Dragon Rampant warbands [more poleaxes and a dwarf smith, 19th March]

[Severian]

Thanks! It was good to get something finished, in any event.

Yes, I did pick up Dragon Warriors and they look great fun; the original books were just after my time. Now I just need to make time for planning and painting and so on; this has been more than normally difficult of late, though, for one reason or another. But I live in hope...

[Severian]

And here are some more rats - well, Otherworld were-rats, to be precise. Think these have come out OK, although the photographs are as bad as ever...

[Hobgoblin]

These look good! A few giant rats and a couple of were-rats might give you a nice little introductory RPG adventure. The beasts could be hiding out in the cellar of an inn, perhaps.

I've been watching the Drunkens and Dragons YouTube series, and one of the most interesting things about the scenarios showcased there is the way in which an hours-long RPG encounter can be built from just a single room. He does some clever things like having computer-game-style "monster spawning" that can be stopped by achieving a particular goal. You could do something along those lines with giant rats and were-rats. Perhaps one of the were-rats is muttering a spell that keeps 1-2 rats "spawning" each round, while her companion and the rats seek to do away with the party. If you improvised some interesting cellar/sewer architecture and added a bit of exploration beforehand, you could get a great kid-friendly session going. I'm envisaging a chase after the spell-casting were-rat around a raised area, while rats flood into the room below and PCs snipe from behind barrels ...

[Severian]

Thanks!

And thanks also for the RPG ideas - I'm trying to finish a miscellaneous cast of skeletons, wraiths and so on (oddments I've had half-done for a while) and will cobble together a scenario to accommodate what I have in hand. Your were-rat idea could prove invaluable...

[Severian]

and a pair of wraiths (or similar), also Otherworld. These might need a bit more work eventually, but they'll do for now.

[Dr DeAth]

Simple but very effective.

[Severian]

Thanks! I may revisit them when I've worked out what I'm doing with the bases...

[Severian]

I bought a cheap light box in the hope of making my pictures a bit more visible; haven't quite got the hang of it yet, but here are a few recently finished things in any event.

The wind elemental is Scotia Grendel; he's been essentially finished for months, apart from his base which I just did. I had to redo his highlighting after an unfortunate incident with brushed-on varnish dissolving washes... but he'll do, I think.

Next, an Otherworld cockatrice (still needs his base done). Bought him ages ago, and finally got round to tackling him last week. He's another trial of speed-painting with pre-shades & washes & some highlighting. Not completely happy with him, but again he'll do.

Lastly, an old WF skeleton, again mostly done a while back. You can't see it here, but his eye-sockets have some red wash; he's otherwise pretty basic. But he was finished at last, so here he is.

[Hobgoblin]

Great stuff! That wind elemental is just exquisite - superb colours and very effective highlighting and basing.

I like the  others too. One thing that might be worth trying on the cockatrice is a little black/dark lining around the eye and inside the beak, around the tongue and in the nostrils - just to make those details 'pop' a little more. If you use a fine brush and some thinned black paint (not much on the brush), you could really bring those areas into focus. But it's a nice paintjob and colour scheme in any case - it reminds me a bit of a Uccello dragon.

[Duncan McDane]

Yeah, really dig the Air Elemental ( originally made for the Leviathan miniature wargame, they make more great elemenatls & demons ). Great dark menacing colour and the face comes out beautifully here. Thumbs up  .

[Severian]

Thank you both for your very kind words.

The elemental is a very nice model - lots of detail to take highlights! If only I could remember exactly what I did...

The Scotia Grendel site is a bit of a treasure house of stuff, isn't it. I've got one of their barbarian warchiefs on a bison half-done; originally bought him to go with my ad hoc Praxian bison riders (who need more tattoos before they can appear in public) only to find he's about twice their size... But he'll make a great ancestral spirit, if he's ever finished...

Hobgoblin: I'm happy the cockatrice's colours remind you of Uccello (whom I'm very fond of). But I have to confess that the colour scheme is borrowed from the old AD&D Monster Manual (and the Otherworld website) - so perhaps it's School of E Gary Gygax... and thanks for the blacklining tip. I'll have a go when my hand is steady enough...

[Severian]

Well, slower progress over the past couple of weeks but a good few things nearly done.

Actually done (apart from basing, which I'm still thinking about) are a trio of goblins - one Red Box (the heavier one) and two scrawny fellows from, well, somewhere.
I thought they were Midlam but I had a quick look on their site and couldn't find them, so maybe they're discontinued now or they came from elsewhere and I've forgotten. Josef Ochmann sculpts I think at any rate. There are three others from the same pack that are in various stages of incomplete.

I made them blue for a change; quite pleased with the effect.

[Hobgoblin]

I think those are Rieder Design's "goblin terrorists". I remember seeing adverts for them in White Dwarf.

They look grand in blue - as does the Red Box fellow. He's great.

[Hobgoblin]

Ah - not quite, it seems. They're some of Alternative Armies' Nilbog's backwoods goblin band, some of which were originally Rieder's goblin terrorists, with the rest variants thereof.

[Severian]

Thanks!

I wondered if they might be from Alternative Armies, since I have other goblins of theirs; but I haven't got the hang of their new(ish) website yet, and missed them. Thanks very much for clearing that up. So that means there are five more of them somewhere astray in the leadpile...