Workers are going home...

   My last many posts have been about the construction project I've adopted- the new TTCombat terrain for our Necromunda games.  And we've finished this set this weekend!

  It's not the best paint job.  In fact, I decided that the rust-effect is the best as it hides the brushstrokes and adds that color that I was looking for.  This also matches the theme all too well considering that the Underhive isn't known for its pristine appearance.    

  We also took advantage of the airbrush for the grey and yellow.  It was a great learning experience as getting the paint to the proper consistency takes practice.  Unfortunately, we still have some learning to do and it turns out that yellow is even more difficult through an airbrush than with a paintbrush.

  For quick work with little experience, I'm pretty happy with the results.  Let's see:

  After layers of copper and silver came the sprayed layers of yellow.  That wasn't fun.  Then came the rust...

  Hours of work, including a little bit of weathering, and boom!  We now have something other than walkways and furnaces to battle over.  

  Remember that this is only one set of the Slum Blocks and one set of the Slum Stacks.  I still have more to build and paint, but this already presents enough terrain to have a good battle.  Have you been working on the setting of your games?  Let me know in the comments below.  

My name is not Jonas.  Happy Hobbying!

Construction update

   It's been a busy week and I've only gotten one game of 40k in, so I don't have too much to report.  But I've been hobbying a little and got some primer on the buildings.  

  It took two cans of primer to get all of this stuff caught up.  I found out that MDF absorbs paint so much that I had to prime to prime to prime before I can even consider putting paint on.  The thick puddles of primer on the surfaces made me nervous until I returned a couple hours later to find the wood-brown color still poking through.  Wow.

  But now that I'm up to this point, it's time to start considering the colors.  I'm even going to recruit my daughter to help as she's artistic and I have an airbrush that we all need practice with.  

  I'm really excited to have some Settlement-worthy terrain for my Necromunda battles.  I even realized that this new stuff is just as good for the Underhive as it is for the Ash Wastes.  And remember that I have way more to build, so I can even differentiate the two settings if I need to...

  This leads me to the first model built out of the Ash Wastes.  It was very, very fiddly and the pieces are so tiny that cutting off the frame-nubs was very stressful for me.  But the stress was very rewarding as the model is really awesome and reminded me of building fine model airplane kits when I was a kid.

  I kept the driver and gun-caddy separate so that the model is easier to paint.  Also, having a spare quad just lying around the battlefield might be a tempting reason for the gangs to scuffle...

  The battlefield is coming!  Have you been working on anything?  Let me know in the comments below.  Happy Hobbying!

Construction Progress

   I've never heard of a construction company putting out a progress report for the public before, but I'm going to be different- I'm going to show pics of the progress!  We've spent the last week just building these wonderful kits and it's been a blast.

  I spent a few dollars on this stuff and was quickly amazed when it showed up only a couple weeks later (remember, this is European).  I stashed it for a week, posted a blog about it, and then got to work.  In the span of a day full of distractions, we got to work.

  My favorite part of the project is that my wife jumped in headlong.  I gave her the giant air turbine and opened the instructions on the website and let her go.  She didn't have the confidence since she's never built this kind of terrain before (to be fair, I have very little experience with MDF terrain as well).  But she had no problems and I came home from work to find this:

  Super awesome!  And the scale is huge, meaning I can even hide Land Raider tanks behind it!  This is key as my terrain collection isn't exactly overflowing with LoS-blocking stuff...  Speaking of blocks- I spent that time working on the much simpler slum blocks.  In total, I built 15 separate buildings that can be stacked.  Including platforms and walkways, this is perfect for those populated areas of the Underhive.

  If I'm going to use it for a particular game, I need to test the scale.  Let's see how a Space Robot from Space looks: 

Perfect!

  Now that I have those built, I have to consider painting them.  I've done some research and it appears I am going to have to prime them before painting them.  Besides the overwhelming amount of ash dust from the laser-cutting process staining my hands, it also turns out the MDF also absorbs paint like a magical artifact.  This worries me as the detail isn't deep or wide, meaning it will basically disappear after that coating.  While I ponder the plan for this, I will spend more time building the rest of the kits:

  Have you been working on terrain lately?  Let me know in the comments below.  

Happy Hobbying!

Construction Season

   We've all been really busy at work lately.  With employees having personal needs and growth coming on like a tsunami, I haven't been able to lay down paint or even push some warriors around for the dice-toss.  Any of you that live in a big city knows that this isn't Spring or Summer; this is Construction Season.  The seas of orange cones and parked yellow tractors fill the various (and busiest) roadways.  The traffic patterns are my hobby time in this metaphor...

  Fortunately, those construction zones haven't stopped the money-spending, and the results of some recent purchases have arrived.  If you've kept up with the blog, you'll remember that I love terrain.  Because I'm not a creative person, I prefer to purchase terrain rather than build it (although I do have skills in that due to years of service to the Emprah).  And with my focus being Necromunda recently, slums and such have been the focus of those expenditures.  

  My favorite brand making terrain right now is TinkerTurf.  I've mentioned it before.  This week, I received the newest batch from their latest Kickstarter product.  The first set was based around stilted walkways and gantries while this one is focused on walls and defenses.  After all, where am I going to set up the market stuff that GW released recently?  This company made the terrain with Necromunda in mind and I happen to be a 'mundan!  You can check out their website and see their fantastic products here.  

  Speaking of the Underhive- not every environment is platforms and rickety crossings.  Sometimes, there might even be habitable structures there!  Getting bored with the mad dash across elevated levels, I went searching for hab blocks and slum stacks and found them.  This time, it was from a popular company known as TTCombat.  If you visit this link, you'll see why this terrain was perfect for what I was thinking.  With a good paint job and set up copying the movie "Ready Player One", this can really capture the slums of the Underhive mood that I'm going for.  Shootouts and gang raids tend to happen in settlements, they say...

  Once work and life settle down a bit and I return to the workshop, construction season will start.  I may not have the cones (well, I do, but in a bit of a smaller scale), but there's going to be some disruptions to traffic as work begins.  That's all I have for the week!  Anyone else out there working on terrain, sprucing up that battlefield, creating a new setting for war?  Let me know in the comments below.  

Happy Hobbying!