AT-43 Dispatch: Monkeys and Robots Doing the Zombie Dance!

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest issue of the Dispatch!

In this issue of the Dispatch, we are going to start out staying close to home again with another look at the Sin City Daily. Then we are going to have a bit of a surprise in an Intelligence Report featuring a look at the new ONI army box! So without further ado, let's head right for the front lines!

Sin City Daily
More Monkey Business In Sin City

This weekend saw another game as Dyllon and I played another game of AT-43! As my latest additions to my Karman army have not arrived, we decided to throw in a Wraith Golgoth for each of us so that Dyllon could get a taste of the vehicle rules. In the end, it was a good game but the monkeys were put in their place by their Therian Masters! That'll teach them to complain about their banana rations...

More people have expressed an interest in checking out the game and Dyllon is still eagerly awaiting the release of the ONI army box, so things are still looking good for the future of AT-43 locally. Once I have the rest of my Karmans, I am thinking that I will run some demos of the game at BattleZone so that I can really get the game moving.

Intelligence Report
Taking a Closer Look at the ONI

We also have a little bit of a surprise here at the Dispatch. Thanks to our friends in France, we have some more detailed information on the ONI including some of their special rules. So without further ado, let's take a closer look at the Zombie Horror that is... the ONI.

The mercenary forces of ONI belong to the human species, the newcomer in the universal war. Its zombies know no fear, on the contrary; it is the other species of the galaxy which are afraid of them! Its powerful combat vehicles are armed with the best technology ONI purchased, stole or looted from the battlefields all over the universe.

Super Zombie Reanimators

The Super Zombie Reanimators are the largest unit in the army box, weighing in with a total of twelve Reanimators. Among their special abilities are Nerves of Steel (not surprising for zombies) and they suffer from Zombie Syndrome, which requires that they spend 1 LP to activate (not sure on the translation there...). ***Edit: It's looking like the Zombie Syndrome special rule actually means that a unit that shoots at the zombies has to pay 1 LP. I am guessing that this is to represent the leader yelling "The head! Shoot at the head!"*** Then there is the zombie gun. Esh...

Okay, this is an indirect fire weapon with Accuracy 3, an Attack Rate/Re-Roll of 1/1, AoE of 4, and a Pen/Damage of 4/1. Doesn't sound too bad, but there's more! It also has the Contamination ability. Sounds fun, don't it? Any enemies killed by this weapons are replaced with zombie detonators, forming a new unit whose card is added to the activation sequence in the next turn. Guess this explains the Reanimator part of the name...

The unit also includes a Zombie Master which gives the weapons of the unit the contamination ability. Yeah, that's right. As long as the master is alive, the whole unit can potentially create massive numbers of zombies. Thankfully, this is offset by a fairly low Armor of 5 but I can still see these guys being very difficult to deal with.

This is a ** unit that costs 500 points and includes two zombie gunners, one medic, one zombie master, and is lead by a Shomyo.

Zombie TacArms Alpha

This unit of three armored zombies, though their armor is not as heavy as the TacArms of other armies. Only an Armor 9 for these guys, which seems low but considering the figure is mostly bare flesh in kind of makes sense.

Equipped with a Zombie Gun (same lovely stats as above...) and basically a UNA laser gun, these beasties look like they are going to be some pretty solid all round fighters. They also have Nerves of Steel and Zombie Syndrome abilities, just like the Reanimators. They are a *** unit that costs 300 points and is lead by a Samurai.

Zombie Detonators

Well, we had to get to these guys eventually, especially since more than half of the army can create more of them! They have a very low Armor 4 and no ranged weapons. Instead, they have two sets of claws and fangs so they really do just want to run up and give you a kiss. In addition to the unsurprising Nerves of Steel and Zombie Syndrome, they also have Bioexplosive. This lets you sacrifice each of the Detonators when you activate the unit, resulting in an explosion with an AoE of 2 and a Pen/Damage of 12/1.

