The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

The underhive continues to come to life! Previously, I have painted up the watch tower, generator tower, and junction tower. That left me with the trash processing unit and the lift tower to do, and while I'm excited to get some paint on both of these, the lift tower won out this week!




This structure was initially base coated with Army Painter Ultramarine Bluw spray. From there, the process is more or less the same as on the previous structures, and so I started by going back over the exposed metal areas with my brown rust base (a mix of Vallejo Charred Brown and AK Red Brown Leather).



Over the blue, vertical surfaces, I applied light streaking using very watered down light grey. There's a little bit of a trick to getting this the perfect consistency, as if it's not watered down quite enough it can either go on too heavy or bead up on the base layer.



I'm carrying my heavy graffiti theme across to all of the structures wherever possible, and this building was no exception. As before, I sketched in the designs with a fineliner pen, and then coloured them in with assorted paints and inks.



I haven't been getting too carried away with hazard striping so far, but thought this building warranted some on the lift doors. I printed out some appropriately sized strips and glued them into place on the bottoms of the door frames.



Time for weathering! I sponged Vallejo Basalt Grey over the wall panels, and dark brown over the blue-painted metal sections. The grey is much more subtle against the blue than on the previous structure, but it still does the job - if nothing else, it helps to fade the blue down a bit so it's not so eye-catchingly bright. I also drybrushed light grey over the floor sections, and light orange over the rusted metal parts.



From there, I pulled out the Beasty Brown to drybrush some dirt into the nooks and crannies and raised sections.



I stopped at this point to grab some pics of the graffiti, with weathering in place.



Then it was on to the final rust layer. I applied a generous layer of Army Painter Dry Rust to the rusted metal areas by dabbing it on roughly with an old brush.



From there, I just had to glue the floors in place and apply a few final details like the generator coils and the lift control panels, and the job was done.















Next week: The Trash Processing Unit!

To build your own underhive metropolis, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

This week, I'm continuing right on with my underhive project. So far, I have painted up the watch tower and generator tower, and so I needed to paint something with a little more colour to it. So I decided to have a crack at my twin level junction tower.




When I base sprayed all of the structures, I hit this one with a coat of Army Painter Necrotic Flesh on the walls, and some medium grey on the floor/roof areas. I then went over with a brush and picked out all of the exposed metal areas with dark brown.



Most of the painting process here will be looking fairly familiar by now to anyone who has been following these articles. As with the sides of the watch tower, I added some streaking to the walls using very watered down pale grey with a flat brush.



I wanted this building to have some more extensive graffiti coverage, but as with the others I wanted it to be weathered and old, so this needed to go on before the weathering layer. I sketched out the designs with a fineliner pen and some pale grey paint, and then filled in the colour using Army Painter inks and Citadel Contrast in various colours.



To apply the weathering, I used a sponge to apply grey over the wall panels, and dark brown over the doors and doorframes. I also drybrushed the floors with pale grey, and the brown metal areas with pale orange.



I glued the ladders on at this point, and then went over the whole structure adding some dirt into creases and wherever else seemed appropriate with a drybrush of brown. I also glued the bottom layer down to the base board, although I left the top layer unglued so that they can be split and used as two single-level structures.



For the final touch, I dabbed Army Painter Dry Rust over the metal sections, working downwards onto the raised surfaces and stippling lightly all over to avoid hard edges on the rust sections. This gave a much smoother finish than on the previous structure, where the rust had wound up a bit stark in places.















So that's one more done. Stay tuned for part 4 - although I'm undecided as to whether to do the trash unit or the lift building first. I'm a bit excited about getting either of them done!

To build your own underhive metropolis, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

Last week, I started painting the underhive terrain that I've been building over the last few months, based very loosely on the designs of the terrain from the original Necromunda starter set. For anyone who missed the previous article, I started out by basecoating everything, and then finishing off the watch tower. This week, I'm carrying right along with the painting, on the generator tower!




For the basecoat on this one, I had sprayed the base with grey, and the upright sections of the building with a brown rust base colour. So before going any further, I needed to base the floors with grey, and just touch up with brown anywhere the spray had missed.



