From SanderS - Fellowship Part I (50 points)

Hoi,

You've guessed it, more Heroquest! Okay, strictly speaking, these are not real Heroquest figures but an assortment of figures I am going to use for the game. There's some Frostgrave plastic henchmen, a Hasslefree figure, Otherworld Elf Sorceress, Zealot miniatures Dwarf and a GW Warhammer Quest Elf.  

So here are the Henchmen to start with, they can either function as mercenaries to the heroes, heroes in their own right or crooks to fight the adventurers.

Now on to the title figures: in my pile of unpainted figures there are quite a lot of groups of miniatures that you could designate as a "Fellowship" these are the first. A group of the 4 main archetypical Dungeon explorers: a Dwarf, Elf, Barbarian and Wizard.

10 figures of 28mm makes for 50 points if I am not mistaken.

---

What a nice bunch of figures. The colour scheme really brings them together and if you hadn't said they were from different manufacturers I'm not sure I would have noticed. I like the blue bases on these as well, it really makes the finished figures 'Pop'!

A tidy 50 Points to add to your earlier entry. You're clearly having a productive week! 
Lee

From KeithS: Another hodge-podge (160 points)

Well, time for the latest pile of miscellaneous stuff I want to finish off!

First up is a Treant from Otherworld.  This is a big guy at around 95mm tall - almost a decimeter for you metrical people!  It's a great figure, though perhaps too big for use with most of my 25mm chaps.  But, it's a gorgeous sculpt, as is usually the case with Otherworld.

He's got a very serious face.  No happy-go-lucky Treebeard type guy, this one.

I like the details Otherworld included, such as the mushrooms growing on him and what not.  They give him a lot of character.

He does seem a bit grabby.

Next up are a pair of newer Displacer Beasts from Wizkids (their Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Minis line).  They're also somewhat larger than I prefer -- I bought them to compare scales and see if I could use some of their stuff to supplement my old school collection.  They'll get used, as the sculpts are quite nice.

This is an oldie, a Carrion Crawler from Grenadier (I think).  I've had this one since around 1981.  I recently stripped it as the old paint was sorely battered.  Nothing special, but lots of nostalgia for me.

Here's trio of random guys.  The left is a Reaper Bones; the middle is old school Ral Partha the right guy is...not sure what he is, but an oldie to be sure.

Flip side.  The Bones are too big for my usual tastes but, with monsters, having an off-scale isn't the end of the world.

Up next, a pair of pack horses from Reaper Bones (I think).  Nothing special, but they will get use as part of a pack train in a game of Chainmail.

Going firmly back to my beloved Old School now, we have three Goblin Warg Riders from Heritage.  They're all the same sculpt, though that's OK as I have a larger force of Heritage and other Warg riders that they'll blend into.

 Another angle.  The Wargs are a bit lighter color than most of my other ones, but I kind of like the variation.

Continuing with a theme of non-human cavalry (to go with the above and my dwarf-bear cavalry of last week) is a force of six goblins mounted on spiders.  These are from Ral Partha's recent Kickstarter.  Definitely a force of low-riders.

There were three sculpts for each rider, two spear, two sword, and two with darts.  They were a pain to glue on as they don't easily sit atop those spiders.

Goblins with scimitars.  It's their thing.

Last up is another Heritage model from days gone by, this one a Troll.  I've had it for a little while and finally got to him.  It, too, is from their Lord of the Rings line of figures.  I gave him a goblin/orc style green-brown skin tone

From the back.  Perhaps not the most elaborate sculpt of all time, but then again not bad for the late 70s.  He'll see some use one of these days, I hope!

That's it for the week.  Alas, I have work travel coming up, plus a much-anticipated trip to Garycon in Lake Geneva WI to follow it, so my painting will drop off precipitously.  Hopefully I'll get some free time right at the end to push out a final point bomb!

Pointwise, a confusing group.  I'll throw this out and let the wise judges make the final call:

Treant (95mm) - 15 points?

Displacer Beasts x2 (40mm) - 14 points

Carrion Crawler (60mm) - 5 points (10 makes no sense for that simple guy!)

Serpent Guy (45mm) - 7 points

Cockatrice+Ogre - 10 points

Horses x2 (25mm) - 10 points

Warg Cavalry x3 (25mm) - 30 points

Spider Cavalry x6 (technically all 25mm but the Goblins are pretty small so 5 for mounts and 4 for riders?) - 54 points

Troll (40mm) - 7 points

That would be a total of 152 points and will easily put me over my goal for the Challenge!

_______________________________________

What an amazing post Keith, chocked full of monsters and fantasy goodness - absolutely tremendous.  You seem to have a knack for unearthing wonderfully nostalgic miniatures that are then lovingly painted, splendid work Sir.  As for the points, I am going to concur with your guidelines apart from the cavalry units, they can be a full 10 points for each.  I am going to count the Treant as two 40mm beasts and add in a few bonus points to round the entry off to 160 in total.  Bravo Sir and a jolly well done for reaching, and surpassing, your target score. 

