Deluxe board & painting stuff!
over 10 years ago – Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 08:31:26 PM

Right, here we go again!

First things first, it's perfectly possible and passable to simply use our tile system by placing them directly on a table, however, in my honest opinion by far the most practical and pretty way of creating your battlefield is to mount the tiles semi-permanently onto a foam baseboard!

I find this method both protects the tiles and saves a lot of set-up time while still maintaining a pretty good degree of customization options, it's also pretty easy to store the boards in a corner of the man cave out of the way ;) 

Saying that, we are by no means going to twist anyone's arms here and scream 'YOU NEED US TO DO THIS FOR YOU' no, what follows is a quick guide to how I create my own boards, from this you can either have a crack yourself (it is a lot of fun!) or hopefully, if the backer numbers stay low, I am more than happy to mount your tile sets for you for a nominal fee :)

Here we go, a step by step guide to deluxing up those RW tiles!

Materials required, not much to be honest, you will need some good strong mounting board (about 2mm thick), High density foam board and PVA. pretty much covers it!

 To work out your basic board size simply lay out a 3x3 tile set and measure, it should be about 240mm when you bear in mind each tile is 80mm square but feel free to make it a little bigger if you want a slightly larger gap between tiles, your call!

This 24cm square 2mm mounting board square is going to form the base of ALL your boards so of course our basic 3 x 3 battlefield layout will need 9 of them cutting to size

Next you need to cut your polystyrene, remember its better to be at least HD quality as the its a more closed cell material and you wont get as much 'chipping' or mess when cutting, HD foam is pretty tough stuff while staying light, the super HD foam is actually used as a substitute for carving soft woods to give you an idea on its dense form. HD is a good compromise for the boards as it is nice and robust and cheaper than the SHD foam which is probably a little overkill for this job. If your in the UK some larger B&Q stores do it or search for Sheffield insulations. (branches around the UK)

You can actually cut the foam to shape using a long sharp blade (those snap blades are good for the job, fully extended) or a hot wire cutter but be sure to cut as close to 90 degress as possible or your boards wont sit butt up to each other and you could have unsightly gaps.

I use a table saw with a very fine tooth blade for my cutting, near perfect 90 degree cuts and long straight edges are easy to create even freehand as I tend to do

 Once you have your 24cm square mounting board and foam cut (you will need for for the 3 no man's land boards) it's simply a matter of gluing the foam to the card with PVA glue and leaving to dry, don't use too much or you may warp the mounting board.

I tend to simply place the tiles on these centre boards as you have seen from previous updates as this allows you endless customization options by simply being able to remove tiles and replace as needed!

Next of course we have to create the trench boards, mounting in this fashion really gives the trench that 'deep' feel and, for me, it's one of the best aspects of the deluxe board set-up :)

You first need to create some templates. like the main 24 cm boards simply lay out the tiles to form either a T-junction, straight and 1 tile square then measure and cut some of the mounting board to size like so..

 From these templates you can now cut your trench board sections..

 There is also the T-junction of course which I forgot to picture, but of course its simply a straight section and two single tiles section ;)

Like the larger no man's land boards, glue the poly to the bottom mounting boards and leave to dry

Next step is to simply glue the tiles in place!

 Note the direction of the duck boards and the use of the trench side components. 

I recommend gluing these tiles down apart from the centre tiles of the straight trench section (again, see previous updates) as if you are using the sandbags nothing else really goes on in these tiles bordering the trenches. It's also recommended to lay out the tiles so the flattest parts (least amount of rocks and sticky out stuff) are towards the trench itself as this will allow the sandbag sets to sit more flush to the ground....handy tip there ;)

That's pretty much all there is to it! Once it's all dry, slap some paint on and go to war!

OK, here comes the bit I always hate, talking about dirty wonga...

If you want me to bling over your tile sets with a deluxe makeover simply add £60, this will cover a standard 3 x 3 board battlefield including the centre 3 no man's land boards and 6 trench tiles, if you don't contact and state otherwise the trench tiles will consist of 2 x straights, 2 x T-junctions & 2 corners. We still have to iron out the extra postage/shipping etc as it will increase the bulk considerably and slightly increase the weight. Don't worry about this right now however as we have plenty of time to finalise details before the pledge manager so just take the £60 as it comes and have a think about it ;) Examples of trench tiles....

 Finally onto something a few of you have been asking about, painting!

