Adeptus Titanicus scenery tutorial

After building my Legio Ignatum titans I had to make some scenery for them. You can't have your poor titans stomping around an empty field after all. GW offers some pretty nifty kits to build scenery with. But (in my very humble opinion) you don't quite get enough scenery with just one kit. Also simply building ready-to-go plastic terrain doesn't quite scratch my hobby itch. So I went a bit wild with the Manufactorum Imperialis kit and made this.

Now we have something to fight over.

<opinionated analysis warning>
The trick to Adeptus Titanicus terrain is to scale it properly. I've seen quite a few people playing with terrain large enough to block line of sight to even a Warlord Titan. Most of the 8mm MDF kits with city blocks are scaled to do this. I think it is a standard approach 40K players have to terrain that fails to appreciate the difference between 40K and AT. They know you need cover, even for your tanks. This does not apply to Adeptus Titanicus. The idea of terrain here is that it helps block line of sight (or at least gives cover to) Knights and smaller titans. It gives small machines a chance to survive. Warlords are supposed to stick out and take a beating. That's what the void shields are for.

Someone delivered a container to the higher floor smoke feeds, but had to run of when the titans approached. 

Another fun thing about Adeptus Titanicus is that it is very easy to create compelling terrain for it. Even without GW kits you can just visit your local hardware store and pick up random rings and doodads. You might even go wild and pick some spare parts from Ikea and create some proper scenery (I most definitely should do an Ikea scratch-built article at some point).

Please don't smoke near the top floor Prometheum tank, also don't fire plasma weapons at it.

Painting was done quick and dirty (an evening's work). I airbrushed the buildings with black primer and then gave them a coat of GW Celestra Grey. After that I sponged on a 50/50 mix of Celestra Grey and Eshin Grey. I followed that up by sponging pure Eshin Grey. This was followed up with another round of sponging, this time pure Ulthuan Grey. I finished it all by thinning down a 50/50 mix of Nuln Oil and Agrax Earthshade with a lot of water and applying that all over the buildings. I also applied some thinned down Athonian Camoshade to give random corners a slightly more worn look.

Do not block the side intake thingies, they are very important to the proper functioning of this place!

The rust was applied using a standard rust recipe from the airbrush. I started with VMC Hull Red and used a random collection of browns and orange colors to airbrush interesting looking patches of brown and orange color. I tried to block overspray with a bit of paper (and a gloved finger). As you can see this failed in a number of places. It doesn't matter, rusts tends to bleed onto concrete anyway and it just adds to the 'worn out, we don't care' look. I sponged a bit of shiny metal on the rusty bits to give it all a proper scraped metal look. Now lets move on to some WIP pics.

I don't use my polystyrene cutter often enough. 

I used my trusty polystyrene cutter with the essential extras from Shifting Lands to create basic blocks, more or less scaled to cover Warhounds, give cover to Reavers and leave my Warlords (mostly) exposed. The trouble with blocks of terrain is that they tend to look rather boring. To alleviate this I cut some random pointy and round shapes as well. It gave me a chance to use some of the fancy extra Shifting Lands tools I own.

Next step: just add doodads.  

Here's a collection of likely looking building bits. These I dressed up by adding bits from the Manufactorum kit. This kit is nice, but I thought some parts were in short supply. I made a rubber mold to expand the number of doodads and cargo containers available. Looking back I could've saved myself a lot of time and effort as the Manufactorum kit has more then enough panels and bits for my needs. Only the containers are in dreadful short supply (only four in a box), so I'm happy I have a bunch of these as extras. If only they made a box called 'container world' that would allow me to recreate the standard look of a modern harbor...

Thinned down instant filler, very useful to strengthen and texture polystyrene. 

With the doodads added, I thinned down some instant filler with water and applied it to all the uncovered polystyrene surfaces. This adds a bit of texture and strengthens the buildings. Thinning it down is essential otherwise you get too much texture (and application takes more time too).

And here's a building ready for primetime (if by primetime you mean adding extra primer).

Here's a building ready for primer. I used a bit of un-thinned filler to fill any gaps between the doodads and the polystyrene.

Next step: priming and painting.

And here's a set of them. Other bits in evidence are the green bubblegum container (the best random sci-fi terrain option ever) and the bunker looking thing. This is a plastic cap from a fruity drink bottle. I also used some bits from the ever useful Maelstrom's Edge terrain set. The cranes in the back are the main reason I bought the Manufactorum kit (aside from the containers). These are awesome. All in all this was a fun project that gave my titans some terrain to stomp around in.