As another bare cement and rusty metal structure, painting from here was fairly similar to the tower. I gave the metal sections a drybrush with a light orange, and the cement a heavy drybrush with light grey.



I wanted to include some hazard stripes on this one to give it a bit more colour. To save time, instead of painting them by hand I worked up some circles in Gimp, printed them out, and then hit them with some sponge weathering with grey paint. Then it was simply a matter of cutting them out, painting the backs with a coat of PVA glue and sitting them in place.



I made up some larger circles to go around the central pit, and some smaller semicircles for the ladder access holes. I also whipped up a couple of quick signs to go on the upright pillars. While putting these all in place, I also went over the panel lines in the floors with a black fine point pen,and added some graffit around the upright pillars, just for colour.



Once the glue had set, I went over the cement areas with a patchy drybrush of brown to dirty things up, and then added some dry rust effect paint to the metal sections. The rust just gets blobbed on wherever seems appropriate, and it can be tricky to tell if you have got it right until it dries. It's come out a little too heavy and patchy in places here, so I'll probably go back and touch it up later.



That just left some final details - painting the keyboard and screen on the computer panel on the roof, painting the pipes in the core with an aged copper finish (you can find the tutorial for that here!), and adding some drops of black and brown ink around the place for assorted liquid stains.













Stay tuned for part 3, which promises to be a little more colourful!

To build your own underhive metropolis, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

Over the past couple of months, I've been slowly putting together an underhive table, based very loosely on the designs of the terrain from the original Necromunda starter set. With the first half a dozen buildings assembled, the time has finally come to get some paint on them!




To get things started, I pulled a bunch of spray paints out from the store room, and sprayed on the bulk undercoats, for the most part just going with whatever colour was going to make up the majority of the structure.



On most of the buildings, during construction I tried to leave parts unglued where painting with them assembled would be problematic, although they still promised to have some tricky parts left over here and there.



Once the sprays had time to dry properly, I took everything upstairs and set to work blocking in the rest of the base colours. Walls were all either coloured or grey for bare cement, floors were likewise filled in with grey, and bare metal sections were undercoated with a dark brown to form a rust base layer.



Painting structures of this size, production-lining it only really gets you so far before it starts feeling counter-productive. I also wanted to try out a couple of new ideas before hitting the whole collection with them, so at this point pushed the other buildings aside and focused in on the watch tower. I wanted a streaky, weathered look to the walls, which on this tower were going to be bare cement. So I took a wide, flat and wet brush and some very watered down pale grey paint, and applied light streaks by just passing the brush gently down the wall, dipping the brush in some water and going back over it if the grey lines came out too intense.



I wanted these buildings to look nicely 'lived in', with wear and tear and graffiti all over the place to add colour. To give the grafitti more of an aged appearance, I decided to paint it on before doing the rest of the weathering. I also added a large building number (or possibly a sector number... haven't decided yet!) to either side of the tower with a stencil whipped up on the PC. The graffit was all painted in freehand - I drew in an outline with a fineliner pen, and then painted in the colours using inks. Any messy bits or errors would be covered up (more or less) by the weathering!



I then sponged some darker grey liberally all over the walls.



Carrying right on with the weathering, I sponged dark brown over the support struts running up the edges of the walls, and then drybrushed over all of the metal parts with a light orange. I also glued the base on, and blacklined in the panel lines on the walls with a fineliner.



To finish up, I applied some Dry Rust effects paint liberally over the metal sections, and added some dirt and dust into the creases with a drybrush of brown. With a few extra nicks and scratches and some stains on the base using drops of ink, the tower was complete!













Stay tuned for part 2!

To build your own underhive metropolis, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

The various buildings that I've been putting together for my underhive rebuild have been deliberately inconsistent in their heights. I didn't want a table full of terrain that had every structure with floors exactly 3" apart. This does, however, cause some potential problems with laying catwalks between the structures. Where the height difference is only minimal, the catwalks sit fine, but where there is a larger mis-match things can get a little precarious. In the middle of painting my first batch of buildings, though, I had an idea for a catwalk setup that could be adjusted to fit between floors at a range of different heights - and this is the end result!




