A detailed account of my various commission/hobby projects.
Warhammer 40,000 – 8th edition continues to shine as my group tries playing through various size battle and themes to see what we like best in 8th. I've owned Fantasy Arc's Bug Hunt Corridors for some time now and I will eventually complete all the parts I have so i can justify picking up some of his cool new rooms and specialty corridors.
Read MoreAlien vs Predator – As a kid I was a huge fan of both of these franchises. I had my grandfather build me a pulse rifle out of wood so I could run around pretending to blast Xenomorphs. I bought the Bug Hunt Corridoors because I always wanted to play out the scenes on LV426. My wife picked up the Alien Archive book which I've been referencing along with the blue ray disks to make my terrain look great and be close to the movie. So I guess you could say I'm a fan. (My boys recently snatched some of the action figures off my bookshelf and have been playing with them, they also grabbed the predators I have the cracked tusk, scavenge and stealth mode mail order versions.)
Read MoreTerrain Making – Now I can have joining rooms. The next sections I worked on are the two-side corridor rooms these sections allow to have a room on both sides of the section. If I had the narrow side rooms this would be perfect to set up a row of holding cells as it if it works pretty good to add some additional interest areas and potential ambush sites.
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Terrain Building – Sorting through the sections of Bug Hunt Corridors I have left to paint and build, I can across some nifty components that I forgot were included in the pledge.
First up were some nifty acrylic counters to indicate if doors are locked or open, these are pretty cool and I'm sure I'll use them once we start laying some games on this terrain set. They fit right over the tabs that are used to slide the doors open and closed so very useful counters.
Next is the really cool bonus bit: The Ganeway Load Lifter. This wonder of engineering is used to move around the hex crates that were also included in the pledge. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to be available for general sale which means this was a Kickstarter Exclusive. Really a shame because I'd love to pick up a few more of them since the model turned out so cool.
When I first dumped out the tiny little baggy of parts I thought it was going to be a giant pain to assemble. In actuality it took me less then five minutes to glue the hole thing together. Really impressive and full of character. I haven't decided how I want to paint it up yet so I'll put it in the pile with the load of crates to be taken care of at a later date.
Terrain Making – Just a short update today, I realize these posts are starting to get a little repetitive, but bear with me. I've gotten the three end rooms painted and assembled for this project. Painting and assembly is the same as the rest of the project which you can read more about here.
Read MoreTerrain Making – Next up in my quest to complete this giant terrain set are a few of the standard side rooms. These attach to a corridor section and swap out with the narrow side rooms (for if you need to put a bunch of rooms next to each other.) Painting these uses the same technique as the other sections which you can read about here.
Read MoreTerrain Making – Slow and steady is a reasonable pace or at least that's what I keep telling myself. I've been doing pretty good sticking with this project for most of the month so far and am really happy with my progress so far.
Read MoreTerrain Making – I've finally wrapped up gluing all the roof sections, crates and loader for this project. These are the items I decided made more sense to assemble prior to painting. The kits go together really easily and it's so nice having all the parts cut out and packaged in neat little baggies. I didn't have any missing or broken parts which is quite the feat considering how many tiny pieces there are in each section.
Read MoreTerrain Making – So the template idea I had for the railings didn't really work out. Because of how small the bars are it was difficult to keep my acetate template in place (probably should have cut it from masking material or used stencil adhesive). So rather than hold up my progress to figure it out I opted to just freehand the lines. I'm sure a decal or stencil would probably be more consistent but this works.
Read MoreTerrain Making – My first personal project of the new year is to get my Bug Hunt Corridors set painted and assembled. This is a major undertaking as I backed this project pretty heavily so I have a ton of little baggies full of burned wood. I started the project putting together all 18 of the straight sections (I held back with three of them as I think I need to get some stairwell parts to make best use of my roof parts and make a complex you can use in regular games as well).
Read MoreTerrain Building – I recently picked up the roofs to match the Bug Hunt Corridors terrain that I kickstarted a while back. Because it was a limited time deal I felt I should get them so I can use the terrain set for more than just the inside of a ship or building complex. With the roofs added they can suddenly be used as freestanding building in their own right which opens up their use in big games of Warhammer 40K, Relic Knights, MERCS, and other sci-fi games.
Read MoreRandom – After what seems like forever some of the Kickstarters I've backed are finally deliverying. Honestly it's pretty crazy when these massive boxes show up at the house. This has been a great week as two arrived at the same time.
First to arrive was my Bug Hunt Coridoors, this laser cut terrain replicates the station from the Aliens movie and is going to look amazing once I have time to sit down and paint it then assemble it. Looking at the sections it seems that if I build everything first I'm never going to be able to get a brush into all the nooks and crannies.
The box was massive and smells interesting, the wood doesn't quite smell like burnt wood but slightly different. Each piece is bagged with all the compaonents needed to assemble it and there is an extensive print out of how to put everything togther. For a project done by a single guy in his garage I'm really impressed with the quality and can't wait to put this together. If you haven't seen it yet Rob Hawkins did an amazing display board using these parts for Sedition Wars. I'm considering doing something similar however this project is going to have to wait until my marines are complete.
Next up Zombicide Season 2 arrived. I couldn't really pass this one up as the few games I've played with the core game have been really fun. With the Kickstarter you go a pretty decent amount of freebies for backing the expansion so I jumped in. As with the other project this was a huge box full of stuff. I like the though C'MoN put into the packaging for the shipping box. They had nice styrofoam spacers that kept everything from moving around and a nice cardboard box to hold all the Stretch goals. Little things like this show they continue to learn from each kickstarter project, and their business model of using Kickstarter as a preorder system is working for them.
