Bederken Dungeon floorplans get an airing

As you probably know I recently released some 30mm square dungeon floorplans in .pdf format through my Bederken blog.  Well, I got my first prints all back and mounted up and I thought I would take some quick snaps to show it in action.  As you can see, going up from 1 inch standard to 30mm makes it much easier to play without minis bumping up against each other- plus you have the freedom to use modern lipped bases.

So the first fools to brave The Dungeon of Dave are some classic citadel paladins who probably have not had a decent dungeon bash since Dungeons & Dragons came out.

Preslotta Citadel Paladins and C11 halfling attack Kev Adams Zombies and Reaper Wizard

Classic early 1980's Citadel creepy crawlies and Red Orcs attack!
Grenadier halfman takes aim in background.  Molemen by Reaper.  Ooze by me.

Thirty year old minis get some playing with!
Some classic Red orcs have been converted here- headswaps and
scratch built weaponry.

Another angle.  Note the green ooze sneaking up on a red goblin in the background.
It was made with a hot glue gun and a plastic base.

 As you can see, my red orc tribe has expanded since I last posted.  These guys are about 50% done.  I swapped out a couple of heads and weapons to give more variety, keeping at least one of each variety in archive state.

The creepy crawlies are a personal favourite of mine, I have been collecting these for a while now.  When you get them they just look like a little lug of brown metal, but with a little TLC they transform into some classic vintage gaming niceness.

Well that's me for tonight... enjoy dungeon bashing!

Convert or die! Chaos Bertha, Modernised Red Goblin, Kill Team Charlie and the Hyperbole Base

First up today is a couple of conversions...

Left. Vintage Chaos warrior.  Right.  Big Bertha.

I always loved the figure to the left, but by the time I was in the hobby he was a faint memory in a citadel journal.  I was rubbing my hands together with glee when I finally found one on ebay.  I was horrified when it arrived badly broken.  Fortunately another appeared in a job lot chaos army I rescued.  Then Big Bertha made the pain all go away with a relaxing night at the sculpting block.

I love converting figures.  I always start with the best intentions.  Fix a weapon, add a little hood... but I always end up going a teensy bit over the top.  I have some converted figures that it would have been just as quick to scratch build.

Kev Adamsified red goblin

This classic fiend factory red goblin (see previous posts) was too near my brand new sculpting block I have made when I needed something to test sculpting on it.  I decided to fix it up a bit.
  I started by grinding off the shield boss to make space for a decorative shield.  To give him a more stooped look I sliced off the head (easy with this old soft alloy) and pinned it further down the chest.  Its amazing how this little change stops the models head looking too long.  A hood was added to exaggerate the hunch.
  I then filed back the fingers and toes slightly and added freshly mixed green stuff putty.  After leaving it to set for a while I poked in the fingers with a dremmel blunted and rounded off xacto knife- my 'Tom Meier tool'.  The blade was filled with milliput so later it can be filed to a flat, sharp blade.  Finally I added the missing eyes and lip, some belt string and a strap for his shield.  The whole job took about ten minutes of actual work, and turned a few cents of figure into a perfectly good dungeon critter!

Converted citadel Fiend Factor Red Orc

Pre-Rogue Trader (Warhammer 40k 1st ed)  C100 Space marines
And the Dave King Hyperbole base.

I was going to call my next trick the Dave king awesome base of utter brilliant awesomeness, but shortened it to the hyperbole base instead.  My new motto for this year is if it is broke, quit winging and fix it, and one thing I whine on about is how lipped bases are great, but impossible to pick up during a game.  This leads to sticky fingers on models, and that just ain't cricket.  But oohh, they look pretty, and the extra size makes for more stable models with more protection against scratching.  Whine, whine, whine.

So I fixed the damned things by making my own.  Taking a regular base, I extended the depth down using plasticard and bevelled this to create a rounded lip just big enough for fingers to find purchase on and fingernails to roll under as you lift.  I then sanded and polished the whole thing shiney smooth and hollowed out the base to create a deeper, wider bowl.

  The deep dish allows for integral bases to sit inside, flush with the lip, deeper scenic features and cappers.  Since I only had a few lipped bases, I decided to cast the cappers separately.  That also means I can make a couple of cappers that have slots already cut, so all I have to do is just fill in the gap.  Rather than cut out custom discs and sculpting the cap onto this, I widened the dish so it would accept Australian 10c coins.  Whenever I feel like making a new cap, I just work on a 10c coin and know its going to fit.  Nice.

