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My friend's really been investing the cash into a pair of gaming tables and the terrain to go with them. My current task in helping with this endeavor is assembling one of the 40k Imperial Sector boxes he just got. It's a pretty sizable item and I'm wondering if anyone who's put some together might have any advice on things to do or avoid in putting it together.

The sector isn't really a single item. It's enough Cities of Death pieces to build one large ruined building and three smaller ruined buildings.

Since they were released I have bought three Imperial Cities, 2 Imperial Sectors, 3 standard buildings-in-a-box, plus an additional 10 each of the Manafactorum and the Sanctum Imperialis sprues. I have more buildings than you can shake a city at and have learnt a lot of hard lessons about what these kits are capable of. As such, I offer the following:

1. Floors. You never have enough floors. You need 2 to 3 times the amount of floors that you are given. I have bits ordered more generic floor sprues than any other type of sprue GW makes (about 30-40 of them if I recall) on top of all the ones I've got in all the boxes I've bought. As you cannot buy the floor sprue any more (damn you GW!!!!!!!!!), you will either have to order the parts separately from a Bitz site, or make your own from plasticard.

2. Plastic Beams. You get 4 of these on the floor sprue, plus an additional one or two on the manufactorum sprue. These things are vital for marking large areas of flat space for floors because they slot perfectly into the grooves between tiles. You can use cut-up bits of sprue as well, but these beams, or rods, look like they were designed to fit in there.

3. Flash/Mould Lines. Most of the time you clean off flash and mould lines because the model looks bad with them and painting is harder with them still there. With the CoD buildings it goes further than that - you must clean all flash/mould lines completely or the building panels will not fit together properly. If you haven't got a mountainous pile of shaved plastic at the end of each building you make, you're not cleaning the parts enough.

4. Starting Off. If you've never put these buildings together before I suggest you start by building this one exactly as it appears in the picture. It is the most basic building to be made from these kits, and it will get you used to everything from doors, floors, butresses, multi-levels, balconies, lights and roofs. Once you've built it, you can build anything.

5. Design. In our group there are two of us that have lots of CoD stuff. One person picked up the name 'The Mad Architect' as he tends to just start building a building and sees where it takes him. The other person (me), designs each building obsessivley, even going so far as to create blueprints in Excel and plan everything right down to the exact types of panels I'm going to use for each section of wall.

There is no correct way to design a building however, although I will say this:

Know how much you have and how much you need.

There's no sense in building a grand construction that's awesome only to find out you've used so many materials that you have nothing left to make any other good buildings out of, or you've used all your floors, etc. It's another reason to build the 'demo' building I linked you to, as that'll give you a good idea of how much each sprue will allow you to build.

6. Basillica Administratum. I mention this building specifically as it is a bitch to put together. Watch your gaps, and only attempt inside corners if you really have a lot of patience.

7. Corners. Build corners first. Make sure you have a few spare bits of floor lying around to ensure you get the right angles correct. If you're building a two-side, three story building, don't build one level before moving onto the next - build all the corners.

8. Have something else to do. These things take a while to build, and you need to let them dry before moving onto the next part. For that reason, have something else to do in the downtime.

BYE

Here's the Sanctus Imperialis as recommended for my first building. The only real issue I had was the balcony, which after assembly turned out to be slightly shorter than the spot it was ment to fit into. Had to slightly bend one wall so it would fit. If you look real close you can tell, but I doubt anyone will notice if I don't point it out.

It takes two sprues to build, and the box set came with three of the same type, so I'll use the extra to build a back corner and/or some other assorted walls around the edges of the base. What do people do for stuff around on the inside floors and what have you?

Aduro wrote:What do people do for stuff around on the inside floors and what have you?

What do you mean by 'stuff around the inside'?

And yeah, the balconies always do that. Now challenge yourself and do a balcony that goes around a corner.

BYE

Just wreckage and other "fluff". Stuff so it's not just a wide open clean floor inside the building. I'm sure this building had a roof at one point, where did it go? Ect.

In all, I'd like to keep the windows open so stuff can shoot out, but have things inside to obscure as many angles of seeing clear thru the building.

Two views of the back side, plus what I've got for extra bitz from these sprues.

Friend is pestering me to get the first piece to him. I mean, I've had the thing a whole day now so surely it should all be done to perfection, right? Never mind the fact it's taken me near a full can of primer and virtually emptied the remains of the glue bottle to get just this one piece "done".

Somewhat random and possibly illogical piling of my remaining bitz into some rubble that sure at least insure any thing being shot thru the building it at the least obscured. I think it's still an interesting question of where did the rest of the building and rubble go however.

edit: apparently the friend just wanted to see what it looked like so far, so I still get to hold into it for a bit and do some more work

H.B.M.C. wrote:Since they were released I have bought three Imperial Cities, 2 Imperial Sectors, 3 standard buildings-in-a-box, plus an additional 10 each of the Manafactorum and the Sanctum Imperialis sprues. I have more buildings than you can shake a city at and have learnt a lot of hard lessons about what these kits are capable of. As such, I offer the following:

1. Floors. You never have enough floors. You need 2 to 3 times the amount of floors that you are given. I have bits ordered more generic floor sprues than any other type of sprue GW makes (about 30-40 of them if I recall) on top of all the ones I've got in all the boxes I've bought. As you cannot buy the floor sprue any more (damn you GW!!!!!!!!!), you will either have to order the parts separately from a Bitz site, or make your own from plasticard.

