You Meet In A Tavern...

That's pretty much how every D&D adventure starts right? I'm continuing to slowly build up a pretty large adventuring collection and this next group are from Northstar Miniatures, and were originally designed for the game Frostgrave. While getting these guys based up I realized a couple of things  - first, it literally is all guys!? I definitely need to get some female adventures into the mix. Second, I'm really heavy on the rogue/thief/assassin type of models - I'm sure that's probably because way back in the day when I played D&D (though I ran games way more than actually played) I had a thief/acrobat character. I'd always imagined him like a combination of Catwoman and Robin from the Batman comics 😃

This figure would probably be the closest to what I could have imagined my character like in miniature form. Back in the day there would never be a figure this cool to put on the tabletop, there would only be a blob of lead in a blister pack from TSR that said "thief".

I guess one can never have too many weapons in hand as an assassin.

Variations on a theme, though his weapons are longer. One of the challenges with the clear bases is if a figure doesn't have both feet flat - this was a perfect example of that. To fix the problem I took a little resin skull and sanded it down until it fit under his foot, and I think it looks the business now 😃

Fighter/Barbarian number one, desperately in search of a tree he can chop down.

More thiefy/trap finder goodness. I do think NorthStar did a fantastic job with the sculpts from this line, lots of great detail in the accessories and accoutrements, and this guy is loaded with them.

This figure is a perfect example of the accoutrements I mentioned - I love that little potion bottle on his hip.

Fighter/Barbarian number two in his hippie pants.

As I mentioned above, some female adventures need purchased - I found some pretty nice sculpts with a company called Dark Sword Miniatures, but at $10.00 and up per figure I think I need to look elsewhere. Any leads would be greatly appreciated 🙂

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

You Don't By Chance Have Six Fingers On Your Right Hand?

I had just completed my first four figures from The Princess Bride here, when I found out that Antediluvian Miniatures were releasing a second set of TPB figures. Needless to say I was super excited, though admittedly I would have rather seen Miracle Max or the Albino than the Clergyman - but who knows, fingers crossed (all six) that maybe Antediluvian have another 4 TPB figures slated for this year :)

First up is the six fingered man himself, Count Rugen.

The Princess Bride

The impressive Clergyman

Prince Humperdinck

Here is Inigo Montoya on the old Likto bases that I used to exclusively use next to Rugen on my new thin clear base.

And now with Inigo's base switched. Because of his pose he is on a 1" base (25mm) compared to my preferred 3/4" base (20mm) that Rugen is on.

I swapped out the bases on the entire first group and I think you'll agree that these bases look way better than the Litko ones. The figures really just blend right into the environment. I've had a tutorial for these new bases in edit mode for months now, so hopefully I can get that one sorted soon and out for anyone interested.

And a quick thanks to new follower Vincent Penetier, appreciate you following the madness!

Until next time, thanks for looking!
Ivor

The Fellowship Of The Rings

One of the very first true miniatures game I picked up was the Mines of Moria starter set from the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game.  This was definitely early days in my rediscovery of tabletop games but it was perfect because it included some paints, along with some terrain pieces. The only thing was everything in that set was plastic and even back then I wasn't a fan of the plastic figures. So I sought out the Fellowship box set which were all metal and this is what you see above.

Sam

Pippen

Merry - though I think this face sculpt looks way more like Sean Astin's Sam in my opinion.

Frodo

Gimli

Aragorn - in probably my favorite pose and sculpt of the entire line, this one is from the Weathertop set.

Legolas

Boromir

Aragorn part duex

Gandalf

I know that they rereleased an new version of the LOTR miniatures game, but I see these figures being used in either a Dungeons and Dragons game or just a homebrew classic dungeon crawl miniatures game like HeroQuest - I have a ton of dungeon tiles from a recent Kickstarter that would be perfect for something like that. We'll see, but the D&D bug has definitely hit me again so it should be interesting to see what happens in the future here.

As always, thanks for looking!
Ivor

Nakatomi Plaza December 24th 1988

Life happens. And it really is a circle. We've all been there, or will be there at some point, so there isn't any need to go into great detail, but both my parents are pretty sick and we even had to have a three pound tumor removed from our dog over the holidays. Needless to say there has been zero motivation to get up to the studio and even less motivation to try to write about hobby stuff - and thus the reason for the lack of posts and even comments on the blogs I follow over the last few months. But I did have quite a few posts sitting in the queue in edit mode and desperately want to try to get those finished up and published. So here was what was supposed to be my Christmas post - a full month late 🙂

This is a meme I made several years ago that has made plenty of rounds on the Social Medias in December

There has been an ongoing joke at the Evans household for years now where I will always pull out Die Hard when my wife asks to put a Christmas movie on. For some context my wife is all about Christmas (she's like a walking talking Hallmark Channel movie lol!) and me, not so much - I think a lot of that has to do with me coming from a divorced family at an early age. Needless to say this annoys her a bit, but to her credit she doesn't push me on it too much.

I even found this amazing shirt this year that spoofs the whole Die Hard Christmas thing even further. Now I have a Christmas shirt, ho ho ho 🎅

So let's get on to the figure. This is "Walt" from Studio Miniatures, but clearly it's John McClane from the first Die Hard movie. Another fantastic figure from a manufacturer who is easily becoming one of my favorites, right up there with Crooked Dice. I will say the SM figures do scale a bit smaller when compared side by side to other 28mm figures though, like CD.

What's really great about the sculpt is the detail on the feet with the make shift bandages, great stuff! At first I almost felt the wash used was too dark, but with the bandages present that does mean he's already been through the air ducts and fell down the elevator shaft, thus getting much dirtier - that's my story anyway and I'm sticking with it lol!

Is there a game where I can use this figure in the future? Not that I can think of right now, but Die Hard is an absolute favorite movie of mine, so when I first saw this figure I had to buy it. So even if this figure just sits in the case I'm glad he's in the collection and that I finally have him on a base.

Until next time (which hopefully won't be two months later), thanks for looking!

Cheers!
Ivor