ADVANCED HEROQUEST REFORGED

whilst this blog originally featured mainly heroquest and descent content. you will of noticed more frequently my posts are featured around my advanced heroquest. whilst my general love for dungeon crawlers is my main focus for this hobby. My true affection goes out to Advanced heroquest.

a very much under looked game in my opinion. a true sandbox of a game that gave you scope to go adventuring to your hearts content.

whilst the game was not perfect. i still feel this game captures the true essence of what a dungeon crawler should be all about. Adventure! Fighting! Looting. Delving deep down into murky old dungeons, hazards and traps awaiting behind every door.

Advanced heroquest had it all. and still does to the very small community that lurk just of the beaten path.

for anyone that hasn't played before, and likes a good crawler. then i cant recommend it enough.

once you get hooked you want more.

Ever wondered what rules i play for advanced heroquest?

go see Slevs blog to find out more

Advanced Heroquest Reforged

this features a revamping of many of the games features whilst keeping the overall rules exactly the same. fighting, exploring its all done the same. only better!

I've been helping out a little bit creating up to date maps and whatever graphics we can throw in to give things a nice fresh feel

you will notice the stats are more focused around WFB stats, which also comes along with a conversion chart so that you can create your own. along with MASSIVE bestiary's for the various Old World races. 

the character sheets have had a huge overhaul so that players can get a much longer life span out of their characters. giving that feel of connection as your heroes grow, learn new skill and abilities, gaining experience as they grow into becoming legendary dungeoneers.

a brand new point system for character creation allows you to create a huge array of different character styles, the added bonuses from abilities and weapon allowances allowing the heroes to have a much wider scope that sets them apart from the monsters of the dungeon

The maps have been revised to now feature double doors, as well as gaining a fresher clearer appearance.

cool brand new designed double sided spell books that cover all of the colleges of magic as well as dark magic.

Additionally you may choose to take a religious path for your hero with prayer books becoming the religious version of a spell book. (all spells and prayer books come in printer friendly and ink buster versions)

i really cant cover all of the source material in one post. so go check it out!

most of all. give it a try. there is a lot of material to download. but its worth it if you really want the best dungeon crawl you can find

go add the blog/follow or whatever to show your support. feedback is highly recommended to help Slev refine and create this fantastic addon.

http://ahqreforged.blogspot.co.uk/

The Dark Beneath the World (part 4) project completed!!

OK so for anyone that follows my blogs you may of seen my rather bold attempt and journey for creating 1 simple troll character from a article posted in white dwarf many moons ago. this article was taken from a gotrek and felix short story.

if not please take a look at the previous parts

PART 1
PART 2
PART 3

i kind of enjoy posting up my journeys of creation. i think a good portion of the fun is delving into the various influences and direction. kind of like an adventure in itself.

well if youve read parts 1, 2 and 3 then youll know all i needed to do next was paint that SOB
Which i did!

of course i have to provide the obligatory action shot. (Trollslayer very clearly wanting first cut!)

A few things to point out on this. whilst again i decided to go above and beyond to fit my very fickle needs for characters to be as specific as possible. i really had no idea how i was going to paint this guy up.

originally i wanted to go proper crazy with the colour scheme. which i did try. but it just wasnt rocking the multiple weird colour look that i would associate with chaos. so i ended up sticking to what i know. so i kept it dirty and earthy in tones.

A first for me on this figure was that i actually made use of a wet palette for the very first time. and boy i should of done this years ago. i seem to save so much paint as a result of it staying wet, my wet palette is sealable, and my paint mixes stay wet for about 2 days. as well as allowing me to mix the paint to a better consistancy. i cant believe i didnt do this a long long time ago. but all in all very glad i finally took the bounce.

Another first. is that i finally bought myself some good brushes. as well as stocking up on a new set of GW brushes. i also bought myself a size 1 and 0 winsor & newton series 7. and again..jeez why didnt i do this earlier? far far superior brushes and im hoping this will start to assist with my painting as i move forwards

 I chose to go with classic troll colours overall. but with a grey/brown skin tone. due to the size of the miniature (this is definately no miniature) it made it hard to paint. so i chose for simple washes on the fleshy areas with the odd blemish to break up the boil covered areas, whilst going for a harsher sharper edge on the hide.

 kind of happy how the spine infused with warpstone turned out. i really wanted it to look like to root of the trolls deformities. the thick heavy pustules surrounding the warpstone kind of help give that impression. the claw itself was the last part of this model that got painted. and in fairly sure you can see i didnt give as much love to that.

