The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

It's been way too long since I made some terrain, so I thought I would squeeze in one last article before Christmas!

My kids had some juice in a takeaway meal the other day that came in an interestingly shaped bottle that I thought was worth having a play with. After giving the empty bottles a wash, I set to with tools and terrain sprue bits and came up with this little advertising hub.




The first step, as mentioned above, was to wash the bottle and remove the label.



I used a razor saw to remove the screw thread part of the neck, and then gave the cut end a bit of a sand to smooth it down.



Then I sprayed inside the bottle with some grey paint. This isn't an essential step, but it does help to make the finished piece a little more opaque, particularly if the exterior paintwork gets scratched on the table later on.



To disguise the bottle's bottom, I grabbed an appropriately sized miniature base and a trio of fans from the second Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue and glued them in place with some Oily Glue.



For the advertising part of the build, I whipped up some signs to fit into the recesses around the bottle, printing them out on photo paper so that they were nice and glossy and bright.



On to painting! I sprayed the bottle with a medium grey primer, and then a zenithal layer (sprayed from an angle above, to leave the darker grey underneath) of a very pale grey. This went straight over the shiny plastic, as the Rustoleum primer that I use generally sticks fairly well. If you're wanting to make your paint more durable and stick better, you can give the outside of the bottle a light sand with some fine sandpaper to break the gloss.



I added in some dark grey (Vallejo Heavy Charcoal) into the deep creases, and added a couple of strips of yellow using Vallejo Nuclear Yellow.



Next up came some weathering with a sponge and some more Heavy Charcoal, before gluing the signs in place.



Finally, I painted up the fans on top with some a Vallejo Beasty Brown basecoat, a drybrush of Citadel Chainmail and a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone, and then dirtied everything up with a drybrush of some more Beasty Brown into the creases and forming some drip marks down the sides. Then I dropped it onto an old base I had prepared a while back, and it was ready for the table!



If you wanted to break up the original bottle shape some more, you could easily add some supporting buttresses around the bottom, or add some lights above the signs.



To build your own pillar of commercial doom, grab the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues 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. And while you're there, grab a copy of the Maelstrom's Edge V2 Beta rules!

- by Iain Wilson

Anyone who scratchbuilds terrain knows that the best part of the process is finding new things to turn into terrain! I recently wound up with a whole box full of black hot glue sticks, and had been looking for a good project to use some of them up. Then my wife came home with a bag of seed pods she had collected from a tree she saw somewhere, and an idea was born. Read on to see how these alien ... er... plants? Yes, that'll do... came to life!




I started out with some blue insulation foam. If you haven't used this stuff before, it's a very firm expanded polystyrene sheet that some people use for insulating walls or somesuch boring thing, and sensible people use for making terrain as it's more solid and durable, and easy to work with than the more common white foam sheet.

Using a sharp knife, I cut the foam sheet into a low, hilly shape. You can use a hobby knife for this, although I used an old kitchen knife. (Don't use your good knives, as cutting foam will dull the blade!)



After painting a generous coat of PVA glue over the foam, I sprinkled on a couple of different types of sand, to create some varying texture over the whole thing.



Once the PVA had time to dry, I used a blob of hot glue to stick a seedpod in place. (For multiple pieces, making the base pieces different sizes and using different numbers of seedpods on each will help avoid them all looking too similar on the table!)



At this point, as I wasn't intending to paint over the hot glue parts of the plants, it was time to get some paint on, starting with a spray of matte white.



I then added some colour using Army Painter Speedpaints - Blood Red on the inside of the pod, Hive Dweller Purple on the outside, and a generous coat of Hardened Leather over the sand. A coat of matte sealer can also be a good idea here, to make sure that the seedpod is not exposed to the air so it will be preserved.



After giving the paint plenty of time to dry, it was time to go to town with the glue. Using a hot glue gun, I placed tentacle-like trails of glue outward from the seedpod, working around the pod to completely enclose the bottom of it.



