Papercraft Build – Inked Adventures Dungeon Cut-Up Basic

I have a real soft spot for nostalgic themed games, papercraft or artwork, this little build fills two of those. Ever since Inked Adventures released their basic Dungeon cup setup I’ve been wanting to build enough for a dungeon layout. So I put some time aside over the past few weeks  and have now built enough tiles to populate a fairly decent sized dungeon, I can see I need to create a few more tiles but for the most part I’m done. As you can tell by the release date it’s taken me a fair bit of time to get around to building these, some of this relates to me trying to find a good material to mount tiles to but I’ll mention more below on that.

All Inked adventure tiles are hand drawn which I find a very nice look. There are 41 pages of dungeon goodness contained in this pack; rooms, corridors, stairs, trap tiles, 2d doors and 3d standup doors multiple versions of both. The beauty of the Dungeon Cut-Up set is even if your not into altering dungeon segments using GIMP/Photoshop, Billiam from Inked Adventures  has created this set so you can use a pair of scissors and glue to create your own custom tiles. There are 4 pages of “extra” bits which you can use to either decorate your tiles permanently by sticking them down directly to the tiles or by turning them into loose tiles you can add mid game.

Layout Example – From an angle

For my set I stuck with components that are multiples of 2inches, 3inches or 6 inches. This will make it simpler to use for Dungeon plungin and Basic fantasy, although I might make a few special rooms that don’t conform to these sizes later on. For the moment I’ve created 8 – 6×6 rooms, 8- 6×2 corridors, 2 – 6×1 corridors, 4 L and T junctions, 2 X junctions, 4 dead ends, 14 small doors, 2 double doors, 2 double joiners, 4 double rockfalls and 2 large pit traps.

Bits created so far laid out

The rooms I created from the parts supplied by Billiam although I did a fair chunk of altering in Gimp to make them fit a 6×6 square. Other than the room with blue squares you could replicate most of the room designs with a pair of scissors, glue and  a little ingenuity or simply use the ones that come with the bundle (12 rooms included).

Example Layout – Top Down

I mentioned at the top I’d been putting of creating these as I’ve never really found a suitable substrate for mounting tiles to. I’ve tested quiet a number of crazy ideas in my time from rubber carpet tiles to magnetic sheet. Not sure if it’s just the extreme weather down under but I’ve found all glues that are easy to use for tile creation (read spray glue even the good 3m stuff) do eventually fail, 3m takes the longest at around the 1-2 year mark.

Kitchen mat backing, simply double sided taped on

After years I’ve finally narrowed it down to two methods, the first I mentioned in my city build thread 8mm PVC foamboard. A little heavy duty for this application plus chews up extra storage space so I’ve simply used grey boxboard 1400gsm (basically what commercial game boards are made from) and printed directly to sticker sheet, stuck the tiles down then cut around the whole lot giving a nice neat tile. To prevent slipping on smooth tables I used double sided tape to a fix non-slip kitchen mat to the backs. Nothing to out of the ordinary and it’s been done before but I’ve found this one of the better solutions for DIY tiles; No spray glue mess, No warping from glue, No lifting , Reasonably slip proof on a table and lastly they don’t take up to much room to store. My current dungeon tiles fill about 1/3 of an  A4 document box. To give the doors some weight I stuck them down to some thick (2mm) magnetic sheet, this will also let me stick them to the inside of the lid of the storage box later on to protect them during storage.

I’ll add some dividers etc later on but just to give an idea on storage

If your not sure you like the style of the tiles or simply want to give them a try there is a free sampler pack which should give you an idea of what to expect. I did this myself while experimenting with tile mounting techniques, once I had a solution I grabbed the full set and haven’t been disappointed. I even grabbed the square tile version although I haven’t used them. I should probably mention that Inked Adventures has released some freebies for this set so grab those as well as they’ll give you more options.

The whole example layout – yep missed a door on the right

As always have fun building and gaming and I hope to get some more posts up shortly, I have 6 projects 90% complete….I should probably focus on one project at a time rather than starting six at once .

