Frost giants

I think I like frost giants more than any type of giant, even fire giants, probably because of the D’Aulaires’ Norse mythology books I read over and over in elementary school.

I painted the first three guys recently.  Left to right, a Ral Partha, Citadel, Grenadier, and another Ral Partha.

The last one I painted blue a long time ago, and repainted a few years ago, before the other three.

The first RP giant may be the first giant I ever acquired.  When I was a kid, there was a hobby shop in the “Berlin Farmer’s Market” (a sort of flea market/outlet mall, about 10 miles from my house when I was a kid, and the destination of one epic hike/bike ride for me, my brother, and a friend some time around 1983) which had tons of Ral Partha, Minifigs, and Heritage Models in their front window, and I found him there.  I was amazed at the time by the level of detail in RP stuff.

The three recently painted guys all have dead, white eyes.

The Grenadier giant was originally painted in a regular European flesh tone, with a black beard… I wanted him to be generic enough to be any kind of giant, I guess.  I like him much more now.  There was also a very similar version with s hammer instead of an axe.  The axe on mine was broken in the blister I bought — I actually assumed it was made that way to be assembled, but when I opened it up I realized it had just broken in the package. The repair I did here extended the axe’s haft a little, and unfortunately I didn’t realize how bent it was until I was finished gluing and pinning it.

The Citadel giant was a ‘donation’ that I took some time to identify, as he was replaced in Citadel’s catalog by a much ‘better’ Tom Meier sculpt when he visited England and did some work for Citadel.

The second RP mini has always been another favorite.  The mace-and-chain weapon, and the pose (he looks ready to charge head-first), make him look very menacing for a smaller giant.  I would be tempted to repaint him more in the style and palette of the other three, but there is nothing wrong with his current paint job, so he’ll just be a slightly different-looking member of the tribe, or maybe a visiting cousin. <Update: He’s the “Hecatron giant” according to the RP catalogs, so I guess I just made him a frost giant because of the horned helmet or something.>

Finally painted some more minis

This weekend we got some “craft time” in, and I finally finished a few figures on my painting desk.  I am noticing that my eyesight is significantly worse than it used to be, and my ability to paint small details, especially eyes, is plummeting, although my ability to whip out a mini in about half an hour remains strong.  I think I spent four hours total painting this weekend, which accounts for the above five minis and work progressing on about a dozen others.  Of course some of the work on these guys was already done (the fighter had been started last August to give you an idea of how rarely I’ve been painting lately).

Anyway the first two are a satyr produced by Mega Minis from an older Metal Magic mold, and a TSR “korred” that I picked up at Origins about five years ago.

Black hair speeds things up immensely since I get to skip shading.  I sometimes highlight black hair but not on these two.  For a TSR mini, the korred is not bad.  He actually has a lot of character that was not evident before I painted him.

The next two are lamias.  Again there is a Mega Minis recast of a Metal Magic figure (on the right), and an older original — a Grenadier lamia that was very graciously sent to me by Scottsz.

Lamias are another monster from Greek myth, like the satyrs, but interestingly the Greek version was half woamn, half snake, while the D&D version is half woman, half mammal (I think the Grenadier one is supposed to have the lower half of a deer or elk, while the Mega Minis one is clearly half cat).

Lastly there is one of the Citadel “Fantasy Tribe Fighters” guys that was sent to me by Mike at Specter Studios.

I am not terribly satisfied by this one, but I know he’ll never be anyone’s first choice for a PC so I just did a ‘wargame’ standard paint job on him — he’s only ever going to be a NPC.  I like his pose but he’s not very inspiring for a ‘hero’.

Don’t ask me what that little maggot-looking thing on the ground next to him is.  I didn’t see it when I was photographing them.

