Vrock

This is a Reaper mini I got a few years ago.  He’s mounted on a cheap plastic poker chip I got in a pack at the Dollar Tree back when poker was a big fad.  Though cheap, they are fairly heavy and solid; great for basing.  I went with garish bright colors because he reminds me of those Warhammer demons of Tzeench.  We were playing 3.5 D&D in a Warhammer-type setting then.  That campaign really soured me on 3e, actually. One player really “mastered” the rules and we spent way too much time trying to get our characters “buffed & polished” (optimized is probably the word for it).  I played a half-orc rogue/ranger/barbarian.  It was fun but after a while the DM couldn’t stand the characters.  I can’t say I entirely blame him.

The flash on my camera drowns out some of the subtlety of the colors…the wings are actually purple at the top, blue in the middle, and white on the flight feathers, not teal.

His pose kind of reminds me of a samurai.  The sword is painted greenish with white highlights, and looks a little like a green stone.  I’m not sure if there was a reason for not painting it metallic, but I do like how it turned out.  If I should ever come across another vrock mini, I think I’d paint it much darker, like a filthy vulture.  I’d have to remove the comb though if it’s another Reaper mini.  Otherworld has a very nice one too.

We beat two of these guys in the D&D game, in the last or penultimate session.  The campaign ended with the party trapped underground in an orc lair, with no real hope of escape.  We called it a TPK.   But I think my half-orc might have been able to figure out something…maybe switching sides, or laying low for a while…

Ghouls and ghasts and an undead troll

The first ghoul figure I ever owned came in the old Grenadier dungeon monster set. (All images embiggenable by clicking)

The eyebrows are a little over the top, but old Grenadier like this always reminds of the Trampier and Sutherland illustrations in the Monster Manual.  Here he is again with a later Grenadier ghoul (Dragon Lords monsters of folklore set) and the Metal Magic ghoul recast by Megaminis:

The bestial ghoul on the left and the bone-wielding ghoul seem like ancestors of the later Reaper figures.  Here is a set of ghouls generously donated to the Galloway Memorial Home for Convalescent and Wayward Minis.  They were made by Reaper:

I think the big guy on the left is a ghast, or at least a boss ghoul!

Reaper made a second set (different sculptor, probably) that is more bestial and naked, again armed with bones:

Again there is an obvious boss and two lesser ghouls.

Ghouls are great monsters because in D&D they really are very scary for lower level characters, since they make three attacks and their touch paralyzes.  A large number of ghouls poses a threat even to mid and high level characters, especially if they are fortified with ghasts or thouls.

Nom nom nom nom...

Lastly, an undead troll which I think was made was Rafm?

The bone paw on the ground there is an actual rodent skeleton part from an owl pellet I found in my parent’s back yard a long time ago.  I’m thinking it was a mole’s, based on the claws.  If you don’t have any owls puking up bones and fur in your area, you can always go mail order for those authentic parts.

Why red hair?  Contrast.  I painted this guy when I was spending WAY more time per figure than I do now.  Painting stripes on clothing? Textured bases?  Who has time for that?!?

Harvester of Sorrow at the FLGS

There are three friendly local game stores (FLGS’s ) in my town, altohugh they have managed to keep their markets mostly separate.  The oldest is JC’s Comics and Cards, which sits between a record store and video store, and mostly sells comics and cards, as the name suggests.  A few games can be had there, but it is just a sideline.  The only figures they has, last I checked, are a few collectible prepainted plastics (HeroClix, etc.).  Down the street is the newest store, Underhill’s, which specializes in board games but also carries a lot of WotC product and a few other RPGs.  They mostly carry D&D pre-painted plastics too, as well as a few odds and ends like game pieces for Zombies!!! which are sold in bags of 100.  (Yeah, I’ll have to do some zombies some time).  The third is a JAC Games, which I don’t frequent much, but the last time I was there they had almost exclusively Games Workshop products and figures.  They did not even have dice bags.  Both Underhills’ and JAC have large gaming tables in the store and I think they are doing it right.  Underhill’s even holds mini conventions (games days) right in the store!  (There is third game store that moved to a new location that is harder to get to and they have shifted to mostly card & video games which don’t interest me).  I understand second hand that there is a gentleman’s agreement among these three not to compete for the limited slices of the markets that exists and since they are competing with Amazon.com and other online corporate welfare queens, good for them!   But if I want to buy figures, I have to go all the way to another town where Kenmore Komics & Games, which carries pretty much everything from games to comics to models and anime videos.  The RPG selection is the best in the area, and the figures are mostly Reaper and MegaMinis, two companies I do like a lot.

