Playing Cauldron

With the warband completed, it was time to play Cauldron. I packed up my war band in an old toolbox, collected my dice and found my notebook before heading off to play games this week. Dellon offered to host Mike and myself. He set up the board full of terrain and atmospheric lighting and music. Since Dellon is the creator of Cauldron,  I didn’t have to read the rule book before playing. I had read it in the past, but not recently enough to remember all the rules. I of course, forgot the beasts cannot take weapons, and I really wanted to use my new kit bash. Dellon recommended I run my Beast as a troll and I ended up running a war band of three trolls named Bip, Bop, and Beep. We also used a supplement for Cauldron to randomly roll a benefit for our war bands. My war band received a bottle of Elderwood fire water. This increase the speed of one of my trolls doubling each time it drinks per game, but once the troll speed reaches 30 inches it dies. You get the benefit of a powerful ability, but it limits the playtime of a character. 

This night we happened to get two games of Cauldron. The first game was a standard brawl all of the war bands fighting each other for treasure. It didn’t take long for all of us converge on the center of the board with  Mike’s chaos dwarves verse Dellon’s chaos hoard verse my Trolls.

 

Dellon’s warband

Mike’s Warband 

After the first game, I felt re-familiarized with the rule set. With our war bands gaining experience, we decided for the second match to play a scenario The Fungodracus Game.  This scenario prioritized the players working cooperatively to fight a single foe, the fungus dragon, in order to take treasure from the horde. Quickly, our war bands spread themselves across the board to not make themselves a single target for the dragon. My trolls hurled their big rock at the dragon, but Dellon‘s two headed giant was the one who made the kill. With the dragon dead, our war bands squared off to see who could collect the most treasure. One of my trolls Beep spent the whole game hiding in some moss and attempting to throw rocks. The troll Bip who drank the elder wood fire, zipped across the board snagging up treasure. In the end all the war bands had successfully collected treasure and left to see another day. 

 I had a great time playing Cauldron with my friends and look forward to playing again. If you are going to adepticon or under the dice fest next year challenge me to a game of cauldron. 

Making Molds - Miscast's Plague Toad

 Over the past few years, I've been making molds for miniatures. The molds I make are not very complex but they get the job done. I don't have any fancy equipment like a pressure pot, but I do have the confidence to work my way out of a problem. 

The first miniature I ever casted was one of Trent from Miscast's Plague Toads. I manage to snag one off his shop and it made the long journey across the globe to my door step. This was the first time I ever use silicon and resin. The only video I watched on mold making was the one of Trent creating the mold for his Toad. Somehow I managed to make a mold and quickly after I started making molds for other figures. Most were successful and others were complete messes, but every time I made one I learned so it never felt like a waste of time or materials. 

Recently I was commissioned to make a mold of one of Trent's Toads for a person to take to conventions to use for casting. I never sold a mold before but I knew I could make one of good quality. At this point, I have easily casted over 100 toads, sending them all over the US and even worldwide. 

To get started, I rummaged in the cabinet and got the original Plague Toad free. I do have a bunch in there that people have casted from this toad or their own interpretations of the toads. It's been fun to see what everyone has created starting with the same miniature. 

After the Toad was freed, it was time to glue is down to a base. I usually use a piece of scrap card board or piece of bristol board. To make sure the Toad is surcurely glued down, a blob of hot glue is used. 

Next, its time to imprison the Toad in a chamber. I usually use a disposable cup since its just the right size.  With an knife, I cut off the top of the cup to allow to silicon to be poured into the chamber. 

Take the cup and center it over the miniature as most as possible. You do want there to be a decent amount of space as thick walls will increase the strengthen of the mold and helps reduce tearing. 

To seal the cup to the base, a generous amount of hot glue is going to be used. Even when you think you used enough hot glue, use more. Gently apply pressure to the top of the cup to create a seal while beginning to hot glue the edge of the cup. Make sure to cover both the lip and part of the base paper. Use alot more glue then you think. 