The ones that got away

The only pic I could find of the original Mithril Beorn (center)

Having, as I do, more minis than I can really finish painting in the foreseeable future (especially at my current rate of zero per month), it’s pretty stupid that I still think wistfully, once in a while, of the minis I’ve lost, traded away, or had stolen over the years. (All pictures from the interwebs, obviously.  Re-posted after much crap from WordPress, which prefers to merge all the pictures for some reason)

Lost: This was the largest loss, although it must have been a good dozen, maybe 14 years ago!  We were playing a GURPS campaign set in Norman England, which was a fairly long and involved game.  We usually played at a friend’s house as my brother & I were living in a crummy apartment.  I knew a large battle was imminent, so I brought a large number of Vikings and knights (mostly Ral Partha, Grenadier, and Citadel mins, several Mithril LotR figures, plus some plastics from HeroQuest and a Battlemasters set) as well the minis we’d been using for the PCs.  We used them to play out a skirmish-sized portion of the larger battle, and another battle next time seemed likely, so I put them back into a pair of tackle boxes and then into the paper grocery bag I’d brought them in.  The ‘gaming room’ was a finished attic our friend used mostly for gaming, and which was usually undisturbed from one game night to the next.  Not this time.  The best I can guess, another player had placed some garbage from the game (pretzel bag, etc.) in the same bag, on top of my minis boxes, and then he or the homeowner’s wife threw the lot out in the trash.  I was really bummed by the fact that the minis I’d brought had been carefully selected to represent some of my better paint jobs and also by the lack of remorse on the part of the player and his wife.  Even a simple “I’m sorry about that” would have been nice.  I know now I shouldn’t leave stuff at other people’s houses, but I think they can’t possibly have realized how much work went into those forty or so minis.

A Citadel berserker. I painted tattoos on mine.

A (very small) barbarian from an early Ral Partha boxed set.

The barbarian from HeroQuest -- the second best mini in the game after the dwarf

The Mithril figures were from their first Middle Earth line, and I can’t even find good pictures of them now online.  There was “Woodman” and a Beorn for sure, and maybe a few others.

Another smaller loss occurred when I was carrying a box of minis home from a game at my brother’s house a few years later, and dropped them on the sidewalk in front of my apartment.  They were mostly giants and trolls and several broke into pieces. It was dark and I figured I’d find the remaining loose bits and pieces in the morning.  But it snowed that morning ( a good several inches) and the was off and on snow for several weeks before I saw the pavement again, and who knows what got shoveled away then.

Thirdly there are a number of individual minis I remember owning but just can’t find anywhere.  Maybe they broke at some point and I tossed them, or perhaps a few were melted down in my brief frenzy of home-casting with Prince August molds?  A Heritage Black pudding, several Grenadier skeletons, and a few TSR fighters fall into this category.  (I’m sure I didn’t melt down any monsters though!  That would only be the worst of the TSRs!)

Traded: I feel much less bad about giving up some of my minis in trades with friends, way back in the mid-1980s when I was still a kid.  I know I traded away a Grenadier beholder, but that is the only one that really stands out.  I know I reasoned at the time that I would encounter on in D&D and whatever I traded it for must have been cool!

Picture from the Lost Minis Wiki

Stolen: These are the ones that really hurt, and actually happened way back in 1982 or 3, before I was even painting and when I had only begun collecting minis.  some of my older friends had come over and looked over my figures — I am sure we didn’t actually play D&D just that day — and several figures were mysteriously gone.  The one I missed the most was a lich blowing a ram’s horn from the Grenadier “Monsters” box.  Man, that one was awesome.

Image from the Lost Minis Wiki

Squigs

These are some oldish Citadel “Squigs” which I used as stand-ins for giant geckos in the Telengard game. Giant lizards are sort of passe and frankly part of the appeal of DMing is getting to use all my weird figures. So when I was stocking the random parts of my dungeon I decided to use these dudes but otherwise keep the Gecko stats. I added a special ability to them too, since they hop and have giant maws, but it did not come up in play.

Yes, those are mushrooms growing on blueboy’s head. No one tried eating them, but they do work like random potions.

So to recap, they use stats identical to Giant Geckos in B/X D&D, but they jabber endlessly, parroting things they’ve heard humanoids and adventurers say, like “What in Hel is that?” and “Get it off me!” If they roll a natural 20 to attack, they have jumped up and clamped onto their victim’s head, after which hits are automatic as they nosh on the character’s neck. One in three squigs will have d6 weird mushrooms growing on them, which, if eaten within 6 hours of being picked, act as random potions (roll when eaten, cannot be more specifically identified even with spells — they must be eaten). I would roll randomly for each mushroom, too.

