Blood, blood glorious blood, nothing quite like it for cooling the mud.

Long time no blog, I’ve been distracted by WWII stuff this time, perhaps I should start a sister blog for my historical stuff. Anyway inspired by Nico and his truly amazing site, really you must visit; I thought I’d post some old pics of more of my Chaos collection. Again old PJs so please don’t judge too harshly they are a shambles compared to Nicos master pieces but work well enough on the table. Perhaps one day I shall revisit them with the brushes but currently too many other projects await on the lead pile.

There are Beastmen, chaos dwarf crossbows and war machines, centaurs and more thugs knocking about somewhere but that’s another post…

I'm a bit busy...

So I've be preparing stuff for a second round of LL and actually playing, ergo no posts for a while. To keep things ticking over here are a few shots of my Slaaneshi stuff old paints but good record here:

I'm looking at you big boy...

Hello darling...

I'd do anything.. for a better PJ.

Not sure why there are no pics of my Daemonette units or mounted knights. The fiends, champions and thugs are still sadly in the lead pile.

A short post from a proud Father!

I finally won an original Monster Manual for a fair price in excellent condition on ebay recently. I got home from work yesterday to a lovely brown package to unwrap, my 2 year old son Arthur is very good at unwrapping gifts so he insisted on helping me opened it.

“OOO, exciting book!”,  he exclaimed as we revealed the beautifully naive and colourful cover of the seminal work. “You read it to me”, how could a proud father do anything less. A most happy session was then spent as Arthur pointed to every single illustration (OK I skipped a few scary pictures very quickly before he got to them) and said, “what’s that?” Except for the Dragons and real animals because he knew exactly what they were. The picture of the sealion (think merlion rather than the pinniped) fighting the shark was of particular interest, he held the book open at that page as he drank the illustration in. He has got cuddly dragons, now I need to get him some cuddly sealions!

Drilla's Killers

I love the WHFB 3rd edition scenario Forenrond's last stand. I've played it a few times, first with the card counters then with an assortment of minis from many different manufactures and decades. The plan is to re stage the fight using only 80's citadel and marauder minis. Not too hard I've got the necessary minis. Most are painted though a touch up will be required on most of them. Here however are the first new PJs on the Blog and the first for this project. Only after painting them did I realise that the snotling doing service as a gobbo musician wasn't needed, never mind!

Drilla's Killers

Drilla

The rear rank.

80's shield design.

Dwarf fest continues...

So a continued Dwarf-fest over at Frothers has prompted me to add a next instalment of my old dwarven army to the blog. This time the Clan contingents Oath sworn to Lord Bruhaha.


A unit of Clans dwarfs first. After the Paul Bonner illustration in Warhammer armies of Clans Dwarfs how could I use the classic plastic Fantasy Regiments Stunties for anything else? There are a few psycho-styrene dwarf heads used for variety (one day I’ll get an actual unit of these very early GW plastics finished). Their leader is the AHQ plastic dwarf and clearly the inspiration for the hammer shields as the rest of them are armed with axes. Excuse the painiting they are quite old PJs.

Olaf Smashedfingersen and his clan Dwarfs.

Next a unit of crossbow dwarves, the same plastic ones converted with the Dark Elf crossbow from the same set, they have lead Perry champion and standard and represent the clans ballistic capabilities.

The Clan Arrers, I really need to add some sort of device to the shields (that and some decent highlights & details &....)

Finally for this entry the clans raving, frothing slayers. Later sculpts but still old school no? I'm a bit happier with these PJs but still old and I am doing better these days.

Slayers, nuff said.

More of them Orcs.

Quick Saturday night post to put a few more pictures of the Boar Boys from my original post up.

Ashkan Pigbotherer and his Boys.

The Pigbotherers' rear...

Ashkan up close and personal.

Something genuinely newly painted soon I promise.

Imperial Dwarves

OK, I still haven’t finished the first unit for the scenario I hope to revisit as the first major project for this blog. Therefore no new paints to put on here.


However In the interests of keeping the ball rolling I’m going to post the first in a set of posts detailing parts of my collection that I painted some time ago. These photos have probably all appeared on one forum or another over the years but hey I guess they’ll be new to some and I want them collected in one place too.

First up is Dwarves specifically Imperial Dwarves. Now don’t mistake them for dwarfs from the Empire of men. These are full on Worldsedge Mountains Empire of Dwarves, Dwarves. I’m reasonably certain that these high medieval guys are all Perry sculpts from the mid to late ‘80s. And we can start off with a unit of Hammerers, the great lord wears his hold colours of red and yellow which are also clearly displayed on his shield and the surcoats of his body guard of mighty hammer wielding hearthguard.

