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It's looking good, keep up the momentum. Personally I'm more worried about the jacket then the pants.

Conscript one is done! Pretty happy with him, especially with the red and green that tie in well with the Chipmunks shown earlier, and the face.

Looks fantastic. I really like the shield. Nice touch.

That Conscript looks like serious business! It works fantastically as an entire model and I love the face, pants, and shield in particular. You and Gymnogyps (who painted a lot of the "studio" models) should compare notes

I started putting paint on the second Conscript and the three Lancers last night. With our Club painting night later today, I hope to finish at least the Conscript, and have all of them done by the end of the weekend. Which would leave me with only the Capitan to go.

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Change of subject. Now that my Mare-Civitas starter is well on its way, and that people are getting curious seeing me paint little mice, I'm starting to think about what other warband to get to run demo with.

Right now, based solely on the figs and fluff, I'm looking at Aquitar, Ribenguo and Zabar. Of those three, is there one that would be better/worse for demo purpose, when faced against my mice conquistadors? All comments are welcome.

 Tonio wrote:
I started putting paint on the second Conscript and the three Lancers last night. With our Club painting night later today, I hope to finish at least the Conscript, and have all of them done by the end of the weekend. Which would leave me with only the Capitan to go.

---

Change of subject. Now that my Mare-Civitas starter is well on its way, and that people are getting curious seeing me paint little mice, I'm starting to think about what other warband to get to run demo with.

Right now, based solely on the figs and fluff, I'm looking at Aquitar, Ribenguo and Zabar. Of those three, is there one that would be better/worse for demo purpose, when faced against my mice conquistadors? All comments are welcome.

I tend to run Aquitar vs Civitas, it's decently balanced, as is Aquitar vs Ribenguo.

Mice Lancers are done! A bit quicker job than the conscript, but I'm still happy with the overall look. They fit nicely with the other models.

Conscript number 2 is halfway done. Should be completed during the weekend, and after that, I'll take my time on the Capitan, as any leader need to have more time invested on him. But not too much; I want to play!

They look great, keep them comin'!

Really inspiring, wish I could pick some up!

Fantastic lancers! I love the green striping on the... err.... pantaloons and the red on the sleeves, it's a very nice touch.

Those with a keen eye will see that I modified the title of this plog to include some Endless stuff too. I think that grouping both games into the same thread is fine, especially as I don't post that often anyway.


Endless Custom Boards
For the official coming of the game, I want to have some more boards ready, as I'll be running event at my FLGS. The demo board I previously made works fine (you can see it here), but is a bit small (15x15) for full games. Also, I want to be able to run more than a game at the same time, or small tournaments, so having 2 or 3 full size boards would be nice.

The first of those boards is a Old Crystal Mine, to tie in with all the crystals we see in the Endless imagery. Building started a while ago, but life got in the way, and I only was able to give it a good go this weekend. Here is what is done up to now. It's mostly basic building and dry fitting. Glueing and texturing will start soon.

Wip1 - Rough sketch


Wip2 - Cutting started


Wip3 - Building mid way


Wip4 - Basic leveling done


Wip5 - Basic leveling with fake columns


Wip6 - River, bridges and platforms coloured on the map

I think Tonio and I are going to be the major pushes behind the larger scale Endless games

That board looks awesome

Sometime after AdeptiCon, I'll probably start on an EFT board we'll have to see

Looks like you're off to a great start!

 Alfndrate wrote:
I think Tonio and I are going to be the major pushes behind the larger scale Endless games

It's only 20x20, nothing bigger than the recommended size in the last build of the rules. Not that I am against bigger games though.

However, I do find that size a bit big. 10 crystal games played really well into the 15x15, and already at that size, big part of the board weren't used. I am not sure of the impact a bigger board will have on the game. Probably just a bit longer jockeying for position before getting into the thick of it, with as much board unused.

 Tonio wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
I think Tonio and I are going to be the major pushes behind the larger scale Endless games

It's only 20x20, nothing bigger than the recommended size in the last build of the rules. Not that I am against bigger games though.

