The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

Back when the plastic Broken Infantry kit was released, I cobbled together a conversion of a broken warrior riding a hovering skateboard-type affair, which featured in my 'Easy Broken Rabble Conversions' article. At the time, it was just something made for a little fun, but I found myself thinking that this would make for a cool unit option for the Broken, and so decided to sit down and write up some rules for them. Below you''ll find some ideas for building your own skyboarders using asorted components and some plasticard, and a link to the (unofficial) rules card to use them in your own Maelstrom's Edge games!

The primary consideration when putting together any sort of vehicles for the Broken is that they rely on scavenging and trading for whatever they can get, for the most part. As a result, there is very little uniformity in clothing and equipment, and I really wanted to carry this across to the skyboard unit. This meant coming up with three different designs for the three models in the unit, although you could just as easily stick with a single design and custimise them with additional bits and pieces stuck on, or simply with individualised paint schemes on the boards.



The first board is the one I build for the original article. I didn't take any in-progress pics of this at the time, but it's a fairly basic constructions - I glued two rectangles of textured plasticard together for the board itself, and then took four turbines (two left and two right) from Epirian Firefly drones, cut away the mounting pins and glued them onto the sides of the board. The rider was assembled from standard broken parts, posed to look like he is balancing on the board, which didn't actually require any converting.



My second board was also based on Firefly turbines, but this time I used two of them with the mounting pegs and trailing wings removed with a sharp hobby knife, as below:



I measured out the board on a piece of 2mm plasticard, allowing space for the turbines at either end with room for the rider to stand in between them. Then I drilled out holes the size of the turbines using a spade bit - a 10mm bit was very slightly too small, but was all I had. A little sanding after drilling the hole pushed it out to the right size.



I cut the board shape out, sanded down the edges, and glued the turbines in place in the holes. I also added a 'motor' piece using the heat shield cut from a torch (flamethrower) and a trimmed down overcharged powercell, but found on the Broken Infantry sprue.



For the final board, I made use of a part of a pipe fitting piece I had left over from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, from a building project a while back. I had cut through the pipe fitting to make it shorter, which left a nice circular piece that looked just perfect for a turbine surround. I cut a matching hole in a piece of 2mm plasticard using a 12mm spade bit, and then cut the plasticard to the shape I wanted.



I made the turbine fan itself out of a circle of 1mm plasticard, and added a circle of mesh to go over the top side of the hole, and a strut to hold the fan, using an injection point cut from an old model sprue. With all of this glued in place, I finished up with another overcharged powercell added for some sort of nod towards functionality.



After building riders for the two new boards, again just using components from the Broken Infantry sprue with minimal modification, I drilled holes in the bottoms of the boards to attach flight stems at suitably jaunty angles. With some paint thrown on, the skyboarder unit wound up looking like this:



Obviously, this is only a starting point - you can let your imagination out for a run and come up with different skyboard designs using whatever components you have on hand. The sky's the limit! (Sorry...)

As promised back at the start, I write up a rules card to include these guys as a Vanguard option in your Broken force. You can find this in the Force Builder section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

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To build your own Skyboarders, you can pick up the Broken Infantry kit along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

A reinforcement for the Epirian Foundation crawls into the online store this month, with the release of the Epirian Contractor Drone. Providing a more stable and reliable platform than human troops, Contractor Drones are used in Epirian forces to add heavy firepower or specialised tactical options to Contractor units.

The Contractor Drone changes the way Contractor units are structured. Instead of having a single Contractor Unit, we're introducing 4 different types of Contractor squads which are differentiated by the type of drone that accompanies them. This current Drone has parts to use it with the new Contractor Defender unit and Contractor Scout unit, with more drone variants and associated Contractor unit types to follow later on.



This resin kit is comprised of a Contractor Drone chassis, and optional parts to equip it with a Maglock Chaingun, linked Cluster Missile Pods or linked Flakk Guns, for inclusion in a Contractor Defender unit, or a Resupply Package to supplement a Contractor Scout unit. You can find it in the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here!



The rules cards for these units will be online very soon, but in the meantime, here's a look at the rules for the new units:

CONTRACTOR DEFENDERS

FACTION:Epirian Foundation
UNIT TYPE:Core Unit
POINTS:6 pts

Full Unit Profile:

Contractor:MV 7, EVS 4, SKL 3, AV 3, MAS 2, FOR 1, WP 2, Type: Infantry (Human)

Contractor Team Leader:MV 7, EVS 4, SKL 3, AV 3, MAS 2, FOR 1, WP 3, Type: Infantry (Human, Squad Leader)

Contractor Drone:MV 7, EVS 4, SKL 3, AV 3, MAS 2, FOR 1, WP 1, Type: Infantry (Robot, Slaved)


UNIT SIZE: 1 Contractor Team Leader & 2 Contractors.
EQUIPMENT: Maglock Assault Rifle & Maglock Guardian Pistol.
Contractor Drone: 2 linked Flakk Guns.


ABILITIES: None.

OPTIONS:
• May add up to 2 more Contractors: +2 pts each.
• May replace up to 2 Contractors with Contractor Drone: +2 pts each.
• Up to 2 models may replace Maglock Assault Rifle with Maglock Assault Rifle & Aux Grenade Launcher (Choke & Emp Rounds): +2 pts each.
• Contractor Team Leader may replace Maglock Assault Rifle with:
- Shock Baton: +0 pts.
- Shock Maul: + 1 pt.

• Contractor Drone may replace 2 linked Flakk Guns:
- 2 linked Cluster Missile Pods: +1 pt.
- 2 linked Strike Missile Pods: +1 pt.
- Maglock Chaingun: +1 pt.


Heavy Defenders: A Contractor Defender unit with 2 Contractor Drones is an [Anvil] selection.

Unique Abilities:
None.

Unique Equipment:
None.



CONTRACTOR SCOUTS

FACTION:Epirian Foundation
UNIT TYPE:Vanguard Unit
POINTS:7 pts

Full Unit Profile:

Contractor:MV 7, EVS 4, SKL 3, AV 3, MAS 2, FOR 1, WP 2, Type: Infantry (Human)

Contractor Team Leader:MV 7, EVS 4, SKL 3, AV 3, MAS 2, FOR 1, WP 3, Type: Infantry (Human, Squad Leader)

Contractor Drone:MV 7, EVS 4, SKL 3, AV 3, MAS 2, FOR 1, WP 1, Type: Infantry (Robot, Slaved)


UNIT SIZE: 1 Contractor Team Leader, 1 Contractor & 1 Contractor Drone.
EQUIPMENT: Maglock Assault Rifle & Maglock Guardian Pistol.
Contractor Drone: None.