A couple of tips here:

- Allowing a minute for the previous tentacle to cool before doing the next one helps to avoid them sinking into each other. If you're working on a piece with multiple pods, then doing one at a time on each pod is a handy way to go.

- Depending on how good your glue gun is, it may build up more heat (making the glue runnier) the longer it is on. This can make it harder to keep good, defined tentacle shapes, so taking a break and turning the gun off for a while can help if you're having trouble making good shapes. Although just working faster can also help, as the glue stays firmer if it is not sitting in the gun for as lone - by varying the speed you push the glue through, you can make the tentacles gloopier looking or more defined, to suit your preference.

The tentacles all in place:



(A couple of these are a little gloopier than I wanted, due to me taking a bit longer to place them while I was trying to get pics of the process, but they'll look fine in the overall terrain patch!)

To finish up, I added a light drybrush of Game Color Bonewhite over the exposed sand areas, and a mix of the Bonewhite and White over the outside of the seedpod to pick up some of the texture.



A gaggle of pod pieces all ready for the table:



You could easily vary this to suit your own table by using different coloured glue sticks, and obviously you'll get very different results depending on the type of seedpods you use!



Once you have your vast plain of sinister biological doom, head on over to the Maelstrom's Edge webstore here, to pick up an army to run around in it!

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. And while you're there, grab a copy of the Maelstrom's Edge V2 Beta rules!

I've always thought that urban battlefields are at their best when they look a bit run-down and decrepit. Adding obvious signs of weathering with liberal applications of dirt and corrosion are an important part of nailing this look. With that in mind I thought I would share a quick and easy method that I use for painting rusty metal!




I'm using a fan assembly from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues here (the fan from Sprue #2, and the large pipe fitting from Sprue #1).

Start with an undercoat of a mid to dark brown.

Note: The actual colour isn't too important - and that goes for the rest of this tutorial as well - as rust comes in a wide range of shades and textures depending on the surface and the level of corrosion. I have shown the specific colours I used for this tutorial in the images, but you should feel free to experiment with different shades to get an effect that you like!



Using a sponge, dab on some patches of mid to dark grey. This is an optional step, to keep some areas where the original metal is still showing through. If you are looking for a more solid level of corrosion, skip this step.



Drybrush with orange. As above, use whatever actual shade you choose, the goal is just to add some contrast on the brown. You can build up some different patches of corrossion if you want by using a couple of different oranges or reds here, but avoid using anything too bright.



Finally, use an old brush to dab on some rust effect paint. I use Army Painter Dry Rust, but there are variations on this same style of paint in quite a few different paint ranges. This is a very matte orange paint that is also quite thin, so once you dab it around it dries with a lighter tint over the areas where less of it is applied, while building up a more solid rust look where the paint is heavier. Don't try to smooth it out - just blob it on there. If you're bothered by the technical aspect of metal weathering, try to apply the rust paint more heavily on those areas where it would naturally be more exposed and so corrode more - Looking at pictures of rusted metal objects can help here - otherwise, just dab it on there wherever it looks right to you. Gaming models don't have to be strictly real-world accurate unless you want them to be!



And that's it. Once the rust paint has dried, it's good to go. You can use this technique wherever you want some rusted surfaces, varying the colours and application to suit whatever you are painting at the time!











To get started on your own city of corroded doom, pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues along with the rest of the 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!

Remember to also grab a copy of the Maelstrom's Edge V2 Beta rules so you can get into the action!

- by Iain Wilson

Fences can provide an interesting extra dimension to miniature battlefields, as they block movement without necessarily also blocking line of site. This can force some tactical decisions around model placement and movement around the table. In this week's article, I'm sharing a quick and easy way to make some fences for your table.




I came across these Lego-compatible fence pieces on AliExpress completely by accident, and thought they seemed ideal for gaming. They come as a pack of fence sections, and join together with separate clip pieces, and they're a nice, dark metallic grey colour. So for the really quick and easy version, you could just take these, clip a bunch of them together and plonk them on the table as-is and call the job a good-un.



I wanted to fit them in with my existing terrain a little better, though, so I grabbed a couple of Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues and set to work. I started by trimming up some reinforcing struts to about the same height as the fence panels by cutting off the top and bottom segments.



Then I took some 3mm foamed PVC and cut strips the same height as the struts, with about 4mm extra width either side - as a happy coincidence, this was the same width as two of the struts, so laying the struts side-by-side on the PVC served as a handy cutting guide.



I glued the struts in place on either side of the PVC strips to form reinforced fence posts, and then cut some shorter strips to serve as bases for the posts. The bottom segment removed from the struts, cut in half diagonally, made some perfect supports to strengthen the attachment between post and base.



With everything glued together, the clips for the fence pieces slot snugly onto the PVC and it all stands up nicely.



I made a bunch of posts, and for good measure cut one of the fence segments in half and attached some more reinforcing struts on the inner sections to make a two-part gate. The whole thing slots together and by twisting the holding clips can go around corners into whatever configuration is needed.



With a quick coat of rusty paint (Vallejo Beasty Brown spray with some splotchy spray of Tamiya Pure Orange and a light drybrush with Army Painter Fire Lizard) and some grey for the PVC parts (Army Painter Uniform Grey with a drybrush of white and some Vallejo Beasty Brown drybrushed into the creases) the fence is ready for the table!





To build your own fence of chainlinked doom, you can pick up the 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. And while you're there, grab a copy of the Maelstrom's Edge V2 Beta rules!

- by Iain Wilson

With the release of the STL files for the Broken Gnolti last week, I found myself painting up another couple of these wee beasties, and along the way I found a quick and easy way to paint their horns that I thought was worth sharing. This would work for any model with ridged or otherwise rough-textured horns.

For this tutorial, I used Army Painter paints. You could substitute any similar acrylic colours for a similar result.




Start out with a white basecoat.



Add a coat of Skeleton Bone over the whole bone area.



Starting with one face of the horn at a time, paint on some Leather Brown, around half to two-thirds of the way down to the base of the horn, depending on how dark overall you want the final result to be.



While the Leather Brown is still wet, go back over with some more Skeleton Bone, blending the two colours together to create a gradient. This doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, as the final step will tie it all back together.



Repeat the above two steps for each face of the horns.



Finally, go over the whole thing with a light drybrush of white, or white mixed with a little bone.



The finished Gnolti, ready to rampage!





Paint up your own Behemoth of Horned Doom by grabbing the Gnolti from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore!

While you're there, you can download the Maelstrom's Edge V2 rules from the Trial Rules section of the website here. The Beta rules documents contain all of the rules for playing V2 games, but keep in mind that these are just 'preview' documents - some rules may be revised based on feedback, and the final layout including background material for the factions and the Maelstrom's Edge universe, artwork and other 'flavor' material is missing.

If you have any feedbacks on the new rules, our model range, or the tutorial above, pop on over to the Comm Guild Facebook group and share your thoughts!

- by Iain Wilson

I've been having some fun experimenting with Army Painter's Speedpaints, to see what can be done with them. This week, I'd like to share this simple method that I stumbled upon for painting a camouflage pattern using just a trio of Speedpaints!




Step 1 - Basecoat the model with white spray.



Step 2 - Go over the camouflage area with a generous coat of Malignant Green.



Step 3 - While the Malignant Green is still wet, dab on dots of Camo Cloak. Make these dots about half the size you want them, as they will spread out. Try to mix up the spacing of the dots as you go, so they don't wind up forming a regular pattern. Doing this while the first green is still wet allows the second colour to spread organically, creating irregular, random shapes.



Step 4 - While those first two colours are still wet, go back over with slightly smaller dots of Dark Wood. This will spread across and through the other two colours, creating the layered camo effect.