The majority of this catwalk is built from parts taken from Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue #2. For the top surface, I used the grid-shaped floor grates from two sprues, glued into a strip two grates wide.



Underneath the grates, I added some support structure cut from foamed PVC sheet. To get the depth I wanted, I used a piece of 3mm and a piece of 1mm thick sheet, as that's what I had to hand.



For the ends of the catwalk, I took a pair of stair pieces, two sets of uprights from the weapon tripod and a couple of pieces of 1.5mm aluminium rod. I trimmed the back end of the stair pieces off and drilled a 1.5mm hole through each side, just underneath the top stair. Then I drilled matching holes through the centre of the circular parts on the tripod uprights, and trimmed off their locator tabs.



The aluminium rod then slotted in through the holes in the stair sides, with the tripod uprights on either side. I then glued this assembly onto underside ends of the catwalk by gluing the bottoms of the tripod uprights to the grates, leaving the stair piece free to swivel on the rod. I also added a bracket made from a cut up solid grate piece, to act as a brace to hold the catwalk in place, and glued support struts around the outside of the catwalk to pretty up the edges.



With everything glued in place, the stair pieces on each end can sit flat on floors on different levels with the catwalk at an angle, and with the bracing pieces stopping it from sliding off.



With some paint on, it winds up looking something like this:





To build your own catwalks (or anything else you can think of!), you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

I'm rolling into the new year with another building for my ongoing underhive table project. The Necromunda Outlanders supplement came with a nifty tower that had a (more or less) functional lift on it, for speedy access between floors. The original cardboard lift piece clipped into the side of the bulkheads that made up the side of the building. For this build, I decided to make use of the magic of magnets instead!




As I've done for most of these buildings, I started with a rough sketch, to get an idea of what I was aiming for. The final structure actually wound up a mirror-image of the sketch, but the basic idea was there.



The lift tower would be three levels, with doorways onto each level. I wanted to use a doorframe on both sides of the wall to keep things looking pretty, so used a strip of 3mm foamed PVC sheet for the main bulk of the wall, and padded it slightly with some 1mm sheet to make the doorframe holes deep enough to accomodate the inset flanges from both door pieces. The doorway pieces were taken from Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue #2.



I cut the other walls of the tower from some more 3mm foamed PVC, and added some detailing to the back wall using some more of the 1mm sheet and some plastic offcuts from previous projects.



Under each doorframe, on the outer facing of the wall, I cut recess for the magnetic lift attachment. Into these recesses, I glued a piece cut from the terrain sprue #2 support struts, with two neodymium magnets superglued to the back. The magnets are facing opposite ways so the poles don't interfere with each other while sitting side by side.



The lift was made from grating pieces from the terrain sprue, with a PVC support beam on the bottom. Into the end of the support beam, I drilled two 6mm holes and glued in another pair of magnets, making sure to get them the right way around to match the wall magnets!



With the tower walls all glued together, I added some strips up the front edges of the lift wall using support struts and lintels taken from Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue #1. These had been carefully factored into the wall dimensions so that the lift fit snugly in between them.



For the floors, as with most of the previous structures, I used double thicknesses of 3mm foamed PVC for rigidity, adding some strips of floor grates from terrain sprue #2 down the middle to break up the flat expanses.



To support the outer corners of the floors, I cut some 30mm strips of PVC and added support struts from terrain sprue #1 up the edges of each facing.



A couple of windows from terrain sprue #2 added to a square of PVC made for a nice cover-generating wall on the other side of the building, to support the small 1st floor platform.



The lift doors wound up slightly above the floor on each level, in order to avoid having to lift the bottom floor up far enough to accomodate the magnetic strut on the underside of the lift. A set of stairs from terrain sprue #2 glued in under the interior doorframe on each level sorted out the step.



The roof was looking a little sparse, so I took a generator from terrain sprue #2, glued it to a rectangle of PVC for just a touch of extra height, and stuck that along the lift side of the roof to provide some low cover.



