Viking Raiding Camp Terrain Project

 It's been a while since I made a post, but here is the most recent project I did for my weekly Pathfinder (1st Edition) game. The campaign is pirate-themed (rated Arrr,) and a recurring threat has been a band of Northern barbarian raiders (Vikings) that have been plaguing the Sea of Fallen Stars lately. They strike out from an unknown base and raid coastal settlements, including the pirate island of Port Nowhere, which the party calls home base. Recently, the party was shipwrecked when an enraged whale attacked their ship, a former whaling vessel. The party had to build a raft and island-hop to try and get to an island with better resources and access to tradewinds so as to make it back to civilization. In doing so, the party stumbles across the hidden island base of the Viking threat! This would allow them to steal a boat (a knarr,) and eliminate the vikings in the same stroke. 

 So this meant I needed a viking village, which I do not have. In addition, time was a factor, and I only had so many hours I could devote to this project before game day, so they needed to be quick and dirty constructions. I could have cheaped out and just used some generic Medieval houses, possibly with some suitably 'vikingy' details added on, and indeed, that was my fallback. But I really wanted something more impressive, so I kept thinking. Looking at images of Scandinavian architecture, I honed in on the idea of sod-roofed structures rising out of the ground like hillocks with doors and windows sticking out. I toyed with the idea of making base structures out of oatmeal canisters or something and covering it with flock or cloth, when I remembered that I have a shitload of these:

These are the wonderful quonset huts from Dust Tactics, a game I never play, but whose minis are super fun to collect for my own nefarious purposes. I ended up with about two dozen of these little huts during a great clearance sale a few years ago. I could connect two of these, paint the ends brown like wood, and cover the top with flock. I could then still remove the flocking later and use them as quonset huts again if I so chose. Easy peasy. My first plan was to cover the top with some green fabric, perhaps a fur or velvet texture that I could paint up in patchy colors to mimic grass. I even considered astroturf! But when I go to my local craft store, I found this product:

This was a grassy turf texture (and color!) that you just peel and stick. Freaking perfect! So I bought it (more than I needed,) and set up to make quick work of this project. It was a fucking nightmare. First of all, this shit is MESSY. If you ever plan to use it, spread a tarp down, brothers and sisters, because this thing sheds like a German Sheperd with a high-stress job. Little green moss fibers got EVERYWHERE. In the end, I tried to do all my measuring and cutting inside a plastic bag just to contain the shrapnel. Next problem I had was that this stuff is inordinately sticky. Like, super sticky. I measured out the right size sheet to cover my quonset hut, and then peeled off the backing of the self-adhesive sheet. This proved to be a fatal mistake, as it was a little too self adhesive. The thing folded onto itself and bonded with a strength equal to one of the fundamental forces of the universe. There was no way short of using an infinity stone that could separate the parts, so I had to just throw that piece away. And there was much cursing. Luckily, I still had enough for the project. The second time, I just peeled off the leading edge, and carefully applied it to the edge of the hut, slowly peeling away the backing as I rolled it across the top. It worked out fine, and looked good, but it was still shedding like a Christmas tree in February. So I mixed up a batch of every crafter's favorite elixir, mother's milk to terrain builders, a 50/50 mix of PVA glue and water. I brushed it on with a chunky paint brush and let it dry outside.

It cut down on the shedding, but didn't eliminate it altogether. I had some overhang of the moss mat, but rather than trim it, I just folded those parts down to make them look overgrown. I did not do anything with the end pieces other than spray them brown, since I was not expecting a lot of scrutiny on these pieces, although I did think about decorating them with Viking details or replacing the door with a more period-appropriate one. In the end, I think they look fine. In addition to the two sod longhouses, I knew I wanted a larger meadhall. My first thought was about using this:

I picked this up many years ago (such great buildings, those Ertl Farm Country sets!) and always planned to use as a Viking great hall, because of the round roof. But it is quite big, and would take up a lot of real estate on the table, all for a piece of terrain that they were never expected to even go inside. In addition, I was pressed for time as I mentioned before. So if I could find a smaller option, that would be aces. I even considered using the Puzz 3D model of the Shining Hall of Edoras from the Lord of the Rings, which my daughter built and sits on her desk. But it was not a good fit all things considered. In the end, I found my solution in an unlikely place: elsewhere in the Ertl Farm Country family of playsets.