They also have rat-like tails. Don’t ask me how they managed to put band-aids on their posteriors either. Maybe there is a handler or monster vet somewhere in the dungeon.

Trolls three

Some time ago I was going to repaint a few old troll figures.  On my vacation a couple of weeks ago to Pennsylvania, I took along a toolbox of paints of figs and got them done, along with some henchmen.  Before I stripped them, they looked like this. (The Minifigs troll was finished much sooner and posted here.)

Here are the Citadel, Ral Partha, and Grenadier trolls as I re-painted them:

The Citadel figure on the left was sold as “Ral Partha Import” back when RP was importing Citadel figures.  (I didn’t realize these were Citadel figures until quite a bit later, and had been shocked that the Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd edition book had so many “Ral Partha” figures in it!  I thought, “Wow, they are showing other companies’ minis!  Maybe they are aren’t a soulless machine.”  But of course even though they had Tom Meier sculpt a number of trolls for them — not including this one — Citadel would never show another manufacturer’s minis. )

4e crap for old lead: Mission accomplished!

Monday night I found another package waiting for me. I knew Scottsz had just sent the minis he’d offered for my 4e books, and the address label confirmed it was from him! I’d already gotten email with images and a listing of his stuff (and two follow-ups as he found yet more figures).

They were all “buckled in” with heavy plastic ties. Scottsz was very concerned that they would get dinged up worse they already are in the mail, and came up with this way keep them all in place. Only the Yuan-ti was loose in the box, so it worked pretty well.

Here they are (sorry for the grainy photo taken on my phone!)

In the upper right, you’ll notice the thief with 10′ pole (broken to about 7′ — every example of this figure I’ve seen since BITD has his pole broken off at the hand). I NEEDED this figure badly, because it is damn cool and old-school and because my copy is lost. Similarly the Heritage barbarian woman in the lower right replaces my badly broken copy from the Caverns of Doom game. Score! There are also several Grenadier blister-pack figures: lizard men and a bugbear, which I’d never hoped to get to complete my collection in those areas… the Cockatrice variant #1 (I had variant #2, with a separately cast wing that never fit quite right, this one is one piece)… a drider from the blister pack to match my other drider from a boxed set. There is the lamia figure that was missing from my Tomb of Spells box! About 1/2 of these guys are “New” to me, and the of the rest, the “duplicates” either replace ones I lost or bolster the ranks nicely. It’s ok to have a third Umber Hulk, right? Also, with Khazan’s donation, I now have THREE Grenadier giant snakes. That really gives me the freedom to experiment in painting them up, or perhaps realize my mad dream of joining two together into one GINOURMOS snake!

There is also a nice Citadel troll (no base but clearly slotta-base era) and what I am tentatively identifying as a Minifigs giant of some kind (near the center, primered gray).

The “bonus” he sent is pure awesome, though, and I hope it is OK to mention it, as I know Scottsz has some secret projects in the works. Just as I’d been creating add-ons for the old Heritage dungeon crawl games, Scottsz had been tinkering with adapting old TSR modules to the same solo/GM-free rules, while adding his own interesting modifications to better simulate the RPG experience. He sent me a hand-drawn adaptation of the Hommlet moathouse dungeon (complete with awesome key and extra copies of the charts!) The whole thing is drawn on poster-board sections about the size of a standard letter sheet. NINE of them! Assembled, it looks thus:

This is about as big, or a little bigger than,the larger Tomb of the Pharaoh/Sorcerer’s Crypt map I did on on a single sheet of
foamcore last year. I will have to try this out soon!

The enigma of Enigma Miniatures

“Enigma Miniatures” is now a company in Spain that produce some very nice figures. But at least ten years ago, there was another company, also called Enigma, which I believe operated out of Canada (their packaging was partly or wholly in French). These Enigma figures were generally large 28-30mm scale figures and seemed to be meant to stand in for Citadel/Games Workshop figures, although they were always just different enough to make me unsure.

