New Year, New (ish) Project

If you’ve been regularly checking in here to see if I’ve been actially doing anything, you will have been a little disappointed, as it has been quite a while since I’ve been anywhere near anything hobby-related.

However, with the imminent (hopefully) arrival of my Kickstarter goodies and a financial windfall in the shape of some Christmas money, I decided to splash out a little on some hobby stuff.

Way back in 2015, Michael Awdry of the 28mm Victorian Warfare blog posted about a game called Space Cadets. Now, whilst I quite liked the idea of the game and the way it utilised hexagonal tiles to represent the exploration of a derelict spacecraft, the price point was above my available funds and I was only really interested in the tiles.

This had been on the back burner for the last 6 years, and with the Distant Stars project, I decided that I would still like to do something of this ilk, but using my existing figures from that project.

As Kallistra produce a range of interlocking plastic hexagonal tiles, 100mm across the flats AND do packs of ten individual hex tiles in black, for a very reasonable £7.50, I ordered a set, to see if they could be used for this.

They arrived yesterday, so out came the camera and some figures, so I could see whether my nascent idea had any legs.

As you can see, you get ten hexagonal tiles, hollow on the underside and 20 clips, which allow you to clip the tiles together.

The edges of each tile have a recess, so that when the clips are attached, the tiles sit flush with the table and are a pretty tight fit, so they won’t become detached during play.

They can be attached along each flat edge, so if you have a tile attached to every edge, you’d need 6 clips, hence why you get 20 in the pack. I’d not realised this when I ordered, so had ordered a further pack of 50 clips, in case I needed anymore – which I didn’t.

Using all 10 tiles, I set them up as a random complex of corridors. The initial idea was to spray them with a metallic dark grey, and use thin card or plastic card between the tiles, held in place with the clips, to represent walls. However, the clips are designed to hold the tiles quite tightly together, so this won’t work.

However, as the tiles are designed to be be stacked when not in use, they do have a recessed edge, so when clipped together, there is a recessed channel around each tile edge, so I might be able to slot a suitable ‘wall’ into these.

Now, whilst I’ve given a measurement across the flats, this doesn’t really help with working out whether they’re any good for 28mm figures, so let’s dump some miniatures on them and see what it looks like…

A couple of Protectorate Outriders, accompanied by a Androne, explore an abandoned facility…

However, it would appear that the facility is not as abandoned as they believe.

“Danger! Danger! Hostile entites approaching…”

We shall leave the brave folk of the Protectorate to their potentially grisly fate.

So, I’m pretty happy with both the size and price for these and think they should work pretty well, but feel I may need at least another pack. As they’re only £7.50 a pack, this isn’t a great expense, but bear in mind that the minimum order quantity is £10.00 before postage, so you might want to have a look at some of the other stuff on the site before ordering.

They do single hex terrain features which sit on top of the standard hex tiles, including craters, hills, broken ground, etc. which are only advertised in the standard brown colouring, but I did query this with Kallistra and they would make them in the other two colours (black and blue). However, as this would be a special order, it would take longer to produce.

If you’re planning on spraying them anyway, that probably doesn’t matter, but it’s good to know that the option is available.

That’s all for now, but rest assured that the Crow is on the wing once more, so expect more regular posts.

Especially since I’ve now seen the new Ghostbusters movie (which is what the 2016 one should have been, but wasn’t) and I feel that the Rookhaven Ghostbusters franchise needs to have their uniforms completed and be sent out to bust some heads…in a spiritual sense.

Games Without Frontiers

Usually, in the blogging circle I frequent, we blame Roger. He’ll make a comment on either on his own blog or on yours, which will set your mind ticking, like a bomb, which usually results in some kind of unusual side project that you really had no intention of getting involved in.

However, no malice in intended, as usually these flights of fancy are things that we’d probably have done anyway – Roger is just the catalyst.

However, not this time… this time I blame Greg.

Greg has been contributing to the excellent and long-running blog The Game Cupboard, with a run-through of The Dragon Heist from TSR, but realised through solo play and illustrated with photos of his games.

Now, what struck me personally about these games is that Greg has a LOT of nice scenery and I was especially jealous of his dungeon walls, which I believe are from the now discontinued MageKnight Dungeons range.

As regular readers will know, I like modular gaming accessories and whilst I have enough HeroScape tiles to fill my table with a variety of outdoors terrain, I don’t have much in the way of interior terrain, so cannot create either labyrinthine dungeons or starship corridors.

I thought this had been solved when Archon Studios launched their Dungeons & Lasers kickstarter, as the sample I got sent and reviewed seemed to meet my needs.

The problem with Archon Studios is that whilst they seem to like running Kickstarters and sending out product to their backers (or if you host a YouTube channel, large amounts of FREE terrain), if you are a normal gamer who maybe just wants to buy things in instalments, you can’t.

The Dungeons & Lasers first edition product has been manufactured and released, but can you actually buy it from either Archon Studios website or elsewhere? Nope. Which is a shame, as it’s a good product.

If you like the idea of a modular plastic dungeon wall system and you live in the United States, there is another alternative – Dirt Cheap Dungeons. I only came across this product and website recently and was quite impressed by the versatility, range and price-point. My problem is that whilst the actual cost of the product is within my price bracket, shipping takes it OUT of my price bracket. Furthermore, I actually need Sci-fi walls, rather than dungeon walls.

So, looking at the UK based options, it seems the only real options I have are to buy a 3D printer and buy one of the available STL file packages or go with one of the various MDF corridor options.

Now, me being me, I rejected these options and went on to YouTube, to see if any of the hobby crafting channels had ideas I could steal.

What struck me about the majority of these tutorials was that whilst the end product looked good, most of them were 2D tiles AND not only took a lot of work and effort, but also required tools I don’t have.

As far as I’m concerned, anything I make should be simple, easy and require no specialist tools or materials. In other words, anybody could make it.

So, because I’m good to you all and also a fucking genius, I’m going to show you how to make simple, cheap modular tiles, which can be skinned to whatever genre you want.

Let us begin…

So, the majority of modular tiles are square, but as the walls run parallel to the edge of the tile, you need the various permutations of where the walls go – a wall on one edge, two edges to form a corner, two opposite each other to form a corridor or three adjacent to form an alcove. Then you have the same options as above, but with doors in. And a blank tile to create larger rooms.

