Citadel devout cleric...and some muscled reinforcments

Alright people ! Some of you may remember that I am currently engaged in a 2nd edition Dungeon and Dragons campaign on the Oldhammer forum. This campaign is run by the most excellent Captain Crooks with fellow players Gaj/Weazil, Count von Bruno, Penddraig and Weismonsters.

The party has reached the 3rd chapter of its adventures and as the time goes by, the bound between players and the fun had is ever growing.

If you fancy having a good read with adventure, laughters, great cultural references and all, I strongly welcome you to give them a read. All the player's and GM's notes are hidden to make the story clear and nice to read but you can see how the work goes behind the scene (if you wish to) by clicking on the spoiler boxes. The 3 chapters so far are :

• 1st Chapter : The Quest for the Abbot's cheese
• 2nd Chapter : The chase to the Crystal city !
• 3rd Chapter : The temple of Pieter Onne-Dray

 

Back in March, I decided I wanted to have new models to represent our characters in the  campaign and while I clearly knew I was going to use the classic paladin from the Citadel adventurer starter set, I learnt that my friend Bruno found the devout cleric to be close to what he had in mind for his Spellsword Rambulge.

So here he is ! The devout cleric is now officially going to be a Spellword, or spellmace since Rambulge is more comfortable with a cudgel than with a blade.

You know you're doing right when...

... you start sculpting sphincters.

Yep, Sphincter it is. Some of you will start to think there's something of an obsession with me and this but the thing is I have thought a lot about them lately.

The first reason being the excellent Steve Casey from the no less excellent Eldritch Epistles has talked about his visits to Bryan Ansell and his marvelous collection of unreleased citadel miniatures. If you have read some of these posts (and you should have if old lead is your thing) you will undoubtedly have thought about the countless moulds awaiting at the foundry amongst which some may contain "The Sphincter Beast".

Well this particular reference has got to be as mythical as the ass cannon and other wonders. No pictures of it are available and we only have the description of those who have seen it to tell it exists.

I've decided to take a dive and see how I would design such a concept.

Of course sculpting a sphincter beast from scratch as got to begin with sculpting a sphincter. Given the chaotic essence of the concept, I opted for a rather aggressive approach for my sphincter :

As you can see, there's not much here but I will add new layers of sphincters and teeth to the concept until I'm happy with it and then I'll start working on the "beast" part of the concept.

Master of the obvious...

Life is wonderful, you know it is. After last post (thanks to easy lead), my old DnD paladin Seu Antheus has got the chance to serve again the lady of the lake to fight evil and save widows and orphans.

This has been made possible by Captain Crooks over the oldhammer forum who just launched a remote game using a specific thread and I have to say it is a really refreshing experience to have the opportunity to play again after so much time...

Ok, dungeon and dragons is fun , no real surprise here, but I don't get much occasions to play (none in fact) so even if I miss meeting players in real, I'm really enjoying this one a lot. Anyone who want to see what all of this is about can have a look here.

I went into my little bazaar and found a model I had loved and forgotten. The paintjob was pretty close to my best at the time so I was quite happy with him. It is a resin model made by Ilyad, a french company which did some very good models back in the day. It comes from a french comic "Les Chroniques de la Lune noire" (Black moon chronicles), a monument of french dark fantasy comics.

Now playing this model feels kinda awkward considering the rest of my collection so I might get him a replacement in the form of the Paladin of the citadel adventurer starter set, I believe you will all agree there is no better model to play such a character...

Painting wise, I'm actually doing a lot but on multiple fronts like always, things are getting close to the end for Kaleb but I'm still struggling with the black and white markings (should be finished this week hopefully).

I also rediscovered the wheel. Yep you're reading right, after rediscovering black lining I actually rediscovered blocking all base colours at the start of a paint job. It's something I've never ever done in my 23 years log painting life and I tried it on my "in progress" sensei gang.

I wanted my sensei leader to be the model or "benchmark" for all the other members. This means I applied all the colours I wanted for him (There will be a complete post about this one) and then added them to all members until I was left with "empty" spots which will receive other colours to differenciate them a bit. This ties the band visually and will speed the painting process.

OK so blocking base colours helps, no real surprise here either...

Here they are in their glorious unfinishedness.

Just look at how proud he looks with his friends around !

The "How to old hammer" band is advancing step by step too, I managed to get an hour this afternoon to sculpt the shields like intended on the chaos warriors. Nothing really fancy here, they're just plastic battlemasters chaos warriors after all but I believe this little cosmetic effort will help to give them some individuality.

Now here's a question for all of you. I've recently bought a marauder giant for a ridiculous price and I have come to looooove the model. 

One thing is bothering me though. The neck. just look at the picture below. Doesn't our good ol' marauder giant look like he could wear a terminator suit? His neck seems to be broken and his spine his totally not in line with his skull (or maybe it's the other way round but anyway...).

If I'm placing his head like his neck is the continuity of his spine, he looks far more taller and even a bit noble. I'm pretty sure that his head was lowered afterwards to make him look a bit more rough and blunt and that his very special mullet cut is just the only way Ally Morrison found to hide the weird neck angle.

I may be wrong but this would make sense. I have to say it is not a problem at all for me sonce I want my models to look cool before realistic.

Just look at the comparison with the head high

Yes I'm a noble giant !

with his head low (like intended)

NNAAARGH

Well, I'm still considering building him with the head high just to be a bit more realistic and because I would love to make hime a bretonnian giant. Or maybe I'll just stay lazy and build hims as is...


Who knows?

How predictable...

Art by Olivier Ledroit

After reading a post on Easylead, I decided to have a go myself to check what kind of a DnD player I am.

You can have a go yourself at http://www.easydamus.com/character.html.

 

Now the really funny thing is that, it turns out I’m a

Lawful Good Human Paladin (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 13
Dexterity- 11
Constitution- 14
Intelligence- 14
Wisdom- 12
Charisma- 12

 

How is that funny you say? I bet it looks like a boring character for most of you...

Well the funny thing is that I've just found an old reference sheet of the last player I played in a campaign some 8 years ago (damn ! my last DnD game was 8 ago and is stone cold dead now) and guess what... I ended being a

Lawful Good Human Paladin (5th Level)

Ability Scores:
Strength- 14
Dexterity- 12
Constitution- 14
Intelligence- 10
Wisdom- 13
Charisma- 14

The stats are pretty close to what was found from my 120 answers if you just consider the scores. (character sheet below). The sad thing is that I didn't manage to get him to becoming a lawful evil paladin whch was my idea from the start but since it's note a profile you can start with right ahead (well the GM wouldn't let me), Seu (it's his name) always stayed the parangon of virtue he always had been.

Juts Look at those pen and paper beauties, I can almost hear the D20 rolling...

I recently found the model I used then which was already inspired by Olivier Ledroit's paintings (see picture above). I'll show it if you're good.

What would you be and more intesrtingly, is the result close to any charcter you've played?