 Another first i attempted on this mini was the use of UHU glue for saliva dribbling from his mouth.
it didnt really turn out great. and its hard to see in the shots. but it also seemed to be removing the paint. so i kept it very minimal around that area. because i wanted after finishing the paint job. was for it to be ruined by the final touches.

 the baby head mutation turned out pretty decent. from the sculpt itself, it was looking too human. but once i stated applying the paint. it became evident that thick heavy veins streaming into the facial area would give it a nasty chaos esq look. whilst the head itself looks totally out of place. i guess that sums up all that is chaos. and really wished i had the balls to of gone all out on this figure in that same approach

 one final thing that i feel is missing. would be to add some glossy varnish to the boils just to give that wet vile look..but i dont have any. so this will have to do until i can get my hands on any.

so a project that started about a year ago finally gets finished.
im happy how it turned out as a figure. however i do wish i had of been a little more daring.
this has opened my eyes to more chaotic goodness. and im already cooking up a few ideas going forwards. so hopefully this is the beginning if a new direction for me.

whats next for me? gotta finsih them doors off. and my pile of unpainted minis has piled up quite a bit since i started plying all my spare time into this project. so it looks like ill be keeping things simple for the next few months. a bit of unit painting with a few characters thrown in.


anyways. hope you all like. and hope you enjoyed my journey.

Chaos Marauders (of the Apocalypse)

so i just realised ive not posted for a while., ive actually been away trapped in the chaos wastes. whilst there ive been painting a portrait of a lovely 3 armed troll i met. whilst there i also met some chaos marauders. but they had funky arms that looks like they were glued onto the shoulders as if by some weird chaos glue. so on my return. i took a trip towards avatars of war at these babies

also i was lucky enough to get the special edition chaos champion that comes exclusively with this pack. who i think is pretty cool. having never purchased any avatars of war before i was a little reluctant. but i really do not like the chaos marauders that GW produce. some of the bits from that pack like the shields and the heads are great but overall the models look piss poor!

so i took the plunge here. cost wise. this pack cost me £27 which isnt far off double the price for GW marauders. but you also get 16 figures in this pack plus the special edition champion. so i thought it was worth it, if not for the experiment alone.

so the pack turns up in a nicely little packaged DVD style case. inside the case there is no sprue. and all of the components are packed away into little bags.

so 3 little bags and a nicely detailed tips guide to constructing the figures were inside.

also i liked the little bases that came with them. whilst i dont personally use square bases. i did like the little clips on the bottom for adding magnets for unit mounting.

so first up. as the little bags are packed full of loads of little components i decide to dig out the special edition champion first.

hes a big guy. and will most likely going to end up as some tainted champion/end of level character type. im tempted to lop off the flail and change for an axe. but i guess we shall see later on.

as for the figure itself. hes pretty good. i think he has some good character about him, somewhat similar in presence to GW's nurgle lord.
the flash was pretty minimal as you can see on the picture above and after this pic was taken it took me less than 5 minutes to fully clean up ready for painting. however one of his pectorals seems to be a little warped from the casting. but it should be easy enough to resculpt. in comparison though to some of the more recent figures ive purchased, he doesnt need half as much work to get into a paintable state so for that its win here on this one.

next up it was time to dig out those components. the 2 remaining bags are basically the same components, from 2 sprues.
so each bag is a dupe of each other containing 8 sets for character creation. totalling upto 16.

so first up the legs

pretty static but decent enough. as you can see from the image, the details isnt quite as crisp as the champion. but leftover sprue trimmings are pretty minimal. 4 sets of 4 different leg types is plenty i think. although for me personally i would of preferred more from the second row. as they have less detail on them, this would give me more scope for sculpting individual details. but thats a personal thing so not really a viable option so say anything is bad here.

