A Vindaloo, Chickpeas, Dragons, and Dwarven Halls

It's Covid-19 Day 101 here at home, and it's both (A) a beautiful day, (B) Father's Day, and most importantly by far (C) in the vicinity of Grace's 16th birthday from a blog-posting perspective.

A few weeks ago, I made the Pork Vindaloo recipe from Cover and Bake, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated (I've noted their wide range of books that I own previously - May 7). Today, having a nice leisurely Father's Day ...at home (shockingly)... I needed something to make with some cubed beef stew meat. We all loved the vindaloo recipe, and there's no reason you couldn't swap out the pork and replace it with beef. So that's what's for dinner.

Beef Vindaloo

For a side dish with an Indian recipe, or frankly, any recipe these days, is my modification of a chickpea recipe, which I will post the details of separately for anyone who might be interested in that sort of thing.

Chickpeas with Coconut Milk and Spinach

For Father's Day, I picked out a few miniatures things for myself, and we did curbside pickup from Games Keep in West Chester when we were in the neighborhood to pick up the new Pilot a few days ago. There were 4 large miniatures from the Wizkids unpainted lines, and included a Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon, a Young Red Dragon, a Behir and an Adult Remorhaz. Now I have lots (more) things to paint...

Father's Day minis

From a crafting perspective, I have had the urge to do some EPS foam board crafting, so I have pulled out the Proxon hot wire table and made some more Dungeons and Dragons terrain pieces (modular caverns and passages, as well as some "Dwarven Halls" dungeon tiles). Given that I have all the dungeon tiles I really need (in two color schemes, no less), it made sense to scratch the itch by making a few fancier pieces. A few of these are shown below (work in process), and I'll continue to tweak some of the techniques and colors. Painting red squares onto the piece at upper left in the picture below was way too stark. The very watered down wash on the other pieces looks much better.

Dwarven Halls tiles

Lastly, and most importantly, Grace is now 16. Hard to believe. As with many of her friends who have had birthdays during the quarantine, and mostly Sweet 16s, it totally sucks that she doesn't get a real birthday party surrounded by her friends. We (I) spoil our kids, admittedly. And we would have spoiled her on her Sweet 16th. We do have a few things up our sleeves, and we will make it up to her when things allow. Until then, Happy Birthday, Grace! You bring me joy each and every day.

Jungle Ruins

I never got around to posting a finished look at the ruins terrain I wrote about making back in June. I also mentioned more recently working on some scatter terrain for jungle or other densely foliated areas. I have taken a picture of both laid out together.

Our Heroes Explore Long-Forgotten Ruins

I have a few more ruin pieces in process that I will finish at some point. I also have a lot more fake floral bits to increase the number of pieces of foliage scatter. The foliage scatter is a more pressing need...

SAS - Tan Dungeon Tiles

Well, I've made a little progress on my "short attention span" project list, including completing what I would call a starter set of the tan dungeon tiles. These were made with a color scheme of brown/tan/cream to contrast to the much larger tile set I have already made in shades of gray.

The tiles are carved with a 1 inch grid and some minimal detailing. The picture below shows a few different pieces in various stages of color layering. The bottom couple of small 5 foot wide hall sections have been base coated in CraftSmart "dark taupe". The middle three pieces have a moderate sponging of Folk Art "camel". The top piece has had its final light sponging of Folk Art "vintage white". The edges have been painted black. Any similar colors would work for this three part process as long as you used a chocolate brown, a rich warm tan and a creamy white.

Stages and Colors

The setup below shows all the pieces I made in this first batch thrown together in a basic dungeon layout. There are ~12 chambers of various sizes, and a decent sized assortment of 5 foot (1 inch) and 10 foot (2 inch) passages.

Tan Dungeon Tiles Starter Set

With the aid of the Proxxon thermocut hot wire table, this went faster than similar projects done previously with nothing but a few knives. My best guess would be that this took about an hour to cut all the pieces. Then maybe another hour or hour and a half to scribe and distress the pieces. Then another hour or so (in 15 minute batches) to paint them. All told, this is probably 4 hours of work. When done a half hour here and a half hour there as time allows, and while a Flyers game is on in the background, this was an extremely easy, and quick, project.

Total materials cost is maybe $4-5 of XPS foam (less than half of a $12 4x8 foot sheet of 3/4 inch foam), and a couple of bucks worth of craft paint. If you bought one 4x8 sheet of XPS and three craft bottles of paint, this would cost less than $20, and you'd have a good bit of the paint and more than half of the foam left over.

I'm working on a few stair pieces, but that's all I have planned for this set at the moment. But you never know...

