Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: Mudstone Miniatures on July 19, 2021, 07:19:19 PM
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First post ever! I've been reading all the great posts and drooling over the awesome art for about a year and I finally decided to post some of my stuff.
I just played a game on the weekend with my son. We're tweaking our homebrew rules as our wizards function more like D&D wizards than Warhammer FB wizards. In other words, they fly around the battlefield and buff/debuff, blast, conjure demons and elementals, cast protection spells and generally cause great chaos! After the second playtest we think we have it right.
Anyhow, I'm more of a set piece battle guy with maybe one wizard so this battle was more for my boy who wanted big, fast and destructive.
So, Drow Elves vs Dwarves. There are about 400 Drow (Celtos Sidhe) with 8 wizards (Reaper, RAFM), 36 Bugbears (Old Glory, Ghost), 27 Trolls (Ral Partha), 60ish Oathmark Goblin (orc?) Wolfriders, a unit of Mind Flayers (Nolzur's, Reaper), 400 Goblins on foot (Mantic), and some demons and such (Heroclix, Reaper) vs about 1200-1300 Dwarves (Grenadier, Mirliton) with 6 clerics (Reaper, Grenadier) and a Dragon (McFarlane), Drizzt Do'Urden and friends (Dark Sword), a demigoddess (Reaper Frost Giant Princess), and 4 Stone Giants (Reaper).
Both games took two days with about 5-6 hours of play per day but we played the long version where units have multiple attacks and hit points (like Kings of War, but really not) the first time, and the short version where each unit has one attack/one HP. The first iteration of the game is for when you play with 10-20 units and the second is more for when your playing 50+ units per side.
Any feedback on paint jobs is welcome. My camera sucks (says the guy who isn't the best photographer).
Enjoy!
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Couple more pics.
I think I need a better camera ::)
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Welcome to LAF - a great first post (and your second isn’t bad either) 8)
Personally I’m a big fan of mass battles, and your collection certainly falls into that category - maybe take some more close ups but your painting looks great to me.
Also love what I can see of your games room...especially the Dawn of the Dead poster
:)
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Wow, that’s really a mass-battle - it makes my dwarf army with a mere 120, or so, figures look like a drop in a bucket!
Very cool to see another dwarf army with well painted ex-Grenadier figures, too! I’m looking forward to your future posts.
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Also, great choice using the Celtos sidhe for drow elves. They’re cool figures, but don’t really fit style-wise with most other elves. That’s an advantage when using them for the drow, though!
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Thanks man!
I was planning on doing a seperate post for each of my armies. I have 22 fantasy armies but 2 of them are only 12 units (about 300 minis) but I buff them with Great Eagles and Ents so they can take on larger armies and my biggest is Thangorodrim which is stupid big! (Cheap EM-4 Orcs for the most part). Lots of LOTR stuff too.
I also do Post-Apoc (Mad Max), Heroclix (all teams Marvel and DC at 5 year intervals - i.e. X-Men 1965, 1975, 1985, and so on up to 2005 and some alternate universes like DoFP and AoA), Terminators, Aliens, Zombies (of course!!!), homemade G.I. Joe (used the terminator genysis resistance fighters and Heroclix), Weird World War Two (Dust, Warlord, Wargames Factory), WWWIII (Eureka NBCs and MOPP), and Garth Enis' Crossed (not sure if I can post thta one because of all of the nudity and general rucked upedness).
I'm buying a new camera today because I took some static army showcase shots but the detail just isn't showing.
Also, I know the Mad Max pic doesn't go here and i will repost it to Post Apoc when I get there. I juts thought it was relevant to the current discussion.
Thanks again for the feedback.
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Beautiful thematic armies there. More please, and some close ups would be great!
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Wow! Those are amazing armies. So many figures and all so well painted. Great job!
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Impressive 8)
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That is an insane number of figures. Well done.
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Very impressive set up. 22 fantasy armies? :o
Your games room looks cool too.
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After talking to my daughter about why my pictures are blurry she told me to try better lighting.
So, I took some of the Drow Characters with better lighting.
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And some units
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Dwarven Rank and File troops
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Wow, those are both beautifully done armies. The consistent palettes and basing tie the figures together well even though there is a variety in each force. Great job!
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I think you need a bigger table!
Great posts - love the shields on the dwarves, are they transfers?
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Wow ... simply wow. Those are stunning minis.
Plus it's my two favorite fantasy races represented by sculpts that need much more love and attention than they get.
I simply can't say which army I like better ... o_o
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Magnificent set-up and lovely painting. I can't even imagine the hours gone into those babies and the tie-in with the Dwarf shield and banner designs work so well.
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Good Lord, that's impressive.
I adore the sombre muted palette on the Drow - they look exactly like Drow should, dark and menacing.
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Amazing - exactly the sort of project I love to follow.
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Stunning work on both the painting and the use of model.
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Yes, many hours did go into these armies and thank you for all the kind words.
