Grimdark is written on the flag of GW (between a lot of skulls and £-signs), but who really made this style, was John Blanche (as a GW employee), so its also called blanchitsu. What does it mean? I dont want to write an essay about its core elements (as if I could...), if you're interested in it, I would recommend to read more about it, for example here. But just a sort summary, that we can go on: its a dirty, dark, sinister looking (okay, lets call it grim) painting style.
I know, this is not a real post, but I achieved a very important point this week: I varnished 75 miniatures! 75 ready! 75 less to paint!
As my sons got 2 boxes of Frostgrave for Christmas (Gnolls and Snake-men), it was urgent to build them. But building without planning gets not 100% usage of the possibilities... Making a Frostgrave warband from 20 miniatures is not a big deal, but what else is possible? Using them in Oathmark is a pretty obvious offer. But how? First step of this planning is to set the limitations:
Now that I have self-sculpted miniatures in acceptable quality, I also want to play with them! In Frostgrave, the golem can be used as a construct, and the treeman as a giant, so I can check off one of my main systems. And in the other one, Oathmark, they certainly can be used as subtitutes for some monsters from the official rulebook, like an Eachy and a Giant for example. But that would bleach out their individual character a bit… So home-brew rules are needed!
Warning! This post can be disturbingly long!
Without a long an meaningless introduction, I just start here: A little after I started painting miniatures, I felt the need to try out sculpting. But as it looks way harder than painting (at least if the result should be more or less acceptable), I had to find something, that’s easy to do. Human figures are obviously not that, because the body proportions has to be correct, the face has to look good, and there are a lot of small details… So actually it’s maybe the worst thing to start with. But I you find the worst case, you just have to invert it, to find the best! So what’s the inverse here? It has to be big, faceless, and with arbitrary proportions. Basically a formless blub… Okay, it would be easy for sure, but I wanted maybe a bit more refined thing… Something humanoid, with hands and legs, but without undefined proportions (and face). Actually an earth elemental (or rock golem) is quite a good start, because its simply some kind of humanoid form, with rocky surface! Like this one (from DevianArt):
Oathmark setting is in technological terms like european early medieval: there are no crossbows (which I wont accept, because dwarves have to have crossbows, so I made house rules for them), not to mention black power weapons. But what if… What if once somebody would invent a magical powder, which explodes if ignited? And what if somebody puts that powder in a tube, and throws a rock on before igniting it? What if the kingdoms of the Marches would get primitive black powder weapons? Maybe it doesn’t fit the initial idea of Oathmark, but as its just a house rule and not a must, I don’t see big problems here (if You want to use house rules, just agree it with your opponent, if not, You can use your miniatures as archers and catapults after all).
Let’s continue last week’s project with building the more complicated parts!
The tower: I made it 1 floor high, and a floor is for 28mm miniatures approximately 50mm. So, for the walls, 100 and 110mm long sticks are needed (50-60mm as for the walls plus 50mm for the floor). But there has to be doors and windows! Placing the doors for the best versatility is according to this example (and sketch):
Once upon a time, I was in my local gaming store, just buying my regular, pseudo-necessary stuff, and there was a sale. As You might know, the sales in the local gaming stores are one of the greatest powers on earth. There were such stuff, I never know I needed, but suddenly it was irresistible…
It was a sale of Avatars of War miniatures. They make beautiful metal and resin miniatures in the best WFHB aesthetics. They are a bit on the more expensive end of the market (12-13€/human sized miniatures), but they are really lovely especially with nostalgic googles. I always adored these minis, but as they were so expensive, and they didn’t really fit to my other miniatures (they are bigger, with more heroic proportions, and they dwarves are twice the size of an Oathmark dwarf). But now! For the price, I bought almost everything what they got (and Im still angry about the stuff I left there...). Lets take a look on them one by one.