2. Plastic Beams. You get 4 of these on the floor sprue, plus an additional one or two on the manufactorum sprue. These things are vital for marking large areas of flat space for floors because they slot perfectly into the grooves between tiles. You can use cut-up bits of sprue as well, but these beams, or rods, look like they were designed to fit in there.

3. Flash/Mould Lines. Most of the time you clean off flash and mould lines because the model looks bad with them and painting is harder with them still there. With the CoD buildings it goes further than that - you must clean all flash/mould lines completely or the building panels will not fit together properly. If you haven't got a mountainous pile of shaved plastic at the end of each building you make, you're not cleaning the parts enough.

4. Starting Off. If you've never put these buildings together before I suggest you start by building this one exactly as it appears in the picture. It is the most basic building to be made from these kits, and it will get you used to everything from doors, floors, butresses, multi-levels, balconies, lights and roofs. Once you've built it, you can build anything.

5. Design. In our group there are two of us that have lots of CoD stuff. One person picked up the name 'The Mad Architect' as he tends to just start building a building and sees where it takes him. The other person (me), designs each building obsessivley, even going so far as to create blueprints in Excel and plan everything right down to the exact types of panels I'm going to use for each section of wall.

There is no correct way to design a building however, although I will say this:

Know how much you have and how much you need.

There's no sense in building a grand construction that's awesome only to find out you've used so many materials that you have nothing left to make any other good buildings out of, or you've used all your floors, etc. It's another reason to build the 'demo' building I linked you to, as that'll give you a good idea of how much each sprue will allow you to build.

6. Basillica Administratum. I mention this building specifically as it is a bitch to put together. Watch your gaps, and only attempt inside corners if you really have a lot of patience.

7. Corners. Build corners first. Make sure you have a few spare bits of floor lying around to ensure you get the right angles correct. If you're building a two-side, three story building, don't build one level before moving onto the next - build all the corners.

8. Have something else to do. These things take a while to build, and you need to let them dry before moving onto the next part. For that reason, have something else to do in the downtime.

BYE

This could be a neat article, especially if you had pictures of some of these problems.

You should have your title changed to 'Article Pimp', Malf. It'd fit better.

Can Dakka host pictures?

BYE

H.B.M.C. wrote:You should have your title changed to 'Article Pimp', Malf. It'd fit better.

Can Dakka host pictures?

BYE

Yup, hit the attachement button.

I agree great job on that HBMC.

I would add that the cities o' death stuff mixes will with the pegasus gothic buildings

http://www.thewarstore.com/product7435.html

A 2x2 CoD structure fits on top of a 1x1 Pegasus one. And you get a lot more for you money with Pegasus.

yeah Malf, one of these days I'll do my Peagus article. one of these days...

H.B.M.C. wrote:You should have your title changed to 'Article Pimp', Malf. It'd fit better.

Can Dakka host pictures?

BYE

Don't listen to the Japanese spy living in China. To use images in the wiki
format you have to upload them to the Dakka wiki portion.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Image_Tutorial

When you upload files in this way, the name you give the file will be the
image link. Legoburner has it set up so that when you upload images it helpfully
starts image names with your callsign, if you so choose to use it (helps with
organization).

So if you upload an image and name it HBMC-CODadvice01, the link to it would
be [[HBMC-CODadvice01]]. It's all neat and tidy.



I don't know what you heard about me
But GW can't get a dollar out of me
No Space Marines you can't see
That I'm an article P-I-M-P

H.B.M.C. wrote:1. Floors. You never have enough floors. You need 2 to 3 times the amount of floors that you are given. I have bits ordered more generic floor sprues than any other type of sprue GW makes (about 30-40 of them if I recall) on top of all the ones I've got in all the boxes I've bought. As you cannot buy the floor sprue any more (damn you GW!!!!!!!!!), you will either have to order the parts separately from a Bitz site, or make your own from plasticard.

One thing you can try for floors is that modular movement tray thingy they put out a little while ago. It's like $10, you get 2 good sized square sheets.. I forget how big, maybe 12" x 12"? But, it's scored so you can cut out the size of tray for the amt of bases you have, but those scored lines would probably work really well to show a floor with large tiles. I was thinking about using them if I ever get around to building building.

H.B.M.C. wrote:You should have your title changed to 'Article Pimp', Malf. It'd fit better.

QFT. He even bugs those of us he sees IRL to think about contributing.

Seriously, though, he's right- it would be a nice article.

The flooring shortage in the boxes is seriously annoying. I was lucky enough to pick up a bunch of used bitz last year, otherwise I wouldn't have enough to complete my latest CoD project.

Get back to work!

/whipcrack

I use a $1 vinyl floor tile to show where "inside the terrain" is.

I don't think anyone really needs the floor tile pieces to
actually make floor tiles, but rather, they use them to create
multilevel structures. That's a nice piece, though. If you
have more, it would be nice to see (probably in another
post, though)