Follow Your Blisstonia

After a few more setbacks over the last week concerning my nascent Chaos Daemons army, I've decided to put that 40k project aside for now and return to more familiar ground. For whatever reason I couldn't get my Slaaneshi mojo working so instead I have switched back to the Blisstonian 9th, my Simpsons-inspired Imperial Guard regiment. Also at this point I would much rather spend my time painting than building another army. I still want to do the Daemon thing but that can wait as it is not something I want to rush or do half-heartedly. Thus onto my beloved Blisstonia...

When I was last working on these guys I had become bogged down with the very first penal squad of the army. I may have to rethink their color scheme or at least change my approach to painting it as I remember those Guardsmen not being very much fun. In the meantime however I am going to begin by painting Techpriest Smithers and his squad of servitors, the Drones of Sector 7G. This seems appropriate too in that they were the first unit I included when developing the theme for this army. I'd also always planned on painting them in a different set of colors from the rest of the army, so that way I can work on them without knowing exactly how I will proceed with the main portion of the Blisstonian 9th.

As evidenced by the extremely early WIP photo seen above, I only sat down to begin painting these servitors a few minutes ago. Therefore I am eager to get back to it while I still have time this evening. Hopefully I can get more done on my Blisstonians than I did with the Slaaneshi daemons before I once again change directions. Despite how fickle I can be, that still shouldn't be too hard considering how little progress I actually made on the Chaos Dameons. Hmm, maybe Tzeentch would have better suited my hobby temperament after all.

Happy painting and gaming!

Rubble by Nesbet

One of the bloggers I've been lucky enough to get to know this past year is Nesbet, author of Nesbet Miniatures who as it so happens is something of a renaissance man of our hobby. His breadth of knowledge is remarkable so that I'm now convinced there is nothing he can't do. You may even have recently seen Nesbet's technical and artistic savvy on display as part of Dark Future Games' search for a new banner design. My only complaint is that he doesn't post on his blog more often. I understand however he is a busy guy and has to spend much time playing bloody sudoku! with his miniatures' bases. :)

Tonight I want to show off some terrain pieces Nesbet made for me some months ago as part of a trade we hashed out over the summer. In return for the stack of movement tray bits I had leftover from working on Sector 7G, Nesbet agreed to make a batch of rubble and debris for me to incorporate into my urban ruins. He's actually not even a 40k player which makes these even more impressive to me, especially considering I gave him only the vaguest of instructions from which to work.

I'm not sure how he made this set of terrain (plaster?) but I really like it a lot and I think he did a great job making detailed, interesting scenery for my games. I haven't yet decided if I want to leave them loose for use as scatter pieces or if I would rather make them part of larger ruined structures. Either way I expect they'll look great once painted. Like many other projects, however, that will have to wait a while longer with all that I have going on now. I likely won't get back to work on Sector 7G until after AdeptiCon, but at that time this custom terrain specially imported all the way from Chile will no doubt become one of my top priorities.

Until then I have ordered some of the few remaining survivors of the cursed Haverbrook 212th Grenadiers to reconnoiter these rubble fields, as well as provide us with a better sense of scale. Initial reports indicate that they will make my gameboard look awesome...

... moving in for confirmation.

Confirmed, the terrain is awesome!

Thanks again to Nesbet for the killer terrain. If anyone is so inclined to let him know what you think of his hobby talents, you can find him at Nesbet Miniatures. Cheers!

Plant Manager Burns Finished

Last night I finished working on Plant Manager Burns, my counts-as Primaris Psyker for the Blisstonian 9th. Overall I'm happy with the results and will gladly put Burns down on the table, leading his army of disgruntled workers in defense of Sector 7G. I think the astropath miniature turned out well and does a good job of expressing the contempt in which Burns holds his minions. In particular I like the jutting jaw and his pallid complexion.

As can be seen in the pictures there are quite a few things I could try to fix but I'm satisfied for now and am ready to move on. The parchment tacked to his staff turned out rather messy as I was impatient and used a wash without waiting long enough for the lettering to dry. Also the staff itself looks unfinished but I've never been able to paint those properly. I did spend some time trying to fix the weird highlighting on his robes which I noticed in my earlier WIP photo, but a few prominent areas still look pretty funky. Nonetheless these issues don't bother me enough for me to want to put more work into this guy and I like where he's at now.

Plant Manager Burns is complete, up next for painting will be the first squad of Blisstonian 9th penal legionnaires.

