Speedpainted 40k Buildings

The University of Chicago

I've been on a one month hiatus from the hobby due to work and family commitments as well as my perennial revamping of the home recording studio. In the meanwhile, several supplements have been released (Inquisition and Iron Hands) or are in the process of being released, and there are rumors of Nids and IG flying around. All exciting stuff. Being away for a while has helped me focus on what I need to do to really start enjoying eternal warfare. The first task is to finish my home table. In a previous post, I show the frame and boards.
My plan is to replicate the spirit of the campus of my alma mater, The University of Chicago. It is completely saturated with gothic buildings and ivy. I'm not trying to do a building for building replica, but I do want the battlescape to simulate a ruined ecclesiastic complex or scholam campus.

So over the past year, I acquired a collection of Pegasus and Armorcast cathedrals and gothic ruins. I have enough Pegasus panels to create quite a large building, but the plastic they use is so incredibly strong and brittle that removing the flash and sprue niblets has become quite a task. The Armorcast resin pieces are incredibly robust and heavy. If it wasn't so expensive, I'd use Armorcast pieces exclusively. I speed painted everything, which in my universe means prime, dry brush, detail, wash. I started with the Pegasus ruins:

These two corner sections come in one box. Click image to enlarge.

Black primer, sloppy dry brush of Adeptus Battlegrey (OOP GW Foundation color...just a light grey), Dwarf Bronze detail on the windows and badges, and then an overall light wash of Badab Black. Total time excluding drying between steps: 30 minutes. I think it turned out great. I'm going to base these two with a long gouge/crater going diagonally between the two section to simulate large ordinance that didn't explode until after going through the building.

Next were the Armorcast ruined pieces:

This corner was purchased separately than the sections below.

There are actually two door pieces, but I'm using one for the other, more intact, cathedral.

Instead of Adeptus Battlegrey, I opted to blend by own gray this time with two types of cheap craft paint. So these were black primer, grey dry brush, second dry brush with lighter grey, detail with Dwarf Bronze, wash with Badab Black.

And then my albatross. This piece has been on my to do list for a long time. Same technique as above except for the roof.

Someone needs a bigger lightbox.

I know it's difficult to see in this poorly lit photo, but the roof has a pretty good imitation of verdigris going on. For that, I started with a black primer, then I basecoated with Copper. I then mixed up Ultramarine Blue with a little bit of Thrakka Green and a lot of white, drybrushing liberally. The complete building took about 4 hours straight through.

I wasn't super careful, since most of this will be covered in ivy.

I'm going to leave the roof removable...maybe this will be the start of a Zone Mortalis board.

Click to enlarge.

Next steps: finish the massive Pegasus building to this stage, and then start adding ivy (fresh and burned) to the buildings. I then need to lay this out and finish the boards. This was a huge step, and it was a really great break from painting tiny figures in an assembly line.

And if you are wondering what you can do with Pegasus building tiles, check out Chris Sabol's monster from Adepticon 2010 (there are many more images I took...be sure to search my handle + adepticon 2010 on Dakka).