November | 2012 | Sirrob01

Archive for November, 2012

Cardboard Warriors Forum – Paper Miniature Hoard 103

Published November 24, 2012 Builds , Papercraft Leave a Comment
Tags: hoard, Onemonk, paper miniatures, Paper Standee, Papercraft, Standee, Wargaming, Wargamming

I’ve just finished assembling the Cardboard Warriors forum hoard 103. This was a fairly small hoard although the little Zerstorung was pretty challenging to build due to the size. I’ve included two different PDF’s, one with SD registration marks and the other with Cameo registration marks both are contained in the zip below.

Reminder that the November hoard is still open which is Xmas wars and Super Heroic, so get those submissions in, only a week left.

Feel free to check over the old Hoards for other miniatures.

Hoard 103 – May/June 2012

Enjoy 🙂

BoardGame – Dungeon!

Published November 21, 2012 Board Games , Builds , Papercraft 8 Comments
Tags: deckboxs, Dungeon!, Papercraft

Wizards of the coast (WOTC) has just re-released the Dungeon! board game. I played this game a heap as a kid, although it was one of the very early 1975 Aussie editions by Jedko. So the game was actually older than me (still is). I was very excited that WOTC had done a reprint and re-release and basically kept the core of the original game intact ie they resisted the urge to tinker with the game.

The game on re-release was very reasonably priced ($22 AUD) which worried me a little as I wasn’t to sure how good the quality would be. However I took a gamble and ordered three copies , one for myself, one for my brother and one for my good friend. The three of us played dungeon way to much together so I wanted to get a copy for each of us, as much for the nostalgia and memories as anything.

Ready to explore the Dungeon

Opening the box up I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the components the board is solid and actually backed on a thicker board than what I’ve come to consider as normal. The cards are simple and colourful and the artwork overall well executed. If there is one item which was a little bit of a disappointment it was the player counters included, they are fairly unstable and don’t look that great they are okay but just not as good as the rest of the components or as functional. The only other bit lacking was no storage compartments for the bits basically just an empty box. Those minor quibbles aside the reprint is excellent value for money.

What you end up with after you unwrap the cards

I decided to work at fitting out the box to better hold the components as well as replacing the player counters. First up I had to come up with a layout for the box to fit all the components. To this end I cut out 2 x 1 inch frames of 8mm thick PVC foam board and glued these together which made a lip raised up from the base of the box by 16mm. This was primarily to accommodate the 16mm square dice. I then subdivided this into 3 rows 2 down each side to hold the cards and a larger section in the middle for the tokens and the new player counters these strips are just under 1/2 an inch wide. Below you can see a picture of the box fitted out ready for filling.

Next up I designed some card-boxes to hold the monster, treasure and spell cards. I based the design of the boxes on a shrunk down cigarette packet (cigarette companies got that right). I textured the boxes to resemble locked chests and did 3 different colors; blue (Spells/Spares), red (Monsters) and yellow (treasure). I am very happy with how these turned out and I plan to strength the hinge area on the inside with a strip of sticky tape. I also came up with a new Silhouette/Robo/Cameo cut template that means the Cameo and SD marks are on the one page but does mean I need to release two slightly different cut files. I think releasing two cut files is slightly better than releasing two pdf versions as the cut files are normally very small 50kb as apposed to pdfs which can be 5-10mb, the only problem is I cant test the Cameo cut files so if someone uses it and it works okay please let me know. I’ve included the deckboxes at the end of this post if anyone else wants them, I included 3 blank/unlabelled versions at the end of the PDF.

The last little improvement I made was to the player tokens. Previously I had stumbled across some nice miniatures by Battle Studio, unfortunately they had no backs so I couldn’t use them for wargaming but for Dungeon! were facing doesn’t matter they were perfect. I basically bought 4 of there sets and then picked out the minis I liked, I then modded the mini’s. Firstly I colour coded the characters clothing to the right colours for the classes, next I laid them out the Onemonk way ie black borders and tabs, lastly I made some mods such as switching some weapons, in the case of the elf mage she is composed of 3 different miniatures. The mini’s themselves are sized almost spot on 25mm to the eyes although I did need to scale a couple a little. I used the flat Reivaj basing technique for these and made 20mm hexagon bases which fit well with the game board. I ended up with 16 character minis, 8 male, 8 female:

