Deviant Designs Deeds

Just a few pictures of my recent Otherworld stuff. This year I painted 42 fantasy figures out of 105 figures painted. Next years targets is 100 with the Otherworld Indiegogo adventures top of the pile.   Old school AD&D Red Dragon Painted around 25 years ago, and based this year. Otherworld Wight Otherworld Wight Otherworld Shadow  Otherworld Shadow Otherworld Troglodytes

  The party face off against the Rust Monsters     Otherworld Rust Monster   Otherworld Rust Monster 2   Otherworld Mummy    Otherworld Mummy   Citadel preslotta fantasy adventurere wizard Preslotta Dwarf, possibly Asgard?   Citadel Slotta Ranger   Citadel Demon of Slanesh   Last of the 3 human Zombies form Otherworld  

  As I now own virtually all of the Avengers (Still mising issue 11, although I have it in reprint) I am going to start re reading them and posting some views and opinons. Some of these issues I would have only read once while others have been read and read. Should be fun revisiting them. I originally discoverd the Avengers with the UK reprint title launched in 1972, which of course came with some free superhero transfers that I remember keeping on the side around at home for years before finally surcoming to thier siren call and using them.. This reprinted issue started with issue 4 of the American comics and it was some years before I read the first 3 issues,

Some old pre slotta miniatures from the early 80's a couple of 90's slotta adventurers   Dwarven Thief  ( Chronicle Miniatures Nick Lund)   Gnome Thief ( Citadel )   Human Fighter (Citadel)   Human Mage (Citadel)   Zombie (Otherworld)   Two Headed Ogre (Citadel)

I recentlyfinished painting the Otherworld miniatures Roper which took some time, partly because it comes in 9 pieces.   I think the thing measures up well against my ebay bought Grenedier version.     I've also signed up for the otherworld Dungeon Adventures set on indiegogo which I am really looking forward to. I note that at todays date it has hit US$13k, which already exceeds the orignal target of US$ 5k.   

Painted in line with the Duke of the Bloodkeep tutorial,

Just a few pictures of some recent painting. The Mordehime necromancer as part of the Mordheim undead warband I am finishing off. I received this as a gift from Mark of the Level 2 Blog. Followed by an Otherwold undead Halfling. This si the final one of the 3 undead non human Otherworld currently produce, again to be used for the mordheim warband. However these 3 figures are significantly smaller than the mix of GW and Westwind I am using for the remainder of the warband.  Finally an old Runequest Duck painted on behalf of Mark. I think he looks better in the flesh. He is so small that he is almost a 15mm miniature.

I have been organising a number of my old magazines and I happened upon this advert for the opening of Warlords Games shop in White Dwarf number 31, dated, June/July 1982. This was not my first White Dwarf, the oldest I still own is issue 22 which survives coverless but otherwise intact. Interestingly WD 22 this has a review of games day 1980 which I am fairly certain I attended, but being so long ago I am unsure. I certainly attend two back then at the Royal Horticultural Society hall, one of which I fairly certain ran a huge roman chariot racing game, it was there that I remember buying the D&D PHB shortly after it came out. Most of my early games were bought mail order via, Games Workshop in Dalling Road (I visited the actual shop once in the early 80’s), Games of Liverpool or Esdevium games (A shop I used to visit regularly when I lived in Reading). However back then I did not have a bank account and had to pester my mum for a cheque or pay extra for a postal order.  T

Mark in his Level 2 Blog  has been commenting on the need for a Minotaur for his Mordheim Beatman warband. I have 3 of varying sizes, An old citadel Runequest Minotaur painted when I was 16-18 (it was advertised April 1982) and which will be stripped down and repainted as I work my way through the lead pile.  It was about this time that I first started to build up a collection of fantasy figures with the intention of running a dungeon something I am now close to since I bought the Dwarven Forge terrain. The second is the otherworld Minotaur posted separately (but included in the group shot). The third is my Beastman Minotaur Lord from around 2004, which I believe was subsequently known as a Doombull which was painted a few years ago along with a few older beastmen. I did buy a plastic box set of Beastmen  and two chaos hounds with the intention of inlcuding this Minotaur in a Mordheim warband but in excess of 5 years later I am still not finished.

It has been another very busy month at work with 10 days overseas and in that time I transferred my study upstairs. However I did manage to get a couple of figures painted an Elven and a dwarven zombie, both looking like they pass some resemblance to certain characters from LOTR. A good set of figures which will be added to my Undead Mordheim warband which is 5 figures short of completion, The Undead Elf Searches the abandoned camp. I also recently bought a batch of Dwarven Forge terrain having wanted to run rpg dungeons with a full set of terrain for over 30 years. So far I have done little more than glance at it but hopefully over the next week it will be coming out of the box. So far I am very impressed at the quality.

Recent articles on HP in DND next have stated that they are a mix of, Physical ability, experience and luck and cosmic karma. http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd%2F4ll%2F20120521 This is something that I have been giving a lot of thought on for a number of years as my rpg group in general does not like the loads of hit points school of playing. In particular we nearly always use mooks with low levels of hit pots for most npc. In general only one or two htis are needed to knock them out of the fight. My current thought on DnD hit points is that the additional hit points above constitution are basically a buffer, allowing the pc to absorb damage, certainly because of experience and skill in line with the dnd next rules. This means that those hits are not actual physical just numerous small nicks and scratches have started to take their toll, just like Conan in the books, or equivilent to using a Fate Point each time you are hit. The key would appear to be what happe

Caveat, I am a big Avengers fan. Anyway I recently picked up a batch of secret Avengers 1-15 for around £1/issue. The premise is that Steve Rogers (no longer Captain America) brings together a group of avengers for secret missions. Key members are Back Widow, Ant Man, Moon Knight, War Machine (blocks the comms channels), Valkyrie , Beast, Prince of Orphans (a new one for me) with guests by Nova (very subtle hero here) and Shang Chi. Although I have enjoyed these it has struck me that there are several things wrong with how it is written. 1) There is too much fighting, in the open, using loud weapons (War Machine is a member) 2) The missions do not really use the skill set of the key characters, or focus on the type of missions you would expect given the premise. Antman is used a bit, Moon Knight uses a disguise but beyond that its really point and hit. 3) There is little characterisation, the characters do not really interact and there is very little

Given my interest interest in low fantasy including the Joe Abercrombie books and the quandry I have over rules. Runequest too deadly, AD&D 4th too magic focus, AD&D 3rd too many hit points and the reluctance of players to run with earlier D&D editions, I wonder if this would be worth picking up? http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr2707.html Mind you having just read a November 1979 article from Dragon called Books are books, games are games, by Gygax who states 'that the ring triology is quite unsatisfactory as a setting for a faatasy adventure game' and the 'best one can come up with is a series of of variations ...the reenactment' (of the novels). He also says 'What AD&D player would find it interesting to play a wizard of Gandolf like proportions' Having played Wheel of Time, MERP, Call of Cthulhu, Conan, Elric, Hawkmoon, StarWars, WHFRP this is not my experience but then it was 1979.

A video of someones collection picked up as I have been looking at the dwarven forge stuff again

Completed resonably quickly as mainly drybrushed fur.

Can not seem to get the right colour for my skeletons. Heres some I have painted recently of various vintage going back to an early citadel release.Some of them are the old Maruader miniatures range FTS10 Skeleton hacking with Sword Rackham MIniatures Skeleton