Shocking Tales of Madness and... Cardboard?!? Update: Second game with Farmland

[Cherno]

Hello fellow Agents and Lurkers,

after three days and countless sheets of paper and cardboard, I can finally present you my Strange Aeons project.It all started one year ago when I first found out about Strange Aeons and I started building some cardboard Standees. As you can see on the photos below, the first version of the Standees are immediately recognizable, having integral bases and no outline. It wasn't until one week ago when I actually got the Strange Aeons rulebook and started on this project in earnest.



The Standees, aside from those old ones (no pun intended) made from sprites from the computer game Blood, were made possible with the help of Anatoli and some other dude I forgot the name of

However, the biggest part was building terrain. I had the "Battlefield in a box" approach in mind when starting this project: All elements should fit in a small box. That means larger features like buildings have to be collapsible and everything will be made of paper/cardboard so they fit stylistically with each other and with the Standees, and so they can just be carelessly thrown into their storage box after play without worrying about paint scratches or parts breaking.

I decided I wanted to have three terrain types for Strange Aeons: Forest, Graveyard and Farmland.

The Forest



The Forest was the easiest to make because I already had the terrain tiles from my All Things Zombie project.This time, however, I didn't just want printed-on trees and cabins, so I had to actually build those. What I ended up with were trees, bushes and hedges from World Works Games' excellent Hinterland Forest set, logs from Dave Gaffam (they have a 25% summer sale over at RPG.now!) and a cabin I made using TLX templates with custom textures.

This should give a nice selection of terrain I can fill a 2x3 table with easily, providing models with different types of cover.

Game aids

Browsing through the rulebook, I noticed that a player would have to keep a copy of the weapons master list (and extra item, spell etc. lists) ready because weapon and other item stats had no place on the force sheets. So what I did was make my own equipment cards with all info provided; this way whenever a certain item is present the player just has to put it in front of him, no need to look anything up or have more than neccessary on the table.

I made cards forall weapons and extra items, as well as counters for map pieces, ancient and evil tomes, and scrolls, and mounted them to heavy cardboard after printing them on glossy photo paper.







That's it for now, next up is the graveyard! don't forget to bring your holy water!  

[Cherno]

Here's my little cemetery



The set is of course Wildwood Grove, an older set from WWG still available in their "Vault" line of classic products and highly recommended for Strange Aeons paper scenery!

The small crypt is made in the TLX style with custom textures from Blood.

The larger one looks actually more like a chapel from it's size and is part of the set. It is collapsible too.



I use the graves as grave markers or normal scenery. The tombstones can be detached.



The monolith can also be used as scenery or as a scenario-specific monument.



The fences were the result of pure chance when I scrounged through my old print-outs of WWG scenery and found two sheets of transparent Wildwood Grove fences in them. I cut them to TLX 6" specs and made some more posts for them, and some free-standing bases.

Hope you enjoy. Next up is the farmland.

[Cherno]

Here are some photos from our first two games. I played as Lurker vs. two Threshold teams.

Some highlights:

Joe Diamond tosses a stick of Dynamite at a Fishman and cultist hiding behind a hedge. Both got caught up in the explosion.



Later, Joe fumbles his to-hit-roll while trying to throw dynamite at the last Cultist... It didn't end well.



A cultist armed with a Bolt-Action Rifle takes a shot at Agent Eads and kills him in the first turn. Needless to say, after that incident the Threshold team quickly took greater care while moving about...



A Fishman, much ridiculed at the start of the game suddenly rushes forward and kills Agent Bale, much to the horror of the Threshold player.



The same Fishman tries to attack Agent Eads, but the Agent fails his Resolve test and flees! Damn! Stay where you are when I'm trying to eat you!!!



Overview of the game table from the Lurker side.



Another Bird's-eye-perspective. This is where I was sitting during both games.

[Cherno]

reserved

[driller]

well, reserved or not, it looks great!

would you mind sharing the plans of the buildings and treeas and stuff, would ya?

edit: oops, sorry, just read that they are copyrighted stuff.

[oldskoolrebel]

Wow! Paper modelling at it's very finest.

This really works; I can only imagine that it does so because you've been very selective about which textures and models you used. Plus you embraced the look of the WWGs- a look that can be quite hard to describe. After all it's not realistic nor is it out-right cartoony.

Well done mate!

Cheers
Andy

[Cherno]

Thanks guys. I am indeed picky when it comes to choosing scenery; WWG and Dave Graffam have by far the best textured models available (not counting non-wargaming related models); most of the paper scenery on RPGnow etc. is just horribly bland  and very unappealing. You get what you pay for, although WWG and Graffam's models have very cheap prices for their contents.

As someone else here said, paper scenery doesn't really work if mixed with other miniatures and terrain, but if everything is made of flat paper it somehow has a style on it's own that just looks right

[Cherno]

huh, I messed up the forest photo in the op, here it is 

[Relic]

I dont like paper terrain by default but your work is outstanding. You are a genius by my standards. If those are available sometime i will surely use them. The weapon etc. Cards are a brilliant idea! I hope you will post an AAR with those in use

[Mason]

While I would never contemplate using card models and scenery myself, I enjoy painting miniatures and making scenery too much, I can see and appreciate a fine job when it is presented to me.
This certainly looks damn good, and has a certain look all of its own.

A very nice alternative to the 'norm'.
Well done, sir!

[Cherno]

Nag nag, the image hoster I used is crap, I have re-uploaded everything. Should be fine now 

[obsidian3d]

That is an outstanding piece of work.  I love paper terrain even though I use painted miniatures.  It's cheap, fills a table quickly and stores a lot more easily than the molded equivalent.  You'll have to show us the box you're using to store all your hard work!

[Yetis Yell]

This is so cool I can't stand it.

[necrocannibal]

Very, very nice looking standees. By the way, I haven't gotten around to taking pictures for you yet. I'll try and take some pictures next week (if you're still interested).

[Cherno]

That is an outstanding piece of work.  I love paper terrain even though I use painted miniatures.  It's cheap, fills a table quickly and stores a lot more easily than the molded equivalent.  You'll have to show us the box you're using to store all your hard work!

Thanks. I plan on making a thematic storage box similar to the ones Arkham Horror player made on BoardGameGeek:









Although I somehow suspect I'll be stuck with a plain old cardboard box for a while

Very, very nice looking standees. By the way, I haven't gotten around to taking pictures for you yet. I'll try and take some pictures next week (if you're still interested).

Yes, I am indeed still interested, always on the lookout for new material as you know

Looking forward to seeing your pics