Monumental architecture

 

Another terrain peice, as every Cuidad Imperiale needs a bit of impressive monumental architecture.  Paris has the Champs Elissay.  Washington DC has the Jefferson Memorial.  Xyphonica has this, the Monument a l'elephant et a l'aigle.  It's designed to have enough flat space for minis to make their impassable terrain or jump infantry moves and perch above the battlefield.

 

I printed out an Imperail Aqilla, stuck it on a sheet of foam board and cut out the shape and stuck it on another sheet of foam board using another printed Aqilla to position the bits correctly.  And of course, this is big enough for titan sized models to hide behind, should they find their sheilds are being stripped by other super heavies.

The elephants are cheap ornaments, the statues are 1980s Mangil Manhides Mercenary Marauders, some LOTR ones, some more greek themed resin ones from a KS and one Primaris and a Stormcast Eternal, as well as bronze avengers guarding the corners. 

Imperial Guard officer (Capt Pasquale from the Cadian 124th) for scale.

Set Design

 

Secenary WiPs

Here's a section of wall.  Base colours only so far (double yellow lines next).  And I need to put end sections on as well

There are banners to be hung from the horizontal bars.  

Superheavy tank for scale. 

Assorted statues, various sources, sprayed with wilko's own brand copper 'craft' spray and then washed with the GW verdigris wash stuff.  

Sentinel for scale

And here it is again, peeking through a pedestrian gate in another wall section. 

And another gate section.  Either the two SM statues or the Basillica ones are going in front of the two large uprights.

Like I say, just base colours so far.  More to do

Kickstarter question

Has anyone in the UK committed to this? :

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/168003818/stormguard-3d-printable-terrain-for-rpg-and-wargam



There are a few bits in here which I would buy, but I'm not buying a load of STL files for a printer I don't have.

From the KS FAQ:

• Can I buy printed Terrain?

   

  RM Studio Terrain is not selling prints through the kickstarter, after the campaign is successful their will be printers around the world that you will be able to purchase pre-printed terrain from.
  Last updated: Fri, February 8 2019 3:47 AM UTC +00:00

And no, I'm not going to buy a 3D printer just for this, I did make an enquiry about some Chimera bits, but it turns out that the thing would take 9 hours of supervised printing to do.  So that's a non-starter, I don't have a spare 9hour block of time free for about another decade, so then, anyone out there got a route to getting these ?

The Plan for 2019

 

Part of 902 Div HQ Echelon - Jus' coz they're pretty.

So all of the gang over at the Bread Bunker have done pieces about doing stuff in a year.  In the past I have put up an occasional (usually the first post in Jan, but not this year) post about the vast amount of stuff I have on the go at the same time.  Like this, the last one from Jun 18.  But as previously discussed, in 2018, I spent about half of what I did in 2017, so the rules of acquisition are working (Cheers, you sexy Ferrengi !)

There's a lot going on in there (the garage). 

So this year I'm going for a four output plan:

• City/Church Wall scenery (with a few statues) to make a processional way (or photo backdrop)
• Finish the Macharius and Stormblade (not a lot of work, but no progress for ages)
• Build the Christmas Vulture
• Build the last three ASL HVM AAA (would involve buying 3x Chimerae)

And anything else will be a bonus !  So that's it, just four things to be done, with plenty of scope for all the other stuff off that list (and the Griffin models that DragonForge has in the pipeline...) being 'extra, bonus, super wonderful stuff'.

                    

I'm hoping that picking just four things to do this year, bearing in mind the amount of time I get to 'hobby' in makes my plan achievable.  Will doing all of these push the overall Devos IV project towards completion ?  Yes, the two armoured thingies round out 902 Div, the scenery just needs to be done and the Vulture, done nicely, might get me another one when my birthday rolls around. 

And hopefully some extra things will get done as well, otherwise I'm looking at another decade to get through the plastic crack pile !

The bunker, here as an example of 'scenery', build by men without rulers or plumblines

Cathedral & Scenery stuff for your delectation.

So looking around for things to make the Basilica project easier, I found these two:  I really, really like the archways on the Raging Heroes kits.  But the kit is printed cardboard, which would be fine on it's own, However, the rest of my scenery is hard plastic, so it just wouldn't match. 

So I'm looking at my existing bits and exploring ideas for materials from Wickes.

But both of these look great

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/loudnraging/warstages-the-gothic-cathedral



https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1989721065/warlayer-zone-one?ref=recs&ref=discovery

Shedhu gate

All things come to he who waits

You may remember this post, where I outlined why I wouldn't be buying the audio book (I know a lot of people love them, painting their minis to the soundtrack of the Horus Heresy etc).  But that what I'd really like is the real book...

Obviously someone in BL is listening, cause a few weeks ago, I got this:

Which is nice, and was quickly read.  I like the British Museum,  It's great, having almost nowt about Great Britain in it, but being full of cultural treasures from around the globe appropriated by our forefathers.  Regardless of the rights and wrongs of that, I love the Assyrian/Babylonian permanent exhibit.  The Shedu gates (the one on the left is a bull, the one of the right is a lion) are a particular favourite of mine and crop up in my FRPG campaign in the most impressive settings (not that the players would ever even notice).

