The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

If you've been following this blog with even passing attention, you might have noticed that I've been on a bit of a Militus spree. In between the assorted conversions and random paint schemes that I've been trying out, I shared a suit in a dark gold scheme way back when the kit was released, and then revisited that colour scheme with the recent Dominator conversion article. With two suits now matching, it seemed like a good idea to keep going, so right now I'm putting together a 120-point force, which will feature in an upcoming article. In the meantime, I thought I would share the method I came up with for painting the gold, using Army Painter Warpaints and Quickshade.





I'm using a Militus suit here, but obviously this technique can be applied to whatever you want to put it on. I start out by spraying the suit with Army Painter Plate Armour. That's specifically for the Militus, as it lets me run Dark Tone wash over the mechanical underlayer and then move on to the armour. You could also use a grey basecoat for a similar effect, or use white or beige if you would like a slightly brighter end result.



Over the Plate Metal, I paint a coat of Wasteland Soil. This goes on horribly over the plate metal, and looks a bit streaky and patchy, but that's absolutely fine for this effect. If it bothers you, you can give it a second coat to smooth it out, but there's really no need - the purple is just there to give the gold some depth, and you won't see it in the end.

You could use a medium-tone brown instead, but I find that tends to give a more muddy-looking result.



Next up, I paint on two coats of Bright Gold over the purple. This results in a rather strange look - from some angles, the gold will look smooth, and from other angles the purple will show through. As with the previous step - don't worry, magic happens in a minute!



Over the gold, I lightly drybrush with Shining Silver to pick up the raised edges.



And finally, I apply a liberal coat of Mid Brown Quickshade wash. This does a couple of things - it deepens up the colour of the gold, and it adds a brown tint over the purple, turning it into shadow. It's a fairly common technique when wet blending or glazing to add purple into the colour you're shading as you work into the deeper creases. This is sort of the same thing, but in reverse.



After leaving the wash to dry, the model is ready to move on to detailing. If you think it needs it, you can accentuate the highlights with some more gold or silver on raised edges, but I like it as is.

The finished model:





Want to give it a go? You can pick up the Militus battlesuit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

With the Remnant rules released this week, players now have a range of different options for building their Militus suits. Four of the currently available suit classes are buildable straight off the sprue, but the Dominator class does require a very small (and very easy!) conversion to give it a second shoulder-mounted weapon.





The plastic militus kit only comes with a single shoulder-mounted weapon, which hangs on a rig that only fits on the left shoulder. To build the Dominator, you need two weapons. The easiest way to do this is to leave off the shoulder rig, and borrow a second mounting joint (parts L16 and L21 on the sprue) from a second Militus kit.



If you have built a suit or two with combat gauntlets, you will also have some leftover elbow mounts, which you can use instead.

Simply assemble the mounting joint on the weapon as normal, then flip it upside down and glue it directly to the top of the shoulder pad.



The rest of the suit can be assembled as normal.



With a coat of paint, the new Dominator is ready for the table!



Of course, that's just the easy way to do it. Being plastic, the Militus kit offers all sort of other conversion options if you want to get creative with clippers and glue!





Build up your own crusading force of indomitable firepower by picking up the Militus kit from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

There are two common ways to create buildings for use in wargames - making them solid and either treating them as impassable structures or using abstract rules to represent models being inside where appropriate, or using buildings with removable roofs so that models can actually be placed inside and positioned accurately when required. I generally prefer to go the former route, as it makes buildings a lot simpler to put together, and is less fiddly during a game than having to take a roof off - particularly if there are models on it!

Sometimes, though, it's handy to be able to go that extra distance, so I thought I would show a quick and easy way to create a building with a removable roof from a cardboard giftbox, with a little help from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.





For the core of this building, I used a plain black cardboard giftbox, purchased from a local discount store.



Usually when I'm building terrain, I just go from the idea in my head and hope for the best. In this case, though, I sketched out a quick plan to make sure that the interior all fit into place as intended. The plan changed slightly along the way, but it provided a handy reference as I was putting everything together.



I started out by drawing around the base of the box on a piece of 2mm foamed PVC and cutting out a hole for the box to sit in. This serves to conceal the bottom edge of the box, which has a slightly rounded edge.



Next, I took a large door from the terrain sprue, sat it in place on one of the short edges of the box, traced around it with a pencil and then cut out the resultant rectangle to create a door cavity.



