Part of my plan for modular Necromunda tiles involves several bulkhead height tiles. While I am happy for some of these to be fully modelled, I also wanted to work out a way to make a solid, convincing but ultimately collapsible tile, in the interests of saving space for storage. Bulkheads, with all their slots, are clearly designed for doing exactly that.
As I’m doing 288mm square tiles (288mm being the length of 4 bulkheads), I started with the premise that I could have two opposite rows of 4 bulkheads and work from there. The other two walls for this tile will be sodden, mouldy brick walls carved from blue foam. I cut the two walls out, and several strips of textured plasticard (more 1mm thick glazing shims) cut to slot into the bulkheads.
The strips are glued to each end of the walls, such that there is 5mm overhang that slots neatly into a bulkhead.
In this way we have contrived a simple system whereby 2 long foam walls and 8 bulkheads (glues together into rows of 4) will quickly slot together to form a riser tile.
Clearly the same can be achieved with card or plasticard, but I like the strength and the ability to carve relief detail that the foam affords. To wit…
In the end I ended up making this in to a 2 bulkhead wide riser for now and added a central support for strength.
The bulkheads are painted in a delapidated, rusty condition, using the salt method. I will write more about this method in the future as I plan to use it extensively across my underhive terrain.
The walls are dark grey brick (with plaster pointing), weathered with green, black, brown and beige washes, and a few posters and signs cut from a sheet I’ve put together from designs found all over the net.
The roof is just a sheet of card, with two strips of card down the sides, painted grey and I’ve used strips of printed hazard stripes for the edges. I’m not too happy with the paint job on the roof itself, so will revisit it later, as well as adding some graffiti to the walls.
This has obviuusly meant biting the bullet and starting to paint my bulkheads. Understandably, many Necromunda players seem reluctant to do this! Here are some more bulkheads, with no specific use yet but just testing out a red scheme that seems to work well.
