Fallout APC 3D Print

I really like the retro-futurism of the Fallout series. I was super excited when Modiphius made the APC available as a printable model so here it is!

Printed on the Anycubic Photon Mono X in Anycubic Basic Black Resin.

Base coats were Krylon Camo Green and Camo Tan. Secret Weapon (SW) Dark Sepia Wash for the inside and used as a liner on the outside. Wheels are Tire Black (SW). Here we see a Character from Mantic Games Star Saga for scale.

The model is detailed with an optional troop compartment. If you don't want to open the thing up there is no need to print the interior compartment.  Play Mat is from Antenociti's Workshop's Designed for Infinity range.

Tabletop view of mantic troopers deploying from the APC to deal with some basic Plague. A-Z Mart is from Antenociti's Workshop Survival range of MDF buildings.

Birds eye view. I'm super happy with the design of the APC. As its a file I'm likely to print a bunch in various states of wrecked for post Apoc scenery as well as a few more working models to supplement my Jailbird convoys... and, of course, to use for Fallout!

Back to the desk!
 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 part 6 wrapping up

Wrapping up Hab 5 construction by adding the exterior steps, some resin details, and the exterior light acrylic.

Antenocitis Workshop have recently released some new steps and stairs for Forward Base which use acrylic steps for a super cool Sci-Fi look. I've not used them on Hab 5 because its a Vehicle Garage and Maintenance building so I rather liked the industrial grate feeling of the stock step but I will be using the new kits when some of the entertainment and command buildings show up on my desk.

As steps go these are pretty easy. I set the stringers in first and then set the steps while there was still some flex in the glue.

There are two exterior personnel doors.  In retrospect I might have made the steps removable for ease of storage between games... that may yet occur if the prove too vulnerable jutting out as they do.  The vehicle ramps are hinged and fold flat against the side of the building when not in use so they are much less of a concern. 

Next up are they acrylic exterior lights.

One of the upgrades to the building included full light brackets instead of the tiny resin caps that are usually used for mounting the lights. I really like the full brackets but they have a small disadvantage in that they have a set length... (Doh! I have, somewhat belatedly, realized I "could" have cut the bracket to alter their length a bit.  It would have been fussy but totally doable... oh well... lessons learned!)

  The acrylic rod provided with the kit was just a bit short of what is required to fully fill all the brackets.  With the stock endcaps I would measure the rod and set the individual light length according to rod supply... except... that I think of Forward Base as a modular system with many interchangeable parts which means, for example, all lights used for all "Hab 1" style buildings should be the same length... so it looks wonky fast if that is not the case. 

Left you see the universal jig that is evolving to cover the various Hab light lengths. 

Right we see... I ran out of acrylic rod! Not to worry I'll swipe some from the next building I open and fill it in. Antenocitis also sometimes has acrylic rod available separately which is super useful.

The fixture count was odd.  There were six brackets but 7 scribed locations for them. Its not a big issue as this middle location is a bit camouflaged by the other scribed details.

You can see here the Bay Doors in their closed position. The resin face is inside the bays as thsi orientation gave the best fit.

I didn't have any vehicles close to hand for a comparison but I did have the Forge World Gargantuan Squiggoth on the table for some repairs. The poor thing took a hit to the tail and some of the Big Shootas during the move here. Its all better now. You can see the Hab 5 is large enough to offer even this big fella some cover!

It also occurred to me that Hab 5 might make a good Lair for a Supers Game... Its a really big space with room for a couple of vehicles and multi level combat internally... food for thought!

 

 

Forward Base: Habitat 5 WiP part 2

Today sees the construction of the main structure. But first a little more painting of panels and resin bits.

A few of the vent panels were not laser cut so were painted in while painting the punched out vents and their resin replacements/additions. All the vents, windows, doors, etc. were punched out prior to assembling anything and dry fitted to see if they could be easily installed after assembly. This turned out to be true for the vents and garage bay doors but not for the acrylic windows and doors which fit very tightly and were installed prior to general construction.

