From the Cross 'Box'

If you read my last post about the five box system you'll know that I played fast and loose with the Cross box.  I called it the hypothetical box, and its designed to give me the slack to do those last minute projects that I always seem to need for D&D.
I also said I didn't want to show what I had made, as I like it to be a surprise for the players (cos I'm still a big kid that way).  Well finally we have got around to the encounter, so here is a Chaos Dragon and a Weird Arcane Crystal Thingy.

The Chaos Dragon started out as a £1 plastic toy dragon.  I must have picked it up thinking it would come in useful sometime.  It did.  The arms were easily detachable (in fact one was missing), so I made a rough skeleton out of various thicknesses of wire.  Next time I'll wear gloves, the wire can be sharp.  A good dab of superglue and everything was sound.  I also pinned the legs and wings in place, as I didn't want them coming loose.  Then a good covering of greenstuff in several layers, with a touch up of liquid greenstuff to even up any really bad bits.  My greenstuffing (is that a thing?) skills are not great, but the rough finish sort of suits the chaotic nature of the creature.  

A black undercoat followed by a basecoat of dark purple, then increasing highlights (drybrushing mostly) of lighter purple.  We long ago established in the campaign that purple is the colour of "The Beyond".  A few details such as blue eyes and red chest scales, then I finished with lines of pink along the tentacles to suggest some sort of energy breaking out of its form.  It's actually a pretty good model for the price, and paints up pretty well as the detail is sharp.  I wish I had bought more of them.

Throughout the later part of the campaign I have used various crystalline constructs and control features to give the idea that one culture is responsible for all this (here and here for a couple of examples).  Hopefully the players will learn that there are certain traits that all such things possess, and use this knowledge in future encounters.

For this I wanted something big and impressive.  This is simply more of the acrylic 'gems' hot-glued around a former (the cap of an aerosol).  The best bit is that it is big enough inside for a colour changing tea light.  My suggestions of using it as a Christmas ornament were, however, rejected.

Boxing Clever

I mentioned a while back that I was trying the five box system to help organise my hobby time.  Initially I found it difficult to manage as I found it gave me too much freedom.  Now I've settled down with it a bit more and it's really helping.

I realised a few weeks in that I was viewing it as a challenge, and I felt I had to do a bit from each box, otherwise what was the point of the system?  Whilst I didn't give up, I ended up ignoring all but the one box that had crafting stuff in that I needed for RPGs.  I was pretty much ready to give up on the idea, as I felt I was back to obsessing on one project.  It didn't help that I had four out of the five boxes out at the same time, which was a less that popular use of floor space.

I recently finished the cave tiles and various other bits for D&D, or at least reached a point where I wasn't rushing to keep up with the game's progress, and picked up another box.  The feeling of painting something different, while still sticking to the plan was inspiring.  So the five box system is here to stay, until I find something better.

So how do I use the system?  Here are a few details on what works for me;

• I use any old box, two are old printer paper boxes, good for terrain projects, two more are packing boxes that I have received minis in in the past.  The final box is a hypothetical box.
• I began by numbering them, but that gave a false sense of priority to box one.  It seemed silly to be working on, say, box three when box one was still there.  Now they are labelled 'star', 'square', 'wave', 'circle' and 'cross'*.  
• Unless I am working on a particular box it goes away.  
• I don't overfill a box.  It's enough to have a unit or two, or a warband in a box.  More can be dispiriting as it seems to take forever to finish.  The idea is to clear a box and then fill it with another project, not have the same long project dragging on forever.
• The more different the box contents are, the more likely they are to be dipped into.  Changing projects can be refreshing.

So what has it got in its boxes precious?

'Star' is Frostgrave stuff, currently the mausoleum awaiting its roof finishing and the warband I mentioned for a friend, now close to completion.
'Square' is D&D tiles, as per the cave and mine tiles, plus some castle or dungeon tiles I have yet to finish and am currently experimenting on.
'Wave' is Vanguard stuff, currently holding goblins, orcs, undead and dwarves.  This is too much for one box really, but I found my starter warbands yesterday and shoved them in for somewhere to put them.  I need to magnetise the bases then they can have a Really Useful Box of their own.
'Circle' is 15mm Ancients, mostly Greeks with a few Scythians to finish off.  This is the one I'm having the most difficulty getting back to, perhaps because I have a small Greek army now and I don't know when I'll need them again.
'Cross' is what I term the hypothetical box.  Its the stuff that needs doing for the next gaming session, its invariably short term, and is often just one thing.  At the moment it contains (or would if it weren't pure essence of boxiness) a couple of craft builds for tonight's 4E D&D game.  Which has, of course, been postponed, otherwise I'd show them tomorrow as I'm rather pleased with them, and I know at least one of the players reads this and, big kid that I am, I like to surprise.


