Planet # 2

Here we go, another planet got made. This time a big gas giant, or at least a half of one. This one didn't turn out as miraculously awesome as the first one next to it, but I think it serves its purpose.
The other half will be a different looking gas giant, with different texture to boot. I also embed magnets on both so the halves (which have space inside) can be joined together to maybe house some other stuff when not in play.

The Space game will have big 5 cm hexes (or 2 inches) and that thing is 15 cm across, centering on one, and taking all the adjacent ones under it.

a Quick post for the sake of consistency

Been busy as heck because of that damn X-mas is coming up.
Zero progress on Treeman.
Minimal progress on Car game.
Some progress on Zombie game.

Now that I've been neglecting Zombie game for a long time, and just recently come back to it, I really like what I've had going on.
I've now polished some of the new stuff set afoot long time ago, and only thing now is to play test them.

Planet

Made a planet prop for the Space game. It's ~4 cm in diameter. I have a lot of cotton wool lying around, and wanted to know if it's good for doing clouds. It is!

The full recipe for this one is:
1 Paper ball (I guess any ball will do, but the slight texture of the paper pulp is so damn good).
5 colors, blue, green, two browns and white for ice, showing just barely on top of the planet.
Cotton wool (from the cosmetics section).
PVA glue that dries clear.
Water.
2 Sticks (toothpicks or some spare plastic bits).

1. Paint the ball. I didn't really mix any colors here, but tried to carefully blend with just flat colors.
2. Make a mixture of 1/4 of glue and 3/4 water.
3. Pluck tiny bits of wool and throw them in to the mix. With this scale I found that the size of my thumb nail are good, just try to get them as "airy" as possible.
4. Take your sticks and fish the wool from the glue, drain it off some against the border.
5. Slap the wet wool in the planet and stretch it in shape with the sticks. Try to stretch it so that there's no big clumps. You might want to get some tissues here to wipe the watered glue that'll start running around the surface.
6. Bear in mind that the PVA glue dries clear, so don't thin out the wool too much. I found out that if the clouds look good when wet, they are barely visible when dry.

Note to myself

I was scrolling through my many comments (got like ten!) and saw a mention for a shaman mask for my Treeman. I was also scrolling though my phone photos and saw this!

Bark reference pic of which I might try to emulate. 

Many of the GW Wood Elves -of which the Treeman will be a part of- use these weird leather half-masks, which had some dissenting opinions at the time. I might have opted to use them less in my miniatures. After all this time I feel the masks are okay.

Now I had an idea connecting all these three. A Treeman face with half-mask made out of bark, with a hole for an eye which would be sculpted as above. Maybe a Treeman Ancient (the one who can do magic), so he'd look more mystical than the regular Treeman who's limited to punching fools.

Car number two, the Bumblebee

Here are some picture of that car I said I'd give you way back when I was starting my Treeman. (The Treeman hasn't got anything done to it, thanks for asking. I've been busy as heck!)

Like I said in my first posts here, these cars are a test bench for different painting techniques. I've pretty much got that rust effect down with these first two.
This time it was the windshields I wanted to get right. I think I did well with the base, the shadowy interior mixed with reflections from blue sky and brown earth. Now the thing that looks like a giant bird turd or shattered glass is supposed to be a reflection of the sun... Maybe next time.
I also fucked up my masking tape, and ripped the whole mid part out. My yellow paint job was so awful that I needed to make so many layers that the tape couldn't just rip out the things its supposed to.

Edit: Now actually looking at the pictures below (especially the last one), I might have an idea how to make reflection right. Just a thin line, with one focused dot in it, above the glass.

The first paint layers I took a picture of waaay back.

These two are taken in an awful lighting.

I really like the effect the salt grains make when paint and wash is sprayed on.

Mechanics along the pictures too!

