Fort Construction: Windmill

 

Belated fort update: I did, in fact, build one more random structure to the fort, a windmill. Every good Gorkamorka fort needs a windmill for power, so now all the random gizmos I built into the workshop can be put to good use.

I built it to be modular like the rest of the fort, not because I plan on having multiple versions I could swap out, but for ease of storage (a tall, skinny tower with sticky-out bits is just asking to get broken) and because you can move it around. It doesn't exactly spin well, but I still thought it was cool.

I used a bunch of random gears for most of the worky bits, as well as some high-voltage bushings that I think were part of the Mek Workshop that didn't make the cut for that section of the fort. 

Anyhow, I think this officially ends the construction phase of the fort. Painting is now well underway and I hope to get the whole thing finished soon. Like soon soon, not a year or two soon. Fingers crossed!

Fort Construction: Towers upon Towers

 

I still need to set up my airbrush to start painting the fort, but why do productive stuff when I can get distracted by random side projects? To that end, I decided that my towers needed to be more towerey, so I made a little watchtower out of plasticard.

In contrast to the main towers of my fort, which are pretty solid, this little guy has more of a ramshackle scaffolding sort of look, supported by a couple of steel beams. I managed to get the beams mostly symmetrical and at the same angle, but found it was pretty hard to attach crossbars to all those weird angles, so the crossbars are basically just long pieces of junk stuck on to hold it all together.

Speaking of my main towers, I made the base of the watchtower slightly smaller than their tops so that it can be set up to overlook the walls.  It can also be set up on the ground or another flat surface, so this piece might get some use beyond fort scenarios.

Also, gotta have a ladder so that da boyz can get in and out.

Fort Construction: Gate

My fort now has an appropriately orky front gate. Astute observers might notice that this gate is substantially different than the original one that I created and isn't actually made of foam. You would be correct.

My original gate was built from XPS foam and had a drawbridge-style gate that was essentially just held in by friction. This severely limited what I could do with the gate, since I couldn't really add any additional detail to any of the parts that had to fit together, nor could I really add any sort of hinges or mechanisms for actually opening the door. As such, I decided to abandon the pressure-fit gate altogether and start out with a new one. 

Since I couldn't really make the foam any thinner without compromising its already weak structure, I opted to build the structural framework out of some aquarium filters. Although they're not made of the most rigid plastic, their grid structure made them pretty stable, except at the joints. Still a definite step up from the foam.

Also, the grid made it super easy to add the magnets!

The doors themselves were also based on the aquarium grating. I built some hinges out of plasticard rod that both allowed the doors to swing open for my vehicles to exit or to be removed if a band of Muties decides to blow them up during a siege.

I also added a nice bulkhead door from Necromunda, since I wouldn't think that they'd want to open and close the gates every time a mobster came in or out.

I made the doors look especially ramshackle, with big sections that looked like they'd been damaged and then hastily patched over. I also made sure to run some wires to that light so that the guards can see who's knocking at the front door in the middle of the night.

The framework of the door can be seen from the back, and I made sure to add plenty of bolts as well. I also added a few big chunks of detail in the corners to help shore those joints up against shearing forces. 

Again, since the fort is modular and meant to be used by all the mobs in our group, I didn't want to put any specific identifying details to tie it to my mob. Instead, I added some magnets above the gate so that whichever mob is using the fort can have their insignia showing.

I'm quite pleased with how my mob's sign turned out.

Finally, I decided to add a bit more detail to the bare walls on the inside of the gate. I modeled some big mechanisms with chains and pulleys that were probably once used to open the doors, but were now clearly broken. I'm sure the spannerz have jury-rigged a temporary solution to operate the doors that has become the norm now.

This makes for the eighth and final wall section of the fort, which means I'm really going to have to hook up my airbrush for real one of these days. Hopefully it won't take me a whole year to actually paint it. 

Fort Construction: Magnets!

I've now magnetized all the wall sections of my fort because of course I have. They were quite a bit easier to magnetize than all the fiddly little gubbinz I made for my vehicles; however, I was pretty surprised at how tightly they hold together. They also snap together in a very satisfying way.

Each wall section and tower got three quarter-inch magnets on each side. I also ended up adding a few extra lead weights at the bottom for some extra stability.  The whole thing is pretty solid once it's all assembled. 

Fort Construction: Workshop

 

Another big section of the fort is finished. This one is the spanners' workbench and tools, including some nice hydraulic arms. I probably went a bit overboard with the cables and the ductwork, but since the workbench itself was so detailed, I wanted the rest of the room to look like it matched.

As you can probably tell, most of this wall section is just built from the Mekboy Workshop terrain set, though it did take a bit of work to take the freestanding workshop and build it into the existing wall of the fort.

