Drop Bunker: First Cuts

I worked on getting the key shapes for the base of the building figured out. I'm not very good at getting objects made by using math, I prefer to create some "beta" items using cardboard first. Once I get the general shape done, I move on to working on getting the folds and angles started. Once those are close, I move on to transferring the shapes, angles and folds to foamcore. That's where I am now. The next step will be to get my measurements and create a precise, reproduce-able template on the computer.

I'll go through those steps for all of the parts of the building. Somewhat time consuming, but makes the final product something that is easy to reproduce and very sturdy to play with.

The two pictures show the steps I went through on the main folds for the corners on the building and where I stand with the final folds on the bunker.

Drop Bunker: Initial Ideas

One of the good things about some corporate meetings is that they are really great opportunities to get some quality drawing time done. Think about it - no one can interrupt you, because you're "in a meeting." The presenter usually has a PowerPoint they provide after the meeting, so you don't have to focus 100% on what they are saying. And, in the case of my most recent meeting, the subject had practically nothing to do with me, so I zoned out right after the introductory sentence.

The things we do on vacation

So I took vacation time to get a lot of things done. Obviously, none of them included anything related to 40K. Haven't posted in two weeks because I've been clearing out some "real world" projects during my vacation. The biggie was to finally rebuild my 1971 Honda CB 750 engine. All the aluminum is buffed and chrome polished, new gaskets everywhere, and soon to be painted - just hope it will run. As far as the photo, that's not my entry in the "Tool Time" fastest lawnmower entry. That's the mobile workstation we put together. You try moving a 300+ pound engine around!

I arrived back at work Monday to find a huge item wrapped in brown paper in my office. They finally had taken down the org charts and someone had put them in my office. Seven 3x6 sheets of foam core!

Looking forward...

I have several projects I've wanted to do and with my cache of board, I'm ready to get going. Just a quick list and short description of some of my ideas.

Ruined Cathedral - I've seen several buildings created with massive cathedral facades and features (large windows, long stairs, flying buttresses, etc.). I want to create a centerpiece item with multiple levels. A great example of this FTW's Ron's cathedral.

Drop-Bunker - I had the idea for this during one of our games where we used our bunkers. We were about to set up bunkers on both sides when I thought how "not real" that set-up would be. In a battle, how would both sides be able to build bunkers that close to each other? I like the idea of a bunker dropped into battle much like a drop pod but done without passengers and put out when the terrain is put out.

Wrecked Titan - A couple of years ago I found LackOf's scratch built titan and various plans for titans. Instead of jumping in and creating an entire titan, I thought it would be cool to test the waters by creating a wrecked walker. That would give me a chance to try some variations on the plans and still have a functional piece when I finished.

Themed Terrain - I've found myself creating terrain that loosely fit into categories. Natural terrain, wrecked ships, ruined buildings, and complete buildings (mainly Mechanicum buildings). Not everything fits into these, but I think it helps the feel of a game if the terrain is coherent. As I work on some of my larger projects, I'm going to fit in as many small ones that build on these different themes.

That's just a few ideas. I've got plenty more that I now have the material to build them with.

Non-BatRep BatRep

Quick post here. We finished our game that my last post talks about. To make this real easy, the game was miserable. My sons and I have fun playing. I can think of very few games where I haven't had fun (including 4th edition Dark Eldar games that went horribly bad). This game was definitely the exception. Because my youngest went out of town, I ended up playing our side by myself. I failed over half of my Grey Knights' psychic tests, which made them rather worthless in close combat. My Interceptor sqad, 5 strong with falchions, failed theirs against a termie squad with 3 left and was wiped out in one round. The ultimate annoyance was the Librarian, who was in reserve and came out in round three, ready to start clearing out some pesky shooty units. In his first assault he not only fails his psychic test, buts fails with snake eyes, doesn't hit anything, and goes away into the warp.Arrrgh! 'Nuff said.

Next post - I'm going to start on another building, I need some fun that my dice can't ruin.

Battle Report (kinda, sorta... not really)

My sons and I haven't been able to put models on the table in a week or so. My youngest keeps asking for us to play, so he and I combined our forces (Sons of Medusa and Grey Knights) to take on his older brother (Templars) in a 1000/1000 vs. 2000 battle. Instead of giving a detailed report, I'll give a broad overview of the setup and the game so far.