ABILITIES: Scout.
Contractor Drone: Resupply Package, Scout.

OPTIONS: • May add up to 2 more Contractors: +2 pts each.
• Up to 2 models may replace Maglock Assault Rifle with Maglock Assault Rifle & Aux Grenade Launcher (Choke & Emp Rounds): +2 pts each.
• Contractor Team Leader may replace Maglock Assault Rifle with:
- Shock Baton: +0 pts.
- Shock Maul: + 1 pt.
• Contractor Drone may replace Resupply Package with Recon Package: +0 pts.

Unique Abilities:

Resupply Package: (squad ability) Friendly units within 6" of this unit (including itself) may re-roll one failed roll to hit during a round of shooting.

Recon Package: (squad ability) All of this unit's attacks have the [b]Paint (4+)[/b] ability, not including CQ attacks.

Unique Equipment:
None.





As you can see, the Contractor Defender unit basically replaces the existing Contractor unit type, with the optional addition of one or two heavy weapon drones. Note that this includes the option to equip the drones with Strike missiles, which aren't included in this release - there will be a conversion article for this option coming very soon!

The Scouts are the first new unit type, adding another Vanguard option to the Epirian line-up. With the new and planned units, you will soon have the ability to field an entire force of Contractors, although you can obviously still mix these new units with the existing bot units as well!


The new Contractor Drone is available now - You can find it in the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here!

- by Iain Wilson

On one of my periodic rambles through the plumbing department at the local hardware store (because how else would I spend my weekends?) I came across some pipe fittings that I thought would be just perfect for some different line-of-sight-blocking terrain to break up the sea of square buildings on my urban table setup. With the addition of a couple of old computer fans and a few components from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, I had a trio of cooling towers ready for the table.

The part that I used for the main body of the tower is a 'round socket downpipe' intended for rain guttering on a house.



As the downpipe is made of PVC, and is quite shiny, I started out by giving it a light sand with some fine grade sandpaper. This provided a better surface for glue and paint to adhere to, and also allowed me to remove the embossed manufacturer logo on the side.



Cooling towers tend to be largely featureless constructions of plain concrete, but that's a bit boring for a gaming table. So I grabbed four reinforcing struts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, and chopped off the two square sections from the end, so that the remaining length would fit neatly onto the wider portion of the downpipe. Then I glued the pieces on using an 'all plastics' superglue, which is a two-part superglue that has the normal glue plus a 'primer' that goes on first to help strengthen the bond. For a more flush fit, I could have sanded down the side of the downpipe where the strut pieces would sit to form a flat strip on the curved surface, but the struts are narrow enough that the gaps that result from gluing them straight to the curved side aren't really noticeable, so I didn't bother.





To add some detail to the inside of the tower, I dug out an old computer fan from my box of assorted 'probably use this for terrain one day' rubbish hobby material. Using a pair of heavy-duty clippers, I snipped through the struts that held the case on the outside of the fan.



On the inside of the downpipe, there is a ridge where the thinner and thicker sections meet. I cut a piece of 2mm thick plasticard to fit neatly onto that ridge, providing a platform for the fan to sit on. I glued the plastic strip in place, but left the fan unglued for now, to make painting easier.





Painting went through a process that is probably familiar to anyone who has been following these articles. I started by undercoating with flat black spray.



Next I sprayed with a medium grey, and to add some texture to the flat surface added a light spray of light grey while the first coat was still wet. This creates a nice, dappled, concrete-like effect. As I only had gloss grey sprays on hand, once the grey was dry I gave the tower a generous coat of Testors spray lacquer. This both kills the gloss and protects the paint from scratching off the PVC as easily.



Next, I gave the strut pieces a coat of Vallejo Beasty Brown...



...followed by a quick drybrush of P3 Pig Iron...



...and finally a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone. While all of this was going on, I also cut a square of Masonite for a base, sprayed it grey, drybrushed with light grey and white, and added some hazard stripes that I created in Gimp and printed out. These were glued in place with PVA glue, and then weathered with a sponge and some medium grey (you can find a tutorial on sponge weathering here).



The fan was sprayed with some Rustoleum Aged Brass, and then given a light drybrush with Pig Iron, before being glued in place inside the tower.





The tower was glued onto the base - I lightly sanded the bottom of the downpipe to remove any spray paint, and then used the 'all plastic' superglue again. Finally, some weathering was added with a large drybrush and some more Beasty Brown.



I had bought three downpipes, but found that I only had two computer fans that matched. Rather than use a mismatching fan in the third tower, I decided to make one battle-damaged by cutting away a chunk of one side. I left a part of the fan platform to provide a place for a model to stand, and glued the pieces of the tower side inside and underneath the platform to give it some support. Obviously the tower was hit with some sort of implosion device, or a cleanup crew sorting out the damaged tower just threw all of the rubble inside to get it out of the way until the tower could be replaced.



The three towers together, ready for gaming:





To build your own cooling tower, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

I'm taking a little break from new releases this week to have a look back at another of the original release units - The Karist Shadow Walker!

The Shadow Walker sprue contains two different torsos (twisted in different directions from the front) and two of each arm in different poses. This allows you to create two very different, dynamically posed models from those parts. You can find the general assembly guide on the Maelstrom's Edge website here.





Somewhere along the design process, the sprue went from being intended to create a single model to including parts for two full models with the lack of only a second head. Luckily, several other Karist kits come with extra heads, so it's not too difficult to purloin a leftover in order to build that second Walker. The right hand model below uses the bare head from the Karist Trooper sprue, and there's another bare head available on the Faction Expansion Sprue.



Alternatively, the resin Karist Heavy Weapons set comes with two troopers and three heads - two helmeted, and one bare. The helmeted heads are very similar in style to the Shadow Walker's, with a couple of extra eye lenses. The model below has also been reposed slightly, with the right arm extended and filled with 'green stuff' putty, and the right shin repositioned so that his front foot matches his line of fire.



While we're reposing our models, it is really easy to add a little more motion to the pose by cutting off the bent leg just below the knee and reattaching it at a sharper angle and off the ground, to create a 'lunging' pose. The below Shadow Walker has clearly just Rifted in and is charging into the action:



Borrowing parts from different kits does, of course, work both ways. The Karist Praetorians below were given Shadow Walker legs to help them stand out a little from regular troopers and to create a more dynamic pose than is possible from the Trooper legs. The added loincloths are from the Faction Expansion sprue.



