The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

Not everyone has the time to spend paintstakingly blending, shading and detailing their models. Sometimes, you just want to get them on the table quickly, so I thought it might be useful to explore some options for fast and painless army painting.

I'm going to start with some Epirian guinea pigs, painted exclusively with washes! This is a really easy technique to get to grips with, and while it won't get you an award-winning work of art, it does give you perfectly serviceable-looking models that look great on the table.




For those unfamiliar with them, washes are thin paints designed to sink into the model's crevices whilst leaving less colour on the raised detail (Also sometimes called 'inks' - Not to be confused with 'glazes' which are translucent paints that tint the surface they're painted onto evenly). So while it's a little less precise than blended highlighting or 'juicing' (applying super-thin coats of increasingly dark colour to build up shadow or colour transition), we can use washes over a pale base colour to highlight and shade a model all in one fell swoop.

I start by giving the model a base coat of white.



Now I'm going to start applying washes to build up the colours I want, leaving the model to fully dry between each. On this model, I've started with a coat of Army Painter Soft Tone over everything except for the weapons. This is pale enough that other colours will go ok over the top - if you're using darker tones, it's best to try to keep them strictly on the areas where you want them, otherwise you'll need to touch up your basecoat to cover up the overspill before painting each part of the model. Apply a generous coat of wash and leave it to thoroughly dry before moving on to the next step.



Next, I've gone over the armour and chaps with Army Painter Green Tone, and picked out the boots, belt, kneepads and weapons with Secret Weapon Soft Body Black (this has a little more pigment in it than most other black washes I've tried, so is good for painting over pale colours without needing half a dozen coats to build up shading).



I've left the tip and front facing of the Shock Baton free of the black wash, as once that layer of wash is dry I have applied a coat of Army Painter Blue Tone to those. I've also gone over the exposed skin areas with Army Painter Flesh Tone, and painted his goggles with Army Painter Red Tone.



For a final step, I gave his weapons another coat of black, and detailed the base. I've gone for a cracked earth look on the base, just for something quick. There are specialist paints out there for doing this sort of thing, but this one was done with regular paint and wood glue - I'll be posting a tutorial on how to do that later on.



At this point, the model is ready for the table. You can add extra detail if you feel like it, and of course you can use different wash colours to suit your preferred colour scheme.



Go ahead and give it a try, and feel free to share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge)!

Starting in November, we'll be offering bases for sale in packs of 5, so you'll be able to purchase standard, medium or huge bases on their own with those lovely arc marker notches in the side. Suitable for any game with forward/rear arc requirements, we hope it will open up some nice conversion and hobby options for you!

The Kasmenai originally came from a barren world long lost to mankind's expansion. Bipedal with elongated limbs, the Kasmenai are radiation resistant and so often find work on human-owned worlds where radiation levels are high. Typically they can be found on mining colonies, and on highly radioactive worlds. Their service is cheaper than robots, especially when the robots need radiation shielding.

When the Maelstrom threatened many of these worlds, the Kasmenai were shown to be the subclass they are amongst humanity, as even those they thought friends fled the catastrophe, leaving the vast majority of the aliens behind. With much greater numbers than human populations on some harsh worlds, the Kasmenai have been driven to rise up and overthrow governments, but besides those in space already, very few find transport to escape. Most are happy to join the Broken given the chance.

Kasmenai bodies are very different from human. Their hardened skin is made of radiation-proof scales, but the absorption of radiation is also how Kasmenai feed, transferring the energy from alpha, beta and gamma decay into the chemical batteries that make up much of their internal organs. Due to this strange electrical sustenance they do not have blood or a digestion system, and their insides are much more radiation resistant, however if they do absorb too much radiation on their outer skin they can shed it like snake-skin, sloughing off the most dangerous contamination. Their bodies are lined with aluminium capillaries that transfer power and thought alike.

Although Kasmenai do not eat like most organisms, getting their energy from radiation, they still need a supply of metals and silicates to build their bodies, and Kasmenai can often be found sucking metallic lozenges to replenish the elements they need to grow and repair. Although their skin is designed to produce energy from radioactive decay, it can also feed off the photons from light and heat, albeit much more slowly due to the vastly lower energies involved. Their dependence on sources of energy can often make them prone to enslavement to work in dangerous locations, and the pallid grey colour of an energy-depleted Kasmenai's scales is a sign of danger, as their normally benign temperament becomes angry and unpredictable when they have not fed properly.

This striking Angel colourscheme is part of our red studio army by Lil'Legend Studios. The contrast makes it quite difficult to photograph effectively, but the sinister undertones can't be missed. Definitely not a creature you'd like to find tearing through the hull of your vehicle.

Dakka user and friend of Maelstrom's Edge, Panic, has been an amazing early adopter of the terrain kits. He came up with the great idea of taking an electrical box from a hardware store, slicing some holes into it, and adding Maelstrom's Edge terrain components. The above image shows the finished piece all nicely painted up.

Any basic box that has texture on it already serves as an excellent base for terrain sprue components. One word of warning with electrical boxes though - they are a total pain to cut, so patience is definitely needed!

