Changing things up a bit here today – I didn’t have too much time to paint yesterday, so rather than an analysis post or something like that, I decided to write about what kind of tokens and game aids I’m working on.

I’ve mentioned a couple of times how much I think physical components can give weight to a game’s demo. Showing off official tokens or game aids when doing a demo can really help sell the quality of the game to someone just passing by. Custom tokens can help make reading the battlefield easier, as well: moving little physical bits tends to help people feel more engaged with tracking things on the field.

This is also a bit of a balancing act: too many tokens or little additions can be difficult to keep track of. They also add setup time to the game as you sort these out, and in cases where tokens are difficult to find or aren’t “official” to the game, you end up with qualifiers around how to get started or play with the same experience that you’re offering in a demo.

My rule here is that if I can find the official tokens or markers in print, then I will use them. Otherwise, I will try to track down effective substitutes or make my own in a way that enhance the look of the game. As an additional point to that, if I make any resources, I want to make sure that they’re publicly available and easy for people to find.

Sculpting Tokens and Game Aids

There are a lot of scenarios in Freebooter’s Fate that require additional models to really make the battlefield look cool. Unfortunately, they are also some of my preferred introductory scenarios – Hunt the Dodo (ToL#5), the Hunt for Rats in October (BRB) and Attack of the Zombie Octopuses (BRB) are all helped by having some models to represent the various creatures that are causing mayhem/being hunted. While Freebooter Miniatures made models for them a while ago, they’re not in production any longer, so trying to use the official models means hoping to track down out of print models.

As such, I’m using my own sculpting ‘skills’ to work on making some models for free usage. While most of what I do is physical sculpting (and I’d love to have these tokens cast in metal to fit in really well), it’s easiest to work in digital for ease of distribution, plus then I can give them away for free rather easily.

While my digital sculpting skills aren’t exactly great, I’m done with the main block out phase of this sculpt. While I’ve started working on a few details, I’ll likely repose it into two or three variations and then start refining it. As with all sculpting, getting the shapes right is the most important part, and the Dodo is relatively simple in terms of shapes – stubby wings, a broad body, thick legs, and a disproportionate beak.

I think I’m planning on making an integrated base for FF-style basing on these models as well – as I am in love with how Werner has designed the bases for the game, I’d like to make them as easy as possible to fit in with existing models and provide a unified look to everything.

Not much of a preview, I know, but it is hobby progress, after all!

Planned Gameplay Aids

At the moment, I’ve got a few things planned for making this game a little easier to demonstrate. The list of stuff I’d like to do is pretty long, but my top five priorities are as follows:

• Zombie Octopus: This scenario is incredible and it sells the humorous theme of the game well. You also need a lot of them, and as much as I want to get some of the old metal models, that’s probably not an option.
• Rats: The Hunt for Rats in October is a great scenario to teach people how the game plays. Having actual rat miniatures will help build thing out a little bit.
• Random Deployment Markers: I’m trying to figure out a good way to do this in a way that won’t make it too easy to know which character goes where, but I absolutely want to make something nice for this.
• Barrel Markers: These are another multi-scenario token that I’m hoping to make a few of. Figuring out how to show contents without making it obvious which one is the “best” one is probably going to be an interesting process.
• Crabs: I just want to do the crab scenario. God, just let me do the crab scenario. It’s so silly and I love it.

Hobby Progress

I worked on sculpting the Dodo base model today. I’ve also joined a painting league at my LGS – my goal is to paint some more “display quality’ miniatures as well as hopefully build some interest in FF locally. As the first prompt was for a monster painted with vibrant colors, I’ve opted to start prepping and cleaning Locura for this purpose.