The alien invasion came from nowhere, but fortunately we were well prepared for any eventuality. The city took the worst of the damage, but it can be rebuilt. The bodies of the fallen cannot. The xenos scum lie dead around us, but there are more to fight. There are always more...
I've been building ruined hab blocks this week, and also spraying the buildings I'd made which were completely unpainted. This means that I now have nearly enough terrain to make a fully populated 6 x 4 table for games of Warhammer 40k, which is very exciting. So I thought I'd begin by sharing some pictures of everything as it currently is, along with a couple of armies who are clearly in the middle of slogging things out.
I cannot tell you how good this is all starting to look, although hopefully you can get an idea from the photos. I'm playing a game later this week, and will be using this terrain - I'll try to put a batrep on here shortly afterwards, to let you know how it works in practice.
But this week I particularly wanted to talk to you about the ruined hab blocks. I was given a set of three (thanks Andy!), and have built each set differently to give you an idea of what you can do with this. First of all, here's a picture of the sprues (this is one set).
In each set, you get enough parts to make a standard hab block, along with a couple of spare walls (one short, one long). All the parts, as you can see, are breakable along pre-defined lines. This means you have a huge amount of flexibility when building them - although you do have to think hard about how you want it to end up before building, so you can ensure that the breaks are in the places you want them.
As always, it's simple to build these - although I suspect if I hadn't built a few normal hab blocks first I might have struggled. As mentioned already, you do have to be careful to make sure everything lines up properly before committing to glue. You also have to be careful when pushing the parts out - because there are so many break lines it's quite easy to snap the wrong bit. If you do this, however, it's easily fixed with a dab of pva glue and a bit of patience. One other thing to be aware of is that (as always) it's worth keeping bits - on one of the models I turned a spare bit of broken wall upside down, and was able to use it to make a third floor section.
You can see what I made in the images below. Each of these images is one separate kit, and you'll see that you can achieve a huge variety of sizes and styles. They're all magnetised, too, so fit well with the other terrain from the range.
Some of these took a bit of work to get right - and not only did I turn the odd bit upside down to maximize its use, I also cut a few bits with a pair of old clippers to make them fit better. These kits are designed to be bashed, and although there's a massive amount you can do just using the pre-defined cuts, if you're willing to go just a little further you can get a lot out of them. I built seven sets of ruins from three packs - and I could have made more (but they would have been less substantial).
One last thing to be aware of is that, although these can be magnetised, and they do clip together with existing hab block terrain, the nature of ruins is that they aren't necessarily very modular. You can't easily stack them, for example - the one I built that has three floors is very definitely glued together! One of the beauties of the Mad Gaming Terrain system is its modularity, and although these ruins aren't as modular as the standard set, they still go well with everything else, and it's very easy to make things line up.
Next week I'll begin to talk about walkways, which connect everything together in even more diverse ways. I'll also be playing the first of many games on this terrain, so watch this space to find out more about that in due course!