Alaiteir's painted minis

Fallout Wasteland Warfare Fallout Miniatures
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@OldBadger: Ah! Fire escapes! Those might be nice.

Anyway, I suppose in an ideal world, it would be nice to be able to make a “hollow” building first (focus on the exterior) and then go in and decorate the INTERIOR later … but in order for it to be practical, it’s probably something you need to plan from the start, because in order to access those interiors, you’d need to be able to separate the floors.

I once made a big “wizard’s tower dungeon” for a convention one-shot of Advanced HeroQuest back in the day (I actually still have it around in the attic, though it needs some refurbishing) where I made a solid front “facade” for the tower, but each floor was made as a removable “tray” that I could slot into the back of the building (for transport/storage), or I could remove it to set it out on the table to act as a decorated “dungeon tile.” The stairway up to the next level ran along the “back” side of each level segment, along with a back wall with decorative elements (mirrors, paintings, shelves, etc.) so that it wouldn’t obstruct line of sight for the players. (I was running as GM and standing all the time, and the dungeon tile was closer to my side of the table, while players had room on their sides for character sheets and dice and such, so I didn’t mind the “obstruction” on my side, since I could easily look over it – much like a GM’s screen.)

I’m not sure I could have accomplished the same thing for a skyscraper, though. The nice thing about fantasy dungeons and castles/dungeons is that if the walls are STONE, it’s taken for granted that they’d be pretty thick … so I could have foam board walls and floors that were pretty sturdy, insofar as holding their own shape and the weight of minis and furniture, but at the same time still LIGHT enough that I could carry the whole thing around without too much trouble. (The main body is about 3’ tall, with 5 floors. I made the top conical roof a separate removable piece, however, since past a certain point I was going to have a lot of trouble transporting it.)

Anyway, the multi-floor setup was doable since all of the “action” took place in the tower, so even if the party split up, I could simply set multiple “levels” of the tower out on the table to track the action. It might be harder to do that sort of thing for a miniatures war game, however, since presumably all the table space will be devoted to the battle area … but I suppose you COULD have some table space that’s not part of the battle area, where you COULD set down a “floor tile” meant to represent an interior floor of the skyscraper (it needn’t necessarily ACTUALLY fit into the building structure, after all, though that would be a cute touch), so you could handle any movement of minis within the building on that floor.

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Always a risk but if you make the barricades as scatter rather than permanently attached you can add or remove them as needed to “tune” the board.

I may have thought about how to do a trinity tower inspired skyscraper in the past :thinking:
I think a skycraper would have to be the entire gaming table…some quick calculations told me that the 3ft works out at around 100 in game feet. (91.5, to be exact) That seems like a reasonable footprint for a skyscraper with a pavement area around the base to allow for entry.
I figured that the best way would be to build a skeleton of the main tower and then have the outer skin magnetised on. Areas for play would have the skin removed to allow access, apart from some heavily damaged sections just to tie it together. Adding elevators mean that I could build the skeleton and add in a block of 4 or 5 floors for playing (with ramps or stairs between them) but then seal off any floors that were unbuilt, adding more floors later.

Obviously, I’ve thought about this more than is probably healthy :wink: but, it’s something I’d like to try. At some point. Not soon though, I want to make a normal table first before heading into this madness :laughing: Plus it’ll be really tall, so I will need to work out storage before I even make a start!

Sorry, bit of a thread derail at the end there! :roll_eyes:

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That’s not a bad idea at all actually, I’ve never used magnets before but I want to try it at some point. The main point about doing a non-explorable one was just to be able to make it (relatively) quickly, but if using magnets like that would be a good way to change an explorable one if I wanted.

Yeah that would be ideal, but if the projects I’ve done so far are anything to go by then I’m not sure it’d really be feasible without damaging the exterior.

That sounds amazing! Foamboard is what I’m using for the main wall structure in this project, I’ve stopped trying to carve bricks into it manually and I’m trying out embossed plasticard this time. I’ve also picked up some foamed PVC from Greenstuff World, as that looks like it should have all the advantages of foamboard but be much better for sculpting details and so on in to.

I suppose there are some smaller office buildings and apartments that you could base it off, but if the interior is done well enough then I can’t imagine there being much of a need for anything outside of it. If we look at the car at the base of these towers for example:

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The width of the white building seems to be about 3-4 times the length of the car, with the grey building being even narrower. The corvega model is apparently ~13 cm long, so the base of the white building might be about 40-50 cm (which, if I’m remembering what Americans have told me, is about 1.5’ I think)? The buildings in Fallout 4 are scaled down slightly compared to real life, so you might not be able to call the model one a skyscraper any more, but I reckon you could potentially get an impressive looking tower block with some room left if you wanted it :slight_smile:
As for the height, storage would definitely be an issue. That could potentially be gotten around by choosing a shorter building, or doing it with the top half having been knocked off by the blast? Depends on what sort of look you’re going for though of course.

I’ve got two main ideas myself, similar to yours. One would be to build it as a single piece, but with one facing removable. This means things like damage and the exterior could potentially be done really well, with all the layers and levels having things passing between them to tie it all together, but would be potentially quite limiting in terms of access during gaming. The other main idea is to build it in levels, which each interior floor having its own set of exterior panels, which would stack on top of each other. Pins at the corners on top could slot into gaps on the bottom of the one above, allowing levels to potentially be mixed around and reshuffled if you want to have different layouts. This would make decorating the exterior potentially a lot harder though, and to get the levels to line up well would require more precision than I currently have… Worth thinking about though! :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I agree with this. Having small modular pieces, barricades, walls and such makes it much easier to tune the board to the game mechanic. A big building interior is a huge investment in time and money and if you get it wrong, you’ve just got a big sculpture. It’s an intriguing idea, but I personally wouldn’t tackle such a project unless I had many hundreds of hours in the game and was confident I understood the mechanics …and how to manipulate them …perfectly. The other issue for me with doing big interiors, is that they are essentially locked into what they are - unless you have moveable walls or something. With the terrain fixed, it makes it much more restrictive in terms of putting variety into the board and you run the risk of just replaying the same game over and over.