Step 5 - Let it all dry. It can help if you can lay the camouflage surface as flat as possible, to avoid the wet colours from running downwards.

The completed model - the rest of the model was also painted with Speedpaint, mostly Camo Cloak, Dark Wood and Grim Black.





To have a go yourself, pick up the plastic Broken Sniper kit from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore!

While you're there, you can download the V2 rules from the Trial Rules section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. The Beta rules documents contain all of the rules for playing V2 games, but keep in mind that these are just 'preview' documents - some rules may be revised based on feedback, and the final layout including background material for the factions and the Maelstrom's Edge universe, artwork and other 'flavor' material is missing.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

My long-awaited Army Painter Speedpaint Starter Set finally arrived last week, and I was impatient to give them a test run. I've had a bunch of plastic SecDef models assembled for a while, for a little side-project, and figured they would be perfect for the job. So I grabbed the first squad of models out of the hobby box and set to work!




I started off with a basecoat of Army Painter Matt White spray. I did experiment on a couple of initial test models with a plain white basecoat and a zenithal base using white and purple, but decided that the zenithal basecoat didn't make enough of a difference to the end result to be worth the effort.

(A zenithal basecoat is where two layers of colour are used - a darker colour in the recesses/undersides of the mode, and a lighter layer sprayed down from above. This can be handy when combined with certain painting methods, particularly using thinner 'glazing' paints to accentuate shading and highlights.)



For the uniform, I went with Highlord Blue, applying to any visible cloth areas and trying to avoid too much spillover onto the armour plates. I also added the blue to the raised surround on the helmet.



After a quick touchup where necessary with some Matt White, I painted a layer of Hardened Leather over pouches, straps, boots, gloves and face, and then went back over the face with Crusader Skin. The double layer on the skin was to give a darker skin colour - my initial test showed the Crusader Skin to be a bit more washed out than I wanted, but layering it over the Leather gave a nice, dark tone.



Next up, I painted over the weapon, belt, exoskeleton, and helmet commlink, targeter and chinstrap with Gravelord Grey.



For the armour plates and helmet, I went with a coat of Zealot Yellow. This settled nicely on the lower areas of the plates, providing a lovely contrast against the blue uniform.



To finish up, I added some Blood Red over the goggles, and while that was drying added some gravel mix to the base. Without a dark brown in the starter set, I used a 1:1:1 mix of Hardened Leather, Blood Red and Hive Dweller Purple over the gravel, giving it a drybrush of Tanned Flesh and Ash Grey (regular acrylic paints) when it dried. With a quick run of Matt Black around the base rim and some white specular highlights on the goggles, he was ready for the table.



The unit assembled - regular SecDef models, with a custom made energy mortar using some plastic tubing and parts from the 2nd Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.





They're not perfectly neat, but for a quick, table-ready paintjob these paints are fantastic, giving some perfectly acceptable shading and highlights with a single coat. I'm looking forward to getting the rest of this force painted up!



To have a go yourself, pick up the plastic, multi-part SecDef kit from the Maelstrom's Edge webstore!

While you're there, you can download the V2 rules from the Trial Rules section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here. The Beta rules documents contain all of the rules for playing V2 games, but keep in mind that these are just 'preview' documents - some rules may be revised based on feedback, and the final layout including background material for the factions and the Maelstrom's Edge universe, artwork and other 'flavor' material is missing.

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

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

- by Iain Wilson

As a wise man once said, "With great Christmas comes a great big bunch of junk food!"

Amongst my family's collection of sugary delights this year was a plastic jar full of candy sticks, bought for my daughters to stuff into Christmas cards. Once empty, though, the jar itself was just too interesting a shape to toss it away. So, there was nothing else for it but to build something!




The jar in question, blissfully unaware that it was about to enter a whole different plane of existence.



After removing the labels and cleaning off the glue residue with some isopropyl alcohol, I sprayed the inside of the jar with some matt black spray. I do this whenever I'm using something clear as a terrain base, as it prevents stray light bleeding through the paint, and also stops things looking weird if the paint on the outside gets scratched.

