Lead Adventure Forum
Other Stuff => Workbench => Topic started by: Burgundavia on May 27, 2023, 01:21:23 AM
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I've been working on a pair of modular tables over the past year, the modular scifi one (https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=138605.0) I'm documenting here and a fantasy city board.
Here's a teaser- those foam bricks are around 1/8" cube
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Madness o_o o_o
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Madness o_o o_o
I did a pair of test pieces. My wife and I liked the smaller bricks, but she, like you, thought the smaller bricks were madness
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Oh my.
They do look good, though. How did you cut those so neatly? 8)
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Insane.... but in a good way. :-*
Now, if your mental health holds up here's your next project.
So, you won't think me cruel, here's a hack to get the pattern. The adding bricks bit I think you have well under control.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgrNgqxJG38
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You sir are a masochist. lol The effect is stunning.
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I applaud your (in)sanity.
You could always use some of the smaller bricks to adda bit of variation or a pattern...like in a mosaic.
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So many....bricks!
Well best of luck and look forward to the end result.
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Your square with the small bricks would make great setts. I would be tempted to make a mould of of the square and cast a bunch (save your sanity!).
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Your square with the small bricks would make great setts. I would be tempted to make a mould of of the square and cast a bunch (save your sanity!).
Ya, that is an option. Now that I've got a few, cast each of them a few times. Might try my hand at that
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You're absolutely mad. It does look fantastic though. I'll be watching this one!
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I've always fancied trying my hand at a building using separate foam bricks/stones. Because unlike most others, I find filing and sanding strangely soothing and placing brick after endless brick probably will have the same effect.
But those are buildings, not an entire table's worth of paving! :o
I salute you for your bravery and lament the loss of your sanity at the same time, because this would be too much, even for the likes of myself...
Regardless though; that's some stunning work and I hope you'll see it through to the end. I for one would be very interested in seeing the end result :)
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Well done! It will be worth it when its finished (I hope, for your sake).
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Thanks for all the kind words about my sanity. My wife fears it has vanished long ago (she is not a gamer).
Got a few pieces started tonight. You can see the open lock base, sometimes filled with a foam insert. The 1/4 long rectangular stones mark the edge of the road, with some 1/8 long pieces for gutter. Then I start the cobblestones after they've dried for 20 or so minutes- using simple white glue, so need that time. I try and run all the stones slightly over the edge or right at the edge to make sure I don't have too many unsightly gaps between tiles.
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Oh my.
They do look good, though. How did you cut those so neatly? 8)
To answer this, I have a Proxxon hot wire cutter
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Although stark raving mad, this has a lot of potential. Will you be filling the gaps between the stones with filler?
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Although stark raving mad, this has a lot of potential. Will you be filling the gaps between the stones with filler?
Not sure at this point. I might use the grout method from RP Archive to fill the gaps. Will do a small test piece in the near future.
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Got all the finished and partially finished tiles on the table tonight - showcased just how much more I need to do
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It looks amazing!
How many bricks do you think you've used?
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Wow, that is very enviable stuff! Looks great :o 8)
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It looks amazing!
How many bricks do you think you've used?
I'm truly scared to count. Thousands already
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Would this be a good time to remark that the vast majority of villages and towns up to the 19th century, and often beyond, mostly had packed earth roads and streets? :D
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:o Oh My G...
What a project !
Year ago I wanted to make such project with a Berlin 45 table, but I made simplier by just painting roads !
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Would this be a good time to remark that the vast majority of villages and towns up to the 19th century, and often beyond, mostly had packed earth roads and streets? :D
Sshhh. This is a fantasy city with both canals and a working sewer system
EDIT: RP Archive said it best:
"D&D takes place is some kind of weird time-warped universe where bronze and iron age tribesmen visit renaissance cities with functioning sewer systems that didn't arrive until the 17th or 18th centuries but cannons don't exist"
https://youtu.be/K_vR2wQlzFo?t=775
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Been a long time since I've worked on this (got the 120 day warning when I wrote this, but got back to it this weekend). I did something I've been meaning to do since the beginning - start basing my buildings. I glued my 3D printed building down with a 3/16" foam shim on an open lock tile and then added some of the cobblestones around it. Below shows the building itself (from Dadi Dungeon Salmystia range) and then with a few other tiles around it
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Look at that roads and foot paths, fantastic! 8)
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Awesome as it looks, I bet the council is going to receive its fair share of complaints about the state of the paving on those sidewalks. They're a veritable deathtrap, sir! ;)
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Awesome as it looks, I bet the council is going to receive its fair share of complaints about the state of the paving on those sidewalks. They're a veritable deathtrap, sir! ;)
Oh yes, the ADA compliance is not good in this city. Can't imagine what the lawsuits are going to be like
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I got a bunch more buildings based today and started in on the road layout and cobblestones on them. I'm going to need to cut a bunch more of the pink foam for the larger cobblestones, but overall I'm happy with how it is shaping up.
