Insomnia + OCD + Deadline

I had one of my infrequent bouts of insomnia last night and around 2am I decided that I wasn't going to sleep so I might as well do something that would be relaxing and possibly soothe me to sleep.   I chose putting the Celtic knotwork design on my small floor.  Yeah, I know.



I think it turned out OK and should be a nice addition to the dungeon.  Yes, seriously.  I painted this at 2:0oam.  The red and white floor tiles were already painted and only needed a little touch up work to finish the piece.

Some more room floors

I've been terrible about getting pictures of the layout but I have my reasons.  They're not good reasons but they're reasons.  The pieces are all painted.  They're also neatly packed away.  So to take layout pics I need to unpack them, lay them into a pleasing pattern, take pictures, then pack them again.  And I'm trying to get the minis painted for the game so I have to budget my time.

But I did get a couple more of the room floors painted up.  I took these pictures at night and I can never get the white balance correct when I do this.  But you can see the general painting.



It's rough to get a nice repeating pattern when you've got odd-by-even tile counts.  I try.



I did a little freehand painting in the center.  It isn't perfect but I think it gives a nice effect.

Quick update on progress

No pics tonight.  Sorry.  But there will be soon.  Promise!

I've got the last of the small rooms assembled and the edges painted, waiting for the detail painting.  One more small room has the gold lining done on the medieval floor pattern.  I'll probably be painting that one but a friend of mine has some vague interest in it.  He does have interest in painting the last 2 door frames.  Especially since I'm out of ideas.  If he can't get them done I'll figure something out.

I'm also building 1 x 2 corridor pieces.  I actually need those for dead ends (odd by even, remember?) and I can use them with corridor sections to build extra rooms if necessary.  I can put them together to make more corridors.  And they fill in a space in the floor tile layers in the boxes.  All kinds of uses!

I think there's one more set of 1 x 2 pieces after these are done unless I get ambitious and use up all the cast floor tiles.  Why not?  I can always cast more.

I also pulled out the filler pieces I need to complete the gaps between the room and corridor walls.  I may need a few more than I seem to have but there's another mold that makes them so I need to pillage that box for the remaining few.  Those just need to be painted.

I'm painting prepped minis now.  Tonight I finished up 8 skellies and got the base coat on their bases.  Tomorrow I can dry brush them up, touch up the base edge, number them, and then they're ready for varnish.  Skellies are easy.  I couldn't resist some fancy stuff (comparatively) but it didn't take long and I like it.  I think I'll add a little flock as moss to the bases to break up the grey.

I also got started on the drow but just wasn't in the mood to work on them so at least the skin base coats are on.  Once I get involved they should go pretty quickly.  I see a little freehand practice on cloaks but I need it anyway.

I have 2 minis about 2/3 done and need to finish those off.  The whole list of what I need is sitting in a file somewhere so I'll need to get it out and start checking things off.  And get the player characters painted up.  Those get more paint love than the monsters.

Oh yeah.  The spiders.  I just need to figure out the freehand on the second one and they're done.  Attaching them to bases takes a little different work because they need epoxy but it's nothing I haven't done before.

More floors

Yes, I'm getting to the point where all there is left to do for the dungeon is the room floors.  All of the dungeon components have been painted, varnished and carefully put into their storage boxes.  I know I'll be pulling them out to do a display layout but first I need to make sure they fit in the first place.

I added gold to some of the sections on this floor.  Now if you look at it you'll also see a circular pattern that wasn't obvious before.



Then I got the chain floor done.  This room is a bit of an odd shape and I didn't make any more like it.  Technically it fits the requirements of the game.  I just didn't like it.



The white is still a little uneven to me but from gaming distance it should be fine.

Another fancy floor

This one is from the A&K Medieval Floor mold and has been a bit of a challenge to build much less paint.



It's kind of difficult to see that there's silver sections that I used to try to define more of the design.  I may have to paint them gold or some other color to make it stand out.

Dungeon Bash Small Room and Vindication

Turns out I was right about the room scale, I just have to have them oriented a particular way for it to work.  Not a problem and now I know.  The side with the even number of tiles needs to be along the edge with the corridor/door.  Again, I still need to put together a larger layout to see if that's going to cause issues with assembly but I doubt it.



Yes, I still need the small pieces to fit the gaps where the walls meet.  They're on the list to be painted.

A very quick setup

I couldn't resist showing off this painted room since I had to move it up out of harm's way anyway.  I couldn't get the corner and wall segments to work and that's frustrating since I thought I did the math right.  I'm going to work with the layouts more since that might be part of the problem.  Otherwise I figure out how to correct (make 1 inch wall sections?), add more cracked floor tiles to make it work, or just work around it.  I have half the rooms to make yet so no matter what the fix is those will be "right".



I can never resist a PC level shot.  Enter if you dare ...



Yes I see the gap between the wall and the door frame.  Again, quick layout.  And if people are looking at that kind of detail then I'm not running the game correctly.

Dungeon Bash Storage and Transport

I need some way to store this monstrosity as well as easily transport it to and from the convention.  Considering it's a lot of cement in little pieces I'll be carrying around boxes of rocks.

I was looking at various sizes and shapes of plastic storage bins but they're never actually square and they tend to have style aspects that make it difficult to use all the space.  Plus I was worried about how sturdy they would be, considering the aforementioned boxes of rocks.

Instead I found some 12 x 12 x 6 cardboard boxes that are designed to transport up to about 70lb of material.  I'll just leave it at that as to what kind of boxes these are.

I bought some of the large size bubble wrap, which turns out to be perforated in handy 12 inch lengths and is 12 inches wide.  Things started coming together.

The final piece that came together was finding a foam core display board that was being tossed away at work.  Free foam core is not to be taken lightly.  It's to be taken quickly. :D

Tonight I wanted to see just how this would work out.  I put bubble wrap along the sides of the box, then made "flats" out of foam core with bubble wrap on one side.  Then it was a parfait of foam core level, walls, foam core, corners, foam core, corridors (Note 1), bubble wrap.  So I was able to get 2 layers of walls/corners and a double layer of floors in a box.  It's not too heavy at all and I used lengths of foam core between then rows of pieces to fill them out and minimize damage.  I didn't go so far as to put them between each piece.

I'm guessing the walls and corners will take just over 2 boxes and then the other pieces will probably spread it out to 4 boxes.  I'm hoping to have room in that last box for the minis but given how many they are they might get their own box.

I need to get some sticky back velcro so I can seal the tops of the boxes and I'll get one of those portable luggage carts and a ratchet strap to put the whole thing together.  I just don't trust bungies for this because they don't have enough surface area.  A ratchet strap will hold things more securely.

Tomorrow I should be able to pack up one more full box and clear off the mantle of finished pieces.  I think the room floors will all go into the last box since it will have extra room.

Note 1 - The 2mm foam I use as a base also lets me stack the floors and not worry about them scratching.  Bonus!