In a H.E.A.P. of Trouble

The High-orbit Escape Atmospheric Pod. (H.E.A.P.)


A trip to Home Depot with Andy to get some MDF board to build some terrain on yielded a bunch of little electrical PVC pieces as well. We tinkered around the store looking for terrain bits and pieces and next thing you know, I had the makings for either high-yield nuclear bombs, or some little escape pods. I opted for the latter.


To the ingredients I added three toothpaste tube caps, I knew I had been hanging on to these for a while for a reason. Do you realize how long it takes to save up three of these things? If you're hard up for some, you can always buy the .49¢ travel/sample sized tubes and use those caps. In the scope of ready-made and found object terrain building, anything goes.


The tube caps work as thruster nozzles inside the engine cavity. Instead of sanding off the raised print, I'm gonna leave it, it might make for some interesting dry brush areas later on.


Here's the three finished H.E.A.P.s. If you haven't seen the kick off to our 40k campaign, head over to planet Trucidos now. The focus of the campaign is not to just win games, nor is it to build up your armies (although I chose this path as well), but it's all about the terrain; building it, making it, and having quality pieces to use time and time again. As part of the campaign, players amass points based on square footage of terrain built. You also get points based on objective markers modeled, which you can make up to six in the overall campaign. These will be three of mine.


I used round wooden bases (you can get at a craft store) and regular household spackle to make little dirt divots where these touched down (err, crashed) at. One of the pods I cracked open, and will model it with a skeleton or two sprawled out of it. I'm gonna paint these up as heavily weathered, beaten up, and forgotten about. I really like that nicked up primer and metal showing through the rusted paint look, so I'll opt for that too...if I can pull it off of course.