Monsters for Firetop Mountain

 Continuing to populate the dungeon below Firetop Mountain, here are the essential monsters to plague the adventurers with!

The orc was fished out by the lovely Mike at Broadswords and Beasts. You can't see form the picture but his hat is an absolutely spot-on match to the art. I added some spiky bits to the end of his spear and sculpted on some boots.

The goblin was lurking in my Night Goblin horde, but he doesn't really fit the style so I nicked him for this instead. Different weapons but his helmet is pretty much right.

The hobgoblin was destined for my Angus McBride orc army, but as he was my only available unpainted hobgoblin I nabbed him for this instead. He's so clearly a hobgoblin after all. 

I actually purchased a (cheap!) copy of Dark World to use one of the skeletons for this project. However they're big and plastic and don't look right so in the end I cheated by repurposing the skeleton I sculpted for my Heroquest set and just rebasing him.

The zombie was in my 'give away at BOYL' box since I don't really do zombies, but turns out I had a use for him after all. I had to give him a new weapon as his axe had broken (rusted?!) off.

The ghoul is another gift from Mike. This time a Prince August home cast model. Suitably hard to tell where the flesh ends and the rags begin! As with all PA homecast models he had no face to speak of so I puttied a few eye sockets on. There's not much of the ghoul's face left after all. 

The troll and the giant are both Bob Olley trolls from RPE bought to bolster my ogre mercenaries. They're much smaller than the ogres though and don't really fit in very well. Originally I was planning to use a Dark World ogre for my giant since they look a lot closer to the artwork, but he stood out as too obviously a ropey plastic model amongst these nice, fine sculpts so I stuck with just a colour difference to designate the troll and giant.

The minotaur is the last of Mike's donations to the cause. I didn't want an enormous figure, he has to fit on the board squares after all, so this chap was perfect. 

I had painted the giant rat a couple of weeks ago for my Skaven horde, but I have enough anyway probably so he will get more prominence out of being part of this set.

The spider was a really busted-up model I got in a job lot of broken minis some years ago. He had just gone into my bits box after deciding I wasn't going to use him with my night goblins so, fresh in my memory, I fished him out and sculpted new forelegs and head to get him back in use.

These three I found among the Oakbound range, handy that. The old gnoll figure was intentionally ratty and works ok as the wererat despite not being as chunky as the art. Everyonw who sees the wulver says it's a werwolf, so now this one is a werewolf. Too big and probably a bit too friendly but the only thing I had that would really do the job without extensive conversion. Lastly a whist hound has been painted black for use as the hellhound.

That just leaves two very important figures for the next instalment of Firetop Mountain!

Encounters for Firetop Mountain

 The gauntlet had been thrown down... Now I needed to raid my stash of figures to see if I could fill the cast of models needed for the Encounters deck in the Warlock of Firetop Mountain board game. Initially I thought it would be a good excuse to go to the Midlam website and buy in some lovely shiny new toys (they have a wonderful dwarf jester I thought would make a perfect fool), but the sensible part of me said I should try and do as much as possible from what I already had. After all, wasn't I supposed to be working my way through the lead pile not adding to it? And with BOYL fast approaching I needed to be saving my cash and couldn't afford the time for delivery in any case. Well then, to the treasure chest...

As it transpires I had pretty much everything I needed. I was short a suitable model for a ghoul, a minotaur and an orc but Mike at Broadsword Miniatures was seeing me the following day at Attack! and generously took a look through his pile, laying his hands on some perfect models. But I am getting ahead of myself as the monsters will be the focus of my next post. For this one we're looking at the NPCs who apparently make their homes in the Warlock's dungeon.

The chef in the larder had to be a halfling. I imagine him warding off hungry greenskins with his trusty rolling pin. This is an Old School Miniatures halfling, I swapped out his pitchfork for a scratch built giant rolling pin. The model is clearly wearing chef's whites and proffering the weary adventurer a hearty burger to sustain them.

The trader has been down here for some time and has grown a fine beard since his portrait was painted. Here he is checking to see if he needs to order a restock of wine, best not to ask where it comes from. This is one of the hundreds of Old Glory Revolting Peasants I bought for my medieval city, I can spare one to this project.

As it turns out I DID have a jester in the pile! He's not the most exquisite figure ever sculpted but he serves the purpose. Slightly too jolly for the role, I like the morose expression and pose on the artwork, but I painted him with a sad face under his bright make up anyhow. 