I also gave the outside a scrub with some sandpaper to break up the glossy surface. This gives a better surface for the glue and paint to adhere to.



To fit doors and windows from the terrain sprue to the curved surface of the jar, rather than building a framework to square things up I decided to fit them to the curve. I laid a piece of sandpaper over the jar and used this as a curved sanding block to shape the back of the parts.



Adding the support struts around the rim of the lid was a little easier - I just bent them around the curve and glued them in place with superglue and a plastic primer.



In a happy coincidence, the spacing worked out almost perfect. I used three full struts, and cut the last one down to three sections, needing to trim only a fraction off the end to make it fit perfectly.



I glued the door and windows into place, adding some steps and gluing the jar down to a piece of hardboard. I also added a grating piece onto a bare patch of the board just for some extra visual interest, painting underneath it with some black as this was easier than doing it later.



To dress up the top of the building, I grabbed a few assorted pieces from the terrain sprues, whipping together an aerial array, a control box and a chimney using a piece of the sprue and some plastic tube.



With these parts glued in place, I finished off the roof with a fan and large pipe fitting glued onto a base that fit just perfectly over the cavity in the top of the jar lid.



The jar needed some texture, so I added a coat of textured paint and while that was drying I built up the base with some filling plaster.



Finally, I added a layer of sand and gravel mix over the filling plaster, fixing it in place with some PVA glue.



After a quick bit of paint work, the new building was looking totally sweet and ready for the table!







To build your own desert habitat of sugary doom, you can pick up the 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.

- by Iain Wilson

Time for a super-quick terrain build! In the grand tradition of painting things instead of throwing them into the recycling bin, this week I built an air purifier station out of a plastic fruit jar, with some help from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue!




The bulk of this terrain piece uses the aforementioned plastic jar, which I think originally had plums in it. The plums weren't much good for modeling, but the jar itself was an interesting shape, so I figured it was worth hanging onto it.



I started out by spraying the inside of the jar with some black paint. This helps to avoid things looking weird if the outer layer of paint gets scratched with use, and also blocks light from showing through if the outer paint layer is thin in places. I also gave the outside a light sand to help the glue and paint to stick better.



To cover over the embossed logos on the bottom of the jar, I took a large base and cut some indents into the bottom to sit over the mould line on the jar. I glued this in place using some all-plastic glue (a superglue with a primer pen that helps give a secure bond on different types of plastics). In the middle of the base I added an iris portal from the second Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.



I went light on additional details as I thought the shape of the jar was interesting enough by itself, but I added a vent on each side - the iris on top would be opened to suck in contaminated or otherwise unsuitable air, and the cleaned/chemically altered/now fit for breathing air would be pumped out through the vents, with all of the 'working gubbins' sealed away inside the unit.



Finally (or so I thought) I added a small base cut from a piece of 5mm foamed PVC.



While I was painting the purifier unit, I decided that it still looked a little too much like a jar turned upside down, largely because the lid is such a recognisable shape. So I broke it up a bit by adding some buttresses around it cut from a piece of polystyrene foam.



With some paint on, the air purifier wound up looking like this:







Build your own air purifier of respiratory 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.

- by Iain Wilson

Sci Fi Barn, episode 3: Now in Epirocolor!

In this latest installment, I finally get some paint on this barn build. If you're wandering in here wondering what it's all about, this was a kitbash of a Plast Craft Games warehouse with parts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues to build the a sci fi barn (you can find the first part here).




With assembly completed, I kicked off the painting by spraying the whole thing with a coat of a mediumish-dark brown satin spray paint that I had sitting on the shelf. Or, I would have, but it ran out on me. So I wound up spraying the top of the roof with some old Rustoleum flat red that I sometimes use as a base for rusty metal.