However, if you rotate the tile 45°, you only need THREE different types of tile – a floor tile, a wall tile and a door tile.

So, first task was to decide how big each tile should be. I went with 2″ squares, which means the diagonal distance is 2 3/4″.

I then cut 9 of these squares from corrugated cardboard I had lying around, as Amazon do seem to deliver here every day at the moment…

I had decided that 4 of these initial 9 would be floor tiles, so 4 squares of cereal packet cardboard were cut out…

And these were glued on top,using a gluestick.

Next were the walls. The walls needed to be 2 3/4″ wide, 2″ tall and have triangular bases, to match half of each base tile they were being attached to.

These had their creases scored and were bent into shape and the interior of each wall glued together.

These were then attached to their bases.

The walls with doors were created next in exactly the same way, but with a doorway of an inch wide by 11/2 inches tall cut out.

And they were then glued into place.

Now, bearing in mind that these are rough and ready prototypes and I only created 9 tiles to test out whether this would work, these are the various permutations I could make with them, with the REAL 13th Doctor wandering these strange white corridors.

The idea is that you can ‘skin’ these blank walls however you wish. Add some textured wallpaper to represent brickwork and you have yourself a dungeon or sewer. Glue sand to the base and green scouring pads to the walls and it’s a hedge maze. Baking foil and conduits made from drinking straws and you have starship or industrial corridors.

These cheap and simple modular tiles are a blank canvas, only limited your imagination and what you actually need.

I will probably adapt the materials for the next batch, but the design is sound and took me a very short period of time to make.

Genius? I’d like to think so…

Jez

More Awesome on the Inside

Due to the application of transdimensional engineering, whilst the exterior of every Tardis in use by the Time Lords is relatively small and unassuming, taking the form of such things as stone columns, grandfather clocks, horseboxes or even antiquated Police boxes, the interior is much, much bigger.

In other words, it’s bigger on the inside, which was the title of my previous post.

In that post, I did state that it was my intention to build the control room for my 13th Doctor – with a combination of downloaded papercraft templates (which I tinkered with) and some odds and ends from my bits box.

I was also intending to make some progress on my entries for Monster May(hem), the month-long event instigated by Keith over at Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodging, but because of certain issues regarding the building of my control room, these were put on hold.

However, I believe that concentrating on my Tardis was worth it, but you can judge that for yourself.

So, having downloaded the template for the 8th Doctor’s Tardis floor, resized it and printed out enough copies to produce the entire hexagonal wooden floor, I cut these out, as well as a piece of mounting board. The idea was to glue the three parts of the floor to the mounting board with a glue-stick, then use a plate to make the completed ‘floor’ circular.

Things did not go according to plan.

To cut a long story short, I messed this part up and had to come up with an alternative plan – which actually worked out better, as you will see.

Using a side plate, I cut a circle of mounting board approximately 8 inches in diameter, used a compass to find the centre, then scribed 5 rings within the circle. I then divided this into 16 segments.

It would have been easier if I’d had a black Sharpie for the next part, but the whole circle was then painted alternating black and white, to create a tiled floor, like so;

As you can probably appreciate, this took quite some time, as I initially painted the black tiles, then realised that I had to tidy of the edges of the white tiles with some white paint, then go back and do some touching up with BOTH black and white paints when the original coats were dry. Labour intensive, but does give a good effect, even if staring at it for any length of time does start fucking with your eyes.

In order to protect my hard work and give it a more ’tile-y’ look, the floor was then covered with some transparent sticky-backed plastic, like so;

You can just about make out the sheen on the top left of the floor in the above picture and the 13th Doctor standing in the centre does give a sense of scale.

The final part of preparing the floor was to make a hole in the exact centre, like so, for reasons that will be explained later;

Now that the floor was done, it was time to start working on the ‘fixtures and fittings’.

First was the Tardis console. The transparent pen lid used as the time rotor had been glued into the hole on the HeroClix base, but was loose AND wonky, so this was re-glued with my son’s hot glue gun, rather than with what I’d attempted to use previously.

I’d also worked out that the cardstock console panel would need some kind of support, so some careful measuring was done and a rubber sleeve, which was the finger-grip from another pen, was cut down and slid over the central column. The base had previously been given a coat of Docrafts Bronze, as shown below;

After this picture was taken, the base received a further coat of Bronze, as did the sleeve.

Next up was the additional furniture – two file card cabinets taken from the Victory of the Daleks papercraft set and a grandfather clock taken from the Sarah Jane Adventures Bannerman Road set, all downloaded from the AFT Downloads site.

The end of yet another expired pen became a stone planter (once repainted), and a blob of hot glue secured the small frond of plastic vegetation, creating EITHER a pot plant for the interior of the Tardis control room or the Great Rangdo of Arg – in his Aspidistra form…

The next part was to assemble the walls. I’d printed out on card wall sections from the 4th Doctor’s secondary control room, including the scanner, but not the stained-glass windows – because I didn’t like them. These had been manipulated to produce a run of roundel wall sections, with blank wall sections in between. I’d made a double-sized blank section, which I then pasted in the exterior door section from the 9th Doctor’s Tardis, to provide an egress.

The two printed sections were cut out, with a half-inch white border at the bottom, to create tabs with which to attach the walls to the floor. This was then joined in the centre and the whole interior wall covered with plastic to protect it and give the slightly lacquered appearance of the original walls. This didn’t go quite according to plan, as it was a long strip and didn’t stick completely flat, so the creases were squashed flat with the handle of the craft knife. I did try ironing these flat, but this didn’t work and actually made it slightly worse, but it’s not THAT noticeable.

The walls were then glued to the perimeter of the floor, then the file cabinets and grandfather clock were glue to the internal walls and the pot plant and central console placed, which just about completes the control room, as shown below;

A few close-ups to give a better idea of how everything scales together – here’s Tara having just come in to the Tardis from outside, showing the exterior door and one of the filing cabinets. You can see where the creases are in the plastic around the door and where I attempted to rectify this with the iron. It’s not that bad…

And the Doctor checking out the scanner, which also shows the pot plant and the grandfather clock. I can see that the pot needs a bit more paint on the inside, which, as it has not been secured yet, can still be done.

