Friday 17 February 2017

From KeithS: Monsters...and A Call for Help (69 Points)

First up this week are a small selection of larger monsters.  I'm shifting over to providing some foes to my many adventurers!


The group shot:


The main ones I wanted to do were these two Minotaurs by Grenadier.  Both are around 40mm and well sculpted - lots of personality!  They're fancy chaps, too, with nice armor and weapons.  One might get used for D&D this weekend.

The shield on the right is really nice - a bull that looks like its breathing fire (a D&D Gorgon?).  For the left, I was out of ideas and simply made a spiral to represent a maze.  Meh, but I guess it'll do.

 Another angle.
Also up were this pair of Ogres.  Both are about 35mm high.  Neither are super special, but they fill a need nicely for gaming purposes.

From the back.  I did the right guy with red hair for no special reason, except that I felt like a little variety and all browns was making Keith a dull boy.

The last of my half-dozen was this Ettin (41mm) and...I have no idea what!  The Ettin is straightforward for a guy with two heads.  The right guy though is totally unknown to me.  He looks like a giant Orc (about 34mm tall) but with a Mongol-style moustache.

His shield was interesting and reminded me of something from Minas Morgul, as it was a leering moon face.  So, I did a sickly green color to weird it up a bit.  If anyone knows who made it, or what it is, let me know (I covered up the base markings of course - dummy that I am).

Last and late, I knocked off these two spiders from Ral Partha.  One was mine from their last Kickstarter, the other was my dad's set from the same Kickstarter.  I didn't really need more spiders at the moment, but they were quick and easy.  I have a pile of similar ones that serve as goblin cavalry, which I will be painting at some point (those should be fun).



Last weekend, I got an emergency broadcast from a friend looking for a 28mm scale wagon for a game of Harn (yes, people actually play Harn and don't just write endless essays on the fascinating crop rotation system of Dumdurdum Manor, or the family tree of Clan Umptifratz and its 37 cousins).  Good news, I had a wagon in that scale from Perry, though I'd not got around to finishing it.


Bad news, it needed some work (and there were no instructions on finishing it):




Yeah, it was a real pain, worse than I think it should've been.  However, the end result was most acceptable.

The worst part, by far, was the four oxen.  I glued on their heads, then realized that the yokes did not fit over their heads, so I had to yank the heads off.  Then, I had to paint the heads and bodies separately, paint the yokes, put the yokes in place, then glue the heads on.  Once that was done, I had to fill in the gaps between head an body and do touch up painting -- with the bloody yokes constantly in the way, and the dumb oxen right next to each other.  A serious, serious pain!  It was all I could do to not throw the stupid things across the room!


You'll note there are no bases on the oxen, either.  After doing all this work, I realized my little basing plan did not work with bases on the oxen, so I had to cut the bases off, then repaint and touch them up before gluing to the base I'd made.  Not much fun.  Meanwhile, the drover and family proved to be less troublesome, though with no bases it was annoying to paint them, too.


The wagon is designed to be laden or empty, as desired.



Before finishing the base, I managed to get it far along enough for the game.  Here it is, being escorted by the party and a knight across a desolate forest area.  A stranger knight is approaching.


But, bandits attacked at a ford, leading to an ugly little skirmish for the party (there were a lot more bandits shortly after this pic was taken, though my gal taking up the rear of the convoy took the one bugger visible to the right out after a short scrap).


I defer to the authorities to score this mess, as it is all sorts of stuff I'm not used to!  Overall it fit a bunch of very practical needs for gaming and I am quite pleased with the outcome.  I suspect I will be following up with yet more monsters in the near future...


Hi again Keith! Another motley collection, good to keep up the Friday tradition. That pair of minotaurs are great sculpts and came out great. And that wagon, well it might have been a pain to build, but it looks the business all painted and based up, the perfect objective for your bandits to rob, or to be guarded by your City Watch from a few weeks ago. 

Really nice gaming setup too, great to see that. Are those the BattleFront rivers?  

Scoring-wise: 40mm infantry for the minotaurs, 28mm for the rest, with the spiders scored half points because they're a). simple b). diddy anbd c). lkook like the quivalent of a prone mini. The wagon, I'll score as a 28mm vehicle, plus the three 'crew'. 
*Makes sacrifice to the Deities of Arithmetic* I make that 69 points! 

Phil 

 




11 comments:

  1. Great looking beasties Keith and I do like the wagon too!

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  2. Great collection of old skool bad guys. I like the wagon,it should have many uses on table.

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  3. Nice monsters and I agree about the wagon I'm building it at the moment and only just realised the yokes had to go on before the heads, apparently it's an easier build than their horse drawn wagon from the same range! Smashing finish on it btw.
    Best Iain

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  4. Woah, that is an excellent peasant wagon, Keith! Great job on grinding through with the build. Fabulous stuff.

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  5. I always find the harder the miniature is to figure out how to assemble... there's even worse pictures on the seller's website to try to help you figure out what goes where! Yours came out really well!

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  6. I remember that two-headed ettin from my teenage D&D days in the late 1970s. Hadn't thought about him in years. Wow. All your stuff looks great, bit I love the minotaur with the maze on the shield - with apologies to Futurama, you could call him Hypnotaur.
    Good on you for finishing the wagon.

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  7. Man these characters are great to behold, brings one right back to the days of yore and some serious AD&D

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  8. The wagon looks really sweet, Keith! I quite like the fantasy figures too. The minotaur figures and the ginger being my favorites! ;)

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