I got two new things for the Car game. Ability cards and ramming statistics.
Now players can build their cars with ramming in mind. And the ability cards can be used as a Hail Mary of sorts, to try to get the lead by force at the last corner, but of course the leader can use his to make his position even better. Cards include things like a extra speed for your car, sabotage of an enemy car or having shit thrown in front of someone else.
After I've got these two integrated well in the game, I feel that it has all the things I originally wanted to get in.

Then it's on to the track pieces. I need to get some more variety to them, and I really don't know how yet.
And then I need to make the pit mechanic, and balance the cars with the round numbers.
And then I need to check my dice, if I want to fiddle with them.
And then I need to actually make the physical game, and not just a prototype.

Treeman progress #5

Progress report on the Treeman. Got arms, got faces. And got the size comparison.

Looks like he's vomiting.

That new face is not yet baked. I might do some additional details before throwing it to the oven, but probably not.

Pretty much the only thing I need to do now with Fimo is tho body. After that I'll be moving to Green Stuff and others to do more details.

This is actually a real blog!

I just realized I've had this thing going for a year now! This just might be a real blog now. I've had a couple of other ones which were abandoned after a few months of declining enthusiasm. This one seems to be going, albeit slowly.

Not to just make a non-post, I took a picture of a thing I did months back.

Numbers!

That's a note of me comparing dice mechanics for my Space game.
Old system was pretty basic and commonly used dice pool. For example a job needs 4 "hits" to succeed, the player rolls as many dice as he has skill value and other bonuses, and from those dice thrown he looks for 4's, 5's and 6's, and counts all of those to be the "hits". If over 4, he gets the job done, or if below - it's a bust.
New system is to throw the same amount of dice as above, but only single out the highest die (which will most probably be 6), and compare that to the job difficulty. Every 6 after the first one will add one to it (ie. four 6's is counted as 6+1+1+1 = 9), in a case of tie, compare the next highest.

I wanted to compare the amount of time it took to resolve actions for both mechanics. The new system was the winner, and so it became the new system.
I also wanted to see the tally in action, so I ended up rolling a bunch of dice (actually just pressing a randomizer button) 400 times total. What I gathered from my small experiment was that with the new system the underdog had more of a chance to win than with the old one (I'm not yet sure if this is a good thing), and the new system also gave me zero ties (which is a good thing, since it's one less result to keep in mind and less re-rolling).

I kinda am thinking about the meta design of the game at this point. Things like how players will feel about stuff, and how long any action should take, and how I want to construct my mechanics so they are as uniform as possible to not to overwhelm the new players, and so on... This kind of thinking is actually a first for me, as with my other projects I've come to realize that the "flow" of the game might be way off, so I want to start from there, and work my way building on top of those observations.

Treeman 4

Treeman update once again. I've had somewhat busy weeks, so not much has been done to it.

Made another head for him, and made it much wider on purpose, just to see if I could get away with just about any size head... seems fine to me. Just another advantage of sculpting non humans.

Almost all limbs are covered with bark at this point, and I'm getting nervous to move to his main body. I've got no idea what I'm gonna do to it, or how bulky I want it to be.

New head and more bulk.

Side view.

Treeman butt cheek.

I did a thing

I was inspired by this (in finnish) to try to make my own paint bottle holder. I had just ordered these German steel hole punchers for making chits for other gaming projects, and one of them just happened to be 26mm in diameter (Vallejo & Army Painter paints are 25mm). This really got the gears moving.
I wanted to make it cheaply and relatively quickly, so cardboard was always the way I wanted to go. While visiting my mom few weeks back I found my old game box for one of the Rock band games, and it was this really high quality white cardboard.
Contrasted by the light brown color of cheap cardboard box I thought it came out alright.

First I though I made way too many holes for my paints,
but it turned out to be pretty well in the ballpark of what I needed.

I frigging love Google!

I just love how my pictures sometimes get "enhanced" by Google bots and scripts. It randomly decides that one of my pictures is worth making better, and does it automatically, and just informs me that "Hey dude, I took one of your pics and made it better! You wanna save this?"
Never change Google-bot!

Thanks Google, I really needed an old-timey, romantic version of this pic.

