in2bator's customs thread

[in2bator]

Greetings! Thanks for taking a look at my creations. I'm a recent convert to HS and have purchased most of what I have obtained from other players (here and on eBay) Consequently, some of the harder to get stuff I've had to improvise. While doing that, I kinda got bit by the creativity bug and decided to venture out on my own into the land of customs. I'm not a big superhero fan, so the C3V isn't my cup of tea. Instead, I tried to find some low-price minis that either filled some gaps in the HS line-up, or I just thought looked pretty cool. I have also done some custom terrain which will be posted here as well.

I am always looking for feedback - on the figures, on the powers, on basically everything. I like what I have made, but certainly know it could likely be improved or balanced.

The final thing is that I don't get to play HS much. My wife has no interest and as the parent of 3 kiddos under the age of 5, it's tough to get time for games. So not many of my customs have been playtested, simply because I only rarely get to play HeroScape! When I do play, I usually want to play with the official figs. I plan on this changing as my 5 year old grows and wants to play the actual game, instead of just making maps and then goofing around with the figures.

FINISHING THE ELEMENTALS:

I like the concept of the elementals, but always thought it was weird that there was only one "Greater" elemental. Also, there's no regular Ice Elemental! To remedy this, I have made the following for your review. I will post pics of the units next to official HS figs soon, but here's the cards. I tried to make similar thematic powers without copying too much directly from the official elementals.



This guy was created before the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan. I promise I'm not an insensitive guy! The mini is DDM Large Water Elemental. Not crazy about the sculpt, and the colors are a bit more muted than the HS water elemental. The other issue with him is that he takes up the entire black DDM base (about the size of an entire HS hex. I feared that trying to trim him back to fit onto a DW9000 or large D&D HS base (like the MoH figure is on) would possibly lend him to fall over since he is somewhat top-heavy toward one side.



This guy looks pretty cool. He is the Large Fire Elemental from the DDM series. Again, he is not as bright as the HS fire elemental, but is still translucently orange. I cut him off his black base and rebased him onto a DW9000 base. The only problem was that some of the black plastic actually ascends the side of the figure. Therefore, I had to decide whether to cut it off and expose non-orange plastic near the base or leave it dark. I went with the latter. Finally, I am having fits trying to get the targeting image made for this guy. For some reason, the GiMP is freezing every time I try to save it! I'm sick of outlining him now, so it will be finished another time.



I like this guy. His brown is a bit different from the regular Earth Elemental, but the sculpt is cool. Not a whole lot bigger, either! He is the Large Earth Elemental from DDM. I tried the Loyal Earth Elemental fig, also from DDM, but it looks too different to work with the D&D HS Earth Elemental.



This is the other sculpt that I'm not really thrilled about. It's kinda like an upside down tornado and is painted solid instead of having exposed clear plastic. I think it's decent, though. The other figure I bought to try out is the Windfiend Fury from DDM, but it is too purple to work with the HS Air Elemental.



Here's the little ice buddy for our GIE. I couldn't find a "medium ice elemental" in the DDM line, so he is actually the Ice Archon from DDM. He rebases easily onto a standard HS base. He is kinda small, so I didn't make him too powerful, somewhat of a support player.

OTHER, MISC CUSTOMS:

Blue Dragon for Aquilla:
(pic coming soon)
I made this out of a modified Mimring, which I have multiple of just laying around. I tried to create something similar to the blue wyrmling - i.e. have a gray horn, gold on his underbelly, etc. I used blue spraypaint as an undercoat (yes, I know that's cheating) and then painted over it and finished with Testor's Dullcote (I think it's called). I'm still making the card, but will use the same powers as Agruna, by Chaosserver, found at this link (http://www.heroscapers.com/community....php?p=1355091) It seems to consistently relate to the wyrmling's like all of the other big/wyrm pairings.

Detachable Head Fen Hydra:
(picture coming soon)
I've heard of others trying to come up with a good solution to make a more realistic experience while battling with the Fen Hydra. Perhaps this has been done by others here, but I thought of it myself so I'm pretty proud. I cut the heads off with garden pruning shears at a point where the neck is reasonably straight. Then, I used some needle-nosed pliers to jam a picture hanging nail (with the flat head cut off) into both sides of the neck to make a path (making sure that the holes on each side lined up and the path of the nail was roughly straight across the gap). Of note, there were only minor injuries sustained during this process. My fingers, however, are still sore five days later from having to grip the small pieces of plastic so hard and at awkward angles. Finally, I glued the cut end of the nail into the head portion so it looks like a thumb-tack with a snake head instead of a plastic piece. I'm going to be painting the inside of the cut sections red for some blood action, as long as it doesn't make it harder to slide the nail in and out. The fit is quite tight already, which is good because the heads won't spontaneously fall off in-game or in storage, but they take a bit of work to pull out/push in!

