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Graviton's terrain singularity

Discussion in 'Scenery' started by Aspect Graviton, Mar 14, 2018.

  1. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Man, I really need to look at those TTCombat buildings!
     
  2. chromedog

    chromedog Less than significant minion

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    I've got a similar storage setup for my terrain. Storage tubs with lids. I tend to use one per "table" (although some of them will do a bit more than one).
     
  3. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    That's the general direction I'm leaning towards now, initially it was an as much as I can fit in policy but I've got more storage space and an FLGS these days to squirrel away terrain at so I'm going to expand into it.

    They are good value especially these event bundles. the only Issue I'm having right now is that this set appears to have been rushed, I assembled the Comms tower over the last couple of evenings and while the key structure is bang on there are several mistakes with the cut I've had to hand rectify (I'll point them out when I've finished the build)
     
  4. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    Primordial board

    Well my New P-work mat has been delivered which is last one in this current wave of expansion
    [​IMG]
    As it came, just sat on my board

    [​IMG]
    With some of the new hills on it

    [​IMG]
    With some of the WIP hills and towers

    [​IMG]
    One of the bridges from a dockyard project which I think is going to be repurposed and an Avatar for scale so I could check some LOF

    The mat is nice, the design is great. the material doesn't feel quite as heavy duty (HD) as the MAS or DCS stuff (may be purely psychological, I've not put them new to each other yet) obvs a HD mat is a bit more preferable from a wear perspective, it's a good 4x4 size however, I've played on a few that are undersized but this one is spot on. The printing is a good quality but doesn't seem as vivid as the marketing images even with my phography lamps on it so I'd say I'm happy with it but not totally elated.

    Moving along then I've been on a bit of a hiatus this week with the towers as I was lacking texture spray which has been consumed by the TT-combat board I'm doing in parallel, but I've managed to get a prototype together of my walkways:
    [​IMG]
    Ta da!
    This is the main structural unit I have planned minus the embelishments, I'm expecting to put on a textured covering on the gantry itself and somethin g to add a bit more definition to the hand rails which are currently flat and boring. The plan is also for the pipe at each end to be capped with mounting points to i can attach miltiple sections together or add on stairs which I have doodled up. but not realy designed yet.

    Things that have annoyed me: the pipe is OD 37mm I was expecting these walkways to be S3,5,6 friendly but if I want that I'm going to have to pad the pipe somehow which is a layer of complexity I was hoping to avoid, but I've thought of a couple of way while typing this which may work.

    Snow board
    Our group tend to meet on Fridays so this week I put out a board using only the FLGS terrain (which I still built most of, just on a smaller budget) and came up with this:

    [​IMG]

    After the current frenzy of building I'll do some terrain for that board too as a pallet cleanser should be fun doing a bit of snow terrain. will then probably follow it up with some lunar stuff as the mat looks like it could do both.

    TT-combat Urban board
    This stuff is brilliant value but it has some silly, silly mistakes that reek of them doing this project as a rush job. Even with the mistakes however I'd still buy this set again.

    [​IMG]

    Comm tower:
    • One of the pins on the aircon box is out by about a mm needs cutting off with a scalpel to fit properly on the other pins without twisting the box
    • One of the ducting pieces is suspiciously absent but it's not noticable unless you're looking for it
    • the sign at the top loses about 3mm to a cut line, covered by a facia but clearly not intentional.
    • There is a console (which is repeated through their other buildings), it has two left sides, you can put it together but the detail for the right side is inside the console. As a note the ones in the other packs so far are all correct.
    Plaza:
    • Sculpture base has a slot 20mm long for the sculpture, the acrylic sculpture has a tab 1" long, I've not cut this down yet as it'll need a saw and the sculpture is now a fully built ball of fragility.
    • The outer rings of the sculpture are extremely loose clearance fits so they're held toether by a bridge of glue and purposeful misalignment across the gap diagonally, my diminishing will to live and not much else.