Behold; yet another of my past purchases, the Longhorn Ranch Log House Playset. I have used this very versatile structure in Western games, as farmhouses or a ranger's cabin in Fallout games, as a cabin in the woods for modern monster-hunting games, and even as houses in fantasy RPGs. But could I really make it work as a Viking longhouse? Obviously yes, but here's how I did it. To start, I removed the chimney, since they did not have chimneys of that type in the look I was going for. A common architectural detail from the period buildings I found online was crossed staves above doors and along roof gables. So I decided to make some out of tongue depressors that I trimmed off with a craft saw. To decorate these, and to cover some of the front windows (which made it look more log-cabiny) I decided to make some oversized, decorative shields. These were 1/2" wooden disks I got from the craft store. To decorate them, rather than paints I grabbed some colored Sharpie markers in an experiment in 'quick and dirty' decoration. This turned out really effective. Using only Sharpies, a silver paint marker, and a ball point pen allowed me to crank out a whole passle of shields in no time at all. I glued the shields to the frame with E-9000, which is also what I used to glue the frame to the front.

One of the most iconic bits of Viking décor are the carved dragon or other animal motifs that you see on the prows of boats and on roofs. If I had more time, I could have molded some from a dragon miniature or even carved some of my own from wooden dowels. But I was in a rush, so I hit the dollar store to look for something that could pass. What I found were these laser-cut animal shapes in the craft section. There weren't any dragons or the like, but I did manage to find a couple of seahorses that I thought might work as dragons with very skinny faces. But when I got home, I realized that at the scale I was working in, I could just cut off their tails with a craft saw and stick them up like rearing dragon heads. I glued them to the top with more E-9000 and voila: they give a good impression as rooftop dragon carvings. To further distance the building from its log cabin roots, I covered the windows on the sides with some rough animal skins I made out of felt in like ten minutes. These helped cover up the cheery wide windows and side doors.

The doors are from one of the Dwarven Forge Kickstarters. They have cool looking Scandinavian serpent motifs, so I gave them a quick spray paint (not my best work) and hit the details with a gold marker, then just glued them together (more E-9000, natch) and just wedged them into place. In the end, I feel it really works, and since I glued everything with E-9000, I can later remove all the details and return it to log cabin status with no lasting effects.

And now for the ships...

I had Paizo's map pack tiles for the longship and the knarr, but I really wanted to have a longship under construction. I had a bunch of neat ideas about building a skeletal ship hull, but again there was the time consideration. I only had one set of longship tiles, and they have water in the background. But then I hit upon an simple and elegant solution; I took my tiles to my local Kinko's and made some simple color photocopies. Then I cut them out carefully and glued the pieces together. Now I could put it on land and make it look like a ship still being built (if you ignore the sail.) Not perfect, but quick and effective. 

I was really pleased with how it all looked, and it made for a very interesting encounter, that saw the party cast silence on themselves so they could use hammers and nails from the shipbuilding supplies to nail the meadhall's doors shut with most of the Vikings inside, while the alchemist climbed on the roof to toss bombs down through the smokehole. Good times.

Up the Toobs!

I have a bit of a plastic addiction.  I just love finding new minis, and dream of having every possible mini for every possible encounter.  But I am also rather cheap, so while nearly anything you can think of exists as a metal or resin model online, they are not always in my preferred price range.  So when I find a relatively cheap mini available in plastic, I scoop them up posthaste.

Years ago I discovered Toobs, and have made effective use of them over the years.  They are produced by a company called Safari Ltd., a name known to many miniature modelers.  The company mainly produces really nice plastic replicas (some folks don't like it when you call such things toys, but that's what they are.)  You have probably seen them at the craft store before, and they are similar to companies like Schleich and Papo.  They make animals, dinosaurs, mythological critters and all sorts of other stuff, mostly in sizes that are less useful for 28mm gamers.

But what sets them apart from the aforementioned companies (beyond being far less expensive in my area,) is that they also make a line of smaller figures, sold in clear plastic tubes (whence, 'Toobs.')  Each 'toob' is filled with about a dozen or so (it varies) little prepainted figurines, all corresponding to that toob's theme, of which there are many (more on those later.)

The sculpting on most of the figures is quite good.  Maybe not to the level of fine detail that 'proper' miniatures are sculpted, and the undersides are embossed with 'China' along with the company name and a description of the figurine's subject, but for most gaming purposes, they can stand their own against any other minis you want to put down on the table.  Being made of dense PVC-type plastic, they are sturdy enough to keep their shape firmly, but still easy to slice and carve for modifications.  You can glue them with superglue, or a more elastic adhesive like Amazing Goop.

