Saturday, November 21, 2015

Basilisks, Bulettes, and Tanks, oh my!

Slowly getting a few more projects done. Today I finished and photographed some miniatures and another applesauce cup tank.

The bulette and basilisk are plastic minis from the Reaper Bones range. I'm not fond of plastic, especially the pliable plastic they use in this range, but some of the monsters are useful. I find if extremely difficult to remove mold lines from this sort of plastic. You can't really file it, and scraping doesn't seem to work well either. Trying to trim it by slicing off tiny bits is beyond me as well. I based them on washers on top of plastic card, to give a little weight to them.

I tried to base the basilisk colors on the real world basilisk lizard, or one variety thereof.

Next is this firenewt from Otherworld Miniatures. They do some nice minis based on some of the old (or classic) game illustrations. Not sure what I'd use him for. Maybe a random (possibly non-hostile) dungeon encounter?

An amphibious applecart tank. This is another tank using a Mott's applesauce plastic cup for the turret, part of a writing pen barrel for the gun barrel, plastic caps from squeezy applesauce containers, and other odds and ends and wood bits.

The entire applecart fleet, as it stands at this time.



Monday, October 26, 2015

Project Applecart

I've been working slowly on some more projects using Mott's plastic applesauce cups that look like barrel halves. Here are a couple of three-wheeled "tanks" just about ready to roll off the production line. The main body can lift off of the undercarriage and sits on dowel so it can turn. The larger back wheels are tops off of squeezy pouches of applesauce. The front wheels are wooden craft disks sandwiched between sawed off Dove ice cream bar sticks (the sacrifices we make for our craft!), with jewelry gears added for flavor. The tops and gun barrels are bits of craft pegs, plastic pen barrels, small dowels and other odds and ends. I'm not sure if these are done or if there is anything else I want to add, but they'll do for now.

Shown with 28mm Foundry figure for scale

An illustration of the undercarriages

Saturday, August 22, 2015

What's More Fun Than a Barrel of Monkeys?

How about a pack of steampunk brass monkeys? These are from the Steampunk Menagerie collection that I received through a Kickstarter project a few months ago. For miniatures with some separate parts (the arms in some cases) these were easy to put together and came together pretty solidly without needing to do any pinning (just some Gorilla brand super glue! It's the what I happened to have). I generally detest multi-part figures for the fiddly-ness and fragility involved. These monkeys/apes were a delightful change. Other miniatures makers could take a lesson from them. The pledge level I made also included some steampunk crabs, but those look much more fiddly (not fiddler) and more likely to come apart easily, so I have yet to put them together. I figure these little steam simians, with their guns and swords, would make good "mooks" or hench-apes for some steampunk evil witch or mad roboticist. Enough chatter. on to the photos.

This first picture gives a better idea of the actual colors:

These other pictures maybe give a better idea of the various poses and weaponry - 5 pistol-armed and 5 sword-armed.:



Saturday, August 8, 2015

Solo Dungeon Delving - part 2

Game materials

Part 2.
Durik comes to a ramp leading down. At the bottom of the ramp he comes upon the goblin leader and 6 of his minions. The space is restricted, so only 2 goblins can attack at any given time. The leader stays in the back and tries to direct the minions (give them +1 to hit).

Durik attacks and strikes down 2 of the minions. Two others close in and one gets a hit on Durik. Durik strikes back and kills another. The remaining 3 minions turn and run. The goblin leader steps up and attacks Durik, causing 2 hits. Durik gets one hit on the leader. The leader hits back for one more hit, bringing Durik to zero hit points. Durik manages to kill the leader and then passes out.

Sometime later...
Durik revives enough to bind his wounds. After a brief rest he searches the bodies and the chamber and finds a healing potion, 20 gold pieces, 2 anklets worth about 150 gold pieces all told, and a toe ring worth 500 gold pieces! He drinks the healing potion and heals 1 more hit point, bringing his total hit points up to 4 (maximum is 5).

Feeling much better he continues on, but soon encounters a collapsed passage. So he turns around and searches the chamber where he defeated the goblin leader. Does he find a side passage or other exit? No.

He backtracks further to the chamber where he encountered the goblin shaman. Are there other exits here? Yes, north and south. He tries the north passage, but it's not long before he finds a very deep pit blocking any further progress. Turning around once more Durik heads back through the chamber and on to the southern exit. As he enters the last chamber it rapidly becomes extremely cold. He reckons, by the speed at which the cold comes on that it's some sort of magic at work. Not seeing anything in the chamber from his vantage point at the entrance and not finding any other passageways, chambers or other parts to the cave system he decides it's time to depart. So he heads back to his base to count up his treasure, deliver recovered items, and rest up for his next adventure.

Durik's sketch map

Map as drawn out later

Friday, July 31, 2015

Solo Dungeon Delving - a session report

I haven't had much time for games and hobbies for a while. Most of the gaming I do manage to fit in is in the form of board games and card games. I did finally start on a solo rpg that I've been wanting to do and planning to do for some time now. It was all done with pen/pencil and paper, so there isn't much to show in terms of pictures, but maybe I will include maps, drawings, or other materials later.

This is a solo dungeon delve, using Scarlet Heroes by Kevin Crawford, published by Sine Nomine Publishing, and The Location Crafter by Tana Pigeon of Wordmill Games (who also do Mythic: Game Master Emulator).