All the buildings are Dadi Dungeon - from a variety of sets. The two wood ones are Ferisia and the other two his Salmysita set. The smaller potion shop has on a very odd shaped base deliberately - I wanted to use that L shape to bend the road around it.
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This all looks great, but REALLY time consuming!!! lol
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Nice!
There's already a real sense of closely packed, oppressive urbanism in those few shots :)
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Nice!
There's already a real sense of closely packed, oppressive urbanism in those few shots :)
Thanks, that's the look I'm going for. Hard to do and make it playable
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Your cobblestone road sections are impressive; the effect is worth the time and effort!
Thanks, that's the look I'm going for. Hard to do and make it playable
Yeah, I struggle with that when scratch building terrain.
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6 long months later, finally getting back to this table. I wanted to do a tree erupting out of the cobblestones. I also wanted to try out Encounter Terrain's tree making method - bending a whole lot of pipe cleaners around and then melting them with flame After bending and melting, I glued the tree down on a small piece of foam on the openlock tile. I also decided to try DIY texture paste for bark, as I lack the right kind. I first tried paint + glue + coffee grounds, but this was too coarse for the bark, so it ended up becoming the ground cover. I mixed up some paint with glue and sawdust for the bark, which worked better. Overall, happy with the tree, but I should have melted it better.
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Example of tree making here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4MINXmvfe8
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Got a few new pieces done and laid out the table. Hoping to get a full 2x2 done by the end of the year (including painting)
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The fact that your modules are different sizes is short circuiting me a little bit… the planning alone…
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The fact that your modules are different sizes is short circuiting me a little bit… the planning alone…
They're all multiples of 1", so that makes it easier. And my plan is just to have enough extra to fill gaps as needed, much as I've done with my scifi terrain board, which is also Open Lock.
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Started in last night at finishing up a full 2'x2' - first by laying out what I have printed and then getting some foam glued down. I need to get my 3D printer working again to print off a bunch more 1x2 pieces.
I also scored a free silicon mat from the side of the road - I think it is a dog food mat, but it is perfect to do some work at my computer desk and keep the surface clean.
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We have one of those mats. It's a puppy training mat. You put down some absorbent material on that and the dog is supposed to learn to piss and shit on it. Ours just associates pissing and shitting with any random mat, so I guess it kind of worked but not quite as planned. lol
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We have one of those mats. It's a puppy training mat. You put down some absorbent material on that and the dog is supposed to learn to piss and shit on it. Ours just associates pissing and shitting with any random mat, so I guess it kind of worked but not quite as planned. lol
Ok, that's pretty funny. Works great for this purpose
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Grind out some more tiles last night. Nearly there with a full 2x2, although I did some rearranging and need to get my 3D printer working again to finish the last tiles.
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Very nice. The tree growing through the pavement makes the board!
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Very nice. The tree growing through the pavement makes the board!
Agreed; it's just so very characterful 8)
The board seems almost complete, as far as the surfaces is concerned. Can't wait to see what you do with the build up areas :)
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Agreed; it's just so very characterful 8)
The board seems almost complete, as far as the surfaces is concerned. Can't wait to see what you do with the build up areas :)
I laid out the board with my buildings yesterday. I'm going to need more straight 3x3 road.
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That’s looking very promising with the buildings in place! It seems like it will be very adaptable and open to future expansions, too, as you add modules.
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That’s looking very promising with the buildings in place! It seems like it will be very adaptable and open to future expansions, too, as you add modules.
