THRUD! THE BARBARIAN!

Usually when I personally talk about gaming nostalgia it's around role-playing rather than miniature games.  The truth is over the years because casting technology and materials have improved so much and most 'popular' items have never truly gone away they just get re-done there hasn't been much in miniature gaming for me to get nostalgic about.  But every rule has its exceptions...

Back in the 80s when I was new to hobby gaming Games Workshop didn't take their IP nearly as seriously as they do today.  It was the time that produced snotlings, and Fighting Fantasy and Blood Bowl and all kinds of fantasy an sci-fi silliness and to be honest I really liked it that way.  On the note when I first started reading White Dwarf there was a comic in it called 'Thrud The Barbarian' which featured a typically meat-headed barbarian character who was cartoonishly out of proportion with the other characters in the story.  Thrud was super fun but I hadn't given him much thought over the past couple of decades.  My affection for plastic RPG miniatures got me into the Zombicide range and low and behold one of the special guest artist packs was by Carl Critchlow and featured Thrud!  I had to have it!

Being a mostly classic fantasy barbarian Thrud is somewhat reminiscent of a variety of Warhammer Quest figures and some Khorne figures I already own, but his helmet is distinctly Thrud and I just had to add him to my collection.

One of the ways in which Thrud stands out from my other barbarian figures is that even by fantasy barbarian miniature standards he is HUGE.  In the picture below he is standing next to a 28mm Chainmail model on a 25mm slotta-base.  You can see how much bigger than normal man-sized he is.  In fact I'm fairly certain that he's roughly the same size as a current Games Workshop ogre.

It was fun to do something new that still scratches that nostalgia itch.  I've got another one-off coming up that's another older GW character but nowhere near as old as Thrud.

-Jay

Mystical abominations (or maybe just goblins?)

Got a few more figures done for an upcoming D&D game and a funny thought occurred to me as I was painting them.  I really love Games Workshop's Lord Of The Rings games and I got The Hobbit Escape From Goblintown when it first came out.  Having said that, I've now painted 33 of the Goblintown miniatures for various games but haven't used a single one to play Lord Of The Rings...weird.

Anyway for my next game I wanted some broken or debased men rather than classic low level monsters.  To that end I decided to re-purpose the goblins from The Hobbit.  This is actually the second time I've done this as I previously painted a dozen of these goblins to use as 'Null-men' for Frostgrave.

It's funny that I've never wanted to sit down and paint all 36 of these goblins at one go because everytime I paint some of them I wish I had painted more.  The sprue comes with 18 separate poses and styles of goblins armed with an assortment of weapons.  These are absolutely tremendous figures and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for any kind of CHUDs for their fantasy gaming.

I also need 2 "big bads" for my game and for the muscle component I wanted something larger than a character model but not quite into ogre/troll size range.  Once more my Zombicide Black Plague box stepped up and offered up the Abomination.

This figure is exactly what I was looking for as its big and scary without looking like something that would be way beyond the capacity of my low (1st) level adventuring party.  It's kind of a zombie/flesh-golem hybrid that I can stat out myself.

That should have me all caught up on figs I need for RPGs for the next couple of weeks, now its on to pig-men!

-Jay

Zombicide - Baldric

Baldric is another of the protagonist models for Zombicide Black Plague.  Many of the characters in Black Plague are grounded in historic medieval themes but Baldric is one of the more fantastically themed characters.  I don't recall any of his background text specifically calling him a wizard but that is what he is.

Baldric is an extremely well executed sculpt that feels very Gandalf-inspired.  From his flowing robes and long beard to the inclusion of a large (especially by wizard standards) sword.  The only bit missing to make him another Gandalf would be the pointy hat.

Much like my last post with the necromancer Baldric will be seeing his first action as a Druid in my Ravenloft game.  I also have to say now that I've painted him I'm really happy with how both figures look with brown robes, it's too easy and too much of a default to paint all evil wizards in black robes.  The necromancer is still a little skull and horn heavy to pass as a good wizard but I feel Baldric would work well in both roles.

I'm suddenly starting to feel a lot closer to being able to actually play Black Plague.  I may need to get off my butt and re-base those first zombies I painted last year...

-Jay

Necro....Druid.....?

Still painting Zombicide Black Plague but I've gone back to the real reason I bought the game; to use the miniatures for other games.

Black Plague has this really cool Necromancer figure but to be honest as a longtime Warhammer Undead player I have piles of Necromancer miniatures done already.  So instead I'll be using him as one of the three male druid miniatures I need for my next game session running Curse Of Strahd.

I'm actually hoping to get another Druid done tonight so I can work on a few This Is Not A Test figures tomorrow.

-Jay

Zombicide - Homer

Another addition to the growing Zombicide Black Plague player pool; Homer!

Homer is another lightly armoured figure, in fact in 30+ years of painting and collecting figures for D&D this might be my first model wearing ringmail.  In Zombicide Homer is another character who's background is not that he is a warrior and he is in fact a simple woodsman.

The truth is Homer is slightly off-plan for me (I don't 'need' him for my current game) but I had him primed and based and I wanted to get something done after work today.

My next 2 fantasy figures (if I stay on plan) need to be an armoured warrior/paladin type and one or more sinister looking druids.

-Jay

Zombicide - Nelly

Last year I started painting the zombies that came in Zombicide Black Plague with the intention of using them for my other fantasy games.  In the same vein I want to use the player models from the game as well as they  fill a few niches that I don't think are particularly well represented in my current figure collection.

I've been a huge fan of fantasy fiction and fantasy gaming for years but there has traditionally been a fairly significant disconnect in the depiction of characters in books or movie and the depiction of similar characters in miniature form.