There's obviously not much point having cover on the roof if there is no way up there, so I took a ladder from terrain sprue #1, some posts from terrain sprue #2, and some offcut support strut pieces and added a ladder access from the top lift floor.



Finally, I cut a square of hardboard to sit under the whole thing for strength. At this stage, the floors are still unglued, for ease of painting.









The whole collection so far, with some catwalks made for a previous article a while back:





Looking at it all together, I think it might be time to get some paint on this lot, and then work on expanding out to a full table from there. Stay tuned!



To build your own hive structures, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

The underhive construction drive continues! So far, I've put together a watch tower, a trash processing unit and a generator tower, and this week I'm adding a junction platform to the collection.




This construction is based (very) loosely on the bare, square platform from the old Necromunda terrain collection, with scatter terrain can be placed on top, or it can be used as a junction point for multiple walkways. I decided to build two of them in the end, so that I can use them individually, or stack them up for multi-level shenanigans.

The bulk of the wall structure is taken care of using the wide doors from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue #1. I used four of them, taking to them with a sharp exacto knife to remove the doors from the frames.



I joined the four resultant archways together using pieces of 3mm foamed PVC with 45 degree bevels on the vertical edges.



Some more strips of PVC filled in the gaps above the door frames, bringing the walls all up to the same height (2.75", which with the roof will come up to around 3". All of the buildings so far have been working around 3" to a level, although I'm not keeping it exactly the same from building to building, in order to accentuate the hodge-podge nature of the terrain once it's all on the table together with catwalks added!)



For the roof/platform piece, I cut two octagons of foamed PVC, leaving a space in the middle for some floor gratings. I also cut a ladder hatchway to match up to one of the lower angled walls.



For the middle detail on the platform, I took a bunch of floor grating pieces from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue #2 and glued them into a square shape.



With the two platform layers glued together, I then inserted the gratings, and filled in the central square with another piece of PVC. I also lined the edges of the platform with reinforcing struts from both terrain sprues, trimmed as necessary to fit neatly around the perimeter.



With the platform glued in place on top of the walls, the last things to do were to cut a base from hardboard, and add a ladder from terrain sprue #1, using a piece trimmed from the lintel piece from that same sprue as a spacer.







For the second platform, I followed the exact same process, but left the doors intact on this one for some solid line of sight blocking.



One or two more structures to go, I think, and then it will be time to get some paint on - Stay tuned!



To give it a go yourself, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

My ongoing project to create updated versions of the classic Necromunda terrain continued this week, with a third structure - a generator tower, based on the hexagonal(ish) multi-level platform.




I started out once again with a rough sketch, to get a feel for what I was building. I wanted something similar to the original shape, but with the bulkhead on the narrow end rotated 90 degrees, and with something in the central hole rather than just having a big empty space.



Instead of building individual bulkheads, like the original Necromunda plastics, I built each support pillar as a single piece. I'm not intending these buildings to be reconfigurable, and doing it this way gives the structure some extra strength. I used foamed PVC for the core of the pillar, cutting out the basic shape of the bulkheads, and then added support struts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues up each edge on both sides. I also added some buttresses from off-cuts of foamed PVC to provide some cover zones for gangers to hide in.

Access between levels is via a ladder running up the short end of the platform, rather than building a ladder into each pillar. This makes the structure a little harder to get up and down on than the original, but can be made up for with catwalk placement when the table is set up in full.



For the floors, I used double sheets of 3mm foamed PVC. One layer probably would have been enough, but I went for the extra strength and visual bulk from the thicker platforms.



I took two generator coils from terrain sprue #2 and glued them together. The ends have a slight angle to them, so I sanded them down flat, and also sanded down an iris portal to fit over one end of the generator. The other iris portal fits back to back with the first.



To give the generator something to sit on, I took a couple of trapezoid windows from terrain sprue #1 and trimmed their long edges to fit inside the central hole in the middle platform. In between these, I glued an octagon of PVC, with a large pipe fitting glued to the underside.



