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I got my first ever bits of terrain last week, and spent until now putting it together. It's modular stuff from Kickstarter, laser cut MDF but some of it needed gluing, especially the bits that aren't so modular. This is all of it assembled, well almost all of it, still had a small pile of ladders, a few walls and a few small floors in a pile, otherwise this is $190 worth of "choose your own bits"  Here you can see the difference between his start of KS radar dish, and the one who came up with near the end of the project. It was run a little haphazardly, which is why it only cleared the goal by a few k, but it was a good evolution in design and helped get it funded where others failed  Who wants Skub?   This is the fantasy set, which was really an early prototype that had some good ideas but fell over a little in execution and has already been superseded - he promised that most of the bits there will be compatible with the new system, which looks like it will be similar to the Spaceship Interior he's just finished designing, which superseded the "tech" set which was identical to my fantasy set here but with different art on the walls.  He started with the stuff at the back, interlocking walls with notches, and some shipping containers as scatter. By the end of the KS he'd moved towards stacking and interconnecting shipping containers of various shapes and sizes, and has gone on from there to make containers that serve as external scatter, and rooms and corridors for an indoor style skirmish, plus a new larger system that should suit things like Space Hulk, Sedition Wars, et al.  Guardian for scale  All packs down into this, though could pack down a little more if you sacrifice stability in a few bits and pieces by not gluing.   The guy is an Infinity player so a lot of it is obviously geared to that system, but it was also adjusted in size right at the death to function in Deadzone which I'll be using it with, and could easily work in any other 28mm scifi game, even 40k if you don't mind the lack of gothic. I think this stuff is pretty cool and competitively priced from what I've seen. Plan to paint it up over the next few months, and buy a few new bits, so I'll drop some wip images in here as I go!
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Nov 12, 2013 15:24
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From the Kickstarter thread regarding the Games & Gears Battleboard:moths posted:The thing is, if you want flat and sterile you can buy linoleum floor tile for under $2/ square foot. And it'll be more visually interesting. How would you go about creating the concrete pads for buildings? This has been my main sticking point - the only thing I can really think of would be a lauan tile with another piece of something layered over to create the building pads and create the effect of a sunken roadway. I guess I could do plastic card or something, as a 6 inch curb would only be 1mm thick... Has anyone found any good way to randomize modular city streets? I can find all sorts of stuff with hills and maybe a dirt road and stream, but nothing with city streets. berzerkmonkey fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Nov 12, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2013 21:51
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Linoleum isn't heavy at all. It' super thin. It's meant to be glued down to floorboard. The problem I've had with the stuff in the past is the repetition of the pattern, that it is generally pretty glossy, and that you need to do something about the backing, like glue it onto a square of felt or something that won't spin or slide, and that won't necessarily keep the stuff from curling up. Maybe the answer is just sticking it to squares of mdf and matte coating it/drybrushing it a bit.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:02
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Linoleum isn't much heavier than any other material, but you'll have problems with it deforming if you try to roll it up or store it vertically. When I get into a bigger house, I'm planning on adhering sheets onto 2' x 4' rectangles. I think the best way to handle a 6mm city would be to use a darker "street" color and then mount the buildings on separate lighter square "blocks." The horizontal scale will be a little off (5' curbs!) but with enough blocks you can get coverage to make it look city-like. As for a good concrete texture, check out the back of some linoleum squares- the side intended to take glue is porous and generally already a satisfactory grey or tan color!
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Nov 12, 2013 22:12
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Fix posted:Linoleum isn't heavy at all. It' super thin. It's meant to be glued down to floorboard. The problem I've had with the stuff in the past is the repetition of the pattern, that it is generally pretty glossy, and that you need to do something about the backing, like glue it onto a square of felt or something that won't spin or slide, and that won't necessarily keep the stuff from curling up. This guy did some crazy beautiful road tiles by making a form out of some plexi, pouring plaster into the cavity, and carving the hell out of the plain plaster square. He then made molds and resin cast the sections. I have a set, but the size and location of the sidewalks breaks the scale for me. Maybe I'll get off my duff and give his process a shot one day - you can't get much cheaper than plaster. moths posted:Linoleum isn't much heavier than any other material, but you'll have problems with it deforming if you try to roll it up or store it vertically. When I get into a bigger house, I'm planning on adhering sheets onto 2' x 4' rectangles. 
