Tag Archives: scenery

Fantasy, Terrain

A Goblin Scoreboard, Part One

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Decided that my Blood Bowl Goblin team, currently glorying in the name of T.U.R.D. (what that stands for changes every single game they play…) needed a scoreboard, to use as substitute to my existing Lizardman temple BB setup.

Goblins have an reputation for being clever but not smart, and for lunatic behaviour at the best of times. This presumably explains why they attempt to play Blood Bowl at all, and excuses all sorts of things like really shoddy carpentry. With that in mind, I broke out the craft wood and set to work!

goblin-thing-one
Goblin BB scoreboard in progress. Three billboards for colour, and the actual scoreboard part two-thirds of the way up. Weather indicator will go between the two score placards. Click for larger.

The main structure is coffee stir sticks, with basswood strips for the big vertical beams. The eventual plan is to have small rare earth magnets behind the scoreboard, embedded in a wood beam, to hold magnetic strip score number placards in place, and to have a smaller weather placard in between the two scores. There’s still some details to add, like “US” and “THEM” labels above the two score areas, and possibly a small announcers stand right at the top of the whole thing, some sort of rickety crowsnest with a raving goblin announcer howling away.

The base has a strip of scrap acrylic with two holes drilled in it to support two bits of wire that go up into holes in the bottoms of the legs, holding everything solidly, and then some scrap plastic to expand the footprint a bit more. I’ll putty along the edge of the acrylic to blend everything together and strengthen things further.

gob-thing-two
Three trolls and the scoreboard. You can see the rickety walkway in front of the actual scoreboard part here.

The second image has all three of my trolls, all still very much works in progress. Left and centre troll are the same figure, with some fairly extensive arm surgery on the left hand troll to give him a different pose than the stock centre troll. All three are Reaper Bones plastic figures, which are awesome for Blood Bowl conversions! You can see the narrow walkway in front of the score panels nicely in this shot, which might get a gobbo scorekeeper perched on it eventually.

More soon; I’m currently out of rare earth magnets and need to restock before I can finish this project the way I’m planning it. That should take place this weekend and then it’ll be fairly simple to finish the rest of the thing!

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Giant Billboard Tower for Infinity

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I’ve previously shown off big (5″ tall by 3″ wide) advertising graphics intended for use on an Infinity table – Weyland-Yutani, a travel poster, and Blue Sun; on Friday evening I decided to sit down and crank out the structure all three of those graphics will be shown off on.

The basic structure is actually very simple, being two vertical strips of mattboard with some cuts to make it look more interesting and some simple details added with scrap card. The frame is 2 inches wide, with the base being 3″x2″. There’s various horizontal pieces at several levels up the structure, although the structure is (deliberately) not optimized as a sniper nest. You can use it that way, but you are going to have compromised lines of fire no matter where you set up on the thing, and a number of the positions are also very exposed.

Weyland-Yutani & Blue Sun advertising on this side. Click for larger.
Weyland-Yutani & Blue Sun advertising on this side. Click for larger.

Total size is about 11.5″ tall with a footprint of about 3″x4″ or so; the dark blue figure at the base is the Fiday that has been seen in other photos.

Travel to Varuna on this side, and some more open structure above. Click for larger.
Travel to Varuna on this side, and some more open structure above. Click for larger.

Incidentially, the three blue things on the left are Tri-Ad Advertising Stands from Antenocitis Workshop; I picked them up recently along with a few things from Warsenal and at some point I’ll probably do quick review articles on them and some of the other pieces. Nice solid pieces of small urban clutter, anyway!

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

In Which Things Get Primered

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We have an Infinity weekend event coming up in just over a month (Facebook event link, if you’re in the area and interested) and I want to have both all my current buildings basically finished and the Haqqislam/Hassassin Bahram force I field fully painted.

I’ve been concentrating on the buildings for the last week or so, just to get them done and out of the way – they take up a lot more space on my workbench than the figures will!