Not surprisingly, Detonators are only a * unit and only cost 175 points for eight of them. Of course with all these Zombie Guns you are going to need a lot more then eight, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Medium Destroyer

This is the "smaller" of the two vehicles that come in the army box. With a Movement of 30 and an Armor of 14, this is pretty fast for a type ** AFV with respectable armor to boot. On top of the Destroyer is a Medium Graser with an Accuracy of 7, Attack/Re-Roll of 2/0, and Pen/Damage of 15/2. A very respectable punch as it is, but there's more! Yep, the Destroyer also has the Mechanic ability so that it can repair itself or other vehicles within 2.5cm at either the beginning or end of its activation.

Weighing in at 325 points, it is also pretty inexpensive compared to most AFVs of its type. The one disadvantage is there is only one weapon but the frame has one extra damage box compared to most. Combine that with the Mechanic ability, and you are looking at one tough little package.

Heavy Battletank Vlad and Shogun Bokor

This is the personal vehicle of Shogun Bokov, the hero included in this army box. With a Movement of 25 and Armor of 16, this vehicle is another nimble "little" tank. Plus is mounts a heavy maser cannon with an Accuracy of 7, Attack/Re-Roll of 2/1, and a Pen/Damage of 17/3. That's six points of damage from one shot, assuming that you are firing in the direct fire mode. It can also be fired as an indirect fire weapon in which case it gains an AoE of 3 but keeps the other characteristics.

The Battletank also has the Mechanic ability (just like the Destroyer) and Bokor has the Interference ability which lets you choose one of your opponents card in their activation sequence and move it. Nothing like having your carefully laid out plans changed at the last minute.

As an added bonus, Shogun Bokor is also no slouch outside of Vlad. Equipped with a Sniper Rifle with an Accuracy of 10, she also has Triple Lens Optics which give her the Detection ability and also lets her ignore Camouflage. Always nice to be able to lead from the back, especially when you are leading a horde of zombies. And all this can be yours for only 690 points. Pricey, but definitely worth it from the looks of things.

The Parting Shot...

And there you have it! Still no official release date on the ONI army box but considering there are now pictures of the contents floating around, I am thinking that it will be very soon! That's all for now but be sure to come soon for more AT-43 goodness. Until next time, may all of your dice come up Dragons!

AT-43 Dispatch: Introducing the Sin City Daily

Hey everyone and welcome to another issue of the Dispatch!

This week, we are going staying closer to home with the Sin City Daily as we take a look to see what is happening locally with AT-43. So without further ado, let's head right for the front lines!

Sin City Daily
Spotlight on Local AT-43 News

This weekend, I was able to break out my Therians (along with some new Karmans) and hit the BattleZone to run a demo. I had originally scheduled a demo with the store owner so I could show him the game and get his opinion but that plan didn't quite work out. Something about first being late, and then being smashed. I'm sure you can all figure it out. :)

Instead, I ran the demo for Dyllon, one of the other employees at BattleZone Comics. The fluff seemed to interest him, the miniatures really caught his eye, and once he heard about the ONI (the word "zombies" can be a major selling point), he was pretty much hooked. Still, he wanted to try out the mechanics of the game so we set up a couple of small games just so that he could get the idea how it all worked. Two battles and a bunch of dead Therians later, he told me that he was interested in the game and that he would be picking up the ONI when army the box comes out.

Matt, another player at the store, took one look at the Karmans and said he would love to give the game a try. Just the concept of space monkeys had him excited, but when he saw that they had wrist mounted guns and smoking cigars... well, let's just say it sounds like another player will be seeking his own karma now.

Now I just have to get the owner to try the game and we'll see what happens. Hmmmm... maybe I should bring some liquor with me next time...

The Parting Shot...

Well, that's it for this week. A short issue I know, but with the interest that I saw this weekend, I am thinking the things will be picking up quickly. Until then, I'll leave you all with the best conversion I have ever seen of Omega Tiamat. This was done by Supercollider on the AT-43 forums and makes me want to pick her up just so I can copy his conversion.

What else is there to say? It just looks right. Until next time, may all of your dice come up Dragons!

