paper dungeon - simple doors

I bashed out these doors for D&D using an Amazon book mailer and a 1.2mm Staedtler pigment liner- one of my favourite pens! Combined with the stand bases, they work great and couldn't be much cheaper.

first bits of a cereal packet dungeon

There are lots of ways to make dungeons for D&D, from gorgeous but expensive Dwarven Forge stuff to ones that cost effectively nothing. Here are some 'proof of concept' bits for a dungeon, made from everyone's first craft material: a corn flakes box. There's a bit of white-tack on the back for weight and friction. They took a few minutes with a pen and some scissors and I quite like the way they look.

The other thing that white-tack is good for is quickly knocking up some stalagmites or boulders. I like the fact that this method of creating the dungeon is just a couple of removes from a basic diagram- it's clear and simple and cheep and cheerful- all my favourite boxes ticked!

Usborne Viking paper house and axonometric paper

Although work has been busy, I've had time to make one of the houses in the book I mentioned yesterday. It went together very easily and I think it looks the business. Forgive the anachronistic Airfix British Infantry- they're there to give an idea of scale. As you can see, the house is on the compact side, but not I think jarringly so. As it is designed to be glued directly to a provided illustrated layout card, I added a rectangle of grey millboard (the stuff that reinforces A4 refill pads at the back) to give it some strength and a couple of millimetres of extra height.

I also jotted down a few ideas for a simple modular castle, made from wood and either card or lasercut MDF for the battlements, partly inspired by this post on Bob Cordery's superb 'Wargaming Miscellany' blog, and partly by the one in 'Wargaming on a Budget' by Iain Dickie. The task of planning on paper was made considerably easier by the use of axonometric graph paper. An architect friend told me about this, and how it is used. It allows you to draw a floorplan (or whatever) as a square or rectangle, without worrying about perspective, but also depict height as well. You can download it to your own specifications at the excellent Incompetech website.

Usborne Viking Settlement and Blood Eagle

A few years ago I bought In Her Majesty's Name, and despite really enjoying it and even collecting and painting some miniatures with IHMN in mind, I still haven't got round to playing it. This past weekend I picked up the authors' newest book, Blood Eagle, based on the same 'engine' as IHMN, and am once again enthused- hopefully this time I'll actually get some games in!

As luck would have it, I also picked up another book in the last few days: an old but pristine copy of Usborne's 'Make this Viking Settlement' (still in print) for a few quid from a charity shop. This beautifully presented and produced book should allow me to make a small table's worth of Viking houses and whatnot in OO/HO scale, which should be a reasonable match for some 1/72 Vikings and Saxons from Emhar I've had my eye on for a while.

In the last year or so my tastes in wargaming have veered toward the simple, the toylike, the inexpensive and the 'old school', so this way of playing Blood Eagle should tick a few of those boxes!