Ruins

I follow a number of crafting web sites for D&D ideas. One of my favorites is Black Magic Craft, and a recent video on modular ruins showed such a nice looking end product that I actually decided to try this out for myself. The video is here.

Two things I will say up front. First, the end result really looks great. Second, this is a time-consuming, fiddly, pain in the butt project. But worth it. If you are into this sort of thing.

Without the Proxon table hot wire cutter, I wouldn't even consider attempting this. With the Proxon, it is fiddly but possible.

You begin by milling a great many individual stone blocks. A great many... I did both large and small sizes. You then build walls, stone by stone. Mine, as in the BMC video, are based on heavy duty cardboard. Some model railroad talus is glued on in bunches afterward.

Building ruins from single foam bricks

When the pieces have been built, they are then base coated with a mixture of Mod Podge and cheap black craft paint. This serves as both a base coat and a level of protection for the foam.

Undercoat black-tinted Mod Podge

To have a useful amount of these pieces, you need lots of them. Lots of stones. Lots of gluing. Lots of painting.

Lots of pieces in various stages of progress

Painting of the pieces, for me, is the same as my painting scheme for generic Underdark terrain or any other stonework. A dark gray heavy brush. A medium-light gray dry brush, fairly heavy. Then a light grayish-white dry brush to pick out the highlights. On some pieces, perhaps not those shown in the picture below, a final wash of brownish-black tones down the brightness and makes the ruins a little dingy.

A couple of finished pieces

A good project, with a very very nice end result, but not for the person for whom this degree of fiddly-ness would make them run screaming from the room. Admittedly, I have a high tolerance, at times, for this degree of relaxational fiddly-ness. But at times I felt like running screaming from the room.

I have done a decent number of both large and small block walls, pillars, etc, and will post another pic of a final set-up soon.

Lava Caverns Crafting

There is a situation developing in our D&D campaign that has me needing to put together some lava terrain for an ancient fire elemental temple cavern complex. Taking a cue from some terrain building I had seen recently on Runehammer Games' YouTube channel, I decided to do mine in a similar vein.

Walkways, platforms, monuments and passages were all carved from 3/4 inch foam insulation board, with a sharp beveled edge and linear geometric patterns. This was all done with simple free hand carving using an Xacto hobby knife. I didn't bother to base coat the pieces since they would be getting multiple layers of paint.

Stage 1 was a thorough coating of a ~60/40 mix of Craftsmart "Wine" and Black. This was liberally applied with the most important thing being that the recesses were filled in. The flat surfaces were less important to get an even coat on, since they would be getting 3 more coats.

Stage 1 - 60/40 mix of "Wine" and Black

Stage 2 was a heavy sponge of "Wine", unmixed out of the bottle.

Stage 2 - Heavy sponge of "Wine"

Stage 3 was a medium sponging of Craftsmart "Terra Cotta". This was done heavily enough to lighten up the pieces pretty substantially, but not so heavy as to completely obscure the darker "Wine" color underneath.

Stage 3 - Medium sponge of "Terra Cotta"

Stage 4 - Seen below in action (complete with Arian the Sorcerer's lightning bolt template!), the final stage was a somewhat random and somewhat heavy dry brush of Folk Art "Yellow Ochre". This simple step was the magic ingredient that took the pieces from "nice" to "yeah, that's what I was going for!"

Stage 4 - Light dry brush of "Yellow Ochre"

We used these pieces in our most recent D&D session, and they looked great. More on that over on my D&D campaign blog...

Folk Art acrylic craft paints are probably better quality than Craftsmart paints, but the local Michaels store now stocks a broader range of Craftsmart colors than Folk Art, and at 70 cents each (compared to 1.59 or so for Folk Art), you can't beat the value. For bulk use in crafting projects like this, I'm liking the Craftsmart paints a lot.

Standing Stones

In a D&D game, there are a few types of must-have terrain to keep in your back pocket for use as your players and their characters bumble and stumble around the world (if you are into that sort of thing...). Standing stones, obelisks, and forgotten monument stones rank high on that list.

When the mood strikes me to make something in the way of fantasy terrain, and I can't figure out something specific to do, it is an easy choice to carve up a few standing stones, monuments or forgotten altars (blood-stained perhaps...).

Standing stone and forgotten altar miscellany

These take virtually no time at all, and consist of a little bit of knife-carved foam coated with a darker gray undercoat and a light gray sponging overtop. Throw in a little dark green or light green weathering for a change of pace. Easy Peasy.