The general formula for working out a commission fee is usually to 2 x the cost of the unit, for instance a set of river tiles costing £10 would be £20 painted, It's often been said that my level of painting is worth much more but I'm rubbish at this charging my worth stuff so let's just stick to that equation for now and call it a KS exclusive, as long as the numbers stay low I reckon I can live with that and avoid getting snowed under with commission work! However PLEASE NOTE...DO NOT add any predicted painting fees to your KS pledge as this is something we will work out after the campaign has run, we are paying fees, fees and more fees as it stands, I really don't want to be tied up for the next 6 months painting RW scenery for a pittance! If you are interested in having things painted shoot us a message on Kickstarter and we can try and work something out, I'm happy to offer discounts for bulk packages too, so lets talk ;)

Also, bear in mind, this isn't the cheap dry brushed tat that usually passes as pre-painted (I have bought enough of them by now...and also immediately repainted!) What you see on the demo pictures are pretty much what you will get in hand at the end of the day...often better as I often refine things after I have painted my prototypes! Everything gets a coat of gloss then matt varnish also for a little extra protection (he never tells anybody about his 2 Golden Daemons in the cupboard gathering dust - Rob)

So, to recap, for me to mount a 3 x 3 battlefield, think £60 and if you require items painted message me with a rough idea what your pledge may consist of and I will try to get back to you with a fair price :)

Sorry it can't be more straightforward but because we are offering a pretty open way to build your own battlefield setting pre-determined painted pledges are pretty difficult!

OK, now all that dirty stuff is over...next update, hopefully tomorrow will cover the final elements that we haven't taken a closer look at yet

see you later!

Ps. You could always have a crack at painting them you know...it is FUN!

Trees & Rivers & planes...oh my!
over 10 years ago – Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 11:45:45 AM

Ok, lets take a closer look at some more battlefield bling!

Actually, before we do that, a quick word about the pledge manager. Those of you KS veterans out there know the score but anyone new to a KS campaign may be wondering just 'how do I tell you all the battlefield loveliness I have chosen'?

Well, it's actually quite easy! When this campaign runs it course (This Sunday I believe) it doesn't end there, KS will take your initial payments, which usually land our side in a  couple of weeks, but 2 or 3 weeks down the line we will release what is called a pledge manager. Everyone will receive an email link to what is essentially an on-line shop showing all the various choices (and more) that were included in the KS campaign. From here it is simply a matter of adding your chosen items to your basket then visiting the checkout, your credit will be deducted and we receive your order and start whipping the casting pixies until they make your stuff! However it doesn't  stop there because using the pledge manager you can actually add extra items  to your basket and the checkout will allow you to pay any extra cost via paypal. In simple terms don't start to worry if you think you have forgotten to add something before the campaign ends as you will have a good few weeks to have a better think about and digest the several more updates we are planning before the pledge manager is complete and released!

Right, lets get onto more pretty pictures and game stuff! As I said earlier, because this was quite a short campaign I didn't have quite as long to run as many updates as I would have liked before the KS finishes, but I will have the extra time between now and the pledge manager to clarify and explain more things such as deluxe boards, more scenery elements and hopefully a few minor new widgets that should add a little extra fun to yours and our RW games!

Ok, here we go...TREES! Everyone loves a good walk in the woods, especially if it means the enemy stops shooting at you!

I designed the bases with the game in mind, to physically limit various types of unit just as real woodland would do!

For example

It is also worth noting that although the tree tops balance perfectly well on top of the trunks it's recommended to magnetise or pin them in place to make them a little more secure and make it easier to move them around. 

Our wood pack includes 2 bases of trees which are enough to make a pretty little copse in the middle of no man's land but with a couple of extra packs you can really do your bit for the environment and plant a whole wood!

Of course, sometimes trees become a casualty of war so I created the shattered forest bases, these can look fantastic as a ghostly reminder of a once green and lush woodland situated in the middle of no man's land now reduced to shattered remnants of shell blasted trunks

Why not even combine the two types of tree tiles and use the shattered trees on the outskirts of the full woodland for an even cooler look!

Roads 'n Rivers!

Roads and rivers come in packs of 6

These combinations allow you to create some great layouts on your battlefields, 2 packs will pretty much stretch across a 3x3 battlefield allowing a couple of kicks and junctions

The roads will actually play a much more important role when I start to design and create the full, multi floor, town houses to allow a solid urban environment for the little guys to fight in....that's right, it's in my head along with a beach landing set of scenery...it's got to happen or my head might just get too full and explode!

Let's not forget that bridge either, wet feet are not fun, again, like other scenery elements it is designed to physically limit the types of units that can pass through

Now, let's move on to the battle in the air!

All those little RW aces zipping about up there will eventually need to land, whether it be simple house rules or part of your scenario the airbase looks pretty awesome on the field, especially when occupied by planes! Who knows, maybe your hero has just stolen plans of Dr Vorne's latest WMD and now must hot tail it over to the enemy airbase, steal a plane and escape off the board edge..your game...your story!

Airfields are no good when they are covered in holes from enemy bombs of course so you might need something to deter those dastardly bombers and fighters from doing the dirty, what better than a great big balloon in their way!

