Terrain build for INQ28 / WH40K

Recently, myself and Wace picked up and split the Renegade boxed game recently released by Games Workshop, both wanting to have a Knight Titan each. After a £30 discount courtesy of Dark Sphere, this meant that we each had a Knight for a mere £45 each.

However, the box contained a building too. So, given that I have plenty of terrain at my place, and that the stuff at Wace's could do with bolstering, I volunteered to put something together, incorporating some parts I had left over from my own terrain builds.

I wanted this to be a bit ramshackle (which is lucky!), and to have a decent playable area, whilst not being totally run of the mill.  Judge for yourselves:

World Building: Part 9 - The Path of the Martyr (terrain progress)

It seems I've been reasonably busy on the quiet working away at the terrain for the Path of the Martyr. What has been a bit of a hot summer in "Croydon, yo", particularly in the furnace-like area of the house I'd got set aside for a painting area made for a bit of a nightmare climate. Paint seemed to dry on the brush even while using thinned paint on a wet palette.

In order to solve the problem, or avoid it, more to the point, I bought a pack of cheapo paint brushes from a discount book store by the name of 'The Works' for 3 English quids. I moved my painting shit to the dining table and did some rough and ready paint jobs with some jumbo brushes on the terrain, which seems to have turned out pretty well, even if a little basic.

It also seems I have enough terrain ready (or near enough ready) to pretty much fill a 4x4 table. Which was a surprise discovery earlier this evening when I decided to put it all on the gaming table...

The wood in the foreground is unfinished

An overview. Please ignore the miscellaneous crap in the background

Please ignore the frankly awful duvet cover that is protecting the dining table

28mm dudes eye view

World Building part 8: Background to the Path of Martyrs

Historically, during the long drawn-out and tragic period known as ‘Old Night’, the populations of the majority of the worlds inhabited by mankind in the Abstruse Sector slipped back to the worship of the Old Gods in varying guises, and were brought to compliance with the Imperial Truth only with great difficulty during the Great Crusade (M31).  Soon enough, when Horus Lupercal and many of his brother Primarchs rose up against their father, many worlds in the Abstruse Sector also rose up in support of Horus, and threw off the yoke of Imperial oppression.

For thousands of years thereafter, the Abstruse Sector became synonymous with words such as strife, unrest, and upheaval. Many were the campaigns which sought to bring this troubled region of the galaxy back to the Emperor’s light.  The ‘Path of the Martyr’ is a string of shrine worlds and moons linking the rim-ward fringes of the Seriphos Sector to the core-ward fringes of the neighbouring Abstruse Sector.  The ‘Path’ is so named as it marks the route of successful campaign of reconquest undertaken by Imperial forces led in part by Saint Felicitè, during M37.

A series of shrine worlds were erected in ensuing centuries, marking out key sites of victories, designed to act as lasting monuments to the sacrifice of millions of Imperial lives. At the end of the ‘Path’, lies the world of Felicity, which marks the site of the eventual doom and ultimate sacrifice of  Saint Felicitè, where she was stricken down as she concluded rites of banishment which ended a Daemonic incursion, and paved the way for a decisive victory against the more corporeal forces of the Archenemy.  Following this victory, the hold of chaos over the Sector waned, and was seemingly expunged. All rejoiced.

Relative peace followed until mid M39, when the entire border region between the Seriphos and Abstruse sectors was embroiled in one of the most severe warp storms in Imperial history (although due to the vagaries of misplaced data and the bureaucratic processes within the Administratum, this cannot be verified). Cut off completely from the divine light of the Astronomicon, unreachable by astropath, warp travel or even travel in real space for centuries, the Abstruse Sector had become a watchword for misfortune, nay, a curse, an augur of misery. It was a region of the galaxy that was largely ignored, although the angry stain of the warp storm dominated the skyline of many worlds at that fringe of the Seriphos Sector. A stain that was said to echo that of the very Eye of Terror itself.

In recent times, as inexplicably as it arose, the warp storm has suddenly receded.  The Path of the Martyr is once again accessible to travel, and exploratory missions of the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition have begun, with the purpose of recovering relics and attempting to ascertain the possible causes of the Warp Storm.  Eventual repopulation of the area is a secondary concern. Surrounding space is heavily interdicted by elements of the Imperial Navy which call the Seriphos Sector home.

Reports from the Holy Ordos indicate that exploratory forces of the Archenemy and the greenskin have been encountered on the Path, though the Throne knows what sinister purposes and motivations have brought them to the region…

World building part 7 - rubble paste

It had been a while since I'd worked on the terrain I'd put together, so seeing as it's been far too hot for painting round these parts, I decided to try out a cool technique that I'd spotted on Bell of Lost Souls recently.

The technique is basically making quick and easy rubble that can be applied to the bases of models and terrain pieces and so forth.  There's a video some dude made up on You Tube that will also prove to be a useful reference point. Some of the "ingredients" that he used, I've changed either for convenience, or because it isn't readily available in the UK.

Anyway, here's a list of what I used, the pictures below are a rough reference guide:
Corroded iron flakes from an old metal plant pot
Crushed snail shells (no snails harmed by me, I just used what the local birds left behind)
Some small ready made bricks (available from Ebay or most model shops)
Chopped up straight bits of sprue (get rid of any with writing on, or those round bits)
Cork chunks (available from Ebay or most model shops)
Sand (use about an equal proportion to the total volume of everything else)
Mix all the above together in a plastic pot or whatever else you have laying around. I'd advise against using your best china for obvious reasons.

To this, then add a decent spoonful of PVA glue. Paint should now be mixed in until the mixture is fully paste-like (the video reckoned to use black, but I ran out so I threw in some grey).

And the pictures:

Mix of crushed snail shell and metal flakes

bricks

Chopped up sprue

Cork chunks

All mixed in a pot. With sand.

Add PVA, and then add paint to point of saturation.

Apply with the spoon. Don't use your best spoon.

You used your best spoon didn't you?

Scatter more bits of sprue on top and press in if you want.

Once you've sprayed this lot, and drybrushed it, in theory it will look proper good, according to the internet.

World building part 6

World Building part 4 - ruined chapel work in progress

I recently bought a laser-cut MDF church from Ebay to form part of the terrain for my Shrine World themed board.  It's a fairly sizeable kit, measuring approx 40cm x 25cm for the church itself, but you also get a fair amount of scatter terrain, formed of fences and rows of tombstones, which cover a similar area.

Obviously, as plain MDF the church looks quite, well, plain.  So I've started making some minor modifications to it. Thus far this has consisted of using the alternative gun barrel ends from the Chaos Predator kit and re-purposing them as gargoyles and carvings etc.  This should help break up the flat surface, and in theory make it look a bit more "40K-esque".