Ork Wreck is Completely Wrecked

My Ork wreck from a fast food kid's meal toy is now complete. Spent the evening painting and adding grass. I think it fits what I was looking to make - a functional piece of terrain. It's got enough space on the flat hills for a small squad to snipe while under cover.

This was my first time to ever use static grass. I may go back and some more to give the wreck an even more abandoned look. Enjoy the pictures.

Speeder Wreck Complete - Orks are Next

Really busy week this past week. Weekend has been full as well so it's been a slow process working on the two wrecks. We spent all day today with my mom for Mother's Day. Got home late tonight and I was able to finish the speeder and start getting base coats on the Ork wreck. I'm ready to hit the sack, so I'll just post my pics and say goodnight.

Two Working Wrecks

Bad weather here in the South for half of the weekend usually means I would get to spend lots of time indoors playing with my little army men, but I had honey-do stuff that took up most of my Sunday afternoon. I did get to spend some time on two of my terrain pieces.

True Night Fighting

My 16 year-old son and I played a couple of games over the Easter weekend. We started another game Sunday night with the intention of playing a little each night. With major storms rolling through our neck of the woods, the whole family headed to the basement- the perfect excuse for us to continue our game. As luck would have it, the electricity went out about ten minutes into playing. We decided to improvise so we could continue playing. I used my headlight that I paint with and Hunter used his Maglite. True night fighting.

The power is still out so I'm posting from my Droid phone app. Never used it before, so I'm not quite sure how everything will be formatted.

Psilencers, Speeders, Jetbikes and the Motherlode!

I work for an international company whose main offices are here in the US. We have a process we go through approximately once a month where the entire company's organizational chart is printed on large sheets of paper then mounted on foam core. When I heard that they changed them out that often and they THREW AWAY the foam core when they were finished the current month's chart, I immediately found the person responsible for the project. She got back to me today and let me know that I was welcome to the boards if I wanted them. This is the Motherlode the title eludes to -  seven 3x5 foot sheets of foamcore! That's enough to build a couple of hive cities and a Mechanicum outpost. Not sure when this set comes down, but when it does, you can be sure I'll start putting it to good use immediately.

First Game with New GK Codex

I haven't been able to get much table time the last few nights to work on the wrecked speeder. Since my youngest son and I were home tonight, I decided to play a game with him rather than build. I still haven't had a chance to play with the new codex, so I thought we could try a 1000 point game. He has a growing Sons of Medusa army that maxes out at about 1000. We got in three turns before it was "bedtime." Instead of giving a battle report, I'll just say play is much different now. I kept trying to use old rules out of habit and constantly looking in the book for new ones. I took a few shots while we were playing.

Land Speeder Wreck

I really wanted to take my boys to the Memphis Battle Bunker's birthday celebration this weekend. They had a lot of stuff going on that sounded really fun. We've never been able to be out there when they gave tours of the building (where they actually do production work on the models). I had to do big boy stuff instead so we missed out.

... and there was much rejoicing.

Whilst taking a short break from work, I happened upon a blogroll with an entry from FTW. I didn't realize that Ron had jumped back into posting. I am very glad to see his return. It was largely due to my enjoyment of his blog that I made the decision to start my own. I immediately sent him a request to join the FTW blog group and waited patiently for his response. I got up this morning to an emailed response letting me know I'm on blogroll #3. My kids and wife think I'm a dork for this, but I'm really stoked! Thanks Ron and I promise to uphold all of my membership obligations!

Dem 'umies - dey broke me ship!

Ok, so it's not broke yet, but that will soon change. I abhor fast food joints, but my kids want the toys junk the comes with the food. That enjoyment lasts until they get home and the stuff usually ends up lost under a seat in the van. This guy to the left is one of the latest victims. I'm saving him from that life in the land of forgotten toys. I think he looks orkie enough to be the start for a great piece of wreckage terrain. I'll post some more of him once I get started.

Tonight I started on another wreck that I came about working on unexpectedly. I bought bits from a landspeeder on ebay so I could use the engines for a set of speeder bikes I'm building. Well, I didn't look at the picture well enough when bidding and ended up with everything except what I wanted. So I decided I had enough to do a good piece of terrain with a wrecked land speeder.

