Years ago, I saw a video where the father of "dungeon crafting," DM Scotty, showed off a cool, characterful wall display he had built for his D&D miniatures. I've always thought it a crime to spend countless hours painting miniatures only to stow them away in cases where no one ever gets to see them. I've considered getting glass cabinets to display my hundreds of models, but I've never found one I'm 100% happy with. Scotty said he might do a full video on how he'd made his case, but (to my knowledge) he never did.
Enter James Floyd Kelly, aka The Tabletop Engineer. Using his 3D design skills and laser cutter, Jim has designed a line of fantasy and sci-fi display shelves. The shelves are available in various sizes and come with all sorts of little accessories that let you decorate your display to suit your taste and miniature collection.
I first got the 18" x 11" Castle Ruins display ($57.25). Laser-cut from 1/4" maple plywood, the kit was easy and fun to assemble using only carpenter's glue. It's just enough assembly that you feel like you accomplished something without it really being much work, maybe an hour. I mounted it in my work studio and quickly filled it with some of my Frostgrave and Blood Bowl minis.
Thrilled with how the fantasy shelves turned out, I immediately ordered the Mega Sci-Fi Display ($92). I have a lot of sci-fi (and Gaslands) models to display. I haven't put this second kit together yet, but I'm looking forward to being able to finally display many of my Warhammer 40K and other sci-fi minis.
Jim even has a miniature miniature display that holds 4 minis (and costs only $16.50). This would make a really sweet gift for a gamer where you painted 4 minis and presented them inside of the mini display.
For game nerds of the 80s, there are few games more beloved and legendary than Steve Jackson's Car Wars. I bought my pocket box edition at Hobby Crafters in Arlington, VA in 1983(?). It was for sale on a rack with other Steve Jackson and Metagamming baggied and pocket box games. A fan of the… READ THE REST
On Polygon, tabletop game historian, Jon Peterson (Playing at the World, The Elusive Shift) looks at the "Satanic panic" of the 1980s, which serves as one of the themes in season 4 of Stranger Things. It is an interesting piece about how TSR certainly flirted with real-world occultism and demonology as they knew interest in… READ THE REST
Anyone who does any type of modeling, be it scale, diorama, tabletop gaming, dungeon craft, trash-bash, and the like, knows the importance of a good bitz box. This is the stash of kitchen-trash plastic, old toys, plastic model sprues, and left over model parts, and misc cool-looking junk for use in your next build. In… READ THE REST
As much as you hate it, sometimes we have to search for things in places we never want to go, like the kitchen sink's drain, the dusty attic, or the spider-web-laden area underneath the house. Your shrieks might just bring music to their ears! But as much as we don't want to see what's in these… READ THE REST
Whether you have your own cookie business or run a celebrity gossip blog, having an unimpressive landing page can really slow things down. Sure, hiring a professional developer to create a website would be awesome, but their rates can be pretty steep, and that's not something you want to budget for these days. Just because… READ THE REST
How much of your Mac's storage space is actually stuff you use? Odds are good a significant portion of your hard drive is filled with untouched downloads, duplicate files, and apps you forgot existed. You may not have noticed it, but the gradual slowing of your computer could be due to all those files just sitting… READ THE REST
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