First paper figure from 1981

 

Since I'm on a cardboard standee kick at the moment, I thought I would show you this — my very first hand-drawn paper AD&D character mini, from 1981.

My friend Ivan (a wonderful man, now sadly deceased) was running what I think was his one and only AD&D campaign for our group, and wanted to try out the use of figure markers. Up until then, we'd always done pure theatre-of-the-mind stuff. 

For the most part, our markers were just chits with the character names written on them, maybe 15mm tall. But as usual, I couldn't resist being more decorative, so I drew a little character portrait on mine.

She was not a long-lasting character. She was a pixie, very curious, and her curiosity was her downfall as it led to her being electrocuted to death by a will-'o-wisp. 

Standees for Mythic China campaign

 

Many years ago I ran a short-lived campaign set in a Mythic China milieu. I didn't have any 3d minis suitable for the aesthetic, so I made a bunch of standees.

Naturally, being set in Mythic China, none of the players elected to play an actual Chinese character. Not one. We had a Japanese sumo wrestler, a Japanese samurai, and a Mongol warrior. And a donkey. The only vaguely Chinese character was an NPC, the Immaculate Po, a monk. I give them enough credit not to think that they actually saw any old Asian people as culturally interchangeable, but really.

I get that people want their characters to feel special, but I do get a bit tired of the never-ending torrent of Special Snowflake Outsider Loners that crop up time and again.

More Paper Minis

 

Ive printed and cut out a new batch of paper minis from OkumArts, bought via DriveThruRPG.

David Okum's minis are my favourites, when it comes to card standees. My main regret is that he doesn't seem to have done a great many fantasy RPG character class variants, or if he has, I've missed them. There are a few, but not a particularly wide variety. If he produced two-sheet PDFs of character minis for each of the main D&D-adjacent character classes, I'd certainly buy them like a shot.

Having said that, I am fully aware that as FRPG gamers in this modern age, we are truly spoiled. Way back in the Before Times, it was quite common for players to have just one or two minis of their own, which they used for all of their different characters. But in those days, actual FRPG minis weren't that easy to come by, and now they certainly are — even if fully 3d cast or printed 28-32mm minis are now ten times or more the price they were back in ancient times. 

Kennon James

 

I've recently discovered an artist by the name of Kennon James (link leads to Facebook, sorry about that) who does old-school FRPG art that really appeals to me.

I just saw a front-and-back drawing he did of a classic massively-thewed barbarian, and it appealed to me enough that I turned it into a standee for use on the tabletop.

This piece of his really suits this use, being not overly detailed or fussy, but very clearly delineated.

I hope he does more of this sort of thing, because I'm becoming more and more engaged with the idea of using card standees for tabletop play, both RPG and wargames, rather than lovingly painted 3d models. Not least because the effort involved in getting them on to the tabletop is relatively trivial.

More Flat Paper Anglo-Saxons

 

Here are some more of Peter Dennis' Paperboys paper flats, this time some mounted Saxons. I haven't done any horsemen before in this style. 

Like the infantry, they look best from directly in front or behind, but unlike the infantry, these horsemen have a much smaller angle of acceptability — the horses are depicted in a three-quarter view, but when turned to the side it soon becomes apparent that they have no actual length. Most of the time, on the wargames table, they'd be viewed pretty much square on though, and they are after all just gaming markers, so it's not a huge deal.

These figures will be of fairly limited usefulness on the tabletop, as the Saxons were really mounted infantry rather than cavalry, and almost always dismounted to fight.

Now I just have some missile troops to do, and then I'll have the basis of a 28mm 9th - 11th century Saxon army to build on.

 Next Day...

Here are the first few bases of archers completed, freshly mounted and still with their PVA boots wet.

I initially place the figures with superglue for rapid adhesion, but alone that glue isn't strong enough to stand up to repeated handling. So, for strength and durability, I encapsulate the feet of the figures with PVA. When that dries clear, it's pretty well invisible. 

 Next Next Day...

I've finished 12 bases of archers and one of slingers, which should be enough archers for just about any Anglo-Saxon army based for Hail Caesar. As for the slingers, I don't know... I probably should actually check the army lists.

I've also redesigned my movement trays to make them more compact and easier to pick up. 

More Paper Dollies

I've started putting together a 28mm army of 10th-11th century Saxons, using Peter Dennis's Paperboys download-print-and-snip paper flats.

I print them on Brother 143gsm matte paper, so when they're folded and glued they're fairly sturdy — as long as I'm not too ham-fisted with them.

Here's the first batch of huscarls, mounted on 3mm grey-board covered with a vaguely grassy patterned paper, also from Paperboys.

I didn't notice that I had the Save Ink/Toner checkbox in the Acrobat print dialogue checked, so the colours are all a bit washed out. But now I know about that.