AT-43 Terrain Project: the first step in freshly fallen snow

Hey everyone,

I finally have some progress on my Frostbite boards! Yay!!! I have only managed to finish one of them but the rest of them have the basic shape cut out and I should be able to get them finished off relatively quickly. I do have one of them finished though which is enough for us to start taking a look at how I am doing this.

The first step for this project was deciding how exactly I wanted to lay it out. For my Damocles boards, I was duplicating the poster map so it was simply a case of measure on the map and mark it out on my board. For the Frostbite board the only information that we have so far is about the game effects of the terrain and some small pictures of what the individual features will look like. Going with this information, I decided to make my boards modular and reversible so that I could get the most out of them, plus it would make it very easy to expand the size of the table later on. I made a quick sketch of how I would lay out the various terrain features on the boards and then I hit the hardware store to get some Styrofoam.

Living in Las Vegas makes it a little tricky to find the good Styrofoam. If you are looking for the white flaky stuff then you are all set but for good quality boards it can be a little trickier. Luckily the Lowe's near my house does carry the blue board in 8' x 2' sheets so I was able to get some without too much difficulty. Here is the board cut into pieces so that I can fit it in my car.

This board only comes in one thickness out here (at least that I have found...) but since thankfully it is 1" which I find it easy to work with. It is much easier to stack the stuff to make it thicker than to try and slice it in half.

Next I needed to start cutting out some of my basic shapes. I decided to make several 1'x1' squares and a 1'x2' rectangle out of this one piece of board with the pieces double stacked so that I can cut into through one layer to create the ice flows and crevasses. Here are my first couple of squares to show you what I mean.

The downside of double stacking the pieces is that I was only able to make enough pieces for a 2'x3' board, but with the whole thing being modular that is much less of a concern since I can just make some more boards later.

Here is a picture of the pieces all cut out; a total of four squares and one rectangle plus an extra chunk that I might use to make some small hills.

I decided that for the first piece I would build a square with a crevasse on it. According to the rules, units can jump up to half of their move to get over these so using that as a guide I cut a 9" long crevasse into one of the boards, making the opening 3" across at the widest point. This is wide enough for most of the units to be able to get across it easily but still adds something visual to the game.

Having cut the crevasse out of one of the boards, I then glued it onto another full square board so that I could make the reverse side a open snow field. Once this was dry, I started painting the board but then I ran into a problem. When I laid out the measurements of the crevasse, I had marked the board with a light blue Sharpie which the white paint was not covering up even with multiple coats.

I hit the internet to find something that might help and did find a very interesting article about using a mixture of baking powder and glue to create snow on miniature bases. I thought about using this technique but since I want to make the boards reversible I decided against it since that would require a pretty consistent thickness on all of the boards to make sure that they lay properly next to each other. In the end I decided to glue white fabric onto the board and finally settled on fleece since my local Wally World didn't carry any white felt by the yard. Here is how the finished piece looks with some of my Therians to give some scale.

This easily hides the lines on the board and I am also hoping that the texture of the fabric will help the individual boards blend in together better. One piece down and four more to go!

That is all for now but there will be more on this project soon plus maybe another battle report as well. Until next time, may all of your dice come up Dragons!

AT-43 Unit Review: Therian Bane Goliaths

Last month some of you might remember that I did a quick write up on the Assault Goliaths. Not a bad unit, but they do seem to be a kind of a jack of all trades. Their mixed armament could be very useful against a balanced or even an infantry heavy force but against AFVs they were a little lacking in the punch department. Well, this month we have their brothers the Banes and if there is one thing that they are not lacking it is punch!

Earlier this month, I was able to get a rematch of the Red Blok game that I had played last month. The forces were different this time as we both had more minis to choose from but my latest addition was a unit of banes.

Now I must admit that I was not as excited about the banes as the assault goliaths, at least not as far as miniatures go. Don't get me wrong; they are not a bad mini, they just never really struck my fancy. They also have developed a reputation on the forum as being the unit with the drunk goliath as one of them always seems to be bent like he is about to fall over and my box was no different. Still, I had a plan that I wanted to try against the Blok and for the plan to succeed the banes were essential.

