Cities of Death - Chicago Style

One of the things that I feel traditional Cities of Death terrain lacks is the truly claustrophobic feel of a city. There aren't actual streets with buildings in blocks, with back alleys to exploit. So a while back I got the idea that I wanted to make movement trays for my buildings. This would allow for neater storage (clean up on Nerd Nights is a complex game of Tetris), and would allow for the terrain to be set up in blocks.

Now the above building was the first one I completed for this project. I had originally tried to get my existing scenery to fit on the trays, but they are so random in sizing that it would just be too much work as is. I'll need to adapt them some other way than how I was initially trying. So I scrapped that approach and built the above as a test for my Chicago inspired city block.

The first thing you'll notice is that the above building is long and narrow. This is very traditional of Chicago City neighborhoods. Most of the buildings are either 2 flats or 3 flats. They will have a door adjacent to a picture window and then 2 sets of windows as you work your way up. On the corners of streets will be larger apartment establishments - sometimes with retail (bodegas) below. In my particular neighborhood there are a lot of vacant lots that will be roughly fenced in. The buildings are really close together with narrow breezeways between them. I tried to capture that with the following buildings.

Vacant lot:
Corner ruins:

Opposing corner ruins:

All of them side by side:
The top-down angle shows the movement tray:

You'll notice the brown square in the lower left hand corner. Spaced around the tray are removable squares where I can put signs, street lights, detritus, etc. All of the buildings are removable and are either on 5" or 6" wide bases currently. I already have a 2nd movement tray and the buildings can be swapped around however I like. The vacant lots allow for less obstructed views of tanks and infantry while targeting through breezeways, etc will allow for those nasty sniping shots.

These are still in the rough stages but I'm really excited by the idea. I think it will make for a really visually stunning game. Hopefully the end result isn't too difficult to play. I think with enough low ruins, parks, and vacant lots it will totally work.

Random Stuff...

Its been a while since I updated the blog. I've been focusing in on other stuff as of late (some productive and some not) but I never completely stop work on my projects. They just get pushed aside. Here's some random crap I've worked on lately:

#1: This is what I SHOULD be working on every day. Adepticon is coming and I haven't put more than a half hour into my tournament army in the last 45 days. As you can see I have a long long way to go - and this is 1 of 3 I absolutely need to complete.

#2: I'm really in more of an Ork mood lately anyway. If it wasn't for Adepticon I'd just work on Orks right now but I'll never get enough points done in time. This Trukk is mostly complete. I've probably got another 8-10 hours to go in order to get the driver and gunner done, and to battle damage and dirty it up a bit.

#3 Scott always complains about this one piece of city scenery I built that is beautiful but extremely difficult to put models in. This is a companion building that I started years ago and just finally put on a base. I deliberately left it more open for Scott.

#4 Here are some CoD plastics being put to use with the combination of some scratch built elements. My friend Christian had talked to me a while back about how he was measuring out bits of foam core to the size of the CoD panels so that he could make his own custom panels. I now have a sheet of foam core that has the lines drawn to turn it entirely into CoD tiles for insertion into whatever project I want. In this case, I didn't do anything fancy - just stuck some CoD bits onto the blank slabs and then added a little gable roof on the top.

#5 One of the terrain elements that gets commented upon when Scott posts pics on his blog is the walkway system often looming in the background (you can see a section of it in the above photo - as usual - looming in the background). Whenever we use the walkway it looks dumb if it doesn't begin and end at a table edge. I need some ruined sections as well as entrance and exit points. After months of contemplation I finally made a ramp a couple of days ago. You can't hide from my bikes up there anymore!

#6 Another Scott Kroll inspiration... We talk about my city terrain pretty frequently and one of the things we agree upon is that it doesn't feel city like enough. The building shapes are too random to make streets and everything is too square. The next piece of scenery is on a base that is deliberately angled to encourage more variety in building placement.

Who knows when any of these projects will be completed. Still, I wanted the world to know I'd still trudging along. Enjoy!

Scenery Rampage!

Sorry for vanishing for so long. My family came in for the holidays and then my band went on tour for a couple weeks, and I've been doing quite a bit with my other hugely time consuming hobby - running a record label.

Despite not posting anything new in over a month, I did find some time last week to work on some scenery. I didn't even photograph everything. There were one or 2 pieces I missed.

However, I completed a full table's worth so I'm excited. The following pieces range from an 15" tall rock formation to a barrel on a base just larger than a quarter. Here's what I've completed.

First off is a pretty much "out of the box" ruined Imperial Building:

Sticking with the out of the box theme, here are some plastic barricades as well as a Forge World barricade that I made a little longer with an extra barrel and an I-beam:

Carrying on with the industrial detritus, here are 4 pieces. One is a large oil refinery style storage container and then a pile of pipes, a discarded dozer blade, and a lone barrel. There are so many ways to make a pile of pipes, in this case they are the core tubes from a roll of dog poo bags. With two pit bulls, you can expect to see these tubes in a lot of future scenery projects! The oil tank is a CD-R canister with some I-beams, brass rod, and card stock.