Time to fit everything together! I took some offcut pieces from the support struts and glued them to the bulkheads to create supports for the floors.



With the floors glued in place on their supports, the last things to do were to add some pipes running up from another large pipe fitting to the underside of the generator, and a control panel on the top level made from another trapezoid window, a computer from terrain sprue #2, and some cutoff support strut pieces.











As with the previous builds, I'll hold off on painting this one until I have a few more ready to go and do them all at once.

Stay tuned for more!



To build your own hive structures, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

Last week, I shared a trash processing unit, the first of a series of terrain structures inspired by the classic Necromunda plastic/cardboard hybrid terrain. (If you missed it, you can find it here)

This week, I'm adding a watch tower to the set!




As with the previous building, I started out with a quick sketch. I don't always use a sketch, and when I do I don't always follow it precisely, but it can be a handy tool for visualising the process.



For this construction, I once again pulled out the 3mm foamed PVC, and a bunch of both of the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues. I started out by building the central pillar, which needed a ladder running up the center to the twin hatches on the platform up top. To give the pillar some depth, I decided to use two layers of PVC, with a ladder running up the outside of each face rather than just using one going up the middle. I wanted to be able to see through the ladder section, though, so cut out a strip up the middle of each pillar side just wider than the ladder rungs. The ladders themselves were taken from terrain sprue #1. I also engraved some panel lines into the PVC with a scriber.



I glued the ladders onto the PVC with superglue, two to a side, leaving just a small part of the ladder projecting above the top so it would reach to the top of the platform. I then ran a strip of support struts from terrain sprue #1 up each side of the ladders for some extra detail.



Because the gap between the ladders would be practically inaccessible once assembled, I sprayed the inside with some rust brown base before gluing the two halves of the pillar together.



For the platform, I made up the main part of the floor using grating pieces from terrain sprue #2, glued edge to edge and leaving two pieces out in the middle for the ladder access.



I then cut a surround from foamed PVC, with a second layer to give it some thickness, and to provide a support structure for the grating.



I designed the side pillars to give the structure some bulk while also providing some nice cover at ground level. As with the central pillar, these were made from two layers of PVC, cut to shape and with some panel lines scribed in on the outside pieces.



To give the side pillars some detail, I trimmed up some more support struts from terrain sprue one and glued them running up the edges of the pillars on both sides.



To finish up, I cut some waist-height (to scale, obviously!) walls for the platform, using some off-cuts of foamed PVC and some trimmed down corner brackets from terrain sprue #1. I then glued the structure together, and cut a base of hardboard for it to sit on.



And that's two structures completed! As with the previous one, painting will come later, once I have a few of these all ready to go.

Stay tuned!



To give it a go yourself, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

Way back in the day, the original version of Games Workshop's Necromunda game came with a small table's worth of industrial-styled terrain that was constructed from printed cardboard and held together with plastic bulkheads. Many battles were fought over my set of this terrain, and so when a friend and I started talking about revisiting the original Necromunda rules, I thought it would be fun to put together an updated set of terrain inspired by that original battlefield. This week I put together the first of the large platform structures.




I started this build by sketching up a rough design for the structure. The aim wasn't to duplicate the original version, but to create something similar to it, with an eye towards making the structures look a little more like actual structures with some sort of purpose rather than just random platforms.



3mm foamed PVC has become my go-to for buildings, as it's easy to work with and lightweight, but quite durable. So to kick things off, I grabbed out the PVC and some support struts from the first Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, and put together eight bulkheads. These were made from a single piece of PVC cut to shape, with two support struts running vertically up the sides of each face.



Four of the bulkheads were left as standalone pieces, while the other four were joined into corner pieces for the front of the structure.



I used some more PVC to put together a box shape for the tower. The cutaway at the bottom of the front wall would be used to add a trash receptacle - my thought was for the tower to be some sort of trash processing unit.



The roof of the tower has four exhaust fans, taken from the second terrain sprue. I mounted these onto floor panel pieces, just shaving off a little around the bottom edge of the fan to make them fit neatly inside the bracing pieces on the panels.



