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Glorantha Miniatures


borbetomagnus

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4 hours ago, Martin said:

Not sure if they were mentioned before but Crocodile Games has some great figures that maybe of use

Yep, back on page 2.  I've had my eye on them, but most of the line is far too fantastic to mix with my own more historically grounded figures.  However I've got through enough of my current backlog to order some of the more interesting ones.......

@Neil Patterson  I'll check that stuff out when our FLGS can re-open.  As a rule, I try to avoid any step that consumes a lot of time, but you never know until you can experiment.  Thanks for the tip!

And since this is the miniatures thread after all....

 

 

 

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5 hours ago, Dissolv said:

Yep, back on page 2.  I've had my eye on them, but most of the line is far too fantastic to mix with my own more historically grounded figures.  However I've got through enough of my current backlog to order some of the more interesting ones.......

@Neil Patterson  I'll check that stuff out when our FLGS can re-open.  As a rule, I try to avoid any step that consumes a lot of time, but you never know until you can experiment.  Thanks for the tip!

And since this is the miniatures thread after all....

 

 

 

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To the Strongest? It looks like the basing style.

Of course Simon (Big Red Bat) is a Gloranthaphile and has been promising a Fantasy version.

It wouldn't take long to smooth over mail in the grand scheme of things......and would remove any lingering dissatisfaction....

Neil

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TTS!  It has pretty much fired all the other Ancients and Medieval games at my club.  I was also able to incorporate it into a RPG session without problems, helping set up the whole "oh in Glorantha whole armies will go at it."

However some of the armies are quite massive in scope.  Cheap plastics helps fuel the armies, but also taught me that anything that slows you down is bad.  This has been my main hesitation for "fixing" or "hobby-chopping" my own.  The time involved is okay when you are looking at a 20-50 miniatures project. 

However I am looking at upwards of 500 figures for this project, as I wish to be able to portray whole battles in the Hero's wars in miniature format.  It sounds worse than it is, as I've got a number of completed historical armies, like the above generic barbarian, which looks appropriately Orlanthish enough for a mass battle.  Undead force large enough for Delecti? Check.  Bison riders?  Done.  Trolls and trollkin?  Done and done.   Broos?  I can and have fielded a whole army of them, plus some scratch-built Scorpion man allies.  What I am really deficient on are the Lunar infantry, and I am cranking away on those.  Other forces are really small on the mass unit scale, like trolls or dragonnewts, so the quantity that you would paint for a RPG is more than sufficient.  Like 8-12 for a unit of anything.

Where I am perpetually frustrated is Sable riders and Impala riders.  The impala clan are pygmies, so finding a cavalry pygmy figure at all, let alone an impala to go with it, is proving completely impossible.  Sable riders are critical plot wise, and are great adversaries for a Prax/Pavis setting, and while they are of normal human height -- allowing me to use various historical cavalry figures, the sable itself is just not turning up no matter how hard I search.  I keep hoping that MadKnight will crank out a unit of these, but so far, no luck. 

Actually taking stock of the project, I think that I need about 6ish Lunar Hoplite units (10 hoplites each so far less than 2 Victrix plastic boxes), misc. Lunar cavalry (I will use various Persian and Arab plastics already owned for this), and then it comes down to some highly specialized units, if I care to depict them. 

Rules wise very few modifications to TTS! are necessary, although flavor changes are great.  Simon has been slooooooooooooooooow at getting out Fantasy rules, and these are being forced to wait behind TTS! v.2, so realistically, I'll be making my own rules modifications for the foreseeable future.  (It's like heroquesting.  Long promised, but after multiple campaigns, you know it just ain't coming.)

For a taste as to "why" build this for what is currently mainly a RPG.   Well, I hope soonish to be able to do events like these with Glorantha troops.  Ideally as part of a campaign!

 

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Yes, Sables and Impala tribes are a problem.

Mad Knight had a green for an antelope launcher based on the illustration of Jax.....err....I forget his name, the one with a demon as a friend who attacked Glamour with elf allies.

Pricey for a unit.

The old (unlicensed) Tabletop Miniatures turn up (for a price) on eBay; a seller keeps offering lots of various types. This range include 2 different Sables and an impala which is almost as large as the sable! The pygmy is quite big as well! He also sells alticamelus but they are pricey. Only 3 riders, the antelope lancer has never turned up. He's in the UK. Trolls, broo and dragonnewt are also sold on a random basis, not to mention price.