the torso's, again 4 sets of 4. details is ok. but not crisp.

nothing too special here. but i would like to point out that as a component box set. im already noticing the grooves and ball joins on each component. these clearly are a good design choice as it ensures that these dont actually need pinning and gives a good connection point for glueing.

this moves us nicely onto the arm options. again we have 4 sets of 4 for each left and right arm. the one thing i wasnt expecting here was the shoulder pads to be part of the arms. it would of been nice here to of had the choice to add the pads if i so wished. but i suspect this was a design choice versus cost. the design being that they help cover the joins of the arms. the cost being that an extra 32 components would of been needed. but they seem pretty decent. scale wise they are on par with GW so im sure if i really wanted to. i could dip into my bits box to create the odd marauder without shoulder pads. Again. flash is minimal. and detail is ok.

as for the weapons, i was a little disappointed.

the level of choice isnt that great. so i will most definately be dipping into the bits box here.
the weapons themselves arent that bad. but do seem to have the lowest detail/crsipness to the sculpts.
the resin used for this pack is very different from the champion that comes with it. and is a soapy sort of feeling material. even trimming the flash feel kind of soapy. this isnt a bad thing. but cant help but feel some details have gotten lost through the production process.

the standard and musician peices (x2 on standard)
the drums look ok. but i have no need for musicians or standard bearers in my dungeons. so i think i will ultimately end up using these as bits to some dungeony goodness.
the standard itself is pretty big. but ultimately poorly designed. there is no ball joint here for gluing the standard onto the handle. and is too thin to pin. i think from a design point they should of made the bar thicker to at least allow it to be drilled. i can see this breaking off on a lot of people if not joined together properly. as for the standards themselves. i wish i had these when i was constructing the double doors ive been adding the finishing touches too. because the top half of the standard would of looked great ottached over one of the double doors. but i think ill still be able to get good use out of them. the skulls as bits. could even use a good portion as part of a chaos styled throne.

next up we have the shields

again like the weapons you can see that the detailing on these isnt the best. the details most likely getting softened through production and losing their detail. i dont like any of these shields. i'll make use of them. but would of liked more choice rather than the standard 4 sets of 4 that dominate this pack.

and finally the heads. there are 9 heads x2 so you get an extra 2. here. sadly. they arent that great

i like the face mack guy (middle centre) and the helmed options will make good chaos warrior variants. the top knotted head option...ive seen that somewhere before.
again though i cant knock the castings of these other than the lack of crisp detail. the mould lines are minimal on all of the components. i will most likely be diving into the bits box for added options here. but i will use a few of these. which yet. i dont know.

Summary

sadly the only real plus marks i can give this set is the special champion provided and the variant option over GW's chaos marauders.
there are no extras other than 2 heads a standard and drum. so it doesnt help tot up the bitz box collections much.
i dont like GW's marauders but they are better quality components than these, i think the general design of these is superior to GW's option. but the quality is lacking. and the lack of extra options is a real let down, too few shields, too few weapons, the shoulder pads being fixed to the arms. and lack of extras.
the paintjobs on the advert push the models perception of detail far beyond what you actually get. lets face it. everyone wants to sell their products. and to do so. you have to have great paintjobs. but i think that the paintjob is so good that it distracts from the models themselves. and not really showing them off in true light. (or the promo stuff actually was better quality than the finished product??)
i think ill have fun throwing these together and im sure that they will look great once ive added my own little touches.
are they worth the 27 quid i paid? definitely not!
Models of this quality i would expect to spend no more than about 15 quid.
luckily i think my bits box will save the day for me in terms of options and hopefully once painted up. im sure they will look great. if you are looking for an alternative option for chaos marauders. then ill give this the thumbs up. but dont expect to be wowed :)

STAR RATING (out of 5) = A generous 3 stars


i have this guy due in the post this week too, hopefully he looks as good as that image does. and not a poor imitation of.

think i was too harsh? anyone else tried any other avatars of war products out? I'd like to know.


