The corner slot took five pieces to make, and although a straight slot would need less, I didn't want to set up the rig everytime I had to make a 90-degree angle. Luckily, the new buttresses I made were closer to the walls than the initial ones, despite trying to measure them the same length. Which meant the thick plastic (~1.8 mm) was able to be slotted in between it snuggly. It even held the two walls together. Although it meant re-adjusting the existing ones, these were definitely simpler than the previous version. The corner ones were a little difficult to get correct, but at least I only needed two for now.

There must be some hobby tool to help glue two pieces of plastic into a neat right angle! This is the rig I had to set up, as I didn't want to hold the two pieces together until I got a solid bond. The Lego brick and the mat made the right angle for the two pieces of plastic. The small ruler is used to hold the horizontal piece of plastic against the Lego brick. The angled ruler is used to keep the vertical piece of plastic from leaning away from the Lego brick. And finally, the glue bottle to stop the angled ruler from toppling over. There must be a market for something like this!

The first milestone for the year, and ahead of schedule! Now the conundrum with the corners resolved (or so I hope), I made the middle section wall. It was definitely too long to keep as a single wall, so tempting to split it into two, I went for three sections. Two of these would be the same size as the Hex Base (6 cm), so that they could potentially be used for the other corners of the hex. The remaining section was 8.6 cm. I didn't want to shorten the base from the current 20.6 cm just so I could fit 3x6 cm walls... I may later regret that.

I finally found a solution to the corners. I started with a mock piece, with just some scrap thickness to create a corner piece with slots on either side for the wall. As it was just a mock, it didn't extend the full height of the wall and identified that it was too thick. The second version, although I was tempted to keep it, caused the walls to tilt or sit at a slightly wrong angle. Even adding some slots onto the wall to hold it in place caused other issues. Hence, I created a mock wall at the correct angle to model the third version. It meant not trying to hold the two loose walls together while waiting for the pieces to bond. The final version did its job of hiding the gap between the two walls, but it doesn't hold the walls firmly together. It would have been nice, but I don't think it matters...

I made the buttresses and mounted them on the second wall before making the commitment and dismantling the existing two walls. I went for it, and made four buttresses in one go and was pleasantly surprised how well they turned out. Not only were the angles of each one aligned, but they sat flat on the ground. Although these four walls sit nicely at the edge of the Hex Base, I didn't plan for the strip in between. Hence will likely end up with different length walls. It's a matter of deciding on either one long wall or more. They do still topple back too easily, and that's something to fix another time.

I decided to try going back to my original Tau buttress that I made for my Tau Gun Turrets, but this was not going to be simple. The main issue with these was trying to get them to sit flat against the wall and ground. This was the major issue I had, as seen when I added them to the Tau Towers. This all depended on how horizontal my cuts were, and any slight angle meant potential alignment problems, especially when gluing them against the wall. Although the finished wall still had a small alignment issue, I didn't have to worry about the slanted wall.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, and despite cutting pieces to make four walls and assembling two, I thought I'd try to see what it looked like. As I wanted the walls to be a single strip so that I could eventually store them away easily, I was stuck with the first problem. How to get the edges to fit together. I tried a simple base plate, but that had problems. A piece to slot over the two ends was too complicated... and a simple corner piece wouldn't hold the walls together neatly either. Have I hit a wall? Or was this design not the best choice?

To add some detail to my stage, I wanted to line the front with something similar to the Tau Tidewall Shieldline, but abandoned that idea quite quickly. Anything curved or round was out of the question. I opted for an angled wall I've seen in some images and even wanted to engineer a lip or a slot to fit to the existing base. Instead of cardboard, I decided to use some scrap plastic to mock things up. However, these actually went back into my bits tray afterwards! After racking my brain for various ideas, including the use of magnetic tape (which had its own problems), I opted for something much simpler. So the final wall design (one on the right) was a simple, thick rear wall with a thinner piece parked up against it. Luckily, a previous cheap purchase that I thought was useless due to it being so thin with edges that can easily cut your fingers, it had some nice triangle templates to cut some at 30 degrees. These triangles would support the slanted wall. So with only six pieces to make one wall, I was ready to mass-produce these!

I started the Hex Base back in 2022 and never got any further. Even though I still have not decided on what type of Tau Terrain to use as a base (rocks, grass, desert or something else), I decided instead to make a stage. This way, I have at least something to display the entire Armoured Core of my Tau army to take photos on. I made two long strips (Isosceles Trapezoid) with the remaining length of the sheet and another Hex Base with the other half. I left the remaining in case I didn't want another two of these strips.

Happy New Year! Is how I should start this post, but what happened to December? Despite finally quitting "Raid Shadow Legends" and almost quitting "Evolution 2: Battle for Utopia", I had more time... to play my other games. I deliberately avoided posting too despite having some time off after Christmas. I made a little progress on a new project (more on that later) to have something to post. However, I just wish they would condense the "Blog Archives" into years! Looking back at last year's first post, I didn't achieve my goals. This year, I want to try and update this site with my Tau Army. Luckily, I know what the first steps are, but I will need a lot of work before I have what I need to take the photos. To start the New Year, I have updated my Competition page to use the Gallery feature on this site as I hit the max images I could place on a page! Once the voting start, I can add the links and make another Site Update!