The Painting Bunkerc y

Hello everyone,

As many of you know, FW recently released the 1st book in the Horus Heresy series : Betrayal. Like many, it’s really captured my imagination and the models that FW have released to date are nothing short of exceptional. Aside from the models the actual book has really raised the bar on so many levels for a FW publication. It’s well written, thorough, beautifully presented and the accompanying stand alone rules set and campaign are nothing short of amazing.

Over the past few months I have been steadily reading through this epic tome and every time I’ve found myself thinking of what I could paint next. World Eaters seems interesting with their amazing Primarch model or do I do a Death Guard army? But one thing keeps bothering me and has done for some time. I have these really great looking Imperial Armies that I’ve been collecting for several years now, however I don’t really have a gaming table that is up to the standard that they are painted to.

I have to admit, the thought of building and painting a gaming table isn’t a new one to me. However painting other armies and models has just been a higher priority. Additionally, the table that I’ve always wanted to create has been difficult for me to visualise and justify the cost, let alone the complexity involved in creating it. The table that I’ve always wanted to do is a ruined Imperial city. But done properly, not just a bunch of disparate ruined buildings chucked onto a 6″x4″ board with a few craters and other debris thrown on for effect. I wanted my board to have city streets, cat walks, ruined buildings and even city precincts. The thought of creating this had been quite overwhelming. Until recently.

As some of you know, my armies on parade entry featured a FW board section. I was thoroughly impressed with this section. It had great levels of detail and could provide some great narrative opportunities if I wanted to incorporate it into a regular game. So I knew that the FW gaming board sections were good quality and had many opportunities for gaming with. Then when I saw the newly released realm of battle cityscape sectors I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of some of the possibilities that were available, but still the thought of painting another army was strong.

What I really like about the board sections is that they have “foundations” for you to put your own buildings on and also feature streets etc to give the boards context when arranged together. In addition to that, each board is a mini precinct within itself. So arranged together they can tell an interesting narrative.

So after a lot if thinking and consideration, looking up reference material online and drawing inspiration from some of the amazing cities created in the 6th ed rule book I went online and ordered 2 of the 4 tile packs and a few boxes of the GW ruined imperial sectors that have become available again. Fortunately for me I used mostly price money to buy the plastic GW kits.

With any luck the boards will arrive before Xmas however I’m not holding my breath, I can imagine that is a pretty busy time of year for FW.

My plan is to create 2 x 4″x4″ city boards for smaller games and one themed 6″x4″ board for larger battles and obviously a 8″x4″ board for something a bit different.

I’ve got some really good ideas on how I’m going to approach this, with a massive cathedral and city square as the feature of the the 6″x4″ board, with a commerce district and small manufacturing precinct featured also.

I can’t wait to get started on this project and wish the board sections had arrived already so I can start building! This is going to be an interesting modelling project and I feel it’s really going to stretch me as a modeller which I’m looking forward to. Plus it’ll be great to finally have a great looking gaming table to play on with my armies and some of the amazingly painted armies my mates have.

Ok, that’s me for now. Thanks for dropping in

John