Cthulhu Ate My Minis! - Rescuing A Vintage Curse of the Mummy's Tomb

My Games Workshop Bookcase Boardgame collection has a couple of survivors who are hanging on for grim death.

Box Art

One such game is Curse of the Mummys Tomb which has long since lost its metal minis and I need to replace these.  Being a tightwad I'm not going to spring for a mint copy or the £35 for a full set of 5 minis.

To the scanner dear boy...

I have the character cards which have fantastic Gary Chalk illustrations of the four protagonists which can easily be turned into papercraft miniatures.  I wrote a papercraft minis how how to many moons ago and this sort of boardgame first aid is trivial if you have a scanner and printer.   

This also gives me the opportunity to print out the additional characters from the expansion "In Search of Eternity" which featured in issue 102 of White Dwarf. 

 According to the Lost Minis Wiki all 8 character minis were repurposed from the Gothic Horror range and the Mummy from the Night Horrors.  In fact this is probably what happened to my minis... Cthulhu ate them.

Scan, GIMP, Inkscape, Print, Play

Replacement Character Minis

I scanned in all the player cards and in GIMP cut out each of the character images.  I increased the white point using adjust levels  to make them pop before saving them into individual files.

Moving to Inkscape I created a basic standee template 1 inch wide x 1.5 inches tall with a half round base.  Each character was then pasted in and flipped copy pasted in.  Remember to put these head to head otherwise your standees will be upside down.

Export them out as a PDF and print them out.  I only have a cheap inket and even cheaper paper so mine came out a bit blurry.  These were then stuck to cereal box card with PVA glue and once dried cut out.  There's a significant difference in thickness of cereal box cardboard.  Name brand varieties tend to be quite thick which can be a disadvantage if you are using plastic stands.

The player cards for the expansion were also printed out and backed onto cereal box card along with some missing value 1 Tanna Leaf counters.

Another Game Saved from the Scrapheap 

As can be seen from the photo the quality of the minis is very dependent on your printer and paper.

Replacement paper minis for base game and expansion

 

However, for me this is perfectly acceptable for the time being as I am desperate to play a solo game during COVID lockdown 3.0. 

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb: rescued and ready to be played

Gaslands: A Question of Scale

 I recently joined the Gaslands facebook group and a user posed the interesting question of what scale models can you use when building your post apocalypse road warrior gang?

The simple answer is quite a few.  Pictured below are a selection of miniatures from my own collection.

1:72 - Airfix kits are an obvious go to for those military inspired builds especially the tanks and helicopters of Rutherford and Mishkin 

Gaslands Scale Comparison

1:64 - Hotwheels and Matchbox are nominally 1:64th scale but there's a lot of leg room and models tend to besized to fit in a blister pack rather than be true scale.

20mm - A popular modern wargaming scale designed to fit in with 1:72 plastic kits.  This seems to be the scale that most 3rd Party companies like Stan Johansen Miniatures have adopted

15mm - Popular with Sci-Fi wargamers but cheap as chips and there are lots of manufacturers out there.

Gaslands in Lockdown: Build a Team Competition

I've been a fan of vehicular combat games since I first saw Mad Max way back when.

Lockdown sees me with plenty of time on my hands and some creative urges which need to be sated, so I propose a build off.

The Rules

1. Visit the Gaslands Refueled Team Builder and build a 50 can team (no Gyros, Helicopters, Tanks or War Rigs)

2. Scratch-build as accurate a model of them as you can taking into account every weapon, crew member and upgrade you can squeeze in.  Base vehicles must be Matchbox / Hotwheels (or similar) so no 3D printing an entire vehicle.

3. Subscribe to the Roleplay Geek Pubishing facebook page and post a photo in the comments with your Teams stats.

4. Closing date for entries is Fri 26th Feb 2021.

5. Winner receives a £10 amazon gift voucher and bragging rights for the best vehicle.

Reaper Bones #24 - Kyra, Iconic Cleric

Probably my favourite D&D setting is Al-Qadim: The Lands of Fate.  This is one of the many settings that TSR released in the 80s and has a unashamedly Arabian Nights feel to it.

