Reaper Miniatures Tiik Baron - 77212

 

This was a bit of a fun experiment of layering a completely different color over another using an airbrush. I had a thought that it would be really cool to layer this four armed sea creature with a blue and green to give it this underwater sea look.

All paints are Vallejo - Game Air and Game Color.

Using the airbrush I started off with prime layer of ultramarine. Then switched to electric blue and gave it all a heavy highlight from all angles and then did a final highlight using light livery green from a 12 o'clock angle with extra focus on the scales. It's interesting because the light livery green gives a completely different end result on top of the blue base than over a darker green base. I think it gives the model a very out of the sea look to it.

I then touched up the model with a brush using scarlet blood on the claws, dark gunmetal on the weapon, a mix of tentacle pink and bonewhite for the seashell armor which I washed with a drop of the electric blue from the airbrush paint. Foul green was used for the clothes and straps which was washed with black wash.

I have quite a few of these tiik models from the bones kickstarters so I'll be using a similar paint scheme on them as well.

Kickstarter paint total 212 + 1 Tiik Baron = 213

Hexton Hills - Kingdom of Aglarion - Ziggurat of the New Moon

So many great Hexton Hills hex tokens built so far - the castle for Onadbyr, the monster fish, the windmills representing the Old Grinder, and the dungeon mountain but this one is my favorite hex tile so far because I scaled down a 3D print and used a flat tile to create a token Hexton Hills doesn't have - that of a ziggurat. 

I've added Dark Green to my land paint schema in order to provide a bit more depth in the grasslands and to distinguish the evergreen trees in the forest tiles.The ziggurat was airbrushed black, hexed lichen, and then just a fine highlight of warlord purple.

If you're following along on my Hexton Hills printing of the Kingdom of Aglarion, then this hex is going to sit south of the windmills like so...

Also, to give a sense of scale - here's a quarter next to some of the hex tokens.

Reaper Miniatures Dungeon Decor: Stalagmites - 77398

 

This was some extra terrain pieces from the bones pile I had hanging around on the bones kickstarter shelf - I did a few pieces back when I created the multi-level dungeon - this item was the remaining item from the set.

Started with a black prime coat and then sprayed Light Livery Green followed by Reaper's Gilded Yellow as a highlight.

Kickstarter paint total 212 + 1 Stalagmites = 213

Hexton Hills - Kingdom of Aglarion - Tomb of the Constructor

 

What a great ominous mountain for a dungeon hex token. This hex represents the Tomb of the Constructor which is a fantastic dungeon location the party travels to north of Onadbyr to find a key. I thought it was a brilliantly written dungeon with amazing npc's and the group appeared to really enjoy the game session. Most of the beginning of the campaign is very much a city campaign and this offers the second opportunity to go explore the surroundings.

The paint schema is the same land and water established in the Onadbyr hex tile except that I have added Dark Green and airbrush just a touch here and there to give the pine trees a pop and the cliff sides a bit of depth. I thought about airbrushing some snow on the mountain but I think leaving it black is more menacing and there's lots of tall snowy peaks way up north so I'll leave the snow for later.

If you're following along on my Hexton Hills printing of the Kingdom of Aglarion, then this hex is going to sit north of Onadbyr like so...

Hexton Hills - Kingdom of Aglarion - The Old Windmills

 

Oh my goodness - tiny freakin' windmills! This hex represents the Old Windmills section and was the first place the party went outside of Onadbyr to find a Noble's farm, the Royal Stables, and the Old Grinder windmill. 

These Hexton Hills hex tokens are amazing. The paint schema is the same land and water established in the Onadbyr hex tile. The additional colors were:

* Farm barns, shed, stables, etc. - Scarlet Blood
* Farm fields - Gold Yellow
* Farm fences and city dock - Beasty Brown
* Windmill buildings and city road - Stonewall Grey
* Windmill blades - Dead White
* Houses and building - Neutral Grey

If you're following along on my Hexton Hills printing of the Kingdom of Aglarion, then this hex is going to sit southwest of Onadbyr like so...

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 - The Calhay Sea

Every Sea needs a fish monster! Or at least rumors have it that if you travel too far out at see you'll fall off the edge or be eaten by a sea monster - and therefore all good sea maps must have a sea monster.

If you're following along on my Hexton Hills printing of the Kingdom of Aglarion, then this hex is going to sit southeast of Onadbyr like so...

