The Dire Wolf of the Dark Emissary

As I wrote in a previous post, the Dark Emissary has returned and this time with an army of wolves at his disposal. This here is the Dire Wolf from Reaper (metal version) and is the second largest wolf in his army (like it wasn’t big enough already!)

Dire Wolf

Dire Wolf

Dire Wolf

This is a very cool miniature and our encounters with the wolves have been very exciting (really fast monsters) I have another 3 smaller wolves painted with several more in progress and a very large wolf, which needs its own post!

The base is an interesting choice from Kromlech and is part of their Windfall line. You can find them here.

Stay tuned for more frightening wolves!

Myriam the Mystic

As I am always scouting Reaper Miniatures for new and interesting minis for myself or King Games, I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between Sister Lana, Healer and Myriam Jahzia from Diablo 3 – Reaper of Souls expansion. I am assuming that Bobby Jackson saw her as some kind of inspiration as she is quite similar, down to the small details of her staff, headpiece and dress.

I tried to paint her as Myriam as we needed an enchanter and jeweler for our campaign in Nordland!

Myriam 1

I chose to paint her hair blonde instead of grey, as if it was a youthful version of her. Whether it is her wit, sense of humour or simply the size of her bosom – she has taken our Bright Wizard Viktor by storm.

Here is a piece of artwork and a screenshot of Myriam.

I added a few more gems to the miniature to make her look like a jeweler :)

Freebooter Miniatures: Battitora Goth Version

I’m an avid collector of many miniature lines and ranges, and Freebooter’s Brotherhood is one of those. I have painted around 20 of the Brotherhood miniatures (some products come with 2 minis). I love their assassins and they are regulars in our Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) sessions. This one (from a set of 2 miniatures: Battitora & Harlequin) was painted a lot different than the official miniature but I like the punk look she has, and as a metal-head she fits my style :-D

Punk Assassin

For some reason I can’t remember, I didn’t apply tattoos to her skin though they would have fitted perfectly! I even painted outrageous eyeliner and dark lipstick :-P she looks like a mean no-patience character and will do just fine in the streets of Middenheim!

Beastmen: Centigors

I have been painting all kinds of outdoors beasts and monsters, which will be part of our newly begun adventure campaign, that takes place outside of Middenheim. As our heroes are escorted by an accountant on her way to Dorfmark (City in Nordland), we are quickly thrown into a political scandal involving a suspicious Burgomeister and numerous raids on local lumber mills. The raiders are humans, but something sinister lurks in the shadows and the beasts are on the prowl in the Forest of Shadows. Several twists have already taken place (despite only 2 sessions!) so I have been busy painting all kinds of beasts for the sessions (as I don’t know for sure which ones will be used as I am not the GM)

Here are some of the larger Centaur creatures of the Beastmen Herd: Centigors

Centigors 1

I had fun painting these and I went through a lot finding them in good condition and of course in metal, but I ended up with a bargain on Ebay, so everything went smooth in the end. I actually have 2 spare ones as I ended up purchasing a whole set in its original box. As these are heavier than they look, there was no way I could mount them on top of scenic bases, so I had to make my own using very fine sand, rocks and foliage. My husband is the base master, so I let him decorate them. I asked for a forest look in mainly green colours and I got exactly what I wanted.

Here are a few more pictures of these cool creatures:

I painted them in different colours, as I spent some time experimenting (as usual) I like the “Ginger” one best, that’s the one in the middle. I also experimented on their horns. It worked better on some than others, but from a distance it looks awesome and they look very frightening on a gaming board with forest scenery!

Oh and the original metal figures had ridiculously small shield attached, so I filed/cut them off and put on shields from the Ungor sprue, and it really helped the overall look.

Here is an official Games Workshop picture with “small shield” versions:

Centigors 4

The Death of Ghartek

Another break from vacation!

As mentioned in a previous post, our heroes from our RPG group recently went on a search for a Dwarf named Snortek. The reason for this is that the very well loved dwarf Ghartek died a horrible death in the Knobelsdorff society (our First Aid expertised hero failed to save him) Little do people know that Ghartek was an extremely racist Dwarf who hated Elves (especially our Wood elf Hero Beluar with whom he relentlessly pranked in every way possible) and it so happened that right before he died from a Skaven attack, he put all the blame on poor Beluar who now believes he is cursed! (he did temporarily dye Ghartek’s beard pink, drop his glasses into his chamberpot and other sorts of devious pranks)

Luckily, there is still hope for our poor Beluar! Ghartek’s nephew Snortek is heading for Middenheim with funeral plans. Maybe Beluar can redeem himself by being VERY nice to the nephew?

Either way! Here are the now late Ghartek and his rather confused and narcoleptic nephew Snortek (pun intended)

Ghartek & Snortek

A Break from Vacation!

It has been waaay too long since my last post and the reason, you ask? Vacation and preparing for vacation! As small business owners, my husband and I rarely stop working and when we do, we spend time on our hobby (which is also our work. Cool, right?)

But everyone needs some time off and we have been lucky enough to have a vacation house by the beach at our disposal for a whole month! This has really given us the break we’ve needed for continuing our work on a whole new ruleset for our own RPG game which is set in the Warhammer Fantasy world (Pre-Storm of Chaos and Pre-End-time, obviously!)

