So, besides my other hobby interests I am actually an avid camper. That is, I aspire to be when I have the time to get out. I have been busy as of late with recent additions to the family and a pandemic dissuading a lot of trips away from home in general, although I think camping is one of the more safer activities one can do despite the viral concerns on earth. Anyway.
I have been reading a lot about bushcraft and been practicing tying knots and reorganizing my camping supplies and cutting down on needless redundancies while getting a few other various bits of gear and just doing all the ‘pre-camping’ stuff despite not having a trip planned anytime soon.
I came across the concept of waxcloth, AKA tincloth, as a way to waterproof and toughen up clothing for inclement weather in the ‘olden days’ so to speak. Mostly for tarps and stuff, but also used on jackets, pants, gloves, etc. I was intrigued by the concept and began to graduate my study from the book to youtube and imagine all the bearded fellows I found. It was a great many.
So I have an old jacket which I really like, but its beat up, torn in a bunch of places, and missing buttons too.
Ol’ trusty. I took it off only to take this photo! Its 98% cotton
I love this jacket. But since it is so old and cruddy (Although beloved) I figured that it would be a good guinea pig for this process which appears quite simple, but also might render the jacket not really wearable in certain contexts. But from what I saw online it would toughen the fabric, make it fairly waterproof, and also prevent wear and tear. I figured why not, and if it became my ‘adventure jacket’ and I couldn’t wear it in public without looking ridiculous, so be it.
Cloth wax is hella expensive.
Maybe not ALL cloth wax, but most of it is pretty pricey and you get so little for what you are paying. The internet is on its hands and knees for otter wax and they seem to have the ‘high end clothing wax’ market cornered. I wonder who tricked the rich into throwing their money at them so seriously. I don’t have the time or interest to find out. They want like 40+ dollars for a bar of wax that is only about 65 grams. I mean, they want 100 dollars for a damn wooden stick to apply the wax. They got these fools begging on hands and knees for it. I don’t have 50 bucks for a tiny bar of wax.
Of course, amazon is there in the clutch to suggest to me cheap alternatives. THe Greenland Wax by Fjall Raven appears to be the same thing generally and you only have to pay about 16 bucks for 100 grams of it. Not terrible when your alternative is selling your soul for barely a palmful of otter’s blessing. Get real.
My research continued and while greenland wax was an option, I still figured I’d need more wax that that for my jacket and while 30 bucks isn’t horrendous for 200g of specially made cloth wax built for the job, everyone online was making their own for next to nothing.
Daddy got wax.
While doing a bit of shopping with the family, we went to the hobby super center which has some of the more obscure hobbies covered, in this case candlemaking, and picked up some wax. Almost all recipes call for a 1 to 1 mix of parafin wax and beeswax. 1KG of parafin was about 6 bucks and 500 G (1/2 a KG) of beeswax was about 15 dollars. 21 bucks for 1500 G of wax. Now scroll back up and see how much otter wax is charging for 60 grams. God they really know what they are doing. Good on them, but damn I will not be fooled to that extent. Also, raw beeswax pellets smell really nice. I hope my jacket smells that nice too, but not so nice it attracts creatures to consume me.
Anyway, onto the project in earnest – making cloth wax.
Making cloth wax pucks.
Wax in a jar!
So I didn’t want to use it all , but figured more then 100 grams would be needed so I settled on a mix of 150g of bees to 150g of parafin using an electric scale. And I put it in a spare jar I had since I didn’t want to wax up my pan since I use it for cooking and cleaning wax in great amounts of a tremendous pain in the ass. Most online dudes just melted it straight in a pot of some kind, but I wasn’t in a position to do that and improvised.
Melt that wax
So I set up my double boiler system by putting the jar in a pot of boiling water, preserving the pan for regular use and still getting the job done, albeit a little slower than I could have. It did the job no problem at all.
I’d say it took about 10 ~20 minutes
I used a kebab skewer to stir it, but could have used a chop stick or whatever else on hand. Just wanted to avoid using things I eat with regularly to save me clean up later.
It all melted down nicely and mixed well. Smelled great too. This is also the first time that I am using my new leather gloves! I used cheap gloves when doing more heavy duty camp stuff, but it was time and as I mentioned before, I was in a ‘pre-camp’ prep fever and this was one of the purchases made. Only 5 bucks! not bad. But that way I could pour the wax from the jar with more confidence than using pot holders or a damp towel.
Wax in
How does one make pucks of wax? Most dudes online used paper or plastic cups and I had a bunch of these little medium sized dixie cups which were perfect. I even put down a paper towel like an adult in case I spilled. I didn’t. The 300g of cloth wax ended up filled about 5 cups close to halfway which essentially makes 5 60 gram pucks for my personal use. Something that the Otter wax company would charge close to 200 dollars for, and greenland wax almost 50. Nobody is knocking them, but just pointing out the reality of what I am seeing here. I spent 20 and could make 15~20 pucks no problem and only need to get more beeswax when I run out of that. I digress. (I also am saving some serious money!)
Forbidden caramel
After a little while in my cold af house they cooled off enough that they sounded hard when tapped upon. So I sat down, cut along the natural seam of the cup and then pulled it off. Besides the bottoms of the cups, they came off very easily and the shape was perfect as well. At this stage I knew that I was in luck and had a potential serious success on my hands.
Please don’t look too long at my mangled thumbnail.
So besides the bottom bit, it came off clean. Look at how nicely it hardened and dried. I am slowly getting interested in pouring resin and this actually made me quite interested to keep up with preparing and studying for that endeavor. I had no trouble pulling the bottom part of the cup off when I took little tugs at it going in a circle and it came off easy.
*Insert Daft Punk’s around the world*
So I left a few cup bottoms on figuring it might be a nice base to hold onto or something. Maybe if I get the wax down to the bitter end having it attached to something will allow me to get those last extra grams out of it. Otherwise I will toss it back into the wax bag to melt again. Or perhaps just eat it. Yeah I ate some. Deal with it.
So the puck making process was a great success. Great value, and all in all only took about an hour not counting cooling time. I needed to be by the stove and stirring which sped that process up, but otherwise it could be done at a very very leisurely pace in my opinion.
The next phase will be waxing up the jacket, and exposing it to heat to seal it and combine the wax and cloth together to form what will become I am hoping my brand new jacket and an heirloom for times to come. I have read lots of good things and watched videos of people expressing the same as well. I am looking forward to it.
I actually managed to get a camping trip sorted out and because I am a magician with great ties to the element of fire, want to make sure that I am not using a hair dryer or press on iron or anything and that I am using proper camp fire to hopefully seal in some camp fire juices and smokey flavor into this jacket as well. That is actually in a week or two from posting this and I am very excited to see how she goes.
We shall see in the latter half of this post on making a tincloth jacket from scratch. Although the jacket is not made from scratch, I am making the wax and going through the process by scratch for the most part so don’t bother me with semantics.
Here is the before and after image with 8 or 9 years or so in between. The honorable Goen “Gwen” Kamekichi and “Zeno” Zenogame .
Believe it or not, this blog about terrain building and other hobby sundry does indeed expand to my love of aquariums. Believe it or not the original idea was to make a terrarium. I loved the idea of a terrarium and wanted a little waterfall action in there as well. Eventually the thought of the waterfall ending into a small pond… and then…maybe a fish or two inside as well? That line of thinking began the research of keeping aquariums and fish, when next thing I know I was doing research about keeping turtles! And then I got a pair of them! Mississippi Musk Turtles. Aquatic by nature and generally keep to a manageable smallish size, unlike their cousins the red-eared slider (Often sold dramatically cheaply for a couple bucks to the typically unprepared turtle owner-to-be) which end up being as large as a dinner plate or more.
