The Exiled Dead

 It's been a little way since I got paint on any miniatures but as luck would have it I had a box of miniatures that I have stats for in 3 different games (and they also feel like they'll fit great in RPGs as well).  Say hello to The Exiled Dead!

These figures are a Warhammer Underworlds release, but I had forgotten that I had gotten a White Dwarf awhile back that also had their stat cards for Warcry, and like most (all?) Underworlds releases their rules for Age Of Sigmar are available for free online.  In addition to their intended Games Workshop uses I feel like these would be a great as constructs in the Ravenloft domain of Lamordia.

I got The Exiled Dead from my friendly local game store, please remember to support your FLGS as well.

Thanks for checking in.

-Jay

Some more horrific odds and ends

Over the Christmas season I got started on a lot of different projects and didn't get around to finishing any of them because of...reasons?

First up I figured I could use more ghost-pants for my upcoming Ravenloft game and really wanted to finally get around to painting my Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire figures so I painted up the first three members of the Thorns Of The Briar Queen.

I really like these figures.  Obviously they're designed in the same style as the Age Of Sigmar Chain Rasps but they have a lot of individual character, as well as some fantastically detailed bases.

The other things I've begun thinking about is where my Ravenloft adventurers will be headed after Forfar.  I haven't decided yet, but if they end up in Lamordia, I think I'm ready.

These are the current WizKids Flesh Golems.  Historically Flesh Golems have been difficult figures to come by as many manufacturers tend to make them really over-sized.  What's nice about these figures is that they are larger than a 'normal' human but not unnaturally over-sized.  I'm honestly not decided yet on whether or not Lamordia will follow immediately on Forfar but if it does this should be a good start.

Next up, some solo adventuring!

-Jay

Return Of The Spooky Ghost Pants!

It's been a busy holiday season this year and I've fallen behind on a few hobby projects but I did manage to get one more model done that's going to do double duty in my Age Of Sigmar and Ravenloft games.

The Dread Warden!

The Dread Warden is a unit champion for my Age Of Sigmar army, and he also ticks two boxes for my upcoming Ravenloft game; he's ghosty, and he's got a magical light....more on that soon.

I'm hoping this isn't my last post of 2019 just yet but the passage of time seems distorted in both the lands of the mists and the lands of southern Ontario so we'll see how quickly the next three days go by.

-Jay

Banshees

The unbelievably slow march of the ghost-pants continues.  This afternoon in preparation for a Ravenloft module I'm planning to run I painted a box of the Age Of Sigmar Myrnmourn Banshees.

The Banshees themselves were quite simple and straightforward to paint.  The real work on these models is their bases.  Each base had an assortment of rubble, weeds and roses on them.  It's well thought out because the bases seem to blend in fairly well with the Garden Of Morr scenery piece.

I'm excited about getting these models on the table soon.  Now I just have to figure out which game they'll be playing in first!

-Jay

Labyrinth Of Thorns (contains encounter spoilers)

This past Monday (Family Day here in Canada) I got together and ran a group of friends through Ashley Warren's excellent adventure; Labyrinth Of Thorns.

I'm playing in a couple of semi-regular D&D games but this particular group has basically been getting together to play holiday themed one-offs.  We started coming out of Christmas playing Winter's Splendor (also by Ashley Warren) and after thoroughly enjoying it and looking for a Valentine's themed adventure we were all super-happy to find a suitable Valentine adventure written by the same author.

If I can get slightly review-y for a minute I'd just like to start off by saying that Labyrinth Of Thorns is an excellent adventure.  It's contained to a specific fixed area which keeps players from going too far afield from their central goal, has a fantastic villain with cleared defined motives, and has really vivid flavour text and descriptions that make it easy and rewarding for both DMs and players to immerse themselves in the story.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Labyrinth Of Thorns to anyone looking for a terrific and rewarding adventure that mixes puzzles and problem solving with some challenging combat encounters.  It's available on DMs Guild.

