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Still no good shots of the Otherworld Ettercaps, not sure what the issue is, but in the meantime my much more talented player took some snaps of the minis I had been working on. My players have been trekking through the wilderness for the last 5-6 sessions. I know a lot of people consider this sort of thing boring, but I really think travel should mean something in a fantasy world, so I detail the route and roll for encounters every 4 hours of overland travel. Since they were in a wild, mountainous region I wanted some chaotic beasties to be roaming, hence the Chimera from the previous post.

I have had a Dragon Ogre Shaggoth since it first came out, but I was always too intimidtated to paint it. At first it was for my Beastmen army, now long sold, and then I planned on using it in a Chaos army for Warhammer 8th edition, before I got fed up with that game. I finally painted him up a couple of weeks ago. He had lost his horns, so I replaced them with some plastic horns from a chaos spawn, and he was also missing one of his forelegs, so I used the long fingers from a demon prince and some putty to recreate it. I wanted to do something to signal to my players that he had some lightning powers, so I did the lightning effect on his axe. This was a super memorable battle, with the Dragon Ogre sitting on a bridge spanning a gorge in the mountains, demanding payment in magic items. The players used Confusion on it and managed to beat it without too much trouble, but it was an interesting fight and they were very eager to steal the axe. I think if you make a random encounter something exciting like this, it helps to make travel meaningful. I still want to do some touch ups on this guy, like where his hand meets the axe haft, but overall I am very happy with him, I think I have really done the gorgeous model justice this time!


In case anyone wants to use a Shaggoth in their game, I found some rules online that I adapted to make this a classic Warhammer Dragon Ogre for Dungeons and Dragons.


Will throw up the Mountain King later.

Quite brilliant, excellent work.

That guy looks really cool and intimidating.

Thanks! I am very happy with him.
I meant to paint a bunch of Winter Elves this weekend, but I was feeling under the weather and decided to assemble the Start Collecting Lizardmen set I had in the cupboard instead. The new carnosaur kit goes together really well, I always loved the old one but I sold it off. Very happy with the plastic replacement. The coolest thing I did was use the Lustria Online tutorial to make an Astrolith Bearer. Not D&D related but I figure I may as well post it here:


I also got a hankering for Heroquest, and have decided that I will celebrate the 30th anniversary of the game that introduced me to fantasy gaming and dungeons next year by reconstructing my own set. I have most of the minis required, and plan on scaling up the board to 25.4mm per square and printing it out onto a game board I will make myself, making my own dice, printing the cards and using suitable miniatures to recreate the game. The only mini I could not easily source was the Fimir, but I managed to find a 3D printer file with scans of the minis. My school's design teacher wanted something to print to show the capabilities to his class, so I sent him the file and he printed a Fimir for me:

He is still encased in his supports here, but with some difficulty I managed to cut him out:





Some of the detail came out a bit shallow, but it was not exactly mindblowing on the original figures. I have ordered some resin "not Fimir" heads and tails that I plan on attaching to Savage Orcs, but this is a cool nostalgia kick for me - the original Fimir minis absolutely fascinated me as a kid.

That's awesome and exciting about you starting on a Hero Quest project. Makes me want to get back and do more stuff Hero Quest related too. Other than the Chaos Warrior, the fimir was my favorite monster as a kid. I'm curious to see these "not fimir" head and tails you ordered. They are the most unique monster in the game, I've never seen any mini that can stand in for them.

Neat! i like those old fimirs, i still have a couple of surviving ones from hero quest around

Jealous! I never actually owned the game - my next door neighbour had it, and I only got to play it about 3 times. I always wanted to be the bad guy wizard and control all the cool monsters!

I was three years younger than said neighbour, and he and my brother were best friends. When he went on holidays, I was so heroquest mad that I suggested we could use the spare key to their house to go in and play the game together without him. I protested that we would put everything back properly afterward. My brother was unimpressed with my suggestion! So Heroquest is really a bit of an unrequited hobby love for me. Been chasing that dragon with all my descent and dungeon saga stuff here. I think Dungeon Saga is an alright successor except that it requires 4 heroes for balance, which is too fiddly for my wife, who is my main opponent. I think heroquest is more her style.

It was a lot of fun, my sisters and i would play it all the time as kids, with my dad as the dm. sadly we also treated it as kids do, so there's not much left of the game now.

Good luck with the project!

The lightning axe on the Shaggoth looks fantastic, nicely done!

@King Thor: Thanks! That was the first time I have tried something like that. I am happy with how it came out. The trouble is, now I am tempted to get a Beastmen Start Collecting and make an army out of my Gors + Shaggoth!

@Amazingturtles: Yeah, it is a great game for kids or non wargamers due to it's simplicity.

