For my first terrain entry for this year's challenge, I offer a set of doors for my ongoing Sedition Wars project. The geomorphic, double-sided board tiles in the game show various types of doors that the players must fight through: standard doors (white), airlock doors (red), and section doors (blue), with varying effects on movement and line of sight. For example, standard doors automatically open when models move adjacent and close automatically when they leave, but airlock doors require the payment of 2 movement points to open or close.
One of the more involved Kickstarter rewards was a plastic terrain set, which included several of each type of door, cast in a hard, somewhat brittle plastic. The terrain set can be found on the secondary market, on sites such as eBay.
I have run Sedition Wars at some conventions, and have one coming up (GAME-ITOBA). It's always a challenge keeping track of open/closed doors, so I decided to paint up some doors. Closed Door = model door on the table; Open Door = remove door model. Easy!
Painting
I selected 7 regular doors, and a couple each of section and airlock doors. The doors are detailed on both sides, with deep cuts, and pronounced lights/switched. The plastic is hard, and the mould lines were very pronounced. After cleanup with a very heavy file (it's almost a foot long with heavy teeth) and some touching up with sanding sticks, I decided the cleanup was "good enough".
I primed all the doors with Chaos Black and did some zenithal highlights with Corax White on the regular doors. I used and White Scar on the airlock and section doors, focusing the latter two on the doors themselves, as opposed to the frames. The regular doors ended up a kind of light grey, which worked out. I used Army Painter Dragon Red and Ultramarine Blue to differentiate the airlock and section doors.
I added some graffiti decals from Warlord Games' 2000 AD line, and several warning signs from Hasslefree miniatures.
The game's board tiles show a damaged, war-torn space station. Empty cartridge casings, blood smears, and the like are rendered on the tiles. Accordingly, I heavily weathered all the doors with a selection of coloured pigments, powders, pigment fixative, acrylic paint, and panel line detailing liquids. Some final detailing with small lights, rendered with flat white followed by fluorescent acrylics, completed the doors. Testors Dullcote sealed it all in.
Below, standard doors:
After some coaxing, the graffiti decals went down with decal set and solvent solutions. Some of the graffiti decals broke apart; old decals.
Below, "No Firearms Beyond This Point"? "Caution Laser Beam"? By the time the game starts, these warnings are obsolete.
Below, section doors, which divide the board tiles:
Airlock doors, with General Warning (hazardous environment) and Cryogenic Hazard (low temperature zone) signs.
Below, some of the doors on a Sedition Wars board tile, with some Sedition Wars figures I painted before.
Scoring:
All 11 of the doors are around 2.5 inches wide, and around 1.75 inches tall. Cleanup was a pain, but the painting itself was not too difficult. Whatever my final post tally, I enjoyed painting these, and they enhance the game.
------------
Beautiful work Dave and I am sorry that the challenge doesn't award points for quality, but just for getting things done. That said, these are lovely, and I like all the extra details and work done to them to give them that gritty look. They make a great addition to a great game, that I really wish more people would have given a chance.
Overall though, 11 doors are a pretty easy paint task for most people and would likely take about the same time to paint as 2 normal models. I know you spent way more time than that on them, but I can only award what would be normal. So I am awarding 10 points as I think an average paint job for them would take in the 3-4 hour range.
-Byron