I did the same on one of the long edges of the box with a small door from the terrain sprue. This door is largely featureless on the back (as it wasn't really designed for use where you would see both sides of it), so I cut a piece of thin cardboard to duplicate the raised panelling from the front.



For the interior walls, I used more foamed PVC, with doorways cut in using the small door frame as a template. I checked that these walls fit where I wanted them, but didn't glue them in at this point so that I could get at the interior easier to add more detail.



The building needed some windows. I tend to default to the shutter windows on my builds and use the trapezoid windows for more interesting things, but for this building I had another plan for the shutters. So I spaced out some of the trapezoid windows on the long sides, cut holes by tracing around them with an exacto knife and then glued them in place. Using the knife instead of a pencil to trace gives a tighter fit, which is useful since the trapezoid windows don't have a flange to conceal a loose fit like the doors do.



I kitted out the interior with some bits and pieces made from an assortment of terrain sprue parts. All of this was glued in place, except for the ladder. I left that separate to make it easier to paint behind it.









And now, the important part! I took the lid of the box and glued four corner braces from the terrain sprue upside down around the corners of the lid top. These were spaced to fit neatly inside the box, so that the lid could be sat in place upside-down to create a walled roof.



Of course, this could also be done much more easily by just sitting the lid on the way it normally goes, but I like having a lot of buildings with walled roofs to allow for models to have some cover up there.

I finished up with a few extra detail pieces here and there, and another sheet of PVC on the bottom to form a base.







To paint, I gave the inside a spray with a Rustoleum dark brown primer, and then a light coat of Dulux chalky beige. The outside received a coat of Army Painter Army Green.



I gave the doorframes and windows a coat of Vallejo Heavy Brown, and then a layer of P3 Jack Bone. The base and roof are my usual urban mix of Vallejo Basalt Grey with a drybrush of Vallejo Light Grey.



As I wanted the weathering to be heavier on the outside then in, I gave the exterior metal parts a base coat of Citadel Scorched Brown, a very light drybrush of P3 Pig Iron, and then a generous dabbing of Army Painter Dry Rust. The interior metal parts got the same base coat, a heavier layer of Pig Iron, and then a wash with Army Painter Strong Tone.



Everything was dirtied up with a sponge of Vallejo Heavy Charcoal and a drybrush of Vallejo Beasty Brown into all the crevasses and corners, again going heavier on the outside of the building.



With some final detailing and a few printed posters, the building was ready for the table!





To build your own rooftop of removable doom, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.



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

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

- by Iain Wilson

I picked up three of the new Citadel Contrast paints to have a play with when they were released - a yellow, orange and red. This was partly just from curiosity as to how they worked, and partly hoping to plug the colour gaps not filled by the other washes (mostly Army Painter) in my current paint collection. I showed off my initial dabblings a few weeks back, with a metallic red and yellow Militus battlesuit (here, if you missed it), using the Contrast as intended, but with the orange I wanted to see of these paints could be used for a thinner, layering style instead of just glopping it on and hoping for the best. So I broke out another Militus suit, and wound up with this:





The model I started with was a Militus suit that I had slightly converted by adding some spare knee wings to the shoulder pads and a flappy cape sort of thing hanging from his belt that was taken from the Karist Kaddar Nova kit.



As with the previous suit, I started out with a basecoat of Army Painter Plate Metal spray.



Over the mechanical undersuit parts and the arm-mounted conflagration launchers, I painted a layer of Army Painter Dark Tone.



When that was dry, I gave the rest of the armour a light coat of Gryph-Hound Orange, keeping it thin enough that it didn't pool. This looked a bit scrappy, but that's ok for now.



I then started building up the orange with successive, light layers. These layers slowly work back from raised edge, building up heavier colour in creases, lower edges of plates and other shaded areas. Once the orange was about as dark as I thought it was going to get, I used a little Blood Angels Red to add some extra shading.





Once I was finished with the Contrast layers, I painted the helmet crest and the cape with Citadel Macragge Blue, and the eyes, inner strip details on the cape and some detail on the sides of the guns with Army Painter Ash Grey. I also basecoated the base with Vallejo Basalt Grey.



To finish up, I gave the blue a light drybrush with some old Citadel Ice Blue to pick up the detail and then washed it with a generous coat of Army Painter Blue Tone. Over the Ash Grey I added a highlight of white, and then I went over the raised edges of the armour with some Coat D'Arms Fiery Orange, with a final spot highlight of white wherever it seemed appropriate. The base was finished off with a drybrush of Vallejo Light Grey and my usual 'urban' detailing.



