Saturday, January 16, 2016

'Epic Fail' from BillA - "Not Everyone Levels Up"

So funny story about this bonus round entry - I'd originally planned to paint up Reaper's "Dead Man's
image courtesy www.reapermini.com
Chest" vignette for this round, but the more I looked at it on my work station, the less secure I felt in that idea: Because the skeletons are cast as a solid piece with the chest/base, would it be considered "terrain" instead of "figures"? I didn't want to take that chance, so in the last two weeks I managed to pull together a whole new concept, order what I needed, assemble and paint.

"Not Everyone Levels Up" is a testimony to every adventurer who has died before reaching third level in D&D.  This is to every fighter who ever stumbled into a pit trap, every thief who ever had a trap blow up in their face, every magic-user unlucky enough to be fed on by stirges.

The "Charnel Grub" is a Reaper Bones figure which I'd bought months ago and has been sitting in my project box, untouched, since I got frustrated with Bones figures a few months back (soooo happy to have learned to use good paint on them!).  I thought he looked like he was bellowing in triumph, so that got me thinking about an unlucky adventurer running afoul of this classic D&D adversary.


The unlucky adventurer is an "Overlord Casualty Marker" from Reaper's "Warlord" game.  He originally had a trio of arrows embedded in his chest; I carefully glued them into their sockets and then snipped them off as close to his breastplate as I could, disguising them further with a tiny bit of white glue.



The base is a 50 x 100mm square base from Renedra, with a 50mm round base from Reaper glued over top of it (the Grub's two lowest tentacles didn't repose well, despite a couple attempts with boiling water, so I needed a ledge to put the Grub on).  The stalagmites were sculpted out of Green Stuff, which was also used to disguise the edge between the bases.  The mushroom is a prepainted "Deathcap" from the official D&D miniatures line, repainted in purple and green to provide a splash of bright color to the scene and also give it a weird, possibly-magical appearance.





18 comments:

  1. Haha yes very fitting! Live the slug creature

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  2. Nice! I love the Dead Man's Chest as well!

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  3. Oh dear, better get those dice out again and roll up another!

    That's a belter, Bill!

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  4. Great work. I'm still in mourning for my host of 1st, 2nd and 3rd level AD&D characters from the early and mid-1980s, so i share your pain, Sir, I really do! Lovely work on the mushroom as well! Glad that's not in my garden, Bill!

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  5. This pretty much sums up my entire role playing experience. I'm totally baffled by later generations of gamers having to select paragon paths above some crazy level. I think the highest I ever made it was 7th. Love the scene you've created. This could have worked for Nostalgia too.

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    1. I'm of the generation of gamers who would be selecting paragon paths - but personally I think the old school, "your character sheet fits on an index card, you don't get a name until you've survived to third level" style of play is more fun!

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    2. Actually, I think this approach should be used for parenting as well. (As you can probably tell, I don't have kids...)

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  6. Well done Bill, thrilled you got this finished.

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  7. ;) this is a great one! Of course, it IS usually preceeded by some variation of " Anything but a 1..." ;)
    Really good basework, very nice combo of parts and models!

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  8. This turned out really well. I remember seeing the teaser WIP on this one.

    Great idea and a fantastic job!

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