Right from the get go, the banes were hit with mortar fire which grounded them. Frustrating, but with their armor of 10 they were able to handily weather the storm. Then I was actually able to get their weapons to bear and then I quickly fell in love with these mechanical monstrosities. I had a clear shot at a unit of Kolossus RPGs on the other side of the table and in a single salvo that unit was gone. Period. And this was from the other side of the table!

Later in the same game, I was able to get a clear shot at a Sierp and I was able to quickly blast holes in him, taking him out of the game as well. Mind you, they did die after that but they had more than made up for their loss by taking out two powerful pieces of my opponents force.

So has my experience from this one game changed my opinion of this unit? You better believe it! In fact, I think that from now on I am going to be making sure that I have a unit of these in my list. At least until I try a Web Strider list. Then I'll field two units instead.

AT-43 Terrain Project: A-Tis phone home! AKA completing the hyperlink antenna

In the last installment, I had most of the pieces laid out for the hyperlink antenna but I had not started to assemble them yet. Before gluing anything, I did a dry run of the parts to make sure that they went together well.

As you can see, I also included a Storm Golem and a Hekat to give a sense of scale. Anyone familiar with the Cry Havoc article will notice that my hyperlink antenna is definitely larger than the one included in the magazine (it is printed on a standard sized card just like the unit cards) but I am okay with that. This thing is supposed to be transmitting to a distant planet, of course it is going to be kind of big!

The next step was to place the light into the base. I had originally planned on attaching the base and then stopped and thought about it. What about when the batteries run out? I would have to break the thing apart to change them and that just would not work. Instead I cut a circle of foamcore small enough so that it fits inside of the base without being too tight. This means that not only can I change the batteries easily, I can also simply remove the top of the piece to turn the light on and off.

To better focus the light, I lined the base with aluminum foil, as you can see above. This really helped as before I did this the base actually glowed when I turned on the light. This reflects the light back and cuts down of the glow factor.

Once the piece was assembled, it was time to get it ready to paint. I had originally thought about painting the whole thing by hand but instead I decided to use masking tape to cover up the parts that I wanted to remain transparent, which I think was one of the most time consuming parts of the whole project. Even so it really was not that bad and it did make it much easier to paint, but more on that later.

I had originally planned on just painting it up at this point but instead I decided to add a few details to enhance the piece. I had some small rubber tubing which worked perfectly for creating some hoses and I used some green stuff to sculpt the connections for the hoses and to add a few glowing domes that you commonly see on some of the Therian pieces. It would have been easy enough to do the hoses with some guitar strings instead of the rubber tubing but since I don't have any I decided to use what I had on hand.

The next step was to prime it and then paint it, which my daughter was kind enough to help me with. She loves to paint! Once this was done I was really glad that I had taken the time to thrown the little detailing bit on it. Seeing it all in black let me really look at the overall structure more rather than seeing the pieces assembled and it definitely looked much better with these small finishing touches.

And finally, here is the finished piece. I added a little weathering to it so that it is not all shiny and new looking, plus I painted orange onto the small domes that I had added. Overall I am really happy with how it turned out, though if I were to do it again there are some things that I would do differently.

1) Paint the inside to! In my enthusiasm to complete the project, I overlooked the fact that I am dealing with a clear dome. That's right; I didn't paint the foamcore inside the clear dome black. D'oh! It is not that noticeable now that it is done, but if I were building this again it is something that I would make sure that I remember to do.

2) Is bigger better? I do like the fact that this is a sizeable terrain piece and I do think that it should be that way; how would a tiny antenna transmit to a distant planet? Still this does seem more fitting for an emplaced piece of equipment while adding it to your army list makes it seem like it should be a bit more mobile. I really am happy with how it turned out regardless, especially since this is my first attempt at building a lighted piece of terrain.

