On the Workbench [May] - Shadow Wars: Armageddon Terrain

Greetings.

From the lack of recent posts, a reader could be forgiven for assuming that nothing has been happening on the project front of late. However, nothing could be further from the truth! I am in full-on Shadow War Armageddon terrain mode.  Aside form the terrain from the boxed set, I have purchased one of each of the additional released terrain sets as well.  Cleaning and assembling the various parts has taken some time and didn't seem very interesting to my readers, so I have been a bit silent of late.

Today, I share a couple pictures of what is most recently on my work bench.  The Shadow War terrain has not yet been assembled into final buildings.  I am cleaning parts and assembling the tanks, pipes and other multi-part bits to see what I have to work with.  Once this is done, I'll make the final decisions on how to assemble and position things for play.  I don't play near enough games to worry about getting bored with stuff.  So I will likely decide on several pleasing arrangements and then just glue everything up. My city fight terrain is on 1ft square 1/4" birch plywood boards for stability and I have made up several new boards in preparation for building up some sector mechanicus pieces using the Shadow War terrain. This should give me one terrain set suitable for both 40K and Shadow War.

I like the plywood bases because the don't warp at the 1ft square size, and allow me to add craters, debris and other various bits to enhance the atmosphere of the pieces.  I do have to be careful to all for the positioning of models so everything isn't all wobbly...that's a challenge for me because it is easy to get carried away adding on suitable fallout for a destroyed building!   I prepare a bare wood base by applying a heavy spry coat of a textured paint...anything suitable from a local hardware/home supply store works.  The texture is a good start to rubble, and hides any plywood grain.  I use the more expensive birch plywood to reduce grain further.  I used to use MDF boards, but found they could still warp over time at 1/4", and were easier to chip at the corners with use and abuse.  But I digress...

By moving the plywood sections around, I can still vary the battlefield from game to game enough for my purposes.  I will build the sector mechanicus terrain so that I get good multi-level sections that can interact when placed close together.  But that is a post for another time as well.

On the work bench this month then are promethium relay pipes, Haemotrope Reactor (sorry no pictures!) and the new Servohauler kit.  I picked up a couple extra relay pipe kits and the generators on eBay because it all interfaces well with the new sector mechanicus kits and will help me bulk out the terrain pieces as well as adding bits to my other buildings to tie everything together. Four kits have been clipped, cleaned and assembled and wait patiently in a storage box:

That is a lot of pipes!

As mentioned, I also cleaned and built the Haemotrope Reactor kit and that is standing by as well to add flavor and atmosphere to the sector mechanicus pieces I plan to put together.  Not sure exactly where or how they fit in yet...and I forgot to get pictures for this post!

On to the servohauler kit which is fantastic from a model perspective.  The crane is large and very cool, and who doesn't need a couple servitor engines lying about to add flavor to a battle? I know these server very little purpose, and I'm not at all interested in their rules.  They are just cool! I expect to have these matched with the Munitorum containers to add a terrain piece with fun industrial flavor.

I built them stock and they are very cool.  I missed an easy opportunity for magnets when I glued the tractor bodies together without including large flat magnets beneath the holes on top that take the various claws, tools, and antennae. But in the end this will mostly go unnoticed since as terrain pieces I need them fixed and durable, not loose with parts getting knocked off during play. I doubt I'll miss the lack of pose-ability down the road.

So that's where I'm at.  I have two more sector mechanicus terrain kits to open, clean and partially assemble before I dive in to build up the final terrain pieces.  I should now have enough parts to build some interesting multi-level structures to bulk out the city fight terrain and enable an interesting and challenging board for Shadow War: Armageddon. For 40K, everything should play out to provide a very thematic board for my games. I will enjoy the mechanicus vibe that adds variety to my standard "hab-block" boards where everything has looked like a bombed out office building or apartment.

So until next time,

Cheers and Happy Gaming!