    Prefabs:
    • one of the cut positions on the base pins is out by around 0.5mm creating quite a bad interference, this has been on 2/3 of the different kits, first you need to find the pin then either cut it down or remove it entirely to get the building wallys to attache to the base.
    • [​IMG] The trellacing on the roof of the Lab has a miscut hole (shown left) that needs opening out to match the lower position of the right
    • [​IMG] The mounting positions on this wall where their only contact point is the removable door make me both sad and angry.
    Now, that's a big old list and I'm only half way through the build, don't let it put you off. I'm going to do another post on what I really like about these designs but I feel I should get them all built first. I'm just pointing these flaws out for anyone else who may be building these so they don't have to find these nasty little suprises themselves. Think I'll also be sending this list to TT, I really hope they're using the event bundle as a beta test before they make their production run.

    Storage:
    Well last weekend I bought and 84L really useful box (with some others in it in a bundle), this week I bought another 3 64L. I think I'm set for now. the 84 is for the primordial stuff (the expanded foam takes up a lot of space) one 64 for the TT urban, 1 64 for the CA board I'm planning, and 1 64 for take the pressure off the storage I already have.

    Anyway that's all for now, thanks for reading
     
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  5. Koin-Koin

    Koin-Koin Well-Known Member

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    I'm curious about the lava table.
    How will you play the lava zone ? It may be explain in the advanced rules but I'm not familiar with those.
     
  6. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    There will be designated Lava pools which will be impassable, cooled tunnels which will be dangerous terrain of some description. I'm also planning on having some active vents spewing which will be probably white noise or zero vis depending on how I model them and impassable. It'll all be on how the final terrain looks and subject to a few playtests.

    The hills themselves will be mountain terrain for movement purposes
     
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  7. Koin-Koin

    Koin-Koin Well-Known Member

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    Thanks a lot for the explantions. Let us know how it goes.
    Such a great looking table deserves a lot of fun play.
     
  8. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    When I got home last night I dug out my spray mask (which I should have done a week ago) and gave both the TT stuff and the human edge stuff a good dousing, not taken any pics of the TT as it's not really much further along (I ran out of white) but I did get through most of the human edge stuff

    Primordial table

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    It's not finished yet but it's now at the stage I'm happy to get some games in

    1. First of all I painted the lava formations with a thick coat of artist acrylic black to see what I could get to with the brush and try and get into all the crevices
    2. The towers were sprayed with a texture grey (halfords)
    3. Towers were sprayed again with a super mat khaki (again halfords)
    4. The lava formations were touched up with black spray attempting to reach the crevices I couldn't with a brush and to cover up the splashing from the khaki. I actually intentionally splash the base of the towers to blacken them from heat weather and ash, the towers are also gently dusted with the spray as this doesn't look like a clean place.
    5. Any nice deep holes get filled with white artists acrylic, followed by yellow, I mixed in a bit of vallejo bloody red airbrush paint to make an extremely vivid orange highlight and then used the bloody red again for a good glowing cherry red.
    6. a mix of dark brown acrylic (that I've been using for the jungle stuff) and the black from step 1 makes a suitable ruddy basalt highlight which was liberally wetbrushed across all rock faces.
    That's it for now. I'm still intending to pick out some gantries and do some detail work on the towers but for the moment I'm happy to call it game table ready and will be getting some use out of it this evening which will hopefully provide better pictures with some more context.
     
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  9. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    That lava table is begging for some way to make pahoehoe (ropey, spoken 'pah hoy-hoy') lava texture:
    [​IMG]
     
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  10. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    Primordial board:

    Had it's first game last night:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
    Raicho time

    So since I only have the big pieces done for now I had to borrow scatter from my generic pool which will have to change.

    The board itself played well, the hills blocked LOS as I wanted and the towers restricted long range fire, hills rather than walls was a bit suprising for me when I realised my datz for example would run over the hill rather than around due to shortest route the point however is to not just have another urban board with a different skin of it. the mountainous terrain affected gameplay (mostly for my Yaogat who had to run across it).

    More terrain is on the way for it, a lava pool is currently in production and yesterday lunch I managed to knock up three quick batched of clump foliage in yellow orange and black so I can make my pyroclastic clouds as LOF blockers and hazardous terrain:

    [​IMG]

    @Section9 I'll be keeping that for reference, annoyingly I made a pool last night with a different texture (I'm going more for ash cone rather than shield flow) but I have some ideas how to make that, and a good idea of how to make it look cool.
     
