Tomb Thursday P15: Book It

Tomb Thursday coming in stone cold with two more must-print pieces for your shifting sands desert library. Let’s see what the Egyptian 3D Printer Gods whipped up for us this week!

Skeletons go in tombs like peanut butter on jelly! You really can’t have one without the other, can you? We’re covering all the bases today by sharing another fun scatter terrain piece and a core tomb tile for your starting desert gameboard.

Let’s start with a fun, free download by the talented Peter Farell. He has a hefty collection of free STLs on Printables.com, and there are plenty of prints for us DnD players to choose from. This “Skeleton Holding Spell Book” instantly grabbed our attention. We love unique sculpts that just light up a room when you place them on your FDM tiles. This spooky scatter terrain piece fits the bill perfectly.

DM Ben found a slick, new skeleton paint scheme on YouTube, so he didn’t mind coloring this one up over the weekend. He’s been experimenting with it on several pieces and has become more comfortable with the steps. This hobby is all about learning and getting a little bit better each and every time. Patience is key.

All the real color scheme credit here goes to YouTuber Apathetic Fish Miniatures. He did an awesome video tutorial on how to paint skeletal bases, and we thought we could utilize it on some of our undead-ish pieces.

Here are his steps:

• Prime Flat Black & Slapchop Base.
• Apply a base layer of Citadel Zandri Dust.
• Cover with Citadel’s Agrax Earthshade.
• Use a light dry brush of Citadel Karak Stone.
• Go back over with a lighter dry brush of Citadel’s Ushabti Bone.
• Finish by edging with Citadel’s Screaming Skull.

Now, DM Ben considers himself a below-average painter, but it’s not for a lack of effort. This one turned out pretty swell. He just has to keep tweaking his approach on future 3D prints until he gets it just right.

Here’s another angle to show off the tattered, oversized spell book. Utilizing a Slapchop base works especially well for things like leather and parchment. All we did here was put on a couple of coats of ASP Pallid Bone. The back of the mysterious tome is resting on a stone slab, so we just used a straight layer of FAN Ancient Stone to finish this DnD scatter terrain piece off.

We envision this oversized skeleton scatter being located in the opening room of our tomb, serving as a sort of guest registry where players must sign in to proceed. That would just be a hoot. Or, this one could be part of the final boss finale showdown. DM Ben is leaning toward the “sign here to proceed” game angle, though. 🙂

Longtime readers know our goal with Tomb Thursdays is to help you develop a 3D Print Plan for your Egyptian gameboard. There are tons of pieces to choose from, and reducing that anxiety on which STLs to focus on first should be just the nudge you need. So, the second piece we wanted to showcase today was this desert pillar tile by the always awesome Aether Studios crew. This charming tile is from their Middle Kingdom set.

You don’t have to go crazy here, but 3D-printing a set of four or eight of these specific tiles is rather wise. DM’s love columns on the game table because they break up the space, offer cover tactics during combat, and they’re aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Once again, we leaned on our tried-and-true Galladoria Games desert paint scheme for all the right feels.

Now, certain situations sometimes call for mighty, towering columns, and we’ll definitely showcase a few of those in future posts, but sometimes less is more, and a more subtle approach is the way to go when building out a specific tomb room.

Until next time!