Sadly, there is nothing on the Lost Minis Wiki about Enigma miniatures, but I should ask around some collector’s forums to see if if there is any more info on these.

I think some of the Enigma figures were pretty crude, and I will never understand how they could afford to sell their figures for so little. They were very inexpensive considering how much metal went into them. They used bases of a size similar to GW’s slotta bases but made of solid metal. I think they bucked the “lead-free pewter” trend of the early 1990s, and used an old fashioned lead/tin mix. But the ones I did pick up have a lot of character. (Click to embiggen — sorry about the dust!)

These guys came in a little plastic package. I’m not sure I like the livery, but otherwise they came out ok. I guess they are supposed to stand in for Warhammer Imperial troops, but they just look like a random assortment of knights and man-at-arms to me. I like that they combined the standard and musician in one figure. The guy with a two-handed sword makes no sense to me, but neither does the leader’s sword. The guy with the mace is a conversion (I made his mace).

I also bought the stand-in figure for a snotling pump-wagon, or that’s what I think it is. It is more like a train than a pumpwagon, and came with no crew. But it is covered in large mushrooms, which suggests GW goblins and snotlings. I have to paint it still. I also picked up a naval cannon for use with the pirates figures, perhaps. That too is unpainted. I should paint them some day.

Does anyone else have Enigma miniatures, or know anything about them?

Pirates

The undead pirates I scored a while back at my FLGS remind me that I have a huge backlog of swashbuckler figures to paint. Huge. But here are some finished pirate and swashbuckler figures. Most are pretty old, and nowadays they market is lousy with pirates, but back in the late 1980s/early 1990s when most of these were made, there was not a lot of selection.

Here’s a scurvy crew indeed, sons of guns all.

Three Grenadier pirates, from the mid-1980s.

A Grenadier (Julie Guthrie, I think) rogue and a bard, most likely Rafm. The skull & crossbones on the hat turns a bard into a pirate, despite the little mandolin on his belt.

The guy on the left is a Castle Creations superhero figure (my brother got a set of two dozen super hero figures that were advertised in a Dragon Magazine some time around 1983, when we were playing Villains & Vigilantes). The guy on the right is Rafm, I think, and was sold as an elf marine in a set with several others I still need to paint.

Two landlubber orcs (a Nick Lund sculpt, Grenadier, sold as a war ogre, and a Citadel crossboworc).  I need to rebase these, and probably repaint the Lund orc.  My brother ran a “fantasy” pirates campaigns in GURPS (basically the historical Caribbean but with fantasy races, monsters, and a little magic added), which must be the best game I ever played in. This inspired me to adapt as many fantasy figures as possible to be pirates. I should post the naval rules we cobbled together using GURPS and the Games Workshop game Man o War. We had some great fun. The game had up to nine players at a time, plus the GM.

Two Dwarfs. I think the one on the left is by Marauder (an offshoot of Citadel) but the other one is a classic Citadel dwarf lord. He has a powder keg (or beer keg?) strapped to his back.

Two later Ral Partha figures, a pirate and a musketeer (D’Artagnan, no doubt).

A Reaper skeleton pirate and a cheap dollar store toy. The toy represents a half-ogre pirate.

Scale creep on the high seas. The Grenadier figure is a short 25mm and the Reaper stands almost 40mm!

More ogres and trolls

A while back I posted some pics to illustrate how you might convert the crummy Dragonstrike! game trolls into slightly better models, which is worth doing if you pick pu the cheap remainders of the green and gray sprues from here. They paint up ok too.(Far left, a rare Minifigs troll)  They are clearly Poul Anderson style “true trolls.”

Here are some Ral Partha trolls:

Ral Partha trolls, until they got the D&D liscence, were always very Tolkien-style to me, and would also make good ogres.  I painted these guys all a long time ago.

