Saturday, March 31, 2007
The bargain bin is back up
Just letting everyone know monstromakes.com has been updated! The bargain bin is up and has been redone a bit. Further re-workings of the page are in place. In addition, I've added some new scenery rules.
Cities of Death question
Does anyone out there have a clue what the difference between difficult and dangerous terrain is for vehicles. According to COD, almost everything is "dangerous terrain" for vehicles, but the rulebook seems to employ the rules interchangably.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Basics
I just got back from ICon where I kind of sponsored the scenery for the 40k tournament. I brought 3000 dollars worth of stuff in six totes and a few boxes and it was...well...hot. I will have more to say on the subject soon, including pictures I assure you. I will also have pictures of the drop pod I just built. Evidentally the world needs drop pods.
I will also, I swear, continue on with my expose on how to build your own city of death, but before that, I'd like to cover the basics.
You see, here at the Empire, we sometimes discuss scenery like you need special rules to make your stuff work...because you do. Let's face it. 40k was kind of made for 12 year olds. If you're older than that, you can handle a little complexity in your rules, or so I thought.
I found out that quite a few people simply do not get scenery--through no fault of their own, I might add. The rules are vague and well, there's no one to straighten it all out. I decided the best thing to do was to use this space here to discuss the basics of scenery.
1. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad without going through intervening terrain? If yes, then you may shoot. Line of sight is not blocked, cover saves are not allowed. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that you can see.
2. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad without going only through terrain that is smaller than the height of the shooting model? (note models are their own height or the height of the structure they are standing on, whichever is higher) If yes, then you may shoot. Line of sight is not blocked, cover saves are allowed. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that you can see.
3. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad going into (not through) intervening terrain equal in height to the shooting model? If so, and you may shoot any model that is less than 6" in. They get a cover save. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that is less than 6" in and can be seen.
4. Can you draw a line between members of your squad to targets in their squad going through intervening terrain equal in height to the shooting model? Without playing any optional rule, the targetted player may only take casualities from those members that can be seen (where the line does not go through the intervening terrain). These models do get a cover save so long as 50% of their squad are in or behind the intervening terrain. If no members are out in the open, they cannot be shot.
There it is. These four steps and you have everything you need to know about the basics of cover. And again, rule of thumb: if you're on a level one hill, you ignore level one terrain, if you're on a level 2 or 3 hill, you ignore level 2 terrain. No one gets their cover save, no one gets line of sight blocked. This is the point of taking higher ground.
I will also, I swear, continue on with my expose on how to build your own city of death, but before that, I'd like to cover the basics.
You see, here at the Empire, we sometimes discuss scenery like you need special rules to make your stuff work...because you do. Let's face it. 40k was kind of made for 12 year olds. If you're older than that, you can handle a little complexity in your rules, or so I thought.
I found out that quite a few people simply do not get scenery--through no fault of their own, I might add. The rules are vague and well, there's no one to straighten it all out. I decided the best thing to do was to use this space here to discuss the basics of scenery.
1. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad without going through intervening terrain? If yes, then you may shoot. Line of sight is not blocked, cover saves are not allowed. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that you can see.
2. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad without going only through terrain that is smaller than the height of the shooting model? (note models are their own height or the height of the structure they are standing on, whichever is higher) If yes, then you may shoot. Line of sight is not blocked, cover saves are allowed. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that you can see.
3. Can you draw a line between 50% or more of the shooters in your squad to 50% or more of the targets in their squad going into (not through) intervening terrain equal in height to the shooting model? If so, and you may shoot any model that is less than 6" in. They get a cover save. Casualties can only be removed from the part of the unit that is less than 6" in and can be seen.
4. Can you draw a line between members of your squad to targets in their squad going through intervening terrain equal in height to the shooting model? Without playing any optional rule, the targetted player may only take casualities from those members that can be seen (where the line does not go through the intervening terrain). These models do get a cover save so long as 50% of their squad are in or behind the intervening terrain. If no members are out in the open, they cannot be shot.
