Tauster'sTiles

[curufin]

Thanks for the re-up. This is some cool looking stuff.

[tauster]

Another sink mat tile from Flotsam and Jetsam:

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4

[tauster]

...man, I really shouldn't have posted each and everything in the same thread...

Krematoria rock formations

Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5  

[beetlewing]

tauster, tauster, tauster... you have no idea how badly I want to play in one of your games.

I forget who said it on here, but you truly are the mad scientist of crafting. Wear that badge with pride man.

[tauster]

Hey, thanks a lot for the praise! And indeed I like the title 'Mad Scientist of Crafting'. *mad giggle*

Believe it or not, but the last game session I DM'ed was in May...
I might be crafting a lot, but that's because for crafting I need only small free timeslots, while for preparing a game session I need at least one whole evening, or most often several evenings. It's simply easier to find time to craft than to prepare game sessions. *sigh*

[tauster]

The airdry clay of the two temple bases is dry, so I started experimenting with painting styles. But before touching a brush, I realized that the piece looks simply too fresh, almost brand new. So I kept hitting it with screwdrivers and other pointy things until it looked sufficiently pitted. Lesson learned: Age them before the clay is hard!




Then I used a simple yellow-brown basepaint, followed by a black wash:



Comparing with where I want to go shows that I'll need to do some drybrushings, to get the black off the raised areas. I tried to wipe the balck wash away with a paper towel but stopped at once when I began to rub the other color away (something that seems to happen a lot with clay). So drybrushing is next.




I considered breaking the whole piece apart before painting it so I don't have to redo the cracked sides later on but decided against it. Not sure that was a wise move - I could have experimented on each shard with different colors and painting methods. ...next time!

[justicechest]

Hot DAMN this stuff is so, just so cool, tauster. I haven't used modeling clay much but this makes me think I should be. The flesh pieces are the best kind of creepy man. I wants them I do I don't need them for a quest or anything, they'd just be good to have... in case. Say a mouthy player needs to get eaten by a mountain giant or something, for example.

[tauster]

There's one Krematoria Rock variant I hadn't shared, mostly because it was just an experiment:

Instead of lava-like I painted the ground metallic green-blue. It was my first experiment with simulating water, so it doesn't look particularly great.
Now, if I water that down really much and add a little alcohol, it might work as verdigris patina for da robot...

[grym247]

Great stuff

[tauster]

I continued one of my oldest unfinished projects...

I realized that the texture looks very much like wrinkled flesh, and that I hadn't so far tried to paint it accordingly.

Basepaint




Dark magenta washing.

  

The disgust-o-meter says 'OK', so I'll probably have a nice floating piece of flesh very soon. Poor players!

[tauster]

We had another Combat Room session yesterday. I was sending three PC (wizard 7/fighter5, psionic 7, on a treasure hunt through Mirror Prime, the ruined and overgrown asteroid capitol of an multi-world empire (think Myth Drannor in Spelljammer space).

The objective was to find a piece of Essence, which is something that their employers (the Mindflayers of Thoon, a strange Illithid sect) want. The Illithid implanted some kind of psionic essence-finder in each of them, so they can feel the general direction of their objective (i.e. the DM can more or less railroad them and they are thankful for not having to turn every brick of the ruins).

The glade where they finally found the essence (after three sessions of searching). Their psionically amplified gut feeling pointed toward the pond.



But before they could start fishing, a dozen skeletons dug themselves out of the earth and immediately attacked:


(I didn't make these, I was just lucky to get these bony beauties cheap on ebay).

They also encountered the undead version of Ben Hur's chariot - again. We had this in two previous CR sessions, and it's always good for some laughs: The chariot doesn't fare well in this terrain, constantly toppling over and never really gaining any meaningful speed.




But they also met their old friends, the undead snipers with their necrotic guns (2d6+2 damage). These guys were a real pain in the behind, as they were constantly taking cover, actively changing optimising their positions and the skeletons were keeping the PC busy in melee. They players didn't see their leader (the heroclix skeleton punk mini), which I had hidden on the battlefield behind cover, so the players knew it was there but could's see.




In a far-away corner of the glade, two angels and a devil fought a separate duel which was apart from the players until in the last quarter of the evening one PC decided trying to save the last angel who was very hard-pressed. Angel and devil ended in mutual destruction, and the PC salvaged the spear and a magic pair of belt-on metal wings from the first dead angel.

