Oldhammer house...

... as advertised yesterday, from Erny's blog here. Very quickly built with a gluestick rather than PVA, so it's a bit 'lifty' in places, which should be taken as a reflection of my shoddy building practices, not Erny's design, which is very nice.

If you are planning to build it, be aware that I think it needs more tabs than are on the actual model. Take a look before you start cutting is all I'm saying - you should be able to work out where they need to be...

Anyway - enjoy the pics!

Building a settlement

I need some buildings to represent the settlements that are being attacked and generally fought over when play Warhammer, LotR and D&D. So, first off I'm trying to make some generic long-house type huts, buildings that have a fairly wide historical span attached to them (Viking long-houses probably weren't massively different to neolithic European long houses, from 5,000 years earlier). I figure that there's no reason buildings of this type can't be from somewhere in the north of the Empire or Norsca, even one of the poorer parts of Bretonnia; in Rohan or anywhere in Eriador; or pretty much anywhere not tropical in any D&D setting.

I have some preformed bits of cardboard that I'm intending to use as roofs; I have some balsa to use as corner posts; I have some 'craft sticks' to use as planking; if I can get some stiff card (preferably corrugated) to use as wooden walls with plaster on them (OK, that's not a well-attested historical style, but I'm trying to make this out of easily-accessable materials so cut me some slack!), I'm sorted...

A spur to this is the terrain-building competition over at the small but perfectly formed Warhammer Fantasy Battle Reporter forum that is calling for gamers to submit Warhammer-compatible terrain.

Can I get my longhouses/long houses finished? Watch this space...

And, in other exciting medieval-style property development news, the lovely and talented Erny over at the Lead Adventure Forum tempted me over to his blog with the offer of a free house!

Hand-drawn by Erny, it's very much in the style of the old Warhammer cardboard buildings or 'Oldhammer', so I've downloaded it from the blog and hope to be building it as soon as I can find some thin plain card to print it on. Cheers, Erny!

Another Rogue for the Gallery

This is one of my favourite, possibly even my absolute favourite, fantasy minis ever - Jolie the Female Scribe, from Reaper, designed by the legendary Werner Klocke. She's going to fulfill a crucial but currently secret role in the current campiagn.

I painted her long sleeves as arms, painted the cuffs as fingerless gloves, and somehow lost her mouth somewhere. But even so.

Did I mention, she's probably my fave fantasy mini ever...

Amazons (and friends)

More-or-less-painted Amazons

These are my Amazons closest to completion. I can't find my Mother Superior mini (can't remember if it was Mother Samantha or the other one, but I'm sure I had one); also sure I had the Amazon with the bow; no idea where they are.

The best so far






She even has eyes that don't make her look like a heroin-addicted panda!




Two of the less-painted ones







Including the famous Amazon-Devout-with-High-Age-Weapon, who absolutely will see action as a futuristic gang-member. There are a couple of other Amazons with only undercoat on.

All those that have any real amount of paint at all






As it says in the title, if they've got more than undercoat, they're in this pic.




Thrud and Livingstone

From the White Dwarf Personalities Set, Thrud the Barbarian, and Livingstone the Editor, 'an obscure sub-class of Thief'.

Yes, Ian Livingstone, co-founder of Games Workshop.

Sundering Elf Quest of the World Tree or something

Ok, bear with me. This may turn out to be me having a mental breakdown, but...

I like Elves. OK, my Warhammer armies are 1-Orcs & Goblins and 2-Dwarfs (though I insist on spelling them Dwarves, because I'm a Tolkienist)... but I still have a few Elves knocking about, even though I'd be hard pushed to field a legal WHFB Wood Elf army with them.

I would also like the jury to take into consideration the fact that my first D&D character, in 1980, was an Elf. I've got history here.

Fast forward 32 years, and I'm trying to get my kids playing D&D, so I'm perusing the WotC website looking at images to make standees from (see this thread on the Lead Adventure site) and I come across the following picture (which is of Forgotten Realms Elves, (c) WotC, illustration by Steve Prescott):

... which shows a Drow, Wild Elf, Sun Elf, Wood Elf and Moon Elf.

There's also this picture:

...which I found on the Forgotten Realms wiki (though I'm pretty sure it's also from the D&D site originally): apart from the human on the extreme left, it also shows a Sun Elf, Wood Elf, Moon Elf, Drow (though this Drow's skin seems much lighter than the Drow in the previous picture), Wild Elf.

I know different D&D settings also have other Elven races - Shadow Elves in Mystara, for instance.

These got me thinking. How many sorts of Elves are there, in different settings?

I know about Tolkien's Elves - rather more than any sane person needs to probably.

WHFB has Dark Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves and the rather hazy Sea Elves. These Wood Elves would in general resemble the Wood Elves and Wild Elves in Forgotten Realms; the High Elves would be similar to the Sun and Moon Elves likewise. Sea Elves likewise would probably be similar to Sun and Moon Elves. But Dark Elves don't look like Drow - generally Dark Elves in Warhammer World are pale (though the illustration here -

- has some Dark Elves with a sickly zombie-like greenish cast to their skin). (image from Stuff of Legends, showing Marauder Dark Elves, (c) Marauder Miniatures, 1989).

However, the Dark Elf from Talisman (the Talisman Dungeon expansion, from 1987) has blue skin, and in that sense is more like the D&D Drow (image (c) Games Workshop 1987)

In the world of Azeroth (Warcraft) I think there are two sorts of Elves - Night Elves, with purplish skin, and the evil Blood Elves, with pale skin.

I don't really know how many other examples there may be. Possibly lots.

The point is, I'd like to put a force together that includes all of these Elven races, and any more I find out about. A sort of Elvish United Nations. My justification will be that in whichever great forest these Elves are now (Athel Loren, Canolbarth or wherever), they have come there from many different worlds, drawn by the Vision of the World Tree, a magic world-spanning ur-tree that calls suitable Elves to it; they can then travel between the different world where the World Tree exists, probably to combat threats against the World Tree itself.

Now this won't be fast, but hopefully it'll be cool. First job is to find a suitable box of minis...


All images are used without permission under fair use conventions.

Reasons

This is where fantasy gaming things will be collected.

But I haven't done much with it yet.