Men at Arms

Recently I have been returning to my Heroquest collection to add a few more figures. As you'll likely know, the metal prototypes from Heroquest are my particular holy grail quest. Many months ago a fellow collector and Heroquest fanatic messaged me to say he'd found a spare casting of the prototype Man at Arms from Wizards of Morcar/Advanced Quest (Dark Company), also released with Frozen Horror in the USA. Only one problem...

At some point the plume had been cut off for conversion purposes. Here you can see the complete figure with the butchered 'spare' next to it. No problem, I reckoned I could fix that.

Searching through the Empire pages of the 1992 catalogue I located a plume that looked the closest. I then took a silicone mould of just the head of the donor model and cast a resin copy. I used modelling putty to fill in the curve a bit more to match the intact prototype plume, cut it from the resin head and pinned it onto the prototype model. Job done.

As you can see the prototype model (second from right) takes the same plug-in weapons as the released Ersatzsolder and Helblitzen models. The tabs on these figures say 1991, Advanced Quest came out in 1992 and Wizards of Morcar in 1993 so it's likely the plug-in weapon concept was already in place for Warhammer and adopted into the Heroquest release. The prototype figure is just a different head on the same body as the Helblitzen figure to the left of him in the picture above.

Having painted so many matching uniforms for my Empire army I couldn't face another batch painting session. Since these are mercenaries and their attire is very different (supposed to represent Tilea, Estalia and regions of the Empire itself I presume) it was a fun opportunity to go to town with bright colours and patterns.

The regular released soldiers in these pictures have been made up with the different weapons permanently attached, just painted to match. Perhaps each player's own mercenaries will be colour coded? Of course I only had the one of the prototype figure so a system for swapping the weapon was required. The pin into the body serves as a locator but not much else on these metal models, unlike the plastic ones where it holds enough to easily swap the weapons in and out. 

Fortunately there's enough flat space on the ends of the models arms for them to be drilled and some small magnets to be inserted, with the reverse on the weapon options. I don't feel too bad about drilling into a rare prototype figure as he'd already required fixing with the plume transplant. Besides, it allows the model to actually be used and is invisible once the weapon is attached.

So here's what the weapon options look like side by side. I take it this chap is meant to be a Tilean. He certainly looks it to me. Sad that you couldn't buy packs of just the one body type since the uniforms are so different a mixed unit doesn't look nearly as good as one with just the single type in.

The heavily armoured Helblitzen, always my favourite of the four released.

This guy looks Nuln-y to me, but that's based on a very limited knowledge of the Empire since I never really cared much for official Warhammer fluff. 

An Estalian?

And here's what a full set of the prototype models would look like.

I've got another prototype on the painting table at the moment, and scouts on the lookout for more, so further Heroquesting developments very soon!

It's a Dark World after all...

Bite off more than you can chew? Me? Always...

From 'I'm not painting for or bringing anything to BOYL this year' I seem to have swung quite far the other way! It all started with the heroes for Warlock of Firetop- a simple task to paint 6 figures so I could get the board game out for easy gaming over the weekend. That escalated to trying to find and paint a miniature for each of the encounters, and that lead to me purchasing a (cheap!) copy of Dark World intending to use one of the skeletons and an ogre in WoFM. When I put them next to the other models I had selected however they just didn't fit. They'd have suited the plastic heroes fine but were too big and chunky to go well with the other NPCs. Well, I would just have to paint up Dark World and bring that too wouldn't I? The rules look pretty fun after all...

Dark World is Waddingtons' take on Heroquest, but actually has some more interesting dynamics in it. It also has its failings, one of which being not having Citadel Miniatures, but it's worth a look. The models aren't actually terrible. The game is actually set in the Dark Eye (Schwartze Auge) world, although the English language version of the game doesn't reference this. The iconography can be seen in the box art. The big bad is Korak the Kobran, who I have decided is essentially Thulsa Doom. As part of his monster turn he can summon The Haunter, a spectre which travels across the board in a random path and causes anything it passes through to die of terror. The Haunter is a cool model with a big black robe and plug-in reaching hands and skull. Unfortunately my cheap set was missing these plug-in bits so I have improvised with some claws from an old Oakbound Kelpie and a Ral Partha Europe skull. The turn order in the game is determined by shaking the 'Chaos Mace', resulting in balls of the heroes' colour being arranged in a random order. You can see it poking out the top of the castle in the top picture. Korak is clearly holding his own miniature version, hence the Fisher Price colouring on his sacrificial dagger.

