Forward Base: Habitat 5 part 6 wrapping up

Wrapping up Hab 5 construction by adding the exterior steps, some resin details, and the exterior light acrylic.

Antenocitis Workshop have recently released some new steps and stairs for Forward Base which use acrylic steps for a super cool Sci-Fi look. I've not used them on Hab 5 because its a Vehicle Garage and Maintenance building so I rather liked the industrial grate feeling of the stock step but I will be using the new kits when some of the entertainment and command buildings show up on my desk.

As steps go these are pretty easy. I set the stringers in first and then set the steps while there was still some flex in the glue.

There are two exterior personnel doors.  In retrospect I might have made the steps removable for ease of storage between games... that may yet occur if the prove too vulnerable jutting out as they do.  The vehicle ramps are hinged and fold flat against the side of the building when not in use so they are much less of a concern. 

Next up are they acrylic exterior lights.

One of the upgrades to the building included full light brackets instead of the tiny resin caps that are usually used for mounting the lights. I really like the full brackets but they have a small disadvantage in that they have a set length... (Doh! I have, somewhat belatedly, realized I "could" have cut the bracket to alter their length a bit.  It would have been fussy but totally doable... oh well... lessons learned!)

  The acrylic rod provided with the kit was just a bit short of what is required to fully fill all the brackets.  With the stock endcaps I would measure the rod and set the individual light length according to rod supply... except... that I think of Forward Base as a modular system with many interchangeable parts which means, for example, all lights used for all "Hab 1" style buildings should be the same length... so it looks wonky fast if that is not the case. 

Left you see the universal jig that is evolving to cover the various Hab light lengths. 

Right we see... I ran out of acrylic rod! Not to worry I'll swipe some from the next building I open and fill it in. Antenocitis also sometimes has acrylic rod available separately which is super useful.

The fixture count was odd.  There were six brackets but 7 scribed locations for them. Its not a big issue as this middle location is a bit camouflaged by the other scribed details.

You can see here the Bay Doors in their closed position. The resin face is inside the bays as thsi orientation gave the best fit.

I didn't have any vehicles close to hand for a comparison but I did have the Forge World Gargantuan Squiggoth on the table for some repairs. The poor thing took a hit to the tail and some of the Big Shootas during the move here. Its all better now. You can see the Hab 5 is large enough to offer even this big fella some cover!

It also occurred to me that Hab 5 might make a good Lair for a Supers Game... Its a really big space with room for a couple of vehicles and multi level combat internally... food for thought!

 

 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 part 5 "Beyond the Rough Guide"

 

From here forward we're kind of on our own. The "Rough Guide" over at Antenocitis Workshop does not cover the interior catwalks and stairs or the external resin bits. This building is from the Forward Base Kickstarter and may have been redesigned when the range was revamped a while back.

First order of business is to identify parts and dry fit everything... and I mean everything! I can't stress this enough.

Here I've found the stringers for the stairs and set them dry into the sockets.

Here I set in the "T" shaped catwalk. My first surprise came here. The catwalk did not fall into position on  the stringers. Like by a full 1/8". I though wow... I've never had a piece, that I was certain was the right part, miss by this much. Turns out the error was entirely mine. I had assumed that the catwalk was intended to be removable and would just sit, unglued, on the frame but this is not the case.

There is a slot on the back wall that accepts the Catwalk. When in position it settles securely onto the stringers. The fit is tight enough, and the snap effect pronounced enough, that I am positive this is intended to be a one-time operation. This really exemplifies why the dry fit is such an important step.

Next up... the steps. I finally identified the yellow frames as steps... I know... I'm a bit slow... I had wondered for a while what those were... and where the steps were... and didn't put it together until now.

On the plus side these steps were loads easier to build than the usual system Antenocitis Workshop uses. they also are very broad and it looks like models with modest bases could actually stand securely on them!

 

I started by dry fitting all the steps to make sure they didn't need any adjustment and to note the way they fit was supposed to work. From there it was gluing the top step and the bottom step into position and then placing the stringers and Catwalk in position before everything had dried.

