Cavern Tiles - New Tiles

Since receiving the Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles last month, I have been looking in the Workshop of Doom for some previous Hirst Arts tile work I did last year. Well I found it and got kinda hooked again. I spent an evening pouring tiles so I could make a couple more large rooms and corridors.

The tiles are from the cavern molds series. These are perfectly sized for fitting with the Dwarven Forge tiles. So now I can have a regular dungeon, and a cavern labyrinth. Good for me.

Here's where I am at with the caverns:

Cavern Room or entry - 28mm fig for scale

Open 6x6 Tile

2nd Cavern Room, 2 Connecting Corridors

Cavern Walls - Loose so they can modify rooms and big tiles

Dungeon Accessories - Ruined columns, chests, boxes, sacks, barrels, fonts, and piles.

Here's a few things on the work bench:

Demonworld giant spider, Micropanzer Walkers, and a few Bones

And a pile of Bones. I am finding that the Bones need a lot of Tacky Glue on a stick to stay on for painting. Big pile of Orcs, Golems and a few monsters.

We are playtesting different takes on wargaming fantasy dungeon bashing, especially when you have 6-8 people playing. And we want to be able to play heroes and denizens.

Sci Fi Corridor Tiles - some progress

When last I left this project, I had done some layouts and cut my pink foam, but had not glued anything down. Well, I got a couple of hours last night and I didn't feel like painting 1811 Spanish Militia, so I broke them out and glued them down and made some more. I'm just kinda winging this one and already its presenting some problems.

Becasue of the Industrial Edge tiles I am using, I have introduced 1/2 tiles into the way I normally would do a Hirst Arts Tile project. So its taking some getting use to. I fear I will need to make some 1-1/2 width corridors to make sure I can fill gaps that are occuring when I introduce T intersections and L corners.

But overall I am pleased with the progress.

I now have 2 big rooms (6x6), a long corridor(6x2), short corridors (3x2), L corner, 4 way intersection, and dead end or spawn point. All told 9 pieces ais a nice start. I need about 20 to play a game on. I need a couple more rooms, a coupl emore spawn/dead ends, a couple o f corners, straight halls and a t intersection. That's probably about a full day of casting to get that far..

I need to pour some more tiles and industrial edge tiles. ButI am making due with what I have poured already. I actually like the chaos of trying to put some of these pieces that are clearly meant to go vertical in as horizontal walls. Fun.

Hirst Arts. Always a fun time. I will probably make what I can from what I have and base coat them. Don't know that I will completely finish the first phase of them yet. I think then either some 15mm Fantasy or Sci Fi. Maybe take a break from Nappies for a bit. Pics have 15mm figs on the tiles. Blue Moon and Khurusan and GZG models respectively. I think the tiles look great with 15mm figs on them. Nice and spacious. Plenty of room for tactical movemnt and fire team play. Add in some Khurusan 15mm scale furniture and consloes and stuff for the rooms. And that could be fun.

The tiles work with 28mm too. Here's an older pic with some Necromunda guys on it to show scale:

And one last shot of the Workshop of Doom's only clear space. About half a cutting mat worth. You can see it littered with some of the Hirst Arts Sci Fi molds I have poured up, pink foam blanks I have already cut for tiles, and the best hobby glue ever made - Aleen's Tacky Glue. If you don't use this stuff for terrain projects you must be crazy.

Hirst Arts Sci Fi Corridors - Where I am headed

So a couple of months back I did a flurry of castings , for no good reason, of a bunch of Hirst Arts molds I had never cast before. I had a blast. Its always fun casting. I was casting cavern molds, sci fi molds, and pipe molds.

Once I was done casting for a while, I started building, of course. I made some test tiles for the cavern molds. I like where that was headed, and I have a good plan for those to transition to my 15mm foam dungeon project.

Then I had all that sci fi stuff. I started messing around, and before you knowit I had these:

1/2 pink foam, cut in regular sizes to match the tiles. This is the easy way out. A space hulk board, basically. Not the amazing boards that Dropship Studio for Sedition Wars. But fully workable. Short walls using the Indutrial edge mold and tiles for floors. Inspired by Spacejacker, I just love the versatility of doing them this way because, although they are not as atmospheric as full walls, they are scale flexible.

Here they are with 28mm figs:

That's very useable, easy for gamers to move figs and see eveything. Not as atmospheric, but OK. GW Karskin and Necromunda figs.

Now here it is with 15mm figs:

Scale looks good, actually better than with the 28mm figs. The edge now starts to look like walls. Great. Figs are Blue Moon and Khurusan Garns.

You can see in the overall pic, there are 6 tiles made up so far. They are not glued together yet cause I want to do about 20 at a time. So that means more casting. But I am happy where this one could be headed. Painted right, these could also double as a vault for Post Apocalypse.

Pouring update - 5-21-12

Well this distraction has been fun and energizing. I spent most of the weekend installing a new set of exterior doors on the Villa, but I did get those new molds poured and they are awesome.

Right now I've made about 6 pours each of the cavern molds. I really like the amount of wall that you can cover with these molds. And their height is perfect for 15mm figs. Just high enough for evoking the dungeon feeling, but low enough to move figs and see. Only issue I see is pouring enough floor to go with all the wall. I think I need to cast the floor 2 to 1 to keep eough floor tiles ready.

I got out and got a new sheet of pink foam so I will cut some tiles out of it tonight na start building. I think I will go 6x6, that's large enough to have a 4x4 room with wall all around. That seems to be a basic module need. Halls will be 4" and 3" wide (so I can have a 1 or 2 tile wide hall way with walls).

the thing I don't like is building the walls on top of floor tiles. It wastes a lot of floor tiles. But if you don't the walls look shrunken and small since their base is lower than the floor. I don't think I can get around this, but it sure uses a lot of tiles.

