Thursday, December 08, 2011

Building my Iron Kingdom

So as I have been reporting, this year has become very Warmachine-centric for me. Having discovered this game has really revitalized my love of playing and has had me painting for fun again as opposed to just for competition. Three tournaments (with 2 Best Overall and one Best General award) and a handful of games later, and I am well and thoroughly hooked.  So what is next?

Terrain.

I have a great gaming room with an 8 foot table. For a while now I have had it set up with a pair of 4ft boards - one my old mordheim set with a few AT-43 cargo containers and some of my 40k scenery, the other a really neat vaccuformed table that was made by GW for its stores.

But now think it is time to add something new, something that will help set the Steampunk/Mixed tech industrial feel of the Iron Kingdoms. I spent a bit of time digging through the Privateer Press forums and the ABSOLUTELY AWESOME Terrain Thralls website, and started looking for materials/bits in my workroom. It was when I was in the toy aisle with my son, however, that it really hit me.

Tech Deck skateboarding toy sets were on a deeply discounted sale and the shapes and scale were ideal! I immediately wanted to work with the one ramp section and had some ideas for making bridges etc with the others.

So here we go! I started by playing around with a few random assemblies of the sections to make interesting profiles and shapes. Following that I had an absolute blast digging through bits and establishing in my mind what each building would function as. Here is the first one I assembled:

This building will be a 'Jack repair garage. I scaled the corrugated door to be big enough even for Heavy 'Jacks and envision it as having a catwalk inside at the man door level so that mechanics could work above
and below. I can almost picture Thor or McBain renting out this space to bodge their equipment back together.....

I started with the large drop in ramp from one set and a smaller notched wedge from another. I added a doorway from a warhammer 40k building, some piping made of sprue, some roof vents and a chain hoist assembly made from 1/35 tank parts.


This shape just screamed industrial/factory to me. I think I built this one first because I was most excited to see it and had the most clear vision of what I wanted it to be in the end.







I added a row of windows high on the facade. I liked these ones because of the ornate detailed grating on them - it really helps to tie this back to the steampunk concept instead of being simply a SF/40k building. 

The large rectangle of clear plastic will be a buisness sign - helping to give this a real frontier/outpost look to this large flat building front that I think is well in keeping with the Iron Kingdoms. I gave it a light sanding to add a little texture that will help it stand apart from the smooth wall. I also added a corrugated sliding barn style door with an appropriately over complex mechanical opening mechanism and a second little sign with a light over it next to the door.  The chain hoist and ramp both facilitate getting heavy parts/crates/tools etc up to the second level.  

Time to get this one into primer and do a smidge more on my next building before the day is out.
Cya next week
James AKA Tkkultist



1 comment:

Matthew Ochs said...

Ingenious use of the sk8 park stuff as foundation pieces, I'll keep that in mind for future projects.