Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Pikes, Muskets and Flouncy Shirts => Topic started by: Teardrop World on August 22, 2019, 06:55:08 PM
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Nearly three years ago, I had dream: build a full table dedicated to Piratesque adventures. I painted a bunch of small guys from Peter Pig, then planned the table: 1,2 m x 1,8m of city and jungle. Bought some palm tree, then life events made the project sink as fast as a Spanish galleon.
I recently peeked at the Sarrissa site and discovered their small MDF modules, 200mm. Nice photos.... and I frantically exhumed my old project from the oblivion beach. Smaller modules, 200 x 200mm custom made: Plastic printed frame with locking system, styrofoam glued onto.
Modules/scenery planned:
City with docks, fort, tavern. Jungle featuring a Cannibal village, a pirate fort (Stevenson's inspired), swamps....
At least twelve modules should be made. First test with the marketplace, the houses are printed and badly painted (but they are beautiful after some grog). A few minis and accessories to give a flavour, as the modules will be bland.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2811.jpg?w=768)
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the houses are printed and badly painted (but they are beautiful after some grog) lol lol lol lol
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Well, dude-ly, don't sell yourself so short. They're not that bad. And where did you get the market stall? And the buildings for that matter? I know, printed, but tell us more. And the cobblestone with the circular center, where'd that come from. Looking forward to seeing more - and soon, dang rabbit!
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@FifteensAway: The market stall is scratchbuilt, I should make more of them. Buildings are from different source: Najewitz Modellbau (huge historic collection) for 20mm, reduced at 70% - and Printable Scenery for 28mm, reduced at 55%. More easy to print at this size (and faster).
The cobblestone are embossed with the classic metal part of brushes (road), and .... exotic tools (7.62mm and 5.56mm ammo cases) for the pavement. A little anachronistic for a pirate table, but black powder bullets aren't very useful for this purpose :D
Two modules for the docks/low quarter: the Warehouse and Trading Post. The Warehouse is painted and glued, the Trading Post are nearly completed, only the buildings to paint. :
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2817.jpg?w=768)
Received accessories and tools today, all from Woodland: moulds for plaster rocks, tree/bushes skeletons to flock, and dead trees/stumps (cast in white metal, very heavy). Jungle modules to come soon.
A close shot of the market stall.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2818.jpg?w=768)
Another module at work: the Tavern area, in the High Quarter. A double module to allow elevation change and "pitoresque" street. (Le french word is mandatory for a pirate game, mille sabords!)
Cheers
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2816.jpg?w=768)
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Well, your work is certainly challenging me to up my piratical game, that's for sure. I suspect you will have a really gorgeous playing surface when all is done. Keep it coming! :o
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I suspect you will have a really gorgeous playing surface when all is done
Hum.... Ceiling mounted cheap sound system (printed fixations) for sound effects (with an Ableton controller), and a few cheap RGB light show drived by a sh***y DMX Showtec light console. This allow a theatrical ambience, but the light are LED and hurt the eyes. YES IT's GORGEOUS ;D We use this table for dinner too, with the light show! Convincing your wife for the absolute need of such a romantic installation should be easy :D
Return to the piratesque post.
A few ships made a few years ago. They are designed with removable sails and mast, for wrecks and storage. Built with small wood planks glued onto a styrofoam hull. Roping or not roping? Candy eye model = roping, practical model = no roping. I'm always over jealous for all of you who make superb models, and try to hide my lack of skills with artifices: Those ships aren't diabetes for the eyes, but allow sails manoeuvres, and have real wood.
The first ship. I used to build some Mantua models before, and it helped greatly for the design.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2827.jpg?w=768)
Mast and sails out. Sails are just hooked on mast. I used a short piece of aluminium tube glued in the hull, to keep the mast in place. Without it, the foam isn't strong enough to allow frequent moving of the mast.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2826.jpg?w=768)
I plan to use a French RPG as a solo tabletop game, "Pavillon Noir" Black Flag in english. The rules allow detailed fencing with location hits, and more detailed sailing rules - command, crew, manoeuvres, gunnery.... An impressive book, completed by a few Osprey on the Spanish Main and pirates/bucaneers.
Read the following with the more atrocious french accent you can imagine:
-Ahoy, Messieurs! Vee are on ze sea for four month! Forget le madame, all we can eat now is ze cuisse of le frog!
Enough triviality! Another view, the second ship. Cannons are modelled in Blender from an historic plan, printed by Shapeways and cast home in white metal. Don't need to use heat resistant silicon (very expensive and very brittle), the standard food silicon allow dozens of casts without much trouble. Silicon for food is more expensive than standard, but if you can pour hot chocolate in it, you should pour a little hotter metal.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2825.jpg?w=768)
Cheers
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That is a nice, practical gaming ship.