For starters although "knights in shinning armour" is certainly an accepted archetype in fantasy fiction when you actually read books or watch TV shows or movies the heroes of these types of stories are rarely the armoured tanks we represent them as in miniature largely for the practical reasons that it would be borderline impossible to function in most situations in full plate armour coupled with the fact that even if the wearer was in peak physical condition they would be fatigued in minutes.  So over the next few weeks I'm going to be adding some more lightly armoured (picture the Starks from Game Of Thrones) fighter types to my collection.

My next (personal) frustration with fantasy figures is the idea that most intellectual characters (wizards, priests, etc) are old.  I covered this subject a year or two ago but my quest for young adult academically inclined miniatures continues.  Thankfully the Frostgrave line of miniatures which includes apprentices with all their wizards seems to be going a long way towards scratching that itch for me.

The final group is probably the most contentious in the hobby gaming community but has been less urgent for me personally (because I usually either paint my own characters, or monsters when I DM) but is one that I need to address; female-non-cheesecake-models.  Its long been an issue that the depiction of female characters in fantasy art and models are ludicrously over-sexualized.  Historically I had never given the subject much thought (sorry, honestly I just hadn't) but when I have female players in my gaming groups or have to get a human female NPC model I feel like the personal challenge I'm facing is whether or not I'm participating in a respectable hobby or just something totally juvenile.  At the end of the day everyone is more than entitled to enjoy their games anyway they choose but for me I think I need to evolve past the chainmail-bikinis and go with depictions I'm more comfortable with.

So, back to Zombicide!  One of the things that really appealed to me about the initial heroes released with Zombicide Black Plague is that for the most part they looked like heroic ideals of fantasy adventurers who none-the-less looked like they could actually move and fight in their gear.  For my current Ravenloft game I need a female figure who is a competent fighter and an active participant in combat but who is not a professional warrior by trade.  Say hello to Nelly.

One of the cool things about Zombicide Black Plague is that it retains some of the original Zombicide survival vibe by not only including full-time professional soldiers and survivalists but also including civilian types who have taken up arms and are the smart and/or tough enough portions of the populace to survive the outbreak.

I'm looking forward to painting more of these characters and hopefully also getting more of the zombies and other critters done to use across multiple game systems.

-Jay

The return of the black plague!

After being away for the weekend when I got back I wanted to wrap up something fairly quick and easy and I've had these 7 figures mostly done for over a month.

I still haven't played Zombicide Black Plague but my intention is that I bought the box  for the figures which I am basically using for other games.  To maintain continuity with my Frostgrave and D&D models I cut these figures off their flat bases and re-based them on cobblestones.  Now that I've done that I'll probably go back and re-base the first 21 zombies I did from this set to match.

I've got a Hobbit/Lord Of The Rings itch I need to scratch so it might be a few more days before I circle back to the superheroes.

-Jay

A little bit of housekeeping

I wanted to put up a few odds and ends today that I finished a couple of weeks ago and never thought to post as well as update something that I'm going to be fixing/changing.

Quite awhile back I ordered a Reaper Bones Golem to do up as my Golem for Hunt The Golem for Frostgrave.  I never got around to playing through that scenario pack and given that Into The Breeding Pits is now looming in the horizon I may not for some time, however I was able to lend it to some friends to use so at least he's seen a tabletop now.

I started off going super basic on my golem with grey stone and a wash but that honestly looked a little too flat.  I went back and added a few metallic elements and gave the clothing a light green wash over the existing stone colour just to  make it a bit more visually interesting.

Next up I finished my next 7 zombies from Zombicide Black Plague.  I'm really enjoying these figures and now that I have 3 of the variants done they don't look quite so repetitive on the tabletop.  Having said that thought now that I have a decent number of them finished (21 so far) and I've actually use them a few times I've run into a different issue.

Their basing, or lack thereof.  Originally I was content to just paint them up and leave the bases plain as that worked okay for the board game.  Now that I'm using them with other miniatures it's the one thing that makes them look a bit weak.  I've decided this week to go back and chop them all off their bases and remount them on cobblestone bases like my current D&D and Frostgrave minis which should also make them look more coherent when I blend them into my Age Of Sigmar Army.

For my cobblestone bases I have been using a 1" punch to punch out textured plasticard and then trimming it to fit on top of standard 25mm bases.

I'll paint up 21 of these this week and then pin my existing models onto the finished bases.  That should hopefully finally dispel the obvious fact that they are board game pieces being re-purposed for war-gaming.

Now what to do next......

-Jay

  

...the horde grows....

Last night/early this morning I got my next 7 Zombicide: Black Plague zombies done.

Not really much to say this time out, followed the same plan as last time and got all 7 of them done in about 90 minutes.

I have a few lingering projects done I need for some games in 10 days so I'm going to take a break from the horde for a few days and circle back to  some games and figures from a  few months ago.

-Jay

Yet another zombie horde begins assembling

A couple of months (wow, has it been that long?  I'm really falling behind on my painting!) ago I picked up Zombicide: Black Plague.  To be honest I picked it up with no intention of ever playing the game, it just seemed like a really good source of fantasy zombie models as well as some cool adventurers.

I've decided to paint the zombies in batches of 7.  That might seem like an odd number but the way the game comes packaged there are 7 or each pose in the game so it just kind of makes sense.  For my first batch I did one of the fairly straight-forward male zombie variants.

I'm pretty happy with how these turned out and I have to say for boardgame models the quality and the quality of the material seems really high.

At this point I'm planning on using these for my Ravenloft game (which starts tonight!) as well as loaning them out for a Frostgrave campaign day I may or may not be able to participate in.

In a perfect world I'll get a few more of these done this week.....so let's just see if the world is perfect.....

-Jay