And a “Ral Partha Import,” cast by Citadel, but I think he may also be a Tom Meier sculpt:

(Reminds me of those Otherworld Bugbears for some reason)

And some more recent Citadel trolls:

That’s a blurry picture, sorry.  Citadel used to make their trolls very comical; these guys are slightly less comical than usual.  You can just make out a bit of a jawbone on the base of the one on the left.  That is a real bone from an “owl pellet” I found in the yard.  I used other parts on the bases of other figures, like this Citadel troll that I painted non-green, hoping to get a more ogrish effect:

The stones are bits of dried sap, and the femur must be from a mouse or mole.  Seeing this figure in such good light (from the camera’s flash), I think I probably should have done some black lining to emphasize the borders of the hands vs. stone etc.  Oh well.  I entered this guy in a painting competition about sixteen years ago (‘monster’ category; I lost to some far superior paint jobs) and the judge mentioned she had no idea what it was supposed to be.  Seriously?  That doesn’t look like it might be an ogre or troll or something? Sheesh.

Here are a couple of Grenadier trolls in armor:

The shorter guy has a katar! How awesome is that?

And an old Castle Creations ogre that I think my brother bought in Baltimore:

And a Nick Lund-sculpted Grenadier ogre:

If ogres were a playable race, this guy could be a PC.  He looks just barely smart enough to wipe properly, for example.

And a Ral Partha hill giant:

He must be a Tom Meier sculpt too.  He looks about ready to go berserk.

Lastly, a Ral Partha ettin:

I never really liked the Ral Partha D&D line of figures, although this is one of the better ones.  I’d like to convert a few figures to have four, ten, or more heads some time.  I wish I had bought the 1979 Ral Partha “three headed troll” when it was available.

(Image from the Lost Minis Wiki, nyuk nyuk nyuk.)

“Light! More light!”

The latest batch of figures I’ve painted.

There’s a ton of good stuff at Philotomy’s OD&D Musings. One thing I’ve been intrigued by lately is that in OD&D, demi-humans could not see in the dark. The ability to see in the dark was a big motivation for me when I made nonhuman AD&D characters way back when. Because we rarely got to high enough levels to worry about level limits, there was usually no reason to be a human unless you wanted to play a human-only class like a Paladin or Monk. Being able to see in the dark (with “infravision” in AD&D, or with more logical kinds of night vision in later editions, which followed the lead of pretty much every other RPG in this regard) far outweighed the nominal benefits of being human. When I read about the original restrictions on infravision in Philotomy’s essay, it helped me make sense of the many several old D&D figures that appear to be demi-humans carrying torches and lanterns, not to mention certain classic illustrations of the AD&D Player’s Handbook .

What do AD&D dwarves need with a torch?

I really like the idea of denying demihuman PCs infravision. And not just because it would encourage the use of awesome torch and lantern bearers, but that is certainly part of it.

A Citadel Dwarf. He was actually made for their fairly recent boxed set of Warhammer Fantasy Battles (“Battle for Skull Pass“). There is a whole unit of miners with candles on their helmets in that set, which is totally awesome.  A lantern plus three candles on his helmet…this guy is gonna light up a hallway.  And with that beard, may spontaneously combust.

An old Citadel Dwarf. One of my favorites, although almost every Citadel Dwarf from the late 19080s is pretty cool, pumpkin-sized heads or not.

That’s one HELL of a nose, too.  Also n.b. that old school Dwarves are not always carrying those iconic* axes.  Why don’t more Dwarves carry swords?  They’re expert smiths, and making an axe is not exactly the high water mark of the weapon smith.

A Grenadier hireling from the hirelings set, circa 1980?

A Heritage Dwarf adventurer, circa 1979 or 1980, from the Dungeon Dwellers line. N.b. she has no beard. Sorry about the blurry pic.  She has a crossbow, which is not a bad idea for a hireling.  No sense rushing in to close combat.

The group from behind.  Note the backpacks.  All dungeon delvers should have backpacks.

The lone human, also a Grenadier figure from the Hirelings set. The camera is looking slightly down on all these guys, making them look a little distorted, but only slightly more so than they really are.

The quote used as the title of this post? Supposedly Goethe’s last words. And the last words of many an adventurer, I suspect.

*Every time WotC uses the term iconic character,  as if there is exactly one Platonic ideal for each race/class, I want to hammer a nail into the floor with my forehead.  I almost never actually do, though.