Going deeper underground (Warhammer Quest/Generic Dungeoneering project)

[Gunbird]

Loving those homemade bases Erik <thumbs up> 

[Elbows]

I love me some Warhammer Quest (well, 90% of it..the actual fighting mechanics leave me a bit cold in a GW style way...).  I'm working on a dungeon product right now, and may actually get around to making up a dungeon crawl very much WHQ inspired at some point.  I shall follow this thread with interest.  I like all of your minis (oddly don't care for the busty dwarf chick though).  Love the barbarian and the Orcs in particular.

[Modhail]

Hi Johan, nice to see you again around here. They do give a great effect for such a simple trick. I find it relaxing to do as a further bonus. (I really should paint my Incursion APE suits, so you can see the trick works for concrete flooring just as well.)

Elbows, I know what you mean about WHQ, love the game to bits, but  I do find the combat, especially the fact that the monsters always just materialise right in your face, a bit jarring.
Ooh, please share your dungeon project! I always like seeing other folk's approaches. Gives me inspiration too.

[EndTransmission]

Great looking start to the project! I'm also working on the same thing, except I've got to start pretty much from scratch as all I've got are the books, cards and doors!

[Modhail]

Well, seems like you've still got a fair bit to do then, EndTransmission... 

I've been adding to my undead population:

The picture focuses on the bases. (I had one that showed the entire figures, but I seem to have smudged the lens just before taking it... You'll get to see them another time.)
The large one on the left is for a Death Knight (a conversion using a  GW Chaos Warrior and some leftover Vampire Counts Skeletons bits). Seeing how he is a "big bad" and intended to be an end of quest monster, like the Lich lord, he gets a nice ornate 30mm base*. His ties in with the Lich lord, being in the same style of crypt style gravestone slabs. But the Death Knight's base features a somewhat more macabre "memento mori" type decoration instead of the Lich lord's more traditional brass effigy.
The smaller 25mm bases are for two wraiths (the leftmost two) and a banshee (the rightmost one).

I plan to have three wraiths in the end (so I need to get one more, at some point), each portraying some aspect of death. The ones I've already finished now are a wraith known only as "the Harvester", carrying a scythe. I've put a stalk of grain as stonecarving on his base, to tie in to this theme. The second wraith is known as "the Timekeeper", he carries a sand timer (and a kris-like knife). To cement his "relentless march of time" mood, he has a section of a astrological chart on his base.
The third wraith, as yet unacquired, will carry a paddle and be known as "the Oarsman".
So essentially I'll have a Father Time to keep track of whose time has run out, a Grim Reaper to harvest the lives of those whose time is up and a Charon to ferry the souls of the dead to their final home...
But they could also be a former executioner (scythe/reaping the lives of the guilty), a former astrologer/soothsayer (sand timer and chart) and a former priest (steersman of his congregation's souls) before their undeath.
Nice, evocative symbolism, that I can explain in several ways to my players. Just how I like it.
Or tell them nothing and let them speculate...

The banshee is just your typical screeching dead lady. As I'm trying to apply some background based cohesion to my collection of skeletal undead, I find myself thinking of her more and more as the Lich lord's wife, back when they were all still living. In this scheme, the wraiths would have been the old (Lich) lord's councilors and advisers.

*: I'm basing my infantry mini's for my own Dungeoneering/Questing/Chanson de Geste gaming (I really need to find an acronym or shorter term for this!) on a mix of 20mm, 25 and 30mm bases.
I'm using the following system for this:
-Regular (rank and file) humans, and any creatures of equal or lesser power, go on 20mm bases.
-Those humans of above average prowess but not dramatically so (for example, my Knight's Sergeant, Squire, the family's loyal War Hound, lesser wizards, etc.) and creature of comparable power and size (Orcs, greater Beastmen, Grave Guard, my Necromancer etc.) get 25mm bases.
-True Heroes, the ones stories and legends are told about (A.k.a. my Knight, the Dungeoneers, etc. The ones that will function as a player's avatar on the game table) get 30mm bases. So do dire foes/humanoid major bosses (the Lich Lord, Death Knight, an Orc warlord, the great Evil Wizard, etc.) Basically those human-sized fiends that are the final enemy at the end of heroic Quest...
For cavalry and larger monsters I have 40 and 50mm bases (Again with True Heroes getting the larger size.) Really unusual monsters such a Giants or Dragons, should I ever acquire those, will get even larger, custom sized bases.