The skeletons and mummies come in bone coloured plastic like the HQ monsters. They're therefore super fast to paint! I washed these with Army Painter Light Tone (should have tried out my Skeleton Horde Contrast Paint, forgot I had it!), gave them some spot highlights and painted in glowing green eyes. Job done! One skeleton was missing an arm, but I'm sure loose bones fall off these guys all the time. The objects on their bases by the way are winged sandals. When the Korak player places a monster they choose a magical item to place on the base- these magic shoes, potions or the dreaded fireball grenade! Whoever slays the monster takes the treasure.

The orcs definitely owe something to the Heroquest and Battlemasters designs. They're actually quite dynamic with their advancing pose, not something that will have been easy to machine for injection moulding. Some considerable skill has gone into producing these figures so I can respect them even though they don't quite have the polish of what GW were producing in plastic at the time. They share the same niche as the Heroquest plastics being easy starter figures that look good with a base coat and wash whilst allowing a more advanced painter to add in extra features to the clothing. I feel like this is something not really understood by a lot of modern board game plastic manufacturers who try to pack in as many fiddly details as possible.

All monsters in the game work essentially the same way, rolling two combat dice and inflicting damage on the heroes equal to the number of hits rolled. Where they differ is their own individual hit points. These are hidden under the base of each model. When an adventurer rolls to hit they get to look under the base and need to beat the number they find there in order to kill the monster. Each type of monster has a coloured card disc insert with their hit point number on it, orcs and skeletons being lowest, then ogres and mummies, then the manticore and Korak himself. Within each type there's some variation though so an orc might be 1 or might be 3 HP. Adventurers score based on the HP of monsters they kill (plus other factors) so not revealing the HP of monsters you find and kill then bluffing about how hard or easy they are to kill is all part of the fun.

The ogres are very definitely inspired by the HQ ogres but done as single piece models. The anatomy on these guys is actually extremely good, if necessarily exaggerated. I tried to make them look like miniature versions of the classic Marauder giant. That flaming pineapple on the base is one of the infamous fireball grenades, one-use blast weapons!

I like these mummies! What cool poses. They are pretty huge, towering over 35mm tall, but again their bone-colouring makes it so quick to paint in all those bandages. These have just had an Army Painter Dark Tone wash, nothing else! The faces and hands finish them off.

The manticore is Korak's personal bodyguard. Other monsters can pop up in any room which gets revealed but this beast is only encountered in the arena before Korak's throne. The model was missing the end of its tail so I puttied on a replacement stinger.

I had intended to go all-in on tiger stripes or some other patterning since it's such a big figure with large areas of skin. In the end though I just wanted to get the set done so I opted for a simple sandy lion look with a few leopard spots for good measure. Compared to big modern plastics there's a surprising amount of texture and detail on this guy, a wash reveals plenty of interest. The mane is pretty stylised so I went really dark with it to hide the lack of 'hairiness'. 

The heroes! Ranger, Knight, Dwarf and Barbarian. They're on Heroclix style bases which count down hit points. The weapons are theoretically interchangeable as they can find 'golden' weapons along the way that increase potency. I've glued these in though, players can just add the golden weapon to their 'base camp' to show they have one. The Knight has a replacement axe as one of the weapons was missing. The Ranger is definitely Strider with his elf-stone on his brow and the Barbarian I decided was absolutely Hulk Hogan with his porn star moustache. I've kept their attire to the colour of the base for ease of identification.

Hoping to get some games in on Saturday as part of BOYL. Come find me if you'd like to play!

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

 Here's the big bad himself, and his little pet!

For the Warlock I had originally looked out a model much closer to the white-bearded chap on the cover of the original gamebook. However since subsequent art has ignored this in favour of the character in the black and white illustration within he really wasn't recognisable as 'The Warlock' everyone now thinks of. Sadly the Otherworld miniature is OOP but I figured I could do something with this RPE summoner figure. I added the collar and join to his robes, a headband and the little bitey worm thing that is always shown snaking around his neck. With the addition of stars to his robes I think he's come out identifiable with the infamous Zagor. His base was painted match his study floor as that's the only place he's gonna be throughout the game.

The dragon I needed to be small enough to fit in the box and on the board so I opted for this wyvern I sculpted for Old School Miniatures a couple of years back. My other choice was the Broadsword Miniatures (ex-Hinchliffe) dragon (two headed) which is closer to the traditional 'English' dragon shown in the interior book art and on the Encounter card. This one I have tried to make resemble the dragon on the book and game box cover art with his abstract 'smooth' scales and adding the horn on the nose, tongue and forelimbs.

With a bunch of pretty models all nicely painted up for it I really needed to find a good way to store them. So I came up with these foam inserts for the box.

Stacking up everything fits pretty nicely, though the lid sits proud by about 8mm now it is in no danger of falling open and spilling its contents.

All ready to play!