Follow this same process around the entire circumference of the cup making sure to take your time and leaving no gaps. Fill in any spots you missed to reduce the silicone leaking out later. Even when I think I'm done, I will generally add another layer of glue. A mold like this will use 3-4 small hot glue sticks. I rather spend the few extra cents on glue than the pain of cleaning up leaking silicone later. If you do not feel confident with just glue, surround the base with cheap polymer clay to add an extra layer to dam any leaking silicone. 

Now it's time to break out the Silicone. I don't really have any recommendations of what to use. I would just use what ever you have access to at your local art store. I rather buy this in store to make sure it's not expired. Personally I just use silicone that is a 1:1 ratio because I don't want to do math. I also like to use a mold with a longer curing time, this allows for bubbles to escape since I don't have equipment. This is what I used for this mold. Its very flexible making demolding a breeze. 

Make sure to wear gloves and work in a well ventilated space. Also read the directions to make sure you're following the specific products directions. Take a cup out for each part and fill to the correct amount. Don't worry you will either make not enough or too much. In this case I was making two molds and knew I would need a good amount of silicone. 

Pour both part A and part B into a third cup at the same time. Do not pour one into the other, you want both parts to go to the bottom to the top of the liquid. Use a popsicle stick and mix the material until its one color. I usually mix for at least 3-4 minutes, but I have that time since the silicone does not start curing for about 20-30 minutes. 

From a distance above the model, slowly start pouring the silicone in a thin line down to the model. This will help bubbles break on the way down. 

Take your time (if the silicone cure time allows) to slowly fill the vessel. This will also allow you to see if there are any holes in the glue. If there is a hole, don't file it with glue. Use polymer clay and jam it into the spot that is leaking. 

Don't stop once the miniature is covered. Add more silicone to help strengthen the mold. It doesn't have to be too much, but you shouldn't be able to see the miniature at all. 

Once the mold is filled, leave it to cure! Don't poke it and move it around too much. Just leave it alone until the cure time passes. Once fully cured, pull the mold off the paper. If its stuck to the cup, use a blade to cut it off. Cut the cup off the mold and gently push from the top of the mold to see if the miniature will pop out. If it doesn't pop out, that means you will likely need to cut into the mold to create more space. The Toad is the perfect shape as it pops right out. But more complicated molds I've made have required cutting into the mold. The best way to do this is with a new, sharp blade and taking your time. Cut in a zig zag pattern to make fitting the mold back together much easier. 

Now that you have your mold, you can start casting! You can cast with lots of different materials: resin, plaster, or wax. Personally I like to use Smooth on Liquid Plastic since it has a 10 minute cure time and it degasses itself.

If you want to try casting a Toad for yourself. I just restocked my store! Follow the link to adopt a Toad and spread them all over the wold. 

ADOPT A TOAD 

Painting my Cauldron Warband

I’m excited to be working on my Cauldron war band. Cauldron is a game I’ve played once and I’m looking forward to playing many more games in the future. I prefer to have a war band for each unique game that I play so that my characters and their stories fit within that setting. It’s hard for me to see the characters in multiple settings in a kind of Multiverse type concept because I like to work on a project by project basis. 

With all the models kit bashed, it was time to get some paint on them. I took all the models outside and gave them a generous coat of black spray paint. For some reason the can said matte black spray paint, but the models had a slight sheen, which kind of annoyed me. After the models dried, I brought all the figures back to the studio and thought about the color palette I wanted to use.

I often fall into using the same color palette for multiple projects. Mostly because I’m attracted to those colors in conjunction with each other. I do want to branch out and try new color palletes and triads. I knew this project needed a pallete to fit the swampy dark setting of Cauldron so I went with my classic colors that I’ve used for a number of war bands, but tried using different color paint this time. 

To get started, I dry brushed all the miniatures with a dark purple. When I dry brush, I usually work in two layers to build up color, saturation, and transitions. In this case I found that the dark purple did not contrast enough with the black to make much of an impact or a difference in the final product, but it was worth giving it a try to see if I liked it. 

 Since I was not satisfied with the contrast between the black and the purple, I decided to dry brush a second purple onto the miniature. This time I used blue violet, which is one of my favorite colors to use. Its a great way to represent shadow, but with color. I gave the miniature a quick dry brush all over covering much of the dark purple that was laid down previously. 

