Last of the Cowfolk

07.15.2020

Here are the last remnants of cowfolk, which is really just 1 since not everyone that wears a hat is from the Ancient West.

First up is Jack Harrison, Adventuring Hero. I didn't realize this was Indiana Jones. Even when the assortment of left arms included a whip. Jack here was my first foray into using Citadel's Liquid Green Stuff. I should have watched the linked video first, because my green stuff wasn't liquidy. For whatever reason, it was half-solidified. I did my best to fill in the gaps when attaching the arms, but it didn't work out too well. In the end, I tried to compensate by painting toward a "ripped sleeves" look. I'm not sure how well that works without me pointing it out, but I've always got to try something new to cover up mistakes. There was a gaping hole in the back of his right armpit, which was begging to become a wound.

I also went with a more dirty, grungy, mayhap "trudging through the wild" look. I went back and forth trying to give the sword/machete/big knife a rusted look. In the end I just quit going back and forth and left it in whichever state it was in.

Number 2 was the true last of the western minis, Texas Ranger Female. Experimentation here was to play around with mixing my own colors, and using a Glaze Medium instead of Thinner. From what I've read, this is basically what Citadel's contrast paints are, and I like those contrast paints. Overall, this one turned out pretty good.

Painting progress chart gets to slide 2 to the Painted column of Reaper minis. And, I didn't get anything new to add to the list so overall progress accomplished! Sure, it's only been a week since the last update, but not accruing more stuff to paint in any time frame can be looked at as a fiscal win.

Another 6 Chronoscope minis have already been primed for when the painting mood strikes. These are all duplicates of previously painted minis. Not sure if I'll have the confidence to compare these against my original paintings to see which direction my skills have gone.

The 3D printer has been running the past few days making improved store front signs for the 4Ground mall. I've gotten the sweet spot on the print bed dialed in - how a glass bed bows up ever so slightly I'm afraid to know. Temperature and humidity are mostly cooperating, although 90° and 85% humidity is cutting it close. I went through the boxes of mall stores that I acquired from last years Oct and Black Friday sales - 25 stores in need of signage. I never go overboard, right?

The end of this week will see an announcement from Mantic Games regarding their next Terrain Crate. Preview pics show hospital furniture, store furniture, and some camping stuff. I'm going to look into the store furniture options. Did I mention 25 mall stores?

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Downloads

09.12.2013

View Downloads in a larger map

When I made Zombie Mall, I thought a few people might download the game, with fewer still actually going through the process of printing out all of the components and playing a game. While I have no idea how many people have gone through that last effort, I do know that 35 have gone through the trouble of downloading at least 1 of the files for the game from the website.

Even more boggling is that half of those downloads are to countries outside of the US. I know those are thanks to links on BoardGameGeek, but how well does what I write translate to Swedish, German, or French?

Boggling!

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Token Redux

08.04.2013

2 months ago I ordered some customized tokens for Zombie Mall. Unfortunately, I was disappointed once I received my order. The tokens were double sided, and the front and backs didn't match up (worse than when I initially tried). The cut lines went outside the bleed area to where the border and part of the next token was often on a token. There were valid reasons for this from the guy I ordered them from, but I would have expected to hear the reasons before he shipped the order to give me a chance to correct any of the problems instead of included in a note with my order.

The tokens weren't un-usable, they just weren't as nice as I had hoped. They also didn't feel worth the $40 getting them made + shipping + waiting 2 weeks between order submittable and shipping. I bagged up the tokens and put them in the box with the rest of the game components that have come to make up my version of the game.

This weekend I decided to try my hand at making tokens again. Originally I just applied labels to both sides of cardstock (110lb). This worked, but it didn't have the nice weight most people are used to when they pick up a game token. I'd gotten some heavier weight chipboard (just thickly layered cardboard) which had a good weight, so I would try using it instead of the cardstock. After surfing YouTube for a couple of different examples of how people make their own tokens, I had a plan!

Step 1 would be how to properly print the tokens. The chipboard was 6"x6", so I would use 1 sheet of label paper and fold it to cover the both sides of the chipboard (before I had tried to line up 2 sheets between the front and back). When laying out the tokens, I increased the bleed area and gave each token a thicker black border.

After getting the label(s) on the chipboard, Step 2 was to score cut lines with my rotary trimmer. The reason I score the lines is because the trimmer blade isn't deep enough to cut through the chipboard. One of the YouTube tutorials showed a cutter that can handle chipboard, but I started this little project on Friday and had to make do with what I had/could get locally. Plus, $225 for a cutter is one of those things that needs a little thinking about before splurging.

Step 3 required a trip to Sears before getting integrated into my process. To actually cut the chipboard (using those scored cut lines from the previous step), my best option was going to be a Craftsman Edge Utility Cutter. Basically this is a large razor blade that cuts like a pair of scissors. The blade fits into the score lines nice and smooth!

After cutting out the tokens, Step 4 was to pretty things up with a black Sharpie. One of the tricks of papercraft modeling is to go back over cut/fold lines with a black marker to cover up white paper that gets exposed. Since I was using white chipboard, but the tokens had black borders, marking up the edges of the chipboard would make things look better. In addition, for those times when my black bleed area didn't match up between the front and back, I could use the marker to fill in a little extra border.

Once it was over with Saturday night, I had re-made 328 tokens. I'm not sure how long all of this took, but based on the streaming videos I watched from Amazon Saturday I spent at least 5 hours on Saturday making the bulk of the tokens. I had other plans for my Saturday, but for me this turned out to be a nice way to spend the day. Working on game rules & components has become my odd method of relaxation over the past year.

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Zombie Mall Expansion 1

07.28.2013

2 months after releasing Zombie Mall onto the world, I've managed to finish what is really the first draft of the rules allowing people to play as zombies. This was something that was originally intended to be in the basic game, in fact it was one of the main ideas that once a person died, they would come back as a zombie. For better or worse, I learned while developing the rules that I really needed to get the basic "how to play as a human" working before I added in "how to play as a zombie".

The zombie play has complicated the rules a little, but I think having as solid a set of base rules to work from as I did with the Zombie Mall rules I tried to limit changes to how play existed and focus on the best way to tweak adding on what was needed for zombies. I didn't cut as many corners as I probably would have if I had just tried to do everything in the beginning. Now, of course, I see how going back and re-writing the basic rules to include the zombie player from the start would be easier for the players learning, as well as keep from saying one thing in the early set of rules and adding in an "oh yeah, and" later on. But I don't want to do that right now. I'm ready for another little break from zombies.

This leads me to my next project that I've been working on, albeit slowly, for the past month or so. I've gotten more and more interested in Dust Warfare (the game that I got all the models for and never originally intended to play). There are reference cards available online for all of the units. These are nicely done cards, but I would like something a little more customizable - mainly I want to build my forces and have all of the stats on 1 handy piece of paper. With that in mind, I've been going through the rules collecting all the little bits of data I can think that I might need in order to (eventually) populate a database that some magical web app I'll whip up can reference and then spit out what I want. To my surprise, it's actually been a good way to learn some of the rules along with the mechanics of the game. Nerd fun at its finest!

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