The stock paint jobs are generally good enough, but are meant as toys or figurines, so lack the shading and details that miniature modelers are used to, but I have used many of them as is without repainting.  Of course you can easily paint over, although I have never tried stripping them first, so I don't know how the material responds to acetone or other strippers.

The real draw here is price.  The MSRP on Toobs is about $12-$14, but you can often buy them cheaper at craft stores or online (I get mine at Michael's with a 40% off coupon.)  For that you get about a dozen minis (some less.)  Even if you only needed half of them, that would make each one about two bucks.

But why would you need them?  What good are they?

Well that's where the trick lies.  They make all kinds of toobs (mostly animals,) and if you run games with giant critters, it's pretty much certain they will have some figurines that will serve in your games.  Most of the figures fit on a 2" base, making them size Large in the D20 world.  Their poses sometimes leave a bit to be desired, tending toward being pretty laid back, which can be underwhelming when you plan to use them in combat, but they can still make excellent giant critters.

So in order to make a Toob pay off in value, you need to find one with multiple minis that are useful to you.  If there's only one in there that you want, you will be paying 13 bucks or so for a mini, and at that price, you might as well look for a fancy pewter or resin job.

So here are some of the Toobs I have acquired over the years, and which I felt were worth the expense.

Up first is one of the most useful Toobs in my opinion, the Venomous Creatures Toob:

This toob is so good, I picked up two.  Although there are only nine models, most of the critters in this set are exactly the kinds of critters you need in a fantasy game, and the others can still find use with a little creativity.  Let's explore them shall we? (I pinched most of these pictures off the interwebz, as I had already modified many of mine, and wanted to show you the stock models.)

I'll start with the least useful.  Unless you do a lot of aquatic adventures (I don't, but I'm not going to judge you if you do,) you will probably not have much need for these two.  The stone fish is pretty cool-looking, and can sub in for any size L fish-type critter when needed.  The bat ray could work as an ixitxachitl (sp?) or a cloaker, perhaps with a bit of modification.

Moving up the usefulness food chain, we have a a Komodo dragon.  The dragon is size H, and is well sculpted, but its usefulness is limited by it's pose, which is not only decidedly relaxed, but is stretched out, making it hard to place it on a grid, if one uses such a thing.

Now we are talking.  Here we have a couple of staples of fantasy RPG encounters (what? you don't use giant toads in your games?  For shame!)  The toad is pretty much perfect as is, or repainted as I did below, and could work as L or H, although I might be tempted to add a few horns or ridges with putty and repaint.

The cobra is just great for a Large snake, except for that stretched-out pose.  I ended up fixing one of mine:

I dunked it in hot water to make the plastic more pliable (i.e. plastic,) and squished it up to fit on a 2" base.  Then I glued it to the base using E9000 or Amazing Goop (can't remember which,) and clamped it in place.  Worked great, and I didn't even bother to repaint it.  The Sea snake is less cool, and is likely to be chopped up for parts if he doesn't get reposed.

Creepy crawlies!  That brown tarantula is very dynamic I feel, and a better paint job would really make it pop.  But I felt the eyes were too small and uninspired, so I grabbed some putty and gave it a hideous makeover.

Meant to give him a shot of Dulcote...

The eyes were simple to add, but I thought it would be cool to make a wolf spider, and so for the other guy, I built up a structure on the cephalothorax and gave him some terrible peepers:

Say hello to Mr. Angry Eyes!

As for the centipede, it's one of my faves, since appropriately-sized centipedes are hard to come by.  Unfortunately, it too suffers from its linear pose, making it awkward to base.  I contemplated cutting it in half and having its top half bursting up from the ground, but in the end what I did was to cut it in two places, wire it together and then bend it into position so that it looks like it is rearing up to bite.  I think it really improves the whole piece.

I needed two, so the other guy was heated up and twisted in a bit, to look more "coiled."  Both got a new paint job:

The last guy is my absolute favorite, and is one of the coolest scorpions I've come across.  It is a fat-tailed scorpion, and it just looks bad ass,  You could repaint it or not I feel it works either way.  In addition to using him as a standard giant scorpion (size large,) I have some funky plans for later on...