[EndTransmission]

A lot of work is an understatement

Those bases are really great and will add lots of character to the monsters

[Modhail]

Luckily, these days, you've got quite the selection of ranges (and price ranges) to select your ideal dungeon population from, should you start WHQ from scratch. Some very pretty figures among them for sure.
If you like the bases, just give it a try, they're not that hard to make. There should be a description of how I do them somewhere in this tread, if you have any questions, just ask!

I managed to have a little sit down at the painting table today to finish off a couple of figures:

The rats of from my missus' Warhammer Quest set, the skeleton archers are for my own project.

Also, last Wednesday my little order from Heresy Miniatures arrived, adding 6 lovely giant slugs/grubs to my monster roster, and an Elf Druid and Exorcist priest to my heroes. (I would have liked to order some more from him, but couldn't resist pledging on the Darkest Dungeon kickstarter. It looks to be a lovely little sidescrolling dungeoncrawler PC game, very stylish and moody. They've only got one week to go.)

Six Spiders, six rats,
Twelve Snotlings and twelve Bats,
Six of the Orcs, six Goblins too,
A three Minotaur wrecking crew,
Some heroic souls, they number four,
And six samples of a Dungeon Door!
That's the quota I have to meet,
Before Warhammer Quest, it is complete...

[Modhail]

Yay, I'm building stuff:

Looks a lot like terrain, doesn't it?

Except, it isn't... :p
It's a diorama backdrop for the Glass Cabinet:

Once finished, this one will go on the shelf where my lady's Warhammer Quest miniatures live. To show them off better, and give me a little bit more room to display them.
I've still got quite a bit of work to do on it, but I have to do it in short spurts, to allow stuff to dry. And also, scribing stones is tedious...
It's split down the middle so that I could also use it in the half-width part of the cabinet.
Depending on how well this one goes, I might make another for my own Dungeoneering miniatures.

[Modhail]

Oh dear, it seems I've completely forgotten to keep track of this thread, my apologies!
Time to play catch up, I say.
Now, what have I done on this since my last post:
I've laid some flooring:


Here is the complete lower level:

I've also finished two of the three middle corridors, but totally forgot to take pictures... 

And this week, I've done the cave and outdoor area on the upper level:


Which means I have one final section of corridor wall to do, and 3 sections of flooring, all on the middle level. And then I can start detailing the thing!

And some bats encountered paint:

Which means I'm that much closer to the half way point of painting the Warhammer Quest set. Just 6 snotlings, a Minotaur-and-a-half and two heroes to go, and I'll be at that magical 50%!

[Elprez]

I seem to have missed this thread until now, 
Fantastic job you're doing, and I particularly like the diorama backdrop for your cabinet idea, 
Your figures are going to look superb on display.

Have you seen these new adventurers from Statuesque which might suit your project?

[Modhail]

Yup, I've seen them, they're nice alright! A bit more cartoonish* than the rest of my heroes. Might still get them someday just for the fun of painting them.
What I am really looking out for, though, are some more suitable monsters. I got the full content of the Warhammer Quest set (or rather, my wife has), but I am still lacking somewhat for the other parts of this project. I have been eyeing Otherworld miniature's offerings, they have some very nice monsters and beasts. But I just need to find the right moment, and more importantly, funds to do so.

