The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

Once upon a time, there was an more-or-less universally accepted standard that gaming miniatures' bases would be either covered in flock (shudder) or covered in sand and painted light green. We've come a long way since then, with the common standard now to have sand painted brown with a couple of tufts of static grass to brighten things up a little.


If that's leaving you less than inspired, then this article might be for you! Over a couple of weeks, I'm going to run through a few different ways to pretty up your bases, ranging from easy to 'might need a little practice' in complexity.

First off the blocks: Industrial Grey

This style is intended to represent industrial or urban cement-paved areas, and can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be (or as your painting skills will allow!)

Start with a medium grey - I've used Vallejo Basalt Grey.



Then drybrush with a lighter grey - in this case, Vallejo Light Grey.



You could leave it there, but where's the fun in that?

You can use a ruler or a cast off piece of sprue to mark out lines on the cement, to represent part of the sorts of markings you might find on cement floors - hazard lines, lane markings, etc.



Paint in between the lines with an appropriate colour. Yellow is a great contrast against the grey, or white is good for a more subdued look.



Then you can add weathering, dirt and stains to your heart's content. For the chips, paint small splotches of your original medium grey and highlight around the edges with the light grey. Dirty things up by drybrushing with a little brown, and add drops of ink for oil or chemical stains.



Finally, paint around your base edges.

There are several schools of thought on base edges. Some painters like to go with a colour that complements whatever is on top of the base. Some prefer a contrasting colour, or different colours to denote different units, or even just good old black. There's no right or wrong - just go with whatever you think looks best.

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Next: Let it snow!



There are various hobby 'snow' products on the market for creating wintery bases or terrain, but to me they never look quite right, as they're too grainy. Instead, I like to go with something like this:

Start by gluing a few small lumps of sand or fine gravel to your bases for a little texture. If you're doing this with the bases separate to the models, make sure you leave space in between the rocky clumps for the model's feet.



Once your glue has set, paint the rocks up. I've opted for a black wash to start out. This is followed by a heavy drybrush of brown (I used Citadel Tallarn Flesh here) and then a light drybrush of light grey (the Vallejo again). That's not a hard and fast formula - rocks come in all sorts of colours and textures, so use whatever colours will make for the nicest contrast with your miniatures.



Once that's done, the flat space in between becomes snow. If you want to (and I would recommend it on larger bases), you can break up the flatness by adding smooth bumps with Green Stuff or Milliput, or just leave them flat. Paint with white.



The last step is a little hard to photograph, so you'll have to take my word for it that it looks better in person. To get a nice, shiny snow look, I use a pearlescent paint. You can find a few variations on a similar theme in most craft shops - either a pearl white paint, a pearly gloss sealer, or a pearl medium which you add to your paint. Whichever you wind up with, paint a coat or two over your white, and then finish by painting the base edges.

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Moving on: Rocky Wasteland



OK, so this one isn't actually too far removed from the standard sand-and-static-grass option, but without the static grass. Start by gluing some fine gravel mix - Mine is a mix of silver sand, regular sand and some crushed up slate. I like to add some bigger pieces of stone scattered around these bases as well to create a little bit of a feature.



Paint: start with a black or brown wash to get into all the crevices.



The drybrush with browns and/or greys (or whatever other colours you want your wasteland to be). I've used light grey and Coat D'Arms Hairy Brown here.



That's the boring part. Now to add some zing! Find yourself an old toothbrush, and pull out one of the clumps of bristles - use pointy pliers if they're reluctant to come out. There will sometimes be a small piece of metal in the fold at the bottom of the bristle that helps hold them in the toothbrush. If there is, discard that.

Before you let go, add a little superglue into the folded bottom of the bristle clump to hold it all together.



Then apply a small dollop of clear craft glue or superglue to the bottom of the bristles and press them into place on your base.

If you have a nice hollow to glue the bristles into, superglue will work fine. If they're sitting more on top of the gravel, the craft glue is better as it is thicker and will pool around the base of the bristles to give them a little stability.



Once your glue is set, paint by washing with brown ink, and then drybrush a little bone or light green over the top to pick out the individual bristles again. Then paint your base edge.



As a final note on this one - If you're making up your base separately to the model, it's a good idea to either leave a couple of spots with no gravel for the model's feet to glue into, or pin the model to the base, as model feet don't tend to glue well to sand or gravel due to the lack of flat surface to grab onto.

