Sarissa Explorer Pod Interior WIP

I really like the look of the new Sarrissa laser cut pods, but I felt the interior was too Spartan.  Wha’ts the fun of having a building interior if it’s bare?  I decided to see what I could do to jazz up the interior of the small “explorer” pod.  I’m going to create sleeping quarters for an expedition crew with bunks and lockers. 

My first step was to assemble the floor end and lower walls.  I left off the upper wall sections for now as it will make it easier to work and paint the interior of the pod.  Next I removed both doors.

The first modification I made was to add a door jam around the inside of one door, this was made of four pieces of styrene #206 “C” Channel from Evergreen models.  This does a couple of things.  First it creates a small lip so that the door can’t be pushed into the pod and it adds a little detail to an otherwise blank wall. 

Next I cut a back wall out of .04” sheet styrene to cover up the rear door.  I felt that the smaller pod would only need one door.

On the side of the pod opposite the door I added two benches for bunks.  The benches are just .04” sheet styrene gut in an “L” shape. 

In between the benches I built a styrene box and glued two wall lockers to the front.  The lockers are cast hydrostone pieces from Hirst Arts Mold #303 “Med Lab Accessories”.   I then put two bunk mattresses on the benches.  Again, these are cast pieces from the same Hirst Arts mold.  At this point the pieces aren’t glued in.  I wanted to just test the fit and get everything in before painting.

Next I added a third bunk and more lockers to the other side of the pod.  Because the door is offset towards a wall I couldn’t fit in a fourth bunk.

Next, to liven up the floor I cut a piece of Evergreen ½” grid sheet styrene.  Unfortunately I didn’t make my measurements properly so there are a few gaps here and there.

Last up I wanted to add some greebles to the back wall, a control panel by the door and some overhead lights over the bunks.  These are cast pieces again from Hirst Arts and are a mix from mold #326 “Industrial Accessory Mold” and #327 “Machinery Builder Mold”.  I also added a bit of sheet styrene to the back of the door to cover up the line from the window.  Like the other details, I’ll go ahead and paint them first and then glue everything together.

Review of the Sarrissa Precision Explorer Habitation Pod

Today it’s a twofer!

Yes, like many others in this hobby, here I am plowing through a project and making progress when something shiny and new comes along to steal my focus.  This time it’s laser-cut terrain from Sarissa Precision.

Sarissa System Infinity Website

I love good looking terrain almost as much as I like good quality miniatures.  Gaming with half-assed terrain just isn’t my style, so I’m always on the lookout for good looking, quality, reasonably priced terrain.  For fantasy and modern day there’s plenty of 28mm/30mm terrain out there, but when you get to sci-fi, things have always been more sparse.  GW did great things with their city fight plastic kits a few years ago, but if you don’t like your buildings with gothic arches and a more skulls per inch than a graveyard, they’re of limited appeal.  I’ve built CNC cut terrain from CNC Workshop out of Australia, but this is my first toe into the water with laser-cut terrain.

I can’t say that I’d heard of Sarissa before they announced they’re new “Infinity” system (they use the mathematical infinity symbol, but no I’m not going to spend the next five minutes to figure out how to type it) on Tabletop gaming news.  I had been checking out at least four different companies taking the plunge into laser- cut designs but the only one that had stuck out to me was Micro-Art Studios with they’re gantry system and building.  I was tempted, but the design scheme seemed overly busy with lots of shapes and layers.  Following the news announcement for Sarissa I almost passed as the Sarissa website only had up 3D render drawings of their new line instead of actual product shots.  This is always a turn off to me, but I gave them another chance and followed  a link to the Frontline Gamer Blog who has reviewed free samples of all of their stuff:

Frontline Gamer's Sarissa Reviews

The Frontline blog posts had a satisfying quantity of pictures and I ordered three pods (Explorer, Settler and Wearhouse).  The order came to $80.50 (with free shipping and a free set of interior walls).  The order came all the way across the pond in about 11 days well packed in a nice flat box.  So far I’ve only looked at the small explorer pod and here is my take on it:

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS - The kit comes packed in a small bag with a one page set of instructions.  One thing I’d read from a couple of other reviews is the strong smell of burnt wood when you open the bag and it is actually pretty strong.  It definitely took me back a few decades to those boy scout wood burning projects of my youth.  I was a little surprised that the kit comes as just parts without any sprues or carriers.  As they offer free shipping this is probably to save on weight and space and it doesn’t take anything away from the kit.  Mine was packed tightly enough that nothing could rattle around and break.  You get 20 parts in the kit.  Be carefull taking them out of the bag as there is one small part for the hatch that can get lost easily.  The instructions are one letter sized sheet front and back using an exploded 3D render of the kit noting what goes where.

