One of the tribes in my Gaelic/Celtos game that I'm creating are the Dwarves. In the original Celtos game the Dwarves are called "Vanir" out of Norse myth. The reason I'm not using the Celtos figures is 1) the cost, and 2) the difficulty is getting them. In the U.S. they do have a distributor but the California company has a problem with supply; they order a $30 restocking order and are charged $100 shipping with DHL. I could go to the makers and suppliers in England, but the cost of shipping and currency change for me is costly too. So I'm going with the basic idea of Celtos of various tribes warring for control of an imaginary island. Celtos' tribes are Humans/Gaels, Dwarves/Vanir, Elves/Sidhe, Undead-skeletons/Firbolgs, Beastmen/Fomorians. My new son-in-law, Alex, is a big time gamer and is writing the play rules, I'm providing the history. Included in the storyline will be encounters with the top ten scary things relating to Ireland: Banshees, ghosts, spirits, beheaded horseman, pookas/goblins, and vampires, etc. Also will have a story on the inauguration of the Gael king/chief, an enchanted forest, dolmens and standing stones. Each tribe will have a wizard/shaman/druid, as well as mounted troops of which the Gaels will have war-chariots, the Elves ride eagles and Goblins ride wolves.
This of course will be a skirmish game, and I'm making it an adult family game for my three grown kids and their spouses.
So I need the game accessories to be moveable, being played on the floor for nobody has a table big enough. Each of the tribes is having a home base: Gaels have a ring-fort, Sidhe (Gaelic for fairy/elves) I'm making tree houses, Dwarves have a mountain type mine, the barbarians have Aframe huts, and the goblins will have roundish huts, and the Skeletons earth mounds. This is what I have so far.
 |
| Mountain mine: home base for Dwarves. |
Making the Dwarf home base wasn't hard. I found in the garbage at my wife's work a styrofoam packing end for printer toner cartridge. All I did was cut an entrance and paste with Elmer's Glue varies broken pieces of styrofoam, The only carving I did was making a stair case. Then painted by washing with gray paint and then outlinning the pieces in charcol gray. Still need to do a lot of touchup on white spots. The enterance for me is reminescent of in the first "Lord of the Kings" movie when the band entered the mountain of moria. Would be nice to paint runes on pillars. Top is suppose to be a ruined outpost.
I've painted so far the Gaels, Dwarves, and Barbarians. Saving now for the Elves. I searched a database of the Dark Heaven figures made by Reaper for I find their figures really nice. But when I matched one that I ordered with my Dwarf figures by Red Box, I found a great discrepancy in size. I'm working my game to be in the 28mm range and the Reaper figures are in the 32-35mm range; way to big as one can see in the accompanying photo. Many of the Reaper figures where great to have a female war-band for each tribe making it possible for couples to have a tribe together. Now I'm having to rethink the scenarios for Red Box doesn't have enough female models to make up a war-band of twelve (ten warriors, a standard-bearer, and musician). Going through Reaper, there were enough female figures to have a female war-band of Dwarves, Elves, and Humans.
 |
| (left) Red Box dwarf : (right) Reaper Dark Heaven dwarf. |
 |
| Red Box Dwarves. Waiting on three that are backordered. |
You always find a size difference in different makes of figures that are supposed to be the same size, that's one of the bains of a wargamers life. Really its best to stick with one make but this is never easy for a variety of reasons. As your doing a skirmish game I think you can get away with the different sized figures, after all we are not all the same size, so I'm sure dwarves aren't either!!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work!!
Happens a lot and drives me mental sometimes to the point where I will not use a range of figures.
ReplyDeleteNice figures and very well done Mountain base for the Dwarves, thats a great use of "trash"
ReplyDeleteHi there great to see a new gamer painter, I think if you are interested in painting figures it is important to have a good base of paints,last count i have around 150 but i'm painting for commisssion nearly every day. when painting faces there are lots of different ways to get the end result but the layers are important and the thining down of water colours is really important and it takes a bit to get right I do a base coat of citabel then a wash of orgrn flesh the a coat of dwarf flesh on all raised parts then another wash orgrn flesh and to finish i use another light highlight of darf flesh it might sound like a lot of wrok but once you get used to it, it can be very quick and easy when you get to stage three the skin looks real bad but don't worry after that next wash it comes right and the final highlight which some don't do makes the face real pop.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Kent
sorry that first flesh colour was tallarn flesh
ReplyDeleteReally love the mountain stronghold. I'll second Ray's recommendation on sticking with one maker as much as possible. Before I really dived into painting fantasy minis, I looked online at a lot of what was out there, and picked one make (Reaper) for all of my humanoid figures, taking into account all sorts of factors, such as variety and types of offerings, quality of sculpts, cost, etc.
ReplyDelete