Two Towers

Well, there they are , cleaned up and finished. Simple towers that can serve as simple bastions. I haven't set them up with walls yet to get a feel for them yet, but that's alright because I bet they'll look just fine. Tonight, time permitting, I may try to make one or two more.

I'm running into an interesting problem... So the friend of mine who plays Guard? He has decided he wants to make a house rule. He wants to play with bigger tables and add a turn to the game. Why? Well, why do you think? This is the same guy who said he wouldn't even play 40K again until he could field 6 Basilisks. Now he doesn't like the small size of the tables. To an extent I agree with him. 6'x4' isn't much. It undercuts mobility and vastly decreases the effectiveness of firepower (as if that was king as it is). However, I know him. All he wants is more time to use those ungodly ranges that few else can touch to undo his opponent with big guns. I foresee breaking my own personal feelings and using all drop armies on him a few times to show the futility of that thinking. He wants to tilt the balance to favor himself winning when you should plan to do the best you can with what you have. Having mentioned this to him, he now seems to be more interested in Apocalypse which is cool because I like Apoc and I know he wants the bigger tables. However, when it comes to Apoc, he's fixated on titans and superheavies (which he can't afford and doesn't want to scratch build). And if it doesn't work out for him that way, he's taling about a 'Nid army made up of countless gaunts of all types. Jeez... I love the guy, but he's a total power gamer so playing him will be grating. But it will be playing with a friend So I guess I can live with that.

Two Towers

Well, I got two towers built and mostly painted. Tonight I'm going to do some touchup work and black in the windows and then these will be great bastions and wall towers. Definitely need at least two more but the standing plan is for three more anyway.

Was on Bell of Lost Souls forum while people were talking about the new Space Hulk. Someone mentioned that it would probably come out with more Terminators. Speaking as someone who has 40 Termies painted and another 35 basecoated or unassembled, do we really need more Terminators? I had to make the conscious choice not to get more when Black Reach ones were floating around like candy. I like Terminators, but I feel no need, either fluffwise or as a player, to have an entire Terminator Company. However, your proverbial mileage may vary. When I mentioned that, someone immediately jumped in to ask how much I wanted for the unassembled ones. Different strokes...

Walls & Building Finally Complete

Finally finished up the touch ups on the walls and building. Took me long enough, eh? Now they get to join the pantheon of terrain I already have. Apparently my terrain collection has had an effect that I never originally intended.

You see, I started playing 40k with 3rd Edition. Several of my friends played 2nd Ed and Rogue Trader back in the day and I got a little taste of interest from those (I'll tell you one day about my first attempt at painting, remembered fondly as the "terra-cotta Marine") but what they were playing just didn't do it for me. I didn't like the idea of a tactical war game where one character or one vehicle could literally rule the field by taking on the entire opposing army alone. And that was a good description of those days. Imagine a character with enough war gear to outfit an entire army, multiple wounds and 3 to 5 saves, all of which are rolled when damage is incoming, dealing 10 attacks with power weapons, finger lasers and whatever other kind of craziness could be packed on. Believe me, you couldn't even kill a Land Raider back then. Every new unit was power cranked to be even more devastating. Remember when Warp Spiders used flamer templates and ignored armor saves? I do. :) Anyway, when 3rd Ed came out, they shifted the game away from characters and on to squads. And that's when I got into the game. That's also when those friends got out. A few weeks ago, we threw a little 4th of July soiree and one of them was over. When he saw all the terrain I've made, he was impressed. So much so that he's thinking about pulling out his Orks and playing again. This particular friend, though he hasn't played much in the last decade has still collected minis off and onin that time. He has Ork and Eldar armies that, if assembled and painted, would probably equal my Marine Army points wise. And another friend has been talking to me about getting back in and building a board in his garage and working on his old Guard army. I guess I've given them the bug again and I'm good with that.

This morning I put some templates on foam core for planned desert terrain, specifically two story buildings that I can use as bastions, wall towers or just stand alone generic buildings. With luck, I'll be able to cut them out and assemble them tonight, If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to paint them, but I wouldn't bet on that. Either way, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Walls & Building

Alright, I did the back sides of the walls last night. Now all I need is a little touch up, especially in corners, and they'll be good to go. While I was at it, I painted the building from the foamcore tutorial last night. Once again, I need to black in the windows and door and it'll be done.

