The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

One of our favourite pieces of terrain in the studio collection is this refinery by 3T studios, made using foamcore and the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue

When assembling it, they were kind enough to take a whole bunch of WIP photos, so we can show you just how simple it is to create impressive buildings like this.

Everything begins with the basic shapes. Sketch them out on paper or however you like, cut out of foamcore, and then glue them together on a hard base

Next, the whole structure gets a light coat of texturing. Spackle/plaster works well for this, and it is also used to break up the texture on the base as well

Now, the core structure of the building is fully painted, so that if anything breaks off or peels away later, there wont be bright white material showing underneath

Now the fun part, components from the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue are affixed to the building, often using a plasticard backing so that they cleanly fit on the various faces of the structure.

Here's just how much detail can be created from the terrain sprue (and a bit more from a second sprue) and some strips of thin plasticard, along with a straw and a chunk of the frame of the terrain sprue as well for piping.

Once all those loose components are superglued on to the base building, we end up with the final structure

Grab a copy of the terrain sprue today and try it yourself!

One of our most widely loved models, the Epirian Spider drones are fun little robots that are equipped with either a cutter light machine gun or a flakk gun.

Design
The origin of the design of these drones started with a desire for an 'animal sized' drone. We played around with a bunch of different options, with a crab-type robot being an early front runner. Debate amongst the team deemed it much more appropriate for the Epirians to have an all terrain drone that could fit in small spaces to help from a terraforming perspective. That role and specification evolved in to the spider drone.

Early Concepts
We always wanted to create a common drone core that could be extended into different means of locomotion. Below, we share one of our early drone development concept images:

Conversions
The drones also convert very easily due to being a versatile plastic kit. We've seen a few variants - the 'grasshopper' drone which has both legs and turbines, and the 'scorpion' variant, pictured below:

You can check out more on the Spider Drones, as well as being able to order them, at the Maelstrom's Edge web site.

Part of our plan for the comm guild is to have some consistent weekly content in place. You might have noticed the beautifully named 'Artwork Overview Tuesday' earlier this week. Today is Terrain Thursday - a day each week when we'll share something related to the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, from building templates to pictures of things people have made using it.

Opening the terrain posts is this nice, simple structure designed to look like a quick prefab house that is shipped alongside other shipping containers.

A simple rectangular box is accented with a cardboard trim, then plastic corner components from our terrain sprue are put on each corner, a large door in the middle, a window and pipe fitting on one end, and a door, terminal, steps and light fitting on the other.

For 15 minutes effort, a nicely themed piece of terrain is born.

If you are not familiar with the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, it is a plastic sprue that contains a whole host of plastic components which allow you to easily create terrain for your 28-32mm science fiction battlefields. Visit the Maelstrom's Edge store to learn more!