Some miniatures for Song of Blades and Heroes (Frostgrave undead and construct)

[Hobgoblin]

I was thinking of getting some to use as Trolls or Ogres in 28mm and Giants in 15mm given how tall they are.

Yup, they're very big. I think you could squeeze one onto a 40mm base for 15mm (for HOTT or whatever). They'd certainly fit onto 50mm. They are colossal, though - I reckon they're at least 12' tall in 28mm and massive with it. So they'd be absolutely titanic in 15mm.

I watched the segment of the troll attack on Gondor in the LotR films, which confirmed my view that these models are actually better than their source material: the faces are less goofy and the weapons more appropriately sized. The models look much nastier than the film's trolls.

[beefcake]

Any chance of a scale shot with a 28mm?

[Hobgoblin]

I'll post one tonight (I hope to get the bases done for the first troll element).

[Hobgoblin]

Better late than never, I hope!

Here are the finished trolls and artillery, along with a size comparison. The chaos warrior in the picture is an old solid-based one, and he's sitting on a 20x20 base (i.e. he's the size of a normal human).

Awful photos as ever, but they should give an idea of the size of the trolls. I like them: they're a perfect behemoth element for HOTT, as they look big enough to form a convincing pantomime oliphaunt.

The chaos warrior WIP is the start of a new plan: basing up all my old, unpainted solid-based chaos warriors for HOTT. A quick audit revealed around 24 or so of them kicking around. I've also got a couple of the old knights of law, who'll probably switch sides (as they appeared to have done in Tabletop Heroes). Once those are done, I'll divest these guys of their teenage paintjobs and redo them to match. But not before the rest are done.

The rationale for this is that I much prefer those early chaos warriors to any that GW (or anyone else has done since). And if I base them for HOTT (and thus use them for that game and Dragon Rampant), I'll get lots of them on the table far more than if I base them for skirmishes or RPGs. I can't envisage any situation where having 24 individually based chaos warriors would be necessary; they're more likely to feature in small groups either in SOBH or TBH. And for those, I have several already painted up, plus a fair few of the Jez Goodwin slottabased ones, which are much bigger and thus much better suited to skirmishes rather than HOTT. The older ones don't even have to be chaos warriors - I can see them featuring in HOTT or DR games as evil warriors or a wizard's guard or malignant mercenaries.

This is just one part of a mass painting and basing exercise for 2017. I've got loads of ancient miniatures kicking around that could be put to much better use on the table. As HOTT armies are small (around 40 figures), and as new elements can be added incrementally to older armies, there's huge scope to dart around between armies and bring them along fairly quickly. So, in no particular order, I plan to work on the following for HOTT this year:

1. A slann army (blades/spears for the palace guards, a wizard, the odd horde element of slaves, and the braves as warbands, shooters or lurkers).

2. An army of C36 hobgoblins. I've got more than enough of these. This army will be largely warband, but perhaps with some blade elements consisting of the most heavily armoured types. And hobhound beast units, of course, and the occasional bit of rocket artillery. I have a temple dog for a knight or behemoth general, though alas I no longer have the hobgoblin rider (instead, I have an punkish amazon of some description). The general element will - of course - contain Gyorukinti.

3. The army of "steampunk" goblins, of which this artillery element is the first bit. I've got some shooter units underway and plan to have pretty much the whole army made up of shooters, with artillery and a wizard general.

4. A reptile army - lizardmen led by a behemoth (Grenadier's flightless platinum dragon) with flyers (Grenadier dragonmen) and knights/riders/beasts (cold one riders of various vintages), as well as a wizard.

5. A "good" army consisting of Fantasy Tribe dwarf blades and artillery, !980s Citadel ents as behemoths, eagles as flyers and a wizard or two.

6. Chaos: the old chaos warriors, some contemporary chaos hounds, some chaos centaurs, more behemoths, demons as flying heroes and gods, and many more hordes (I've got at least five bases' worth of WIPs). And a chaos ship (as an airboat element).

7. More goblins! More hordes, at least one more element of trolls, some Chronicle wolfriders and more Essex blade elements and Fantasy Tribe warbands. Plus some night goblins spears, perhaps.

Now, this all sounds a bit ambitious. But I got at least two and a half HOTT armies done last year, after starting in mid-July and proceeding quite slowly until recently, with quite a bit of other stuff thrown in. And of the 60ish AP I completed, 8 was horde elements - which are at least twice as much work at other elements and half the points cost.

The nice thing about painting up HOTT elements is that you can just slot them into existing armies as you complete them. I suspect the slann and reptile armies will evolve together, for example. We shall see ...

[Globlin]

The trolls look great. Kudos to Pippin for managing to down one outside the Black Gate!

Sounds like you've got a busy year ahead.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, Globlin!

Yes - it's a fairly full schedule, miniatures-wise - but HOTT armies don't take long to paint. Basing and undercoating aside, a dedicated week of evenings should be enough to get a full 24 points done. I also have some plans for some skirmish warbands: Aly Morrison half-orcs and hobgoblins (one of each; the hobgoblins to act as "extras" when I use the HOTT-based hobgoblins for Dragon Rampant); Trish Morrison lizardmen; old Citadel dwarfs; and some Runequest broo. In each case, I have a few painted up already, so the goal is to expand each band to 10-12 or so.

