Pacificon Quar Games

Nah, it wasn't bad.  Quite the opposite really.  It was FUN.

Pacificon Convention Report

Pacificon is in the Bay Area, which is where Zombiesmith is located.  Zombiesmith is the maker of Quar.  So I reached out and said "hey, I'm gonna be at Pacificon, soOOOoo if you were thinking of going to Pacificon as a vendor, then I have a GREAT idea...How bout I run a bunch of Quar games all weekend long on my nice terrain boards for you?"

"Go On..." said Zombiesmith, and I went "well, that's basically it....." 

And a deal was struck.  I would spend all weekend hosting Quar games and Zombiesmith would reward me for the effort by giving me an exorbitant amount of store credit.  At least I thought it was an exorbitant amount.  I am hesitant to state actual numbers as that seems gauche, and I am nothing but the epitome of sophistication.  Lets just say it's enough to keep me steeped in Quar for a while.  Especially at the glacier slow rate of painting that I am known for...but not enough to purchase one of everything in the store.  

So my con experience was:  All Quar, All the Time.   

Being the Busy Bee that I was, I neglected to take any pictures.  But other folks did.  Here they are collected for your enjoyment.  So enjoy them, I guess.

Extra credit.  Count how many times I'm pictured pointing at the table...

Kinda counts

definitely counts

doesn't count

hard to tell, but that counts
That's my hand pointing behind the tree...

These aren't my figures.
A guy named Nate spent a lot of time at the Zombiesmith Paint and Take,
painting up his troops.  I had to let him use them in a game.

not pointing...

Hopefully Zombiesmith got a few more sales.  I got to cosplay and pretend like I was one of the Gaming industry.  So maybe it was a win-win?  I didn't really ask for numbers.  Pacificon in general is kinda a small con with regards to miniature games.  It seems to do more Board and roleplaying.  

We talked briefly about doing it again for Dundracon, which is held in the same place but at a different time of the year, and reportedly has more miniatures gaming.  We'll see how it goes.  Maybe its the start of meing being some sort of game booster.  Maybe it's the end.  Maybe it's need more experimentation.  

I enjoyed hanging out with Mr HeadZombie and Mr AB (the head rules writter) and being mistaken as a member of Zombiesmith when I'm really just an euthiastic fan of the game.  And if I didn't correct everyone then so be it...

For my haul, I picked up yet another box of Quar that I don't have: 

So another Quar faction.  Ending my convention experience of  All Quar, All the Time with yet more Quar.  I'm nothing but consistent.  

End Note

When I got home the wife told me that a shelf in the hobby room had come off the wall.  It was full wqargaming rule books which survived the fall but it also had half of my very LARGE, Very COOL, very EXPENSIVE Viking Great Hall.  And of course, being the most expensive thing on the shelf and the hardest to replace (notwithstanding the company that made it is gone) it did not survive the fall so well....

trust me, there are snapped pieces everywhere..

I'm gonna have to think about what to do next...I mean, of course I'm gonna have to fix it...couldn't possibly just throw it into a tub and put it in the garage and forget about it right....right? 

Thanks for reading,
Double thanks for writing a comment.
Till next time. 

Quar house finished!

And just in time to.  I had a month to do it, and I did.  It's hard being this awesome at wargaming.  Too bad the awesomeness doesn't translate into other areas of life. 

(and in truth I'm not that awesome at wargaming either but don't tell anyone)

Quar House Finished

Taddaa!  With Quar figures included for scale this time.  

and there it is.  

And while I like it, I don't love it.  it's kinda like soup.  Even if it's a good soup, no one is ever excited about having soup for dinner.  

It's too big for one thing, but I think I could overlook that in the long run.  But there's something about the walls that I don't like.  I think I missed a step.  Maybe I should of added sand to the filler for more texture on the walls.  I definately messed up on the parts where the brinks are supposed to be showing through the stucco, as those parts just look dumb.  bricks are too big as well.

I like the way the roof and the ramp look though.  And as those are the main features that's good enough.

I don't mean to sound negative, it's not that bad.  Just a little disappointing because I wanted to love it.  But sometimes you get soup instead of pizza.  

I walked away to attend to something and when I came back I found my youngest son playing with it...

at least he liked it.

I told him to play carefully as daddy's toys were fragile.
He only broke one of the miniatures.

Maybe I'll like the house more when I see it on the terrain boards surrounded by other stuff.

