Always police your brass

A few items here.  First, another wonderful mini from Victoria, part of the Highland Moss Guard series.  The kneeling versions offer so much flexibility.  They can be used for weapons teams, or for fun poses such as this, interacting with the base.

In addition, there are some shell casings from Secret Weapon miniatures on the base (which was made from backed sculpey, by the way!).

The shell casings add a wonderful extra detail.  Just a few here and there enhance the theme greatly.

I am working on the last tartan pattern now... pics of that either late tonight or tomorrow!

Let there be light!

With the lower walls complete, and the interior ready as well, it was time to complete the highest level.

Many functions are expected from this level.  It will provide the majority of the light on the inside of the board... from outside and within.  Any false moves here, and I might cancel out one or both of those light sources!!

I worked my way around the top level.  Mostly at a disadvantage, since I could only glue so many of the pieces together.  Some painter's tape is all that is holding these semi-assembled sections together for now.

At last!  Upper level in place.

Interior bracing.  Just like the lower levels, the idea is to increase the thickness of the walls with those decorative pieces.  Ideally, tripling or even quadrupling the width in places, while still allowing as much light as possible into the structure.

More bracing on the exterior.

All the struts and buttresses in place.

At this stage, I would have to transverse the central knave with arches.  These would have to reach all the way down to the columns, but no block too much of the light/views of the interior.

This would be complicated by the size of the LED lights that I was using.  You will see why later.

Here are the first raw cut sections of those arches.  There will be lots of details and secondary arches added to these which will make them more interesting and much stronger.

Here is a hint at what they would have to support.  Keep in mind that the roof is, in it's own way, going to act like a cantilevered bridge.  The structure of the roof itself is designed to be self supporting... or as much as possible :-)

I wish I could have glued these in place, but they will be one of the last things added.  I will have to add much of the details to them separately... making it more of a challenge.

The three basic pieces are done.  There will be lateral arches which sprout from them, and bracing will be supplied in that same sneaky method of 'details'.

Here is a shot with just one bank of lights turned on.  You can see how dramatic the effect is against the backdrop of the very warm kitchen lights.

The source!  I found these at the Home Depot last week.  There is a second bank like this on the other side of the knave.  You can see how I didn't have as much room as I was expecting (a fraction of an inch, but is was a key fraction!)

All in all, there are four sets of LED lights going into the ceiling.  I think it will provide the most light of any of my previous structures, which actually had more lights!

I am truly hoping that people will be able to see the stained glass effect.

Next up, building up the roof section.  Stay tuned!!!!

The rockets red glare

After numerous changes to the list here and there for a variety of reasons, it has been determined that there is only one Exorcist tank.  Time is definitely a consideration, as it took a number of hours to create this conversion.

Obviously, I used a Secret Weapon RAV 6 x 6 chassis for the basis of the vehicle.  Some of you might be familiar with the extra armor skirts that I created for it a while back, which I used for the Weathering and Battle Damage video.

Using some bits, some plasticard and polystyrene tubing, I worked furiously to get this thing completed.

There were some other things I had intended to do with it.. such as creating a driver (I had even saved some parts), but the clock has run out, and I have to move on.

Still, I think it gets the idea across!

There was something else as well.  I used up the last of my large gauge tubing on this turret, and there's no way I can get more in time.

I put a hatch in place of the driver for now.  Again, more stuff was planned, but I had to be able to get at everything with the brushes in a limited amount of time!

Some shots of the turret primed, which helps to eliminate all the distractions of the kaleidoscope of colors!  I am painting this now, so pictures late tomorrow night!

What's on the inside...

Time to get these walls a little higher!!  Here's where I left you in the last post.

I continued to add the exterior elements, such as the bracing, so that the lower levels would be more stable, allowing me to go higher.

It did get somewhat tricky, as I tried not to glue the wrong parts together!  I had to wipe away glue more than once.

Now that all the exterior bracing was complete, I started to add the same elements to the interior.  Those were more complicated, since they would have to bear more load.  The pieces on the outside were as much for decoration as for support.

The most complicated bit was going to be these upper sections of walls, which would have to be set back about an inch.  The roof is going to be relatively heavy, since it will hold a bunch of LED lights (chock full of batteries!) and a bunch of miniatures.

