Nezalhualixtlan's Standard Template Constructions

[Nezalhualixtlan]

So, I've been on a Terrain kick recently. Probably should be getting ready for the incoming Tyranid codex, but my minds been elsewhere since I'm waiting to see the final stats on things in the Codex before deciding what new stuff I want. So, I've picked up a few terrain kits for myself, including a 2 Imperial Strongpoints, a Blastscape (that was malformed and I'm going to need to fix), a Battlescape, and now a Fortress of Redemption and 2 Imperial Sectors.

Eventually I'm going to get Shrines of the Aquila, a Skyshield Landing Pad, a few Citadel Woods, hill, modular hill, and down the line a Realm of Battle Board. Given the cost of all of it, I was originally going to try doing my own terrain and modular board out of masonite and pink board. But the more I've been thinking about it the more I'm liking the terrain GW puts out, and over time I can afford to get it, and it's going to save me time which is the thing I don't have all that much of right now between work and school. Eventually I'll be putting together some home made tyranid terrain pieces to go with it if GW doesn't put out something before then (I'm not a huge fan of the FW tyranid spore chimneys). But that's a while off.

Anyway, long and short is, I'm going to be putting up my work on it all here. The plan is to put together a jungle themed set of boards and ruins and woods. The ruins will go with an eventual Imperial Army I'm planning on putting together too. When I finally get to basing my Tyranids and the Imperial stuff it'll be themed appropriately for the board and other terrain. It's an ambitious project, and I'm aware it's going to take a long damn time to get it all done, probably with times I get a stuff done and stretches where I don't because I'm too busy. But it'll be fun and in the end I'll manage to have a nice set of stuff I hope that can be used for regular games, Apocalypse, Planetstrike, and Cities of Death games.

I'll be putting up pictures in the appropriate slots as I build stuff, get it based, painted, and flocked. Hopefully this will be a pretty good log of my terrain progress.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Cathedral of Illumination:

So, I've been planning a large sort of centerpiece terrain that'll be pretty big but should look impressive when its finished. I'm calling it the Cathedral of Illumination, fluff-wise it'll be a monument to the Great Crusade and the spread of Science and Reason throughout the human worlds, although crumbled to ruins now and partialliy swallowed by the jungle.

I'll get pictures of it in process, of being built and eventually painted, but for now here's the plan for it:



It's going to be a mix of Shrine of the Aquila, Basilica Administratum, and Sanctum Imperialis pieces. Full dimensions will be 18"w x 15"h x 10"d at it's extremes. There should be a good amount of area that's usable to sit models on and if I've planned correctly, space to fit my hands to put models in place without having too many spaces that are hard to reach.

The top row is what it should look like from the front, and the sides, the middle row is from the back and cut aways from the sides, and then the bottom is the Top-down view.

I'm just waiting on my Shrines of the Aquila to come in now, hopefully I'll get some pictures of the building in progress up this weekend.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Imperial Bastions, Aegis Defense Lines, Interceptor Weapons:







The Imperial Bastion sets are very nice. They're easy to put together, and well thought out, and made of nice thick and sturdy injection molded plastic. Sprue joins mesh nicely at parts that tend to not be exposed to cut down on the amount of rough edges you'll need to file down, the pieces match up nicely and intuitively in terms of how to put it all together, and I think best of all, it's hugely modular. I'm not going to, but you can easily use these to build up larger structures.

I left the vertical growth of the building unglued, for one you can turn over that top floor as it's reversable, one side has the circular inset for mounting the Interceptor weapons or Comm Relays on top, or a flat side if you don't want anything up there other than maybe models standing on it. Second, you can take the middle section out and put the floor on the bottom piece and have a smaller bunker, or stack the middle pieces up to form a even taller bastion - and I've found it useful already to be able to take the middle piece out and leave the floor on the bottom to represent a destroyed if not exploded bastion ruin in game.

There's a nice level of detail on the models, and the Interceptor weapons are pretty cool looking and would make decent armament for other tanks and stuff if you wanted to kit-bash. The Aegis Defense lines look pretty cool too I think.

I'm definitely happy with these. More to come as I get them based, painted, and flocked. Considering a modular base for them... one regular jungle, and one with Tyranid spore and things on it that could allow you to interchange the model's theme.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Fortress of Redemption:








All I can say on this thing is Wow. It's huge, and the level of detail on it is stunning. I'm really happy with this piece. Most of the pieces are again thick and sturdy injection molded plastic. The tall hooded angel of death pieces are a little thin, but form up into a solid and sturdy piece when they are glued together and set on the base. The only thing I was somewhat disappointed on is that the Dark Angels iconography is in many places just part of the model, and not an optional add-on. I had thought before buying it that maybe those shield with the DA Sword symbol could be left off, but they can not, unless you want to file the symbol down. It's a fairly intuitive piece to put together, and there wasn't anything difficult about it. Most pieces had logical sprue joins which kept them hidden after putting things together, although in a few spots there were some that definitely are left exposed. There was a minimum of mold lines to have to file down due to how that cast it too, which was nice. I left the annex bunkers detached and unglued from the middle tower (with the rampart walkway between glued to the middle tower. It should be easier to transport and store like that, but will also enable me to replace them with craters should they be destroyed in game apart from the middle tower.