Here’s the warehouse finally complete and primed, as well as the antenna. I’ve also been working on more graphics for various things, including new ads & signs as well as hazard labels and such.

thing
28mm warehouse for Infinity gaming, six antenna, and the box of LEDs.

Also, the LEDs I ordered off EBay a while back, waiting for me to break out the soldering iron and add lights to the objective room I built recently, which is currently out in the sun room with fresh spray primer on it. More on that soon.

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Post-Labour Day Update

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Last post was in June, I’m getting really lousy at keeping this poor blog from getting dusty and neglected. It’s been a busy summer for things like bike holidays and being out in the real world, not so much on the gaming front although our Blood Bowl league season is drawing to a close (my poor Rodents of Unusual Size got blown out of the playoffs in the first round) and some good games of Infinity.

On the modelling front, about all I’ve gotten done is a some progress on the various Infinity buildings I’ve started this year. We’ve got an Infinity tournament coming up on October 24th weekend, so I’m pushing to get the current group of buildings done and finished before then, as well as having my entire Haqqislam force painted and finished to field that weekend!

Recently I’ve been pushing on the mosque (shrine?) seen previously here. I’ve put a few of the recent pictures of that building up below! Click on any of them for full size, and enjoy.

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Taking The Summer Off?

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Apparently I’ve basically taken most of the summer off from blogging and doing wargame-related things I felt the need to blog about… last post was June 10th!

I’ve been playing a lot of Infinity and Blood Bowl, but doing basically no painting or terrain building at all until this weekend, when I’ve finally cleaned up my workbench and gotten a tiny bit of progress on the mosque roof for my Infinity terrain.

Drum dome on mosque roof. Click for larger, as usual.
Drum dome on mosque roof. Click for larger, as usual.

I’ve run with the “bright hexagonal future” jokes about Infinity with the one, and tried to incorporate some Islamic themes as well because I run Haqqislam forces in Infinity. The main footprint is a hexagon, there’s a hexagonal tower as part of the cupola/minaret on the roof, and I’ll probably use some hex-patterned origami paper I bought recently as part of the decoration scheme as it looks a lot like some Islamic tile patterns.

What else have I been up to this summer, anyway? Riding my bike over mountains, for one, and lots of other bike riding and other good warm weather activities!

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Antennas for Infinity

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A number of the stock scenarios in Infinity need some sort of antenna or console for the troops to interact with/hack/seize/blow up/etc. You can use basic tokens on the tabletop, but real scenery looks better!

Antenna and consoles in Inf are supposed to be on a 40mm base, so I had a go at cutting 40mm circles with my circle cutter. The stubby blade won’t go all the way through the mattboard I build with, though, so I wound up basically scoring circles and then finishing them as carefully as possible with a new Xacto blade. It’s not an ideal way to cut circles, and for larger and more visible ones like a round roof I’ve started since building these antennas I’ve gone with multiple layers of light card, which the circle cutter handles very nicely, and glued them together in layers.

in-ant
Six antennas for Infinity on 40mm bases. Each is roughly 4″ high. Click for larger.

The antenna themselves are more mattboard, generally offcuts from other recent projects. No particular design ethic to these, beyond “angular and futuristic”, which is easy to achieve.

Even for scenarios that don’t require antenna on the table these are likely to put in an appearance as general futuristic clutter, which is always in high demand on an Infinity tabletop!

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Billboard Ads for Infinity

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While building another piece of scenery for our Infinity tables I built a roof that didn’t turn out; it just wasn’t working out physically the way I’d pictured it in my head. Turning the partially completed piece on one edge, though, I realized that what I’d created would work quite well as a display board for two big billboards – presumably video or holographic displays, this being a bright hexagonal future!