Not too much to report other than that. I've been thinking about a terrain piece using a couple of those slimfast cans I acquired a number of years ago and still haven't used. They would be another addition to my one-day-to-be-accomplished industrial tank farm that I've been considering for years. Of course, this is just a side project that I don't feel pressure on since it's been rattling around for about 5 years and I've only built one piece... That doesn't mean I shouldn't pick up a few more small coffee cans, just in case.

Half-Painted Walls

Well, I'm halfway to my previously stated short term goal for the week. Last night I whipped out a bottle of paint and a foam brush and painted the front sides of those five walls of mine. Now they taunt me less with their reflective whiteness. Tonight I hope to get to the back sides of them and maybe do another once over on the fronts. The foam brush covers quickly and well, but you have to wait for paint to completely dry before you can go over it again or it streaks badly or, even worse, wears off and leaves big white sections showing through. Hopefully, by the weekend, I'll have these done and will have started the bastions.

I've run into a minor pickle. You see, I have another painting project I'm doing for a friend of mine. It's not 40K related but it's something I want to focus on and devote time to. Basically, I'm not sure whether I should put the work in progress here or not. Give me a couple of days to think about it.

I think when I've made my desert bastions and acquired and painted boards, I'm going to to arrange a battle with friends at my house. The entire point of building all this terrain and table acquisition is to be able to play more battles at home. I've always wanted to but I've never really had the space to do so. Now I do but it's space that's...environmentally challenged in that it's too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter to really use. I may have to plan a day in the fall that's good enough but considering the weather here in fall, that'll still be rough and too hot. But darn-it-all, I want to play in my own home and I will come hell or high water!

The Last Wall For a While

Before you is the last short wall I intend to make for a while. Just for the sake of full disclosure, if you look in the background, you can see the wall I completed before but recycled a picture for. Soon, I'm going to paint the five walls I've recently completed but I haven't decided if I want to do them all in tan and continue my desert/adobe theme of if I should do them in gray and make them part of my industrial buildings. I'm leaning towards desert because industrial areas tend to have open areas and more wide-ranging and mechanized defenses while out in the desert, walls are more useful for shade and against the occasional in coming invader or some kind of crap like that. In addition, I like the desert look a little more so I am leaning in that direction. I noticed a while back that if you put two of these walls back to back, they make a good elevated pathway. I noticed this morning that, thanks to the notches I put in the base so that they could stand at angles, I can fit a building to them well so I'm thinking that a few of these walls together like that and a few buildings together could make a pretty cool Indomitable Fortress.

Started drawing out that Memorial column I was talking about before. I have a couple of small issues to work out, but I see great potential for it as a terrain piece. On a completely different note, I'm also thinking about making more static defenses like sandbag walls, concertina wire and tank traps. The sandbag walls, well, there are ways to make them from scratch but I like the Tamiya ones a lot and they're cheap ($5/box) and they look good. One box can make an inch high tank redoubt or four five in ch long sandbag walls. If you pick up one a month, after a while you'll be swimming in sandbag fortifications. As for concertina wire and tank traps, they may be the subject of a future entry...

Haven't decided what to do next. You'll probably know the day after I do. I've got several things to paint and I think I'll do a bit of that for a while. Besides, I don't want to go out and buy any foamcore right now. I'll have to soon enough when I'm ready to build the Memorial column.

Wall

What did I get done last night? I assembled another wall. Actually, I also painted a couple of miniature ships for another game system entirely but we're concerning ourselves with 40K here so that other stuff doesn't matter. I also have to ask your forgiveness for the photograph. I took a picture of the wall I made last night, but I don't have it on hand for this and since one wall looks remarkably like another wall, I decided to recycle a wall pic. Consider me properly castigated. I'll never do it again. :)

I'm thinking about a quick little project. I was reading an article from some women's magazine about interesting lighthouses and the shape of one caught my eye. It was something easy to do with foamcore and I envisioned it more as the base and column of some kind of memorial or statue. Recently I made a memorial out of a Black Reach Captain (I've got 3 or 4 I'll never use for play), a dice box (you know the ones that dice bricks come in) and some Basilica buttresses all mounted on a CD (good use for coasters). Well, a CD is just a bit smaller than 5x5" (120mm or 4.72") so if I made this base column that's based on this lighthouse, it'll be just the right size to top with this statue. It's also a good reason to make more statues (besides the fact that more and varied terrain is always good).