What is it about Ochre that looks so good on models? This Epirian Hunter by Zambro at Dakka has a great finish and a nice use of contrasting colours that really make the model pop.

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

Other than our box art, we were suffering from quite a lack of scenic artwork featuring Epirian robots in action. This piece was commissioned to show two Epirian Scarecrows in the middle of securing an area at full force. From the railrifle firing a magnetically focused shot into the distance, to the chemical haze in the air around them, biological opponents have little hope!

We continue our preview of the Broken with another weapon - a crudely retrofitted pistol. Fabric wrappings are a very common sight on Broken weaponry, and this long triggered weapon does a good job of showing the range of some of their designs. The long trigger allows the weapon to be fired away from the body, minimising risk to the firer when ammunition is unreliable or the weapon is overcharged.

The Epirian Foundation is most famous for the variety of robots it employs, but the vast organisation made its fortune in the business of finding and cultivating new worlds. There are six stages to the terraforming process that the Epirian Foundation uses to take a planet from a barren wasteland to a verdant paradise. Taking a planet all the way from stage 1 to stage 6 can take thousands of years and huge investments. Frequently a planet is taken to stage 4 and the process is halted, for the cost of reaching garden world status is not deemed worthwhile for all but the richest or geographically blessed planets.

The six stages are:

1. In stage one, a planet is barren, inhospitable and even overtly hostile to human occupation, due to extreme temperatures, atmospheric conditions, weather or seismologica phenomena. Even colonists in armoured vehicles or space suits are not safe. The goal of stage one terraforming is to stabilise the world, removing or mitigating the biggest threats to survival so that the terraforming process can begin in earnest. Stage one is dangerous, risky work and can take hundreds or even thousands of years, and in many cases might be too expensive to complete.
   
   
2. In stage two, the planet is still unsuitable for sustaining life, but is no longer dangerous on a day to day basis. The next phase of terraforming is about removing big impediments to cultivating a viable habitat, such as the removal of toxic materials, protection against cosmic rays and the beginnings of atmospheric tweaking to provide breathable air and survivable temperatures. By the end of stage two, a colonist might be able to survive unprotected for a few minutes, but life still remains under protective domes. The transition between stage 2 and stage 3 typically begins the true colonisation age, as settlers flock to the world in search of their fortunes.
   
   
3. A stage 3 world is marginally habitable. There might be a thin atmosphere that requires rebreathers, or substantial areas of the planet might be too hot or too cold to survive for more than a few hours. The third stage aims to begin moving more of the world's surface to a habitable state through atmospheric processing, temperature control using greenhouse gases or space-based mirrors, the seeding of a water cycle using comets of ice and the introduction of thousands of variants of nanoorganism that digest the soil or purify the air. It is at stage 3 that colonists begin to settle the planet in earnest, and much of the resource extraction is also performed at this stage. The planet of Zycanthus is around halfway through stage 3 of the terraforming process.
   
   
4. Stage four begins to move a planet from a marginal world into a more comfortable home for humanity. The air is close to human-standard by now, and extremes of temperature are limited to the poles and equator. Following purification of planetside bodies of water or the introduction of water from ice comets, a truly self-sufficient ecosystem is cultivated, and agriculture moves from a desperate struggle against the elements to a profitable enterprise. Cities grow and the world ceases to be considered a backwater, sustaining a bustling economy and trade network with nearby planets.
   
   
5. Stage five is where a world truly becomes a desirable place to live. Most of the planet is fertile and verdant, although differences in temperature and ecosystem can still vary widely depending on latitude and longitude. Agriculture is by now a key export, and tourism may even become a factor as outsiders flock to experience the natural world that has been created. Extraction of resources begins to be limited by environmental constraints, as a world of this quality is too rare and costs too much to be sullied by mining and industry.
   
   
6. Stage six is a status achieved by relatively few planets across the Spiral Arm. Garden worlds or paradises, as they are often known, are blessed by fortunate geography or huge expense to be close to perfect for sustaining human life. Ecologies thrive, with vibrant habitats teeming with plant and animal life. Living on such a world becomes a status symbol in itself, and the rich and powerful flock to holiday in its lush forests and shining beaches. There is no greater prize than a garden world, and their loss to the Maelstrom is viewed as more tragic than almost anything else.

With most of our models generally shown from the front, it is easy to miss the crazy amounts of detail on all sides. This shot of one of our studio Epirian Handlers shows just how much detail these plastic models can have!

- by Iain Wilson

The Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue is a fantastic resource for enhancing your games. Packed as it is with different bits and pieces for crafting buildings and scifi accessories, it serves as a handy base to combine with foamcore, cardboard, plastic containers, the cat*, foam packaging inserts, plumbing supplies, or anything else you can think of to create distinctive and personalised battlefield terrain.


*Don't glue things to the cat. Seriously.


For now, I'd like to focus on one particular way to use the sprue, by crafting a basic building using a cardboard gift box.





These are fairly readily available all over the place, are generally made of a fairly sturdy cardboard, and are (best of all) cheap. You can also get them with all sorts of pretty patterns on them, but you'll probably want to paint them, so that’s less important, really.