The only other available option is the Ral Partha Gembok antelope. There are 2 versions - sadly too small for a sable and too big for an impala (unless you use big 28mm or 32mm for everything else). A small 25mm figure just fits although the neck needs extended or the horns interfere with the rider.

I was lucky enough to get hold of some London War Room sables and impala before they went under (as well as WestWind bison). Not yet done, the sables take 25mm or small 28mm riders. The impala are going to be heavily converted 20mm (parthians mostly) with Hasslefree heads.

The other one to watch is Rapier miniatures although they are working to a 32mm scale. Threatening bison riders with the other Praxian tribes to follow.

Neil

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Bit of bad news on the Rapier front.  His web site has been down for months, and his friendface reports some type of health problem.   I don't know what it is about Glorantha and miniatures, but they seem to have the darnest luck.  According to the comments this well pre-dates the current health concerns, but at some point mail order was cancelled for the remainder of 2019.  😞

If they get through whatever is going on, there is some hope.   This is from their Facebook page as well.   No idea when, or any type of eta.

 

No photo description available.

 

 

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On 5/4/2020 at 3:48 PM, Dissolv said:

Bit of bad news on the Rapier front.  His web site has been down for months, and his friendface reports some type of health problem.   I don't know what it is about Glorantha and miniatures, but they seem to have the darnest luck.  According to the comments this well pre-dates the current health concerns, but at some point mail order was cancelled for the remainder of 2019.  😞

If they get through whatever is going on, there is some hope.   This is from their Facebook page as well.   No idea when, or any type of eta.

 

 

I wasn't aware of the health issues that have affected Rapier Miniatures.

I send good vibes toward his health. I last ordered figures from him about a year ago. Shipping was expensive since I'm in the U.S., so it was a large order and included some of his excellent Morokanths, Scorpion Men, Minotaurs, and Ducks. They're still in my backlog of figures to be painted, but I'll get to them eventually. 

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Slowly continuing to paint Glorantha miniatures. Here are a few recent ones I've completed.

Another Broo from MadKnight's Broo Pack. This is the two-headed one with the flowery vines growing out of his body.

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Infinity-Engine's Rock Mostali from the RuneQuest Sampler Set. I tried to paint the "skin" (or is it more properly called a "crust") in metallic green with white highlights to make it look like his crust is Malachite.

 

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This is a Human Female Sorcerer from the Wizkids Pathfinder Deep Cuts Unpainted line. It contained two figures of the same sorcerer. I posted a picture of the other figure up-thread. I thought this figure could be used as a Rune Priestess of Ernalda.

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Edited by borbetomagnus
removed extra picture of the rock mostali
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Ok, here's the large figure in the background of the pics in the previous post. I took a Stone Giant from the Wizkids D&D miniatures line, cut the head off and replaced it with the Wizkids Giant Octopus, thereby making my Gloranthan version of a Walktapus.

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Here are the two figures, unpainted. 

 

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Stone Giant's beheaded body. Instead of gluing the Octopus on the Stone Giant body I used a piece of wire so that I could place the Octopus head on it by drilling a small hole on the underside of the Octopus. It makes it easy to store and transport to game nights.

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Here are a couple pics of the final figure from different angles. And with two-headed, vine-infested Broo for scale.

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Close up of the head.

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I did use glow a few layers of semi-transparent glow-in-the-dark paint on the suction cups. The effect is faint, but still pretty cool. I've not been able to get a good photo of it though.

Edited by borbetomagnus
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@Dissolv Those pics of the massive Gloranthan Hero's Wars miniatures battle are awesome! Please provide more as you play out the battles.

Is the earthen ramp that the advancing arming using to advance toward the wall being magically created during the battle? Please describe more about the scenario and what's happening. 

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@borbetomagnus  First let me say that I LOVE the Walktapus conversion.   That was some clever bit of work, and I think the final results are excellent!  Similarly, I never noticed the plant broo -- I've got two different broo packs still unopened as I focused on mass producing a box of GW Beastmen  and Scorpion conversions back in 2017.  I don't think that I've ever posted photos, so maybe I should get around to that?