Sewer Tiles

What's a good Dungeons and Dragons town or city without sewers underneath, inhabited by all sorts of evil and ill-intentioned creatures? With that in mind, I have spent a little time recently finishing a modular set of sewer tiles for our games.

The tiles are carved out of 1/2 inch extruded polystyrene insulation foam board (same as most of my D&D terrain). Each piece has a 1/2 inch base layer topped by another 1/2 inch "walkway" layer. The channels are either 5 foot (one square) or 10 foot (2 square) wide, with 5 or 10 foot wide walkways alongside. Where there is no walkway it assumes "solid rock" negative space.

Step 1, after foam assembly and a black base coat, is a sponging of Folk Art brand "medium gray".

Step 1 - medium gray sponging

Step 2 is a sponging of Folk Art "dove gray", a light gray applied more sparingly than the "medium gray". You want to highlight but not totally hide the darker gray, although I admittedly still go fairly heavy-handed on this step. Lighter colors "pop" better on the table during gameplay, and what might look more realistic up close from an artistic point of view often looks dark and dreary during games...

Step 2 - light gray sponging

Step 3 is a little bit of spot dry brushing of Folk Art "buckskin brown" (this is a nice rich medium brown color no longer stocked by the local Michaels stores - sad face...). This just aims to give a bit of a muddy feel, and to break up the potential monotony of gray.

Step 3 - a brown dry brush in spots

Step 4 is to retouch any "water" areas and edges with black, as you will unavoidably sponge some gray onto these areas.

Step 5 is to apply a brush-textured coat of gloss Mod Podge to the water areas to give them texture before painting. This is important, as you will be relying on the raised texture of this first Mod Podge coat to give something for steps 6 and 7 to catch on. The dry brushing in the next two steps will not be as effective if there is not some texture for them to pick up and accent.

Step 6 is to lightly dry brush some "buckskin brown" onto the water areas. This needs to be done streakily (is that even a word?) and sparingly - you are looking for hints of a sludgy nasty greenish-brown water, not an outright brown water.

Step 7 is to drag a heavy dry brush coat of Folk Art "citrus green", or a similarly putrid green, over the Mod Podge texture from step 5 (this is why step 5 is so important).

Step 8 is to re-coat the water areas with another coat (or two) of brush-textured gloss Mod Podge. You can see the way I did the brush-texturing of the Mod Podge (in step 5) by how the "citrus green" dry brush caught on that texture. The important thing in steps 6 and 7 is that I was looking for some hints of brown overlaid with a good bit of putrid yellowy-green, but didn't want the end result to totally overlay the black undercoat. I was hoping for a yucky greenish-brown over a still-dark base. I think this gives that effect. It might not be everyone's idea of a D&D under-the-town sewer, but it did achieve the exact result I was looking for...

Steps 4-8: brown water, putrid green, and gloss Mod Podge

By the end of this mini project I've added enough new pieces to the ones I had made several months ago to fill a medium sized Sterilite storage container with a good variety of 5 and 10 foot sewers with 5 and 10 foot walkways, including enough junction pieces to give me good flexibility to create all sorts of layouts. [In other words, probably much more than I will ever need...]

As with the badlands terrain pieces documented a few days ago, I'm not sure how much use I will have of these pieces, but they were fun to make, and the entire project probably took less than $20 in materials and 3-4 hours of time. And most importantly, it was fun...

Rivenrock Wastes Completed

Shown below are the intermediate steps and final product of the project to complete "badlands" hill terrain for either historical miniatures or Dungeons and Dragons games. [Another very recent post showed the beginnings]

After a dark brown latex house paint base coat (Behr "Swiss Brown"), each piece gets a stipple and dry brush of Craftsmart "Orange Spice". This rusty reddish brown color is intended to show only as subtle hints in crevasses, and isn't done very heavily.

Brown base, rusty red and finished piece

Next, each piece gets a healthy sponge coat of Folk Art "Camel", my go-to light tan color for terrain. A little dry brushing gets to the spots the sponge can't easily reach. I don't want an overwhelming amount of the dark brown base showing through.

Base coated, rusty red and "camel" sponge

Finally, a lighter sponge coat of a very light creamy tan (Folk Art's "Taffy") is used to highlight the edges and brighten the flat surfaces. The pieces looked a little dingy before this step but popped nicely after.

"Camel" sponge (left) without final highlight (at right)

The final project, shown below, consists of a large two-piece hill which can be used together or separate, a bunch of larger pieces, and a good assortment of smaller pieces in both 2" foam and 3/4" foam. The 2" pieces (which are most of them) give good height and mass, and the smaller pieces allow for climbing access for figures, or just smaller scatter.

