The start of the modular game table frame

Here is some pics of the first piece of my modular game table frame, I still have some work to go on this but the basic shape will hold true for these pieces.  But what I was looking for was a fairly lightweight frame to hold my GW Realm of Battle Board or the foam terrain panels that I've made.  The ability to break it down into the 2'x2' sections, and make it so that you can configure the setup to what ever size you want.  Like being able to go from a 4'x4' board to a 4'x8' board, or have a 4'x4' board with 1'x4' side boards, or a 4'x6' board with the 1'x4' side boards.  Now on the side boards what I mean for them is just a simple piece of hardboard cut down to 1'x4' to act as a tray for holding out of play miniatures, place to put your rulebooks, place to roll dice and not have to worry about hitting miniatures with the dice.

At some point I'm looking to take the supports & fold up legs from a 2'x4' or bigger table and put the base supports I'm planning on cutting out here at some point.  Which these 2'x2' modules will fit down into and the supports will also help hold the modules together.  I've got a few ideas on ways to lock the modules together, and already have some woodworking items to hold modules in line when the faces are put together.  But those are further down the road in next year more then likely, since I'm running out of time this year.

Anyways here is the pictures and the final pic of the trial run at the FoW Winter Modular Game Board.

Dreadball is here

As the title says, Dreadball has arrived at my house from the Kickstarter pledge I did back in September.  And I've unboxed one of the three Dreadball boxes I've received, this is the first of two or three shipments from Mantic Games that I'll be getting for my pledge.  And overall I think Mantic Games knocked it out of the park with their packaging & quality of art / materials included in the box.  As far as the game goes, I've not had a chance to really read over the rules yet; since life has been chaos over the past few months.  But hopefully I'll have games in during New Years with the friends, and I'll put up a post about that once we get to play.

Now onto the insides of the box...

First item in the box is a signed print of the box and rulebook picture signed by Ronnie from Mantic Games.

Then we have the game board for Dreadball.

Then the Dreadball Event ticket (for Adepticon) & Mantic Games promo items.

Dreadball rulebook

Dreadball tokens, dice, clear bases, number decals, cards, team sheets, miniatures.  With the Kickstarter pledge I received the regular paper tokens that come with the base game, but I also received their acrylic token set as well.

Dreadball teams Midgard Delvers & Skittersneak Stealers

Dreadball teams Trontek 29ers & Greenmoon Smackers, and the MPVs & extras

Size comparison with one of my test models for the Astral Claws Heavy Bolter guys.


And some close up details for the different teams, these are just quick put together and not yet cleaned or ready for paint.  That will come later here in a few weeks maybe.

Now that I have a game board in hand and can take measurements from it, one of the future projects is a back lite game board that will look awesome with the theme of this game.  Really wish I had a CNC Router table at the moment, but hopefully one of the local friends will get one at some point this coming year.  Maybe I'll go see about buying a laser cutter / engraver this year.

Work on a FoW board for friend in AZ.

I have started to make a Winter theme FoW board for friend in Arizona for use hopefully in a tournament in Arizona in January.  And then it's his to keep after the tournament, and I might make another one or two for use as prizes for that tournament as well.  Now which one he wants to keep is up to him, as I'm learning as I go with these and already have new ideas on how to make these.

Anyways, I started these as a three part board with 2'x4' sections.  But due to future shipping concerns, and being able to easily fit these in my Mustang to transport them to work on it during the week; I had to cut them into 2'x2' sections.  First I did a ruff sketch on my new iPad using an app called Bamboo Paper (free & a paid version), included here is the screen print from the iPad of that sketch.

So I started with 1/2" Owens Corning Foamular Insulating Sheathing (from Home Depot) as the base level of the board.  This is the town section of the picture and everything leading up to the first level, and what the first level is glued to for the other board sections.  Then taking into consideration the size of FoW mini's I went with 3/4" Foamular for the other levels.  With only a few FoW tanks built at the moment, and no troops built yet I really didn't have too much to go off of at the moment.  I've used 1" Foamular as terrain for my 40K boards before, and I figured 1" was going to be to much for FoW board I wanted to make.  I'll hopefully get some good FoW models to use for a size comparison, and Jon's opinion of the board here in a few weeks when he is in Ohio for work.

