Developing the Warzone: Industrial Beginnings

So with Critical Engagement in a few months we've all decided that we want some more variance in the terrain on offer in the tournament just trying to break up the monotony of the urban environment. I'd like to make two boards, one industrial and the other a little more rural. So the easiest one to start with, in my mind at least, is the industrial one.

So when your creating a board the easiest way to start is to have the idea then do some research to help come up with a theme. So when I started this up I went to the ever trusty Google image search and started looking up chemical planets and other industrial complexes and started looking for inspiration. See below.

So lots to look at but the main thing I was looking at was piping... a lot of pipes. And one thing you really need to consider when coming up with a table of scenery is that it needs to last and be usable. Unlike train layout hobbyists, wargaming buildings get things placed on top of them and around them. The buildings also get moved around a bit and piled on top of each other between games, so they are probably going to take some knocks. Which means they need to be rugged and not have too many sticky out easily snappable bits, a little chip repair here and there is fine but small aerials dont ever really fit back on again.

So back to google to see what else I can do:

Adorable, isnt he?

 Now these I can do and they add lots of interesting shapes to the field and also dont have too many of those tricky sticky out bits.

So with all this research done I had a couple of train rides to come up with ideas ( I commute to work, good for thinking time), so in my notepad I came up with a few ideas. I settled on a martian desert/oxide desert so red dirt, now to contrast that I don't want my buildings to be green (too complimentary as strange as that sounds) or grey (too tedious).
I want my buildings to settle into the landscape and have a unified look, so I've settled on a dusty deep blue with yellow hazard stripes as accent marks, to settle them I'm going to use a red weathering powder to help the buildings look as if they belong. I'm going to paint my gas tanks a dusty worn white though as I'd like some nic contrast on the board.

I'm also gonna work on some nice scatter terrain but still thinking those through at the moment, any suggestions feel free to chuck them in the comments.
Current list stands at:

• Some shipping containers, nice and easy to make hopefully and always good line of sight blockers.
• Industrial vehicles, diggers, etc (any suggestions here especially would be useful)
• Barrels and detritus

So with that determination in mind I'm gonna start looking at how I'm gonna go about this project. First stop shop for me was looking about for some cool industrial style terrain. Luckily that wonderful Mr Perry of Dark Ops has just the best starter kit for a dzc industrial scenery.
Linky
Ordering from him I picked up his industrial scenery pack which is a lovely bunch of stuff, I added a few extras on there to make sure I had a big bunch of stuff to work on. It arrived in a reassuringly solid and heavy parcel with that ever intoxicating smell of burnt MDF emanating from it.

So once I cleaned up my geeky drool I got to work on my first building which is the sublime Hangar.
I even may have made a gif hehe.

It went together pretty quickly with only a little moving around of bits, it took around about one and bit cups of tea to put together. (Cups of tea tends to be how I measure projects, an average army project sits around 100-150 cups. The Tron PHR I did not dare count how many I had....)

Need to put in the door properly but I need to jiggle it about a bit to fit.

Anyway I'm really excited to get this project really cracking, I've even got an idea to use a monorail I won a while back as a mass cargo transit with the carriages converted to carry shipping containers or other material. I may also convert a monorail station with some sort of crane apparatus to unload it.

Fingers crossed I get it done in time for Critical Engagement, which considering my time table may be abit of a stretch but he who dares eh?