The Drones of Sector 7G (Illustrated)

A couple of weeks ago Old School Terminator of Dark Future Games posted an interesting piece entitled "How Do You Pick Units? How Do You Build Your Army?" In it he examines the thought process that he goes through when planning out an army, offering up his Tyranid army as a very thorough example of how it works in practice. I find these trips through a gamer's list-making mind fascinating and informative, in addition to highlighting for me just how different people's approaches to army building can be, and indeed to the game itself. OST hoped to start an open discussion on this topic and asked for additional examples of this, so I thought it might be interesting (well, for me at least...) to do the same for my new Imperial Guard army that is just now getting underway.

In OST's case he studies the attributes of his favorite few units from the codex and then develops a theme for his army around those key features, selecting additional units that will allow his to play the style of army he envisions and to meet specific strategic needs. I admire his clarity of thought and his careful consideration of the impact his choices have on his army's tactics and overall performance. My own approach to building an army is perhaps somewhat more... quixotic? Keep that in mind as I do not mean to present this an example of good army-list building technique but really more as a contrast to the well-reasoned approach of someone with tactical acumen like OST. So with that caveat, let's being:

The Drones of Sector 7G

Sometime during the summer I began to think that it would be fun to put together and paint some models to go with my 40k terrain project, named "Sector 7G" in honor of that part of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant where Homer Simpson works. In one episode Mr. Burns points to Homer and asks who he is, to which Smithers responds, "One of you drones in Sector 7G." From that little exchange came the idea of putting together a squad of servitors and so that I could eventually let them wander around the table in scenario games blasting away randomly at nearby targets and being a nuisance for the competing armies. They'd be my drones and I'd have another Simpsons reference in my gaming nonsense... hooray, mission accomplished!

I call the middle one "Grimey."

I was quite satisfied with having a handful of zombie-like, cyborg workers run amuck on my table and left it at that for a while. It eventually occurred to me though that if I'm going to have a bunch of servitors, why not include a Techpriest to lead them in their efforts to repair 7G? Thus was born Techpriest Enginseer Smithers, as well as the realization that I could take the joke even further and put together a Springfield power plant-themed army to represent the workers and defenders of my Imperial manufactorums. I've been trying to find a way to get excited about the Guard again after several years away from them, having previously played a conventional Infantry Co. style list with LRBT platoon in support, and so even the most tenuous of connections to the Simpsons proved to be enough inducement for to me start a new army. Ever one to beat a joke in ground, especially bad ones, I was off to get my Codex to see what other things could be twisted to my silly plan.

Techpriest Enginseer Smithers

With the themed I'd chosen, I would obviously have to somehow include Mr. Burns himself in my army. After searching through a lot of potential models, I settled on using the Astropath from the Imperial Advisors pack. I think he has a suitably frail yet sinister appearance for playing the role of Mr. Burns. I don't want someone as important as Monty Burns to be just a mere astropath, however, so I promoted him to Primaris Psyker and thus he can appropriately be the leader of my army. Maybe in the 41st millennium Plant Manager Burns would be a psyker, though I prefer instead thinking of his powers as representing his control over the Sector's automatic defenses (Lightning Arc) and the dread he inspires in others (Nightshourd). Also, as my opponents are likely to recognize the model as an Imperial astropath, I'm hopeful that it will be easy enough to explain that he's just a simple counts-as Primaris Psyker.

Plant Manager Burns

Next up for consideration was the section of Troops, from which I elected to employ Penal Legion squads. These guys will provide the labor force needed to keep 7G humming along despite the massive damage it's suffered, in addition to being responsible for defending the plant in times of danger. I didn't want to worry about the command structure that you get with Infantry Platoons, nor did I feel the grunts of 7G befitting of the prestige and myriad special weapons available to Veteran squads. The independently functioning nature of Penal Legion squads seemed like a good way of portraying the various work details, each lead by a Crew Boss but otherwise with nothing special about the members of the squad. The deployment options gained from being Scouts should help them get to their job sites faster, while being Stubborn should let them demonstrate their tenacity and commitment to their work.

