Another weird monster

This morning I finished another older weird D&D monster, although not nearly as iconic as my last couple; the Abyssal Maw.

In the somewhat long-ago time (roughly 2000) the folks at Wizards Of The Coast decided to put out a miniatures skirmish game based off their then current and new D20 D&D system, that game was Chainmail and it featured some Monster Manual creatures as well as a pile of potential player character models.  Chainmail was an interesting fun game but was largely a victim of bad-timing in the game industry as the game launched roughly a month or two before Games Workshop announced they were producing a Lord Of The Rings miniature game, which then became the go-to fantasy miniature game for new and casual players.

In addition to some classic D&D critters the design team also used the game to create and launch some newer monsters.  One of those newer monsters was the Abyssal Maw.

The Abyssal Maw was neat in that it added a low level 'demon' miniature to the games and brought some of that Cthulhu flavour back that old-school gamers tend to like.  One of the things I liked about the Maw is that it's totally asymmetrical (it has 3 eyes and 5 arms) which gives it a distinctly unnatural feel without working to hard on creating something visibly strange.

While working through a few odds and ends I also cranked out the bat familiar from the WizKids Nolzur's Marvellous Miniatures line.

I actually have a couple of upcoming games that I'll need some small animals for and one specifically which will require some bats so getting this into my collection will be useful.

-Jay

Thatchertown - The Hall House In The Woods

The party's first expedition to Thatchertown and it's surrounding areas has been successful so far.

After being hired by Red Sheila the group made up of; Wrack (Human Fighter), Varek (Half-Elf Rogue) and Eternity (Tiefling Wizard) made their way through the forest to her ancestral home to rid it of any woodland creatures who had assumed occupancy.

Along the way they happened upon a fallen warrior who was in the process of losing a fight to an Owlbear.  They were too late to save the brave adventurer but they defeated the Owlbear and recovered a magical sword for their efforts.

Once they arrived at the former home of Philos The Red they found it had been overtaken by an unholy alliance of cultists and gnolls for an unknown purpose.

After defeating the evil cult leader they recovered the key to a magical lock that led them to a portal to either a land/world/or dimension of snow and ice....

We ended our adventure as our players stepped through the portal into the area beyond!

I had a great time running my first D&D Next adventure and GMing my first game on Roll20.net and want to send a big thanks out to my players; Darren, Darcy & Stan for rolling some dice and slaying some monsters with me.

The second instalment of The Hall House In The Woods should happen the last week of this year or the first week of next year.

-Jay

"Iconic" Fighters

Back when Wizards Of The Coast first launched their (at the time) new D20 version of Dungeons & Dragons one of the somewhat subtle concepts they introduced was the branding of "iconic" characters.  Basically the idea was that anytime an illustration or a game play example called for a human fighter they would use the same human fighter thus creating a sense of continuity over a broad range of relatively unconnected material.  This idea has since been ported over to Pathfinder where the same 4 characters can be seen over and over again and are now the 4 starting PCs in the awesome Pathfinder Beginner Box.

First up let me just say I really like this idea.  It's not a game play mechanic and it's not a real world-building sort of thing but it almost creates an unspoken narrative and I like the fact that it feels like a throwback to 1st edition D&D when Gary Gygax's original PCs all got featured in the Rogues Gallery supplement.

As I close in on my first Pathfinder game for 2014 (just have to set a date) I realised that I would have to get a male human fighter miniature ready for one of my players to use.  I immediately got out the fantastic Valeros Iconic Human Fighter figure Reaper did for Pathfinder.  The player in question actually played Valeros about a year ago when we played through the Beginner Box but at the time we used the Pathfinder pre-painted miniature.

Valeros is a great miniature armed with two melee weapons and a bow as well as wearing a fairly generic set of medium/heavy armour.  I went with a fairly earthy colour pallet as Valeros doesn't really seem like a flashy kind of adventurer. 

Painting up Valeros and reflecting on the "iconic" character idea got me thinking back to D&D and I got out my old figs to re-base and touch up Regdar the "iconic" human fighter of D&D 3rd edition.  Regdar has a pretty special place in my miniature collection as he has been re-based four times now and represented five different characters.  He's just a great generic fighter figure who none-the-less has some fantastic detailing and character about him.

Looking at the two figures together it made me feel like I've got the male human fighter angle covered without having a massive assortment of figures.  It also made me think that every player and GM should have two figures like this in their collection.

Which do you like better?  Sword & shield or two-weapons and bow?

-Jay

The Fourth Gnoll and thoughts on a Pathfinder game

Today I finished the fourth of my five gnolls, the fifth one is going to go on the back burner for a little while for two reasons; first I need to get moving on those pig-faced orcs if I want to get them done on-time and secondly because the final gnoll has some demonic elements on her and I want to get a corresponding demon figure of some sort and paint it to match.

Today's gnoll is the group's leader; the ranger.  I really enjoyed this figure because much like the other gnolls in this line (Chainmail) he has a lot of texture which makes more detailed figures incredibly easy to paint.  As I mentioned earlier I went for a slightly browner tone on his red fur but other than that his hair and fur are very similar to the gnoll cleric from a few days ago.

I have started collecting and painting figures for 2 separate Pathfinder projects.  The first as I mentioned is my 'classic monsters' game which will basically be a one-off dungeon crawl over the holidays featuring the who's who of classic D&D monsters.  In addition to that I have decided to get organised and commit to running a 12 part Pathfinder campaign in 2014.  I had the opportunity to do a lot of gaming this year but very little on the RPG side so I'm going to plot out a series of linked games and run them once a month next year.  For that I have decided to use The Witchfire Trilogy by Privateer Press as my foundation, played using the Pathfinder system.

