Project: Gothic City Damage

In doing the row house I want to create more of a ‘damaged feel’ than I did with the cathedral. I was a bit worried about this because when you are adding to a model you have lots of chances to see what the model will look like before you cross the point of no return. Doing battle damage, the moment you hack off a piece of plastic you’re committed to the way that looks. The only real option for fixing it is covering it up.

Laying out the flooring I discovered that it was going to be hard to create a 4th floor big enough for a 5-man sniper team. Also, if I make the interior accessible to hide guys in it really cuts down on the roof space. So instead I turned the 2nd floor into the sniper hole and blow the windows out to allow access to place models there.

Again all the windows on the ground floor are boarded up to block LOS. A Land Raider can hide behind this build, but tall models like Monoliths and Vendettas still have trouble.

Project: Gothic Rubble and Row Houses

Started on the base for the Row Houses. Right now the big job is the rubble piles and making them look like a collapsed building. I have a bag of old Hirst Arts blocks that I cast about 8 years ago that I am cutting up and using as the top layer of rubble. At the moment it looks ok, but we'll see if it look better after painting.



The row house itself is being glues together. For that I am using the amazing stuff called Gorilla Glue. When trying to use plastic glue I found these building would take a great deal of glue to make it solid. The snap-tight nature of these building tends to pop apart and it can be dynamic when it happens. So I called in the toughest glue I could find.

Next step is to start the fortification and building up of the non-collapsed house.

Project: Gothic City Row Houses

Building number 2 is a pair of row houses, one collapsed andone standing. Within the rubble of the collapsed row house is a tankemplacement. Both Houses are on one board so that the free standing row houseprovides cover and an LOS block for the tank emplacement.

The free standing row house will have a 3/4th story sniperposition with a fortified roof. The ground floor will again be an LOS blocklike the cathedral. The roof should be large enough for 2 IG squads. The second floor will have blown out windowsand another smaller fortified position.

The collapsed row house is made from the one spare door wayI had and some old terrain that came from the 3rd edition box set. I have acouple of other ones that I will use to give rubble piles some buildingelements.

The layout of the foam is done and the next step is to starton the rubble pile and tank emplacement.

Project: Gothic Cathedral Done

So the Cathedral is done. There are still a half dozen things I could do, but that is when you should stop with a terrain project. So the base has grass and the windows are not all blown out. I wanted to make this part not totally wrenched. When looking at ruined cities from World War 2, there is always a church left untouched. This is mine.

Painting went fast. That is how terrain goes. I was worried after priming and the first coat of color that I was going to hate it. However, at the second dry brush and adding the shrubs I started to see where it was going to end up. When I added the propaganda posters it all came together.

The model has lots of cool things like a wench to bring ammo up to the roof, Chaos graffiti on the back wall, Nuka Cola billboards used to cover windows, some gore and a flying car billboards as part of the flooring on the roof. These are the fun parts that make the whole things stand out for me.

Next up a pair of row house. I working on the layout now.

Project: Gothic Painting

Painting has started. I am using craft paint for the first time. There are a number of building to paint and I want to keep costs low. To save the detail on the Cathedral I did you spray primer.

The Cathedral itself was primed black and heavy dry brushed with med grey with a slight green tone and then light grey with a slight blue tone. This was to keep the building from being too monochrome. I want it to work as background, but not disappear.

On the base I am using Gesso to improve the toughness of the part that models will be moved around on. The light brown is some brown mixed with the Gesso. I will go back over it with a darker tone when it dries.

The air dry clay of the sandbags soaked up a great deal of paint. I still need to add some texture to the barricades to make them look more like dirt piles. I am still debating on sandbagging them.

Project: Gothic City Basing

Got a new foam cutter and started on the base of the structure. First the foam cutter, I called a friend who has great deal of exp using foam cutters (he is also cheap) and ask what I should be looking at. He pointed me to Hot Wire Foam Factory tools. They are not the cheapest, but they hold up and work the best. On his suggestion I picked up a Scroll Table as well.

Hot Wire Sculpting Tool

Hot Wire Scroll Table

Both tools came out to about $100. The Scroll Table is very useful. I can now make straight lines cuts. The base of the Cathedral is square, I would never have been able to make a perfect square without it. Both tools are plug in which means they stay hot better and don't have to worry about batteries. The sculpt tool is very nice and have given me a lot more option to use in the future of this project. Now on to the building.

I am using Joint Compound available at hardware store for about $10 for a 3lbs of the stuff. It is premixed plaster of paris that dries in about 8 hours. It gives me a more realistic ground base without being sandy. Part of it I will cover with turf and part will end up as mud.

I have started to add in 'trash' into the places that will be mud and cork rock (an excuses to drink wine while working) to areas there will be turf.

The building is not glued down yet waiting on painting.. so there is it so far.

Project: Gothic City Fortifying Buildings

Started fortifying Gothic cathedral. With the areas around fly buttresses and the roof there are 3 areas where a 10-man squad can bunker up. The ground floor windows are boarded up to keep those random LOS shots on tanks.

I used air dry clay to make the sandbags. They are lighter than Sculpey clay or green stuff. I made them on the big side 1/4" x 1/4" x 1". This makes them easier to make. It takes 24 hours to dry and the clay doesn't really stick to itself. I will have to go back and glue it back down to get them to hold up in game store play.