Well, my Imperial Strongpoint has finally arrived in the mail, and I still have nine days left for this Group Build!! Time's going to be tight, and I'm not going to get any more paint that a base coat completed, but I'm inspired and I'm going to race against the clock.

The aim is to build an Indomitable Fortress along the lines of the Fortress of Redemption. The build will use the Imperial Bastions from the GW line as a basis, and then try to blend all of the scratchbuilt components and sections in to make it look like the one construction.

For those who don;t have access to the Planetstrike rules, the Indomitable Fortress is comprised of at least two bastions, plus a main tower. It is also able to fire missiles from a silo.

The theme of this build is that the fortress body was carved from the rock of a cliff/hill, and then STC components were installed. Since this Group Build is Higher and Higher, the second aim is to get as many different playing levels as possible.

Here's the basic part after one night of effort. Nothing is attached at this stage - it's just there to get the basic layout, size and height.

Here's the look from the 'front' of the piece, with the next components annotated on (Tacical SM Sergeant for scale purposes):


Here's a ground level view:


Here's the 'back' view:

Day Two

Well, it's been a productive evening, and I feel like I might actually achieve this by the deadline.

First part of today - glueing together the boxes & polystyrene that are forming the base of the main tower (no pics, 'cos it's off drying and doesn't look very interesting.)

Battlements:

These have gone well today. The polystyrene to make the back of the cliff has been selected and sorted out, the gun tower has been lowered down to fit into the height of the face a bit better, and the gap between the pieces has been closed off. This section is now slowly being glued together. The line drawn on is roughly the place where I want the cliff/rock to end and the bastion battlements start.





Main tower:

I measured out the height of the tower using a very careful rough guess from the tower of the Fortress of Redemption on the GW web site. It looks to be about 8 times the height of a marine, which works out almost exactly the height of two soft drink cans. The rest of the box then makes the cladding, with the holes cut out for the spare crenellations from the Bastion kit to be inserted.




Missile launcher:

This has been made by cutting the blast doors out of the lid of an egg carton (I wanted the rough texture). The hinges have been made out of sections of a cotton bud shaft which have been clipped off. The masking tape is there to hide the holes in the plastic container. The container itself is from our groceries - an apple box I think. Tha main tower is being built on a mushroom box.



Overall shot:

Since most of the right side is dismantled and off in various stages of drying, here's shots of the left half of the fortress (one front and one back), incorporating the battlements and the missile launcher. The flower candles were the nearest heavy object during gluing time and are holding the battlements and the polystyrene "cliff" together at the moment.

looks very nice with concepts and build materials, must will follow progress
....

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Day Three

Stairs:

I started today with the staircase that leads up to the main door, at the base of the main tower. I wanted a single, winding path that forced any invader to spend lots of time in front of the guns. I made the vertical components out of card, and then cut sections of paddle-pop sticks to create the steps. Each one is roughly an inch across, and about half a cm heigh. Each section of the staircase adds 30mm of height.





Craters:

As each of the bastions can be destroyed, and each of the pieces is remaining separate so that I can use them elsewhere, I am going to model craters straight onto the board, leaving them the right size so the bastions sit over the top of them. The first crater is also going to be my practice run for making the rock effects, so it's been made onto it's own piece of plastic base for ease of work. The second crater, for the right hand bastion, is going to include sections of the subterranean passages underneath a damaged floor. I've cut out the polystyrene, added some cardboard for the walls that I want to place details onto, and then put the damaged floor over the hole. The Eldar are kindly assisting it to stay in place while the glue dries.






Cake:

Since no siege can be withstood without an adequate food supply, I then stopped to produce cake:




Finally, I got back to work again, and used "no more gaps" to fill in the spaces in the staircases. Here's a final shot of the whole right-hand wing of the complex in it's current state:

I like what I see, I think the GW terrain looks its best when combined with scratch building!
Good to see you base your cake on the same material as your terrain

PS there are some plans for the Fortress of Retribution (redemtion) available on Warseer
post 1258 ->
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?109769-Apocalypse-40k-Terrain/page63
and the bastion
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?109769-Apocalypse-40k-Terrain/page23

Bugbait out

awesome man! i always love terrain with pre-maid stuff meshed with scratch. and i totally love the built in crater thing!! pretty smart and versatile thinknig i'd say more, but Dark bugging me to go do dishes so he can go to the hobby store ^^; so gl! and at this rate, i'm sure you'll finish!