This hungry beggar has been in the wars. I suspect he's a previous adventurer who has suffered in his attempt to raid the dungeon and ended up selling most of what he had to the trader or losing it to the nefarious rogues who share his new home. 

The trickster in his elaborate garb is one of my favourite matches. I think he's a landsknecht of some kind. I gave him a beaker of beer in the empty hand that should be holding a pike. Not someone I would trust, would you?

I think the sage might be a Midlam miniature, bought to be a trader in the rug market in my medieval city but now co-opted into the dungeon. He's perhaps a little too animated but maybe he's just enthusiastic in the imparting of wisdom.

The thief is another halfling. ex-Grenadier this time. Of all the NPCs this role I had the most choice for having half a dozen knife-wielding, cloaked figures. I thought this one looked the most sneaky though, and halfling rogue is so DnD it had to happen.

I was really pleased with the pick pocket match too, even though it's not the most elegant model. The fancy hood, cloak and even the spotty bag of swag are such an excellent fit. The pick pocket is actually a Treasure item rather than an Encounter since she can be hired to steal from other players.

Shylock the moneylender is such a perfect match to the art he may have been the inspiration for it! Not sure what he is, maybe a Citadel Fantasy Specials figure? Anyhow the stereotype is probably unacceptable these days but I reckon this is what Shakespeare would have had in mind. As soon as I saw him I knew that was Shylock. 

Two of these are Monsters rather than NPCs, but they crept into the photo anyhow. The wight is a Northstar miniature who was destined for my undead army but managed to remain unpainted, awaiting his starring role in this project! He's a lot more armoured than the drawing, which looks more like a romantic poet recovering from a  night on the opium, nevertheless I didn't actually have a Lord Byron figure in my lead pile, certainly not an undead one, and he looks more threatening this way. The vampire is a Dark Eye figure from Ral Partha Europe (an aged summoner I think?) but with his big collar on his cloak was the most vampiric thing in my lead pile. He's obviously happy in his work!

The hexmaster has also suffered from the lack of razor blades in Firetop Mountain! He's grown a fine, shaggy beard but still has his crazy eyes and powers of cursing.

Next on Firetop Mountain, the nasty monsters!

Heroes for Firetop Mountain

 BOYL approaches once more. This year my plan was to take nothing and just join in with Paul's big game that he's been working on painting for the last... three? four? years. Sadly that's now not able to happen so at our GROG meets we have been discussing what to bring. We've settled on some of the GW bookshelf board games and I'm going to be bringing Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

This is not my original set which I picked up (second hand) from a wonderful independent games shop in Bournemouth around 1995. That one only had two of the heroes in- the dwarf and barbarian. I spent the early years of Oldhammer (around 2009/10 I guess) picking up the rest of the heroes to complete the set and even ended up with a spare barbarian which I painted for an Oldhammer Forum warband-

Sadly this now-completed set somehow got lost in the move to our current house (I keep imagining I will discover it behind a bookcase sometime). Last year when I had Covid in the run up to BOYL I found a reasonably-priced copy on eBay and decided to replace it. The box isn't in quite as good condition and it was missing the rules but all the pieces were there. It seemed like a suitable thing to take to BOYL this year. Just one issue- the heroes weren't painted. Could I get them painted in time?

Yes, it turns out that I could. They were surprisingly quick and fun to paint for such basic models. They are, I think, the second set of boardgame plastics GW produced (the first being Dungeonquest a year earlier) and the Psychostyrene Dwarf and Drastik Plastik orcs had been produced for Warhammer. A year later the classic Regiments set would hit the shelves with some models that a light years ahead of these in terms of detail and execution, but weirdly even the Dungeonquest figures are probably better executed than these guys. Nevertheless they're still better than most of the soft plastic board game toys supplied by a lot of modern manufacturers. I've kept them on their original plastic disc bases but mounted these of 20mm rounds (they are small spaces after all!) and disguised the edges with some putty paving slabs.

But now there's a problem... I have three weeks and two weekends left before BOYL and as always another seed has been sown... Could I get figures for all of the encounters? What about all the monsters? Wouldn't it be cool if everything was represented?...

I had a rummage in my lead pile and yes, I could, but would I have time to paint them? Damn! Another high pressure BOYL painting challenge when I'm meant to be finishing off my Skaven! Stay tuned... 

The classic quartet of dungeon heroes.