Here’s a quick video showing the build process:





You will need: a giftbox, the terrain sprue, some glue (superglue for gluing the plastic parts on, PVA/wood glue for gluing the box lid on) clippers, a pencil, a sharp knife, and a ruler can be useful for marking out parts.





I want a building with a walled roof, as that gives some nice line of sight-blocking terrain while giving troops somewhere elevated to stand. So the box will be turned upside down, and the lid will eventually be glued on top, also upside down.





First step is to cut the parts you want to use off the sprue and clean up any mould lines.


I'm using the long support pieces vertically on the walls of the building, so they need to be trimmed down to the height of the box. That's simply a case of taking the lid off, holding one of the supports against the box to mark where to cut it, and then cutting them all off at that point.





Put the leftover pieces aside - they'll come in handy for other projects.


Next, measure out where the supports will go on the building. I tend to use them slightly in from the corners of my buildings, rather than as corner bracing - this looks neater, as they don't meet in a flush corner if you butt them up against each other right on the edge.


You can put them wherever you like, so long as it's consistently spaced around the building. Here, I've used a corner brace to mark out the spacing, by placing it up against the corner and marking against the side of it. Repeat top and bottom on both sides of each wall.





Next, work out where you want to put your door. Hold it in place against the building wall and draw around the back of the door frame with a pencil.








Do the same for the windows - I've gone for one on each end of the building.





Then take your knife and carefully cut out the door and window holes. Note that the windows don't actually have to be inset into the walls - the box frame design means that they actually look pretty good just glued on the outside. So you can save yourself some cutting if you're in a hurry. I do prefer to inset them, though, as it looks a little more polished.








Once the holes are cut out, check that the parts fit in securely - trim up if necessary.





Then it's time to glue everything in place. Apply a small amount of glue around the door and window frames and push them into place. You can 'hide' the glue behind the protruding frame on the sides and bottom of the windows, so that you get less overflow onto the cardboard.





Run a line of glue down the back of the supports, and press them into place against your pencil marks on each wall.








Next, grab your box lid, and on the inside mark out where you want the roof hatch to go. Once again I've used the corner brace to mark out an even distance from the sides of the box lid. Then glue the hatch in place.





Now we can glue the roof on. Spread some PVA glue liberally over the top side of the building, press the lid on upside down, and sit something heavy on top to hold it snugly in place while the glue sets.





You could use superglue for this if you don't have any PVA or if you're in a hurry, but the PVA glue gives a better bond if there are irregularities in the cardboard that stop the two pieces from meeting perfectly flush.





While the roof is setting, we can hack the sprue a little to add some extra detail to the back of the building. Cut a corner piece off the narrower side of the sprue, as below. This will become the pipe for a small chimney or air vent.





Clean off the extra tabs and the mould line, and grab the small pipe fitting off the sprue.


A handy feature of this part of the sprue is that it fits perfectly into a 1/4"(7mm) plasticard tube, which in turn fits snugly into the small pipe fitting. So cut yourself two short segments of tubing - one for each end of the 'pipe'. If you don't have any plasticard, you can also use a strip of thin cardboard (cereal packet or the like) wrapped around the sprue instead.





Glue the tubing (or cardboard strips) onto the 'pipe', glue the curved end into the pipe fitting, and check the fit against the back wall of the building. You can trim up the protruding sprue support as necessary to make sure the chimney sits vertically and the pipe fitting is flush against the wall. Then glue in place.





I have also added one of the small vent pieces that was trimmed off the wall supports right at the start, just for a little extra detail, and glued a comm panel onto the front wall beside the door.


So the finished building looks something like this:





This can then be decorated however you like. I would recommend a good spray paint for the basecoat, particularly if the boxes you are using have a glossy finish. The building below was basecoated with black spray, and then given a spray coat of a medium grey, and a final highlight with a light grey spray from above, to leave the darker colour in the recesses and undercuts.





The 'chimney' pipe was painted in copper with a light drybrush of green to dirty it up, and some details like the comm panel screen and the light above the door picked out for a little extra colour. You could also add on building numbers, posters, warning signs, or anything else that you might find on a real building - we'll be covering some different ways to pretty up your battlefield terrain in a later article.




Pick up the terrain sprue from the Maelstrom's Edge online store here and give it a go! You can share your creations on the Comm Guild Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MaelstromsEdge

The Maelstrom's Edge box set comes with two cardboard objectives for the Karist and Epirian forces. The above shows a lovely physical model based on the Epirian Objective by Sgt Oddball over at Dakka.

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

In a lot of Maelstrom's Edge fiction we discuss small craft, tunnelhuggers, and similar. These craft can breathe air and operate in space, so are generally a bit more streamlined than larger ships. The craft above is capable of transporting 8 people for a considerable length of time, and is heavily armed with solid mass weapons that can operate in atmosphere or in vacuum.

Every month, we'll be posting a roundup of some of the awesome content posted to the Comm Guild Blog. Below are some of the highlights from September:

We kicked off the month by releasing our latest audiobook, Fracture.



Written by Stephen Gaskell, Fracture continues the story of Kelvin and his family from our first audiobook, Transit.