berzerkmonkey fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Nov 12, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2013 22:19
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berzerkmonkey posted:All my experience with linoleum is from many years back, and I remember really heavy tiles. I'm sure science has made it stronger, lighter, and faster though. Pattern isn't an issue, as it would be painted over - obviously repeating textures would be an issue though. I'd probably use a smooth tile (do they even make them?) to avoid the issue altogether though - like I said before, at 6mm, textures are pretty glaring. A grain of sand looks like a decently sized rock... If there's going to be a curing problem though, I'm probably better avoiding it. Are you sure we're talking about the same material?
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Nov 12, 2013 22:23
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ghetto wormhole posted:Are you sure we're talking about the same material? They make both smooth and textured, so I don't see why not.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:24
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ghetto wormhole posted:Are you sure we're talking about the same material?
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Nov 12, 2013 22:25
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linoleum comes in a rolls not tiles and is a thin adhesive sheet that mimics tiles.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:33
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Basically just hit up Home Depot's flooring section and treat it like the best terrain store you never knew about. There's also some awesome finds in the textured wallpaper section, but that stuff doesn't holds up well to abuse.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:37
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JEEVES420 posted:linoleum comes in a rolls not tiles and is a thin adhesive sheet that mimics tiles.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:39
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NTRabbit posted:I got my first ever bits of terrain last week, and spent until now putting it together. It's modular stuff from Kickstarter, laser cut MDF but some of it needed gluing, especially the bits that aren't so modular. This is all of it assembled, well almost all of it, still had a small pile of ladders, a few walls and a few small floors in a pile, otherwise this is $190 worth of "choose your own bits" I have a whole lot of that stuff too which I finally finished assembling about a month ago. I have maybe 60% the amount you have. I think it's great. I'm sure there's little to set it apart quality wise from the stuff produced by other MDF etching folks but it suits me and was quite cheap. My friend found a really good blog post about painting them. Squibsy fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Nov 12, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2013 22:53
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A good way that will be super light if you don't mind a bit of cutting is buying some hardboard and tacking the linoleum down to it. Stuff is super cheap and fairly durable as long as you don't drop it on an edge or play frisbee with it.
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Nov 12, 2013 22:53
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So after doing some reading on hirst arts and deciding to just suck it up and pay the outrageous shipping fees for casting material, how do I decide between excalibur and merlin's magic? e: Oh, also, hi terrain thread. Have an old WIP video of a set piece I made for an end-of-campaign boss fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDhsYADAV4g
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Nov 12, 2013 23:25
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Bad Munki posted:So after doing some reading on hirst arts and deciding to just suck it up and pay the outrageous shipping fees for casting material, how do I decide between excalibur and merlin's magic? Dry ice or fog machine?
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Nov 13, 2013 00:07
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Bad Munki posted:So after doing some reading on hirst arts and deciding to just suck it up and pay the outrageous shipping fees for casting material, how do I decide between excalibur and merlin's magic? I'd like to suggest Hydrostone or Ultracal 30 instead; I know that Excalibur has a tendency to "shrink" as it dries from personal experience. I've had excellent results with Ultracal 30, and have bought but not yet used Hydrostone.
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Nov 13, 2013 00:14
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I make all my bricks from merlins magic. If you mix it thick enough it's amazing, but if you don't mix it thick enough, it settles at the bottom of your mold and you get a pool of water on top. But I highly recommend it. You can get like 50 pounds of it for about 75 bucks shipped. Doesn't have to be measured, after a while you just get to be like "yeah that's thick enough" and pour that poo poo.
