Tuesday 16 December 2014

Star Wars Imperial Assault - Scale?

Whew! The postman really must hate me today since Myth, Shadows of Brimstone, my FFG DUST order and Imperial Assault all showed up at the same time! Anyway, here's a very quick photo to give people an idea of the scale of the minis. Generally, the bad guys are a little bit taller than the heroes (especially Vader and the Stormtroopers) although I suspect this is intentional on FFG's part:


From left to right: GW 40k Dark Eldar, Imperial Assault (Stormtrooper), Mantic, Imperial Assault (Luke), Infinity Prowler, DUST, Imperial Assault (Trandoshan), Imperial Assault (Hero), Wizards of the Coast droid.

Thursday 11 December 2014

Old Town Scenics - Townhouse A

So, another day, another Townhouse from TTCombat. Yet again they have produced a really nice kit with a larger footprint than the previous building and a second floor, too! 5 sheets, about 50 minutes build time and only two "Huh?" moments!

A few tips for this build:

1) I would suggest building one floor at a time.
2) Be aware that there are differences between the sheets and the images on the eBay auction. Notably, the window frames are a little different and the large window and frame on the front are quite different. Also, note the side wall on the ground floor that only has one window. The window is towards the back on the eBay picture, but towards the front on the sheet.
3) Since I kept knocking off the window frames during the previous build, I cut them all out first this time and as each wall piece was cut from the MDF sheet, I glued the frames on immediately. That way they were all dry by the time everything else was cut out and the building was ready for assembly.




The first "Huh" moment occurred while I was building the upper floor - I couldn't figure out where the triangular roof pieces were supposed to go. But then I realised the front and back outer walls didn't have any tabs on them to take the roof so I figured they should be glued to the inside of the front and back walls.


The second "Huh" moment occurred while I was about to call it done - I noticed that the stairs don't actually reach the ground floor..they are about 2 steps shy. More on that later.




All things considered, this is another great building for Malifaux or WWE and - as is the theme with the TTCombat range - very reasonably priced at £12. While I would have once again liked to have seen some detail on the ground floor / upper floor, such as some wooden planks, my only real complaint here is the stairs. While this can be remedied quite easily by cutting up some of the MDF left on the frame to create a raised platform at the bottom of the stairs.. or by TTCombat extending the length of the stairs.. the real concern is the way it is attached to the upper floor. 

Because it is slotted in and not in anyway attached to the ground floor, every time you lift off the upper floor you are taking the stairs with it and thus you risking moving / knocking over models that are inside the ground floor and any models unfortunate enough to be on the stairs are probably going to fall off. Even if you remove the upper floor successfully, you will have to slide off the stairs before you can set the upper portion of the building down somewhere and they might be easier said than done depending on how many layers of paint you have applied to the MDF. Instead, I think it might be better if the stairs are glued to the ground floor and the top of the stairs simply butt up against the upper floor without slotting in. 

Tomorrow I will hopefully tackle Townhouse B, then it is on to the tower! Next week I'll probably return to eBay and pick up a bunch of the new buildings that just popped up today. Dare I say it, but they look even better than the ones I have built so far!



Monday 8 December 2014

Old Town House A

Another MDF building from TTCombat, this time one of the western-themed dwellings suitable for Malifaux etc. 3 sheets, 35 minutes build time (including sanding) and definitely no need for instructions here since we know what a house looks like.


 
For the price, this building has a nice footprint on the table and I can see that it would be pretty easy to pick up 3-4 of these (or maybe two of these and two of the Old Town Scenics - House B) and call it done. The only piece of advise I have is.. don't glue the two halves of the roof together. Because they sit on tabs that are at 90 degrees to the angle of the roof, you won't be able to lift the roof straight off without having to bend it along the join.. which is probably going to break it unless you use some tape along the inside of the roof. Instead, I would suggest leaving the two halves separate and only glueing the ridge to one of those two halves. You'll just have to remember to take them off in that order.





The only oddity is that one of the side walls has a cut for an extra tab that doesn't exist on the front / back. It isn't a big deal though. I would also liked to have seen some interior detail on the walls but that would have required etching on both sides of the wood which TTCombat don't / can't do just yet. Some wooden plank detail on the floor would have been nice, too. Despite all this, "House A" is still a very nice, cheap dwelling for the tabletop. 

I also picked up the two larger townhouses, as well as the tower. Hopefully I will get the chance to build them during the week.



Tuesday 2 December 2014

Whew! Mokmurian sure gave me the runaround..

..but after encountering him 5 times and failing to beat him 3 of those times, I finally got him. Scorching Ray / Blessing of Lamashtu & Poison Blast / Blessing of Pharasma isn't my normal one-two boss finisher but it's hard to say no to all those D12s.

PACG Time!

Huh, how about that? It's midnight and just to change things up a little,  I'm not working. Time for a cuppa and some Pathfinder! I still have two more adventure decks to go before I wrap up Rise of the Runelords..

Wednesday 26 November 2014

Progress

Some progress over the weekend on Project 2 (Warzone) - I finished applying the flesh colour base coat with the airbrush and started painting the base colours on the Undead Legionnaires. Last night I finished up Mr Grimm, the Predator Drone from Anvil Industries so technically that counts as progress towards Project 1.


Sunday 23 November 2014

Laser Defence Platform.. complete!

Whew! Okay, so, in two and a half hours, you too could turn your two sheets of MDF in to one of these!


Getting there is certainly more complicated than the carriage or the market stalls, but fortunately it is not as difficult as it might seem when you examine the MDF sheets and perform a parts count:

Curses! If only there were two fewer unique parts..