I remember the first time I saw the grendier dwarves in a boxed set (50 orcs and 50 dwarves) and that was what hooked me on mass battles. I used to get the fantasy warriors metal blisters at a comic shop down town. Throw in the Salvatore books and I was (am) a lifer.
I love the Celtos sculpts but they don't really feel like fantasy elves. They're more like Celtic folklore (Aos Si or Sidhe I think) which is awesome too. However, I needed drow that looked totally different from the surface elves of D&D. I like the Reaper scultps for wizards and command models and I use GW Cold Ones and Chariots simply because there is nothing else available.
As for the shields, I found some designs I liked off of the internet. Then I changed the colours to brown and cream and doctored them using the vignette option so they're dark at the edges. Then I glued them to black bristol board and cut the circles out manually. I tried to use a punch to get them perfect but they were too thick to get the punch through.
I did the same thing for my Dol Amroth proxies.
Here are some more dwarf characters.
Also, if there is something you want a closer look at on the table let me know and I'll take pics of it.
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More Dwarves!
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This is all incredible! the level of thought and detail into each mini...but multiplied out to the vast numbers here... :o
Thank you for joining the forum and sharing. This is a real privilege to be able to view.
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I agree with Mr. Hooligan, this thread is a visual feast! So many really well done figures to enjoy. Fits right in with the regular contributions so many folks on LAF post!
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More Dwarves!
I use the middle one as Thibbledorf Pwent and he leads the Oathmark Heavy Dwarf Infantry (seen above) as the gutbusters.
I use to love the drizzt books but only the first 6 and 'The Orc King' and 'The Lone Drow'. So I would reread 8 of them but the rest do kinda suck.
Some of the characters are reaper bones. I dislike the rubbery texture of the models but you can't beat the price so I try to include them whenever I can.
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Awesome!
And I want to have that owl-griff rider too...
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Those really are amazing!
Great painting and in huge amounts. Splendid!
I never thought of using those Sidhe before.
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Looking at them now and thinking actually pretty good for price.
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are those movement trays lids from a plastic container with textured tops?
If so that's brilliant. If not, they're still brilliant and how did you do it?
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Loving the miniatures here. Are the unit bases going to be painted?
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Great stuff :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*
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Absolutely fantastic stuff. An interesting method of movement trays.
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awesome stuff...
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wow ... what a collection - and painted to such a great standard :-*
one lucky son ... and that's before we get to the comics and posters !
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Sorry for the late reply folks I've been busy busy with work!
As for whether the trays will be painted my answer is no.
I have always struggled with basing because of the numbers of miniatures I use in my games. I needed something cheap, standardised, and durable. I think if I paint or flock the outside of the tray they will not wear well. I would rather them be done in the same sand/static grass as the individual bases and the interior ground of the base is indeed finished in this manner. It's the damned edging! I figure the clear plastic edging is 'good enough' because once they're ranked up in larger battalions of multiple movement trays there is a weird beauty that apeals to my boardgame vs diroama compromise.
I would love to make giant battle dioramas like the kind you see in museums, however space is the adversary in this instance. When playing it becomes less about the miniatures and more about mechanics so I feel like the clear edge helps in decision making (i.e. how many units of Elves do my Gobbos have to kill before x happens... the situation become crystal with more defined bases, etc). I think once I retire I'll play a lot less and maybe I'll spend time making those aforementioned giant dioramas. I would have to make backgrounds for my tabe edges which would be a cool project in itself.
Final note on trays; I bought 10 plastic containers (for the lids) for a dollar at the dollar store. Seeing as I had so many to do that was a no brainer (and I'm still swimming in extras:). Over the years I have experimented (and rebased multiple times) using a big variety of possbilities. I've used masonite and drilled holes and placed magnets (makes set-up too long however and you can reuse trays if the number of minis are standard in a unit and sometimes they're not), I've used plastic strips and glued the miniatures directly to it (they pop off too easily). I tried the Warhammer way, but I absolutely hate using miniatures on square bases for skirmish games (great for ranking up, but crappy for war party level games), I've done scenic dioramaesque trays but then I made them themed (i.e. Drow had stalactites and such etc) but it accentuates the differences between between armies and company styles/scales and it was difficult to use troops from different armies (i.e. humans especially, and different Orcish/Goblin/Ogre/Troll/Gnoll troops can't be swapped in to create an army you want for the situation). I even made reinforced scenic bases out of Fimo and they weren't durable enough. So in the end I decided to do a standard accros the board.
I'm going to start a new thread and eventually catalogue all my fantasy stuff here and on my blog.
Thanks for the enthousiastic interest folks.
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Saw the other thread and was blown away, this is equally impressive and incredible! :o :-*
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Yup, that truly is an INSANE number of miniatures.
If, 'God favours big battalions' he must blooming
well LOVE you!!!!
lol lol lol
Excellent work. My butterfly mind would never let
me stick to one task like that.