Wednesday 27 May 2020

New Home Construction - Some Necromunda Habs

Bulldog Lopez posted a really cool building he'd built from classic Necromunda bulkheads on Facebook the other week. The design worked brilliantly because of its simplicity - the bulkheads were just glued together and a roof dropped on top. I'd been holding onto some bulkheads with some much more complicated plans in mind, but hadn't got round to attempting anything. Being shown a simpler and effective option got me motivated to make some buildings of my own.


The first two buildings of a new settlement.

My design brief was as follows:


  1. Easy to make with pretty much just Necromunda bulkheads and plasticard.
  2. Replicable.
  3. Functional for games of Necromunda (when paired with gantries and walkways from Sector Mechanicus and Zone Mortalis scenery).
  4. Functional for skirmish style games.
I figure if I can make 5-7 buildings, perhaps with a bit of flexibility in configuration, that will give me a nice little settlement to use.


First up I decided to make a basic standard hab. This will be the template for most of the later buildings in terms of configuration and dimensions. The hab is constructed from six Necromunda bulkheads, a couple of types of plasticard and some plastic strip/rod. The roof hatch is from the GW Ryza ruins set.


You can't see clearly here, but I blanked off the open X type bulkhead by gluing a rectangle of plasticard to the interior.

The shutter is made from some corrugated plasticard which I'm rapidly running out of!




I painted the hab up by spraying grey, using masking tape to paint the yellow stripe, then drybrushing the whole thing with a light brown. I used an orange brown to add some rusty details.





I wanted a commercial property for the second building and settled on a food vendor. I glued the bulkheads differently to make this one slightly longer and thinner. The shutters are more corrugated plasticard, whilst the sign and serving counter are cut from slightly thicker plasticard. I added some bits from GW kits, the most important being the knife and fork logo (a Blood Bowl Halfling counter).





Broadly speaking, the paint job was similar on this hab, although I increased the colour with an eye-catching red to entice customers in!


The menu is another scrap of plasticard and the sauce bottles are from Black Cat Bases.

The graffiti stencil is my favourite part of the paint job - made by actually making a stencil from paper and stippling paint around it. Some of you Confrontation fans might recognise the logo!




I enjoyed making and painting these so much that I've already made another couple of buildings and have planned out more after that!


By the way, here's Bulldog Lopez's lovely build:


I just love these colours!


16 comments:

  1. These are great! I might give this a go, as I could do with some more buildings to break up line of sight and add to my wasteland shanty town. The colours remind me of the favelas in Rio - I once made some houses based on that. The corrugated card and the details really help, too.

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    1. Honestly, you won't regret it - they're easy to assemble and full of nice detail that rewards a simple paint job. Cheers!

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  2. You both did great jobs. You're going to make me slap some paint on those Necromunda bulkheads yet. Fabulous stuff!

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    1. Do it! They give an awful lot of bang for your buck!

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  3. These are marvellous. I really like the shutters being pulled down and graffittied up on the shack. It evokes the real world shops we see, but without spoiling the idea we're in the Underhive at all. Can't wait to see what your future plans for the rest of the bulkheads are.

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    1. Thanks Curis. I really like the shutters too - my favourite part of these actually. They're easy to do and effective at mixing up the look of the bulkheads, as well as having some real-world logic.

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  4. These buildings are just fantastic! It is such a cool use of the materials. I remember being excited about bulldog's buildings initially, but then forgot about them. Just yesterday I stumbled upon the New Necromunda terrain bulkhead set I never finished prepping. I'm wondering about using them for this idea. I'm also still playing with some fan made 3d printer files. They've been a nightmare to print, honestly, but I think I'm getting the hang of modifying them to print. Thanks for the inspiration.

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    1. Thanks Sean! I've debated for ages how to get the best out of the bulkheads and I reckon this is better than trying to replicate the old Necromunda terrain. The new bulkheads definitely have some potential - I'm going to take a look at those eventually too :)

      Good luck with those STLs!!

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  5. Well done! Such great use of those bitz!

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    1. Thanks Skully! It's a fun way to get them back into circulation.

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  6. :O
    I never thought of this and it looks simply awesome! I do love what you achieved with such raw materials. The colour is a total win too. I bet you can get modular and stack them too, hmmm...

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    1. Watch this space for modular stacking! I'm working on it at the moment. It's definitely possible :)

      Thanks Suber!

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  7. Great work... Also, can I ask you in which facebook group I can find Bulldog Lopez's photos? Thanks!

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    1. Thanks! Glad you like them. Bulldog Lopez posted his pics in the Oldhammer Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheOldhammerCommunity/

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