I think this view gives you an even better sense of the 'verticality' that I am after.

Some of the upper sections are in place.  Keeping them aligned was definitely a challenge.  Even more so when I could not glue the main pieces together.

A view from the inside.  While I need columns to support the weight of the roof, I need to make sure there is enough room for all the statues, which will help tell the story of the army.

Oh yeah... and there are supposed to be miniatures in there!! :-)

The corners of the knave were encased, which set the level for the height of the support columns.

Speaking of which... time to make some columns!  These are going to be relatively simple, since there is already a lot going on in that space.

These four spots will carry a good chunk of the weight.  The two on the edge of the board will have to hold up even more, since the back of the structure needs to be wide open.

The upper sections are braced with decorative elements, similar to what I did on the lower levels.

With these extra pieces glued to either side of the thin walls, I have now effectively tripled the thickness (and the strength) of the walls!  Now I have the open feel of the thin .25 inch walls, with the structural integrity of .75 inch walls.

Starting to put the columns in place.  Stay tuned for more!

The Cathedral rises

Army board time!

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to find a push cart at Home Depot to mount the board.  

This will make it a lot easier to move the display board around, and it also means I have a place to put all the miniatures, books, and other paraphernalia that I am going to need.

The top shelf was much more narrow than what I normally do for my display boards, so a lot of changes had to be made from the original plans.  On the square board, the cathedral was going to be in the corner, with the Aegis Defense Line around one edge.

As you can see, the orientation has changed, with everything lined up on center. I have also added a number of pieces to the ADL.  It will help for actual game play as well, giving me many more options.

Many things are now going in different places.  This is also dictated by the extra tanks.  My original list only had two... but that number has doubled.  Obviously, those take up quite a bit of floor space!

You can see me plotting out the first few walls, using that .25 inch pink foam that I discovered the same day as the cart.  It really is amazing stuff, giving me the opportunity to create those delicate shapes.

A side benefit of the thinned gauge foam is that more miniatures will fit in the structure.  Last year's board lost a ton of room to the thicker foam.

You can see the new pieces of ADL in place, including a few ruined bits.  More walls are created for the lowest level.  It is so much easier to cut the window shapes from this foam!!!!  There are also a number of statue pedestals scattered about...

I am really looking forward to all the rose windows!  So much light will be allowed into the cathedral, just like the real ones.  I will still be placing my LED lights inside, however.

You can see that I am trying to form the 'T' shape in order to create a knave.  It will have to be more "column and pillar free" than the original plan, but that's how there things go.  Sometimes you have to adjust on the fly.

Using a little painter's tape to hold things in place, I started to work up to the next level.

After getting the 'mid level' in place, I started to cut out the shapes for the all important upper level.  This one is very important, since I think it is the best chance to see the stained glass effect from both inside and out.

Yes, you heard that right... stained glass!  More on that in the next post.

A view of the interior.  I am not sure if the big statue will be there or not in the end, but it would be fun to include it.  In any case, it will be removable.

To paint this, I am trying to keep things in pieces during this construction phase.  It will be a lot easier to get everything painted that way than trying to reach into dark crevices with a brush!  I tried this out to a much simpler degree on last year's board, and that was a huge help.

To try and make things more stable, I have been adding the extra ribs, being careful not to glue things together that will need to be taken apart later!

You can see that I have worked up more levels with the ribbing.  I have spent many hours adding these to the interior and exterior.  This is helping to hold things in place as I create decorative elements as well.

Tank terrain

Here's another great product from Secret Weapon Miniatures!  This has all kinds of great uses.

It's a destroyed tank, and as you can see, it has three elements.

They can be placed in all sorts of different positions and still look great!

The turret is very impressive.  And it makes fantastic barricade.

This is one way to truly represent what a messed up tank really is.  Paper counters or upside down tanks are not quite the same.

Here is the last piece of the set.

These can work very well with a diorama/display board (as I am doing), or as stand alone terrain pieces (which I am also doing!)

I put a few miniatures in with the set so that you get an idea of scale, and how it is a much better representation of 'cover', now that everything is reliant on TLOS.

As always, you don't have to wash or scrub this down.  No nasty mould release residue!