My character is Durik Borgrimson, a dwarven scout, who apprenticed as a toymaker. This adventure takes place while Durik is scouting around the rough edges between civilized country and wilderlands. His first scouting assignment.

Part 1.
Durik came across the trail of a number of goblins. The trail was very easy to follow as the goblins had made no attempt to hide their passage. Much trampling of grasses, brush and other vegetation, the occasional bit of rubbish, wanton damage, and other signs marked the goblins' trail.

The trail led Durik to a cave entrance in a hidden ravine. By that time the night was turning into the wee hours of the morning.

He cautiously approaches the cave entrance, trying to remain undercover as much as possible. As he gets near enough he finds the entrance guarded by 3 goblins in assorted ragged clothing and bits of armor, armed with various hand weapons. The goblins are fairly alert and perk up as they notice something approaching the cave. They ready their weapons as Durik gets off a shot with his bow. One goblin is taken down with an arrow. The other two goblins dart back inside the cave.

Durik cautiously enters the cave and finds himself in a chamber occupied by three additional goblins who are arguing with the two goblins who had run back inside. Durik decides to rush in and try to ambush the goblins, but does no damage in his haste. The goblins try to fight back, but get in each others' way and also fail to inflict any damage.

The fight becomes more deadly as Durik kills one goblin with his ax, and then dispatches 2 more goblins on the return stroke. The remaining 2 goblins stand and fight back, but their attacks don't get through Durik's defenses. With some deft ax work he kills the last 2 goblins. His search finds 6 gold pieces and a belly chain worth 90 gold pieces.

Moving on, Durik comes to a second chamber, with another passage the heads back to the first chamber. The second chamber is empty.

He exits into a long passage. The sounds of quarreling come from the far end of the passage, around a bend. One of the voices has a creepy quality.

Durik makes his way down the passage. Peering around the bend he can see a large alert hobgoblin on guard duty at a second exit from the cave complex. The hobgoblin's attention is focused towards the outside.

Durik pulls back and finds a side tunnel off of the long passageway. He explores the side passage, but finds it ends shortly in a dead end. It looks like it's used as a sort of rubbish tip, among other things.

So he returns to the second chamber, and with a quick search he finds another passage behind a rock. Following the passage he comes to an open area occupied by a goblin shaman and 7 goblin minions. There is an argument going on as some of the minions are wounded and arguing with the shaman to heal their wounds.

Durik charges in to attack the shaman, but the minions are in the way. He kills 2 of the minions in his initial attack. Meanwhile, the goblin shaman casts a spell that heals any wounds on the remaining minions. This improves their morale. Three of the 5 remaining minions land hits on Durik. In return he kills 2 more of them.

Next, the shaman casts another spell, this time aimed at Durik. Durik feels something like an attack inside his head. He resists this attack. The minions, down to only three now, attack Durik, with one landing just a glancing blow. Durik kills one more minion. At this point the shaman escapes by means of a magic portal. The last 2 minions fight it out with Durik. He manages to kill them without taking any further damage in return. He finds 20 gold pieces, a bracelet worth about 90 gold pieces, a toe ring worth 100 gold pieces, and an amulet worth about 400 gold pieces.


He binds his wounds and moves on to the far end of the open area.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Dirty Orcs and Others

Pursuant to the comments on the post: Improvised Shields I "dirtied" up the orcs's shields with a light overall wash of old GW flesh wash, followed with dabbing here and there with a somewhat darker brown wash mixed with a small amount of a bit of gray paint, on both shields and lower parts of their garments. I think it turned out suitably grubby. I did all of them, but here are a few representatives.

I also finished painting a Reaper rat ogre and a Reaper giant horned viper (it came with 2 heads, the other was more like a real snake, but I liked the idea of the horns to make it stand out from other snakes). I tried to base the horned viper's colors and pattern on the colors and pattern of a real life horned viper species.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Improvised Shields

I made some shields for some of the orcs in this post: a-mess-of-orcs. Since I didn't have any spare shields that fit them the way I wanted I ended up making some shields out of plastic card and a bit of sculpting putty (the latter mostly to sculpt straps like the one you can see on the orc with raised shield on the left of the picture). I wanted the shields to look suitably scrappy, rough, but big and sturdy. Looking at the photo, I may want to "dirty" them up a bit. I think they look a little too clean and shiny.

(click to embiggen)

These guys are orcs of the Black Eye. I also have orcs of the Red Eye, the Bone Head orcs (skull and sometimes bones as their emblem), and the Broken Bone goblins, among others.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

2014 rolls over into 2015

I managed to end the old year with a board game play through, of Descent 2: Journeys in the Dark, First Blood scenario, played solo with 2 characters. It was a quick game/scenario - actually the playing time was less than the setup time, because I had to look up lots of things and find all the bits and pieces and sort everything out. Hopefully I can get more games in and get quicker at setup.

And then I started the new year with another play through of a board game. In this case, Relic Expedition, which isn't designed as a solo game at all, but I tried it out using a solo variant I found on Board Game Geek. It wasn't bad, but not entirely satisfying either.

I hope to play more games this year, and paint more miniatures, and maybe even get started in an actual solo rpg.

Happy New Year and Happy Gaming to all!