House Renovations – Bedroom Two

It would appear I’ve been MIA for a long while (other than the Taco post). Rest assured I’m still here and kicking, just been chewing through a fairly hefty renovation job on one of the bedrooms of our house, which I have now thankfully finished.

The Room itself is fairly small (2.2m x 3.4m), as this room backs onto the lounge room and shares a common wall with were we have the TV hanging it added some additional work. A short summary of whats been completed:

• Additional power sockets added by the TV – this included insuring they were on 2 different circuits. To keep the power in 2 studs only there was also some cable tidy up.
• Cable channel added behind the wall to keep cables tidy
• Conduit mounted for speaker cable and speaker cable run.
• Common wall with lounge room soundproofed/insulated
• Additional power point added for bedroom
• Cupboard built in for bedroom
• Shelving built onto one end of cupboard to maximize space
• Bedroom door shifted 40cm to the left and changed from full height door to normal height door.
• server/network (Node Zero) cupboard constructed and power sockets added above bedroom cupboard – this is pending completion.
• All skirting and cornice replaced
• Full repaint
• Carpet still needs replacing

I find it fairly difficult to photograph rooms but hopefully the below gives an idea of whats been done.

Left Old and Right New

The draw unit in the cupboard is actual a flatpack kitchen draw set, unfortunately I had to hand cut all the draw face plates and build a box to slide the unit into. It does work very well and the kitchen draw slides are much more robust than what you normally find in wardrobes so hopefully I wont have a problem with the draws for a long time.

Lion drawer handles we wanted labyrinth handles but couldn’t find any small ones

The shelving built onto the left end of the cupboard are also built-in. We left the end closest open so that when you look into the room from the doorway (or out) it doesn’t block sight lines and helps to make the room feel bigger. The unit itself took me about 2-3 solid days to make (curve at the bottom was a bit of a challenge) and each shelf is routed into the back and side to maximize support. Even with that we’ll only use half of each shelf for books and the free ends for ornaments/nick-naks.

It’s held to the wall with a number of screws in the back and side

Looking in through the door with the temporary curtains drawn

This seems like a really short post for something that I spent close to every spare weekend since February working on. We spent last weekend moving some stuff back into the room so there are now somethings on the shelves and pictures on the walls.

I plan on taking a break from house renovations/fixing for a short time so expect to see a bit more paper/wargaming stuff in the next few posts I have a heap to catchup on .

Healthy Vegetarian Tacos

Just a quick post showing a recipe for healthy vegetarian tacos. I grabbed the original recipe from the clean eating magazine but made some changes to the original and my version is below. I’ve made these a few times now and both myself and my wife love them so enjoy, the below will make 8-10 tacos depending on how much mix you use in each one and are fairly easy to make, although dicing 400g of mushrooms takes some time

Ingredients for Taco Mix

400g plain white mushrooms cut  into small cubes (diced)

2 small onions diced (I use Spanish onions but brown/white use what you have)

1 cup about 1/4 head of cauliflower again diced/cut small

1/2 cup of veg stock

125g canned corn (one of those small cans)

140g of tomato paste (I use one whole small tin)

2-3 gloves of garlic (crushed/minced)

1-3tsp of chilli powder (mild is about 1tsp, 2tsp medium, 3tsp hot – depending on your chilli powder)

1 tsp Cumin (powder/ground)

1/2 teaspoon of salt and pepper

1. Mix 1/4 cup water, tomato paste, cumin, chilli, salt and pepper in a small bowl and put to the side.
2. Place the stock, onion and garlic into a non-stick pan (I use a wok), slow cook/simmer this for about 5mins.
3. Add the mushrooms and cauliflower and stir in and cook slowly, the mix will seem dry to start but as it cooks and the mushrooms shrink the mix will become wetter. Cooking time should be around the 10min mark or approximately when the mushrooms have halved in size.
4. Throw the mix from step one and the corn into the pan and mix in. Cook (simmer) for between 10-15mins, The mix will be dry but still moist, not wet.

