Monday 10 August 2009

Reaching for the sky, well kind of anyway

Good evening everybody, time for an update on the building project. As some of you may know I managed to get my hands on two strongpoint boxes two weeks ago. I really couldn't resist, especially with them being two for the price of one! Not quite sure I'd really like the kit all that much, but how could I resist this great deal.

After cleaning all the sprues last weeks (and turning two boxes into a single one), I have to say that the Planetstrike building kits are quite nice. Very pleased GW had the (common) sense to add some texture to the walls and defense segments, that will really help people from all skill levels to turn them into great looking pieces of scenery.

So far I've discovered that if you keep a few things in mind, the Bastion is a sheer joy to put together:
- There are a few corners (especially the ground bunker level) that don't fit together thighly. Luckily this does not influence the structutal integrety as all the parts and surfaces that need glueing line up just fine. So a quick greenstuff fix will take care of those holes.

- Be careful when glueing corners of the higher levels together, things may seem to fit perfectly but that may not line up when you add that last wall segment. Some gentle bending and bashing may be needed.

- It may not be the smartest thing to fully assemble a bastion, this due to the holes in the top level (the grates). If you leave the part you can see through there (on the inside of the bastion) plastic it will look bad when looking into the top bunker. A quick brush with some Chaos Black will fix this and I greatly suspect that I'm one the few people who even noticed this.

- A lott of this stuff also works quite well with Cities of Death sprues, however it will take a bit of trail-and-error as cities of death wall segments don't line up with all bits.

- Cities of death sprues line up perfectly with the higher level bits of the bastion kit. The bunker section, however, is about 1,5 cm lower than the cities of death bits. Which equals a ton of cutting and filing, slowly turning my apartment floor light grey, to make everything work.

- The higher level wall segments are an absolute threat to combine though, this as they are the same height and weight. For the bigger pieces we're talking exact same volume and for the individual wall panels of CoD it works out perfectly if you glue two of them together. Personally I can't wait to see what people will come up with when combining those kits. If forsee some cathedrals and a full blown admech complex on the web somewhere in the not so far future.

Now on the stuff everybody is really interested in, the pictures (click images for bigger version). The Vault / Library at in its current form, apologies for all the clutter. I ran out of space to put stuff as two strongpoint boxes and several CoD sprues take up quite a bit of space:


Right now we're looking at a variant on the Indominatable Fortress:
- Two Bastions
- Left Bastion - 3 automatic weapons
- Right Bastion - 4 automatic weapons and a comms relay
- Bunker/Vault entrance - stairs leading down to the underground storage facility and to the left and right of the corridor raised firing positions. Plan to add a walkway between the both and count it as a single bunker and the official entrance into the Fortress (instead of using the main tower as dictated by GW's suggested rules in Planetstrike).
- Not sure yet on AA guns, both the Lascannon and Autocannon turrets just look so great.

And a quick pic of the back:


Quite pleased with is so far, though there's still tons and tons of stuff to work on before I can even dream about starting to undercoat and paint the rather colossal contraption.

So what do you guys think? And keep an eye out for a new update on tuesday, need to do some work on my thesis tomorrow

4 comments:

  1. Pure awesomeness heph. Truly inspiring

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  2. It is indeed, but dear lord Id be nervous of damaging it.

    Looking forward to seeing how you paint it, though I don't envy you having all that detail to do.

    Any chance of a blog swap Heph?

    Cheers
    E

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  3. Certainly mate, just added your blog to my slowly, but steadily increasing follow list!

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  4. Thanks Mate. Looking forward to seeing this beast finished.

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