As I was working through these models, I found myself wondering what it would look like if Shadow Walkers had their own specialised mini-factions. From there, I wound up with the 'Shadow Dancer', carrying a regular cybel blade on place of the usual Shadow Walker's wrist-mounted version, and with an added prehensile, mechanical topknot which, I expect, would whip around as the Dancer flips and whirls about his opponents, and shoot out toxic darts or hallucinogenic gas from the emitter on its tip. The cybel blade was taken from the faction expansion sprue, and the topknot made from a piece of guitar string and the muzzle from a Karist radwave emitter.



By contrast, the 'Shadow Stalker' eschews close range combat where possible, opting instead to carry out his work from afar with his nox rifle. This model has an assault rifle arm taken from the new Broken Forsaken Tech Chieftain model with the bayonet and muzzle removed and a silencer made from a length of plastic tube attached. The head is the bare head option from the Karist Heavy Weapons pack.



I don't have a name for this next one yet (feel free to leave suggestions in the comments!) but how about a Shadow Walker sect that has found an alternative to teleporting? Using arcane science to fuse Angel DNA to the human form, this Shadow Walker variant is equipped with void-gel wings!





Of course, if you're going to have bizarre sub-sects of the Karist Walker breed, it wouldn't be too surprising to have a clandestine offshoot of the regular Kaddar priesthood overseeing them. And so the Kaddar Noctis was born - like the flying Walker above, this model fuses Human and Angel DNA, with the traditional Shadow Walker cybel blade replaced with an Angel's void-gel tentacles. The legs and torso are from the Kaddar Nova sprue, with most of the Cybel reactor removed and replaced with a modified cybel glaive head from the Faction Expansion sprue. Arms and head are from the Shadow Walker sprue, with the small tentacle parts taken from a pair of Mature Angel models.

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To add some sneaky, pointed 'negotiation' to your own Karist Force, you can pick up the Shadow Walker along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Someone on the Maelstrom's Edge Facebook Group page this week was looking for templates for making vending machines. While I have put together a bit of a range of assorted scatter terrain, this was something that I hadn't got around to yet, and so this seemed like a perfect excuse to have a look into it. As a result, I wound up spending a chunk of this week playing around with some cardboard and foamcore, and sketching up some panel designs in Gimp, with the end result below:

I have put together two different designs, which you can download from the Maelstrom's Edge website here. The first is a basic, square box design, while the second is a slightly more complicated build with a rounded front. The download also includes a sheet of assorted fronts for both types of machine. My original fronts were all somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because I like to amuse myself by inserting random bits of dubious humour into my gaming tables. As I realise that this isn't to everyone's taste though, I have also included a set of less silly, generic fronts. Of course, you could also just make your own, using mine as a template.



I recommend printing the templates directly onto thin card - I used some old manilla folders cut to A4 size, which is light enough to go through most inkjet printers but solid enough when assembled to survive on the gaming table. Alternatively, you could print on paper and then glue the templates to thin card and assemble from there.

The page with the fronts on can be printed on paper, although I recommend using a good quality printer paper as glue can bleed through and affect the colours on cheaper, thinner paper.

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ASSEMBLY

The square machine is extremely easy to assembly. Just cut along all of the solid lines with a sharp hobby knife, and score lightly along the dotted lines without cutting all of the way through. Then fold along the dotted lines and glue the tabs inside the resultant box. Superglue is fine for this if you are confident of getting everything lined up right, or you can use PVA glue to give yourself a little more working time. The small rectangle piece is glued inside the front, over the rectangular dispenser hole.

Then glue the tabs on the bottom of the vending machine onto a piece of MDF or masonite, cut just a little larger than the bottom of the machine - I used some 3mm MDF left over from a building kit, cut to 35mm x 30mm. This helps to give the machine some weight, to help it stay put on the gaming table.

It's a good idea to paint the machine at this point, and then glue on the front after cutting out the white rectangle. Then grab a control panel from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, trim off the thin strips on the sides as below, and then glue in place above the dispensing slot - it's up to you whether you paint the panel before or after gluing it in place.



The end result will look something like this:





For the rounded front machine, you will need a little foamcore or MDF, to form the top and bottom of the machine. This avoids trying to form a curved cardboard surface using a series of little tabs to hold everything together on the curve - that's fiddly and never looks quite right.

As with the square machine, cut out the template by cutting along the solid lines, scoring lightly on the dotted lines, and then folding. There is one dotted line that folds the opposite way to the others - this line is grey instead of black. To get this line to fold in the right place, place a ruler along the line and push from the other side to crease the card up along the ruler's edge. As with the square version, there is a small rectangle that glues inside the dispensing slot.





The separate base template is used as a tracing guide to mark out your foamcore or MDF. You will need to mark out two of these for each machine, and then cut them out.



Once you have cut out the base pieces, fold the machine around them without any glue to check the fit, and trim up or recut them as necessary to get a snug fit. Then glue in the bottom piece as pictured below. Note: If you are using foamcore, you can't use superglue on the exposed foam edges. Use PVA glue instead. It's fine to use superglue to glue the bottom flaps to the paper bottom of the foamcore, though.



Then glue the top piece in flush with the top edge of the machine's sides, as below. As before, use PVA glue here as you're gluing to the foam.



You can then add a wood base and control panel as for the square machine above, paint, and then add a front panel onto the curved face of the machine. The end result will look something like this:





If you would like to have a go at building your own vending machines, the templates are here, and you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

This week we released the second of our resin Forsaken Chieftain models for the Broken faction. These two models allow Chieftains to take a few extra options that weren't available from the plastic kit, and are a wonderfully characterful pair of models. However, since I find it physically painful* to assemble models the way they were intended to be built, I thought I would take this opportunity to slice a few of them into pieces and see what interesting conversion possibilities they opened up.

*May not be an actual medical condition, but why take the chance?

Built straight out of the package, the two models each come with a pair of weapon options. The 'regular' chieftain has a xeno spotter perched on his/her (it's deliberately ambiguous) raised right hand, and also has a two separate left forearms, one with a poisoned blade and the other with a trophy melee weapon. The 'tech' chieftain has two separate right arms, with a custom beam blastgun and a custom slug rifle.