But that's just one of the Toobs.  Depending on what kind of campaign you are running, there are dozens of others that may be of use to you.  For example:

This Toob is called "Alligators Alive!", which I assume refers to some show or demonstration at an aquarium or park somewhere.  It is chock full of crocodilians appropriately sized for size L critters, along with another snake and a couple of turtles.  None of them even need painting, and I have put them to good use in both fantasy and modern games.

This is another crazy useful tube.  It is the cave animals toob, and is full of useful critters (I've got three of them.)  I mean look at the options here: a spider, a scorpion, a crab, a crayfish, and a millipede.  I'll grant you that I'm less likely to use the salamander, eel or catfish (although I have some interesting thoughts for a Fallout creature on a river encounter...) but the rest are like a dungeon critter sampler pack.  I actually lucked out the first time I picked up one of these toobs, as it was mispacked with an extra scorpion in it (can never have too many!) 


The crab and the crayfish are ready for repainting as they are (I have to confess, I have always liked using giant crayfish in D&D games, I don't know why.  My current campaign is a wilderness exploration-style game, and I've already sprung one on them at low level (fear the river!)  In addition, I think I will convert one or more of my crayfish into cave fishers, which could be pretty cool.  As for the crabs, they make cool enemies, and I especially enjoyed using them for a pirate-themed one-shot (more on that in its own post.)

But since they are cave critters, the spider and the scorpion do not have eyes.  So for the scorpions, I used putty to add an extra plate on the top of the head, into which I made some eye indents, and also sculpted some chelicerae in front to give them a bit of character.

He's primed with black gesso and waiting for paint.  Maybe some toxic green as a radscorpion for Fallout?

The spider was the first time I sculpted eyes (and a brow ridge for expression,) onto a spider, which gave me the inspiration for the tarantulas above.

Eyes so shiny!

To add variety, I made a row of eyes for another of the same model, based on a different species:

Safari Ltd. makes a line of dragons in their larger scale figures, and the sculpting is usually pretty good.  But these are massive critters, gargantuan at least in size.  However they also have dragons in their Toobs, as well. 

These are size Large, which can be hard to find from other sources, which tend to be larger, and of course these are the best deal going out there.  I rarely bother to convert them at all, and just prime and paint away.  Here is one I used in my Mummy's Mask campaign for a large blue:

Never painted the base.  One day...

As you can see, there is enough detail to pick out individual scales in paint.

From the same campaign, here's two more that I used as drakes:

These are just a few examples; there are plenty of other Toobs you might find useful.  The horse Toobs in particular are scaled well to use with 28mm scale, and although I've never used them myself, I've seen many folks do so to great effect.

So head to your local craft store and check 'em out, and see how you might use them in your games.

No-Pain Terrain: Easy solution for trees in RPG's

I have been running a campaign with lots of forest encounters lately, and that has thrown into sharp relief a long-standing problem I have had, namely how to create forest settings in games.

Currently I have a few forest-themed battle maps, but they never seem to look right to me, and lack versatility.  Likewise, using realistic plastic trees wargame-style means you end up reaching past them to move minis, and inevitably knocking over the trees left and right.  In general, I find using 3D tree models on the table for RPG's a poor solution, and have always wanted a better option for forest encounters.

Now obviously, if I'm bothering to post this, I must have come up with something, right?  Indeed, I was cruising my local craft store, and found a line of garden-themed resin miniatures.  They have little mushroom houses, little swing sets for resin fairies, and other such fripperies unworthy of the seething masculinity for which this site is so famous (they're not dolls, MOM!)

But one item that caught my eye was this cute little set of a table and chairs made from mossy stumps.  And while I'm sure someone will put these to adorable use in a little garden diorama, for me, I saw the answer to my forest encounter dilemma.

It occurred to me that these stumps were just the right diameter to represent trees in 28mm, the smaller ones fitting neatly into a single grid square to represent a medium sized tree, while the larger one (the 'table') occupying a 2"x 2" square for size large.  By using only the stumps, I could easily show where the trees were without having the upper sections in the way.  And as simple shapes, I could easily create a one-sided push mold of them and cast as many of the things as I needed.

So I picked up a single set, since I was intending to cast more as needed.  I also saw this other, lone stump, and figured I could add it in for variety, once I snapped off the little branch at the top to aid in easy casting.