Some final thoughts: Over the Plate Metal basecoat, the orange wound up more of a coppery brown. I don't dislike the colour, but a white or cream base would be needed for more of an 'orange' orange. I also found that the red faded considerably as it dried, so the final level of contrast on the armour plates isn't as high as I had intended. Some over-compensation would clearly be required when shading this way with the Contrast paints in this way.

Another minor issue is that the Contrast rubbed off on raised edges really easily with handling during painting. I had heard that the Contrast paints were a little more fragile than regular acrylics, and are best sealed for handling, and this would seem to be made worse by the thinner coats used here. A light coat of sealer between layers now and then would probably be a good idea for keeping the paint intact while working, although I'm not sure how the Contrast goes over sealer.

Overall, though, the process seems to work, it just needs some refining as the Contrast behaves quite differently to the Army Painter Quickshades that I usually use for this sort of method.



You can pick up the Militus battlesuit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

I'm venturing back inside the box this week, with a new building variant based on a couple of cardboard gift boxes, with some detailing help from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue as usual.

Need your bot repaired, pronto? Want to pick up some spare power converters to get those units in the north quadrant back up and running? Well, don't bother heading down to Oily Joe's, because he's closed down and scarpered, to try to get a berth offworld before the Maelstrom hits.





The base structure of this building uses two differently sized cardboard gift boxes, sourced from one of the local discount stores. The smaller box forms the walls, while the lid of the larger box, which is just a fraction narrower than the small box is long, is used for the awning roof.



I started out by flipping the small box upside down, and using it as a template to mark out a surround of 2mm thick foamed PVC, which I cut out with an exacto knife and a steel ruler.



Then I grabbed a large door from the terrain sprue, and held that in place on one of the long walls (remembering to account for the 2mm surround at the bottom) to draw around it, and then cut out the door hole with the exacto knife.



I glued the door in place with some superglue.

I did the same with a small door on the other long wall, and shutter windows on either short wall. I also added a large pipe fitting one the side with the smaller door.



Next up, I slathered superglue generously over the top of the upside down box, and sat the roof in place.



To help disguise the the roof isn't quite as wide as the building itself, I added a strip of reinforcing struts from the terrain sprue around the lower edge, cutting them to fit neatly. I also added a square hatch on the roof to provide access.



Finally, I glued a comm panel on the wall beside the large door, and glued everything down onto an 8" x 8" piece of masonite. I also added a fan attachment to the end of the pipe fitting - this one is a plastic bit from an upcoming kit (Shhh, don't tell anyone - it's a secret!) but you can also create a fan blade using some cardboard or plasticard, as per the tutorial here.





With that, it was time to paint!



I gave the whole thing a light coat of flat black spray, and when that was dry added a layer of Army Painter Ultramarine Blue. On the doors, I added a white strip with Army Painter Ash Grey and white, and then weathered the whole thing with a sponge and some Vallejo Heavy Charcoal. (See the tutorial on sponge weathering here!) The base and roof were painted with Vallejo Basalt Grey and drybrushed with Light Grey.



For the rusted metal bits, I started with a base layer of old Citadel Scorched Brown, lightly drybrushed with P3 Pig Iron and Ember Orange, and then applied liberal dabs of Army Painter Dry Rust.



For a bit of extra colour, I printed off the sign for the front and a few smaller signs to scatter around the place after drawing them up in Gimp. These were stuck on with PVA glue, and then a dirtied everything up with a drybrush of Vallejo Beasty Brown in the corners and wherever else seemed appropriate. A few finishing details like the comm screen, lights, and some graffiti on the walls, and Oily Joe's was ready for the table!





To build your own retail champion of the future, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

The Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue comes with a whole slew of assorted bits and pieces that can be added to basic building shapes to pretty them up for the gaming table. Over the past couple of years, I've shared quite a few different ideas for base structures for those buildings, and I thought it might be useful to do a bit of a round-up to compile them all in one handy reference.





One of my favourite options, that I've gone back to many times over the years, is the cardboard gift box.





With minimal effort, these can be quickly turned into table-ready terrain with the addition of some detail bits and some paint.

For a few ideas, here's some previous build articles:

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For a slightly more detailed, but still mostly pre-made option, go for a wander through your local hardware store and look for interesting plastic shapes. Plastic storage trays, storm drain sections and various assorted plumbing fittings can all make great bases for buildings with a little imagination and some added detail.





