Tuesday, 26 January 2021

Reaper Bones #25 - Ghostly Summons

Those translucent Reaper Bones minis seem like a great idea, particularly when you can integrate LED technology as I did with my Flaming Sphere and Fire Elemental.

In reality many of them have very spindly lower portions which makes uplighting them particularly difficult.

It is however a great opportunity to try airbrushing gradients and to play with a 20 year old bottle of Citadel Blue Ink Shade.  You be the judge of whether I managed to pull it off or not.

Ghostly Summons - Julie Guthrie (SKU: 77095)

To be brutaly honest I interpreted this mini to be some sort of water elemental spell and nothing supernatural of ghostly at all.  This explains why I painted it blue (Facepalm).

Ghostly Summons - SKU 77095



Monday, 25 January 2021

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.

Curse of the Mummy's Tomb Box Art
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

Paper mini layout in Inkscape
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.

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


Sunday, 24 January 2021

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 Comparisons
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.

Thursday, 21 January 2021

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.

Monday, 11 January 2021

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.

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


Bones Progress

Reaper Bones: 245 - Painted: 102

Related Posts