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consider yourself guilty for making me complete my building phase of my current workload of dungeon tiles...will post pics shortly on my thread...

and you´re getting solar panels on your roof?...wow... that´s very modern...and very...european...

Damn sounds busy! Kudos for going solar though, let us know how that works out for you I've been curious about such things.

That's great Vik. Glad I could motivate you.

The Solar Situation is kind of a no-brainer at the moment. Massachussetts, the local power company, and Solar Provider are subsiding the cost of the system and instillation, and I agree to buy electricity from the Solar Provider, instead of the electric company. What makes it a great deal is that the Solar provider only charges $.12 per kwh verses the $.25 I'm paying from the electrical company, and the rate is locked in with such a low rate of increase, about $.005 a year, so that it in 20 years I will be only be paying .25 per kwh. Where the electrical company has rate has climbed at a singnificantly higher rate.

Extra power generated by the array is banked for me purchase at the $.12 rate. If there is no power banked, and the sun just refuses to show it's face for weeks/months (Nuclear Winter ?) my power will just be drawn from the local power company, at the power company's rate, until the array is back to generating power.

I have the option of buying the system outright if I want, any time over the course of the next 20 years.
It's about a 400KW array, which should generate slightly more power than we typically use.

TLDR: It costs me nothing to install and it should cut my electric bill in half.

If anyone who is a home owner in Massachussetts and interested wants further information I can refer you to my rep, and claim a sweet referal bonus for doing so, if you join the program as well.

thhat model up to a point now is also here available...i´ve heard that some peeps are even making a small income that way by feeding the the energy back into the system...iirc...
actually i think solar power is the way to go...

That's awesome, I'm really glad such a thing is going on. I dunno that it's an option here in southern Illinois, probably not atm, but it sounds cool. How large is the array in terms of physical size? Does it fit out in your yard, or is it tacked onto the roof?

Pretty modest in size. It will fit on the roof in the front of my house.

I've always been fond of solar, just never had the money to invest in a adequite sized system.

Struggling to find time to work on miniatures. Actually collapsed and fell asleep on couch after working overtime today. Later tonight I'm going to trade some Ork stuff for Tyranids. It's completely unrelated to anything I've been working on, but I got an offer.



There are the bookshelves I cobbled together, a table, round room sections, new pendulum traps, a wall with a secret door, and an archway.

Also, Grim, I think I figured out how to make fire for the edges of the movement trays for KoW Army of the Abyss models. Just need to apply the technique I used to make that fire to longer and lower.

Ooh cool. I never did get any abyssals after all, but that just makes me doubly interested in yours

the round tiles really make me envious... but i need to focus^^... also... mind showing some of those traps "at work" ?... would love to see them get some use...to see how they scale up to the tiles...

Corner bend with optional traps

That looks fancy Nice work.

Your stuff is so stellar it's really starting to push me on the 2.5D stuff. As long as I had walls for taking dramatic photos maybe... Hmm.. stuff to consider.

Thanks !!

Walls are pretty easy to make. If you peel the paper off of one side of the foamcore, you just draw the wall detail on with a pen, razor, pen combo

Do you find the doors and furniture look odd when you've got those 3d elements in there with your 3d models, or does it just 'work'? The 2.5D stuff certainly looks more playable, faster to build/paint, and easier to store/transport. If all it would take to make me happy is a couple of photo-backdrop-walls, it would probably be better to do the 2.5.

It just works. It's like a cut away view.

I find it also give you more play space. Big monster limbs and swinging swords can hang over the "walls" that isn't possible with 3D walls

the first trap idea is sadly not possible to use in my dungeon...i can´t make such raised areas anymore..but looks cool...
and the swinging pendulums is ace....need to remember the hot glue trick for sure! thx^^

That step up on the piece is on top of the regular floor to give the pit itself a bit of depth. The floor section there was cut out and removed, and a piece of thn card glued underneath the whole thing, so you can't see the table underneath. It may be too late to cut the square out of your tile, but you could add the step up on both sides of a hall piece to give the pit a bit of actual depth.

While rummaging through my cellar I founf a some prepainted dungeon features from the MageKnight Dungeons Exansion. I also base coated a dozen or so tiles last night. My goal is to have those tiles painted and get a few pictures up Tueday morning of painted dungeon sections with all the dungeon features I've painted so far, including the MageKnight items.