And a close-up of the central console. This has not been completely finished, as the cardstock control panel section is not yet glued in place and I’m undecided whether the base needs to be painted Brass-y or can stay Bronze;

Now, this is the FUN part. If you look at the picture above, you can see that rubber sleeve under the console is now painted bronze and has interesting lines scribed into it. If you recall, this was originally blue. And, if you remember earlier, I did say I’d explain why I’d made a hole in the floor…

As the transparent plastic tube is open at the bottom AND not covered, the idea was to feed a LED or other small light up inside it, so as to illuminate the Time Rotor. In order to test this idea, I sat the whole diorama on top of a big torch, covered the top with a circular placemat and turned it on.

This is the result;

Not only has the top of the Time Rotor illuminated and cast its light on the ‘ceiling’, the blue of the plastic sleeve shines through the base of the console and the floor is also glowing red, purely from sitting on top of the torch.

Which is pretty damn awesome.

To paraphrase Kelis;

“My Tardis brings all the fans to the yard,
And they’re like, it’s better than yours,
Damn right it’s better than yours,
I can teach you, but you have to understand non-Euclidean geometry….”

Right, time for an announcement. Whilst May is Monster May (Hem) month, June is Forgotten Heroes month. I’m announcing it now to explain the rules and to give everyone a chance to order whatever figures they need to participate, if they so wish.

Rules are as follows; during June, you must produce at least one figure to represent a fictional character which has not yet had a decent figure made for it yet. It can be from any source, be it a movie, TV series, book or comic and in any scale. The base figure you use CANNOT be a figure designed to be the character you are producing, so no using Miniature Figurines Retro Space Pilot as a base for Dan Dare, as it was designed to represent this character. Can be as simple as repainting a Heroclix Blue Beetle as Goldbug to ‘doing a Roger’ and sculpting your figure from scratch.

I shall be falling in the middle and converting an existing figure into a character I want, which, bearing in mind my current project, is Doctor Who related.

If you want to take part, post a comment on here stating you want to join in and I will add you to the list of participants.

Which character have you always craved a figure of, which no-one has made yet? Now’s your chance to make that unique figure just for yourself.

That’s all for this time – join me next time for (hopefully) the completion of my entries for Monster May(Hem), but definitely MORE Doctor Who.

Bigger on the Inside

In nearly every episode of PROPER Doctor Who there will be one or more scenes which take place within the control room of the Tardis. Unless, of course, the Time Lords have changed the dematerialisation code, rendering the Tardis inoperable, in which case you’ll probably spend more time pottering about in a UNIT lab…

So, in order to continue to provide the TRUE adventures of the 13th Doctor, I do, of course, need a suitable “set” of my version of the 13th Doctor’s Tardis control room, which I did state I would probably need at the end of my previous post.

As discussed in the comments section on that post and having researched the various iterations of the Tardis control room over the years, there are certain constants – the main control console is hexagonal in shape and the illuminated Time Rotor rises from the centre of this, sometimes reaching as high as the ceiling; the control room itself is usually oval or circular in plan and has at least two doors, one leading outside and one leading further into the Tardis interior; and, finally, there will be circles or roundels somewhere within the control room, either as decorative panels, light fittings or as part of the structure itself.

The control room also usually reflects the personality or style of the Doctor who uses it, so in order to build a suitable control room, I need to know what sort of person my 13th Doctor is.

We’ve had a brief taste of his personality in his first outing and, from there, we know what his outfit/costume consists of, which, until I’d finished painting him, didn’t realise was very similar to the outfit that the Master wore when “hiding” out as Professor Yana…

Which means that you could use the Crooked Dice figure as a 28mm version of the Master who was involved in the Time War, until he fled to the end of time, with a suitable paint job and the addition of a cravat…

Moving back to my 13th Doctor, as his style is somewhat Victorian/Edwardian, based as he is on Rod Taylor’s portrayal of the time traveller in the 1960 version of The Time Machine, I was thinking something in walnut and brass for his control room.

Roger did suggest in the comments of the previous post that the secondary control room, used by the Fourth Doctor between The Masque of Mandragora and The Robots of Death, might be a possible contender;

Now, there are certain elements of this design I like, but also parts that I don’t, but it did give me a starting point with which to start designing my control room.

Having got a rough idea of what I was going to do, the next thing was to look at what ‘bits’ I had knocking about that could be used. A thorough search through the ‘box of bits’ that every wargamer/modeller has, turned up the bottom part of the Oreo style Heroclix base with the knurled edge and a transparent pen lid approximately 40mm long.

A suitably sized hole was drilled into the base and the pen lid glue into place, to serve as the base for the control console, like so;

The bottom half of the pen lid is a little scratched, hence the slightly milky looking nature of it, but as this will be painted AND beneath the console itself, this isn’t a problem.

The next problem was how to construct the remainder of the Tardis… which was when I remembered a website I’d previously visited a while ago that might be able to help.That website was Action Figure Theatre, created and run by Philip Lawrence.

What Mr Lawrence has done is to create Doctor Who fan fiction in the form of illustrated photo-strips, using the 5″ Doctor Who action figures brought out by Character Options.

More importantly for my purposes, he has created papercraft ‘sets’ for his stories and these can be found and downloaded as JPEG’s from AFT’s Download site.

Want a model of WOTAN from The War Machines? Or the interior of a Dalek saucer from The Dalek Invasion of Earth? How about Magnus Greel’s time cabinet from The Talons of Weng Chiang? Or the interior of the Rani’s Tardis from Mark of the Rani? This site has got you covered – including the interiors of EVERY Tardis from Hartnell to Capaldi.

But is doesn’t stop there. There are also sets for the Torchwood hub, Bannerman Road from The Sarah Jane Adventures, the interior of the Enterprise from Star Trek (Keith take note), Indiana Jones-inspired sets and a section of generic places, such as sewers, Victorian house interiors, spaceship interiors, etc.

Now obviously, as all these sets are scaled for 5″ (or 3.75″) action figures, you may be wondering why they might be of use. Well, as each page is a JPEG file, this means that once they are downloaded, they can be resized, cropped and generally fannied about with just like any other digital image.

