How to: Make a Custom GM Screen

In preparation for my Weird War II game I went looking for a GM Screen, unfortunately I couldn't find exactly what I wanted.

So I decided to make my own and you can too.

You will need:

3x 25mm Ring Binders with display pockets on front & back.  

1x Roll of Double sided tape

Scissors

4x Plastic Document Pockets

Lay out one of your folders making sure (and then checking again) that the opening to the pockets on the other side is at the top.  

Cut eight strips of double sided tape and stick them on the inside covers.  Carefully peel off the backing tape on the strips.  

Take your next binder, and again checking that the opening to the display pocket on the front is at the top, carefully line up the edges and place the folder on top of the sticky tape and repeat on the other side.

You can just use two binders but I like a lot of room to roll dice and keep my handouts and maps organised so I recommend using three, they still fold up neatly.

Next prepare the Document Pockets.  Stick the double sided tape on one side of each pocket, I found a long strip at the top & the bottom worked well.  Stick the pockets to the inside covers of your screen,  try to keep the pocket taught so it doesn't gape open.

And your pretty much done.  I printed some appropriate art for the four pockets facing my players and the rules and tables I'll want to check often in the pockets inside.

When you change games to a different system or genre you can just switch out the art & rules pages to suit the new game.  

5000 Visits to my Blog!

Hi everyone.

I've just had my 5000th visit to my Blog !  I'm very pleased as this doesn't track my own visits and I was fairly sure that no one but me would ever look at it!

Back in July when I started this blog I wanted to share what I was doing and maybe provide some inspiration to other Roleplayers that might want to use miniatures in their tabletop games.  Over that time my painting skills have improved, i've learned some new techniques, won prizes in a couple of competitions and painted some models i've been really proud of.  

In the last five months I've made 40 posts on subject like what scenery to use, Step by Step Guides and rants about Games Workshop and i'm glad you've enjoyed them.

Over the next few months i'm hoping that our local games will actually use miniatures more often so I can give you some reports and in game photos, a guide to making your own custom GM Screen, more photography guides and in March I have an enormous delivery of Bones Miniatures to look forward to.

Anyway, thanks for the support everyone.  Lets see if we can hit the next milestone of 10,000 posts in less time!  

Getting my Weird War II game ready

I've been planning my next turn at running a RPG game for rather a long time, in fact thats the first project I had planned at the begining of July when I started this blog.  Well the time has come and the game is due to start on the 25th November so I have a few things left to do.

I can't share everything i'm going to do just yet as I know some of my players will be reading this blog and I don't want to spoil the surprise.  I have got four more miniatures to paint  which will bring the total number of miniatures i'll have ready to 55.  

The adventure is fully written (i'll share that with you once we've finished) and I have most of the scenery and vehicles i'll need.  I've chosen the background music which will add ambiance and i've got some WW2 books with photos of the war as props to help the guys get in the mood.  I've also got some documents the players might find which i've translated into German (and in English to give to the character's that took German as a Skill)

I'm using the Savage Worlds system which uses playing cards to determine who acts in each round and 'Bennies' to represent a hero's luck.  The heroes get three tokens which can be cashed in to get a reroll or other benefits.  For this game i'm using rather distinctive tokens....

My very talented photographer friend Roy has helped me out with some excellent scenery and vehicles including an abandoned french farmhouse and lots of German half tracks, tanks, trucks and motorbikes.  I think this is the most prepared i've ever been for a game.

I do still have a few things to do though.  I need lots of trees and I need to make a GM Screen, i'll make another post on making a custom modular (and importantly Cheap) GM screen soon.

Reaper Bones Ogre

Another week, another Bones miniature.  After this one I just have the Minotaur left to do so I promise i'll be onto something new very soon.  I struggled a bit with this one due to lots of distractions away from the paint table and he's not 100% finished.  He could really do with more work on the kilt, the strap across his bandages on his left hand and some brighter highlighting on his club.