Now on to the figures (because I'm me and that's my thing).  Obviously I can't show figures without potentially spoiling some of the encounters so.....spoilers ahead.

First up we have our intrepid band of adventurers.

I didn't paint most of these models, and unfortunately Kim's Gnome Sorcerer got a bit washed out by my flash but as you can pretty much figure out this was a pretty motley collection of "heroes". 

As an aside the funniest moment for me when the characters introduced themselves was that I was suddenly struck by the fact that my friend Jay's half-orc Ranger was pretty much Dan Harmon's character from HarmonQuest, which was only made more funny when Jay told us he didn't watch HarmonQuest and really wasn't familiar with the characters on it.

One of the first encounters was with a group of Vine Blights.

I'm super excited about WizKids doing Blight models as I have needed them forever for Curse Of Strahd and forgot how prominently they featured in The Sunless Citadel as well.  I basically painted the models brown, then green washed them, then gave them a drybrush of their original brown colour.  Simple but effective and really quick to get done.

One of the next encounters was with a Harpy.

I really struggled with this one  as I generally paint miniatures with an eye to using them in games with my daughter so  prefer more of a PG look and vibe to my figures but the Harpy choices available on short notice were this Reaper miniature or basically nothing.  I'm happy with how she turned out but if I was going to run this adventure again I would probably invest some time into replacing this miniature.

One of my favourite encounters and some of my favourite models to paint for this adventure were the 3 Spectres.

For the Spectres I used some of my Age Of Sigmar miniatures along with the technical paints Games Workshop produced specifically for painting ethereal miniatures.  Not only do I really like the look and feel of these miniatures, it was a great reminder that I should go back and paint some more ghost-pants for my Age Of Sigmar games.

Not every encounter in the adventure is meant to be hostile and the players were able to enlist the help of a sympathetic ghost named Ophira.

Ophira showed up with the intention of warning the group off from their encounter with the Spectres but one of them jumped the gun and they started mixing it up right away.  She was however able to help the group in their final battle before unceremoniously meeting her end.

And finally the adventure's big-bad(s); Rafael The Paladin and his pet Chimera.

These were also really fun and rewarding miniatures to paint and are from Reaper's Bones line.  Rafael is a really cool sword-and-board style warrior and instead of the colour choices listed in the text of the adventure I chose to paint him to match my cleric and paladin of Trithereon with the thought that I could possibly use them as the core of a warband in another game down the road.

The Chimera was another 'classic' D&D monster I didn't have in my collection so it felt great to finally get one done.  This figure was a bit of a surprise for me because when I looked at it in the pack the detail looked a little soft but as soon as I started to get paint on it I realised it actually had a lot of deep texture on it.  I'm really glad to add the Chimera to my repertoire of D&D monsters.

And there you have it.  A well written adventure, populated by some pretty cool miniatures enjoyed by a  great group of players.  That just simply felt like D&D done right!

Now I guess this means I need to start looking for an Easter themed adventure?

-Jay

Goodbye Shadespire.....Hello Nightvault!

I think I just had one of those feel good/bad moments.  I feel great because I finally got my Shadespire stuff done, but on the other hand given that the whole thing probably only took me three hours from start to finish I feel a bit crappy about these guys having sat on my painting desk primed and ready for a year without getting touched.

My full force of seven models is now done for the Sepulchral Guard.

I really like these as some characterful undead models and I hope that in addition to Warhammer Underworlds Games Workshop continues on with the practise of providing some more of their models with textured bases.  They saved me tons of time and hassle and in my opinion really look good on the finished pieces.

Having painted my three petitioners yesterday my additions today were three of the 'named' heroes for the Sepulchral Guard.

First up, The Harvester

Next we have The Prince Of Dust

And finally The Champion

As much as I painted these for the purpose of playing Warhammer Underworlds I'm sure they'll show up in some other games as well.  How could they not?  They're probably the nicest skeleton models that I own.

