The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

It's become a bit of a tradition around this time of year for me to grab some leftover sprues and throw together a sci-fi Christmas tree ornament. For this year's trinket, I grabbed some parts from the original Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and made myself a somewhat technological snowflake!




The build for this one was pretty simple. I started out with two trapezoid windows and half a dozen energy fence pylons.



To make the branching parts of the snowflake 'arms', I grabbed some 1.5mm aluminium rod, cut it into 20mm and 30mm lengths, and bent them in the middle.



I made a simple formwork to glue the rod pieces in place, by laying a pair of struts from the terrain sprue on either side of the fence posts, adding a drop of glue into the grabby port on the post, and then sitting the bent rod in place. Another dollop of glue on top sealed the rods in place. I also added another piece of rod bent into a loop on the end of the 'top' fence post, to serve as a hanging loop.



Once the frankly horrific amount of glue I had used here had time to set, I used plastic cement to glue the windows together, and the bottoms of the fence posts to the window frames.



On to painting! I sprayed the whole thing with Army Painter Matt Black, and then with a layer of Plate Metal.



I then went over the window frams and fence posts with some Secret Weapon Soft Body Black wash that I had sitting around from an Adepticon goodie bag a few years back.



On the fence post bases and the window frames, I added a coat of Citadel Macragge Blue, with a highlight around the edges of Army Painter Ice Storm.



Then, because I apparently can't go for more than a week without weathering something, I took a sponge and some Vallejo Heavy Charcoal and added some chipping to the blue areas, highlighting with some more Ice Storm. As a final touch, I used some Army Painter blue tone to add a blue tint in the creases of the 'arm' attachments, for a little extra colour. And then on to the tree it went!



Here's wishing everyone a safe and happy time for whatever holidays you happen to celebrate around this time of year!



Build your own ornament of celebratory doom by picking up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge range from the webstore here.



What are you working on? We would love to see your models and terrain in the Comm Guild Facebook group!

For other building ideas, modeling tutorials, army spotlights and conversion walkthroughs, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.