So, if you were, for example, to download some of the wall panels from the fouth Doctor’s secondary control room, the floor and console from the Eighth Doctor’s Tardis and a few pieces of suitable furniture from various other sets, import them into Microsoft Word as pictures, then spend some time getting them right, you might end up with the components for your very own custom Tardis control room, printed out on to card, ready to be assembled, like so;

That’s all for this post, but join me next time, when we should see some progress on May’s monsters, along with (hopefully), the completed Tardis control room.

“These ARE the Droids I’m Looking For…”

Regular visitors to this site may have noted that I haven’t been particularly active over the past few weeks.

Well, gaming-wise, at least…

I have been busy doing other stuff. Like making my first visit to Scotland and the town of Edinburgh. This was a planned trip, probably the last holiday I’ll have with my entire family, as my oldest has now moved out and my daughter has just started university.

So, four days in Edinburgh, during which I climbed to the top of Arthur’s Seat (251m) getting to the top before every member of my family…

“Smug? Me? Naahhh…”

And on the suggestion of Stevie, booked an excursion BELOW Edinburgh, into one of their famous underground vaults, which was very atmospheric and mildly spooky, as you can see from the picture below:

I also took a fair few photos, mainly for reference purposes, but shan’t bore you with lots of pictures of interesting buildings, bits of Edinburgh Castle and Potter-eque alleyways, until such time as they become ideal for whatever tale I’m telling. However, this warrants showing – a genuine hexagonal Victorian postbox:

Not only did I have a nice break in Edinburgh, this was followed by moving my daughter into her halls of residence down in Portsmouth, which was a full-on busy day, so you can understand why I may not have been particularly active hobby-wise.

However, I have managed to get a few bits done on my ongoing alternate Star Wars project.

I realised that whilst I had my Dominion and Union troops, I needed a few characters to make my universe more rounded. So, looking through what multi=part plastic figures I did have, I created a ‘Protocol Droid’ by taking off the distinctive handlebar from one a Warlord Games Cyberman, combined various components from both a Void 1.1 Viridian Marine and a Junker with a few other bits to make a ‘bounty hunter’ and put together my free Legion of the Black Sun Necromancer to be a corrupted ‘adept of the Dark Side’. Once these have been fully painted, they will receive full in-universe designations, but for now this gives an idea of where I’m going with them;

But wait, there’s more!!!

Having found myself with an unexpected free evening, rather than waste it trying to find something specific for this project online (which I finally managed to do – see later in this post), I bit the bullet, got the paints out and sat down for a bit of an undercoating session – and achieved a fair bit.

The Union Militia were all undercoated in Docrafts Linen, their weapons in Docrafts Noir and a couple of them had their armour painted in Docrafts Jungle Green, as I’d decided that the Militia colour scheme would be predominantly tan and dark green, so inspired by the Rebel Commandoes, but not an exact copy. Skulking in the background is a GW Adeptus Arbites, which I intend on becoming another ‘bounty hunter’ for this universe.

My Dominion Legionnaires had an undercoat of Docrafts Noir, then were spirited off into my garage and were sprayed with some Poundland Gloss White, to try and give a bit of fast shading – which kind of worked. It does give a better indication of how they will end up – and yes, there are a couple more than there were last time. Remember, the Dominion IS Legion…

Incidentally, the ‘corridor’ I’m using as my backdrop is the free sample of the Dungeons & Lasers modular scenery that I mentioned in my previous post. I decided to de-sprue it and have a bit of a play. It’s good stuff solid, robust, well-detailed and how it goes together is really clever and simple. I’ll definitely be getting some of this stuff when it’s released, but if anyone wants to ‘late pledge’ for the Kickstarter, go here.

My Dominion Outriders were also given a similar treatment to their more heavily armoured brethren. I also shortened the Sharpshooter’s rifle, as once it had a lick of paint, it was obvious that it was too long. I still think they’re pretty cool and am looking forward to painting them, although for a full squad, I need to build three more Outriders, as the Sharpshooter doesn’t count.

Finally, I added some paint to my character models, although things did not go quite according to plan with some of them.

My ‘bounty hunter’ got an undercoat of Docrafts Dark Grey with his gun then being painted Docrafts Noir. The ‘protocol droid’ I had issues with – it had an undercoat of Docrafts Bronze, then a coat of Docrafts Shining Gold. However, for some reason the silver-grey plastic it was made from was still showing through the paint, so I then undercoated it again with Docrafts Noir and it now is the dirty brass colour you can see below. Archon Corax, my Vader surrogate, I tried to be clever with, by undercoating him with Gunmetal spray.

This was NOT a good idea, as this type of metallic paint relies on small particles to reflect the light and whilst this works fine on a larger model, like the bunker, it obscures the detail on figures, so I had to get out the nail polish remover and cotton buds to remove most of the spray paint. I left it on the lightsabre blade, as I thought this would help making it ‘shiny’. However, the rest of the figure got an undercoat of Docrafts Noir.

The final figure was the corrupted ‘Dark Side Adept’, who got an undercoat of Docrafts Dark Grey (which is actually quite light, as you can see from the pictures) and his pistol painted in Docrafts Noir.

Having read this far, you might be wondering how the title of this post relates to any of the preceding subject matter.

It doesn’t.

However, I will now explain. As this project progresses, I find myself populating my Star Wars-inspired universe with various figures to serve as proxies for the various troop types and ancillary characters. I have my Rebel trooper proxies and I have my Imperial Stormtrooper and Scout Trooper proxies. I also have Jedi proxies, both Dark and Light (although you haven’t seen the light one yet) and a couple of bounty hunters. I also have my first droid, but this was, up until recently, a bit of a stumbling block.

Humanoid robots are relatively common from several manufacturers, so finding figures for protocol, assassin or combat droids is quite easy. However, if you want proxy Astromech-style droids, you would have to buy either Fantasy Flight Games or the old Star Wars Miniatures game ones – which could prove a bit pricey, or make your own – which could prove to be a bit fiddly. I did find and download a template to make 1:50 scale papercraft R2 Units is a variety of colours, but this looked like it would try the patience of a saint – which I am not.