From Sander: First blood, some monsters to start with. (75 Points)

Hoi Everyone!

My Christmas vacation has started and now I finally have time to join the Challenge in  earnest. While the main focus of this year's Challenge will be my big 1:72 Salamanca Diorama, I have given myself time up to Old Year's Eve to do some 28mm figures I have lying around the workbench. I will try to do some of those in between the Salamanca figures as well just to keep from getting painter's block but I really hope to get into the Salamanca pile in a big way this Challenge.

Anyway for my first entry I have painted up some figures I am using in my Heroquest games at home and at the school HQ club. Last Friday I organised a big Christmas Quest using these for the guys and gals at school and it was a blast.

Let's see what I cooked up shall we?

First up are some plastic Gnolls from North Star miniatures. While I like North Star mini's a lot, these were a bit of let down since I think they suffer from a lack of detail. They did account of themselves really well in battle with 3 attack and 3 defence dice each.

More North Star plastics next in the form of some cultists. Now I really do not like Chaos, but these were a blast to paint and I like the evil looking dark scheme I managed to come up with.

 

Moving on to metals and a different producer: Otherworld Miniatures. They make some really good Fantasy Dungeon figures. All the kids at the HQ club chose one out of their range and I bought some baddies for specific scenario's like the one played Friday. Here are a couple of Wraiths:

This Otherworld skeleton lord could be the Witchking from HQ lore or a generic Liche lord or even just a Wight.

Next up an Oldhammer Chaos Mage. I got this one off of Ebay and since you need a Chaos Sorcerer just about any other Quest, one can never have enough.

Finally we have come to the only human in the lot, the rest could all fall under the label of "monster" so appropriate for this Challenge. A plastic North Star Barbarian called Munzuk. A soloquest for the wizard played at the club resulted in one of the kids liberating Munzuk from some Ork stronghold. He is now the wizard's henchman. Therefore we needed a dedicated figure.

 

This leaves me with 15 figures of 28mm scale, resulting in 75 points if I am not mistaken.

 Artist: The Longest Johns

Album: Christmas at Sea

They're just downright awesome!

Cheers Sander

____________________________________

Welcome back to the Challenge, Sander!

These monsters (and minion) are excellent and I think it's just terrific that you've organized a group of students from your school to play Heroquest with them. 

Though the gnolls, cultists and Oldenhammer chaos mage are very cool, I have to say that I my favorites are the Otherworld wraiths and the skeleton lord. Lovely work.

I'll keep your Tuesday Minion spot warm for you until you can take up the reigns on the 2nd (waves chair, cracks whip). :)

From KeithS - Trolls (63 points)

"Miserable, no good, robbing Trolls!" -- Thorin Oakenshield (at least the Rankin Bass version of the Hobbit; I really do live my life via movie quotes).


This is a quick diversion I worked yesterday on my final snow day.  They are 8 Trolls minis from Otherworld and one that is stylistically very similar but I have no idea where I got it (except for the base its hard to notice the difference at a casual glance).  I'd wanted some Trolls for wargaming that scaled well with 25 or 28mm but cheap ones were hard to come by, so I bit the bullet and went top of the line.  And they are masterful figures.  Lots of detail, plenty of personality, somewhat customizable (2 different heads to choose from and adjustable arms).  I was quite pleased with them, though I think they came out darker than I'd have liked.  I was using a green ink wash I'd not used before (PSA: kids, test your washes before going hog wild with them).  No matter, they're pretty in their own special, Trollish way.


Here's one happy camper.  They all have lots of warts or sores -- I did those in a very light olive so they stood out a bit.  I did the nails in ivory and let the green ink stain them murky colored.

This chap brought along a friend, or what was left of him (the head he's holding was an extra Viking head from that project).  Perhaps he uses it to play ball, or it might just be a snack.  I'm not sure.

From behind and one from the side.  They have a lot of personality, and personality go a long way.

Certainly wouldn't want to run into this guy in a dark alley, or across a battlefield.

The group shot (outside of the walls, of course). 

I'm pleased with the way they turned out, even if too dark for D&D standard Trolls (with their "mossy colored skin.")  They measure about 38mm from toe to hair, though they are bent over, so I figure they fall into the 40mm category.  Getting tem done really frees up some space -- they'd been sitting atop a small cabinet on my work desk for months. 

Next up, more miscellaneous old lead and perhaps a company of foes for the Trolls, aside from the Vikings, of course.

A very productive period for you Keith - these certainly look a fearsome bunch. Always good to clear up projects that have been hanging around. Well done, and yes i gone with them being 40mm - Big Nasty Trolls alright.