Gods & Monsters

We have finally reached the last week of Frostgrave Mo’vember and whilst I may have completed the “Frostgrave” part, with my warband up to full muster (see Kringle’s Men – Part 2), we are still one moustachioed miniature shy of the full complement for the “Mo’vember” part…

I deliberated long and hard over which of the many bearded and moustachioed figure that are awaiting paint should be my final entry for this project, and had several figures potentially lined up as subjects. However, as I have a vast collection of unpainted supers waiting for their chance to enter the limelight, after my tender ministrations have changed them from their original character AND one of them was suitably hirsute around the facial area, it seemed obvious that this would be my final entry for Mo’vember. So, who have we got then?

This is the original figure, representing Hollywood, the Earth -691 future version of Wonder Man, who appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy #17. When I first saw this figure, I immediately knew who this figure was going to represent in my own Superhero universe and how he would be repainted, so had to buy him. And this is what he looks like now:

This is Zeus, a superhero originally known as Apollo during the late 70’s, who went missing after the attempted invasion of Earth by the Anuran Empire – an attempt that was thwarted by the assembled might of both the heroes and villains of that era, which resulted in their deaths. It was assumed that Apollo had also perished, but he had gone into hiding in the wilds of Canada where he remained until he was found by Major Liberty, who convinced him that his days as a hero were not over. Older, wiser, but no less powerful, he has renamed himself Zeus, to reflect his more mature outlook and has rejoined society, acting as a mentor to the younger members of Liberty Force, but still haunted by the deaths of his team-mates so long ago.

A fairly straight-forward repaint. The colours were chosen to suggest my idea of what a modern-day Greek God would choose. Initially he was to have had an all-in-one body suit, but once undercoated, it just seemed obvious that he would go shirtless, so I stippled his chest with white, to try to suggest chest hair. His leggings are actually an Acrylic Gloss White, as it was a recent purchase and I needed a test piece for this paint before I used it for the purpose it was bought for. I think that the contract between the shiny white and the gold works well and whilst it may not be the most complicated of paint jobs, it came out exactly how I envisaged it, so it’s a win.

So, strictly speaking, that should conclude this month’s shenanigans, as we now have our final Mo’vember entry and the Frostgrave warband is complete. However, as regular readers will know, I never just paint one figure and, as the post title suggests, we don’t just have ‘gods’ to look at…

Looking at the Frostgrave bestiary on North Star Military Models website, it shows the kind of beasties that warbands may encounter when venturing into Felstad. As I had a few suitable figures, it was time to re-purpose them for frosty adventures…

First is my Minor Demon…

This is a Games Workshop Pit Fiend from their Night Horrors range from 1989. I could have gone for a non-typical colouring on this figure, but red seemed appropriate. A nice detailed model, which the picture above does not do justice to and also fails to show the subtle shading I managed to achieve – ah, the joys of artificial lighting.

Next up we have a slight cheat, as these figures I’ve had painted for a while, hence the non-Frostgrave basing – my Snow Trolls…

These are Copplestone Castings Yetis, from their High Adventure range, available from their website for £6.50 for the pair, which given their size, is a bargain. Especially when compared to the official Frostgrave Snow Troll, which is £6.00 and not quite as nice, in my opinion. These particular figures were bought as Wendigo for an “abandoned cabin in the woods” scenario, but would also make more convincing and horrific looking Morlocks. Just buy some already, you know you want to and they’re cool.

My final entry is something which doesn’t seem to appear in the official bestiary, so I present my Ice Ogre…

This is a Dreamblade Savage Ogre, a common from the base set and a fairly substantial beastie. This is the third and final (hopefully) time this miniature has been painted, as he was originally a desert ogre in shades of brown and yellow, was partially re-painted as an Oni in red, until I decided that he would look better as an Ice Ogre, so out came the whites and blues.  I’m pretty pleased with this figure, as it came out exactly as I had intended, the white dry-brushing of the whole figure representing the hoarfrost that has built up as it roams Felstad, looking for fresh meat.

So, that’s Frostgrave Mo’vember over and as December hoves into view, I will be dedicating this month (and possibly the following month) to my most ambitious project yet. This is a project that I have been planning on doing for a while and have been slowly accumulating the necessary figures and terrain. There will be miniatures, both of the heroes and their foes, there will at least one building and at least one vehicle. Here’s a visual hint…

For those of you that this isn’t enough for, I’ll just say that I have the tools and I (hopefully) have the talent…You know who to call, right?

Comments and feedback appreciated, as always.

Kringle’s Men – Part 2

Due to my wife being away this weekend on a Christmas shopping trip, this meant that I could occupy the dining table for an extended period of time without suffering black looks and the withering scorn usually associated with any time I spend “being geeky”.

Which means that I was able to complete my third week’s entry for Mo’vember AND finish my Frostgrave warband. Industrious little bugger, ain’t I?

When people are asked to name a barbarian, one name readily springs to mind, namely Conan. However, for those of us Brits of a certain age and mindset, another name will also be on the tip of our tongues – Thrud the Barbarian.