I already wrote a post about the (at the time new) Frostgrave Knight plastic set. I loved it, my only problem was the low number of miniatures in the box. I wanted more (more, more)! And as I saw the last piece in my local gaming shop, I couldn’t withstand the temptation… And was as amazed, as the first time: this set is superb! I was thinking about building and kitbashing possibilities since the last time, so we (because I bought it with my sons) could build it pretty fast this time. Before the results, lets take a quick look of the former, (mostly, because some of them got additional equipment) unchanged miniatures, 2 knights, 2 templars and 4 captains (1 from every family member):
It was a pretty special year from a lot of aspects. Here and now I just want to emphasize one of it. Because of the limited options for spending the free time, I landed this year by my unfulfilled, childhood passion: tabletop games and miniatures. I jumped into a lot of projects (maybe got a bit addicted...), and Im enjoying them a lot. But maybe the biggest pleasure is, that my family joined me in this! That is why not only this year, but the Christmas was also very miniature heavy:
In the last post I listed all (for me known) options regarding the bases. It could end here, but that theme is closely connected to some others: movement trays, storage and transport solutions. Lets take a short look on them, and then I tell you which way was chosen by me.
If you are using single based minis for big battle games, you have to move a complete unit of more (5-10-20-40) miniatures at once, and that can be really frustrating… But movement trays can solve that! They are like a plate, where You place your figures, and then move the plate. There are 2 main types:
Bases. Doesn’t Seem like a very interesting theme, but there are a lot of different options, which can be pretty confusing for a beginner (like me). And although I’m reading/watching (way too) many blogs and channels about wargaming, I didn’t find a cover-all source of it. I will try my best, to fill this gap. Because its important! Because if you want uniform armies, one very important point to decide at the very beginning is, what base do you want to use. Because an army on different base types looks very-very disappointing (in my opinion)… Let’s start with the main parameters!
Until now, all posts were about miniatures, that were ready (already varnished), but now! Now is time for a brand new box (I love the excitement of new miniatures way too much…)! And this will be, the new Frostgrave Knights box, because they were too good looking to save my wallet longer from them (yeah, I could hold myself back for 2 whole weeks after release…).
This will be my first post mainly about painting, I want to share a really easy and quick method of making good (enough) looking skeleton warriors (with rusty weapons). Painting skeletons, as they are usually not very complicated models, you can save a plenty of time with proper technic. And what is this proper technic? Lets go step by step, and I try to enlighten, were the time saving is:
Maybe 5 posts about the wizards was enough, wasn’t it? Let´s talk a bit about the remaining parts of the warband: the soldiers. The warband can consist up to 8 of them, however they don’t gain experience (except the captain in the supplement book), but they are still very important members of the band. The following type of soldiers are in the basic rulebook (the equipment is important because the game should be WYSIWYG):
Where did I end up in the previous post? Listed up some options for getting non-human wizards. What I couldn’t make last time, to show, what wizards I have. While I really love kitbashing, I had no torsos left from the wizard box, and I didn’t want to buy another for that reason. So I had to buy specific ones.
My first try were dwarf wizards (with a complete warband) from Reaper, from the Bones material (soft PVC). Unpainted they look not as bad, but after the first coat of color, terrible… The details are so blunt, it’s frustrating to paint them. And the result is disappointing. I’m nearly not good enough painter to get mediocre results with them. I really hate these miniatures… But they are certainly playable, and they represent a point in my learning curve, so they stay. But still… I don’t want to talk about them any longer. I don't even want to show pictures, because i couldn't force myself to paint them ready.
Let´s stay a bit more longer with the wizards for Frostgrave theme. The official plastic wizard boxes are a cheap and very versatile possibility to get miniatures for the game, but however much I like this set, it has a limitation: they´re only humans… What if you will have a non-human warband (official there are no special rules for other races, so you can play with anything)? There are two main options to consider:
We were at the point of refining the concept for the different wizard groups. That was a point where I sat down took the sprues, and waited for inspiration… I looked, and touched, I touched and looked, and there are the results:
Let’s see the first miniatures! It's pretty obvious, that the first ones should be the most important ones: wizards (and apprentices) for Frostgrave. All 25-28mm wizard miniatures can be used, but the simplest way to get them (if you don’t own already some) is the official Frostgrave wizards from Northstar (there are two of them, the second box contains female wizards). Just for the record, there is a well-priced metal wizard line from the same manufacturer, but I don’t own any of it. For -17€ You get 8 multipose, hard plastic figures, with lot (really tons!) of options. Not the cheapest plastic boxed set pro figure, but with all the small parts, the individualization is almost unlimited!
