KrazyIvan

We will be combining Divergent Paths with a Rapid Growth league at Tempe Comics in Tempe, Arizona. For our league we will be using the rapid growth format, fixed faction, and fixed master. That means that you will declare a faction for the entire event, and start with a 25pt list. This will include your master and upgrades. Each week the SS total of the game will increase, and on certain weeks you will be able to add additional masters to your pool. We will grow at a slower rate than last time as this is a 10 week event. You will still be able to obtain trophies and such, just like any rapid growth league. *** This is a great format for any of you beginners to jump in!!! *** Note, that you don't have to participate in the league to come play Malifaux on Friday nights, but only the league will be prized...did I mention prizes? I will be giving away both Guilders and Mystery Boxes over the course of the event. League starts September 16th through November 20th, with games taking place on Friday nights. Tempe Comics is located at 1523 E Apache Blvd in Tempe, Arizona.

I find Hans to be pretty terrible in comparison to the Trapper personally. Have both, but have never had a situation where Hans would have been a better choice. YMMV of course. Consider picking up Johan. He is one of the strongest models we have, point for point, and he can find a place in most crews (Outcast or otherwise).

Hates conditions eh? It Johan or the Scion then a welcome add to the crew?

Worked up another couple wall sections. You can see here how they will line up. These still need gap filling, greeblies, and bases but you can see what I am going for. These are made from triple layered urethane foam. They are 3" tall and 4" long on each of the straight sides. They were glued together with PVA and have three double ended toothpicks embedded in them to help hold them together. Once dry the entire thing was chopped up with a hot wire cutter and an xacto knife. Then I took a metal ruler and ran the edge against the "rock face" to break it up a bit. Afterward I beat up the foam with a rock from my front yard. The wood is all hand cut balsa.

Building a board with nine tiles that each have these wall sections mounted to them is hardly limiting. There would be around 3000 possible layout combinations based on my original plan. The real issue for me is storage. Storing and transporting 9 boards that are around 3 1/2" thick each isn't easy.

Started doing some proof of concept work today. Here is a corner piece. The intent is for 4 of these to come together to form the wall formations. After some consideration I've decided to made the top playable, and this a spot to put more terrain. This particular piece still needs some gubbins...I'm going to at least add some lanterns on the posts, maybe a soulstone crystal or two poking out from the rock. My next thought is that I shouldn't glue these directly to the boards. If I leave them free-standing then it just makes everything ever more modular, plus 9 boards with 3" of terrain sticking off of them is going to be difficult to store and transport. It does, however, mean that I need to base these. I'll be making 36 of these for the board.

Plants mounted on 2"-3" bases. Lots of them. Aquarium plants will do nicely.