The first problem I had to overcome was the fake moss.  While it looked nice, when you got close up (kind of a big thing in the world of miniatures,) it just looked like green plastic hairs.  And they would definitely cause trouble when making molds, so they had to go.  Washing off the glue was not an option, so I went for the nuclear option:

Pure acetone will strip nearly everything, and I don't (DON'T) recommend it for softer plastics.  But these stumps were cast from good, strong resin, so I felt they would hold up well.  Indeed, after a brief soak, the fake plastic moss and the adhesive that affixed it came off easily with a little toothbrush action.  So I now had 3 stripped stumps with crisp detail, all ready for molding.

Of course, there are tons of options for making molds, and perhaps I will make an entry soon about the various ways of doing so, but for now I will just say that for this particular application, I used this:

This is a two-part molding compound which is not my favorite.  I've had questionable results with it in previous applications, but I realized that for this particular use it would work fine.  So I mixed up the goo and pressed it all over the stumps, giving me three decent molds:

They were a little thin in places, but I figured they should hold up well enough to crank out a small forest.

But what to use to cast in these fine molds?  As with molding compounds, there are dozens of options with varying qualities, but I went with three different materials to see what worked best.

To start I used some superfine white Milliput I had lying around.  Now, I had originally picked up this product for use as a mini sculpting compound, but I just never liked it (that's a post for another day.)  This gave an okay stump (although pricey,) but perhaps because I did not mix it thoroughly enough, but there was a sticky patch on the top that never really dried out.  So this was not my favorite option.

Then I used my go-to material for casting; hardware store repair putty.  There are many different varieties, under many different names, but I find the Fix-It Stick by Oatey to be the most reliable and easy to acquire in my area.  It is nice and cheap (around seven bucks for the tube seen in the photo,) and dries quickly and rock hard, after which it can be sanded.  One note on sanding: in my house this product is known as 'urine putty,' because the chemical smell of it as it is curing is reminiscent of old cat pee.  When sanding, this smell is released into the air, and you may be unpopular for a little while.  But the results are reliable, and make a good, nearly indestructible product.  But I wanted to see if I could get my project done even cheaper, so I headed to the craft store.

This is an air-drying clay by Fimo.  It's not standard pottery clay (although the color makes it look like it,) and it is extremely light.  It is also as messy as standard clay, and left little clay bits all over the molds, but these were easily shaken out.  The real problem was that it took several days to dry all the way through so that I could demold it.  Once done, it was very lightweight, which wasn't really what I was looking for, but the detail was okay.  The single biggest positive is the price.  The package was a few bucks with coupon, and should give me a good-sized forest.  For this reason alone, I have decided to use it exclusively going forward.

Next I "black-bombed" them all with some old spray primer I had lying around (I don't use it any more, having switched to brush-on primers and black gesso.)  They all looked more or less the same at that point, and now it was time to paint.

I used plain old craft paint, in several layers.  I wanted to have them all look more or less uniform, so I used the same color scheme on all of them.  This also helped speed up the process, allowing me to "assembly line" it.  Once they had all been base coated, I washed them with Agrax Earthshade and Voila!

Already a good-sized forest.  I can bang out a dozen or so more fast and cheap, and be able to cover the table in as large and dense a forest as I could possibly need.  I'm even thinking of sculpting up a size huge tree (3" x 3") and mold some of those.

When I get the time, I will add a few details here and there such as clumps of moss patches of shelf fungi to give them some individuality while still maintaining the overall consistency.  But they are ready to use just as they are now.  Here's how they look on the table with some minis:

I realize the picture quality is poor, but it's late.  Here we see a party of (very) old friends wandering through the forest as they are set upon by a goblin patrol and their giant spider.  The trees are stable, and heavy enough not to slide around when the table is jostled (I may apply some liquid rubber like Plasti Dip or FlexSeal to aid in their non-slip properties)  You can see where the lines of sight are broken and so forth.

I realize many may prefer full trees, and I can respect that.  But for my money (and not much of that I am proud to say,) this is simply the finest solution for RPG's I have come across.  Hopefully, some of you may find it of use as well.

Post Script- While at the craft store, I took a picture of another product from the same line, which could be a slightly less cool, but still reasonably effective version of this idea:

They are little wooden discs, and they have the outer bark ad inner tree rings, so they still look like trees, even if they would be much shorter and more irregularly sized.  But at seven bucks for a whole forest, it wouldn't suck.  Slap a layer of liquid rubber on one side, and game on!