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Nov 13, 2013 00:19
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Hubis posted:Dry ice or fog machine? Dry ice. It was a pretty small thing, and space was limited, and I wanted a LOT of fog. Inside the main portion of the thing, there's a cavity in which I put a little plastic container that comes right up to the lid (which is the platform on top) with a spillway inside for the fog. Underneath, there's a path for the fog to fall to the bottom and then get pushed up through the well. It worked amazingly well, although we had to occasionally pop the top off and drop some more dry ice in, but nobody seemed to mind because it was so fun. I can post a pic of the inside/underside of you want, although there's not a whole lot to see.  e: Also didn't want to coat everything in a film of glycerine or whatever the fog machines use. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Nov 13, 2013 |
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Nov 13, 2013 01:08
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ineptmule posted:I have a whole lot of that stuff too which I finally finished assembling about a month ago. I have maybe 60% the amount you have. I'm planning on getting the barricade wall containers and a guard tower once they're back in the store, makes a nice pseudo wall of martyrs while my incoming Deadzone fort plastics should be able to make a nice ADL, as well as other uses for both. As for painting, thanks for the link. I don't have an airbrush, so I'm resorting to painting them by hand. His radar dish looks similar to what I had in mind, but the containers I was going to paint a mix of dark yellow, green, blue and red like containers are today. I'm also going to take the ammo crats, paint them all the same colour, but then bunch them into groups with different colour paint on the dots - blue for bullets, red for plasma, white for missiles, etc. No idea how useful that will be, but I think it's cool to have variety. The buildings, wide containers and cubes will probably be shades of grey, of which I already have two and have two more coming for my Enforcer painting, so plenty of options to try. Going to test the paint on the scrap sheets to see if doing it by hand works, before ruining anything! NTRabbit fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Nov 13, 2013 |
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Nov 13, 2013 06:09
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Dr. Doji Suave posted:A good way that will be super light if you don't mind a bit of cutting is buying some hardboard and tacking the linoleum down to it. Stuff is super cheap and fairly durable as long as you don't drop it on an edge or play frisbee with it. How easy is this to cut without access to power tools? This may be the thing I need for modular tiles that I can store easily.
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Nov 13, 2013 13:37
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TarDolphinorShark posted:How easy is this to cut without access to power tools? This may be the thing I need for modular tiles that I can store easily. Pretty easy, you can cut it with a sturdy sharp knife and some patience. A regular saw might be better if you pick something thicker though. Just don't be tempted to rush and try a score & snap - it will leave you with splintered jagged edges. Watch out for warping of the wood if you apply lots of glue to stick things on.
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Nov 13, 2013 13:48
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TarDolphinorShark posted:How easy is this to cut without access to power tools? This may be the thing I need for modular tiles that I can store easily. Fairly easy, although I would suggest investing in a simple cheap saw if you plan on doing any long term work. What is neat is sometimes the folks at Home Depot will cut it for you to the sizes you need for free long as you are chill. If you wish to avoid using a hand saw then a sharp box knife will do it, but it will take multiple passes and can result in a bad cut.
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Nov 13, 2013 14:46
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TarDolphinorShark posted:How easy is this to cut without access to power tools? This may be the thing I need for modular tiles that I can store easily. You can get a circular saw for about $40 - cheaper if you hit up a yard sale or Black Friday sale. Hell, your dad or a neighbor probably has one. It will make clean, quick cuts and save you the aggravation of trying to slice through hardboard with a lovely box knife.
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Nov 13, 2013 14:56
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TarDolphinorShark posted:How easy is this to cut without access to power tools? This may be the thing I need for modular tiles that I can store easily. If you buy it from a diy store you can ask them to cut it or alternatively find the "Project Panels" and get a 2' x 2' x 1/8" piece of hardboard, it's what I did. Then I glued some cheap dollar store vinyl tiles to them for a modular Infinity board. I should take some pictures of them (that and actually finish the drat things).
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Nov 13, 2013 15:39
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Indolent Bastard posted:If you buy it from a diy store you can ask them to cut it or alternatively find the "Project Panels" and get a 2' x 2' x 1/8" piece of hardboard, it's what I did. Then I glued some cheap dollar store vinyl tiles to them for a modular Infinity board. I should take some pictures of them (that and actually finish the drat things). This is what I will most likely do. I planned on cutting them to 2x2 anyway. Thanks. I'll look into those. Would liquid nails work well enough for adhearing another layer of hardboard to create raised curbs without warping the board?
