Brumbaer / 3D Printing / Kill Team Cathedral
 

January 2019. Kill Team came as a surprise to me. I dislike Warhammer 40k with all my heart, but Kill Team cuts down most of the things that annoy me. It also helps that it is small sacle, 5 to 15 models per side and a game is usually played in an hour or less. Kill Team is played on a tabletop, but it is much smaller than the tables we are used to. Such a tabletop is called a Kill Zone and Kill Team captured my interest enough to make me want to create my own Kill Zone.

 

The board

Kill Zones have a fixed size of 30" times 22" or 76cm time 56cm. It seem to be a weird format, but is in fact the size of an old paper format called Imperial.

When I started out I planned to have a MDF base. So I got two sheets of 38cm x 56cm and some sturdy tape to make a foldable board.

I tried to give all models the armament as stated in the rules.

 

 

Wall segments

Games-Workshop produces some very nice, very detailed wall segments. But the idea of having to cut out, remove flash and paint the excessive detail of 50 plus wall segments and some more columns tempted me to drop the project.

But then it occurred to me that I could 3D print some wall segments and columns with less detail and no need to cut and "deflash".

I decided to keep the overall look of the GW wall segments, but remove all the detail.

I realised quickly that the walls needed at least some detail for being not too boring.

Once I decided on the shape I tested different colors. The ever popular greay, the currently in mode sand and a terracotta. Each in combination with silver, gold and copper metal parts and different washes.

In the end I decided on silver metal parts and sand for the outer walls and terracotta for the inner walls and some Gloss Nuln Oil for weathering.

Some color test-pieces.

There are different kind of segments. Some with window only, some arcs, some doors and a variant for the main entrance.

While the basic design and the test pieces had some complete segments the finished model has not a single unbroken segment.

 

The layout

There are many features that will make us recognise a cathedral or church. One is the main entrance between two towers. Another is the nave in the middle and two aisles at the sides. At the end there is a combination of Transept and Apse or an Apse with some Chapels at the side, depending on interpretation.

Work in progress first test of the layout with miniartures to get a feel for the scale.

This image was taken after the wall segments and columns were printed. At this stage I planned to hae the floor made of layers of MDF boards. The lowest layer can be seen at the walls further in the background. The plan was to have two additional layers. The blue altar and the white columns were first concepts to check what it might look like and to judge size and proportions.

For printing I combined multiple segments. My printer can only print objects with a maximum size of 20cm x 20cm, so I can print stretches of 3 segments plus columns in one go.

Here you can see the walls and columns that form part of one of the aisles and nave. Those were printed in one go.

You will notice that there is no second level and that there are no places which can't be seen into intentionally. Both features shift game balance and so I decided to not have them in fixed structures like the outer walls. 

When needed they can be added with some scatter terrain.

 

The floors

At some point I decided to abandon the idea to use MDF for the floor and decided to 2D print the floors as well. The limited build room of my 3D printer forces me to divide the floor into 12 tiles.

In the following picture the tiles can be easily made out.

The floors are raised in three steps from the ground. At some places the floors are damaged, not only inside, but also outside of the cathedral.The eagle is also a 3d structure, minimally higher than the floor so it is easy to paint. Outside parallel to the aisles are some sockets intended for buttresses or supports, but in the end they are reserved space for some statues.

As you can see craters and other damage are also part of the design. 

Talking about painting. One of the reasons for using my own walls was to reduce the amount of painting needed. All walls and columns are sand coloured, but the walls inner side is in terracotta. Alle metal parts, but the eagles are in silver, the eagles in gold. The walls are primed, brushed and got only a single coat of  paint.  on the inside. Metal parts and eagles only got one coat. All parts were weathered  with a black wash. "Everything earth". For painting earth I used two different approaches. One is just an ordinary coat of pain the other one uses textured paint. Both can be see side by side above.

Everything kept simple to get a quick result.

Orcs and T'au were starting to fight over the cathedral even before it was finished.

Last not least I created some stained glass for the rose. The frame of the rose consists of two parts and som overhead foil is put in between them to mimic the glass.

This concludes the cathedral itself and leaves only ...

 

 

Scatter Terrain

Scatter terrain are little terrain pieces used to bring some variety to an otherwise fixed board. The will be added or removed just as the players see fit.

Of course they should fit the cathedral theme. So nothing could be more fitting than pieces of broken walls and columns.

As you can see the terrain pieces have their own little ground. It gives them literally something to stand on and blends them better in.

Just outside of the cathedral there was some space reserved for supporting columns or buttresses but I decided to put some statues there. These are the six variants. I printed some in a smaller scale to be used inside the cathedral.

What would be a cathedral without an altar ? So there is one as well. It is a slab of marble with two side walls that can be put on or not.

 And as a last piece there is a pulpit. It lloks a bit small, because the marine is so large, but it is sized correctly for ordinary humans.

 

 

The end

All that's left are some more pictures of the finished model