Lets go ahead and do the postmortem for the city boards. I'm going to go through how I created all the elements or the boards, along with links to the various bits and bobs that I used. Strap in, this is going to likely be a lengthy post... Step 1: Planning I started with some basic ideas: The board must be suitable for multiple games, in this case Malifaux and Frostgrave. The board must be modular so that it can be configured in multiple ways. No mats! Lots of people like mats, but I'm not one of them. I wanted texture on the ground. With those rules in mind I fired up 3D design program called Sketchup and started rendering the board as a 3D model. The main purpose for doing this was to check size and scale. By building the boards actual size in 3D I was able to check how many possible configurations the board had and ensure that there was plenty of space for terrain on top of the boards. Sketchup is an easy program to learn, and is pretty simplistic for 3D design software. Most importantly the basic version is free. You can download a copy here: http://www.sketchup.com/ Note that I use Sketchup version 8 (which is pretty old at this point) Step 2: The boards themselves The boards themselves were the most labor intensive part of the project. They are completely scratch built, using no commercial war gaming terrain products at all. They are made from double layered 1/8" MDF. I used the 3D render of the boards to create a template for a laser cutter, using a Sketchup plug in called 'Flights of Ideas' then sent the file to a local shop to have the MDF precision cut. Once I had the MDF in hand glued the boards together. The surfaces to be glued together were scored first to ensure a strong grip. I used E6000 multi-purpose adhesive to glue everything. You could use whatever glue you like for this purpose, but I would recommend something stringer than model glue or white glue. There is going to be some warping to deal with when everything is painted, and using an industrial strength glue will ensure that the boards don't separate in later steps. ** Please note that many industrial strength adhesives, like E6000, give off noxious fumes that can cause serious damage to your eyes, lungs, and inside of your nose. When using this stuff you either want to respirator with cartridges rated for solvents, or you want to do your gluing outside. DO NOT ASSUME THAT A ROOM WITH AN OPEN WINDOW AND A FAN IS SUFFICIENT. I can tell you from personal experience that no room in a typical house is ventilated well enough when using this stuff. ** This is the glue that I used: http://www.lowes.com/pd/E6000-Multipurpose-Adhesive/50149282?cm_mmc=SCE_PLA-_-Paint-_-Glue-_-50149282:E6000&CAWELAID=&kpid=50149282&CAGPSPN=pla&store_code=1032&k_clickID=200c254c-730e-4597-a156-90418298fa0c Once the glue dried I start prepping them to have all the stonework attached. When dealing with MDF preparation is key. You have to understand that nature of how MDF is manufactured results in a very "thirsty" product. It will absorb any water based substance you put on it, and that absorption will result in warping to one degree or another. This is why using the proper glue is so important; if your glue bond isn't strong enough the board will pop apart when you start to attach anything to them. The following steps allow for the warping to be corrected. I started by priming the boards. I used acrylic gesso and a $0.99 chip brush from Home Depot. Gesso was used because it is not self-leveling, meaning that it will not provide a smooth surface. Instead the product has a 'tooth' to it. The brush that you apply it with will leave a texture on the board that makes it easy to attach bits and bobs to it. In this case that'll be all the stone work. You want to apply the gesso to one side the boards then let partially dry. This will cause warping, but that is ok. Once the gesso is dry to the touch put a heavy book, brick, rock, can of speghetti sauce, or whatever on the boards to flatten them out until the gesso is completely dry. This won't correct the warping, but it will minimize it. Then flip the boards over and apply gesso to the other side, following the same drying procedure. The second layer of MDF will warp the opposite direction of the first layer, and will bring the board back to level. When done the boards should be completely flat. You can get gesso at any art store, or online: https://www.amazon.com/Liquitex-Professional-White-Surface-Medium/dp/B000KNJF6W At this point I moved on to the most time eating, soul killing, sanity rending portion of the build...the stone work. I used the most labor intensive process possible because I wanted complete irregularity in my stone. I basically made each individual flag and cobble stone from scratch. It was a ton of boring work, but I am pretty happy with the result. The flag stones themselves are bits of irregularly cut up cardboard from cereal and soda boxes. I just chopped up whatever boxes we had on hand until a quart sized ziplock bag was mostly full. There is no magic trick to this stage. It's simply cardboard, scissors and time. Once I was done with all the cutting I got to work placing the flag stones. They are simply glued to the