I started by cutting the 1/2" board into 2'x4' sections, and peeled the plastic film off the front and back of the pieces.  As I believe you will get a better bond on the glue if you go foam to foam instead of to the plastic that could peel apart down the road.  Then I cut down the 3/4" board into 2'x4' sections, using a 54" drywall square that I have and a good utility knife.  The blade doesn't always score all the way through the board, but you can easily snap the cut lines to complete the cut.  And as a bonus you can cut the pieces and snap the boards into the sections, and then peel the film off a lot easier.

Then using a cut off piece of the 3/4", I made the first level to the right of the town in the picture above.  Then added the 2'x4' 3/4" piece for the second section above the town and, and started laying out the topo of the first level on those two pieces with a marker.  Then going about an inch or two outside the lines I cut the boards down with a utility knife, that way there is not a lot of waste to handle while using the hotwire cutter.  Then I start in with the hotwire cutter cutting to the layout line to give the basic outline of the first level.  Then I come back with the hotwire cutter and on a bevel start cutting a slope to the edge of the level, and in some sections I left the vertical face to give a look of a stone outcrop.  On the Gorge section of the level I sloped the hotwire cutter a little more to give more definition to the area, I still need to go back with one of the bigger foam cutters that I have to make the gorge even better (that is for this week).  Then repeat the same process for the second & third level from the sketch above.

At this stage I start gluing the sections together making sure to line up each sections as I go, gluing one board section at a time & one level at a time before the next.  On the glue subject, I've found some glue that I thought would work fairly well last week.  It's the newer Gorilla Glue that dries white and 2x faster, I'm not really impressed with it for gluing the foam sections together.  I tried it on a piece of 1/2" & 3/4" foam to form a section last week before I started this.  I was able to easily peel the pieces apart without to much trouble, not sure if it didn't have enough moisture to cure or what.  But the glue didn't expand every much if at all once I had it apart to look at it today, so that was a week for it to set up and it was still not bonded very well.  So I switched to regular Gorilla Glue and used a little more water on the pieces, they are super bonded together now.  With some foam out around the edges of the level sections to let you know that they bonded really good.

And as you can see in the below pics I've got the sections all glued up, but I was missing the 1/2" 2'x4' foam for the third section at the time of these pics.  I've since added it (after I took the previous glued up piece apart), and now I'm just waiting to use my larger foam cutter to melt the gorge into the pieces tomorrow after work.  Also another thing to add on cleaning up the aftermath of the hotwire cutter, get a semi stiff plastic bristle cleaning brush and use it to go over your cuts.  This will clean off the hairs & slag left from the cutter, and will smooth out some of the cut too.   I've also cut down the first & second section pieces in the pics below to the 2'x2' sections, and left the third as a 2'x4' for glue up to the 1/2" foam here tonite.  The 2'x2' sections made it way more easy to fit into the back of the Mustang, the 2'x4' was a massive pain in the butt and made noise all the way down the road due to the way I had to position it in the car to fit along with all my other stuff for the week.

Next up will be to finish the molding of the gorge and clean up of glue expansion.  Then start painting with the stone texture paint I've found that doesn't destroy the foam, even though you can get some good effects with normal rattle can paint and the way it breaks down the foam a little bit.  I'll go over that a little later with a few more trial pieces to see what happens, but so far the effect on the Foamular with that paint is not as extreme as with regular Styrofoam.

Quick Review of the New White Dwarf Magazine

This is just going to be a quick summary of what I think of the new White Dwarf magazine.   First impression of the magazine is that it was a better quality on the materials & printing.  There is way more content then previous White Dwarf magazines this past year; and even though I didn't read over all of them, they all seem relevant and not like the previous ones that were mainly just out to sell the flavor of the month.  The only thing that I didn't like was the breakdown of the GW stores in the back since they lack the state by state breakdown as before, but they have expanded the Independent Retailer section back to how it was before and they have the state dividers in this section.

