We’re working as hard as we can to be able to play Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion the way we want to play it — by making a quick, easy to set up and play game an exercise in overcompensation.
We play a lot of board games. One thing common to all the most popular games is how well they lend themselves to being modded. The pieces that come in the game are just the starting point.
One thing I always wanted to do, while we were playing Gloomhaven, was to actually paint the miniatures. Another item on my wishlist: have miniatures for all the monsters instead of cardboard standees. And finally: have a nicer looking setting than those cardboard tiles which after dozens of games, were showing quite a lot of wear.
So for the next big box game in the series, Frosthaven, I wanted all these things in place. What better time to begin work on it than with Cephalofair’s entry level addition to the Gloomhaven universe, Jaws of the Lion.
From seventeen unlocked and unlockable characters, you begin with four (and they are all unlocked). There are four additional mini boxes in the set, but they are sealed and I do not know what is in them. (I am guessing that they are powered-up versions of the starting four, but I don’t know that for sure).
Everything else in the box is flat cardboard. The scenarios are no longer cardboard tiles, but pages in a book. The monsters are still standees. There is no dimensionality.
To up our Gloomhaven, Kingdom Death and Terraforming Mars games, Tom and I have been diving deep into the world of 3D printing. My entry level Creality Ender 3 Pro, a filament printer, is on the left. Tom’s Elegoo Mars resin printer and washing/curing station is on the right.
The filament printer is best suited for larger prints and terrain; the resin printer is perfect for highly detailed, smaller items, like miniatures.
The picture above shows three times I tried to print the mini for my EQ Shadow Knight on my printer. Every time, I had issues, usually with the support structures needed to successfully print. The painted one was printed on the resin printer. The detail was amazing, but prints can’t be much larger than the screen of a smartphone (and this is no coincidence; printing happens by shining a screen image at a printing surface).
Aside from the minis, the picture at the top of this post only shows items printed by the filament printer, including my Bulbasaur friend. Everyone has to print a Pokemon. I think it’s some sort of natural law.
Painting is the unfortunate side effect of printing where miniatures are concerned. But if I don’t paint these things, they’ll remain unpainted.
I didn’t have to print the above miniatures; they came unpainted with Jaws of the Lion. I’ve started painting them up. If I were any good at painting, they would look more like their concept art. I came fairly close with the brooding Hatchet and the looking for redemption Red Guard, as they are mostly monochromatic. I tried several color schemes with the white and gold Voidwarden before just giving up and covering all my mistaken attempts with green. The tiny Demolitionist is like a gremlin with bombs and crusher hands and has bizarrely detailed concept art I didn’t even attempt to match. None of these paint jobs are finished; I have a lot of detail work to do, but thought I’d show them off at this early point.
With any luck, I’ll be able to show them smashing through the Jaws of the Lion scenarios within a month or two 🙂