But Master Crow’s Web-Fu is strong…

Way back in May of 2018 Michael Awdry, of 28mm Victorian Warfare fame, was painting up some of his Imperial Assault figures and happened to mention a company called Combatzone Scenery, who made/make resin-infused plaster scenery for Imperial Assault, with which you can replace the cardboard tokens that come with this game. As I was not involved in a Star Wars-y project and did not own the game, I didn’t pay this much attention at the time.

However, my extensive practising of my Web-Fu in search of suitable proxy Astromech droids flagged up this picture:

Following the link back, I found that this was the Robot Accessory Set from, you guessed it, Combatzone Scenery, in which you get 14 robots cast in resin “compatible with 28mm skirmish games such as Star Wars Legion, Warhammer 40,000 or Infinity”, available to purchase for £15.00. That works out at about £1.07 per robot. The cheapest official Star Wars Miniatures Astromech droid (R5-D4) I could find was £2.99. Okay, so they’re not exactly right if you’re a Star Wars purist – the MSE droids are too big, the GNK droids have their legs in the wrong place and the R5 units have the wrong number of eyes – but for my purposes, they’re ideal. They look close enough to the source material that you will be thinking Star Wars, but fit in with my slight tweaking of the universe. And they’re £1.07 each…

Incidentally, if you play Imperial Assault, Legion, X-Wing or Armada, check out Combatzone Scenery, as they have a wide selection of products that will enhance your games. Similarly, if you play Super Dungeon Explore or other Chibi style games, they have a whole section devoted to this genre too, so well worth a look and very reasonable too, compared to the cost of the actual official game components.

Join me next time for more Star Wars inspired fun and remember, just because you happen to bump into me at a wargames show, doesn’t mean I’ll let you take my photo…

Never Break the Chain

One of the problems with being a wargamer is that you can be influenced by other gamers, be it in person  – at your FLGS or local club – or online – in a forum or on a blog such as this.

Whilst the majority of the time, this can be a positive experience, where you gain insight into a new painting style or have a manufacturer brought to your attention that you weren’t aware of, who stocks items that fulfill a specific need in your current project, there are times when something catches your eye or imagination and you suddenly find yourself having shelled out for a new game or figures from a new genre or scale, which are sufficiently different from your normal wargaming fare that you either put them to one side and promise you’ll look at them “later” or you stutter to a halt, as the overwhelming nature of the new project causes your brain to spasm

In other words, you broke the chain.

In my experience, in order to be successful and productive in our wonderful hobby, you do need to maintain momentum, as a two-week “break” from the hobby can easily slip in to a month or even a year if you’re not careful. This hobby momentum I refer to as the chain, so I can cheekily use lyrics from the Fleetwood Mac track of the same name for the post’s title, but also because is IS a chain – if you use it correctly.

Now, this is just MY theory on how to maintain momentum in your hobby pursuits, so feel free to disagree, but it works for me, so I’d thought I’d share it with you.

If you concentrate on a single genre or project for an extended period of time, unless it is something you are committed to or are extremely passionate about, you will experience burn-out. This can lead to a loss of momentum or, in the worse-case scenario, a loss of “love” for that particular project or genre.

Which is not good.

I find that having a small handful of different projects, which share a similar scale, means that I can easily transition from one to another when I start to become jaded with one particular project. It does help that the majority of my projects have an element of the macabre, so whilst I game Victorian Fantasy/Horror, Japanese Medieval Fantasy, Doctor Who, Ghostbusters and the current Alternate Star Wars project, some of the figures I use will turn up in multiple genres. And as Superhero gaming covers every possible permutation of genres and this was my first ‘love’ when I returned to gaming from the wilderness, it has kind of influenced the way I look at every other genre – so most of the projects I do are a blend of more than one thing.

Because there is this transition, this ‘sharing’ of resources and figures, I can easily slide from one project to another if I feel myself becoming “bored” with a particular project, so I don’t fall out of love with it, lose hobby momentum and break the chain, which, according to Fleetwood Mac, you should NEVER do.

Now, this transitioning can also be used in writing posts for your blogs. Sometimes, I’ll read a post which covers so many different projects or genres that it as though the author has just opened his head and spilled the contents on to the screen, without any concern or forethought as to how all these disparate parts come together. It can be somewhat jarring and reduces my enjoyment of reading that particular post. But, if there is some underlying theme or link between everything you’ve included in your post, then you can cover multiple genres or projects in one post without anyone even realising.

I’ll show you what I mean and you can judge for yourself how successful I’ve been…

So, way back in April of this year, I trotted off to the Excel Centre for the annual Salute wargaming convention and, being one of the first 5,000 through the doors, got my goodie bag with various freebies.

As a gamer with a limited budget, I am a fan of free wargaming stuff, although I sometimes can’t think of a particular use for the item when I first receive it. This happened with last year’s freebies, which ended up being sent to Stevie, as he’d missed on on Salute that year and was drooling over the free figures – and I had no use for them.

We’re gamers – that’s what we do.

Anyway, one of this year’s freebies was this;

This was a promo figure for Archon Studios new planned game Starcide, a sci-fi skirmish game, namely a Necromancer from the Legion of the Black Sun faction.

At the time, I had no real use for him. However, as I considered the various factions within my Star Wars-inspired project, I speculated on what would happen if a member of the Order of the Sentinels fell completely and started using their powers to siphon off the life-force of others to prolong their own life. I think they’d end up looking like a Legion of the Black Sun Necromancer…

Now, Archon Studios also had some promo examples and leaflets for their next project to be launched on Kickstarter at Salute, a hard plastic modular scenery system called ‘Dungeons & Lasers’, which allowed you to build either dungeons or sci-fi complexes out of set of interlocking components. Looked pretty cool and exactly the kind of thing I’d be interested in, so I grabbed a couple of leaflets to read up on it.

After the show, I visited their website and signed up for their email newsletter, so I could be kept in the loop. Prior to the launch of the Kickstarter for this new project, anyone who’d signed up for the newsletter received an email asking if they’d like a free sample of the new kit…

As I’ve stated before, I LIKE free wargaming stuff… so said yes.