I did learn some stuff by doing it and now am posed on the precipice for some real well made terrain next time.  

But there is Dave Stone terrain challenge done with extra credit to boot (as seen in last post, but I'll put a pic here to make life easy for Dave...

Lord knows Dave deserves some ease.  Best wishes Dave.

Pacificon

This weekend I'm off to Pacificon in the Bay Area to put on some Quar games.  It's kinda nice having the house project done so this week I can focus on printing out the QRSes for the games and play Minecraft.  

Thanks for Reading.

Double thanks for writing a comment.

till next time.

Halfway there;

 Whooooaaa It's halfway there      

whoooaaa-ooh, terrain on a prayer!

Glue gun in hand, it'll stick I swear,

whooaa-oh! terrain on a prayer! 

Quar House Progress 

Good progress of the Quar house / barn, my first time ever scratch building anything.  

Let's rapid fire pics to get through the assorted bits quickly in order to get to the big payoff.

First, create a little staircase out of foam:

tadaa!

then for the roof, cutout two triangles out of foam that will make the upper portion house.  Cover these with planks made out of coffee stirs to create a wooden effect.

Protip, when you cut the first triangle out of foam you can just slice that triangle in half,
so the you'll have two the exact same. 

For the actual roof, I used a jig also bought form shifting lands.

the idea being that it helps you cut consistent shingle shapes like so...

and after repeating the process several, several, SEVERAL times you have enough shingle strips to glue on appropriately size roof sheets..

little roof

Big roof

I decided that it'll be easier to paint if all put together.  But before that I had to cover the windows so that they wouldn't just look inside the ugly interior.  I took some plastic from a blister and some card tock and layered them inside.  The plastic down first and then the card stock, to create a glass effect and light coming from inside...

not the best picture.  Here is the inside

and the outside.  
still not the best picture and I'm not sure that makes the effect.
But it gets the job done.

Now it's time to glue all the separate pieces together...

All the separate pieces laid out.  

using a hot glue gun on the low setting, I glued it all together.  

 Somehow somewhere along the way I mis-measured,
as I didn't plan for the ramp to butt up right against the house.
I thought there would be some space in between.

it's pretty big.  I did not appreciate how big until I saw it all together. 

For a reference, here it is next to the Sarissa MDF barn..

Since 28mm buildings aren't in scale anyway, I don't think the larger house will be an issue other than the large footprint on the table.  Though the whole point of the terrain is that it's sits in the corner and looks pretty.  But there it is, in all of its scratch build glory.  

This gives me about 2 weeks to paint the thing.  Should be good as long as I don't waste any time.

Time Wasters:

The kids went back to school.  It's glorious.  but they brought back with them germs.  And of course, the sickness has transferred to me.  Got all the symptoms. 

The other big-time waster is our newfound video game addiction 

My son is big into Minecraft, and I thought that I would try it out just to see what it was and have an understanding of what it is, and now I'm all into it too.  It's a nice way to spend time together.  But there have been a few nights where after he goes to bed...and I still play it.  I have history with video games.  There was a time when I could play Word of Warcraft OR finish my dissertation for grad school....but not both.  

Not Time Waster

I went over to my friend's Mr. PC professional wargaming shed for a game of Dead Man's Hand.

Table set up

Game play picture.

I really liked the game of Dead Man's Hand.  It's got good play and easy mechanics.  Which is good because I have a whole pile of terrain for it around here.... somewhere. 

Extra Credit

I finished the extra credit assignment that I gave myself.  

Tadaa!

28mm 

Just a fancy cup holder really.  A place to put in game resource tokens.  

Thanks for reading.

Double thanks for writing a comment.

Till Next time.

Scratch build: Quar House (Part 1)

1 house in 1 month.  A singular task for this distinctive blog.  

The one-month deadline comes with Pacificon at the end August where I am putting on several Quar games.  I have enough adequately painted figures, so any cool terrain items I can add in the meantime will only enhance the games.  Because everyone knows, it's the terrain that really makes the presentation pop.

Also falls nicely with Dave Stone's Terrain Challenge that ends at the same time. 

Evolution 

I've never scratch built a house before.  That makes me the PERFECT person to follow along in this process as I flail around and try out things I saw on the internet,  like a teenager on his first date.  

