Epic: Let's Build Dropzone Commander Terrain

Now that I've played Adeptus Titanicus and built some terrain for it, it's time to come up with more. Preferably the destructible kind. In other words, we're adding buildings to the desert planet of Lautan Lama. They've already appeared in their unfinished state in several battles, but what with Legions and everything, it's high time to get them properly finished.

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I was reading up on Titanicus at Goonhammer ages ago, and in their article on terrain, they suggested looking into TTCombat's Dropzone Commander for some cheap but quality more-or-less-epic-scale buildings and stuff. I got the Ruinscape terrain set, and while I was at it, I thought what the hell, why not, and splurged on the two-player starter set. And soon enough they were here!

Dropzone Commander is a 10mm wargame that centers around, well, dropships. There's infantry, tanks, flyers and everything, and a fairly slim rulebook to work it all out with. If If I have a complaint, it's that none of it is really very interesting. The somewhat sparse fluff tells us that Earth has been invaded by aliens known as the Scourge, whose models look something like a cross between Tyranids and Necrons, and several militaristic human factions are fighting them. Eh.

Another minus in my books is that there's no assembly instructions for the models. You can get slightly rudimentary instructions for the various starter armies at the TTCombat website, which I at least think are the same models, but still.

There are a couple of resin models and the rest are in hard plastic. The resin casting is good quality, although there's quite a bit of flash and such. I took a shot at building one of the UCM sprues, and I have to say that the hard plastic is very good! These were a breeze to put together. The one criticism I have is that the flying stands are a bit fiddly and don't always fit together as well as they should.

I tried painting them, and I quite enjoyed it. I picked German Camo Bright Green for the basic color, and I think it worked out okay. Here's the resin HQ vehicle and the APC. The command vehicle especially gives me strong Micro Machines vibes, so I guess that's what I was going for?

The infantry models are simple but functional; their uniforms are in Russian Uniform WWII.

The main problem with the models is really the same as with the fluff and the rules: they're really boring. The scuttly enemy crab commander vehicle is kinda cool, but with everything else, take your eyes off the models and you can't remember what they look like. So overall I have to say I don't find this a particularly evocative product.

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What we're really here for is the terrain.

The Ruinscape set consists of two parts: some 30cm×30cm cardboard tiles that can be used to build a regulation 6'×4' playing surface, and twenty card buildings. The tiles are cute, and I'm sure they'd work quite decently for Dropzone Commander. I'm a bit leery of how thin the cardboard is, and I think they're unnecessarily crowded.

The buildings, however, are beautiful. There's five different kinds, so four each; they come folded flat and it's a very simple job to glue them together. You pretty much just unfold it and glue the roof in place. The end result looks great.

The big tower blocks are properly big. These are 10mm scale buildings, so technically they're too big for Titanicus. In practice, though, I think they look great, and when you remember that in Titanicus they're basically representing Imperial gothic architecture, I think they work just fine.

I mean of course an Imperial building would have unbelievably massive doors. The smaller buildings are really cute:

And again, there are twenty of them. If that's not an incentive to use the destructible terrain rules in Titanicus, then I don't know what is. I think this set is simply amazing value for money, even if you only end up using part of the card buildings. I built eight of them to start with, which I think will be plenty for Titanicus purposes.

In keeping with the Just Cause 2 theme of my previous terrain pieces, we will be using this set to portray the city of Bandar Setan. There's no reason you couldn't just use them as they are, but I think I'm going to go to the extra trouble of making them little bases. That way I can also make rubble markers the size of those bases for when we blow them up, like we used to have in Space Marine days. So I cut up appropriately sized cardboard bases, and used some spare paper to glue them together.

The result is quite neat!

So I made little bases for all the buildings I assembled, and it was worth it: they now stay standing up straight, and look cute.

Then it was a simple matter of gluing model railroad ballast to the base and painting it Iraqi Sand, and we have some finished buildings.

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As Dropzone Commander was on its way to us, Goonhammer resurrected Warlord Wednesdays to tell us about TTCombat's MDF terrain, and to be honest, it looked great. I mean look at that Tyrell building! They also have some really cute accessories in the Dropzone Commander line. Now that I'm working on a Legions Imperialis collection, I'm also suddenly very interested in smaller terrain pieces.

But as our Titanicus games have demonstrated, these Dropzone Commander buildings are fantastic, and great value for money. Highly recommended!

