Wednesday 19 November 2014

I love the smell of burned MDF in the morning..

A few days ago I noticed that the Troll Trader were listing some new "TTCombat" branded MDF terrain on their eBay store with themes that would be of interest to Malifaux and Infinity players. I suspect that the guys at Troll Trader have gotten hold of a laser cutting machine and are producing these kits themselves. I'm a big fan of terrain and working with MDF in general so I decided to order a few of the smaller pieces to see how they go together and.. really.. to see if it is worth investing in some of their larger sets such as the buildings or the castle.

The sets showed up today, so lets stat with the Noble's Carriage:


This comprises of a single sheet of MDF. It comes with no instructions (none of the sets did) but it is relatively easy to build if you refer to the photos on the eBay page. As is typical for MDF terrain, each piece has detail etched on to one side and is attached to the wooden frame / sprue at one or two points depending on how large the piece is.

When assembling, I recommend that you start with the rearr (parts D, R, S, T and U) first, to create this:



No, that's not a toilet. Next, assemble the seat with parts G, H and I and put that to one side:



Note that the rear part sits on top of the very back of the chassis (K), and will be held in place by the sides (A and B):



At this point, with the front (C), one side (A) and back assembled and stuck to the chassis (K) it would be a good time to attach a few of the detail pieces to 'fill the holes' and paint the interior. I would go ahead and glue the lantern holders (N) into the sides of the carriage, and I would attach the 'prongs' (P) which support the foot steps (Q) to the underside of the carriage. Finally, glue on part M to the lower front. Now all of the holes are filled I would paint the inside of the carriage. Don't forget to paint the 'inside' facing of the other side piece (B) and the roof (E)!


 Once the interior is painted, I would paint the seat (separately) then glue it in to place before attaching the other side piece (B).

Now that you have a fairly solid 'box' everything else is straight forward. Attach the driver's seat (J) to the upper front - I did this too early in the photo avove. Four of each part O will slot onto a lantern holder (N) to create the lantern and finally the wheels (L) will be glued onto the chassis and held in place by the four bolts (F).

I will try and paint the interior of my carriage tonight so that I can fully assemble it and take a 'completed' shot. For £3.95, this carriage is a bargain in my opinion and the only 'fault' I can find is that some of the small, repeated shapes such needs to be flipped on the sheet so that the burned side is facing outwards like the other carriage pieces.. but this is just me being anal. Of course, if you're going to paint it up, that's probably not much of an issue at all!

No comments:

Post a Comment