I went back over the red roof with some Vallejo Charred Brown before drybrushing over all of the metal parts with some Citadel Boltgun metal (Leadbelcher, for the newcomers). The non-metal parts of the interior walls were drybrushed with some Army Painter Skeleton Bone to pick up the texture on the foamed PVC, and the exterior bricks were given a heavy drybrush of Scalecolor Baal Crimson. Then before putting the drybrushes away, I gave the dirt on the base a layer of Vallejo Heavy Brown.



I was aiming for a weathered but not overly rusty metal look for this piece, as it's intended for a fairly arid 'western' themed table set. So over all of the metal parts and the base I added a generous coat of Army Painter Strong Tone and set it aside to dry.



At this point it was time to fit the window panes. The warehouse set came with painted clear plastic pieces that looked fine in the original warehouse, but turned out to not look right here. So instead, I used them as a template to cut some clear plastic sheet to size as a replacement.



I hadn't originally planned to add internal window frames, but with the panes in place the glue around the edges was very obvious , so I added some thin frames using some thin PVC.



After painting these new internal frames brown, all that was left was to add final detailing. I drybrushed the base dirt with some Army Painter Skeleton Bone and all of the metal parts with a light layer of Army Painter Shining Silver. Lights and sensors on the door frames were painted in with red and blue.





With the metal parts being quite dark, I didn't add a lot of dirt weathering, other than over the tops of the doorframes where it served to conceal a few messy over-brushes of red from the bricks. I did add some brown dirt smearing around the edges of the window panes, partly to give them a more weathered appearance, and partly to conceal any fogging from the glue.





With some crates and an old vehicle thrown in for colour, when the roof is lifted off the interior winds up looking like this:





To build your own outbuilding of rural doom, you can pick up the 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.

- by Iain Wilson

Back in the barn!

I recently shared the first part of this build, combining a Plast Craft Games warehouse with parts from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues to build the shell of a sci fi barn (part one is here). This week, I broke out some more terrain sprues and set to work on the interior!




When I built the outside, I left the floor unglued, to get easier access for fitting parts. So I started by taking the floor piece back out and spraying it matte black, so that it wouldn't show underneath the grating pieces I was planning to use for a new floor layer on top. After measuring out the width of the floor against the floor grate pieces from the terrain sprue, I found there was going to be a slight gap around the edges, so I added some skirting using the reinforcing struts from terrain sprue #2.



Then I tiled the floor with one of the floor grates from terrain sprue #2, spacing them out with struts from terrain sprue #1 to cover the full length of the barn.



I wanted a small balcony on the end with the smaller door, which would provide access to the platform and crane on the outside of the wall. I used another of the floor grate pieces with some more reinforcing struts and lintel pieces top build the balcony, and some plastic tube with two of the small pipe fittings from terrain sprue #1 to hold it up on the protruding corner. Finally, a ladder from terrain sprue #1 provides access up to the balcony.



To add some detail to the inside of the doors, I grabbed some extra doors and cut the frames off the outside using a razor saw and scalpel.



The rectangular inside frame of the existing doors protrudes through the wall about a millimetre, so I cut some 1mm plasticard to form a spacer behind the new interior frames, trimming it up to match the contours of the outside of the frames and then gluing it all into place. I also added the outside ring from a porthole from terrain sprue #2 to finish off the hole for the exhaust fan on the outside wall.



I considered adding some interior detail around the windows, but this would complicate painting as I needed to get the clear plastic panes in at the end. I also thought about building some animal enclosures, but decided to keep the floor space open so that, in the event the building is being used with the interior accessible, I can just drop in a vehicle or some crates and other obstacles to suit the situation.

So that just left putting the barn onto a base. I cut a piece of 5mm hardboard to size, sanding down the edges to bevel them off and then glued the floor piece of the barn into the middle of it. When I went to glue the rest of the barn over the top, it immediately became apparent that I hadn't accounted for the raised floor tiles when I added the interior door frames, so I had to cut out some inserts for them to slot into.