As a side mention to the foamcore design tutorial and because this entry made me think of it, here's something to think about. Of course you need graph paper to design your buildings. Well, you don't NEED it, but it helps a lot. But 8.5x11" graph paper isn't suited for bigger things which you'll probably eventually want to make. You could make lots of smaller pieces and put them together to make something bigger, but sometimes you want a big facade for a building or something similar. Trust me. Those city walls? The factory? I didn't do them on normal sized sheets. Go out to an art supply store (or, in my case, local blueprint company) and you'll find graph paper pads that are 11x17". They're obviously a little more expensive, but when you want to do something big, they can't be beat. If you're going to make a lot of buildings, it's a good investment if and/or when you decide to go bigger.

Some Things I've Done With Foamcore

So, I've been talking about all this stuff you can build with foam core. Well, it's time to show you some of the things I've done. Maybe you'll get inspired!

Desert buildings. Note the one at the far right front. That's basically the basic building we built last time with the bottom of a plastic easter egg on top.




Similar buildings with an industrial look. The little factory in front is just foamcore with a couple of short PVC pipe fittings.




Desert ruins... Note that their bases are L-shaped. That way I can fit them together to make bigger building footprints...





Of course, wall rubble makes great barricades and can represent even more demolished buildings.





Talking about Planetstrike, does that look like it could be a Skyshield landing pad to you? It's a whole lot cheaper...





And maybe those could be defensive walls around a bunker. How many foamcore defensive lines do you think you can get out of $20 worth of foamcore?




These are bridges. Some are meant as river crossing bridges. The rear ones were meant to be between buildings but several strung together make a great elevated monorail track.




Watch out for the scraps you cut out while making something. These were left over from the monorails. I slapped them on a base and now they're Imperial message boards. Some people like the Imperium and some people don't...




Now these are city walls! Constantinople had nothing on these bad boys!






But if you need something for a small fort or a compound, these'll work nicely, too.




This is one of my biggest pieces. This factory has a 15x15" footprint. It's foamcore with some plasticard on the doors and PVC pipes for tubes and smokestacks.




And lastly, you've seen these before. Who says you're restricted to blocky Imperial architecture?




So, I hope you got some ideas from this. when it comes to foamcore, you're pretty much limited by the thickness of the foamcore and your imagination (and maybe the size of your graph paper but you can buy that bigger!) so get out your pencils. Get drawing, get gluing and get cutting!

Wall & Foamcore Tutorial 3

What did I make? Another wall! What are the odds? Actually, I have a couple more to build so don't be amazed when I present them in the next few days. But, then again, that's not all I did. I also continued with the foamcore tutorial.

Yesterday I drew a simple building on graph paper. Normally I would have made photocopies of it but for our purposes today, I'm going to use the original drawn template itself. First you need your tools: a glue stick, a bottle of glue and an exacto knife. Once you have those out, we're ready to begin.

Take your glue stick and run it on the back of the template so you can stick it to the foamcore. If you want to be hardcore about it, a couple of days before you use it, open the glue stick and let it dry out. The glue in there is moist and when you put it on the paper, it will absorb into and warp the paper a bit. If you leave the glue stick open, excess moisture will evaporate giving you less chance of that happening. That's also why you want to photocopy the template. Copy paper is less absorbent than graph paper so you won't have to worry about it as much.

Adhere the glued template to the foamcore. Make sure it's flat and as even as possible. Notice how my sticking has ripples in it? That's because of moisture warping the graph paper as I mentioned before. Try to do the best you can but don't stress if there's a bubble or anything like that. Unless you're doing precision cuts or something like that, it won't really matter too much for out purposes.

This is when you get out the exacto knife and start cutting. Once again, try to stay with your lines the best you can, but don't stress if it isn't perfect. Foamcore is light enough and strong enough that even if you don't make a perfect line, the edges can still adhere well to things when gluing. Another thing that I'd take the time to mention is that if you plan on building a lot of buildings or big ones, you might consider buying a mat cutter. Even an inexpensive one will help with your straight lines and allow you to cut through board at angles if you want. If I had to start building again from the beginning, knowing what I know now, I would definitely invest in one. I also chose to cut out the door and windows. I recommend taking a little bit of scrap foamcore and gluing it behind the open sections. once you've finished and are ready, it's a little hard to paint the inside of the building. Besides, why waste the paint?

Once you've done the cutting, you'll be left with the various parts. Peel off the paper. A little might stick, but that's OK. it'll get painted over in the end so it won't hurt anything. It's a good time to double check and make sure everything is the proper size. I'll tell you a secret. When I drew this out, I miscounted one of the sides and made it a hair too long. It was an easy fix, but it's a perfect reason why you don't want to use your originals. If I still had it, I could erase and redraw a couple of lines and if would have been perfect for reproduction.