I always wanted that Shaggoth model, but the price was way too high for me. Nicely done. You should definitely think about a beast an army, but check out the news and rumors thread about the Faun project. Could be a nice addition to a beast herd.

Thanks for sharing that story about your childhood with Hero Quest. Have you been able to get yourself a copy of the game? My older brother was always in the know about cool fantasy games, all my experience growing up with Hero Quest (plus expansions), Battle Masters, Dungeons & Dragons: First Quest, Weapons and Warriors, etc were all because of him. Last year I was feeling nostalgic, and bought myself a copy of Hero Quest and Battle Masters off of Ebay (plus and extra copy of Hero Quest for him). Long story short, if you are still wishing you had your own copy of Hero Quest, I'd check Ebay.

Warning, this will hurt your wallet but given the discussion on HeroQuest you should check out Zealot Miniatures for their line of Hero Quest minis!

Oh, I saw that alright. Some awesome miniatures there. Thanks guys! I will be starting my Heroquest project in 2019, with the aim to finish it before the years end (a 30th anniversary edition!)

Been busy as usual at the end of term, but I have been working hard on the denizens of the far north in my setting. My players wanted to get their hands on a Daern's Instant Fortress, a magic item that is basically a "Poketower". You throw it down and it grows into a massive keep. I bought a Renedra Keep to use for it, but as it is such a powerful item I decided they should quest for it.

I decided that since they are in the city of the Winter Court, their Keep would be made of magical ice, and it would need the still beating heart of a Frost Giant to act as it's focus. So they had to head out onto the Great Glacier and hunt down some Jotun.



In 5e, Frost Giants are supposed to be Huge, but I decided to make them Large because I had bought miniatures for them back when I was still playing 3e and they were only Large. I am using a RBG Jotun, and two Hordes Blighted Ogrun that I got for half price in my local shop. I gave them a more bluish colour than most people do and I think all together they look the bomb.




I have a small Legion of Everblight force and I had painted Thagrosh for that army years ago, but he had gotten broken in transit and damaged, so I repaired him and based him similarly. I am using him as a dragon corrupted warlock of the Frost Giants, and my players were VERY freaked out by him because they did not know the model was from Hordes. I think they look great together. I also prefer them as Large, because I like the idea of them sailing in Longships, and I find that easier to believe if they are not as tall as buildings!



To add some interest to the hunt, I also painted up this Descent Frost Wyrm, and I used the rules for the Dungeons and Dragons Frost Wyrm which is more like a Purple Worm in an icy area. I really like the mini, but I was intimidated by painting the ice crystals. I think they came out alright, but I hope to do better on my second one! I had it's tremorsense represented by it's ice spines chiming in resonance with any vibrations in the area near it. The scenario was that the Giants were hunting the Wyrm and the players were hunting the Giants, and it went off pretty well! I think everyone had a great time and there were some very dramatic moments.

Playing each week keeps me painting, but it can be stressful when the players veer away from their stated plans. They were going to go to a demon infested city, so I spent the summer painting a lot of demons for them to fight, but then at the start of the school year they decided to set out instead for the north and ignore the city. So I suddenly had to paint a lot of mountain monsters and northern monsters. I am a bit burned out now! But I am really happy at the same time that I am gradually populating my fantasy world with miniatures. It has always been a dream of mine to do this, and I am doing pretty well at achieving it!

All the minis look great, it sounds and looks like it will be an epic adventure getting that instant fortress. I especially like the ice wurm, I think the crystals turned out nicely.

Your games always sound like such a lot of fun. Even if they do mess up your plans. At least you've got demons now just in case! It's always good to have a few demons around.

Daemon infested instant fortress from using the corrupted heart of a frost giant warlock?

Really nice work on the last batch.

Thanks all for the kind words!

I wanted to get a lot more hobbying stuff done, but travelling back to Ireland and the general madness of my family has meant I did not get ANYTHING done til yesterday. I started working on the Renedra Tower I bought to represent the Daern's Instant Fortress my players were questing for, as well as using it for any Strongholds the players start, and just general wargaming use. It is a really lovely kit, the Tower, with a removable roof and a top floor you can sit minis inside.
Here is a picture, the bottom third is finished and the middle third is awaiting highlighting layers. Pretty tedious work! The top third is downstairs in my basement, my brown primer ran out before I could finish spraying it, so I am gonna pick up some more when the shops open tomorrow. Painting is pretty simple - spray brown, heavy drybrush Eshin Grey, wash Argax Earthshade, light drybrush Eshin Grey and final drybrush Dawnstone. I then gave a wash of Camoshade around the base and the tops of any arches or slopes, but I think I need to hit it again.





Given that it is the end of the year, I thought I would do a wee retrospective.