Here we go! Treeman part three

He's got a head and more arm!

The Toothless One. Can't do the teeth with Fimo, so he'll be looking like this for a while.

He also has a mock-up hand to let me feel how its position will be like. I probably end up ripping it off and sculpting over it, and re-attach it so that the palm is more towards him. It now looks like he's going to smash some poor fellow he's grabbed (which is actually not a bad pose...)
One thing the pic doesn't show is that his wrist behind the thumb is waaay thicker that I'd like it to be, so I'm gonna just shave it off (along the road, kids!) and re-sculpt the bit.

I sculpted the head on its own on this plastic card. I still want to add some depth, it's kinda flat now.

After I was done sculpting the head I though I made it too big, but now actually seeing it attached I feel it's OK. He looks weird now with that wireframe body, but once he gets some central mass, I think it's gonna fit just fine.

Next time I'ma take few regular minis to work and do a size comparison pics.

More Treeman

Two more pics of the Treeman. Progress is slow but steady.
The right leg is the second of the two (maybe three) different types of bark I plan to sculpt here. The leg is actually core, and the bark comes in patches on top of it, whereas the other sculpted bits are just bark.

These will be the last phases that I can pose the thing anymore, so I'll need to be looking at that thing long to figure out if I got the right pose already.

Suddenly, a Treeman!

Hello everybody. Today's post is about sculpting, and how I hate the new GW Treeman.

So the new Treeman Games Workshop came out a while ago is this tall and slim, almost demon looking thing that has form-fitting bark armor. The concept is cool and the mini is well sculpted, but I've always thought the Ents as trees and forest coming together to form only a somewhat humanoid looking thing. Like GW had at 5th edition Fantasy Battle.

So I thought I'd try to sculpt my own. I've had some practice with it, and the cool thing about this is that it's not human (so there's no uncanny valley effect), and bark is fun and easy to sculpt, and even if you don't get it fully right, the paint job will forgive a lot. If I ever get this in painting state.

First I took some copper wire to get the skeleton, and posed it how I wanted.
Then added some Fimo just to give it some bulk and rigidness.

A bad picture of the right arm, which will be this huge stump to stomp trespassers with.
This is the detail I will go over with Fimo alone. When I get the full body done I want to add some more detail with Green stuff and such.

I actually brought Fimo and other stuff to work, so I can try to spend my lazy tuesdays and coffee breaks more productively. We'll see if I get noted for doing this...

Masterful use of Polyurethane foam

Masterful use of Polyurethane foam.

Masterful use of Polyurethane foam.

Progress report

It's been a while (again) since I posted anything. Nothing much to report but some honing in both, the car game and the zombie game, nothing really playable yet or even something to write about yet.

Been painting and modeling stuff mostly. Some terrain pieces and continuing my practice on different painting methods on another car for the car game. Post with pictures soon (tm) to follow.

The main reason I posted though, is that I managed to fix my shit and relink all the pics on the blog except one, which I replaced with a new one.

I also bought two new board games Coup which is quick bluffing game in between bigger games, and Dark Moon which I'll go get today from the post office!

Summer break's over!

I had my massive 6 week summer break which meant that I'd avoid anything even remotely resembling work (ie. doing blog posts).
EDIT: Also it seems like I've effed up my photos here by trying to get more space on my phone. I've already got them back, but it seems blogger can't relink them automagically. We'll see if I ever get around of replacing them...
EDIT 2: Fixed my shit

Not much did get done over those weeks worth posting, apart from our big club meeting, http://sumpinmukana.blogspot.fi/2015/06/suoja2015.html. That's me on the left playing X-wing!
The link above is our club's recently started blog (here in Salo, Finland, and it's in finnish). Big focus there was on Flames of War and Warhammer Fantasy.


I brought my car game there and it got played a few rounds. Thanks to all participants my initial ramming rules got scrapped almost immediately and a set of new ones got improvised on the spot to take over, these new ones will hopefully be the basis for the final ramming rules.

