Bonehead scrambles to light up a table

[Bonehead]

Got a game in early July. My buddy usually runs things; 'beerhammer' we call it. Late night, four-player game. Plenty of beer and takeaway. 

This time he's not able to make it, so I've got to step up. Between another one of us who's been buying 2nd hand scenery and I, who have just started properly scratchbuilding in the last two weeks, we've got to fill up a table.

And because we've already set a pretty fun precedent in this regard, it needs to be riddled with diagetic lighting. Or I'll be letting the side down.

I should have started this earlier, but I was in a bit of a rush. So far I have completed one scratch-build. I went for the classic 'coke can refinery'. It's good to start with a traditional piece. Less good to use up an entire week working out how to light it up (different LED colours require different voltages, it turns out, so you have to wire a bunch of resistors in critical places if you want different colours on the same piece).

The refinery started out like this:

A basic mock-up. I got my main idea from 'Eric's Hobby Workshop,' a YouTube channel that has lots of inspirational videos that I strongly recommend. I made the I-beams out of thick card-stock I nicked off the back of a notepad. Bit of hot glue gun action and you're away.

Then I immediately complicated the brief by adding LEDs:

Long story short, it ended up like this;

For a first scratch-build I don't mind it. Rust's a bit over the top, but what the hell. The pipes will connect to the set of standard GW pipes that my mate got. It'll make for a good mission objective, I feel. Turn the switch on in the control room and keep it on for two turns. What switch, you ask?

That one. And what does it do?

Go hard or go home. The little generator hut between the pipe and control room does actually do that job, in a fashion; it's just big enough to hold a 9v battery, so it's the power source in a very real way. The top simply lifts off.

The wires hanging down are a measure for the future: Each pair is wired to a plug, in a socket linked directly to the battery, so I can build gantry/catwalk pieces with lights on the sides, wire the  plugs to the lights, and just plug in the gantries to light them up. Hopefully. I may have to introduce a socket for an effect-pedal power supply to do that, but that's going to be a max of two solder joints so barely worth mentioning.

Yesterday, me and the terrain-owning member of the group got much of his terrain sprayed up in basic colours. Good enough to game on, to start with. Few washes and some weathering powders and they'll be great.

Today, I wired up one of them. It's magnetised,for storage and transport, but I used another socket to join the two floors'wiring, which again menas it only needs one battery. Lots of the GW terrain tiles have bulkhead lights modelled on, so in most cases I just drilled those carefully out and fit the LEDs in there. Giving this result:

Round the back it could use a little neatening up, but with a lick of paint and some green stuff it should be fine in barely half an hour's work:

I also wired up this little piece; before I worked out different lights needed different voltages, so it's running two different bateries. Should be very easy to splice in sockets to run an extension to another piece and save on batteries.

I've also made a battery compartment in it too, so the 9v doesn't hang out on the floor and in the way anymore, but I forgot to photo that, as well as forgetting to photo it all painted up, but it is now as well.

Decent start, but just two weeks to go. I'd like to get one more scratch build done and lit up, and the aforementioned gantry/catwalks. There's also a complete chapel that could use some lighting.

Wish me luck. Or call me a an idiot, your call.

Edited Monday at 10:04 PM by Bonehead
Gramers

[Firedrake Cordova]

A very old-school approach to scenery building, with a really nice result, somewhat reminiscent of the terrain used in the old White Dwarf Necromunda battle reports in the 1990s.

[Bonehead]

It'll do as a proof of concept. Appreciate the kind words. I did learn one valuable lesson building it, which is that I don't really like working with card as the main material. it's a bit messy and slow because of how you have to use hot glue or wait forever for different glue to dry.

Thus, I've decided to move on to mostly plasticard for my next scratchbuild. 

Which is going to be pretty simple, just a couple of catwalk pieces to join larger buildings. Verticality makes for fun games, I've found. And modularity makes for repeatability.

Thus:

Dead simple construction. Two-inch wide sections of treadplate-patterned plasticard, reinforced with more thick card on the underside, and then reinforced again with more plasticard at the sides and ends. They'll both get two LEDs to a side, and plugs attached so they can be wired into the main refinery piece. Or any other piece I choose to put a plug socket and battery housing in, come to think of it.

I'll do that next, then see about how long I think it'll take to build a cantilever arrangement on top so they have cover. Might buy some plasticard I-beams and that to speed it up.

If i did do that, I could put a couple more LEDs up top, too. Pretty strong motivation.

Cheers!