If anyone remembers the Nymph from a very old pre-Bones Reaper Learn to Paint Kit, you probably -- or at least I did -- asked when in the world will I ever use this miniature. She's wholly unprepared as an adventurer, what with being without a weapon and probably reliant on at least a tub of water. Well, only whatever many years later, I finally found a use for her. But, before that, "Five Leagues from the Borderlands" has a purely optional pre-campaign step where you can draw up a map of the region you're playing in. Sure, you could use one of those interactive computer map things, or even a pen and paper, but this impatient luddite with ten years of barely used basing material bought on the cheap noticed that 2D hex terrain tiles were a thing in boardgames. However, none of them were quite what I wanted for the settlements, camps, delves, a hidden delve, and an unknown location. I had a supply of cheap wooden 2" square tiles to make bases, so I figured if the catapult tile game, Carcassonne, could make a map from square tiles (the Carcassonne tiles had too many castle walls for a 5L map), I could make a map from my tiles as well. I used tiles in case I wanted to move the tiles around, add more tiles later in the game, etc. After painting, I mounted the tiles with poster putty onto a vinyl floor tile.
Anyway, here's what you may or may not want to make sure you have in your basing supplies if you want to make something similar:
1. Tiles: If you want hex tiles, Amazon sells those as well. Avoid rounded edges, although rounded edges are better if you're also using the tiles for basing miniatures.
2. Colored primer: I brush-on colored airbrush primer when painting miniatures, and found them useful for the small plastic sprue bits used as buildings, and blue for water.
3. Museum Wax: I regularly use Museum Wax for temporary bonds with miniatures and use them along with other glues and putty in making the map.
4. Fine craft sand: This comes in both uncolored and green. Uncolored is useful for general basing. Green I haven't used in basing, as it looks too artificially colored.
5. Texture gel: Useful for making hills.
6. Epoxy: Greenstuff is probably better for higher mountains.
Bits of interest:
* You only need nine tiles to start. Each tile should have enough room to put your party's token on, in this case a confused Reaper Bones villager, starting at the upper middle tile.
* Each tile is one map area in the game, and you can actually travel from one map area to another, regardless of distance (I think). So it doesn't really matter how the map is made, so long as it looks good to you. Map areas do have other effects on the game, such as when the game generates a location on a map area with an already existing location.
* Settlement flags are columns printed from a spreadsheet program, mounted on cardboard, and cut out as a flag. Names were from a random town name generator.
* Each enemy threat has its own camp banner.
* Camps are little triangles made from sprue. Annoying to make. The delve on the leftmost tile, from a sprue "intersection" was inspired by the Egyptian temple from Sims 3 World Adventure.
* Mountains were made by dripping Durham's Water Putty onto aluminum foil. Cheap but messy. I think epoxy is better. Wash then drybrush.
* The desert buttes were made with leftover water putty, rescued from the bottom of a mixing cup, then crumbled up a bit.
* The peaks in the upper right grey water tile were from a store brand art store's coarse gel. Inspired by Crater Lake, although the tile doesn't actually do anything (yet).
* The pools between the tiles and the waterfall on the upper middle tile are clear plastic painted with blue colored primer.
* The waterfall "foam" is cotton, as is the "cloud" in the lower corner. The "cloud" marks a hidden location, in this case a black tower made of, you guessed it, sprue.
* Rocks were cheap rocks sold at an arts and craft store to put in the bottom of a clear vase or something.
* To show a map tile that has a unknown location, I used a pirate map. When the location is discovered, I'll have to add another decorated game tile to the map.
* At the bottom, is a turn track for the actual 28mm battles used on a game mat (not shown). The Lead Adventurers forum has a tradition of using lady miniatures as time track markers, and I'm using primarily Reaper miniatures in the campaign. The Nymph is a metal figure from the early pre-Bones Learn to Paint Kits that I knew I would not use in an adventuring party for noticeable reasons, so here she is. If you look closely at her arm, you'll still see the metal flash I wasn't sure I should if I should have removed when I originally painted her.
* Will name the region, Klocke, as it's a convenient pun.
Now, to go back to painting some Bones IV figures I'm using as the party members...!
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April 27, 2024, 07:54:49 AM
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