Some works in progress and more pics.

Here are some more photos of the dungeon beasties that are in progress.

Unable to stomach the prices for the beautiful Otherworld Miniatures bugbears I decided to gather a bunch of D&D prepaints and see if I could salvage them into something a bit nicer.  They've been equipped with new weapons and shields, removed from their bases and re-based.

Another late addition.

While the prepaints start off rather...underwhelming.  With a little paint, a nice base, and some minor adjustment to weapons and equipment, they can become very reasonable as seen below:

Men-at-Arms

   A couple of people had asked me about the men-at-arms I posted in my first post.  They are Gripping Beast Hirdmen mixed with a box of Fireforge Crusader knights on foot.  Luckily the FF/GB stuff is literally plug-n-play.  Identical scale, shape, arm mounts etc.  In the future I may grab some GB Arab archers, some FF mongols, some more crusaders etc.  I suspect combing a half dozen boxes you could creat some really genuinely cool stuff.

I really like the end result of combing the crusader and viking bits.  The figures end up being quite historical looking with minor differences.  These kind of mash-ups would work well in a near-historical setting like Game of Thrones etc. 

The beginning of a dungeon crawl...

So one of my current projects (without much of a concrete objective in mind...) is the creation of a dungeon and a dungeon's worth of suitable monsters.  This will be kept and used for pretty much any dungeon crawl or small fantasy skirmish I feel like gaming.

Scale: 25/28mm with 1" squares (using Dwarven Forge dungeon pieces) and 25mm bases up to about 75mm bases for larger creatures.

Inspiration: Older style, simple but charming figures.  I want some decent simplicity and retro look without going too retro (no button nosed gnomes in big flouncy shirts here...).  So a kind of D&D original look but without the 70's flair.

Game?: I may eventually produce a card-driven game to run at conventions (maybe not sell...).

Anyway, on with the pictures!

A group of Men-at-Arms for use as towns' guard, mercenaries or allies.  Gripping Beast Vikings mixed with Fireforge Crusaders.

 

Mantic Ghouls for use as ghouls, zombies and various unpleasant things.

GW LOTR orcs...very poor plastic sculpts (huge bits of unsculpted plastic on the minis).  Pretty disappointed considering how good many GW plastic kits are.  Will be used for goblins.

Wargames Factory orcs - not the best sculpts, but very nice to see something different.  You'll find no gigantic muscled green orcs here...I'm avoiding that "look" as much as possible.  Never been a fan.

Wargames Factory skeletons with some Mantic bits thrown in for good measure.  I like the skeletons okay but as with most plastic skeletons I fear some will break with gameplay.  Good thing I have more spares sitting in the box!

The start of our intrepid band of adventurers.  Otherworld Miniatures in the front rank (far preferred) and some "gigantic" Reaper miniatures in the back.  I'll keep adding to this bunch, as the characters will also serve double duty, standing in for evil characters or special NPCs etc.

Recycling the trash...

For many monsters and creatures I've found very cheap reasonably pre-painted miniatures from HeroScape, D&D, Pathfinder etc.  I've recovered several of these for use as they're decent figures (very soft on the detail unfortunately) but I like the look and they do rather well as monsters.  Most of the large creatures are based on 40mm plastic rounds, while normal figures are 25mm renedra plastic rounds.

A HeroScape troll was recovered, given a different look and based.

I really love the look of the D&D Ogre I found, so I picked one up, repainted, re-based and re-armed him.  Unfortunately my dip dried up without me knowing it, and I dunked him in goop...I managed to save it, but the overall miniature turned out poorly.  Still love the look of the guy though.

I can't afford lovely OW Minis bugbears at the moment so I started gathering up a handful of pre-paints from D&D.  They're all horribly painted and some of the sculpts are so bad I've thrown them out.  This fella is the first of five I'll be saving and refitting to look decent in the dungeon.  I'm pretty pleased with the end result.

More to come later...