There it is. These four steps and you have everything you need to know about the basics of cover. And again, rule of thumb: if you're on a level one hill, you ignore level one terrain, if you're on a level 2 or 3 hill, you ignore level 2 terrain. No one gets their cover save, no one gets line of sight blocked. This is the point of taking higher ground.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Cities of Death-- prototyping
I am a big believer in free form features. In other words, crap you glue on. But I think this only really works well when the crap you glue on is sort of already finished out. You don't want to take an electrical wire cap drill two 1/32 holes in it, take speaker wire, strip it, seperate it, create cables comin out of the wire cap and glue them to a perpindicular brace made from some kind of drywall screw contraption...or at least you don't want to do this five hundred times. My suggestion is this: if you see something in a store, it's the right scale, it requires only one moment of glueing (and it will glue with a modicum of attention), then fine: use it as is. Case in point, I find that 3/8" Lagshields with mini christmas bulbs make great sci-fi columns. They're kind of mad scientist-ish, but note: I buy both products in packages of fifty, and I glue one to the other and I'm done. I would not do this if I also had to sand, drill, cut, and or grind, because all of that takes time, space, money. Not to mention it makes a mess, which means you'll need a workshop or have to work outside. In the latter case, inclement weather is sometimes a problem.
"But," you say, "all the really cool stuff looks really cool because of detail." Yes. What I am saying is that you do not attempt to mass produce detail by hand. One building will take you a year. Mass produce easy to produce (or already produced) features by hand, glue those to the building, but for the serious stuff, the various pipes, the various hoses, the skulls, the layers of relief, the vents--these things require cutting with tiny scissors and holding them down as the glue dries with toothpicks. Don't do that five hundred times for the same effect.
Instead, do it once, and then mold the thing. Basically, what I'm saying is have a prototype, a mock up of what you want the thing to look like when you're done, mold that (and possibly make multiple molds of it) and then cast it five or ten times for the desired effect. This is the principle behind the Cities of Death plates that they sell you. They don't give you a sprue of little detail things, they give you detailed plates all ready to be used. I would suggest thinking in terms of prototyping on any piece of detail that takes longer than fifteen minutes to make.
As far as actually constructing the prototype is concerned, you build the prototype exactly as you would build anyother piece except for a few things.
First off, you're going to mold this piece. Yes, it is possible to make two part molds, but they take longer to use. Keep that in mind. The best things to mold have big flat surfaces and no "holes" in them . There's a lot to say about molding, and I'm not going to do it here, suffice to say, that you should think about how molding works when you are designing your prototype.
Second, when you design a piece you are normally looking for a few things that you needn't worry about when you build a prototype. First off, color and paintability are not a problem. What comes out of a mold will be made up of whatever material you cast it in. So, if the material you normally use requires three coats of primer before it will take a drop of paint, don't worry about it: it's replica won't. Also, normally when you construct a piece, you sort of do so under the acknowledgement that someone in your group is likely to break it. So, you don't want to use soft materials or anything that is likely to just break off. When you build a prototype, however, you don't have to worry. At the very least, your replica will be made out of some kind of mineral, possibly stone; it will be one continuous and solid piece. This means that you can (and I have) make something out of wet clay, mold it, and pour out solid versions of it.
Three things, though. If your prototype is too soft, it will probably be destroyed in the molding process. Balsa wood is fairly notorious for this because the mold rubber tends to want to stick to the balsa and...well...one of them has to give. A wet clay prototype isn't going to be around after you scrape it from the mold (but note, one pouring and it will probably clean out the molds details. Second, the preferred material for building is pink styrofoam insulation. Great....but it floats, so you're going to want to anchor it down first with glue or else it will keep trying to get a 1/4" off your tray and will ruin the mold. Third, if you have a prototype that is durable to survive the molding process, it can be re-molded. This allows you to have multiple molds going if you need lots of the same piece. Hirst Arts, for most of their projects, recommends casting a mold 20 or 30 times. I think that's a bit ridiculous. Make two molds, or mold bigger sections. I don't think it's too liberal for you to think that each molding will take an hour. This means that when you're making your prototype, if you want a whole bunch of an item, you should probably make the item out of more durable stuff than wet clay or balsa. At the same time, it doesn't have to be that durable. I use a glue gun for most of my molding stuff--anyone whose used one before knows that it's not the most durable of bonds.
"But," you say, "all the really cool stuff looks really cool because of detail." Yes. What I am saying is that you do not attempt to mass produce detail by hand. One building will take you a year. Mass produce easy to produce (or already produced) features by hand, glue those to the building, but for the serious stuff, the various pipes, the various hoses, the skulls, the layers of relief, the vents--these things require cutting with tiny scissors and holding them down as the glue dries with toothpicks. Don't do that five hundred times for the same effect.
Instead, do it once, and then mold the thing. Basically, what I'm saying is have a prototype, a mock up of what you want the thing to look like when you're done, mold that (and possibly make multiple molds of it) and then cast it five or ten times for the desired effect. This is the principle behind the Cities of Death plates that they sell you. They don't give you a sprue of little detail things, they give you detailed plates all ready to be used. I would suggest thinking in terms of prototyping on any piece of detail that takes longer than fifteen minutes to make.
