Stormwall Magnetizing

One thing that seems to make storage and transport of huge figures easier to move is magnetizing.  I like to magnetize the waist and the feet at a minimum so the piece can be taken apart and stored.

Here's a pic of my StormWall in pieces that made him manageable to paint and store.

What you can't see is that the base is also magnetized.  When the Stormwall does get killed, I can put away the model in its foam and leave the base right on the table where it was destroyed.  No extra wreck marker needed and the template left in place LOOKS GOOD.  Here's a pic of the Stormwall and the base.

The real benefit is that the model now stores in a much smaller foam footprint that fits inside my existing case.  No need for a custom foam or additional foam outside my case special for the colossal.

May Prototypes

Made some progress with the new buildings.  Here's the street scene with just a few buildings.

The buildings need paint next but I wanted to work out the kinks with this prototype set.

Some more sign options and a few cross-hair markers for Bill.  In the background is a vending machine that got too close to my gray overspray and now has an unintentional design on the front.
 

Here are the bus stop and subway entrance pieces -- cut out but no add-ons attached.  These are just the prototypes -- after putting them together, it was clear that some design improvements were needed.  When I cut out the next set, I'll put the transparencies on them to look like plexiglass.

While cutting things out, I found that it's super simple to cut out 3", 4" and 5" rings for use in Warmachine.  Fifty cents of materials makes a useful game aid.

Here's the work / paint tray I cut out to make the rest of the artistic work go a little easier.  The intent is to make some that allows me to do some painting and then put the whole tray away easily.  The tray protects the kitchen table too.

Infinity Board Progress

I've been doing entirely too much "designing" and not enough "producing" or painting so I devoted some time while the gf was traveling to put together some of this stuff that I've been cutting out.

First is a small park with hedges, topiary and a statue.

 

 

From a different angle, you can see some baby blue shops on the left, a few street ads and three flower boxes.

 

Same view from a little higher up

 

Here's an overview of the street.  You can see the red long bridge at left and the new jersey barriers in the middle at top.

Here's a little closer view of the street level.  The tabletop is a gray street.  The curbs that are under the buildings are a different piece that can be picked up and moved.  The troops are walking on a crosswalk that's actually painted on the tabletop.  I may paint over them.  Crosswalks turn out to be equally well painted on a piece of plasticard that is easily movable where the tabletop paintjob isn't.

Here's what the street looks like from the point of view of the 1K Sons

 

Still a TON of work to do on this board.  Plenty of designs that haven'been cut out.  Hoping my next post is the Mag Lev train.

Terrain Storage

Someone asked what my system was for storing terrain.  This is a quick post for that.

First step - Folding Tables (courtesy of Cyric).  This allows for a gaming area to be converted for games and then back to a family area with only a little effort. 

Next - A rolling shelf unit holds all the books, game craft and terrain pieces.  To keep them dust free and protected, I put terrain in storage containers.

Storage containers - I generally put my terrain in labelled storage containers so I can get to it easily and keep it dirt/dust free.  It also makes it easy to move and store in the garage or basement.  Stackable, water resistant, $4 each on sale.

Build small - I rely heavily on scatter terrain and re-usable pieces between game systems.  You can change it around for infinite variety.

Flat terrain is preferred.  Where terrain goes vertical, it is usually nested and stackable.  It must fit in a storage container.
I gave away all my centerpiece terrain because it doesn't store easily in a 14" x 20" space.

Tabletops -- You can change your whole scene by changing from an open field to desert terrain to a water colored board.  Tabletops store flat against the wall.

A good storage system in the basement also helps keep you organized.

Terrain Weekend

Bryan and I took some time to paint up and assemble some of the buildings I had cut out with the laser.  I have to say that the painting took longer than expected.  The assembly on the kidney shaped building did too.

The results?  Here are some pics of the building and catwalks we assembled. 

Learned plenty on this weekend.  The prime and paint we used made the process of painting these buildings longer than it needed to be.  There were some problems with a few of the building segments that we found when we assembled them.  We found that very thin segments could be quite brittle.  There's a set of windows with a thin sill that are just waiting to be broken by a misplaced hand.  Also, the kidney shaped building was a fail.  Took a lot of time to design, cut and assemble and the finished product looks cheap and amateur.

The buildings we did assemble have the designed effect.  Cheap, simple, effective terrain that's strong, fully functional and storable.  Below are some pictures of those buildings in storage mode.  All the buildings are storable in russian doll mode.

The building below is all three buildings stored in one.

Next steps:  Lots of touch-ups yet to do on the paint.  Plenty of other building, painting and assembly to do.  I have an L-shaped building and a balcony building designed.  I'd also like to recut the roof of one building roof that's pretty sloppy.

Laser Cut Buildings

I've always has trouble with making buildings for wargames.  The problem is in the windows.  Drills make round holes in wood and mortising tools are not nearly as good as they promise in their ads.  I made a full Russian Tank factory once and had no trouble with the factory but the office windows were a debacle.  Drill, saw, drill, saw, saw, saw, drill -- took forever.

To get around the window problem, I tried cutting out a building wall from a piece of MDF but found that my tablesaw cut straight but couldn't cut square especially for small pieces.  Not a good tool for making miniature terrain.

After seeing all the recent startups using lasers to make buildings, I looked around and found one for rent.  First step was to design a throw-away building I call Building 0.  I have no intention of making any/many of these but it's here to build some skills around the drawing program and make the mistakes around fabricating.  Here's a cut-out of the roof of Building 0 and a staircase.

 

Once cut with lasers, the walls come out like this: 

 

It's a very simple setup -- 6"x6" building with 3" floors.  Here's what it looks like with just the base plus the roof section.  (I will apologize right now for some truly lousy photography)

The roof has a balcony around the top with cutouts to allow for walkways to be added.  I also made a middle floor that I can copy to be floor 2, 3, 4, etc.

I learned several things with this building. First and foremost -- the engraving I did on the outside of the building takes a LONG time to print. Plain old cuts take much less time. Granted they're less interesting but for quantity, I need to lose the engraving.  Also, the joinery I used presumed the MDF was uniformly 1/8" but I found it's a few fractions of a millimeter smaller in most cases.  The holes I cut for holding things together (mortices) need to get a little thinner.

Here's the simple building with a staircase going up the side to the second floor. 

After putting it in play, I found that my proportions were off. It looks good but the rise needs to be steeper and the stairs need to end higher.

 

I also built a 6" walk way to go between buildings.  I don't have a building for it to go to -- so it's just propped up against a middle floor for Building 0. 



The walkway's a little off in the ratios too -- the railing is too low and the walkway isn't very interesting overall. Needs some cutouts or a railing.

 

Here's what the building looks like with the base, the middle floor and the roof.

The next step is to print a few more middle floors and paint it up.  Look for another post in about a week.

Historic Wargaming

This is what I did this weekend:  tried out a set of self written American Civil War game rules.  Overall, not so bad.  Took 6 pieces of feedback to improve the rules.  Now I just need to get them arranged well and tighten up the verbiage.