YOU are the hero!

Back in the day I was what is commonly known in RPG circles as a "forever DM"; that meant I got to run a ton of games but I never got to play as a player in the game.  For all my obsession with Dungeons & Dragons my most common outlet for having adventurers as an in-game character was Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.  Fighting Fantasy was also my introduction to the British art and gaming scene in the early 80s.

As much as I enjoy the solo gamebook experience it was like a new door opened when back during the original run of gamebooks a novel format version of a group play version of Fighting Fantasy was released.  Since then Arion Games has also published an Advanced version of Fighting Fantasy (which is great!).

I'm playing a Fighting Fantasy game this coming Tuesday and I need a miniature for it.  I kit-bashed an adventurer because I seem to always have trouble finding a miniature that is armed, and has adventuring gear but isn't wearing armour.

I started with an Oathmark Elf figure, added some arms from the Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago sprue, backpack from Victrix Napoleonic British infantry, coiled roper from Great Escape Games cowboys, and a head from a Warlord World War Z sprue.

I'm really happy with how this figure turned out.  He looks like he wouldn't be out of place in a Lord Of The Rings or Game Of Thrones style setting.  I'd say I'll be able to use him for multiple other games, but let's be honest...I never re-use PC models...

Thanks for checking in.

-Jay

  

Some odds and ends

Yesterday was one of those days I picked away at a few small projects and almost finished projects while trying to get some coherent writing done.  Nothing earth shattering here but one more figure I actually needed with a lot of urgency (played using him as my PC last night), and two more sci-fi scatter terrain bits.

First up; Flint.

Flint Stone is my character for Advanced Fighting Fantasy.  He is a member of the Hanna-tribe which of course makes him a Hanna-Barbarian (I'm a dad, I'm allowed to tell dad jokes!).  Anyway Flint is made out of the Northstar Frostgrave Barbarian box set with a Bolt Action backpack thrown on to complete the wandering adventurer look.

Flint did mostly pretty well in his first game until a short run of bad luck (literally, I couldn't make a single 'luck' roll) and I'm looking forward to playing more Fighting Fantasy in the near future.  I also appear to have begun collecting a small tribe of barbarians since last year. 

There's definitely one more Barbarian in my near future and then it will definitely be time to move on.

The other thing I realized late yesterday afternoon while prepping some more Broken Contract figures is that I had the two bases of oil drums I'd gotten with my two female Gen-Mods just sitting around and I could get them done quickly.

I actually tried something slightly different this time and I think it worked out pretty well, but it may have been just a bit too subtle to show up in my pictures.  For the oil drums I started off by dry-brushing them metallic (Lead Belcher in this case), then painted them with a watered-down yellow (Averland Sunset), and then I hit them with a super light dry-brush of the same metallic again.  This gives the effect of painted drums where the paint is wearing off but no necessarily super-rough or dirty.

So that's it.  I have a few more lingering almost finished figures I'd like to wrap up this weekend and then it's back to the wasteland.

-Jay

Generic Brit Fantasy Warrior Miniature

(least inspiring post title ever)

Usually when I paint a single miniature it's either because it's something I need for a game or its some sort of cool critter that I don't have but wish I did.  Today's addition is neither of those things.

I might be trying out the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rules (or I might not)...

I might need a replacement character for my current Warhammer Fantasy Role Play game (or I might not)...

I might need an additional sword armed warrior for Frostgrave and/or Rangers Of Shadow Deep (or I might not)...

But in any event if I need figures for any of the things listed above, they're all basically one figure.  A friend recently hooked me up with 2 sprues of the old Empire Militia/Mordheim Human figures so I had a good base to work up from for something slightly different from a traditional D&D 'sword and board' style fighter.

In addition to the Mordheim sprues I used a head from the Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago sailor sprue and added a backpack from some Napoleonic-era soldiers I had kicking around.

I really like this figure because he looks and feels a bit more like an adventurer collecting his gear as he goes and bit less like an optimised RPG character.

I can't wait to figure out what game I actually painted him for :)

-Jay

Rolf The Barbarian!

I wasn't aware until I sat down to type this that I haven't posted in a month, ouch.  I've actually barely hobbied in a month which feels even worse.  Hopefully this weekend I'll be cranking out a few different small projects.

