Thursday 2 December 2010

Terrain is everything - 40k outpost, that got bigger Pt 2 'the tower'

So here's part 2 of the '40k outpost, that got bigger'. Having realised the outpost on it's own took up far too much 'real estate' for no vertical space I felt I had to tackle this issue. I've always been one to use height to double up on available space.

Back in my early gaming days I made a number of walkways out of U shaped polystyrene that had protected the edges of some new wardrobe doors my parents got and part of an 'Arielator'. The Arielator was the new thing for washing powder, a netted bag that was attached to a fan shaped ring and support cradle. You put the powder inside and in with the wash and your clothes came out dandy.

Now a bit of jimmying with a screwdriver and you could separate the fan, the cradle and the bag. The fan was the perfect size to fit on top of a Pringles tin - instant cooling tower and the cradle, turned upside down was the ideal support strut for my over head walkways. Some of the walkways were travelators, back then figures only moved 4 inches and I thought passing an intelligence test would allow you to get the travelator to work, you'd move further and heavy weapons could fire and move 4 inches. Nice house rules but really it was about doubling your real estate, battlefield below and above.

Anyway back to the tower. A lot of it was thought of on the fly. Of course I started with a template in Illustrator. I had the dimensions for the outpost and the reinforcement cladding so I could match the decoration and try to fit it roughly the space available but as the model had also been 'adjusted' in construction things didn't always line up. As you can see the roof side wall template was way off. luckily a dry fit showed this wouldn't be right before I cut it down to size, 'remember measure twice cut once'. I think the template has been fixed but just in case ensure you only trim down the cladding once you've checked it'll fit. Also the buttresses have 5mm nicks cut into the inside to support the roof and I may have trimmed them down a bit so there was more space available.  I don't think those changes are on the template but it's not too hard to shave 4 or 5 mils off.

Once I had it constructed, elastic bands and pins really help hold the structure together while the PVA dries, I placed it in the outpost so I could work it's footprint out. As you can see the outpost entrance bulkheads got in the way so a bit of snipping with scissors allowed the tower buttresses to lock into the bulkheads which not only makes it quite secure it prevents any nonsensical gaps between tower and outpost. In actual fact that view in the 5th picture I think works the best.

Anyway plans for the tower are here. Any issues or questions if you decide to give it a go let me know.

 



4 comments:

  1. That looks great all painted up. I just wish the pics were a bit bigger.

    Thanks for sharing the template as well. I've downloaded it and saved it with the rest of the great projects I'll probably never get a chance to do... But here's to hoping!

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  2. Cheers Warhammer39999 I'd noticed that some of the images didn't open up larger when clicked on but hadn't fixed it. Because you've asked I've mended the links. I'll put some more shots of them up next week if you wish, just let me know. Thanks for commenting.

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  3. Sorry for the delayed response, yeah, I'd like to see some bigger pics if it isn't too much trouble. :)

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  4. Bigger pics of the finished building coming up tomorrow.

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