Some people want to get seriously good at miniature painting and are constantly working on pushing their skill set further.  I have no desire to get better at miniature painting.  But I get it, in their perverse little minds that's a fun aspect of the hobby.  I have a desire to improve my terrain making, because in my saintly mind that's a fun aspect of the hobby.  Moving up to Scratch Building seems like a natural step in my evolution.   And since it's my first time I'm gonna get all chatty about it, like virgins with wedding night jitters.

Quar Barn - House Scratch Build

This is for Quar games, and while there is opportunity here to go really crazy with the design I feel like I'm unprepared for that.  What I want is a house / barn looking building that would be recognizable as a building but still have some quirky elements.  

First step I drew out some plans on graph paper to get a sense of how things will shape up. and then ignored them. This will create issues later on.  I'm gonna build this out of foam because I have a lot of it because somewhere along the road I've become an EPS foam hoarder, and I have a hotwire cutter.  

And if I end up hating the whole thing I can just throw it away with minimum loss of materials.  

I know I want a little stone foundation, little stonework border to run along the bottom of the walls.  to wit, I purchased a little textured roller: 

Which failed utterly.

While it did make a nice brick pattern in the foam what it didn't do was make that pattern deep enough.  I noticed it and thought, "I bet you won't see that pattern with paint on it" and tried an experiment on some foam that you can see below the roller in the picture above.  You see the brick / stone pattern in that foam?  No you don't.  Even if I push REALLY hard on the roller into the foam with as much force as my girly arms could do, the pattern is just not deep enough.  

So I scraped the roller and just drew / gouged some stone work with a pencil.

The experience made me look askance as the other things I bought for the project.

These little windows should be alright..

But the etching on these doors probably isn't deep enough.
But still, the doors are door shaped which is the main reason I bought them.
So we'll see how they work out.

After the stonework, I cut out the basic shapes of the walls, and used balsa square dowels for the framing, and cut some holes for the windows.  This is the WIP result

looks like something!

The walls are 5" high.  The short ends are also 5" wide, and the long ends are 7".  

The Quar-ky / whimsical element of the build is gonna be a walkaway that leads up the upper floor. The walkway is gonna be 3" high and wraps around the building.   To make a 3" high ramp out of 1" foam sheets I made template...

and cut out 3 identical(ish) shapes 1" high. 

 

and then stacked them on top of each other and then shaped the walkway to roughly drop one inch for every 3" in length.

kinda like that.  still needs some smoothing out
but you get the basic idea.

Then cover the walkway with planks and dirt texture.

Kinda looks like ramp now.

Back the walls, I then added some watered down wall filler to the blank spaces to mimic the walls having plaster...

Which I am unsure about as I think I missed a step somewhere.  I think the idea is to add some texture to the bare foam to mimic plaster but I think the same thing could be of been achieved by just texturing the foam.  Plus, it kept getting on the wooden planks try as I might to not do that and clean it up.  I gave up in the end.  I told myself no one is gonna look that closely as it.  

But since I was adding a layer on top of the foam I took the opportunity to leave some areas exposed and scrap in a small brick pattern.  The idea being that in places the plaster has fallen away you would see the bare bricks beneath.  Though I don't think I sold the effect too well.  

Well, now that I have 4 reasonably detailed walls and a ramp, I decide its time to get this more house shaped.  I cut out a base from foam, and using a hot glue gun on the low setting glued the house together.  I then added stone pillars to each corner (carved out of foam naturally) to hit the ends.

Like so.  House shaped.

or course, it's not that simple.  I can tell with my critical eye where lines were not cut quite straight and measurements were just slightly off, and these little mistakes seem to compound the further along you go.

But it's a experiment.  It's a learning process.  It's gonna be a big beautiful building.  I do feel a little rushed though, with my self-imposed deadline to have this done by the end of the month.  Who am I, congress?  

Extra Credit

I've given myself extra work.  Because I was always a good student.  Clash of Rhyfles has an in-game resource called Pluck, usually represented by some tokens.  The problem is: a player will keep their unspent pluck in a little pile over here, and when they spend it they'll move a token to a little pile over there.  Then 20 mins will go by and the player will go "what's this pile of pluck doing over there? When I keep my pluck over here and then move it back.  It's a mess.  

So this is basically a fun way to organize Pluck, spent Pluck goes inside a cup, henceforth called a chalice. 

The dark ages Quar hero statue I got at a Quar event awhile ago and has just been sitting on my desk.  This seems like a fun use for it.