board with white glue (PVA). I bent the cardboard flagstones along the roadway and glued them to both the top and the side of the boards. You have to keep an eye on the gutter area where the bend in the cardboard stones as they don't like to stay put. You can use a little dab of model glue to tack them down while the PVA dries. The cobbles stones were made from a variety of materials, that changed as I went along. I stared with greenstuff (kneadite). This stuff worked great but I quickly ran out and it is pretty expensive per ounce. I switched to miliput, which functioned just as well as greenstuff but wasn't quite as expensive. When my initial supply of miliput ran out happened accross Apoxie Sculpt on Amazon. After a little research it seemed like it would be a perfectly good analog for miliput, and it per oz cost was much less. I ordered some, and it was perfect. All of these products are two part epoxies. That means there is a A and B compound that you mix together. Once mixed you have a bit of time to work the material before it hardens. Most of these materials come with part A and B in the same package, but Apoxie Sculpt is sold in two parts, each with it's own tub. The initial is higher than the other products, but the per oz cost is less. I used this stuff for all my sculpting needs, including gap filling on my minis. To create cobblestones you simply mix a small amount the material then roll balls of the appropriate size. Those balls are then pressed down on the board where you want them. These will have a hard time adhering directly to MDF, but if your primed the boards with gesso there should plenty of tooth for the Apoxie Sculpt to hold on to. I left some areas clear of cobblestone so that I would have ruined sections. During this process I staged a raid on my wife's crafting materials and stole a 30mm round button that had the appearance of manhole cover. That was glued to the board with superglue. I also used the Apoxie Sculpt to hand sculpt the some gutters. Those are simply the material formed into a rectangle with slits pressed in. I used a typical modelling sculpting tool for this part of the process. I applied Liquitex Resin Sand to the empty areas as dirt showing through. Resin Sand is an artist medium that you can find at mode craft stores. I used it for nearly all my basing. It's applied with a popsicle stick and wet paint brush. This process took me about 3 weeks to get done, working in small batches while I watched TV in the evening. I buy my Apoxie Sculpt on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0013UDWXI?psc=1&smid=A1LQ759O23Q0NG My current set of modelling tools also came from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/SE-DD312-12-Piece-Stainless-Double-Sided/dp/B000SVRSRY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1472926031&sr=8-3&keywords=wax+sculpting+tools This is the resin sand: https://www.amazon.com/Liquitex-Professional-Resin-Effects-Medium/dp/B000KNLGYQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472926731&sr=8-1&keywords=liquitex+resin+sand Once all the stone was affixed to the board I primed the boards with gesso a second time, but this time I used two coats and I stippled on the second coat. Since gesso hold its shape this created a stone like texture on the boards. Once the gesso was dry I started in with paint. The painting followed a process, much of which was done with an airbrush: First prime everything black. A rattle can would be ideal for this, but I elected to use my airbrush along with Vallejo Black Primer. Using an airbrush I applied pre-shading to each and every flag stone by spraying a small amount of Vallejo Grey Prime on the middle of each flagstone, and in random spots on the cobblestone roadways. I then sprayed a base coat of Creatix Medium Grey on the flagstones. This paint is translucent and made for airbrushing, so with the pre-shading in place the middle of each stone was a lighter grey than the grout lines. Army Painter Ash Grey was thinned down and applied to the cobblestones via airbrush. Pure black and pure white Army Painter paint was lightly stippled onto the flagstones. Army Painter Monster Brown was applied to the dirt areas Army Painter Soft Tone wash was applied via airbrush all over the cobble stones. Army Painter Strong Tone wash was applied via airbrush to all the flagstone and dirt areas. The cobblestones were dry brushed with Vallejo Grey Primer, then again, very lightly, with Army Painter White. Army Painter Green Tone wash was applied in several layers in the gutter ares to simulate grime from settled water. Army Painter Purple Tone, Red Tone, and Green Tone wash was applied haphazardly via manual brush all over flagstones. This was done because natural stone is rarely just shades of grey. The various colors will be toned done in the next step. Army Painter Uniform grey was dry brushed all over the flagstones, followed by a slight lighter dry brush of Army Painter Ash Grey, followed by a even lighter dry brush of Army Painter White. The dirt areas were dry brushed with Army Painter Oak Brown then a lighter dry brush of Desert Yellow. Finally Army Painter Strong Tone was applied to the dirt areas a second time. The