I found that after a few months of keeping my turtles that the small tank I got for them wasn’t nearly good enough and the “filter” if you want to call it that, which came with them was not nearly up to the task. Turtles are known for being messy, musk turtles and other sand/silt/mud loving reptiles like them especially so and this was the case sooner rather than later. Filters are turned to molten turtle poo laden slag under the pressure of dealing with their needs and fail often.
I was employed, but not rich. I also have a penchant for DIY if you haven’t noticed and making a filter didn’t seem too difficult. I found a couple of excellent videos by Urau Joey, later (and currently still) to be known as the ‘King of DIY’ as far as youtube and aquarists are concerned. I liked his methods, point of view and attitude about the hobby, and spartan and utilitarian style. Get the job done, get it done well, and get it done cheaply if need be.
This is the original video I used as a basis for my overflow filter.
And this is the video I watched to make the 3-tier sump wet/dry filter below my tank.
I made the Overflow and Wet/Dry Filters!
This is the original plan that I drew up for my Overflow. Jenky and scribbled like runes of a mad one, but it worked well for a long time.
It was actually as easy as I figured it would be and once I finally got the thing working it worked like a dream for quite a while. And for only 20 ~ 30 bucks for both projects including a few extra bits I needed they lasted a hell of a long time. The Wet/dry in fact is still perfectly fine and just needs to be cleaned out, while the two overflow filters I made are not quite defunct, but like an old car or a happy days juke box, they need that special touch/kick/punch/wiggle/freak out at odd hours of the evening/morning/as soon as I get home in order to keep functioning.
Any and all errors are completely my own fault and I made a mistake with drilling the check valve on the overflow and long story short I had been dealing with an air leak in both pipes for ages. When I moved the tank from one room to the other, I just chucked one of the overflows into my closet because I didn’t want to trash it (The Power of Junk Compels me) and managed with a single filter which ran well enough on its own freeing up some space in the tank too.
Here is a picture of the remaining filter which has been working long and hard for close to 6 or 7 years now. You can see the unreasonable amount of silicone glue I plastered in an attempt to seal the leak around the check valve and on a good day it works like a charm.
My Aquarium has fallen into disrepair
I originally got turtles because they seemed so hands off and these days I only feed them once every two or three days and have some guppies in there so if they are feeling peckish, they can find their own meal. It has worked well and in general they have been getting along fine.
I ran the filter full time and gave it breaks when it lost pressure. Sometimes leaving the filter off for a few days at a time and then running it later to keep things fresh. It worked well enough and the turtles and fish don’t seem any worse for the few days when the filter is off as long as I keep the water fresh. But I realized (I always knew in all honesty) that I needed to do something about the filter. I had built the old one so long ago and had been wrestling with it on and off for years that I sort of had a feeling of helplessness in my situation and started to feel bad for my turtles and knew I needed to take action.
My tank isn’t in great condition and I stopped taking pictures of them since I was ashamed of my tank. They are glorious dinosauric creatures which roam the depths of their realm in glory and I was not doing them the justice that they deserved to say the least so I began my research again.
Apparently no less than a couple years after I had built his overflow, he made an updated version of it!
Hope sprang anew.
In my research I went right back to Urau Joey and went to check on the old video I watched ages ago and saw the new one. Improvements across the board! What a revelation! I had started writing for this blog and been cranking out terrain and painting up gangs for necromunda all while still putting in good time for the family (Since my hobby time is generally in the wee hours after all have slept or the moments of respite between this and that). So it appears my fire of motivation had been lit and just like back then, Joey had set me straight and given me a path to building a newer, better filter which seemed a lot more effective than the old one and didn’t need a check valve (Necessarily) either which appealed to me greatly since I am pretty sure that is where I went wrong with my first build.
I set out to draw the plans right away, and even dug up my old ones which saved me the time and trouble of re-measuring everything. It even gave me the dimensions of…the…old…filter… hmm…. perhaps this “junk”… could find new life??
New plans were much clearer and better written than the old one in my opinion. I surprise myself with how tight and compact I can do these things at times. Still much to improve upon, but if I could see it in my mind, had the tools and materials available, then into reality I shall summon it.
The new plans looked decent and I got to thinking I could potentially use my old overflow for the straight pipe sections saving me the hassle of having to buy another 2/3 meters of pipe (Since that is how they sell it at the local home center) which is a tremendous waste/will live in my closet for another 8 years (*Spoilers* I have plans for that old pipe and terrain builders will know where I am going with this)
Anyway, I did a few measurements and compared to the old filter plans it seemed like I wouldn’t need to buy ANY of the smaller diameter pipe since I could harvest most if not all of what I needed from the old filter. Imagine the joy of the Red Magician, whose love of junk and the thrown away shone through as they grinned in the starlight of infinity nodding their head knowingly. “This is why we keep all that junk, of course..”
Say that to my closet(s) of shame! But I digress, for that argument is skub at its finest (And worst really).
Behold the old shaman whose efforts were NEVER in vain.
Time to cut!
So I pulled out the ol’ saw and went to sawing! (After googling if I could actually reuse the elbows and t-junction fittings and found that you can go crazy and spend tons of time drilling the cemented (Melted together) pieces and MAYBE get a usable piece so I determined that buying new ones would be the way to go.)
So I sawed while the water filled up in the tub for my baby’s evening bath and made quick work of the job shearing the joints from the straight pipe. There was little to know junk in the pipes either which was contrary to my imagination during all the times they worked like garbage in the twilight of their effectiveness.
Behold my handiwork.
There are the pieces of reclaimed pipe lined up next to my 30 cm ruler, as well as the legendary section of remaining pipe from the time I built them three eras ago. For those following along at home, those black dot marks on my ruler remained from my foray into square measuring and drawing when I was making Necromunda tiles.
Needless to say, I had more than enough pipe to make my overflow, but now I needed to go shopping to get a few knick knacks to complete the job.
Building the Filter
New pipes purchased, old cut to size, and all laid out.
So after making a few purchases, amending the plan, and getting everything ready to go. I laid out all my parts and started to glue bits here and there. The only things that deviated from my plan thus far were that after a deep dive into the comments section of Joey’s video, it was recommended that I install a ball valve towards the outlet of the filter to ease the process of priming it and also as a means to cut noise and control the water flow rate.
The gluing process was largely painless since I had done it before and one thing that bears noting is that I didn’t glue EVERYTHING in place completely. I glued the parts I knew wouldn’t need to move at all (Elbow to elbow connections, a majority of the outlet pipe section), but left a few bits free to move since I needed to plan how I wanted it to hang in the tank and what angles and such to make it easy to work with. Having it in a huge straight line like this is not ideal for most people to I did a dry fitting, wiggled it back and forth how I wanted it in the end, and drew nice easy marks where I wanted the pipe sections to fit and hold.
I also used some silicone caulk I had and put that on the outside of EVERY connection since air leaks are the #1 killer of pipe pressure and I was extremely wary of this as it was my big problem with my old filters. I wasn’t taking any chances and also wanted this filter to work well, and ideally work for a long time. If my old filters managed to get the job done long enough with the slip shod attempt I put in back then, this should be a prim and proper job well done.
Holy Moment
Why don’t I have a hand drill or a reasonably sized bit for my dremel?