Mighty Lord Bruhaha.

The artisans and tradesmen of the hold also march to war, lead by the elder son of the holds lord. They carry a mix of weapons but are well armoured as you would expect from a unit of smiths, masons, engineers and armourers.

We are the knights that say, "come and have a go if you think your hard enough."

Next is a unit of crossbow Dwarves with much the same uniform.

What do you call a miffed knot?  A crossbow.....No? Please yourself.

Finally the hold brings it’s great crossbows to war.

Thunk!

More Dwarves another day.

Old School fantasy art.

OK just discovered this web site by Johnathan Bingham. Awesome stuff, I recognise some of the work from OSRIC. Particularly love the dragon and adventurers.

Any way I just love B&W illustrations, try my hand at it myself a little so perhaps if I get the courage up I'll post some of my own stuff. I think I'm going to have to link to other great BW site on here as well as the other things I mentioned in my first post. Obviously a link to Russ Nicholson goes without saying and a favorite at the moment is Andy "ATOM" Taylor.  More will be added.

Perhaps at some point I need to muse on why B&W illustrations seam to rock so much, they do a different job to coloured pieces and you know what, I almost prefer them.

Recently I’ve been playing….

I’m 34 so I’m roughly as old as the whole RPG hobby. This means that Old School to me is Fighting Fantasy, including Dungeoner (which came out as late as 1989), WHFR, WHFB 3rd edition, Rouge Trader and the games I cut my RPG teeth on MERP and AD&D. Until recently I had never played DnD, I remember looking at the lovely red box but being advised by older friends that it was a big con. That I’d only have to splash out for the next box set up and I’d be better off buying a more complete game. This led me to getting WHFR and the rest is history.

Cool cover.

However I have discovered like many all over the world the joys of OSRIC which ultimate led me to Labyrinth Lord and the sheer joy of my ten year old self finally getting my hands on this game. Sure I can and have picked up the original DnD basic set but only being tainted by nostalgia for the original illustration and not the content has left me free to consider LL a better book. It’s great with the AEC as well but that’s another post.

My ones orange.

Anyway I’d e-bayed myself up some old adventures and with no patience for my two sons to grow old enough to play, I convinced some gaming mates to give it a go. So one Friday night armed with a night pass from the wife I went for curry and beers followed by a bit of Labyrinth Lording. I had bought along just the basic book, Module B2 : A Keep on the Boarderlands to play and B4: The Lost City just for the ready made adventures packs included to save time rolling the characters.

I firmly imposed the rule of 3d6 each stat no re-rolls, with much glee to me they all moaned about the imposition. We ended up with an Elf called Leg-o-Lamb with high Int and HP of 8, a Dwarf called Two (being the 2nd Dwarf my friend had played) with average to poor stats and a Cleric with almost the worst stat line ever seen. The Clerics player took one look at the weak, stupid character and called him Father Ted, at least the law of averages would mean an OK roll for hit points. Father Ted has 1 hit point, Two’s player in particular thought this was very funny.

Farther Ted plus minders, Leg O Lamb & Two.

Long story short Father Ted hired some help and they set off to the caverns. They waltzed up to the nearest cave opening and had a fight with some Gobbos, Father Ted survived and Two died. Awesome. Two’s player took over one of the hired help and died.He managed to stay alive as the other hired help. Inside the Cavern the Elf remembered his sleep spell just in time to save the party and they escaped their initial foray with 250 GC in Ogre bribes and only one character death. We all had a laugh and I’ll be forcing them to play again soon.

After waiting some 20-25 years to play basic DnD was the wait worth it? Yep, simple rules, great fun with no pretentions. We’ll be playing again soon as I get another pass.

OK a New Year of Old School.

So I've had this blog since 2009 and here is my first post. Just to show how glacially slow everything I do is. As always I have big plans for 2011 but with two kids and no time I figure I can at least write a sort of blog about my interpretation of old School miniatures and games if nothing else.

I like to keep my collection contemporary to 3rd edition WFB or earlier. I break this rule often and modern ranges like Otherworld miniatures make their way into my collection. In the next few months I hope to post ongoing work on a scenario that I've played a few times but never solely with the figures available at the time I bought it. Also some PJs of the first figures off my growing mountain of Otherworld minis. If time permits I intend to play some Labyrinth Lord, DnD, I had a few hours spent in the caverns of chaos with some old friends recently and it was a blast. Lastly I hope to document the collection I have already painted and perhaps revisit some with my brushes, lord knows they need it. Oh and I guess some of my historical stuff may creep in too.

Here is a picture of the last thing I painted to keep your/my interest..