However, I do find that size a bit big. 10 crystal games played really well into the 15x15, and already at that size, big part of the board weren't used. I am not sure of the impact a bigger board will have on the game. Probably just a bit longer jockeying for position before getting into the thick of it, with as much board unused.

I'm sure I will be that guy that has 1 of every model and will spend his days looking for "apoc" sized games on huge boards

It seems much larger than 20x20, though I did count the squares before I posted. I think the thing to remember about board size is you're going to want that extra space. for the most part, I could probably play most of the games I play (Warmachine/Hordes/Malifaux) on a 1/2y by y sized board. Because most of my armies revolve around me charging forward, i rarely use the outer parts of the board.

I do look forward to seeing this board progress though

I might missed if you wrote it but what material is this made of exactly?

Pink and Blue boards of insulation foam.

I'm not sure where you could buy it in Hungary, but my bet is at any sort of home improvement store, construction store, or DIY store.

You can buy it in America at places like Home Depot or Lowes.

Wow. I've been debating a material for my board. Totally stealing this idea. YOINK.

It's a very, very handsome start and I can't wait to see it after being painted to your calibre!

 WhiteRoo wrote:
I might missed if you wrote it but what material is this made of exactly?

I didn't, so that's not your fault. I just assumed people would know what it was, but with an international forum, I shouldn't have.

The pink and blue parts are Sheet Insulation Foam, used to insulate walls. The blue one in denser, so harder to cut and sculpt, but provide a sturdier foundation. That's why I used it for the back walls and the first levels of elevation.

I used 1 inch sheets and half a inch sheets, but I learned too late that "half an inch" is more like 5/8", so it doesn't all fit nicely. I'll have to remember to use only half inch if I do use it on other projects, and not to mix both.

The base is just a 20x20 1" foam piece, over which I layed a the paper sheet I drew my grid on. It's not glued, and have been removed since last picture, to work on the river. The paper have all the details drawn on (elevation, walls, columns, bridges, rivers, etc.), but it's a bit hard to see with the pictures.


Edit: Ninja'ed by Alf, but I'll leave the post as I put some more details in my answer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zygrot24 wrote:
Wow. I've been debating a material for my board. Totally stealing this idea. YOINK.

It's a very, very handsome start and I can't wait to see it after being painted to your calibre!

Insulation foam is a great material to work with. It's easy to cut, you can press some texture straight into it instead of gluing stuff on (that's what I did with my demo board; took a big rock and rolled it onto the foam), and it's light, so easy to transport. Most of the terrain I work on has that as a base, or foamcore.

I'm not familiar with Endless, but what is the reason behind the stair-like structure? It looks really nice because many models would fall over on a non-flat surface.

Is it based on a one inch by one inch square grid?

 WhiteRoo wrote:
I'm not familiar with Endless, but what is the reason behind the stair-like structure? It looks really nice because many models would fall over on a non-flat surface.

Is it based on a one inch by one inch square grid?

Endless Fantasy Tactics is OTL's other table top wargame, it's based off of the old JRPG games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, etc... A grid based tactical wargame if you will. And movement is done on a 1 inch by 1 inch grid

If I make it a two by two, that's big enough to play Brushfire on it.

I'm planning to build a modular set of scenery for Brushfire and I really like the idea of this stair-like structure.

 Tonio wrote:
Insulation foam is a great material to work with. It's easy to cut, you can press some texture straight into it instead of gluing stuff on (that's what I did with my demo board; took a big rock and rolled it onto the foam), and it's light, so easy to transport. Most of the terrain I work on has that as a base, or foamcore.

I've worked with that foam tons. It just somehow never occurred to me to use it for EFT boards. Thinking about my EFT board has been deciding how much I want to compromise between modularity (replayability) and aesthetics (good lookin' games).

A bit more work done on the Mine board. I transcribed what should appear on the base board (level 0), and tiled the parts that needed to be. I did it a bit different than with the demo board, and it worked really great, saving me a ton of time.