So I had glued it all together and it sat outside for about 16 hours or so. I was happy with it. Everything was glued, siliconed, and ready to go. I decided to not cement the ball valve since it was expensive (More than I thought! Almost 600 yen in Japan. Damn.) and at that point in the piping I didn’t expect air pressure to matter as much.
That evening while on a video chat with friends I was hand drilling the holes I marked out the large pipe which would be my inlet and function as a weir. (A Weir is a fancy way of saying a form of grating/means of blocking some water into getting into the pipe) The weir holes were kind of small and I kind of wish they were bigger and there were more of them, but that is something easily sorted at a later date when I get some decent drill bits for my dremel too. I got a blister torquing that hand drill, but it all worked out in the end so whatever. I was also a bit tipsy while doing it so it didn’t hurt.
Behold my new filter installed and running like a champ.
Prime Time Live
With the overflow installed and set up in my tank, lower exit pipe running down below to my sump set up, it was time for the moment of truth, priming the beast for the first time. My old filter was still in there for the time being to do some backup work and buy time for the new filter to kick in before the tank filled too high. Also I didn’t want to yank it out in case the new pump didn’t work.
Here is a photo of the comment on Joey’s video. Thank you for being concise and clear Lazy Peon.
So yeah I actually took a picture of a comment on a video so I could check it later. While in Joey’s video he shows the process nice and quick, as he is want to do since he’s gotta keep those video times down and keep them quick to remain interesting, not to mention he already showed the whole process in depth in a previous video, I needed some help. In fact a lot of people in the comments section had a hell of a time priming their pumps. Comments about placement of the T-valve, capping, uncapping, etc. were many. It was a hot day, and my turtle tank room has no AC and I was wet from playing in the tank, setting everything up, etc. so I was hot and sweating like a beast. Living hell. And I could not get the damn thing primed and was getting frustrated. All my time and efforts wasted, blood boiling, arms and hands smelling like stanky tank water because my old filter was crappy and I was not being a good turtle father and even my attempts at fixing the issue with a new filter would be in VAIN AND AHGUIRABLRFNLNEDfaefra. Was basically how things were looking.
So the baby starts crying, I clean up and help her out. Feed her and rock her and put her to bed. I cool off. (Baby zone gets A/C so it was a welcome respite) I was checking a few other videos on you tube and googling how to prime the overflow filter and found where I may have made a mistake.
How I got the Filter primed and working.
What I did, in order(almost identical as above) and primed my filter immediately.
1. Close exit of overflow (Ball Valve was crucial and not having it would have required me having three arms or something.) If I didn’t have the valve I would have tried to pinch it closed or maybe shove something into the outlet pipe which would have been a nightmare.
2. Fill the air intake pipe (Tallest one on the back with open top) with water. I needed a small funnel and just used tank water.
3. Cap the air intake pipe you just filled with water. (You will be wanting to check the water output or messing with other stuff, so make sure you have a proper cap instead of just putting your hand on there. Although I could probably use my hand/finger easy enough in the future now that my rig is set up and priming not a problem.
4. Open Outlet (AKA open the Ball valve)
5. Wait for a few minutes (This is where I was having my problem. Lazy Peon said ten seconds, Joey did it almost immediately in his video. (While other folks online would leave it going with the cap on for a few hours before attempting to remove it) I originally waited only a few seconds, or my finger would slip from the tube, or even when waiting for a 10~20 seconds it was no good.
– I switched to a proper cap to seal it after pouring the water in. Huge help. Hands were free and accessing the ball valve was easier without a finger sticking into a pipe at the same time.
– After I opened the valve, I let it run for a few minutes until the flow settled and seemed steady. I didn’t give it enough time before and it needed a bit more time I determined.
6. Slowly and gently remove the cap over the intake.
I took it off quickly once or twice and think I ‘startled’ the flow and it lost prime once, but when I took it off a little bit, to transition from the siphon filter (What this contraption is with the cap on) to the overflow filter (What it is with the cap off) in a more gentle fashion it worked like a charm. Decent suction, and if it weren’t for the crappy little holes I drilled, I would get far better surface skimming (And water flow), although my skim game is adequate for the time being and I am not too worried about it as is. As I removed the cap there was some gurgling as air and water sorted itself out, but the flow remained strong and my filter was working.
I should have read Lazy Peon’s comment more carefully, but I was in a frustrated mood, hot, and covered in tank water while worrying when my baby would wake up any moment. Needless to say, I was in a tense moment and under duress so I panicked a little bit, but after a cool down was able to get it working. What a relief.
Game Plan going forward
With my filtration situation under control, I am a happy camper. I played around with the ball valve and the water pump which returns the filtered water to the top tank to get a decent balance. Before my old filter would be ‘overloaded’ with the slightest trickle of water from the pump in the sump, but now I almost have it open at full blast.
Now that I have another old overflow filter laying around, I think I will cannibalize it and make another one of these filters. I have enough of the large pipe to make another and it was painless (Besides my ordeal trying to prime it). And if I get back to having two filters in the tank it will be crystal clear in no time at all. I plan on making the new one the main pipe for skimming duties and cut the weir appropriately for that.
Also, the sand in my tank has gotten pretty bad so I need to take it all out and get some new sand for my turts. I think the lack of proper filtration for so long took a toll on it and its time to get some new stuff. I also will consider perhaps getting some other newer piping from the outlet of the filters into my wet dry filter as well. Then work on decorations and such so my turts have some new digs to properly enjoy. I am sure that they are much happier now than they have been for a long time. Their temperament towards each other has not been the best and that is natural for musks at their age and I do not have the facilities to run two tanks at the size that they need so I separate them within the same tank using bricks and other tank structures to some success. I think with better environments they will be in a better mood and turn their aggression on each other less I am hoping.
I seek to reclaim my honor as a turtle owner and see this new filter as the beginning on that path. I hope that you enjoyed reading about my turtle tank build!
Basically all any game comes down to – pretend dudes fighting each other on tables of stuff.
The Hook
I got started as many, walking around the mall or hobby shop and seeing the displays or game boards or people playing with these miniatures, rolling dice, and generally (seemingly) having a grand ol time.
There was a hobby shop or two with some wargaming tables, but back then cardboard was my weapon of choice and the plastic was still far enough away.
It wasn’t until a friend and I caught a glimpse of a GW battle bunker, dedicated to the hobby and filled with people who were all too eager to show the ropes to the next generation. I played a small sample game and thanked them and went on my way.
Later on my friend picked up the starter set, with space marines and the ancient dark eldar and we got going from there. Long story short, I made the rounds through a great number of wargames and other table top hobby since then and I write about it in great detail in the article about my personal gaming history. I have ended up playing a few skirmish games mostly, while still have my 40k army and intend on playing a few crusade matches with my friend who plays as well.
Skirmish is King
10 gangers are all you need to play in essence.
I have landed at skirmish games and think it really is the best. Particularly Blood bowl and Necromunda are my current fancy and I like them both for similar reasons.
Low model count– This is a key factor because it means that someone can get into the hobby with very little initial financial investment if that is a throttle. Also, hobby-wise, it isn’t an unreasonable amount of models to build and paint either. And for people who have been through the grinder that is 40k batch painting, it is a breeze to knock out a blood bowl team or necromunda gang or kill team or the like. Check out my Escher Gang.
Consequences and Rewards– One of the big factors that put a serious nail in the coffin of 40k for me after my friends and I started playing blood bowl, was the fact that 40k battles were, for lack of a better term, meaningless. Of course its fun and rolling the dice and testing mettle and strategic wiles is great, but win or lose, both of you put the plastic back into the box and there is no lasting impact other than the damage to someone’s psyche and the raised heart rate over losing or how the winner/loser handled themselves if it wasn’t perfectly friendly and gracious.