Overall I think the new White Dwarf is worth the $10 US price tag at the moment, we'll see what next months White Dwarf holds in store for a continued quality.  Compared with magazines of the same price range, the White Dwarf is as good or better I think.  And maybe by the next White Dwarf I'll breakdown and get an iPad to get the new digital subscription, and see how the digital editions of the Codexes are.  And the digital White Dwarf runs around $7.99-ish maybe, and includes more digital extras with it as well per the GW website.

Congrats to Dreamforge Games

The Dreamforge Games Kickstarter Project for the Crusader was successful netting $205,000+ in funding, and numerous kits to choose from with the pledges.  Which I wish that I would have had more funds to pledge towards all of the cool kits that have been achieved on this Kickstarter Project, but for some reason Septembers are always difficult with funds for me.  Mainly do to birthday renewals on plates for the vehicles, and many fun things & expensive things happening around Septembers for me normally (trip to England 2010, bought my Mustang 2011, three different Kickstarter projects funded during September 2012).

Now for the difficult part, trying to make up my mind on what I want to get with the pledge.  I think I will stick with my decision from a week ago, since that was the funds that I figured on having available at the time.  So my choices will be four of the Leviathan Crusaders with all of the free extras, then  three of the 20 man boxes of Stormtroopers, three of the Support Weapon kits, two of the Beowulf/Grendel Cannon arms, one Nova Cannon, one Ripper Saw, one HEL Cannon, two of the 15mm Crusaders, and the shipping the ship them when they are ready to ship.  Since I can't wait that long for my Crusaders & Stormtroopers to get to me.

Again, congrats to Mark & Dreamforge Games on the success of the Kickstarter Project.

New Stuff from DreamForge Games

One of the blogs that I watch a lot, has a Kickstarter Project for sum of their great miniatures.  I purchased a resin Leviathan Crusader from DreamForge Games over this past year, and now they have a Kickstarter Project for funding on making plastic kits of the Leviathan Crusader & Eisenkern Stormtroopers.  For the full details on the Kickstarter Project go to the links I've added to the top of my blog and to the side bar on the blog, for further information about DreamForge Games check out them out under the Blogs I Watch section.

I for one will be supporting both the Leviathan Crusader & Eisenkern Stormtroopers Projects.

Upgrades for Mustang, lessons learned on F-150

First up here is the changes to the Mustang:

• Pypes Cat back Violator Exhaust system installed (Oct 2011)
• Pypes X-pipe installed (Oct 2011)
• Projector One Piece Headlights installed (Apr 2012)
• Smoked Red LED Taillights installed (Apr 2012)

Comments on the first two upgrades, the Mustang sounds really mean now.  The bad thing was that it was a have to upgrade after I bought the car last year, since either the previous owner or the crap car dealer I bought it off of had a slapped together exhaust system on it.  Slapped together equals Flowmaster mufflers that looked like something from a small 4 cylinder car and a combination of pipes sort of welded together to make the whole thing sort of work.  The moment I became aware of this slop job exhaust was on a trip back from work for the week and the car keep getting louder and louder as I went, and the sound wasn't coming from the back of the car either.  After getting home with a massive headache from the sound I ordered the exhaust system & X-pipe, then when we went to install it we found that the car had lost the H-pipe they had tack welded into the car.

The next set of upgrades was the lights, first the headlights then the taillights a week later.   The headlights are a one piece design (originals are three pieces) with LED Halo Lights around the Projector lights.  The headlights seem kind of cheap in the way they are build, but that was not reflected in the price of them.  They didn't come with instructions, and the one's I found online that a guy had done were not the best.  So we got the side grinder out and cut out parts of the fiberglass headlight support to make the lights fit back in where they needed to be.  One of the cheap things about to lights was that the lens plastic doesn't seal to the backer plastic in places.  But that is what you get from stuff made in Taiwan, the temp fix is to add some RTV or silicone caulking around the joint.  I'll be adding in some more permanent fix for this over the winter, and might come up with a better Halo light for them as well depending on what I can fab up.