This morning I finished a character model for a solo D&D game module I found online and hope to try out on Monday; Rolf The Barbarian.

Rolf is a Reaper Pathfinder miniature and one of the things I really liked about him is that he breaks the mould of the traditional huge hulking barbarian.  As a character Rolf's strongest traits are Dexterity and Constitution so a more Heroquesty Barbarian would have been far too big to represent Rolf.

One of the other things worth calling out is that it seems most of the 'adventurer' type figures in the Reaper Pathfinder line seem well layered with lots of bits and pieces of equipment and armour without feeling like they have a lot of decorative nonsense on the figures.

Hopefully by Tuesday I'll be able to update you on how Rolf did on his first adventure!

Stay tuned.

-Jay

A new miniature based on an OLD game book

As I've gone through my recent nostalgia phase I've spoken a few times about my fondness for Fighting Fantasy game books.  I absolutely loved these books growing up and recently started combing used bookstores looking for them as a way to reconnect with some of my fun early gaming memories.

The most well known of the Fighting Fantasy books is still the first which was The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain.  Warlock is a fun book and set the tone for the whole series but for me personally my favourite of the original series was Citadel Of Chaos.  Citadel Of Chaos was a relatively short linear adventure but it did a really great job of building up it's antagonist Balthus Dire as a truly menacing adversary who was both a skilled warrior and powerful sorcerer.  In addition the art for Balthus Dire cast him as a sinister imposing figure.

In the U.K. Fighting Fantasy has waxed an waned but has never truly gone away.  In recent years this has given rise to a convention known as Fighting Fantasy-fest.  This con has authors and artists and other fun activities and this year Otherworld Miniatures designed a Balthus Dire miniature as a limited edition convention exclusive.  Once the con had come and gone Otherworld made their remaining stock available through their online store, they did the same thing a couple of years ago with Zagor (THE Warlock Of Firetop Mountain) and I always regretted I never got one so this year I decided to take the plunge and get myself a Balthus Dire figure.

This guy is everything that made old school Fighting Fantasy (and by extension old school Games Workshop) art cool.  He's foreign and exotic looking with patchwork armour and a wicked looking curved scimitar.  He looks faintly elven without actually being an elf which adds to his mystique.

I'm extremely happy with how this figure turned out and I used a colour image of Balthus Dire from an Advanced Fighting Fantasy RPG book as a reference which kept me from using my usual palette of blacks and reds for my villains.

I hope I'm not the only one who appreciates this throwback to what was for me a golden era of game writing and art.

-Jay

YOU are the hero!

Another foray into the distant past.....

In the long-ago time before Warhammer and its various iterations the founders of Games Workshop started building their fantasy empire with a series of 'choose your own adventure' style books called Fighting Fantasy.  These books were set in different worlds than the Warhammer games would eventually find themselves in but felt like early GW products in their art-style and combination of high-fantasy mixed with humour.  The first book in the series was The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain and it basically played like an old-school early 80s Dungeons & Dragons adventure that the reader could play by themselves.

In 1986 Games Workshop released a board game version of The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain that basically works like a cross between Talisman and Clue.  At the time of release the game was well above board game standards in terms of component quality and the artwork holds up really well to this day.  In the game each player plays an adventurer trying to explore Firetop Mountain while also deciphering which keys they will need once they make it to the end.  Each character is represented statistically in the same way as a Fighting Fantasy game book character and they will encounter similar challenges and treasures along the way.

Aside from some luck of the dice allowing for slight statistical differences all characters are effectively the same (no race, class, etc) but rather than just some sort of meeples Games Workshop included 6 unique character models in the game.  I only recently acquired my copy of the game but I have to say if I'd had this in 1986 I could have use these pieces to represent every D&D character I played through my first few years in the game.

For 31 year old models they hold up surprisingly well and other than some giant hands (which seemed common among GW 1 piece plastics of the era) they are well executed figures.  The only thing some players might be disappointed by is the lack of a female figure but again the pieces are effectively just meeples so you can add any figures you want.  In my case I'm actually going to paint up a female halfling rogue for Zoe to use in a game.

I'm excited to have these done and they will make it to the tabletop this coming Thursday so after languishing in their box for 3 decades at least the time from paint to game will be relatively short for them.

-Jay