The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

- by Iain Wilson

With the release of the Revolutionary Captain ushering the SARA subfaction into Maelstrom's Edge games, a range of new tactical options opens up for the Broken. I'll be sharing my fledgling SARA force in an upcoming army, but to kick things off I thought it would be fun to have a look at some modeling options for the fantastic Revolutionary Captain model!




The Revolutionary Captain is a multipart, plastic model. He's not as modular as most of the Maelstrom's Edge model range, as the sculpt was in this case aiming for a specific character look. Being plastic, however, it's still relatively easy to give the model a more customised look if you feel so inclined, and I'll explore some different ideas for that below.


The studio model, painted by Winterdyne.

Built straight off the sprue, the Revolutionary Captain is equipped with his SARA Officer's Pistol. His rules card, which can be found here, gives him the option to take one of a number of different secondary weapons, which can mostly be sourced from the Broken Rabble kit. To equip a Beam Blastgun or Slug Rifle, the easy option is to just stick the weapon on his back. You could model a rifle strap from modeling putty, or just assume the weapon is held in place with a magnetic lock built into the back of his coat.



To take a more hands-on approach, for this version I sliced off his right hand, and used a forearm snipped from a Rabble sprue arm to hold the blastgun. As it still sits against his waist, there's no need to try to resculpt the coat belt where the hand was removed, as you can't see it anyway.



Of course, everyone knows that battlefield commanders spend a good amount of their time pointing at things. If your commander isn't either pointing at something, or standing with one foot on something, people might not even recognise them! By slicing off the Revolutionary Captain's left arm at the coat's shoulder seam, I was able to glue a pointing arm from the Rabble sprue in its place. I also replaced the head with a regular Rabble head by drilling out the neck a little with a 2mm drill bit, and glued a maglock pistol from the Epirian Contractor kit onto her hip with some strapping made from 'Green Stuff' putty to replace the officer's pistol. The putty isn't strictly necessary - you could easily just glue any of the Captain's pistol options to the belt, but the addition of the putty strap does make it look a little nicer on the model.



Of course, there's no reason for only humans to be revolting! With the neck drilled out as above, you can use any of the alien heads from the weapons sprue in the Rabble kit to create a xeno force commander.



While we're replacing heads, some Captains like a nice, sensible cap in place of a beret, so for this one I used an Epirian Contractor head (mostly for the sunglasses!) and built the cap up into an officer's hat using Green Stuff. I also added a melee weapon on his belt using part of a Karist sword from the Faction Expansion Sprue and bits from a couple of weapons on the Rabble sprue. This could easily represent either the Poisoned Blade or Trophy Melee Weapon. For a slightly easier option, you could just use the Karist sword or knife from the Faction Expansion sprue. The resin Forsaken Chieftain also comes with both of these melee options, so if you have that model you could use whichever one you didn't use on her for the Revolutionary Captain.



Of course, if you're hacking up your Revolutionary Captain model to replace heads and weapons, this leaves you with some useful parts to build another Captain to lead a second Detachment! For the below model, I used some parts from the Rabble kit (legs, arms and beam pistol), the left hand and head from the Revolutionary Captain, and a torso from the Epirian SecDef kit just to help him to stand out a little more from the Broken horde.





To build your own army of revolutionary doom, you can pick up the Revolutionary Captain 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

The Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue comes with a whole slew of assorted bits and pieces that can be added to basic building shapes to pretty them up for the gaming table. Over the past couple of years, I've shared quite a few different ideas for base structures for those buildings, and I thought it might be useful to do a bit of a round-up to compile them all in one handy reference.





One of my favourite options, that I've gone back to many times over the years, is the cardboard gift box.





With minimal effort, these can be quickly turned into table-ready terrain with the addition of some detail bits and some paint.

For a few ideas, here's some previous build articles:

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For a slightly more detailed, but still mostly pre-made option, go for a wander through your local hardware store and look for interesting plastic shapes. Plastic storage trays, storm drain sections and various assorted plumbing fittings can all make great bases for buildings with a little imagination and some added detail.





You can find some tutorials and walkthroughs for putting these together here:

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On a sort-of related note, you can find all sorts of handy bits and pieces around the kitchen as well - Never throw anything out!





Some handy articles:

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If you feel are happy with building from scratch, you can of course work up whatever building shapes you want using standard modeling materials. Foamcore (AKA foamboard), plasticard, sturdy cardboard and foamed PVC can all be useful for creating more freeform shapes to suit yourself.





Some scratch-built building ideas:

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Finally, there are a whole host of premade and often inexpensive buildings out there on the market these days, made from MDF, cardboard or PVC which can be spruced up into something special with a few extra details here and there.





Check out these examples of kits given a little extra love:

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Do you have any clever building ideas that we haven't covered here? We'd love to see them in the Comm Guild Facebook group!



To get started on your own terrain adventure, you can pick up the Maelstrom's Edge terrain sprue, along with the rest of the Maelstrom's Edge model range in the webstore here.

For other Maelstrom's Edge modeling articles, including tutorials and walkthroughs of a wide range of different building and miniature projects, check out the Hobby section of the Maelstrom's Edge website here.