Thieves' Cant Cipher Wheels

 

An actual interactive prop in the form of two large bracelets make up this 3D printed Thieves' Cant Cipher. On one bracelet are a bunch of symbols and on the second bracelet is the translation alphabet. Match up a symbol with a letter and write or decipher a message.

The best part is that enterprising user generated a DnD Cipher website to easily generate a string of text for your Dungeons and Dragons game. Maneuver the top and bottom rows representing the rings starting point and give your characters a clue such as B-DOT.

Using the cipher wheels generates the message - "meet me at the old oak tonight when the moon rises."

note: the website only works with lowercase letters in the message

I will definitely be incorporating this into my game. Probably be one of those deals where they find a message - maybe another clue like B-DOT - then maybe on a low level bad guy they see these cipher rings on the bad guy's wrist and they'll need to figure out how to procure them one way or another.

These were airbrushed with Glorious Gold.

Hexton Hills - Kingdom of Aglarion - Onadbyr

 

I'm starting something new - it's 3D printed terrain from Hexton Hills. I received the hex terrain files as a Christmas gift from my son, I'm converting the mapping of our current family Dungeons and Dragons campaign to a 3d visual feast. We are currently playing the Crown of the Oathbreaker campaign from Elderbrain. It's an amazing campaign book and has a main city of Onadbyr where the initial primary story takes place but then opens up to classic hexcrawl with various spots of interest.

The hexcrawl map is huge - and there's a players version but there is also a DM's version with many more interesting places. Each hex on the map is 25 miles or a typical days travel in D&D. In order to map this into 3d terrain, I've taken the scale of 7 hex tokens = 1 hex map which makes each hex token about 8 miles. Which means the party can go three hexes in any direction. 

Each hex as printed using the files direct from Hexton Hills is about 2" on the short side of the hex and 2.5" on the long side of the hex. That means I'd need a board about 6' high and 8' long - way to big. So I've scaled them down 50% as I can put a board on the table that's 3'x4'. Now, according to Hexton Hills you can't print that small on a printer using filament (called FDM printing) and have to use the complicated and potentially toxic resin printing. Well that's where Bambu Labs and their .2 nozzle comes into play with the settings set using the factory best configurations of high quality at .06.

Red filament is printed at standard size and the grey filament is half size.

The really cool thing is that you can print with or without the locking tabs - I figured that at the 50% reduction the locking tabs weren't going to work as there has to be a high level of precision - I can't say enough about Bambu Labs printers - they lock! Here's a sampling...

It does it so well that the entire grouping can be picked up...

I tack the hex grouping to a coaster and then off to the spray booth. I'm keeping the rules simple as I'm going to have hundreds of hex tiles when it's all said and done. From a campaign perspective I simply need to keep ahead of the current adventure by a map hex (7 hex tokens) or two. I'm spraying Vallejo Game Air and I've placed the .35 needle/nozzle on my Badger Patriot 105 airbrush (that's the black ball - what Badger calls Super Detail).

Water

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* Ultramarine Blue

* Electric Blue

Land

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* Earth

* Sick Green

* Light Livery Green

Castle

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* Black

* hand drybrush Cold Grey

* hand drybrush Stonewall Grey

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Ogre

 

This was a fun model to paint - I had to resist doing more but I kept the basic schema of airbrush and pick out some details for these Lost Mine 3D printed minis. This is the ogre model and I believe he's only used as a random encounter outside of Phandelver.

I airbrushed a black primer and then used Reaper's Suntan Flesh through the airbrush on the entire model. I did use just a couple drops of Vallejo thinner and a couple drops of Vallejo flow improver which was a first as I've previously been using Vallejo's airbrush paints previously so this was my first time shooting Reaper paint. I decided to stay with the Reaper paint picking Ruddy Brown and Rich Leather as my only browns. I used Nightsky Blue on the giant rock of a club. Crimson Red for the hair and Dirty Grey for the loincloth. Yellowed Bone for all bone items and Dragon Black on the base. Then called it Done!