Let's Build Modiphius Terrain

Earlier, I had ordered a couple of Fallout figures from Mōdiphiüs for my Renegades and Heretics, and I found them to be good quality, but the range as a whole was kind of uninspiring. However, I did order some Nuka-Cola machines for my Imperial Knight's base:

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I thought it made for a fun addition to the model, and the resin terrain pieces were all fairly good quality. This made me take the plunge and order their Skyrim Word Wall.

The whole thing came in one piece, and the cast quality is really excellent. It's even got all the little Nord runes on it and everything, and I'm delighted to report it's the Unrelenting Force wall: the best shout in Skyrim because it has by far the greatest comedy potential.

I covered the whole thing in Basalt Grey, and gave the words and the darker bits a Black Ink wash.

The non-dark stone then got light drybrushes in Neutral Grey and Medium Sea Grey, and I did the FUS runes in Deep Sky Blue and Fluorescent Blue.

I was lazy and did the same greys on the back.

Here it is! Armiger and Arch-Militant for scale.

It's a simple paintjob, but I'm very happy with it.

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Soon after I finished my word wall, Modiphius dropped the price of their Red Rocket station, and I felt like I had to get it. I'd looked at it earlier, but frankly it was way too expensive.

It's a very hefty box! Most of the weight is the 3'×3' neoprene mat, which is all right, I guess. Not really something I was interested in. It doesn't look bad, and although it's quite creased from being folded in the box, I'm pretty sure it'll even out.

What we're really here for is the Red Rocket building. It's made out of fairly strong, good quality card, with plastic connectors holding it together. There are also two resin coolant pumps and a resin Red Rocket.

You start by building the ground floor of the station. Two things struck me. First, there's no assembly instructions in the box: you have to get them off the Modiphius website. It's not a big deal, but it's annoying scrolling around a PDF on your phone. The instructions are also shoddy. You have to squint quite a bit to make out what goes where, and ludicrously, all the card pieces are named on the sheet you punch them out of - but the instructions don't use the names. This is just silly.

Secondly, there doesn't seem to be any way to attach the building to its base. With the card as light as it is, it'll never stay put, and I could see this becoming very annoying.

The card is quite nice, though, and I'm almost surprised how good it looks despite the plastic connectors. I actually googled to check if there really was no way to mount the building, and finding none, I grabbed my trusty Finnish equivalent of PVA glue and stuck the walls on the base.

This worked quite nicely, and I decided to reinforce my building by supergluing in a couple of scenery items, like this GW barrel:

And an appropriate Fallout container.

With that done, I moved on to the next phase: the canopy. 

After I moved from the canopy to the roof, I realized that the assembly instructions were even worse than I thought. You use the same piece for both the roof and the floor of the building - or so I thought. In fact, the two pieces are mirrored, and if you pick the wrong one for the floor, you can't mount the Red Rocket signs on the roof. The instructions don't tell you this, of course. Guess which piece I already glued.

So that's annoying, but I can work with it: I just need to glue the signs onto the roof edge the old-fashioned way. That's not the end of it, though. The roof isn't really attached to anything either, but I get that, because then you can lift it off and use the building interior. However, this does mean that the roof will shift around a lot, which isn't great. What's worse is that the whole canopy is only attached to the building with a single plastic connector. It's just hopelessly flimsy: even assuming the resin rocket, the whole thing shudders and shifts if you so much as look at it.

If this was for a diorama or something, it wouldn't be ideal; for a piece of miniature wargaming terrain, it's inexcusable. People are going to be placing models and templates around it, poking about with tape measures, bumping the table and so on. Terrain can't be this flimsy. In my opinion, this whole thing is going to need a proper base, and it should have come with one. Since it doesn't, I'll build one.

Before I do, I really have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with this kit. The instructions are garbage and the end result is flimsy. If I'd paid the frankly outrageous original price for this thing, I'd be pissed.

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Sadly, adding the resin rocket doesn't help much. The four pylons are meant to fit into slots in the rocket's base. They don't.

While I had the rocket on there, the pylons did stay more or less still, but I'm still really uneasy about the whole canopy resting on just one plastic connector. Especially since the rocket won't actually stay on, as the slots are just too small for the card pylons.

So, it was basing time. I optimistically started with some thick card.

Then I cut down the tabs on the pylons to a size that actually fits the rocket, and after a lot of frustrating wrangling, managed to superglue the rocket on.