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Nov 13, 2013 15:45
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TarDolphinorShark posted:This is what I will most likely do. I planned on cutting them to 2x2 anyway. Thanks. I'll look into those. If I recall correctly I just used Gorilla Brand Carpenters Glue and a bunch of heavy books to get it to bond well, no real warping issues.
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Nov 13, 2013 19:09
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Crossposting this in/from the painting thread - let me know if anyone minds and I won't do it again. I've gone back to my crane. Work stopped a while ago when I ran out of ideas. I was stuck as to how I was supposed to make the underside of the crane top more interesting. Since it is such a tall model, the underside and very thin nature of the plasticard platforms is a lot more obvious than on lower down models. Eventually I hit on the idea of using cable fixings to attach wires and followed that up with cork as concrete (thanks Andy_T) and a smattering of engine gubbins.    I've also gotten around to making use of some crates and barrels I have had stashed in a box for a while.  These deliberately don't have a base, so that they can be added to anything, especially designed for my necromunda platform buildings. The crates are from the WAMP store (http://www.wampstore.com/store/) and the barrels, just like the rest of my barrels are from The Baggage Train (http://www.the-baggagetrain.com/). The baggagetrain is THE best place I've found to buy things like barrels and boxes from in large amounts. It's a small operation so orders can take some time but are very much worth it.
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Nov 15, 2013 03:23
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Well, I pulled the trigger and bought some Excalibur, white. And because I don't know how to ease into something or take it slowly at all, I ordered 50 pounds right off the bat. Really didn't expect it to get here so soon, but the fedex ground truck showed up at my door today just a few days after I ordered it. Impressive! Now to get my rear end in gear and start casting like mad.
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Nov 16, 2013 18:55
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NTRabbit posted:I got my first ever bits of terrain last week, and spent until now putting it together. It's modular stuff from Kickstarter, laser cut MDF but some of it needed gluing, especially the bits that aren't so modular. This is all of it assembled, well almost all of it, still had a small pile of ladders, a few walls and a few small floors in a pile, otherwise this is $190 worth of "choose your own bits" This is so loving cool. Amazing. For anyone interested in this type of stuff I found a dude on ebay that does something similar. I like yours way more though.
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Nov 17, 2013 09:09
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BULBASAUR posted:This is so loving cool. Amazing. For anyone interested in this type of stuff I found a dude on ebay that does something similar. I like yours way more though. Spartan Games also has a line of terrain like that - HDF corridors and structures with resin accent pieces.
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Nov 17, 2013 19:55
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Does anyone know how well this stuff mixes with Pegasus "Platformer" or "Hexagon" brand terrain? Two of the plastic kit terrain sets?
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Nov 18, 2013 01:14
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MisterG posted:Does anyone know how well this stuff mixes with Pegasus "Platformer" or "Hexagon" brand terrain? Two of the plastic kit terrain sets? If someone who had those was able to measure from floor to platform height, you can compare them with the stuff I have - the walls of those containers are exactly 50mm high, with the roof railings sticking out another 4mm. The older style walls (which he isn't actively selling but will make on request) are also 50mm tall, and sit on floor/roof tiles 3mm thick. Whether they work together stylistically is personal taste I guess, but I don't see a huge problem. Evangelising a little (I really like his stuff, want him to do well) but he's got cheap hex pattern bases up now, along with new Infinity template as he's started working with acrylic, the Tesla Cannon firebase package and barrier wall containers plus guard tower package he had on ebay to cover some unexpected KS shipping dramas are going back up tonight, and those are what I'm waiting for.
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Nov 18, 2013 02:48
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Do any of you use the dwarven forge sets? I'm just curious which pieces you find you use the most and which you wish you had more of. I've begun casting my hirst molds in earnest and I'm roughly using their sets as a guide for what I might like to have.
