Dragged into Turbolasers 118 - Part 1: Under the Dice Fest 2025.

Under the Dice Fest 2025.

In part one of a special two-part episode, we interview people who attended Under the Dice Fest 2025, a small festival in Massachusetts celebrating miniature-based tabletop wargaming. The festival was designed to appeal to those who shy away from the mainstream iterations of the miniature wargaming hobby, focusing on those who want to play the games on their terms, sometimes outside of the scope of the game rules as written, or those who want to play old games which their publishers no longer support. It highlights those who are more concerned with telling a story with the miniatures they build than with creating something optimal in terms of a game’s rule system. A punk rock approach to the miniature wargaming hobby, if you will.

Flames of Orion: Dark Spirit painted

Echoes Through the Empty Chambers of Heaven.

Earlier this month, we converted a model for Flames of Orion, a mech combat game that Steve (sovthofheaven) designed. It was an ideal time, as a Kickstarter is currently running to create a physical print of the book (which is available to download for free). It was also just in time for Under the Dice Fest, where we used the model in the Flames of Orion event, Beneath a Dying Sun!

Photography: Developing Black and White Film

A History of Bad Men (Tmax 100; developed in Ilfosol 3 [1:9]).

For the past year, I have been fascinated by film photography, having been introduced to it from my late grandfather. Shortly after starting to shoot 35mm film, I began to scan my negatives using my Nikon Zf with a 105mm f2.8 MC lens and a Valoi Easy35. This allowed me to pay a lab to develop the film for me, but digitize and edit the negatives myself, rather than paying for the lab to scan them (and often give low quality jpegs unless you pay over $20 per roll). This reduced cost while also affording me more control over the process. Despite this, I could not escape the feeling that I should also be doing the development myself too. My grandfather would often talk about how he used to develop his own black and white film and even had a darkroom for a short while. After doing some research, I discovered that the process is relatively straightforward, only requiring a single developer that can be used at room temperature (20oC/68oF) and a fixer. To my delight, I was given a Paterson Film Processing Starter Kit as an early birthday gift, and wanted to share some of my initial results!

Flames of Orion: Dark Spirit

Violence Dimension.

Over the last few years, we had the opportunity to playtest Flames of Orion, Steve’s (sovthofheaven) mech combat game. The game’s rules were recently finalized, with copies getting sold at Adepticon this year, but also available to download for free! The game is soon going to be launched on Kickstarter too! Each time we played the game, we used one of Steve’s mechs (sculpted by Ana Polanšćak of Gardens of Hecate), Dark Spirit. Over time, they developed quite a legacy and are even featured in a narrative piece in the rulebook. With Under the Dice Fest rapidly approaching this year, we thought it would be fun to create our own version of Dark Spirit so we can use them during the event!