It's never too late for an update?

Well, life has kind of gotten away from me since my last update. A lot has happened since then, some family issues, a new job and issues with that, some more family issues, and here we are in October.

That said, I had a fair amount of hobby time, which I tried to use pretty wisely, I have not had any motivation to post. However, now I am on vacation and my wife is watching last year's Nigella's Christmas Special with her friend, so I have some time to kill.

(I am posting this via the Blogger app on my phone, so I have no access to fancy editing).

Terrain Tutorial #1 - Introduction and Materials

One of the many projects that I currently have on the go is a collection of Imperial Sector terrain. In a previous post, I have put some pictures up of the buildings themselves, which are essentially assembled, short of perhaps a few bits to add here and there.

However, now I am tasked with finishing them, which includes putting them on a sturdy base, adding debris and battle damage, and then ultimately paint them all up. This series of tutorials will hopefully document my progress in a way that can be useful for others.

Hills Terrain WIP #1

In addition to the Imperial Sector, I used some white styrofoam to carve out a few hills for terrain. I like some designs more than others, but they will all make do for now. They are based on plasticard, and covered with a slightly grainy wood filler. I still need to add some more rocks and rubble to add a bit of texture before priming and painting.

 

More hills after the break.

Imperial Sector WIP #1

As promised, here are some WIP shots of my buildings. I spent a lot of time searching other people's creations to get inspiration - there are lots of amazing projects out there!

My goal was to create a good variety of pieces, and have some that can be used in a modular fashion to add variety to the tabletop. The shots below showcase the basic skeleton of each building - I plan on adding lots of debris and rubble, as well as some bits such as discarded weapons, etc.

Eventually I will mount each piece on hardboard for stability and to delineate area terrain if it is used as such.

Sanctum Imperialis:

This building set came with 3 Sprues which I used to make 2 buildings. The main building closely mimics the "standard" template for the Sanctum, with a few minor changes. I wanted to give this building a more substantial second floor, as well as putting few windows on the main floor to block line of sight.

The smaller building was created painstakingly with some greenstuff to create the 45-degree angles. It reminded me how piss-poor I am at using greenstuff, and the interior joints will have to be covered with some girder bitz provided by the kits. That said, I do like how it turned out, and the fact that its entrance is on an angle to the rest of the buildings will hopefully add some character to my city.

The Productive Hiatus

It's been quite a while since I've written anything, but that is not to say I have been neglecting the hobby - quite the opposite, in fact.

In the last 3 or so months, I have purchased and assembled a Dark Vengeance box (I needed templates and wanted a portable rulebook, plus the models are quite nice as well so I figured it was a great value).

Also, I was lucky enough to find an Imperial Sector box online (with 20% off of GW price, no less) and so I am now the proud owner of some ruined city terrain! (WIP pics in another post)

AR Coliseum Project - Preliminary Sketches #1

Not much to say here... just some sketches I hastily put together using the Paper app on my iPad. Enjoy!

AR Coliseum Project - A study in shape and scale

With any successful project there is a lot of boring pre-planning prior to any physical work being done. This post hopes to accomplish just that - set some basic parameters on which the work will be based.

Through Red Republic Games' comments, they stated that any arena size would do for games of Arena rex, but offered a 30" diameter circle as a good starting point. This seems like a reasonable size for a skirmish type game, and I originally started my planning based on this. However, the Antiquity nerd in me quickly realized that the actual Coliseum isn't circular, but elliptical instead.

The Coliseum: in all it's HDR Glory!