Once that step had dried I added in the remaining steps and leveled them as I went. The notches are a little shallow so its easy to get something just a bit tilted... you can see through he bay door that the center step droops a bit. This got adjusted after the picture.

A view of the adjusted steps through the regular door.

With the interior wrapped up it was time to look at the exterior details. Here you can see that a resin vent has been added. The upgrade kit also included resin replacements for the two lower square white vents but these were not perforated and I ended up liking the way they looked when painted so will save those bits for another project.

The large resin exhaust fans are in position. The slotted MDF remains as is on the inside and would have looked fine on the outside but the resin caps are very nice and help with the flatness that MDF designs tend to have.

At this point I began dry fitting the ladders and made a major discovery!

The ladders extended downward well below the level of the floor...

... which allowed me to finally identify what these bits were! These are part of the Hab X Booster packets. Apparently the boosters are for lifting the Habs off the ground and allow for cool stairs etc...

I got these Boosters for all the Habitats but now have to decide which buildings can take them. Habitat 3 for example is a small living quarters Habitat that can be stacked on top of other Habitat types via an MDF clip arrangement.  In that case the Booster doesn't get used.

Fortunately the Larger Habitats like Hab 5 will all take them so there is not decision to make... on with the Boosting!

Now that the building is boosted those pesky ladders fit perfectly. Another victory for the dry-fit!

There are three ladders. This long one, a shorter one that is affixed between the Bay Doors, and a very short one that allows access between the shorter roof and the taller section.  These ladders interact very much with the removable roof panels so care needs to be taken when fitting and gluing these into position. Pay particular attention to the fit of the shortest ladder as one of the roof panels has to be able to slot in under it and the other panel slots in from the side. Just be sure that the lower roof panel is not obstructed, or accidentally glued in... either condition would be a major fail!

The other two ladders can be seen here under clamps.

The bay door ladder has a tight fit between the bay doors and should be used to help position them. I did not do this and ended up having to shave  a bit off the back side of one of the lower tabs to get a flush fit.

For next time... non-functional exterior acrylic rod lights, possibly some functional interior (key fob style) lights, and some odds and ends like resin covers for the etched power couplings.

 Other than some weathering, all that will remain is to make some decisions about the various doors. Non of them are "working" doors and are either stood into place, held in place by compression, or Glued in place.  At the moment I'm leaving these unglued and will revisit them if that doesn't work out in practice. When the range was redesigned one of the big revisions was to replace the non-functional acrylic "Hologram" doors with working MDF/acrylic doors, many of which have a structure that implies a small airlock. 
 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 WiP Part 4 "The Ramps"

Today we move beyond the Rough Guide, add the ramps, and begin sorting the left over parts to see where to go next.

First up... I somehow missed installing this workbench which is clearly shown in the drawings of the rough guide. It went in without a hitch but, due to the nature of MDF, there was a risk that the back right corner would separate and tent up. To reduce the risk of that I used a chopstick to press the corner down.

Beyond the Rough Guide...

This is a first gen Kickstarter version of this building and the Rough Guide doesn't address any of the optional resin components.

I assembled and painted the garage door frames and then glued the resin garage doors to their MDF counterpart to get door textures on both sides of the piece in the same way that I did the vent covers in the walls. Unlike the vent resins, which are slightly larger then the MDF they replace, the Garage Door resin is slightly smaller than the MDF it replaces. This will be tricksey later...

The resin frames don't precisely conform to the opening so I used a Sharpie to blacken round the edges. These small spaces will be recessed once the resin is on and won't be visible. More importantly I intend to use this lip to let the garage door sit in the right position when the doors are "closed".

Above the door here you can see one of the resin Vents. Because the resin is larger than the cut-out it sits very nicely and self levels once the MDF vent is glued behind it. 

Time for more adventures with clamps, blue tape, and Super Phatic glue!

At this point I realized that the Garage Doors were going to be reluctant to sit in the door frames resin side out. The largest part of the door is smaller than the opening and the locker wall just inside the door prevents clean access to the inside lip.  I can magnetize the doors, and will probably have to anyway, so they don't fall over when bumped or jostled, but the doors sit very well in the reverse orientation.

