Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

So lately I've continued with my dabbling in the use of lasers to produce wargaming terrain.

I contacted Crag Gallant from the D6G and he put me in contact with some of his mates who have lasers and sell there designs online. 

I was just enjoying the exchange of information with someone who was interested in laser cut Terrain. Turns out that one of them liked the cut of my jib and offered me money to provide some designs. Who was I to refuse this opportunity? Normally my hobby s just cost me money, usually too much money. So now I had a chance to get payed for something I was literally doing purely for the enjoyment of it. I actually feel a little bit guilty about it. 

The coolest thing about this is my designs are going to be sold online. The image in my head of gaming tables around the world filled with my terrain is kinda ridiculous. 

My stuff is still not ready yet but when it is it will be on Urban Lasercraft  in the meantime they have some very neat looking templates and tokens for X-Wing and Malifaux. Check them out.

So here are some of items I've been working on. They are meant to be street props for generic 28mm SiFi gaming.

All of these designs are protected by copyright.  

I can see what you see not.

Gaming Achievements

Eldar physic node
 floating in space

Rogue Trader adventure has been cumming along nicely. The party has completed there first story ark. I ran the Lure of the Expanse adventure from Fantasy Flight the party ended the adventure by escaping an Eldar maiden world after their unbridled pillaging drove an Eldar farseer to intervene by raising a army of Wrathguard  and close the world off from the universe with a warpstorm. I think the party has done alright through this adventure. They have amassed a sizable fortune, established several interplanetary  trade-routes and acquired an additional warship. All for the price of a navigator's leg, Seneschal's skin and two burnt fate points. However the party's attempts to establish a dynasty has raised the ire of several  powerful adversary s including several other Rogue Traders. Also not least amongst them is the odors Xenos of the Holy Inquisition.


I have something special planed for advancing the story this ark will be of my own creation and I plan some more 3D terrain for the more important combat encounters.

My party was smart enough to
avoid combat but they were still
nearly court in a demolition blast

Besides Rouge trader I also ran a one-two shot of Deathwatch. I enjoyed running the session but I think I got the short end of the fun stick. The party of three Space Marines managed to live up to the GW fluff. They prevented a planetary uprising from taking hold in the capital of an Agri-world. In the process they managed to save the life of the planetary governor and personally kill hundreds of rebels as well as a dozen Genestealers and there Brood Lord .

Pax-Aus came and went unfortunately I was unable to attend. Fortunately one of my gaming mates did and managed to pick up some bits and bobs for me! Starwars X-wing is a very neat game. Simple to pick up and plays fast and fun. I have only played a few games and so far loved every one. My 6yo son also loves it and he easily grasps the beginners rules. Under the Starwars skin it is a great system. I imagine it would easily be expanded upon into a ground combat or fleet engagement format. Truthfully the game would sell well just because of the excellent pre-painted miniatures even if it had a mediocre rules system. With ships like the iconic Millenium Falcon and Slave-I along side the classic X-wing and TIE-fighters Fantasy Flight surely has created a licence to print money.

TIE Advanced. Nice detail and prepainted 

You can nearly see Darth Vader.

Negative Die pool 

One other thing that came back from Melbourne for me was the StarWas Edge of the Empire core rule book and GM kit. Another bloke also got the beginners box set. We had the game of the one shot adventure that came packaged with the beginners kit.  I don't know if I could find the words to describe how much fun I had  but Penny Arcade did a comic that captures the gist of my feelings. The adventure is super simple we just jumped right in. It came with some very nice maps a set of the custom dice needed for play.

Positive Die pool

I liked the dice mechanic you roll a set of custom D12s, D8s and D6s determined by your skill and  any advantages for the task you are attempting. These dice are opposed by a different set of D12s, D8s and D6s depending on the difficultly of the task and and disadvantages hindering you preforming the task.  The dice are marked with pips representing success and advantage on the positive dice and failure and threat on the negative dice. this created a system that allows for raging success or crushing defeats as well situations were you may fail forward or succeed with unexpected consensuses. I personally found it really discourages meta gaming when planning for a dice roll and encourages role play. Rouge has a nice simple percentage system that makes the math easy. But when you know that you have a 35% chance to succeed and a ability that grants a additional 10% chance its pretty easy to forget to just have fun and roll for it.

Force Die and force tokens.

