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I finished fixing up the mold. Unfortunately, my sculpts did not survive the de-molding process (but they are fine now, all glued back together. (However they do look like they are trying to be extras in the movie "Brave Heart" still). The silicone went down so thick as usual it never settles out to be a flat surface, but the mold is still working pretty well. If I ever plan to make more than six casts, I will probably make something to help hold the mold more rigidly.


The glue never seems to get all the way through the leaf dinosaur, but the raptor was what was the most complicated and most important to me to work. It mostly seems to be working pretty well. Even with only one side working, I am still happy that my first attempt at making channels for the casting seems to work. I can make a new mold for the other.

(The top right cast was done in the old style of squirt into both halves of the mold and squish them together.)

Glad to see you're having some success. Albeit a bit messy just now.

The little leaf lizzard guy. I'd be tempted to make a single piece mold of his body so you just pour that in. And the the leaf part, it would be a much simpler piece for a two part mold on its own but you could also just press each side into some playdough and make a pour-in mold of each side and then stick them together on top of the body. There'd be more assembly that way but less to go wrong with the silicone and resin.

Although, looking at the mold you've made id say you could use it for the leaf part if you just plug up the areas you don't need filled with playdough and try to make some leaves that way.

If you do go for a two part mold again there's a trick with two part molds to deliberately leave a strip along one side without any mold release so it gets stuck in place and becomes like a book opening kind of shape. it helps because it always lines up right.

Heh heh, that's true they are looking a little messy in that picture, luckily I think they are looking a little better than they were with a little paint on them now. Thank you for all the advice, I have made those hinged molds before, that good advice on this one, if I can get the silicone to behave well enough. I'm tempted to make a one piece mold of the leaf guy filled from the bottom with a vent coming off the top of the leaf, but those are good points about the leaf still being usable. Thanks.

Very interesting progress pictures and nice results! Thanks for taking the time to record the steps.

Thanks Ezki!

I realized I was running out of time to finish the game before a big school vacation was coming up. So I spent the whole evening finishing the writing of the rules and enough game cards to play. Then yesterday in class my students helped paint up a game board to play on and make the letter cards needed to make a game possible. It's certainly rough right now, but we were able to play the first ever game of it to test it out. My student who played it, loves it so far. And the others are anxious to try.

MOOSE! A Møøse once bit my sister... No realli!

Looks like a great little game. If you ever have time to do a dakka write up I'd be interested to give it a go.

Cool to see your game "in the wild". Good to know the test went well and excited to see how it will develop!

So cool to see a completely from scratch board game. Nice job!

Thank you all for the kind and supportive comments. It is fun to have made my own game, and it is still very popular with my students. Even though we have never had enough time to finish a full game.

I bought a little storage case today for the game pieces. I still have two more sets of 6 to add, so hopefully they will all fit.


Luckily, I have also been able to use the original mold for the previously failed plant dinosaur following advice from my brother and TheCrowe. It takes a little cleaning up, but they are turning out fine now.


Do you have suggestions for the eyes, I'm currently planning to paint the entire eyeball a featureless dark blue like the original sculpture. There's jsut something I like about it, but at the same time I want these guys to be cute, so I'm open to suggestions.

Congrats on having a functioning mold! I would be partial to Kermit's eyes But blue sounds good.

@Viterbi: Kermit's eyes would be interesting, but I worry they would be too difficult to paint. I considered just white with a black dot but worried it would be too cartoony.

I have finished the last sculpt for my base set of creatures for my game. The rock turtle for the element of earth. I think it turned out looked exceptionally cute.




I am also more or less done painting these guys unless any of you have advice for making them look better with my limited supplies.


Thanks for stopping by. My game is still very popular with my students. They spent half an hour today organizing the homemade cards and creating new letter cards to use in the game.

The rock turtle looks awesome.
Students are great guinea pigs, glad to hear they like the game.

Thanks DJJazzyJeff

Great to see the kids are having fun with it (and helping with production! )

The blue fits the plant dino eyes. i think a little white dot for a light reflection on them might look pretty good, as long as it doesn’t look like a pupil. Or hitting it with a gloss varnish if you have any.

The rock turtle is adorable, it looks like it would spend most of its time sleeping and be grumpy if woken up.

Keep it up man!

Thank you Thumpingbear I love what you think of the rock turtle, that's great to visualize. Unfortunately I don't have any gloss varnish, but you're right that that would really add to its look.

It still needs to cure, but I poured the last two molds today using the last of my silicone. I hope they cure correctly. I'm hoping to use the next few days to testout my game and work on balance and flow.

Luckily, a friend who is much harder working has been testing out my game and telling me places that might need improvement. But last night, I finally played a full game all the way to completion on my own to test out over-all game play. For starters, the game took 1 hour & 45 minutes to finish. I had a feeling from the games with my students that the game took a little too long, and this also lines up with the suggestions from my friend. He has already devised ways to get the game down to 1 hour, which is great. I'm going to experiment to see if I can find any other ways to help it too.

Below is a simple battle report of the test game.

Please excuse the spelling error in this pic, there was a handful of "p", "d", and "b" and I accidentally placed the wrong one. This pic is when the "player" on the left lost his first creature getting surprisingly overpower by the jelly blobs (two little blue guys). Even after the loss, having the Pterosaur (flier) in his opponents start zone gave an advantage.


Both "players" continued to build up forces, and the "player" on the left continued the assault with his second Pyro Raptor running across the board to engage.
Since it's hard to read, the spelled words are "monk", "picks", "my", "poll", "gone", and "time".