This was the year I finally broke my block and got back into painting in a pretty big way. I also think I improved and tried out a lot of new things. The big problem is still my crappy photography, but I am working my way to a solution for that as well. I powered through painting a lot of hero miniatures like Monks and Bards, as well as all the heroes from some of my board games. I also painted up the core Descent set, which was a lot of work and I am very happy with it now that it is finished.

I also kept pushing my scratchbuilding, and made some monsters from scratch for my game.

Then I did a huge amount of work on my setting making a ruined city with keyed locations and a bunch of maps hand drawn, as well as a veritable horde of demons to infest it. As I have mentioned, this work ended up being for nothing because my players never went there. I am a little sore about that, because I felt it was a wee bit of a betrayal of trust! But at least I painted a bunch of stuff that had been sitting idle for years and years. I have the guts of a Demon army for GW games now, so I shouldn't complain.

In the summer, I worked pretty hard on repairing and assembling all my old Hordes minis, and I painted a majority of my Gatormen, which I had been sitting on in storage since like 2011 or so. I think they came out really well, though I am not sure when I will use them for anything!

The latter half of the year has mostly been a bunch of smaller monsters (rats, ettercaps and skaven) and a few very big centrepieces. I have always had a problem where I was intimidated by big pieces and never worked on them. But this year I got a Treant, a Dragon Ogre, a Chimera, and a Hyra all done.

Been running out of steam toward the end of the year, as some of the stuff I am working on is fiddly and difficult, but I am hoping to get it all done before school starts back and eats all my time again.

I think if anything this year proved that it is always better to crack on and try stuff out rather than wait til you are "good enough", and playing is the best way to motivate yourself to paint.

I also spent a LOT of money on minis this year. I really want to cut down next year and focus on painting what I already have.

For next year, big projects:
- War is coming! My Dungeons and Dragons game is entering a phase of conflict where the PCs will likely be leading a rag tag army against an evil empire.
Good Guy Factions:
- Celtic tribesmen (from Warlord games)
- Norman troops (from Conquest)
- Elves (need to finish the Winter Court)

Bad Guy Factions:
- Troops of the Iron Empire (Late Roman Byzantines)
- Hellspawn (Flesh Hounds, Hellhounds from Descent, and maybe some of the stuff from Wrath and Rapture, big Pit Fiends)
- Heavy Cavalry (Chaos Knights and Easterling Kataphracts)

I also want to make some scenery for big siege games, and mostly what I need is a long palisade wall which I can repurpose to be around the motte and bailey castle, the ringfort, or the town.

So in a lot of ways this is going to involve painting a lot of my Historicals, which has been a long term goal of mine. Part of the reason I wrote my setting the way I did was to encourage myself to do this work.

Heroquest, 30th Anniversary
I want to recreate Heroquest with modern miniatures. This is something I hope to achieve by the end of the year, hopefully by my birthday in November, so I can rope my wife into playing it with me!

I think that is plenty to be going on with, but if I make good progress on those two I want to get my Aboleth and River Trolls painted along with my Bog Trog Ambushers for a "monsters from the deep" set.

Happy new year all.

Thanks for the great retrospective Da Boss, I still need to make one on my blog. You've accomplished a lot this year. I'm really excited to see what you do for Hero Quest this year, and your D&D game sounds exciting. Also thanks for the help and advice this past year as I started into D&D.

No problem!

I have been mostly working on my Tower. Nearly done, jeez. I killed two pots of grey paint and a pot of wash on this thing.




It has come out okay, though I was hoping for a more brownish tone to show through, but it's alright as is. I am planning to make a pallisade out of twigs for the wall, for a Motte and Bailey style fortress.
It's a lovely mini though. Definitely can recommend it to anyone who is in the market for a plastic watchtower or keep.

Figure it is a good time of the year to take stock and think about what I need to achieve.
My campaign is grinding on toward a large scale war between the players and the main antagonist, the Iron Empire. The players are now important people in a realm ruled by aloof Winter Elves and mostly populated by celtic clansmen with some barbarians to the west. The Iron Empire is an "evil Byzantine" empire with a lot of enslaved humanoids and Infernal allies. I want to use Matt Colville's Warfare rules to represent it, and technically this does not require miniatures. But I would like to use this as motivation to get a bunch of minis painted, so I want to make representative regiments for the armies involved.So, here they are:

The Vasthost of Kolluthos the Slaughterer

Kolluthos – Warlord riding a Gorgon (1 unpainted) (Chaos Lord on Juggernaut)
Bodyguard – Bloodletters on Gorgons (3 unpainted, unassembled) (Bloodcrushers)

Elite
Hellknight Elite Cavalry (Chaos Knights, 1 regiment) (5 unpainted)
Iron Empire Kataphracts (Easterling Kataphracts, 1 regiment) (6 unpainted, unassembled)
Erynies Regiment (Daemonettes, 1 regiment) (10 unpainted, unassembled)
Bloodletter Regiment (Bloodletters, 1 regiment) (5 unpainted, unassembled)
Fiends (Fiends of Slaanesh, 1, Ice Devils or Bone Devils) (3 unpainted, unassembled)

