The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

This week, I'm kicking off something a little different for the new year. It's a bigger project than normal, so I'll be spacing it out over a couple of articles, with the aim being to build a detailed display board to use as a backdrop for photographing miniatures. I wanted something that would have plenty of open areas for placing miniatures, and a few different contrasting areas to allow some variety in backdrops with just the one piece. And so 'Landing Pad 16' was born:

Normally when I'm building terrain, I have a rough idea in my head of what I'm going to build, and I just wing it from that. Because this one was a little more complicated, I started by sketching out a rough design, and then translated that into a 1:1 plan on a sheet of cardboard.





For the bulk of the structure, I chose to use foamed PVC sheet. This is a lightweight, but strong plastic material that is easy to cut and shape, and takes extremely well to superglue, which allows it to be used to build solid, detailed structures.

I took my plan and drew up a neater version on the PVC, and then used an exacto knife and steel ruler to cut it out.



I had a slight measuring mishap when scribing some panel lines on the floor piece. Rather than starting over, I just flipped the floor over, making the build a mirror image of my original design. The floor was layered, to allow for some depth in the detailing. With the floor marking out the basic shape for the structure, I could start adding the walls, shaping the PVC to the outline of the building.



The foamed PVC is quite flexible, but I added a curve to the landing pad wall by heating the PVC in boiling water, curving it around a biscuit tin and letting it cool. This wasn't super-effective, but gave it enough of a lasting curve to let it bend more easily to the required shape. Having the natural bend in there means that the PVC isn't trying to spring back as hard against the glue line, giving a more solid joint.



As with all of my Maelstrom's Edge buildings so far, detailing on this one is added courtesy of the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. I created two hexagonal windows for the landing bay freight access corridor by gluing together pairs of trapezoid windows along their long edges.



As I built up the structure, the plan changed a little from the original sketch. I added extra access between the two sides of the board, and brought the detail on the 'reverse' side down from the roof to a first-level courtyard.



The courtyard needed some depth to allow for some staggered model positioning, so I added a couple of descending platforms on the rear, using layers of PVC to create the steps between levels.



I had planned for a groove to run around the top of the landing pad wall, which would theoretically serve as a runner for a retractable roof - I'm not building the roof, but wanted it to be implied for completeness. For the roof groove to have depth, this needed to protrude into the back facing of the wall, so I built up a box structure using layers of PVC.



The doors on the terrain sprue have detail on both sides, but as they're intended to be used on external structures they only have the framework on the one side. I created a double sided doorway by removing the frame from the rest of the door using a razor saw. On a second door, I cut the door itself out leaving the frame intact, so I could have an open doorway for the freight access.







However carefully you cut and glue, you wind up with some gaps and rough edges. I used some putty to fill in wherever necessary, and once set used some fine sandpaper to smooth it down.



To give the walls some structural detail, I built up a recurring pattern using the support struts from the terrain sprue, and glued this on along the top and bottom of each wall. For curved walls, I carefully bent the strut to shape before gluing it in place.





Rather than having bare cement floors everywhere, I added tiles to the courtyard area using textured plasticard. By cutting out squares of tiles in a regular pattern, I inserted some decorative areas of smaller tiles - these will be painted up with the Epirian Foundation logo.



Using ladders from the terrain sprue, and posts cut from sections of the sprue itself, I added a handrail around the courtyard.



I left the handrail open in a couple of places, to allow some avenues for displaying models and show where the terrain would theoretically continue past the confines of the display board. I did extend the rail part of the way down the stairs, by cutting a piece of 2mm plasticard in a pattern matching the rungs of the ladder.



Down the other end of the board, behind the landing pad, I built some nice, hefty pipes using the large pipe fitting from the terrain sprue and some 13mm garden drip irrigation fittings.



I scattered some smaller pipes around the place using the small pipe fitting, some plastic tubing, and some more scrap sprue from the terrain sprue.



With all of that done, this side of the board is more or less done. There is still a little more gap filling and sanding to be done, and probably some more small details to add here and there. I'll need to add some sort of trim around the bottom edge to neaten everything up, but that will wait until the other side is finished so I can make it consistent.

















Stay tuned for part two, detailing the landing pad side of the board!



