Medea Refinery.
My new Medea Refinery terrain set is complete, and all set to be one of the centerpiece boards for our LibertyHammer 40k narrative event later this month!
Process
The whole build took about a month of work off and on over evenings and weekends. Tons of photos, notes, and 3D models are in the WIP writeups:
- Part 1: Pump Station A1
- Part 2: Smelt Furnace 17
- Part 3: Pipeworks and Silo
- Part 4: Water Tower
- Part 5: Reservoir Tank and Processing Site
- Part 6: Painting
I also have up a general walkthrough on 3D printing terrain.
But the short story is, Medea Refinery started from some boards…
Hardboard terrain bases cut and sanded.
Proceeded with some serious traditional scratchbuilding…
Scratchbuilding the first piece.
Grew to incorporate a bunch of bespoke 3D modeling and printing…
Modeling the outlet spigot.
Then took a small crew to get it all painted…
My 9-month old supervising.
Later I took some photos…
Medea Refinery photo shoot.
And now it’s done. We could spend a lot more time working on it. There’s enough detail to spend forever on weathering, let alone anything else. But we’re at a good balance between great looking terrain, robust and playable terrain, and actually getting it finished in time for our summer event.
Action Shots
A few photos of the refinery in the thick of battle; more photos are in this gallery.
The fire background is from Argaz, used without permission.
Wrap-Up
Again, more photos are in the gallery, tons of construction notes are in the WIP writeups and 3D printing walkthrough, and all of the 3D models are available for free download via Thingiverse. Thanks to everybody that’s followed along, it’s been really encouraging to receive so many positive comments throughout.
Many many thanks of course also go to Alex, Colin, Jason, and Tom for doing such an awesome job bringing the pieces to life. In our club we’re really big on community storytelling, group projects, and fun events, and it was a great time to build yet another whole new world for our space dollies to fight over and forge the narrative.
I’m not sure when I’ll get to another big terrain project. In the immediate future I need to make the mission packet for our LibertyHammer event, and then roll right into the same for the NOVA 40k Narrative. But a couple small projects are already in the works, and building the refinery has reminded me that terrain building is one of my favorite aspects of the hobby, so I’ll be back at it soon. See you out there!
