Fort Hardknox

Posted on 23/03/2019 by sho3box

The Boss Drum tribe assaults Fort Hardknox.

I painted a post-apocalyptic, scrap fort from Fogou Models. It’s shiny AND chrome and I painted it in three working days/24hrs approximately, over a bank holiday weekend.

Fort Hardknox. Its world is fire. And blood. But mainly acrylic paint. And glue.

Fort Hardknox is a resin set of four walls, three corners and a hinged gate in a post-apocalyptic, beaten metal panel and scrap style. All of the walls and corners have a flat battlement floor piece, with a pair of small supporting walls. A number of ladders and small extra panels that can be used for whatever you want are supplied in the core set shown.

I bought this pre-release copy of the set, because I was jealous of the three (!) of my buddies –Asslessman/Leadplague, Axiom/Magpie and Old Lead and Curis/Ninjabread – who were working on their copies. I was gravely disappointed. I had to unleash my dogs of war… or paints of war… or smegma painting crazies. Whatever, I’m going off topic.

This was my favourite Mad Max movie for my whole life until, totally unexpectedly, that changed in 2015. But I still love Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. And if you love Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, then you love post apocalyptic scrap forts. That’s science. I had to have one.

Come quietly, or there will be… trouble.

The other bloggers had their forts either nearly or already finished, and considering the standard already seen, I knew that a direct competition in terms of painting quality was doomed. So “Screw that!” as Sun Tzu would say, don’t engage if you cannot win.

I did reckon however, that I had one chance for my fort to stand out in that company. I figured that I could get it painted pretty fast, like V8 faster than the other guys, based on a speedy technique that I have working on recently. If that worked, then I could at least publicly rub my friends noses in how long it took them to finish.

“What a puny plan!” I hear you cry. Well “Nobody likes you, everybody hates you!”, as Sun Tzu probably also said.

And anyway, as I type this, I have the benefit of hindsight, so I know that the plan worked, so it is you, dear reader, who should be feeling embarrassed now, not me.  Hah!  What do you think this is, some artificially dramatised home improvement show? Grand Designs or some crap? NEVER!

Nobody asked you.

Fogou resin models have some significant advantages over some other resin pieces that I have worked with:

  • they are moulded without release agent, therefore there is no requirement to degrease the models. A time and hassle saver.
  • they have close to zero mould lines from what I can see. However Fogou does it, that aspect of clean up on a model set this size was essentially about one minute. Really.
  • low component numbers. The only assembly required on this set was to glue the battlement floor pieces and two supporting walls to each of the main walls and corners. The absence of mould lines meant that those elements went together extremely easily. I glued them with some gel superglue in less than half an hour (maybe less, I didn’t time it).

All of that meant that I easily had time to get the set out of the box to 100% ready for a black spray undercoat during a spare hour on a weeknight after work. Witness!

Lurking outside the settlement of “Standard Falls”, mutant insurgents stealthily attempt to breach the wall.

The following Saturday morning was the riskiest part of the plan. Anyone who has endured a St Patricks Day parade in Ireland knows that March is not ideal for spraying models, it can go either way. Luckily Saturday turned out to be… a lovely day!

Well, not all day, it cleared up a bit after lunch.

At this point I contacted Curis at Ninjabread and we started a video chat that lasted until the early hours of Sunday. Curis was working in his fort. I was working on my fort. We each had colours and techniques worked out, so it was a pleasure to spend that Saturday chatting while painting, so much so that we did the same thing all day Sunday too. We were even joined by Captain Crooks/Funky Wenis Rodeo for some of the Sunday morning.

Batch painting is a lot easier and more enjoyable with mates. I’m not great at it while painting something like a character model that requires more concentration, but for certain types of work it’s great. I imagine that its why sewing circles are so popular… apparently… well, that’s that what I heard.

I’ll go in to more detail on the painting process in another post, but my three days went a little like this:

Which left me with this:

No! No more talk! We go in! We kill! Kill! We kill ’em! They kill us, we kill them! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill! Kill!

I dunno if it’s enough to get me to Valhalla, but it should keep the night fevers away until I get the other add-on elements of Fort Hardknox, as hinted at in this illustration by Doti at Katsina Miniatures.

Filed under: Terrain | Tagged: , , , , , |

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34 Responses

  1. imperialrebelork, on 23/03/2019 at 22:14 said:

    Great post man and what a fantastic fort! Obviously very Orky too. You’ve done an awesome job with the paintwork too 👍🏼

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  2. Captain Crooks, on 23/03/2019 at 22:59 said:

    The effort has been rewarded at least 5000% – and that’s just based on the MK rehearsal pic. Bravo for smashing this huge terrain piece out to such a standard(falls) in such a short(en) time, you’ve set the bar! Now walk away! To the bar!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • sho3box, on 24/03/2019 at 13:32 said:

      You puppy! It was a MK gig that caused the apocalypse in the first place actually.

