Stargrave - Smoke!

Well with the Walls of Force still getting painted on my table, it was time to tackle another issue. Smoke Grenades! Yes I did buy the template set which comes with 2 templates for use as Smoke, but those are...well, not to the standard of a game table I like. Yes they will work well for the placement of the smoke template, but...

...so it was off to the dollar store on Saturday, with tape measure in hand. I needed to find a 4"x3" clear plastic cup. Having done so (it's close to 4" diameter) it was a matter of getting some of my card stock & having traced the cup circumference, was ready to begin

I think you can see where this is going. We now have a topper that will be the smoke so when tracing line of sight to different elevations through smoke we will now know for sure.

So as there will still be the base templates used, I painted them all up using grey & sponging on white to represent billowing smoke.

I now have the stacked between old CD's with a weight on them so they won't warp on me while drying completely. How does it look?

And while the glue dries on the actual poly filler 'smoke' you can see what the end result will be.

I know the purists will immediately say "Hey thats not 4"x3"! & they would be correct. But then when does smoke conform to anything when released. I will be making 12 total of them for use in our campaign & as the other players will be using them, I don't expect any issues. However I will trim some of the smoke once the piece has dried & may need to add some other pieces depending on how well it holds.

So thats my hobby time for this week. Thanks for visiting

Stargrave - The Botched Deal

 The campaign has begun with "The Botched Deal". Normally I would have taken lots of photos & generated a comic book AAR of the scenario, but the fact remained, this was all of our first try at the game, so we were looking up various rules to ensure we were on the right track.

The scenario involved a central building containing a Physical Loot token. It is surrounded by other buildings.

 

Another view of the village. These are some of the most versatile buildings I picked up on an Ebay sale. They have been used in Old West, Desert Pulp & now Sci-Fi.

 

We had 5 Crews descend onto the table & scrambling to recover the various Data & Physical Loot tokens scattered about. Early on, some of the Ruffian/Townsfolks were dealt with, where others just wouldn't go down & caused grief for some crews, tying them up.

 

It's a good thing I made 8 Walls of Force!

 

We also discovered how painful it can be trying to unlock a Loot token without the special equipment.

 

We had quite a range of figures on the table, including some of Scott's Bombshell Miniatures

 

And SW Legion ones, which is likely one of the reasons this ruleset is so popular!

 

We called the game after turn 8 & had just 2 Ruffians arrive from the Unwanted Guests table. I think there were 3 locked loot counters which were lost as the crews returned to their ships. Apart from a few badly wounded soldiers, everyone survived to return for the next mission.

 

So some after game thoughts. I will need to search for some tokens to use for Stunned & Jammed weapons.

The Crew Experience tracker I got from the Facebook files worked well. I had reduced them down to where they fit into a Dragon Shield Card sleeve. 

I will also need to make some more interesting 'Smoke' counters.

 

Thanks as always for visiting!

Stargrave - Wall of Force

The table is set, the crews created & preparing for their first mission.....Sunday!

 As I work on last minute preparations for tomorrows game, I realized I needed some walls of Force, should any of the crews take that as a power.

 

Wracking my brains as to how to make a transluscent/clear wall for the game table, I finally opted to use some old Sprues for a frame & document protector for the clear wall.

 

After digging through my sprue boxes, I found some that were the correct width of 6" & then cut them to just under 3" in height. I needed to then cut another piece of sprue with some extended bits to support the frame. This happened the be the central piece of the same sprue clipped out. Then it was a matter of clipping/removing the nubs & sanding it

 

After the  frame was glued together & the clear document protector pieces added using white glue, it was left to dry.

 

Now it was time to add some paint. First up I painted the frame in Royal Blue, ensuring that I painted onto the clear plastic as well to represent a base colour for energy spikes.

 

I then used Indian Turquoise to represent the energy the actual energy.

 

This was then followed up by white hi-lights for the energy & then a touch-up of Prussian Blue in the areas of the frame that were not representing the energy spikes.

 

As its getting late, I was only able to complete the first of 8 walls of force, but will get the rest painted after the game tomorrow. 

For an expense of mainly some time, these were cost effective using stuff I had lying around & I think they turned out well. Thoughts?

 

Thanks for visiting. 

EWG - Another Glorious Day in the Corps (take 2)

We had Dan offer to bring out Aliens: Another Day in the Corps for another play. This time we had a full slate of  8 players & were using a modified system of 1 Motion Tracker card per 2 players. Thus we were drawing 4 per turn.