With Blood bowl, the idea of a player leveling up was a new concept for us (My gaming group and I) on the table top outside of D&D. Going out of your way to create opportunities on the blood bowl pitch for a player to get ONE MORE star player point so you could roll an advancement instead of making a more obvious and perhaps otherwise strategic choice gives a player more to consider when making decisions and also makes those decisions matter more as well. Ultimately one of the biggest factors in determining whether ANY game is more or less complex and in some ways good or not is how many decisions you have to make and how much your decisions matter after making them.
Meaningful Choices and lasting impact.
These are some of the charts for temporary and permanent injuries as well as examples of means of improvement in blood bowl and necromunda
The above charts are some of my favorites to look at. (Yikes, I should just go back and play old editions of D&D with that attitude! – I have, and loved it.) Yeah, seeing charts with a little bit of random, but also some control as well is a nice balance for me and it makes improvement and advancement exciting, a little random but also more natural as well. Being in 100% control of ALL advancement has its place and makes for more control (And to some players more “fair”), but it can take away from the narrative at times and also take away from the agency of the fighters and models themselves. (Have I just assigned personal agency to the plastic models on the table? Yes I have. The dice speak for them and through them, this I know.)
When games have lasting impact both positive and negative, besides stats and injuries and improvement in game, also memories remain as well. I remember who caused a permanent injury to one of my star players in blood bowl and would go out of my way to put more blockers than necessary on them in order to return the favor when we played again. When a particularly lucky/deadly ganger of mine goes on a small rampage sending my enemies out of action, I have more then half a mind to play them a bit more conservative in case revenge is waiting for them around the corner.
The excitement and stakes rise dramatically as characters in game start to get stronger, have a higher value, and become more important to the team/gang. Also the fear lurking in the back of your mind and the anxiety that goes with it that at any moment all that could be taken away with careless play or a lucky dice roll… Those are the reasons that make these games so fun as a player.
That green fella is going to have to roll on no less than two charts to sort that out. Talk about IMPACT!
Expanding and Enhancing the Team/Gang/League
Now this is a gang firing on all cylinders. So much equipment and so many members…
Not just the players get stronger, but the teams/gangs/etc. get stronger as well. Often times there is an opportunity to hire on valuable support staff, purchase new equipment and weapons, and plenty more.
This is one of the coolest parts of skirmish games and Necromunda in particular just unleashes the floodgates of customization when you introduce the trading post into a campaign. It also allows gangs who don’t start with certain weapons or types of weapons to dip their toes into those waters, or to purchase armor, eq, and shielding to overcome many of those troubles. Blood bowl has cheer leaders, asst. coaches, apothecaries and any number of mercenary and star players which are similar in that respect.
This ability to tailor your team to exploit weakness in opponents and capitalize on strengths while minimizing your blind spots adds a nice level of customization that a lot of games don’t afford to players because the factions and their options are set. If you want to enjoy luxuries in those games you need to play the factions with those luxuries, as in you need to buy the plastic for those factions, etc. etc. all they want is our money, etc. Either way, the ability to customize, grow, and expand your team and gang is another way to have an impact on the game and also a way to recover from consequences as well.
The Narrative (And sidebar on Focusing on the Game and not the players.)
Impact and consequences lead to emergent elements of great narrative import, which is to say that a story unfolds as you play just because some crafty play and a few lucky dice end up leaving ‘lasting memories’ and now you form rivalries. Or if players in blood bowl score every game, they become undoubted champions of the league.
The narrative element of tabletop war gaming is indispensable. If you don’t have some kind of underlying story element, over arching campaign, or even any kind of interest in the game outside of its mechanics I think so much potential is lost. I don’t think people need to write pages and pages of fluff to justify the game, but playing skirmish games and not even naming your dudes is such a heart breaker to me. I’d sooner forgive unpainted minis with all proxy weapons (The first handful of times) before letting someone slide by without at least naming their gang/blood bowl team.
There is such a low bar for starting narration in any skirmish game and it immediately makes things so much more interesting. For example, instead of ‘Cultist 4 KO’s Ganger 2’ you can create something more memorable like ‘Slither tongue the cultist KO’s Rude Wanda the ganger with his blunderbuss’. It isn’t that much of a change, but now we add names, a little bit more flavor, and most likely a few more memories to Rude Wanda and Slither Tongue. If the lasting injuries on Wanda end up being particularly serious now we have a name to set to the figure who dealt the blow.
Side bar regarding this topic. (This ends up roller-coastering off the rails a bit so hang in there.)
I previously mentioned that all you were left with after a 40k game is a the feeling of psychological damage even in the best of situations. That is because (in mostly matched play) 40k is more of a battle between two players using the pieces as their method of mastering another person. You get the same in any war game to some extent, but the larger scale wargames turn into a wager of percentages and minimizing the random factor while maximizing what is possible within the extent of the rules.
Few if any people I know bother naming their armies, let alone each squad and only giving a name to their characters on occasion. I think this is important because when you are thinking more on the level of ‘Rude Wanda and Slither Tongue the Cultist’ you are thinking less about ‘Me and my opponent’. It is partly an immersion thing (Into the story and setting of the game) and also a means to ‘blame’ ‘lucky dice’ or ‘strong play’ on the models and the dice instead of cursing your opponent, another human being across from you.
Players are going to do their best in games typically and in the world of war gaming, people get mad when they lose or the dice suck for them or their opponent rolls uncharacteristically well. I knew I was getting tired of 40k when my opponents would comment on dice rolls in terms of statistical commentary instead of something like ‘Oh that is a good roll!’. “Hmm, 5 hits, that is a little under average for the 13 hit dice I rolled” with a furrowed brow indicating out loud that ‘this was contrary to expectations and the laws of statistics and if the game of numbers in their head (which they already won) doesn’t play out to the averages (Which they are planning for and deserve) that the game can be considered a throw away because ‘dice’. It can be treated that way statistical mind or not, but all I am saying is if that is how you are looking at the dice, go take a competitive math test or something because that is weak… BUT! I am digressing from my digression.
What I mean to say is by having named models and attributing luck, good play, cruel actions, etc. to the figures. and their predilections (Even though we ALL know that the players are controlling the plastic little toys) it is easier to separate what is happening in the game world from the real world. Nobody wants to be mad at their friend because they got their butt whooped in a game of pretend with rules. If we can ‘blame’ (I use the term blame here because there are emotions and feelings which must be directed somewhere) the models and figures and their personas in game instead of our friends, the whole gaming process goes much more smoothly in total from my experience and becomes something that we want to keep playing.
For me and my friends, on top of the time investment, plastic investment, and need for lots of space, terrain, tools, etc. the result would often end up with someone disappointed at how their models performed and are they blaming themselves? The other person? Luck of the dice? It changes every match, but the person who loses (or even wins in many cases) in games like those has a lot of unresolved feelings in many cases where their opponent didn’t have as good a time as them or vice versa. Gracious and friendly players aside (The exception rather than the rule), this is often the case.
If you know this fella, this is what happens when the cycle of anger and sadness falls into the hands of narrative creators. This marine isn’t angry about anything in-setting though, no sir. They are angry at themself.
The Models ‘have agency’ and they ‘make choices’ which keeps the cross hairs of rage off of our loved ones.