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Nov 18, 2013 02:53
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NTRabbit posted:If someone who had those was able to measure from floor to platform height, you can compare them with the stuff I have - the walls of those containers are exactly 50mm high, with the roof railings sticking out another 4mm. The older style walls (which he isn't actively selling but will make on request) are also 50mm tall, and sit on floor/roof tiles 3mm thick. Whether they work together stylistically is personal taste I guess, but I don't see a huge problem. Those measurements were good enough. I'll give his stuff a spin since the first thing I saw was the computer room accessories and those are fantastic! Once I get stuff assembled (one day far far in the future) I'll post comparison pics. E: Ordered a few of the armored shipping containers, a large container, the radar array MK II and the computer room. Those will work well as a small forward base that I should be able to intermix with pretty much anything. E: Answered Bad Munki Bad Munki posted:<snip> Any thoughts? I may just email hirst himself and ask what he uses. He has a page on that subject: http://www.hirstarts.com/moldmake/moldmaking.html VVVVVVV MisterG fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Nov 19, 2013 |
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Nov 19, 2013 03:44
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I decided that, instead of just casting haphazardly, a spreadsheet was in order. Now I know how many of which part I need to cast to get the terrain parts I want (for now, mimicking a dungeon forge basic set.) Turns out I'm already done with a couple parts! Also turns out I need about 130 more floor tiles.  I'm having fun, though. I've found a good balance between mass-production and not feeling like it's a job by just keeping two molds going at a time. Gives me time to do other stuff, take breaks, etc. After a few hours of football, I'll find I've gone through a surprising number of casts.One thing I know would help a ton, though, is if I duplicated these molds but customized them to have the parts I want in the ratios I need (it'd be awesome to have a mold 8"x4" with nothing but 2"x1/2"x1/2" field stone walls, and a similar one for floor tiles.) I'm not sure what sort of silicone material to use to best replicate the properties of the stuff from hirst. Any thoughts? I may just email hirst himself and ask what he uses.
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Nov 19, 2013 04:07
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MisterG posted:E: Ordered a few of the armored shipping containers, a large container, the radar array MK II and the computer room. Those will work well as a small forward base that I should be able to intermix with pretty much anything. Just a few tips, if it's not fitting together it's not meant to, don't force it The armoured container floors have one end with no notches, that end goes in last, pretty straightforward. The large containers instead have one side that has shorter notches than the others, which takes a couple glances to notice. That's the side that goes in last, and the final wall has just enough give to bend and slide over them without snapping. Though he could have changed that with the Mk II large container. The only thing I glued were the railings to the container roofs, because they fall off easily, the rest just holds together. Also, those window things clipped to the outside are what the ladders and the walkways connect with, so you can take them on and off at your leisure, with the containers unglued they come in and out with a little tug quite easily, but the ones on the end of the normal containers require you to remove the floor and bend the walls in to do that.
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Nov 19, 2013 08:50
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^^^^^^ Thank you! That is very useful. A friend of mine helped me figure out a way to make my terrain very portable while still assembled, so I assemble my terrain once and glue/paint it. Of course I leave removable stuff separate, but having things mostly assembled saves me some game setup time. I start with the transport box and size the terrain to fit into the box snugly. This let's me standardize the size of the storage/transport box while still allowing for a variety of terrain sizes. Before the suggestion I had all manner of box sizes. Now, I am almost down to a single box size.
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Nov 19, 2013 17:41
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I've been casting a lot of floors for this. That's 160 1" tiles in the big stack there, which puts me 75% of the way to my goal. Since I'm just sort of doing this when it's convenient, I'm surprised it's only taken a few days to run that mold so many times. Just a few more castings and then I'll focus on walls for a while. I'm enjoying this remarkably well despite the slow, repetitive, slogging nature of casting the same mold a thousand times.
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Nov 21, 2013 04:13
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can you elaborate more on the process? It looks like you have a vacuum setup with the wires and what not
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Nov 21, 2013 04:40
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Bad Munki posted:I've been casting a lot of floors for this. You get 10 per fieldstone mold? Gothic is 7 tiles per mold, plus some triangular pieces to help make up for the difference, which doesn't. That was the first thing to prompt me to make my own custom molds. So now I have a mold that casts three 2x2 tiles, a 2x4, a 1x4, and two 2x1. That's 28 square inches of tiles already in convenient dungeon making shapes, compared to the 7 individual pieces from the original mold. I just used whatever mold making compound they sell at Hobby Lobby, with a 50% off coupon to make it something like $14us.
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Nov 21, 2013 04:40
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