-Jay

I better get my Shadespire stuff done before Nightvault comes out

Games Workshop has been teasing season 2 of their Warhammer Underworlds game; Nightvault.  When Shadespire initially came out I wasn't really all that excited.  It looked like a decent enough game but playing miniatures on a board wrapped in a competitive-play style just isn't really my thing.
After watching my friends play for about a year and seeing more spring up around the game as well as the new starter having some more undead for Age Of Sigmar in it I've decided to jump in.

Having said that, even though I didn't play Shadespire I did pick up the Sepulchral Guard figures.  Now that I'm looking at new figures its made me aware that these have been sitting unpainted for a year and and I should get off my butt and paint them before the new figures come out next week.
The Sepulchral Guard set is only seven figures and I did paint one of them (The Sepulchral Warden) in December last year.  Of the six remaining figures there are three unique characters and three  similar figures called the Petitioners, I decided to start with the Petitioners.

At their core the Petitioners are basically nice new sculpts of the basic Warhammer skeletons. They were fairly easy to paint with a little dry-brushing and some washes going a very long way.

That's four of the seven models done.  If I can get the other three done this week I won't have to feel bad about getting the Nightvault models.

-Jay

The Ghouls that no one loved...

Yesterday I mentioned that I was participating in Black Knight Games Call To Arms event.  The goal is to get 2000 points painted by the end date (which I really should check into in).  The night I was invited to join I hadn't really seen the hot new Malignant models so I planned to just do a vanilla flavoured Death army.  I headed down to the store with a clutch of 20 Ghouls to paint thinking that would be a good start.  I managed to finish them the other day and then just decided to accept the fact that they're going to sit in a figure case and probably not be part of of my current/new Age Of Sigmar army.

Having said that I'm still happy to have painted 20 more.  I can always use more ghouls for lots of different games I play.

I painted these the same way I painted the ghouls I painted for my advent calendar over Christmas which is coincidentally the same way I painted my last 2 batches of Escape From Goblintown goblins. 

Depending on how things go these may turn up as allies in my Malignant force.  I'm actually also seriously considering some Dryads as allies and going with a haunted forest vibe.  We'll have to see if I ever actually make a firm decision.

-Jay

The first of many ghost-pants!

Age Of Sigmar's second edition just came out last week and as much as I enjoyed my time playing the first edition of the game the truth is I didn't actually play all that many games.  I liked the simplified system and thought the new background was cool but the truth is none of the new armies really 'grabbed' me.  The models were well sculpted and well executed but I've always been a fan of a fairly traditional classic take on fantasy and the admittedly exciting new direction Games Workshop was going in just didn't strike any particular nerves with me.

One of my local games stores, Black Knight Games in Hamilton, is running and event called A Call To Arms which is basically an event geared towards collecting and painting an army.  It coincidentally kicked off shortly before the release of the new box set and being traditionally an Undead player the new Malignants were the first collection for the game I was really excited about.  So here I go!

Ahead of the arrival of my new starter box I got my grubby hands on a Nighthaunt box with comes with; 3 Spirit Hosts, 5 Hex Wraiths & 1 Cairn Wraith.  I was eager to try out the new Hexwraith Flame technical paint so I decided to start by painting the Spirit Hosts which had the most ghosty bits to try it out on.

Let me start off with two product opinions.  First up whoever designed and tooled the Spirit Host models is one of history's greatest monsters.  I have built TONS of models over the last 30+ years and I genuinely don't remember the last time I struggled so much to build any models (let alone plastic models).  They weren't very stable to work with during construction and the instruction sheets provided were confusing and barely helpful.  Even though I'm basically happy with the end result I can't imagine ever building another unit of these again.  On the flip-side the Hexwraith Flame technical paint was AWESOME!  It was incredibly easy to use, performed exactly the way I thought it would  and (in my opinion) got a terrific result.  My immediate reaction to using it was to start looking through boxes of unpainted models for more ghost I could paint ASAP.  The stuff is great and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants or needs to paint any ghost models.