It has been a while since we’ve used an official ruleset like WFRP, D&D, Pathfinder etc, because we always end up house-ruling a lot.

We have decided to test these rules (just the two of us) while we are on vacation, and since we have all the “props” and miniatures at our home, we had to bring a limited amount of miniatures in a good old Gw army-suitcase. So as you can see on our session pictures, we had to improvise… A lot! (The pile of green Nurgle-tokens is supposed to be a disgusting pool of slime, the green tablecloth is grass etc). The people next to/on top of the cages are victims which are supposed to be inside them, but I didn’t have the nerves to squeeze them in there!

Vacation House Session 1

Sorry for the less than professional pictures taken by my mobile phone :*-) but I thought it would be fun to put them up for people to see. I’m always curious myself when it comes to how people play RPG’s!
The tiny shiny dots on the table are range increments which makes sense when playing!

The heroes are looking for a dwarf (long story) but he had somehow escaped the Beastmen camp and was no where to be found. The heroes decided to save the other prisoners now that they were there, anyway :-P

Here is another picture after the heroes found the dwarf named Snortek. He was hanging head down from a tree while being interrogating by bandits.

Vacation House Session 2

I’m glad we brought all the trees cause they really spice up the whole thing. The fir trees are incredibly lifelike and well made. We are already selling a lot of 4-ground trees in our shop, so we will definately be selling these in our online store aswell. I will be adding a bit of paint to the visible parts of the trunks when I get home, but they really outshine my old Games Workshop trees.

Another thing that really helps our players to get into the RPG spirit are props! Instead of having papernotes lying around, we use books which look really great on the table! Not only do they look amazing, but it is also a great way to gather all the notes! Some of our props are cheap remakes from China, but others are actually real antiques.
Here is a picture of just some of the things we bring into our game.

Vacation House Props

We have several of the Warhammer dice cups so each player has his/her own :-)
And right before we went on vacation, we received the collector’s edition of Total War: Warhammer, which included the most insane Book of Grudges replica and loads of other high quality props (the drinking horn is epic)

Oh well, turns out my little vacation update turned out bigger than expected! We will be getting home and back to work in a few weeks and then I’ll have time to write a whole bunch of posts!

Gold Wizard of the Lore of Metal

Recently painted this cool Pathfinder Miniature Kyra, Female Iconic Cleric. Instead of her Original colours I chose to paint her as a Wizard of the Gold College. Since we desperately lack female wizards in our WFRP campaign (mainly due to using Games Workshop miniatures which mainly consists of male miniatures, other than Elves)

Gold Wizard

The miniature is perfect as a Gold Wizard with loads of gems and golden features! I even added some gold coins to the base.

I am currently spending far too much time playing Pathfinder Card Game (Rise of the Runelords and Skull & Shackles) and as a result I wanted to paint our heroes as stand-ins for the usual character card. Unfortunately one of them was Kyra, so I had to paint her again only with her original colours!
They are turning out pretty cool, so I will post pictures of the heroes soon :-D

The Doctor is in!!

Decided to dust off Doctor Festus and his loyal champion that my husband very creatively named “Fat Little Nurgle Champion”.

As a collector (of far too many miniature lines) I, of course, collect old Chaos Champions. More specifically Realm of Chaos Miniatures. Not sure which line this guy is (other than Citadel), but he deserves a shared post with “Herr Doktor”. Even though Festus is made in Games Workshop’s Finecast, assembling him was rather painless and the paint really stuck this time. Guess I got lucky :-D
Really love how the Champion fixed his missing leg with an extended arm! Also painted the guy in very rusty colours.

Festus is currently part of my WFRP campaign in Nuln, where he puppeteers the Nurgle followers. Recently, a group of heroes thwarted his grand plan, and he is now keeping a low profile while counting his losses.

Helja the Runesmith

In the great Knobelsdorf Society of Middenheim there are people of many nationalities, gender and race. As a place of learning and the occasional adventure hooks, I thought it was about time to introduce our local Runesmith Helja which just recently entered our sessions. She is a formidable dwarf with a keen knowledge and she is quite an experienced fighter.

Margara Runesmith 1

I really love this miniature and I think Werner Klocke did a great job. Female dwarves don’t always get the best treatment from sculptors.

I painted her in warm red and purple colours with a messy blacksmith’s apron (she works a lot!). Here are a few more pictures:

Notice Board!

One thing we have always used in our RPG’s but never had terrain for is a notice board! It is a very useful prop whether you are in a big city or a small village, ’cause you can always find a missing person note, an advertisement, a wanted poster or a help wanted notice! We couldn’t find any such thing anywhere, so we made one ourselves!

Notice Board

Using balsa and a bunch of accessories it ended up looking pretty cool! We printed out some of the posters we initially made for an advertising pillar (which I will add to the blog at some point!) Ulli and Marquand is loose in our Middeheim campaign so they were an obvious choice for a wanted poster along with other posters (handouts printed in mini-size) a notorious witcher + Scoia’tael leader, advertisement for an awesome shop called King Games, and a real cool handout from WFRP 1st edition (think it was a fan-made version. Thanks to whoever made it!)

UPDATE: I recently posted a link to the posters I used and some tips www.cabanaminis.com/posters-for-notice-board