I run around the edges of the cut-out figures with a sepia felt pen, to remove the glare of the cut edges. Then I use superglue gel to tack the figures in place on the base, and then go back with PVA to create an encapsulating boot around the feet for strength and durability.

I have two sets of Paperboys Saxons — one (on the left in this photo) is from their 1066 book, and the figures are printed in shoulder-to-shoulder groups for big-battle wargaming. The other set is intended for skirmish games, and each figure is printed and mounted individually.

The 1066 base is much more densely populated: with three ranks, there are twelve figures on the base, whereas on the other there is only six. I could bunch up the individual figures more if need be, and I'll probably try that for the front rank of a shield-wall base.

Of the two types, I find that I prefer the look of individual figures when mounted on their bases.

I'm currently putting together some units of the Great Fyrd as well, and there will be some light troops as well — slingers, archers, and javelinmen — as well as some mounted troops who, for Saxons, would probably be mounted infantry rather than cavalry.

They look pretty good on the tabletop from the front or back, or in oblique up to about 40-60 degrees. They disappear from directly side on of course, but that's not too big an issue most of the time.

Because they're so cheap and quick to prepare, these paper soldiers would be ideal for trying out new periods or genres of wargaming, or even as an end unto themselves. I'm quite enjoying them.

Later on...

I've given my Anglo-Saxon fyrd some moral support in the form of a holy banner and a bunch of monks, which I'm sure will be of great comfort to them when the Vikings come rampaging over the hill.

Also, I experimented with giving one of the bases — front right — a couple of coats of spray satin varnish.

It doesn't show up as much in the photograph as in real life, but it seems to have darkened the ink a bit, while at the same time giving it a bit of a milky film that lowers contrast.

I doubt that I'll do it again.

 Later on (again)

Now I'm having a go at making some shield-wall stands, this time using the Paperboys Viking skirmish set.

There's a single close-set rank of four figures in front, and then a few more loosely scattered figures in behind them just to give the crowd a bit of volume.

There is a little bit more work involved in using individual figures rather than the base-wide groups in the 1066 set, but it's not really much more arduous, and I do prefer the look of them.

One good thing about Vikings is that they're really very similar visually to the Saxons, so at a pinch I could use them all together. The raven banner might be a bit of a giveaway though.

Something else new with this lot: instead of glueing the grassy basing paper around the edges of the grey-card base, I've just painted the edges green and sponged them to mottle them. It's a lot faster and easier than the other method, with the additional benefit that I can get a lot more bases out of a single printed sheet of basing paper, since I don't have to allow for any overlap.

Later on (again again)

Using 40x40mm bases is pretty flexible on the wargames table, but moving a whole bunch of individual stands about as units gets tired pretty fast.

So I've made some movement trays to accommodate 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 stands, to be 3d printed. The 6-stand tray is 120 x 80 mm, so 6 stands in 2 ranks. I can't fit a tray 6 stands wide on my printer platen.

The STLs are available (for free) at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6934223

 I've tried making a six-stand tray in two halves, and though it does work, it's not ideal. The gluing surfaces are just too small.

I've added some reinforcing strips of masking tape on top and bottom, and that certainly helps a lot, but I wouldn't rely on it not bending in the middle at the worst possible time.

I'm not likely to have a lot of use for a tray that wide in any case, and I can always use two 3-stand trays if need be — which would probably be a better option for several reasons.

Preparing Paper

I am in the throes of preparation for reviving the mouldering corpse of my old space opera campaign. When it was last active, some considerable time ago, I was using the Hero System 5th Edition to run it. I did like the Hero System in many ways, but it was not the simplest game to run or to play in.

This time I'm planning on using Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying d100 system, though the milieu will remain the Star Hero Terran Empire. I have a d100 sci-fi game, based on the Mythras Imperative rules, called M-Space that I will pull all the character generation and equipment and what-not out of, since all the definition work has already been done there.

Rather than spending hours and hours painting 3-dimensional miniatures for the game, I'm once again making use of Okum Arts paper minis, which are great and cheap and pre-coloured. The pile to the left are all robots; the rest are various humanoids. I'm printing them on some 150gsm inkjet paper, so when folded and glued they make quite a stiff and sturdy miniature, still easily cut out with a little pair of decoupage scissors. Plain 80-90gsm printer paper is usable, but the resulting minis are still very thin even after being folded and glued, so they need card reinforcing strips applied along their bottom edge so that they don't fall out of the standee bases.

I've shown these before — these are some of them that I made for Call of Cthulhu, in 3d-printed bases that I designed in Blender and printed on my Ender 3.

I prefer black bases, but at the time I printed these I only had grey filament. Now I have some black PLA+, so I'm printing a bunch more. Because why not, after all?