Fort Construction: Fuel Tank

 

You can't have an entire gang of Morkers riding around in the desert all day long without someplace to gas up their buggies when they get home, so I added a nice fuel tank to one section of my fort. I made the tank out of a tall, thin soda can, but since I'm pretty obsessed with making my terrain as durable as possible, I made sure to fill it with expanding foam before adding it to the fort.  It's still not immune to getting dented, but it should be at least durable as the rest of the wall section.

I added plenty of pipes on the inside, mostly made from some kids' building sets. I actually went through a number of these sorts of sets before settling on this one (although a lot of terrain builders are big fans of this one), but the others had joints made from more bendable, rubber-like materials. Again, since durability is an important factor for me, I try to avoid bendable components that could flex and crack off their paint. 

This section turned out really well and is certainly one of the more characterful sections of the fort so far. Excited to see how it looks all painted up.

Fort Construction: Ladders

 

One important aspect of any fort (especially as far as the rules are concerned) is a way to get up onto the ramparts. In Gorkamorka, attackers can climb the walls from the outside, but ideally you'd want a way for your own boyz to get up there first. At one point I'd considered simply building ladders or stairs into some of the wall sections, but I decided it would be better to put the ladders where you need them, regardless of how your fort is put together.

The main structure of the ladders was built out of some aquarium parts that had a nice grid to them. I originally went with ladders that were two squares wide, but that made the ladders too wide for anyone but my Nob. Most military ladders tend to be thin and lightweight anyway, so I decided to err in that direction.

Like most everything in the fort, I magnetized the ladders so that I don't have to worry about bumping them or having them tip over.  I could also use the magnetic couplings on my walls to attach other sorts of walkways, though I don't know what I would do unless I wanted a really long walkway crossing the entire fort for some reason. Maybe I'll think of something.

Fort Construction: Inner Walls

 

Making some good progress on detailing the inner walls of the fort.  Since this is where my gang's disproportionate number of Spanner Boyz hang out working on new gubbinz and making repairs to the mob's vehicles, it seemed like the fort would have to have some decent (if still somewhat ramshackle) electrical systems. Basically I imagine their fort to be a sprawling auto garage that has grown out of control.

This section is just a bunch of pipes and conduits, with a convenient access hatch on the top. This piece also has the outside, so presumably all the waste from the generators and refineries (and, of course, the Orks) flows through these pipes before being unceremoniously dumped into the desert.

I used a pretty eclectic assortment of materials for this section, including a chunk of a model railroad car, a box of raisin bran, some drinking straws, and loads of plasticard. The rivets and bolts are mostly tiny hex nuts, though quite a few of them are actual nails I used to attach the bits to the underlying XPS foam structure. I also inadvertently melted a bit of the foam with super glue in a few places, which required some appropriately Orky repair jobs.

This piece was a bit more straightforward in its construction. It was mostly plasticard with some random bits from my bits box. Most of the rivets on this piece were tiny glass beads, which I'd previously used on my Big Trakk. These were a lot harder to work with than the bigger greeblies I used on the other section, so I kind of gave up on the beads after this.

I was especially pleased with how these big electrical panels turned out. Not bad for mostly scratchbuilding. 

Now I need to start working on some appropriate power tools to make this a proper chop shop.

Fort Construction: Da Chunk

 

One of the main reasons that I decided to build my fort with modular walls (apart from much easier storage and transport) was so that I could swap out standard, straight sections with alternative ones. This meant I could make diagonal or curved walls, two-story towers, or whatever else I thought might be cool and Orky. For the basic fort, I had originally planned to have two kinds of special sections, both suited for my gang's fort at the far end of the Skid—one corner piece that jutted up against a large chunk of the 'Ulk and some sections where the walls of the fort butted up against solid rock walls. I ended up not having time to do the rocky outcroppings in this batch, so I focused my attention on the chunk.

The chunk is made from a large Nerf gun and a couple smaller water pistols I picked up at a thrift store. Apparently I completely forgot that I own a Dremel while I was building this thing, because most of the work was disassembling all the broken toys. 

There were some advantages to doing it the slow way. Taking out the screws on the Nerf gun and other toys with more complex mechanism allowed me to get at some of the sub-assemblies without damaging them. On the other hand, cheap water pistols made from hard plastic welded together are a huge pain. I mostly tore them apart with wire cutters, and they tended to shatter into sharp plastic shards. It made for some appropriately damaged wreckage, but probably wasn't worth all the stabbing I got during disassembly.

There is a small foam wall section stuck to the back of the chunk so that it connects with the rest of the walls and models on the walkways can still pass by. There's also a bit of internal structure built out of plastic bottles to make sure that all the broken toys stay stuck together. I filled this interior structure with expanding foam, so everything is pretty solid at this point.

I filed a few grooves into some of the more pristine bits of Nerf gun to make it look appropriately worn and damaged. I also filled some of the small holes in the construction with some dangling green stuff cables. It looks pretty decent with just a basecoat, so hopefully it will look even more like a huge chunk of space debris once it gets a proper paint job.

Fort Construction: Outer Walls

 

Work continues on the fort for my Morker boyz. Yesterday I spent some time working on the outer walls of the fort. The fort walls are made out of flame pro-tardant polymascotfoamalate with medium-weight chipboard used for cladding and armor panels. Chipboard works well in this case because many glues will melt foamulon, which can make it difficult to add details to the surface. PVA glue is still safe, though, and chipboard sucks up PVA really well, making a pretty decent bond. Chipboard also has a lot of downsides, such as warping when it gets wet and leaving soft, frayed edges when you cut it. I ended up transitioning to using mostly plasticard as the project went on and even went back and replaced a bunch of the chipboard in some places. Smooth plasticard surfaces don't bond quite as well with PVA, though, so I had to stick it on with two-part epoxy in some places, which was a lot more work.

Since the walls were a bit top-heavy to begin with and would have fragile and relatively heavy miniatures balanced on top of them, I stuck some lead fishing weights in the base of each wall section to keep them from tipping over.

One of the criticisms I got about my walls early on is that despite the abundance of chains in much of the Gorkamorka artwork, having chains on my fort made it look more like a Slaaneshi dungeon than an ork fort. Naturally, I immediately reconsidered this aesthetic choice and instead...just kidding. I added even more chains.

My general goal was to make it look a bit like the remnants of old machinery that broke down and was just kind of left in place. I might add some dangling cables or broken rails as well. Still, it's coming along slowly.