You can easily double-up your command options by using the leftover weapons on plastic Broken Rabble bodies. On the below models, I equipped one with the leftover slug rifle by slicing off the locator peg and gluing it on in place of a regular plastic arm. The other has the leftover trophy weapon in place of the plastic forearm, which just requires cutting the lower arm off just below the elbow and gluing the weapon arm piece in its place.



Parts can also be mix-and-matched onto the resin Chieftain models to switch around the available options a little. On the below tech Chieftain model, I left off the resin right arm and equipped him with a plastic arm and beam pistol from the Rabble sprue, and cut off his left arm at the elbow and attached a trophy weapon from the other Chieftain model.



On the regular Chieftain below, I replaced the right forearm with a plastic one, and added a regular blastgun from the Rabble weapon sprue. I also cut off a plastic left forearm and added a grenade.



For a more action-posed Chieftain, I cut the legs off this one at the waist, using a razor saw. Then I glued on a pair of running legs from the Rabble sprue, added a slightly modified slug pistol hanging off the belt, and glued the xeno spotter on tilted just a little bit forwards.



Since I now had a pair of leftover Chieftain legs, I did the obvious thing and glued them to a Karist heavy weapon trooper torso I had left over from a previous conversion. This Chieftain has the right arm with custom beam blastgun from the tech Chieftain, and a left arm and alien head from the Rabble sprue.



Mixing things up a little more, I added a xeno spotter and trophy weapon to a Broken Sig Jammer body, to create a less ostentatious Chieftain model. A head and left hand from the Rabble sprue finished the conversion off nicely.



And finally, a Chieftain equipped with a trophy weapon from a more civilised age, which is apparently less clumsy and random than a blaster. The laser sword is made from an overcharged powercell from the Rabble sprue, with a cut-down blade stolen from a Star Wars figurine. I also cut the left arm off, carefully cutting around the cape so that a plastic arm would fit in neatly underneath it. This Chieftain will no doubt take to the battlefield and display his displeasure at the lack of faith shown by his underlings...





Hopefully, that's inspired you to have some fun with your own Chieftains. You can pick up the resin Chieftain models, the plastic Broken Rabble sprues, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

The Forsaken are commonly dismissed as simple, degenerate pirates, but the truth is that they usually attack only out of necessity. Piracy is many times the only way their community can survive a hostile galaxy: stealing food, fuel, ammunition and anything else of value they can get their hands on. The Forsaken rarely send out their forces en masse, knowing that a single crushing defeat could mean the end of their entire tribe's existence. Instead, they strike in small patrols, typically led by a Chieftain.

Though a Chieftain is granted his or her position of authority by The Assembly, they must first earn the respect of their fellow Forsaken to even be nominated. A Chieftain must be equal parts fighter, diplomat and cunning tactician. Knowing that their forces can never win a stand-up fight against a prepared opponent, a Chieftain leads his warriors to strike unseen from the shadows, quickly fading away before the enemy can root them out and respond in kind. Many an opposing force has underestimated the ingenuity of a Broken force led by a Chieftain, only realizing too late their folly, as improvised booby traps decimate their defensive positions and Broken secretly approach from their rear.

The appearance of a Chieftain can vary wildly both based upon the culture of their original homeworld, but also from that of the Broken Freeport they are now a part of. Chieftains tend to have slightly nicer clothing and equipment than standard Broken rabble, and many see it as almost their duty to show that even amongst the ranks of the Broken, an individual can still rise up and carry themselves with dignity and class. When the Broken do manage to defeat an enemy officer with particularly fancy clothing or an heirloom weapon, a Chieftain will confiscate these valuable items. A Chieftain wears these purloined treasures into battle, as both a reminder of their past victory, and to display their status as an iconic Broken leader.



This high detail monopose resin model comes with two different weapon options for the right hand - a customised slug rifle or a customised beam blastgun, and is available now from the webstore here! You can also find the updated rules for this model in the Force Builder section here.

With the release of our second Broken Chieftain model, we've also updated its unit card in our online Force Builder rules here, finally unveiling the full suite of equipment options that Broken Chieftains have available to them. This article will look to update your Chieftain knowledge, focusing on their two new upgrade options: Customized Weapons and Enhanced Cybernetics.

CUSTOMIZED WEAPONS

Though Broken Weaponsmiths work tirelessly to keep the weapons of their fighting force repaired and functioning properly, they are also constantly prodded by their Chieftain to find new avenues for how Broken weaponry can be made ever more deadly. In other words, Weaponsmiths, and Broken society in general, are obsessed with making their guns as powerful as possible, regardless of how dangerous this makes them to the wielder. While Broken weapons can never match the accuracy or reliability of the more sophisticated enemy factions they face, the Broken instead rely on a near endless supply of desperate bodies clamoring to get their hands on a customized weapon, even when it is prone to lethal malfunctions.

Anytime Broken forces manage to steal, capture or purchase weapons off the black market, a portion of these are tithed to their Chieftain, who turns them over to their Weaponsmith in the name of 'weapons development'. The disassembling, tinkering, and soldering in a Weaponsmith's shop often continues days at a time. No method used to improve a weapon is off the table: overcharged powerpacks, larger caliber ammunition, oversized magazines, fusing multiple weapons together, etc. If it can be dreamed of, a Weaponsmith has attempted it. The more powerful the conversion, the more rare and coveted the weapon is amongst the Broken, and the more likely it will find its way into the hands of a high-ranking individual like a Chieftain, who views it both as a potent weapon and also as a way of reinforcing their status over those they command.

Rules-wise, customized weapons are an upgrade for a Chieftain that cost 2 points, and gives them the following benefits:

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Customized Weapons
All weapons this model is equipped with permanently gain +1 PEN, +1 DAM and the Unstable ability (if they don’t already have it). Grenades & CQ Explosives are excluded.

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As this upgrade affects any weapon a Chieftain takes (excluding grenades & CQ Explosives, of course), it gives you tremendous versatility towards deciding how you want to improve your Chieftain's shooting. For example, with weapons that provide a lot of shots but are only DAM 1, like a Slug Rifle or Chem Pistol, the Customized Weapon upgrade suddenly turns them into DAM 2 weapons. This means that every successful penetration is going to kill a standard MAS 2 infantry model outright, making these weapons now capable of mowing down enemy rank and file models. On the other hand, weapons that are already DAM 2, like a Beam Pistol or Beam Blastgun, now become DAM 3, allowing the Chieftain to become a big game hunter and seriously wound large models like Hunter Warmechs or Mature Angels. This upgrade also benefits any melee weapons the Chieftain may take, such as a Trophy Melee Weapon, Poisoned Blade and even the melee profile of the Beam Blastgun, turning the Chieftain into a formidable foe at close quarters.