Top Row Warriors, Bottom Row Rogues

Top Row Mages, Bottom Row Clerics

I was very happy with the size of the paper miniatures at 25mm and I’m seriously considering scaling all future card miniatures to 25mm to the eyes as then I could base my terrain on 20mm instead of 25mm and save a little space. I still have some other additions I’d like to make like some custom treasure cards and an expanded rulebook but for the moment I just want to get the 3 copies all finished up to the below layout then I’ll look at additions in the future:

Flip Top Card Box Download:

Dungeon Card Box

Dungeon Card Box Instructions

Below are the cut files as usual I’m tricking wordpress and have renamed the extension to odt, after you download them rename the extension studio

Dungeon Card Box SD Cut

Dungeon Card Box Cameo Cut

In case anyone wants the blank mesh, I’m releasing the below file into the Public Domain, I’d appreciate a mention if you use it but no obligation.

Dungeon! Cardbox Mesh Only

Enjoy the card boxes and if you see a copy of Dungeon! grab it you wont be disappointed for the price 🙂

Papercraft Build – Undersea Kingdom

Published November 13, 2012 Builds , Papercraft Leave a Comment
Tags: Mayhem in Paper, miniature, miniatures, paper miniatures, Paper Standee, Papercraft, scifi, Standee, undersea kingdom, volkite

Squirmydad (Mayhem in Paper)across on the cardboard warrior forum designed a paper version of the Juggernaut from the Undersea Kingdom TV show/series. Right about now I can see most people scratching their heads as I was. Basically it was a 1936 TV series put together to compete against Flash Gordon. It’s not what you would call a high budget series. However when I saw some of the pictures that Squirmydad posted from the series, it tugged at my nostalgia bone in particular the Volkites (large robot guys) . I suspect they remind me of the monsters from the early Doctor Who episodes I used to watch as a kid, you know the high budget monsters from the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Doctors stint in the TARDIS.

Volkite Upclose

Squirmydad was almost finished the model so I thought I’d try my hand at drawing some Volkites. As Squirmydad was almost finished the Juggernaut I drew and finished these fast. These are the quickest I’ve ever completed some paper mini’s basically from scribbling on the page to 5 finished mini’s was about 3 maybe 4 days. I did use every trick I could think of such as mirroring bits and reusing as much as possible. I was pretty happy with the results although I did fall into my usual bad habits drawing them but still learnt a lot. The one mistake I did make which made it to the final versions available is that the fold line on the tabs is about 1/64 (1/2mm) to high so you’ll need to score just below the line not on it (I must have bumped the line at some point).

Juggernaut with Volkites in foreground

Squirmydad did an excellent job on the Undersea Kingdom Juggernaut, considering the flimsy reference pictures available I think he has nailed the vehicle almost perfectly. The model is very easy to build, I assembled it in one afternoon and it has that classic Sci-fi retro feel. Squirmydad has also done a set of Robo/Silhouete SD GSD files so for those who own one of those cutters the model is even easier to build. There is a full sheet of clear instructions as well, although for the most part the model goes together easily enough and I only checked the instructions twice.

Juggernaut by Squirmydad – Mayhem in Paper

I managed to finish up 5 Volkites, 4 with guns and 1 with just traditional claws. Now I’m not entirely sure I got the colouring right as the show was in black and white but I coloured the models to give them that retro sci-fi feel without going to over the top. I then didn’t do my normal trick of procrastinating over the small imperfections and simply wrapped them up and called them done.

Volkites ready to Invade

Lastly a picture with the Volkites around their Juggernaut vehicle. Now the observant of you will note that the Volkites cant actually enter their vehicle, being to tall. Interestingly if you look at the original shots of the Juggernaut and the Volkites from the TV series you’ll notice that in the show they likewise couldn’t physically fit in the Juggernaut. So I think somehow Squirmydad and I got the scaling spot on and as with all good 1930’s sci-fi you’ll have to get inventive with your scene cutting 🙂

Volkites and Juggernaut

Squirmydad had one last piece of fun with the models and did a quick 1930’s inspired movie poster of the Juggernaut and Volkites.