First of all I would suggest removing parts D (x4), E (x4), L (x12), N and O (x12). You will use all these parts to make the base of the laser defence platform. Each 'foot' is comprised of 3x L, 3x O, and one each of parts D and E:


Start by taking one of the angled pieces (L) with the two notches facing upwards and glue one of the horizontal pieces (O) in place. Glue on the other two angled pieces until you have this:


Add the remaining horizontal pieces, then slot part D into the short end of the foot. Follow that up with part E which you slot in and glue on top of it. Repeat the whole process three more times until you have four of these:


Now for the base! You will need parts H, K, M and Y (x2). Since we are going to be building a platform that will allow the turret to rotate, it's important to know which parts not to glue!


Glue the two Y pieces together to make this notched cross shape. Later on you will need to make two smaller versions in order to allow the turret to aim up and down.


Position the assembled cross underneath the base you have constructed so far and sit piece H on top of it. Hopefully you can see what we are going to do - lift up the cross piece and push it through the circular hole in the base.. enough that you can push - and glue - part M in to place.



So it's important to make sure that the cross is glued to the disc, but the large piece (H) that is sandwiched in between has no glue on it. Now cap off the disc with.. another disc which is glued in to place (K). All being well, you should still be able to rotate part H.


Now on to the main body of the turret itself. We will start by making the arms which support the upper section:


Start with two each of parts F, G and J. Make sure that as you assemble these parts that they are glued the right way around (see the next step) otherwise you will end up with two identical pieces which should actually be mirrored:


Moving up, we now need to assemble the sides of the turret itself. You will need 4x S, and two each of X and 1. Just like the cross we needed to make for the base of the platform, we now have to make two smaller crosses (as seen below):


Once you have two crosses, they need to be pushed through the 'inside' of parts 1 in preparation for the discs (X) being glued on the 'outside'. Make sure the notches in the discs are pointing upwards.



If, at this point, you have two piece that are exactly the same and 'pointing' the same way they you have definitely gone wrong. I totally did that the first time around..


Now glue the 'arms' on to the sides of the turret. You should find that the notches in the discs line up with the small protrusion on part F. With the sides complete, we can now move on to the main body of the turret, so let's start on the back piece:


For this we will need parts A (x3), B and V. I'm actually not 100% sure that we need part B for this but I couldn't figure out where else it would go. Glue part B onto part V and then glue the three bars (A) over the top so you end up with this:


With the back and sides complete, let's assemble the turret:


This part is pretty straightforward. Take parts C, W, Z and 2 (x2). Glue in the back piece that you have already assembled and the front part (W) and glue them onto the base (C), then attach the side pieces you built earlier.. and then the angled pieces (2) and the top (Z)



At this point you should be able to rotate the arms downwards and attach them to the platform base. The assembled platform should still be able to rotate around the Y axis (at the base) and around the X axis (at the top of the turret arms). Now it's time for the fiddly bit - making the two barrels. You will need parts P (x12), Q (x6) and R (x16). You might start assembling the lower section of the barrels like this.. but this is wrong. Luckily I figured it out before the glue dried!


You actually need to use ALL of the cog-shaped pieces while making the lower half of the barrels. You need three of the slightly large cogs (Q) positioned as per the picture above, with six of the smaller cogs (P) sandwiched inbetween.. all held in place by eight of the small arms (R).


Once both of these lower barrel pieces are complete, slot them onto the turret body and glue them in to place.


For the upper section of the barrels you will need parts T (x4) and U (x16). In principal this is a simple job but I found it quite hard to get everything to stay in place.. so I found it easier to only glue two of the long pieces in to place, on opposite sides of the octagonal parts (T)


..and then slot (and glue) that partially completed upper section onto the lower portion of the barrel. It might be a tight squeeze but this has the added benefit of ensuring that it is correctly centred on the lower part of the barrel. From here, you can continue glueing on the long pieces like so:


Simply repeat until all of the pieces have been used up and now all you need to do is glue on the last disc (I) onto the top of the turret and the laser defence platform is complete!

Although this took a bit more preparation work than my other purchases, especially with all the sanding that I needed to do in order to ensure that things looked nice and tidy, for 5.95 this item is worth the price just for the satisfaction of assembling it. Once it is complete, the laser defence platform looks pretty impressive and it's a sizable piece of terrain that will wok well with Infinity, 40k or any other sci-fi tabletop game. Sadly I am now out of things to build but hopefully I will pick up some more of the TTCombat range soon!

Saturday 22 November 2014

Laser Defence Platform.. Whaaaaa?

So work has begun on the last of my TTCombat purchases, the Laser Defence Platform. While my initial thoughts upon examining the two sheets of MDF sheets was "whaaaa?" I have started to build it and luckily, things are starting to make sense. Pictures tomorrow..

Market Stalls.. complete!

So the market stalls were very easy to build, with each one only taking about ten minutes and that's assuming you are sanding off the burrs for each piece. The large gazebo type stall comes on a sheet of it's own, where as the smaller stalls are two to a sheet.





No build steps are needed for these stalls - you just need to make sure that when you make the big one that you insert the two notched beams into the slot cut into the side of the stalls. It's the only thing you can get wrong and naturally, as soon as I started gluing things to other things, I got it wrong. This is how it should look:



When complete, the large stall looks like this:



The pair of canvas stalls look like this:



The pair of wooden stalls look like this:



Note that I didn't cut out all of the produce that comes with the stalls; the loaves of bread were fine and the wine bottles were OK (but a little annoying to cut out). The apples and bananas, however, were too small to bother with IMHO. Instead I will probably buy the produce set from Warlord.

I purchased all of these stalls as a bundle for 7.95 but the three different types can also be purchased separately for 3.95 each. With two of the bundles you would have more than enough stalls to make a street market to spruce up your game of Malifaux, Mordheim or D&D.