For my Spirit Hosts I started by prepping the models bases by using a green stuff roller to put cobblestones across their bases.  This is the basing I've decided to go with across my entire Malignant army.  I primed white then gave the entire models a coat of Hexwraith Flame.  After that was dry I drybrushed P3 Frostbite over all the ghosty bits.  The weapons are Boltgun Metal with an Agrax Earthshade wash.  The cobbles are Skevenblight Dinge with a Dwanstone drybrush and a Nuln Oil wash.

Overall I'm happy with how they turned out and I'm looking forward to painting more ethereal models over the rest of this month.

-Jay

Played D&D early 90s style today

I played my first game of D&D around an actual physical table in awhile today and had a blast.
I ran a short 1 session game with three of the guys I used to play with a lot in the early to mid-90s so the whole experience had the added fun of feeling like getting the band back together again.

I wanted to buck some expectations from my group so I had 3 goals/themes in mind:
1.  No undead
2.  The whole adventure would happen outside during daylight hours
3.  None of the "bad guys" would actually be evil

The group was charged by the Chief of a small village to investigate recent animal attacks around their village.  The took a local hunter with them and headed off to find the source of the disturbances and hopefully track down the village's missing Shaman.  Their first day's exploration brought them into contact with an Owlbear who nearly decimated the party.  If not for their NPC's luck with his magic bow it could have been a TPK in the first encounter!
After surviving the Owlbear encounter they were set upon twice by small animated treemen who they were very successful in sending off without too much difficulty.
The final encounter was the discovery that the village's Shaman was basically an eco-terrorist who was also in league with the hunter who had led them to his cottage.  Two of the three PCs were killed in the final encounter but a good time seemed to have been had by all.

For this adventure I recycled 2 existing models, using my Darksword Owlbear for the initial terrifying foray into the woods as well as a Frostgrave Necromancer apprentice as the village Shaman Yunel.

In addition I painted 6 new figs for today's adventure.

First up Ragnar the Ranger and his Owl animal companion Herne.

Ragnar and Herne turned out to be two of the antagonists of the story but although the player's had been suspicious the whole game they weren't sure until the final encounter.

I also painted 4 Games Workshop Dryads to use as 'forest spirits'.

I slightly modified the Twig Blight stats from the monster manual to make them a bit beefier and more threatening but due to my bad luck with the die rolls for these particular monsters the PCs walked all over them anyway.

At the conclusion of the adventure the players had levelled up twice and were able to affect a somewhat dodgy resurrection that should lead them through a magic mirror to A Red And Pleasant Land for their next adventure.

-Jay
 

Monster Manual Advent Calendar - Day 20

Lich/Demi-Lich

Oops.  I definitely hit a wall and missed a few days there, sorry about that.

Today's addition feels a bit like it straddles the line between the Lich and the Demi-Lich.  The Lich is an ancient wizard who has used magic to grant himself a sort of immortality but in comparison to many other immortal creatures the Lich's immortality is a bit cheap and second-rate.  Although Liches are extremely powerful spell-casters they are also undead and not even vaguely human anymore. 

Liches have long been a staple high-level boss monster in D&D due to the fact that even if they are completely destroyed, if the vessel they have placed their soul in is still intact they can remake themselves and return to torment their 'destroyers'.  They are an easy go to for a recurring villain in any campaign.

For my Lich I've gone a bit outside the box and used Games Workshop's new Wraith model.  Truthfully this model is a bit more ghosty and insubstantial than a traditional Lich but I really like the skull and general feeling of malevolence this figure  projects.

-Jay

Monster Manual Advent Calendar - Day 13

BANSHEE!

The Banshee is one of the classic old school monsters that I have actually used in a fair number of games.
They were background characters in any adventure/story involving our good friend Lord Soth as well as being featured in one of the first third party D20 adventures I ever purchased and ran (the name escapes me at the moment).