Pics tonite when I start making a few tiles.

They're here...

I got back to the office today and waiting on my desk was a great little package from Bruce at Hirst Arts. - My new molds are here!!! Yeah!!!

I will pour them up this weekend and let you know how it goes. I need to find a suitable tile base (foam, cork, mdf) to put the casts on. I need 2x hallways and 6x min rooms. Litko priced the 6x6 bases at $300.00 for 50. So I won't be doing that. I dont have a table saw or I would do them my self. For $300.00 I could buy a table saw.

I think I will concentrate on pouring the caverns and use the sci edge and floor molds as the off pours or scrapings. The cool thing about pouring plaster is, if you scrape your mold at the right time, the scraps off the tip are still plastic and you can slop those in a simple mold(usually a basic block or floor tile mold) and get more castings. Its pretty efficient and reduces waste. Of course I keep all the waste in a bucket and use it for rubble when I do post apoc stuff.

Poor little Hussars. I will be back soon. just needed a break.

Hirst Arts Test Fitting and.. I love it

I test fit some of the cavern molds I poured the last few days, and as ususal, this stuff is just too much fun. I got out some of 15mm guys. and voila! Instant 15mm dngeon that scales right and seems big and intimate at the same time.

Bruce Hirst at Hirst Arts doesn'tget enough credit for the work he does on his molds and the ability to let all of us build amazing things at a very reasonable cost. Thanks Bruce!

Only problem is, I need to do some transition pieces from these to my finished dungeon. (or get rid of my dungeon and do an all Hirst Arts one). 

So I ordered these two new molds to my list:

 The cavern accessory mold. Stairs, columns, doors, tiles, etc. Nice filler for my cavern.

Indutrial edge mold. This will be used for my 15mm scifi tiles. spacejacker used it to great effect for his project and now I will as well. http://tinysolitarysoldiers.blogspot.com/2011/07/3d-spaceship-modular-tiles.html

I will use Hirst arts floor tiles instead of his ingenius floor tiles from plastic and 20mm square bases, but I really like the feeling of his tiles. This will go well with my 15mm dungeon project. (that I can use Scott Pyle's great new Dungeon Delve rule set on).

As I was cleaning up my casting stuff last night in the dark, I realize I may have Gamer OCD as well. I was laser focused on getting molds poured yesterday when Igot home from work. So much so that I had 16 molds going at one time. Time to put on the brakes. relax. have fun. slow it down. New projects are like an itch you have to scratch. I'll probably only cast a couple molds a night, just to turn it down a notch and not look like a mad scientist on my back patio at 11:00 at night mixing plaster and pounding molds. How does my wife put up with this...

But I do have an awesome new set of tiles poured. I have 4 casts of all the sci fi molds. Only need about 6 more to actually be able to do something. and I really like the cavern molds too.

Wargaming is awesome.

And for something really different...

Ok so this is how my Gamer ADD works. I thought I would give you guys a little glimpse into the mind of a derranged gamer. I have been talking about needing a bit of a change to recharge the batteries. Now that my Nappy Fever has sttled down to about 100 degrees and simmering(simmering is where all the flavor is made), I felt a littl ebit of change needed to keep the juices flowing and not burn out. Seems resonable, but then I want to make sure I get to the finish line as well, that is finishing my British army and my small Spanish Army by the end of August. So I don't want to get too distracted.

So I resolved myself to painting my 1st Hussar unit as a reward. I ususally save Cav as a reward for pounding through the infantry. they are on sticks, they are rimed, they have base flesh painted and have a flesh wash. Good solid start, I'll stay focused on that so I can meet my goal fo August. Here they are, happy as a clam I am starting on them:

SO, I had 30 minutes on saturday and decided It wasn't enough time to work on faces, so I looked up from my table and saw these on a shelf: 

These are 28mm scale scrathbuilt shanties that I haven't finished yet for post apoc and sci fi. I pulled a couple down modestly and started to do some painting on them. Great I can always pick these off one at a time and get them done too. Good idea sir!

 Prgress on two of the shacks. I really had a lot of fun scratchbuilding these. Times up! Gotta go.

So I leave, and then I start thinking...Well, I can't just go from well made buildings to shanties(I am thinking in terms of Sci Fi here. Because I am particularly taken by the Sarissa Precision and MicroArt SciFi building for Infinity). And as the society develops, there will be a transition. So so small buildings, but better built than just a shanty. So maybe some concrete or plock buildings that have metal and scraps filling in the gaps, then full on heavy construction. Well I think I have some casts left over from all of the Hirst Arts Egyptian molds I cast about 3 years ago. Then the block house shaties were born. see below:

 So of course this morphed into, hey you need some more blocks cast. You have a 50 lb bag of unopened dental plaster. Just cast a few molds when you have some time this weekend. Keep it small. No bug deal. This is a fun side project when you have alittle window of time and dont have time to commit to painting.

So I found a couple of hours sunday to cast a few more basic block molds.Well, while digging for those molds, I ran across the scifi molds I got for xmas 3 years ago. Never been cast. Well maybe you could try a floor modl out...

Two hours later I have this:

 And this:

 This is the from the cavern molds I never cast.

Man I'm screwed. I love this stuff. and its fun to cast and pop them out of the mold. I never got one pour of the block molds, but I will. I think I may take a minor break and do some more of this. I know this won't last long cause its a lot of work. But if you have the materials cast, the fun part is scratch building stuff to use.

Sometimes you have to embrace the ADD, and let it take you where it must.

Don't worry sad Hussar. I will put your paint on soon. Don't worry.

And I just wanted to show you guys this resin cast model that is available for purchase. Isn't that incredible.I absilutely love it. I may have to pick it up. Its expensive and I don't remember who makes it, but holy hell that's beautiful.