To summarize some of the narrative ideas I have talked about so far (And make a brazen attempt to keep this train on the tracks) would be: Naming gangs/players brings the game to life. Mechanics/decisions that have great Impact & Consequences help to create strong memories and begin to show emergent story elements like rivalries, fears, anxieties, and hopes. Expanding & Enhancing the team allows a player to grow and strengthen in a custom direction as well as mitigate consequences and weaknesses (often at a cost). By having this narrative Focus on the Game and not the Players we can keep (the sometimes) stronger negative emotions focused on the plastic and not the people, which can ultimately (In best case scenarios) fuel in-game motivation to settle the score instead of leaving nerds (Of which I am one!) with a cluster of unwieldy psychological emotions that they can’t readily deal with (Which I have in no short amount. You should know that if you have read this far!).
Giving the models ‘agency’ (Which is to say letting the dice have a say in things once and a while) adds a fair amount to the whole experience in a few ways. I listen to a few podcasts and one group plays blood bowl in a league where ALL skills are almost completely randomly chosen. (Choose a skill set, then pick 6 of the available skills and roll off for which one you get) Otherwise people all just pick the “best” skills every time and you see a lot of repeat gameplay, and then start counting dice odds since that becomes the only choice you have in the hobby since the ‘meta’ has determined the ‘right’ choices to make…
When games have mechanics to partially randomize leveling up and in particular how skills are gained, it makes characters become unique instantly. Even if the skill isn’t the ‘best’ choice, it is a new tool available and with that tool in (proverbial) hand, you start to look at ways to solve problems or take advantage of that. This creates emergent strategy and game play. Normally a character can’t climb well, but after rolling a skill up and getting a skill removing all penalties from climbing, now you are thinking about the terrain and play area with a brand new set of eyes. This is one of the best aspects of random skill ups.
Even if the skill up is less than ideal, or nearly useless even when putting them into situations to put their new skills to use, at the very least you have a new lease on life through them and they can now perform very risky gambits and gamble their lives more often. Why? Because they need to die, and I need to rehire a new champion who has a half decent skill! As a (sinister, but efficient) blood bowl halfling coach once said, “Halflings who level up get placed on the line of scrimmage and things work themselves out soon enough.” This maxim being funny because halfling teams lean heavily on keeping team value low, and skilling up even once almost doubles their value, so they are placed DIRECTLY in the way of danger until they ‘retire’ the big permanent ‘retirement’ so to speak. This concept can apply to other games as well if the ‘fun and random’ skill ups get a bit too fun and random for all but the true narrative players who subsist on IV drips of pure immersion to get by. I don’t blame them. I like winning and playing a hard game, and I also like random interesting skills and abilities on characters with narrative and story undertones, but if your physically weak fighter with the sniper rifle gets skills which provoke enemies to attack them and gain bonuses to morale checks or something, then something might need to be done there.
Losers Win
Neither of you is the dude with the scales. Those are the dice offering scant justice between each player. You get very little, even when you think you have won.
Maybe not in the case above with the terrible skill ups, but one of the most important parts of why skirmish games that I am describing above are great are for the plain and simple reason that losers win. As in nobody loses, completely, more often than not.
How can this be? Typically these games offer rewards, bonuses, and advantages to teams who are in a weaker position by a large margin and even when they lose, everyone gets some kind of reward.
Munda offers bonus tactics cards (One shot ‘gotcha’ style abilities to gain an edge) per 100 credits of difference between the two gang’s ratings. Even more power cards for every 200 cr of difference. I suppose this represents the desperate tactics and moves that a gang feels they need to go through when they are so out matched and against it. Blood bowl offers the inducement system essentially giving the ‘underdog’ an equivalent amount of spending money to bring the two team values into equilibrium to use how they wish before the match. In both cases, teams which are clearly at a disadvantage get a little bit of a boost to keep them in the fight, or at the very least, give them more of a chance to stab back before they are ultimately pummeled.
In regards to post loss, and thanks to the XP systems and scaling objectives or winnings, even the losing team gains something from the loss. The few places things went right earn their players XP, potentially skilling them up to bring the pain to bear in the future. Otherwise, most missions offer an amount of credits, reputation, experience for participation even if you have lost. Every fighter in a mission in necromunda gains an xp for going on the mission. Every Blood bowl team gains a minimum of 10k gold pieces at the end of the match.
It may not be much, but instead of walking away from the table with nothing to show for it, maybe a few fun memories of the battle perhaps, Each player’s team/gang gains an amount of experience, reward, and some form of progress one way or another. Losses are still steps forward, although they are smaller compared to if they had won, they are still steps forward. In the previous example, maybe, MAYBE if you and people like you all lose enough then the people who write the rules of the game will throw you a points reduction or perhaps finally nerf the ‘broken’ offending models.
This is huge, and is one of the main factors that prevents feel bads from poisoning what was supposed to be a good time with a like minded hobby enthusiast. Even though winners obviously win and gain the most, losers are not just left broken and beaten. They get a little something for their trouble, and may have left a few marks on their enemy as well sending key warriors/players into the recovery box giving them a better shot next time.
The Future and the Crusade
It is almost a war of religious proportions, and a fight over a ‘bible’ of sorts…
The new edition of 40k (‘#new40k, 9th edition, 8.5, what have you) is on the horizon and when I saw the previews I got excited! Believe it or not, despite how much I rag on 40k, I still enjoy it very much. It is a time sink and a slog and players I can stomach playing have gotten fewer and fewer around me so opportunities have grown fewer as well, but I still enjoy the game. And I also love to read rule books and see how things are changing since I had mentally checked out of 8th when the rules for my dudes were split across so many books and I didn’t have the will to hunt them all down, matome them, and print out my own ‘codex supplement’ to make them easy to access. So I am excited by all the news. And in particular the idea behind the ‘crusade’ system.
GW seems to have gotten the memo and realizes that there are people out there who want something more than matched play and refuse to participate in the main group events because matched play draws out some of the worst of the fanbase and you only need to play against rules lawyers and people who play to win at all costs a few times to have a bad taste in your mouth and not feel the desire to give them another chance. That is kind of my situation. I have looked over the old ‘narrative’ ‘campaign’ rules stuff that they had for the last few editions, but it never seemed fleshed out and always shunted in as a pittance.
Any form of narrative campaign offering thus far.
Crusade looks good. Starting with smaller patrol-sized armies and limited choices for unit composition, then earning resources to gain more units, more choices, and hopefully have more fun. The requisition point system which seems to be in place to ‘buy’ units each battle, and to spend on unit upgrades seems excellent.
Treating each unit like one would treat a single ganger or player in munda and blood bowl is a great way to do it. They gain scars, weakening them after particularly bad losses and gain accolades and abilities for their accomplishments and success on the field of battle.
I only saw what GW has been sharing on their community site and stole a ‘tiny’ glance at the leaks, but I like what I am seeing and my friend and I are looking forward to getting a few games in and try out the new crusade system.
A lot of what is being implemented falls right in line with a lot of the things that I think is good in tabletop and wargaming. That is a very encouraging thought! I appreciate the ability to choose and ‘control’ the game, but I also like the randomness of the dice. I like the concept and implications of luck, both good and bad for a number of reasons you can listen to my podcast to hear about. The ability to control the game in certain aspects is the same as making choices in those games. The choices we make in games shape the direction and also reflect on us as players, our skills, and ability to read and react to situations. But having dice decide the fate of fighters and characters in game as well as how they grow and suffer, that is the exciting part which is another fun and interesting surprise that needs to be considered when making further decisions, and also an impetus that helps to guide the narrative as players attempt to make sense of why such things would even be possible.