It is. My scifi table and my hellscape table are essentially the same, so lots of experience with using the tiles. And the tiles in the bottom right of that photo are start of my generic outdoors table, just lacking some static grass
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Spent the day creating a ruined building, mostly for a game of Mordheim tomorrow. The construction is largely done, but lots of finishing work to do. I did up a test piece of using coloured spackle/wall compound over the foam.whwre I'd carved bricks or stone, quite liked it. So that'll come next - first a coat of black paint, then paint the rocks/bricks, then the spackle (mixed with paint), then weathering. Note the walls currently aren't glued to the floor to make it easier to spackle/paint the inside.
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Do you talk somewhere about how you do the roofbeams? They look like they actually have a groove and tongue (or whatever it is called) holding them together. Looks great! :-*
Mike Demana
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Do you talk somewhere about how you do the roofbeams? They look like they actually have a groove and tongue (or whatever it is called) holding them together. Looks great! :-*
Mike Demana
Nope but happy to here. Just did this yesterday. Those are 3/16 basswood sections, cut roughly to the length I wanted. I then spaced the beams at 3/4" apart. So after I cut them to length, I marked them at appropriate intervals and then 3/32 on each side of centre, and then used my chopper to cut roughly half way through. And then used a blade to cut the bottom of the notch, where given basswood is a bit tougher than balsa, it popped out. And the I fitted them together, cleaning up any errors.
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Very effective build and kudos on you for notching the wood to make the floors. Lots of work that has paid off!
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Got the table out today for a Mordheim game. A few quick shots
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Thanks for the description of how you did it. Sounds like a miniature carpenter at work...! It looks great now, and I'm sure will be even better when painted up!!
Mike Demana
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Really nice work!!
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You got a game of Mordheim in? You lucky dog! Your building and table look great.
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You got a game of Mordheim in? You lucky dog! Your building and table look great.
Thanks. Come south, likely next game will be Oct 13th or 20th, will confirm.
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I was shamed by another long term member of our local gaming club, so bad to get some primer down on my tiles at least. Amazing what a coat of paint will do for cohesiveness
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A work of love. Kudos. Cutting foam bricks is much better than a fidget toy.
Some suggestions if I may.
If you decide to make moulds make sure that the individual bricks are glued well to base otherwise rubber will seep under the individual bricks which might tear the mould when removed.
If you decide to use grout choose a material that shrinks when dry like plaster of paris so that all that detail can remain visible not become shallow.
You mentioned a scifi board, do you have links for it please?
Thanks for sharing.
Keep it up
Z
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A work of love. Kudos. Cutting foam bricks is much better than a fidget toy.
Some suggestions if I may.
If you decide to make moulds make sure that the individual bricks are glued well to base otherwise rubber will seep under the individual bricks which might tear the mould when removed.
If you decide to use grout choose a material that shrinks when dry like plaster of paris so that all that detail can remain visible not become shallow.
You mentioned a scifi board, do you have links for it please?
Thanks for sharing.
Keep it up
Z
Thanks, it has been a long process.
Not planning on moulding these - am going to keep plugging away at individual bricks, but good advice for if I wanted to.
For grout, was going to follow what RP Archive does - mixture of unsanded tile grout & dirt.
As for my scifi board, I've documented parts of it here: Modular 28mm scifi board (https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=138605). I really should post some of my recent work there. I've been bouncing between my scifi, my hellscape (https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=143853)and this board.
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Looking good.
Amazing what a coat of paint will do for cohesiveness
It is always the point where you finally see where the finished product is going to end up. Very satisfying.
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Because finishing is for suckered, I decided to start on two ruined towers last night (in time for a game Saturday hopefully). Both are 4"x4" square and roughly 12" tall. I've based them roughly on towers in San Gimignano, although my towers will be plastered instead of rough stone. I still need to add floors on the 2nd tower and a few windows in each.
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Nice - what are you going to plaster the walls with? Spackle?
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Nice - what are you going to plaster the walls with? Spackle?
That's the plan. Need to carve the exposed stones and brickwork into the foam and then I'll plaster over it
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Off to a great start! I love the way towers, ruined or otherwise, break up the vertical space of a table. These are going to be awesome... :-*
Mike Demana
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Got a bunch of work done today - stone texture and glued together. Also added some old bolts to the base for stability.
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Wow, that is very impressive work for foam as a base! Seriously impressed!