For a look at my pirate stuff, check out this link - when you have an hour or three to waste! lol:
https://carobbeansea.blogspot.com (https://carobbeansea.blogspot.com)
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That is a nice, practical gaming ship.
For a look at my pirate stuff, check out this link - when you have an hour or three to waste! lol:
https://carobbeansea.blogspot.com (https://carobbeansea.blogspot.com)
:o :-* Impressive! The naval battles must have been a blast! My setup and city will be hugely smaller :D How did the Bluemoon figs look with Peter Pig and Rebel, as Bluemoon are 15/18mm?
Just completed the Trading Post module today - fresh paint! This module is to be placed on the dockside, with the Warehouse module. There will be a fourth module in the city's low quarter: the forge, and small houses.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/img_2830.jpg?w=768)
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I'd say the Bluemoon pirates are one of their 'smaller' ranges. Peter Pig are surely smaller. Rebel sort of in between. And that matters...why?
Not to me a whit. :?
I'm having too much fun with my miniatures to care what the 'purists' think. We are taking little metal toy soldiers, getting them painted up, and pushing them around the table like a kid on holiday. What the heck can ever go wrong with that!? lol
I know the arguments about a gun can't be the same in two different sized same 'scale' miniatures. I just choose not to care. Like I said above, I'm just having fun.
Buying from all three ranges - and Miniature Figurines (close to Rebel) and Museum Miniatures (closer to Bluemoon) which each have a pirate range and of which I have some from both - just adds more variety to the mix.
I figure one day when the burden of storage and setup gets excessive, I'll just selectively take out enough unique figures to create a nice little skirmish pirate setup (and join the rest of the scallywags who do that now) and have several score of figures without any duplication at all! And then sell, trade, or - gasp - give away the rest. [It's a hobby, not an investment. If I can light up someone's life with my unwanted figures one day, that'll be pretty cool. Unless I find a higher bidder! o_o]
Don't forget to check out Irregular Miniatures - they tend larger, though.
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What a great project! :D
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Agree a very nice project indeed! Looking forward to seeing more.
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I'm having too much fun with my miniatures to care what the 'purists' think.
I'm afraid to be in full accordance with your point of view. I have some bigger Museum and they fit well, and are listed as 15mm. But as Bluemoon are listed as 18mm, in a scale creep world where 25mm is in fact 28, 28 is heroic 32, 32 mean 35, is 18mm more like 20?..... lol After watching your pictures, there's effectively not much difference. I'm definitely not a purist: a couple of microns are a minor inconvenience.
My main concern is the printed size of the houses - a bit small, optimized for my 200mm modules. All houses where intended to have a playable interior, but I eventually glued the roof of the smaller houses. The next module is base coated and should be finished this week. Experimenting jungle module using plaster rocks made with Woodland molds, and made a few trees with plastic tree skeletons. The jungle modules will be the hard part of the project.
Thank you all for your kind words.
Cheers
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I've never gotten on very well with interior gaming whether in 15 mm or larger scales. I'm happy to keep the action in the great outdoors.
As to building size, having them a tad small will serve you well.
Really looking forward to seeing your jungle sections.
Coming along nicely and at a good clip.
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It took me longer to complete the low quarter module, as I spent the week working on a mini fantasy campaign for Ranger of Shadow Deep. It will take longer to complete the tavern double module.
A close view of the low quarter. The blacksmith is here, because the dockers need a lot of free space to work, the people on the market place don't want to have plenty of horses in irons, and the rich of the high quarter appreciate a quiet street. The poor can support the continuous sound of a hammer on the anvil. :D
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/img_2836.jpg?w=768)
A view of all the modules made for now. Frontline of the city: a line of dock module is planned, back of the city - a line of fortified wall to protect the citizens from a jungle attack.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/img_2844.jpg?w=768)
By the way, just received today an addon book for Pavillon Noir. A blast. L'Art de L'Escrime (The Art of Fencing). All french speaking swashbucklers here should take a look at it. A description of the different schools of fencing (spanish, french, german, italian). As most of the books on the age of pirate are in english, it's refreshing for the langue de Molière speakers to have access at so much historical informations. Well, I'm gonna paint more 15mm swashbucklers this winter.
Cheers
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Continue to enjoy watching your project develop. Looking forward to more. You have lots of nice street clutter but I think you will need about three to five times more than you have now! lol Don't forget a little bit of greenery here and there - besides the anticipated jungle.
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Glad to see you have revitalised this project; I look forward to your jungle modules.
