Zombie town!

I tested the terrain set-up for tomorrows playtest of the BRP based Zombie! Rpg rules. We're going for the 10 mm approach, meaning my WW2 terrain gets a bit more use. Just have to painting up finish 70 zombies and survivors, but that's not gonna be too hard, these Pendraken mini's paint up easily. Houses from Fieldwork, trees and hedges from various N scale train supply brands. I've got a few cars as well, for added atmosphere.

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012-2013

Another repair session

Last RuneQuest game I managed to topple a complete box of water cave blocks while playing. The damage was considerable, but it speaks for our casting plaster's quality that I managed to repair all of the broken bits in one hour, including glueing stuff back together and painting / washing with various shades of gray. I must have used about 50 of them.

Work in progress

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012-2013

Another great hirst session

Hirst terrain blocks are brilliant stuff, but one has to invest a considerable amount of time in order to get some serious quantity of blocks. We did and here's today's yield. It looks like a lot but you need a lot of blocks to make stuff. Still, we are putting some effort in regularly, and slowly but surely we're getting together a lot of cool looking terrain.

Here's the temple interior stuff so far

 

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Market Stalls

A bit of commerce fo the RPG table.

Here are some market stalls I bought at Crisis this year, they will serve as fluff for City setups in Pavis and elsewhere. I'll be getting the other ones as well, there were six models in all. Just on the lookout for some nice stall attendants in a scruffy medieval / ancient city style...

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

A belated Happy New Year!

I had 2 weeks of holiday, during which i have done very little in the hobby room, too many other things to do. Still, meanwhile the hobby activity has resumed, and although there are no pictures to show at the moment, I'm working hard at finishing Pavis buildings (x2), Rubble buildings (x1), and a lot of new modular room/cave terrain in hirst blocks. So this early pic will have to do! There's much more now!

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

First stage of Ingilli Warship

Still lots to do, but at least it's lying in the water

I started modification on a Revell Viking Drakkar for my Ingilli Warship that the Lunars have confiscated in Corflu. First stage was glueing the hull together and fixing the deck, and it got ugly immediately afterwards: Dremel through the entire hull lengthwise, without damaging the deck, but not more than 3 mm below. Add to that the tendency to stick back together after using the cutting disk, and it adds up to 15 minutes of stress. Still, it worked out fine, and I slapped a sheet underneath, slapped on half a bottle of slo-zap, a morokanth's weewee's length of green stuff, and it's hardening as I write this. Time for a Roll 20 upgrade session now...

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Test building for the Big Rubble

Made out of Hirst blocks

In parallel with making buildings for New Pavis, I'm also preparing a set of ruins for the Rubble. Or at least I intend to. Here's my first attempt, still a WIP,of a nice ruin in Manside. I'm gonna go for a mix of a few styles, ranging from egyptian to babylonian, I hope it'll look convincing. I'm gonna roughen this one up a bit, and then paint it and see what it looks like.

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

New Pavis update

Far from finished (The rubble is gonna be a particularly hard task :D) but here is an update with some hills I got at crisis, a few palm trees, and some of the buildings I am working on.  The Pavis temple is basecoated as well, I'm hoping to be able to finish some more stuff this week.  I am particularly happy with how the new buildings turned out.

Palm tree bonanza

At Crisis, I bought a nice collection of basic palm trees in various sizes from minibits ( Pendraken ) and then I ran into a booth offering these palmtrees with a twist, completely painted, just needed to put a metal base underneath for stability. These will never make it on a desert table for historical games,but they look just the part for my Praxian oasises in RuneQuest, so I got both bags, a bit of basing and washing, and pronto!