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In part two, we try to make your bases more riveting, and wander off in search of a shrubbery. Stay tuned!

Feeling inspired? Want to share how you have based your models? Jump into the Comm Guild Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge)!

- by Iain Wilson

Time for another painting tutorial! This time around, I'm having a look at lenses.


Epirian bots have a single eye lens which creates a great focal point on the model's 'face' if it's painted in a nicely contrasting colour. Below, we'll go through three different, easy techniques for painting these lenses without losing too much hair in the process.

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The Wash Method

This method tends to not look quite as effective as some others, but has the benefit of being quick and easy to do. Start by painting the lens silver.



Then add a wash of the colour you want the lens - in this case, I've used Army Painter Red Tone. This will give you a sightly shimmery, coloured lens. If the lens is convex (as with the drone lenses) you'll also get a lighter point of colour in the middle. For flat lenses, like on the Hunter bot, you can replicate this by adding a small dot of white or pale grey after the ink has dried.

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The Specular Method

This is a variation on the common blending method used for lenses and gemstones and the like. Start with the main colour you want the lens to be - the below is Vallejo Bloody Red.



Using a fine brush, apply a small amount of black ink to the top right of the lens. You want enough that it pools against the side, but not so much that it runs over the whole lens. If this gives you a particularly stark transition from the red to the inked area, you can blend the two in a little once the ink has dried by adding a small dot of red back into the middle of the lens, overlapping onto the edge of the inked area.



Finally, using some thinned white paint, apply a tiny dot in the middle of the dark inked area, and highlight the bottom left edge of the lens.

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The Glue Method

Start with your chosen base colour - I've gone with red again, because I like red lenses...



Now squeeze out a small amount of superglue onto a pallet or other flat surface. Pick up a tiny drop of glue on the tip of a pin, and apply it to the lens. It may take a little experimenting to get the right amount (You might want to practice on something that doesn't matter first, as it's next to impossible to clean excess glue off again if you use to much). You need enough that it forms a small bubble of glue covering the lens with the surface tension of the glue holding it in place, but not so much that it runs out past the edges of the lens. Leave the model sitting with the lens horizontal to dry.

As the glue dries, it will most likely shrink a little, and will leave a nice, shiny, glass-like coating over the lens.



You can also us this technique with clear craft glue, although as that sort of glue tends to be thicker and tackier than superglue it can be tricky to get a small enough amount in the right place. You could probably also use gloss sealer, although depending on the size of the lens and the amount of sealer you apply, it may take longer to set properly.

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And there you have it: Three different ways to paint your robots' optic lenses. Go forth and assemble your robot legions, and as always feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge)!

- by Iain Wilson

I've previously shown off a couple of conversions built to represent Karist Angel Keepers - a HQ unit that is currently in development and intended to offer a different way of playing Karist forces, by giving them access to an army potentially made entirely (other than the Keeper, of course) out of Angels. The conversions garnered a fair amount of interest, so I thought I should put together a brief run-down on how to do it. Of course, nice conversions are all well and good, but you also need rules to use them. So as an extra bonus, I snuck into the rules development vault and purloined an early playtest version of the Angel Keeper's unit card, which you can download as a PDF here.

Note: This card is now out of date. The current version of the Angel Keeper's rules can be found in the Karist Enclave file here.




The PDF includes two cards: The Angel Keeper unit card, and a 'companion' card that includes new rules that apply to the Keeper. The rules on both of these cards are 'Playtest Rules', meaning that they're rules that are still being worked on, so you should ok it with your opponent before using the Angel Keeper in your games. Once the development process has been completed, the rules on the companion card will be rolled into the normal rulebooks and a final version of the unit card will be issued.

Obviously, the Keeper's force roster isn't yet as complete as it could be, because there are currently only the two angel kits - Minnows and the Mature Angel. Rest assured there will eventually be more unit options (and the associated model kits) to fill those other slots!


