Boxville Towers

 

Christ, I've been working on this for the better part of a year 😶😶😶 I originally started this project to use in my Adepticon 2020 game, Upheaval on Tanjarax IV, which never happened. It's finally finished.

It's kind of a 3 way mashup of Wyloch's sector mechanicus walkways, the box making techniques of Sage Reynolds, and the hand-drawn style of Warhammer Townscape.

Most of the following pictures were taken before I applied the final spot colors, and they're far from comprehensive. I can take some better ones if there's any interest at all but otherwise I couldn't be arsed.

The boxes were constructed of heavy duty chipboard—not the grafix brand that Wyloch favors (since I despise amazon and refuse to order my supplies from there) but the Blick brand which you can order by the sheet for peanuts. I went with the 30-ply, which is very heavy duty indeed, but I think you could probably get by with the 14 ply and save your utility knife arm some strain.

For the first few boxes I tried painting the background washes on paper first, then gluing them as a veneer onto the finished box and illustrating over that. This turned out to be stupid difficult, so for the rest I just primed them white, sprayed a variety of slightly diluted liquitex inks onto them using a mouth atomizer, then illustrated directly on the primed chipboard, which worked way better.

I also made some extra support pillars and stairs, but because no design is ever perfect, they don't fit in the main box. Instead, I have a painted notecard box from the thrift store that I'm going to give the same treatment. It will also serve as the maintenance bay for one of the large vehicle objectives in the Tanjarax game, someday.

Lemme know what you think by delicately nesting your comment into the box provided below.

Orbital Shipyard II: Experiments in Press Molding

Here's the thing about scratch-building starship miniatures: It's difficult. And time-consuming. And fiddly.

(https://deepspacepilots.bandcamp.com/)

Sometimes you get frustrated with trying to build your model from the various pen bits, cigarette lighters, oddments, and thingummys, and you start effing around instead.

Then you wind up with weird abominations like this:

And then you get tantalized. You find more things to press into clay that's a little too stiff to roll out evenly. You try and figure ways around the problems of symmetry. 

You actually try and make a two part press mold work. These are the things you use:

This is what it looks like while the resin is curing:

This is what it looks like when you eff up pouring:

And this is what you get in the end, none of it fitting together or resembling anything usable as a miniature, but all of it promising the wonderous concretization of ideas that is the terminal point of my interest in this hobby:

So. Back to the dry-dock. But with the knowledge that the cosmos will some day yield the sweet, sweet juice of miniature space battles.

Playtesting at the Club: The Dogs and The Dust

I haven't said much about it here yet (out of fear of hexing myself) but for the past six months or so, I have been tinkering away at a set of scifi skirmish rules called The Dogs and the Dust. The project originally started because I wanted a game with the simplicity of Song of Blades and Heroes but with the feel of Necromunda. It has since absorbed a lot of other elements: the shock system from Nuclear Rennaisance; a simplified version of the attack/shoot/magic dice and Dreadskull systems from Skulldred; a radically altered version of the command dice system from Chain of Command.

It's still very early days, but nevertheless the guys at CSW sportingly agreed to help in some preliminary play tests. What follows are some pictures from the game.  

Above: the beginning of a game-long standoff between Pat's commander and Josh's motile brain-in-a-jar.

Like SoBH and Skulldred, TD&TD is meant to be completely customisable. As a result, this three way game saw everything from walking lobotomies and storm troopers to mechanized walkers.

Pat's scout gets the drop on some storm troopers with poison flechettes.

I was testing a way of randomly generating objectives. There were d6 objectives (we rolled 4) that players took turns placing before deployment. Players could deploy characters anywhere within 12" of an edge and 6" from any opponent. After deployment, each objective was individually determined to be worth d6 victory points, and then each one was scattered either 3", 6", 12", or stayed put. As a result, the action was all over the map from the very first turn.

Government and Corporate troops play laser tag among tire sculptures.

There was a lot of absurdity as we encountered some...ah...soft spots in the rules. It was also a lot slower than I expected, running about two hours for a three player game (which is probably twice what a game of SoBH runs), so it definitely needs streamlining. But by the same token, the guys picked up the basics really quickly and seemed to enjoy themselves. A huge learning experience, all told. Still a lot of work to do going forward...

A complex showdown under the Noonan day sun.

...but hopefully some day soon, I'll have a beta test version to share...

Chronicles of Yore: Outpost Raiding for Fun and Profit

Here follows a battle report from a while ago now of a couple games of Nuclear Renaissance that I played with fellow CSW member, Tim. He brought his Neo-Soviet future men, and I, of course, brought my Slagscape Conservation Collective mounted up in their brand new Mayhem Machine.

It was a cold, fluorescent dawn over the crossroads community Orehill, last outpost of the Inner Outlands after the Unthinkable Incident.

...reason being, they had a well protected community bunker. Word was that it packed full of Canned, Hyper-Enriched, De-hydrated Dietary Aid Rations—commonly known in the wastes as C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s

As luck would have it, both bands of Wasteoids came across the same rumor. Informants are scarce out here. The Neo-Soviets roared out of the alkali dust on choppers and a land vessel.

Meanwhile, on the other end of town, the Slags rolled in off the hard pan. Slow going, since the Professor couldn't fit in the truck, what with his lobotomised gorilla body.

The Neo-sovs didn't waste much time getting into the center of town to crack open that bunker full of C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s.

But then neither did the Slags. As soon as they realized they weren't the only ones interested in a few recommended monthly allotments of calcium, they revved up the old Mayhem Machine and gunned it into town, with Graf Moxie and Janx Moogin spittin' fire from the copula.

Even though they commanded a full field of fire on the bunker, the Slag's were unable to close and make off with any of the cheez (the obvious outlander slang for C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s).

Meanwhile, the Soviet bikers buzzed along the flank, past the food carts, emptied of their cheez in the final minutes before the Incident.

Graf Moxxie got gunned down as he tried to leave the safety of his rolling fortress to make a dash for the bunker.

But the Slag's gave as good as they get. Downtown Orehill quickly becomes lousy with wasted Wasteoids.

It was at this point that the Neo-Sovs withdrew, figuring this particular haul was not worth the havoc. As it turned out, they had another trick in mind.

We decided to play another game representing the Slag's attempt to transport their hard-won C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s down the main road leading out of Orehill. This time, though, the Mayhem Machine was so packed with rations that none of the collective could take up crew space.

And it just so happened that the pissed off Soviets were waiting in ambush.

It didn't take long for them to start pouring hot lead and hotter plasma into the Mayhem Machine's hood.

Nor to start springing on their adversaries from the side streets.

Unfortunately, they were not counting on the as-yet un-tested Gatling prowess of Professor Parcival-Blythe.

After a flurry of exploding gas tanks and a hail of bullets, the road was clear...

...while the erstwhile bushwhacker met with the business end of Sprightly Jiles's Stunbrella.

It was hard fought, but the Collective won its way out of Orehill with the cheez in hand. There was much toasting on the Slagscape that night. The Conservation Collective celebrated with a fun do.

Slagscape Conservation Collective: Finished

Just a bit of a picture dump today, as I got all the finished Slagscape Concervation Collective models out and photographed them together. Here's some music to go with it as well (if you like the band, then by all means check them out here. They're from my home town and they're awesome.) Enjoy!

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