And that, my friends, is how you build a homemade Therian hyperlink antenna. Going out, buying Cry Havoc #14 and just using the card might be faster, but I think that having an model to represent it is much better.

AT-43 Terrain Project: how to make your own Hyperlink Antenna!

Edit: Just a quick note. When I first posted this I put it as an "On the Cheap" feature. Why? Was there mysterious motive behind my actions? Or was it simply gross negilgence on my part? I claim the former but suspect the later. In any case, it is now a "Terrain Project" as it should have been all along. And now back to your regularly scheduled blog...

In Cry Havoc #14 Rackham introduces the Therian Hyperlink Antenna, a special device that can be added to any Therian army and produces an extra 3 Leadership points when it is turned on. Included in the issue is a card to represent the antenna, both when it is turned on and off. This is all fine and dandy except that I don't have that issue of Cry Havoc and more importantly (at least to me anyway...) this is a terrain feature. It should be something real, something three dimensional! With this thought burning in my mind, I set out to to build my own version of the hyperlink antenna.

The first step was to start collecting the items that I would use for the antenna, the most important which you can see below.

Starting from the top left is a lid from a container of Floam. "Floam?", you say? Yes, Floam. You can find this in most major large department style stores in the kids arts and craft section, or even at Michael's. Next to this is a transparent orange ice cream cup that I picked up at our local Walgreens. By a total fluke, they only charged me 8 cents for it instead of the 33 cents it should have cost. Needless to say, I rushed back to get some more... : ) Below this the lid to a pink lemonade mix from the grocery store, easy to find and the whole container has a sci-fi kind of look to it. Lastly is the to go lid from a Ritter's Custard sundae. It is a little hard to see right now (it is transparent after all) but the shape is perfect.

The first step in constructing the antenna was to trim down the edge of the orange dish. It had one of those wavy edges on it and it was about 1/2" too tall, so out came the Dremel and off came the edge. A word of warning though; cutting thick plastic with a Dremel creates quite the stink and can gum up the bit in melted plastic. Still, once I recovered from the fumes it looked quite nice.

Below is a picture showing all of these pieces assembled in a "dry run" so that you can get an idea of what the antenna will look like when it is completed.

The only thing that was lacking at this point was some way to show whether it was on or off. Another quick trip to Walgreens turned up the solution; Stick N Click lights! As seen on TV being sold be that really annoying guy, but the perfect solution for my problem.

The only way to get the light to fit was to actually mount it in the bottom section of the antenna, meaning that I had to cut a hole in the lemonade lid for the light to shine through. Some quick work with an hobby knife and I was well on my way.

Next I needed something to fill in the space on the lid from the Floam container, which was easily done by tracing it onto a piece of foamcore and cutting it to fit. Once this was in place, I traced the orange dish onto the foamcore in the lid and cut the openning for it.

This gave me a good start toward making my antenna, though I obviously still was not yet finished. More on that soon. : )

Be sure to come back for the next installment: A-Tis Phone Home!

AT-43 Unit review: Therian assault goliaths

Meet the new bad boys of physical comedy... .larry, .moe, and .curly!

Seriously though, the assault goliaths are the latest addition to the Therian army and one that I just had to buy as soon as I saw them. They just look too cool in my opinion! Then again looks are not everything (even in a miniatures game), so the real question is how do they play? I recently had a chance to find out firsthand.

The game that we played featured the Therians against an alliance of Karmans and the Red Blok. With the way that the units moved onto the board my Goliaths wound up being paired off against the strider-heavy RB faction, in particular a Sierp and Urod. Once they were able to move into a position that they could draw line-of-sight, they opened up on the Sierp but honestly they were not very effective. It's armor was too high for the sonic cannon to be effective and though the nucleus gun was able to inflict some damage, it was not enough to really make much of a difference before all of the goliaths were destroyed by a barrage of fire from Urod.

A dismal first performance for them but I think that it is largely a case of not really being on par with what they had to face. With a strider heavy force such as this, I would have been better off fielding a unit of bane goliaths. The dual nucleus guns that they are armed with would have had a much greater chance of being effective which could have helped swing the battle in my favor.