Overall the miniature is pretty good, the detail is clear and the mold lines aren't too bad and the paint job is certainly good enough for its tabletop purposes but I just didn't enjoy painting it as much as the other bones miniatures, I think that's just me being peculiar though.

I wanted the club to look like fairly new softwood, not really the best choice for a club but he is a stoopid ogre and I didn't want the heaviness of a darker brown to draw attention away from his face. 

In hindsight I think I should have chosen either a darker skin tone or a lighter tone for the bandages as the photo makes them fade in a bit more than they are in real life.  On that subject i'm continually disappointed with the performance of my camera.  Its just not up to the job of macro photography and i'm definitely going to look at getting something more suitable.

The next painting job will be the Artizan WW2 French Resistance and a British Soldier because my game is finally starting.  In fact the next post will be about the preparation for that game.

Reaper Bones Werewolf

'Hi everyone, my name's Richard and i'm a Bones Addict.'  

'Hi Richard!'

'I've been painting them for several months and can't seem to kick the habit.  I'm just taking it day by day folks!'

Applause

The next Bones miniature I wanted to have a go at was the Werewolf.  Its not my favourite sculpt by a long way (the arms are too long and the claws too short for my taste and the mould line...well i'll talk about that later) but I wanted to see what I could make of it.  And I needed a Werewolf for my tabletop collection.

Normally I would have gone with a dark brown paint scheme but since I did the Great Worm in brown/sand last week I thought i'd go with something different.  I searched the interweb for inspiration and not surprisingly found lots of photos of Timber, Winter and Grey Wolves which looked great.  

So I settled on a Grey scheme with nice red eyes and creamy teeth.  If you look at predators in the wild they keep their teeth very very clean, I wish I could say they same about my kids.  Wolves teeth aren't white, they're normally an off white with a black gum.

Wolf fur ranges from brown/tan and black on a white base to almost pure white with every shade in between.  I wanted a bluish grey and it turned out pretty much as I wanted.  

I started with a base coat of Citadel Fortress Grey then layered dark grey washes over the skin and fur getting a bit darker each time.  I then highlighted with Fortress Grey mixed with White, about 50:50 over the exposed muscles and did another pass once it was dry with the same colour but with a bit more white, this only went on the higher or more exposed surfaces of the muscles.

The mouth was painted with a dark Citadel Scab Red but the tongue was a more baby pink colour and the teeth were Citadel Ushabti Bone.  These got a light wash of Citadel Nuln Oil to stop them looking like granny's false teeth.  The claws were a very dark grey with black lowlights. 

I have to admit the mould line on this one is quite horrible and if i'd realised how badly it would show up on the photos i'd have smoothed it off somehow.  Its always difficult to get rid of a mould line when it isn't on a flat surface though and this one ran all the way over fur.

More photos below, click to see a larger version!

Reaper Bones Purple Worm (Only its not purple)

Continuing my new obsession with Reaper's Bones line I decided to paint one without primer just to see how bad it would be.  Well i'm really pleased to tell you that its not, at all.   Not even a little bit.

Now a lot of people have painted this model and I can completely understand why.  Not only is it a beautifully detailed yet simple model, it lends itself to lots of different colour schemes.  Added to that it only costs £2 ($3) at the Reaper store.  

So as usual I did a bit of inspiration searching on the web and looked at all kinds of natural critters to get an idea of what I wanted to try.  My first thought was to do a translucent white/pink look like a real world intestinal worm but that grossed me out so much i'm not even going to put the picture up here.  I looked at Earthworms, Millipedes, Sandworms from Dune and Final Fantasy, the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi and caterpillars but in the end I chose to go with the sandy version.

Now my idea was to paint the figure as if it relies on natural camouflage to blend in with just its mouth poking out of the earth and when something comes past....whoosh out it comes and strikes.  One of the things that that forced me to do was use a limited colour palette and for the base to tie in with the model.  I usually go for some contrast between the base and the model to help it 'pop' but in this case that wouldn't work so I went with a very dark red mouth and rather clean and bright teeth.