CONSTRUCTION (DRY FIT ONLY) – I first punched out all of the little bits that are left in some of the holes for the mounting tabs.  At first I used a hobby knife to cut around the plugs to make sure there wasn’t any tear out, but soon found it wasn’t necessary.  The best method I found was to use a blunt tool (I used the end of a scuplpting tool), hold your finger over the back side, and punch the plug partway out.  Then turn the piece over and punch it out the front.  I got through all of the plugs in a few minutes and only had one spot with any tear out, which is more due to my carelessness.  The next step was to remove a little fuzz here and there from  laser cuts that hadn’t gone all the way through.  This was most apparent on the struts.  A little 150 grit sandpaper cleared up these areas in just a few strokes.  After that it I did a dry fit of all of the parts.  It went very quickly.  From the point of laying out the parts to the point in the pics below it only took 15 minutes.  If I was planning to use these out of the box, I would have glued them at this point, but I’m going to be adding some interior details.  The assembly process was pretty self explanatory and about the only thing you might need the instructions for would be the hatch.  Two of the reviews flirt with the idea of leaving the parts unglued and relying on the dry fit.  While I find the dry fit is nice and tight, I wouldn’t rely on it myself.  The doors are almost fully cut, with just tiny tabs left over so that you can either leave them in or punch them out as you like.  This is one area that I would recommend going over with the hobby knife before punching the doors out as the corners seem to give a greater chance for tear out. The windows on the sides can also be left in or punched out as you see fit.  Unfortunately, the hole in the roof is pre-punched, not leaving you the option of not using the hatch.

THE PROS:

1.        It’s reasonably priced at $18 U.S. (depending on the exchange rate on any given day)

2.       It goes together very easily with almost no tools or special skills needed.  

3.       The fit and design of the kit are top notch with no obvious gaps or problems.

4.       Great generic science fiction aesthetics.  This basic shape could work for anything from a backwater off planet colony to a refugee slum or an Antarctic base on earth.

5.       Modular compatibility.  This isn’t apparent from my work, but if you look through the Frontline pictures, you can see how you can mix and stack the various kits to make great themed tables.

THE CONS:

1.        No Backside Detail - The laser cutting process is limited to cutting only one side of the sheet, so you don’t get any detail on the backside.  This isn’t a problem if you’re going to keep the pod sealed up, but if you want to use the interior, you’ll have to add your own details.

2.       Sarissa did not etch the floor piece, similar but different to the point above.  They cut the holes for attaching the walls and struts, but not any floor details.  Laser time costs money and I imagine the time saved not etching the floor is worked into the low price of the kit, but I would have preferred to see the etching on the roof mirrored on the floor.

3.       Separate roof hatch – The circular hole in the roof is fully cut out, unlike the doors and the windows.  I would have liked to see this left with tabs so you could have the option of not using the roof hatch.    

4.       Gaps at the side corners – To clarify, I don’t mean gaps in between the parts as the fit is excellent, but the fact that all the laser cuts are at 90 degrees, the angled corners on the side leave a 45 degree gap on the outside that I don’t really like and isn’t easily covered up.  Again it’s a limit of the nature of the process not design, but I think I’ll have a go at filling in the gap with putty.

5.       I think the struts between the floor and the base need horizontal cross braces.  They are designed so that you can take the pod off of the base and stack it on top of another pod.  That’s great in concept, but without some bracing between the struts, it will be a pain to transfer them between the base and other locations.

BOTTOM LINE – This is just my initial impressions, so I’ll need to play around with these kits much more, but at this stage I’m in love with this system.   I think I can knock together some interior details without a problem, which is my biggest issue, so I should be able to get some great results with out much additional effort.  These have my ideas flowing as the utilitarian design of the pods lends them to work for just about any human sci-fi setting I have contemplated over the last few years.  They work for AT-43, Dust, Gears of War, Star Wars CMG, 5150, Halo, AVP, 40K (although I’ll need to add a bunch of skulls J).  They could even be linked together and made into a spaceship (think the space ship levels from Mass Effect).  These kits really have my imagination working overtime.  Now it's off to work on some interior details.