 

With the shadows completed, it was time to add the mid tone. I pulled out my favorite green and at this point I’ve used two pots of green between all of my war bands and my large Skaven army.. Luckily, I had enough for this war band as well. With a large dry brush. I did two layers of green on selected points of the model. I use the mid tone to show where light is hitting the model as well as accentuating points of interest. 

Yellow is a tough color when it comes to miniature paints. Often I find that the yellows are never as saturated as I want them to be pigment wise and most struggle to have good coverage, requiring  many more paint layers for saturation. Multiple paint layers can result in thick paint on the model and loss of details. I’m still searching for the perfect yellow paint, if you have any recommendations, please let me know. I’m desperate for a good yellow. The yellow I did have does a good job complementing the green.I did three coats of dry brushing to build up the transition and saturation of yellow 

With the majority of the painting done, it was time to do the fine details. For me, that usually means painting the eyes to draw attention to the face. For this war band, I wanted their eyes to be piercing. I dotted each eye with a bright red paint. After I cleaned up the base rim with a matte black paint and the project is complete completed.

 I have more models than I need to build one war band. I’ll have options for different builds as well as the different characters available to use. In the end. I have two troll, two orcs, one beast and three goblins. I’ll definitely be creating more denizens for Cauldron in the future but for now I’m ready to play some games. 

 

Festival Rumpus 2 Community Challenge

 Community challenges are one of my favorite ways to expand my creativity. Often the subject matter is outside of my normal scope. This year I was excited to participate in Festival Rumpus. Festival Rumpus is a challenge to create a miniature, board or other project inspired by the game Rumpus by Kyle Reimergartin and Max Moon. The Game Center’s around fairies, whimsical game boards and fun gameplay. I had the opportunity to play Rumpus with Kyle using a warband run by Dellon and myself. I had such a great time playing, I knew I needed to create some fairies to play. 

I really enjoyed my Entry for Entmoot (a community challenge from earlier this year) and wanted to use the miniature I created as my jumping off point. The challenge was to create an Ent using sticks from right outside your house. Since it was winter it was slim pickings for sticks but I created a weird spider Ent carrying the forest on its back.  Ever since I made this, I knew I wanted to revisit this concept.

To get started, I first opened my bits box and box full of extra miniatures to start my search. Specifically I was looking for spider miniatures or other arachnids. Quickly I found a few different options that I could use as the base model for my fairy war band. I knew I wanted to have one miniature be the focal point. That miniature would be the leader of my band of fairies.

The basis of this miniature is a WizKids drider. I cut the figure off the front and kept the spider body. Next I searched my bits bin and found pieces of dryad bits from various kits. I also found this casted head of an old man that was given to me by a friend. After the bits were added, I started to hot glue the sticks to the back of the spider. 

Since the hot glue and various material materials did not look cohesive, I used a mixture of textures to hide bad seeming and overzealous use of super glue. This mixture mostly consists of coffee grounds and teabags and I experimented with using old flocked grass that I’ve had for 14 years. I really liked how the flock looks on the side of the sticks very similar to moss growing in the forest. 

Rumpus  requires three fairies to play the game, I began kit bashing two smaller fairies to accompany my larger model. I used smaller twigs to fill out the back of the miniature and similar dryad bits along with the mix of textures to create a cohesive figure. As I was kit bashing, the story started to come together. I saw the old man’s face on the central character as a wise wizard corrupted by magic of the fairy. 

The next step was painting all three models. First, I took the models outside and spray-painted them with matte black paint. After they dried, I brought them inside to pick my color pallete. I wanted the palette to be similar to my first model, but with the color saturation increased. In my usual style, I selected a triad of colors to work with. Starting out I dry brush the model with a blue purple (one of my favorite colors). After two layers of dry brushing with blue purple, I dry brushed the model with green as my mid tone.  Using the green, I emphasize key features of the model to draw the eye in. After the green dried, I used a smaller brush with a bright yellow to highlight smaller details and to draw the viewer to the face . I unfortunately forgot to take photos of me painting because I was so excited with how the models were turning out. 