The taillights were a little easier then the headlights to install, but there was electrical issues to figure up with them all together.  The taillights bolt right into the same place as the original did, so that was easy enough as no mods there.  The electrical on the other hand gave us fits, as my and the friend Travis were not sure why they wouldn't work with turn signals turn on.  But the hazard lights would blink, brake lights worked and park lights would come on; but the one taillight would just stay on with the turns on, and the other had a very slow blink.  After we gave up on it for the time being, I looked at some forums for Mustangs and LED taillights.  I found some places that suggested the fix that I said would work and was shoot down on.  So the fix was to add LED load equalizers to the turn signals on the headlights, as there is three LEDs that we wired into the turns on the headlights.  I removed the headlights an installed the Load Equalizers between the wires, and the lights now work and flash the way and speed they are supposed to.  The Load Equalizers basically draw a little more power when the turns are on, as the LEDs by themselves don't pull enough power to trip the flasher tube.

Now for the lesson learned on the F-150:

If the brake pads you ordered have a three prong deal on the back of the pad that goes into the hole in the caliper piston to hold the pad in, check that the pad will fit into the holder on the vehicle before you try and modify the three prongs to work.  I cut the prongs off the pads, and tried them back in the rear disc brake calipers and found that it wouldn't fit over the rotor.  Then I took the pad and tried to install it on the holder to try and slip the caliper over it since I took off the prongs.  That is when I found the pad was to big to fit in the holder, but it was designed the same as the one I took off the truck.  So I'm going to see what I can do with the place I ordered them from on Monday, until then I went to the local parts store and bought a set of ok ceramic pads so I can use the truck.

So with the new Slotted & Drilled Rotors and EBC Yellow Stuff pads on the front, & plain Rotors and Ceramic pads on the back of the truck it will come to a stop very fast now.  Even for a big heavy truck it will emergency stop faster then normal cars around here, the Mustang might beat it by a few feet with it's current setup of disc on front and drum brakes on the back (but that is going to change).  The main thing is that when I have my enclosed trailer hooked to the back I don't have to worry about getting pushed down the road when I go to brake with it behind me.  Then next upgrade on the F-150 is a Pypes Cat back Violator system once it shows up (damn back order), since the previous Flowmaster exhaust Cat back system is almost rotted off the truck (only six years since I did that).  This time the Pypes system is all Stainless Steel, which is what I went with on the Mustang as well to go with the Stainless Steel headers on the Mustang.  I just want to to the fix one time and maybe not worry about for the time that I own the truck or car, if ever have to replace it.

That's all for now, Later.

   

It's been awhile, again

Well once again I've left me Blog in neglect for almost a year, but I really have not had anything gaming wise going on to blog about (other then buying stuff to make at some point). My state of Gaming has pretty much been focused on computer gaming while on the road for work. Now I have went and created a folding work table that I'll show in an up coming blog post. Also I have bought a really nice resin model from Mark Mondragon at Dream Forge Games, and I hope to get that one started soon while on the road for work during the week days.

 I'm now waiting on my 40K Gaming stuff until they come out with 6th Edition here soon hopefully, as that will more then likely change up some of the projects that I still need to work on. Another thing that will change up for me soon will be more space to have my hobby stuff in, as hopefully within the next month my sister will finally move out into a house she just bought. Only problem is that I've been nominated to move some walls and re-route some plumbing for her in the house. After that is done and she is out I'm gutting the Master Bedroom / Master Bath to fix it up and gain some more room in there as well.

 Hopefully at some point I'll also build a garage behind the house to start doing some more upgrade work to the vehicles, since under my current plan I will have both my F-150 & Mustang paid off at some point this coming year. And then my student loan paid off not to long after that, so I'll have money to start doing upgrades to them both and finally get my 1979 F-250 4x4 going as well. With maybe some other vehicle projects here and there, which will be easier with a garage to work on them in.

 Well the next post will be some updates on the Mustang & F-150.

 Later,