 Onward to the Ramps!

The habitat 5 ramp instructions are pretty clear and easy to follow for building the hinges. The hinges were constructed and here you see the top and bottom view of the ramps.

As always I'll go back at the end and dress up the scuffs from where the MDF parts were removed from their frame. Reaper "Nut Brown" is almost a perfect match to the seared brown edges.

I stood the building on end to line up the ramps the way I wanted and glued the hinges on. The ramps work as designed although I'm gonna have to dirty up the underside... not that the building should be deployed with the ramps in the upright position but... ya never know!

 Extra resin bits...

There are a couple of power supply panels that attach to the outside of the building, three fan covers, two vid screen frames, six light fixtures (I actually need seven but one seems to have escaped during the long Winter pause so I may need to fabricate on from the MDF Frame debris pile)

...and then came the five angular pod things... these took a minute to figure out but once I got looking at the spare MDF pile and how the ladders must attach to the building it became clear that these are Feet to support the building above ground level. Its interesting because these are optional resin bits but the ladders require the building to be elevated or the ladders would have to be cut down to fit.

Not shown are a handful of small resin vent covers that I ended up putting in the spare parts bin because the interior etched areas that they cover were not perforated like the main vents. I ended up wanting to keep the interior vent details all MDF and painted similarly. These covers won't go to waste though! Its always handy to have a few extra bits like those.

Next up... finish painting these extra resins and sort out the remaining MDF installation that wasn't covered in the Rough Guide. This is mostly exterior ladders and interior catwalks. I seem to be missing the steps for the catwalk access so I'll have to take another look round to see if they wandered off during he extended time this sat on my desk. At any rate I think general construction should be finished in one more session and then any additional weathering or detailing will be tackled. There is one spot on the outside of the building that just looks unfinished so I'll have to do something to dress that up.

Back to the desk!

Reaper Fantasy Scenics Ritual Circle and Statue

Reaper Bones 4 has a Fantasy Scenics segment that I'm working my way through.  Today I've got the Ritual Circle and The Statue.. which also includes a small ruined temple.

For the Ritual Circle I thought I'd go more towards a horizontal Stargate or Portal since more of my scenarios would find that useful. Transiting models can stand right on it.

First its a black Primer coat then the red lettering with Blood Red (Reaper (R)) and a Drybrush to Highlight the edges of the lettering with Fiery Orange (R).

A quick Drybrush of the whole model follows moving through Cloudy Gray (R), Sky Gray (R) and Solid White (R).

Then the Washes. Blue (Secret Weapon (SW)) in the circle center and inner Surface of the Arc Structures then Sapphire around the outer edge of the circle and on the outer side and crevices of the Arc Structures. The coverage of these was intentionally uneven and the edges blended. Once completely dry Solid White (R) was dry brushed near the cracked details and to create some sense of motion across the main circle. The edges of detail on the Arc Structures were treated the same way.

The sandy earth areas were washed with Flesh (SW) and Dry Brushed with Sunny Skin Tone (Vallejo (V)).

For scale you can see a WiP Wood Elf from Atlantis Miniatures.

The Statue and Temple were treated similarly to the Ritual Circle but use a lot more colors. The floors got some of the same Flesh (SW) as a glaze in places to show the effects of traffic and time.

The Pillars have glazes of Blood Red (SW) and Green (SW) and are re dry brushed with Solid White (R) in an effort to represent some of the more complex Marbles and other stone types used in temple construction.

The Statue itself got a wash of Blood Red (SW) and The Robe of Verdigris Light Green (SW) before getting a final dry brush of Solid White (R).

Both of these models are intended as regular to heavy use game scenery so I avoided putting in details like weeds and leaf accumulations in favor of simple and durable in hopes that they wear better.

Our Atlantis Miniatures Wood Elf WiP has returned to provide scale.

Speaking of the Wood Elves. Here is a WiP shot taken just after the red lettering was started on the Ritual Circle.