I have been making pretty good progress on the girls the last week or two. After priming them I already began laying down some base colors and will end this article with washing them. (*Spoilers* Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil are essentially deities in my life these days and gave me hope for this project to not end in failure and disappoinment.)
So after doing some fun kitbashing and getting the girls in decent shape, it was time to bring some life to the models. I knew that I wanted Orange to be the main color for them. I LOVE the yellow that GW did and think that the amount of yellow in the Escher default color scheme is amazing. I like the wild and crazy hair they all have and the whole attitude that Escher seems to embody as a gang. I also like women very much. I also like super sexy women too. I actually don’t mind at all if they have electrified whips or shoot poison needles and boiling plasma or fire shotguns filled with acid either. (Can you see why I love dark Eldar/drukhari so much?) Also, Escher are agile, have insane initiative meaning movement and board traversal almost goes without saying.
Reading over the gangs as I was gearing to get into munda, I knew they were the gang for me in both aesthetic and playstyle.
Color Scheming
Much of the first layer is on at this stage. These are my champions and my leader.
So as I was saying I wanted Orange to be the main color. I also saw they are all wearing these epic thigh high boots which, while a bit sexist as almost all GW female minis are, were super sexy and I loved them and saw them as bright red leather. To keep with the theme of orange, I planned on highlighting them up to a bright red which essentially borders on orange anyway so it should mesh well enough and the bright reds would be a great contrast to the dirty nasty gritty bases I plan on giving them too.
I have a terrible habit of going CRAZY with metallics and all of my models end up covered in a smorgasborg of gun metal, silver, bronze, and golds. I can’t seem to help it and I want to have less of that this time around because these are supposed to be grungy underhive gangers, not some fancy precious metal toting parade or something. So I was sparing where possible and only used the grungy colors.
Behold one of the best metallic paints of all time from GW
I love tin bitz. It is like pre-dirtied-up bronze that can be dry brushed with a light gold and look so nasty and grungy and shiny at the same time its excellent.
That and a little gunmetal here and there, primarily on the guns. In the images
My precious Juves & Juves to be.
You can see at the stage above I left off color in a few key spots. Those are the places I intend on painting dark grey and black leather or metallics. I thought the warmer color of tin bitz would match well with the oranges and reds I wanted to be main on them. I also put down some tan/raw leather colors where I want to paint tin bitz to remind me later on, or where on the hanging cloth which I want to try and do up in animal print.
All kinds of flavors in the Neon Urge (My Escher Gang)
So besides the clothing and such, Of course the skin and hair as well. I have a color coding system for the hair, Green for Juves (Since they are ‘green’ so to speak), Blonde for the gangers (I am going to do some highlights and wayward strands of various colors to give a little personality and also show that they are becoming unique in their own right), and the leader and two champs in Purple, red, and blue respectively. My close combat red hot wild champ has red hair and my more cool needle rifle assassin has the blue hair. Leader has purple blending a bit of both.
Also, each of my leadership has a different flesh tone as well. This is actually kind of a blind spot in my painting skill set, but painting “natural” fleshtones is actually quite tricky for me. I have painted TONS of red fleshed aliens and khornate daemons and such, I have painted the deathly pale whitish-blue and whitish-purple flesh of vampires and dark elves, but when it comes to natural browns, reds, tans, and paler flesh tones I am a bit of a mess. So this project is going to have a variety of flesh tones as well. I want to take some into more darker browns and others into more reddish orange tones. I have a few which I plan to have paler flesh, but with different undercoats with mixes of yellows to give some variety. Besides the application in being able to practice painting different styles, I also get a much more varied background in my gang which will add tons more personality I think.
A couple more shots with some of the tin bitz laid down, but many more details ignored at this stage.
What time is it? Time to get a wash!
Juves looking tasty after a little wash.
I will let that joke wash over you for a bit while you debate closing the browser tab.
So I finally got to the stage I look forward to as soon as I am getting tired of going over the details – applying a wash. I used GW’s agrax earthshade, AKA brown wash on the whole model. I go pretty heavy on the wash in the early stages of the model as a means to show myself where I need to highlight the model. Also, the underhive is gross and smelly and filled with pollution and the grime of tens of thousands of years so going heavy on agrax felt more than acceptable. Finally, because I had primed over an old paint job, I needed the wash to draw attention to the parts on the model which weren’t as detailed as they were since I turned them into melty girls.
Thank goodness, because after the wash there was still a healthy amount of detail remaining. The faces are pretty much done for I think so I will need to get creative there, but most details were still quite discernible and some of the poorly glued connections actually are hidden well enough since they have been shaded.
Look at me all fancy busting out a paper towel all professional-like for this photo.
They are still wet with shade at this point, But the amount of intact detail was nice. The tin bitz (Most notably on the boots, kneepads, and whatever those side packs on their belts are. They look a bit like chinese lanterns and some kind of walky talky or something. I am presuming they are for communication, like mini-vox casters or some kind of support system. It is easy to forget that although this is the far future and a LOT of the necromunda brand has flavors of cyberpunk, it also has a lot of flavors of post apocalyptic as well so while they can get bionic implants and stuff, we aren’t talking about badass altered carbon-level neurocham stuff or like microchip HUDs in an eye ball, we are talking more like “somehow we managed to pray hard enough to the machine spirit to get approval after duct taping freshly gored eyeball connector bits to some fiberglass wiring and a go-pro then popped a 9 volt battery in there good luck killing Goliaths buddy”
Which is a long roundabout way of saying it probably is a walky talky, but makes me want to know what it was intended to be. a few minutes of light googling has failed me so far so if you know let me know.
Further research found this very clear picture of the bit in question.
Apparently I can’t drop this and googled another 10 more minutes. It appears that all the models I have have these, but they aren’t the only accesories that Escher get. They aren’t grenades, knives, and I think they are more than trinkets. I am ammending my guess from vox caster, to vox caster or perhaps the paired bit to a respirator or similar life support apparatus given the tank-like container which runs through what looks like some kind of portable analog panel/display showing pressure, quality, etc perhaps. Anyway. Lore behind obscure accessory bits aside, where was I?
One of the better shots post-wash.
Here are the gangers. Washing realy does them good and enriches the skin tone on all of them. The shotguns and autoguns in particular look super nice and dirty. When I get them with nuln oil later on they will be in great shape. I still have plenty of stomache and arm definition which will be great for highlighting. The red boots really look like leather as well after the wash. Not to mention the orange details which looked like ruined macaroni previously now really pop and look like garments. I really appreciate these models since the wash settles exactly where it needs to with only a little bit of encouragement from my brush. I particularly like the pairing of tin bitz and red on the boots. I was happy with that choice after giving them a wash.
Where do we go from here?
Next steps… yeah I need to base my minis. As I was painting them I realized slowly that I still needed to put some basing goodness on them so that is in the cards. I figured I am going to do the shoes and legs up a bit more so even if I base them know and undercoat the base I will be in good shape and not ruin the model too badly if I get messy.
Highlights. I don’t think I am going to go TOO crazy with them since I have ten more of the girls waiting in the wings to be built and painted from scratch… So I want to brighten up all the reds, oranges, flesh tones, and do some golds and silvers on the tin bits and gun metal here and there.
Details. I plan on having fun with hazard stripes here and there, particularly on my leader’s chain sword. I also need to figure out how to paint animal print and make those cloths look a bit less like dish rags and more like tiger and cheetah furs. Need to bring the hair to life and add a bit more flair to give them some more personality. Also going to give some more love to the weapons, maybe do some weathering here and there. Finally small details like the feathers and gems here and there around the models will get some love too. Blood for the blood god is perfect for making ruby-like red gems which sparkle. I love that paint so much its obscene.
