Ebay win(s)

After a year or more, and at least 20 bids, I finally won a high elf griffon from the Isle of Blood Warhammer Fantasy Battle starter.  I guess the market finally became saturated enough that my low ball bids had some success (fortunately for only one griffon and not all of the ones I was bidding on!).  As is my custom with ebay, I then checked out what other items the seller had for sale... and ended up with a Skaven regiment and some bits.

You can not tell from my crummy camera phone picture, but the sculpting is amazing, and the skaven in particular are super sharp, and have no duplicates in 20 figures, something that would be inconceivable when I started in this wacky hobby over 15 years ago, when plastic meant "monopose" 99% of the time.

Now I just have to decide if I want to change the griffon's rider to something for fitting for the Empire, like a wizard lord, or if I like the model enough to leave it as a high elf, a testimony to an army that I will never start.  The skaven can be used in D&D games or WHFRP, or with some conversion in Mordheim, although I like the figures enough that I seriously considered getting a few more of these regiments and starting an army... but just for a few minutes.  Skaven armies are massive, and I do not need a fifth unbuilt/unpainted Warhammer army. (do I?)

 

Pro Gloria Miniatures

I probably would have noticed these figures earlier if I had been to the Warhammer Empire forum lately, but a new company (to me at least) called Pro Gloria, has just released some lovely HRE civilian figures, sculpted by Paul Hicks!

Very exciting, and not too expensive either, at €5.95 per pack.  There are currently four packs, and hopefully there will be many many more. These figures will be excellent as NPCs for WHFRP, or for Mordheim type skirmish games.  As an aside, the paint job on these is by Andrew Taylor, and just look at that herald... he has a double eagle under his arms... amazing.

Sometime in the future, I need to get these figures.

Five Games...

Concept cribbed from American Barbarica: Five roleplaying games I would like to run if I had the time and the players group.

1) Deepest Sea - A OSR game, using a slightly modified Labyrinth Lord engine and my own home made setting of, well, the Deepest Sea.  A grity low powered dungeon crawl, with a few sandbox elements, and some political hooks for those who are so inclined.
2) Wandering Weißenland - WHFRP sandbox game set in eastern Weißenland, exploring the ruins left from the destruction of Solland, the local politics, and whatever else the players would fancy.  The WHFRP game is pretty low magic oriented, and deadly, so cautious exploration would be key.
3) Skype/Electronic tabletop dungeon crawl - A game played with friends online, using some of the various electronic tabletop replicators out there.  Would probably devolve fairly quickly into a silly inter-party bash like most of our games played in high school.  Not that there is anything wrong with that.
4) Dark Heresy/Inqusimunda skirmish/role play hybrid game - Battling teams of Inquisitors/Rogue Traders/gangers, on a declining world, combat played using Inquisimunda rules, running around looking for clues, and hopefully roasting each other.
5) Dank Medieval city game - Massive rotting city, inspired by the Lies of Locke Lamora, highly political, complex multifaceted religious situation, and low magic.  neighborhoods with different customs, complicated guilds for all aspects of the economy, alchemists, corrupt nobility, etc.  Players as rogues/bravos, trying to make a big score, and escape a debt.  Would have a heavy reputation factor.

Come to think of it, most of my imagined settings are pretty low magic gritty settings.

Also, spent some time today looking through Rolang's Creeping Doom.  Lots of excellent ideas there, including a cleric class which worships a pantheon of gods, but only one per day, which one determined by a d6, with completely different modes of worship and rewards for same.

Painting again, at last!

The other day, I decided that I should just paint a figure that I had sitting around in my desk, from start to finish. I chose the beggar figure from the Reaper Townsfolk II set, sculpted by Bobby Jackson. These are great figures, full of character and easy to paint; however, they are very very large, too large to work well with many other figures out there. I plan to use these figures as scenery for Warhammer games, and as NPCs in WHFRP, so the size should be ok.

A nice feature of painting a fantasy figure, and particularly a one off, is that there is no uniform consideration, and if I want to paint the pants one color and the shirt another, only aesthetics dictates what I should do. So I was able to zip along, and got a fair amount finished.

As you can see from this picture though, I had a bit of a handicap while painting though...

Since then, I have painted up another figure (the farmer with the withered arm from Reaper Townsfolk V), and plan to do a few more soon. Maybe this will get me back on track.

In a RPG sort of mood

Inspired by Penny Arcade's articles on sandbox gaming [herein defined as free form gaming with multiple plot threads in a prepared semi-dynamic world], and a general interest lately in content creation, I have been thinking quite a bit about a WHFRP campaign, set in southern Wissenland [the southernmost Elector State in the Empire]. Naturally, it would be supported by miniatures, terrain, and so on. (what good game is not?)

Chasing down information online about this sort of gaming, I read the 24 steps of creating a sandbox, as defined by Bat in the Attic, and immediately started to think of ideas and plot lines and so on to hook my PCs. Looking over a map of Wissenland, I decided that Wusterburg looked like a good center for action, with two rivers, the Black Mountains, and other interesting areas to explore and to place. This will also allow for some ruins/empty territory exploring as the area encompasses parts of former Solland. (Elector State ruined by Orcs in 1707 and now subsumed mostly by Wissenland)

This sort of gaming project has extra allure to me because it combines both world building and obsessive detail, both of which I enjoy. It is also useful at the current time, since the offspring makes any actual at home hobby time fleeting at best, and this can be pursued during lunch hours, with mapping and NPC creation.

Difficulties in creating a WHFRP campaign are many fold. First, I do not have any regular playing group. This could be a way to start gaming with some friends of mine. Second, I do not have all the WHFRP books, and would want/have to get more. For example including Skaven would mean that I need the requisite source book. (That the books are now out of print does not help matters any) Third, I have not GMed/DMed/Storytold before. Fourth, I just do not have much free time, and weekly gaming sessions would exceed the time I have. None of these difficulties are insurmountable, but they do make this project more of a fantasy than it would otherwise be.

In any case, this is where my hobby time has been lately, thinking about striking out into the wilds in the southern empire, righting wrongs, and exploring ruins.

As for painting, I have not touched a brush in months... well, a miniature brush that is. I have painted a patch on a wall, and rolled out some paint in the garage, but nothing miniature wise. I think that 2009/10 will go in the records book as the least productive painting year ever.