You see, this is really a project of three halves...
On the one hand I'm getting my lady's Warhammer Quest set painted. On the other hand, I'm also building a collection of dungeoncrawling monsters and heroes for myself, which tend to have a bit more dark and sinister bent than WHQ.
On the third hand  (), I'm also collecting miniatures for Chanson de geste/medieval fantasy style games.
The first two are actually fairly close together in concept, both featuring small groups of heroic individuals, each one controlled one by a separate player. But for my own sub-project, I am not restricted by the Warhammer Quest setting and can range as far and wide as I want within a generic fantasy world. The last part is more warband oriented, with each player controlling a single hero and his personal following. This could be a knight and his retinue, a sorceress with an escort, a Dwarf Thane with his personal guard or even a wandering priest and his acolytes, basically any sort of group one could find in a work medieval or Tolkienian heroic fiction. Opposed by either wandering monsters or similar bands of a more villainous persuasion...
Because these three parts overlap so much (WHQ has a wide assortment of rules for monsters, Knights do sometimes go underground, heroes don't only live in subterranean tunnels, etc.), I have assumed from the start that minis from one segment of the project will unavoidably see frequent use in other segments.
I've already got plenty of heroes in stock, but relatively few monsters to oppose them. (I really should do a proper list one of these days...)

*: Now that I've had the length of this post to think about it, I don't think cartoonish is exactly the right description. Especially compared to other offerings there are these days. Sure their features are exaggerated, but they seem to remind me more of old school RPG artwork than cartoons...

[Michka]

I love this thread. Warhammer Quest was my favorite miniatures game for the longest time. It still influences every miniatures game I run. The bases you make are fantastic. I just started sculpting my own bases recently. They're nowhere near as cool as yours, so I'll be gleaning some ideas here. But the most amazing thing in this thread though is the display cabinet. Hell, I want to play a game in that cabinet. (That sounded so wrong.) It reminds me of the artwork from many old school game books. I can see the Erol Otis drawing of that set-up. Can I recommend Otherworlds monsters to populate it?     

[Modhail]

I'm glad you like it! 
I'm pretty happy about how the display is shaping up as well. Now I just need to finish the darn thing...
Otherworld is definitely past of the wishlist as far as miniatures go for my own project.
The display itself however will be populated by my wife's Warhammer Quest miniatures, the reason I'm building it, is to show them off properly once they're painted.
Maybe I'll eventually build a similar display for my own dungeon miniatures, once I have enough of them painted.

[Elbows]

This thread is definitely inspiring...my own dungeon project is going along well, I'll be starting a thread up here soon.  My love for WHQ is still pretty strong, so I think I'll be making up a game similar (different mechanics, but a similar feel).  Easily one of the best boxes GW ever released.  My dungeon stuff has been from a mix of sources so far, some Reaper, some LOTR, some Wargames Factory, some Mantic, some Otherworld, some repaints of Heroscape/D&D/Pathfinder figs, etc.  I'd have nothing but Otherworld but their prices are bit too much for my current budget.

Shame that there are so few "comprehensive" ranges which would be nice.  I'm shocked no one makes a plastic box or two of random dungeon denizens. 

[phreedh]

I do find the combat, especially the fact that the monsters always just materialise right in your face, a bit jarring.

This! I think the iOS implementation (iPhone/iPad) does it a little better than I remember the board game doing it. Can't put my finger on what's different though. I think it's a combination of the rooms being bigger and the monsters being placed "downfield" in the rooms. Also, as soon as a warrior moves next to an unexplored room, the room is revealed and any monsters in it are placed before the warriors have even entered.

I think WHQ could be greatly improved by just tweaking the placement rules a bit.

Likewise, the iOS version has three tiers of items. Don't remember the terms, but they're like common, uncommon and rare. You can only have four items of each tier equipped at a time - and you can't equip stuff during combat. That means your weapons and armour compete with rings, potions, bandages and other doodads. All equipment is in a common pool for the warriors to pick from.

Finally, there's a difference in progression too. Characters gain XP. When enough XP is gained, a warrior can level up by paying gold. The amount of gold needed is lesser than compared to the board game.

It's worth investigating, I'm a bit keen on doing a little tweaking to my home made WHQ set to make it more like the iOS game. Just wish I had the time to do it.