Upscaling Maximum Apocalypse With Custom Tokens

I love board games, and find that they are a great way of bringing people together. However some games has elements that annoys me so much that I just can't leave it.

The latest one was the Kickstarter game Maximum Apocalypse, which is a wonderful game that I enjoy immensely. However I find the ammo and gas can tokens absolutely horrible which results in me ranting about them every time I play the game.

Therefor I wanted to make some new custom tokens to replace them.
I had the following requirements for the tokens:

They had to be relatively cheap
Be easy to make, as I needed to make a bunch
Functional, they have to be playable without breaking

I had initially planed on just find some cheap models of ammunition and gas cans on Aliexpress and then just paint and finish them. While I did find a suitable gas can model, I was unfortunately unable to find any ammunition models that I liked or was cheap enough for this project. Therefor after getting an SLA 3D printer as an anniversary present I decided to just design and print my own.

In this Instructable I will show the two approaches I took for creating my custom Maximum Apocalypse game tokens.

Supplies

Tools

Paint tools, brushes etc.
Fine sanding paper or file
Exacto or snippers
Access to an SLA printer (Optional)

Supplies

Model paints (Red, Brass, Copper, Black, Silver)
A clear mat finish
Model putty e.g. green stuff
Model tokens (ammo & gas can)

Step 1: Preparing the Token Models

Gas cans

The gas can models I decided to use I found on Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32735538396.html and came in sets of 6 which was perfect as I needed 12 to replace all the original tokens.

They were relatively cheap and they looked great on the sellers page.

However, once I received the models I was surprised to see that there were a lot of imperfections as well as being just a bit smaller then I would have liked. Because of the game having a post apocalyptic setting, I was able to make some of the imperfections look like wear and tear, but I had to fill some holes and imperfections with a model putty and smooth it out using some fine sandpaper

I am very sorry, but I forgot to take pictures of this part of the process.
I also wanted to note, that if you have access to an SLA printer, then I would recommend just printing some gas cans instead of buying the models e.g.: Jerry Can 20L.

Ammo clips

I wanted to design the ammo tokens to look like a stripper clip for an old Lee Enfield rifle, but found that single line of bullets was to fragile, so I had to add an additional row to make it sturdy enough for playing.

I sliced the model using PrusaSlicer. Nothing fancy was done to print the models, just added them at a slight angle and made sure that the supports only attached to the bottom of the model, this made it fast and easy to snip them off and sanding them clean.

I then used my Prusa SL1 to print two batches of 20 pieces

In hindsight I should have printed three batches as with the expansion the number of ammo tokens reaches 50

I have released the model which can be found here Ammo tokens for Maximum Apocalypse

Step 2: Giving the Tokens Character

The paint job on the tokens was pretty basic and straight forward as I didn't want to use a lot of time making the tokens.

I had originally planed to use an airbrush so I could paint all the base colors of the tokens at once, but unfortunately I couldn't get my airbrush to work, so I had to use a regular brush and paint them individually by hand

The gas can token I painted in a Dragon red, using a Shining silver to dry brush some of the edges and for making some dents and scratches.

For the ammo token I used a Brass for the bullet casing, True copper for the bullet and the Shining silver for the clip.

Just for kicks, I added a little red 'incendiary' tip to some of the ammo tokens.

After painting all the tokens, I gave them a coat of clear mate finish to protect the paint job while weathering.

Step 3: Weathering and Finishing

Again to save time I decided to just do a simple black wash, specifically a ready to use Dark tone wash.

You could just take some black paint and thin it, that would work just as well.

I gave all the tokens a quick and dirty wash just to take a bit of the shine of and making the edges a bit softer, finalising the post apocalyptic look.

Finally I gave all the tokens 3 heavy coats of clear mate finish to make sure that the paint wouldn't rub off while playing with the tokens.