Back when White Dwarf was actually a gaming magazine, rather than a catalogue, it featured a one-page comic strip by Carl Critchlow, featuring the misadventures of the aforementioned character. He was big, he was stupid, but he was exceptionally good at killing things, although the collateral damage from his fights usually resulted in the deaths of innocent bystanders and large-scale property damage. The strip ran from September 1983 to September 1988, after which it was quietly dropped. Thrud was briefly resurrected in a full-colour self-published comic book, of which five issues were published between 2002 and 2007. This introduced the character to a new generation of gamers.

Over the years, Thrud has appeared as a 28mm miniature several times, the first five versions of the character being released by Citadel Miniatures, with Heresy Miniatures also releasing three versions of the character as well. These were all limited editions and are available on the secondary market, but you will probably pay through the nose for them.

The most recent incarnation of the character can be found as part of the Zombicide: Black Plague Kickstarter, as an optional buy Guest Box, and features not only Thrud, but his enemies To-Me Ku-Pa and the Black Currant and a new character named Persephone Pursuivant. You will have to scroll down a fair way to find the relevant images.

So, when building a warband for Frostgrave and needing a barbarian, and being of a certain age and mindset AND having one of the Citadel Miniatures limited edition miniatures, seemed like a no-brainer to include him…

This particular figure is LE12 Thrud the Barbarian and by far the best of Citadel’s sculpts, in my opinion. Having now seen him on the screen, I think I need to dry-brush his furry boots to bring out the detail, as he currently looks like he’s wearing wellies. And while he appears not to be wearing suitable clothing for venturing into a frozen city, in issue #2 of his comic, he did just that, wearing the outfit above. He also happened to be accompanying a sage/wizard and his apprentice and, unsurprisingly, only Thrud survived.

As Kringle is aware of Thrud’s reputation, he felt that whilst his remaining warband were ideally suited to plundering the treasures of Frostgrave, he really ought to have some insurance against Thrud’s tendency to accidentally kill his allies. Being an Enchanter (and having run out of money), if you can’t hire troops – make ’em…

These two miniatures are what I’m planning on using as Constructs, one small and one large.

The figure on the left is a GW Realms of Chaos Familiar from 1988 (apparently). Whilst it looks like one of those wooden artist’s mannequins, I was not confident about painting a wood effect on something so small, so opted to try to make it look like it was made from polished aluminium instead. This was achieved by giving it a base cost of GW Mithril Silver, then washing it in GW Elf Blue. I think it’s worked pretty well.

The figure on the right is a Dreamblade War Toller, which is effectively a golem made from a large bell. For this one I tried to make it look like polished brass, which was a base coat of Bronze, dry-brush of Gold, then washed with a dark brown. Pretty pleased with this one too. As this was a Common, this one is still readily available on the secondary market, so if you want one, check your Dreamblade singles stockists or eBay.

The final member of my warband if Kringle the Enchanter himself.

Being fully bearded, he meets the criteria for Mo’vember, so he’s my Week 3 entry. Here’s a rear view of him…

As you can see, whilst he may have foregone gloves, he has not only found Wally, but nicked his scarf! (Incidentally, the scenery above was supposed to be the backdrop for all the miniatures featured this week, but for some reason my camera kept focusing on the ruins behind, rather than the figure, resulting in particular blurry photos, so I had to retake the pictures shown above.)

As the warband is now complete, next we have the obligatory group shot;

As I have three Marvel Heroscape sets, which has the grey tiles shown above, the Road to the Forgotten Forest set, which has cobbled tiles and the coniferous trees and two sets of the Heroscape ruins shown above, I believe I may have enough terrain to construct a Frostgrave board just from Heroscape tiles. Bonus!

However, if you are intending on building your own city, I suggest you visit Shed Wars, as Eric is currently constructing his own Frostgrave board and has several brilliant ideas for terrain and scenery. The link above will take you to the first post, but it’s worth reading all of them.

So the Frostgrave part of Frostgrave Mo’vember is complete, which means I only have to complete one more moustachioed figure before the end of the month to complete this month’ s project. However, as I can’t really just do one figure, we may very well be seeing some denizens of the frozen city next week, as Kringle’s Men can hardly go in unopposed, can they?

Be sure to check out the progress of my co-conspirators on this project, Dick Garrison, Blaxkleric and Punkrabbit.

Comments and feedback appreciated, as always.

Kringle’s Men

Due to receiving an unexpected birthday windfall, my mind has been on what shiny new toys I could buy, rather than concentrating on painting tiny little men with equally tiny little moustaches…

However, as my co-conspirators on Frostgrave Mo’vember (Roger at Rantings from Under the Wargames Table and Simon at Fantorical) have been busy beavering away AND have drafted an additional compatriot in the form of Punkrabbit (blog here), who has been swayed by the siren song of Frostgrave and joined us in our little corner of the asylum, I thought I should really crack on.