Glacial progress on Necron Terrain

Well another long absence between posts is over and I’m back with a little hobby progress.  It’s usually only when I see the time gap between updates that I truly get a sense how far my hobby has slipped on my overall priority list.  Oh, well, another year and my youngest will be in pre-school and maybe I can put a little more time into things.

Anyhow, moping aside over Christmas I did manage to move my Necron terrain ahead.  First, I’ve been experimenting with color schemes.  I originally wanted to go with a black base and yellow lettering from the Dawn of War Dark Crusade PC game, but I had to abandon this for a couple of reasons.  First, it was terribly time consuming to color in all of the glyphs with paint.  I tried pens, but the rough texture of the blocks was chewing up pens too fast.  I had to use a traditional paint brush, which just wasn’t fun.  It felt too much like a chore.  As much of a problem though was the look.  The blocks are weathered like stone and the black look wasn’t very complimentarily.   The DOW green on black seems to look like some sort of alien metal, not stone, and it just wasn’t working for me on the weathered blocks.  Here’s a pic of one of the black side on my test Stele before I ran out of patience.  The outside row of glyphs only has one coat of green, the inside has two.

Moving on I defaulted back to tomb kings with a traditional sandstone paint job and a brown wash.  On the up side this is easy as cake (It took less than 20 minutes to do the other side versus an hour to do the black side) and looks good for tabletop quality.  On the down side it doesn’t fit my armies color scheme or any of my other exiting terrain.  Another problem is that the wash really highlights the differences between the Hirst blocks and my blocks.  Dang it.  I’ll try one more with a dark grey base,  a black wash in the letters and grey highlighting and see how that goes.  Here’s a pic of the sandstone side.

In the mean time, I’ve been casting away at a larger project.  This is a modification of the temple design from the Hirstart’s website.  I’ve scaled it down a little and replaced the entire hieroglyphic block with the Necron Glyphs.  The other big change is to ditch the fluted molding detail at the tops of the slopes.  I got a comment from a forum that they made the structures look too “human”.  After a while I think I agree.  Maybe it’s not too human, but certainly Egyptian than I wanted.  So I dropped them in favor of some weathered flat tiles.  These don’t quite match the blocks but they’re close enough to work for this piece.  Once I’ve settled on a color scheme she’s ready for a paint job.  The temple is built in five sections for front, back, sides and the floor for easier storage. 

I learned going full scale that the glyph blocks still aren’t right.  I need to do some heavier weathering with cracks, and flaking so that they more closely match the Hirstart blocks.  I’ve done some test carving and it’s too delicate to do with the sand blaster, so I need to take a small hobby knife to the work which is slow and time consuming.  I’m hoping to have the set ready for one final mold by the middle or end of the month.

Necron Terrain: Mold Making Failure & Success

Progress on my Necron blocks has been slow going over the past several weeks.  My wife lets me do some modeling in the house, but for all the really messy stuff (sand blasting, pouring silicone and plaster) I have to work out in my garage with just a tiny space heater.  Lately most days have been below freezing and my little heater just couldn’t get the garage over 45 degrees, which is too cold for either plaster or silicone.  I did manage to sand blast my second set of masters though.  I used a Badger 260 mini-sandblaster with 220 grit aluminum oxide abrasive.  The blocks came from the printer with a fairly grainy surface to start with, so I didn’t have to hammer the plaster copies too much with the sand blaster.  Mostly I went for just rounding the corners and pitting the surface.   I experimented with some really harsh sand blasting but it was hard to control and tended to eat away at the faces more than the corners, making the blocks look more like melted butter rather than sand blasted.  I sand blasted three full copies of the masters from the first mold and picked the best to make my final mold.

I had the blocks all prepped for molding for a week waiting for it to warm up.  It’s been super frustrating and when I finally did get a warm day to make a mold of my new blocks I rushed it and didn’t de-gas the silicone resulting in bubbles in the mold.  Bummer, there’s $20 of silicone down the drain.

So I had to wait a few more days for warm weather and re-poured the mold and got it right this time.  I took my time and de-gassed the silicone and got a great looking mold with good fidelity to the blocks.

I cast this a few times along with Hirst Arts mold #93 (Egyptian Tower) to make the first test piece shown below.  It’s tough to tell without paint and weathering, but the surface textures between the two molds are pretty close.  The proof will be once I get it painted and stained this weekend.  So far, the results have been better than I expected.