Of course, the negative aspect of using customized weapons is that the weapon also gains the Unstable ability, which means that any '1's the Chieftain rolls to hit end up putting suppression tokens onto his unit equal to the DAM of the attack. While this can certainly be annoying when it happens, it is generally a small price to pay to seriously upgrade the offensive capabilities of your Chieftain.



EXTENSIVE CYBERNETICS

While many Broken soldiers eventually have some part of their anatomy replaced with cyerbnetics (usually due to injuries they've suffered on the battlefield), some Chieftains choose to go a step beyond and command their Weaponsmith to give them extensive cybernetic limb and/or organ replacements as a means to improve their strength and durability. This is represented by the Extensive Cybernetics upgrade, which cost 2 points:

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Extensive Cybernetics
This model permanently improves its MAS characteristic by +1.

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Boosting a model's MAS by +1 provides both defensive and offensive benefits. The most obvious improvement is that a MAS 3 model requires doesn't suffer an injury until at least 3 points of damage are allocated to it. For example, when a Chieftain leads a Broken Rabble squad, whenever there are only two DAM 1 penetrations remaining to be allocated (a frequent occurrence), you can now elect to put them onto the MAS 3 Chieftain, which means instead of losing a Rabble model, the unit will suffer no permanent damage! In other words, having a MAS 3 Chieftain not only means that model is more durable, but any unit the Chieftain joins effectively becomes more durable as well.

On the offensive side, a model's MAS characteristic is utilized in close quarters fighting with a melee weapon, both to determine how many shots the melee weapon makes, but also to figure out the PEN characteristic of that weapon. A MAS 3 Chieftain gets to make 5 attacks with a melee weapon (instead of the 4 it makes when it is MAS 2) and all those attacks are made with +1 PEN. For example, a Chieftain with Extensive Cybernetics and a Trophy Melee Weapon gets to attack 5 times in close quarters fighting, with each of those shots being a quite powerful PEN 5 and DAM 2. Even crazier, if the model also has taken the Customized Weapons upgrade, they combo together and those five shots are instead PEN 6 & DAM 3! That's enough potential damage to make any foe quake at the thought of facing a Chieftain in CQ fighting.

With these new upgrade options available, a Chieftain is easily the most customizable command model currently in the game. You can go with a super-cheap 7 point Chieftain that just has a couple of pistols, which allows you to fit more Broken units into your force, or alternatively you can take every upgrade and have a 13 point beast that has all kinds of tactical capabilities...the choice is ultimately yours!

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Ready to try out your own cybernetic Chieftain? You can pick up the new resin Chieftain models along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

If you have any rules queries, tactics suggestions, or modeling progress to share, you can join in on the Comm Guild Facebook Group page here.

- by Iain Wilson

It's been a few weeks since I built any terrain and I'm starting to feel withdrawal symptoms, so this week I have busted out the foamcore and terrain sprues, raided the recycling bin, and built a quick little storage tank for my newly assembled elite Epirian SecDef units to hide behind.

The main body of the tank is made from a small Pringles can. This of course requires you to remove the Pringles from said can, which my wife was happy to take care of for me. If you don't know anyone willing to make this sacrifice for you, you could use any other appropriately-sized tube. For the tank on my plantation dome, I used a metal tin. You could also use soft drink cans, cardboard postal tubes, or even roll your own out of cardboard or plastic sheet.



I used foamcore for the end supports. For the uninitiated, foamcore (also sometimes called foamboard) is a craft board that is comprised of a thin sheet of expanded polystyrene foam sandwiched between two sheets of stiff paper or thin card. Because it's lightweight but fairly strong, it's a fantastic material for building terrain.

I marked out the shapes that I wanted on the foamcore with a pencil, and then cut them out using a sharp hobby knife and a steel ruler.





As I wanted a worn concrete look for the ends, I used the hobby knife to roughly shave away the edges along the top and sides, and then used fine sandpaper to smooth the cut edges of the paper down.



For the access port on the top of the tank, I took the square hatch and corner reinforcing from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and cut a piece of plasticard sheet to an appropriate size to fit them all on it with a little room to spare for visual effect.



I then cut four strips to run around the outside of the top plate. To replicate the curve of the tank for the two strips that would run across it, I positioned the bottom of the Pringles can on the plasticard lined up with the bottom corners of the strip and traced around it with a pencil, and then cut along the resultant arc with my hobby knife. Because the bottom aluminium strip on the can is slightly larger in diameter than the actual can, this doesn't create a perfect fit, but it gets it close enough that you can sit it in place to see where it needs a little shaving with the knife to sit flush.





The strips were glued in place with plastic cement, and when that was set I flipped the construction over and glued the terrain sprue components in place as well.





To add a little detail to the outsides of the tank ends, I cut some sections off the long support struts on the terrain sprue, and also assembled a little computer terminal by trimming down the comm panel and cutting a piece off the end of the lintel piece.





One end got two of the support strut pieces, and the other end another two strut pieces, the computer terminal and a small pipe fitting, all glued in place with superglue.



I then glued the foamcore pieces onto the ends of the tube with superglue. One end of the tube is rolled cardboard, which glues just fine to the foamcore. For the tube's aliminium end, I gave the superglue a little extra help with a primer from an 'all plastics' two-part superglue.



A little more superglue was used to stick the access port in place on top.



The final step before painting was to paint the exposed foam on the foamcore sections with PVA glue. This protects the foam when the base coat is sprayed on, as most spraypaints will partially eat the foam. If you're painting with a brush, or with a specific foam-friendly spray, this step is unnecessary.

I basecoated the whole tank with a Rustoleum quick-drying grey primer to get a consistent base for painting over, and then hit the tank itself with a spray of Army Painter Dragon Red.



I could have saved some repainting here by masking off the ends to avoid overspray from the red, but it didn't really seem worth the bother. I just used a large, flat brush to add another coat of grey (in this case Vallejo Neutral Grey) over the end pieces, added some weathering to the red using a sponge and some Vallejo Heavy Charcoal (you can find my tutorial on sponge weathering here) and added a layer of Vallejo Beasty Brown over the terrain sprue components.



To create a nice concrete look, I drybrushed over the end pieces with Vallejo Light Grey, and then added a highlight with a lighter drybrush of P3 Morrow White. The brown components received a heavy drybrush of Citadel Boltgun Metal (now called 'Leadbelcher', but I'm still working through a lot of old paint!)