These have had color blocks and shading done but not yet highlights or fine detail. I'm using a lot of blue and purple to shade to give some verve to the green base color. I'm painting the bases at the same time as the model to see if that helps to get a camouflaged feel but maintain enough separation to keep them from actually disappearing into the base. Early days on these.
 

Joan of Arc terrain WiP

 For my first go at painting since the big move I decided to work on the Joan of Arc Board game.

This is a game that could only exist because of the great golden age of board-gaming that was brought about by the confluence of Kickstarter and the explosion of 3D miniature design and printing.  Its a very ambitious project that combines elements of RPGs/Tabletop Miniature  Wargames/Dungeon-crawlers.  Its already in a 1.5 Kickstarter to re-balance and expand the tabletop elements... I'm a bit obsessed.

 With the proliferation of board-games containing high quality "Designed for painters" components its no surprise that a few have ended up on my painting desk. Previously I've tackled the Dark Souls: The Board Game core set and The Order of Vampire Hunters Core set. Still in my queue are Fallout(The Board Game),  Chronicle X, Gloom Haven, and the inevitable... and seemingly endless, Kingdom Death: Monster.

 One of the things that interests me with these games, in addition to the really great sculpts, is the very well defined scope of each project.  Traditionally tabletop wargames and RPGs are essentially open ended endeavors so the sense of closure is pretty cool with the board games.

Many of the games like Joan of Arc (JoA) have made use of colored material and I've attempted to leverage that color base here basically shading, highlighting, and weathering using the existing color as a base. 

 Paint adhesion can be an issue but on hard plastics (as these are) its not a big problem and it occurred to me, somewhat belatedly, that I could spray with a clear primer... after all I've done it before... notably when mistaking the clear primer as a clear-coat sealer...  Let me tell ya its not the same! ... but it does let the original color show strongly and would work well for this sort of thing

JoA comes with a nice selection of 15mm buildings and the minis are very nice too... one of the fabulous things about 15mm is the ease of achieving the visual effect of mass troops, huddled villages, and massive monsters.  JoA does all of these superbly!

To the left you'll notice a pair of Japanese houses.  These are repairs that I snuck into the task list.  They are resin and were originally painted in the '70s in a sort of pygmy true 25mm scale. I've forgotten the manufacturer but they have the feel of the JR style about them.

While mixing up a green color I missed my mark in a big way so... base-coated the skin of a GW Ork and Goblin army from the Battle at Skull Pass... This chariot has a copyright date of 1993 on it so ... I guess its about time it got tinkered with!

Next time should have the JoA core set scenery wrapped up along with the surprise Night Gobbos and maybe some Forward Base underway.

Until then.

Raging Heroes Holy Blades All-Stars

Raging Heroes has had a few regular releases that expand on the TGG Kickstarter offerings.  Its very nice to see them working outside the massive Kickstarter format.

The Holy Blades All-Stars are a group of female Paladins that I'll use for warbands in Vanguard, Mordheim, and Frostgrave.  I'll also get a lot of mileage out of them in some RPGs, especially High Fantasy in the vein of Dragon Age.

 The Models were pretty clean and the resin has crisp detail and is just flexible enough to make handling them easy.

 The Models are very light weight and several of the more dynamically posed, the Standard Bearer in particular, were prone to falling over if the terrain was at all uneven, or the table was bumped, so I added a 1" (25mm) steel  washer to the base and now they are super stable.

 The flag staff of the Standard Bearer is holding up a huge, otherwise unsupported, banner and I'm afraid that it will eventually break during handling.  I'll probably try to replace it with a brass rod or similar if that comes to pass.

Painting wise the banner is not finished.  I'm going to add some patterning and images to it after we get on the other side of the big move.  So its mostly just concept at this point... playable but not really done!

 I experimented with a different way of doing armor and started with Tire Black (Secret Weapon) over the standard Khaki primer/white dry-brush foundation.

This was then dry-brushed with Engine Metal (Secret Weapon) and edge highlights were Necron Compound (Citadel) then lining with Tire Black thinned 50% with Glaze Medium (Vallejo).