The MDF vents were glued to the resin parts and painted both sides. You can see the left side are the painted MDF and the right are the painted resin. The white is Graveyard Bone (Reaper(R)) and Splintered Bone (R) over black primer on the resin and clear sealer on the MDF.  On the MDF side the vent cavities are Glowing Mist (R). For the resin Cavities Soft Body Black (Secret Weapon( SW)) wash to clean up the dry brush bleed.

On the interior rear wall of the building the rollup doors for the toolboxes got a thinned  Phoenix Red (R) and the clear acrylic door was placed.  

 This was a tight fit and, in retrospect, I might have positioned it a little differently because this wall gets doubled by the outside wall which leaves this door recessed vis-à-vis the outer wall. Its not a big deal just something to add to my lessons learned when doing future builds.

Now construction can commence in earnest!

Before attempting to slot things together I carefully trim one side of the coating off the tiny tabs.  This coating helps give these kits a smooth finish but it often seems to bunch up when going into slots and the excess has to be cut away afterwards. Cutting off just one side retains the strengthening effect of the coating while reducing the bunching and occurrence of too tight fits to practically zero.

"The Rough Guide to building habitat 5" on the Antenocitis Workshop site notes that this kit is a little complicated and should be approached in a certain way. Believe it!

The first assembly is the Lattice with Beam, Support Struts, Top Side Panels and Roof Guides for the rear part of the building.

 True to its name the guide is a little quirky. As is the usual case with these kits all of the components of the model have very specific names but the parts are not labeled so have to be carefully selected and test fitting is essential. Some of the parts have names that imply the existence of other parts for example "Beam 1" seems to be the only part named "Beam" in the kit so I spent some extra time trying to located the other "Beams" to make sure the one I had selected was actually "Beam 1"

Next up come the first aid stations.  Volgren Troller has very generously supplied a full First Aid Station and sink for each vehicle bay. The Rough Guide was a little fuzzy here. It details about half of building the most complicated side without mentioning the small positional markings on the struts or how the First Aid stations are constructed... and do the same for the other side... which I mistook for a comment about installing the other side wall when it really specifically was referring to the First Aid Stations.  The kit is very well designed so once I started dry fits it became immediately obvious how things were meant to go.

The inner framework, complete with matching First Aid Stations and side catwalks. The catwalks are not only great places for miniatures to lurk but help a lot with giving the tool boxes and other etched features an illusion of depth.

Now comes the Interior Rear Wall.  Once this wall is in position the whole framework can be slotted into the floor.

Floor installed. For as many slots as the floor part has this went together very easily.  The precision of the laser cutting is really great. The Rough Guide helpfully mentions that the floor should be worked starting from the rear wall. The front wall is not yet on and the side walls are still a bit flexible at this point making them a lot easier to deal with in the fitting.

Time for the Front Wall.  This slots into the floor and relies on the flexibility of the Top Side Panels to be lifted enough to get the wall into position.

Next comes the Exterior Rear Wall which completes the main structure.  There ae still a lot of things remaining to do but this was the tricky bit.

Remember those resin vent panels? Add them in here as they get painted. The printed side is reversed to show the etched detail on the other side of the wall panel and the slightly larger resin side allows for the whole thing to be glued in flush.

First picture shows the resin side.

Second picture shows the painted MDF side.

These slide in very easily and add some extra detail. 

Back to the desk to work on the ramps, doors, ladders, interior details etc...

 

Archaica Schola Wargaming shop opens in the Undertown!

 I'm so excited to show you Archaica Schola Wargaming a new 28mm MDF kit from Antenocitis Workshop!

This is the stock kit plus the upgrade pack with a few additional decals added but otherwise straight out of the box.  No painting or weathering was done.  I expect I'll dirty up the outside of it eventually but I'm trying to decide where it fits into my building group.

 I've assigned it for the moment to the Undertown.. which is where all real wargames shops reside... but the building looks a little upscale for the neighborhood so it may be relocated to Midtown or the Mall... I'll probably do weathering at that point to make it blend better.

I added LED light to the ground floor but left the upper level without illumination while I think of an unobtrusive way to accomplish that.