manhole covers and grates were painted black, dry brushed with Army Painter Weapon Bronze, followed by an application of Army Painter Strong Tone Ink then Army Painter Green Tone ink. Buffalo Grass from Scenic Express was glued on in various places, then the board was sealed with Valspar Gloss Varnish, followed by Valspar Matte Varnish. Buffalo grass can be found here: http://www.sceneryexpress.com/Buffalo-Grass/products/1232/ Step 3: Buildings My buildings are all commercial kits, mounted to MDF bases. The bases were laser cut squares of various sizes that were ground down and beveled with a Dremmel tool. Since the bases are pretty small there was no need to go through the counter warping procedures mentioned above. Gluing your buildings to their bases prior to paint should give enough support to prevent warping. The buildings were assembled, cleaned, then glues to their bases. The tower was "ruined" by cutting it up with a Dremmel tool and a heavy duty hooked xacto knife. Rubble was created by gluing down shaped bits of urethane foam (pink foam), then applying a kitty-litter slurry as the rubble itself. That slurry is simply a hefty amount of white glue mixed with non-clumping kitty litter. The resulting slurry should be wet, but not runny. Use a popsicle stick to apply and shape the slurry. This method will result in a rock hard coating on the underlying foam that will be very resilient and hold up well to use. You could also apply glue, then sprinkle on the littler. If you do that you will need to coat everything with a final layer of PVA mixed with water otherwise the kitty litter will be easily knocked off the board. Several of the buildings have wooden bits added - floor boards, barricades and, in the case of the tower, floors. All of these bits are balsa wood obtained from the craft store. Use can use any kind of balsa you like, just eye ball it for scale. PVA and superglue was used to affix the wooden bits and bobs to the buildings and boards. Finally nail heads were applied to the barricades. The nail heads are tiny pieces of Plastruct plastic wire. These things will go all over the place as you cut them so use something to block in your cutting area. Liquitex Resin sand was liberally applied to the rest of the base. The final modification was the roof of each building. These are simply more of the cut up cardboard pieces from the previous step. All of the buildings were painted in the same basic manner. I used an airbrush to pre-shade using a zenithal pattern. Then sprayed translucent paint over the top, followed by line highlights. Here is the process for each type of building: Prime via airbrush using Vellejo Black Primer. Apply pre-shading using Creatix White sprayed through an airbrush. White it sprayed where ever the piece is to be lighter. In this case each section of stone was highlighted near the top and left darker near the bottom. This is that basic zenithal technique that I mentioned. Vallejo Grey Primer was sprayed on as a 90 degree angle to the piece as a a final pre-highlight. The entire piece were sprayed with Creatixe Medium Grey paint. Sharp edges were highlighted with Army Painter Ash Grey using a standard brush. Roof tiles were pre-shaded with Creatix White paint. Roof tiles were then stippled and lightly dry brushed with Army Painter Uniform Grey paint. Roof tiles were based coated with either Creatix Blue or Creatix Red paint. Roof tiles where then edge highlighted with either Army Painter blue or red paints, a lighter ton than the base color. Army Painter Blue or Red tone was sprayed on the roof tiles to bring everything together. The wooden sections were painted a very thinned down Army Painter Desert Yellow. The wooden sections were dry brushed with Army Painter Skeleton Bone, then Army Painter White. The wooden sections were given a wash of Army Painter Strong Tone wash. Creatixe Medium Grey was sprayed on based. Army Painter Strong Tone was washed over the base. The base was highlighted by dry brushing Army Painter Uniform Grey, then Army Painter Ash Grey, then finally Army Painter White. The last step for each building was adding some plants. The previously mentioned buffalo grass was used all over. Some areas received static grass...that I've literally had for years. My stuff is from Games Workshop and is a blend that isn't actually made anymore. The vines are by Silflor purchased through Scenic Express. The lighter green bushes are from a model briar patch purchased from scenic express. Links! Gothic Ruins from Pegasus Hobbies http://pegasushobbies.net/catalog/Peg.