Anyway, Kenmore Komics  liquidating the Reaper Warlord line, and the last yime I was in I got, for less than $40, this:

That is mostly undead pirates, but also a goblin pirate, two human pirates, a monkey with a powder keg, and the Overladen Henchman figure.  In the front are a skeleton playing a violin and a wraith that came with a ridiculously huge flag; I replaced it with a sword.

So, pirates may be next big project (I have a goodly number of older pirate figures still waiting to be painted, but perhaps this will get the juices flowing.

So on one hand I do feel bad about Kenmore’s loss.  I know they are losing money money even if they recover the cost of the the minis because these figures have been taking up retail space for a long time.  But on the other hand, a whole freaking pirate crew for well under $40!  Score!

Wraiths

A ghastly trio:

A Ral Partha witch-king (flame is just some Liquid Nails I added later. The sword was rather thin and beginning to break from repeated bends); a Reaper ghost, and a Ral Partha wraith (he would have had a sickle in his hand originally but it was broken off when I got him second hand).

I got the Witch-king at a BASHCon, where I had won a few vouchers for RP stuff in a painting contest.  I also won some of their weird “Fantasy coins” but gave them away.  I only remember the orc coins were “shekels” and the dwarf coins were square.

Stangely, I painted the mounted witch king (he came mounted and on foot) with a red cape.  I think I just thought all-black was too boring.

Townsfolk, and a new pic of the hirelings

As always, click to embiggen!

Merchants. Left to right, a Reaper blacksmith, a Citadel merchant, a Grenadier dwarf, and some guy with a book I can’t quite place.

Fighting men

A Grenadier archer, a really early Grenadier barbarian, and a Ral Partha paladin.

Why did it have to be snakes!?!

Organizing my figures has been life-long struggle.   OK, not a particularly important struggle, but still, it’s been a pain.  Take monsters.  Do you just put them in boxes willy nilly where they fit most compactly (to minimize the total boxes needed), or do you put them in some sort of order — by name, by hit dice/level/challenge rating, by type, by locale (swamp vs underground vs arctic…), by theme, etc.?  If you are a collector, do you organize them by manufacturer?  There are lots of possibilities.  I finally settled on putting most them in “themed” boxes.  So lizardmen, troglodytes,  and kobolds all went in one box; ogres, trolls, & giants in another; etc.  The drow and spiders I posted earlier actually share a box with my snake-themed monsters (“spiders & snakes”).  These are the serpent folk:

These “giant” snakes (on a 1″ grid battlemat) are a Ral Partha cobra, and two Grenadier  figures.

The army of the apes

I have slightly mixed feelings about MageKnight, the WizKids collectible miniatures game. On the one hand they had some terrible sculpts and spawned the “random figure” packs; but on the other they were the first really widely distributed, cheap, prepainted line of minis and they put a number of Ral Patha sculpts back in print. This army of apes is mostly based on a single Ral Partha gorillaman (which originally came in a set with a caged woman). Shortly before MageKnight completely crashed, you could get MageKnight figures for 25 cents or so at conventions and gaming stores, and I bought up tons of figures from a bin at Origins one year, including all these apes. The rest of the army is filled out with some metal figures, including some really old Minifigs flying apemen from their S&S line of the 1970s — scored at an auction at a BASHCon for $2, some fifteen years ago…

Satan’s little helpers

Xmas and Santa Claus always reminds me of Satan Claws.  I’m probably the billionth person to make that association, but it really sticks in my mind, for some reason.

Since the mythology projects are done, I got back to painting for my own amusement again, and the latest batch to get done are some imps.

(Gratuitous image at left: one of the the many films I discovered working at a video store.  The big climax has the priest going after Satan himself, wielding a massive flambard (two-handed sword with a wavy blade, also called a flamberge…  Maybe it was a normal two-handed sword, but of the very late German style)).

The group shot.  Bad lighting + bad focus = awesome 70′s look.

Here are the three biggest ones, some Reaper imps about an inch tall.

These guys are also the “newest,” dating from this decade.  But the third guy is clearly channeling the classic Ral Partha ‘commando’ style of Tom Meier’s sculpts.  I must have dozens of his orcs, goblins, trolls and demons with their junk hanging out.

Next, four imps… or an imp and three quasits, maybe.  The two in the center are both the same sculpt.  One is a really old one cast in lead/tin pewter from before the big lead in miniatures scare of the late 1980s/early 1990s.  The other is pure tin, which I bought from a dealer at Origins a few years ago.  Now that they are painted I can’t remember which is which; they are too light to tell apart as you can with bigger tin vs. lead figures.

The penny gives a sense of how tiny these buggers are.

Lastly, a TSR figure, of some kind of minor fire elemental/dwarf monster.  I can’t remember what they’re called but the one thing TSR did right after yanking the AD&D license, in rapid succession, from Grenadier and then Citadel, was to focus on a number of  weird monsters not already available.

Probably more on TSR’s small range of unloved miniatures later…