I've chosen to use Kolony Militia heads from Pig Iron as a way of suggesting the faceless, anonymous regard in which Plant Manager Burns sees his workers. On the subject of modeling, I would like to note that I am gluing on grenades despite Penal Legionnaires not being armed with them. I foresee possibly wanting to adapt this collection sometime down the road into a more traditional mechanized veterans type of army and therefore would like to keep my options as open as possible concerning WYSIWYG. That way, whether working for now at Sector 7G or on some other battlefield in the future, I expect these minis to be versatile enough to serve me for years to come. Here then are the first of the Blisstonian* 9th Volunteers:

Work detail, Blisstonian 9th Volunteers

At about this point my wife asked what I was up to and, upon hearing of my plans for another Simpsons 40k project, pointed out that I had overlooked an important asset available to Mr. Burns... his hounds. She insisted that during a game Mr. Burns be able to "release the hounds," or else my army of cartoon references would be an unmitigated failure.

Of course! She was right and I thought it was a great idea but was initially unsure as to how to do that with Imperial Guard. My first idea was to go with a squad of Rough Riders as Burns' hounds, modeled using Chaos Warhounds and sporting a variety of comical laser guns and rockets. Something about this didn't seem right, especially as the models would have a much lower profile than a normal squad of Guard cavalry. I then pictured Burns sitting next to one of his dogs, which somehow stirred within my mind the image of a fire-belching IG sentinel. I liked that and decided Plant Manager Burns would have Sentinel squadrons as his hounds. Initially I was leaning toward Armoured Sentinels, but after playing around with some various lists I now believe I will most likely build them as Scout Sentinels. This is partly due to the Scout variants being cheaper in points but also because I now really like the Pig Iron heads and want to also use them for my vehicle crews.

Release the hounds! Well... build the hounds, then release them!

I've mentioned before that I had ordered the Manticore/Deathstrike kit just because I really liked the model and thought it could be fun to use in scenario or narrative gaming. At the time I had no intention of including it in an army, but I saw this Drones project as a great excuse to make use of the Deathstrike Missile Launcher which I'd already assembled some months ago. It's a highly unpredictable, one-shot gimmick in which to invest precious points, hence why it's probably one of the least deployed weapons in the Imperial Guard's tabletop wars. But the doomsday quality of the Deathstrike seems to me like just the sort of thing Plant Manager Burns would want to have at his disposal. I concede that it is really more of a Hank Scorpio type of thing, but I believe Burns40k would also see the value in a weapon of such destructive potential. One should be enough at a thousand points but when this army grows any larger, I'd like to include more of them.... Kaboom!

"Exxxxcellent."

Casting about for more ways to expand on the army's theme, I recalled Mr. Burns' preference for the "personal touch you only get with hired goons." Therefore to act as his bodyguard, keeping Burns safe from xenos and disgruntled employee alike, as well as to give his authority some extra muscle, I've chosen to include a Storm Trooper squad equipped with the army's only pair of special weapons. I had tucked away enough of the older style of storm trooper miniatures to make up a full squad of them and was happy to see that their gas mask faces appeared to be a good match for the Pig Iron ones I was using on the rest of the army.

Hired Goons

I would like to have a way for those Storm Troopers to get around the battlefield more quickly and the IG Valkyrie has got to be one of the coolest kits ever released by Games Workshop. Mr. Burns is conveniently known to ride in style so for this army I'll be including an IG bird to serve as his limousine, but one that is armored and flying because it's the future! Even if it's guaranteed to get shot down every game, this is one of those units I really want to play around with as it just looks like a fun model to have. When I get back to expanding on Sector 7G, one of the first terrain pieces I plan on adding will be a landing pad so I don't think a single flyer would look terribly out of place in this collection. Also, should things turn against Plant Manager Burns, I'm sure he'd appreciate being able to make a speedy departure.

Burns' armored, flying limo

It would be reasonable for the Imperium to keep an eye on someone like Burns so to round out my HQ section I've included a Lord Commissar. Again I did not want to go with any of the infantry command squads for this particular army, thereby hopefully avoiding any confusion about Burns being an astropath. I do think however that a commissar could fit in nicely and monitor both Plant Manager Burns and those loaf-about carbon blobs of the Blisstonian 9th. The commissar with the plasma pistol and sword is another of my favorite models that I've looked forward to painting for a long time so he goes into the list-mix, too. Overseeing this entire operation will therefore be a stern and dutifully suspicious member of the Emperor's Nuclear Regulatory Commissariat.