  11. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    You can get cinder cones, a'a (the rough 'lava rock' used in gas grills) and pahoehoe all in the same area (happened at Craters of the Moon National Monument, which is about 3 hours from where I live), so having a cinder cone hill is no problem.
     
  12. Koin-Koin

    Koin-Koin Well-Known Member

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    The one detail that will get your table on fire (maybe even literally) a BBQ nearby the table :innocent:
    It will help to set the mood.
     
  13. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    And draw potential new players! :laughing::smiling_imp:
     
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  14. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    So unfortunately I've been somewhat busy with societal commitments to do much terrain over the long weekend but there have been developments:

    CA board:

    My first pieces have arrived which is mostly some TT combat halo esq stuff and some micro arts tyranid spawners which I'll be incorporating into a hungry/taigha enclosure as a bit of dangerous non urban terrain.

    Primordial board:

    I have some of the new microarts forward base turbines, these were going to go towards the CA base but since the primordial board is meant to be a geothermal installation a pair of big turbines seems like a legitimate addition.

    I've made my first lava pool which I'll try and create a turorial for on the second lava pool. I'm quite happy with it now but it was touch and go.

    I've also been working on my pyroclastic clouds:

    Iteration 1 using the custom clump foliage, it may be salvagable but in all honsety I'm not sure how, tried an armature (like you would making a wire tree like I have before and well it looks awful.

    Iteration 2 using the clump foliage, i've made a core of yellow, followed by a mix of orange and yellow followed by orange followed by the ash in what I can only accurately describe as a blob. It definately blocks LOF, does it look any good? Eeeehhhhh... maybe a bit of black spray over the top as a highlight. Will it instantaneously disintigrate when touched? Almost certainly. Will it ever dry? Who knows I'm too afraid to touch it.

    Iteration 3: cotton wool on a chicken wire armature, This is currently underway, it has potential, also if done right I can put LEDs in the armature and make the explosion glow. To be continued, hopefully I'll get some paint on it later.

    New board!
    So I wasn't planning on doing another board for a while after my current set but my gaming group have apparently though differently, my partner came back from town having visited one of them at home and brough a suprise back with her:

    [​IMG]
    Mystery box!
    [​IMG]
    Holy fuck It has a Warsenal Alcazba bundle in there
    [​IMG]
    And a note from various people in my local group

    I'm not generally one to be knocked speechless but wow. I can only express my heartfelt gratitude. I mean they'll get to play on it but I was absolutely blown away by the generosity.

    So once I'm clear of the current three simultaneous builds which are across the dining table and form a 5ft pile behind the sofa, I'll be straight on with this! (If I start now my life will be in danger).
     
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  15. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    Primordial lava pool:

    [​IMG]
    I'm reaching a stage where I'm quite happy with this, better lighting is required however, I just took this photo in passing.

    1. Hard board base, the shape here is no particular design as it's a left over from another project, lips are filleted with sand paper
    2. the rocks around the outside are cut offs from making the earlier lava mounds, this works well in this case as it gives you rocks which match the theme and which have a flat bottom. I PVA'd these on in hindsight I'd have used the hot glue gun as the cell structure hasn't given me muh adhesion against the smooth top of the hard board.
    3. Filler slapped all throughout the lava patch, this is going to be an impassable area so I just went to town on it, it was applied with a brush and then stippeled to get the texture. This is also the stage to blend it with the rocks and board to cover any gaps.
    4. The entire piece was undercoated black the pool was then messily undercoated white to catch the sides of the pool and splash up onto the rocks.
    5. Rocks were painted with a mixture of black and brown as a wet brushing as a highlight for the rocks to try and get the basalt colouration.
    6. Yellow over all the white, followed by a wet brush of orange, then red and then Black.
    7. After all thats dry I painted in a couple of hot spots using white again and then went back up to an orange.
    8. I watered down some red and gave the whole pool a thin wash of it which has unified the colours and in better lighing than the picture has made it glow a bit more.