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

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

Pa'ku are generally regarded as slow, deliberate creatures, rarely rushing into action and often waiting on the sidelines of a battle pondering the best course of action before deigning to lend their (once they get going) formidable skills to the fray. While playing with the resin model, though, I happened upon a conversion idea that was just too much fun to not do it - and so the Jet Pa'ku was born!

I originally put this guy together for a spotlight article on the Pa'ku model when it was released (which you can see here), and in his unpainted state he looked like this:



The conversion used most of one Pa'ku model, the main part of the gun from a second, two auto sluggers taken from the Broken Infantry sprue, and the bottom of an energy fence piece from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.



I had to make some changes to his pose, so repositioned his arms by soaking them for a minute in boiling water, bending them into the shape I wanted, and then dropping them in some ice water to 'set' them in that shape. To fit the hands onto the guns, I trimmed away some of the webbing between the fingers, widened the trigger space by cutting away a small piece at the back of the gun, and gently bent the fingers around the grips. I also cut a wedge out of the front of his neck with a razor saw, and bent the head forwards using the same hot/cold water treatment. The minor gap that was left behind was filled in with a little 'green stuff' putty.



The Pa'ku's feet are very flat on the bottoms, to attach to the base. That just wouldn't do here, so I used the above hot/cold water treatment to add a bit of a curl to the toes, and then sculpted some detail onto the bottom of the feet with more green stuff.



For the jetpack, I used the main sections of two quad mortars. I trimmed the fittings up so that they would attach sideways to the Pa'ku's backpack, added a turbine from the Epirian Firefly Drone on the front where the weapon barrels normally go, and filled in the gap in between the two new jets with the energy fence base, some green stuff, and a small piece of plasticard over the top to neaten it up.



With everything else assembled, the final detail was to add the smoke trails from the jetpack. For rigidity, I cut a couple of pieces of plastic sprue to the right length and glued them bases for ease of working. Then I covered these in a mix of shredded cardboard (made from small pieces of cardboard box run through a spice grinder) and PVA glue. This was a bit experimental, but looked the part once done, so I crossed my fingers and just hoped it would work out right when it was painted.



Speaking of which, painting started out with a basecoat of Army Painter Army Green spray.



I drybrushed over the skin with Coat D'Arms Putrid Green, and went over all of the metal and leather parts with Vallejo Beasty Brown. The leather straps then got a coat of Vallejo Heavy Brown.



I drybrushed the metal areas with P3 Pig Iron, and then washed the metal and leather parts with Army Painter Strong Tone. I also went over the skin with a generous coat of Army Painter Military Shader wash, and when this was dry, picked out the fur around the backpack, the weapons, claws, targeter and the smoke trail with Vallejo Heavy Charcoal.



Since making the smoke trail clearly wasn't getting experimental enough, I had also decided to try painting a flame effect into the smoke. I did this by picking out sunken areas near the jet nozzles with white, then painting in some yellow and red, leaving the brighter yellow deeper in and fading out to red closer to the surface. Then I drybrushed over the top with more Heavy Charcoal, and highlighted with Vallejo Light Grey and some white.



The weapons, claws, fur and targeter were given a light drybrush with Vallejo Neutral Grey and then a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone. I also added some Dark Tone patches on the jetpack to break up the metal tone a little, and painted the bumps on his back with some old Citadel Tentacle Pink, washed with a couple of coats of Army Painter Red Tone.



This just left some finishing touches - I gave the weapons a highlight with a very light drybrush of Pig Iron, picked up the cloth bindings with the old Citadel Liche Purple with a Tentacle Pink highlight, added some highlights and scratches to the metal bits with Army Painter Shining Silver, painted in the eyes with Citadel Iyanden Darksun, and finally popped some Army Painter Pure Red onto the targeter lens with a white highlight spot.











And there he is! There are no game rules for this monstrosity; it was purely an exercise in conversion for the sake of it. Sometimes it's fun to take a break from assembling game-ready forces to just build something cool!

To add a Pa'ku (or a Jet Pa'ku!) to your own Broken force, you can pick him up along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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

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

It's been a huge year for Maelstrom's Edge! As 2018 draws to a close, we thought it would be fun to take a moment to have a look back at what we have achieved over the last year.

Our biggest focus for this year has been to expand the model range, to give players more options for their games. We rolled this out with regular model releases in either plastic or resin.