Sadly, the military action that you see is plain old terrestial Rome vs. Dacia.  We gamed out the entire Dacian wars using TTS! some years back, not just the major battle, but the reduction of the various hill forts, German and Sarmatian interference, and a couple of Roman do-overs when the Dacians had the temerity to "win". 

However waaaaaay back in the day one of my very best scenarios was "The fall of Runegate".  I didn't have miniatures, but I did have Dragon Pass, so we used counters to demonstrate what was happening where, and the players frantically rushed around trying to shore up the defenses.  It was pretty epic, and way better than typical dungeon crawl.  The whole thing was made more poignant by the eventual arrival of the Crimson Bat, and the destruction of Runegate and all of its inhabitants, a major blow for the PC's as Runegate was their home base!  So literally what they were fighting for was all the NPCs that they had known and relied upon -- and these were all food for the Bat!  The next session was a straight up Miyamoto Mishashi "escape from the lost battlefield" scenario, which saw the players decide that the Upland Marsh was probably the safest bet..........resulting in another epic, and well remembered session even after all these years.

These days, I have enough Ancients experience (and armies) behind me to know what a spectacle massed forces really are, and how well they would fit into gaming in Glorantha.  Glorantha is rife with warfare.  Existing within a bigger world is one of the main draws and signs of maturity of the setting, imo.   That means that the PC's can participate in, or get caught up in, the sweep of larger events -- it isn't always just duels, gang warfare, and rubble hunting.  

However for the game itself, both structures were scratch built out of cheap stuff laying around.  They were fast and easy to construct, and eventually disposable.  We could make another couple out of styrofoam pretty easily, although I have ordered a Palisade and Earth work hold out from infinity engine. https://www.infinity-engine.com/index.php?id_product=80&controller=product

 No eta on that one, as I am working through the various armies first.  Bottom line is cool terrain can be fast and easy to construct.  The ramp was created in conjunction with the wall and earth mound, which is why it fits so well.  It was then cut into sections which the Romans (representing a Testudo around engineers) had to build, turn by turn, as the Dacains showered them with long range missile fire (Ballista), and then eventually arrows on the final approach.  The game was epic and drew quite a crowd whenever we ran it (there being many hill forts requiring reduction--and even one time the Dacians were the attackers, a la Trajan's column) but was quick and easy to game out thanks to the ultra fast playing TTS!

Anyway, I actually did pull out a full game of TTS! during a RP session, but we were so into it that I didn't take any pictures.  The action revolved around Prince Tarkalor, still merely a Prince, with his hero band, some Pol Joni acting as an honor guard, and the local Orlanthi militia putting down a broo incursion.  The players were shocked by the full game system laid out in front of them.  I made very minor modifications to the "hero" rules and each PC was a hero.  They wound up putting the storm bull bison rider PC's and the PC shaman with the Pol Joni, and rolled up a flank with repeated cavalry charges.  Meanwhile, they sent the Prince and his bodyguard straight into the center with reckless abandon -- "follow me! To Victory!", but didn't realize that in TTS! you might not get to move every unit.  The militia froze, and the Prince wound up surrounded on three sides, eventually punching his way completely through the filthy horde, only to turn around and charge them from the rear, shattering the Broo mobs when the militia finally engaged them from the front. 

Prince Tarkalor is now revered as a nearly King Arthur like figure by those players.  🙂   I have held back military heavy sessions since then, as I want them to be bigger and more epic when they happen, plus the players are off with more traditional "small scale" adventures. 

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To the Strongest!   A miniatures game for Ancients and Medieval warfare created by Simon Miller.  It is designed for convention games, so features lightning fast play, and supports very high concentration of troops without bogging down (hooray, double infantry lines finally!).   It is excellent, losing none of the period flavor while stripping the game system down to the essentials by eliminating both dice and measuring tape.  This was done because Simon noticed that the bulk of the time "playing" the very long historical games were spent either shaking, rolling, and chasing dice down, or carefully over-measuring some protractor angle for a charge.  

While not his current focus, Simon is a noted Glorantha-phile, and you can see quite a few Glorantha based miniatures on his blog: https://bigredbat.blogspot.com/
The name of the blog alone is a bit of a clue 🙂  I very much hope that his long awaited Fantasy rules set has a nod or two to Glorantha gaming, as opposed to cleaned up WFB type gaming, which Oathmark may have already cleaned up anyway.