As far as actually constructing the prototype is concerned, you build the prototype exactly as you would build anyother piece except for a few things.
First off, you're going to mold this piece. Yes, it is possible to make two part molds, but they take longer to use. Keep that in mind. The best things to mold have big flat surfaces and no "holes" in them . There's a lot to say about molding, and I'm not going to do it here, suffice to say, that you should think about how molding works when you are designing your prototype.
Second, when you design a piece you are normally looking for a few things that you needn't worry about when you build a prototype. First off, color and paintability are not a problem. What comes out of a mold will be made up of whatever material you cast it in. So, if the material you normally use requires three coats of primer before it will take a drop of paint, don't worry about it: it's replica won't. Also, normally when you construct a piece, you sort of do so under the acknowledgement that someone in your group is likely to break it. So, you don't want to use soft materials or anything that is likely to just break off. When you build a prototype, however, you don't have to worry. At the very least, your replica will be made out of some kind of mineral, possibly stone; it will be one continuous and solid piece. This means that you can (and I have) make something out of wet clay, mold it, and pour out solid versions of it.
Three things, though. If your prototype is too soft, it will probably be destroyed in the molding process. Balsa wood is fairly notorious for this because the mold rubber tends to want to stick to the balsa and...well...one of them has to give. A wet clay prototype isn't going to be around after you scrape it from the mold (but note, one pouring and it will probably clean out the molds details. Second, the preferred material for building is pink styrofoam insulation. Great....but it floats, so you're going to want to anchor it down first with glue or else it will keep trying to get a 1/4" off your tray and will ruin the mold. Third, if you have a prototype that is durable to survive the molding process, it can be re-molded. This allows you to have multiple molds going if you need lots of the same piece. Hirst Arts, for most of their projects, recommends casting a mold 20 or 30 times. I think that's a bit ridiculous. Make two molds, or mold bigger sections. I don't think it's too liberal for you to think that each molding will take an hour. This means that when you're making your prototype, if you want a whole bunch of an item, you should probably make the item out of more durable stuff than wet clay or balsa. At the same time, it doesn't have to be that durable. I use a glue gun for most of my molding stuff--anyone whose used one before knows that it's not the most durable of bonds.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Custom Cities of Death- use a skeleton
My new feeling is that I want to make my own cities of death plates and mold them so that I can make my own cities of death buildings. The reasons for this is obvious: they'll sell, they won't cost $50 a building, I can do a better job, etc.. But it does bring up some rather interesting points about scenery design that I'm not really sure many people get into and so I thought I'd bring up some of the issues that this project has ultimately brought up.
The first trick is, how is such a thing done?
I'd like to point out an interesting fiasco of scenery designers the world over and that is the assumption that everything designed must be complete in and of itself. Hirst Arts, a company that I believe nigh-god-like, is just as likely to make this mistake as Games Workshop or even Forgeworld. If you read the Hirst Arts page about how to make things, they have directions for how to make flat blank walls. This I do not need. I have foam core, I have sheet styrene, I have pink styrofoam (as well as white styrofoam and Dupont board). I can make, with ease, walls that are unadorned of any sized. Thus I do not need to presss out hundreds of "blank" tiles to fill in the "blank" areas of the scenery. I have that covered.
The problem is that these companies are not thinking with the right philosophy. They are attempting to have you build EVERYTHING using their product. Every bit of your futuristic landscape should be popped out of a Hirst Mold. Every piece of your Cities of Death building should be cut from the GW sprues. Why?
It's much easier to make the basic "no frills" shape of the building out in regular materials that are easy to work with and then dress it up using a piece here from whatever sci-fi scenery set you want to buy. This allows your bit bin to include pieces from various legos sets as well as star wars models, Hirst arts castings, Cities of Death snippits, beads, craft store jewelry making supplies, hardware bits, dollar store items, etc.. In short, you are not thinking of the building altogether, completed with shape, volume and detail. You need only think of the building's shape first and then figure out how you want to spruce it up. Maybe you spruce it up with Cities of Death pieces. That's fine. But with a skeleton of the building already in place, you don't need to cover it entirely. And believe me, a few Cities of Death pieces will go a long way.
To give you some idea of how not in this frame of mind GW is, look at any Cities of Death piece. It's two sided. Why? Wouldn't it be easier to make it one sided and just glue it to some kind of superstructure, be it foamcore or board? Wouldn't that make the piece more structurally sound, and wouldn't that allow the building to have areas of "blank space" so that the entire city doesn't look plastered with those same five frescos (three of which are pretty much the same from any set)"? A ground floor that is composed of skull backed arches would be interesting, but a whole building of such pieces looks odd. Plus, this way, the detail doesn't obviously come in little 3"x2" blocks. You can have molding underneath over which rests a ground floor of high ornamentation seperated by some line of relief with a second ruined story with a continuous brick face.