As the new kids on the block, the Broken received the lion's share of new models, with a slew of non-Core options to expand the force. These included two Chieftain variants - a Forsaken Chieftain with a Xeno spotter, and a Tech Chieftain variant with bionics and custom weapons, a Sig Jammer to mess with an opponent's technological capabilities, the ever-impressive Gnolti, our largest model to date, and the quad-mortar-carrying Pa'ku.



We also introduced a new category of unit to the game, with two 'Add-on' unit options joining the Broken ranks. The Marsayan Hypnotist and Hakoyu Grand Master can replace a normal squad member in regular Broken infantry units, adding different capabilities and tactical options to the unit.



The Epirian Foundation also received some reinforcements, with a resin Contractor Drone added to the mix, changing up how Contractor units are formed. The original Contractor unit was replaced with Contractor Defender and Contractor Scout units, with new battefield roles defined by the drones that accompany them.



A new Command option also joined the fray, with the release of the plastic Master Bot Handler kit. This fantastic kit allows you to build a mech-suit enhanced commander with a wide array of different weapon configurations, and accompanied the release of a new sub-faction for the Foundation: The SecDef.



The SecDef are the elite troops of the Epirian Foundation, and take to the field with the best weapons and equipment money can buy. We kicked off this range with another plastic kit, SecDef Infantry, used to build SecDef Tactical Teams, and have added to this with our latest release, in the form of resin Boostpack Infantry for SecDef Rapid Intervention Teams.



Through the Comm Guild blog, we continued to release weekly modeling articles, covering a wide range of different hobby-related topics including painting techniques, conversion ideas and tutorials or spotlights on different terrain projects. There are too many to list them all here, but you can find them all in the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website.



There have also been some big changes to the Maelstrom's Edge website over the last few months, with the addition of more content and some rearranging to make things easier to find. We also added printable PDF versions of all of our rules cards in the Rules section, to supplement the online-viewable cards in the Force List viewer.





SO where to next?

We will be continuing with our regular release schedule, with new models coming over the next few months for the Epirian Foundation and the Karist Enclave. The usual onslaught of modeling content will continue through the Comm Guild, and we'll be looking to add more gaming material as well in the form of battle reports and tactics articles.

We will be attending Salute in April, so the start of the year will also be busy getting models ready, and all going well, we'll have a couple of big previews to show off over the Salute weekend...





Our thanks to everyone who has supported us through the past year. We're looking forward to sharing new and shiny things with you in the year to come!

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Have questions about the Maelstrom's edge models or rules? Need help with a modeling project? Have conversions or painted models to share? Head on over to the Comm Guild Facebook page to discuss and share everything to do with Maelstrom's Edge!

- by Iain Wilson

Last year, just for something different, I made a Christmas ornament out of a plastic bauble and some components from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. I thought it might be fun to continue this each year, and so with that time of year upon us once more, I broke out the sprues and some foamed PVC, and came up with this:

For the main part of the star, I cut two stars out of 3mm foamed PVC - a single 6mm star would have been easier, but the 3mm was what I had to hand.



I glued the two stars together with superglue, and trimmed around the edges to make sure they lined up.



In the middle of the star I drilled a 13mm hole, and glued a marble in the middle.



To run around the outside of the star I took ten support struts from the terrain sprue and cut them down into segments.



The long segments were trimmed up to fit and then glued around the outside. I used the short segments to add internal bracing, and cut the vents into wedge pieces to fit into the points of the star. Finally, I added a large pipe fitting on either side to bracket the marble.



To paint, I started out with some Rustoleum Oiled Bronze spray.



Over that, I added a heavy drybrush of Coat D'Arms Bright Gold.



I used a drybrush of Vallejo Emerald to add verdigris wherever it looked appropriate.



The final step was to paint the marble. I went with red to keep the Christmas vibe going. I used a blend of Vallejo Red and Army Painter Pure Red, with a highlight of white and a little Army Painter Purple Tone to shade around the outside.





To build your own festive constructs of doom joy, you can pick up the terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

The addition of the Contractor Drone to Epirian Contractor units gave them some new tactical options, with heavy weapon options for the re-titled Contractor Defender units, and supply drone options for the new Contractor Scout unit. This week I'm looking at some modeling options for the multi-part, resin Contractor Drone model.