Future is looking bright for the Neon Urge! Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think that bit is!
My friends and I had just finished up our most recent (And first ever!) Blood bowl season since meeting up had become more and more tricky for various reasons and we were looking for something to play. Sick of 40k and the (not nearly necromundian, but still unreasonable) amount of books with relevant rules spread across them, FAQs, Errata, new material, and a general feeling that a single game was a slog to get through we decided to play skirmish games. Check out the post on ‘What is good?’ when I eventually write it about why. But we played blood bowl and loved it and will keep up with that, but wanted the thrill of a new game and ‘Munda came a’ callin’.
The pandemic of 2020 was in full swing and there was a lot of free time to be had behind a computer so I poured over the rules and was intrigued by the concept of the two (main) terrain distinctions of Zone Mortalis (ZM) and Sector Mechanicus (SM). Essentially 2D tunnel fighting vs. 40K-style open 3d terrain. I loved the idea and after some further research and googling I learned the basics of how ZM worked while the desire to build a cheap set of walls and doors began to mount deep within my soul. And my soul would have its day.
Zone Mortalis Understanding
So at a glance, ZM was the “2D” style of terrain. It reminded me heavily of D&D 3.5’s Miniatures combat or 4th edition D&D grid based combat with how cover worked, but mixed with classic 40K sensibilities. I was (And still am) in love with the idea of a model falling off a railing, hitting the ground, falling again, and again…. but for jumping into a brand new game I thought the sheer amount of movement rules and worries about falling, jumping, climbing, etc. was a bit too much for a first run so the 2-D idea appealed to me.
I like the idea of building a battlefield being part of the game as well, and being able to go a tile at a time between you and your opponent made for some fun and strategic ways to play even before models were set up which also made for some fun (While still being a part of the structured rules with doors, obstacles, loot casket set up, etc.).
After a few games I realized that the ZM style tunnel fighting was brutal af and I play Escher (Essentially speedy elf types with poison) and my buddy plays Goliaths (Ork types which like the choppy smashy) and the close quarters nature of it certainly didn’t seem to do me any favors, but also understanding slowly dawned on me regarding one of the biggest mysteries of my research and when I felt was inherently paradoxical in what the rules said and what was being released by our lords and masters GW.
3D TERRAIN? IN MY ZONE MORTALIS? It’s more likely that you may think…
Indeed. A LOT of the ‘modern’ ZM set ups showed stairways and catwalks despite being what I assumed was a (for all intents and purposes) 2-D environment. Enter the question machine gun of doubt and worry:
-Which walls can you or can’t you climb on? -If we are in a large underground tunnel, are the stair systems in some kind of ‘open’ area? -Is line of sight legit from these raised spots to other more ‘2-D style’ parts of the dungeon (battlefield)? -Isn’t this just sector mechanicus but you’re selling plastic 1′ squares which undermine the principle behind not premeasuring shooting? -WHY CAN’T I UNDERSTAND CELSIUS -OR- FAHRENHEIT ANYMORE AFTER LEAVING THE STATES? …. and many many more.
In Japan, it costs 9,400 yen (about 100 bucks) for FOUR of these delicious tiles. Most if not all missions ask for 6+.I get it, but… come on.
Well, I needed to figure out a way to rationalize all of this in my head and understand why this design choice had been chosen. I came up with this:
ZM as a 2D battlefield is brutal, exciting, and often close quarters mayhem with fun interactions with doors and things like interesting concepts such as battlefield set up regarding tiles, walls, etc. which is (in my opinion) more meaningful than the sector mechanicus style set up.
Also, 2D gaming, while intense, is grounds for more shooty agile gangs to become vulnerable since there is so much terrain blocking LoS, and engagement and close combat are seemingly inevitable if you intent on playing to the mission and there happen to be giant meat necks between you and the loot. This seems like a purposeful design choice, but is also a brutal brutal punishment if you only have one or two opponents and one of them uses templates exclusively, and one of them has CC ability that turns my poor darlings into corpse starch without a second though because damn it I can’t stop rolling 6X on a D66, but I still love this game!
Adding the 3-D elements (Stairs, platforms) to ZM seems to give it a lot more interesting choices since climbing, catwalks, and falling are super fun and integral parts of the game which ZM played ‘vanilla’ just lacks and that is a waste of fun potential. It also allows more agile teams and shooty teams to get their sniper shots and stay out of combat for a LITTLE while longer as well as take advantage of climbing and jumping too to attempt to reach objectives. Also, it is still the fun tile building set up and door/objective placement which allows for cool interactions such as full tile deployments, and cool missions like ‘Escape the Pit’ which remove a tile from the board at a time as the underhive crumbles plummeting into the abyss. Not to mention the close combat and brutal close quarters nature of ZM battles is still there when forces converge along with all the benefits it always had, but a little less punishing than before.
ZM having 3D elements was actually a good idea I felt. It preserves the idea of of Zone Mortalis enough, while including a great many of the fun and exciting rules that make the random and excessive madness of the ‘Munda fun. It also makes missions on ZM tiles a little more “fair” to gangs who don’t care much for the idea that at any moment a gang of renderizing axeswould be swooping around the corner or between me and the objective and the only option felt like eating the axes one juve at a time. But I still have concerns and questions…
That is a ‘renderizer’ serrated axe. It has +2 S, -1AP, 2D, and turns flesh wounds on injury dice into serious injuries on a D6 roll beating the victims toughness. Also, Teun135 ( http://teun135miniaturewargaming.blogspot.com) happily mentions killing Escher’s with themas well. My point is not only illustrated by, but beautifully painted in plentiful amounts of blood for the blood god on the end of that weapon.
Further Questions & Concerns
So I like ZM, and think the 3D additions aren’t bad and add in a beneficial way to the game play and experience. I still have trouble, or rather, would like input and ideas about the following:
Q: With 3D terrain features, and (intended) 2D terrain features, how do you reconcile line of sight over walls?
Idea: I suppose creating a few open ‘arena’ sections of the ZM map where line of sight can be allowed and other areas where it is ‘covered’ or not visible from above may be a possibility.
Q: Or the above when climbing and moving on catwalks essentially ignoring doors, etc?
Idea: As for climbing, perhaps limiting vertical movement to only ladders and stairs and using catwalks. Perhaps(Undoubtedly) I just messed up when we were working with
So I am not sure what to do with the above, but if there are explicit rulings on these facts or perhaps you have a house rule or idea on how to interpret these situations I am all ears.
Enough ranting. Show us the terrain build!
Behold the glory and terrible fury of styrofoam.
So that ‘little’ musing I wrote above was actually supposed to be a lead in to the fact that I was excited to play necromunda and liked ZM and decided that I wanted to cut down on my unreasonable foam supply and make walls, pillars, and door sections for a ZM board using my D&D tiles as a base.
So I did some googling and saw what was on offer online and how other people did it. MDF is very popular, and I eventually came up with the following dimensions (Which I didn’t end up following through with exactly since I am lazy wanted to stretch my foam supply.)
Here is an excerpt from my research notes including delicious details:
So! I opened up the foam closet, grabbed a bunch of pieces roughly the thickness I wanted, and used that as my main component.
That thickness was the base for the doors, and twice that became the thickness for my walls. For the pillars, I used a combination of ‘regular thickness’ foam and a sheet of ‘thicker’ foam to make a proper cube. Long story short, use what is on hand and if you care, make the pillars thicker than the walls. All that matters is the terrain is made, the overwhelming supply is cut back slightly, and you can get the job done.