(i still have lots of things in the works. and they will start tumbling off the painting production line very soon. so keep your eyes peeled :))

Till next time

The Dark Beneath The World (pt3)

well looks like it's time for my first post of the year. now i did vow to post more this year. but so far ive opted for doing more rather than posting it thus far.
as a result i think ive hit a pretty solid milestone in the sense that. ive actually done crap loads on the troll from these posts

The Dark Beneath the World (pt 1)

The Dark Beneath The World (pt2)

now without pattering around too much you can see from the previous parts to this project, the journey, the planning and the beginnings.

and its been a while since i last posted anything on him. so over xmas i just decided to blitz him out of the way. so i have now completed the sculpt and its ready to paint

 from the descriptions i managed to get quite a lot of the explained details onto the model

- Horn-headed. (got the big sprout on one side and a few stubby spikes on the other)
- Hideously changed. the one side of his face being heavily distorted, the other being more drawn towards the horn)
- Gnarly hide covered in huge, dripping tumours. (check check)
- Three enormously muscular arms, one of which terminated in a pincer claw. (got the pincer in there and three arms, albeit a little straggly)
- Growing from its left shoulder, like some obscene fruit, was a small, babyish head which glared at them with wise malign eyes. (got the baby head)
- Huge leech mouth set below its neck. (managed to get this in, although it probably looks a little like something else other than a mouth..haha. very chaotic!)
- Chain warpstone (here i went for 2 huge chunks of warpstone. 1 chained around him hanging beneath the head. and another hammered into his spine)

 so you can still see he is a troll..whilst i did want him to look more disfigured than this. but i pretty much made up the head as i was going.
im still happy that he looks like a troll, albiet a pretty disfigured one. I didnt want to go too far chaos warped. never go full chaos warped! but basically i didnt want to lose the fact that he is a troll.
you can make out the baby head, i decided not to go the total recall route and took a completely different path there (20 internets to the first person that spots where exactly copied the baby head from)

the leech like (vagina) shaped mouth i managed to squeeze onto his left pectorial.

 here you can se the less disfigured right side of the face. the ear only remaining as a stub as the horn sprouts from his head

 i put loads of pustules and boils/sores all over him, not really holding back there much.

 here you get a good view of the huge bullnosed pincer. i decided to go for something more brutish than sharp like you would see on slaneesh

 here you can just make out the warpstone hammered into the spine. i literally puts loads of huge bubbling boils all around the warpstone to make it look like its festering and the route of the spawn

i kept the lower half pretty much as it was to signify the change in the troll. i didnt want it to look like this chaos troll was a product of any chaotic breed.
whilst it has warpstone agonisingly hammered into its spine and hung around the neck, you could assume it was a product of skaven experiments.
whilst the boils and sores sugges Nurgle.
the pincer screams Slaneesh
the head and leech mouth point towards Tzeentch

the only one not really covered here is Khorne. and lets face it, they have had their fair share of coverage since the release of age of sigmar. so no need here.

but the point being is that i wanted to keep it somewhat of a mystery as to its origins from troll, to mutated beast. and i think ive somewhat succeded on that front.

so as far as i am concerned...its ready to be painted.
im unsure of the colours but im kind of leaning towards blue/grey/purple based. this will help the greens of the warpstone really pop out. but im quite undecided yet on how i am going to paint it. im totally open to suggestions or references if anyone has seen anything cool out there.
i just weant to make sure that i keep it looking like he live in the dark beneath the world

first post of the year done
YAY!

2015 whats in the dungeon? yearly review

so 2015 for me in the dungeon..erm..excuses excuses. not much time.
the real world away from this. i work bloody hard to provide for my family as a result of this i could safely say. im not a prolific blogger at all. my time, regrettably is limited for sitting down and chopping up/painting/sculpting etc.
20 posts this year for me is actually pretty good. im moving into my third year of blogging and 2014 hardly consisted of any hobby time at all. so much so that i actually considered just closing the blog. but things are slowly changing and i'm starting to find much more time for myself.
unlike many other wonderful blogs i see around. I dont have a large number of followers that feel the need to comment often. so my blog is more like a glass cabinet in a shop window. people pass on by. and on some occasions it changes. and these people take a look and move on.
i can live with that. i guess thats part and parcel of being an infrequent blogger. but hoping to be a little more active rolling into 2016.

so 2015. if i remember right i actually managed to get a few things done.