Perhaps the game is horribly flawed and it's just the StarWars nostalgia and the fact I got to just play a game instead of running an entire universe that has tinted my perception. Hopefully one of the other players steps up to GM a few games before my veneer of smoke an mirrors is shattered. If there is as much fan service in the next adventure as there was in the first then I good time is bound to be had.

  Cast down into the Halls of the Blind.

More Lasers

So its been awhile since I posted anything about laser cut terrain. last time I had  received some test cuts from a local fabricator with a laser. I had to redesign my walkways, the ramps were too steep and too narrow. I have refined my designs and have now produced several more. I am now reaching out to a couple of blokes in the United States that are also interested in laser cut terrain. I have been bouncing ideas back and forth with them and they may even be interested in producing some of my designs.

Perhaps next pay day I will get some more test cut made.

Here is a bunch of 3D renders showing some of my new designs.

These were inspired by the Hab-blocks in the MassEffect  games they should be fun to play 40K and infinity with.

These were inspired by the plastic bulkheads that come with the Necromunda box set.  

It is a modular system allowing the construction of buildings and hallways there are even removable doors.

This would be great for a game of Rogue Trader. The party exploring a maze of  corridors as they are stalked by Genestealers. 

I couldn't afford add the terrain or the excellent armored train to my WWX kickstrater pledge so I decided to draw up some of my own. 

Drew up a hole train set with rails box, flat, coal, passenger cars and a engine.  

I also drew up a whole towns worth of buildings Shops, houses a train station and this  saloon.

I worked out a way so all the wheels will turn and the carriages link together. I can't wait to stage a train robbery with my WWX outlaws. 

Roleplay & Gaming Aids part2

Previously I talked about my plan to use 3D terrain when my Rouge Trader players experience a major combat encounter so I have compiled some photos and notes of what I managed to put together.

I lot of the stuff I used was paper terrain from Worldworks Games.

The major encounter I was planning for was on a unexplored world with an ancient temple complex built by the Eldar before their fall. Scattered ruins around a central tower surrounded by a thick forest.

Eldar foam-core symbol

Split in half

I cut out a series of Eldar like shapes from foam core then carved them up a little to look more like ruins.

A quick rough coat of paint, they looked like crap but they are ruins.

Misc Eldar shapes

Foam spheres and cone cut to shape

Foam test fit

The top of the cone needed to be
concave to accept the foam semi sphere 

The temple of far seeing was meant to be a mighty tower looming above the forest floor. 

The body was constructed out of foam block from a craft store a few seconds with a saw reshaped them as required. Some wood glue fixed the major pieces in place.

All the small foam semi
spheres glued in place

Small foam spheres cut in half and
 sanded to fit the side of the cone

To get the correct shape on the stairs I used the cone as a sanding block. 

I will post a few picks of the tower in use during game night.


I only have a few more cool encounters using this 3D terrain but I may plan more. I was surprised how much work GMing can be even when using campaign book a.

I used toothpicks as well as glue
to hold the stairs in place 

Foam-core dais on top to the tower

Vanes glued in-place and a
star-chart added to the dais

Checking scale and access

Two coats of paint it kinda looks like Wrathbone

Opportunity Lost

Most people who care would already know that Games Workshop has canceled its production of its Specialist games.
Apparently the speculated reasoning behind  this decision is that they were unprofitable. Now I don't have any idea how much it cost to produce, store and ship the diminished quantity of models they would sell to the public.
It must be significantly less then what they make out of their big three games Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000 and Lord of the Rings/Hobbit strategy battle game. Perhaps they think that redirecting their resources towards the big 3 will reap higher profit margins.
However there must be some money to be made, there has been a surge in the last ten years of other games companies moving in on GWs turf. Some of these companies compete directly with GW fan-base while others have moved into the margins that GW has abandoned.

Tiny cute 40k perfect for roleplay.

Spartan Games is a company that produces some very nice games.  Their three most popular are Uncharted seas, Firestorm Armada and Dystopian Wars and are very similar to three of GWs specialist games Man O' War, Battlefleet Gothic and Epic Armageddon. Spartan Games has not ripped off GamesWorkshop, their games are fully realised creations with their own unique rules and back-story. But would there have been room in the market had not GW abandoned its share of the customer base?

Another very popular GW specialist game is Blood Bowl and another Company that has found a receptive market in the space abandoned by GW is Mantic Games -  their DreadBall has become quite popular. I wonder if people will stay loyal to Blood Bowl when DreadBall has a slew of teams and with more on the way?

In the grim darkness of the far future
there is only gang war!