The door for the trash unit was made from pieces of foamed PVC, cut to fit neatly into the opening to look like it's jammed open.



To conceal the joins on the tower walls, I ran a strip of support struts from terrain sprue #2 up each joint on the front and back, and then glued on the roof and a control panel for the trash unit.



For the floor of the first level, I used two layers of PVC, with some holes cut in to insert some floor mesh pieces from terrain sprue #2.



I glued the bulkheads onto the underside of the floor piece, and glued the plastic floor panel pieces into the holes. With a very minor bit of trimming, ladders from terrain sprue #1 fit neatly into the central hole in the grating sections, hanging down to about an inch above ground level - low enough for someone (or at least, someone with upper-body strength!) to grab the lower rungs and haul themselves up.



On the back of the tower, I added a generator piece from terrain sprue #2, bulked out with a little PVC to make it protrude enough to provide a neat little covered firing point.



For the upper level, I put together a catwalk using floor mesh pieces from terrain sprue #2.



The support braces for the catwalk were cut from the sides of a ladder. The ladder up to the catwalk has some of the rungs leftover from cutting the supports glued to the back, to space it out from the wall slightly.



High catwalks aren't very pleasant places to be in battle without some cover, so I added a balustrade using posts from terrain sprue #2 and some offcuts of PVC. A trimmed down ladder added some access to the roof level.



The other side wall needed some detail, so I grabbed the junction box from terrain sprue #2, and some aluminium rod and installed some exposed wiring. The clamp pieces were made from short sections of plastic rod and some sections cut from the support struts from terrain sprue #1. The lower end of the thinner cable will drape over the first level floor, having been severed from wherever it was originally attached to.



Finishing up by adding a light to the front wall and an access hatch to the bottom left wall of the tower, I also added a 10' square of PVC as a slab base for the structure. At the moment, the base, first level and tower are all separate pieces, and the ladders are all similarly unglued. I will glue the base onto the bottom of the bulkheads after painting the underside of the first level, and glue the tower and ladders in place once they are painted. I'll probably also add a larger piece of hardboard under the whole thing for some extra rigidity and also to give it some more weight on the table - better to prevent it sliding around.









Painting will come later - I'll get a few more structures made up over the coming weeks, and then go through painting everything together!

Stay tuned!



To give it a go yourself, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

I received a grab bag of all sorts of awesome resin parts from Victoria Miniatures this week, so decided it was time to take a break from terrain building and have a bit of a tinker with some infantry. I had thought a while back that Epirian Contractors were just crying out for shotguns, and so with some handy resin additions, I created a new unit of scouty Contractors, which I'm calling 'Pathfinders'.




There's very little converting required here - I just assembled the Contractors without arms. Although I couldn't resist a little bit of cutting things up, so I gave the squad leader a cap on his belt, by cutting off the top of a spare Contractor head.



Victoria's resin cloaks are designed to slot over the shoulders, and fit snugly around the Contractors' collars. These were glued in place with superglue. The shotgun arms needed just a little trimming at the shoulders to fit neatly, as the Victoria Miniatures torsos are slightly narrower than those of the Contractors.





Painting was a quick and easy 'paint in base colours and then give it a wash' job. It's not the prettiest, but it gets a unit on the table quickly. The green areas were painted with Army Painter Army Green, and Vallejo Yellow Green, and washed with Army Painter Military Shader. The metal parts were base coated with Vallejo Heavy Charcoal, given a light drybrush of P3 Pig Iron and washed with Dark Tone. For the shirt, I used Army Painter Barbarian Flesh, Vallejo Heavy Brown for the leather parts, and Coat D'Arms Bone for the shirt. These were washed with Army Painter Strong Tone - This is a fairly heavy contrast with the bone, so creates a bit of a dirty, muddy look. If you are looking for a softer shading effect, you could use Mid Brown or Soft Tone instead of the Strong Tone.



To finish things up, I highlighted the green areas with Coat D'Arms Putrid Green, gave the skin, shirt and leather a highlight of bone, and painted the eyeshades with Heavy Brown, P3 Cygnus Yellow and some white highlights. The bases were basecoated with AK Red Brown Leather and washed with Army Painter Mid Brown.