We sell them in two styles, the Allied blimp style of barrage balloon and the Axis 'drakken' style. Both are designed to slot onto the existing flying bases that come with the 'Battle of Brighton' RW expansion so they do physically fit into the intersections of tiles and stop enemy air movement to a certain degree!

 OK, that's it for now, hopefully be running another couple of updates before the KS ends covering the rest of the elements, the deluxe board and a personal painting service by yours truly (hopefully tomorrow)

Take care now and talk soon!

Bags of fun with buildings!
over 10 years ago – Sat, Sep 05, 2015 at 03:33:07 PM

Ok, let's take a closer look at a few building elements!

Actually, lets not get ahead of ourselves, one essential thing to make a trench look like a trench are sandbags of course!

Our sandbag set consists of 8 sandbag emplacements, all different, 4 x straights and 4 x corners. The corners consist of 2 internal and 2 external corners and one set of 8 sandbags should be enough to stretch across your average 3 board battlefield

There is even room to still fit 4 infantry in the same square!

We actually use a house rule which works quite well with the 3D bags, infantry are not effected, cavalry are limited to 1 per square in the sandbag tile and tanks, if they enter the tile destroy sandbags altogether!

They also work quite well if you are simply placing the tiles directly on the table and create a little depth to the trench tiles

There are 3 main ruined sections we are supplying for this Kickstarter

They are quite modular in design and can be used separately or together to create larger ruins, simply remove a tile and replace with a scenery element of your choice, it really is that easy when building your own custom battlefields!

On the larger structures that have roofs I tend to simply bluetak the roof sections in place rather than permanently glue as this allows you to remove them for easy access, you could also of course use magnets or pins

Note all buildings also follow the standard tile size allowing 4 infantry to fit inside, where there are interior details such as rubble piles I specifically sculpted them so the buildings can hold 4 infantry....unless of course it has been damaged and a space is filled with a rubble token.....WIP, more info on later updates!

Here is an example of a small village created from 1 of each ruin, we will see if we can run up some sort of bargain pack so you can purchase all 3 together as a KS special maybe

A larger village created from 2 x each available ruin! Of course I fully intend to create more ruins and intact structures to fully populate those battlefields, these are just tiny acorns!

Note that the ruin sections themselves are quite modular and I designed them to look pretty cool on their own but by turning through 90 degrees it's possible to build much larger ruined buildings, for example.

The wall sections are a nice accompaniment  to our buildings too, they are also modular and from the standard 't' section, corner, straight and gate section with enough you could create a fully walled village with controllable access points. Unfortunately I haven't had time to paint myself extras so this will have to do!

Let's not forget that ruined church, prime nesting material for any sniper worth their salt!

You can even opt for a graveyard too!

Note on larger elements such as this and Dibnah's factory that have buttresses and chimney bases not complying with the square tile format its a good idea to use the flattest of the tiles beneath, this way these larger irregular buildings can simply sit on top...easy!

Of course, just like the ruins, because of their square design nearly all of the buildings are pretty modular and allow you to have fun building much large structures....how about this 'Abbey' made from 3 church sets!

Finally, why don't we use the cover of the ruined village to give our troops some much needed medical facilities!

The medic tent takes the usual format of a 8 cm square tile, inside you will find a cute little bed and chair. We actually use a house rule for this that allows you to rotate casualties back onto the battlefield like this...

Next update in a couple of days hopefully!

Should have details on creating the 'deluxe' boards and a closer look at other scenery elements...stay tuned!

Miles of Tiles that makes you smiles..
over 10 years ago – Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 12:20:56 PM

Right, let's hit the ground running, first things first this Kickstarter is all about creating some kick ass scenery and board elements to compliment an already existing game called 'Rivet Wars'

Rivetwars was created by a chap called Ted Terranova and, quite frankly, in the 30+ (and I guess 60+ between Rob AND me..God how old does that make you feel!) years of gaming experience it has been a wonderful fresh breath of board gaming/tabletop battles awesomeness that deserves to take the rest of the world by storm and firmly plant Ted in the position of Governor of the known Universe and while our products are not officially licensed, not long ago Ted himself presented himself to me in a dream, sat aloft a golden throne and flanked by two giant custom dice to say unto me 'Bulldog, thou art maketh some cool scenery, keep it up!'

OK OK, it may have actually been an PM on the forum, but you get the idea ;)

Anyhow, what I am trying to confirm is we are not presenting a gaming system here, if you want the Rivet Wars game, check out your FLGS or most online retailers, it's all out there now and Ted's second Kickstarter for yet more chibified loveliness should hopefully be hitting our wallets before the end of the year (I'm guessing)!

Right....onto the fun stuff!