Progress on my Necron Terrain and Finecast Dissapointment

Happy Thanksgiving to those of the American persuasion.  I’ve got a a couple of updates before I head to my in-laws for a few days.

Progress on the Necron Glyphs

I managed to make the first mold of the 3D printed bricks.  It was mostly successful but it had a few flaws.  The blocks came from the printer with a very grainy texture.  I thought about clear coating the blocks to make them smoother, but I was in a hurry so I just made the mold with the masters as is.  The result is the silicon settled into the grainy surface and made the mold very hard to dislodge.  I ended up with a little tear out on the glyphs of the 1.5” long block.

I made a few plaster casts of the mold with hydrostone and now I have a good set of base blocks to start the sand blasting process on.  Unfortunately, I have to head up to my in-laws place in the mountains until Sunday, so sand-blasting will have to wait.

Here’s a few pictures of some of the casts.  Sorry for the poor quality, but the low color contrast of the blocks makes them hard to photograph.

Of Finecast and Dissapointment

Over last weekend I broke down and bought my first Games Workshop Finecast model.  I had been planning to make a plastic cryptek model, but still didn’t have all the bits, so just picked up the GW version.  I know I’m coming to the finecast debate six months or so late, but man was this disappointing.  The local shop had three blisters.  Two had staves with wonky bending.  The third had a pretty straight staff, but you really couldn’t tell much else about the model through the packaging.

Once I got it on the work bench and together the flaws really started to jump out.  There’s a ton of micro air bubbles in inconvenient places.  It’s hard to see, but the worst is on the end of the thumb of the left hand and you can see light coming through the tabard where there’s a bubble in the back.  The foot also had a bigger bubble at the toes, but I managed to hide that with some flock.

None of the flaws are enough that I’d try to return the model, but I certainly won’t be buying any more finecast models unless I can’t convert the model from plastic.  I think I can hide the rest of the flaws with some green stuff, but I really shouldn’t have to.  I’m not a loyalist to any one company and have bought resin figures for years from many different companies.  I can tell you for a fact that resin figures CAN be cast at a higher quality AND a lower price.  But you can’t do that when you have to pay out your profits to shareholders.  The companies that do it better and cheaper do it for the love of what they do while they pay the bills.  Grumble, grumble grumble.

On the plus side though, I've been making good progress with my plastic models.  I’ve got five new immortals ready to finish when I get home and an annihilation barge and squad of Triarch Praetorians about half way painted.

Thinking About Building Necron Terrain

I’m still reading and absorbing the new Necron codex and I’ve started building some new models.  I’ve got an immortal squad and an annihilator barge that are just about done and a few more models in construction.  In the mean time I’ve been thinking about building some Necron terrain.

I’m one of those players who would rather loose badly with a well painted army on a table full of good looking terrain than win with a plastic grey army on a table full of felt circle “woods” and cardboard buildings.  To that end, I’m looking at creating some Necron themed terrain to go with my metal warriors.

I love Hirst Arts Molds(http://www.hirstarts.com/).  Bruce Hirst sells a line of silicone molds that model builders can use to cast plaster blocks used to build all kinds of neat terrain.  I’ve got many of his gothic and sci-fi molds.  He also sells a line of Egyptian themed molds that I’d considered in the past for Necrons, but while Necrons have a certain Egyptian vibe, it wasn’t close enough for me to pull the trigger.  With the reboot of the Necrons to be more Tomb Kings In Space, the Egyptian theme is a closer fit.  But to tie the whole thing together I’m going to need some blocks with Necron glyphs on them.

After wondering at the marvels of 3D printing recently, I decided to produce my own 3D Necron glyphs to combine with Hirst Arts Egyptian molds to create some Necron terrain.

Unfortunately I’m an old fogey.  As a point of reference, when I learned drafting in college, they still taught it with a drafting board and a T-square.  Over the years I’ve learned 2D CAD, but haven’t made the leap into 3D modeling.  I ended up designing some blocks in 2D and commissioning a 3D artist to put them into a printable format.  After that I sent the file to Shapeways.com (http://www.shapeways.com/) for printing.

Two weeks later, there’s a package of nifty little blocks in the mail.  That is just too cool for words.  Here’s a pic of the finished blocks printed in plastic.