I honestly need to focus more on just painting and finishng the basic rooms and hallways, but the features, like steps,pits, traps, etc.. are just more fun to work on.

Are you going to try any different environments like sunken partially water-filled caves, regular caves, deep underdark caves with glowing moss? I think I'll have to do some of those before it's over but I haven't even started yet myself

Gonna have to come back and really examine how you're doing your traps and stuff in case I want to make my own.

Is the hallway always taller like that, or do you just add the raised part and spikes once the trap has been sprung so everyone knows what's going on?

The raised corner was just an experiment to make the pit look deeper and cooler looking. I could just use the whole tile to replace a corner piece when the trap is sprung, but I like the raised step aesthetic, so I might make a few more corner pieces with the raised step as well.

I have some ideas for carvern pieces, but I want to get a decent dungeon set first, before I go off on a cave tangent.
Probably use some combination of covered alluminum foil or paper mache for the walls.

This week I'm going to try to force myself to paint the peices I've already built. My gaming group is only a few sessions away from finishing the Mines of Phandelver adventures, and I'd like to have a playable set ready for our adventrues after that.

While I took a lot of inspiration from DMscotty and DMGinfo, I am a lot more inclined to use and add elevation to my pieces that they are, so my caves willl ikely have some elevated features, to make combat more interesting.

Ahh, interesting about the elevation. You and I are probably closer aligned in that sense (given I wanted fully 3d terrain to start with ).

I don't really see anything wrong with having a cave room that starts at table level and rises and inch or two towards the middle and back down. Then people at the far ends will have partial cover/no line of sight to/from each other.

I never strictly/religiously follow instructions/directions/tutorials unless I want to get something *exactly* like the thing that's being described. Putting a grill together, sure. Making my own scenery though? Nah, just looking for tips

Got some painting done.







Also started building some beds, and torch holder/urns/???

that skull smoke looks interesting... what does it stand for?
and the urns...made from wooden beads?...i bet you could make quite good looking columns too...
i probably should show my progress in painting the tiles too... it´s slowed down a bit as it is space and time consuming like hell...

also...beds...??? in a dungeon...er....that´s where i always wanted to sleep...

Hey, you would be suprised how many D&D adventures have bed rooms in the dungeons for the people that live in them. The Mines of Phandelver Adventure we're running has 3 bedrooms in the Redbrand ruffian's hideout alone.

The skull in smoke is an old miniature from the 80's. Good for just looking creepy, or as a summons/ritual.

Urns are indded ornate beads glued together. They happen to be plastic. Available in a range of finishes, mostly metallics, but I chose the bone finish because it came 48 pieces to the bag, instead of 36. Still have some smaller ones I'm looking to make into potion bottles.

I look forward to seeing your progress.

Great stuff

I really need to take more pics of what I've been up to. I painted about 20 goblins and worked on my D&D tiles more.

Experimented with usging the double layer cardboard fpr some cavern tiles

That's really simple. I kinda like it. What are your plans for covering the rough cardboard edge? And the floor?

Alluminum foil. Crumpled and then unrolled Alluminum foil. Painted up it gives a really great organic texture.

I'll post picutres as soon as I can recharge my camera's battery

That sounds easy yet intriguing. And quite possibly less of a 'falling apart later' hassle than something like plaster/spackle.

Long story short, Vacation, Pink Eye from hot tub, House Burgled, got Frostgrave and KoW2 rulebooks.

Adventuring Party

The Druid, his bear form, the Rogue, Paladin, Fighter, Wizard, Wizxard's Familiar

Goblins


Goblins and vermin


Bugbears


Rats, lots of rats


Assorted Dungeon Dwellers


Scratch Built Gelatonous Cube and Ochre Jellies

MAAAANNN...you got robbed?...damn...how do you feel now?...i currently live in a corner of my city were this is not such a strong theme, but in other parts it is quite the ..."custom"...i hope you´re on top of everything...i bet that is a lot of stress...on everything...

but we see you productive, which is a good sign...
er...whats a pink eye?

the cube and the glibbers look hilarious and convincing^^

any ideas where to get cheap and lots of rats?...for my own needs i recently got me a nice amount of tyranide glands...the ones that look like brains... we´ll see what can be made with these^^...

Damn. Having been burgled before I feel for you... Lousy experience. I hope insurance covere you and nothing sentimental went missing.

On a lighter note... Pink eye...Piiiink eeeeye!