You can find some tutorials and walkthroughs for putting these together here:

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On a sort-of related note, you can find all sorts of handy bits and pieces around the kitchen as well - Never throw anything out!





Some handy articles:

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If you feel are happy with building from scratch, you can of course work up whatever building shapes you want using standard modeling materials. Foamcore (AKA foamboard), plasticard, sturdy cardboard and foamed PVC can all be useful for creating more freeform shapes to suit yourself.





Some scratch-built building ideas:

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Finally, there are a whole host of premade and often inexpensive buildings out there on the market these days, made from MDF, cardboard or PVC which can be spruced up into something special with a few extra details here and there.





Check out these examples of kits given a little extra love:

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Do you have any clever building ideas that we haven't covered here? We'd love to see them in the Comm Guild Facebook group!



To get started on your own terrain adventure, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in 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 Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.

- by Iain Wilson

If you've been following my articles for any length of time, you may have noticed that I like using lots of ink washes in my painting. Washes are a great way of quickly adding shading to a model, and so are an invaluable tool if you want to get your models painted speedily and easily. So when the new Citadel Contrast paints came out this month, I couldn't resist taking them for a spin to see what they could do. I specifically wanted to try out a bright red and a yellow, as these are shades that weren't already covered well by my existing collection of washes, and so dug out a Militus Battlesuit from the to-be-painted pile that seemed like a good candidate for the experiment.





The model I chose to paint up was one of the conversions featured in the Militus conversion spotlight article from back in April. This is a mostly-stock model, with a little trimming on the leg joints to allow more of a crouched pose than is otherwise available to the kit.



There are a range of specific basecoat sprays available for the Contrast range, but working on the assumption that following instructions never got anyone anywhere interesting, I chose to use Army Painter Plate Metal spray as a base instead.



Red inks tend to give a richer colour over gold than silver, but that worked into the overall plan. I started out by giving the whole model a generous coat of Iyanden Yellow.



After leaving that to fully dry, I went back over the armour plating with Blood Angels Red, leaving the yellow on the suit's mechanical underlayer and a few other strategic spots.



And just like that, the model was 90% finished. I finished up by adding in some blue detailing on the weapon, chest, boostpack exhaust and helmet eye-lens, and some dark grey on the incursion rifle barrel. I also painted up the metal grating base structure with some Macragge Blue on the vertical panels, and then some Army Painter Strong Tone and Dry Rust over the whole thing. Finally, the base itself was painted with Vallejo Basalt Grey, drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey and Beasy Brown, and given a few nicks and scratches with black and some more light grey.



As with any ink-painting technique, the end result is not perfectly neat, but what it lacks in accuracy it makes up for in speed. Although if you wanted to spend some more time on it, it should be possible to get neater shading by applying multiple, light coats - This won't be as subtle, or as suitable for paler colours as when done with Army Painter Quickshades, due to the Contrast paints being so much more heavily pigmented, but it should still work ok for darker shades. I'll be testing that theory in a later article.





If you're feeling inspired, you can pick up the Militus kit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

I've been playing around with speed painting a lot lately (so much to paint, so little time!) and have been having a lot of fun experimenting with inks to achieve quick and easy shaded, table-top level results. This week I decided to see what I could do with some Army Painter Quickshades and the new SecDef Lieutenant model.





To start out, I basecoated the model with a flat, cream coloured spray.



I then gave everything except his head a coat of Military Shader.



Once that first layer of ink had dried, I went over the armour plates with a second coat of Military Shader, and boots, pouches and gloves with two generous coats of Mid Brown. On the pistol and the exo-skeleton on the arms and legs, I used Purple Tone, which over the green resulted in a nice, slightly bluish-tinged grey.



I decided that there wasn't quite enough contrast on the plates and exo-skeleton, so went over them with a coat of Dark Tone.



For his head, I painted on a generous coat of Flesh Wash.



To finish up, I painted in his eyes with fine, white horizontal lines, and small dots of black in the middle. For his beard and some characterful head-stubble, I added a thin coat of Dark Tone. I also went over the lens in the targeter and the helmet lenses with white, then a layer of Red Tone, and then a highlight dot of white. Finally, I added some fine gravel to the base, and painted it with Army Green, a coat of Strong Tone, and then a light drybrush of Ash Grey, with a couple of grass tufts added for colour.