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Got the basics of the 2nd tower roughed in today. Realized I messed up my measurements for the holes for the floor joists, so will have to pivot in my plan, base it on a 5x5 instead of 4x4 and add some thicker columns on the front corners to fill holes & add interest
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Finished the last bits of the first full 2x2 square, including the curved road and 2 statues - one ganesha and one little garden fairy thing that definitely won't have blood coming from its eyes.
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This is fantastic work. You make it look so easy.
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This is fantastic work. You make it look so easy.
Switching from generic white glue/PVA to Aleene's Tacky was a key part of it - it holds much faster, so you can do rows of the smaller stones almost right away without them moving
G
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definitely won't have blood coming from its eyes
;) lol
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one little garden fairy thing that definitely won't have blood coming from its eyes.
Did you think of that after seeing yourself in the mirror after laying those little cobblestones?
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Did you think of that after seeing yourself in the mirror after laying those little cobblestones?
Lol, nope. I thought of it the instant on saw these lying on the street in a free pile (I have 1 more like this and another fairy in another style)
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Finally got all the base colours on these pieces, seem to have misplaced a piece however. Oops
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Notwithstanding the missing piece (at least it’s a small one!), it looks amazing with the base colours on! That’s going to be a great surface for gaming. I know games can still be fun on a super basic playing surface, but there’s something about detailed terrain that steps up the immersion…
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Nice to see it in colors other than pink. Really coming together.
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So did a bunch of work - picked out some stones in a dark and light grey wash (one speed paint, one mixture of a Reaper paint with satin wash), then dry brushed white and finally a black/brown wash.
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Those cobbles look great. How long did the painting take to do?
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Very nice work on the cobbles. Really makes them ping.
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Those cobbles look great. How long did the painting take to do?
Not as long as the laying. I airbrushed the base colours, which would have taken less time if my airbrush wasn't crap - that was two or so hours. Painting the individual stones took an hour or so. Wash was 30 minutes.
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Great progress
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You have been busy! lol
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Added dirt to the tiles today- using the RP archive method of 50% dirt/50% grout, sprinkled on dry and then wetted and excess wiped off. Need to add the leaves & skulls, also finish the statues.
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And done - this set of tiles are now complete. The leaves are real leaves punched with an aliexpress punch.
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That looks great! Now get some gaming pics showing it in use lol
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Those dead leaves really make it look realistic.
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That looks great! Now get some gaming pics showing it in use lol
Our next Mordheim game is Nov 17th up at UVic at 11am - you're welcome to come down and play
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Very, very nice work.
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Wrote up some details on the blog:
http://warbard.ca/2024/11/05/building-some-modular-fantasy-city-tiles/
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Although I've been quiet here, I have been busy over the past month. First up - some modular risers. I've been wanting to create some elevation on my board for some time, but I want to do it in a way that is modular, both for storage space and more the pure modularity. I also got a new 3D printer, a fast Creality K1 Max, so printing stuff became a bit easier.
These are the usual Open Lock tiles edited in FreeCAD. The new part is the riser interiors, which allow me to place existing tiles in between the risers in a way that breaks down to almost nothing.
The collapsing wall sections are foam and then DIY sculptamold on it.
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A few more photos
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Very nice progress.
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The ramp idea is great idea - way easier to position minis on then steps.
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very clever stuff
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OOh the modularity looks to work perfectly Burghs, the individual bricks/pavers look very time consuming but give it a wonderful texture, the crumbly sections look very realistic!
Cheers
Matt
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Been busy working on the board over the past few weeks to run a pair of Mordheim games. As part of that, I've been working on two new pieces: a graveyard and some dirt roads. The graveyard was a deep dive into my digital pile of shame. I searched "graveyard" and "tombstone". The larger mausoleum is from Dark Realms and the tombstones/graveyards are from Dark Realms, Terrain4Print, Dadi Dungeon and August McDaniel (who did the Ruins of Generica).
For the dirt roads, they are my standard Open Lock tiles but with sculptamold on top. I used a printed wagon wheel to make the track marks.
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Looks good, like the transition pieces as well.
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Here's an in-game shot, with the dirt road partially painted and my 2nd riser set with a building on top of it. This action shot shows some Beastman trying to hunt some Mouslings.
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Very nice, very mucky! ;D
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I got to play on this board on Friday. Absolutely insane level of detail! And very easy to move figures around, even inside the multi-level buildings. The ramps are a great feature to allow figures to move between levels without falling over or being awkwardly stuck on landings. Thanks for a great game, Cory!