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase.

Sculpt: Excellent - the sculpt is well done with good detail and just a fun piece.

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Excellent- big ogre going to smash little humans.

D&D Keychain and Charm

 

Happy New Years! This was a fun print and paint. The original file on Makers for the DnD Keychain is actually a bit too small for a keychain but it fits very well as a charm on a pair of crocs (just have to print this crock charm blank and add a little superglue). To actually print out a keychain I held the Z axis stable and expanded X and Y by doubling their dimensions.

Airbrushed both with a black primer - then painted using Reaper paints of Dragon Black, Brilliant Red, and Fireball Orange.

Picked up some 12mm split ring loops off Amazon and it's perfect to add onto your keys.

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Sildar Hallwinter

 

This model was an interesting choice for Sildar Hallwinter - definitely an older warrior which is good - it has a medieval europe meets asia flair which is a bit different - the double swords is out of character for the module as written but could work. 

I was quite pleased with how this paint scheme turned out for the minimalist style I'm using on these figures for LMoP.  Besides the tan skin tone - there are only two tones of brown - one dark the other light. The grey is used in the hair, beard, and pants. The blue in the pants and hair wrap. Black base like the others. 

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase.

Sculpt: Excellent - the sculpt is well done with good detail.

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Good - like the older man look - not a fan of the some of the other pieces to fit the storyline.

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Goblins

 

A goblin war band for the first scenario in the Lost Mine of Phandelver or the latest update of the adventure as written in Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk.

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase. I should have painted these first but when I originally purchased the set we were already past the first set of encounters, but now I'm running a new group through and this warband with a few of the town characters need painting.

Once again the style for this set is Wizkids pre-painted simplicity with some flair. With that these were first airbrushed with Vallejo Goblin Green and then various bits picked out. I took care of all leather and body armor bits including the giant protruding spikes in Leather Brown. All metal bits were done in Dark Gunmetal. From there each goblin was given different color hair and clothes to make them look unique and not a military warband unlike hobgoblins who are very militaristic in their background lore. Finally all the bases were painted black.

Sculpt: Excellent - these models have a great look to them - I'm not a big fan of all the spikey bit coming from the armor and I toned that down by painting them all the same color.

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Excellent - has the proper base and scale, and will look good on the tabletop.

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Orcs

 

This is the hollywood version of orcs - or maybe the World of Warcraft pretty boys/gals of the orc kingdoms. I prefer my orcs a bit old school, ugly, and nasty. However, if you're looking for fantastic looking barbarians with tusks then these will be calling out to you.

I did these a little bit different where I first did an airbrush undercoat of black, then I hit these with the a blue-grey from the 12:00 position. Next I gave the Vallejo Xpress Colors a go using Velvet Red, Copper Brown, Plague Green, Templar White, and Dwarf Skin a go.

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase.

Sculpt: Excellent - these models have a super dynamic look to them and if you're into new age orcs you'll love them!

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Excellent - has the proper base and scale, and will look good on the tabletop. One note, the champion orc (back right on the picture) is a bit wide in stance and came with a 32mm base instead of 25mm or 1".

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Hobgoblins

 

Love the sculpt of these Hobgoblins - a little old school but with a modern flair and a bit of uniqueness to the models. Between these and the skeletons, I think they're my favorite sculpts from this set from 3D Dungeon Labs and their Phandelver bundle. The design language I'm going for is simplistic and clean and I think this is one of my best paint jobs for this look.

I started these with the airbrush and did a base coat in Terracotta. Then picked out the details using Vallejo's new Abyssal Turquoise along with Sombre Grey, Dark Fleshtone, Leather Brown, Gunmetal and perhaps my new favorite color Charcoal.

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase.

Sculpt: Excellent - these models have a super dynamic look to them and as noted a bit old school - love em!