* A no prize for identifying these symbols, leave a comment.

Vanguard Orcs; Starting the Warband

I received my copy of the Vanguard rulebook a short while ago.  Whilst I didn't actually back the Kickstarter (beyond the $1 required to comment), T'Other One kindly offered to add a rulebook pledge to his order for me.  Many thanks, ser.

A while ago I began assembling and painting a few of the beta test warbands (my goblins are here), but I never got round to doing much with the test rule set.  Now I have the actual book I hope to get some games in.

I thought about which force to concentrate on.  I already have a few goblins, and the beginnings of dwarves and undead for the beta rules, but given the tie in with KoW, it made sense to go for something I already had an army of.  In 28mm that's Orcs or Kingdom of Men, and since there's currently no list for KoM, orcs it is.

I've got a couple of metal minis, the Godspeaker and a Krudger, the rest are the plastic orcs.  I've even converted one of the ax orcs to carry a bow.  There are currently no rules for a skulk, but adding a bow as equipment to an ax orc should give something close.
This does touch on an issue that I and several of my gaming friends have, the book doesn't have profiles for everything.  I understand that Mantic are going to fill in the gaps, and probably tempt us with nice shiny new minis with their profiles.  Commercially this makes great sense.  To an aging gamer like myself it would have been nice to see everything in one book.  That said, it would soon be out of date as new stuff came out anyway.

I'll not say much about the game itself until I have actually played it.  It seems clear enough, and the tie-ins to Kings of War battles are a great idea.  I think it will play very well, though as an orc player, I am wondering how to get more power dice, being limited to red only.  I'll try and get a game in soon and give a more informed opinion.

Ten brown orcs, standing in a (couple of) row(s)

*PS* Mantic have already added some new profiles, including Skulks.  Hooray!  

They have updated the army building document on their website in the free rules section to include the new stuff here.  Their blog on Friday talks more about it.

Cave tiles - A New Way (Part 3) - Finished Tiles and Extra Features

Here are the cave and mine tiles, pretty much finished.  If you missed them, the other posts about them are here for part one and here for part two.

This is the whole set spread out waiting for the varnish to dry.  After a session of play I realised the polystyrene ceiling tiles were a bit fragile, even after a coat of Mod Podge, so I gave them a coat of matt varnish.  

To the right you can see some of the extra features I have been working on; rock pillars and pools.

The rock pillars came about as I wanted something to break up line of sight and make the interior of the caves a bit more interesting and natural looking.  They are simply a roughly circular or oval shape of ceiling tile stuck to a thin base of cardboard.  Painting is just the same as the tiles; they get a black undercoat, then the edges are sponge painted and the top is given a coat of Barely Black, and finally a varnish.

Here's a reconstruction of the dining cave in the Lost Mine module.  It looks a bit different from the published version, but it provides the same challenges, and certainly worked well at table last night.  I have added quite a bit of extra terrain from Terrain Crate for this picture.  We just had the tables in play last night.  The cliff edges and the pools are clear overlays.  I got the idea from a recent DM Scotty build where he was showing a rising water level.  At first I thought to use this just for the various water features in the dungeon, but then I realised it worked well for other features such as patches of fungus and the cliff edges and steps in the cave above.  Rather than using cutting boards I found some clear plastic open sided pockets.  These are cheap (50p for five) and easily cut, but tough enough to stand up to use in play.  They have a shiny side and a matt side, The matt side takes Sharpies and similar permanent markers well, and placed shiny side up gives, I feel, the right look without being too obtrusive (or taking too long to craft).

I found the tiles easy to use at the table.  As each one represents 20 foot square, I don't have to place too many at once, and the party mapper seemed to find following the layout pretty easy.  Of course, the party split up into two groups, meaning that we ended up with two seperate areas of tiles.  I never intended to create enough to lay out the whole dungeon in one go, so we reuse tiles when necessary.

As a bonus, the whole set at present fits into a 9L 'Really Useful Box'.  Just.

I may still need some narrow winding passages for the later part of the dungeon, and there are some more artificial areas, but my dungeon set will do for those (and I think I need to add to them as well).

As I mentioned before, I may well revisit these tiles and do more robust and neater versions, probably including a cardboard lock system and using stronger XPF rather than ceiling tiles.  That's definitely something for the future though.