To take the paint job that little bit further, he could use a light edge highlight on the armour plates and exoskeleton, but for a quick, rough and ready job he's all set for the tabletop.



To start your own SecDef muster, you can pick up the SecDef Lieutenant, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

The Epirian SecDef received a boost right in the Command slot last month with the release of a resin Lieutenant model. This fleshes the SecDef out into a fieldable Epirian sub-faction in their own right, as you can now build a detachment solely from SecDef units. This week, I'm taking a closer look at this fantastic model, and some of the modeling options available to it.





The SecDef Lieutenant comes in five pieces (ok, six, if you count the base!) - body, head, targeter, and two different hand options equipped with maglock pistol or carbine.



The head and targeter both have ball joints for full movement range, so you can position the targeter lined up with whichever way the Lieutenant is facing.





The head is also compatible with the SecDef plastics, so you can use a regular helmeted head for a slightly more safety-conscious leader. On the below model, I've used a regular SecDef Tactical head, and also clipped the helmet off his belt and glued on a plastic pouch from the Epirian Handler sprue to cover over the clipped detail.



You can also easily swap in alternate heads from elsewhere in the range. Here's a commander with a little more facial hair, for example, with a head lifted from the Broken Infantry sprue.



Carefully sawing through the waist with a razor saw allows you to swap in alternate legs to switch up the posing. Here, I've used a set of legs removed from a SecDef Boostpack Infantry model, and also given him a capped head from the Epirian Contractor sprue.



Of course, the compatible heads work both ways, so you can also swap in the Lieutenant's venerable pate for a regular SecDef Sergeant.





To get some of your own super-soldier action happening, you can pick up the SecDef Lieutenant, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.



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

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

- by Iain Wilson

While fusion reactors and other super-advanced energy generation is all well and good on worlds with bountiful resources, sometimes a more low tech solution is called for.

This week's article was spawned, as so many of them are, by my reluctance to throw stuff away. I found myself looking at an old electric toothbrush head and thinking, 'That would make an excellent base for a fan!' And so the wind farm of the future was begun.





I started out, as I said, with a perfectly ordinary electric toothbrush head.



The wider circle near the base of the stem turned out to be exactly the right size to fit into the large pipe fitting from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. So I started out by trimming a little length off the bottom of the stem with a razor saw, so that the raised circle would sit flush with the top of the fitting when it was seated in place.



The bristles needed to go, to make room for the fan blades, so I plucked them out using a pair of clippers.



For the fan blades, I cut three strips of thin plasticard, rounding off the ends.



I added a twist to the blades by holding one end with pliers and rotating the other end.



With the blades shaped appropriately, I glued them in place using an all-plastics glue (a two-part glue that uses a primer pen and a tube of superglue to securely bond all sorts of different plastics. Useful when you're using plastics that don't holding plain superglue well).



For the turbine's hub, I cut the end off a superglue tube cap with a razor saw.



Using the all-plastics glue again, I glued the cap piece into place in the middle of the brush head.



Finally, I glued the large pipe fitting into place on the bottom of the stem.



With a little paint on, the turbine is ready for the table, either as a standalone piece of scatter terrain, or to add to another terrain piece!





You can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

I somehow managed to get through Salute this year without bankrupting myself on shiny, new models, but I did come home with a few fun-looking odds and ends. There were quite a few vendors selling laser-cut MDF kits, some of which I had seen before and some that were new, at least to me. One of the latter was Uncertain Scenery, who had an amazing industrial catwalk setup topped with a very cool sensor dish that I couldn't resist picking up.

This week, I decided the time had come to crack it open and see what I could do with it!





I have to start by saying that this was a fantastic kit to put together! It uses a mix of 3mm and 1.5mm MDF, and the design is really clever at making use of those two sheet thicknesses to create detail. Parts are cut with only a single attachment point to the surrounding sheet, so removal is easy and there's only that one point to trim up.



Because I can't resist the urge to tinker, I did make a few minor changes. As with a lot of MDF kits, the doors on the base of the structure were just a single panel with the door shapes etched into them. To give a little more detail, and to better fit in with the rest of my terrain collection, I decided to replace the existing doors with a door from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. It turned out the base structure was just a fraction shorter than the plastic door, so I added some spacers cut from 0.5mm plastic strip to the tops of the interior walls. This lifts the roof piece up just enough for the plastic door to slot in place. Rather than cutting into the walls to slot the door in, I cut a strip of leftover MDF from one of the parts sheets to run up either side of the rear of the door frame, and then just glued the door onto the outside face of the interior wall.