This is what I got;

So, this sprue/frame contains enough components to create a small corridor with two walls… and an animal companion. It’s a fairly substantial bit of kit, as each floor section approximately 3mm thick and each wall section about 5mm thick. Floor sections are single-sided, with tabs that the rectangular connectors on the sprue clip on to, to ensure they don’t shift about. The wall sections are double-sided and in the production version will have different styles of either the fantasy or sci-fi decor on, so you can chooses which side you want showing. The way the bits clip together is really straightforward and the product is pretty robust.

The Kickstarter launched on 13th August 2019 and has now been successfully funded, but late pledges can still be made here. Lowest scenery pledge is $99, for which you get one base set of your preferred genre choice AND three extra rooms of your choice.

I know that I’ve previously stated that I’m not a fan of Kickstarters, but on this occasion, having seen the stuff in the…er…plastic AND if I had the cash, I would definitely buy in to this. Have a look yourself, as it might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.

I also received another unexpected email recently, from Keith aka the Angry Piper from Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodging. He’d sent me a photo of an item he thought I might like and asked if I wanted it.

Free wargaming stuff? Oooh, yes please…

Anyway, this is the item, which arrived yesterday morning.

Yeah Baby… you know who to call..

28mm Outrider figure for scale purposes, as my Ghostbusters are currently packed away… somewhere. (There was something else in the box, but the less said about the better, right Keith?) A very generous gift, especially when taking into account the shipping costs, and one that I am extremely grateful for.

Just need to find a way to pay him back somehow…

Right that’s all for this post, which not only had tied into my current project, but also a once and future project and was all linked together with a single theme.

It’s almost like I planned this…

“He says there’s a secret entrance… On the other side of the ridge.”

As the end of August can be seen lurking in the distance, creeping ever closer, and this is when The Angry Piper’s TerrainTime 2019 challenge finishes AND my Star Wars-inspired terrain piece was almost complete, I decided to crack on with the roof. Once this was completed, all I’d need to do was give it a couple of passes with some spray paint and job done.

So, first order of the day was deciding on what to use. Looking at the original inspiration for this terrain piece, the Endor Shield Generator Bunker;

the roof is pretty thick and also stepped, so the first order was to scout out some 5mm foamcore to make the lowest tier of the roof. As my intention was to use an aerosol spray paint on the entire model, the exposed foam along the edges would have to be masked, otherwise the spray paint would melt it. Potentially useful if trying to replicate a weird energy weapon attack, not so good when just attempting to undercoat a model.

A rectangle that matched the approximate footprint of the model was cut out, and the sides covered with clear sticky tape, angled at the corners to avoid overlap.

The next stage was to add an additional tier, slightly smaller, cut from mounting board and a third and final tier, the corners of which were trimmed, as were the centres, to give a bit more interest to the basic roof structure, before adding any external greeblies.

A quick raid of my box of bits and two end caps from flat pack furniture, two push pins, a plastic flanged nut of some description and a spare token from HeroScape (which has the HeroScape emblem on) were dry-fitted, then stuck in place, once I’d decided where they were going.

All well and good, but what did it look like in situ?

Not too bad…

Not too bad at all…

But obviously, as it stood at this point, all the disparate elements were clearly visible, so out into the garden it went and was given a liberal coat of matt black primer.

yes, I did say matt – the only reason this is looking shiny is that the picture was taken when the paint was still wet.

As I wanted a playable interior as well, the inside was given a coat too. The interior will gain some detail, possibly utilising some of the decals from Diorama Workshop. These are designed for 3.75″ actions figures, but re-scaling them and printing them out on sticky-backed paper and you’ve got instant Star Wars “wallpaper” for whatever environment you wish to re-create.

The next step was to use some Wilko Gunmetal Spray Paint, which gives a nice subdued dark grey-ish metallic effect. The idea was to try and utilise the technique known as zenithal shading, to try and create some simple highlights without too much effort. However, I don’t think I got it quite right, so my bunker model appears to be the same colour across its entirety, except for some possible darker shading in the doorway.

However, my Dominion troops seem to like it and for a relatively simple and inexpensive project, I think it’s come out looking pretty good.

If you’d seen the finished article prior to seeing how it was built, would you have guessed what it was made of? Or just assumed it was 3D printed or something?

That’s all for this build, but join me next time as this project continues. I think we may be off to the Droid workshop…

Jez

“Chewie and me got into a lot of places more heavily guarded than this…”

So, my intention for the month of August was to continue with my Alternate Star Wars project AND take part in the TerrainTime 2019 challenge being run by the Keith (aka The Angry Piper) over on his blog Dead Dick’s Tavern and Temporary Lodging. I had already bought one of these;

which is a Wilko Half Size Propagator Lid (17.5cm x 21cm) for the absolutely HUGE amount of…75p! Bargain!!

The idea was to use this vacuum-formed plastic cover as the basis for an Imperial-ish bunker, similar to the ones found on Endor or Scarif. Relatively simple plan – trim the rim so it was flush with the ground, tart up the exterior a bit, spray the whole thing, weather it a bit – shouldn’t take too long and should be pretty simple, right?

If I’d stuck to my initial plan…yes. However, I overthought this little project and ended up trying to make a recessed door (like the one on Endor). Over the next two and bit hours there were indications that things were not going according to plan, but rather than listen to these subtle hints from the Universe, I struggled gamely on – until I realised I had well and truly Fucked. It. Up. 

Once you’ve reached THAT point, all you can do is sigh and consign your efforts to the bin, because no amount of remedial work will miraculously resurrect your idea.

However, lessons were learnt from this;

1. Don’t overthink or over-complicate your builds,
2. Cheaper is not necessarily better, and
3. Vacuum-formed plastic can be a pain in the arse to cut straight lines out of.

Of course, in between my epic fail with my first attempt at a Star Wars-inspired terrain piece and this post, this was previewed by FFG;

Yup, the OFFICIAL Star Wars Legion Imperial Bunker – RRP seems to be about £69.99…

As we all know my particular opinion on FFG pricing, I won’t reiterate that here, but seeing this item reminded me that I had seen a plastic object with similar detailing knocking about the house somewhere – namely this;

This is a hard plastic fitting wedge, used when installing laminate flooring. It’s usually used to offset the ‘planks’ when laying the flooring, to ensure that it’s square with the walls…or that’s the general idea. Anyway, these wedges are 30mm wide and 70mm long/tall and I thought I could use them to clad a simple box, to make a substitute bunker. However, I only had a couple left over that I could locate, and needed a good 20 or so.