To build your own Pathfinder unit, you can pick up the plastic Contractor kit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

The new Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue introduced a whole lot of fun new bits and pieces to play with, and I've been having a blast coming up with different ways to make best use of them. This week, I'm using some iris portals in a slightly un-portal way, to create a laboratory-style specimen tank!




For the top and bottom of the tank, I used a pair of the irises from the terrain sprue.



The two irises are joined together using a piece of 1mm thick, transparent plasticard. I cut this into a rectangle 74.5mm long, to match the circumference of the iris' inner rim. I then curled the plasticard around into a cylinder, and used another thin strip of plasticard as a tab to glue the edges together.



The instrument panel mount serves both to hold the controls for the tank, and to disguise the join in the cylinder. I used a piece cut from the side of the terrain sprue itself for the upright strut, a computer panel and the base of the sentry turret to create a sliding mount for the panel.



Finally, it's not much of a specimen tank without a specimen to put in it! I took a mature angel torso, and filled in the arm, leg and back sockets with 'green stuff' putty, to create a 'resting' angel form with no void gel extrusions.



On to painting! This was mostly done with Army Painter paints. I gave the tank parts (aside from the cylinder) a basecoat with a spray of Plate Metal, and the angel with Wolf Grey.



I followed up with a wash of Dark Tone on the metal parts. I wanted a grimy, green ooze look to the cylinder without messing about with water effects, so I painted the inside of the cylinder with some brush-on gloss varnish with a couple of drops of Green Tone mixed in.



The angel received a couple of heavy coats of Dark Tone over the grey.



To suspend the angel in the tank, I attached it to the upper iris with a piece of copper wire glued into holes drilled into the top of the angel's head and the underside of the iris.



With a final drybrush of P3 Pig Iron over the metal parts, and some detailing on the computer panel, I then assembled the tank by gluing the cylinder into the top of the base iris, sliding the angel inside and gluing the upper iris on top, and then attaching the panel strip to the side.





To give it a go yourself, you can grab the new terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

As one of my very first articles for Maelstrom's Edge, I put together some shipping containers/cages made from parts from the first terrain sprue and a little foamcore. With the recent release of the second terrain sprue, it seemed fitting to revisit the idea with the shiny, new parts available!




As with the original containers, I used doors to form the front and back of the container, with the rectangular doorframes from the new terrain sprue being perfect for the job. For the back of the container, I shaved off the control panelt and the gubbins up on top, as I planned to have the back as a wall. You could obviously just leave it alone and have a door at each end.



I linked the two doorframes together with the support struts from the terrain sprue, and glued in a floor cut from 3mm foamed PVC.



Inside the struts, I glued rectangles of 1mm foamed PVC, running up to about 1mm short of the top edge of the upper struts. This gives the container some strength, and provides something solid for the walls to glue onto and a ledge for the roof panel to sit on.



I glued another rectangle of PVC into the rear doorframe.



Onto the outer faces of the walls, I glued rectangles of corrugated cardboard, cut to fit flush against the edges of the doorframe and the struts with the corrugations running vertically. (There's no special significance to it being blue - it's just from a multicoloured pack of card I picked up a while back!)



Into the front doorframe, I added a piece of corrugated plasticard, cut with the corrugations running horizontally to simulate a roller door. Most modern-day shipping containers have hinged double doors, but since this doorframe is a little narrower I thought a roller seemed more appropriate. I used plasticard rather than more cardboard as the corrugations are slightly smaller, which helps to make it not look like just another wall.

With the door in place, I stuck another piece of corrugated cardboard into the top of the container for the roof.



The finished container, ready for paint:





And with some paint on:





To mix up the design, you could use plasticard with different textures in place of the corrugated cardboard.



You can also use other real-world container designs for inspiration, adding side doors, changing the length, or as below, using a trimmed down generator, a fan and a couple of other bits from the terrain sprue in place of the back wall to creat a refrigerated container.



