New on the download page light and medium camelry for your Arab armies. This fills in a gap in the Arab Conquest list and also should cover all the options for the Pre-Islamic Arab list as well. Virtual versions also added to the Arab army bag on Tabletop Simulator.
Odd the rabbit holes you fall down when learning new stuff..
I only need separate poses to give the figures some variation, but you might as well see if they join up. This poor old fella looks like he has at least one wooden leg.
Having spent a couple of months creating paperboys it’s probably best to admit that I don’t really enjoy making them. An odd thing to say considering how much time and effort have gone into them, but I’m always disappointed by the end result (due to my un-craftiness) and feel that I’m not doing the original artwork justice. Combined with dodgy eyesight that struggles at exactly the distance you need to see them at, once the bases are on the table I’m always peering at them trying (and failing) to bring them into focus.
I’ve had some experience with modding computer games and I’ve tried in the past to convert stands into a digital version using something like Unity but never got very far. Recently, however, I started to notice a game on Steam called Tabletop Simulator which claimed to be a toolkit for recreating board games, card games etc in a virtual form and in a way that adding your own custom content was relatively straightforward. It’s similar to VASSAL but in a 3D environment with physics like collisions and gravity enabled. Reading the docs on creating custom content suggested that making my own pieces should be relatively straightforward, so I took the plunge and bought the game (it’s not that expensive, tbf). The main technical challenge to having a virtual paperboy is the “cutting out”, but as it transpired the game engine understands a .png texture with a transparent background, which is how my models are rendered out before being combined into sheets, so a quick experiment suggested that it would be fairly straightforward to make 3D versions of my stands.
Some work in Blender later, and I’d figured out a way of not only making a 3D version of the stands but also how to automatically shuffle the various “flats” randomly so that I could quickly generate different versions of the same stand for visual interest.
Which in-game looks like..
I have made the game scaled to be 120mm stands on a 6’x4′ table which is designed for playing Impetus, but as you can edit everything and group objects together there’s very little limit to which game you play with the figures. In the example below the front army is Basic Impetus on 120mm bases, behind that my preferred option which is to scale the bases 50% and then group them back together into 120mm bases for a real sense of mass, behind that the stands are scaled to 66% (80mm) to play 500 points of Impetus, behind that scaled to 50% (60mm) as 350 points of DBMM and behind that scaled to 33% (40mm) for MeG, Field of Glory, etc.
Converting the figures to their virtual versions doesn’t take long, but I’ve had to learn some new tricks to make all of the necessary terrain pieces which has taken a couple of weeks to complete. So, as a first release if you get Tabletop Simulator and search the Workshop for 633AD you will be able to play with the Byzantines, Arabs, Khazars, Slavs and Bulgars plus suitable terrain. It’s not perfect and there are some work-arounds necessary when first setting up, but there are readmes that explain how to proceed. I have not included any rules or other copyrighted material but it’s easy enough to add a pdf to the game for your own use.
Enjoy!
I have taken the liberty of adding a “Buy me a coffee” button to the site because a) the number of downloads of the sheets has been much higher than I expected (I expected maybe three) and b) I’m going to make an announcement soon about a new project with my figures which I will be publicising more widely which I hope may bring more interest to the site and encourage people to support continued development.
Many thanks,
Steve
New on the downloads page – Early Bulgar Horse Archers. That completes the Bulgars, there will be a break for a short while in producing new sheets while I work on a related project, my intention is to do a couple of sheets of Arab camelry to give a few more options and then late Sassanids. I did a sheet of Clibanarii a while ago so have uploaded those to start you off.
Now available on the download page – Early/Danube Bulgar Boyars.
*Edit* I hadn’t lightened up the backs of the figures before I uploaded them, so there’s now the correct version for download.
New on the downloads page – Slav cavalry, which completes this army.
New on the download page – Slav Medium Foot
New on the download page – Khazar Guards, which completes this army.
New on the downloads page – Khazar Archers and Slav Archers and Javelinmen.
633AD 