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These builds are inspirational.
Good job.
Thanks for sharing
Z
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I got to play on this board on Friday. Absolutely insane level of detail! And very easy to move figures around, even inside the multi-level buildings. The ramps are a great feature to allow figures to move between levels without falling over or being awkwardly stuck on landings. Thanks for a great game, Cory!
Thanks! Wondered how many West Coasters we had here on LAF.
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Thanks! Wondered how many West Coasters we had here on LAF.
A few that I can name are wirelizard (obviously!), Bravo6, wrgmr1, and codsticker. Seem to be more of you Islanders than us mainlanders :)
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Long time, no post. I've been busy building things, will post them layer, but thought I should post the bridge I just built to connect to my modular risers I've built. Like all the other parts, this has its base as a 3D print, in this case 3 different pieces- 2 3" long by 2" tall risers and one bridge section, designed in FreeCAD. When I glued it together, I left the centre unglued, allowing me to use whatever 2x2 tile I wanted in the middle.
I covered the top in my standard cobbles/setts and the sides in my usual 1/4" thick stones, but the underside was 1/8" thick foam to preserve as much space as possible under the bridge.
If I were to do it again, I really should have made it modular, with each side being one piece, which would allow ruined and centre sections. Oops. Next time.
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While I appreciate your attention to detail, adding stones to the underside of the bridge arch where nobody taller than 30mm will ever see them, is flirting with madness! Awesome, brilliant madness, but madness all the same :o
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flirting with madness
Flirting, no. Full on love affair with madness, yes
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That bridge looks amazing. I agree if you're going to do a modular city like that, the bridge has got to fit!
Mike Demana
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The modellers cruel dilemna. True, nobody will ever see them. Nobody likely will see the scratchbuilt wiring and rudder pedals fitted to the cockpit of a model aircraft once the canopy is in place but the modeller knows they are there and that's the important part of it all.
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Another piece I've been working on is a set of stairs. I've never been happy with prior attempts and didn't want to do foam stairs, as cutting them straight is a headache. So I decided to try doing a set of 3D printed stairs with foam on top, hoping that the foam would cover up the 3D print. Stairs for wargaming also need space for miniatures to stop, made more challenging by the move to 40mm bases for newer models (looking at you GW). So I designed a model and then printed it out. Overall, quite happy with it.
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Based on this success, I started on a straight set of stairs to put along a 4" long section, below. It's on the printer now, so photos when it's done.
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Nice workable solution and models will fit where they are suppose to.
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Nice workable solution and models will fit where they are suppose to.
Ya, why I went with ramps before this. So much simpler.
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Just re-read the whole thread, absolutely outstanding work.
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I think that turned out really well.
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Amazing fantasy city. So many wonderful details.
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Catching up on some work I've already done - the Fatted Pig. This is 95% done, need to finish the entrance-way.
The base is 3D printed as per my usual. I wanted this piece to bridge the gap between my 2" risers and some new 1" tall risers (coming soon). So you'll see the back part is 2" tall, while the front is 1". I noted I screwed up here - to match other pieces, I needed to add 1/2" piece to end 2" section.
The building is 1/4" thick cut foam, cut on my proxxon and then textured. I put coloured spackle over the painted foam to represent plaster. I mixed it with crackle medium, which I wasn't 100% happy with on the outside, hence the 2 colours of green. I thought the first coat cracked too much. The inside was also plastered over. I wasn't super happy with how smooth I got the walls. Next time I would glue the floor joists after I do the interior plaster.
The tile floor is a decal on white styrene. That makes them water resistant. All the images came from the internet, scaled down and in the case of the tiles, tiled in Inkscape. I did 2 largish squares and then cut it up after the decal was dry.
The dirt is the same mixture as on my roads - 50% grout/50% dirt. It dries rock hard. Skulls and bones are from a variety of sources, including Halloween dollar store items and GW's skull box.
The end of the short wall also flexes quite a bit, so I need to do some work to strengthen it. Also why the entrance way hasn't been glued on it - it is going to be fairly fragile so need to make sure I figure out how to make it stronger.
I also need to finish the roof, complete with individually printed roof tiles (because that's the way I roll)
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That’s an impressive piece of modeling! The building would be good by itself, but with the fully integrated board :o