Final pieces with "Taffy" light highlight

This project filled a very large plastic storage box. I'm not sure how often I will have a use for them, but the materials were cheap and the whole project only took a few hours scattered over the course of a week or so. Very easy, and now I have options other than gray rock...

The Rivenrock Wastes

In the world of Myara, north of the area that our characters have been operating in, is a wilderness region called the Rivenrock Wastes. I envision this as an arid land of wind and rain carved sandstone formations not unlike the more rugged parts of the American southwest.

I don't have any terrain pieces suitable for this. But I can make some...

Once again using the Proxxon, I am able to cut pieces of 2 inch thick extruded polystyrene insulation board quickly and easily. A little knife work cleans up the basic shapes. More little bits will be made and glued (as in the back of the picture) to make two-level pieces. Finished pieces could in turn be stacked to make taller formations.

The Rivenrock Wastes - in process

Easy. Maybe the players will choose to go to a place where these can be used. Maybe not. Hard to say.

And it doesn't really matter. The project (thus far) was fun.

Florian Sky Ships

The Proxxon hot wire table has (as expected) triggered a burst of crafting creativity. One of the things I have been thinking about introducing to our D&D campaign has been an encounter with a Florian Sky Ship - a magical sky ship that looks like a seagoing ship but sails the skies of Myara. [This did happen last Friday, but that post will be on my Myaran Realms blog soon...]

Free-handing on the Proxxon makes this relatively easy. So a first attempt at something like this makes an impossible thing at least possible. Step 1 was to rough out the shape of the ship, including fore and aft raised decks, and then to add "railing" pieces made on the new toy. These are approximate (at best) in terms of serious modeling, but are fantastic in terms of creating the illusion of a Florian sky ship...

Basic Ship Shape

Step 2 was to do a basic paint job consisting of a dark brown latex house paint undercoat (the same used for my "cave" tiles), followed by a light tan dry brush of a cheap craft paint (Folk Art "camel" I think...). Before this, I scribed the lines using a pencil (shown in the first picture). After painting, the lines were highlighted by scribing them with a brown Sharpie. Like in the theater, things viewed at moderate distance need to be exaggerated to get the intended effect.

Ship with base coat of paint

Step 3 was to detail the sky ship using odds and ends I had laying around in my "bits box". A bits box is all the little leftover bits you have hanging around unused from many years of historical and fantasy miniatures gaming. Deck hatches to the below-decks levels and cargo hold were made by scribing and painting rectangles of balsa wood (in complementary but slightly different colors). The cannon is a leftover from an Empire Warhammer Fantasy kit. The captains steering wheel is a wheel from the same Empire cannon kit. The "air elemental power nodes" that power the ship are 1/2 inch wood working plugs or scratch built pieces. The chain blocking the gang-plank ramp to the main deck is a piece of jewelry chain tacked down with two black-headed map pins.

Completed Sky Ship

The beauty of the new Proxxon is that this entire crafting project took maybe two hours of time, only about a half hour of which was cutting the foam pieces of the ship. The rest was painting and detailing. With the curved lines and railing bits, this wouldn't have been possible, in any amount of time, with my old method of "sheet of foam board and a knife".

This project alone probably made the cost of the Proxxon worth it. But there are many more projects to come...

A New Toy

I've done a lot of crafting for our Dungeons and Dragons games over the last three years or so. Much of this has been carving foam board (extruded polystyrene) into all manner of dungeon terrain, cave terrain, buildings, monuments, ruins, etc...

I have done this carving either free hand with a series of knives, or with those same knives and a set of metal rulers, T-squares etc...

On the advice/recommendation of Jeremy from Black Magic Craft on YouTube, I broke down and bought a Proxxon Thermocut hot wire table. The Amazon Prime fairies delivered it yesterday (one day shipping to have it for some of the weekend), and I got to play around with it a little bit last night.

Proxxon Thermocut Hot Wire Table

Oh my gosh. Why did I wait so long to get this!?!?

The wire heats pretty much instantly after hitting the ON switch, and can cut 2 inch thick foam sheets with ease. There is an adjustable fence that can be used on two sides, and can be adjusted for any angle 0 degrees to 90 degrees. It's like a mini table saw for foam.

I have yet to spend much time doing anything with it other than the briefest of test drives, but in a matter of maybe 5 minutes last night I was able to rip several 2 inch tall strips of half-inch foam using the fence, and then freehand those strips into a number of pieces that will become ruined walls.

Ruined wall pieces - mere minutes to make!

Amazingly quick. And easy. And uniform.

Pieces would be assembled like this...

Good stuff. More to come...