Gelatious Cube and victims

This Gelationous Cube is a Reaper Bones mini in three parts, two halves of the cube and a pile of victims.

The cube went together no problem and the pile fits well into the space for it, but being transparent you don’t really see anything of it.

So I painted the pile, with the idea that it could do double duty as treasure or dungeon dressing.

Well, to be honest, even if you’ve painted the pile you still can’t see it through the cube. It’s more like a darkish shadow in there. A bit disappointed about that, but now I at least have a pile of corpses and treasure to put somewhere in a dungeon.

De Havilland DH4a – Pulp Edition

I got myself a 1/48 scale De Havilland DH4a (Passenger) from Roden a while ago. The idea was to use it in my pulp games, as a prop or maybe something to fight for. It was half-finished for quite a while until I got it on the painting table and put it all together.

It’s a nice kit, but a bit fiddly, especially when it’s time to assemble the wings… Getting the top one in place was a bit of a pain. It didn't help that I dropped it when it was nearly done.

I painted it up totally imaginary and put on some random slides from the stash.

Pretty good result and it will look good on the gaming table, I’m sure

As a great little extra there were lots of spare parts, including quite a few bombs and machine guns. These will definitely find use as contraband. Great stuff.

A varied bunch of pulp minis

Here’s the latest from the painting table, a bunch of pulp minis that took a bit longer than expected to finish.

The figures come from:

Warlord, and their Operation Sealion Enemy Agents pack. It’s a nice additional nun that will be useful, as they are, and the other two will find a place in a game of Pulp Alley, I’m sure.

Artizan Designs and the final figure from their Merchant Sailors pack

RAFM – a gigantic doctor from their Cthulhu range. The size of that head compared to the others... Their RAFM figures are all over the place size-wise, which is really annoying.

Finally two pics of 3D-printed stuff waiting for paint. More on what has happened on the 3D-printing front soon.

Skellies

A couple of minis I had had half-finished in the tin-mountain for a time, a very long time for the foot-soldier…

The skeleton rider is mostly a Guardian on Horseback from Gamezone. That model is multipart and the skeleton guardian’s upper body, arms and weapons were a bit of a mess to get together. That effectively moved the model to the mountain for a long stay, until I had it out the other day and had a sprue of Mantic skeletons in front of me, too.

Some glue and green-stuff and I had married the upper body of a Mantic skeleton to the lower body of the rider. Really satisfied about that.

It was quickly painted and turned out rather well.

The foot soldier is an old GW skellie, from their Tomb Kings series. I have a couple already painted (10+ years ago) and this was mostly ready, just needed some details and a wash. Said and done. Half an hour's job and I had another mini ready for gaming.

A little end-note: If you're a Google+ follower then it is time to change the way you follow this (and other) blogs, as Google+ dies in early April. So it is time to either become an ordinary follower or follow by e-mail.

Making your own clear bases

I’ve been using clear bases the last couple of years, as you have seen, and I’m really satisfied with that.

A female pulp adventurer on a home-made clear base

I found a YouTube video on how to make your own clear bases from Pulp Alley the other day. I seem to have missed it when it first aired, about half a year ago, but checked it out now.

It’s all about a very simple and cheap way to make your own clear bases, and I decided to try it out.

First you have to buy a punch stamp, and the video recommended EK Tools. I found a Medium Punch (1”) locally in a e-shop selling scrapbook-stuff and had it delivered just two days after purchase.

Then you collect all those blister-packs that you kept, as they could, someday, be useful for windows/water/whatnot. Now they will actually be used!

Use a scissor to cut out all biggish flat surfaces.

Start punching! I found some of the thicker blisters to crack when I punched out my bases, but it all works well enough, and I’m pumping out cheap (as in free) bases. What’s not to like?

Finally - ask your friends to keep their blister packs! One of mine had to do some trash-diving to collect what he had just thrown away (well, he actually rummaged around in a bag of plastic bound for recycling).

When I scrapped a lot of material from courses I took ages ago I found a sheet of clear plastic used as a cover for an old spiral bound collection of papers. The paper and metal tread is in their respective recycling bins, while the plastic is refined into clear bases.

3D-printed cargo piles, barrel cart and more

Got a bunch of 3D-printed stuff ready for gaming.

 

The cargo piles are really useful pieces of scatter terrain. They will be at home in both fantasy, Wild West and pulp settings, and of course other historical ones, too. You’ll get cargo piles for $5 at Printable Scenery.

The barrel cart is a free piece, from Thingiverse this time. It's just great! I have to bind the barrel down with some suitable string, but haven’t found what I need yet.

Finally a marker stone and some stone braziers, also free and from Thingiverse. The marker stone be useful both in Frostgrave and our D&D campaign, while the braziers have a place in the next solo Pulp Alley game I’m planning, not as braziers but relegated to a lesser role as pedestals (the statue is a Reaper Bones figure converted into a bronze). 

This is really the beauty of 3D-printing. I needed five pedestals for a game, looked through my library of stl-files, found something suitable and had them printed in a couple of hours. Great!

A lot of scatter terrain this time. I’m also printing dungeon terrain pieces, and more on those and what you can build with them soon.
(Sorry that I said that the cargo piles were free the first hour or so, as they are not. My bad)

Female Pulp Explorers from Bad Squiddo Games (and 3D printing)

Got these female explorers painted. They are from Annie Norman’s Bad Squiddo Games, sculpted by Shayne Hoyle, and they are great.

When I see the photo of them I think I should have painted their eyes, but when you see them in the flesh (or should that be tin?) they look good enough. I think that is what I should strive for, to actually get minis to the gaming table.

I’ve had some problems with the 3D-printer from early December. Filament extrusion wouldn’t work as it should and everything turned into crap most of the time. I tried everything to solve the problem, but nothing worked.

Well, not until I thought of ambient temperature. I had the printer in our garage, i.e. my hobby-room. It’s the coldest part of the house, and now, with winter in full swing, it was down to 16⁰C in there. That proved to be the thing. I moved the printer up to an empty bedroom, turned it on this morning, and it worked just like it should. Yay!

It’s happily printing away as I write this.