I also decided to replace the blocky, MDF ladder with a plastic ladder from the terrain sprue, cut to an appropriate length. The original ladder used a 3mm thick ladder piece, and guardrails up either side assembled from three pieces of 1.5mm sheet. As luck would have it, the ladder and the innermost guardrail sections together turned out to be exactly the same width as the plastic ladder, so leaving out these inner sections allowed my adjusted ladder to just slot into place as if it was meant to be there.





The base section originally had doors on two opposing walls, but I decided to just go with the one, and have a pipe running in where the other should have gone. I glued the door piece on backwards, with a new panel line etched in with a panel scriber so it wasn't just a featureless expanse, and added a pipe made from a couple of large pipe fittings from the terrain sprue, a piece of a 13mm drip irrigation elbow, and half of a press-stud for a valve.



Everything else was assembled as per the nicely comprehensive instructions, although I left the dish panels off for spraying to make life a little easier, gluing them on once everything was mostly painted.



To paint, I started by giving the whole kit a coat of matte sealer, to help prevent the basecoat from soaking into the MDF as much. The base structure and dish panels were sprayed with a beige primer, and then given a rough coat of flat white.



For the rest of the assembly, I sprayed a generous basecoat of AK Interactive Rust spray, and then a light spray of Army Painter Platemetal. The bare metal parts on the base structure were given a coat of some old Citadel Scorched Brown, and then a drybrush with P3 Pig Iron.



I added weathering to the white by sponging on Vallejo heavy charcoal, and then dirtied everything up wherever seemed appropriate with a drybrush of Vallejo Beasty Brown.



And that's it, ready (for now) for the table. I've left it unbased for now, as I have some plans in that direction which will likely wind up in a future article...





To spruce up your own MDF kits, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

Metal and concrete buildings are all well and good, but I thought it might be fun to build something a little shinier for a change. Nothing says 'futuristic city' quite like mirrored-glass-wall buildings, after all!

I've had a play in the past with some clear plastic and mirror-effect sprays, without managing to achieve the effect I was after. Then I came across some lovely, shiny silver card in a discount store, and an idea was hatched.





The basic idea was to make a structure out of 5mm foamcore, using the support struts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue to form a framework to hold the cardboard. I started by plotting out a rough design using a bunch of struts trimmed to appropriate lengths, so I could get the foamcore dimensions correct.



After marking out the wall dimensions on the formcore, I cut them out using an exacto knife and a steel ruler.



I made a base for the structure from two stacked squares of 2mm foamed PVC. The upper, smaller square created a framework for the foamcore to sit up against, to ensure the building was square and give it some extra strength.



With the outer wall constructed, I added some reinforcement on the inside corners using some offcuts of PVC.



To create the framework for the card to slide into, I glued 5mm plasticard strips onto the walls, tracing the pattern of the support struts.



The strips are narrower than the struts, so with the strut centered on the strip a 1mm overhang was created on each side.



To help avoid the building just being a boring, square box, I left a cutaway to allow for an angled doorway. To fill this in, I cut a square of foamcore to fit across the opening, and cut a rectangle out for a door from the terrain sprue.





With the wall structure complete, I started building up the roof layers with some more PVC, cut to overhang the walls just slightly to close off the tops of the card slots. These weren't glued in place yet - that had to wait until the card was in place.



I joined the three roof levels together using angled pieces of PVC. This served the dual purpose of giving the roof an interesting shape, and also making the whole roof structure into a single piece that could be lifted on and off, which would be easier for painting than separate pieces.



At this point, it was time to paint! I decided to keep it fairly simple, as the main focus on this building was going to be the mirrored walls. I gave the whole exterior a base coat of AK Interactive Rust spray, and then a layer of a satin black spraypaint, leaving the rust in the crevasses for some natural weathering.



When the spray had dried, I cut strips of the silver card to fit into each of the wall slots.



Once all the strips were in place, I glued the roof on top.



For the final detailing, I painted the base with Vallejo Neutral Grey, drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey. I also gave the black a light drybrush with the light grey, and then added some dirt weathering with Vallejo Beasty Brown. I also added some signage, with Epirian logos made from strips of the silver card and some gold card from the same pack for the 'yellow' lower squares. All ready for the table!