Interceptors and Bases

On my last post I mentioned my addition to my existing Daemonhunters/Grey Knight army - an Interceptor squad. I haven't been able to spend as much time as I would like putting these together and getting paint on them. It was my hope that my youngest son and I would play a doubles tourney this weekend at the Memphis Battle Bunker. Since we won't be able to make it, I don't feel as rushed to get these done. I've got a couple of WIP picts below. The two I'm showing are the Justicar and  a model that I wanted to reposition to make him look like he is in the middle of landing/taking off.

Grey Knight Nerdiness

So, I've seen all the posts with GK rumors, army lists, covert product photos, etc. While it was entertaining to speculate about the upcoming codex and models, I didn't start creating a new list based on rumored rules or reposting found rumors. I also promised myself that once the codex did come out, I wouldn't post my new list ideas (plenty of that already out there). I have been playing Daemonhunters for about six years and was very excited about all the new stuff. I will talk a wee bit about my weekend and the trip I had been anxiously awaiting all week.

My wife and I had to go furniture shopping this weekend and I managed to sneak in a trip to the Memphis Battle Bunker as part of the furniture store rounds. This wasn't an easy task as the bunker is nowhere close to where we live or even near a furniture store. Once we did "happen" to drive by, my daughter and I made a beeline to the checkout counter where all the new GK goodness was waiting to be had. I promised myself to be conservative with my first purchase. The codex was an obvious choice, a box of GK to create an Interceptor squad, and this month's White Dwarf packed with Grey Knight info. Being the day's driver, I wasn't going to be able to check out my prizes. Instead, I got my daughter to take my picture celebrating my nerdy giddiness (that would be the picture to the left that embarassed my wife).

Getting home that night, I started reading the codex on the front porch until I ran out of sunlight. That gave me the perfect excuse to go to my lair and start re-inventing my army. I put together a decent 1000 point list for a doubles tourney next weekend. With the list in hand, I proceeded to pull out the models I had to figure out what I needed to make.

 I started creating my Interceptor squad around 8pm and continued until 2:30am. It was really nice to be able to work with plastic for a change. I decided to do some custom work on a couple of the guys. Since they have jump packs, I wanted some dynamic landing/launching poses. I didn't finish working on them, but I've got a WIP photo below. I'll post more later and will have some shots of the process I go through when I base my models. I spend a lot of time detailing my bases. I  think it adds so much to their overall look.

Easy Metal Floor Grating

I've seen a lot of people create cool looking floors with a material that is sometimes referred to as "Granny Grating." I've never used it because a long while back I found another material that came to me out of necessity (you know, the mother of all things). I was in the process of putting together my first Chimera (at left) for my Inquisitor and wanted a really detailed interior. Not wanting to buy anything else, I used bits that I already had at home. We were in the process of doing some home remodeling and remembered the sticky mesh tape that I used when working on the walls.

Foamcore: The Emperor's Building Material

Maybe it's not in the fluff or part of a Dan Abnett pre-Heresy novel, but in my world of 40K, the Emperor has established foamcore as the de facto building material. Here's a few reasons why I use it so often...

1. It provides strength without weight. The stuff is super light-weight, but sturdy enough to support the weight of models and of the building structure.

Medicae Outpost Part III

The Door:
For mine, I cut out a frame in foamcore. This was glued centered on the side flush with the bottom. Before I glued it down, I used the inside cut (the archway) as the shape for the door. The door was cut out of the same cardboard as the side panels. The hinges and door handle are pieces cut from a sprue frame.
Another good idea for a door would be a  hatch from a tank. In the second picture below, I've used a pvc plumbing part.

Medicae Outpost Part II

Now that the glue has dried on the first side section, carefully remove the tape. Glue the second strip to the top and secure it with tape like you did the first section. Don't worry if you end up with small gaps (such as where the side strips meet). We'll look at cleaning up things like that when we finish.

Medicae Outpost Part I

As promised, I will spend the next few posts on the Medicae Outpost I built a while back. At the time, I kind of built it on the fly. So, I'm building another, this time with the goal of finishing with a reproducible process and template. As you read through this post, you can click on most the images to view a larger version. We'll start with the supplies. The list is:

Hello World.

Greetings everyone! I have finally decided to take the plunge and start my own blog.

For months I've lurked around several 40K related blogs. One of my favorite being FTW. I enjoyed the great articles and the great blogrolls. I would take breaks during work and check the site at least 3-4 times a day. When the author decided to cut back on his online activities, one of his projects that "got the ax" was the blog. I've found other blogs that are interesting, but just didn't have the breadth of FTW.