1 new hero
15 dungeon doors
12 giant rats
1 minotaur lord (been stting in painting queue for years. so a major victory here
15 clanrats
11 skaven slaves
5 goblins (gnoblars mashups)

ok ok. so maybe that isnt a great deal.
but for me and my lack of progress in 2014. its a clear and obvious improvement in turn around.

a total of 60 minis painted in 2015. with probably equal amount started. meaning going into 2016 i still have a load of stuff to catch up on. but hey..dont we all?

so a quick review of my completed stuff in reverse order

Borek Rognisson 

i was quite happy with this guy. if you look at most of my stuff done this year it consists of a lot of batch/unit painting. so was nice to break free and focus on a solitary figure and try a few new things out. the freehand tattoos on this guy was a first for me. and i also tried a new skin tone out. which wasnt too bad.
my one realisation from this was that i need to get some proper brushes. ive been using GW brushes for a long time. and they really dont hold their point well for fine freehand. so ive been eyeing up a few winsor and newton brushes to treat myself to in the new year.

What did i learn?
buy some good quality brushes.
trollslayers are cool.

Dungeon Doors

so i managed to grab some dungeon doors from zealot miniatures. these are for my AHQ adventures.
double doors are to get around the bottle neck negative tactic that was in the original advanced heroquest. ive been working very closely with a guy called slev who bounces around various rpg sites. he has a ruleset that makes AHQ much more indepth. and ive done quite a lot of graphics and such for it that i dont show on this site as i dont feel anyone will care if it is out of context.
anyways the doors..they are for that.

grabbing a total of
2 porcullis'
12 open doors
8 closed doors

my intention to make every door completely unique rather than just simply painting them was probably a bad choice as it just added to my already mountainous to -do pile.
but that said i managed to complete a total of 15 double doors
 which can all be viewed
HERE
HERE
AND HERE

i still have 8 to complete to get through my original batch of doors and i should be good to go adventuring.
what did i learn?
stop making life hard for myself lol

Giant Rats

As part of fleshing out my skaven bestiary for AHQ i managed to nab a few sprues off ebay for plague monks and skaven slavers (that come with the rat ogres box set) so expect to see the plague monks completed very soon. and im sure ill complete the slavers in 2016 too.
but that aside both sprues were chosen to kill 3 birds with 1 stone. as they also came with a total of 12 giant rats attached to them.

nothing really special here. you can tell they didnt get too much love from me. infact i got my daughter to help me. and she absolutely hates painting. so i bribe her to get me to help me on very rare occasions.
but they helped flesh out the bestiary in pretty much no time.
what did i learn?
im getting bored of painting in units. you can tell this by the obvious lack of love given to getting these painted. they are good enough for the table. but clearly a rushed job just to get it done and out of the way. so i need to learn to balance the cool projects and the laborious projects in order to keep myself as creative as possible.

Minotaur Lord 

ok so i went into oldhammer mode here. i'd been up in the attic and dug out pretty much all of my old mini collection and games in an attempt to sift through and clear out a lot of the junk that ill never want or need. as a result i dug out all sorts of 40k stuff. epic stuff, bloodbowl and loads of fantasy stuff.
there really are some absolute gems in with the old stuff. and as part of this cleare out i'll be looking to be getting rid of a lot of my old stuff that i dont need.. i have no idea why i even have so much 40k crap. i dont even like it lol. as for the 40k epic stuff. i loved the idea of massive armies on a small scale. titans tanks infantry all in a much smaller set. but allas ive got loads of it. and dont play it. so they will be going too along with the bloodbowl collection. the fantasy stuff though. will be staying. im surprised how much cool figures ive got from the 80s and 90s. and this guy above is one of them.
this was the first hefty weighted metal model i had painted for a long time. actually it was the first metal model i had painted for a while too. i'd forgotten what a joy it was to paint metal as opposed to resin. i dont know if its the weight or the way the paint lays on it. but i just prefer it. not taking anything away from the resin stuff you see these days. but im an old schooler and i like the old ways. so painting this guy was a nice experience and definate break from the norm.

what did i learn?
paint more cool figures like this. as this was easy to paint as well as being the most enjoyable mini ive painted for a long long time. interms of techniques i didnt try anything new here other than glazing the skin to make it look a little more tanned that regular human flesh. and also i tried some wet blending on the horns which turned out pretty good.
so expect to see some cool older minis cropping up in 2016.