I also used some natural basing materials to help tie it in using the same colours.  During the summer I picked some wild grasses while on a walk and dried them out on the window sill, they work really well but are fragile so I only tend to use them on display bases.

About halfway through painting this model I realised how well it was going and i'm very happy with the end result.  In fact this model has made me feel like i'm less of an amateur than I thought. 

Reaper Bones Cave Troll

I'm hoping that I can get across (to anyone who’s interested and maybe looking for some inspiration) how I paint, what techniques and tricks I use and how even an amateur like me can get a good result.

So I dug into the mound of unpainted miniatures that shall henceforth be known as ‘The Leaden Pile of Shame’ and rescued a poor Reaper Bones Troll that’s been languishing in there for some time. I’ve chosen this one as it’s a wonderful sculpt with great detail but isn’t a particularly challenging model to paint due to its limited number of textures. Other than a loincloth it’s generally just skin claws and eyes. 

The ‘Pile of Leaden Shame’ is full of miniatures I’ve bought and prepared ready for painting, the bases have been covered with sand and the model has been assembled (unless the assembly would make painting too difficult) and primed. I prime all my miniatures with standard auto white primer. I’ve tried Games Workshop’s Primer (I found the can I had a bit gritty) and Krylon (expensive but good quality) and now generally use the unbranded primer from Poundland. Yes that’s right, I buy my primer for a £1.00. It’s actually very good quality, gives a really smooth surface without obscuring any detail and gives a solid base to work on.

Those miniatures stay in the pile until I really need them for a game, get inspired to paint one or until I can’t bear the shame caused by their pale accusing faces staring at me from the desk.

So on to how I paint.  I’m going to go for a fairly traditional green skinned Troll and intend to build up the depth of colour with several washes.  For inspiration I’ve been kissing…..looking at Frogs.

So the first step was a watered down base coat of Citadel Goblin Green (Now known as Warboss Green).  At this point I had a nasty surprise.  The paint really didn't want to stick.  This can be caused by a couple of things, the first and most common (i've been told) is an oily coating of mould release agent and the second (and the one I suspect in this case) is a very smooth primer coating mixed with too much water in the wash.  I added a bit more paint and that solved the problem.

Next I added a wash of Citadel Agrax Earthshade which gave a nice definition to the muscles and a brown tint to the skin tone which suited the swampy look I wanted.  Following this I added a wash of Citadel Waargh! Green Ink as I wanted a slight blue tinge in the skin tone.  In hindsight this was a bad move, almost a disaster in fact as it completely overpowered the Goblin green and the Agrax Earthshade leaving me with a really flat green skin.

At this point I considered stripping the paint off and starting again but tried a drybrushed layer of Goblin Green and another wash of the Earthshade which worked out quite nicely.  My next job was to pick out the boils in Citadel Scorpion Green which is a really vibrant electric green, I also used this to drybrush the highlights in.  Final highlights to the boils was given with Sunburst Yellow to make them pop and draw the eye.

Next on the agenda was the details, the teeth and claws got a touch of Citadel Ushabti Bone with washes of Earthshade and Nuln Oil and a final highlight of Ushabti Bone.  When you add a wash, the base colour is darkened so you can use it to highlight and it keeps the same tone and looks natural.  The loincloth got a pale tan base with washes and highlights in a similar fashion. 

I then went to paint the eyes and got another nasty surprise.  You can barely see them let alone paint them.  In the end after several unsuccessful attempts i shadowed the eyes with Nuln Oil and highlighted the cheeks to make the eyes look deeply inset and left it at that.

Its not 100% finished as I want to hit it with some Army Painter Antishine and then gloss varnish the boils, nostrils and lips but I doubt my photos would pick that up so it can wait.