You can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

A beautifully painted army that someone has slaved over for more hours than is healthy can be a truly wonderful thing to behold. Sometimes, though, we just want to get some models on the table as quickly as possible. Way back when I first started writing these articles, I shared a tutorial on painting with washes, as it's a really simple technique for speed painting. (Don't look at it, the pictures are horrible and I really need to redo them...)

I thought I would revisit it this week, with a step-by-step walkthrough painting a Broken Pa'Ku (almost) entirely with Army Painter Quickshade washes.





A quick note before starting: Army Painter have two different product ranges under their 'Quickshade' banner. The first are dips, which come in a tin and are used precisely as the name implies - you essentially paint the model in basic colours, drop it in the dip, shake or wipe off the excess dip, and call the job a good 'un. These are good for quickly adding shading to a bunch of models, but can result in a rather muted overall effect due to everything being shaded the same colour. The second product is what we're using here. These are washes, sold in dropper bottles. Washes are thinner than regular acrylic paint, and are usually painted on over lighter colours, where they settle into the creases and darken everything up. Instead of doing that, I'm painting directly over a flat white spray undercoat.



My previous Pa'ku was painted green, so I decided to change it up a little and go blue this time. The first step, then, is to paint a generous coat of Blue Tone all over the Pa'ku's skin. Because the wash is quite watery, this isn't a precise operation. You're unlikely to win awards with models painted using this technique, as regardless of how careful you are, a little bit of wash running into places it doesn't belong as more or less unavoidable. If it gets too messy, you can wait until the first layer dries and then touch up the rest of the model with some white paint before proceeding.



Next up, I painted the straps and bindings with a coat of Mid Brown.



I wanted the large bumps on his back to contrast with the blue skin, so used Flesh Wash. Over the white, this created a light, weathered-bone sort of colour. This needed to go on quite heavily, and required a couple of touchups after it dried, as the flesh tone is very light. In hindsight, Soft Tone might have worked better.



For some brighter colour, I painted the armour pads with Purple Tone.



That left the gun and other metal parts, and the fur around his back pad. I painted these with Dark Tone. For the metal, I was aiming for a dark grey/black tone rather than a true metallic. If you want more of a metal tone, then painting the metal parts with Gun Metal before washing would have done the trick. Instead, I opted for a couple of coats of Dark Tone, with the below picture showing the first coat.



To finish up, I applied the second coat of Dark Tone to the metal parts, and ran a coat of Strong Tone over the fur to help differentiate it slightly from the metal. I also decided that the brown was paler than I wanted, so gave it a second coat of Mid Brown. The Quickshades lend themselves well to this sort of layering - they're heavily pigmented, but over the white the effect is light enough that you can get subtle colour effects with light coats, and a more vibrant colour with a heavy coat, or layer extra coats (or different coloured washes) over the top for a darker finish.



I also went over the targeter lens with some Red Tone, and added a little Dark Tone into the other three eyes, following up with a small dot of regular white paint (hence the 'almost' disclaimer!) in the center of each eye and the targeter when the washes dried.



The base was painted with Army Green, washed with Strong Tone, and then drybrushed with Ash Grey.



The end result is a fairly basic colour scheme - If I was so inclined, I could go back over and tidy up a few small areas of splash-over from the wash, and add a few extra details here and there like the cabling on the gun.



If you're looking for quick and easy, though, it's a really handy technique to play around with, and can easily be adapted to other colour schemes using different wash shades.



If you're keen to paint up your own big, blue, artillery frog, you can pick up the resin Pa'ku kit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

Last month saw the release of the fantastic new Militus suit for the Artarian Remnant, a brand new faction being introduced to Maelstrom's Edge. The Remnant wage war using elite Champions is advanced, armoured suits, and the Militus is the first of three suit variants to see the purplish-tainted light of day. From a modeling perspective, the Remnant are a joy. For starters, the Militus is a multi-part, articulated plastic kit with a huge range of posability (as shown in my recent Militus Spotlight article). To add to the fun, Remnant Champions are big fans of personal heraldry, with each suit being uniquely decorated with the Champion's Fire Team and House colours. So this week, I decided to write up a step-by-step painting guide for a colour scheme I chose for one of my converted Militus suits.





The model I chose to paint up was one of the conversions featured in the spotlight article mentioned above. I built this suit using a mix of plastic Militus parts and a bunch of resin components from Max Mini that I've had sitting around in the bits box for some time now. I didn't want to spoil his pretty, detailed shoulder pads by mounting a weapon up there, so I also built him a weapon drone using a modified jump pack.