Here is a quick rundown:
1 - Put a gridded paper on the foam board
2 - Using a small pick or other pointed tool, punch a small hole in all the grid intersections that appear on that level.
3 - Using a metal ruler and a exacto knife, simply follow the holes and make straight cuts. This give a narrow line
4- Finally, using a broader tool, pass in each line made with the knife to broaden them. I used a woodeen sculpting tool, made to work with clay.

Wip7 - Tools for tiling


Wip8 - Wip8 - Base board tiled

If you do alot of work with foam I highly recommend looking into a hot knife.

I recommend this one:
http://www.micromark.com/electric-hot-knife,10875.html

It's fairly in expensive but it has some nice features including an adjustable depth gauge and temperature that would work really well for transcribing your lines.

I'm not sure if it's of any interest to anyone but me but in the next month or so I'm going to be experimenting with urethane foam to see if it can be used with hirst arts molds. If it can it should be pretty economical to produce a number of tile sets.

Your boards really starting to come together. I can't wait to see the finished product.

I have one, but with a really flimsy blade, and a wire cutter. The one you linked at seems like a buy to me. Bookmarked!

However, for the tiling, I just can't see using that kind of tool. The heat eat the foam at a variable speed, and I would need a crazy steady hand to mark my lines as straight and regular as I did with the exacto knife and sculpting tool. However, I plan to use it a lot to texture the wall and rock pillars.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Catyrpelius wrote:
I'm not sure if it's of any interest to anyone but me but in the next month or so I'm going to be experimenting with urethane foam to see if it can be used with hirst arts molds. If it can it should be pretty economical to produce a number of tile sets.

It would be of interest to me. Building the basic of the board is fine, but applying a rock like texture on the floor is not that simple. Having thin, light tiles that could simply glue on the foam would be great. Keep us posted.

The hot knife I linked to comes with an ajustable depth gauge that you can angle. If I had to make the lines like you did I'd probably setup the knife using the gauge then use a straight edge. It might take some fiddleing to get the temperature right but I'm pretty impatient. I'll try and take some pictures tonight so I can show you what I'm talking about.

How much of a rock texture are you looking for with the walls. If you want them to look rocky like a cliff face or a rocky mountain side newspaper balls covered with plaster cloth then painted.

I may have missed it somewhere but are you going with one half inch per elevation level in game terms? I was looking at different building materials and trying to decide on a thickness for each elevation increase. It has been tougher without the models in hand to use for scale.

On the board size discussion: The table can seem to shrink really quickly when Commands like the Rhapsodist's Lullaby, or Dark Priest's Aetheric Void can restrict enemy action on large swaths of the board (7x7 square in both of the above cases.) I also want to see scenarios with multiple objectives, making players send models all over the board.

Galen wrote:
I may have missed it somewhere but are you going with one half inch per elevation level in game terms? I was looking at different building materials and trying to decide on a thickness for each elevation increase. It has been tougher without the models in hand to use for scale.

On the board size discussion: The table can seem to shrink really quickly when Commands like the Rhapsodist's Lullaby, or Dark Priest's Aetheric Void can restrict enemy action on large swaths of the board (7x7 square in both of the above cases.) I also want to see scenarios with multiple objectives, making players send models all over the board.

The actual thickness of each level is irelavant so long as your consistant.

Galen wrote:
I may have missed it somewhere but are you going with one half inch per elevation level in game terms? I was looking at different building materials and trying to decide on a thickness for each elevation increase. It has been tougher without the models in hand to use for scale.

On the board size discussion: The table can seem to shrink really quickly when Commands like the Rhapsodist's Lullaby, or Dark Priest's Aetheric Void can restrict enemy action on large swaths of the board (7x7 square in both of the above cases.) I also want to see scenarios with multiple objectives, making players send models all over the board.

I thought we had scenarios with multiple objectives .

Don't worry, hopefully you all will feel free to pilfer from the Miasma War Campaign when we get it out.