Scorpionmen

Here are the finished Scorpionmen for my resurrected Glorantha project, it has only been 11 years since Sebastian gave them to me.  A slow burner.

I have some more plans for there; a Queen, a hero and some swarms of smaller scorpions.  The balance of the army will consist of broo.

The minis are from Rapier and they are based on my BatBases, the deep unit-sized ones, which are just over 12cm wide. This means the bases will be roughly twice the size of the old Hordes of the Things bases, leaving plenty of room for modelling and accomodating the odd extra-large model (like Greg's 12" Gonn Orta and Batty!). Until we get the re-basing sorted, we will be using pairs of HoTT elements.  

Back to the Rubble

I helped out a (very little) bit with a game run by Greg Privat and Andrew Taylor, at Salute, yesterday, set in the rubble of Pavis, the great ruined city in the plains of Prax.  That's the Pavis wall in the background, and the Zola Fel river on the right.

Below, some trollkin are fighting a Lunar on the roof of this ruined building.

A whole tribe of Uz can be seen below.

Greg produced the terrain and painted most of the miniatures, other miniatures (some of the Lunars) were provided by Andrew Taylor of Mad Knight Castings.   I was very impressed with some of the new miniatures, which have slipped under my radar until now. and there are some humorous pieces such as the trollkin (note what appears to be a suicide battering ram, below), and an elephant-headed broo.   

The Lunars, in particular, are rather fine.  Above are some Thunder Delta Slingers, and, below, an assassin and various Lunar soldiery assault an altar.

I was very impressed with Andrew's new range; great to see Gloranthan gaming underway again!  I will paint some Gloranthan toys before the year is out.  It was great, as ever, to meet Greg and his new and even-taller wargaming buddy Jean, and Andrew of Mad Knight, plus various old chums like James Ewins,  Nick Speller, Simon MacDowell, Dug, the chaps from Frothers etc (sorry if I have missed you!).  In the general confusion of the day I missed meeting Iron Mitten, the Dark Knights and Bloody Dawns crowd and Saxon Dog (where were those games?). 

Gloranthan Army Miniatures Encyclopedia

Mon ami Greg has set up a blog where he's going to store images of figures painted/converted for the world of Glorantha (the world in which Runequest was set).

A lot of images of very nicely painted miniatures will be going up there.   It should be a great Blog!

http://gloranthanarmy.blogspot.com/

Beat-Pot Aelwrin

Beatpot Aelwrin led a slave revolt against the Lunar Empire.  He gained his name from his use of kitchen implements as weapons (his cauldron helmet and a cleaver which you can't unfortunately see in this photograph).  He was later converted to the Lunar Way by Jar-eel the Razoress. 

Conversions from Foundry miniatures.

Gunda the Guilty

Gunda the Gunda the Guilty is the daughter of a valkyrie who was conquered and raped by a cruel philosopher. When she was 12 she claimed by combat her first pack of wolf-pirates. She escaped is a close friend of Harrek (the chap with the polar bear skin).  IIRC her magical spear means that she absorbs the guilt of anyone she kills with it.

Lance and Laser model; Foundry viking companions.  I use her as a hero, in HoTT terms.

Shaker Temple Quakebeasts

These are the quakebeasts of the Earth Shakers, shown yesterday.  When they beat their tails on the ground, the earth trembles!

The riders are converted Tin Soldier Scythians (a nice and somewhat overlooked range), and the beasts themselves are from Schleich.  The bulk of the Tarsh Exile soldiery are provided by my Pictish army, which I'll show another time.

Cannibal High Priestess of the Shaker Cult

Here is the gigantic high priestess of the bloody Maran Gor Shaker Cult travels in her processional wagon, drawn by six blind cave oxen and escorted by her virgin cannibal cultists.

The Shakers make the barren ground around their temple fertile, by ploughing the corpses of victims into the soil.  They defend their realm by summoning massive earthquakes, and eat parts of their captives to gain their magics. 

All the pictures are clickable.

The model is based on http://www.celtic-webs.com/theunspokenword/books/wf.html

I built the wagon from the bitzbox and greenstuff.  The oxen are converted from Front Rank.  The chains are silver (strictly should be copper, the cult metal of earth religions).  The queen herself is very heavily converted from a Reaper Rat King model. 

At one stage, my son Jack dropped the completed but unpainted model; did I swear?  Yes I did!

The cultist miniatures are converted from Foundry, Citadel, Shadowforge and Gripping Beast. They were superbly painted for me by Nick Speller; the colours he chose are especially effective!

Tomorrow- the Shaker quakebeasts.

Harrek the Berserk

Harrek in Gloranthan terms is a superhero; the equivalent of JarEel from the earlier post.  His sentient polar bear-skin cloak is the skin of a god.  I depicted Harrek in the act of bursting through a Lunar Phalanx. 

The mini is Lance and Laser.  He has seen a lot of use; in HoTT terms I used him as a Paladin because of his magic resistance, alongside Prince Argrath and Gunda the Guilty (and supported by 5 Riders and a flyer).  The three hero line up proved very effective and helped me win at Berkeley in'05.

Pimp my Dinosaur

This is Hugg'e Brrr, a Trachodon mage from Dragon Pass.