Finally, I mixed up a batch of filling plaster with some PVA glue and fine sand for texture, and slathered it around the outside of the building to cover up the hardboard. This mixture didn't immediately stick particularly well to the hardboard, although it would once the glue dries, so this process involved poking it into place with fingers and an old paintbrush, and a certain amount of cursing. In the end, though, I got the plaster laid down all around the exterior, with a smoother ramp of pure filling plaster leading up to the larger door. Then I finished up by adding some small patches of sand and gravel mix here and there, glued into place with some more PVA glue.





Next up: Getting some paint on. Click here!







To build your own outbuilding of rural doom, you can pick up the 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.

- by Iain Wilson

Time to get some terrain on!

Back in 2017, I put together a sci-fi 'western' gunshop, using the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and a foamed PVC western shop kit from Plast Craft Games. Plast Craft sadly appear to have gone out of business, but I picked up a few building kits on clearance from a local retailer to start fleshing out a themed table. The first (and probably largest) off the rank is an appopriately upgraded barn!




Along with the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprues, the kit I used for this build is an urban warehouse. If you want to build something similar yourself, while you may not be able to still track down this specific kit, there are other similar buildings available in MDF from other manufacturers, or you could use foamed PVC or foamcore to build your own from scratch.



I started out by adding some tech details to the windows, bulking out the frames using support struts and lintel pieces from terrain sprue #1, and floor panels from terrain sprue #2.



On the front of the building, I replaced the sliding wooden doors with a garage door from terrain sprue #1. To make up the extra height, I cut off the top of a second garage door with a razor saw and glued the two together.



The resultant door was the right height, but too wide, so I also widened the door cavity in the wall with an exacto knife before gluing the door in place. The round window at the top of the wall turned out to be exactly the right size for the exhaust fan from sprue #2..



The other end of the building has a smaller door and a rectangular window up high. I enlarged the cavities slightly and glued in a shutter window and door from sprue #1.



To avoid the building from just winding up looking like a plain box, I built a small platform and crane onto the wall, turning the small window into an access point for small freight. The platform was constructed from sprue #2 floor grates and some scrap pieces from the warehouse kit's roof trusses. The crane used a trapezoid window and a couple of energy fence pieces from sprue #1, the upright supports from the gun unit on sprue #2 and another scrap piece of PVC. I'll need to find some string or fine chain for it to finish up.



At that point, it was time to start slotting everything together.



The warehouse kit has a tiled roof, but I wanted to go with corrugated iron instead, for a better contrast from the brick walls. With the top ventilation struts trimmed off, the assembled roof provides a solid base for the iron roof. I've left the middle two roof trusses and the roof itself unglued, so that the roof can be removed and the building interior used during a game.



Over the original roof, I glued two sheets of corrugated cardboard, adding a strip of thin, folded card for the ridge capping. That didn't look quite right as-is, so I decided to also add some rain guttering, using some plasticard and a few more components from terrain sprue #1.



The windows are still missing their 'glass' - some thin, translucent plastic that comes with the warehouse kit. This will be glued in place after I've painted the barn. Otherwise, the finished exterior:



As a final touch, I decided the small platform needed a hand rail, so I whipped one up using a pair of posts from terrain sprue #2 and some thin plastic rod.



Coming up in part 2: I'll add some detail to the interior of the building before painting. Find it here!



To build your own outbuilding of rural doom, you can pick up the 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.

- by Iain Wilson

A while ago, I picked up a set of the Army Painter coloured metallic paints, and decided this week it was time to take them for a spin. The paint set includes some lovely purples that were just screaming out for a friendly little angel to bring to life. And so that's what I did.




The model I chose to use for this was a conversion that I put together some time ago while playing around with the Mature Angel kit. The end result is a slightly sinister-looking, floaty juvenile angel.



Metallic paint generally goes best over a dark basecoat, so I started out by spraying the model with some Army Painter black.