Next up, I gave all of the metal parts a generous wash of Army Painter Strong Tone, and put it aside to dry.



While the wash was doing its thing, I cut an 8"x8" square of masonite, sprayed it with a coat of grey primer, and drybrushed with the Light Grey and some white. I also marked out a square in front of where the pipe fitting would sit on the end of the tank, and painted in some hazard stripes. (If you are interesed, you can find a tutorial on painting hazard stripes here.) Then I glued the tank in place using some superglue on the bottoms of the end pieces (this was fine as I had included the underside edges when I painted the exposed foam with PVA glue. Don't put superglue directly onto expanded polystyene - it doesn't end well) and added some patches of drybrushed Beasty Brown to dirty everything up. Which left the tank looking like this:













To build your own storage tank, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Last week, I built a 120-point force using the fantastic new Epirian SecDef models. If you missed it, you can find the article here: http://www.thecommguild.com/roller/thecommguild/entry/modeling-spotlight-120-point-epirian.

This week, my aim was to get this force painted up to a basic tabletop standard. This can be helpful for getting past the 'sea of grey' stage and allowing you to field a painted army faster than might happen if you're painting each unit up to a fully detailed level, or if you just want a quick and easy paintjob on your army and aren't interested in getting bogged down in detail work. The end result isn't going to win any painting awards, but looks fine on the table and can be updated later.

So, the painted force:

For painting up armies quickly I tend to rely heavily on ink washes, as they are so handy for adding shading quickly (if sometimes a little messier than doing it by a more manual and time-consuming method would allow for). This force was no exception to that. I started with a basecoat of Army Painter Army Green spray, and when that was dry added a wash of Army Painter Military Shader.



When the wash was dry, I went over the armour plates with Army Painter Ash Grey, the exo-skeleton sections in Vallejo Basalt Grey and the weapons on Vallejo Heavy Charcoal, before adding a layer of Army Painter Dark Tone over these areas with a detail brush. Any slight spillover onto the green is fairly unnoticeable, but excess wash was quickly removed with a wet brush where necessary.

On the Ash Grey armour plates, rather than covering them completely with the wash, I just painted a thin coat of the wash onto the lower surfaces of the plates, or on the innermost half of the thigh plates.



I then painted the face and neck with Citadel Tallarn Flesh, chosen by virtue of being the first flesh tone I came across in my paint box. I also painted the flesh tone over the goggles, to provide a nice base layer for the red that would come later. The pouches, straps, rifle stocks and boots were painted with Vallejo Heavy Brown and then the flesh and brown parts were washed with Army Painter Strong Tone.



Finally (for now) I painted the base with Vallejo Neutral Grey and the goggle lenses with Army Painter Pure Red. The helmet chinstrap had originally been painted in the Heavy Brown, but after the wash I found that the tone was too similar to the flesh colour, so I went over the brown with black, and also used a black fineliner pen to darken the lower frame of the goggles, around the bottom of the lenses and up the nose. I also used the Neutral Grey to add a quick drybrush over the black on the weapons to pick out the detail - I wanted them dark, but to still be recogniseable on the table.



At this point, all of the main colours are in place and they're ready for the table. To finish them off later, I can add a highlight to the green with some light green, some light brown or bone on the brown parts, and add some shading and a reflective spot on the goggle lenses, which gets something that looks more like this:



I will also need to go through and drybrush the bases and add some detail so that they match my other urban bases.

So, the 'finished' units:

Lieutenant



Tactical Teams





Snipers



Annihilator Teams





Recon Walker





The gang all together:





To start assembling your own SecDef force, you can pick up the Secdef sprue, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

With this week's article, I'm continuing the SecDef love because, well, they're awesome!

As nice as it is to include some elite supertroops in amongst the Epirian bots and contractors, I thought it would be fun to build an entire SecDef force. Obviously, with only a single Hammer option currently in the official rules, this required a bit of creativity, but two mocked-up new unit cards and a bunch of sprues later, my first 120 points were assembled and ready for painting.

To build even a bare-bones force within the army selection rules for Maelstrom's Edge, a Command unit is required. While there will no-doubt be a SecDef officer option released down the track, I'm far too impatient to wait for that, so I ran up an unofficial unit card for a lower-level officer, a Lieutenant, to command smaller SecDef strike forces. The aim was to create a commander on about the same level as the Journeyman Bot Handler, and one that could be built from existing parts with minimal conversion required. So I took a bare bones SecDef trooper built from the sprue, on the assumption that SecDef field officers would likely look little different to their troops, and just swapped his rifle for a pair of pistols taken from the Contractor sprue.



To allow for a viable force, the Lieutenant has the 'SecDef Commander' rule, which allows him to take up to two SecDef Tactical Teams as Core choices instead of in their usual Hammer slots. In the interests of fielding as many big guns as possible (because the SecDef heavy weapons look cool) I choose to give each of the Core teams two LM14 Machine Guns, and added two extra warm bodies to each to bring them up to full strength.





The models throughout the force are assembled largely straight off the sprue with minimal conversion. I switched around some of the leg pairs (as explained in last week's Modeling Spotlight) and changed around the left hands on the unit Sergeants to add some variety to their poses without having them all holding their rifles twp-handed like their troops, to help them stand out a little.

With the two available Core options filled, I decided to include a sniper unit in the Hammer slot (because why wouldn't you?). To keep them extra sneaky and to stay within my chosen 120 points, I went with the base unit of three, and gave the two troopers each a sniper rifle.



There was clearly not enough firepower on the table here yet, which called for some Chainguns! Rather than fill up my last remaining Hammer slot for the detachment, I made use of the Tactical Team rule that causes teams equipped with two CG100 Chainguns to become Anvil selections, and built up two five-man units accordingly.





To round out the detachment, I liked the idea of a SecDef force having access to a light vehicle that would serve as an advance scout, and potentially as a beacon to guide in teams arriving by Aerial Insertion. After some searching online, I found the Heron Light Battlewalker, a resin kit from Hexy-Shop. This is a small walker with an enclosed cockpit but a detailed interior, which allowed me to cut away the roof and part of the sides to create an open cockpit.



I replaced the Heron's original weapons with a pair of CG100 Chainguns glued together side-by-side, and added a driver by cutting up a pair of SecDef legs, re-assembling them in place in the seat and then filling in the resulting gaps with 'green stuff' putty.



