The Panau Tourist Office has denied reports that massacres, chaos and factional fighting have affected the tourism industry this year. Tourist deaths this month reached 750, but ministers played down the figures, saying that the sinking of the cruiseliner "Happy Days" distorted the figures. An average mortality rate of 50 tourists a month is quite acceptable in this day and age, our glorious leader confirmed.
One of the things that made me get into Adeptus Titanicus was the idea of building Epic-scale terrain. I admit that this may seem backwards to some people, but I really like building terrain. I was very disappointed when my 15mm collecting plans fell through, mostly because I was looking forward to building a miniature service station!
Now that I have Titanicus, though, I have a great excuse to build some even tinier terrain pieces. I thoroughly enjoyed my first ever game: the Battle of Bitter Tower was fought over improvised terrain, and as it turned out, all of the terrain we deployed ended up being tactically or symbolically significant. Below, in the foreground you can see Del Monte Tower, which my Princeps Seniores spent several turns hiding behind.
I feel like a good starting point would be to make a proper version of Del Monte Tower; namely, a honking big fuel silo. Earlier, I invested in this lovely little Titanicus terrain kit:
It has all kinds of super adorable little bits and bobs, and I've added a selection of the fuel pipes to a cocoa tin to make what I maintain looks very much like a big as heck fuel tank. My flatmate cut me a circle of sturdy cardboard to serve as a base.
Here's the pipe, and because it's physically impossible to extract the correct amount of green stuff for anything, an entirely superfluous crater.
Then it's just a simple matter of covering the cardboard base with PVA glue and Noch Z-scale ballast.
And we're ready to do some spray-painting.
Then it's a simple matter of painting the whole thing in Vallejo Light Gray, with some select bits in Gunmetal, and applying the Panau Oil colors of red and white. I've played too much Just Cause 2 to be able to paint a giant fuel silo any other way.
Then it's time to paint the base in Iraqi Sand and we're done!
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Now that I'm building fuel infrastructure and I've been playing around with the Manufactorum Imperialis kit, the next thing I'm making is definitely a tank farm. I remember bombing them in Microprose's F-117A Stealth Fighter when I was very young, and I can't really think of many things more Panau than huge, explosive fuel tanks.
I tried to place the tanks so that Knights could move around them, but Titans would find it difficult. They're glued onto a piece of MDF board.
I then covered the whole thing in Noch ballast, which I'm really starting to like.
After a whole bunch of Iraqi Sand paint, we have ourselves a terrain piece.
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The thing with the Manufactorum Imperialis kit is, though, that while it contains lots of cute little things, most of the terrain you can make out of it is just too tiny for Titanicus purposes. So I'm setting it aside for the moment; I do have some ideas for what to do with the rest of it. So now we're going to do some proper scratchbuilding.
Since I had earlier decided to go with Vallejo Iraqi Sand as my base color, and I've now embarked on this Panau terrain project, I think it's time to draw the appropriate conclusions and say that our battles are taking place on the Imperial desert world of Lautan Lama.
One of the most succesful pieces of improvised terrain we used in our first game was my copy of the Black Book of Communism, i.e. Communism Peak.
I feel like the most appropriate way to translate this into a Panauan desert would be to make a mesa about the same size. Also, Sunny Mesa is my favorite landmark in Alpha Centauri. I'm calling it Dataran Tinggi Komunis. As luck would have it, we had a long piece of Ikea cardboard lying around that was almost the exact width of my Black Book.
Three layers of it made a stack almost exacly the height of the book: in other words, the perfect base structure for Dataran Tinggi Komunis.
I tried making one of the short edges out of Milliput, and while I think I may have applied it unnecessarily thickly, I think it worked out all right.
That exhausted my previous supply of Milliput, and the only kind my hobby store had was terracotta, so that was what I made the other three sides out of. It's superior to regular Milliput in that it doesn't look like marzipan, so you don't have to resist the temptation to eat it.
While I was working on Communism Plateau, I also made some destroyed Titan markers. I stuck one of the extra Warhound carapaces and half a head on a properly sized base, and made a crater on another one out of Milliput.
I'm quite pleased with the end result!
Once the edges of Dataran Tinggi Komunis were filled in, it was a fairly simple matter of plugging any remaining gaps with filler and gluing ballast to the top and the base.
I used the leftover Milliput to make a Reaver-sized crater.
After spraypainting, the plateau looked more or less like a fucked up cream cake.
I then applied some Vallejo Snow texture to the sides with an old, coarse paintbrush, with up and down strokes to create a pattern and hide the cracks between the bits of Milliput. I'm really happy with the result!
I painted the vertical bits Tan Earth and the flat surfaces Iraqi Sand, and gave some of the more textured bits of the walls a drybrush of the same.
I'm very happy!
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Finally, to store my Titanicus paraphrenalia neatly and securely, I of course turned to Feldherr.
I simply love their raster foam; it's perfect for holding Titan weapons and even the little plastic doodads for the command terminals. I now have a Feldherr Minus bag that keeps all my extra weapons safe, and there's still plenty of room for more.
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So, here we are: I've built some proper terrain to replace the books and cans and whatnot we used the first time around. I can't wait to see it in action!
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