Building one of four different options, the Contractor Drone kit comes with three different weapon options - a maglock chaingun, twin cluster missile pods and twin flakk guns. It also includes the Resupply Package for the Contractor Scout unit.





While sharing a superficially similar configuration, the Contractor Drone is a distinctly different model from the Spider Drone, with a chassis that is bulkier and taller. It also has weapon mounts situated beside its off-centre sensor unit as opposed to the Spider's side-mounted set-up.



The drone's legs all fit into any of the four shoulder sockets, with a barrel pivot allowing them to be positioned through a wide range of movement.



The equipment options slot in with a large locator tab. If you want to keep your options open, you can use a small piece of blu tac or similar re-usable adhesive to temporarily fix them in place and swap them out as you want.



Since I have problems assembling things the way they're supposed to be, I couldn't resist taking a knife to the kit to see what I could do with it. For a taller profile, I repositioned the feet on the below drone by soaking the legs in hot water and then bending them. I also cut through the legs right beside the shoulder assembly and glued them back on at a shallower angle.



One of the weapon options - Strike Missile Pods - didn't make it into the kit for the initial release. There are a couple of fairly easy ways to get around this problem if you want Strike Missile-equipped drones. For this one, I took a pair of Strike Missile pods from the Hunter Warmech kit, trimmed them up a little to fit onto the Contractor Drone front and glued them together.



If you don't have a Hunter kit to hand, you can also take the Cluster Missile pods, trim the missiles flush with the front of the pods, glue a 1.5mm hole into the front of each pod and glue in two pieces of 1.5mm plastic rod trimmed to points.



For a closed version of the Resupply drone, I cut through the supply cache directly behind the front panel using a razor saw, and then glued the panel directly to the front of the drone.



Legs are all well and good, but sometimes a more stable platform is called for. On the below drone, I replaced the legs with a skirt made from sections cut from a lintel piece found on the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. Under that, I added some tracks purloined from an old Mechwarrior tank model.



The Contractor Drone chassis also makes a nice, solid foundation for a remote turret assembly, to be installed on fortification walls or vehicle hulls. In place of the legs, I added a mounting column cut from a length of plastic tube, and inserted that into the small pipe fitting from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.





You can pick up the Contractor Drone along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

A side effect of building a lot of scratch-built terrain is that you sooner or later find yourself eyeing off all of your rubbish, trying to decide whether to throw it out or put it in the 'terrain fodder' box. This week's article comes from seeing an empty yoghurt tub sitting upside-down on the sink and thinking 'Hmm... I could totally do something with that!'

With the addition of half of a plastic Christmas bauble, and some bits and pieces from the terrain sprue, I built an observatory:

This all started, as I said above, with a 700g yoghurt tub. I was undecided at first as to just what to do with it, but when I went fossicking around in my potential terrain bits collection, I came across half of a plastic bauble that my wife bought a couple of years ago with Christmas stamps or somesuch thing in it. It looked a perfect size to combine with the tub, and so an idea was born.



I decided to keep this one fairly light on extra detail, for a clean, functional-in-a-sciency-sort-of-way building. The first thing to do was add a door, so I grabbed one from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, traced around it on the side of the tub and then cut out the doorway rectangle carefully with a sharp hobby knife. After checking the fit and making some slight adjustments with the knife, the door was glued in place with an 'all plastics' glue (a two-part superglue that includes a 'primer' to help the glue grab to plastics that can otherwise be problematic for a strong glue bond).



I added three support struts spaced around the building, just gluing them in place where I wanted them.



For the dome, I took some more support struts and separated the small square sections with attached rivet strips by cutting through the strut with the knife. I gave these a slight curve by bending them carefully over the handle of the hobby knife. On the bauble, I drew a guideline through the middle and then glued the strut sections and a large pipe fitting along the line.



I then glued the bauble in place on top of the yoghurt tub, and added two more support strut pieces halfway around each side, to help reinforce the glue bond, as the edges of the bauble are fairly thin.



Finally, I cut an 8" square of masonite, and glued the tub in the middle of it. I also added a couple of steps cut from an off-cut of foamed PVA, and a little strip of plasticard to cover over the doorstep, where my doorway cut had been a little untidy.



