I was struck again more recently with a similar wave of all things ‘Northern’ that struck me when I painted for and penned this earlier post. I can’t fully explain where the notion comes from exactly but on this occasion is was prompted by joining in a new SAGA campaign at the local club.
I didn’t ‘need’ any more troops per sae but is was an excuse to paint up some LotR minis I’d bought off eBay (dirt cheap), a random Wargames Foundry Viking (£1 at Claymore 2016) and a re-paint of one of my oldest miniatures from Citadel.
First up, mounted Theoden from Games Workshop’s Lord of the Rings range.
The results on that occasion were less “Wow” and more “Nae Bad” (Scot dialect for okay). Subsequently Vinyl printing at Pixartprinting came around again so I thought I’d have another run at it.
Aside from a couple of standard “roll ’em out and use ’em” mats (images below) I thought I’d try something a bit more ‘flexible’ as well this time. Gaming tiles.
Not a new idea by any means – I’ve made many homespun ones before as will many of you. They work well but the print quality is always going to be restricted by the quality of your printer. Likewise durability by the stock you can print on to. I used to have a great colour laser which was great for this type of printing but it died a few years ago. The inkjet that replaced it, while a good machine, wasn’t so suitable for this purpose. Add to that, some stock that I used wasn’t totally ‘official’ and colour fade to a pinkish hue not long after printing (and all the work involved with trimming and mounting on to foamcore). Imagine how annoying the same result had on carefully built card building models! Grrr.
On the left, a double tile using the vinyl printing, on the right, one I made earlier using my own printer. In this case it is clear that this is one of the printed stock that suffered from the discolouration I mention above.
So, a few of the images below will at first appearance look odd. Big vinyl sheets with randomly dotted terrain on it (see the coastal set). These were laid out in Photoshop before going off to print to minimise the amount of cutting required and to get as much bang for your buck (i.e. you don’t send off thirty 12″x12″ bits of art to print but one big sheet).
For example. here’s a screenshot of the artwork that went off to print for the City tiles. One big file. One big sheet.
With the coastal one I was looking to get from the big sheet a 3’x3′ plain ‘water’ mat (hence the appearance of pirate and viking ships!). The actual coastal areas and land areas were to be sliced into individual tiles to be used either in conjunction with the ‘water’ or in their own right.
Worked out well.
The City banner, whilst it ‘looks’ like a laid out ready-to-use mat, was always intended for slicing. Which you can see in the later pics. The reason for that was – if the slicing proved problematic then I’d at least be left with a City mat that could be used. The cutting and subsequent mounting was not a problem though.
Rushing this post a little so that these fellas are an option for selection as the basis of a Rogue Stars team for next weeks club meeting where the plan is to get several games of RS going all in 15mm! Currently at 3 pairs I think.
Call me unoriginal, but I liked the colour scheme used on the CMG website to showcase these guys that I pretty much copied it.
They are called Ygs Fighters. No idea who Ygs are nor do they strike me as ‘fighters’ per sae. More like a Science Away Team with a couple of body guards. Whatever the backstory, they are really nice models and full of character. They’d be well at home as a team in Rogue Stars for example.
Miniature figure collector and painter (in that order) and solo wargamer whose opponent has lost his gaming mojo
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Continue reading Another Northern Wind: Rohan, Vikings and a very old Citadel miniature 