Emperor's Nuclear Regulatory Commissar

Another individual whom I felt compelled to include in my army was a Homer stand-in of some sort. Fortunately I've got Guardsman Marbo to adapt to my purposes, and as GW saw fit to simply reverse the letters of one syllable, so shall I. My counts-as Marbo will therefore be known as "Safety Inspector Moher." While I still haven't entirely planned out this conversion, I'll probably end up using mostly Catachan parts and one of these tox-guard heads from MaxMini. I plan on replacing the usual demolition charge with a dangerously mishandled radioactive fuel rod. Thus in true Homerian fashion, Safety Inspector Moher will be both a champion of his fellow workers and simultaneously one of the greatest threats to their lives.

My inspiration for Safety Inspector Moher

By now I was pretty happy with the army lists I had drawn up and was ready to stop at the 1500 point mark. I thought the inspiration well had run dry and that I wouldn't be able to wring anything more out of the codex. I looked at some other heavy support choices and more elite options but couldn't see a good way to work any of them into my theme. I did not want to force anything in that doesn't belong and thought to myself, "Oh well, I don't need to fill the FOC completely." The list making was done, or so I believed until I remembered one last thing...

Lawyers! I have no doubt that Plant Manager Burns would want legal council while navigating the many byzantine layers of Imperial governance and the myriad perils that would entail. Burns' legal defense team will be played by the more bookish-appearing Inquisitor henchmen models and will be a counts-as Psyker Battle Squad for the army. I don't think it will be too hard for people to accept that their powers, Weaken Resolve and Soulstorm, represent the terrifying potency of such an aggressively litigious group of attorneys. I'm not too sure what to do about the unit's overseer, though I'm considering using either a Necromunda Enforcer or a spare commissar model to help keep the egg-heads in check.

The start of Burns' legal defense team.

And that was basically it... ta-da! As best as I can recall that was the thought process I went through in developing my plans for this project. So this time around at least there wasn't much worry given over to tactical performance or cost efficiency and instead most of my decisions were based on the visual and interpretive expression of my chosen theme. Along the way I wrote out a bunch of different army lists to see how the point totals were shaping up and am still tinkering some on the margins with the leftover points. Below are the lists that I'm going to be incrementally building toward for use in Sector 7G. Thanks for sticking with me through all that and indulging me in this narcissistic exercise. While I may have nothing enlightening to offer in all this prattle, at a minimum I hope I've explained how my army came about, one which I'm sure to most veteran generals would likely appear to be just an odd and hopelessly outclassed assortment of units masquerading as an army. I imagine the more cut-throat gamers will still snicker and roll their eyes, but you've now seen why I'm willing to put the effort into making this a reality.

And so at long last, the army lists:

Primaris Psyker

Techpriest Enginseer: 5 servitors, heavy bolter, mult-melta

Psyker Battle Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Scout Sentinel: heavy flamer

Total Points = 500

Primaris Psyker

Techpriest Enginseer: 5 servitors, heavy bolter, mult-melta

10 Storm Troopers: plasma pistol, meltagun, plasma gun

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

2 Scout Sentinels: heavy flamers

Deathstrike Missile Launcher

Total Points = 1000

Lord Commissar: plasma pistol, power weapon

Primaris Psyker

Techpriest Enginseer: 5 servitors, heavy bolter, mult-melta

10 Storm Troopers: plasma pistol, meltagun, plasma gun

Guardsman Marbo

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

3 Scout Sentinels: heavy flamers

Valkyrie Assault Carrier: multiple rocket pods, heavy bolters

Deathstrike Missile Launcher

Deathstrike Missile Launcher

Total Points = 1500

Lord Commissar: plasma pistol, power weapon

Primaris Psyker

Techpriest Enginseer: 5 servitors, heavy bolter, mult-melta

Psyker Battle Squad: 5 additional Sanctioned Psykers

10 Storm Troopers: plasma pistol, meltagun, plasma gun

Guardsman Marbo

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

Penal Legion Squad

2 Scout Sentinels: heavy flamers, smoke launchers

2 Scout Sentinels: heavy flamers, smoke launchers

Valkyrie Assault Carrier: multiple rocket pods, heavy bolters

Deathstrike Missile Launcher

Deathstrike Missile Launcher

Deathstrike Missile Launcher: dozer blade

Total Points = 2000

I've got about another week left of vacation and plenty still to assemble and prime before going home to the enveloping humidity of the South. I try to remain as flexible and open as possible so if anyone thinks of any Simpson references that I've missed but could include in this project, please let me know. As always, I welcome any and all suggestions, criticisms, angry muttering, et cetera. I know it was a lot to go through with the only reward being a few pictures of unpainted miniatures. Oh joy. Thanks again for letting me share with you my thoughts about this army... updates to come as things get painted.