And, of course, the discerning stellargee knows that nothing beats an old shipping container for knocking together your own little shanty cabin or business shack!







To give it a go yourself, you can grab the new terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

This week, I'm continuing on my quest to add transport vehicles to all of my Maelstrom's Edge forces, with the probably exception of the Remnant (who really don't need them!). A while back, I shared a kitbashed Karist anti-grav buggy converted from a Games Workshop Genestealer Cult vehicle. This week, I'm revisiting the Karist Enclave to build them a transport vehicle from a Beyond the Gates of Antares skimmer.




The kit that I used was a Freeborn Solar Command Skimmer. This is a hybrid kit with metal and resin bits that go onto a basic plastic skimmer chassis. I went with this variant rather than the basic version because the resin add-ons make the cabin space look a little more practical for carrying troops.



The general styling of the vehicle was pretty much exactly what I wanted, and matches up quite well with the Genestealer buggy aesthetically, so I didn't actually make a lot of changes. I needed to swap out the crew for Karists, and chose to just replace the pilot and putty over the gunner's seat with 'green stuff' putty. The pilot was built using the top half of a plastic Karist trooper, with a head from the resin Karist heavy weapon trooper set.

The main weapons would also be replaced, but I kept the metal launchers for the sides of the cabin, as they'll do well enough to represent Karist grenade launchers.



The main gun on the Antares skimmer is fixed in place in the middle of the nose. I decided that something with a little more free movement was called for, so grabbed a sentry turret from the new Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and added a Ravager Pulse Cannon nabbed from the Tempest Elite kit.



The gun turret fit in nicely underneath the front of the skimmer, and with everything else glued in place it wound up looking like this:



I kept the original flight base on there for painting, but then switched it to a spare Games Workshop vehicle base that I had laying around, attaching the skimmer to it with one of the drone flight stems from the Antares kit.

Painting followed the same scheme as my Karist Strike Force, and the later anti-grav vehicle, after which it looked like this:











Stay tuned next week for some trial Transport Vehicle rules, and (unofficial) rules cards for this assault skimmer as well as some Epirian and Broken transport vehicles!

To build your own Raptor, you can pick up the Freeborn Skimmer from Warlord Games, and the new Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and other Maelstrom's Edge kits from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

Time for another building!

I don't know why, but I've always loved the shape of the humble Quonset hut. Some time back, I built some vaguely-Quonset styled buildings from plastic drainage channel, but the new terrain sprue gave me an excuse to revisit the idea and build something closer to the original design.




The bulk of the structure is 3mm foamed PVC. For the front and back walls, I grabbed a handy round thing and used it to trace out a pair of semi-circles, which I then cut out with a sharp hobby knife.



I also cut a rectangular piece for the floor, and a bracing strut to connect the tops of the walls.



I took a pair of curtain windows and a curtain doorway from the new terrain sprue and sat them in place on the walls before tracing around them with a sharp pencil and cutting out the resultant rectangles with a hobby knife. Then I used some superglue to stick them in place.



Using some more superglue, I fit the walls, floor and support strut together.



The roof was constructed from corrugated cardboard. I cut three pieces, one for each side, and a third to run over the top. Bending these short pieces over the curve was easier than it would have been to do it with one single, long piece, and the sections create a layered joint to give the roof a little bit of detail.

I started by gluing the side pieces in place along the bottom edges.



After giving the glue time to set properly, I added more glue up along the wall tops and carefully pressed the roof sections down onto the curve.



I used a similar process for the top section, initially gluing the centre line in place along the support strut, and then gluing the sides of the section down overlapping the side pieces.



A few final details from the terrain sprue, and the hut was ready for painting:





For a quick and easy paintjob, I gave the hut a basecoat of AK Interactive Rust Basecoat. Over this, I sprayed a light and rough coat of Army Painter Plate Armour, and then added rust by dabbing on Army Painter Dry Rust. Some quick details like lights and curtains, and then a drybrush in the creases with Vallejo Beasty Brown finished it off.











To give it a go yourself, you can pick up the new terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range, from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore.

As always, feel free to share your models and terrain, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.