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Excellent - has the proper base and scale, and will look good on the tabletop.

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Owlbear

 

Back to the standard Vallejo Game Color paint for this model. This is a fantastic sculpt and 3d print - lots of fun to paint. I have some new drybrushes by Golden Maple (Amazon) - it's a 6 piece drybrush set and they're round and soft like makeup brushes. Get them wet, mostly dry them off, then drybrush like normal and they work really well without leaving that dusty/chalky nonsense. Additionally they appear to handle the drybrushing technique without destroying bristles like what happens with a standard brush.

I used the same painting directions that were used for the Wizkids Owlbear.

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase.

Sculpt: Excellent - these model has a great dynamic look to it.

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Excellent - has the proper base and scale, and will look good on the tabletop.

Wizkids Raging Troll - WZK90081

 

My "fun" with Vallejo's Xpress Color paints continues - with some limited success and a major fail. I had picked up the raging troll from Wizkids at the local game store when I picked up some additional standard Vallejo Game Color paints that I was close to running out - plus Vallejo has refreshed its Game Color line and I picked up some of the new colors. I'll report on my opinion of the new formula in a future post. 

The Wizkids line comes with a Vallejo grey primer from the factory. Before starting to paint I aggressively hit the troll with a top down drybrushing using Vallejo Dead White to provide the highlighting slapchop on the model.

Best Xpress Color for a troll... Troll Green of course - so I used my handy dandy Xpress Color paint chart and came up with Troll Green for the body, Plague Green for the cloth, and Black Lotus for the hair - more or less following the 5e Monster Manual picture. Being cognizant of the bubble issues, I took great care to brush any of those out - they tended to appear when I used larger quantities of paint on the brush - which the brush does tend to load up a large quantity of the Xpress Color paint because of how thin the paint is - almost an ink. Keeping it basic with minimal colors and letting the contrasting of the paint do its job, I finished within an hour. It was a serviceable paint job.

I say serviceable, because when I finished I did something I hadn't done - I hit it with Testors' Dullcote and crud was that a mistake! It appeared to either reactivate the Xpress Color paint or dissolved it at the high levels of the model where the paint was thinnest (vs the recesses where the paint was thickest). The green didn't have as much of an affect, but I think that's because the green covers a smoother area? The black was hit pretty hard as the top ridges actually show the white drybrushing. However, worst of all was the Plague Green on the cloth - it just ate through the paint giving it a very bleached out look.

Now, if I had spent tons of hours I'd be pissed. As it's a test piece and still suitable for the gaming table, I figure I'll just live with it as is and do some more testing to determine what's going on. I do know that the Testors' spray can is okay because I used it to dullcote the six Redbrand goons which were painted using Vallejo Game Color and there was no problem with the paint on those models. Those turned out perfect.

Therefore I'll do some more testing on additional models painted with Xpress Color - both using Testors' again as well as using another brand of matte spray. Additionally, I can try giving a go using Vallejo's matte through an airbrush.

Lost Mine of Phandelver - Redbrands

 

These were awesome 3d prints for the Redbrand gang and I had a good time detailing these out from a basecoat of airbrushing Scarlet Red on all the models (which went down very well). All paints were Vallejo and after using the airbrush I brought these six models onto the hobby desk to pick out the details. Tan for the flesh followed by Terracotta for the leather armor. Next was Leather Brown on the bags, Bestial Brown on the hair/beards and Gunmetal on the swords. The Redbrand Gang leader, I did a little more by using Wolf Grey to give him candy cane stripes on his pants.

This is part of the 3D Dungeon Labs Etsy shop purchase.

Sculpt: Excellent - these were fun sculpts to airbrush with lots of dynamic flowing robes/cloaks and as a group will look great on the tabletop.

3D Print: Excellent - well done - clean - no issues anywhere - very solid.

Fitness: Excellent - has the proper base and scale, and will look good as a unit on the tabletop.