*In episode #5F23 of season 9, “The Joy of Sect,” Homer joins a cult whose leader promises to take his followers away to the planet Blisstonia. Great episode, I highly recommend it.

Rogue Shots

Not too long ago I posted a picture showing off the progress I'd made in putting together my ongoing terrain project. Rogue Pom has also been working on some cool scenery pieces lately (you can check out his most recent work here) and asked if he could see some of my buildings from another angle for better reference. He's now planning out some construction work of his own and as I'm happy to help out, not to mention pad my post-count a little, here's a few additional shots of Sector 7G:

If anyone wishes to see more photos, perhaps of specific buildings, just let me know and I will be happy to get them posted. I plan on eventually showing off each piece individually in more detail once I start painting them. Considering my usual pace at completing hobby projects, I'm sure that day will still be quite a while from now.

Tonight my wife and I are going to Canada to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and then tomorrow I should be able to start priming and painting the Imperial Guard that I brought with me on vacation. The weather here is just as I'd hoped it would be and I do not foresee any problems with humidity. Woo-hoo!

If I Can Prime It There

It's been a rough couple of weeks for me with familial sadness in no short measure, but the Emperor has no time for whiners so let's get to it. After several more scattered nights of construction, Sector 7G now consists of 12 buildings and one space filler, enough to cover an area 32" square as can be seen in the picture above. There's still more to be built as I now aim to eventually double the current size of this cityscape, but I'm ready to move on to something else for the time being. I made a number of really dumb mistakes while putting together the last few buildings and have had my fill of sawing through floor sections. Also I've not detailed anymore pieces since the last update but that's easy work. I'm not worried about finding some spare time here and there to finish them off.

As desperate as I am to get back to painting, brushwork continues to be on hold as the weather on the Carolina coast has been brutal and I have not been brave enough to try any priming in the heat and humidity. The few late-night priming sessions I attempted have been rained out so I'm not sure what to do. My experiments priming with gesso have not gone well either and now I'm scared to use the stuff on anything that I genuinely want to paint. Plus I'm heading off with my wife and daughter in about a week to visit family in western New York. I'm therefore reluctant to start anything too ambitious since I'll be gone for probably two weeks or more. But therein can be found what might be my last hope to get some real painting done this summer.

I know that most of the east coast is suffering under similarly dreadful climatic conditions. My hope however is that there will be enough improvement going from South Carolina to New York to allow me to prime as many miniatures as possible while I'm staying at my in-laws house. And maybe, just maybe, I might even get some painting done while I'm away on vacation. If not, I'd still be coming home with models primed and ready to paint upon my return. Thus my goal for the coming week is to focus on assembling a batch of dudes to take with me.

I have several projects up in the air from which I can choose but I also need to keep in mind the constraints imposed in taking this on the road. One primary concern is that the figures all should be easy to transport without taking up lots of space. And if I am to have any chance of painting, then I also need to plan out in advance the color scheme and limit it enough to what I can pack in a travel bag. It may be overly optimistic to think that I'll get anything at all painted, but I've had success in the past as a traveling painter so why not give it a shot?

The gluing commenced late last night resulting in the five guardsmen pictured above. More to come soon as I intend to go over my plans for this in a couple days once I have some additional models built. The basic idea though is for an Imperial Guard force themed to go with my Sector 7G terrain, and one that would make use of my Deathstrike missile launcher as well. The opportunity to fire that thing in a game has proved to be too much temptation for me and so I'm excited to have found a way to include it in an actual army project.

And thus the endless procession of new projects continues....

Seahorses of Annihilation

I'm taking a break tonight from assembling terrain, the pictures of which that I've taken have been mostly either boring or unusable due to near constant toddler-attacks. I've included a few WIP photos at the end of this post just for the sake of completeness after my last posting, but I've got something else on my mind right now that I'd like to address first with this update. This evening I decided it was time to get back to my old Chaos Marines. After a decade of waiting for me to settle on something, they finally belong to a named warband, the Beasts of Annihilation. Having chosen this group based solely on their color scheme more or less matching the one already painted onto my army, this step forward has brought with it a new dilemma in that there is no established chapter badge or symbol for this warband. After taking so long to get to this point, I am eager to hurdle this stumbling block so that I can at last finish this army.

At first the name itself seemed somewhat silly to me, but over the ensuing weeks its appeal has grown on me, especially after an exchange about it with Sons of Taurus. The result of this shift in attitude is that I no longer know if I should go with my original joke idea. I therefore painted my candidate design onto a spare icon bearer, last touched by brush more than six years ago, as a test run. You can see the result below. Well, what do you think... have I taken it too far?