The next piece is a holdover from when I worked for Games Workshop. Its a foam bunker that they shipped to us for our demo tables at some point or another and after multiple incarnations it finally was just taking up space and went home with me. It never had a base and it was painted rather poorly so I almost never used it in games. A base, a little extra dry brushing, some random inking, and some highlights on the view ports and I think it looks great now.

Okay, so now lets finish off with some completely scratch built stuff. First off are a series of rock formations. They didn't drybrush up the best, but the one is truly massive at 15" tall and they add some height to my desert board. Once I have a Stompa or assemble that Baneblade I'm sitting on, they'll have something to hide behind.

Finally, I'm going to end with my alien desert "forest". These strange thicket trees look suitable for the desert, look good in groups, and are made by making pink foam stumps and hot gluing broom bristles into them. Expect to see more stands of these in the future as I made a bunch more that are unpainted. You'll notice that some of the thicket trees are on separate bases for varied density. Oh, and this piece is for Brian who always wanted to take the 4 individual thicket trees I had made and group them together to make a forest! Never again Brian. You have your forest!

Pit Bulls in the 41st Millenium?

Rather than talking about my Angels of Absolution I want to take a moment to discuss pets and gaming.

Nerd Night takes place every Monday at my cozy 2 bedroom apartment. I am set up to accommodate three 4'x6' tables in my living and dining room by pushing the couch out of the way. I'm sure if we ever had an increase in turnout I could fit a fourth table in the living room and there's always room for a game in the kitchen! If you haven't guessed, I take gaming seriously and love hosting. One of the hurdles I've had to conquer in the last year and a half was the addition of a stray American Pit Bull Terrier to my home - and then a second one a year later.

My first addition was Ian. Ian is a lovable scamp who had an obsession with hand nibbling and jumping up. He's also the nosiest little guy you'd ever meet. He will root through your bags, he'll sniff at your miniatures, and he'll steal the gloves out of your pockets. If he can get at it or stick his nose in it - he will. So the first challenge was dealing with this behavior. When I got him he was only 7 months and I was living in a 1 bedroom apartment so he was non-stop energy. I followed the recommendations of getting him toys that would keep him busy like putting peanut butter in a Kong, but he'd finish the peanut butter in seconds, rampage through people's stuff some more, and then proceed to eat large chunks out of the Kong toy that he wasn't supposed to be able to destroy. Putting him in the bedroom he'd scratch at the door which isn't a great option in any circumstances but its even worse when one of your gamers is also your landlord! I'd put him in the crate sometimes but he'd whine, cry, bark, and rattle the cage. They say that if you ignore a dog they will learn that their behaviour is failing to get the desired result and they'll stop but Pit Bulls are known for their tenacity, and Ian just wouldn't quit. Eventually we learned that if we put everything up out of his reach and we concentrated on each other, he'd usually curl up on the couch with a Nylabone and alternate between chewing and sleeping. Success!

In June of this year though, I found another stray Pit. He had no tags, no collar, and no chip and I live in the kind of neighborhood where a Pit Bull is a status symbol and a bargaining chip that is used for protection, for fighting, or for a quick $300. In Chicago there is a no adoption policy on Pits that go to animal control so my options were to take him to a rescue, find a home for him myself, or take him in. After a month of trying to find him a home I decided it was wrong to uproot him again and I kept him. Now Harley isn't well adjusted like Ian. Harley seems to have had a rough life so far and he's afraid of everything - strangers, animals, loud noises, everything. When the Nerd Night Crew first came over his tail would go between his legs and sometimes he'd just look at people and give a low growl. A couple of people asked me to lock him up while we were gaming. I went out and bought two gates so I could make a fence to my kitchen 5' high, as these guys can easily clear a single gate.
Unfortunately, there were several problems to this approach. To keep Harley company and to keep Ian out of people's crap I put him behind the gate too. This, of course, drove Ian crazy. He's a very social dog and he loves being around people. He'd whine and cry. He'd shove his feet and nose as far under the gate as possible so he'd look as pitiful as possible while getting as close as he could to the action. When he'd get bored of this he'd bark, howl, push on the gates, and on 1 or 2 occasions he even knocked the lower gate down. He just wanted to be where everyone was that badly. On the other hand, I found that my troubled new Pit Bull was only having his anti-social behaviour reinforced. He'd bark at everyone from behind the gate - whether he knew and trusted them or they were a stranger. He'd be territorial. He was angry and unhappy so he'd reach a point where he'd just bark - without stopping. The Apocalypse game day we had in November was the turning point. After being behind bars for 6 hours (not including the mid game walk) he just started barking as loud as he could, and he did it for the full remaining hour and half we played for. At the next Nerd Night after that, he started with the mega-barking as soon as the gate went up and I walked away. I decided the gate wasn't working.