Mix ready to eat

Serve with (depending on what you like)

Corn Mountain bread cut into circles for soft taco shells, warm them if you like (Corn tortillas prepacked downunder all seem stacked with fat)

Low fat shredded cheese

Low fat Sour Cream or Cottage Cheese (If I have cottage cheese I don’t use the above cheese)

Lettuce/Spinach leaves cut up (We prefer spinach leaves or a mixed lettuce leaf mix)

Tomatoes cut up 2-3

Shredded carrot/cabbage mix

Mushed/diced avocado

Make up the Taco’s the way you like. Depending on what you add and how much mix you use each taco should be around 600-800kj (150 -200 calories) and only a few grams of fat.

Papercraft Build – Steam Ram

Back in April Squirmydad from Mayhem in Paper released the Steam Ram. At the time I picked up the model with the plan to build a Steampunk army around a couple of them. I’ve finally got around to building two and thought I’d do a review/build post about the Steam Ram.

Once you have purchased the Steam Ram for the very reasonable price of $3.95, you’ll receive a zip which contains:

• A single layered version of each colour (brown, dark grey, light grey and green) at 28/30mm scale
• A layered version of the above so you can turn guides and other bits off which is great for customizing
• A single layered version of each colour (brown, dark grey, light grey and green) at 15mm scale
• A single layered version of each colour (brown, dark grey, light grey and green) at 15mm scale with all guides off
• Assembly Instructions and a Card modelling basics file.

On top of this if you own a craftrobo/silhouete/cameo you can slip over to the Mayhem in Paper website and pickup the GSD files for the cutter. All round this is an absolute pile of stuff for the purchase price but as you look through the Instructions and files you’ll notice that Squirmydad has also included parts not just for one model but for at least four different versions. Although with the parts this actually equates to a lot more options, here are the four basic ones easily constructed from the instructions:

• Wheeled with Main Gun
• Tracked with Main Gun
• Wheeled with Top Machine Guns
• Tracked with Top machine Guns.

I’ve borrowed the above images from the Instructions (copyright Mayhem in Paper)

The model itself is well laid out and all the parts are easy to identify. If you are hand cutting the model do be aware that not all the parts are used when assembling a Steam Ram so make sure you check the instructions and see what parts are needed for the version your planning to build before just cutting everything out. The 30mm sized Steam Ram is spread across 4 pages but for a single tank build you’ll only need to use about 3 pages of parts.  I found the colouring of the ram to be perfect not to dark and not to light scaling wise the ram should be perfect to use with 28mm miniatures. It did take me around 4-5 hours to finish each Ram, they mainly took this long as I was building very carefully and ensuring every join and part was edged, I even sanded a couple of parts to ensure they were perfectly perpendicular. So if your used to assembling card models you should be able to pull a Ram together much more quickly.

I did make some slight modifications to the two tanks I constructed. Firstly I centralized the gun box on the front but then cut out the driver window and glued this to the left of the gun box. I then added both machine guns to the top but set these towards the rear and facing left and right to provide some flanking protection to the tank. Naturally I had to build the tracked version and later on I might add some unit markings when I have more of a feel/theme for the army.

You can see in the above picture  how I made use of some of the extra hatches that were included with the Steam Ram to add hatches to the top of the machine gun turrets. I am really happy with how the Steam Ram looks on the table and a pair of them really do look intimidating when I was in no way pretending to push them across a table in formation .

I actual had the urge to create some fan art for the Steam Ram, this ended up being  some desktop wallpapers and a Kindle screensaver image. First up the wallpapers I did two versions a widescreen 1920×1080 and a 4:3 aspect ratio 1600×1200 version.  I am happy with how the wallpapers came out although I’m not sure anyone would actual use them as wallpaper. However they were fun to make and have a Steampunk/Victorian era feel. For want of a better name I’ve called my Steam Ram “Variant F”, Lord Hamilton Squirmydad had already written into the short back story for the model.

1600×1200 version – Link to Full Size

1920×1080 version – Link to Full Size

Lastly I pulled together a quick version for a Kindle Screensaver. The image below will appear slightly washed out but it has been colour balanced to look okay on an e-ink Kindle not a computer monitor . I’ve uploaded the below on my kindle and it now cycles through in my screensavers and if anything still appears a little dark (note you do need to jailbreak your kindle to use custom screensavers).