I then gave the whole model a coat of Night Scales, a metallic black from the Army Painter set. This has a slight bluey-purple tint to it that is just perfect for the angel. I was tempted to just leave it like this and call the job a good'un.



Deciding to go for a little more 'wow', though, I grabbed the bottle of Royal Purple, a midrange purple metal colour, and drybrushed the angel with it, building up more colour on raised areas and tentacle tips.



I used a light drybrush of Zephyr Pink to add some extra highlights wherever it seemed appropriate. I also went back over the top of the head with some more Night Scales, and picked out the eye sockets with Zephyr Pink before adding some white over on the eyeballs and inside the mouth. Finally, I added some coarse sand mix to the base with PVA glue, and then painted with Army Painter Dirt Spatter, then a wash of Mid Brown ink, and finally a drybrush with Kobold Skin, also picking out the base edge with more Dirt Spatter.









To build your own angel of floaty, screamy doom, you can pick up the Mature Angel kit 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.

- by Iain Wilson

Regular readers would know by now that I have a habit of grabbing odd things from around the place that have interesting shapes and turning them into terrain. In the past, I've built terrain from various bits of building hardware, storage containers, food packaging, and Christmas tree decorations, amongst other things. This week, I ransacked Amazon's toy department to put together a communications hub!




The base for this model was a small light up laser gun toy that I found while browsing Amazon. This particular toy came in a set of 4 - three of this same design in different colours, and another blockier design that I'll find a different use for later.



The first step was to take the gun apart so that I could remove the pistol grip and any other un-needed parts. The cowling from the front will likely wind up as a building entry at some point in the future, and I saved the light and speaker just on the off-chance that I want something to light up and make pew-pew noises.



The main part of the gun was almost perfect as is, although I trimmed down the protrusion that the pistol grip originally clipped onto with a razor saw.



I then cut a piece of plasticard to fit neatly over the opening, and grabbed a computer panel from the first Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue to add to this plate.



I reassembled the body of the gun, and added a couple of aerials made from plastic tubing, aluminium rod and a post piece from the second Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue.



Finally, I added a base to make it a bit more stable, glued an exhaust fan from the second terrain sprue over the muzzle piece, and puttied over the screw holes.



With some paint on, it wound up looking like this:



I considered leaving the blue central piece unpainted as a shiny, translucent feature, but decided against it as the three guns have different coloured pieces, so the translucent piece would be different on each comm hub... and that would offend me on a deeply spiritual level when I build the other two.







To build your own hub of communicative doom, you can pick 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.

- by Iain Wilson

There are a few different options out there for filling in open windows on terrain. In the past, I've used clear plastic or aluminium mesh cut to shape and glued in. I recently picked up some Ultraviolet Resin intended for creating water effects, and it occurred to me that this might be a fun alternate way of adding panes to some windows.




The resin I'm working with is sold by Green Stuff World. It's a super-clear gel that you squeeze from the bottle and then set with a UV light, or by leaving it out in the sun. They also sell a UV torch, which I couldn't resist picking up.



To create a window pane, I took a painted door from the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue and laid it down on some aluminium foil, with a small piece of thin plasticard in behind to push the foil snug against the back of the window frame.

(I used a painted door as it was going to be impossible to paint the inside of the window frame once the resin was in place.)



I then added a drop of resin into the middle of the window, leaving it a minute or so to settle out to the edges of the frame. There were very few airbubbles in the resin, but I used a pin to gently poke the few that were there to make them go away.



To set the resin, I sat the UV torch on top of the doorframe pointing directly at the window, and left it for a couple of minutes to let it do its thing. From further experimentation later, the resin starts to cure within a few seconds, but I wanted to leave it long enough to make sure.



From there, the door was ready to be glued into a piece of terrain and detailed.

For coloured window glass, transparent paint gives a nice tint. This porthole was filled with resin in the centre, and then once set I painted the back of the resin with two coats of Tamiya Clear Orange.





To make your own windows of transparent doom, you can pick 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.