Terrain Snob

I've had some Infinity card buildings sitting in my office cupboard for the longest time. Since.. the USAriadna pack came out, which was in the heady pre-pandemic days that seem like a distant memory. I got a second set with the Ariadna vs Aleph box, though it languished alongside the first.

It's not that I hate pre-coloured scenery in general or cardboard terrain in particular (I have plenty of Battlesystems stuff and what you get in those Infinity boxes is an excellent way of getting started) but.. the lack of geometric detail, the concerns about stability, the concerns about durability.. not to mention the fact that I have dozens of 'normal' MDF and hard plastic terrain kits (some even painted) meant that I always had a "better" option. I was a terrain snob!

Until tonight.

I've been meaning to have a go at the Dead or Alive supplement for Stargrave since it came out; I have more than enough minis assembled and this evening I had the opportunity to play it.. but ferrying boxes of fragile terrain to and from storage just to try it out seemed like a chore. Besides, I didn't have enough pieces finished in a consistent style to fill a 3x3 board and I knew it would bug me if I mixed and matched the styles (plus that would mean even more boxes).

(A store photo for one of the Precinct Sigma kits from MAS. Looks perfect for Judge Dredd, Realities Edge / Hardwired.. or Infinity, of course) 

Even so, I might not have considered the cardboard Infinity stuff if it hadn't been for the recent videos I watched showing off pre-coloured MDF terrain from Micro Art Studios (I particularly like the graffiti-strewn Precinct Sigma stuff) as well as the previews from Multiverse with their upcoming pre-coloured MDF products. It had warmed up to the idea of simpler, more robust buildings and there was no denying that the finish was far more detailed that I would ever achieve in paint.

(Preview from the Multiverse FB page. I'm getting a Fallout vibe from this!) 

So I opened up both packs, filled a 3x3 with rectangular buildings and shipping containers.. and since the art style fitted the mat, it all looked really good and played well enough. I'm certainly considering the hard card terrain sets from CB now and I might even pick up a few of the pre-printed MDF kits to see how I feel about phasing out my TTCombat sci-fi terrain..

(A humble card building from the Aplekton scenery pack. Humble, but useful. And 100% more painted than the robot)

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

So my Middenheimers were consistent in the final game of the TAGS Mordheim campaign, going out first in the seven way skirmish with a series of pretty bad rolls (5 attacks! No wounds :( ) leaving me with half my guys out of action by turn 3. There was a rout test, it was failed (naturally) and for my poor, beaten up mercs, the war was over.

Overall I really enjoyed playing Mordheim (even if I didn't quite finish painting my warband up by the time the campaign concluded) but it was a little disappointing to confirm what most people say about the game e.g. take as many cheap models with two hand weapons as you can get. It's not that I didn't enjoy the challenge of trying to make my warband work.. but at no point did I feel like my strategy of protecting my guys was finally starting to pay off. Oh well, should we play it again, I have more than enough bits left over to make 14 unarmoured henchmen all dual-wielding clubs.

The upside of going out early was that I finally, finally got to play a game of Infinity with my own Ariadna models (instead of a demo game at a con). I lost, naturally, but I can't really blame the dice too much because for every B:3 ranged attack that should have hit but didn't I would pull off a couple of very unlikely armour saves.. so most of my casualties were just down to user error on my part. We have a few weeks before the Infinity escalation league kicks off so I will hopefully have the time to get my Bauhaus painted up for the tournament and make a start on my Ariadna before the league starts.

I'm totally counting this as work towards Project 1

Not in any way official, of course.

Laser Defence Platform.. complete!

Whew! Okay, so, in two and a half hours, you too could turn your two sheets of MDF in to one of these!

 

Getting there is certainly more complicated than the carriage or the market stalls, but fortunately it is not as difficult as it might seem when you examine the MDF sheets and perform a parts count:

Curses! If only there were two fewer unique parts..

First of all I would suggest removing parts D (x4), E (x4), L (x12), N and O (x12). You will use all these parts to make the base of the laser defence platform. Each 'foot' is comprised of 3x L, 3x O, and one each of parts D and E:

Start by taking one of the angled pieces (L) with the two notches facing upwards and glue one of the horizontal pieces (O) in place. Glue on the other two angled pieces until you have this:

Add the remaining horizontal pieces, then slot part D into the short end of the foot. Follow that up with part E which you slot in and glue on top of it. Repeat the whole process three more times until you have four of these:

Now for the base! You will need parts H, K, M and Y (x2). Since we are going to be building a platform that will allow the turret to rotate, it's important to know which parts not to glue!

