Besenval Port. Stage 1 (of... well, many)

Well, you have seen a couple of buildings, a few civilians to inhabit my wannabe city project... I guess it is time to spend some time on the actual city! Or my 40K Sims will have nowhere to live in! :D

You may have heard me speak of that misterious word 'Besenval' Port area from time to time. But no one had the slightest idea of what really was it. No, I mean, literally; no one, not even me.

The idea came to me from some industrial containers I have at home. I have already used them and I believe they have appeared in some AAR before. One day I thought 'well, where do all those containers come from? What are they doing here on this green grass board? That doesn't make any sense!' I guess you can see my point and how the only logical solution to my problem was to build a proper harbor for my containers.

Shhh, the only logical solution, I said...

Yup, a train station would have worked as well. Or a frakkin' spaceport platform and that would have been it all. But no, I really wanted a full urban scenario. With buildings and stuff. Cool stuff. A port. It had to be a port. That would allow me to set a river, some sea... it was perfect!

So, what was going to be my scope on this? I thought I could build a port for my Rogue Trader games settings, but not only. In fact I recently got the Osprey 'On the Seven Seas' rulebook soooo... ;) (don't worry, I'm afraid it's still to be some time before I even think of pirates, too much to do first!)

I thought I could come up with a basic structure and the rest would just be a matter of buildings. That of course meant that everything should have mason pillars and cobblestone or so, nothing about concrete surfaces. That would be adaptable enough for any ambientation, should it be sci-fi, fantasy or historical.

This is my first experience with foam. Never used the material before, but sometimes you have to take risks ;) I immediately could see that a whole new world of options was open before me, as I dared to achieve slightly complex shapes:

 

Well, cutting this was complex enough, at least for me!

Small dock, but it will have to do it for the moment

I have three 120x60 boards. My idea is building structures on, at the very least, two of them (desirably the three, of course). What you see here is just the first level, I still have to decide the height (and shapes) of a second level in the back part. It's funny to see how things look in your haead or a couple of sketches and then how they look in a totally different way when torn into real stuff.

 

I'm gonna need much more space if I'm to place these buildings here

Second board will definitely not have a canal

 

 

Well, I got the basic shapes. What's next then? Test the material to see how it behaves...

 

Hmm, looks like it has some potential...

 

So let's do some paving!

This escaped from my hands...

Wow, I should have done bigger stones. But once I begun there was no way back!
 

This is insanity, believe me. 10x5 mm. each

 They will be most likely bigger on the second floor... Or will that look weird?
  

One... another... another... another... F&$%, I made a mistake! Again. One... another...

Well, this is it so far. It still has a looong way ahead, but the thing is that it has started! We're on the move, no way back!