 

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Temple of Pavis in New Pavis - WIP

Made out of pu foam and porous tack

Here is the foam model of what is to become the Pavis temple in New Pavis. It's a bit underscale, if not it would become near to useless, but it'll evoke the new pavis feeling just fine, I'm sure. Next job is a brush paintcoat with thinned black acryl paint and a big brushing session to get the dirt brown look I want for the wall and the pink / brown look I want the pyramid to have.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

More Hirst goodness

After glueing up a cartload of cavern floor tiles and water and rock caves, I made some bits and pieces from another mould into an attempt at a modular inside terrain system. Early days, it's a modest start, but the idea seems easier to implement in Hirst than it was with scratchbuilt, mainly because of the Hirst dimensions and consistency.

The idea is to have 3 or 4 sizes of room flooring, and as many wall types, first in the combination visible here, but this can easily be expanded afterwards. I'm hoping to basecoat it all up tomorrow evening.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Pavis building test & more

The house of Ofnow Konsekwenz in Pavis

Here is how the first building turned out.  Not too shabby, but there are some things I'll be taking along for the next version: I want a roof terrace, so the outer wall must be higher, I need a height difference of 15 mm, minus 3 from the foamboard leaves 12, that's a nice balustrade.  Then I can make a hole in the roof and mount a little hirst trapdoor in.  Simple and good looking.
The door was made from a sheet of balsa, engraved with a byro and an exacto knife.  The windows are mosquito net, brushed brown and glued between the two walls.  Bottom plate in foamboard, white glue, fish tank sand.

This nice wyrm was painted, start to finish, in under one hour.  The basecoat, subsequent base red and a nice white brush started of the figure really well, after that it was just a bit of detaling and a pinch of flock.  Very happy with it, and I just know that if I keep going at it, it might get better, but not a lot.

Pavis style buildings

As the start of our Pavis campaign approaches, things start getting hectic. I made an inventory of my Glorantha Miniatures Pipeline. About 100 unprepped/semiprepped miniatures, 100 more prepped and based miniatures, and about 150 in various stages of progress. About 20 are more or less finished, but need that last bit of TLC, mostly a coat of dull varnish.

Another important part is terrain. We have been diligently casting hirst, and I hope to finish quite a bit of caves and caverns by next weekend, but we also need Pavis style buildings, including the test building on the picture here, but also temples, clan houses, all in a style somewhere in the middle of ancient greece, egypt, and Conan's Cimmeria.


A third project that is underway, is our Pavis campaign wiki, introducing Pavis, Prax, the protagonists, player characters, and a lot more. For copyright reasons, we decided to keep this wiki private, so we can share maps and snippets of pdf between players, but once the PC descriptions are finished, I'll post these on the hiording blog and tdm.

Posted with Blogsy - (c) Rudy Boeynaems 2012

Casting session

For our first whole day casting session we decided to make a bit of everything

The blog has been quiet the last few weeks, the reason for that is a mix of too much work, the temporary pause playing RuneQuest waiting for RQ6 (and Moon Designs Pavis, which I received last week), and the fact that the weather has remained so chilly: I really prefer sitting in my hobby room without the heater blowing, and when it's so cold I can't: I just have to heat it.  As a consequence I find I head down less often.  Still, I am still painting now and again, currently working on a set of Tusk Riders, a nice collection of zombies, and I also have a bunch of NPCs that I need to finish off, just some basing and finishing touches and we're good to go.

Funnily enough, two months ago I finally bit the bullet and decided to go and buy the SLR I have been wanting for so long now.  I invested in some decent lenses as well, and theoretically I am now able to make way better pictures than before.  But setting stuff up now takes longer, making it a more formal occasion: set up the flash and umbrella, set up the scene, tripod, linear rail and 1:2 macro lens.  So far I haven't really made pictures of my modelling, but I intend to soon™.

Once work settles down a little, I'll make a bit of effort on documenting the new photography tools.

Some Call of Cthulhu stuff

Leng Spider base, homemade

 I started making a nice big base for my Leng spider.  Used some broken hirst bit, lots of wood glue, and sand and rubble, completed with some bottles and a barrel and a earth cult shield.  Time to basecoat, then paint and add some spider web goo.