The Banshee's key ability beyond its ghostly touch and terrifying presence is that its wail can outright drop a PC to 0 hit points with one failed saving throw.  Its yet another potentially instantly lethal monster.

This Banshee model is by Games Workshop and I have to say I really like it.  Its got some rotting clothes and a gaunt face to highlight its undead nature in addition to being posed like its floating rather than walking.  I can't help but feel there some inspiration from Galadriel here which is why I choose most of the colours I did.  My only break with that was red hair to both give the model some contrast and because there's a certain 'forlorn' castle I might want to use this fig with for a D&D game down the road.

-Jay

Advent Calendar - Day 9

Dire Wolf

Over the years one of the things I had struggled with is finding good models for Dire Wolves (or just wolves in general).  A ton of companies have made wolves over the years but for some reason they always strike me as much too small for Dire Wolves.  As an added irony most miniature companies (in my opinion anyway) scale their dog miniatures way too big which means that a wolf model comes off as even smaller.

About 5 years ago I found some pre-painted D&D miniatures of Dire Wolves that were PERFECT.  They filled a 25mmx50mm base and were roughly the same height and mass as a Games Workshop warhorse.  Those were fun but I need more and different wolves as well.

The Dire Wolves in Games Workshop's current range are a bit more like zombie wolves and although I really like their uniqueness they didn't fit with my image of a Dire Wolf for old school RPGs.  I wanted a giant furry but still living wolf.  Luckily for me Games Workshop actually makes exactly what I'm looking for in their Warhammer 40,000 range; the Fenrisian Wolves.

These wolves are huge!  They are slightly bigger than the pre-painted wolves I had from before but in addition they are far better sculpted and have much crisper detail.  I painted the first one in my traditional 'evil' wolf scheme but might try some wintery colours down the road on more wolves.

-Jay

Advent Calendar - Day 7

Wraith

Today's entry is the flip-side of the coin versus my Death Knight from a few days ago.  There have been a number of Wraith models from various miniature companies over the years for RPGs but I've found pretty much all of them to be pretty underwhelming, Games Workshop went with a 'Grim-Reaper' take on the basic Wraith idea and I've always liked it the best.

Full disclosure I actually painted this figure before the start of the month but after Darren suggested the idea so he's already seen the game table in an Age Of Sigmar skirmish game but I still think he'll get double-duty in fantasy role-playing games as well.

-Jay

Advent Calendar Day-4

Death Knight

It seems like tradition (for my anyway) that any advent calendar has something in it that is at least mildly disappointing, today's addition is unfortunately that thing for me.

I wanted to add a Death Knight and not finding any great actual Death Knight models readily available I turned to the Games Workshop's undead line and chose their fantastic looking Wight Lord model.  The Wight Lord hits (as a Death Knight) on everything I'm looking for; armoured, regal, conveys might beyond a skeleton, crisp excellent detail...but there was one REALLY obvious thing missing to me; he's not Lord Soth.

Death Knights have existed in D&D since the beginning but with the release of Dragonlance in the late 80s Lord Soth became THE Death Knight.  In addition to featuring heavily in Dragonlance  fiction and modules Soth was eventually dropped into my personal favourite setting Ravenloft where he got two more novel and another published module.  There are certain characters who become so iconic (if I say "wizard" don't we all picture Gandalf in our minds?) that even when there are other versions of that same character you somehow just can't move past the image of the 'alpha' version.

Although my plan from inception with this project was that these models would be used for D&D this might be the one figure I can't quite muster putting on the table and declaring what he is because I can't shake the feeling my players will feel and think what I feel and think.  If he fails to see the table as a Death Knight in any of my games I'm sure he can return to his intended purpose as an Age Of Sigmar hero where I can appreciate him for how perfect he is rather being hung up on my own image of what a Death Knight should look like.

-Jay