All the examples below show my own custom board, by custom we mean the tiles from the KS have been mounted on an High Density foam backing and based on thick, strong mounting board in 3x3 sections, which, imho is probably the best way to show off your battlefield and still allow good storage and easy modular builds of different layouts as well as protecting your tiles. It's a tried and tested system that I have used successfully with my very own Super Dungeon Explore and Krosmaster gaming boards (as it happens our next kickstarter early next year)

We hope to provide your battlefields mounted like this in a 'deluxe' fashion as an additional option on the KS but more of this later on future updates ;)

The layouts will still work with the basic tiles laid flat on the table, it just means that you have to place each one individually, and, while offering the ultimate in customisation it does of course increase considerably set-up/breakdown time!

A small example of a 2 board (grid) placed directly on a tabletop, I have purposely left gaps so you can see the separate tiles, in reality they sit butt up against each other just like on my custom boards

Right....In our experience your average game of RW (Rivetwars) takes place on a 3 x 3 battlefield, like this.

 This shot makes it easy to see how the battlefield is broken down into 9 boards, bear in mind that our 3x3 'board' is actually referred to in the game as a 'tile'. We apologise for any confusion caused (least of all mine as I just realised this!) But we wanted to create a totally customisable battlefield system and selling the smaller squares rather than a fixed 3x3 board seemed the best approach and naming these small squares 'tiles' seemed to be the logical choice! Anyhow, I digress, lets continue!

 These boards are then broken down further into our own 'tiles' 9 in total in a 3 x 3 pattern on our boards, we have 9 designs so all the tiles on one board can be unique, mix them around and you have a multitude of variations available to you!

And just to confuse you our tiles are referred to as 'grids' within the game :P

It should be noted that when you purchase the tile packs they will all be different tiles, no duplicates within packs

Now imagine each one of our tiles(grids) to be divided into 4 squares, commonly referred to as...wait for it....SQUARES in the game...finally got there!

Each square can be populated by a single infantry figure..

While each tile (grid) can be populated by up to two cavalry figures..

Or a big fat nasty tank!

I decided not to physically mark the tiles(grids) into smaller squares as this tends to look too regimented on larger play areas and the eye can easily dissect a tile into quarters 'on the hoof' while you are playing we have found

If you are wanting to populate a basic 3 x 3 battlefield with our sandbags then 2 sets would be required to cover the entire length of both players trench area..

 While the next little titbit doesn't really apply to those  not wanting things mounting this seems the best place to put it, right here with layout basics..

During game-play we have found that the centre 'no man's land' boards consisting of 9 tiles are best left loose from the base, this allows you to insert our scenery elements and have a jolly good play around!

Our deluxe trench tiles come attached permanently to the bases, not much happens scenery wise in these sections, apart from the straight trench sections. The two centre tiles on this section are not secured. This allows you to slot in elements such as roads and rivers that can leave/enter the board to make for some great scenarios :)

Btw, I am planning a little bridge insert for the section that passes over the trench, hopefully it will be during the campaign but it will definitely be available before the Backerkit pledge manager hits you ;)

You may notice too that the deluxe trench boards are not entirely limited to staying as trenches, if you purchase extra tiles (or use the spares removed from placing elements on your no man's land boards you can 'fill' them in!

And finally, being a normal person living in a normal house, storage is always an issue in my tiny mancave! Once done with our deluxe boards can simply stack on top of each other (I like to slot some foam or bubblewrap between layers)

 If you are really cunning, bob the sandbags in the trench, turn it's matching pair over and store the little sandbags with the rest of the board!

 I know a few of you have asked us to suggest various sets of scenery to buy, we intended this Kickstarter to be a totally sandbox experience, to allow you to create your very own custom battlefield but we will try and run through some example set-ups that may help fire your imagination in future updates, in the meantime see what I did with some of our scenery elements and a little playtime!

Well, here we are again!
over 10 years ago – Wed, Sep 02, 2015 at 08:37:23 PM

OK, here's my first 'let's blame Rob' tag

This post, right here, should have gone out before I went away last week but obviously, as you may have guessed, I am now back!

Nobody pressed the big green button so I am doing it now and following up with another update covering basic tiles and stuff :)

Once again people....'LET'S BLAME ROB'! :P

Ok, so time shift to sometime early last week <wiggle wiggle wiggle>

First of all, apologies for the slight confusion with pricing the items right there at the beginning, seems there was a little confusion and crossed lines of communication  between Rob and me regarding scaling up of prices from the special tiles to basic board tiles...all sorted now though and we included an additional whole 20% discount off RRP  for all KS backers!

I will be off grid until the 1st of September on a camping trip but Rob will still be around to answer any queries you may have

As soon as I am back we will run some frequent and regular updates with plenty of pictures of the tiles and scenery in action as well as just a couple of new scenery bits and pieces that were swimming around my head and never made it to the Kickstarter!

Aaaaand 3...2...1...you're back in the room...see you in a tick!