Top of this list are the Morrison half-orcs, which are simply fantastic figures:



Unusually with Citadel models of this vintage, I'm not inclined to multi-base these fellows: they're simply too individual and characterful. And they were clearly designed as adventurers rather than warriors: witness the D&D character classes in the descriptions. Also, they've got lots of "skirmishy" detail: one of the assassins has a crossbow on his back as well as a two-handed sword, while another has sword and shield and a two-handed sword on his back. That's all stuff that can be catered for nicely in ASOBH or Battlesworn or the equivalent. I'm planning to run another Tales of Blades and Heroes game for my kids and their friends, and I can see these fellows featuring as villains (or ambiguous NPCs at best).

The only one I have completed so far is this fellow (from a while back - he's the assassin with the crossbow):



But I have the "cleric" almost done and a couple of the fighters on the way. I also have the foot and mounted hero underway, though he's going to be quite painstaking (in an effort to have both versions match).

Something that got me in a "skirmishy" mood yesterday was chancing upon the Dave Graffam paper models going very cheaply on DriveThruRPG. I'd initially gone for the pay-what-you-want samples, but noticed that lots of stuff that's normally $4 or $5 is going for $1. Even at current exchange rates, that made it all far too tempting. I spent about a fiver and got a whole batch of buildings. I glued the first few sheets to cereal-box card and began to assemble them - results below. I printed them on light card, which would have been OK on its own, but would have resulted in fairly fragile models. As I've done them, they're really robust. The downside is rougher corner folds with bigger gaps, but I followed the tip on using a black marker to line them. That might not look great close up, but it works fine at "tabletop distance". I might drybrush up some of the bigger black lines, but I probably won't bother. One thing I might do in future is leave the finer parts (chimneys etc) unbacked.

Anyway, I've already got three buildings constructed, and I'll have a smallish settlement done shortly. I can feel some urban skirmishing coming on. And for the TBH game, I think a riff on the Scouring of the Shire might be appropriate - "cleaning up" a town that's been taken over by half-orcs. I even have quite a few old Citadel halflings and hobbits kicking around ...

[majorsmith]

I like those buildings! Have you got a link to them?

[Hobgoblin]

I like those buildings! Have you got a link to them?

Here's the link to the creator's website:

http://www.davesgames.net


You can buy them from various webshops, including DriveThruRPG, from his site.

They really are excellent. I'll certainly be snapping up a good few more (not least some sci-fi ones for Rogue Stars and MDRG). And there's a lot of conversion potential - for instance, the tower could easily lose a few floors to become a shack. There are lots of crates and things in with the kits too. And of course, once you've bought the PDFs, you can print as many as you like (or at least until your spouse makes enquiries about the levels of printer ink ...).

[majorsmith]

Thankyou!

[Hobgoblin]

A WIP half-orc - I've since fixed the blotch by the eye and the shield rim. Tonight I'll give his cloak the mud-spattering it deserves.

[fred]

Looking good, I had a variant of that last half-orc, with a different head.

With the fold lines on the buildings - rather than using marker pen, it can be worth using a normal painting wash or ink to go over the white bits, this tends to be not quite as strong on any overlaps.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks, Fred. Is that the chap in the hood with the mace? He's steeping in Biostrip as I type ...

Thanks for the tip - I'll try that next time out (one of the great things about these buildings is that you can just print out more!). I tried using a pastel marker for the one in the photos below; it's glaring here, but is hardly noticeably on the tabletop.

Here's another Trish Morrison beastman that arrived in the mail today. I'm trying to make an effort to get started straight away on eBay purchases.

This little wolfman is destined for my HOTT chaos hordes, along with these fellows. I'll aim to get one or two brighter or weirder types to go on the same base, so that they don't look too drab next to their peers.

[beefcake]

Hey those are cool. Nice work.

[Hobgoblin]

Thanks!

I also made a little progress on the half-orc last night. Here he is with some of his full-blooded kin - although I think Aly Morrison's hobgoblins make a better set of "orcish" counterparts (and they're certainly close to Tolkien's orcs than the Citadel ones).

One thing I love about the preslotta half-orcs is the unifying shield design, which, despite their disparity, makes them instantly recognisable as a skirmish warband or Frostgrave side or Dragon Rampant unit (probably Bellicose Foot with Wizardling, to account for both the shaman/cleric and the various missile weapons secreted about their disreputable persons).

[Hobgoblin]

Here's a quick lizardman - one of Karnac's reptilian raiders. I've got a few of these Trish Morrison lizardmen kicking around and am being prompted by my son to get them painted up. The contemporary Warhammer fluff had most of them green, grey or brown but with a wide range of brighter colours too. I quite like that idea - especially with duplicates. And nearly all of these are duplicates in the sense that most of them share two basic heads.

I quite fancy using these guys in Rogue Stars and Mutants and Death Ray Guns. In earlier paintjobs, some of them did time as primitive aliens in first-edition 40K. I seem to recall that the one with the big mace was roughly the colour of the archer then.