From 40K to Role Play

After a successful start to the family Role Play Campaign. It seemed like a good excuse to buy some minis.

To my surprise there are lots of different companies producing minis now. Also loads of different games.

After a lot of looking I found some minis that matched the Lego team the wife and kids created.

Just a couple of weapon swaps got some Otherworld miniatures to look the part.

With the Adventurers table ready it was time for generic foes.

I’ve gone down the zombie route. They are nice and fun for the family to chop up without morale issues arising.

I quickly realised I needed more zombies. You can never really have enough zombies.

An unexpected birthday present solved the problem in the form of GW deadwalker zombies.

Lego was great for making scenery. With the move to minis I have a long list of stuff to make.

1. I’m going to be taking inspiration from Puzzlewood for my forest bits.

Just using cut up polystyrene packaging with some stones stuck on. Then covering it all with toilet roll soaked in PVA.

Testing out how best to flock the scenery. I’ve never really done any flocking before but it seems simple enough.

I’ve made some small bits of scatter terrain. Just plywood discs, stones and tile grout.

Also flocking up a bit of MDF to use as a base.

I enjoyed buying and painting some new minis. Now it was time to fish out and paint up some old ones.

After painting some 80’s minis I decided to paint some 90’s minis.

These ones were already painted so I just added to the old paint job.

These are another group of adventures for the campaign.

Warhammer Quest: Imperial Noble

Bretonnian: Morgiana Le Fay’s Frog

Bretonnian: Grail Damsel

Making stuff was always my favourite part of the hobbie. So I decided to make a side saddle motorbike chicken walker thing.

I made a modified excavator digger arm design for the legs. Then started off with a model, a clothes peg & a wall plug.

Just ended sticking bits together at this stage.

The old bits box was dugout the cellar. (My son had recently got the 40k Recruit box so I stole some necron parts.)

Using various bits I constructed the side saddle motorbike part of the walker. While trying to work out how to make the legs.

Surprisingly I couldn’t find an easy way to make complicated hydraulic style walker legs.

After a couple of failed attempts I was able to construct some legs.

Now with the main frame done it’s time to gap fill and add all the details.

Life has been getting in the way of hobbie time lately. So progress on the project has been slow.

I did however buy myself some Halflings & Goblins from Wargames Atlantic.

The plan is to give weapons from the Goblins to the Halflings. The weapons supplied with the Halflings don’t really suit the small skirmish battles I need them for.

I chopped the Halflings right hand off at the sleeve and stuck the Goblins weapon hand on.

The Goblin hands are a bit bigger but not too bad. The swords are also a little big.

The shield arms were a little bit more difficult due to the Halfling left arm options. Although the shields are a really good size.

Well we finally found time to play the RPG with minis rather than Lego.

A brief summary events.

The 3 brave Adventurers arrived on the Isle of Doom. They followed a treasure map to where X marked the spot. Just to find a strange old man in a hut. The old man sent them off to help some people that were trying to head up a nearby river.

While travelling through a forest on the way to the river they encountered some zombies.

Ni called for her spirt cat to construct into a solid form created from soil, stone & wood of the forest.

Delilah started attacking from range by squirting high powered milk from her teats. (Because that’s sometimes what people want there character to be able to do!?)

Jon ran away and hid behind a rock.

The zombies staggered into melee range with the Adventurers. Combat ensued and the zombies were hacked to pieces.

The Adventurers fled as more zombies appeared from the trees.

I’ve been struggling to find time to get anything done.  So I decided to get some Army Painter Speedpaints.

First I found some minis to experiment on.

1. Primed Grey
2.  Coat of black/grey speedpaint
3. Drybrushed with white (cold grey white)
4. Did some metallics
5. Applied some speedpaints

I didn’t like the cold white under the speedpaints. I also needed to do lighter under painting for the flesh.

1. Lightened up the skin
2. Did warm pale yellow drybrushing
3. Re applied the speedpaints
4. Added some highlights on the orks fur

I think speedpaints could really help speed things up. Just need to get used to them first.

Kitbashing Frostgrave & Wargames Atlantic plastic sprues. Trying to get a nice range of fantasy humanoids.

Frostgrave male Barbarian with 2 snake-men weapons stuck together.

I was mostly just trying to make a ridiculous weapon for this (Skyrim) barbarian….

I got a bit carried away buying stuff for the humanoids.

North Star – single spures:
Crewmen
Snake-men
Frostgrave Gnolls
Frostgrave Soldiers (male)
Frostgrave Soldiers II (female)
Frostgrave Barbarian (male)
Frostgrave Barbarians II (female)
Dwarf Light Infantry
Orc Infantry

Wargames Atlantic – boxes:
Halfling Militia
Goblin Warband

Kitbashing Frostgrave & Wargames Atlantic plastic sprues. Trying to get a nice range of fantasy humanoids.

Just did a simple weapon swap for this one.

Frostgrave female Barbarian with a male Barbarian hammer.

Design inspired by Aila from High Rollers – Aerois D&D campaign.

Kitbashing Frostgrave & Wargames Atlantic plastic sprues. Trying to get a nice range of fantasy humanoids.

Trying to make some creepy mutant folk that live in a swamp. I really like how the Dwarf heads look on the Orc bodies.

Dwarf Light Infantry Head

Orc Infantry Body

Modified orc banner arm

Gnoll empty handed arm

Female soldier cloak

Making painfully slow progress on the project.

Made up 4 sailors and an adventurer. Minimal changes made to these ones. Just some little bits and bobs from other sprues used.

The lightly armed sailors/ civilians should come in useful.

They all need some cleaning up and filling before painting.

The plastic Frostgrave minis do have lots of annoying mould lines etc.

Failing to find time to get anything done. I realised that I could get apps for video/ audio editing for my phone.

So I had a go at making a short atmospheric / scene setting Intro video for the RP campaign.

It’s heavily inspired by ‘Night of the Living Dead’ (1968). I just used still images of models that I had on my phone. Then made some random synthesiser noises…

I might make some creepy background music videos to add a bit of atmosphere while playing?

I have resorted to making stuff in the car on my lunch break at work. It’s not ideal but better than nothing.

Some scratch built beasties made of stuff off the floor and various bits of wire.

Made up 10 knolls / wolf men.

I had a Frostgrave knolls sprue that assembles 5 figures. It came with 10 head options. The spare heads were put on 5 Wargames Atlantic goblins.

The heads needed a bit of green stuff but that’s about it.

I think that once painted up they should look quite similar

Made up 10 snake-men.

I had a Frostgrave snake-men sprue that assembles 5 figures. It came with 10 head options. The spare heads were put on 5 Wargames Atlantic goblins. I also used the snake-men arms on the Goblins. The small models where then mostly equipped with crossbows taken from various Frostgrave spures.

The snake arms and heads required some copping and green stuffing to work with the Goblin bodies.

I made a simple snakeskin stamp to texture the green stuff.