 The rest of the color scheme is kind of traditional for warrior nuns and I viewed them as an Order of Paladins that specialized in fighting the Undead and so are equipped with a lot of tools for the consecration/reconsecration of burial grounds so that the Necromancers could be stripped of their access to the mortal remains that fuel their endless hordes.

 With that in mind there is a lot of gold on these models.  I tried to make the embroidered cloth of gold details have a different texture to the ecclesiastical tools that are meant to be metal.  To accomplish this the gold cloth is entirely non metallic while the tools etc... are done with regular metallic.

 The gold cloth is Iron Oxide dry-brushed with Sun Yellow (Reaper) while the metals are Brass Casings (Secret Weapon) washed with 50/50 Flesh Wash (Secret Weapon) and Glaze Medium then spot highlighted with Shining Gold (Citadel)

Whites are layered with the Reaper Bone Triad (Dirty Bone, Graveyard Bone, and Splintered Bone) and lined with diluted Soft Tone (Army Painter).

Lots more to do and the packing is accelerating!  I'm hoping to get some a few more Raging Heroes, Lead Adventurers, Hexy Shop, and RWBY figures done before the end... fingers crossed!

The Port House 3D Print

 I'm flinging paint at the model backlog in between bouts of pre-move prep so I have a half dozen projects in one stage or another of completion that I hope to finish before pack out.

This is The Port House from Rampage: The Lost Islands Kickstarter.  Rampage is very aggressive with releasing files and they often follow up the initial file release with some adjustments, improvement, or corrections soon after the initial offering. This is the 1.0 version of the Port House.  They have updated this, and several other models from the project, since I printed it and it seems that they have generally re-scaled the models for the more common Heroic scale.  That means that this model is a wee bit petite compared to my other buildings.  Its even a bit small compared to the Tabletop World buildings that are scaled for true 25mm.

 Since most of my games that use this style of build tend to be fantasy themed I'll imagine this as a mouseling, or gnome, building.  I'll have to do up some mouselings with timber floor bases!

Actually for gaming I probably should have moved to clear acrylic bases years ago... but I didn't... so now I'm not inclined to do so... maybe when I start a completely new army I'll give it a go but I'll otherwise keep trying to theme match the bases for the existing sets.

Gerystone and wood standard process.  I skipped out on plaster for this one and may go back and add it later... I had some print errors with this model and went with it being a bit run down.

 You can see the very wide back window area that looks like exposed wood... printer error... also some of the supports for the railing failed to survive the print and some outside wood supports and one face of each of the doors are a little fuzzy or deformed.  This was an early 'learn to print' model for me and I learned a lot.  Still, I think it'll be serviceable enough on the tabletop as part of the larger town so no need to let it go to waste!

For scale there are some Twisted minis, a couple of Lead Adventurer minis, and some Reaper Mouselings.  The other buildings that I'd like to compare it with have been packed so I'll have to do that on the other side.

 I've done a lot of the Greystone Village buildings and I'm trying some new things.  Since this building has a tile roof, instead of a wood shingle roof, I went with a variegated red tile.  It was fun to play with the color mix to get a more natural looking roof.  The rest of the Lost island buildings tend to have this tile roof so it'll be a nice addition to the wood shingle schemes I've already done.

The Greystone has been a theme here for a long time but I think the next step will be to add some variations to the stones.  I'll probably do that with the next several residences but stick with the more monochrome grey for working buildings like shops, forges, warehouses etc.. 

I've also skipped on putting magnets in this building as the magnets seem to have found themselves packed up already.  It holds together very well as is and each level is in two parts that are offset from the level below.  I'll likely put magnets in the bottom level at least just to encourage it to stay together through vigorous rotations but it seemed to spin and slide and stick together as it is so no rush on it... one more thing to remember on the other side.

 The roof tile started as an Amethyst (Secret Weapon) wash over the black base followed with a Gory Red (Reaper) Dry-brush then patch dry-brush areas... some with Phoenix Red (Reaper) and other areas with Scrofulous Brown (Vallejo). 

The printer error is also visible from the outside rear of the model as a elongated window but I just painted it to resemble wood slats and moved on.  I think it adds some character to the model!

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