The anguish here comes from balancing the comfort of my guests and the comfort of my family - who just happen to be two American Pit Bull Terriers. Exacerbating Harley's anti-social tendencies is the last thing I wanted to do and that's exactly what I felt like I was doing. Over the last 6 months I found that once Harley became comfortable around someone the tail went up, the growling stopped, and he's just happy to be around "the pack" and hang out. That isn't to say that my guests shouldn't exercise caution, and if Scott ever brought his son over, Harley would go straight into my bedroom, but otherwise I feel that the best place for the dogs to be is by me and part of the crew. Harley needs to be socialized and he can't be socialized from behind a fence.

Last Nerd Night I found we had a distinct lack of hooks for coats etc so the dogs were back rummaging through people's stuff, so my first order of business was adding another 4 hooks. I'm also clearing shelf space so people have an easier time putting their stuff up high. Expect more renovations in the future to make our gaming as comfortable as possible - for man and beast.

Our pets are part of our families and they feel just the same as we do. The key is finding the best compromise so that we can all co-exist and be happy while we game. Thanks to the Nerd Night Crew for their patience and understanding while I've fumbled my way through trying to find that balance and coming back week after week regardless. It is most appreciated.

This is Embarrassing...

Back in September of 2005 I participated in a tournament put together by GW Canada. The coverage from that tournament is still accessible and I stumbled across it yesterday. I remember being mortified when they put these pictures up. I had so many completely finished models and they didn't look before they grabbed - they shot photos of anything regardless of how well painted. Here are those pics and some commentary:

We'll start off with this atrocity. This is supposed to be representative of my work? Ouch. It was originally base coated with Bubonic Brown Spray when that was available. I started to paint Bleached Bone leaving Bubonic in the recesses and then came to the conclusion that I preferred Brown Ink in the recesses and started inking it. Nothing was completed on this tank in 2005, and sadly, in 2008 its in pretty close to the same state. I was so upset that they posted this pic and it is still available on the GW CA website for all to see. Terrible.

Okay, this one isn't so bad. Chaplain Vitus and Veteran Sergeant Diceus are looking sharp and complete. The two Assault Marines are at least fully base coated. in the last 3 years only 1 of those 2 models has been completed. Wow, I suck at completing projects.

Okay, here are some models I can be proud of. There is only one incomplete model in the bunch. The far right model is still sitting in my figure case in the exact same state of completion more than 3 years later. He's actually supposed to be part of a Devastator Squad and not this Tactical Squad.

Wow, this Dread is so close to completion. Once again, he's received no additional work in the last 3 years. I really need to finish this model. I was really proud of that Plasma Cannon conversion when I did it. This model was assembled before the plastic dread was available.


So we finish this trip down memory lane with a rather beautiful photo of my completed Whirlwind. One day I might go back and add some more vehicle markings but I'm really proud of this model overall. I think its pretty striking. Thanks for reading.

The Week in Review

We started the week with completing the jump pack on that Assault Marine I pictured a short while ago.

Then I repaired the Rhino that got dropped on Monday. I actually took 3 pictures of this Rhino which has been in service since 1995 or 1996 and which has gotten multiple upgrades. In this latest round of repair and upgrade I painted the right hand door in the 6th Company colors. This was also done on the front of the Rhino in a small circle on the far left track guard. I also added a small Tactical marking below the angel. That particular angel had to be re-glued and some of the paint got scratched up, so the Tactical symbol was in part to cover the variance in tone between the different era's of Bleached Bone. One of the "Storm Bolter" halves also had to be re-glued along with the whole left flank.

One thing you might notice is that not all the recesses are Brown Inked. This is because when the Rhino was originally painted it started at Bubonic Brown and was worked up to Skull White. I later went back and added Brown Ink and then added battle damage. I apparently didn't compete the job, but it's cool.

Another interesting detail about this Rhino is that I added scratch built reinforced armour after Epic came out in the mid-late 90's. Those metal Rhino models had cool little details and one of them was the reinforced rear armour that I emulated here. Back then I didn't know about buying Plastrux Plastic Rod so the rivets are actually inserted paper clips that were clipped and filed, haha. What a pain in the ass...

Dramatic Re-Enactment - Rhino Explosion!

On Monday's Nerd Night there was a minor setback to my Angel of Absolution plans - I had a Rhino explode. This is my display case. The door was closed just like in this picture. I, however, thought it was open. The moments that passed as my hand holding the Rhino hit the glass went something like this:

The distortion on the picture of me screaming isn't from re-sizing the image, its from the power of my head exploding.

Needless to say, a week ago I said I only needed to finish 3 models to get my army to 1500 points fully painted. I have not met that goal. I actually just finished repairing the Rhino and demoting it to the 6th Company (you'll get pics on the next sunny day.) Additionally, though I worked on the 2 Devastators I need to complete I put more focus into finishing the Assault Marine pictured in the step by step and working on tanks. Oh well.