Here’s the basic structure, front and back views.

bb front
Front of the billboard. The whole thing is 6″ tall and 4″ wide.
bb back
Rear of the billboard. There’s enough space to balance a figure on the very top, if you’re so inclined…

To get something colourful on the two displays, I fired up GIMP and then went looking through Flickr and Google Image Search for source materials. It’s easy to just rip things off when you see them around the web, and far too many people do that. Both Flickr and GIS allow you to search for images that people have specifically licensed to allow free reuse of, though, and generally you have to pass on your graphics made using their images as sources – what is known as a Creative Commons Share-Alike license.

Haqqislam billboard - Kufic Arabic for Bismallah (God Bless) and various hexes, because Infinity...
Haqqislam billboard – Kufic Arabic for Bismallah (God Bless) and various hexes, because Infinity…
Tyrell Corp - one of everyone's favourite (evil) megacorps!
Tyrell Corp – one of everyone’s favourite evil megacorps!

For the full size, high quality, and uncompressed images, please use these two links:
Arabic billboard – 2.7Mb
Tyrell Corp billboard – 2.7Mb

Creative Commons License
These works by Brian Burger/Wirelizard Design are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Basically, this means that you can use these images as you see fit on the web or printed for use, including commercial use, but if you modify them further you have to share your version too.

Creative Commons sources:
Neon on Ferrari
Chevy grille
star twist origami
Blade Runner screenshot
Tyrell Corp logo

I didn’t wind up using either of these two (yet!) but they’re too cool not to share: 2nd Life cyber-art, and another by the same artist.

Fantasy, Terrain

Necromancer Beer – a Blood Bowl Sideline Ad

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Something quick and silly to break the month-long dry spell in posting!

On our local Blood Bowl league’s Facebook page one of the guys made a joke about “Necromancer Beer – one taste will revive you” and while I was waiting for dinner to finish I fired Inkscape up and cranked out the following bit of fluff.

Necromancer Beer - one taste will revive you! Feel free to print this for personal use!
Necromancer Beer – one taste will revive you! Feel free to print this for personal use!

This is the same height as a number of other BB sideline ads already floating around the internet, so should mix nicely with them.

Enjoy, and if you do use this, please send me photos of your pitchside scenery with the Necromancer Beer banner on it!

Infinity, Science Fiction, Terrain

Sci-Fi Warehouse for Infinity

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After building the first building to use on Infinity tables, which turned out to be a complex shape and two storeys plus roof, I decided the next building needed to be simpler and quicker to build, but still interesting.

Going through my building supplies I found a sheet of corrugated craft paper that became a feature of the new warehouse, both for the two large rolling doors and on part of the roof. The rest of the building is mattboard/picture framing card, which is cheap, easy to work with, and makes good durable buildings.

The whole warehouse is 9″ long, 5″ wide, and about 6″ to the highest point of the “sail” that divides the roof up.

More details on the picture captions below. There’s still some structural work to do on the back wall and on the roof, and a lot of detailing still to do. Paint will happen eventually, as well.

Infinity, Terrain

A Building For Infinity

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I’ve previously shown my urban scatter terrain for Infinity, and after getting that assembled I decided to tackle something more challenging and larger.

Quite a bit larger, actually. It’s a two-storey building that wound up being about 10″ long, 6″ wide and almost 7″ tall!

The building is entirely made of mat board, usually used as picture framing board. It’s good quality cardboard, easy to work with and it takes paint and glue well. Our local art supply place, Island Blue, sells the offcuts from their framing business off cheap! The roof and second storey come off to allow full access to the entire building during games, and I think I’ve managed to make the building tactically interesting for games of Infinity.

Check out the gallery below; the captions have a lot more detail.

  • hexcourt

If you’re interested in doing similar buildings for Infinity or any other skirmish game, I really like the ongoing “Cardbuilding” series of articles over on the Infinity news site Data Sphere: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 3.5, Part 4. Errhile is much more organized than I am, designing a whole system so that his buildings nest and stack for storage and reconfiguration, and he’s got lots of great techniques and ideas in his lavishly illustrated articles. I might well do some similar modular buildings, but for now it’s fun to just bust out a big, complex building — I haven’t done much terrain building recently!