Painting: Xmas/New Year Challenge

This set of old miniatures are going to be a core set of models I'm putting together for my son for him to play D&D with. There are many old models here but Tom really doesn't care too much about that. He very rarely plays with miniatures, in fact only when he's at my house!

But I know his friends like it, so I'm putting these together as a treat so that they have a few character models and a few monster types that can really represent any creature they fancy.

Character and larger creatures.

For general enemies Tom will never use creature specific models, he normally plays with coffee lids to represent PC's, so I have gathered 5 types 3 of each. Beastmen, dark elves, chaos warriors, orcs and goblins.

Need to change the goblin bases.

Now to get them painted :-)

I've also made him a simple 12" board to play on when the group are in combat. 

If in the future he decides he would like some more then there are always birthdays :-)

D&D5e: Warehouse and Tenement Boards

These are the latest, but not necessarily last, building boards I've made for playing D&D in a more 3D environment. In fact I have used a couple of cat food boxes to create two more basic cottage builds, will post when all painted up.

 These two boards are 6" by 12" about twice the size of all the others I have made so far.

Here I have added some of the furniture I've made to give a rough idea of how they look.

I can see these being used as the title suggests or as the basis for a mansion house, added to some of the other smaller tiles to create the upper class residence. (Ahm posh tha knows)

But mainly it gives me loads of other options, like creating a tavern or hotel environment without having to use my other more basic dungeon tiles. 

D&D: Mapping Tiles: Examples

Here are some examples of the maps I have created so far with the Tile sets I made for myself last week. They seem to work fairly well, not sure if they will become too formulaic and boring, only time will tell.



This is my version of Bryn Shander in Icewind Dale, a medium sized, walled city.

I can imagine that really large cities could be constructed over 4 A4 sheets, could be interesting.

After I had laid out the tiles on two separate pieces of A4 paper I cut down the centre of the right hand bit so the two could overlap. When I use them they will be held in plastic wallets so they lay flatter. For the photos I had to remove the wallets, due to reflections.  

I had to also draw extra bits in, like the city walls and some of the extra buildings so the map made sense, but it did not take long. The only bit that caused me a problem was that I had a lovely picture in front of me by Mike Schley and I felt bound by some reason, to make mine as similar as possible. Heavens knows why. But I didn't let that constrict me on any of the others.

 Next I used the more wintery tiles to create the Town of Huddlestone on the borders of Icewind.

Created on one A4 page and still needing details adding.

Finally Bremen a small village on the edge of a lake a little way from Cairn Kelvin.

Added extra bits to this like the lakeside and the piers. I am in the middle of drawing more hexs with coastal features, will post them when they are complete.

My initial thoughts on these is that with them I can bring together a usable map quickly which looks OK, so at present they're doing what I wanted.

Will be writing in where taverns and important buildings occur soon.

Mortal Gods

I have been putting together a skirmish force for the new Mortal Gods game from War Banner/Footsore Miniatures which I believe will be coming out early next year. Its an Ancient Greek skirmish game, knew there was a reason I had bought all those Foundry Greeks 15 years ago.
Has taken me a bit longer than I was expecting, things keep getting in the way, but recently I've really got stuck into them.
The bases are all hand made from card, glue and PVAcrete, see the WIP pictures below.

Recently altered the shield design throughout the army. I used an indelible pen to draw the extra bits of design. As you can see from the middle hoplite below, he was the first, I made the mistake of using too thick a pen. Some repainting to do there.

Was happy with the rest however.

The whole skirmish force.

Still a bit of work to do on these but hopefully will be complete before Xmas.

This is the board we've been making at Luke's specifically for Mortal Gods, will be nice to get a chance to play on it at some point. Will be delivering it to War Banner this week.

D&D5e: Village Mapping Cards

I have been working on these mapping hexagonal cards recently, much inspired by Mighty Empires, to aid in the creation of villages, towns and cities in our games of D&D.

This is the original sheet I drew out and then scanned into my PC so that I could print and colour to different effects. There are 25 hexs in the set and I reckon I should only need 4 or 5 for a village, perhaps just 2 for a hamlet. So there is plenty of variation from a 25 card set.

This is the first coloured set I made, these I will use to make hamlets,villages and smaller towns.

After I coloured them I copied them on my printer and cut them up and then laminated them.

These are the laminated versions in a small hexagonal box from the Range.

Have completed a more "city" set with deeper tones and cobbled streets. Will post some pictures of how they look as maps shortly.