Still, the question remains: are the assault goliaths worth it? Personally I still think that they are in the right situation. With their mixed armament, they have a versatility that the banes simply don't have against a force with a more balanced mix. For example, when used against units with lighter armor such as infantry the assault goliaths can potentially eliminate 12 targets compared to the 6 that a bane goliath unit will eliminate, enough to seriously cripple even the largest RB squads. It is just against striders that they seem to have some difficulty, though since the last battle did include the near-indestrucible Urod it is perhaps still too early to say.

Overall I would say that the assault goliaths are a nice addition to any army but if you are going to be facing a large number of AFV, you might want to put the points into bane goliaths instead.

AT-43 Terrain Project: More on recreating the poster map

A few weeks ago I started working on a 3D version of the poster map from Operation: Damocles, specifically the outdoor portion. It has been a while but I finally was able to get some more work done on it over the past few days.

The first step was give the whole board a nice base coat of black paint. I used some FolkArt acrylic paint that I had picked up from Wal Mart to do this. An 8 oz. bottle is only a couple of dollars making it nice and inexpensive. I did two coats of this to try to get a nice even coat on the board and I was hoping it would also help to seal the board as I was thinking about using spray primer on the hatches. "Hoping" being the key word there.

I taken the board out into the garage and sprayed it in several spots when I noticed that it had started to bubble. I was convinced that I was screwed at this point but luckily it actually did not damage the surface too bad. In fact, I actually like the way that it turned out as it provided a nice texture to the surface as you can kind of see below if you look closely at the surface around the hatch.

Once the primer had dried and I was able to determine that the damage was not serious, I started to finish up the board. First I used a heavy dry brush of Apple Barrel Pewter Grey acrylic paint all over the board. Once I had finished the whole board with this, I went over it again with a lighter dry brushing of Apple Barrel Country Grey acrylic paint. By doing this right after finishing the dry brushing with the Pewter Grey I was able to get the two shades to blend together slightly, creating a nice concrete like appearance.

The various markings in the surface were actually etched in before I put on the black base coat, while the yellow "traffic lines" were painted on as a final step using Apple Barrel yellow acrylic paint (notice a trend here folks?). It is not easy to see from a distance (Grrr...need more pictures!!!) but the yellow paint that I used was not very thick which created a nice worn look even though it was freshly painted. In fact, it took two coats to give it enough of a presence on the board to really look right.

There are still some more things that I am thinking about doing to the board (sealing it with some acrylic sealer to try and make the surface a little more durable for example) but I am really happy with how it turned out. It is close enough to the Damocles map that it can easily replace it in official scenarios and it provides a much more visually interesting piece that a simple paper map.

AT-43 On The Cheap: Leadership markers

I know that Rackham has their own set of markers that they made for AT-43 but in the spirit of doing things on the cheap (and because I haven't seen them for sale here in town...), I decided to try looking at some alternatives. The official markers are black disks with pictures of blue radios on them (which is the symbol for leadership in the game), so I decided to do something similar. My markers are also blue and round but the radios are nowhere to be found.

Look familiar? Anyone who played Magic: The Gathering (and who didn't?) no doubt recognizes the round glass stones that were commonly used in that game as well as many other CCGs. I happened to find a number of them in amongst some old minis and decided that they would be perfect! They are small, easy to carry and best of all cheap. If you find that you actually don't have any of these laying around, try hitting your local craft store. They are commonly used in floral arraignments and you can get a more than you would realistically need for a game at a very reasonable price.

AT-43 On The Cheap: Inexpensive mini carrying cases

A question that I have seen kicked around on the official forum is how to carry your AT-43 minis. The answers have run the gamut from a big cardboard box to special carrying cases ordered from an overseas company but I found a solution that works quite well for me.

I picked up two of these cases from Michael's, a franchise of craft stores here in the States. The cases were only a couple of dollars each and they seem to work perfectly. Now I must admit that I have not actually used them to transport the minis yet (what with the holiday break in gaming for me) but they seem to be perfect as you can see below.