First up, the figure that would have been my first entry for Mo’vember, had he not proved so troublesome and the first member of Kringle the Enchanter’s warband – Sir Gideon Rust, Templar.

The is another Ral Partha Europe figure, namely the Armoured Duke, currently available for £3.00. This figure has a lot of nice detail, but my initial colour scheme didn’t quite work, so I ended up re-painting him not once, but twice. I finally managed to get his armour looking nice and rusty. The fact that he has a moustache and goatee also means that he meets the criteria for Mo’vember. This particular sculpt also reminds me of the Tenniel illustration of the White Knight from Alice Through the Looking Glass, so should you be putting together a Wonderland-inspired warband, you can’t go far wrong with this figure.

Next up, my second week Mo’vember entry and also a member of Kringle’s Men,  Black Powder Pete, “Archer”.

Yes, I know he’s a dwarf and yes, that is an arquebus, but as far as the “rules” are concerned, it’s a bow, alright? As I had been painting this dwarf up in a similar colour palette as my other figures, I decided that he should be part of Kringle’s Men. And as a dwarf, he’s got a beard, so another Mo’vember tick there…

The final member of Kringle’s Men this week is Holly “It’s NOT a girl’s name” the Apprentice. A little bit arrogant, Holly decided to cut some corners when casting his first spell, resulting in it exploding in his face. This burnt the right side of his face and damaged his right eye, resulting in complete colour blindness, so he now has to rely on his master, Kringle the Enchanter, to advise him what colour his clothes are. His master has a mischievous sense of humour…

As the expression on this figure’s face made me think he was a bit up himself, I decided to give him stripey Christmas elf tights, as I seem to have developed a bit of a Christmas theme with my warband. The right side of his face was an accident, as I was trying to paint his eyes, did the left eye fine, then ended up with a huge black blob as his right eye, which I then attempted to rectify by over-painting with white, picked up the wrong paint and ended up with a grey blob in the centre. It looked pretty cool, so I added a bit more GW Dwarf Flesh around the eye-socket, to resemble burnt skin and now we have a rather unique take on the HeroQuest Wizard.

So, managed to catch up, regained my painting mojo and have finally decided what my final Mo’vember entry will be, although he won’t be a member of the warband. Next week, we will finally meet Kringle the Enchanter, along with some of his creations…

Comments and feedback appreciated, as always.

View from the Crow’s Nest – Mo’vember

As the weather has turned decidedly chilly as we venture into the penultimate month of the year, here at the Buffet we turn our minds to things frosty and hirsute.

Which is my way of saying welcome to Frostgrave Mo’vember! For this month, myself and fellow bloggers Roger over at Rantings from Under the Wargames  Table and Simon at Fantorical are indulging is a combined project – Mo’vember, where the goal is to paint one moustachioed figure each week and Frostgrave, where we each paint a warband for the game. Should any of the members of your warband have the requisite facial hair, then you’re already ahead…

However, whilst I jumped at the chance to paint up a suitable warband, as I don’t actually own the game, I was initially a little perplexed as to what exactly makes up a warband. However, the author of said work, Joseph A McCullough, posted this handy guide on his blog, detailing the costs of each type of troop, making my life a little easier.

So, for my 500 gcs, I decided to take an Apprentice, a Templar,  a Barbarian, an Archer and an Infantryman, which along with my free Wizard, means that I’ve got 6 miniatures to paint. However, of the figures I’ve selected, only two had the requisite facial hair, so I needed two additional figures to ensure I had the four necessary for Mo’vember, so that’s another two figures, totalling 8. For one of these, I decided to paint up a handy dwarf, but have yet to decide what the final figure will be…

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to my wizard and his apprentice…

The figure on the left is my apprentice and is the Wizard character from the HeroQuest boardgame, who looks sufficiently young to be an Apprentice, although he does appear to have chosen his outfit from the Seventies. The figure on the right is my Wizard, and came from Black Tree Design’s Fantasy Realms line, until they sold this on. I believe that it was supposed to represent a certain wizard famous for his fireworks and the wearing of grey clothing and is still available, from Scotia Grendel, as Godefridus the Wizard, for £3.00.

It would appear that having read far too many AAR’s for Frostgrave using scenery sourced from Christmas decorations, the colour scheme for my wizards was influenced by  this, hence the festive colours above.

The next shot shows the first of my troops and my dwarf.

The figure on the left is a GW man-at-arms with a halberd, who is my Infantryman. His colour scheme echoes that of the wizards, without being an obvious copy. The figure on the left is a dwarf arquebusier from Ral Partha Europe, available from their site at £1.75. This is a lovely little figure, with plenty of detail, including a pouch, sheathed dagger and strap with pouches of black powder across his back. However, as he is bearded, he fulfills the criteria for Mo’vember, although he can’t be part of the warband, as his weapon is a little too advanced…

I apologise for only showing WIPs this time around, but hopefully by my next post, we will have some completed figures, along with my Templar and a very familiar Barbarian…

Comments and feedback appreciated, as usual.