Orcs and Goblins for Heroquest

Here are the orcs and goblins for my Heroquest project. The earthy colour on the dungeon bases is to make them blend in with my brown-earth based Warhammer orcs and goblins when needed.

That pretty much wraps up the figures for the project. Now I just need to finish the furniture!

Fimir for Heroquest

 "The Fimir are rare and recluse creatures, and decades may go by without a sighting the Empire would officially acknowledge. Notable professors of the Altdorf academy even claimed that they were only a myth. That is why imperial scholars were puzzled to hear reports from adventurers who claimed to have encountered them in Morcar's dungeons, far from their native bogs. If these reports were to be believed, what could have lured them from their fens? Had Morcar enslaved them? Had they joined him in some demonic pact? In any case, they had been a sorry sight to behold. Instead of fearsome beasts of myth the reports spoke of miserable, hunched creatures wandering in the dark, dangerous only when cornered. One might even have been moved to pity the wretched beings. The novice adventurer does well however, to remember the loathsome method by which they breed, and maintain his resolve."

Finding metal fimir that fit on a 25mm base is no easy task. I had all but given up hope, but then I spotted these "Myeri" by Oakbound studios.
Initially I wasn't that impressed by the sculpts but they're actually prettu characterful in a sympathetic sort of way. They were also fun to paint, I pretty much just kept slapping on inks until I was happy.

Heroes for my Heroquest project

Finally got the heroes themselves done for my Oldhammery heroquest project. Sourcing suitable figures took me quite a while, but I think I finally ended up with the team I wanted. The Heroquest elf doesn't have a bow, sure, but he can always use the rules for the crossbow and this way the figures are good to go for Warhammer Quest as well.

Chaos Warriors for Heroquest

A bit surprisingly I had trouble sourcing metal chaos warriors for my "HQ in old metal" -project. Apparently metal chaos warriors are less common than I thought! Good thing I got Slambo!

At first I planned to do bright 80's style colours but opted for a black armor look in the end. It was much quicker to do and they look a bit more menacing now.

Team Undead for HeroQuest

Next up I have the undead figures for my HeroQuest project, including a custom Chaos Sorcerer sculpted by James Sherriff. These were a lot of fun to paint and turned out quite nice.

It was my first time trying to do zombie skin with some blue and purple tones and I really like how it turned out. I have a bunch of old ghouls in my pile that I'll probably do using the same technique when I get around to doing them. If I can remember the recipe for that skin at that.. wait, I can't remember how I did that NOW. Oh, well.

"Are we there yet" with 3D printing?

Well, take a look at this one:

I started a Heroquest campaign with my kids and my daughter (3 yrs) just wants to play the elf all the time. I thought it'd be neat for her to have a female elf figure to play with. I looked through the usual companies and found a couple of suitable models that weren't all ass and tits but would have had to order them from the US. Luckily I've just bought a 3D printer!

It's an Anycubic Photon resin printer and you can get one delivered to your door for well less than 400 euros these days. I've been waiting for a printer to come along that would be accurate enough for miniatures and consumer grade PLA printers haven't quite been accurate enough yet. Then I saw one gamer in a Finnish miniatures group post some models he had printed using a resin printer and I knew the time was ripe for me to jump on the 3D printing bandwagon too.

The printer after finishing up its first model, a test piece.

I won't start blabbing on about what a resin printer is and how it works, you can find that stuff easily online. Suffice to say, It takes a bit of calibrating, messing about with toxic chemicals and being smart when posing your 3D models for printing but it isn't anything people can't handle. The prints I've done have turned out really good and the problems I've had so far are nothing a bit of calibration and a good workflow can't fix. The quality of the prints when successful is quite enough for Epic scale tanks, but nooot quite there for the infantry figures I tested.

A Battletech Atlas was my first "proper" print and it turned out excellent on the front. On the back, some of the details were muddled by something more experienced printers call "light bleed", where the resin bits that are printed first might have additional curing of the resin because of the UV light spilling through the resin. 