A couple of coats of spray and a little detail work later, and the new observatory looked like this:



A quick tip on painting clear containers - it can be a really good idea, particularly if you are using lighter colours, to spray the inside of the container black or grey before gluing it in place and painting the outside. This helps to make the end result more opaque, as the painted building can otherwise go a slightly translucent or look a little glowy if there is a strong light behind it. It also helps keep the building looking good if the paint gets scratched on the outside.







To build your own yoghurt tub science building, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

This past month saw the release of the Pa'ku for the Broken faction, taking to the field with their gigantic Quad EMP Cannon strapped to their rather large backs. This is another brilliant model in a slowly growing collection of characterful alien creatures for the faction, and so in my usual style, I figured it would be fun to take a hobby knife to it and see what happened!

The fantastic studio model below shows the Pa'ku in all his warty glory. He's big, he's ugly, but nobody's going to tell him that so long as he has that gigantic quad cannon pointed in their general direction!



The Pa'ku is a resin model, and comes in 6 pieces, along with a 45mm base. The arms are on ball joints that allow for a bit of posing movement, and the cannon barrels have a round locator piece, so can be swivelled around to whatever orientation you prefer.





The immediate, obvious conversion opportunity is to replace the quad cannon with a larger-bore, single cannon. On the below model, I added a ring of plastic tube over the rear tube assembly, and replaced the barrel section with a new, larger, single barrel made from layered plastic tubing, with some plastic rod struts on the sides to give it a little extra detail.



As an extra bonus, you can also put him on the table with the unofficial rules card in the Force List section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. You could easily leave off the side detailing and just use a single piece of 10mm tubing for a less detailed but much easier conversion, or use a different gun entirely for other heavy weapon variants.

Venturing a little further outside the box, the slow moving, steady Pa'ku seemed like an ideal candidate for ferrying around notable Broken characters who prefer not to dirty their own boots any more than necessary. With that in mind, I took a Pa'ku and assembled it without the gun, and then added a platform onto the back with a little plasticard, and added a rider built from the Broken Infantry sprue. The handrail is cut from a ladder from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, and the sheath of extra harpoons is a piece of plastic tube filled with offcuts of 1mm rod, attached with a rivet piece from the previously-hacked-up ladder.



Of course, it's possible that not all Pa'ku are as slow and deliberate in their actions as the species is renowned for. What happens to those more headstrong, battle-hungry Pa'ku? I'd like to think they turn out something like this:



The jetpack was made from the main section of two quad guns, with help from a little putty, Epirian drone parts and plasticard. The head was repositioned by cutting and bending the neck, and the forearms twisted in hot water and guns added from the Broken Infantry sprue. I'll be sharing a more detailed build of this one in an upcoming article, once I get some paint on him!

To add some giant-cannon-goodness to your own Broken force, you can pick up the Pa'ku along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

This week's modeling article came about more or less by accident! I have a bunch of flight bases left over from the Epirian Drone kit, as it comes with both 45mm bases for Spider Drones, and flight bases for Firefly Drones. I discovered when sorting out some bases in a mixed box of bits that the 25mm round bases fit quite neatly inside the bottom of the flight base, creating a pretty neat little detail effect, and I thought: I need to do something with that!

And so I did - multi-purpose shipping crates:

This is a really quick and easy build. You'll need two flight base bottom pieces, two 25mm bases, some thin cardboard (I'm using part of a manilla folder here, but cereal packet or similar thin card or even some thin plasticard would do just fine) and a computer terminal from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue. That last bit is optional, as the crates will still look perfectly functional without it, but it does help to finish it off and give it that definite sci-fi stamp!



First, cut the cardboard into a strip - the width of the cardboard is the length of the crate. I've gone with 50mm long crates, as that seemed like a good size, but you could make them longer or shorter (or even do a mix of sizes) if you choose. Mark out six 15mm increments along the strip and lightly score with a sharp hobby knife, and cut the cardboard off about 5 or 6mm past the last one. Cut the corners of that last, shorter increment off at 45 degrees, as below:



Fold along each score line to create a hexagonal tube.



Apply superglue to the inside of one end of the tube, and wrap it around one of the flight bases, with the base bottom facing out, so that the end of the tube lines up flush with the bottom of the base.



Repeat for the other end, and this time also glue the short tab on the end of the cardboard inside the corresponding edge of the tube.