The final change was to glue a 10c coin to the bottom of the master to act as a pouring spout.  This means the lip of the base is perfect without having to grind flat.  A quick adventure with Pinkysil and Easycast (Barnes casting supplies) and my first test base was ready a half hour later..

My pre-rogue trader c100 space marine team, (Kill Team Charlie) are my first victims.  I am basing them up for corridor sci-fi skirmish gaming.  I have a few more in the post, and some in the dettol at the moment, and have bravely decided to convert some of my doubles.  I am toying with the idea of making a second team to go up against them using more of my old Rogue Trader, Judge Dredd and Paranoia minis.  However I think these guys may need some retro alien scum to blast away instead.

Well thats me for today.  Later lead heads!

Red Orc Restoration, C29 Creepy Crawlies, Heroquest Undead

Original, cleaned and fully restored painted FF24 Red Orc (aka Red Goblin)

Happy new year lead freaks!
Over the holiday season I got a few nice emails encouraging me to do a lot more stuff this year.  Get that!
So with that in mind I wanted to start the year with a tute.

During the holidays I got stuck into the lead pile and knocked off a few jobs that where bugging me.One of which was some sexily bad Citadel Red Goblins!  That clever son of a gun Beepie (bpi) painted some of these last year so well that it encouraged me to hunt them down on evilbay and get me some retro badness.  The elongated heads and faint eyes make these models look bad to begin with, but as you can see a little love and pow!  Its like Gygax & Dave A. are still alive and rolling up stats.

These old figures can be restored with a dunk in bicarb soda water to halt any potential lead rot, and a gentle working over with a copper brush.   Wear a mask.  I had my lead levels checked this week by my GP, and came up clear.  Yay for me.  Anyway, find a soft copper brush- mine is a cheap BBQ scrubber from the supermarket.  Test it with some gentle brushes and look for scratches, then go for all holy hell.

As usual, I use diluted grey-green miliput brushed on with a cheap brush to fill minute surface cracks.  A quick smooth off with fine sand paper, and a polish with bluetac and you will have a lovely painting surface.

Beepie sanded off his shield bosses so he could paint some insanely small insignia on the shields, and looking at the models I think that's a great idea.  This brings me to my next subject.  Augmentation.

Converting old miniatures feels a bit naughty, I tend to only do this to broken ones, but there is no harm in using a little putty to fix up a figure to modern tastes right?  I call this augmentation, because I am not really converting the figure at all, but it would be wrong to say they are perfect archive pieces.  The orc to the right is my faithful archive model.  The next batch (these figures are dirt cheap because, damn, they are ugly) I am augmenting.

To give an example, the models sword is battered and wonky.  Great for an orc, but most figures from this era suffer the same problem.  Applying freshly mixed milliput grey-green with a moistened card and carving a smooth, sharp edged blade is a great augmentation.  Fingers of this era are often just lines, lacking the comic book knuckles that the early eighties brought that beg for highlighting.  A small amount of greenstuff mixed 8:1 with sculpey a black clay shaper and a little patience can make all the difference.  Speaking of which...

C29 creepy crawlies (beetles, scorpion, unknown chaosy two headed  lizard thing and giant tick)

These bad boys are mostly C29 creepy crawlies.  They have been modernised by gluing on slotta bases and then very carefully sculpting a dungeon floor surface using procreate to hide their integral bases.
Any help identifying the mysterious two headed, one winged chaos snake thing is most welcome!  Really early chaos familiar perhaps?

MB Heroquest plastics.  Yay.

Continuing on the old dungeon theme, I found a bag of unloved Heroquest figures in a flea market a few months back.  By some strange twist of fate, a few months before I discovered a shrink wrapped mint Heroquest box in an bric-a-brac and antiques store not one hundred paces from the same spot!  Tenner.  Bargain.  Its now in my vault...  will be selling that on ebay soon, once the Aussie dollar drops a bit.

I converted the minis by carefully shaving off the plastic base with a razor.  I say carefully, because the plastic used for these is much harder than modern citadel plastics, so does not take stress well.  If you try this, dont cut with something like tin snips, you will get white stress tears and odds are the leg will snap off.  A fresh scalpel and some patience payed off, and I had these, two zombies and five goblins prepped for a little mid week old school insomnia indulgence.
I plan to go back and do some sexy blending later on these, pick out the teeth then varnish the ever living crap out of them for sticky pizza fingered gaming in the near future.  I googled heroquest to see if anyone else had painted their figures recently and to see what they did, and I was really surprised how big a community it still has!  You go Heroquest fans!