Kyra, Iconic Cleric - (Derek Schubert - SKU: 8901) 

Kyra exudes that persian vibe from her head to her toes and I can see her squaring off against a capricious Djinn or some of those vile Yikkaran Yak-men any day now.

Kyra, Iconic Cleric - (Derek Schubert - SKU: 8901)

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Bones Progress

Reaper Bones: 245 - Painted: 102

Related Posts

• Reaper Bones #1: The Marathon Begins - Where I paint a dozen Giant Rats.
• Reaper Bones #2: Kobolds, Are They Dogs or Dragons? - Where I paint a dozen kobolds.
• Reaper Bones #3: A Carcase of Skeletons - Where I paint a half dozen skeletons.
• Reaper Bones #4: A Shuffle of Zombies - Where I paint five zombies.
• Reaper Bones #5: Introducing Shaina Coppervein, Dwarven Orc Hunter - First PC mini.
• Reaper Bones #6: Mimic, Treasure Chest and How I re-base my Bones - Where I paint furniture.
• Reaper Bones #7: Fire Elemental Meets Novelty Lamp - Where I hack a mini with LEDs.
• Reaper Bones #8: Flaming Sphere LED Tealight Hack - Another mini LED lighting project.
• Reaper Bones #9: Elliwyn Heatherlark, Gnome Bard - Another PC mini.
• Reaper Bones #10: Horace "Action" Jackson - A Baddass disco dancing Motherfucker.
• Reaper Bones #11: Pirate Captain Thorin Stoneheart - A Swashbuckling Philanthropist.
• Reaper Bones #12: Monstrous Menagerie - Clay Golem, Eye Beast, Griffon, Owlbear, Marsh Troll.
• Reaper Bones #13: Giants - Male Storm Giant and Female Cloud Giant.
• Reaper Bones #14: More Monsters! -Ape-X, Female Demon, Two Golems, Oxidation Beast.
• Reaper Bones #15 - The Road Warrior - Mad Max - 50 bones painted at last.
• Reaper Bones #16 - A Patrol of Orcs - 5 orcs out hunting your party.
• Reaper Bones #17- Personalities - Player Characters, NPCs or a villain or two.
• Reaper Bones #18 - Furniture
• Reaper Bones #19 - Townsfolk - 4 resident NPCs
• Reaper Bones #20 - Devil Women - A couple of Hellborn beauties.
• Reaper Bones #21 - Nova Corp & IMEF Soldiers - 15 Sci-Fi Badasses in heavy armour
• Reaper Bones #22 - A Flurry of Familiars - 11 teeny tiny magical friends
• Reaper Bones #23 - Vermin - Beetles, Scorpions and Spiders

Pacing and Player Decision Making

When you are beginning your journey as a GM you have a lot to juggle.  

You have to keep track of your NPCs, deliver descriptions of the world, drop hints and rumours, bookeep, keep one step ahead of the players... Frankly it can be exhausting at times and it is easy to forget about pacing.

Pacing and Prioritisation in Player Decision Making

In real life we have to make decisions in real time and often those decisions are made under time pressure with imperfect information.  Naturally we prioritise those decisions to select the most urgent tasks first and this should be no different for players in your RPG.

Ask yourself how many times your party has meticulously planned a combat encounter.  The planning (or more likely the arguing) can often take longer than the combat itself and this can suck the life out of the game.

Putting your players under time pressure when planning will result in them throwing out many of their wilder options and selecting between two or three based on what they know.  I've seen many parties get bogged down in analysis paralysis because they just have too many options on the table or too many voices.

How you pace a game also affects the engagement levels of players.  If there are too many long discussions it can sap the will to live from some players particularly if there character's share of the decision making is uneven.  You only have to look at the Avengers to see how disengaged Hulk can be when the others strategise about attack plans.  Hulk just wants to smash like your typical tank PC.

Pacing also raises the stakes for players.  Rushed decision making increases the risk of failure and the players feel that there are consequences to that failure.  The tension rises, the action becomes more visceral.  Success following a tense battle is always sweeter and mixed with relief.

I said make the action "Intense" - Image credit Diary of a Croation Larper