The biggest part was flipping the main wall of the workshop around and installing the bench on the wrong side. I decided to make the more detailed side of the piece face forward, since the other side would be glued to the wall. The piece is fairly symmetrical, so I really only had to carve some holes for a couple of wires and pipes to get the bench to sit (mostly) flush with the wall.

I ended up grinding off the back half of the wall to better attach it to the fort, so the workbench is now at a slightly odd angle. Plenty Orky, though.

Nice to see that the Orks keep their workspace as tidy as I keep mine.

Since the Mekboy Workshop came with a big hydraulic arm and I already had another as part of the gubbinz for my big trakk, I wanted to make some spots around the workshop where the arms could be installed. I went a little overboard making the mount for the arm, adding as many motors, compressors, and gears as I could fit into the tiny space I'd allotted myself. Though I guess going overboard is kind of on par with the rest of the workshop.

I was originally going to mount the second arm on the floor right next to the workbench, but that didn't give me much space if I wanted to make sure that this piece still fit together nicely with the other fort walls. Also, there was already more than enough detail crammed in this little section, so it couldn't hurt to spread it out a little bit.

I ended up making a little freestanding platform for the arm to sit in. I modeled it mostly on the assembly line platforms you see in car manufacturing plants, which seemed appropriate. I also had to pack more lead weights into this little thing than any other part of the fort just to keep it from tipping over when the arm swung around. Turned out pretty well, though.

Only a few more sections and this thing will be ready for some paint.

Fort Construction: Shanty Town

 

In most mobs on Gorkamorka, the nob and spanners would just curl up to sleep in their beloved vehicles, but other members of the mob probably get booted out once the comfy spots are taken. I'd imagine that a few industrious grots could nick a few sheets of metal and build themselves a nice hovel, while the yoofs in the gang could also nick a few sheets of metal...and make the grots build them a nice hovel.

I wanted to sort of give the impression not just that this section of wall contained the mob's sleeping quarters, but that the walls were probably honeycombed with little nooks and crannies that the mobsters had either purposefully left while constructing the fort, or hollowed out at some point.

Unsurprisingly, I used a rather eclectic range of materials to build this little shanty town. There's lots of plasticard, some bits of random toys, a bit of green stuff, and some tiny cast details. Also plenty of bolts and rivets.

Overall, it certainly doesn't look like the greatest of living conditions out in the deserts of Gorkamorka, but I have some friends in San Francisco who've definitely paid to rent worse places.

Fort Construction: More Storage

 

I figured that my fort needed some additional supplies like food and ammo (and plenty of booze) to keep the mob running, so I made another little spot for stashing supplies behind one of the walls.

I had a bunch of Necromunda crates that looked pretty appropriate for Gorkamorka, but a bit too pristine. After a bit of fiddling around, I decided that I needed quite a bit of variation in the crates to make them look proper Orky, so I ended up making a few of my own out of plasticard and green stuff.  I also made a few wooden crates. Although wood is pretty scarce on Gorkamorka, it seemed like a good way to store a bunch of tasty mushrooms.

In the end, I made more crates than would actually fit under the wall, so I might not be able to get them all on the finished product. Or I'll have to get a bit creative with my stacking. We'll see.

Fort Construction: Spare Parts

 

Now that my mob has a way to gas up their trakks, the next thing they needed were some spare parts for making repairs and building gubbinz. I picked another section of the wall that needed some sprucing up and added a storage area.

Most of the bits for this section came from the various scrap piles that you get in Ork terrain kits. In fact, if you look closely (or not really that closely), you'll notice that I made quite liberal use of the scrap piles and Orky barricades as I was adding detail to the various wall sections.

Although the scrap piles have a lot of really nice detail, they're basically just big hollow domes with detail pressed into their surface, which makes it pretty challenging to dismantle them into individual parts. I was essentially left with half of a bunch of parts, which I just rearranged into a different sort of junk pile. It worked pretty well considering what I had to work with. And I got lots of use out of my Dremel. 

The Ork terrain has quite a bit of Imperial iconography scattered around it, which makes sense in most Ork settings, but much less so on Gorkamorka.  While most of the scrap on the planet originally came from Imperial ships and vehicles (and who knows how many alien vessels might have been part of the 'Ulk), these bits have been recycled over and over again for hundreds of years. With the exception of the Muties, it seems unlikely that anyone would have a centuries-old heirloom toolbox with a perfectly preserved Aquila, so most of those details got filed off.

A few of the bigger details like tires are just blue tacked onto the piece for now, since it seems like they'll be easier to paint separately. I think most of the empty floor space will probably end up with stuff on it eventually.

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.