3ITC - Bultha's Farm - Planning

The 3ITC isn't going well.  Real life has interfered, in both positive and negative ways.  But I am determined to make a start, and I've gone for the ruined farmstead from The Battle At The Farm from the original Rogue Trader Warhammer 40 000 rulebook.

The (horribly unbalanced) scenario has fifteen marines plus the chapter master holed up in a ruined farmstead.  The map names a nearby hill as 'Bultha's Rise', so I'm calling the farmstead Bultha's Farm.

There's not a lot to go on in the book, in fact, in the spirit of keeping it accessible, the photos use the ruin from Bloodbath at Orc's Drift.  I'd like my version to look a little more Sci Fi though.

The map of the battle site

A suggested table layout

The text reads "The farm lies in ruins following the initial assault some days earlier. The main building has survived only as a shell of broken walls about 1.5 metres high, it is built of stone. Outhouses and cattle pens exist only as low stone walls."

Not much to go on, but that gives me plenty of room for my own interpretation.  There's no real guide to the size of the building.  The very nicely detailed map lacks a scale, the text suggests the table is 6ft x 4ft, but that makes the scenario even more difficult for the Orks, marching across a lot of open terrain towards 16 Space Marines in cover.  The photograph suggests that the table size is smaller, that ruin is no more than about 4 inches on its longest side, making the whole compound somewhere close to 12 inches across.  so I'm going to have to interpret (make it up as I go along).

I'll stick to a rectangular shape, but as a nod to the Orc's Drift ruin I'll have a small section of roof remaining, possibly even with sufficient of the first floor to provide a firing platform. Most of the walls will be lower, around 30mm, with a couple of doorways and maybe sills where there were once windows.

I wanted a different roof to the sort I usually build, and decided that a curved section might look good, rather like the 20mm Tatooine building I did here.  I wanted to use some of the plastic trunking you see on building sites, the ribbed section looks great.  However, I couldn't source any, so I'm using a drinking chocolate container for the roof.  Although I'll be hacking it up to make the ruined roof, I'll be keeping the footprint of the building the same as the tin.  I may someday make a non ruined version.

The walls will be XPS pink foam, textured to represent the stone walls.  I'll pile some rubble around the walls, but not too much, I want to be able to place minis in it.

If time permits I'll also make some matching walls.  I have some old 'Platformer' terrain with some nice looking bits that I think would look good on the top of stone walls, though most of the walls will be partially ruined.

So those are my plans, and I've just got a post in about them before the May deadline.  Next month I'd better start building, beginning with a card mock-up.