I like the idea of a big internal, multi-level board. Done right it would be awesome, but it’s the doing it right bit that worries me. With small external terrain, barricades, walls, fences, gates, small buildings, piles of crates, shipping containers, vehicles and wotnot, you can concentrate on making em look good and worry about the gameplay later. If your layout is problematic or you just want to play a different game, you just rearrange it.

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Yeah it would be very easy to get wrong, as you say it could quickly just become repetitive if you can’t shuffle things around in it. Doing a tower would definitely be something for the future, after I’ve had more practice doing the smaller buildings and had time to put enough thought into it!

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Very much these! :+1: If I do one it won’t be for a good long time after I’ve had some practice and have a good solid plan!

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The thing is, unlike the scaled down exteriors, if you are playing inside a box, you have to create enough room, space and distance for gameplay to be interesting. Otherwise you’ll just be on top of everyone and everything. If your building is 40cm wide, then you subtract a couple of cm for walls, knock off a few more for desks, chairs and furniture, then divide the remainder into rooms, you are going to be base to base with any other model in any given space. That defines your gameplay.

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At that size it would only really work as part of a larger tabletop I think (unless relentless close quarters action is the feel you’re going for), but as Info mentioned above you could easily do one the size of a standard tabletop. A larger one would of course still define the kind of tactics you use to extent, but that’s also the purpose of building something like that I think; to give flavour to the way you play the game.

For a tournament or something you want it to be as balanced as possible for fairness. For friendly matches/AI though, I can imagine that throwing in a few scenarios that deliberately make you consider strategies other than what you’d normally do are a good way to keep the game interesting. I remember a while back seeing a mate of mine playing 40k as a Tau player (long ranged), against an opponent who were Tyranids (close combat) on a space hulk style map full of narrow corridors and tiny rooms that heavily favoured close quarters. This forced the Tau player to switch up their usual artillery focus and instead take a force of mostly flame-thrower armed battlesuits. It wasn’t balanced at all, but occasionally deliberately unbalancing it can be quite fun :slight_smile:

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An interesting experiment would be to decide on a footprint for your building …say 60cm x 50cm …then get a cardboard box and mock up a floorplan. Place walls wherever, cut holes for doors and windows, throw in a few bits and pieces to simulate furniture …and then play a game in it and see how it plays?

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That’s a brilliant idea actually, would avoid the risk of putting all the time into building it only to find it doesn’t work. I’ll give it a go next time I’ve got a cardboard box suitable :slight_smile:

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Well there is no shortage of cardboard in the world and it’s usually free. I know from recent experience I find it difficult to know when to stop with terrain. I put a silly amount of time into one tiny building. Something like a big skyscraper would probably take me a couple of years to finish. I’d want to be 100% sure it was going to work.

For me, there would also be a very real risk of losing motivation with such a big project. I can imagine feeling overwhelmed with it and walking away from it. With little projects, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel and you get a sense of completion.

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Motivation can be tricky to find sometimes, I used to barely finish anything before wanting to start on something else. I’ve found by starting with smaller/faster projects and then getting gradually larger/more ambitious with them that I’ve gotten able to focus on one project at a time better though :slight_smile: I’ve also found it can help to be harsher on myself at saying that a particular detail/model is done, as otherwise I’d spend ages “just doing a bit more”

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On the note of boxes, depending on where you live, if there are any locally owned non-chain stores in your area, just going in and asking if it’s ok to snag a few boxes for a project will often yield results. My local grocery store has provided me with boxes to move before when I’ve needed them. And you’d be surprised at the range of sizes you can find, might be that you see a few items that give you ideas for additional projects too.

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Off licences are great for boxes as any box that can hod multiple bottles of booze is likely to be strong

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That’s a really good idea as well actually :slight_smile: We don’t really have any chain stores in my area (except from a Lidl and the odd clothing store), so there could be plenty of spare boxes around. Only potential issue would be how to get them home

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Submitted my masters research project the other day, so allowed myself a few hours to have a go at sculpting a carpet and start painting the floor sections. This is what it looks like so far:

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After doing arranging some foamboard and plasticard offcuts, I’m not so sure about the configuration I’d originally been planning. My initial design was to have a pile of rubble leading from the ground floor to the first floor on the lefthand side, and then to place a ladder to get from the first floor to the second floor. A ladder would restrict what kind of units could get up though, so I was wondering if anyone here had any ideas or suggestions at all?

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That’s looking really good. What did you use for the carpet?

A staircase maybe? Or maybe a bridge or walkway spanning from another building?

Congrats on getting your research in BTW.

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For the carpet I used greenstuff to sculpt the folded/torn edge, and then painted it :slight_smile:

I hadn’t thought of a bridge/walkway idea, could certainly be interesting! A staircase is probably easier to do without another building for now though, perhaps one made of coffee stirrers to represent it being built by raiders/settlers post-war?

Thanks! Still got a load of other reports and pieces of work to do of course, but I’m genuinely pleased with the work I’ve managed to produce

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Just remembered I took this picture before painting it, hopefully shows off how it was done

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That’s looking great! Love the carpet, I’d never thought of doing that :slight_smile:
I think a makeshift staircase would work, it’d make sense that it had been added after the building was ruined!

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