Note how these two building sides join together? That way, when I glue them, they'll be more stable since I''ll glue each join in two different places instead of one that could just snap. When I make taller buildings, I'll continue that up the side so they all fit together like teeth. Lots of extra stability makes for more durability...

Start gluing the joins and also the walls to the base. Usually if you glue two walls together and then to the base, it's easier to glue the other walls on. You may have to hold pieces in place for a minute but it should go together easily. And don't forget to glue the scrap foamcore to the door and windows! Glue the supports in the corners for the roof. They hold up the roof and, if you glue on three sides, give extra stability to the structure as a whole.

Make sure you finish everything you're going to do inside because now it's time to glue on the roof. Once you've done that, there's not getting back in there without doing some cutting. However, since it's just foamcore, if you make a mistake, turn it into a ruin or something and build another correctly. That's the great thing about foamcore buildings. if you mess them up, who cares? Make another!

Lastly, glue on the roof. It only takes a little bit on each support and letting it settle.

Voila! You new have a completed building. You may want to embellish it a little. A Plasticard logo could be cool. I like to take the bottom halves of plastic easter eggs and glue them on top for domes. Some bits glued on could make this a communication center or a temple or storage depot or whatever else you want. And of course, you can make buildings of almost any size and shape fore just about any function. Or you can go smaller, making barricades, bunkers and anything else you can think of. Heck, I'm even working out how to make vehicles and Rhinos out of foamcore so I can make wrecked vehicles for more terrain. The possibilities are almost endless. In fact, tomorrow, I'm going to show you some of the things I've made so you can see for yourself and maybe get some ideas.

Until then, good luck and good cutting!

Wall & Foamcore Tutorial Part 2

Last night I got another wall done. Nothing fancy. I have been noticing a minor problem with my last two walls, though. when foamcore sits around for a long time and isn't entirely flat, it will bow a little. Because of this, I'm having a harder time gluing things together because they're not entirely flush. No biggie, though. Once it's painted, you probably won't be able to tell it from any other wall.

So let's make a foamcore building. The first thing you want to do is to pull out graph paper and draw it out. As you can see to the left, I have drawn out a simple intact square building that is 5x5x3". If you're starting with no buildings and want to make a lot of them, I recommend settling on a scale so that you can use multiple pieces and they look like they belong together. Or you can make each piece different. They're your buildings! I base almost everything I build on 5x5" and use 3" for each floor. If I had to start again from scratch, I might go to 6x6 or stay at 5x5 and use 2.5" per floor but I'm pretty happy with the scale I use currently for the most part. As you can see, each of the sides is the same and I've put in dovetails of a sort for stability when its assembled. You could totaly make them interlocking teeth but this is good for a simple building. Also remember that this is supposed to be in three dimensions so you have to account for the thickness of walls when you draw this out. That's easy with 4/inch graph paper. Just use a 1/4" (one grid block) to account for thickness since the foamcore will be 3/16" thick. Not quite the same, but certainly good enough for our purposes. I drew in a door and windows on a couple walls. You may or may not want to cut them out. Sometimes, I paint the doors or windows on. Often I cut them out and then glue a scrap piece of foamcore behind them so the depth is there. Paint black in the recessed area and it looks great. When you get into more complex buildings, you may want to think about places to slot things to add more stability or functionality but that's for later.

I also drew out a base and a roof. Note that the base is 5x5 but the roof is 4.5x4.5. the building is 5x5 but you have to account the the thickness of the wall so the roof is 4.5x4.5 to fit between the walls when they're glued together. And how will the roof stay up? Well, if you check out the previous page, I have some bars up there for roof supports. Glue them on the inside corners and then set the roof on top of them. If you want to be clever, you could cut out the doors and windows and cut a larger piece of foamcore that can cover the door and windows on the inside and can also support the roof. They're your buildings and you can do whatever you want with them.

Lastly, you probably want to go out and make photocopies of your templates for several reasons. If you like the building, you can use the same template over and over without redrawing it every time. If there's something wrong with the drawing and the building doesn't fit together, you can erase and redraw a couple of lines and the template is fixed. Of course, you use up a lot less graph paper that way. Lastly and more importantly, the actual paper in graph paper is weaker than standard copy paper which means it's more likely to tear or warp a little when you glue it to the foam core. Also it's less likely to peel off cleanly once you've done your cutting.

Now you've designed your first building. That's the hard part. Tomorrow you're going to put it on the foamcore and cut it out.