A quick search online and I discovered that B&Q were currently selling off packs of the Diall brand of these wedges, as they were being discontinued, for the low price of £1.00 for a pack of 22. So I bought 2 packs.

Now I had my ‘cladding’, I just needed my walls, so the remains of a cereal box was press-ganged into service and a basic structure built – with the recessed doorway being pre-planned this time, rather than an afterthought.

That’s one of my Dominion Outriders to give an idea of scale – the structure has a footprint of 18cm x 12 cm and is 7cm tall, so as to fit in with the multiples of the individual wedges.

After a certain amount of gluing, the exterior of the structure was clad, as shown below.

As the reverse of each wedge is divided into a 3 x 5 grid of oblongs, I decided to use two of these reversed to create the inner walls of the recess, with the intention of adding a control panel at some point, once I’d found something suitable.

Which then looked like this;

Looking at the original wedges that had started this train of thought and project rolling, I realised that they were from a different manufacturer AND had a different pattern on the reverse – which looked like blast doors to my eyes, so these were glued in place, like so;

All in all, it took about 40 minutes to do this, including building the cardboard structure. Cheap, simple and, in my opinion, looks pretty good.

So, the next stage is to build a roof, add a few external bits and bobs – such as the afore-mentioned control panel and some sensor domes – then give it a liberal coat of black spray primer, followed by a spray of Gunmetal (bought to refurbish a mirror frame, but gives a nice subdued metallic finish) and it will be done.

The interior will have to wait, as the end of August fast approaches and it needs to be usuable/finished by then, so I’ll just concentrate on the exterior.

And I’ve still got another pack of these wedges and am wondering whether they could be used as internal walls, if they were glued back to back…

There should be another post to finish the bunker off, before we move onto how I’ve worked out how to cunningly and cheaply make my own Astromech droids.

You KNOW it’s going to be another potentially Genius idea, so make sure to tune in…

Jez

Carpathian Kitten Loss

The title of this post is a phrase used by Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters II, referring to what Vigo the Carpathian is suffering from and why he looks so grumpy in his painting.

It’s also… The. Best. Title. Ever.

After my brief diversion to announce the Forgotten Heroes 2019 event, we return to my ongoing Ghostbusters project and something that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, but not got around to yet.

As I’d previously built the first room of my museum ‘board’ (go here if you missed this genius idea) and discussed in the comments that it could be used for any large internal space, including an art gallery, this started those insidious cogs turning in my brain…

As the villain of the second Ghostbusters movie spent the majority of the film as an oil painting, to have a ‘complete’ collection of 28mm Ghostbusters and related characters, I really needed a scale representation of this. I mean, I’d just built a museum hall, so how difficult could it be?

Turns out there were some teething issues, but as I’ve now overcome these, I can show you the best way to create scale paintings for your scenery, that are; 1. easy to make, 2. dirt cheap and, 3. with the right bits, can be added and removed from your scenery without any issues.

So, the first thing to do is to find the relevant images that you want to replicate. I decided that my portrait of Vigo should not hang alone, so decided to source some other images of like-minded folk. Having selected my ‘Rogue’s Gallery’, I used Google Images to find the largest, most detailed version of the picture I wanted, then simply copied and pasted these into a blank Word document.

Using the Formatting facility, I then reduced these images in size to what I felt was the correct proportions, ensuring that the aspect ratio was locked, so it didn’t distort the image. Using the ‘Picture Styles’ Formatting option, I then added a “frame” to each picture, using ‘Compound Frame, Black’. Having done this, I then printed this out on a piece of A4 paper, using my colour printer, along with one other image, like so:

So, Vigo is at the bottom left of the portraits and above him is a portrait of Ivo Shandor’s mother, which features in Ghostbusters – The Video Game, which I’ve mentioned before. As for the other three portraits, they are all historical personages and anyone who can name all three gets bonus points and my everlasting respect.

The final image is the actual logo for Stay-Puft Marshmallows that appeared in the first Ghostbusters movie, on the packet that Dana had on her kitchen counter. Yes, I am THAT much of a geek…

Interestingly, the image of Mr. Stay-Puft is a bit more angular than the one that manifested in the final reel and I’m tempted to try and recreate this…but maybe not full size.

Anyway, as I had printed this out on A4 paper, I decided to cut out the pictures and glue them on to thin card using a gluestick…

This was a mistake, so don’t do this.

The glue make the colours run and you get weird lumps everywhere. Instead, print the images straight on to card, as most home printers will take the sort of white card they give to kids to make greetings cards from and is therefore available from most stationers and handily comes in A4 size. (As a side note for any overseas readers, A4 is a standard paper size in the UK, equivalent to 8.27 × 11.69 inches, because having it 9 x 12 would be FAR too easy…)

Once you’ve done that, use a steel rule and a craft knife (as even with the best will in the world AND a steady hand, you won’t cut ’em straight) to cut out your paintings, like so:

You will then need to colour the edges of your ‘paintings’, as otherwise when viewed from the side, you’ll see the white card they’re printed on. This can easily be done with a black felt tip such as a Sharpie, although someone’s wandered off with mine, so I had to paint the bloody things. Don’t do this – it takes too long and you can end up with paint, ironically, on your ‘paintings’.

The next stage is to cover the paintings with transparent sticky=backed plastic. I used a 50p roll from Wilko, intended for covering school books. This is to protect the images when being handled, as ink from an inkjet printer will wear off if treated too rough and gives the ‘paintings’ that sheen that you see on oil paintings. Once you’ve done this, flip them over and glue 1 pence pieces to the back of each one, like so;

It doesn’t have to be a 1 pence pieces, you can use any coin of your choice, or a washer, although washers do tend to be more expensive than a penny each. The important thing is that the coin (or coin substitute) be of a composition that is ferromagnetic…

And the reason for this is because that way, by placing a strong enough magnet on the reverse of the wall you are intending hanging the ‘picture’ on, it can be placed anywhere on the wall and removed just as easily, so will not be a permanent fixture.

