The Dwarf

Believe it or not, I haven't completely abandoned my original idea of painting minis for Talisman board game. Here's an old citadel dwarf to represent the, well, dwarf, from the basic game.

A Blast From The Past

After years and years, I finally got around to visiting some old gamer friends. The experience was weird in a good way, not unlike coming home.

I also got to play a great game of mythical Japan, Legend Of The Five Rings, ran by my friend who is one of the developers of Audatia, a historically accurate card game of sword fighting with historical people, playing which helps you learn the techniques and terminology of 15th century Italian sword fighting. How cool is that? Dear reader, I trust you know as well as I do, that there are no words for how cool that is.

I was also made aware, that this other fellow I also haven't seen in years has his own miniature blog featuring, among other things, pirates and zombies. Convergent evolution?

(Pic from Wikipedia)

Maybe it's just that great minds think alike. Anyhow, dawnofthelead.com is definitely worth checking out, if just for the mind blowing pirate ship he is building.

But best part was that my wonderful goddaughter, whom I've seen shamefully little, was there with her friend, taking part in the aforementioned Lot5R game. It was their first ever tabletop RPG, and they took to the concept like ducks to water and great, cinematic fun was had by all.

But, anyhow this is my miniature blog, so my conscience demands I include a mini pic also. Being a bit short of anything recently painted, I'll leave you with this picture of some Rogue Trader squats I painted ca. 1996. Looking at the colour scheme now, I can only say: What the van Helsing was I thinking with that colour combination?

Year One

It has now been one year since I took up painting again. Looking back, I'm surprised how much I've done.

I usually get about a half hour of painting done every day. Hopping from one project to another I work on 1-20 minis simultaneously which means a lot of half-dones lying around.

With these guys laid out, the funny thing is, I don't know if I've gotten a lot better at painting during this past year but I've definitely gotten a lot faster. And maybe I'm now getting more hits compared to the misses..

Anyway, as a hooray to myself, my top five pieces of the past year IMHO:

This arthropod. I'm happy with getting decent paint job onto the plastic I was having trouble with earlier. And I'm pleased with the way the light source effect turned out. I also think the pose turned out fine; the spider rearing back from the torch, probably thrown by some startled dungeon explorer who has just noticed a spider the size of a cow sneaking up on them.

This pirate. I always wanted to paint a classic pirate, but never got around to it before. Also, he was one of the early ones I did after picking up a brush again after taking a break for a decade. With him I felt like I was really getting my painting groove back on again, painting was starting to feel fast and easy, and I like the result.

These marines. Finishing a full squad was very satisfying. Also, the droids had been taunting me from my "to-paint" pile for almost 20 years. Finally done!

These watchmen. The second time a did a whole unit, and finding inspiration in classic art was surprisingly much fun.

This fellow. The paint job is crap, but he is the mini that broke the decade long hiatus!

The Goblin Fanatic

The Goblin Fanatic follower from the Dragons expansion. 

Another fast and easy job, because I had this little fellow lying around half painted for years. His a snotling, I'm not sure whether from Citadel or Marauder.

I also have some Citadel night goblin fanatics, but they felt too massive compared to the other goblins I've used so far.

The Third Hobgoblin

Talisman contains three hobgoblins, two enemies from the basic game and the player character from the Talisman Expansion Set. This guy is the third one.

I have four of these 1984 Citadel hobgoblins by Aly Morrison. I'll get around to painting the fourth some day, even though I now have enough for the Project.

Beware Of Dragons, For They Are Lazy

Another dragon, this time a basic dragon enemy from the basic game.

The mini is a Citadel Green Dragon that came in boxed set with a dwarf adventurer.

I didn't paint the beast (or the dwarf) now, the paint job is 15-20 years old. I just added the base, the thing was very prone to tipping over.

What was supposed to be a charred tree stump turned out looking like a smoked cigar..

Not Bolted Down Anymore, Or The Orc

This one I also found ready in my collection. The Orc player character from the Adventure expansion.

He is part of a Citadel bolt thrower crew from 1988 by Kevin Adams.

One of the guys is different from the catalogue picture. He had a very appropriatelly positioned piece of flash on his right hand which I left on so that he is giving the finger.

A Return to Painting or Hobgoblins at Last

In the 90's I was an avid gamer. I mostly played tabletop rpgs, but I also painted up a lot of minis. Both individual figures of various scales for the rpgs and a couple of small armies for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Rogue Trader and Epik 40k.

Aside from my Ork army for Epic, which got regularly thrashed, I only ever played a couple of games with my armies. But that didn't matter. I had fun painting and loved to haul my minis around to show them off even if the paint jobs were kind of crappy.

Then I found other things to do with my time and didn't touch the hobby for over a decade. But about six months ago while going through some old stuff in storage, I ran into a box of painted metal as well as a whole heap of unpainted and thought it would be fun to pick up a brush again and see what I could manage.

I started with these two, rather characterful chaps.

Two of the four Citadel hobgoblins in my possession from ca. 1985 by Aly Morrison were done with some artist acrylic paint from large tubes. It was cumbersome to do and they took forever to finish, but I'm pretty pleased with the results.

And with that I wanted to start painting again, but what exactly? Today I'm even less likely than before to actually get around to playing wargames. And the idea of painting whole squads or regiments of uniform minis assembly line style didn't feel like relaxing fun-times. But I still wanted some goal and structure to start a project.

I thought back to the other games I had fun playing and remembered Talisman. A simple fantasy boardgame ruled more by chance than strategy. The 2nd edition of the game with the Expansion, Adventure and Timescape sets added provided hours of fun years ago.

That would be my project, to paint the player characters, the enemies, the followers the players could have in their retinues and other persona in 2nd edition Talisman and it's official expansion sets.

These would be mostly fantasy figures, but thanks to the Timescape expansion, a couple of sci-fi minis as well. A quick googling found out the contents of all the expansions and adding up, I came to around 300 minis, a pretty big task! Painting maybe 2 minis per week (as I have more or less at the time I'm writing this) it would take about 3 years to complete. No problem, as long as I follow the rules:

1. I do this for fun. If it starts to feel like a chore, I'll take a break or quit all together.

2. The illustrations of the game, though I like them a lot, shall not be a strict guide. I'll paint them by what ever mood strikes me.

3. My goal is good enough for gaming. If the results look good from 1 meter away, I'm happy.

4. Ruining a small piece of plastic or metal is not a big deal, so I shouldn't be afraid to try new techniques.

So, here are the first result, hobgoblin, the player character and hobgoblin, the enemy!