As you can see, all of the regular sized minis fit in perfectly. They have a little wiggle-room in there but if you are really worried about breakage it would be easy enough to put some kind of padding in the compartments to keep them from moving around.

I also have a unit of Therian Assault Goliaths which needed a home, but they are a too tall to fit in a regular compartment. If you look at the upper right side of the organizer you can see that it is actually a double sized compartment, which made it perfect for an Assault Goliath. One of them. The good news is that the plastic that the boxes is made from can be cut with a utility knife, so I simply cut out the dividers on the compartments next to the original one and now Larry, Moe, and Curly are all safe and sound in their own little cubby holes.

The larger minis (such as the Fire Toads and Golgoths) are not quite so simple; aka I haven't found a good container for them yet. Then again, right now I only have the one Golgoth so it is easy enough for me to simply have it ride shotgun with me to the store; aka I haven't actually been looking for a good container for them yet. Once I find something though, I'll be sure to pass on the good word.

AT-43 Terrain Project: Recreating the poster map

When I started work on my first board for AT-43, I actually had no idea what I was going for (a common state for me...). I did not have the rules, the miniatures, nothing but an interest in the game and what knowledge I could find in the official AT-43 forum. I discuss this more in depth in other posts, so I will simply leave it that the "final" board (it is actually still not finished yet) is much different than it's original form.

After this, I borrowed a copy of Cry Havoc #14 from Joe, another member of our fledgling group. In this issue, the details of the Damocles Campaign are laid out with several special rules and four new scenarios. The common factor for all of the scenarios is that they all use the poster game board that come with Operation Damocles. I had originally planned on making a 3D version of this board but I had later decided against it. Well, having seen this I changed my mind yet again and I started work on the easiest of the two sides, the open space with the large elevator. Very simple to build and it is featured in all four of the scenarios from phase 1 of the campaign.

To start out, I needed a board to build it all on. Since I decided to work with materials that I have on hand for now, I settled on a board that is 24" x 32" (roughly 60cm x 80cm) which is actually slightly shorter than the original poster. The difference is pretty minor though, which is why I was not too worried about this.

One of the key features of the poster map is several hatches located at various points on the board. They are actually used as objectives in the game, so I needed to find some way to model these quickly, easily and cheaply. Oddly enough, I found the solution while I was playing Play Dough with my daughter.

Play Dough actually comes with two different types of lids, one with just a lip (seen on the left) and one with a lip and a raised center (on the right in case you hadn't guessed). These are the lids from the really small containers, not the big ones like I used to grow up with. I used the lids with the raised up center for the closed hatchways while the others became the open hatchways. Above the two lids is a medium sized base from GW and this is what I actually used for the hatches. I cut a shallow line into the closed ones, while the open ones were actually cut in half and hot glued to the lip of the lid so that they look like the hatches on the poster. (I did actually have WIP pics of these but they were unfortunately deleted before I had a chance to download them. D'oh!!!)

Having made the hatches, the next step was to position them on the board. I measured the distances on the poster from the nearest two edges for each hatch and then positioned them on the board. I pushed them down into the board to make an indentation to mark where they were supposed to go, and then went back and hot glued them down.

Once these were attached, I needed to make the elevator. On the poster the elevator is irregularly shaped, but to keep things simple I decided to just make mine rectangular. The edge is cut at roughly a 45 degree angle and I also cut a line to mark the edge of the elevator floor. I don't know how well it will show up once I actually get some paint on it but hopefully it is visible enough that it will be apparent what it is. I also put indentations on the board to represent various seams in the concrete. They are hard to see now, but once the paint is on there they should be more obvious.

Here is the board laid out as it is written up in the third mission of phase 1 of the campaign (minus a few terrain elements since I don't have enough containers yet). Overall I am pleased with how it came out, but then again it still isn't finished. Hopefully I will be able to get some paint on it over the next couple of days so that I can show the finished product.