Basing Experiment

A number of miniatures enthusiasts advocate keeping one's eyes open for everyday items that can be incorporated in miniatures building. One reason is to exercise creative muscle. A second reason might be to instill uniqueness into a piece. The third reason, less fancy and artistic-sounding in nature, is to save money.

As I have recently been customizing Hreoclix for other games, I have been removing them from their dials. Some have an adequate little plastic base already for standing, others do not. But I'd like something better looking. This summer, before I really had things like my Epic Duels project in mind, I came across a number of discarded solar LED garden lights. Obviously thrown out because they didn't work any more and I just started collecting them for different ideas I started having. I'll probably get to some of those in the future, but I'll talk about one I'm in the midst of trying out right now.

One of those discarded lights contained an acrylic rod with bubbles trapped in the middle of it, like this one:

Image from buyeparts.com

The rod, 1-1/8" (29 mm) in diameter, seemed just right for basing miniatures in the Heroclix scale.

I was thinking about how to cut the thing such that I would come out with reasonably straight and level faces on the discs. By had was maybe out of the question. My father-in-law suggested his lathe and I jumped at it. I just eyeballed a thickness I liked, which turned out to be around 3/8" (4 mm). At the thickness I chose, we got 22 discs, and one that was thicker (the piece that was in the lathe chuck).

The cutting did generate heat, enough of it that the discs ended up with rough faces. But, hey, I'm just going to be covering that with paint and maybe some green stuff, so no big deal there. I filed off the roughest parts, but the surface will just look like ground, I think. The only hitch is that I think the best way to attach the minis to the bases I made will be to keep them on the small, almost adequate bases they are on. 

So my first experiment is to dig the smaller base shape into the top surface using my Dremel and a couple of different wood bits. After fitting them in, I have realized that I will want to fill in gaps and such using green stuff (or some other filler) then painting them. But I'm thinking I'd rather do this in batches, so it will happen after I have a few more figures ready to finish in this way. 

Here's the four Star Wars characters mounted and ready for ground work:

Not too bad even as they are, but adding ground effects will look better.

A belated Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all!

Falling girl: a Heroclix conversion

When I prepped some green stuff for the clone trooper helmet, there was still a little left over. It was still quite a lump and I couldn't stand to toss it so I quickly  sorted through that Heroclix box to see if there was a hero I could convert with a bit of green stuff. What came to me was an idea for a DC hero called fire. The sculpt, as you can see in the pics, is a semi-transparent green. I assume she's supposed to be hovering or something, definitely not standing or running. But the pose and the way the hair sticks mostly straight up from the head, she could also be falling. Not like an accidental fall, mind you, but like she's jumping off a cliff or something. What kind of girl might be jumping from a cliff? Perhaps a girl like Lara Croft. So I decided to make Fire into a rugged adventure girl.

So with no specific game in mind or any plans for future use of what I was about to create, I got under way.

First thing's first, of course, gotta trim all those tendril things that are probably supposed to be flames or something. Quickly shaved them off, because I gotta have time to shape the green stuff before it sets. Well, then she looks all naked, so a pair of adventurey shorts are in order, I can just paint a shirt over her as she is. Well, maybe not...

her breasts just seem too...

unrestrained-looking...

to be under a shirt...

Okay, so one breast reduction surgery later, I figured all adventurers need a backpack, so I made her a backpack. Made sure to make the backpack strain away from her body a bit to keep the impression of her falling through the air. Put on a belt and a sidearm, because adventure girls have those, right? Finally, because I still had some epoxy left, I gave her some nice heavy hiking boots.

Some painting and a layer of Pledge acrylic floor finish to seal it up and hey, presto!

I think the conversion went rather well for having to make up a plan after mixing the epoxy!

Still thinking on how to base her.

The pics:

This girl is tough! See, she has a bandage around her left hand!

"I'm falling into the unknown, but on purpose!"

Kind of looks like she's going for the Crane Kick a la Karate Kid.

I really like how the backpack turned out. I even put a little canteen on the left side.

SW:ED Project - Ahsoka Tano

Now to introduce my second completed Epic Duels team made from Heroclix: Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex.

Ahsoka and Captain Rex ready for battle!

Ahsoka Tano
I used this sculpt of the X-Woman Quake. The biggest reason I chose it was that her pose seemed to be exactly the kind of stance Ahsoka might take in a fight, specifically with the positioning of her light sabers.

Quake (photo from HC Realms)

While this is my second completed team, this was actually the first conversion I had attempted to add sculpted material to. In fact, I hadn't even acquired any green stuff yet. I tried using JB Weld instead. I'll tell you now that I don't recommend using JB Weld after having used green stuff, it's much harder to work with. Despite the troubles I had with the JB Weld, I think I got lucky and the sculpt actually came out looking pretty good for what it was, good enough to try painting it instead of doing it all over again with green stuff.

 

 

 

 

So yes, I used JB Weld for Ahsoka's head-piece and her skirt, for which I am especially amazed that it worked. Her belt, pouch on her back, and neck-tie shaped thingy on the front were done with green stuff. For her light sabers, I clipped some bits off of a paperclip. Then for each I heated one end and pressed it into one of the fists so that the plastic melted around the paperclip. After cooling, I added some Krazy Glue to further strengthen her hold on her sabers.

Painting her face was a struggle, I think it came out too busy-looking with the white markings at this small scale, but I don't know how else I would do it. As for the rest, I went for her dress from later in the Clone Wars series.