Once I knew I was happy with the color pallete on the large model, I moved on to painting the smaller accompanying models. Both were painted using the same methods as the larger model, but with smaller brushes, I really liked how all three fairies look displayed next to each other, and this is really where the story of these fairies came together

Alrdic the Alchemist dedicated his life to the pursuit of magic. In his explorations, he discovered that fairy bones could be used to prolong life. To prove his hypothesis correct, he crafted two homunculus to follow him around.  Driven by this knowledge, he ventured deep into the woods to hunt fairies, grinding their bones into fine dust. This act enraged the Court of the Fae, who cursed him, declaring that if he ever returned to the woods, he would become one with it.

The next time he set out to hunt, he became lost and disoriented. As darkness enveloped the forest, panic set in. He wandered deeper, he felt his legs grow heavier, moss creeping over his clothes, and branches entwining around his shoulders. After what felt like days, perhaps even weeks, he transformed, becoming more forest than man doomed to wander the woods for eternity.

 Make sure to check out all the other entries for Festival Rumpus 2 on Instagram. 

Kitbashing a Beast for Cauldron

 I love skirmish games! They are what I play most often and I enjoy making warbands of all different sorts but making weird monsters is my favorite.

A while back at this point, I met Dellon of White Tiger Table Craft in person for the first time since he had just moved to my area. He gave me a copy of Hill Giant Game's new book Cauldron which he and Steven created. Flipping through the book, I was immediately inspired and bashed some trolls to use. 

https://hillgiant.itch.io/cauldron

I didn't get the chance to play Cauldron until this year at Under the Dice Fest. Late one night a group of us decided the board we were playing on was perfect for Cauldron and we quickly rolled up warbands. I created a warband of 4 beasts named The Golden Girls.

I can't remember who won but we had a great time. Since then I've wanted to make more miniatures that fit into the world of Cauldron and that led me to making more minis for a warband but starting off with a new Beast miniature.

This miniature started its life as a bear that I got from work. I really liked the pose of it standing up. The head is also really dynamic and I'll save it for a future project. 

Next I dumped out one of my bits boxes to start searching for bits to use for a Beast. I have one giant tub of bits and one smaller tin of bits. When I get bits, I sort through to see what I can immediately use for a project or something that sparks an idea, it goes into the tin box. All other bits go into the big tub. Since I knew I had some monster bits in the small tin, I dumped the box onto my work service and searched. 

The first thing that caught my eye was this metal miniature of a fish person. This miniature I got at Adepticon at Totally Not Panicking booth through a random pull. The miniature is sculpted by Ana of Gardens of Hecate and it has so much character. I already used its claws on a different kitbash which Dellon painted (photo at the bottom of the post). But knew the head would be perfect for this project.

My saw was so dull it didn't really do much to the metal. Through sheer force, I used my clippers to free the head from the shoulders. The part I had to cut through had the most metal material of the model but I got it free after about 10 minutes. 

The bear model is a soft rubbery plastic that would struggle to support the metal head on its own. A hole was drilled into the bear's neck and a paper clip was inserted. I also drilled a hole into the bottom of the head and pinned it to the model with super glue gel.

After seeing the fish head, I found two crab claws and glued them for new hands. Rarely do I plan anything when kitbashing. I generally go with what makes me laugh, looks weird or makes me go 'Thats cool'. 

I also cut the tail off a dolphin toy and added it the back of the bear. Now that all the bits are added, its time to fill the gaps around the neck, tail and claws. 

My favorite materials to use when for gap filling is green stuff but I usually have milliput around incase. Some people prefer to mix both epoxies but I prefer to use just green stuff in most cases.  The pokemon tin in the back is my small tin bit box. There are also some of my other Cauldron warband minis hanging out in the back. 

After a little bit of gap filling the miniature is done but it lacks over all texture. My painting style relies on texture to help add depth to the model. While I am skilled at sculpting, sculpting fur is something I haven't done. I would love to spend time learning to sculpt fur, if anyone has tips, let me know! 

To help transition between the base model and the bits, I used liquid green stuff and my home made texture of coffee grounds and tea bag contents for basing. 

And now its ready to paint! But that will be for another post when I paint my entire warband. 

BONUS:

This miniature is a collab between Dellon and myself. I kitbashed the mini and Dellon painted it. It now serves in Dellon's Warhammer Fantasy Chaos Army.