Quick minis update

I took the day off to see an assembly at my kid’s school and get some chores done, and while I was waiting on the laundry I painted a Reaper Bones mini, probably as quickly as I’ve painted a mini (well not counting assembly-line painting of armies or 1/72 plastics which I mostly don’t shade or highlight). The mini has pretty shoddy detail, really, and I decided to cut off the goatee on the sculpt and paint him as a half-orc, as I’m playing a half-orc ranger in a very occasional 3.5e game with my brother-in-law and his friends. I also finished up a mage, which I’d been meaning to use for a PC in a now-defunct campaign.

The ranger’s mail was just a plain undergarment with no texture, but I used some of the Heritage “Chainmail” paint I acquired a while back and the little flakes of metallic whatever made even the plain surface look reasonably close to mail. I really need to try it more. The milky stuff on the ranger’s base is varnish which isn’t quite dry. I’m hoping it will eventually dry clear.

And from behind:

The keys to making this one a super-fast paint job were: 1) not priming at all (Reaper claims you don’t need to prime Bones plastic minis; I found that the paint rubbed off pretty easily before sealing); 2) keeping the color scheme simple; 3) combining shading and lining by using a thick black wash to line the boundary areas and pulling it into the deeper crevices for shadow; 4) just adding white to the base colors and highlighting very heavily, since I wanted a weather-beaten look anyway for the ranger. The mage has more traditionally subtle shades and highlights but at arm’s length the ranger looks more striking to me. The mage is a Ral Partha; I’m not sure which line or date but he was definitely in lead, not zinc (er, “Ralidium”). I think he is probably a Julie Guthrie sculpt.

Also, I finished painting Orcus some time ago and forgot to photograph him:

He’s a late Grenadier sculpt, but still in line with the 1e version as opposed to the muscle-bound 3e/4e version. I’m still not sure about the eyes, but the sculpt has really deep pupil slits and showing whites made him look bug-eyed, so I guess this will be it.

A little half-orc trivia on Dragonsfoot

Here’s an interesting discussion on the origin of half-orcs in D&D.  No-one has (at this writing — 7/13 –) brought up that very early Dragon magazine article that introduces half-orcs and half-goblins to PC race possibilities (without any mechanics) but the digression into the origins of half-ogres leads one to a 17th c. fairytale featuring half-ogres!

Hot elf chicks?

So there’s been a ton of these posts around the OSR community following James’ lead.  I think it’s a great idea and certainly am not above posting stuff like that.  I would have suggested spreading the posts out over a few weeks though since blog postings seem to get lost in the sea of Google results.

Most of the good old school illos of  elf chicks are up on someone’s blog already and a multitude of hilarious subversions of it are out there and I’d been meaning to work this painting I found into a post anyway.

Would you believe...a half-orc chick?

That’s actually pretty hot for a half-orc chick. (Quentin Matsys’ painting is also obviously the inspiration for John Tenniel’s famous Alice in Wonderland duchess.)

Oh yeah, now that you came here looking for a hot elf chick, wilt your kale on the many old school/DIY/retro/uncatalogable RPG links below to the right.  Or just go here.

Devil’s in the details: half-orcs

The OSR is kicking around random tables to give demihuman characters a little on-the-fly background.

I don’t actually have the issue of Fight on! this references but I think I get it. There is already a really good orc table, but no one has claimed half-orcs as far as I know, so here goes; apologies if this isn’t in the proper pattern.

Half-orcs

Do I have enough half-orc figures?  There are a few I still need to paint, but most of them are here.

Another quick half-orc post

When I was reading Save or Die! a while back, there was mention of half-orcs and half-goblins appearing in a random character generation article in the Dragon #3.  This was the article “Birth Tables for D & D” by Brad Stock & Brian Lane.  On the race table, half-goblins and half-orcs are each given  a slim chance on the “Commoner” table — a 2 or 3 on 2d6 respectively  (“Merchants” and “Gentry” cannot be either).

Much love for half-orcs…

“But these creatures of Isengard, these half-orcs and goblin-men that the foul craft of Saruman has bred, they will not quail at the sun…'”— from The Two Towers III 7, Helm’s Deep