Captain Rex
...sort of. In my researching of Captain Rex and from watching the Clone Wars series, I took note that the dual blaster pistols (DC-17 hand blasters, apparently) are the signature weapon for Rex. Thus, I want to do a sculpt with 2 pistols, I just haven't decided on one from the figures I have yet. However, I do have 4 Punisher sculpts that would make a good squad of clone troops: one sniper, two with rifles, and one with a mini-gun. So I did up one of the rifle-wielders to stand in for Rex until I get a sculpt I like for the role. Maybe there's an Epic Duels team featuring Commander Cody and some other troopers.

Punisher (photo from HC Realms)

The Clone Trooper came out pretty well. It started with a decapitation. Yes, after trying to model a clone helmet onto the Punisher's head, I took it off and stuck it on a spike to ease the molding process. After the helmet dried, I used it to make a mold so that I have an easier time with future clone conversions. Thus finished with the head, I glued it back on.

Actually, while waiting for green stuff to set, I did some body work. You can see the original sculpt is quite filled out with muscles, something clone armour wouldn't actually fit, so I shaved them down to approximate clone armour. I also cut the rifle down to more closely resemble a clone blaster rifle. While I intend him to be a regular clone, he can stand in for Captain Rex for now.

Painting was pretty straight-forward. Three coats of white to cover up the Punisher's original black clothing. Then the black areas at the armour joints and for the visor. I managed to paint around the gun, so no changes (besides the cutting) to that. Then some really watered-down black to to give a tarnished or battle-worn look. and that is that!

So I now have two teams (with cards too), meaning I could actually play the game using minis! Exciting, is it not?

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Hello hello.

I had a birthday recently. My parents got me a gift card to Chapters (and a used scroll saw!). I had to go in to town to pick up a part for our dryer (which now seems to be functioning as required) and to renew my driver's license. So I thought I'd pop in to ye olde Chapters store and see if anything caught my eye.

I went straight for the games table. There was a lot of Risk and Game of Thrones Risk, a few Ticket to Ride boxes, and some other stuff. I was about to turn around when I saw Dominion on sale. I picked it up, looked it over and wondered if I should buy it. Then I remembered having played it on my computer (against the AI) and somewhat enjoying it, but it wasn't an earth-shattering experience. I know it's rated quite high on the BGG, but I had to admit I wasn't all that interested in the game.

Dominion is a deck builder. This means that you, as a player, have a small deck of cards at the start. Some of your cards act as some form of currency that is used to purchase cards from a certain pool. These cards are added to your deck ad you get to use them as the game moves forward. You will go through the deck over and over, buying new cards that either help you buy more and better cards, let you attack an opposing player or defend the opposition's attacks, for example.

Dominion against the computer is not the only deck builder I've played. I've tried a couple of others out that friends own. There's a thematic one called Thunderstone Advance, which is almost a semi-cooperative game in that it's players vs. monsters, but feels more like a race since you can't collectively lose and the game just goes until someone can kill the big baddie. Of course, there may be other ways to play where you can all lose to the monster, but I've only played it with a friend who owns it, so I only know from my experience. I also played 7 Wonders at this friend's place, and that was pretty good, too.

Despite my experiences with these games, I've still kind of been on the fence about how much I really like deck-builders.

As I returned Dominion to its place, I saw Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, a cooperative deck builder. Yes, another deck builder. For some reason it was catching my eye, much more than Dominion ever did. So I whipped out ye olde smart phone and looked up Mr. Potter's game on the BGG webs. It was still rated over 7/10. So I dove in further, looking at a couple of written reviews. One was titled "This might be the co-op deck builder you've been looking for". There was also the likelihood that this game would see a table often enough as a number of people in my life, some of them fellow gamers, are very into Potterverse (is that a thing?). Mostly, though, was the thought that my 8 year-old daughter, who just finished book 3 of the Potter series, would be interested in this game.

I decided to take the chance.

Hogwarts Battle is a straight-on cooperative game with a recognized theme that is well-matched to its mechanics. 2 - 4 players can be Harry, Ron, Hermione, and/or Neville, each with different in-game strengths. You can collectively lose to the game if the Death Eaters take full control of Hogwarts, which is represented by a number of important locations from the book. The interesting bit is that it's kind of like these legacy games that are all the rage these days, where you have stuff that's hidden from you until you beat the game up to a certain point. With Hogwarts Battle, the new stuff is split into books. Book 1 is super easy and the game gets harder as you add more books, but it also gets more interesting as you go and more rules are added.

Today I broke the game open and played Book 1 solo using Harry and Ron. Then I played Book 1 with Jeanette (Ron and Hermione) to see if she'd go for it.

Well, now I am in the middle of playing Book 3 with Jeanette, who really wanted to play Neville this time (I'm Harry). We'll see how we fare tomorrow. I haven't looked at the Book 2 and 3 villain cards or Dark Arts cards, so I don't know who else might be coming or what other tricks there might be to foil us.

Middle of a Book 3 game with my daughter. So far we've defeated Prof. Quirrell, a Dementor, Tom Riddle, and Peter Pettigrew. There's, I think, four more villains to go and they've taken control of the Hogwarts Express. We are now facing what could be a rather difficult father and son duo: Lucius and Draco.

Another cool thing is that I saw pnp files that people have put together for players to take the roles of other characters from the books, like Luna or Ginny.

And a zoomed-out shot to behold the gloriousness of this game on my game table.