-Gaming-Accessories/c2/p98/%234930-Gothic-City-Ruins/product_info.html Gothic Building 2 from Pegasus Hobbies (used for the tower) https://www.amazon.com/Pegasus-Hobby-Gothic-Building-Small/dp/B001FFZBJE Ruined Hamlet from Warlord Games (2 kits were used) https://us-store.warlordgames.com/products/ruined-hamlet Silflor Ivy from Scenic Express http://www.sceneryexpress.com/O-SCALE-ENGLISH-IVY-MULTI-SET/productinfo/MN93632/ Briar Patch from Scenic Express http://www.sceneryexpress.com/LIGHT-GREEN-BRIAR-PATCH/productinfo/CA0711/ Step 4: Fountain and Scatter Everything in this section, except for wrought iron portion of the fences and the weeping angel statue, was painted in the same manner as described above so I will not be going into the painting of the stone and/or ground cover. The wrought iron fences are resin, purchased from Puppet's War Miniatures. The stonework was painted like all the other stonework in this project. For the fences themselves I used the following process: Prime via airbrush with Vallejo Black Primer. Paint the fencing with Army Painter Monster Brown using a brush. Stipple Army Painter Orange paint on using a sponge. Lightly stipple Army Painter Skeleton Bone using a sponge. Liberally apply Army Painter Strong Tone wash. You can get the fences here: https://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=412 The rubble piles were assembled and painted using the urethane foam, kitty litter slurry, and resin sand process as the building bases. They are on MDF bases. The wagons are from 4Grounds, on MDF bases with urethane foam and resin sand. For the covered wagon I simply de-laminated a piece of 2-ply paper towel then cut is to size. Is was soaked in the 50/50 mix of PVA and water then put into place and allowed to dry. It's now rock hard. You can find the wagons here: Covered Wagon http://www.4ground.co.uk/camps-carts-and-wagons/28mm-roman-ox-cart Open Wagon http://www.4ground.co.uk/camps-carts-and-wagons/28mm-ox-wagon The fountain base is from Puppet's War Miniatures, and the statue is a Weeping Angel Christmas ornament. I assembled the fountain base, then sealed the inside. The Angel was cleaned of mold lines, and had the ornament hook remove. The hole was then filled with Apoxie Sculpt. I Angel was glued to the fountain with superglue. That left a gap between the Angel and the base which was filled with Apoxie Sculpt. The painting process was pretty simple: The fountain base was painted just like all the other stonework. The inside of the fountain was shaded using Army Painter Dark Tone through an airbrush. This was done to give extra depth to the water that would poured in later. The statue was based coated Army Painter Weapon Bronze. Army Painter Strong Tone was sprayed on to the statue using an airbrush. Army Painter Green Tone was bushed on to the statue. I heavily thinned some Army Painter Turquoise and painted it into the recesses of the statute to create a verdigris effect. This was heavy applied all in one go and allowed to puddle up. The last step was to very lightly dry brush P3 Pig Iron all over. The "water" is Envirotex Lite crystal clear resin. This is a two part epoxy resin liquid. Once mixed I added some Army Painter Green Tone wash then poured it in the fountain. Some old flock was sprinkled on top and pushed down with tooth picks. Once the resin setup a little bit additional flock was added and lightly pressed into the resin to created a layered algae effect. Some pointers for using Envirotex Light: Mix, mix, mix then when you thin you are done mixing mix some more. You have to be sure that this stuff is mixed enough or it will not setup. Only pour layer of 1/8" or less per go. If you want a deeper effect our a second and third layer. If you pour too much at once it may not setup. Resins get HOT when you mix them because they have a chemical reaction to one another. This is normal, but the thicker the pour the hotter things will get. Pour only the indicated amount to avoid damaging the model. You have air bubbles from mixing. Pour then wait 15 minutes. At the 15 minute mark the bubbles should have some to the surface. You can then light a match and quickly wave it over the bubbles. This will pop the bubbles. You can fine the fountain itself here: https://puppetswar.eu/product.php?id_product=581 The Weeping Angel can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Weeping-Christmas-Ornament/dp/B00P1MSH7K/ref=sr_1_6?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1472935449&sr=1-6&keywords=plastic+weeping+angel Envirotex Light can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Environmental-Technology-16-Ounce-Pour--Finish/dp/B000LNS9CW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472935614&sr=8-1&keywords=envirotex+light Last but not least are the trees. I wanted them in planters so that they would fit the rest of the board. I had the base laser cut from MDF. It's made up of a circular base and two rings glued together to form the lip. The stones were created in the same manner as the cobblestones. I drilled a hole in each base to accommodate the trees that I purchased. The trees were glued in, then resin sand applied. Everything was painted in the same manner as previous described, then vegetation was glued on. Blood Elms from Scenic Express http://www.sceneryexpress.com/3-4-ELM-TREES_SET-OF-3/productinfo/BN32008/ And that it! Congradulations, you made it to the end of the wall of text. If you have any questions after reading all that post away and I will do my best to answer them.

A second two story gothic ruined corner. The one without vines.

The board is done. THE BOARD IS DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE!!!! I finished the last piece this evening. Here is the final product: Now that it's done I'm ready to answer any questions that you might have. Ask away!