Click the above and then right click save as

As you can probably tell I really enjoyed building the Steam Rams and the customization options available in the PDF’s is huge with a large variaty of models achievable from just the base included parts. As I mentioned above I plan on building an entire Steam punk army around these two models and then using either Defiance VG or No Limits to spec the army out so watch out for more models/miniatures and eventually army lists in the coming months. If you haven’t already done so this model is well worth the money so head over to RPGNOW and grab a copy you wont be disappointed.

Hope you enjoy your Steam Ram, I’m going to go back to not pushing mine around a table in formation .

Cardboard Warriors Forum – Paper Miniature Hoard 104

Cardboard Warriors forum Hoard 104 is finished and released, this hoard contains some good stuff to pack out your Christmas Wars armies with. There is the Reinhold by Squirmydad a couple of mini-gun wielding Santa’s by Ryan and the Snow Tundra Tiles and Toy Soldiers from myself.

You can pick up other Xmas Wars goodness from Hoards 38, 39, 40 and 88 . Between the old hoards and the new one this year you can put together a couple of very nice themed warbands or a whole Xmas wars themed army.

The December Hoard (105) with a theme of Chaos Unleashed/Modern & Ancient is open and will remain so until mid Jan so why not head over and create a miniature, a piece of terrain or a vehicle for the hoard.

Hoard 104 – November 2012

Enjoy battling with Xmas wars miniatures over the holidays

Snow Tundra Tiles/Terrain

The Cardboard Warriors forum hoard 104 was Xmas Wars and as I’ve always wanted to try my hand at creating some terrain I thought some Snow Tundra tiles would be a nice start. It turned out to not be as easy as I hoped as getting some form of texture into a white snow background is very challenging.

First up I sorted through my skiing photos looking for a good snow texture, unfortunately real snow when used as a texture looks very boring basically you may as well just go and cut out 6 inch squares from plain white card. So I took a segment of particularly interesting textured snow from one of my photos, duplicated it and then bump mapped and played around with the colours until I got a base texture I was pretty happy with. I then added an overlay of irregular white shapes to represent blown snow drifts and then finally placed on some rocks, logs, grass tops and a frozen pond (sorry no river it was beyond me, plus no time). I’m fairly happy with how the tiles turned out although the shadows around the rocks didn’t really work the way I wanted but overall they look good on the table. I turned the whole thing into a layered PDF and with the bits I’ve put in you can get about 8-9 fairly unique tiles.

Ready for Xmas Wars miniatures to be deployed

I also put together a quick snow covered tri-fold pine tree, I changed the colour a little on the tree so there is a green/green tree and blue/green tree in 3 sizes; 5 3/4, 4 3/4 and 3 inch tall versions. I only had time to put together one tree texture so all the versions use the same texture but I’m very happy with how they turned out as I don’t think there are any snow covered pine trees out there in the war gaming paper tree world. I did make the little 1/3 base circle bits separate so if you like you can easily integrate my trees with one of the commercial snow terrain sets around the place.

Three Sizes of Snow Covered Pine Trees

I’ll be including my Snow Tundra tiles in hoard 104 but they are available below  for download as well. I’ve included both a Cameo and SD cutfiles,  Unfortunately I cant test the Cameo file so use with caution, if they do work okay please let me know in the comments below.

The below is a zip file but I’ve had to rename it as an odt so right click save as and then rename the extension .zip once downloaded.

All Zipped – Sirrob01 Snow Tile Final

I’ve only put the cutfiles in the zip as I have rename those anyways but below are just the PDF’s.

PDF – Snow Tiles and Pine Trees

PDF Instructions – Pine Tree Instructions

Enjoy

Cardboard Warriors Forum – Paper Miniature Hoard 103

I’ve just finished assembling the Cardboard Warriors forum hoard 103. This was a fairly small hoard although the little Zerstorung was pretty challenging to build due to the size. I’ve included two different PDF’s, one with SD registration marks and the other with Cameo registration marks both are contained in the zip below.

Reminder that the November hoard is still open which is Xmas wars and Super Heroic, so get those submissions in, only a week left.

Feel free to check over the old Hoards for other miniatures.

Hoard 103 – May/June 2012

Enjoy