Skaven Clanrats

another delve into building up my AHQ bestiary. these were straightforward table top standard unit painting here. simple base coats and washes and that was it

you can tell again i dont give the same love to units as i do singular figures.

what did i learn?
i still dont like painting units..but maybe i can get away with very simple paint jobs going forwards. its not great to show these bog standard paint jobs to people. but at least it shows progress. i guess i need to get around the mental block of that to allow me to love the unit painting method.

Skaven Slaves

this was my first real unit i painted to completion for my skaven bestiary.
a mixture of simple technniques and some washes etc meant that these took me quite a while to complete. they arent anything special . but you can clearly see they were given a lot more love than the clanrats. as a result of how long these took versus the mountain to-do list i had to make a choice of quick and easy versus nice and detailed. at this point now ive already decided i will save the good paint jobs for characters rather than units. saving that nice detailed paint job for the big bad dungeon bad guy versus his minions kind of makes it worthwhile in the long run.

what did i learn?
stop spending ages on units...i dont like it.

Goblins

before i made a start on the skaven i was kind of just trying to get back into the swing of things. kicking around with ideas with not much direction.

as a result of this i wanted to work on some goblins. but i never actually liked the GW goblins.

i have no idea where gnobblars came from over the last few years. but they are new. and ill just ignore them completely as i just think they are something novel to balance the ogre units out a little and give something cheaper for the warhammer player. i dont play warhammer so i dont care. what i did care about was the fact they actually look more like goblins than goblins do.

so as a bit of kit bashing seemed cool at the time i churned out a few new goblins with a mixture of gnoblar heads, goblin legs and torso's and night goblin arms (cheers seb for the idea)

personally i think these look fantastic and was really happy with them...but they took a while to actually do.

going forwards i think they will get less love than seen in the above picture.

what did i learn?

gnobblar heads are cool for goblins.

i also tested out a new colour scheme for greenskin flesh which i kind of like but need to refine it somewhat.

i need to do more of these.

So. thats what i actually got completed in 2015...not a bad haul for me. but by nowhere near what i would like to be churning out.
my favourite from this year has to be the minotaur lord. maybe a mixture of nostalgia helped there. but it really was the most enjoyable project ive done in 2015.

so with 2016 right around the corner. what do i have planned?

Finish the dungeon doors off
only 8 left to go. with all of them already started i just need to gather some inspiration to get them finished.

finish off my heroquest furniture.

i only have the alchemists bench and the sorcerers table to complete. ive started the alchemists table and have planned to sorcerors table. but id definately like to have these completed soon. that would then mean i have created all of the base set heroquest furniture. after that i may be looking at the expansion furniture (which only came in token format) like the forge from kellars keep and such. as well as a few designs ive drawn up. i may at some point do some themed furniture too. a skaven throne and stuff like that. but ill stick to my goal to make sure i have finished the heroquest base set by the end of 2016 at very most.

more Skaven

i have a huge skaven bestiary i would like to fill out more.

ive already started on some converted plague monks which i hope to complete very soon.

then there is the slave masters.

and other various character types after that.

ill then take a look at what else i need and either buy or convert from what i have to make more variations.

Chaos troll

remember this?

no?

• The Dark Beneath the World (pt 1)
• The Dark Beneath The World (pt2)

well inspired by a gotrek and felix short story. a quest for AHQ was created from it, which inspired me to create the big bad final boss from the quest (i'd like to do more unique characters of this type going forwards) but ive been working on him over this xmas holiday period and hope to have a new post following my updates. ultimately leading upto me completing this beastie.

so they are my immediate plans going into 2016. i hope to at least double my post count from 2015 over the next year as more time gets free'd up for me. im hoping to get many more things started. but for now my main focus is clearing out the backlog and things i no longer need in order to help me gain some positive focus moving forwards

so with that in mind. i hope youve all had a great xmas. and ill wish you all a happy new year!

see you in 2016!!!