Mausoleum #03

 

This is the third in the Printable Scenery Hallowed Mausoleum set. So far I've just printed and primed it, and since I'm going out of town for a week or so, that's as far as it will go for a little while, but I thought I might as well make a start on it.

Bronze.....

...or stone?

This one definitely needs a sarcophagus in it I think. Fortunately I have some that I got in the very first Reaper Bones Kickstarter.

Printable Scenery Ruin

 

This is the front half of a two-part ruin from Printable Scenery, printed on my Ender 3. It's scaled for use with 28mm figures.

I had originally intended it as a vehicle for using my new static grass applicator, but that turned out to be such a useless piece of junk that I reverted to my old favourite, foam flock. There is a bit of static grass on there, but it was applied via the old sprinkle-and-blow method, rather than via this new-fangled static electrickery.

This is the back half. It's a bit less architecturally interesting than the front, but it has its moments.

And here they are, both together.

Photo Stage Paddock

 

From time to time I have an urge to photograph my models on a more naturalistic background than a plain white, grey or black background. So I threw this little photo stage together.

It's on a 180mm circle of heavy card that I had lying around that I had cut for some other, now long forgotten, project. I painted it with blotchy mud-brown acrylics, and then went to town with various grades and colours of foam flock, and a few tufts and patches of static grass. There's some actual dead leaves on there too, fairly thoroughly pulverized in a small blender I keep in my workshop for that sort of thing.

The 28mm Sergeant Measureby is there, as usual, for scale.

Mail-Order Junk

 

This static grass applicator arrived for me from China via Bangood today.

It is absolute shit. Not only does it not work very well, it doesn't seem to work at all. The power source is just a couple of AA batteries, and even if everything else was top-notch (it's not), they just don't generate enough current to do the job.

D-, Would not recommend.

Another 3d Printed Ruin

 

This ruin, again from Printable Scenery, was printed in two parts, and took about three days of printing all up. You can see a big gap between the front and back sections; I haven't yet decided whether or not I'll fill it or leave the model in two pieces.

There are quite a few stringing boogers remaining, and normally I'd scrape them all off, but in this case I intend to use them as the basis for some creeping ivy on the walls and pillars.

Unlike the mausoleum I completed recently, this model is going to have a whole heapin' helpin' of grass and moss added after the painting of the stonework is complete. That's going to be a while away though, because I want to mainly use static grass, and I'm waiting for a static applicator to arrive from Canada — and that's probably a month or six weeks away, under current conditions.

A couple of days later...

I've applied some limited colour to the ruins with various washes and glazes, and until the vegetation goes on, that's about all the colour there will be.

As well as some grasses and bushes around the base, I want to add some mosses and things growing on the stones of the ruins themselves. I find this tends to seat the structure within the scene, rather than making it look like it's just been plonked down on to a scenic base.

Several days later...

I've made a beginning on applying some vegetation to the ruin.

At the moment, the glue is still quite wet, and I'll let it dry out completely before I go any further as the colours will change a bit, and I want to be able to see just what is going on.

I'll probably have to knock back some of the more lurid colours by spraying a filter over them, but we shall see.

Most of the ground cover is foam flock. The mossy patches are static grass, and the bushes are lichen of some sort.

Power Grid Resources

 

Power Grid is probably our most-played boardgame. I have a bunch of expansions for it, and it constantly results in surprising and exciting play — no game is exactly like any other. It's immensely replayable.

Today I made a tray out of plywood to organise the resource tokens, which until now have been kept in another little rimu box I made, but which was inconvenient to get the tokens out of. This should be easier.

In truth, it's bigger than it really needs to be, but not by much. The yellow tokens (garbage) are the problematic ones; they're a lot bulkier than any of the others, and there are a lot of them, so they take up more space.

I have a plan for a magnetic lid. I'll probably do that tomorrow.

Mausoleum

 

Here's another terrain piece from Printable Scenery, this time a ruinous mausoleum. It's one of a pack of three (one of which is in two parts).

I have not yet decided whether to leave the mound bare and stoney, or to put some grass flock on it. I'm leaning towards leaving it though; I think it adds to the Gothic atmosphere of the thing.

I printed it on my Ender 3; it took about 28 hours I think.

As usual, Sergeant Measureby is there with his Spear of 5mm Increments, for scale.

Ocker Eyetie

 

For certain reasons I had to do a test-print in resin of my 1:100 Fiat M13/40 model today.

I already have sufficient of them for my Italians, printed in FDM on my Ender 3, and I'm quite satisfied with those prints as wargaming models.

Therefore, I thought I'd paint this one up as one of those captured by the Australians, like this one here.

The vehicle in this photo looks quite dark, and I'm not sure if that's because it was still in its original olive green, or if it's painted in the red-brown used as one of their disruptive camo colours.

I worked out an easy way of painting those Aussie kangaroos in a series of simple geometric shapes, but I never actually put it to the test in real life.

Now's my chance to put my money where my mouth is.

Skeleton Crew

 

The skeletons are printed from a digital model by Tom Tullis at Fat Dragon Games. The necromancer is a miniature from Reaper.

Strength

 

I've heard murmerings, from time to time, about how "unrealistic" the minimum required strengths listed in AD&D for using various weapons are.

The two-handed sword, for example, is commonly brought up as an example. In real life, they tend to weigh somewhere in the region of seven to ten pounds, though their listed encumbrance value (from memory) is 25 pounds.

Let's ignore the encumbrance value for the moment, since as well as its raw weight that's also supposed to take into account the fact that a two-handed sword is a big, awkward thing to carry around all the time. The minimum strength required just to use a two-handed sword without penalty is (again, from memory) 15.

"15 STR needed just to swing an eight pound sword?" I hear them cry. "Ludicrous! I can swing an eight pound wood axe easily, and I'm puny!"

What these carpers and moaners fail to take into account is that the strength required is not just to lift and swing the sword, but to do that again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.  And again. And do that while ducking and dodging and maneuvering for advantage. And do it with enough muscle to be able to steer the thing with enough finesse to ever be able to hit anything, or to defend yourself from being hit. Exhaustion can set in surprisingly quickly, even when using a much lighter weapon than a two-handed flamberge.

Fighting is tiring, is the point, and swords get very heavy very fast.