A Time for Elfs

Merry Christmas!

Ral Partha Europe makes another appearance in the depths of the dungeons beneath Castle Meatginder.  This time its a full unit of wood elves painted in muted blues and browns. 

This makes for a pretty good range of character choices.  You've got everything from magic elf to bow elf to spear elf to sword elf.  What more could a guy want for figure choices for Moldvay Basic where elf is a class and not a race.

As discussed earlier, I've been thinking of ways to make elves in Castle Meatgrinder more than just tall, pointy-eared humans given to tree-hugging and prancing about.  I think characterizing them as soul-less beings poisoned by iron opens up a lot more possibilities than the current fad of, "They
re people, but you know, different somehow.  Here's a few stat changes."

 

Some of you may realize that I've been done with this project for a while now.  My wargaming output is pretty sporadic, so I've pre-scheduled a lot of these posts in advance.  The good news is that I want to start 2016 with a clean slate, and that means an upcoming post dump of random things.  Enjoy.



More Heroic Dudes

This last collection represents the last heroes from 15mm.co.uk (plus the second Halfling from Irregular Miniature's 6mm line).  All that's left now is the wild elves from Ral Partha Europe, and we'll have all seven character classes available for the party.

 



Quick Notes on Random Heroics

Here's a shot with a dwarf so you can see the relative size differences between human males, females, dwarves, and halflings.  As mentioned earlier, the humans here are 15mm.co.uk, the dwarf is Ral Partha Europe, and the halfling is Irregular 6mm.  As you can see, it's a good spread.  The dwarf is a head shorter than the human male, and the halfling stands just waist high.  I'll make sure to add one more once I get the last race (elves) painted up, and they are waiting on-deck.

One other thing that's worth a mention is the shield on that fighter/paladin type.  At a distance, or if you don't know your traditional Catholic artwork, it just looks like some colors thrown down.  When you see it right next to the reference work?

Like the colors for the dwarf clan, this is a bit of an inside joke that works well in the setting.  Hewing as close as possible to the medieval church opens up a wealth of inspirational material both in the paint process and the dungeon creation.

Mondy Miniatures: Random Heroics

Still working to get the last of the necessary figures ready for Castle Meatgrinder.  It's going to be a largely procedurally generated dungeon heavy on the wandering monsters and set-pieces and light on the railroad tracks.  This should be the last batch of heroes, aside from the elven warband.  That just leaves the orcish warband, and then we should be able to hit the tables. 



The tiny little guy on the far right is a full-plate mailed halfling.  He's actually one of the heroic single figures available from Irregular Miniatures, but he works great as a half-a-ling.  The rest are from 15mm.co.uk's adventurer packs.

Three Rooms

The map of Castle Meatgrinder has been done for months, but there are enough empty rooms in its halls to allow for a few more rooms with interactive elements.  The crypts needed a little bit of furniture, and 15mm.co.uk makes these nice little crypts:

 



They also sell blisters with mushrooms that paint up nice.  I added a few wooden furniture plugs to serve as broad shrooms as well.

While I was able to save a few small treasure chests from the 10mm collection, I wanted a couple of stands of generic storage markers.  These boxes, barrels, and spears are also from 10mm.co.uk.  They'll add a little more variety to the gray halls of the dungeon.

Miniature Monday: The Bard

He's not Shakespeare, but given the old school rules that I use for my games don't even have "Bard" as a class.  Yes, your thief can carry a guitar, that's a 25 coin encumbrance hit.  He came with the pack, and it adds a nice touch of flavor for somebody wanting a more flamboyant fighter or thief.



More Monsters

More zombies!  This brings the total population of zombies in the dungeon to seven, not a bad little number.  These 15mm.co.uk guys have great hair, too!

Undead fist bump!

Castle Meatgrinder has a rodent problem.  In addition to the swarms of rats that prowl the halls, the steady drip of chaos into the halls create these lion sized monsters that make ROUS's feel inadequate.  These rats are the weird plastic figures sold under the Reaper Bones line.  They look okay, but for some reason the typical spray primer just makes them sticky.  They are cheap, though, gotta give them that.

This last shot isn't a new figure.  This is a 10mm Ogre from Pendraken, but he's a beast.  He's tall enough to serve as a smallish ogre, so that's what he is.

True buckaroos better buckle up and grab their nuts.  The Thanksgiving break was productive, and Uncle Warren has a whole mess of miniature shots ready to go for the month of December.