Other than the snout being a bit long, this is essentially what I envision as the Beasts of Annihilation's calling card to the 40k universe. I may try to add some orange shading on the belly but I don't know if it would be worth the effort. I haven't come up with any alternatives so if I don't go with the seahorse it's back to the drawing board. I enjoyed painting it and it passed the main test of not being particularly difficult or time consuming so for the time being I am satisfied with it. Also I would probably have fun doing larger versions of the seahorse on tanks and banners. I just have this nagging feeling that it could possibly be too inappropriate. Then again, I'm also working on a Simpsons army so I've probably already crossed that threshold of concern. Perhaps it was a millennium of taunts and jokes about the chapter seahorse that eventually drove the Beasts of Annihilation to embrace Chaos, due to bitterness and a mad desire to prove their mettle.

My inspiration for this comes from the real-world iconography of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines (2/4) with whom one of my best friends served for a number of years. Hence there is actual military precedence for this. I'm fairly sure I've also seen the seahorse used in heraldic devices, but that could have been mere fanciful depictions or even just a figment of my imagination. Nonetheless, seen below is the insignia of the aforementioned USMC battalion.

I'd love to hear any thoughts on whether I should go forward with the seahorse or if I instead need to rein in the stupid and find something more suitable for a bunch of daemon-loving meanies. What do you think?

Below are the photos showing some of my recent work on 7G. The first one is of the space-filler piece, previously consisting only of the pipe sections glued down onto the base, that I have now turned into an impromptu gun nest...

Next is a detail from one piece of a marine who has crashed through this building's ceiling, squishing some unfortunate fellow beneath him. Look for the hand poking out from under one of the tiles to see evidence of this pitiable ending....

Seen below is a damaged building that has become a fuel depot to serve whatever vehicles or generators located in Sector 7G...

Lastly, a WIP of my next double sized building that I'm still putting together. (I ran out of pieces.) You can see I have used one of those shoddy, flimsy GW "moonscape" craters to reinforce the bond between the sections of the base. It worked out really well out in this case so I'm now planning more of these using the rest of my packet of craters.

It's still slow going, but I feel like I'm getting the hobby winds behind my sail.

Update, Sector 7G

In an effort to build some much needed hobby momentum, I've spent time over the last couple of days working on a few pieces of terrain for 40k. It's been almost a year since I did anything with my "Sector 7G" cities of death project so this seemed like a reasonable place to start up again. When I last left off with it, I had assembled seven buildings with another two almost complete. Eventually I will expand this urban industrial collection by an additional four or five buildings along with assorted space fillers, but for now I just want to finish a few of the ones that I put together last summer. It will be good to finally check-off even a small portion of this from my to-do list, plus I'll still be able to use the terrain blocks individually as they are done.

Here's a group shot of what I accomplished before setting them aside to work on something else... I believe it was Dark Angels. Nonetheless, I've begun detailing two of the buildings, the results of which can be seen in the above picture, but more clearly in the shot below, as evidenced by the scattering of sand and some Imperial Guard bits. I enjoy making little scenic additions to these types of pieces, which is the main reason why I chose to base all of them on the modular movement trays. Hence there are a couple of little vignettes that I'll point out once they're painted. Future construction efforts will involve making the aforementioned building sections, but with more emphasis on irregular footprints to help break up the monotony.

Those two structures seen above are the ones I've chosen to address first. The one on the left is the building that I first put together when I started this project. It's also the one that was first referred to as Sector 7G, prior to me deciding to put together a bunch more of them and call the whole group by that name, so this is kind of special piece for me. The one on the right, imaginatively named Pump Station, is the one that really got me motivated to start up again on this set of urban terrain. After painting, I'm going to fill the reservoir area with resin water effects (tinted, maybe?) and use the experience as practice for when I likewise fill the skull pits on my Realm of Battle Gameboard. It has only been about three months since I worked on the gameboard so it can still wait a bit.

The days have been predictably humid here and so I was not able to get these sprayed this afternoon liked I had hoped. Therefore I've planned a session of late night priming this evening. I'm still trying to get my painting situation sorted out, but until then I think messing around with Sector 7G will be a nice way of easing back into the swing of things. I haven't entirely settled on a color scheme for this set of terrain so I'd love to hear any suggestions.