Rather unusually for me, this model was painted entirely with Army Painter paints - normall I use a mix of different brands depending on what suits the current project, but in this instance I happened to have all of the colours I needed in the one range!

To start things off, I base coated the model with a spray of Platemetal.



I then painted the armour with a couple of coats of Ash Grey, and the trim with Wasteland Soil. For the base, I used a generous coat of Army Green.



The trim then received two coats of Bright Gold, and the suit's mechanical underlayer, sword blade and the drone's Incursion Blaster were all given a heavy wash with Dark Tone.



I painted the shield background and the helmet crest with Pure Red. Over the gold, I applied a coat of Flesh Wash, and also added a thick wash of Strong Tone over the base.



When the washes were completely dry, I drybrushed the base with Ash Grey, and added a light drybrushed highlight of Shining Silver to the gold. I then went over the grey armour with Matt White and Ash Grey, using pure white on upward facing plates, and blending down with Ash Grey on angled facings, leaving pure grey on downward-facing portions. I also added a wash of Red Tone over the red on the shield and helmet crest.



This just left some final detail work. A added a highlight to the shield and crest with a mix of Pure Red and Matt White, although I wasn't happy with the finishing tone on the crest - I fixed this with another wash of Red Tone. I also picked out the gems on his shoulders and sword with red, shading with Dark Tone and adding specular highlights with white. I also added a red glow to the sword blade and the drone's jets using a mix of red and white, and added some nice, bright red in the eye hollows. And finally, I painted around the base rim with black, and added a couple of tufts of grass for a little contrasting colour.



The finished suit in action, taking on some Karist troopers!





You can pick up the Militus kit, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

A short while back, I showed off an Epirian Contractor truck that I put together using a Games Workshop Ork truck with all of the Ork bits removed. It seemed only fair to give the Karists some similar vehicular love, and so I found myself once more purloining the parking lots of the 41st Millenium, this time making off with an Achilles Ridgerunner. The moment I saw this buggy, I thought it would make a fantastic anti-grav vehicle, which was right up the Karist Enclave's alley. And so I set to for some serious wheel-removal action!





There was surprisingly little conversion actually required to make this work - I was intending for a fairly high-tech take on anti-grav, with all of the 'workings' would be internal. This helps to preserve the lines of the vehicle, and eliminates the need to build parts specifically to represent the techy stuff. So for the most part, the buggy was just built as standard. I chose the radar dish that comes in the kit instead of the open cupola, because I liked the look of it.



With the wheels being left off, I also needed to remove the axles, so these parts were all either left off, or trimmed away as necessary.



To conceal the gaps where the front axles should have been, I added a piece of thin plasticard in the wheel arch on either side, and then glued the shock absorbers running down to connect the chassis to the front armour plate. This was just intended to create a little detail, rather than having just the flat plasticard.



On the rear, I covered over where the differential piece should have gone with a couple of vents cut from the support struts on the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.



Obviously, an anti-grav vehicle needs to hover, but I didn't want it sitting too high and also wanted a nice, sturdy joint for the flight stem. To this end, I drilled a hole in the bottom of the buggy, allowing the flight stem to fit snugly through, and glued a short length of plastic tube to the inside of the buggy's top section, for the flight stem peg to slot into.



To attach the stem to the base, I just drilled an appropriately-sized hole a little aft of centre, and called the job a good 'un. The stem would be glued in once everything was painted.



The original weapons needed to be replaced with Karist versions. I left off the smaller weapons that attach either side of the cab, but for the main gun, I cut the attachment joint out of the missile launcher's lower plate and glued it to a pair of Cybel Lances taken from the Karist Heavy Trooper set, with the firer's arms removed.



For the gunner himself, I used the kneeling Heavy Trooper, with a right arm purloined from the plastic Karist Trooper sprue and a hand from the Faction Expansion sprue.



From there, it was just a matter of gluing the rest of the buggy shell together. With the assymetrical cabin, it wound up looking a bit lopsided without the wheels, so I added a small pair of stabiliser wings on the rear, cut from 1.5mm plasticard.





With some paint on, the buggy was ready to fly!











If you're feeling the need for speed, feel free to pop along and share your vehicular creations, or ask any Maelstrom's Edge- or hobby-related questions on the Comm Guild Facebook page!

You can find the Karist range, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in 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 Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.