Expedition to the outback, RAFM.

I also started painting the outback expedition vehicle.  This is just some rough coating and washing, getting ready for the fine work, but I've sadly enough been starting so much stuff lately, it's hard to finish stuff, and my desk is full-fuller-fullest again.  I have got to finish some stuff pronto, but as it stands I'm also working on a new Open Office Chargen macro, using csv files for the data so that I can simply add races, spells and weapons as needed.  So between painting lots of RuneQuest stuff, the better half of the RAFM Call of Cthulhu range, and this software project that turns out to be just that little bit more complicated at every corner, it's hard to find time for preparing adventures, reading, or just doing good old research.  It's like juggling.

Finished some more cave blocks

Here is the result of 2 castings each (not completely though, some bits went wrong) of all cave moulds.  I used some fieldstone floortiles to put them on, I might give those a whiter brush later to make them look more fitting.  Some parts are glued wrongly in the first batch, so I'll need to have another go to complete some of the double pieces, like the wooden door.  Still, the images clearly illustrate the feel of the blocks, they look great and will work very well for RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu, as well as any other skirmish type game, 28 mm or not.

The rocky caves, mould 81 & 82

The water caves, mould 83 & 84

Entering the water caves.  Using fieldstone floortiles

Mountains of madness?

Time to cast: 1 hour. 
Time to glue: 1 hour. 
Time to dry: 1 week. 
Time to base: 6 minutes. 
Time to dry: 1 day.
Time to paint: 1 hour. 

Look and behold: one cast each of moulds 81-84.  A second batch is drying, I think 2 batches will go a long way making cave encounters a lot more realistic and enjoyable in Runequest and CoC alike.  I'm doing a superdry white brush tomorrow, then some varnish, and we're good to go!

Hirst casting tryouts

Hiring children to do the work proves much cheaper,
and they can be bullied into working unpaid overtime easily

We had a few casting tests today, with the help of my son and daughter, to establish how many hirst silicon moulds one can cast per unit of time.  The tests pointed out that the speed I could reach very much depends on the number of moulds available.  At one time, I had 7 moulds 'in the air' at once.  That was doable, I would say I could manage to keep 10 moulds busy.  Depending on turnaround time, and therefore drying time, I could do 2 to 2,5 rounds per hour.  Some of the things I found:

1. Setting up took me about 45 minutes.  This will be the same for one person doing 3 moulds or 4 persons doing 40 moulds so organization is essential.
2. We need more mixing bowls: it is a very bad idea to rinse your mixing bowl in the sink, you have to let the plaster set and then remove it.  For one person, 5 mixing bowls is a good number.  Luckily, these are dead cheap.
3. It took me over one hour to clean up.  This will also be required after every cast, so it would be best to try and organize big casting sessions.

The homemade vibration board worked VERY well, so that's going to stay.  I have a nice setup in mind, with one person making the mixture, one scraper, one unpacker and one all-round, and that should allow to make lots of casts in the course of an afternoon or so.

Second Floor interior and some extra's

 Let's start with the extra's: I have gotten the Alchemist Shop Friday, slapped some paint on it, just needs a bit of detailing and pin washing and we're good to go.

 I also ordered the Kitchen set: a nice touch to complete the Inn, with fireplace, pizza oven, and an atmos that is slightly to modern for RuneQuest, but amist I bovvered forsooth?

Here's the main feature, although it's not looking like much compared to the splendid complete interiors above, these beds are still gonna add a lot of spunk to my Inn rooms for sure.

Making a second floor for my inn

Yellow Polystyrene, a stump pencil, some black acryl, and a ruler.

Although I was unable to start a barfight Saturday, I'm not despairing: I have started work on the second floor of the Inn, the idea is to make a wooden floor, and then add some room walls, some nice beds from Scotia Grendel are underway to finish things off.