Let the retard race begin!
There's world war II stuff going against a zombie whale and dwarven submarine.

Thanks for Mikko, Timo, Ville & Ville!

Some progress

So we had out game night, and I got to test my stuff again. I really do love these sessions with friends since my regular game-happenings happen no more.
In addition to my Zombie game we played my new Terra Mystica which is this fantasy themed resource management game with some Catan in it. I'm super glad I bought it!
Then was King of Tokyo. Really fast and really fun competitive custom dice game with this Godzilla/King Kong theme.
Pandemic was up next. It's funny how I'm constantly thinking about Arkham Horror (which might be my all time favorite board game). It has many of its elements but condensed, and therefor a lot quicker to finish.
The evening's main game would've been X-Wing (I guess this one), which I've been dying to try out for so long, but again was foiled by us somehow losing the main game box.

Managed to remember to take a pic during the game.
My dude and a friend are storming a house at the left side, pretty much full of zombies, in wake of a fire bottle burning in the middle there. While others are tackling the right side of the map, or what's left of it.

What has been learned so far

This first real test of the summoning mechanic was good, I think. It ended up really unreliable, but that's how it was designed. We had almost no activity in the first half, and after that a couple creatures managed to come through. Although we had amassed so much weapons at that point they were no match for us.
I also need to think about the ratio of zombies to special creatures more, but I feel that's only doable through more play testings.

The curses, that are essentially players' HP, were almost nonexistent. Some played it safe, and others were just too quickly dispatching the foes to get hurt. This will be my next big thing I need to tackle.
I do want to reward players for playing safe and good, so inverting the mechanic I don't think is the answer. Long ago I thought about just piling the curses on the players as time progresses, but deemed it too hard for the players to manage. Maybe I'll revisit that concept.

Skills (and therefor Stamina) are still in pretty bad-ish place (still!). Players did use them, but I felt that they needed to depend on them more.

Some other small adjustments are needed for the mission I had. Like ending it sooner after the objective has been found, or pile something interesting atop of that. I thought the length was pretty good until the point we found the missing person (although we had to go through all of the rooms before finding him). I had it so that the players needed to escort him back, but I called it after finding him because I felt that it was dumb without any extra twists.

After all these I felt that the game still had improved MASSIVELY. Its flow was so much better with the new dice mechanic and how players can move more in each turn.

a Space-teaser

Here's a bit of fiction I've created for my space game, I couldn't keep myself from not sharing this stuff.
So if I've made stuff right this should be viewable in Google Docs:

Nu-Delta (race)

So there's a bit of dumb fiction to whomever might be interested in such stuff.

Oh, also, I do not speak English natively so bear that in mind, and please do point out any stupidities in that text if you will.

Zambies...

My friend has arranged a board game weekend (in two weeks) with a handful of other friends, and I have to take my zombie game there to have a real play test, with all that new content which just might be some of the final stuff for it.

Not dead yet!

The way I seem to enjoy my hobbies is in cycles, some longer ones and some shorter. Friends I know seem to force themselves to work on their projects even if the inspiration isn't there, but I don't work that way. I embrace the the lack on inspiration, and have the time for myself to dust off my brain.

Zombie game is still shuffling

One aspect of the zombie game has always been absent from my test builds, and this is purely because though I've had numerous different versions of it, none of them have been quite the thing I need for the game - the random enemy spawns.

What revitalized this blog now, was the breakthrough on that system. I might just now have the starting grounds of the final version of it.
It goes like this: Every player roll a Misfortune dice (1D6) at the end of their turn. If they roll under (a certain threshold, TBD), nothing happens but they put the die in the Misfortune pool. If they roll over, they take all the dice in the Misfortune pool and roll them together - more dice equals more bad things to happen.

So the systems before this have been too random, required turn tracking or weren't balanced enough to the player amount etc.
How I see this system now: it balances itself out by having all players contributing to the pool, it's random enough because of the threshold checks and the enemies come in "waves" without having a specific tracking system.