Age of Strife

I've been meaning to expand our collection of epic scenery for as long as we have been playing epic this time round (about a year or so), but never really had the space before moving into our new house. Having a dedicated hobby area, and a conservatory big enough to setup a 6*4 comfortably means we now have the chance to do things properly! (I say we, I'll be doing most of the building and painting whilst the missus supervises & plays!)

Using primarily 2mm plasticard, I've gone with 8" square sections initially, with a 1" border - which gives a default road width of 2" in the urban areas themselves. I've pencillled in some 8"X1" and 8"x2" strips to allow us to widen certain roads and allow the larger titans in to the city. All of the buildings are going to be based on a 1" square grid and range in size from 1" square towers up to the full 6" square allowed per tile. Vertically we're going for approx 1" per standard floor so building height will range between 1" and 4". I have a few ideas for larger multi-tile features, but these will have to wait till I can pick up some a3 plasticard. In amongst this there will also be some urban canal/river sections and a combination of light/heavy bridges.



I'm still toying with how to go about detailing things, but the plan will be to make up some template panels in inch square multiples for building detail and cast these up in bulk once Im happy with the structure and the style.

I've put the first four sections together so far, and am fairly happy with the results.

Another plus of the 8x8 with a 'free' inch on all of the edges is that I'll be able to put together a storage rack something a little like this....

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Will hopefully make some quick progress once I pick up some more materials

Cheers

Stu

And a cheeky second post in the log as Ive found some pics I took while introducing my brother to epic - hes a 40k / fantasy player







Also on the list is to make up the first few masters for the building facias. I have an idea in my head of how I want these to work, but I'll probably draw them up in illustrator first to work out the spacings and such of various details.

When i get round to the ruined buildings, my aim is to use the clean resin fascias and rough them up to be recast as ruins. Then I can add some interior detail either using the one floor per section spacing or two, depending on the outer style. It's making sense in my head, so that's a start.

I'm also starting to think about texturing the section surfaces as well. 2 main trains of thought I have at the mo are either:

- key the surface using fine sandpaper, and use pva + varying grades of sand
- key the surface and use plasticote textured paint, which is more expensive but will give me a standard base color(or two) to work from.

other ideas have included textured paint, polyfilla, gw rough coat spray or textured plasticard. The jury's still out if I'm honest

Also scribbled out some ideas for a monastery style fortification which spreads over 2 sections....

looks really good. I really must paint up my epic tyranids at some point!

These are awesome. Will keep an eye on this one to see how it goes, will be very interested to see the final results.

Looks great stu!
Don't forget to hold off on a building or two for next month's scenery contest!

Thanks guys. I'm halfway through the first set of panel masters, so hoping to cast up a few hab block facias at the weekend

I've got plenty of ideas for unique sections, so will likely hold one of those back for a terrain comp. I'm testing the water with a 16"*8" piece, to see how many usable floors I can stack into the space.

As a side, does anyone else still play epic / aeronautica in one guise or another?