Finished Coruscating Nodule tokens.
Next up in the process is making tokens. As I've gotten deeper into tabletop/miniatures games, one of the things I've come to appreciate is a completely themed table of miniatures, terrain, and tokens. I think that's the artist brain wanting a visually cohesive experience. I completely understand the reasons to have dice and other things on your board to keep track of damage or other details, but if you want my honest opinion, I don't want to see it.
I want the board to be visually immersive, and to be as much of a window into the world in which we're playing this game as possible, as opposed to something more like a board game with pieces and cards etc. So, in my rather totalizing vision for a tabletop game, everything on the board is painted, complete, and bespoke, and you can have your pencils, character sheets, dice, cards or whatnot off to the side, thank you very much.
(My one obvious exemption is for Space Gits, in which stacks of dice are an essential mechanic, also this game can do no wrong and EVERY time I play it, whether with experienced tabletop nerds or with folks who've never touched a miniature, it's an absolute ripping great time.)
Coruscating Nodule tokens
For this scenario, I needed a variety of tokens. In Cauldron your characters are often seeking Treasure tokens, which must be spirited off the board to be claimed. So I needed some of those. I also wrote a couple other types of token into the possible events that might happen in the Mass- something called a Coruscating Nodule, and then a great big mushroom for the final game.
I find tokens a lot of fun to make and paint, since they're like tiny little sculptures and they can be looser and messier than actual miniatures. Also they can be made from junk and debris, so there's no pressure to do justice to a fancy expensive miniature that I treasure and want to be worthy of showing off. The pearls I mentioned previously became the Coruscating Nodule tokens. That was delightfully easy- just superglue them to a base, douse the connections with baking soda, and repeat until I had something that looked like a semi-biological outcropping. Then add base texture (I use gesso and dip the whole base in a mix of scale gravel/sand, both for miniatures and tokens). I'm painting all the bases for the tokens with the same teal I used on the boards. Follow with a black wash, then drybrushing in the same pink, lime green and yellow I used on the boards.
Oh horror! Gold spray paint!
For the Treasure tokens, I assembled these by gluing the 'building circles' toys onto bases- happily they fit into the base slots! I cut a few of them up to give some variation and added some small rocks and of course sand texture to the bases. The mushroom token came from some 3D printed mushroom terrain a friend gave me- actually quite nice for 3D prints (I do a LOT with digital fabrication in my teaching and art-making, but I am not usually a huge fan of 3D printed tabletop games whatnot).
I tried very hard to resist spray painting these things. I did some tests, though, and my usual brush-on Vallejo primer just ran right off the plastic toys. I could have fought it, but honestly that wasn't worth it here, since I had a lot of tokens to complete. So I surrendered and got a can of gold spray paint (going straight for the WORST possible stuff- not only spray paint but METALLIC GOLD!). It worked like a charm though.
Gold and teal!
With the spraying out of the way, I could move onto my usual detailing. I did the same cycle of teal base and drybrushing on the treasure tokens. The mushroom needed a bit more special attention, though, since it's a showpiece for the end. Last summer I bought these Vallejo Shifters paints for a project I was doing with Max (if you haven't yet, go take a look at Rumpus, which he and Kyle have been madly developing for the last couple years). This was a set of 'Twinkling Tombs' tokens I made- think a game board inspired by Damien Hirst's For the Love of God.
One fun thing about miniatures work is that I can indulge in a lot of stuff that I think is really silly or tacky or whatever, and just run with it, rather than try to frame it aesthetically or actually make peace with it. I think that's really exciting and freeing, honestly.
Treasure tokens!
These came out fun- maybe thinking of them as big gears or something protruding from the earth.
And here we have a tray with all the tokens ready to go. I did decide to use some red crystal tokens I had on hand, as well as one other set of things I'd made for Wanted! Reward 10,000cr which will be revealed in the actual game scenario.
So I'm moving along through the list of things to make- and moving now onto the NPC miniatures, which I want to slow down and do in a refined way, since they're miniatures I love and and want to do a Nice Job on. And then there's layout for the game scenarios, packets and tables! Gonna be quiet on the blog for a few days since I'm going camping this weekend, but more to come soon.
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