Sometimes I wonder why I start certain projects, this building is very much one of them. All seemed reasonable as I started but soon the error of my ways was revealed! It is hard to dedicate a lot of time to a single project and it is even harder to keep up motivation once the project is started.
As I have slowly been building up my section of the underhive I felt that I needed a proper building that could occupy a moderate chunk of the table, blocking line of sight, offering cover and give the walkways I have been working on something to connect to. Making a solid building with the Sector Mechanicum pieces just wasn't going to work, the time invested in making the pieces and then painting them was too high and so I turned to the bulkhead walls that come with the base Necromunda set to help me out. I cast the pieces for the ground floor and started painting them up. The repetitive nature of them was fine as I guess this is an industrial building and as such would be made without much thought to pleasing aesthetics.
I painted them ´with a little more weathering than usual, this helped to hide the few mistakes I made in casting the first few bulkheads. It is always a process to learn how to demould these to keep the details intact but also to get the correct amount of plaster into the mould fast enough before it starts to set. That can cause breaks in the piece that seem to only reveal themselves when it comes to getting the piece out of the mould. The heavy weathering also keeps the piece from being too colourful on the gaming table and distracting from the action which should always be in the foreground. The weathering is mainly washes and a little Typhoid Corrosion from GW to give some texture to the rust.
I don't want the building to be too tall as I can't store them as easily then. Also I don't think it benefits game play when the buildings are too tall. It impedes access to certain areas of the board, makes determinations of line of sight difficult and also gives long range weaponry a slight advantage. I don't see the confines of the underhive really containing massively tall structures except in very limited circumstances. I reduced the foot print on the first floor of the building to allow playable access to it. The walkways that go over this level will extend out just as far as the ones below providing some shelter and be at the perfect height to meet the walkways I have started work on.
The painting of these structures takes me an age. I think I put a little too much effort into the first ones I built and now I feel like I have to match it across them all. Don't get me wrong, the effort is definitely worth it in terms of how the finish piece looks on the table. Its just that the sheer volume of the surface alone takes a while to cover solidly in paint and then going in to do the details is a whole other Sisyphean effort. I have cast the final pieces for this piece namely the walkway on the top. I haven't however gotten any further than you see here and it could be a long time before more progress is made. I'll film a video then and show it off. Fingers crossed it is sooner rather than later!