Building the Angel Keeper

My initial idea for the Angel Keeper included a sculpted mask and a flail lifted from a Games Workshop kit. He looked the part, but the sculpting required was going to be a turn-off for some players, so I worked up a second incarnation that used only MEdge parts, which looks like this:



To build this version yourself, you'll need the following parts:

• A 25mm base
• Kaddar Nova legs and crown
• Shadow Walker Torso
• Karist Trooper arms and shoulder pads
• A bare head from the Kaddar Nova, Trooper or Expansion Sprue
• Ripper Grenade Launcher, Cybel Glaive and grabby hand* from the Expansion sprue

*Yes, that's totally the official designation for it.



Assembly is mostly fairly straightforward: Build the legs as you normally would for the Kaddar Nova. You can create a slight visual break from the Nova by trimming off the bottom-most layer of the tabard, so it looks slightly less fancy than the Nova's if you like. Assemble and glue on the torso and the head.

One of the main identifiers for the Angel Keeper is the mask that they wear, which aids them in communicating with their angels. This mask covers the keeper's lower face, and is made by taking the Kaddar Nova crown and trimming away its peak, as below:



This is then glued in place with the former peak pointing downwards over the Keeper's nose and mouth. To give it a slightly better fit, slice off the Keeper's nose and if you're using a Kaddar Nova head (which is slightly more gaunt than the Trooper heads) it can help to make the mask a little more curved - hold it upright between your thumb and forefinger and give it a gentle squeeze to bend it very slightly, and then glue it in place.

There is a small hollow in the small of the Nova's back, which is normally filled with the Nova's giant backpack. For the Angel Keeper, it's a handy place to glue the Ripper Grenade Launcher, hanging in reach on the Keeper's back for when it is needed and nicely disguising the hollow. If you're modeling your Keeper with the grenade launcher in hand, you can instead glue a grenade there, like on my first-generation keeper below:



The Angel Keeper is armed with a Cybel Goad, which he uses to encourage the angels in his charge to do as they're told, and also to whallop nearby enemies when the need arises. I envisaged the goad as potentially taking various forms depending on the preferences of the individual keeper - So some may use a staff or prod, others a whip or lash of some kind, or something else entirely. This opens up all sorts of modeling possibilities, but I'll show a couple of relatively easy options that I've come up with so far.

The easiest version of the goad uses just the shaft of the Cybel Glaive. Chop the head off just below the energy unit, along the red line shown below:



I picture this goad having a small cybel cannister in the round part behind the spike, which distributes a tiny jolt off cybel energy along the spike when it comes in contact with something.

Alternatively, you can trim the bottom spike and the blades off the glaive, as below:



This one is more of a taser-style unit, still requiring contact to use and administering a small cybel charge directly to the target rather than along a blade or spike.



Option number three is a little more complicated, using the handle from a Cybel Blade (from the Expansion sprue), the spike from the bottom of a Cybel Glaive and a short piece of metal guitar string to make a whip, as below:



I have this one coiled up to hang on the Keeper's belt. The coiled guitar string is bound with a little fine copper wire to keep it together.

If you want your Keeper to have his grenade launcher in hand instead of his goad, the easiest option is to use the grenade launcher from the Trooper sprue instead of the Expansion sprue version, as it has the firing hand attached. For a single-handed grip, just slice or file off the support hand from the grenade launcher's stock. The pistol arm on the trooper sprue is nicely positioned out to the side for the grenade launcher - just cut off the pistol hand at the wrist, and glue the grenade launcher hand in its place.

For the Keeper below, I have also used Shadow Walker legs with an Expansion sprue loincloth, instead of the Nova legs. This is an easy way to give your Keeper a slightly more dynamic pose or to make him slightly less austentatious.



You can pick up the parts you need to build your own Angel Keeper from the Maelstrom's Edge online store (www.maelstromsedge.com - You'll need the Kaddar Nova, Shadow Walker, Karist Trooper and Faction Expansion Sprue, which will build you an Angel Keeper and because of all of the extras on the sprues will still leave enough spare parts to still build a Kaddar Nova, a Shadow Walker and a unit of Karist Troopers or Praetorians.

We would love to hear any feedback you have on the Angel Keeper's rules, and see how everyone is building their own keepers, so please share your creations, questions or comments on the Comm Guild Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge)!

We just wanted to put out a quick reminder that the short stories collection Tales From The Edge: Emergence is available on Amazon right now! It contains a range of fiction suitable for anyone with even a hint of sci-fi interest. With Christmas approaching, why not pick it up as a gift for a sci-fi loving friend?