Glue a 25mm base, bottom facing out, inside each of the flight bases. The arc markers on the 25mm base line up with two corners of the flight base. If you're not using Maelstrom's Edge bases for this, it still works, you just won't have the extra bit of detail from the arc markers. Some bases also have branding stamps on the bottom - you could use these the other way around, for a slightly different look.



Finally, glue the computer terminal in one end.



Add some paint, and your cargo crates are ready for the table!



Printing out some shipping company names and gluing them on the sides is a great way to add some extra detail and make them look authentic!



To build your own shipping crates, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue (and 25mm bases!) along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

One of the most enjoyable aspects of terrain building for me is to find everyday things that, with a little bit of tinkering, suddenly turn into something that looks at home on the battlefield. This has resulted in me spending more time than is healthy wandering through hardware stores and discount shops looking for new fodder for the workbench - it's often a little surprising where that perfect next project piece will show up.

This week's build is based on an idea that I have come across in several different incarnations online, and thought it looked too cool to not try it out. So after a quick trip to the local grocery store, I found myself building a generator out of bubblegum tape dispensers!

I picked up two packs of grape-flavoured Hubba Bubba. Obviously, the flavour doesn't make any difference to the build, but if you're buying bubblegum anyway, is there any logical reason to buy any flavour other than grape?



The first step was to remove the bubblegum from the packs, and remove the labels. The labels mostly peeled off easily, but needed a little cleanup with some Tea Tree Oil to remove the sticky residue - If you don't have access to Tea Tree Oil, use whatever local equivalent you have for cleaning sticky residue off things.

Then I may have got momentarily distracted...



One side of the pack has an internal ridge running down each long side of the opening, and a pair of tongues that close over into the other half. These needed to be removed, which I did with a sharp exacto knife. They're made from a fairly soft plastic, so cut easily.



This left four almost-identical, semi-circular pieces.



To join the segments together, I took four 25mm bases and cut them in half with a razor saw. The arc markers on the Maelstrom's Edge bases serve as a handy guide for this, but if you are using different bases then some measuring and marking would be involved here.



I cut a piece of masonite to an appropriate size for a base, and then a smaller piece of foamed PVC for the generator to sit on. I could have used another piece of masonite here, but figured the plastic gum dispenser would glue better to the PVC. On the PVC, I marked out where the dispenser pieces would sit, and added a 25mm-wide centre strip to serve as a guide for gluing the base pieces on.



Then, I sat each dispenser piece in turn onto the marks and glued the base sections in position on both sides using an all-plastics glue.





(The 'all-plastics' glue that I use is a 2-part system that has a tube of superglue and a 'primer' pen. You prime the contact points on both parts to be glued before applying the glue, and it creates a super-fast and extremely strong bond with just about any type of plastic).

It was around about this time that I noticed that there were small recycling symbols embossed on two of the dispenser pieces, so I carefully shaved these off with the exacto knife and lightly sanded down the surface. Then I moved on to the ends. Due to the dispenser having that tongue that I cut off back at the start, one side was left with a flat plate, while the other had a hole where the tongue originally slotted in. I took the cut piece of tongue and glued it into this gap.



Then I took eight support struts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, and cut off the vent sections on their ends. These were glued in pairs into the dispenser opening.





The four sections of dispenser were then glued down onto the base, with the 25mm base sections on each touching the matching section on the next.



I felt that the generator needed a control panel, so quickly threw one together using a console and two trapezoid windows from the terrain sprue, with a square of foamed PVC as a base.



With that glued in place onto the masonite base, the generator was ready for some paint!



I painted it up using my normal weathered metal technique (which you can find in the tutorial here).





To build your own generator, you should be able to find the bubblegum tape just about anywhere that sells bubblegum, and can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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



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

- by Iain Wilson

As anyone who has been following these modeling articles may have noticed, I have all sorts of trouble looking at store-bought kits and not immediately coming up with various ways to hack them up and glue them back together again, and this week's article is no exception. There are a plethora of outstanding MDF building kits out in the market these days, which can be great options for inexpensive, easy to build terrain. Thanks to how easy it is to cut and glue, they can also form a great base for modification. I recently put together a basic desert building from Knights of Dice's Tabula Rasa range, with some extra detailing courtesy of the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue (If you missed it, you can find the article here), and this week, I'm taking a stab at a second building from this range. Intact buildings are just so pre-galaxy-spanning-apocalypse, however, so I'm taking the knife to this one and creating a small abandoned outpost:

The first step was to plan out exactly how I was going to destroy the building, so I popped the parts off their sheets and fitted the basic structure together with no glue. Then I took a pencil and drew a rough line around the outside where I wanted the walls to be damaged.