This means that at some point (probably November-ish) the classic monsters will give way to some Warmahordes and pseudo-Warmahordes figures for role-playing.

-Jay

The Third Gnoll

(I bet you thought I forgot about these guys)

There can be a lot of different motivators to get a hobby project done.  Sometimes people rush to get something done for a tournament or campaign, sometimes people are trying to get something done for a painting contest, sometimes it's an RPG and sometimes it's because you can't let yourself start "the next thing" until you finish "the last thing".  And so I circle back around to my gnolls.

Just the other day I received the next batch of figures for my planned 'classic monsters' fantasy RPG (I've firmly decided I'm definitely going to use the Pathfinder rules) which consisted of 6 Pig-Faced Orcs and 2 Rust Monsters from Otherworld Miniatures.  These figs look AMAZING and I can't wait to get started on them but I can't bring myself to get going on them until my gnolls are done.

To that end I painted the third of my 5 gnolls, this one is the cleric of the group.  Following my friend Darren's suggestion I went with grey skin and red fur for a straight from the Monster Manual look.

I think it turned out pretty well, but for the next fig I'm definitely going to go for more of a brown-red for the fur.

If I can get the other 2 gnolls done this weekend I think I'll take a crack at doing the Pig-Faced Orcs as my fantasy unit entry in the Immortal Brush Competition!

-Jay

...oh, and one other thing.  In the same order as the Otherworld fantasy figs I also got 4 of the new Judges on Lawmasters from Mongoose/Warlord.  That means that the same fire that got lit under my butt to finish those gnolls might also get me to finish my last 10 Judges on Lawmasters from the previous generation of Mongoose miniatures.

A new Gnoll Warrior joins the group

I finished my second (of five) Gnolls for my upcoming Pathfinder game.  This is another basic warrior to go along with the first figure.  This time around I decided to go for light coloured flesh and extremely dark fur.  I'm really happy with how the contrast turned out.

One of the side benefits of getting excited about using 'classic D&D' monsters for my upcoming game is that it's gotten me to go back and re-visit some old source material and fiction to establish the tone for my game and I have to say I'm really looking forward to a game that has that back to basics high-fantasy feel.

-Jay

My first Gnoll finally done!

I feel like I've been trying to get paint on this guy forever now, but he's finally come together for me.  My original plan was for him to be a "test model" but the more I thought about it the more I disliked the idea of a coherent looking group of gnolls.  Don't get me wrong I'm sticking with models of a consistent scale based consistently but I'm think I'm going to vary the colours a lot over the group.

While I was waiting for various washes to dry on this guy I got a decent amount of work done on my last 5 Revenant Crew for Scrapheap so hopefully they will be showing up here tomorrow as well.

-Jay

Return to the hobby grab bag

A bunch more stuff in-progress today.

First up 2 items from project scrapheap; the long awaited final 5 Revenant Crew and Skarre herself!  When these models are done all I'll be left to finish are 2 Revenant Crew Cannons and something worth 2 more points.....

....unless I switch gears and add a 4 point unit and drop 1 or 2 other things!  The circle of life came full circle for these Black Ogrun figures last week.  I had bought them during my first go round painting Cryx, decided I wasn't going to paint any non-undead, gave them to my friend Jordan, who also didn't paint them for 4-5 years, and now he's given them back to me!  These guys fit extremely well with my pirate themed force and will give me some punch in a force that has only 1 warjack.  I'm extremely excited to have these.

And last but not least, slow progress continues on the Gnolls.  I've started up my test model and he should be done by tomorrow (hopefully).

I'm also going to working on another project on the side.  This is a bit like Project Scrapheap in that I'm going to by building a force for a game out of some figures I have on hand in-spite of the fact that they are not the 'proper' figures for the game in question.  The idea was inspired by 2 elements; first my buddy Darren showing off his cool Mortis engine, and secondly my realisation that if I'm not going to be using my vast collection of D&D pre-painted undead models for roleplaying then they might be able to do something else for me instead.....

Stay tuned!

-Jay

An encounter with Gnolls (WIP)

I mentioned the other day that I had based up and prepped a pre-Chainmail Gnoll for painting.  Since then I was able to dig up 4 more unique Gnoll miniatures from the Chainmail line to add.  These figures look great, I have a really hard time believing that they are 15 year old figures from a line that failed to catch on!

What's great about the assortment of figures is that I have a couple of basic warrior types along with a ranger (Gnoll warbands are usually led by rangers) and a slightly mutated character (this should show better when they are painted.

Work continues unabated on project scrapheap but I have to say I have been really enjoying this trip down memory lane working up 'classic' D&D monsters.

-Jay

Coming soon to a dungeon (or wilderness setting) near you! ....... OWLBEAR!

The last of my 'almost dones' from the grab bag last week the Owlbear is now ready for the tabletop.

I have to admit it's been quite a few years since I dug out my Chainmail models and I forgot how good the sculpting and casting was on a lot of them.  In hindsight I think the problem I had with the line at the time was that there wasn't a faction that I was excited about from top to bottom, but now that I'm revisiting the figures with an eye towards planning out single encounters I've found there's some classic fantasy stuff in there that from a quality point of view is still over the top.

Now back to Project Scrapheap before I get too distracted by shiny things.

-Jay