So, coming back to that elf, here's a company that takes the concept of 3D printing miniatures yourself and builds a great business case for it instead of crying about piracy: https://www.heroforge.com/

On that site you can easily design your own figures, choose their appearance, clothing, gear, poses and even facial expressions. You can then either have them print and ship those models for you or you can buy a printable 3d file for yourself. That's what I did with the elf:

A slight printing error on the hair, probably due to insufficient supports below it.

My printer can't quite capture all the nuance of the expression on the 3D model but I'd say it's pretty damn good! I painted the figure using colours chosen by my daughter and she can enter the dungeon with her own custom elf next time! I really hope we'll be seeing some big manufacturers get onboard with this business idea. How about getting to customize and print your own, licenced 40K figures? Heroforge sells their digital models for ten dollars each, which is a bit expensive for more than a one-off hero every now and then, but I hope the prices will come down. They do have sales every now and then and for example on Black Friday you could get a model for four dollars. That would be low enough to buy some more often, especially as their design engine gets better.


I still have a lot to learn using this new printer but I'm really happy I got one! You'll definitely be seeing more 3D printed stuff from me in the future!

ADDENDUM: Here's a Stug model from a guy on thingiverse scaled down to 1/300.Needless to say I'm happy with the quality!

"Gargoyle" Bloodthirster

My kids have now grown old enough (ripe old age of 3 and 6) to play Heroquest with me. I want to play with a painted set, but the original figures might not be a joy to paint. Luckily there are plenty of old Warhammer figures to use! Here's the gargoyle. Better pack your brodesode!

I tried to do a "glowing hot iron" effect on the horns. Works for an oldhammer figure.

The figure is based on a 25mm base so I can still put it on a Heroquest board. I was afraid that the small base would make the figure unsteady but it's surprisingly stable. I think the center of gravity is pretty close to the center of the base.

Scale creep *sigh*

Paukarlahticon V

The fifth Paukarlahticon was on 3-5.June and there were more people than ever there. 30 people came to play over the weekend which I am really happy about. A lot of games played, a lot of beer drunk and lots of war stories in the sauna!

Here are some random photos of some of the games played there. I will make separate posts on Cold War Commander and General de Brigade so you can check those out too.

A lot of Muskets & Tomahawks and Ronin going on this time. I think this is Ronin, correct me if I'm wrong.

Epic 40 000. My Dark Angels vs. Necrons. Looking good!

Or not. I was wiped away promptly. I really need to learn how to play this game :)

Late night drunken Bamboleo.

Good old Heroquest. Which is the best game ever made, obviously.

A tutorial game of Frostgrave.

Soldiers of God. I was interested in this but was too busy showing off Frostgrave to pay too much attention. It looked pretty card driven.

A friend of mine brought his 3D printer. 3D printing will definitely revolutionize our hobby in the coming years. I'll show off some printed stuff I paint later this summer.

The printer at work.

There were boardgames played as usual but as usual I was preoccupied in the miniatures section. If someone took photos, send them and I'll add them to the report.

Introducing kids with an old classic

My nine year old nephew and his friend were visiting so I decided to dig up HeroQuest and see how they like it. I've been waiting for my sister's children to grow old enough for "proper" boardgames for years and I think now's the time.

The first adventure, of course.

The adventurers split up, something experienced dungeon explorers never do, and the dwarf runs into trouble!

Just a room short of their goal, the remaining adventurers are swamped by the monsters and make a valiant last stand..

The children said they've never played anything like it and had lots of fun. The theme is familiar enough as they play fantasy games on their computers, but boardgames like these don't exist these days, not as Finnish translations, at least. Kids that age are just starting to learn English and the Finnish market is so small it is not economically viable to do translations of niche boardgames. HeroQuest was translated back in the day and I think it sold lots of copies as nearly everyone has memories of having played it or having a friends older brother who had it.

Maybe I should get around to finally paint the figures...