 The kit is pretty spectacular and features a large clear acrylic roof so you can see the game room while playing... of course that is waaaaay tooo much sun for your average gamer to endure so I think it'll be an evening hotspot and mostly empty by the light of day.

Still... it does a great job of advertising that the buildings have live spaces inside.... which is awesome!

I ended up gluing in the game tables and the advertising walls instead of magnetizing them this time because they are easy to maneuver models around or on.  There are no resin parts in this kit and everything is MDF or clear acrylic.

The cute anime girl is from a Guilty Crown radio control car decal set.  I also got a girl in a wheelchair to mark a handicap parking space and some block text for another outside wall from the same sheet.  Everything else comes with the kit.

 Stocked snack shelves of snacks, hobby supplies, paints and washes, and an assortment of tabletop miniature game products as well as three display cases for painted miniatures... lots of fun to be had in here!

 This place will probably serve as the group hangout for the RPG I'm brewing up around the Kingdom Death: Death High mini line... I'm thinking a kind of Sci-Fi Knights of the Dinner Table meets Haganai and Angel Beats feel with a group of friends who rotate through playing different RPGs as well as dealing with life in a "Sci-Fi Supernatural Martial Arts Comedy" setting.  Might be fun... might be a mess... we'll see!

 A view of the Handicap parking space which is usually under an overhang.

Archaica Schola in situ.

A-Z Mart Pristine and Weathered

 The pristine version of the A-Z Mart from Antenocitis Workshop.

I've some models from Mantic Games Star Saga here for scale.

The pristine version differs in a few details from the weathered version so there is a side by side look at them a bit farther down.

 The pristine version has photo graphics for the shelves  so it appears fully stocked and the cooler/freezer case doors, like the windows, are unbroken.  The A-Z Mart pristine version is ready to welcome tiny customers!

I'll want to sort out a generic mat suitable for Post Apocalypse  games... in truth one may be kicking around the workspace but I have yet to dig it out...  baby steps!

The A-Z Mart is prepainted MDF with lighting accomplished by LED key-chain torches, decals from Antenocitis Workshop and Forge World weathering powders for the general grime.

 Side by side with the weathered version... the weathered version used a different process involving the  removal the protective coating from some of the painted surfaces before laser cutting them on a high enough setting to scorch the edges a bit.  This actually worked quite well and is very visible on the white surfaces like the letters and the front window frames.  The white surface gets discolored a bit well beyond the edges and gives it an aged appearance.

The broken glass of the windows and coolers really screams "I've been looted" and one of the coolers even has a zombie graphic in it!

I'll do the Petrol station in this before and after plan probably using the weathered versions for Fallout and the pristine versions for Supers.

Back to the desk!

Let there be light! The Undertown illuminated.

The Undertown has lights in the form of LED Keychain Torches blutacked to the ceilings.  These provide about 12 continuous hours of illumination.  The batteries are replaceable but it may be cheaper to just replace the whole torch when as required. I got them from Amazon for around $0.50 each including shipping in lots of 20.

The lights make a big difference even when the room is fully lit.  Interior details can be seen through the windows in rooms that were otherwise in full shadow.

Whiskey Jacks gets great effects in the main saloon and through the slits of the armored windows windows and doors of the back office.

 Following are a lot of pictures of the various buildings of the Undertown where some buildings are illuminated and others in the photo are not.  The difference really jumps out. There some pictures of the fully illuminated table in various ambient light states.  At the end are a couple of shots of the A-Z Mart (weathered) which is pretty eerie looking.

 All of these buildings, most of the scatter terrain, and the game mat are from Antenocitis Workshop.

Sake shop upstairs fashion outlet downstairs.

 Flats

Lit and unlit buildings.

 The Neo-Tiki Hotel.

Neo Tiki Hotel office and guest services.

 The Data Trust.

 The computer screens really pop in the Data Trust. Full table regular room light.

 Full table at half room light.

 Full table in the dark.

 A-Z Mart regular light.

A-Z Mart in the "Vamps and Zombies and Weres... oh my!" dark