More photos to come as I get it painted, this I think is a little too big and detailed enough it doesn't really require a base.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Blastscape:








This is probably the single most disappointing thing I've bought from GW. This is made from thin and flimsy vacuformed plastic, but unlike the Moonscape which I think are pretty good for being vacuformed, this piece had a lot of flaws. Worst of all, I pre-ordered this when the models up on GWs website looked spectacular, before we realized they were the resin masters and not the vacuformed junk, which has hugely degraded detail levels. It looks like some of the pieces that are high just didn't get enough plastic filling the mold. I have wafer thin pieces of plastic that'll break at the touch in some of the highest parts of the models, like flashing wafer thin. And when I called GW to see if they could replace it due to the problems, they could only offer me a refund, as they hadn't produced enough of them to do replacements and that was that. They offered the suggestion to fill them with spray foam insulation and let that harden up to add some rigidity to the model and strengthen it. I'm going to do that when I get to it, but for now they remain unfinished, and I still really need to get them a little heated up to soften the plastic and reform it so that they sit flat on a surface, as they're a little off kilter right now.

More pictures to come as I get them painted and flocked.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Battlescape:






I'm pleased with this piece of terrain from GW. It's made from pretty thick and sturdy injection molded plastic, not the vacuformed crap the blastscape turned out to be. The detail isn't bad, and its a very easy piece to construct, really not all that many pieces. The destroyed rhino is hollow too, so there's the opportunity to use it as a bit of a makeshift bunker in game if you want, I think it makes for an interesting and cool piece between the trees, craters, and wrecked vehicle. The only thing is I'm not sure what the giant bulbous looking eyes are on the tree. I can make it work for my terrain, but it's a little weird looking, of course, xenos trees are probably going to be weird, so it's not that big a deal.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Crashed Aquila Lander:








I picked up these in my very first GW purchase, Battle for Macragge, when I was starting my Tyranids. I figured I'd eventually want terrain, and now I'm glad I got them. They're nice injection molded plastic, not super detailed, but enough to be cool looking.

[drew25a]

wow thats a lot of stuff to start of with.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

To be fair I've been collecting for 2 years, but most of this I've gotten since planetstrike launched this summer.

I'm in a building mood. Eventually I'm going to have to invest in getting myself a proper airbrush, because the amount of painting I have to do and basecoating that's going to need to get done across the terrain and my Tyranids who I've got a lot to finish, is going to overwhelm me otherwise.

Pics of the Cathedral of Illumination in progress:

[Twisted Heretic]

Watching this one with great interest.

Hell, I'd probably try to follow along if I thought I had the budget for it!

[Nezalhualixtlan]

More work done on the Cathedral... Going to require some greenstuff on a few gaps, but it's coming along.

[AlltoEasy]

that Cathedral is sex!

[Fabius Style]

If you carefully cut out the Aquila Lander's windows and glue cut up blister pack plastic you'll get much more convincing and effective windows. Just a thought.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

Well, after a long week of working on it, the Cathedral is built. Now it just needs to have a few gaps filled in with green stuff, and needs to be based and painted. I have to say I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

The plan, when I can finally get to it is to get some masonite, and probably put a textured plasticard veneer on it, before chopping up bits of old sprue and building/gluing it into the corners and along the walls with sand leaving mostly open space so that models can actually go in to play. I'll probably chop up a few other pieces of wall sections and have some minor large pieces of detail in there too, but mostly it'll be open. What I am thinking is that with such a huge building footprint, I will probably have the main building on a piece that traces it's outline, with the Marine statue / broken floor Aquila on a second piece that's cut to fit together like puzzle pieces, so I can slide that out in order to better get into the bottom areas with models, and also fit it on a game boards better when space is an issue, because it really is a huge piece of terrain.

Paint-wise, the building will be black in a large part, with copper & gold detailing along with oxidized patina on most of the metal bits though iron and rust on things like exposed pipes and upper level catwalk and anything that's metal but not obviously supposed to be part of the decoration, and skulls done in a dirtied up off-white maybe with some greenish moss cover. My terrain in a large part will be jungle themed, and this will be a part of that, so there will likely be a good bit of plant growth on it as well, with leafy fronds and vine covering, moss, and grass and leaf scatter.

I can see it all in my head what it's supposed to look like when I'm finished. So far, it's coming out as I envisioned it so I think it'll be good when I'm done.

[Nezalhualixtlan]

more pics

[Nezalhualixtlan]

more pics

[Nezalhualixtlan]

end of pics

[Mini77]

All I can say is that cathedral is awesome. Makes me want to build my own exactly to that design. Can't wait to see it painted.

[Cygnusmaximus]

Looking really good! That cathedral is one impressive piece of terrain and it is obvious you put a lot of thought and effort into it, and both have really paid off.

My only (minor) gripe is that the towers seem to be defying gravity and would have collapsed a lot more without some form of support for their inner-most corners.

Aside from that, it looks incredible - I'm anxious to see it painted!

[tcraigen]

my favorite part of all those photos is the fly photo bombing through the shot in mid flight. Looks great needs paint heheh.