Reaper Miniatures Shoggoth - 77115

 

Supposed to be Shoggoth which is a monster from the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft

It was a terrible, indescribable thing vaster than any subway train—a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us, crushing the frantic penguins and slithering over the glistening floor that it and its kind had swept so evilly free of all litter.

— H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness

Hmmm... I see this as the Loc-Nar from the Heavy Metal film. The green ball of pure evil seeping its tentacles to infest and control.

Do not try to escape. You are in my control. Look at me: I am the sum of all evils. Look carefully. My power infests all times, all galaxies, all dimensions. But many still seek me out; a green jewel they must possess. But see how I destroy their lives.

 —The Loc-Nar, Heavy Metal

This is a bones mini and Tre Manor is a new sculptor for me to paint - I see that he's done lots of bugbear, orc, and gnoll minis for Reaper - many of which are on the to be painted shelf so we'll see more of Tre's sculpts in the future. When I was airbrushing the Hexton Hills terrain I would end up with extra paint in the airbrush cup - so I found a good use for it!

Kickstarter paint total 211 + 1 Shoggoth = 212

Hexton Hills - Onadbyr from Map to 3D

I was going to publish this yesterday, but that post was getting a bit long - so here's the process of interpreting the map as designed by Elderbrain to 3D hex tokens. First to think about is that we're being representative - not exact - the map in the book is representative with tokens for cities, farms, dungeons, mountains, swamps, etc. Additionally, each hex on the map needs to be segmented into 7 hex tokens in a 2-3-2 pattern.

So we start with the map from the book for the city of Onadbyr...

Then we use the Hexton Hills Map Planner software which is a free online tool to plan out your hex token build. All the tokens are in menus on the right and it's a fairly easy and fun way to build together your map. The software will also calculate and generate a build list documenting which pieces and the total number need for the build.

For this hex - the 2-3-2 hex tokens are going to be...

What's great about the software is that it allows the building of regions. Naming a region and then selecting the hexes which belong to the region shows up on the map like this which replicates the hex on the map from the book...

Finally, after printing and painting the final result is...

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

=====

* Ultramarine Blue

* Electric Blue

Land

=====

* Earth

* Sick Green

* Light Livery Green

Castle

=====

* Black

* hand drybrush Cold Grey

* hand drybrush Stonewall Grey

Water Cup for Miniature Painting

 

I came across this water cup for cleaning brushes while painting. I've been using other items for a water cup - turning upside down the miniature blister pack, a paper cup (don't leave water in there too long or it will leak), cutting the top of a water bottle, a coffee/drink mug (don't confuse with your actual drink or you'll be drinking dirty paint water), etc.

It's nice to have an actual water cup designed to effectively clean and hold brushes. This has nice grooves on the bottom and sides along with vertical grooves to squeeze the water out of the brush and bring it to a point. It has a slot on top for your current brush and three slots in the back to hold upright an additional three brushes.  I actually would have liked more brush holder slots and some slots for larger size brushes. It's hard to tell from the angle of the picture but the bottom actually flares out just a bit from the top making this cup just about impossible to knock over so no dirty water all over the paint space.

I am the DUNGEON MASTER

 

Look Ma, no paint!

Using multiple filament colors for 3D printing is no longer a new thing, but it is new to me. There are two ways to do this - manually change at specific print points or the Bambu A1 / A1 mini printers have a four filament spool holder and feed system that does it automatically. I don't have that add-on option, but you can control in the software what color filament you want to use and the printer will stop on the specific layer for a manual exchange which is the process used to produce this print.

The base plate and the riser were printed using black filament and then just before the lettering was to start the filament was changed to red prior to continuing the remainder of the print.

I think it turned out pretty cool - can sit on your desk, a shelf, or at the gaming table.

They're Just Rocks

 

Everyone needs some 3D printed rocks for their gaming table - there are three build plates of rocks - I only printed one of the plates as that's enough to make a nice encounter. As printed they're about 2"x2" but can be scaled up or down as needed. I'm going to scale one of them down to use on the base of an upcoming dragon currently being painted.

I printed this using standard settings, therefore I used the airbrush on these instead of drybrushing as that would have promoted the layer lines. Shot these with black everywhere, then cold grey on top and sides, then stonewall grey on top only .

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.