Dreamstone Kickstarter imminent!

Yep, after a long time and a couple of Covid-related delays the launch is next week! Just a few more tweaks to make to the page and we'll be ready to roll.

Keep an eye on the campaign page here.

Dreamstone Kickstarter imminent!

Fighting Fantasy Battlegame Toys

Some might be aware that GW published a set of rules for fighting small engagements with large-scale plastic toys based on the Fighting Fantasy series. Well, they did. They also prototyped a polystyrene dungeon in the style of the Mighty Fortress for use with it. Although this never saw full production there are some examples of it kicking around. Well, at least I know of one that is...

As you can see, the plastic figures produced for the game were extremely high quality... (images from www.fightingfantasycollector.co.uk). As a result they sold extremely well and are very common and easy to get hold of. No, wait, I'm thinking of something else. let's face it, they aren't the finest example of plastics production, but I guess we can forgive GW as the technology was new (to them) and they were finding their feet.

 

 

A rumour abounds that BOYL 2020 might see some games of this ancient and lofty ruleset being played, but given how rare (and therefore expensive) the actual figures are... I mean, would you pay good money for them? Not when there are cheap alternatives of just as good quality to be found on the modern market.

Enter the True Legends bucket of fantasy figures! At our weekly gaming session last Friday Chris brought out this beuatiful collection of toys for us to admire. Just marvel at the workmanship:

Needless to say I begged him for a chance to paint one of each of these mighty heroes. Well, except the crazy, stunted witch lady with no hips. That model is just too nasty for me to want to paint even out of silliness! The rest though cut straight through the painting queue onto the desk and by Wednesday evening they were done. 

Here's Legolas, Gimli and Conan tooled up and spoiling for a fight!

And here are some less certain characters that I decided to paint as a rogue/ninja type, an Indian princess/sorceress type and (what I presume to be meant as an orc) a 1980s He-Man type furry demon man.

Yes, they're gawky, but they were actually pretty fun to paint up and apart from some wierdnesses of proportion and design (what does Legolas have on his feet?) they don't look too bad. Especially given a 1980s heavy metal animation theme (which makes things like the more modern attire of the rogue/ninja less incongruous). So now I want to build on the 54mm cartoon miniatures collection, especially get some more bad guys for the heroes to face. My attention has thus been drawn by this:

Should be some fun things to try out in there...

Fighting Fantasy Battlegame Toys

Exciting cartoon times ahead!

 

Familiar to anyone?

How about...?

 

 

 

If you were quite young in the 80s and 90s you may remember these guys from one of my favourite kids cartoons, The Dreamstone. Airing in 1990 and running for four series, The Dreamstone is one of those engrossing fantasy worlds with rich characters and dark undertones. The very first episode opens with Zordrak, the Lord of Nightmares (the big dragony bloke in the top picture) feeding the captain of his army to the monstrous Fraznats that live in a pit by his throne.

What really makes the cartoon stand out in my view is that it is really about the bad guys, specifically the officious Sergeant Blob and his reluctant wingmen Frizz and Nug. Forced by their giant master to undertake missions to steal the ever-desired Dreamstone from the cutesy land of dreams, their life is made dangerous by the half-baked inventions of mad genius Urpgor. The overriding feeling is that they'd all rather be fishing in the sea of despair and leaving the goody-goodies well alone.

Just over a yar ago I had the mad idea of sculpting a couple of these characters and sending them to Martin Gates, the director of the production company that created The Dreamstone. After a long period of waiting for companies on either side of the world to talk to each other (British production company, Canadian merchandising, German rights-holders...) I'm excited to say that this is now happening:

The next few months will see a lot of sculpting! The plan is to Kickstart (or other crowd-funder) the range in March and aim for a September release to coincide with the 30th anniversary. There'll also be a simple miniatures game to accompany it which will likely be a freebie for crowd-funder backers. I'll post updates here and on the Facebook page as I have them.

Exciting cartoon times ahead!