There were no controls in the Heron's cockpit other than a screen down between the driver's feet, so I added a control loom made from a leftover resin piece and the pistol grip from a SecDef assault rifle. I also added some roll bars on the sides of the cockpit (these pieces normally go on the platform on the rear of the Heron), but these are only sticky-tacked in place so I can take them off for painting - this should make it easier to get into the nooks and crannies in the cockpit.



The final touch was to shorten the legs slightly, as the Heron turned out to be a bit taller than I had expected and wanted it to be. This was done by cutting out the lowest section of the legs and reattaching the legs to the ankle ball-joint.



All up, with an 11-point Lieutenant and 12-point walker, the above force comes in at 119 points - perfect for getting started, and ready to be taken as a detachment in a larger Epirian force or fleshed out later if and when more SecDef units are added to the roster. If you would like to build something similar, you can find the unit cards for the Lieutenant and the walker in the Force Builder section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

Next week - Painting!



To start assembling your own SecDef force, you can pick up the Secdef sprue, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, from the webstore here.

As always, feel free to pop along and share your work, 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 article roundup here.

- by Iain Wilson

Last week saw the release of the awesome new plastic Secdef to bolster the Epirian battleline with some elite military muscle. If you missed it, you can see the release article here: https://www.facebook.com/maelstromsedge/posts/2244261785589396, and you can also find an assembly guide here: http://www.thecommguild.com/roller/thecommguild/entry/assembly-guide-epirian-secdef.

This week, I'd like to go through some quick and easy modeling ideas to tweak your models. Novice modelers, fear not - nothing here requires extensive conversion experience or special tools!

To (ahem) kick things off, you may have noticed in the assembly guide that the sprue comes with 3 sets of legs - one in a walking pose, and two slightly different standing poses.



The left and right legs from each pair have matching locator pins to help them go together neatly, and these are different sizes for each pair to help you keep them sorted during assembly. You can easily mix-and-match the pairs to create some variation in the posing, though - the smaller pins will fit into the larger locator slots, and for pairings where the locator pins don't fit in you can just cut them off with a sharp hobby knife and glue the hips together without them.



One of the ongoing design goals for the Maelstrom's Edge range has been for the various kits to be compatible wherever possible to enable parts swaps. This is particularly useful for increasing the pool of available heads for any unit, and the open-hand design that has been adopted for weapon arms likewise adds extra options for switching gear around. On the below models, some slightly more hi-tech than usual Contractors have been made by using Contractor heads and weapons on the Secdef bodies.



You can also use heads from the Broken Infantry sprue to add unhelmeted human heads or aliens to your Secdef's ranks.



For an enclosed helmet option, you can use a spare head from the Epirian Bot Handler sprue.



The left arm on the above model has also been modified, removing the pointing hand at the wrist and replacing it with one of the open-palm left hands that normally hold the Secdef heavy guns. The heavy weapon arms are also useful for putting on Sergeants to show tactical hand signals.



Secdef troopers are equipped with a G20 pistol along with their assault rifles, although this isn't included on the sprue. As with other pistol and grenade options that come as standard on various units, there's no specific need, rules-wise, to show these. If you do want to show the pistol, though, the G20 is a variant of the standard Epirian Guardian pistol, so you can use the pistols included on the Contractor sprue to represent them, as has been done on the 'Lieutenant' model below.



(Lieutenants aren't an official unit option currently, although a HQ unit for the Secdef is in the pipeline. I'll be working up an unofficial rules card for this guy to go in the Online Force Builder for those who might want to try out an all-Secdef force.)

Finally for this week - While the designs are slightly different, the strength-boosting exoskeleton makes Secdef legs similar enough to the legs of the Master Bot Handler that you can make a walking Master Handler by simply swapping in the Secdef legs for the normal Master Handler legs, as below. I couldn't resist also taking the opportunity to replace this Master Handler's usual weapons with a modified pair of CG100 Chainguns taken from the Secdef sprue.





What have you done with your Secdef troopers? We would love to see your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

To pick up the Secdef sprue, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, visit the webstore here.

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

We are very proud to announce the immediate availability of our latest plastics - the Epirian SecDef. These guys have exo-augmented armour, allowing them to be a much more powerful and effective fighting force than their contractor allies.

Available now at https://www.maelstromsedge.com/store/41/3x%20Epirian%20Secdef%20Infantry, along with details of their history and background.

Below, you can find instructions for assembling these great new models!

Assembling Epirian Secdef

General Notes

Polystyrene cement - only use superglue if you want to go insane! All of our models are designed to be assembled with polystyrene cement as it gives some time to re-pose while gluing, fuses the models together and prevents brittle joins like other glues do. Make sure you have polystyrene cement in your toolkit before you begin!

We want you to experiment! We've broken our models up into lots of parts and given a fair few spare parts so that you can push yourself out of your comfort zone, learn new skills and create some really unique models. We've tried to price things so that it won't break the bank if you make a mistake, so please cut stuff up and have some fun. Start simple with a slice here and a re-pose there, and watch your confidence and skills increase until you are a master modeler!

Basing - Always make sure you glue your model to its base with an eye on the arc markers on the sides of the base. The arc marker indents should be at the halfway point between the front and back of the model to show the front and back halves of the model when gaming. See the Maelstrom's Edge rulebook for more detailed notes on this.

Dry fit before gluing! - There are lots of pose options possible, but that means there is also the freedom to screw up and make some bad poses! Sticking the parts together and seeing how things look will usually lead to a model that is fairly static and repetitive. You should consider knee, hip, torso, and arm positions when gluing and ensure that you have a pose in mind before you start gluing things together. If in doubt or insecure about your talents in the posing area, we recommend you try to copy the poses from some of our studio models found here in the gallery.

Epirian Secdef Assembly Notes

Three Secdef models can be made from one sprue. The sprue includes the following weapons: 2 x AR60 Assault Rifle, 1 x SR40 Sniper Rifle, 1 x CG100 Chaingun and 1 x LM14 Machine Gun.



Legs have three different poses and are paired, left and right, with differently-sized locator pins to keep them straight. Leg 5 goes with leg 7, 8 with 4 and 6 with 9.



The three torsos have two different designs (two with chest pouches and a backpack, one without), but the chestplate is identical for each, and any of the three torsos fit with any of the legs.