The Epirian foundation is fragmented into many competing franchises. Each maintains control of multiple worlds, and technology and people must be interchanged frequently. Ensuring security on these worlds requires each adult Epirian citizen to be issued with a MATS number. This unique number allows an Epirian citizen to rise to high status on one world, and have that status recognised throughout the galaxy, granting a galactic mobility that would not otherwise be possible without immense personal wealth.

MATS numbers are controlled at the system level, and as such represent an extremely juicy target for infiltrating agents. Getting some fake individuals in to the MATS system is an easy way to gain unfettered access to key Epirian institutions and facilities, and for those desperate to escape a world, can lead to a significant bump in their position on passenger manifests.

Every month, we like to post a roundup of some of the awesome content posted to the Comm Guild Blog, just in case you missed anything! Below are some of the highlights from October:

This month saw the release of the first volume of the Tales From The Edge series of books, featuring short stories from the Maelstrom's Edge universe.



This book is titled Tales from the Edge: Emergence, and is available in digital format now.

Also released this month are our model bases, now available separately!

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Our regular 'Spotlight' articles are intended to show some of the models from our range, and include notes on the design process, colour scheme options and building or conversion guides.

The October Spotlights included a rather sinister-looking Epirian Bot Handler, an even nastier looking dark red Angel, an Epirian Hunter toting some serious firepower, a Firefly drone in our box-art colour scheme, and a ruined hab block from our studio terrain collection.

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We had a bit of a look at some great MEdge buildings made by Dakka Dakka user Panic, using plastic electrical boxes.



While we're talking about terrain, there was a tutorial by Iain Wilson (insaniak from Dakka Dakka) showing how you can create quick and easy buildings using the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and cardboard gift boxes!



Iain also shared a tutorial on painting with washes; a valuable technique for getting a new force on the table as fast as possible.

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Our rapidly expanding range of artwork and background features this month included the very first completed art piece for our Karists, the mature angel, an interstellar hydrogen harvester, some scout ship artwork, some fiction on terraforming, metalloceramic production, the Kasmenai, the birth of the Karist movement, a second and third weapon preview for the upcoming Broken faction, a better look at the artwork featured on the cover of Emergence, and a look at the digital rulebook.

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On the community front, Sgt Oddball over on Dakka Dakka shared a fantastic kit-bashed Epirian objective marker:



Amongst the other great contributions by MEdge fans were Panic's Epirian Doom Marines, TP^DC Deputy Manager's Angel Minnow, and a desert-themed Hunter bot by Zambro.

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If you like what you see here, or have questions about the game or the Maelstrom's Edge universe, head on over to the Comm Guild Facebook Group page and and join in the discussion.

Starting after this post, we'll be reducing our posting frequency from daily updates to a more sporadic output. The constant flow of content is now being penalised by social media algorithms and we actually get a much higher readership for less frequent posting. We've got a lot of great hobby articles in the pipeline, as well as more of the usual content. In addition, the more detailed articles will not be pushed off our homepage as quickly as they have been due to our frequency of posting model photos!

Here we are! Our first ever shared image of one of the concepts that is being sculpted for the Broken.

An infantry heavy army, the Broken are made up of desparate individuals who do everything they can to survive. Our initial range will be focused on those who have survived as members of the broken for a generation, with heavily recycled clothing, ragged yet trusty equipment, and a wide variety of poses, weapons and components.

Na-cybel is the type of cybel energy discovered by the Enclave's founders during their escape from a Maelstrom-infected collapsing cybel tunnel, and later reproduced via their Commune reactors. The Fourteen survivors began to experiment with cybel energy, fascinated by the strange new form that had flooded their ship. Eventually they managed to recreate what they called na-cybel energy, a metastable form that seemed not to harm flesh in the same way. Whilst cybel energy had been used often in ship engines, few people directly exposed themselves to cybel energy because of the health risks. The Fourteen survivors decided that the benefits of na-cybel energy outweighed its dangers.

