From PaulOG: Stalingrad Apartment Complex (Klendathu) (140 points)

28mm soldat shown for scale, not scoring 

Making landfall at our next planetary stop of Klendathu, we find ourselves in the theme of "An Invasion Gone Bad". For this I offer the following themed terrain build for Stalingrad, an invasion that went as badly for the Germans and Klendathu did for the Humans in Starship Troopers. Its been a labour of love so please excuse if I spam with a few more pics than usual :-)

This 28mm scaled apartment complex building occupies a 1 foot square mdf tile and has 5 seperate (and detachable) floors. It was printed in small sections by Alan on his filament printer last year, after which I then spent some 30 odd hours glueing, chopping and drilling to give it that pristine Urban Combat look. Quite a labour of love in which I took my own modicum of injuries! Each floor was modified to make it quickly removable and allow skirmish games to be played just in this building alone.  

The building breaks down into five separate floors - I added framing to the underside of each so that it doesn't inadvertently revert to this state mid-game...

I wanted a balance of dioramic destruction vs playability, so tried to portray a holdout building in which defenders have cleared the worst of the internal rubble to keep their fighting positions effective. It took some time to do this sensibly (with obligatory research of actual Stalingrad buildings - Alan's high standards require nothing less than primary source evidence, which makes one really lift one's game!). All this modelling took well over a month (in lockdown, of course) so I quietly packed it away to enjoy painting it during the Challenge.

Undercoated in black, I then got my airbrush into action (with coaching assistance - thanks Marty!) to finally start adding pigment to the project. I really wanted to bring some colour to the table amongst all the usual urban grey wreckage, so went with a timeless brick red vibe with some coloured internal walls. I added floorboard beams and other detritus from scrap balsa. Final layers on the brickwork were traditional drybrush method, while internal floors and walls were stippled to give a bedraggled look.

Junkers-eye view of the building

Overall, I put some hours into this and am really happy with how its turned out.  It weighs in at six full 6" terrain cubes for 120 points, plus 20 planetary theme bonus points, for a total of 140. 

And finally, welcome back Millsy as our Saturday Minion!

* commercial stl files by WOW Buildings, here: https://wowbuildings.net/

Hail Hydra! (Red Skull was my AHPC VII Character bonus round submission :-)

From Millsy

Crikey, what a monster building! It's an gorgeous piece Paul and you've done an amazing job on getting it ready for the table. The colour is spot on, a perfect match of muted earthy tones. It almost looks like it has been lifted straight out of recoloured period footage. I'm sure you'll have a wonderful time fighting over it for years to come. Good to see Alan is keeping you honest on the history side of things too!

6 cubes worth of terrain plus the location bonus is a well earned 140 points. Nice!