In Glorantha the different types of dinosaur have different qualities.  The Trachodons, in particular, are highly magical, so this is, surprisingly, a HoTT Magician element.  Hugg'e was thrown together one night whilst I was watching Starsky and Hutch, hence his unusual name and pimp chic.  The miniature is a lightly converted Copplestone dinosaur.

Sir Ethilrist

In the Dragon Pass Game, the dapper and puissant Sir Ethilrist is the leader of the fabled Black Horse Troop, and once looted Hell.  My model has him riding the legendary Hell Hound that he brought back with him. 

This model was very easy to make; my mate Ian found a prepainted Hell Hound, that needed a minimum of work, and Sir Ethilrist is a nice old GW knight from the bits box.  Needs a pennant.

When I get back to Gloranthan gaming, I'll need to model the black horse troop.  These guys ride on demonic (vaguely draconic) steeds, has to be a suitable model out there, somewhere...

Werewolves; Gloranthan style

This unit represents the Telmori tribe of Dragon Pass, bursting from concealment in a forest (the picture is clickable).   There are a full tribe of these, and they are invariably allied to Sartar.  Each Telmori is twinned with a wolf brother, and many Telmori are cursed with the ability to magically transform themselves into wolves.  The magic of the Telmori, like that of the Lunars, is cyclical and they are at their strongest during the full moon.  They only use stone weapons.

The big wolves are lovely old Grenadier critters, and the Telmori themselves mostly Black Tree or Foundry Picts.  The fully-transformed Temlori is an old TSR Ravenloft mini.

I'm really proud of this unit; I am ashamed to say they've only been on the table once, at Salute in '06, and this is the first time I've got around to photographing them.

Storm Walkers

These are sky-clad flying Runepriests and WindLords of Orlanth, and a Sylph, from my Gloranthan armies.

Foundry minis, and a lovely old Citadel elemental.  Click for tattoos!

Looking at these, I find myself thinking how good they would look as a larger unit.  Much of my Glorantha stuff was done as single elements for HoTT, but these days I like units with bigger footprints and may return to expand them at some stage.

Very Very Heavy Cavalry

Dinosaurs ridden by Dragonewts

Triceratops family

Brontosaur with Sartarite crewman

These are a few shots of some of the dinosaurs from my Gloranthan Collection, which last saw action at Salute in 2006 with Greg's Dwarf Mine terrain.  The top two are Schleich, many of whose dinosaurs are very convertable to 28mm gaming (see also my Triceratops on the Glorantha thread).

I keep finding old models I forget I even made; perhaps the War of the Ring rules will help me to get them onto the table, soon...

War of the Rune

These are pictures of a game we played last week, using my Spartans and Assyrians as Lunar Empire surrogates, to clash with Ian Notter's Praxian Sable and Bison clans.  All the pics are clickable.

 Praxians on the left; Lunars force marching forward on the right.

Massed Bison Rider clan

Pesky Sable Clan, with their nasty bows

My one success was managing to catch the stationary Bisons with my Phalanx

We used GW's War of the Ring rules.  I'm cautiously impressed with the old school nature of these; massive units, buckets of dice.  Not rules to be taken especially seriously, but the potential for a fun game there; the huge units looked damn good, too.

The outcome?  I had some success against the Bison clan, but the Sables shot me to pieces during the approach.

Euglyptus the Fat and Fazzur Wideread

In this Gloranthan HoTT element, Fazzur Wideread,  the veteran Lunar general, is remonstrating with his superior, Euglyptus the Fat, during the Battle of Building Wall.  Due to Euglyptus' incompetance the Lunars went on to be soundly defeated; I rather regret not adding the barrel of eels in which Fazzur subsequently drowned him! 

I am pleased with the Euglyptus conversion, which is from a GW 40K scribe.  Some figures I actually painted myself, for once!  Not something you see every day.

Baboon Troop

This is one of my old Gloranthan units, the Baboon Troop.  They are one of the smaller tribes that roam the plaines of Prax.  

It is composed of the old Citadel 25mm baboons.  I'd really like to redo it sometime, with the newer, larger Lance and Laser baboons...

Jar-eel the Razoress

 Jar-eel the Razoress is the principle super-hero of the Lunar Empire, and incarnation of the Red Goddess.

Another Gloranthan mini from around 5 years ago, this is a Hordes of the Things "Hero" stand.  Although the painting is not the best, I'm really pleased with the composition of this piece.   Jar-eel was built up on a dolly.

Oldie but a Goldie

Over the next few days, I'm going to post a few shots of miniatures from my pre-ancients obsession; Glorantha.  These were some of the first 28mm minis I painted, around 6 years ago, and depict battle mages of the Lunar Empire, summoning Lunes (madness elememtals).  Essentially Gloranthan artillery.  If this inspires you with nostalgia for Runequest, have a look at Greg Privat's site: http://gloarmy.free.fr/

The minis are Eureka cultists with an old, converted Citadel Mage.  They aren't bad (I'd do better today).  I used to use the ghastly Miniature Paints acrylic matt varnish, which gives the minis a slight bluish tint and leaves them a bit glossy.  Unfortunate...