Crafting Fungi

I promised you an amusing fellow, here he is.

The party met him in the same wizard's tower they met the various monstrous plants.  For some reason he got called 'Bob', which seems to be the group's stock 'silly NPC' name.  As only the party wizard could understand him, via Comprehend Languages', there were lots of 'I am Bob' jokes.

Bob is a Reaper Miniatures mushroom person I painted especially for the adventure.  He was so much fun that I will get teh other tow minis in teh set done soon.

Bob wasn't alone; there were lots of other fungi in the chamber and I made these myself.

The main material for all these was that rubbery foam that packs some electrical goods.  I thought the large pores in it worked well as the holes the fungi use to distribute spores (or something, O Level Biology was a long time ago).

The stalks were cocktail or barbeque sticks, and the smoother texture on the caps was DIY filler.  The branches on the Violet Fungus was taken from a plastic coral from a pet shop.  Extra shaping, e.g. the stalks, is hot glue.

Everything was hot glued to washers and painted.

I made four of each kind, so I have plenty to use in the future.

Quick Update:

Bob came second in an online painting competition on the DMs Craft forum.

(O.K, there may only have been six entries, but even so)

Ideal Halloween plus more from the garden

With perfect timing Mantic's The Walking Dead: All Out War arrived today.
I've tried the playtest version already and enjoyed it, so I am looking forward to playing the full version.

Nice box art

Plenty of minis. this is the Kickstarter edition, so includes quite a bit more, I especially like the Walker Ronnie figure.

The components are good, and the resin crashed cars are extra fun.

A little while ago I showed an in game shot of my latest modelling, some less than peaceful plants for D&D games.  Here are some better shots, including the Ambush Vines T'Otherone mentioned.  All are made using DM Scotty's techniques.  They were fun to build, and looked good on table.

Two hungry Ambush Vines

Two (hopefully) less vicious plants.

Next time I'll show you some more of my crafting to demonstrate what an amusing fellow I can be, and I'll get some comparative shots of the Walking Dead and Conan minis.

Garden Crafting

Here is a quick picture of some of my more recent crafts for RPG.

You can't see much in terms of individual crafts, but the overall effect of a chamber full of tropical vegetation comes across nicely (I hope).

The pieces were simple to do, merely pieces of plastic plants hot glued to washers and textured.

  

I'll put up more detail, as well as some better pics if anyone is interested.

Orc Krudger

The first 'Orc tober' post, a Krudger I painted for a local painting competition.

The mini is the orc warlord from 'The Warlord of Galahir' expansion for Dungeon Saga; actually the resin collector's version.

The figure is very nice, and (confession time) the first resin miniature I have ever painted.  I wish now that I had got more of the resin specials for dungeon Saga.

I went for muted 'naturalistic' tones, and he is based on broken pillars to fit in with my Kings of War orc army.

Sadly he didn't win, though gaming group honour is preserved, as that category was won by T'Other One.

A Big Box of Hyborian Goodness

Well two actually.

This is the long awaited Conan Boardgame Kickstarter. Finally. 

The two boxes contain the game and the stretch goals.  I didn't go for any add-ons, just as well as they are being released later.

 Box 1, the game itself.  A nice bit of artwork that would look good on the cover of any Conan book.

A rough idea of the contents.  Remember this is only one box out of two.

At first sight not very impressive.

But there are two trays of minis, jsut drink in all their plastic glory

O.K. lots of identical poses, but they will come in very useful I'm sure.

Box two, our hero in a more contemplative mood.

I hope that gribbly thing is inside.

Rules and cards

Another two trays of minis, plus some bigger bits at the top

Second tray, including the furniture.

At first glance I'm very impressed.  I should confess that I got this lot more for the minis than the game, however, I'm sure we can have a fun game or two as well.

I will comment more on the quality of the minis in a later post when I have had time to fully inspect them.  My initial thoughts are that they are of good boardgame standard.  They are the equal of the Dungeon Saga minis, if not slightly better, and easily better than many of the D&D prepaints.  The only disappointment is the furniture, which has plain surfaces rather than textured to represent wood etc.  Dungeon Saga scores far higher on that.

Long Time, No See

"Meesa Back"

After a while of sorting things out and trying to find the inspiration to post again I thought I ought to get back online.  (No it's not just the excuse to start an 'Orc-tober' thread).

I haven't been idle with crafting and painting, including a lot of bits for both my D&D groups.  Yes I now run two groups, as my daughter asked me if I could introduce her and a group of her friends to the hobby.  I have been building floor plans and some furniture ans similar to use in the games, more on that as and when I get round to posting the pics.

Whilst I have your attention, I should mention Mantic's latest Kickstarter (yes, thats a surprise).
Star Saga, or Dungeon Saga in Space.  

July Already, Round-up and Tidy Up

This month will be dedicated to tidying up and finishing off various projects (not that an army is ever really finished).

First up is a re-basing project I have mentioned before, my 15mm Rat-men.

I have had these for many years, originally painted up for Hordes of the Things, then Warhammer in 15mm. I tried them last year for Warband, now I'm getting them ready for Dragon Rampant.

This is a 24 pt force, the difficulty was more what to class things as than do I have enough.  I hope to try them against Merlin's armies soon so I can decide what makes a balanced and effective force.  As a contrast to my orcs I wanted to go for a big army, it's only one unit short of the maximum allowed.

The minis are very old Pendrakken figures (technically 10mm), also available in strips from Kallistra, and the paint job is pretty old too.  I certainly wouldn't paint them like that if I were starting them now, fortunately they are mostly painted already, just a bit of basing to sort out.

I'll try and get round to showing what I got done in Deadzone June tomorrow, and maybe more on what I have planned for this month's stuff.