Sump Canal Pt 2 (Terrain)

With only a week left until the Necromunda Terrain Builder's competition entries are due, I cracked on with my Sump Canal over the course of Saturday and Sunday.  The focus was to (1) complete the canal, (2) finish painting the docks and (3) create scatter terrain to complement the canal and docks.  And fish.  I needed some animal life for the Canal.  That was a must.

So the build is complete!  Now I just have to put it together as a diorama for my competition entry, due 20th of December 2019.

The Canal

My prior pours of polyurethane and resin had almost hit the mark - remember I am/was a resin novice!  When I went and checked out my board on Saturday morning I noticed a lot of bubbles in the resin, some of which were large and numerous enough to ruin the effect.  I wonder why it happened?  Likely to do with the quick curing time coupled with me having to mix up multiple batches to cover the board.

I had watched some resin-related YouTubes that had people using what looked like a hairdryer or heat gun to push the resin around... it got me thinking that maybe I could melt the bubble out of the resin!  So I fired up my flame torch and gave it a shot.  Mmmm.  Mistake #2: Resin burns.  Fortunately, it was only a little bit, so I decided to mix some more resin and see if I could hide the damage.

I got out my acetone to give the surface of the canal a nice wipe-clean - nothing like dust to ruin the effect.  Mmmm, Mistake #3: Acetone really @#%% Resin.  It got streaky and lines appeared in it.  Yuck and bugger.

But I still had some resin left!  So I mixed up the last of it, added some green ink and poured it afresh.  24 hours later and it looks passable - thank the Emperor!

The Docks

I've plenty of them now.  To save some fiddling, I decided to base many of them with the stumps I had previously made - their magnets were having trouble gripping through the now thicker resin board, so it doesn't really matter anyway.  I even made some netting-type dock walks, maybe the sort of thing that the sump's residents would do when raw materials are hard to come by?

One box of (primarily) dock terrain...

...yields all this, about 20-square inches worth.

Scatter Terrain

This was kind of fun.  For my previous quarter's build, I made a crazy spiked, barricade-type thing out of old sprues and whatnot.  I really like the piece and it has a use in games as well: shooting that passes through its footprint is treated as passing through light cover.  It was easy to make, so I made another half dozen similar things.

Here is most of it in one visual feast.

They've got a little variation in them and even some dock references (like the fishy and nets).  I like them, they're exactly the type of thing that makes an attractive board interesting to play upon.

These nets-come-fences were quick to build: wire mesh frames, plastic mesh and
some electrical wire to wrap it all together.  I used my flame torch to add a little...
... eh, who am I kidding: any excuse to create with FIRE!

Again, making use of some different wire mesh and electrical wires from a
computer I harvested a couple of months back.  And a fishy!

The thing on the left is similar to one I made for last quarter's terrain challenge -
it's a couple of sprue bits glued together to form a corner.  That round thing is
a beer cap smashed flat with my hammer - I've used them on a few pieces now,
the common element ties the various bits together.

Here are another two sprue type cultist poles - maybe something that cultists
hang their sump dampened cowls out to dry upon?  Or their enemies heads...
The spikes are from ear cleaners - I've used them many times for spiking things up.

The last bits of scatter for your viewing pleasure have been placed together in a delightful little diorama I have named "The Blood Shack".  It started out as a third suspension rope/wire bridge but once I had glued it together, I realised I did it back-to-front!  Waste not, want not I say.  So I bent it into a rough square shape, made a roof out of a bit of an old printer tray and added some netting and something that looks like a porthole.  Is it the butcher's meat room?  Is this where cultists relieve themselves?  Only the foolhardy would venture inside.  ("Sign says, woo, stay away fools").

I had made the machine out the front as the generator for my drinking hole entry earlier in the year to power the moonshine still.  With the addition of half a whale, it now has a whole new life as the mincer.

Finally, there's the poor beast that's lying in the foreground.  Evidently, the cultist is preparing to tenderise the meat some with a rusty ball of spikes - I think I saw that on Master Chef once in the Mystery Box Challenge.  I will draw your eye to the harpoons embedded in the noble sump whale's body.  Maybe Willy is destined for the mincer as well?