    TT combat City board

    I didn't get any more assembled (still sat at around 75% built) but I did pick up some spray while about last night so I got round to painting what was already built. I warn any reader now I'm going neon green to match the signs and my YJ army:

    OK this is a warning, It's really, REALLY green, more so than this. I'd recommend opening the next spoiler with one eye closed to avoid "green shock" and to be sitting down.

    [​IMG]
    You can also see the MAS turbines for the primordial board and in the foreground another building custom cut by one of my locals which he's donated to the pool and will look in line with the TT stuff.

    So I'm exorbitantly happy with this, and with the masking it's come out with some rather nice crisp clean lines, I have some detailing and cleaning up to do on them but mostly it's done with the single pass of the neon green. The two mats in contention for this board are at the FLGS hopefully I'll get a couple of pictures and make a decision on which mat I want to use (thoughts here are the deep cut YJ one).
     
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  16. Koin-Koin

    Koin-Koin Well-Known Member

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  17. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Where is the "jaw dropped" emoji?

    That lava pool looks excellent!

    And I don't think your YJ table is green enough yet. :laughing::innocent:
     
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  18. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    Human Edge Geothermal plant (Primordial board)

    Well I managed to get a game in last night to playtest the board some more:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
    Start of a Nomads Vs Haqq game

    So the hills were difficult mountain as planned and the lava pool was played as impassable low vis (-3 mod) and White noise which worked pretty well it definately screwed with my intruder and grenzer but also affected all the general fire coming across as well.

    Stuff this board still needs:
    1. Scatter terrain, in the form of both rocks and general gothermal plant detritus
    2. Ladders on the towers so I don't have to explain where the access points are.
    3. Walkways, which are underway
    4. the aforementioned pyroclaustic clouds
    5. yet more area terrain.
    Storage
    So I managed to get all the painted primordial stuff into a box last night, the pictures in the spoiler here are more for my own benefit so I can remember how to win this nightmarish game of tetris in the future.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    There is actually another Hill+Tower, and I will cross that bridge when it has been painted.

    Yu-Jing Board (TT-Combat Infinity bundle)

    After packing that way I decided to try a layout for the TT stuff, so it's not on the right mat but that's potentially a good thing, 1) I now know that this board scheme works with the Aleph mat, 2) I'm easing myself into The Green gently.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    It looks a little barren still however there is about 25% of the stuff to put together still which includes all the scatter, a lot of that is green acrylic.
     
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  19. Section9

    Section9 Well-Known Member

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    Looks good!

    For Geothermal Power related bits, it's mostly pipes. The pipes come out of the ground and go to the turbines. And back.



    OK, that is almost enough Green. I can still see. :innocent:


    On a more serious note, you probably will want to add some red to that for contrast. Rather purplish red, at that, a color about like P3 Sanguine Base.
     
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  20. Aspect Graviton

    Aspect Graviton Friendly Alien Overlord
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    UK Games Expo.
    Normally I work this for my friends publishing house but this year it clashes with a holiday so I just went down for the day.

    There was plenty of terrain there from vendors, some of which I've had my eye on for a while.

    Pictures should be here, I'm posting on my phone on the way to the airport so I've not the facility to fold them in nicely as normal (hopefully I'll change that as an edit)

    http://imgur.com/a/80I2xj5

    Tyr terrain Imperial raider
    Obviously it's designed for legion however I've been looking at doing a crashed ship board for quite a while and at £85 I thought it was a steal. So yeah I now have a decent start to another board. I was also looking at the crashed ship from blotz but it's a bit too slopey (as in covered in slopes) and rather open. I may complement this raider with the superstructure and engines from blotz however to add a bit more height.

    Deepcut studio: nomads mat
    Yeah I also got yet another new mat, I had a good chat with Gediminas who runs deepcut (they were also previewing their prototype aristea mat) they were also showing off their double sided mouse pad mats which he was saying shouldn't be much more that the single siders they do.

    TT combat
    I just took a lot of pictures of the bundle I've already got, seems I have a way further to go!
     
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