As was to be expected I got distracted. From Frostgrave to Rogue Trader I returned to the Back of Beyond. I even started a Facebook group dedicated to the period.
Two and a half years ago I made a start with Freikorps Rorschach, but only recently I decorated this car.
Major Rorschach and his Freikorps is send by his financer to travel
through the recently collapsed Austro Hungarian Empire to meet an
aqcuaintance in civil war torn Ukraine. From there the road goes to
central asia to investigate terracotta artifacts. At least, that's the
plan.
In the works (but for quite some years already) more Freikorps (with Copplestone, Brigade Games and Great War Miniatures), Red Sailors and revolutionary citizens and the notorious Ukrainian anarchist Makhnovichina.
I'm waiting for a parcel of Brigade Games' austrians to make a unit of Hungarian POW bolsheviks.
Here's Hauptmann Rorschach and the comittee of silly hats of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut: his trusted leutnant and an archeologist
and spiritualist who joined the expedition. Troubled
by unexplained disturbing dreams der Hauptmann has an unkempt if not
savage appearance.
Two of these are based on Copplestone Castings' Turks with substituted helmet
and cap. I'm supposed to do this with an entire squad of Turks and
pressmoulded putty stahlhelms. The guy with the Bergman gun is a simple headswap with a Grenadier Half-Orc.
I'm working on my genestealer cult. I've decided for a cockroach theme. At first only because I thought it would be fitting. Lately though, a dose of Naked Lunch is creeping in. I'm referring of course to Willian S. Burroughs cult novel and the film adaption by David Cronenberg.
Mugwumps and insect typewriters are replaced by genestealers.
The hybrids will be painted like some nasty mix of human and insect, but still following the inspiration of the miniatures, the Navigators Guild from David Lynch's Dune film adaption.I'll post pictures when they are finished.
Enter Doctor Benway.
Doctor Benway, rogue surgeon, arms trader and Tox dealer. Shown here with his bodyguard of tox-heads.
This unscrupulous entrepreneur is suspected of illicit dealings with warlords, cartels, terrorists and religious sects.
I immagine tox to be a highly addictive sedative that, amongst other side effects, causes the addicts body to slowly rot away.
Doctor Benway sells his services to the highest bidder and in this case he organized weapons and mercenaries for the genesteale cult. In some cases he may join battle if getting attacked while closing a deal or delivering goods.
One of the fascinating parts of genestealer cults is the Lovecraftian side of it. A hidden cosmic menace, masses of cultists ignorant of the true horror of their degenerate religion.
For cultists I probably opt for Spanish Civil War Moorish soldiers.
I think Morocccan warrriors fit the theme. The cult's homeplanet Tishtrya IV being something between Tatooine and Tangiers.
Places like the Lead Adventure Forum or the Frostgrave facebook group are good for something. They definately help create a fantastic community. The main reason I put my tile designs here on this blog was because of all the positive reactions. A couple of weeks ago I was made aware of medieval north-european tiles. A subject matter I had always completely ignored! As usual it took a few days to sink in but at a certain point the designs reappeared at random in my google image searches. Apparently my algorythmic metadata got somehow teleported into the V.A.L.I.S. mainframe and I found even more nice pics.
In the end I found a suitable picture to do my trick and I made this:
Not bad at all. But way to symmetric.The arches and the faces pop out in an unnatural way so I mirrored some parts and covered some other parts. The end result is this:
And a quick frosty blue version which I haven't printed yet.
Feel free to save and print them out if you like them.
I also did a little bit of modelling these days. After a few evenings of desperate searching in various boxes with old lead I found one of each Mordheim hairy head to make this little nordic band. It works quite well even though the Frostgrave bodies are slightly smaller than the old Mordheim ones.
Frostgrave got released. Apparently it's quite a hit and all copies sold out. The book is very well produced and the miniatures are marvellous. The resin tokens that came with the Nickstarter are very nice as well.
I didn't sit still waiting for release in the meantime. I've been digging up many forgotten fantasy figs I had stored in boxes.
First of all I'm repurposing some old Mordheim gangs. When I that game was released in 1999, I cherry-picked quite some figures I always had wanted ind ordered them through the local GW store. This possessed gang was one of the best efforts. The Chaos Sorceror magister is the wizard of course. The possessed will subsitute soldiers after a succesful possession spell. Furthermore a knight, several soldiers and men-at-arms, a bowman while the boar counts as a dog.
North Star has simultaneously released these two 'elementalists' in their Fantasy Worlds range. Sculpted by Mark Copplestone these are not an official Frostgrave release though. The similarities with Elsa and Anna from Frozen are striking I'd say.
Last but not least some Heartbreaker dwarves and Crocodile Games' Yetis.
A small unit of late Romans. Unreleased models by Jim Bowen for Graven Images.
These are rather big 30mm miniatures and fit very nicely with my Grenadier barbarians. Which is more or less what I hoped they were as I want to use them both as roman saxon foederati and LotR warriors of Arnor and as such the bodyguard of my Copplestone Gandalf, an equally big miniature.
I do hope these will get an official release eventually. Apparently there are sculpts of early saxons and franks as well. I absolutely love these miniatures.
Today some undead skeletons, stalking the ruins of Frostgrave. These are Grenadier walking dead done by Copplestone. They look like they came from an exotic southern land, with ancient Libyan or tribal Carthagene haircuts and interesting designs of the swords. I believe this little range were among the last Fantasy Warriors released by Grenadier before they closed and in fact you will not find them in any catalogue. They came with slot bases. [edit: I got these from Mirliton, who stil sells them]
I also found this nerdy t-shirt in my closet. By Johnny 'Prison Pit' Ryan from a few years ago. To get in the mood.
A few people asked me how did the tiles on the ruins I made last week.
I've been restructuring my house a few months ago and I discovered the world of encaustic cement tiles. A technique of coloured, pressed cement from the beginning of the 20th century with the most amazing patterns.
While it's a modern technique, many of the patterns in reality are based on much older Islamic tile and mosaic designs.
While planning various options for the house I made and printed some wallpapers to see if it worked. Using pictures from various online catalogues.
Inevitably, at a certain point I tried how it looked with some miniatures having Arrakis meets Marrakech in mind.
Some of the test prints were blue tiles, and had a somewhat icy aspect. Then I had the idea that there must be tiles that looked like snowflakes that would be great for Frostgrave. And indeed they exist!
I also found some antique Moroccan ceramic design. So here a few of the designs a did, for you to download and print out. I print two pictures on one page, using Windows, for the right size. I recommend heavier, semi-gloss paper for the best effect.
Edit: more tile designs:
