Following on from my last post a couple of weeks ago, it was apparent that if I had some gates and entrances, I would also need some blank walls.
Once again, I roped in the talents of Graham at Grimsforge to make me some basic walls that I could put in between my other buildings. There are four walls - two long and two short. I painted one side with urban graffiti and posters, and the other side more neutrally to give me some backdrop flexibility.
The next evolution of Hyam's landing is to make sense of the spaces with dividers and connectors. No human settlement is comprised of a selection of completely separate buildings - there are walls and hedge, roads, alleys and fences. I got Graham at Grimsforge to make me a selection of structures that I can place against or inbetween my existing buildings to try and emulate that real urban feel.
The new structures are four walls with access points in them (solid walls to come at some future point. Like the rest of my Grimsforge terrain, I drew up what I hoped would look cool, and then Graham built them for me mainly from card.
At first glance it might seem odd that the settlement of Hyam's Landing was ever founded. It occupies a dusty patch of plain that is remote from any major starport or what passes for a city on backwater fringe worlds. Water is hard to come by and the gases in the local atmosphere begin to corrode any structure almost as soon as it is constructed. But Hyam's Landing is ideally placed as a staging post for the long trading caravans that wend their way deeper into the interior. Prospectors and miners from the adjacent lowhills come to town with their finds and to spend their cash. And in spite of the presence of a foreboding Imperial Blockhouse and its garrison, the facilities offered by the discrete starport are attractive to off-world traders looking to keep a low profile.
Illustrations of Imperial architecture are pretty rare in the Rogue Trader rulebook. Yes, there's the fantastic spread of Helsreach illustrations as well as the Emporer's Palace, but for the rest of the book we only see glimpes of background shapes, walls, ruins or ductwork.
I was delighted to see Tony Ackland's brilliant unpublished* Rogue Trader townscape when he put it up on Facebook a little while ago. The image shows a backwater frontier town complete with rickety shacks, landing pad and an imposing block house festooned with gibbet, observation cameras and spikes.
*correct me if I'm wrong.
| Illustration by Tony Ackland. |
If the first part of a project involved some vendors and goods to sell, then the second part of the project needed to be a location for them to do some selling. It's not the fantastic Necromunda market (although I will get round to doing that at some point). It's another creation build for me by Graham at Grimsforge - a bazaar with some little commercial units for my vendors to occupy.
Before Christmas I asked Graham at Grimsforge to work on another couple of projects for me to round out the variety of buildings in my fringe-world setting. Along with some bigger pieces (more on those at a future date), I wanted a selection of smaller sheds and shacks that I could use as scatter or butt up against a larger structure to change its footprint.
| Grouped together the sheds make a nice little homestead. |
Like most gamers, I haven't had many opportunities to play miniatures games in the last 18 months, so it was brilliant when after being cancelled in 2020 and delayed from August 2021, Bring Out Your Lead was finally able to be held.
In my last post, I showed off three of the fantastic buildings scratchbuilt for me by Grimsforge. This time round it's one of the larger buildings that Graham built for me, which I'd described as a 'two-storey house' in my concept sketch. As it turns out, there's been a change of use and it's now the town hotel!
| A weary traveller attempts to negotiate room rates. |
Generally I prefer to make my own models and terrain, but every so often there are projects where a specialist is required! In this instance, I wanted some more buildings in the same vein as my prototype hardfoam GW habs. Whilst it might be within my capability to construct something in the same aesthetic, some of the construction techniques looked beyond me, especially when it came to some of the more interesting shapes.
| The settlement just keeps on growing! |