PROXIES
Since I joined the HS crowd late in the game, certain units have either been out of my price range or just not accessible. Therefore, I have made some proxies by modifying some different figures.

Zelrig from Mimring (aka Zelring):
(Picture coming soon)
Aquilla's alliance is just too darn expensive these days, so I converted an extra Mimring to Zelrig. Slight modifications were made - tongue snipping, horn clipping, etc, then a quick spray of red paint and some amateur detail work on top of it and Whallah - Zelring. I mean Zelrig. Kinda.

Zetacron from DW9000 (no clever combined name for him):
(pic coming soon)
I took an extra DW9000 and sprayed him white, then detailed him out with some blue and black. I probably should have consulted a picture of Zetacron prior to doing it because I ended up putting on too much black. But I like the way he turned out, so I'm not going to redo it.

Fyorlag Spiders:
(pic coming soon)
I had to custom make my own Ticalla Jungle, so there was no way I was getting these little critters without spending an arm and a leg. I looked around for a long time for small, plastic spiders. Surprisingly hard to find! I even considered buying those Halloween spider rings and using those spindly little spiders. Thankfully I e-mailed Andrew from Auggie's Games and he recommended the Deathjump Spider. He was selling them unpainted in squads of 3 (identical sculpts) for cheap, so I picked them up. A black undercoat and brown drybrush treatment later and I think they look serviceable. They are on reddish bases which I painted black. I considered transferring them to HS bases, but don't think I will use them that much.

TERRAIN:
I don't have $200 to drop on a Tundra, Volcarren, and Ticalla sets, so I've made my own.

Here's my Ticalla jungle, made from this wonderful tutorial by Grishnakh (http://heroscapers.com/community/sho...=489751#521556). It took a bit of work, but I think they look pretty darn good. I'm probably not going to be flocking the bases much, simply because I will have kids using them frequently. I made the bush tiles a long time before thinking I wanted to attempt the trees. Therefore, they are waaaaay too tall and were also put on grass tiles instead of swamp. Rookie mistakes, those were! I considered cutting them down to the right height, but think that would look pretty weird. I used some paint to turn the brown edges to a greenish hue and they look a bit more like the real thing.


Next up is my Thaelenk Tundra custom.
(pic coming soon)
I have a bunch of 2-hex snow already, thanks to expansion packs, but lacked glaciers, 1-hex snow, and ice. I decided to use floral foam from WalMart to carve the glaciers. They looked OK prior to spray-painting them (again, I am no artist), but then something unexpected happened. I sprayed them heavily with white spraypaint to try to fill in the air bubble dots in the foam, but it ended up melting the foam! My big mountain survived, but shrank a fair amount. My initial smaller glaciers became little piles/puddles of sticky paint and had to be redone. I went easier on them with the paint the second time and although they aren't as white as I'd like them, they do just fine. I superglued them to water tile bases to form permanent fixtures.

For the snow terrain, I used white spray paint on the concrete tiles from the Marvel Master Set. The white isn't as bright as the white plastic ones, but it still looks OK.

Ice was made by using water tiles and doing one quick pass of spray paint over them so they were lightly coated with paint. This gives them a kind of bluish-gray appearance from the white and blue both showing through.

Finally, my Volcarren Wasteland custom:
(picture to come soon)
This was my first adventure in custom terrain, and I learned some important lessons. I used red spray-paint on the asphalt tiles from Marvel Master Set for the lava rock, using some gray paint in the centers of the hexes. I used water and swamp sprayed red for molten lava. The biggest lesson I learned from this process - DO NOT SPRAY PAINT THE INTERLOCKING SIDES OF YOUR TERRAIN!!! It will make it so the adjacent pieces are extremely hard to connect and separate, also causing multiple custom pieces to lift off the horizontal plane as the paint will dry thicker at the bottom causing slight upward tilt at each joint. Granted, they look cooler with red sides, but it's not worth it! I didn't try the yellow flecked look for the lava tiles, as I was thankfully able to procure multiple Volcarrens at reasonable prices.

UPCOMING CUSTOMS:
I'm somewhat busy with work right now, but will likely be making a couple of Valkrill Elementals. I have the Loyal Earth Elemental and Windfiend Fury DDM figures which will do nicely. Still coming up with some powers for them, though. I will post them when I get done with them.

Please feel free to share your thoughts on any/all of my customs or proxies. I'm far, far, far away from being a professional painter or particularly creative person, so input is always appreciated.