My last and favorite GamesWorkshop Specialist game is Necromunda.  I never got a chance to play but the time for that may still yet come. The image of Necro/Goth Punk gangs battling over turf in the twisting foundations of a hive like mega-city has haunted my dreams. It seams that the idea of a SiFi skirmish level game, dominated with dense terrain is a popular concept. There are numerous companies that compete for this sliver of the wargaming market, a pair of the notable are Corvus Belli that produce Infinity and the upcoming DeadZone by Mantic.

While the percentage of profits of these smaller and less popular games may be a lot less then the big 3 they also were never supported like the big three. Some were given new rules and campaign supplements and the odd WhiteDwarf article. But there was nothing like the host of new editions, rules revision, FAQs and the army book/codex system for faction specific updates. The specialist games also helped newer customers enter the hobby who would otherwise be excluded because of the high cost of starting one of the core games. I myself was lured in by playing HeroQuest and SpaceCrusade. Another aspect is the specialist games with their often radically different play-styles, which helped prevent gamers from getting burnt out or bored with the core systems.

The main reason I am currently upset is the Epic & Battlefleet miniatures work great for role-play especially since Rouge Trader has some nifty rules for spaceship, ground vehicle & aerial combat. Also one of the recent acquisitions of my players was an Aquila Lander. I have loved the unusual look of the Aquila and the utilitarian style of the Arvus Lighter since I first saw it on the Forge World site. I have longed for a reason to purchase one of each but it seems it has been removed from the Forge World site along with its more reasonable prices Epic scale incarnation.


So many links 

Roleplay & Gaming Aids

When I first started playing tabletop games it was the Games Workshop based Milton Bradley board games HeroQuest and Space Crusade. My brother and I then moved to Warhammer 40,000 2nd ed. These games had a few things in common a great story and game universe, narrative driven conflict, loads of miniatures and 3D terrain.

Many years later my first experience of a true Role-playing game was a sit in on a session of D&D 4th ed. I wasn't familiar with the game universe but I could appreciate the imagery that the DM was weaving as the party played through a few interactions. I enjoyed the free form and unstructured nature of play. You could declare that you character was taking any type of action only constrained by your imagination and the roll of a d20.
I was a little bemused when it came to combat the DM would draw simple maps, the party and adversary's were represented by paper tokens.

HeroQuest Dungeons

I was expecting a board more like the HeroQuest dungeons of my childhood. 3D Doors and furniture, swarms of horrible monsters and mighty heroes all in miniature form. I was wondering why bother with the paper maps and tokens at all? The magic of the noncombat encounters seemed broken by the board game like combat. It wasn't until I got my hands on the player's hand book that I realised that D&D was two games. The free-form Role-Play game and not a bad tactical miniature skirmish game with structured rules. Any combat using the book rules would be difficult without a tactical map movement and positioning in combat was immensely important and tokens would be necessary to avoid confusion. After some research I found that in previous editions this was not always the case. And in the future it may no longer be the case.

Now that I am running a game, I find myself at an impasse. I like the feeling of a game has when it is condensed from the combined imaginations of my players. But I still long for a scene of tiny heroes crawling over the ruins of a destroyed alien city in the pursuit of forbidden treasure.

Warhammer 40K Terrain

The game system I am running is Rouge Trader and the combat rules seem malleable enough to used in a purely narrative fashion. However my long time geek love has been Warhammer 40k and its universe. A lot of what defines 40k is its armies of overpriced plastic warriors battling to the death on top of synthetic battlegrounds.

So the compromise I have reached is all of the noncombat and most of the minor combat encounters are played out in purely narrative form and the larger more important cliffhanger combat encounters I plan to do something special. Full 3D terrain and miniatures. I only have a small assortment of minis suitable for Rogue Trader mostly Reaper stock. The bulk of my GamesWorkshop figures are Orkoid so I have turned to paper-craft to fulfill my vision of blood-soaked away missions. Terrain would be supplied by the excellent quality World Works Games TerrainLinkX and the bulk of the opponents will be paper standees obtained for a very reasonable price from OneMonk Miniatures.

Paper-craft  products may be incredibly cheap but to produce a quality product takes time if I wasn't running a campaign book I don't think I would be able undertake these projects. Even with a pregenerated plot to follow I found I didn't have sufficient spare time, the TerrainLinkX is a nice product but it takes forever to cut, fold, glue and then leave to dry before gluing again. With a little CADfu and a A0 plotter I found a quicker way. The props and standees were still done the traditional slow way. While googling Paper-craft I stumbled upon some insane 40K vehicles by Eli Patoroch an insanely talented Russian 40k fan on 4shared.