To show you what I mean, here’s Dr Floyd Petersen of the Rookhaven Ghostbusters franchise, examining a portrait he has discovered hanging in the museum, which appears to be giving off a significant amount of Psychokinetic Energy…

“There are no strings on me…”

Did I hear someone say… ‘genius’?

Until next time…

Unnatural History

Anyone who has visited one of the big museums, such as the British Museum or the Natural History Museum in London, will know that not only are they filled with cool and interesting things, but they…are…HUGE. I’m not just talking about the exteriors, but once you walk in through the front doors, you find yourself within a cool, marble-floored hall, whose ceiling and walls stretch away from you – almost to infinity. This sense of scale, of grandeur, is deliberate, as it puts you in the right frame of mind to full appreciate the artefacts that you will shortly be viewing.

Now, back in 2009, Sony released Ghostbusters: The Video Game across various home console platforms, including PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and the Wii. There were two ‘versions’ of the game – realistic and stylised – depending on which console you had, but the general plot was the same.

It was set in New York in 1991 and the Ghostbusters, with the addition of a new “Experimental Weapons Technician” (controlled by the player), attempted to thwart the convoluted plan of Ivo Shandor to return from beyond the veil and complete the work he had begun back in the 1920’s.

Now, unlike a lot of the games published under the Ghostbusters banner, the script and story for this had been created by Dan Ackroyd and Harold Ramis, and featured the actual vocal talents of the majority of the original cast, including the notoriously reclusive Bill Murray.

And it was awesome, especially on the Wii, as you actually felt like you WERE a Ghostbuster.

You may be wondering how this video game and my introduction regarding museums are related to one another…or to wargaming, which is the purpose of this blog and probably why you’re here in the first place. All WILL be explained, so read on.

So, one of the levels of this game featured the American Museum of Natural History, star of the first Night in the Museum movie and novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (NB: the movie based on the latter – The Relic (1997) – whilst not too bad, moved the action to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, so not the same place.) You got to explore various parts of the museum and bust a variety of supernatural menaces along the way.

This got me thinking that having a tabletop representation of a museum – a museum ‘board’ if you will – would be a great location to play a variety of games on. A heist of a valuable artefact could be thwarted by costumed vigilantes or uniformed police; a group of stalwart, square-jawed adventurers could sneak in to prevent cultists from opening a portal to another dimension and releasing some squamous horror; paranormal exterminators or meddling teens could investigate and eliminate a haunting, whether real or faked. Just think of all the movies you’ve seen that have featured a museum or art gallery as a major location and think of what fun YOU could have with your figures, if you had one yourself…

Now, I am aware that Sally 4th does as part of their Terra Blocks range, under the sub-heading of Exotic Locations, The Museum of Antiquities, which is constructed from 17 100mm cubes, that can be rearranged to your heart’s content, for £17.50.

However, whilst nice, this doesn’t really convey the scale of the big museums to me, so I sat on this idea for a while until I had one of my unbelievably genius ideas. You may be somewhat sceptical at this point, but just you wait and see…

Right, first thing you need is a box, but not just any box. You need a box that is pretty big, robust and deep. I was initially going to use a box file for this, as they’re pretty cheap and easy to get hold of wherever you happen to be in the world, but then remembered that Ikea do black storage boxes for a very reasonable £2.00 each. Obviously, being Ikea, you’ve got to build them yourself, but no tools are necessary, as these are the only parts you get:

As you can see from the instruction sheet, this box is called ‘Tjena’, and comes in three parts; the pre-assembled lid, the sides and folded bottom and a flat insert to go in the bottom of the box for added stability. The box is 13 3/4″ long, 9 3/4″ wide and 4″ tall (or 35cm, 25cm and 10cm, if you use Metric) and looks like this once you’ve built it;

You can now see why you have a insert, as the folded part of the base of the box means it hasn’t got a flat bottom.

Each one of these boxes will represent one hall within our museum, so depending on how large you want your museum to be depends on how many boxes you buy. As each ‘hall’ is only £2.00 (in the UK at least), your playing area and budget will dictate how many halls your museum has.

Once you’ve decided how many halls you are going to have and the approximate layout, you need to cut openings in the relevant walls of your halls, so that the visitors can move between halls. Make sure that the openings in each hall are the same size, so that when you put them together, they marry up. I have decided that as my museum may have exhibits such as prehistoric animals or modern art in the form of giant plastic pigs, the openings need to be 3″ wide and this hall will have three openings, so I cut these out.

The reason I did this first is because whilst the box, insert and lid are coloured black, the card it’s made from isn’t, so the cut parts show the original colour of the cardboard it’s made from. As the next stage involves paint, it’s better to have all the bits you’re going to paint on show at the same time.

As museums tend to have neutral coloured walls, out came my £4.00 can of Wilko ‘Soft Taupe’ spray paint and the interior walls (and the cut parts showing the base card colour) were given a liberal coat, then left to dry whilst I moved on to the next part. And this is what it looked like once it was dry.

However, whilst it was drying, I tackled the ‘floor’. The idea here was to cover the card insert with suitably patterned self-adhesive decorative vinyl. Having found a role of said product that featured 1 inch squares, that looked like floor tiles (and is actually fairly similar to the tiled floor of the British Museum) in Poundland, I thought it would be ideal.

So, I cut a section big enough to cover the insert and overlap the edges, peeled of the backing paper and carefully applied the sticky-back plastic to my card insert, like so;

As the walls of my hall were now dry, I simply dropped my floor into place and had the first of my basic museum halls completed;

And to give a sense of scale, here’s Jake Hudson of the local Ghostbusters franchise facing off against some Oriental beastie stalking the halls of the Rookhaven Museum of Natural History;

Now, it’s not complete, as I am intending on adding skirting boards, light switches and power outlets to the walls, to make it look more ‘real’, but I wanted to get this up on the blog so others could see just how simple, quick and inexpensive creating a large interior space to play in was. It doesn’t need to be a museum – it could be ANY interior. And it doesn’t need to be a room this size – it could be easily divided up into smaller rooms, to represent a secret base or a prison or…well anything YOU need.

And, once you’re done playing, pop the lid on and stack it up with the other halls you’ve built. Robust, quick and easy to build and store, and cheap.

Genius.

‘Nuff said.