If you ask me, there's no way that thing stays up there without glue. But with superglue for the rocket and to make the pylons stick to the base, it sticks together and makes the whole canopy much less wobbly. I then painted the resin coolant pumps, cut a little base for them out of some of the leftover card, and stuck them on.

Next up, a Nuka-Cola machine.

At this point, I decided the walls looked a little bare, and got my flatmate to print me a selection of tiny weathered posters.

I mean is it really a garage without an explicit calendar in the office area?

I also added a poster to the garage area, and I have to say, I think it looks great.

In the public-facing area: Torquemada is watching! Behave!

Finally, I added a poster for a lecture course I taught last fall:

And my favorite touch: wanted posters from my Rogue Trader tabletop campaign.

I have to say, these little posters made me very happy indeed. All that was left to do after this was glue sand to the base.

And paint it Neutral Grey to go with the rest of my scenery.

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So, this was a mixed experience. The word wall is lovely, and the Red Rocket station was a disappointment. To sum up: if you buy the Red Rocket kit thinking you're getting an easy to assemble, ready to go piece of wargaming terrain, well, you're not. If you buy it as a starting point for a terrain piece you're going to spend a bit of time and effort building, then I think it's not a bad purchase. But that is to say that it doesn't exactly do what it's sold as.

Having said that, I might well be persuaded to buy more card terrain, as long as the price is right. The resin word wall, on the other hand, is absolutely fantastic, and I'm delighted I bought it. In general, Modiphius's resin terrain pieces have been really good, from the small bits to the big stuff.

Anyway, now I have some terrain, for better photo backdrops if nothing else!

Warhammer 40,000: Let's Build Munitorum Containers

I've been on a terrain-building kick lately, and now it's time to continue it with some containers.

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A while ago, I found some money on the street. Literally, there was a wad of banknotes. I turned it in to the proper authorities, but when no-one showed up to claim it, the amount was deposited into my account. It wasn't a huge sum, but since it was almost literally a windfall, I decided to spend it on something stupid that I couldn't possibly justify buying otherwise. Because I'd been looking at Kill Team terrain at the time, that stupid thing ended up being this Munitorum Munitions Hub box.

This is just a wonderful, huge box of terrain, with ten armored containers, piles of crates and barrels, and even cranes and vehicles. My second full-time job ever was at the Helsinki harbor, specifically at the now-vanished container terminal in the Western Harbor, and I suppose as a legacy of that, I kind of have a thing for containers? So I sort of really wanted this terrain box, but I could never have justified spending this much money. But it came down to either this box or the Armada Super Star Destroyer, and I'm pretty sure this will spark more joy.

Then, of course, the pandemic happened, and we never did get to play any Kill Team, or, indeed, anything else that couldn't be done over email, so terrain dropped pretty far down my list of priorities, and the munitions hub gathered dust on a high shelf.

Now that we're playing 40k again, though, it's time to get started. Here's my first new piece of terrain: a container.

Bearing the livery of an obscure trading house, this container was an absolutely lovely model to assemble. Each sprue in the box has one container as well as several crates and barrels, and it's been a joy to tinker with them. On that note, here's another container.

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For my first slightly bigger project, I'm going to stick some containers together. But first, I want to build an interior for one of them. Any Imperial settlement is going to have innumerable places for people to hide away, either for a little nap during their work shift, or as a whole illicit residence of their own. So I made this little bedroll out of green stuff:

Here's the whole thing painted, with a Fallout crate and some boxes from the container sprue added.

I then seem to have entirely neglected to take any pictures of the rest of the build! Anyway, now it's done:

I know grimdark is very much the thing, but I've found I have a certain nostalgia for the bright corporate colors of the 1980's, and wanted to bring some of that into my 40k as well. The top container follows my Epic terrain theme. Next, I gave my containers a cardboard base.

Then I glued on some sand, painted and varnished it, and it was time for the next components.

Meanwhile, a whole bunch of Necromunda terrain got released, including the lovely Underhive Market set. The large market stall was simply perfect for what I had in mind, so I built one and painted it orange.

I also have some Fallout workbenches from Mōdiphiüs, and I thought the armorer's workbench would look cute here.

I glued in the workbench and one of the Munitorum crates, and added sand.

And then it's time for the market stall.

Obviously I couldn't resist adding a Nuka-Cola machine and a crate or two, and then it was just a question of more PVA glue and sand until the whole thing was done!

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This was a fun little project. I'm very happy I got the Munitorum box, and I've barely gotten started: there's still all kinds of stuff in there...