Regular
Iron Empire Soldiers (Late Roman troops, 2 -3 regiments) (24-36 unpainted, unassembled)
Iron Empire Archers (Medieval Archers, 1 -2 regiments) (12 – 24, unpainted unassembled)
Wolf Riders (LOTR Wolf Riders, 2 regiments) (6 unpainted)
Hellhound pack (Flesh Hounds, 2 regiments) (5 unpainted, unassembled, 5 unpainted)

Levies
Slave Troops (Corsairs, 2 Regiments)
Slave Hobgoblins (LOTR hobgoblins, 3 regiments)

Monsters
Giants? Have to think about this
Ogres and Trolls conditioned?

Heroes
Elite
Heroes of Helix (all painted) (Various DnD hero miniatures representing allied heroes the players have met)
Winter Elves (1 Regiment, half painted (10 Miniatures – Nyss Swordsmen, Lylyth, Winter Elf Rogues from Descent)
Wild Hunt (1 Regiment, half painted, 5 miniatures) (GW Wild Riders)
Clansmen Chariots (1 Regiment, unassembled, unpainted, 2 chariots) (Celt Chariots from Wargames Factory)
Golems (1 Regiment, assembled and painted) (Descent)

Regular
Clansmen Infantry (1-2 regiments, unassembled, unpainted 12-24 miniatures) (Wargames Factory Celts)
Bear Clan Infantry (1 regiment, unassembled, unpainted, 12 miniatures) (Frostgrave Barbarians)
Half Elf Infantry (1 Regiment, unpainted, 12 miniatures) (LOTR Galadhrim)
Wild Elf Cavalry (1 Regiment, unpainted, 6 miniatures) (Glade Riders)
Wild Elf Regiment (1 Regiment, half painted, 4 miniatures) (Wood Elf glade guard)
Ironguard Motte Infantry (2 Regiments, painted) (Rohan infantry)
Ironguard Motte Cavalry (1 Regiment, unpainted 6 miniatures) (Riders of Rohan)

Levies
Zindar Irregulars (1 Regiment, partially painted) (Collection of Gnomes and Halfings from nearby town, mostly DnD minis, some Descent.)

Monsters
Friendly Giant? Dragon? Mulg and his Trolls?

The plan is to work on the villains first, because which of the good guy regiments get used depends on whether the players succeed in recruiting them or not. But I want to try to work on some miniatures every week, which means organising my workspace and staying focused on this project until it is ready! I am excited about this, because I am sneakily using this as a way to get some of my various historicals painted.

Of course, I may end up needing to paint some random stuff if my players head off in a random direction, but I am making this post to keep myself accountable!

Wow Da Boss, that is quite an undertaking! Good luck focusing on this big plan, and I'm looking forward to seeing your progress. That makes a lot of sense that you are starting with the villains.

That is a tall order sir, good luck. Do any of the players paint?

Ha, yeah, it is a big ask. I am starting to regret this. No, none of them do, so I think sometimes they under estimate the work that goes into it.

I have been busy, and I am trying a new photography location that I hope gives better pictures. I will see about setting up a better background for my miniatures but here, finally, are the Otherworld Ettercaps:

I love these guys. I love their flabby bellies and goofy heads, I love the idea of weird spider hybrids living in forests doing inscrutible things. Brilliant.

And I especially love their flabby spiderbutts!


I recently also painted a GW hydra. I think it is a lovely miniature, and I am really happy with it comes out. Especially pleased with the transitions from the underbelly to the scales on the back.








And here is what I am working on at the moment - some Byzantines painted up as worshippers of Asmodeus to represent the troopers of the Iron Empire.
First some archers:


I think they look alright. The faces are a bit blank, but I think I will leave them as they are. The red and black looks alright I think.

Next are the shieldwall. I did a freehand symbol of Asmodeus on the shields. I have not done a lot of freehand before, and it isn't the best, but I am happy with it at tabletop distance:





21 more to go!

Still more work to be done on lighting and camera. Sorry about that.

Looking good, you've been busy. Along with the scale transition of color I also like the red accents with the frills.

Thanks! I was very happy with the Hydra, one of my favourite models this year and also one of my favourite D&D monsters.

Kept working on my evil Byzantines, first regiment is completed now. I have a space in the back for the "unit mage" to sit, but apart from that it is done.

They look neat! I like the fringe on the banner.

They look blooming brilliant bud, great work on the free hand on the shield. Banner looks ace. Awesome.

Byzantines are a bit too dark for what they were... but since it is _EVIL_ byzantines, they are OK. Your freehand is very good with these contrasting colors.