After seeing the amazing custom laser etched counter sets that Silver Compass Designs put together for the Heroes of Armageddon charity event I decided to look into getting some of them for my own armies.
I sent Pete an email and learned that they don't really have any standard packages. Most sets are completely custom! He was very helpful and gave me some ideas about where to start with designing a set and made sure I was aware that EVERYTHING about the set could be customized. There is no requirement, for example, that the tokens be of any particular shape and the lasers can do incredibly fine detail so practically anything could be put on them in terms of designs or text.
Caught up in a frenzy of design I came up with counter sets for My Orks "Da Big Red WAAAGH!" and my Dark Eldar "Blood Rain Kabal". Pete managed to convert my eccentric sketches into polished art and shapes on the first go round. He even added my Kabal rune to their new three part pain tokens so they would match my theme!
The design process was a lot more fun than I imagined it would be and I'll be doing it again in the near future with a counter set for the Tyranids.
I got the two sets a couple of days ago and immediately set to work on the Ork set just to see how it shook out. It looks like it'll take me the better part of a week each to get them set up. I could knock them out in a basic way in a day or two but decided to run a bit amok with the painting!
Of course I'll be posting a picture of each of the completed sets as I finish them. The Ork set is over 200 counters and the Dark Eldar set is 166 counters so they'll take just a bit to get up to speed. You could do effective sets at much lower numbers of counters. These are large sets because I really liked the large sets that came with the Heroes of Armageddon armies.. and because the design process was so much fun!
I've also added a tutorial page with a detailed tutorial of how I painted these... check it out!
Silver Compass is also putting together Laser etched custom dice where all the faces can be customized. Having seen a couple of samples I'm looking forward to those as well.
Of course I had to have something cool to carry my awesome counters in so I got looking for something appropriate and found it at Marsbarn Designs.
The Skull bag is a square bottom dice bag. Great bag at a decent price with really fast turn around and a huge selection of fabrics and patterns to choose from.
Speaking of Orks I finally finished off the counter set with infantry status markers, a big WaaagH! token, and a special die with the Waaagh!'s logo in the 6 slot. I had a last minute fail though.... I took a break from painting while my wife was home for some R&R and the first peice I did when she left was the big Waaagh! marker. Unfortunately I incorrectly remembered the color scheme and neglected to check it before actually putting down paint. As a result the colors of the Jolly Ork are darker than for the rest of the set. I corrected this for the infantry status markers so the fail was limited... the the biggest marker of the set! DOH! A custom, square bottom, dice bag will easily contain the counters and completes the accessories for "Da Big Red WAAAGH!"