Wall & A Foamcore Tutorial Begins

This is what I got done last night. What is it? It's a wall. It's three inches high and has a walkway on the back so that minis can stand on the wall and look or shoot out. Normally one can crank out several of these in an evening, but last night being...complicated, I was only able to manage one. It did get me thinking, though. Making things out of foamcore is really simple but I never did it until a few years ago, primarily because I thought I couldn't do it. But it's easy as all get out so I'm going to start a tutorial on making buildings and structures out of foamcore.

What is foamcore? Foamcore is a type of board that is created by gluing and pressing paper to the sides of thin sheets of polystyrene foam. The end result is a light, durable and strong board which can easily be cut or shaped. Most foamcore is white with white backing paper. It can be found with other colors of paper and, more recently, in black with black foam.

What do you need to start making buildings? Well first you need some foamcore. What kind of foamcore will be right for you? Well, good old white foamcore, in my humble opinion, is the best. Why? You can get it many places and sometimes cheaply. While you can find it at art stores and grocery stores, check out craft stores like Michael's and Hobby Lobby. They almost always have it cheapest and often have sales on it. Let's assume you're looking for a 20x30" sheet. At art stores, it tends to be a little expensive ($3-4 per sheet). Grocery stores will have better prices but still be a little high ($2-2.50). Craft stores will often have it cheapest ($1-1.50) and when they have sales you can get it by the arm load. Last time I picked some up was during a sale and I got it for 50 cents a sheet! Black foamcore is another good choice but for a different reason. It's very expensive ($5-6!) and only art or craft stores will have it. The big upside, however is that if your terrain gets damaged for some reason, it'll be harder to tell because the rip or tear will be black. You can pass it off as part of the design or construction. But if white foamcore gets damaged, there's this obvious white spot sticking out. If you're making something that will only get moderate use (you and your buddies), white is fine. If you're doing something more high traffic (club or store terrain) use black. Either way, start with white because mistakes are much cheaper... You'll need a few other things, too. Graph paper (4/inch), glue sticks, PVA or school glue, an exacto knife and a little bit of room will finish you out.

Over the next few posts, in addition to whatever I manage to accomplish normally, I'm going to walk designing, cutting and building a simple structure, give some tricks and ideas on how to embellish them and show some other buildings and structures you may want to consider. When we're done, you'll be able to make an entire world of terrain on your own!

Final Webway Portals and Astramalleus History

While my wife was out last night, I watched our daughter. And during that time, I managed to finish my final two webway portals. I think they look quite good considering their crude nature. I'm sure once I slap some paint on them, they'll work a little better. In fact, I may do that tonight, but I'm not making any promises. I have a few Father's Day activities I have to participate in so I may not get to it. Besides, I kinda want to start on that Manufactorum I've had sitting around for a month.

Doesn't it just tempt you to do something with it? Note to anyone who wants to do any sort of standing column/pipe/smokestack type of thing: there are baby bottles that are long and thin and mostly used for storage (as far as I can tell) and they're awesome for pipes and tubes. You don't want to buy them brand new because they're expensive as all things related to weddings, babies and funerals are but if you pick some up either used (they were boiled before they'd sell them) or from friends who have extras, you can get them for nothing or next to. Sometimes they're graduated and have numbers and markings on them. If they're raised in the plastic itself, you'll have to strip them off with an exacto knife or something similar but it's not hard. If you can find some that are just printed, more power to you.


So, continuing from before:

The Astramalleus or "Star Hammers" are an Ultramarine descended Chapter chartered during the 23rd founding in the fallout of the Age of Apostasy. Because of a change in the fundamental rites and doctrines of a Marine Chapter, a young Captain, aided by many veteran troops, managed to steal a Battle Barge and defect. After wandering for years scrounging supplies wherever possible, they managed to find a planet with a tribal level of civilization which they chose to make their home. They lived in safety until outside events changed their course forever.

Captain Ullce Walach was alerted to a large spike in Imperial transmissions in the general area. An Ork Waagh had been encountered and was heading for the Imperial hive world of Hajic Secundus. With over 9 billion inhabitants and several large foundry complexes, this was a world the Orks could not be allowed to have. The Waagh was estimated to reach the planet in six days. No significant Imperial reinforcements would be able to arrive for at least a month. Walach and his navigators took calculations and estimated they could be there in ten days. Taking this before the entire assembled Marine force, Walach described the situation and asked for volunteers to travel to Hajic and hold off the Waagh. Every Marine stepped forward. They had rebelled against the changes in their Chapter, not against the Emperor or the Imperium. They painted their gray armor black and began preparations.