But GW's design does not allow for such an option. The back, having detail, will not sit flush unless ground down, and of course, you don't want to grind the detail down. The floor tiles of Hirst Arts, I think, betray the problem with their ideas on the subject. You're making a battleship floor plan a square inch at a time. I remember making the plan I have on my home page, it was several dozen castings and it really didn't even cover a quarter of a 40k table. I can do similar things with screen (either nylon or mesh), some flex rex, and maybe a few pieces here and there that look like storm drains. Plus I can cover an entire 40k table with this setup and do so in an afternoon. Hell, you'd be surprised what you can do with just the cheap 1' square lynoleum tile pieces they sell at the dollar store. All with the advantage that nothing has to be ground down to make the floor level.
So, this is step one I think for a builder of their own city fight pieces. Don't think of building the entire urban landscape using only these pieces--it's too much and no set is that versatile--rather, think of your project as an attempt to make interesting bits of detail to add to an otherwise featureless building shape. Then, if you want "inside" detail, you can worry about that after you've already insured your ruins structural integrity.
The first trick is, how is such a thing done?
I'd like to point out an interesting fiasco of scenery designers the world over and that is the assumption that everything designed must be complete in and of itself. Hirst Arts, a company that I believe nigh-god-like, is just as likely to make this mistake as Games Workshop or even Forgeworld. If you read the Hirst Arts page about how to make things, they have directions for how to make flat blank walls. This I do not need. I have foam core, I have sheet styrene, I have pink styrofoam (as well as white styrofoam and Dupont board). I can make, with ease, walls that are unadorned of any sized. Thus I do not need to presss out hundreds of "blank" tiles to fill in the "blank" areas of the scenery. I have that covered.
The problem is that these companies are not thinking with the right philosophy. They are attempting to have you build EVERYTHING using their product. Every bit of your futuristic landscape should be popped out of a Hirst Mold. Every piece of your Cities of Death building should be cut from the GW sprues. Why?
It's much easier to make the basic "no frills" shape of the building out in regular materials that are easy to work with and then dress it up using a piece here from whatever sci-fi scenery set you want to buy. This allows your bit bin to include pieces from various legos sets as well as star wars models, Hirst arts castings, Cities of Death snippits, beads, craft store jewelry making supplies, hardware bits, dollar store items, etc.. In short, you are not thinking of the building altogether, completed with shape, volume and detail. You need only think of the building's shape first and then figure out how you want to spruce it up. Maybe you spruce it up with Cities of Death pieces. That's fine. But with a skeleton of the building already in place, you don't need to cover it entirely. And believe me, a few Cities of Death pieces will go a long way.
To give you some idea of how not in this frame of mind GW is, look at any Cities of Death piece. It's two sided. Why? Wouldn't it be easier to make it one sided and just glue it to some kind of superstructure, be it foamcore or board? Wouldn't that make the piece more structurally sound, and wouldn't that allow the building to have areas of "blank space" so that the entire city doesn't look plastered with those same five frescos (three of which are pretty much the same from any set)"? A ground floor that is composed of skull backed arches would be interesting, but a whole building of such pieces looks odd. Plus, this way, the detail doesn't obviously come in little 3"x2" blocks. You can have molding underneath over which rests a ground floor of high ornamentation seperated by some line of relief with a second ruined story with a continuous brick face.
But GW's design does not allow for such an option. The back, having detail, will not sit flush unless ground down, and of course, you don't want to grind the detail down. The floor tiles of Hirst Arts, I think, betray the problem with their ideas on the subject. You're making a battleship floor plan a square inch at a time. I remember making the plan I have on my home page, it was several dozen castings and it really didn't even cover a quarter of a 40k table. I can do similar things with screen (either nylon or mesh), some flex rex, and maybe a few pieces here and there that look like storm drains. Plus I can cover an entire 40k table with this setup and do so in an afternoon. Hell, you'd be surprised what you can do with just the cheap 1' square lynoleum tile pieces they sell at the dollar store. All with the advantage that nothing has to be ground down to make the floor level.
So, this is step one I think for a builder of their own city fight pieces. Don't think of building the entire urban landscape using only these pieces--it's too much and no set is that versatile--rather, think of your project as an attempt to make interesting bits of detail to add to an otherwise featureless building shape. Then, if you want "inside" detail, you can worry about that after you've already insured your ruins structural integrity.
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