      It was a fun and satisfying challenge to get the fort painted to a pleasing level that fast, thanks for the feedback Captain!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  3. Mikko, on 23/03/2019 at 23:02 said:

    Gorgeous! Will need to give Fogou a look.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  4. Suber, on 23/03/2019 at 23:47 said:

    Haha, you really made a hell of a job here! Amazing, I can’t believe your speed/quality rate :O

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • sho3box, on 24/03/2019 at 13:35 said:

      I imagine that there are people out there that could have done it faster, but I reckon that it was pretty fast output by most standards. It looks pretty authentic to me 🙂

      Thanks for the feedback Suber!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  5. airbornegrove26, on 24/03/2019 at 00:19 said:

    That’s it I have to have one of these! Thanks for 80’sing up this post as well!!!!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • sho3box, on 24/03/2019 at 13:40 said:

      Fort Hardknox will fit in to any one of your tables I expect, knowing how you approach those things airbornegrove26, but I get a bit of a New Texas vibe from it. At least, it’s definitely going to feature in my Dracula’s America in Spaaace games.

      I’m as eighties as being kicked in the junk while wearing lipgloss and watching Police Academy, I can’t help it 😉

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  6. SymphonicPoet, on 24/03/2019 at 07:04 said:

    Nicely done! I really need to build more terrain. I’m in the middle of a vehicle binge, but vehicles need places to motorvate.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  7. Alex, on 24/03/2019 at 09:31 said:

    Brilliant mate – the fort is awesome, (goes without saying really!!), but it’s the cultural references that make me laugh & make your world such a cool place to hang. I really want to see MK take on Boss Drum!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    • sho3box, on 24/03/2019 at 13:51 said:

      That’s very kind Alex, thanks. I did wake up this morning and have to check if I had actually just written a load of crap, but thankfully I had written a load of crap with a purpose.

      I have to be in the right frame of mind to blog, but when I am it just kinda pours out. Results are usually a bit of a ramble, and when I go back I can always see things that I would write differently etc, but I do try to make the posts at least partially worth reading.

      As for the models and terrain themselves, I can’t really imagine approaching them any other way really. I’m deadly serious about the hobby – I’m obsessed – and I don’t treat 99% of my models as jokes, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t humour in nearly all of them. Almost all of them are fundamentally absurd before I have taken them out of the packaging.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply
  8. Paul Ward, on 24/03/2019 at 09:41 said:

    Fantastic work and a great write up. I always enjoy reading your posts.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  9. axiom, on 24/03/2019 at 14:07 said:

    Fantastic paint job on a wonderful set! The graffiti both personlises it and adds real character.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  10. mrsaturdays, on 25/03/2019 at 09:28 said:

    Hmmm, Good AND fast. You’ve broken the rules son.

    That’s super tasty. If I ever see it in person I might give it a wee lick.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
  11. Will Postell (Maj Guiscard), on 25/03/2019 at 12:50 said:

    Woah, that is one badass fort.
    Someone needs to attack it!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • sho3box, on 25/03/2019 at 19:54 said:

      It’s not certain yet, but it looks like it might be human Resistance holding out against an unseemly number of T-800s for the Hardknox debut.

      Could be fun to have endos slowly punching through walls etc 🤖💀

      Like

      Reply
  12. Warburton, on 25/03/2019 at 19:37 said:

    Nice work 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  13. Mark A. Morin, on 26/03/2019 at 14:53 said:

    Wow man, love this – and I always loved that movie too – in my top 5.

    Thanks as well for the link.

    Btw, is that ALF in there?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • sho3box, on 26/03/2019 at 15:26 said:

      It’s a fantastic movie, so influential and definitive that I don’t know if new viewers can appreciate what it looked like in the eighties.

      Yup, that’s ALF 🙂 He has had a few, rough adventures in the retinue of Inquisitor Verhoeven over the years. Usually generates a laugh 🙂

      Thanks for the feedback Mark!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  15. Fort Hardknox Part 2 | sho3box, on 29/05/2019 at 18:18 said:

    […] Fort Hardknox […]

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  16. “Shack Me Up” Towers – Fogou | sho3box, on 21/10/2021 at 09:40 said:

    […] would paint it, and I could gauge how much time it would take, based on actual experience painting similar. I even wrote a blog post including a step by step of how I did it on previous items, so for info […]

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