40K TERRAIN MADNESS, why I have no beer money...

Okay, I mentioned I made a purchase...here's a preview:

In the boxes:

The boxes opened: (there's a lot of plastic here)

A quick structure: (all boxes are modular and compatible, this is probably no more than 15% of the available pieces)

The pics aren't great, I had to coax each shot from the dying batteries...

but I'm excited by the possibilities. The pieces snap together, so I can take apart and reconfigure with ease. I'm eager to take a look at the cathedral we discussed last weekend, ruined by the Crashed Imperial Aquila Lander.

However, I'm also looking forward to finalizing (to a point) the putty casts I did. I do plan to reduce the scale of the structure you saw and make two ruined corners instead.

WARHAMMER 40K TERRAIN, casting building components...

Well, I finally did a wall panel. I'm not sure I'm all that crazy about he results. These haven't been sanded or shaped to fit together, or glued, painted, etc. (they are just stacked in the picture). Those things might help, but I'm not sure about continuing with this idea.

I like the Gothic buildings of 40K, but our resin casting endeavors will probably yield much better results. As mentioned before, the foam molds and water putty might ought to be left to concrete barricades, bunkers, bridges, etc. Or a more industrial style building. Or natural elements...

Still, I'll probably cast a few more of these and remove some of the 'window glass', just so I can make at least one 12"x12 or 24" building ruin.

Unfortunately, the first glimpse of a home-made building left me thinking...man, I'd rather pay $20 bucks and get this:

Speaking of that, if I were to buy a building, what are your thoughts on an Imperial Sector (manufactorum, administratum, sanctum imperialis, additional pieces for 4th bldg)

VS.

the Imperial Strongpoint (box set contains one Imperial Strongpoint, including two plastic Bastions and three plastic Aegis Defence Lines).

I guess it just depends on the type of battlefield you're going for...obviously they pushed one for Cities of Death and one for Planetstrike. The Strongpoint does come with some cool weapons bits...not sure if they would come into play in a normal (non-Apocalypse) game though.

CONVERTING OLD TERMINATOR TO NEW SIZE...

If you remember, I got a batch of old (circa '94 or '96) terminators on the cheap, and by comparison to the current models, they seem diminutive and static. While I don't plan on getting caught up in 'true-scaling' my army, I would like there to be a difference in the sizes of a space marine in power armor compared to tactical dreadnought armour.

I've been kind of itching to see what I can do about this, so I worked more on this than terrain over the weekend. Below: the two old terminators were from identical blisters and would have the same pose if not for the conversions. The current terminator is from AoBR, but I think it's the same size-wise as those from a termie box.


You see the base layer of green stuff over the pins...I'll build this up to make it look seamless and add detail later.

360:

gotta fix that back crotch the old models have...gotta give 'em a bum...

We spoke before about sharpening the blades of weapons, I decided to do it on the lighting claws since they were so bent and chunky to begin with.

And here's a couple shots of the craters I was talking about...the first attempt is on the left, the process still needs work, will be interesting to see how they look painted

OK, terminator curiosity satisfied for the moment. I like where it's headed, but it is a lot of work...not sure if it's worth it to do every one.

Maybe I really will get to a wall panel mold this week...

WARHAMMER 40K TERRAIN...getting out of control...

I'm coming up with ideas for molds faster than I'm making them or casting. Here's an update showing floor tiles (that you can't see) and a multi-use buttress element...and some entourage for fun and loose scale (thanks to the modelers of 3D Warehouse).



While I didn't shoot a pic yet, I did try another sand mold blast crater the other night. It came out better, but I'm still not sure they're worth making. I'll try to get it on here, I'm interested in getting your opinion (may be hard to tell without being painted). Of course, for an average cost of pennies, they look pretty good.