Ishoo Wun-Oh-Six: Portheim Tile

Hello again and welcome to the first real instalment in the Portheim Project! This ishoo will tackle the main building block of the whole project - the basic Portheim Terrain Tile, which can be customised, adjusted and messed about with the build all sort of more exciting versions of itself! Yes - a modular terrain tile and it's only taken us seven years to get round to making one!

But how hard is the making of a modular terrain tile? Let us consult the mystical oracle of Grot...

A tablesaw is very handy for making sure all the lines are exact, and, by using the built in fence, you can make sure all pieces have the same dimensions. I started this over the holidays, so I had to use my Dad's old Triton Work Center, which is kinda small. During term I have access to a huge industrial saw table at school which makes these things much easier.  Sigh. 

Unlike the blade on a knife, the blade on a circular saw is actually very thick - about 3mm usually. This means that for every cut you make, you lose 3mm of material. Since the sheets are exaclty 600mm wide, you get one 300mm and one 297mm wide tile across. Since all the tiles must be the same size for a modular table, this obviously does not work. I cut the slightly narrower tiles down to 150mm wide half-tiles, and use the rest of the left overs for other things. As you shall see. Eventually.

And there you have it Hippo Fans! I've got quite a bit more of Portheim in various places - this is just what I had in the modelling room at the time, and painted. Come back next time - we'll either be making a launching ramp/boat slip or a boat. One of those.

Kitnapped published on The Game Crafter!

Kitnapped, the game of duelling cat collectors has now been published on The Game Crafter!
Kitnapped started life as an entry in the Board Game Geek 24 hour game design challenge back in June 2016. Since then, it's been tweaked and tested more extensively that the 24 hour deadline would allow, the art has been upgraded, and two test games have been printed. There were a few minor tweaks needed to the test games before it was ready to publish (the recommended ages on the top and bottom of the box didn't match, and a few minor rules clarifications) - these changes have now been made so the public can also enjoy this exciting game!

In Kitnapped, you play as cat enthusiasts trying to amass the greatest litter of kittens. You can find kittens by drawing cards, but it's much more fun to lure them away from other players using sqeuaky mice, saucers of milk and balls of wool. Of course, everyone else will try to lure your cats, so you want to block their lures with collars, microchips, and the all powerful naptime. You can also make other people's cats sick. Whoever has the best collection of healthy cats when the Crazy Cat Lady arrives wins the game.

I'm also playing with some ideas for an expansion which will materialise sometime soon. It's got some new mishap cards, and the ability to upgrade your cats with unique special rules.

OMG! GeekFest is today!

Seriously, OMG.

Ishoo wun-oh-fiv: Necrotite Rig

For countless ages of men, rumours and myths have spoken of this day - the day when TFH finally updates once more! Amongst the pygmy people of the amazon they hold that this day will herald a new age of man, and that we shall all bathe in the sickly green glow of glory. And they are mostly right since it's a Necrotite Rig. At last.
But how easy (not to say time consuming) is the manufacture of such things? Well, apparently not that time consuming, since it's been lying about the modelling room since September and not being worked on.
Anyway, here's Bane Grot to explain.

And there it is! Stand by for further updates about Portheim month - and don't forget, GeekFest 2017 is next weekend!

Portheim: Prologue.

A glimpse of Portheim from way back in 2009.

I've decided to try to increase the posting rate on the blog by bringing back themed months during the summer holidays. This time round: Portheim.
Portheim was a project from before TFH even existed - 2008 I think. I'd had the good fortune to have a huge amount of medium density white polystyrene insulation board offcuts given to me by a friend in the building supply industry, and realised that it was the destiny of these boards to become modular terrain tiles. At the time, we were playing a lot of Mordheim at HGC, so I decided to make the boards for that sort of medieval fantasy skirmish game. There were not enough to cover a whole table, so I came up with the idea of doing them as a dockside table. The idea being that you put down a blue table surface (painted, or a sheet) for the water, and then build up the docks on this using the tiles. Portheim was fairly quickly built up, including a bunch of things like a ruined lighthouse island and some boats to go in the water. The porblem was that it worked fine for a 4' table, but I never got more polystyrene to expand it out to larger sizes. Then Bunnings started stocking the stuff. Then an idea we'd had at HGC about a modular town table came back to light, and things sort of happened. So Portheim is on the go again, and during January I'll be posting TFH ishoos on various aspects, like making the tiles, building ships and other stuff.
Of course, I have to post the People's Choice Necrotite Rig first. So I'll just go and finish that shall I?
There are also some comissions which will need to be worked on while Portheim stuff dries, so I'm not really expecting more than one ishoo a week. Especially since GeekFest is next week.