Glue the two Y pieces together to make this notched cross shape. Later on you will need to make two smaller versions in order to allow the turret to aim up and down.

Position the assembled cross underneath the base you have constructed so far and sit piece H on top of it. Hopefully you can see what we are going to do - lift up the cross piece and push it through the circular hole in the base.. enough that you can push - and glue - part M in to place.

So it's important to make sure that the cross is glued to the disc, but the large piece (H) that is sandwiched in between has no glue on it. Now cap off the disc with.. another disc which is glued in to place (K). All being well, you should still be able to rotate part H.

Now on to the main body of the turret itself. We will start by making the arms which support the upper section:

Start with two each of parts F, G and J. Make sure that as you assemble these parts that they are glued the right way around (see the next step) otherwise you will end up with two identical pieces which should actually be mirrored:

Moving up, we now need to assemble the sides of the turret itself. You will need 4x S, and two each of X and 1. Just like the cross we needed to make for the base of the platform, we now have to make two smaller crosses (as seen below):

Once you have two crosses, they need to be pushed through the 'inside' of parts 1 in preparation for the discs (X) being glued on the 'outside'. Make sure the notches in the discs are pointing upwards.

If, at this point, you have two piece that are exactly the same and 'pointing' the same way they you have definitely gone wrong. I totally did that the first time around..

Now glue the 'arms' on to the sides of the turret. You should find that the notches in the discs line up with the small protrusion on part F. With the sides complete, we can now move on to the main body of the turret, so let's start on the back piece:

For this we will need parts A (x3), B and V. I'm actually not 100% sure that we need part B for this but I couldn't figure out where else it would go. Glue part B onto part V and then glue the three bars (A) over the top so you end up with this:

With the back and sides complete, let's assemble the turret:

This part is pretty straightforward. Take parts C, W, Z and 2 (x2). Glue in the back piece that you have already assembled and the front part (W) and glue them onto the base (C), then attach the side pieces you built earlier.. and then the angled pieces (2) and the top (Z)

At this point you should be able to rotate the arms downwards and attach them to the platform base. The assembled platform should still be able to rotate around the Y axis (at the base) and around the X axis (at the top of the turret arms). Now it's time for the fiddly bit - making the two barrels. You will need parts P (x12), Q (x6) and R (x16). You might start assembling the lower section of the barrels like this.. but this is wrong. Luckily I figured it out before the glue dried!

You actually need to use ALL of the cog-shaped pieces while making the lower half of the barrels. You need three of the slightly large cogs (Q) positioned as per the picture above, with six of the smaller cogs (P) sandwiched inbetween.. all held in place by eight of the small arms (R).

Once both of these lower barrel pieces are complete, slot them onto the turret body and glue them in to place.

For the upper section of the barrels you will need parts T (x4) and U (x16). In principal this is a simple job but I found it quite hard to get everything to stay in place.. so I found it easier to only glue two of the long pieces in to place, on opposite sides of the octagonal parts (T)

..and then slot (and glue) that partially completed upper section onto the lower portion of the barrel. It might be a tight squeeze but this has the added benefit of ensuring that it is correctly centred on the lower part of the barrel. From here, you can continue glueing on the long pieces like so:

Simply repeat until all of the pieces have been used up and now all you need to do is glue on the last disc (I) onto the top of the turret and the laser defence platform is complete!

Although this took a bit more preparation work than my other purchases, especially with all the sanding that I needed to do in order to ensure that things looked nice and tidy, for 5.95 this item is worth the price just for the satisfaction of assembling it. Once it is complete, the laser defence platform looks pretty impressive and it's a sizable piece of terrain that will wok well with Infinity, 40k or any other sci-fi tabletop game. Sadly I am now out of things to build but hopefully I will pick up some more of the TTCombat range soon!

Laser Defence Platform.. Whaaaaa?

So work has begun on the last of my TTCombat purchases, the Laser Defence Platform. While my initial thoughts upon examining the two sheets of MDF sheets was "whaaaa?" I have started to build it and luckily, things are starting to make sense. Pictures tomorrow..

I painted something!

So I had four goals during my 2 week summer "break" while my family were on holiday. Painting a character mini for my Monday night tabletop game was the first goal and the only one I really achieved. Here it is! Good job this isnt a Plog..