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Posted by: FifteensAway
« on: 14 September 2019, 13:46:57 »
Continue to enjoy watching your project develop. Looking forward to more. You have lots of nice street clutter but I think you will need about three to five times more than you have now! lol Don't forget a little bit of greenery here and there - besides the anticipated jungle.
A big city mean for me no jungle, and a big jungle will be no city. I want both, so it will be a sample. The Low Quarter is cobblestone, I plan to add a little green between some stones, but nothing more. Poor working people always make a mess, and cobblestone is easy to wash (did you think of the dirt made by a poor crushed under a noble's horse?). Greenery is reserved to the High Quarter. The tavern module will have a small garden (with a wall around, in case of those pesky plebs would steal the flowers ;D).
As I like to use RPG rules to play tabletop game, the action can be set in a smaller space. Kind of a zoom on a scene, opposed to a large table where you have a panoramic view. The games will occur on one or two modules only, the other modules like a visual background. Pro of the tabletop rules: simplicity and big games - Con: limited panel of actions, defined by the rules. Pro of the RPG rules: do what you want as action, and roll for the test - Con: hundreds of pages of rules and smaller encounters.
Well, not worked a lot on this (been busy hosting a Ranger of Shadow Deep game). I made the plans for the city fortress and a jungle fort, 1:1 scale. The fortress will be made with 5mm depron sheet and is planned to be used mainland/coastal/island.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/img_2871.jpg?w=768)
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/img_2870-e1569082876887.jpg?w=768)
Once upon a time, when Legend of the High Seas was alive, I made a map with a free mapping software - as a campaign support. Took back the idea and the original design, improved it a little and made it with ink and colour crayons. Isla Muerte, the Caribbean jewel. Disputed by the Portugese/Spanish/French/Cannibal/Hollandese/English, this generic island will have all the stereotypes. Small coves for smugglers huh.... honest businessmen, swamps inhabited by fierce mosquitoes (insects or indians), deep jungles and so on.
cheers
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/img_2851.jpg?w=768)
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I just destroyed the modules. They weren't modular enough. :'( I forgot why I stopped this kind of table a few years ago: small scenery elements serve more purpose. Unglued the houses, and added them to the fantasy stock. About thirty printed houses and twenty resin home-made houses. I will make elevation plates, with cobblestone engraved, to break the flatness monotony. Getting rid of the modular concept allow for more "organic" towns, curved and labyrinthine roads.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/img_2887.jpg?w=768)
The jungle modules planned are to be made on smaller bases, usable on different setup (I play fantasy, modern imagi-nation or sci-fi). Already some of them prepared.
@FifteensAway: Over jealous of your naval game :-* , ashamed of my tiny small boats, I ordered some Constructo ships at 1/100 scale. Not the wooden kind, with real plank to curve with heat (I made a few of them), but the easy kind - plastic hulls. They should look more like yours. Cut the hull at the waterline, repainted the hull (original colour was fluo bright red, like a distress beacon).
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/img_2889.jpg?w=768)
Play test of the Pavillon Noir rules. Played as a tabletop game, with extended gameplay. The system is simple, a character have basic stats that will never move (if you are weak, you stay weak), and evolving skills. The stat give a target number, for the dice roll to be equal or under, and the capacity is the number of die to roll. Ten sided dice are used for known skill, twelve or twenty sided for the other skills. Each good roll is a success, the number of success give the overall appreciation of the task. Fight are fun, roll my number of dice against the opponents die, count the success/critical hits and failure. Critical failure with "fencing" skill can be a win. Roll the dice for the location (arms, legs, torso...) and apply damages.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/img_2880.jpg?w=768)
The little solo story.
Three adventurers, a noble, a buccaneer, a merchant on a ship travelling to Isla Muerte archipelago. The winds are not fair, water and food are low. The ships is in land sight, the captain send the adventurers on an island. The merchant spend the game trying to build a fishing line, failing each time. The buccaneer go hunt a peccary, but the musket shot misfire, then succeed but fail to field dress the carcass. The noble is lost in the jungle and face a monkey. His "survival" skills isn't enough to find a small water pond. Cannibals are near, and they fail their "vigilance" test to detect the noble.
The rules are a little Savage Worlds flavored, and smooth to play. For solo, I add the Free Universal RPG system as a game master to add surprises.
(https://teardropworlds.files.wordpress.com/2019/10/img_2885.jpg?w=768)
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A bit startled by your 'act of destruction' but seems you have a plan forward. No need to be jealous. Your goal seems a small game while mine was a massive undertaking that dragooned in at least pairs of hands for a club project game - I just was the financier as it were, buying in all the "toys". Could never have done it in the time frame without all the help. Will continue to watch what develops.