Tom Meier goblins

I was taking some photos of these guys for a Facebook group and realised I'd never posted them here.

I must have mentioned before that I'm a big fan of Tom Meier's sculpts and these are among my favourites. They're all originals from the early eighties, so many of them bear the scars of previous battles and healing potions (superglue). 

I repainted them about two years ago with a view to proxying them for the Saxons in a game of Dux Britanniarum that still hasn't happened!

The two larger command figures are more recent sculpts, from Tom's Thunderbolt Mountain range, which for many years I was too intimidated to attempt to paint! 

I am slowly making my way through them, but I really need to be in the right mood to paint them. I won't rush them!

Adira, Dark Champion finished

(See my previous post for details regarding the figure.)

Very nice to paint, the detail is very crisp and the resin is slightly pliable, which may have averted a disaster when I dropped her!

Pretty happy with how she came out, especially the green under-lighting on the tentacle.

Adira, Dark Champion

I bumped into Annie last night, in her shop of all places! Whilst proudly showing off the new ogre female miniatures that she's had beautifully painted by Paul Cubbin, she whipped out  her newly received, hot of the press Adira, Dark Champion 28mm miniature.

Beautifully sculpted and cast in a lightweight, slightly flexible resin that captures the detail extremely well (those of you familiar with Prodos castings will know what I mean), Adira comes with a choice of arms and heads. 

Head one is largely bald with a long flowing top knot, head two has a wonderful barbute style helmet with forward pointing horns that put me in mind of an angry bull!

There is a choice of three arms, a left, a right and an odd. Left and right arms are wafting around a couple of nasty looking axes. I think these will attach in a variety of positions to get some real animation into the pose. What really sold me on this figure though. is the third arm (I use that term advisedly; Octopus tentacles are arms, not legs - see, This blog can be educational too!). 

Ok, this isn't an octopus tentacle by any means. It's a writhing mass of fleshy tendril that ends in a slavering maw. Semantics. It's a real clincher. As soon as I spotted the appendage I knew the figure had to be mine, and I'm proud to say this is the first one sold. I think they're not technically available until the Partizan show this Sunday.

Really looking forward to trying out a few poses this weekend (then I'll try some on the model!) and getting it daubed in paint. 

Watch this space...

Adira, Dark Champion will be available from Bad Squiddo Games very soon. Get yours  quickly there is a limited amount available at the moment.

https://thedicebaglady.net/female-miniatures/
www.badsquiddogames.com

Pesky Orcses

It's been a while since my last post so I thought I'd better put something up in the hope that it'll spur me on to paint something other than sci  fi for a change.

Here are a couple of GW Orcs from their Lord of the Rings range. Lovely characterful models that deserve a bit of time being spent on them.

I'm rather pleased with how the skin turned out on these.

The Companionship of the Necklace.

The Companionship of the Necklace are a non-IP infringing band of adventurers travelling across Bottom Earth in a quest to destroy the One Necklace, forged literally years ago by Big Ron in the fires of Mount Combe in the Land of Unfunny Puns.

Herein are set out their stats for Dragon Rampant as told in the Red Book of Westfebruary.

Dandruff the Wizard. (pictured above)

Light Foot with mixed weapons.

Spellcaster and Blessed Weapon (melee only: the sword Glamrock)

11 points, which breaks the rules, but he is Dandruff...

(Not sure why I went for mixed weapons. I don't like the idea of him throwing little missiles around. We have also banned him from casting Bog Thee, Dragon's Breath and Power Bolt. They are far too flashy for Bottom Earth.)

Harry Horn (Shambler the Ranger).

Elite Foot with missiles.

Blessed Weapon (melee only: the sword Annboleyn)

8 points.

Windermere, man of Pondor.

Heavy Foot.

4 points.

(Dull, but he gets Wall of Spears on account of his shield.)

Lass's Legs, Elf.

Light Missiles with Sharpshooter.

6 points.

(Predictable, that.)

Grumpy, Dwarf.

Bellicose Foot with Shiny Armour.

6 points.

Emo Binbag,

Ham Sammich,

Seedy Book, and 

Tipsy Randybuck, Schnorbbits.

Scouts.

Mystical Armour (Emo's sparkly shirt)  and Blessed Weapon (melee only: the sword Gordon.)

6 points.

The Companionship of the Necklace come in at a mighty 41 points.

I'm not sure I would ordinarily use blessed weapons, them only being useful on a 5+, rolled before the game. With three in the party though, the odds are good that The Companionship will benefit from at least one each game. Last week, Glamrock was working. Unfortunately Dandruff didn't enter melee!

A Dragon Rampant Experiment

Wondering how far the rules to Dragon Rampant could be pushed, this week's game featured the non-IP infringing Companionship of the Necklace, led by Dandruff the wizard, as they battled to escape the Chamber of the Marzipan Bull.

On a 4' square table, a number of single model units and a 4 strong unit of scouts faced a seemingly endless onslaught of full strength units, to see what would happen.

Orcs enter in an uncharacteristicly artistic manner.

The game started with the Companionship arrayed at the east end of the chamber except for the dwarf, Grumpy, who was grieving at the tomb of  Bashful, his cousin and last king of Kazoo-Comb. In game terms, Grumpy starts the game battered.

It mattered not, he soon shook it off and went on a one-dwarf killing spree courtesy of wild charges due to his Bellicose nature. First a troll fell to his axe, then several units of ravenous orcs and a unit of more bellicose orcs. He was in danger of charging out of the chamber and down the corridor!

Lass's Legs the elf also made short work of another unit with his machine gun archery.

Even Dandruff was getting in on the action. His demoralising sonorous tones taking effect on all manner of evil creatures from afar, leaving them battered and confused.

The game was working, but we felt it could be improved. The Companionship were a bit far away to offer much help to Grumpy, should he slip up, and the orcs were getting a bit congested entering the chamber.

We switched to a 3' square board and halved the size of the evil units (whilst retaining full SPs). This also gave a much more aesthetically pleasing game, with more believablely sized fights. The companionship still looked heroic without it being silly. Single models wading through units of 12 is a bit much.

This time it was Harry Horn who kicked things off, downing a troll in one gulp.

Unfortunately, the boss turned up and after a lengthy battle that could have gone either way, the elite unit to fall was the unit formerly known to the hobbits as Shambler.

He was soon avenged by Windermere, who bravely slew the hacked up Uruk who was on his last legs and probably going to expire soon anyway.

We stopped there as time was getting on. The game works well enough and we may well take it in the road. 

I'll be making up some hopefully prettier scenery, so watch this space to see if we're coming to a show near you. Possibly Exeter at the end of April.

Next time I'll be posting the stats we used. 

I'm also open to suggestions for better non-IP infringing names...

MacTavish and Mr Nesbit

Dan Mersey's latest blog post includes rules for the reduced strength unit I painted for him that I was delighted to see made it into the Dragon Rampant book.

You can read the post here: http://merseybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/dragon-rampant-mactavish-and-mr-nesbit.html?m=1

I took a few photos of the pair before I sent them back to Dan. This seems like a good time to share them.