As a comparison, here’s one of the Hirst Arts blocks with hieroglyphics. 

Unfortunately, I’m not ready to build just yet.  As you can see above the HA blocks have a pocked and worn finish.  Now I’ve now got to make a mold of the printed blocks, cast them in dental plaster and then I have to sandblast the casts so that they match the sand blasted finish of the HA ones.  Then I can make one last mold of the sand blasted blocks and I’m in business!  Yes, obsession is a dangerous thing.

I've got a draft design of a simple stele I'll try out.  I've got  a good holiday break coming up.  Hopefully I can make some good headway on the army and get the blocks ready for molding.

The Necron Codex Is Here

GW released the new Necron codex and the first wave of models last Saturday.  I picked up a copy of the codex and one of the new Command/Annihilation Barge kits.  I have spent the last few days puttering with the model and ensconced with the book. (Well, as ensconced as you can be with three boys under ten, work, an oil change and a busted water line to my fridge to fix).

Despite all of that I did get a good read through the codex and have started a more detailed analysis.  I have already formed some quick impressions:

Pro:  All of my current models are still usable.  Yeah!  With a new codex release you always have to worry that something’s going to get the boot.  It looks like the only unit that disappeared outright are the Pariahs, but I don’t own any.  However the models themselves can come back in as the new Lichguard for anyone that does have them.

Pro:  Just about every model I own now got cheaper (in terms of army points).  They’ve gotten on average 25% cheaper.  In the old codex, my model collection came in around a total of 2,800 points.  Under the new codex they should be around 2,000 plus or minus.

Con:  It looks like all of the models that stepped down in price also stepped down in terms of stats, warriors go from a 3+ to a 4+ save, the “Living Metal” rule for the Monolith is toned way down and destroyers lose their jetbike status, etc.  Especially hard hit were the C’Tan.  They’ve gone from star gods to mere shards (think the Eldar Avatar of Khaine), with a significant cost reduction and a great weakening of power.   One silver lining is that now you can pick your C’Tan powers ala carte as war gear so you can create your own now.

Pro:  Not all of the units with a cost reduction got hurt.  In fact Immortals and scarabs now seem to be even better than before and at a lower cost.

Neutral:  There are some shiny new plastic and resin kits out and it’s pretty clear that the codex was written to make those more attractive than the old models.  This isn’t surprising as it’s standard practice for a GW codex.   Essentially they figured out what legacy players had the most of (warriors, destroyers and Monolith) and then make sure that there was a new unit that could do what they do better (Immortals, Tomb Blades etc).  Again, it’s not ideal, but it is what I expected to happen.  At least the old models didn’t suffer the indignities that my Tyranid Carnifex did with their codex update.

Neutral:  Something like half of the new units have kits available in the first wave of models with a rumored second wave in the first quarter next year.  While that’s pretty good, I still have bad memories of the fabled Tyranid second wave that never came.  Here’s to hoping that the next Necron wave happens.

Annoying:  Overall the fluff quality is good.  However the author, trying to move the Necrons farther into the Egyptian theme decided that it would be a good idea to stick faux Egyptian titles on everything.  As an example scarab swarms are now Canoptek Scarab Swarms.  I get the shtick, but being lover of PBS historical documentaries, it gets old quick.

On the modeling front I cleared off a space on my workbench and dug in to the new barge kit.  This thing is a treat.  It’s a cool looking kit, but good golly Molly this thing is complex.  I haven’t bought a new kit since Tyranids and while they were nifty kits, they didn’t even come close to the level of complexity to this little wonder.  I’ve been modeling for over 20 years so I’ve got the experience to take something like this on, but I shudder to think of some kid getting into the hobby and this being their first kit.  Oh the horror.

For the actual build, I think I’m going to go the route of the Annihilation Barge.  This doesn’t have anything to do with army building, but primarily due to the fact that you can take the plastic parts for the lord model of the Command Barge option and put him on foot.  This is awesome.  He even has a 25mm base included in the box.  Nice.

I also finally dug out my old Necron models and they’re going to need to get cleaned up.  The infantry were packed in one of the GW hard sided cases, which must have had some free space because the models moved around and there are plenty of loose green rods and paint chips here and there.  My Monolith was stored in a hat box and will need one of the upper pylons glued back in place.

All in all I should be reading the codex for the rest of the week and maybe having an army list of the model’s I have ready for a possible game the week after next.