 

We opted to replay the scenario where we needed to find Newt & escape through the exit.

 

Once again, I played Cpl Hicks, opting for the Pulse Rifle / Grenade combo to start.

 

Starting off, we have the numbers! The Bugs are in for a fight!

 

Well that didn't take long. Some small groups of Xeno's rush us, but are readily dealt with.

 

Ripley comes face to face with a couple of Xeno's rushing through the door.

 

Gorman finds himself left behind as he was barricading a door

 

After a bit of computer work, Newt is found & Ripley is able to make it to her...to calm her down & have her follow us to the exit.

 

More Xeno's are spawning, right into the muzzle of the flamethrower!

 

Just my luck, "They Are in the Ceilings!" Xeno's fall into my lap

 

The mad run to the exit begins, some well placed grenades cleared a lot of these Alien swarms out. Multiples are chits stacked beneath an Alien Model to denote groups.

 

Everyone made it out alive! Our card stack was quite depleted by this point.

 

Thanks again to Dan for bringing out this fun game! Also thanks to all the folks who came out to the club, it was nice to see people making it out.

 

Off to a Rocky start!

So having completed the Zuzzy rocks, it was onto some of the foam built ones I've cut with my foam wire cutter.

There are a lot of great Youtube videos of people making these & are well worth the watch for ideas.

 As I started working on them I figured I would do a step-by-step of my own with the colours I chose. For these larger ones I used scrap pieces of Pink insulation foam.

 Originally I was going to mount them on CD's, but then I thought...why? The goal of these was for use in Rangers of Shadow Deep & many other various games where large rocks were needed to cut down on LOS

So after painting them with black gesso, it was on to the base Ash Gray. The goal is not to completely cover the black with the gray, as you want the deep recesses to remain dark.

This is followed by scrubbed on patches of Burnt Umber. Definately using dollar store brushes for all of this scrubbing & stippling.

 

Next was the Burnt Sienna, which is scrubbed on sparingly. The colour looks good for where there may have been oxidizing iron bits within the rock formation.

Lastly my favorite edging colour, Sand, to touch up the edges & dust across the larger patches.

 

And here they are completed for today. I did make 1 spire version & will likely make some more of these, which I intend to paint in Desert sand colours.

 

Of course we needed a figure for scale image.

 

Then it was onto some small rock faces that were emerging from the earth. These were made with the usual white packing foam, which isn't as durable as the pink.

 

I covered these ones with Mod-Podge to hopefully make them more durable after painting them grey. I guess once they are on the table & tumbling dice roll over them, we will know if it worked.

 

So that ended my hobby session for today. Thanks as always for visiting.

 

 

Going a Little Over-board!

 These past few weeks, I've been going through a bit of a painters block. No desires to grab a brush & dab some paint.... so instead I've spent some time getting some other things done in the basement.

To start, I have the luxury of access to a large format plotter & took advantage of some of the maintenance to plot off some various gaming mats to get the inks flowing through them after the 2 years of sitting they went through during the pandemic.

 

These mat patterns are all from one of the 3d printing Patreons I follow - Unit 9. Every couple of months they add some new themes to the monthly files.

 

I mounted them on the many pieces of foamcore that were saved from going to the dumpster at work.  These have been sitting about for some time & I wanted to start using them. I know others have had these printed on vinyl or mousepad material which can be rolled, but I wanted to keep it cheap...for now.

 

The mat files are offered in several sizes (2'x2', 3'x3', 4'x4') so I chose the ones I could manage with the minimum of fuss & taking into account having to store them afterwards. So now I have Cyber City, Hangar Bay, Wasteland & Underworld themed boards built.

 

I hope to use them in Stargrave & 5 Parsecs from home depending on the size of battle & number of players.

 

Overall I am quite happy with them. 

So next it was time to knuckle down & get working on some sci-fi looking rocks for our upcoming Stargrave game. It was then I found the box of a bunch of Lava type rocks I had purchased from Zuzzy many years ago.

 

I wanted to make them usable in more than just sci-fi..so stuck with traditional colours more or less. 

 

There were also several that had volcanic lava streams emerging from them, so I tried my hand at doing that...yes it took a couple of attempts & a couple of Youtube watches to get the 'Lava' to where it looked somewhat realistic.

So now I've got some more rocks on the paint table, but these are foam ones I've been dabbling with & hope to get them done Sunday.

I apologize for being absent from the blog these past few weeks, but we all go through these phases & its always great to be getting back into the groove!

 

Thanks for sticking with me!