When a commune reactor is used to produce na-cybel, it mixes highly disrupted, almost Maelstrom-like energy with calm, refined cybel energy. At the interface between the two, a hybrid of cybel and Maelstrom energies forms, with the more placid, wispy qualities of cybel combined with the colouring of Maelstrom energy. Unlike either though, na-cybel does not annihilate with conventional energy and matter, instead sparking tiny purple and magenta lightning strikes that topically burn objects. It has been observed that na-cybel has powerful effects on the human nervous system, producing a sense of euphoria and sometimes visions. The Enclave use this as a religious experience and also as a means of controlling their population. The scarring that results from na-cybel exposure is superficial in general, but only to a point, as heavy users such as the Kaddar Nova will eventually be crippled and killed by the cumulative effects.

The na-cybel is only used as a narcotic. Karist weapons do not use or fire na-cybel, they fire refined cybel. The technology in the communes, enhanced with further understanding and insights by studying angels, can be militarized to control and channel natural cybel with peerless performance to all other human civilizations, surpassed and dwarfed only by the angels themselves. It is this deeper understanding, derived from the need to re-produce na-cybel, but re-purposed to weaponising natural cybel, that gives the Enclave their unique weaponry and abilities.

We've shared a few of our red Karist forces now, but this is the first showing of the very evil looking Kaddar Nova. The withered, blackened flesh lends itself well to a commander who has spent decades exposing themselves to deadly volumes of na-cybel radiation, ready for their ascendance. The colour scheme on this model just makes every little detail of the plastics pop so nicely in our opinion!

Today we share this nice compound by Sgt Oddball over on Dakka. The metals are weathered very nicely and the simple flocking at the base of the building and stencilling on the face of the building really pull the whole model together nicely.

Sgt Oddball's Epirians make an appearance once again, this time around a small structure he has built. The striking use of bright colour really helps the Epirians to stand out against the cool greys and metallics of the building.

The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website

With powerful shields, protective armour and effective weapons, taking out a defensive installation or enemy craft in space is not a trivial undertaking. For those like The Broken who have limited structural capacity, the sabotage ship is a dangerous and powerful tool. Stripping a ship bare, and filling it with explosives and cybel containers, and either a remote pilot, or a skeletal crew who have nothing to lose, sabotage ships are frequently used to gain access to restricted cybel gates, or as leverage in negotiations for resources, people and craft.

It feels like an eternity since we first released images of the Epirian Contractors. Our first sculpt with a new sculptor and manufacturer, getting the scale right took a number of back-and-forth attempts but after a few revisions we were able to create a model that was in scale with our Karist range and served as the starting point for the full Epirian range.

The Epirian sprue has a nice crisp level of detail and managed to cram a lot more on than we thought possible, which is why there are two pistols on each sprue. 5 heads and 5 pairs of arms opens up a lot of nice options for posing. Our Epirian models have a slight lean to them which makes them very difficult to photograph effectively but this is something we think we have continued to improve at. The lean does mean that the models look very nice when they are posed with a slightly raised leg, standing on a rock or similar.

The Epirian hats proved to be a dividing aesthetic. Some people love them, some people hate them. Fortunately, we were able to provide helmets as an alternative option for those who prefer to avoid the more casual hat look. A marmite feature!

The Epirian Contractors are our second best selling models, and are available in sets of 6 from the Maelstrom's Edge website.

We are now selling bases individually for $0.50/£0.50 each, in packs of 5. Head over to the Maelstrom's Edge store to check them out. Please pass on the word to our friends in the Warmahordes community who might be interested in them too!

The Karist Enclave are unable to take huge manufacturing facilities with them when they secret themselves away upon a remote world and capturing large facilities is immediately noticeable as well. As a result, more than any other faction, the Karists use complex refineries and nanoforges. A nanoforge is a molecular level assembly system, which allows almost all Karist equipment to be assembled at a near-molecular level. While organics remain too complex to replicate, armour, weaponry, furniture, electronics and extremely basic foodstuffs can all be produced from a wide array of input resources.

The most common output material is Metalloceramic - the material from which Karist plate armour, spacecraft and day to day tools are built from. As the name implies, the material mixes properties from input metals with the benefits of a ceramic, giving the best of both worlds in terms of conductivity, protection and strength.

Nanoforges are not exclusive to the Karist Enclave, but the energy requirements for operating them are immense, and only the Karists are content enough to sit on top of such large volumes of cybel energy. Most other groups in the galaxy appreciate that human power is a lot cheaper than cybel energy, so tend to vie away from such high levels of automated production for all but the most complex and critical equipment.