There are five 'sets' of arms, including two that have right hands with fingers together, and three with the fingers more splayed and the trigger finger separate. The closed-finger version works best for the Machine Gun or Chaingun, while the more open fingers work best for the Assault Rifles or Sniper Rifle. These are more-or-less matched with the extended left arms for the rifles and the left arms with more bent elbows for the heavier weapons. The pointing left arm obviously works with whichever right arm you choose, although there is one rifle arm that has the weapon held out to the side rather than across the body.







There are two small parts labelled as part 24 on the sprue. These are optional, and can be glued in between the belt and the heavier weapons as a support strut.



Finally, the three heads all fit with either of the two torso variants.




For some more ideas for building your Secdef models or to share your own creations, head on over to the Comm Guild Facebook page.

You can pick up the Secdef sprue, and the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge miniature range, from the webstore here.

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

2018 is halfway gone already, and so far it's been a busy year for Maelstrom's Edge! We would hate for you to have missed anything, so here's a look back at what these six months have brought us.

Our monthly model releases saw some hefty reinforcements arrive for the Broken, in the form of the Marsayan Hypnotist with his innate powers of misdirection, the equipment-tinkering Sig Jammer, a specialised Forsaken Chieftain, and of course the giant, muscle-and-scale-clad behemoth that is the Gnolti, our biggest model to date!





All of these add to the existing Broken Infantry units to allow for a more varied and tactical army. One of the great things about the Broken as a faction is the sheer range of possibility opened up by their nature as a melting pot of all of the leftovers and unwanted dregs of galactic society, and we're looking forward to exploring this further with future model releases.





April saw the release of a new plastic kit for the Epirian Foundation - The Master Bot Handler. This multi-part kit comes with a raft of weapons options to equip your Master Handlers for a variety of battlefield roles, as broken down in the 'Equipping the Epirian Master Bot Handler' tactics article that you can find here.



Over on the Comm Guild blog, Iain shared some different modeling ideas for this fantastic new kit, with a general modeling spotlight here and a conversion guide for a quad-weapon-equipped 'special character' version here.





The Comm Guild blog is home to an ever-growing listing of different modeling articles. On the terrain front, we've made mini hab domes from plastic bowls, created a grove of scifi cactus from foam balls and old toothbrushes, built personal sleeper caskets for those long interstellar trips, tinkered with some scatter terrain for detailing urban tables, assembled an Epirian-themed dice tower, set up a residence in the desert, made a ruin from a cardboard gift box, and finished up with a sci fi pagoda!







The miniatures weren't forgotten either, with articles sharing modeling and conversion ideas for Karist Angel Keepers, Epirian Drones, the Broken Sig Jammer, the Marsayan Hypnotist, and Epirian Bot Handlers





We also shared basic guides on working with resin models, and magnetising your Karist Heavy Weapon troopers, and some conversion spotlights on a re-posed Gnolti, an Epirian Light Carrier Drone and Sentinel Bot and a veteran Gnolti 'Longhorn'.







So... what's next?

Over the next 6 months, we will be continuing our regular model releases, starting with our newest plastic kit: the Epirian Secdef!



And of course the Comm Guild articles will continue to bring you more tips and techniques for making the most of your models. Stay Tuned!



Join in the Maelstrom's Edge discussion on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

To pick up the Maelstrom's Edge model range, visit the webstore here.

- by Iain Wilson

This week, I'm showcasing another terrain build, but for a change of pace I thought it would be fun to build something in a more unusual style.

I've been eyeing off the Japanese building range from Plast Craft Games for some time, and in particular a three-level temple that was just screaming to be turned into a table centrepiece. So I grabbed the temple from one of my regular go-to online stores, broke out some Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, and set to work!



The Plast Craft Games buildings are flat-packed, assemble-yourself-style constructs in a similar vein to the various MDF offerings out there, except that instead of MDF they're made from sheets of die-cut, foamed PVC. This material is somewhere in between styrofoam and plasticard in density, and is nice and easy to work with and surprisingly sturdy once assembled.



My plan was to not get too crazy with modifying the building, as I love the general design of it. It just needed some sci-fi-ing up to fit on my table. So with that in mind, I discarded the resin screen doors that come with the kit in favour of the single doors from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. The existing doorways on the temple were exactly the right height for the plastic doorframe, but a little wider, so I filled in the gaps on either side with strips of scrap sheet cut to size. Other than that, the bottom level was assembled as per the instructions.





Similar treatment was given to the second level, although this level only has doors in two walls instead of all four.



The top level has a smaller doorway in a single wall. Rather than cut out the door hole to fit another full-sized doorframe in there, I filled in the doorway with some leftover sheet bits and glued on the square hatch from the terrain sprue. I also replaced the spire on the roof peak with another square hatch.



The railings that came with the temple were a little low, and a little low-tech for my liking, so I replaced them with ladders from the terrain sprue. This required some fudging to make it work, as I discovered when I started gathering ladders that I had run out. Luckily, I was able to cobble together a few discarded cut sections to fill the last of the railing on the second level. It's a little rough if you look too closely, but I can always pass it off as a rushed repair job (those lowest-bid contractors at work!).







I wanted to do the bulk of the painting before adding the roof sections, as I figured that would be easier than trying to work around them. So the building was given a basecoat with black spray, and then a top-down spray with grey, leaving the black in the lower recesses for natural shading.



I then picked out all the metal parts with Citadel Leadbelcher, before giving them a wash with Army Painter Dark Tone.



The balcony levels were painted with Vallejo Neutral Grey and drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey, and the wall panels were basecoated with Vallejo Heavy Brown and drybrushed with P3 Jack Bone. At which point, it was time to add the roof sections.



I'm not sure if it was my slightly rushed assembly, or a flaw in the temple kit, but I found that the roof sections for the two lower levels were actually too short to reach the corner beams. Luckily, I had some corrugated cardboard that matched the card used for the roof almost exactly. Cut to size and with tile-grooves added by 'scoring' across the corrugations lightly with a sculpting tool, they were a close enough match to hold up to all but the closest scrutiny.



My improvised roof sections were painted black before gluing in place, and then all of the roof pieces were drybrushed with Leadbelcher and washed with Dark Tone. Finally, I picked out the lights above the doors with a drybrush of Citadel Ultramarine Blue, Ice Blue and then white, and added a masonite base sprayed with grey and white for a quick concrete effect. If I have time later, I may go back and replace this with a tiled slab to pretty things up some more.

The finished building:







To pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, or any of the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, visit the webstore here.

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the article roundup here, or for help or advice, or just to share your work, feel free to visit the Comm Guild Facebook page!