But the main enemies were the giant Modron (a worthy melee enemy) and FROD, the flying robot of death who rose from the pond, algae- and mud-covered. It was immediately taking aim at one of the PC and began to charge it's canon, firing a powerful blast of arcane energy (7d6 damage).

Now the party was
- kept busy in melee by the skeletons
- constantly under fire from the undead snipers
- and being attacked by two powerful arcano-mechanical artifact guardians.

In short: We had a busy combat.

The PC's essence finder pointed decidedly towards the FROD, btw. In the end they won (i.e. survided) and succeeded in getting the 5 ton metal sphere out of the pond. They buried the necrotic weapons in an ancient wine cellar they accidentally broke in, where they found a small box with 30 playing cards made of silver, gold and platinum. They all know that game - it is the in-game version of Magic The Gathering. Each card is 90 gr heavy (i.e. 10 coins of the respective metal), but there are several factors influencing (multplying) the price: Rarity, the fame of the artist who engraved it, quality of the craft, collector's value, etc. The pure metal worth would have been 350 GP. All factors considered (one player got the gambling proficiency, so he could recognize these factors and guesstimate the real value), the half-deck is worth more than 120.000 GP!


Now they need to find their exit portal (the essence-finder has recalibrated itself and now points toward the portal that the Illithid should have opened remotely), deliver the essence (the energy crystal in the hearth of the FROD) and find a card collector to cash in their price. Which will be the background story of the next combat room, where they'll encounter a certain walking ruin and a tentacled statue of a saint...

[DnDPaladin]

simply awesome !

[chiefsgtbradley]

Jan 18, 2015 20:52:57 GMT DnDPaladin said:

simply awesome !

Oh yes indeed
Thanks a lot for crafting, teaching and sharing your methods and stuff!

[tauster]

Yes I know: A base is a base is a base ...and not a tile.
Still, the effects can be easily used on tiles, so I post that stuff here.

I long since wanted to try the Ice Base tutorial from Eons of battle (I really recomment that channel!). Also, the lava earth tutorial.



dmscraft.proboards.com/thread/151/advice-on-crackle-glaze-needed

Eggshells and a two large wooden squares for the lava bases. Turns out that size matters indeed: The larger the (flat!) base, the harder it is to pressa (round!) eggshell on it without hassle...







Two more wooden squares, basepainted in blue. When dry, wrap electric isolation tape around.




Put a thick layer of crackle glaze on. I had used that stuff before, but it seems that it either aged or I didn't close the lid properly - the stuff has dried out quite a bit and is really hard to work with now. It might take a few days to dry out completely.

[tauster]

Here's how the crackle glaze looked this morning, after a night's time of hardening. The cracks are already there, but there's still moisture inside.




And that's after approx. 20 hours. Almost cured. I'll give it another day, to get it really dry & hard.

[tauster]

I really like Necrotales' tutorials, so I'll try the CD swamp diorama idea.

Take two CDs, glue the middle with plastic. I've 'primed' them with whiteglue and then aplied some spackle. They will have to dry overnight before going on. This will be first and foremost an experiment with swamp terrain, something I haven't tried before.

[DnDPaladin]

as usual about your stuff, simply amazing !
as for your game sessions... if you take more then an hour or 2 to make a game, something is not done right or you are making things too big.

[tauster]

The right base got a layer of glossy varnish, the left one didn't:




Drybrushed white




Drybrushed with light blue, then some pearlescent finish to give it a glossy sheen.



No idea what I'll do with these two, I just wanted to see if this method works. Now I have two 4x4 cm square bases and no winther-themed mons... wait a minute.

[tauster]

....woooho!
Ooops, sorry.

I had this cool trio sitting on my shelf for months:



One of my campaigns will have a sidetrek mini-adventure somewhere down the road (way down the road - possibly not even 2015), so I got me a lovely pair of ice trolls and their pet Wolliped. From the beginning, I loved the sculptures but disliked the sloppy commercial painting and hated the ugly flat black bases. They should have taken at least some white or grey bases...

Now guess what.

 


Now we're talking Ice Trolls!

I don't want to make another single base for the Wolliped, so I'll have to think up something different for that critter. I could paint the base, or try some flocking.

[tauster]

The swamp CDs got flocked with sand and a few stones, then another layer of whatered-down whiteglue to seal everything in. I'll basepaint them in a warm brown, darker than what Mel the Terrain Tutor did in his recent swamp terrain tutorial (there's another one here, actually I like that color scheme a bit better), but I'm aiming at something quite similar when all is finished.