I measured lengths in 2″ (Single doors and wall segments) and 4″ (Double doors and double wall lengths.) While the walls themselves are a bit thinner than 2″, the ‘pillars’ are closer to 2″ squares thanks to the thicker foam. Happy accident.
Measure and Cut When my original (grandiose) plan and actual materials finally met, I was able to begin the process of making the actual terrain. I actually made a small plan on paper so I logically knew what I wanted to do ahead of time. Breaking down monotonous projects like this one into a few basic steps helps me get into factory mode and crush through it. Check out the plan:
Wow! I even wrote the actual measurements for what I did. Also, I had much higher hopes for my efforts than what I actually put out haha.
So I got to task, and measured out tons of squares and put dots on the ones that I deemed worthy of being called a ‘basic shape’, while the rest would end up in the plastic trash or perhaps used as terrain elsewhere. (*Spoiler alert, I recently cleaned my hobby area and finally allowed myself to throw away the cut ends and remains of styrofoam, etc. I HAD to hold on to for close to who knows how many years. Don’t worry, I still have far more (nice) styrofoam than anyone should own.)
So! I measured, and cut the foam with a straight edge in a sea of ear slitting squeaks in the darkness of the night while my family slept. I then used caulk to stick them together into the shapes I wanted. If I had gotten by foam cutter from WISH sooner than I had, I may have cleaned up the rougher edges. But I did not, so I did not. I used a slicer though and pretty much made them nice.
Mesh and Spackle, AKA Hell.
Spackle everrywhere.
The process of attaching the mesh (A cheap plastic screen used for screen doors from the daiso for 200 yen) which I cut down to size turned out to be annoying to work with. I had it in my mind I would cut some nice lengths, and spackle up the broad sides and top and just lay three sides of the walls in one shot. This was not so because the screen didn’t want to cooperate and had been rolled up for a long time. So I cut it into smaller strips and did a wall facing at a time. This part of the project took a LONG time and I couldn’t do it in short bursts because how messy and intensive it was. I had doubts, friends, but we pressed through..
After they were all spackled, and the mesh was laid on them using the spackle as glue, they dried hard. I trimmed the overhanging bits of mesh into that popcorn bucket which I intend to use for scatter terrain and rubble at the base of other features later on. (*Spoiler alert, I recently took out all the large peices and cut the rest down into a nice mulch of mesh, foam leavings, plaster bits, and various junk I toss in there with the intent of making into underhive detritus. I am excited to work with it in the near future after I finish painting my gang.)
With the 3 of the 5 faces I intended to spackle covered and meshed, I determined that I wasn’t going to mesh cover the sides where walls were intended to connect. Because f dealing with more mesh after all that. I was fairly satisfied after seeing the bunch of them dried, looking nice, and ready for the final build touches.
Final touches before paint.
Thank you to butter and soap boxes everywhere.
At this stage I was happy with them, but wanted a little something to help unify their shapes and my recent forays into youtube and such had me thinking that using this thin card was going to be the way. And it was.
I didn’t bother measuring TOO severely, but cut roughly identical long strips of the card, and then cut those long strips into tons of 2″ mini strips which then became the subject of my next monotonous task. But white glue and tons of time later, and a little creativity with the doors I managed to finish the task. I was quite happy with them at this stage. I cut off the extra bits when they were too long and put them into the bucket of future hive detritus where they shall masquerade as flakes of metal plating.
In particular this was the first time I really worked with this material in this way and as far as embossments and such are concerned, it turns out pretty nice and adds a nice level of depth to what would otherwise be a fairly mundane looking surface. I like the technique and will be using it more in the future as well.
Spray and Pray
So I sprayed them with cheap dollar store brown which I thought had a reddish quality to it. I imagined it like gross muddy brick-like stone. Then I (poorly) made a (crappy) wash from black paint, water, and some dish soap since I saw something like that from Lukes APS on youtube. He is a champion and one of the greats in our hobby for sure. I didn’t follow the recipe exactly and should have used ink instead of black paint. I had the ink too, but forgot about it and just said ‘ahh paint will be fine.’ It wasn’t I wanted more grunge and nastiness… and it didn’t come through like I was hoping.
I was kind of upset, but it still looked decent and I figured it would be dry brushed over anyway. After the brown spray, I added some dripping dark greenish ooze like there was mold or some kind of waste leaking along the walls. In the parts of the wall segments that looked particularly crappy or the mesh refused to cooperate, I assumed that the waste and walls were heavily damaged and went heavier there.
After that I dry brushed the whole thing with a silver color and the effect of the bricks which has a sheeting of mesh metal over them was complete. I thought it looked pretty awesome! Still a bit too much silver for my liking, but I have a game plan going forward. But for the time being I was pretty much done with them.
Poster time baby!
When I first saw the nice application of those tiny posters on terrain pieces I loved it. Blown away. Like the tile being slid aside in my ZM tile project or well placed bits, when I see something like that which really convinces the eyes and mind to recognize the scene taking place in the proper scale, it is tremendous. And I had finally gotten a proper paper printer and went to town. Scoured google, facebook, and all manner of forums for a small supply of posters which are plentifully available. Most of them print well enough and it was an experiment all the same.
The open space on the walls needed something to break up the monotony and the posters proved to be an excellent choice. I went for a variety of patterns and even made some look all chewed up with holes and rips and such while I pasted them on. I used a mix of white glue and water and did a coating where I wanted the poster. Placed the poster, then did a coating on the top. I messed around with the poster using my fingers and the brush to damage them. The glue holds nicely and they look great. My favorite part of the walls by far.
You can see how my walls and pillars look when on a ZM style tile as well as set up to be used while playing a game. They look pretty good I think, but they aren’t complete by a long shot. But I don’t think I will take to time to “finish” them until the need arises or the mood strikes.
Future Game Plan / Concerns
So the project is pretty much finished, but they need a little more love to be better than decent. So here is the game plan going forward. If you have any other ideas what could take these tiles to the next level, by all means!
Finish painting the bottom borders. The card at the bottom of the walls forming the border is still brown card. Lazy, but I thought they looked decent enough and I didn’t want to bother. I did a few testers with a light grey and didn’t care for it. But, after doing my ZM tiles, I found another paint I like and will do the borders in a metallic black color which will match the tiles well enough and hopefully add to immersion.
Getting better grungy look with black wash. After the drybrush of silver, they look super bright and could be a lot nastier. My original wash failed, but there is still time to put wash on them again. I think I will be adding more details and my friend is going to do some spray paint looks on the tiles as well. One thing missing from the walls is some free hand spray paint so I want to add more of that. It will certainly take it to the next level.
Emphasize the yucky green. At this stage, the green is more of an afterthought and one person online thought it was a camo pattern. I don’t take it as an insult since camo patterned walls aren’t a bad look at all, but you know. So I think I am going to do a mid tone green in the central parts of the dark green which is drybrushed over with silver to make it feel like its oozing through the grate and slowly sliming down the walls. Maybe even get crazy and do some bright green water effects on the parts near the bottom of those dripping places to really sell it.
And that is that.
I hope that you enjoyed the small musing about ZM tiles and how to use them, and if you have any insight on ruling for line of sight / travel and movement between the more 2D and 3D elements I would be happy to hear about what you think.
I also hope that my simple build for the ZM walls and barriers was slightly inspiring too. I am happy with them and put them into use for almost every game I have played one way or another so far.
The Red Magician's Junk 