-BB

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Thanks for the feedback. Loved your thread, and the plans. Gonna stick with my own for this build though. Have you made the whole fortress from those plans?

I actually buy cake bases for terrain making. Since cake supply stores sell a variety of both squard and circular pre-cut MDF boards, it works really well.

Day Four

Well, this project continues to run to a good schedule. Four days in, and heaps of progress. With five to go I might just make it. There's been a lot of glueing and waiting for things to dry so far, which is pretty much finished, so the pace should improve (hence more photos for today).

Left Hand Crater:

Some more work on this after yesterday, where this crater was just a strip of cardboard sized up on a temporary plastic base. Today has seen,

Cardboard hacked out into ruins



The position set and checked (to ensure that the Bastion can still be removed from over the top of the crater)






Rubble and destruction added



Undercoat applied




Right hand crater:

Yesterday this crater had the subterranean sections cut out, and the floor and wall added. Today has seen the interior details started, which include a rack of SM boltguns, and the escape hatch from the bastion kit magetised so that it can be inserted and look like the entrance to the next section of the fortress.





Main Tower:

The final part of today is work on the base of the main tower section. Very little has gone on with this piece yet except glueing the various major structural pieces together, which can be seen in the first photo. The remainder of the pics are from the cliff/rock added to the back of the tower. The pics show how the box at the base sits right up against the back edge of the board, and the cliff protrudes further out, creating a kind of overhang. A little part needs to be touched up (top right corner), but overall, I'm becoming comfortable working with the expanding foam to create rock effects. Doing the crater first provided a good opportunity to learn, and while I'm still getting the hang of it, this part of the cliff has worked quite well to my mind (though it's probably a little harder to see when the main tower itself is clear plastic). Trust me - it'll look better once painted.

I can't see most of the pics, but from what i hear you're going at an amazing pace! You seem nearly done

-BB

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Do you have a plan to disguise the card battlements?
Im hoping you have a good supply of small gravel and course sand for the open areas.


I did it back to front . . . I made the fortress and then IronDad made the plans, so they should be good.

Battlements are going to have rock below the blue line and concrete effect above the blue line. None of the card is going to be bare at this stage.

Main front area is going to have rubble/rocks from the excavation left as difficult terrain. Most of the currently visible sections of card or polystyrene are going to be covered over in the next phases. Not sure what to do about the main tower though. I think a concrete effect on it might be a bit harsh - I'll have to experiment...

I thought you were older than that!

Very very nice lupus! Great way to expand those kits.

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I assume that you're talking about the picture of my son rather than my amatuer terrain making attempt...

Day Five

Relatively quiet day today - Monday, back at work, and my earlier pictured son's first day of school. He's looking forward to the day he can help the men shoot the monsters and the dinosaurs (Orks & Tyranids). My wife then reminded me as I sat down to my terrain making that I owed my sister in law a new databse for her business before the end of the week, so that killed most of the evening.

Anyway, I did get the rock set out for the left hand side. Three shots of the work, from different angles. The epic titan is holding the coffee cup top onto the pepsi can (see earlier pictures). I couldn't get it to stay on with glue, probably because there wasn't enough contact surface area. The foam I'm using for the rock dries rock hard (you can cut and sand it if you want), so that'll hold the lid on nice and tight.

Day Six

The main tower base was set onto the board today, which allowed the stairs to be placed on permanently as well. Three shots of that, plus the texturing that's gone onto the battlement floors.

Day Sevem, Eight & Nine

Destroyed by my boss.

Day Ten

Right hand crater.

Next on the list is the crater under the right hand bastion, which includes the underground section of the fortress.



Gun Turrets

The gun turrets have been extended by running cables out through the sipper section of the coffee cups.


Main Tower

Final assembly has commenced.


Paint!

The rock effects have been finished off, and the model given it's undercoat and spray paint basecoat.



EDIT:

And now it's been given drybrushes on the black rocks and most of the green. Because it's late at night now, the flash on the camera makes the rock drybrush come out looking a bit harsher than it does in real life.