Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Hermes Serpent

I'd seal the printed out texture sheets with a matt varnish (WalMart did very cheap cans in Virginia) to make sure it stayed in good condition.

Nigel

Agreed! I have a laminator, but I don't think I can get matt finish sheets for it. Varnish, on the other hand, I have by the gallon can...

I'm more worried about durability then anything else; these MDF sections get stored like a deck of cards on the shelves, so they're going to get more wear from being taken out and put back then from actual game play. I think.

What about pouring latex or something into a plasticine mould. That would be stronger than plaster but not cheaper.

Originally Posted by David Johansen

What about pouring latex or something into a plasticine mould. That would be stronger than plaster but not cheaper.

Thank you for the idea! I've done this kind of molding, with various materials including resin, so It's worth a try. Expense is not really an issue; I do a lot of model building, so I have a lot of this kind of thing in stock in the workshop. I'm doing this 'out of inventory', as it were.

What I'm trying to balance is the time factor in detailing the tiles, the durability in play, and how much storage room they'd take when done. I think some experiments are in order...

Okay, so, put balls of plasticine down to make a stonework pattern and pour an inch of latex into it. When it cures use the latex as a mould for thinner layers of a cheaper material.

Re building papers getting to silly prices...

There's a software package called "Model Builder" for $40 that can be used to make paper buildings in about a dozen different wargame and model railroad scales, or it can be used to just make sheets of brick or stone (or whatever) paper. The included textures are great, and you can import other textures as well (including photographs if you like).

I think it's better for making texture sheets that you put on a gatorboard core building and finish off with Grandt Line windows and doors, myself.

A bit of initial outlay, yes, but if you have the large printer already, might be worth it.

http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/model-builder.html

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Okay, so, put balls of plasticine down to make a stonework pattern and pour an inch of latex into it. When it cures use the latex as a mould for thinner layers of a cheaper material.

Quite so; I've used this to make my cobblestone streets for the railway, where I have to inset rails into the paving.

What I'm after with the underworld tiles is something simpler and more 'playable', and maybe a lot less detailed. Chirine's First Law Of Miniatures is in full play here, as it's hard to kill flat sections of MDF. The final result has to look good in photos, be easy to store, and be very durable.

Experiments on the weekend; photos to follow...

Man, tough audience

Okay, have you ever seen what happens to the surface of medium density fiber board when you soak it a bit? I'm not sure the 1/4 inch stuff would bubble up like that, its got a harder, shinier surface.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Re building papers getting to silly prices...

There's a software package called "Model Builder" for $40 that can be used to make paper buildings in about a dozen different wargame and model railroad scales, or it can be used to just make sheets of brick or stone (or whatever) paper. The included textures are great, and you can import other textures as well (including photographs if you like).

I think it's better for making texture sheets that you put on a gatorboard core building and finish off with Grandt Line windows and doors, myself.

A bit of initial outlay, yes, but if you have the large printer already, might be worth it.

http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/model-builder.html

It's the same stack of building papers in Hub Hobby - Richfield that have been thre since you and I were going there; they just up the price as the years go by. Nobody buys the stuff - old technology, as laser-cut MDF is now all the rage.

(Which may be an option - must talk to TRE Games about this; already on Tim about doing me doors...)

I'll look at the software - great suggestion, thank you! - and see if we like it. I have a couple of programs intended for gaming, like "Dunjinni", which have similar features. The mammoth printer will do 27" wide by 12' long, so doing textures will be relatively easy; I have an Exacto knife, and I know how to use it.

The dilemma, for me, is how much detail do I want to put in to this project. My time and energy is very limited these days, and I don't like to waste either on projects that will make no real difference to what I do. For example, I scrapped the Barsoomian flyers that Paul Stormberg wanted me to make for this year's Gary Con, as I realized that "Warlords of Mars" - while a good game - is not the kind of game that I am interested in building for or for running. I had started to make flyers for a man-to-man / being to being style of skirmish play, and then reread the rules; it's a mass combat and very abstract game, which is not what I like to play. ("Warriors of the Red Planet" would have been better, but would have fallen outside the remit of "Legends of Wargaming" and not been allowed.)

My problem, as I see it, is that I am not a 'gamer', as the term of art seems to be presently defined. I am, and have always been, a model builder who likes to put on games to show off his work. I don't know if that's viable, any more; I had a very, very bad moment a while back when one of my long-time gamers blandly assured me that "anyone who does miniatures is a nut-case" and "weird". Well, okay, I thought, then why are you here?

>Shrug<

Yeah, that sounds a bit like me. That was the appeal of Warhammer for a number of years. It gave me stuff to build and paint. I'd have done just about anything else if anyone around here would have been willing. Hell, in many ways my store is about trying to create that kind of community that wants to do something that isn't ridiculously over-priced and designed to milk every dime out of you that it can.