Twelve days later, six days after the arrival of the Orks, Angels of Death descended from the skies of Hajic. The beleaguered and overwhelmed Planetary Defense Forces considered it a miracle from the Emperor himself. Marines began devastating assaults on Ork strategic positions and hit-and-run attacks to take pressure off the Defense forces. For 22 days, the Renegades fought with valor and skill against an enemy that hopelessly out numbered them. They fought holding actions to allow time for citizens to be moved or Guard forces to regroup. They attacked captured foundries to keep their building facilities out of Ork hands. On the 21st day, all the remaining Marines on planet gathered to defend the Camarko Pass, the only remaining way into the Valley and Hive City of Camarko, largest city on the planet and home of the Imperial Planetary Governors. Ork blood flowed ankle deep and when the bodies grew too numerous, they fought on top of the bodies. Every Marine lost was a great blow to the defenders, but they were enough. On the twenty-second day, elements of two Marine Chapters arrived and began to fight. Within two more weeks, seven other Marine Chapters, including a contingent of Ultramarines, had responded and and elements of the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Guard and signalled their estimated arrival times.

The renegade forces had paid a heavy cost. of 278 Marines who had made planetfall, only Walach and 63 others had survived. Once it was clear that the arriving forces were enough to the task, Walach made preparations to leave the planet. The other Marine Chapters, seeing the work the renegades had accomplished and knowing the penchant of Marines to keep their own counsels, did not inquire too deeply into their identities or their reasons for leaving before the job was done.

As fate would have it, they were recognized before they could leave. One of the last responding Chapters was the Grey Storms...

Foamcore Webway Portals

Last night, the wife was out and I had our daughter and despite the fact that I was solely responsible for making sure she was fed, clean and generally still alive when my wife got home, I managed to do something!

I've done a lot with foamcore. About three years ago, I played a game against a friend of mine's Necrons at his house. Up to this point, I'd pretty much played in local game stores. I'd played a few friends who had terrain at home, but that wasn't many games. Neither my friend or I had terrain and that day I decided I should start acquiring/making some. A lot of foamcore and graph paper later, I have more than enough terrain to choke a small horse. Ruins and basic buildings are easy (which is why I have a ton of them) but things not involving straight lines are a little harder. But I've been wanting to make something like these for quite some time and since I had painted the resin ones just a little before, I figured this was as good a time as any. You've probably seen similar ones on the Intar-Webs before. I used a template that I downloaded somewhere (I think GW was hosting it for a while). These aren't as big, though. The template as created would result in huge gates and, if I actually decide to make a little Eldar terrain one day, I might make some for an Eldar world table or something. For my purposes, though these will do fine for artifacts left over on other worlds or something similar. Hopefully, I'll be able to whip up a few more in the next few days but we'll play it by ear and see what happens.

Some of you will probably want to comment that they're far too angular and blocky for Eldar technology. Well, that's fine with me because I don't see a need for them to be museum quality or anything. Some people like to feel like they're playing in a historical diorama and want buildings as photo realistic as possible. Not me. I find that simple buildings are easier to infuse with imagination. By representing them more simply, I create the feeling of a building or a village than the reality of a building or a village. That and, ultimately, a hut is a hut is a hut no matter where you go in "civilized" or industrialized places, whether it's adobe, concrete, plasteel or whatever they make them out of in forty thousand plus years. My point here is that these are shaped like webway gates and they're good enough to represent even if they don't look like wraithbone or super organic. Once I paint them, they'll look better. I am thinking of hitting a craft store for some jewel like baubles to decorate them a little more but we'll see how that works out.

What's next, you might ask? Well, after whipping up a few more Webway portals, I think I'm going to start painting a Manufactorum that I've had based for quite a while but haven't gotten around to painting yet. Surprised that I have actually bought buildings instead of making them? I actually like the GW buildings and they're not that terrible expensive. I've amassed quite a few of them and, when combined with the old 3rd Ed. Ruins that came in the box set (I've got a dozen or so of them), the look pretty awesome out there on the board. Of course, the biggest project is to get a bigger table so I can start hosting games at my house, but that's for later. Between the Manufactorum and the stuff I have sitting around unpainted (Tac squads, both regular and Black Reach, Rhinos, Whirlwinds, Speeders, a Predator I recently got cheap), I have more than enough stuff to paint and talk about for quite a while.