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@Dissolv Thank you for the praise on the Walktapus conversion. The two figures by themselves were unremarkable when I saw them in a local game store, especially the D&D Stone Giant. I knew I could do something interesting with it and then saw the giant octopus... The colors I chose may not be "Chaos" (initial thoughts are black), but in my Glorantha I tend to choose unusual or garish colors for chaos beasts such as spots of hot pink. Chaos works that way, you know.

I'd love to see your GW Beastmen and Scorpionmen conversions. Please share photos.

I thought the photos of the ancients battle may have been set in Glorantha because of the photos with the earthen ramp and advancing battalion. When I saw the earthen ramp in one picture near the wall and then adjacent to the wall in the next picture I thought a Rune Lord was invoking Ernalda to build a ramp during the battle. 

I love the detailed explanations of the Runegate scenario and the other one with your Glorantha campaign players engaged in a miniatures battle along with their characters. This goes back to the early Arneson and Gygax days of our hobby.

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On 5/7/2020 at 5:00 PM, Oracle said:

Please enlighten the ignorant: What is TTS?

To add to replies already made, a miniatures game owing something to Commands & Colors ancients, except is based on a square grid rather than hexes, playing cards rather than special dice and cards and has more detailed troop types. An ECW version has appeared and others are promised. I already sourced some Dragon playing cards for when a Gloranthan suitable version appears!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169926/strongest

 

https://bigredbatshop.co.uk/pages/about-to-the-strongest

Neil

 

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Okay, so I started on the Lunar Hoplites.  First up are my versions of Beryl and Quartz Phalanxes.  I've got five additional Beryl (light blue scheme) Hoplites based individually.

Next up........What are you god of again?  Muwhahaha!

 

 

 

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He is the "Of Gods and Mortals" Zeus figure.  I saw him in my friendly local game store and snapped him up, but he's  still available.  60mm tall and easy to paint, the color scheme is right from the book, but he REALLY needed the light blue tattoo scheme to not look horrible.  

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1 hour ago, Dissolv said:

He is the "Of Gods and Mortals" Zeus figure.  I saw him in my friendly local game store and snapped him up, but he's  still available.  60mm tall and easy to paint, the color scheme is right from the book, but he REALLY needed the light blue tattoo scheme to not look horrible.  

@Dissolv I LOVE your Orlanth!

The Beryl and Quartz Phalanxes look great too. Are these Hoplite miniatures from the Victrix ancients line, or another manufacturer?

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Thanks!  I really appreciate the feedback.  😄 You can probably tell I was having fun with this one.

The Hoplites are indeed Victrix Spartans.  The sculpts are great, the price is excellent, and there is not "too much" detail on the figures -- sounds counter intuitive but figures fighting in formation with large shields often have most of the detail work totally obscured, mooting all the work you put into them.  The one downside of Victrix is that the plastic they use seems fragile -- I snapped the spear of one figure while just reaching over to pick him up.   Despite this, Victrix is still easily an A-, maybe more if you are basing and storing your miniatures as a unit, as I am.   I've got a set of "Athenian" Victrix Hoplites and some good looking shield decals, so the next set may or may not be as close to the canon description in "Armies and Enemies".

Based on a blogger's recommendation, I also ordered a box of Victrix's "Warriors of Carthage", but who knows when the heck that may get here, or what unit they will be used to represent.  I've still got plastic Persians (defunct Wargames Factory) and Arabs (Gripping Beast) in the closet anyway.  Lots of stuff to work up in front of them.  

 

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I've looked at Victrix's "Warriors of Carthage" set at a FLGS and have considered purchasing it. I may at some point, but I have such a large backlog of figures to assemble and paint that it may be a while before I make that purchase. I do have Victrix's Macedonian Greek Successor Heavy Cavalry set and will eventually use the set for Glorantha figures.

I just started a "quarantine-enforced" RQG game this week with two family members that is going very well. One day was for character creation. And we played through two sessions of The Broken Tower quick start. We're taking our time and adding in more details during the sessions, such as the encounter with Carthalo, where he enlightened the PCs about the cosmology of Glorantha in his mad and haphazard way while also adding in clues and details pertinent to the scenario.

We're continuing tonight.

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