If you’d like a copy of the models you can grab them from the Mayhem in Paper website:

Link to Mayhem in Paper Freebies Section

Link to Juggernaut and Volkite Zip

Hope you have fun terrorizing your 1930’s sci-fi pulp hero’s 🙂

Cardboard Warriors Forum – Paper Miniature Hoard 102

Published November 10, 2012 Builds , Papercraft 2 Comments
Tags: cardboard warriors forum, hoard, Onemonk, paper miniatures, Paper Standee, Papercraft, Standee, Wargamming

Just a quick post, I’ve just finished assembling the cardboard warriors forum hoard 102. There were a number of submissions from different artists which resulted in 8 pages of miniatures. It has taken me some time to layout the miniatures, test cut and photograph them. I’ve done two different PDF’s one with SD registration marks and the other with Cameo registration marks both are contained in the zip below.

Currently the November hoard is open which is Xmas wars and Super Heroic, so I’d encourage anyone who has ever wanted to try there hand at creating a paper miniature to give it a try, make sure you check out the guidelines first.

You can currently get the file from my dropbox folder, but I suspect it will be available from the Onemonk hoard area shortly:

Edit: Now Available from the hoard pages

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15349793/Hoards/….Hoard%20102.zip

Not much else I can really add except I’ll be finishing the May/June hoard shortly.

Enjoy 🙂

Papercraft Build – Capital City Build Stage One

Published November 6, 2012 Builds , Papercraft 1 Comment
Tags: Capital City, Card Terrain, Fat Dragon Games, Paper Terrain, Papercraft

To go with the half sized Lost Reich mecha I’ve been building, I have slowly been working on a small Fat Dragon Capital City build.I plan on using this build for Lost Reich and Destroy all monsters or Mighty Monsters games. As those games can involve a lot of smashing and building destruction I worked on customizing a fair number of elements and incorporating magnets and metal into the pieces.

First up I had to work out the scaling to use to get the Capital City down to Z-scale, by a happy coincidence this was fairly easy, basically each 7inch tile was scaled down to 2 inches square and then I recombined 9 of these together to form a new 6inch square. This is just slightly smaller than Z-Scale however they look good on the table. Each tile was also designed such that the road exits on each side are in the middle, the only tiles that don’t respect this rule are the highway pieces but I can live with those being special.

As part of the above tile scaling and creation process, I created several custom tiles; parking lot, street parking and dual lane highway tiles. I created all these at full size so that later if I want to build a full size capital city I can use those elements in the build.

Next up was working out how to join the tiles together along each edge and designing some way of allowing magnets to stick to the tiles. I also wanted to do slightly raised footpath/sidewalks to give a little dimensionality to the tiles. I played around in sketchup with the design until I came up with the below. After that I then did numerous test tiles using different basing materials and glues but didn’t uncover anything to new, although I did use up a bucket load of time.

The basing material I settled on was PVC foamboard it is much stronger than the regular paper foamboard but extremely tough to cut. I created the little tin circles using a hand sheet metal hole punch and then tapping them flat with a hammer. I probably could have saved some ink by not printing the sidewalks out on the lower pieces but at the time I thought I might have to use the layout before all the sidewalks were ready, but this turned out to not be the case. The spacer pieces I simply created as craftrobo cut files and then cut them from 200gsm card.The edge joiners are simply pieces of flex magnet on the edge of the tiles and I cut up some cheap steel rulers to make joiners.

Each building will have a very thin disc magnet in its’ base to stick it to the board, you can see my first prototype building in the below pictures. I will do a separate post on the buildings at a later date when I have built some others, as they are also not exactly stock. Here’s a quick picture of the underside of one of the corner sidewalks about to have the washer and metal discs glued into place.

Below is the initial GIMP layout of the city which I used to make sure I built the right tiles. the city it’s self is currently 61cm x 61cm or 2 feet square consisting of 16x6x6 inch tiles. If I had built the tiles at full size this would equate to a gaming table approximately 214cm or 7 feet square. Later I will figure out some other city layouts and make some additions, one addition I do plan to add is a city park which I’ll size so I can drop it in were the carpark currently is:

And lastly a few pictures of the finished tiles laid out in the above design, as you can see I did change the design a little from the prototype layout above:

The full impact of the raised sidewalks isn’t really coming through very well in the above photos but they really add a dimensionality to the tiles which the human eye can pick up at a significant distance (at least across the room).

Now I just need to finish building the mechs, buildings and props but those will be posts for another day.

Sirrob01

Archive for November, 2012