The player on the right seemed to get getting a serious advantage. The left player had lost two Pyro Raptors, and now the right player was attacking with a Pterosaur, two Pyro Raptors, and a jelly blob, against the defenders Pterosaur and three jelly blobs.


There was a major turn around where the defending jelly blobs of the left player defeated the attacking force (I was using spare minis as damage counters). The jelly blobs and Pyro Raptor of the left player were badly injured but managed to take out one more jelly blob of the right player's winning the game.

Rock turtle looks so great, I want one for my garden now
Game looks fun and I hope finetuning goes well!

The conga line of jelly blobs in that last pic looks pretty funny. Like. French column advancing.

@Viterbi: Thanks Viterbi, after what you said I want a rock turtle for my garden now too And thank you about the well wishes for fine tuning. I'm looking forward to it, but it will still be a lot of work.

@theCrowe: Heh heh, those jelly blobs do look funny like that. They kept detouring and leap frogging each other as they fought off pyro raptors and pterosaurs and ended up advancing like that in the end.

Something I have been working on for a while, but haven't posted WIP of is this Fomorian giant for D&D that I have been sculpting. It's done now except for painting. Sculpting this guy was really easy and stress free. In the lore, these guys are very deformed from a curse. So, instead of making sure I'mmaking all the proportions right like I normally have to, I am purposely making them off.



The rest of the pics including all WIP are in here

Wow, he's such a tall and gnarly dude. What a great character. I like how his feet turn in. Does he have a name?

Thanks theCrowe! I'm glad you like him. I hadn't thought to name him, but it would make sense for when I use him in a game.

The second trilobite mold turned out well, and you can actually tell the casts are trilobites this time. I've just painted up the Metal Trilobite for my game.

Awesome Fomorian! Really like it, looks properly twisted.

Also, really like the little poke-saurs. Really cute and kid friendly.

That's Da Boss I was trying to make it more twisted like the art, rather than the official mini. I feel like the real mini just has a hump and one big eye, and that's it. Also thanks about the sauruses, "poke-saur" is a pretty accurate nickname for them

I hope you guys don't mind another BatRep of my game, that's what I have been working on. I'm also happy to say, that all figures have been successfully molded and cast. This was the first game I have played of it with all figures available. This is also the first time trying out all the rewritten creature cards. I had fun, even playing by myself, and I think it's working a lot better already.

I tested out what it is like to start with the start zone full of creatures to see how that affects gameplay and speed. Since it's a test, I started both sides with identical creatures.


By the end of the first turn, there was already a lot happening. The right side went first and had very good luck on rolling for extra cards, taking an aggressive stance from the start. The left side got a second Phytosaur out on the first turn that gave a card drawing advantage that showed for the rest of the game.


The right side's early attack focused on trying to remove the weaker card drawing creatures from the left side, but the left side's creatures powered up quickly and surrounded the attacking creatures resulting in the first losses of the game.



The left side marched 4 creatures across the board in a counter attack while trying to stop the right side from transporting a Rust Chiton to their start zone.


The casualties began to pile up as the left lost its interfering Pterosaur, the right was able to deposite their Rust Chiton in the enemy start zone for a drawing bonus, and the left's Pyro Raptor was able to pull off its special attack one-shoting the the enemy rock turtle. The Pyro Raptor was then cherry picked afterward. The last thing that I did was a clever plan turned into foolish move from being tired, and the right's Phytosaur managed to escape the surrounding attack of the enemy Metal Trilobite and two Phytosaurs, but I forgot to power it back up, so it was overcome by its wounds.


The game ended with a 5-3 victory for the left side with the defeat of a Jelly Blob in the bottom right corner. As I said above,I had fun. I am actually looking forward to doing more testing.


The look more like ghost turtles than rock turtles, but like I said, I have finished casting the rest of my game pieces. I just have to paint the turtles. Any suggestions on the paint scheme, especially detail colors? I'm thinking a light brown like Raw Sienna with a heavy brown wash for the main body. Maybe some green in there too?

Very interesting game description- with so much starting action almost like a 'speed play'.

Like also the description of the color scheme for the turtles- possibly brown base colors and green wash, to get that color in? Or brown base, darker brown wash, green drybrush highlights?

Excellent game development.

Creating your own game AND pieces AND an enthusiastic audience? Really well done, man, congratualtions on all your hard work and results! That Fomorian looks fun, look forward to the end result!

For rock turtles maybe lean into a rock themed grey with some brown and green notes, maybe even yellow lichens. Just to keep the main green for the Phytosaurs. He's a sweet little creation. Looking forward to seeing one (or all of em) painted up whatever you feel like doing with it.

@Meer_Cat: Thanks Meer When I was worried about how long the games were taking to finish, my friend who has been helping me test the game suggested that I try to do something about the slow build up at the beginning, which hurt the momentum of the game. I decided to follow how one of my students wanted to set up the game, and I think it helps make it action packed from the start. It definitely is like a speed play. Even though finishing still takes about an hour, I think it feels more frantic in the beginning and has more momentum.

@Ragsta: Thank you Ragsta, I am very happy how the game is turning out and even more happy with how it is being received. I'd consider it a functioning prototype now. Thanks about the Fomorian too.

@theCrowe: Thank you, that's good advice (as usual) about keeping the color pallet distinct for each creature to make identifying them quick and easy.

School is back in session, and here is the picture to save our progress of the first game after coming back. I am on the 3rd version of the creature cards while working on balance and making sure it is as fun as I can manage. One of my other students set up some of the other figures as an audience in the top left corner

Really nice to see that the rewriting is helping and congrats on finishing all the sculpts!

Thanks Viterbi!