So now the bounty that is the internet has provided something which could quite easily become a focal point in my long planned basilica.  Heck, it doesn't even need to be the front door.  Get a load of this:

On sale here and definitely one for the Christmas list.  Possibly the only one at 75 Euro Dollars.

The rules of acquisition don't count at birthdays and Christmas

Well, not so much 'don't count' as 'can be circumvented'.

So I saw this on TTF http://ttfix.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/things-from-basement-pavlovs-house.html

Which is available here http://www.thingsfromthebasement.com/store/p350/Pavlov_House.html  but is so new and shiney that it doesn't yet have a price.

So coupled with the Blackhawk down Target Building: http://gcmini.mybigcommerce.com/28mm-blackhawk-down-target-building-28mmdf085/ 

And the Stalingrad tank factory: Although my link for this no longer works, it's probably on the bay of Es somewhere.

So, that's birthdays and Christmas sorted.  I've got that kickstarter building for my dad to build - he fell of a step ladder at the age of 72 and scared the bejesus out of all of us.  Fortunately he's fine now, so I'll be press ganging him soon.  Just my need for ten Chimerae left to sort. 

Surprise scenery

So the Royal Mail, in cahoots with HMRC, sent me one of their wonderful anonymised demands - I paraphrase - "There's a parcel from Cadia  Canada, if you give us £30ish, you can have it."

Eventually, curiosity overcame my reluctance to spend money. 

Here's the box on the table.  Oh, its a kickstarter.

Ah, now I remember !

More MDF than I can eat.  This much laser cut MDF has a smell.  Not a nice smell like when you walk past a Teriyaki bar and then Cinnabon and then into a coffee shop, but not unpleasant either, it's just a smell which tells you get building.

Hummm.  Well, just in case this piqued your interest, this is what it should look like when built:

Goodies, goodie, goodie, gum, gum. (Sorry if you didn't grow up watching BBC in the 1970s)

The bizarre title will be explained further down.

Amera Plastic Buildings, as seen in the fortymunda posts.  Six buildings and a pretty nifty bunker for a shade under £100.

Someone (The Responsible One perhaps ?  He is pretty keen on scenery) mentiioned that they sometimes don't stand up too well to sustained use.  And the really tall building you can see here did need one floor re-gluing after the fight. However, they are not likely to see more than half a dozen days of use each year, so I've no really qualms about that.

And this is one of the helpers destroying the illusion of scale (she's not really a deformed headless bitch, she's looking the other way ).

Anyway, this last picture (and the other unpublished ones) reminded me of this: Giant Kitten wrecking London. Which explains the title.  And yes, Michael Aspell did once used to be a news reader.

A bit more progress - Easter weekend.

Hello.  A little more progress to report.  But these arn't making a huge dent in the list.

This wasn't on the list, but after leafing through the IA masterclass volume 1 (available from no good book retailers at all, only direct from the publisher....) I was stuck by the need to weather the Valk fleet a little more.  So I started.  And now I'll have to finish.  Overdid the yellow ink straight off (it's over humbrol metal coate, which is ace if you something to look like metal.  Prolly coz it is [?]).  The light coloured bits, will I am confident, eventually look like rusty corrugated iron. Perhaps the engines were made in New Zealand, where corrugated iron is naturally occurring.

Getting there.  Sponging greys over the engine and matt varnish.  And then airbrushing the soot from the engines.  But first more blue and black ink washes over the hot bits.

This is the Industrial Mechanika warthog, which you may have seen on Dwartist blog.  It was paid for last year (and so is 'legal') and is 1/35th.  But don't let that stop you - it didn't stop me.  Ideal for a command vehicle.  The casting is crisp and the separate hull panels on the front (as you look at it, the features to the left of the vehicle) slot together with no room for glue.  And the wheels are fab too.  I've got some splinter masks for this one from a kickstarter (also last years).

And lastly, some salamander progress - more stowage has been selected and prep'd.  Work has begun on the inside of the crew compartment as well.

And a few more buildings as well.  These are Amera Plastic Buildings, which are cheap and quick to put together; each is a kit of vaccuformed plastic sheet, which makes them simple and inexpensive in engineering terms.  You get extra little bits of 1mm plasticard with some of the kits, with which you can buttress the interior of the building, should you wish.  They arn't the prettiest, however, I think that the scenery is just that; a backdrop to the main event - the minis.

The winter coloured Chimera gives an idea of the scale.  The basic under coat and two tone grey is all from spray cans.

There is a small gap at the top of the wall on the end of the factory; a strip declaring this to be a tractor factory will be fitted at some point.  The units will be held upside down and the inside done in the darker grey to get rid of those white bits you can see.

Compared to some other buildings for 28mm wargames, these are inexpensive and quick to put together. And you get something that you can stand minis on the floors. And they could be reinforced and tarted up.

And check this out for a DKK army: http://gunheads.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/a-new-beginning.html?showComment=1398017289539#c3900700890810703689

Fundahawk progress

Managed a little shading on the ground around the thunderhork.  So it's an improvement (That's a question) compared to previously (post 07 Feb 14).  But the ground is still not as light as my tables.  I may just darken the tables...

I had a chat with PVP when he dropped in and we discussed toning down the rust and improving the canopy.  But small steps, eh ?