A1 battle mat  

Closeup of TerrainLinX detail

Giant paper-craft bugs

The party is jumped in an alleyway

Tiles & alleyway junk from Worldworks

The Trading of Rogues... and baked goods

So I finally took the plunge and have become a GM the system I have been running is Rouge Trader. So far I have been enjoying it immensely, so much of my childhood was spent completely immersed in the 40K universe, and still now remain heavily invested. I have been running one of the Fantasy Flight campaign books Lure of The Expanse  with some personal flavor. I was a little daunted about how to shepherd a group of PCs that would have some very powerful role-play abilities like the purchasing power of Warren Buffett and a star ship able to nuke any site from orbit. So I decided to limit there amount of obscene wealth and access to ridiculous interstellar craft.

Previously on Rogue Trader...

Ravion Havelock was commandeered by the imperial navy to serve as escort for supply’s to Segmentum Solar during the second war for Armageddon. Ravion was mortally wounded in the war. Singled out for special honours by the lord sub-sector militant, Ravion died before he received any official recognition. He is remembered as a great war hero. 50 years later. The explorers received a summon from the family solicitor Maximus Pembroke, to attend the execution of the last will and testament of Ravion Havelock. Pembroke selected one of the public observation bays near the main ship docks for the formalities. The view of The Emperor’s Hand as is was being returned from service from the Imperial Navy having been refitted and repaired at the Imperial Navy Dry-docks was spectacular. 2.25km long, 9 megatonnes, painted in the black and red of the Havelock family the Emperor’s Hand was an inspiring sight but it was still dwarfed by surrounding larger transports of major merchant families. In attendance were the remaining family members there personal retainers, most of the household staff, several old family friends and some anxious creditors. At the conclusion of the reading of the will Pembroke announced that the final matter for the day was the opening of Ravion’s personal correspondence. There were two items of note. One large envelope and a small bundle of leather journals. The the envelope contained a rare and powerful reward, a warrant of trade granted to Ravion Havelock and all his line. As the explorers digested the gravity of there new elevation in life the room erupted into chaos a grill in the floor exploded as a large rodent snatched the bundle of journals and scampered across the room to escape and five men wearing large coats sprayed the party in auto-pistol fire.

So beside hamstringing my players wealth and supplying them with a hunk of junk to fly around the Galaxy. I have had to take a lump of my imagination an smear it over the pages of a notebook in an attempt to form a corporeal world that others can join. So far I have been somewhat successful, but my players have had me sweating over a possible change in direction for the game.

GM: "So everyone free tomorrow?
I have prepared a bunch and should be ready for anything."

Captain: "Haha ready for anything eh? Them's fightin' words"

GM: "Please don't force me to drop a moon on the party"

Void Master: "Who's ready to give up on all this dread pearl nonsense and start up an intergalactic catering company? Havelock's tea and cupcakes, the must have food for every loyal servant of the emperor. I can see it already..."

Captain: "Hmm I read that in Guybrush Threepwood's voice, it made a lot of sense... Maybe that's a sign that Havelock should spend more time walking around trying to combine stuff with a rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle."

Void Master: "I'd love to see you insult power-sword fight our rival rogue trader Fel."

Captain: "You fight like a dairy farmer!"

Seneschal: "Cupcakes.. maybe not. Are communion wafers a thing in 40k?"

Void Master: "They would be grimdark cupcakes, made in the shape of skulls and such."

Seneschal: "That's gotta be good for a laugh at the cake supply shop.. "Uhh, I was wondering if you have any skulls? Double-headed eagles maybe?"

Void Master: "A double headed eagle decorated with skulls! So good it's almost heretical! Havelock's Heretical Treats, place an order today!"

GM: "The inquisition may may have something to say about that...

Hi I am Eisenhorn of the Ordo Xenos and when I am hungry from purging the unclean I always look forward to a snack from Havelock's Heretical Treats. They are so yummy you can taste the Grim Dark!"

Former player: "I hope they have gooey centres."

Seneschal: "Try our new Cup'o'Chaos cupcakes! No two alike, but every one tastes of sweet heresy! Use the pass phrase 'The Ruinous Powers sent me' for a free sample!

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is war and also cupcakes."

If a Rogue Trader sold his ship and turned his attentions to catering they would be an unstoppable force in the culinary world.