I cut the walls using a sharp exacto knife, by scoring through on the outside following the pencil line relatively closely, then scoring a roughly corresponding line on the inside of the wall piece (this wasn't an exact match, just eye-balled to be close enough) and then snapping the piece in two. The edge was then cleaned up using the knife to remove any fluffy or protruding parts.



When all of the cuts were completed, it was time to add some detail. The Tabula Rasa kits are deliberately plain, both to keep the cost down and to provide a generic structure for detail pieces to be added, and so they're a perfect base for the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue!

I took a door piece and used a razor saw to cut the door out of the frame, and broke the frame into several pieces. Some scarring was also added with the knife.



I widened both the exterior and interior doorways to match the terrain sprue door pieces. The door frame pieces were glued in place on the exterior doorway, and I added a second doorframe with the door also removed but the frame left intact into the inner doorway. Support struts cut to length were glued over the corner joints on the walls to hide them, and add a little more visual interest to the otherwise fairly plain, boxy building. On the first Tabula Rasa building I added detail over the window holes as well, but for this ruin it didn't seem necessary.



The courtyard has a low MDF wall that runs around it, but I wanted something a little more flashy, so I took a couple of ladders from the terrain sprue and cut off one side with a razor saw.



These were then cut to length and glue in place around the edges of the courtyard, after gluing the scrap pieces back into the locator holes for the original wall to fill them in.



To help turn this into an old, long-abandoned ruin that the jungle had started to reclaim, I built up some patches on the floor with air-drying clay.



I pressed a few castoffs pieces of MDF into the clay, and glued the distressed door down on the courtyard floor. Over this, I painted a thick layer of PVA glue and sprinkled on a generous layer of a gravel, sand and railway ballast mix that I like to use for building rubble as it has a lot of different textures in there.



When the PVA glue had dried, I tipped off the excess gravel mix, and then it was time to paint. I didn't have a brown spray to hand, so I undercoated with some flat black and, while it was still wet, followed up with a light coat of Army Painter Dragon Red.



Over this went a coat of a light cream colour, and then a highlight spray of white from above.



I went back over anything that I wanted to look like exposed metal and re-undercoated with Vallejo Beasty Brown, before drybrushing with P3 Pig Iron. The few bits of the original floor still peeking through the rubble were painted with Vallejo Basalt Grey and drybrushed with Vallejo Light Grey.



With that out of the way, I went to town with washes!

I gave the whole building a generous coat of Army Painter Strong Tone. The walls were painted with a medium-sized flat brush, using vertical strokes to create a streaky effect and allowing the wash to pool and run where it felt like it. When that first wash had dried, I went back over it, picking out small areas with extra dollops of Strong Tone and also adding some patches of Green Tone and Military Shader to give them a greenish, mossy tint.



Time to add some shrubbery!

I took a bunch of assorted fake plants. Most of these are cheap aquarium plants, although I also used a bunch of plastic greenery taken from a mat I found at a local hardware store for creating fake vertical gardens. It looks rubbish as an actual plant feature, but is a perfect resource for my purposes here.



Fake plants, particularly the cheaper kind, tend to be rather brightly coloured and slightly glossy, which just wouldn't do. I got around this by giving the plants a light spray with Army Painter Army Green - not enough to completely cover over the original colour, but enough to dull down the colour and shine. To add some extra colour differentiation, I very lightly misted the tips of some of the plants with white. The painted plants were then glued in place wherever seemed appropriate, but poking a hole through the rubble and into the underlying clay, applying some superglue to the plant stem and pushing it into the hole. I also cut some leaves off a few plants and glued them around on the ground.



The final step was to paint the fallen leaves with varying amounts of brown, and then a quick wash of Strong Tone. At this point, the ruin looked something like this:











To get all apocalyptic on your own building creations, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range from the webstore here.

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



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