A Galaxy In Flames: November 2014

Friday, 28 November 2014

Iron Armour: The Coolest Armour?

In my humble opinion, MK III, or Iron Armour, is the coolest armour going. This is a strict opinion article, and I wrote it just because I wanted to share some of the things that I love about this armour and why.

What makes it so cool? Well, as far as a sculpt goes, it has a lot more going on then the armour that comes after it. You have large pauldrons, a classic medieval knight helm, large greaves and vambraces (arms and shins), with lots of smaller details, such as overlapping plates on the rear of the legs, and rivets and trim all over. As far as the painting process is concerned, all the pros of the sculpt come in to play. Large areas on the torso, shoulder and shins mean you can have some real fun with freehand or decals, and the rivets keep the plates from being boring.

The Legion Command options are even more interesting, as they take these elements and add the classic imperial symbols, such as olive wreaths, golden gilding and Greaco-Roman weapons, and iconography. The MK III platform really lends itself to this.

The custom Legion variants of MK III are also the most impressive of all (make your arguments for MK II and IV, I'm keen to hear them), with the Iron Hands and Salamanders thus far getting the real treatment, but the upgrade kits for the Death Guard and Imperial Fists are very impressive.

Lastly, the breachers are fantastic. Rules-wise, you don't really see them as a popular option, outside of zone mortalis, but the rule-of-cool means they often see use on the battlefield.

That's it, just a simple opinion piece, let me know what your favourite armour MK is and why,

Macca

Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Istvaan III Table: Comms Tower

Keepy here,

Now for the biggest of them all...

I couldn't help myself. I just had to one up the bell tower and reach for the stars with the most vertically endowed building to date - The Comms Tower!

This is the template I had chosen for the structure. Four tiles wide at the base going to two rows of three then a single tier of two wide.

Initial build is the same as the previous buildings, sides were constructed then pinned to a double layer of cork:

I then started to add Juwella tiles to the base... only to find I would run out with 1/3 of the floor to go...

To take out my frustrations, I weathered the tiles with the back end of a ball pein hammer - I love the way shattering plaster tiles looks! Several strikes later and I was back in the frame of mind to sort out the issue at hand.

There were no tiles left in stock in Australia that I could find, so I came up with an ad-hock solution which seemed to work quite well: Adding an elevated stage. This was constructed using left over "fence" pieces from the GW building sets, cork and plasticard. I also used the steps from another GW building set.

With the elevated stage taken care of, it was time to make the first floor. I differed slightly from my usual floor building techniques by having hardly any overhang to make the building look more slender.

As usual, this was magnetised and the floor was then build on for the next set of levels.

It was at this point I realised that I had added an extra floor on the base level of the building... Oh well, more height I guess!

As I mentioned before, there is hardly any room on the edge of the added floor. You can fit a 25mm base in between the vertical supports on the outside of the building:

On with the next floor, this is technically the top floor but I plan on having a small "comms room" on the top of this level for radios and a antenna tower:

The Comms Tower thus far:

I then started work on a antenna mast and comms room. The mast was made out of GW ladders and a plastic building truss strengthened with a couple of I Beams glued onto it's vertical sections: