Purplebeard's Warhammer Quest Stuff

[Purplebeard]

Hi everyone.

I have been really inspired by some of the threads on here and have decided to start my own WHQ-only thread. The aim of this thread is to share random thoughts/rules ideas about WHQ, and to share pics from my collection (both newly-painted figures and battle-scenes/game-scenes) since the internet is relatively lacking in WHQ pics. I'm also going to start my own fansite shortly, so I will use this as a testing ground for ideas.

Anyway, to start off, I did a huge photography session the other day (of both Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer Quest stuff), and took some mocked up pics of WHQ battle scenes. I'm planning to use these on the website when I get it done.

I mocked up some Warhammer Quest battle scenes with painted models. The aim of this is to get photos/material for the hobby site I plan to start soon. It is an ambition I have had for years and I'm finally in a position to make it happen this year, though it will be a lot of work.

Orc Encounter



Barbarian versus a terrible Troll - and the Snotlings pile in! At the same time, the Elf staves off the wicked Orc warriors.



Orcs pour through the door



Trolls head for the door, watched by their Shaman master



Wolves hungry for tasty wizard meat (yum). Only the stout Dwarf stands in their way.



The Wizard leads bravely from the rear

Hope you like my pics. I've set up some more encounters to show off my recently completed figures (undead, etc). I will share these soon.

[Necanthrope]

Looking good Purplebeard!
It's always nice to see some painted quest stuff, and your painting looks very dramatic.

[Nachie]

Excellent! Please keep posting, this is the best game GW ever produced, hands down.

[Purplebeard]

Replies:

@Necanthrope: Thank you. I think it looks pretty good from a distance, the high contrast from the colours creates the 'dramatic' effect, and it isn't too hard to do.

@Nachie: I loved WHQ when it came out. One of the best presents I have ever been given. I didn't have too much as a kid but I did manage to get the big games - Heroquest, Battlemasters, Dark World, and WHQ. I now wish I hadn't sold on 90% of the stuff I used to have!



Just a few WHQ bits I've done recently. I held the pics back until now so that I could get through the Dwarf stuff.

Mummy (from Heroquest)


Skeleton Warriors


Skeleton Archers


Wolves

The Mummy and some of the skeletons were more-or-less doen a while back, but I added a few more in. The swan transfers are from the medieval range at Veni Vidi Vici, and they are barely noticeable in real life (oh well). The colour scheme for the wolves was copied from an old Vampire Counts army book, and I'm not fully happy with it, but it'll do I guess.

Now, working on wolves got me thinking about monsters and substitutes. Wolf models can easily be plain wolves, Dire Wolves (for undead), or Chaos Hounds, for example. A Griffon could easily be a stand-in for a Hippogriff. IMHO, a Manticore could be a decent stand-in for a Lammasu, etc. Maybe armoured goblins could stand in for Hobgoblins, at a push. Of course, anything can stand in for a higher level version of itself - eg. an Orc could easily be an Orc Warboss.

I'm thinking of compiling a list of 'suggested reasonable substitutes' for budget &/or time conscious collectors, since collecting everything would be a monumental task. I know that this the subject of 'suitability' is entirely subjective in this context, so that's why I have labelled the list as 'suggested' stand-ins.

Do you have any thoughts or entries you could add?

[Necanthrope]

Not so much stand ins as cheap miniatures, but i'm using a lot of battle masters stuff in my dungeon.

[Purplebeard]

Yeah - that's great. I had Battlemasters. I wish I'd never sold off all the figures

That's really good. There are loads of old figures that can do the job cheaply - the Heroquest stuff, Battlemasters, Dark World, and I've heard that there are some more fantasy figure tabletop/board games from around the same time too.

That's part of what I'm aiming for - on the one hand, to maybe do an article about getting hold of cheap figures, and on the other, to look at suggested substitutes and stand-ins.

I guess that they are both sides of the same coin - getting people big collections of painted figures cheaply & quickly, so they can get playing!

[Necanthrope]

The way I am doing it is to collect one battle level at a time. So far I have almost all of battle level one, I just need some ghouls, zombies, and hobgoblins.

I'm converting some centaurs from chaos knight bodies and a few chaos archers from Battle Masters. I was using all the monsters from dark world, but most of these are now replaced with GW miniatures. I'm still using the Dark world orcs as hobgoblins.

Battle Masters givers you an ogre, lots of goblins, lots of orcs, some beastmen, some chaos warriors,a few chaos knights, some chaos archers, and goblin wolf riders. All of these are being used in my dungeon, with the exception of the cavalry. You also get a lot of empire stuff in Battle Masters. It is available on eBay for pretty cheap.

Dark World can still be found on eBay, but people often try to sell it for more than it is worth. I got mine for less than 10 pounds including delivery. I wouldn't have wanted to pay more than 20.
In Dark World you get: Four adventurers( a dwarf, a ranger, a barbarian, and an elf), and a selection of weapons for them, 4 skeletons, 2 mummies, 8 orcs, 3 ogres, a manticore, and a chaos sorceror. It also has a few treasure chests, some nice dungeon doors, and a really good 3-d temple than you could use as an objective room.
The quality of the miniatures is pretty low, but they are usable.

Island of blood should also get a mention, the sheer volume of skaven in that box for a mere sixty quid is a real bargain. Clanrats, stormvermin (clanrats with spears), rat ogres, weapons teams and characters. It's a steal. And, you can take the swordmaster champion and use him as an elf ranger or revenant knight. The griffon can be used in latter games, and you can convert the rest of the high elves to dark elves by just using a dark colour scheme.

I've not got any myself, but mantic game do a great range of undead in big boxes for low prices. They also have abyssal dwarves that would be great subs for chaos dwarves. And it looks like they will be doing dark elves at some point too.

For Warriors, I don't think you can beat Avatars of war. They are not too expensive and the quality is really good. They have a great variety too, with something to represent almost every warrior available.

[Hellebore]

Great set there.

I'm collecting as much as I can right now too, except I have 3 basic requirements I'm sticking to:

All metal
Cheap
Not GW

Currently I haven't found any metal chaos dwarf equivalents, but I have 9 blunderbuss models that were given to me years ago so technically I have't bought them...

I've been scouring random mini companies looking for appropriate substitutes to the creatures in the book. I've bought from West Wind, Foundry, Reaper and just placed a large order with Black Tree Designs as they currently have a 50% off infantry and free shipping sale and when your infantry normally cost 4.99 GBP for 3, that's an insanely good deal. Plus they are the only people I could find that sold ratmen.

Hellebore

[S_A_T_S]

Great to see a fully painted WHQ set up. My friends and I got back into it last year, but our GM (who owns almost all the stuff) just doesn't "do" painting. On the flip side, now he has finished fixing up his house, he does seem to spend all his disposable income on minis for it, so at least we have models for everything!

I'm going with Necanthrope for Mantic - they are excellent models for the price you pay, and as you aren't going to be using them that much, it's not worth paying a lot. We also use Heroquest stuff, as well as random bits off eBay. Our GM got a D&D cockatrice from the net - it's tiny (large squig size), but that just adds to the humour, and it's pre-painted, which in our group is obviously a plus. He's also got some scorpions and other bits and bobs from the D&D range, they aren't too shabby.

I've taken it on myself to put together a selection of heroes, as I think that is the one part you really should be careful with and paint nicely. I love Avatars of War (the witch hound is the best witchhunter model available from what I can see and their trollslayer is amazing, thick and bulky, seems just more... solid than GW's) but their barbarian looked too camp and static for me, so I found a Reaper Minis evil mercenary - much better! A good price too, so have a look at them. For my own set of WHQ, I'm sticking with rebuilding the basic boxset from scratch and I found this and this for my mini beasts. Decent size, and less than £10 delivered from US. I use the larger models as fillers, as it's very rare you can fit 12 spiders in a ring around the warriors without some trailing back down a corridor. The GW bat swarm (in metal when I bought it...) was also a good deal, as you get some solid metal bats of different heights and wing spans for a reasonable price. All you need to add are the 20mm bases...

[Nachie]

Did you do anything special to re-base those HQ minis, or just cut away the old base, file down the bottoms of the feet, and glue them to the slottabases?

[Purplebeard]

@Necanthrope: Of course there are all the old WFB editions 4th (HE vs. Goblins), 5th (Brets vs. Lizardmen) 6th (Empire vs. Orcs) and 7th (Dwarfs vs. Goblins) too. And the 4e/5e (mostly) monopose plastics. They can be picked up pretty cheap. The Centaur conversion is a great idea btw.

@Hellebore: Your requirements are quite high! But best of luck. There are some awesome metal figures around from alt makers like Otherworld and Ultraforge. I would like to add that there are some nice old school figures available from Mirliton (Grenadier dragons) and Grendel (huge leviathan monsters - but they're resin :S).

@S_A_T_S: Yep, there are painters and gamers. I am more of a painter; I just don't have access to get out to games atm, and I've just finished uni (so looking for work). I don't buy much new stuff myself - I go for collections or junk lots and pick out what I want, generally. Then I sell the rest on. It can take a long time, but it is a really cheap way to collect.

@Nachie: You've got it spot on. I just hacked chopped away the base around the feet (carefully - it is easy to snap the legs of the skeletons). Then the plastic under the feet was more carefully trimmed (though leaving a little bit on), and I hid as much of the base tab as possible with basing material. I didn't use a file, just clippers.

[Hellebore]

@Hellebore: Your requirements are quite high! But best of luck. There are some awesome metal figures around from alt makers like Otherworld and Ultraforge. I would like to add that there are some nice old school figures available from Mirliton (Grenadier dragons) and Grendel (huge leviathan monsters - but they're resin :S).

Thanks for the tips. I admit my standards are a little restrictive but they have generated a far greater appreciation for miniature companies out there. By forcing myself to look everywhere I've discovered some really great stuff. Like West Wind's orcs. Those guys are huge almost black orc sized and 11GBP for 10 is a pretty awesome deal.

For large monsters I don't mind resin, as their size gives them the same kind of heft metal has.

Now all I need to do is paint the lot. You've set the bar wonderfully high.

Hellebore

[Daniel36]

Giving the doorways a paintjob does so much to the tiles. Pretty amazing.

[Necanthrope]

One thing I'm surprised so few people do is to colour the edges of the boards black with a marker or paint. I say it to lots of people, and it makes a huge difference when you play the game. IMO doing the board edges and painting the dungeon doors is the biggest single thing you can do to enhance the look of your WHQ set.

[Hellebore]

I'm just bypassing that and going straight to the 3d terrain.

Hellebore

[S_A_T_S]

I didn't bother with any of this and just printed all the tiles onto card then laminated them. Saves me £200 odd compared to buying from eBay. Would look better with doors, but can always make a mould off the GM's set...

[Purplebeard]

@Hellebore: Yep -I should clarify that only the Grendel stuff is resin - the Mirliton stuff isn't. I did not know that you could 10 for £11 on West Wind Orcs, that sounds like a sweet deal.


@Daniel36: Thanks. I always ignored it when people said that until recently, but now I have to agree. I know that there are plnety of painters out there who are a lot better than me, but I am really happy with the results on the doorways.


@Necanthrope: I promise I will get a black marker pen and do the edges, ASAP. I've painted half the dungeon doors, so I'm part way there I guess.


@Hellebore: Cool. Daemonslave's log is a good place to look. There was also a nice dungeon in Deathblow 2 (by a fella called Andy Judson), it was 3D but built up on card, so you could still slot the rooms together with the doors. The effect was great, and I think that it would be a bit more achievable for novice modellers/terrain buiders (like me) than some of the other stuff I've seen. I'm focusing on getting monsters (and the last few heroes) done for now.

Or you could cast everything up in moulds from kits. That would be easier but more expensive.

And there is another fella who had a log on here, and he was in Deathblow, I think. I will post the link when I get hold of it.


@S_A_T_S: Good plan. It should be pretty quick too. There are some good sites with new copyright free boards created by fans. The quality is variable but there are some good ones. I have a load on my computer; I want to print them off and laminate them like you suggest. Oh, and there are shedloads of floorplans/boards for other games like Advanced Heroquest and D&D available on eBay etc.

[Purplebeard]

These are the threads. They're oldies, but goodies!


Cyrus' threads

Cyrus' Warhammer Quest All Monsterlevels Madness
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=240866

Cyrus' WHQ 3D Dungeon
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105617

Enjoy!

[Hellebore]

@Hellebore: Yep -I should clarify that only the Grendel stuff is resin - the Mirliton stuff isn't. I did not know that you could 10 for £11 on West Wind Orcs, that sounds like a sweet deal.

However they are lead based if that matters. I used to buy lead based models from GW in the early 90s when I was 12 so I don't think I'd be more likely to poison myself NOW at 30. Thus I bought them. They also fit my criteria to a T. I bought a regiment of swordsmen and bowmen and then a command pack (which has 4 models in it) allowing me to make 2 groups of 12 for the all important dice rolls.

Black Tree Designs also have a huge range of stuff that looks like GW's stuff from the 90s. They're the only guys I found that sell ratmen and currently they're selling 3 infantry for 2.75GBP iirc (they're 50% off their normal price) and they have free shipping. They've got tonnes of monsters, undead etc if you're interested.

@Hellebore: Cool. Daemonslave's log is a good place to look. There was also a nice dungeon in Deathblow 2 (by a fella called Andy Judson), it was 3D but built up on card, so you could still slot the rooms together with the doors. The effect was great, and I think that it would be a bit more achievable for novice modellers/terrain buiders (like me) than some of the other stuff I've seen. I'm focusing on getting monsters (and the last few heroes) done for now.

Or you could cast everything up in moulds from kits. That would be easier but more expensive.

And there is another fella who had a log on here, and he was in Deathblow, I think. I will post the link when I get hold of it.

Yeah I've got a tonne of hirstarts molds I bought for a Mordheim project a few years ago. We've been using those.


Now come on and finish your stuff so I feel like I need to do mine!

Hellebore

[Purplebeard]

@Hellebore: Thanks for the heads-up, I've had a look and there is some nice stuff from BTD. They have a shed-load of furniture/fixtures/fittings which would be great for dungeoncrawl games. I'm going to go back today and have a really good look though.


@Necanthrope: Good news! I have located a marker pen in the house and I'm going to do the edges of my boards today!

P.S. You won't often hear/read me saying that I'm going to do something today, so relish it


I have been busy this week and have got some Undead done:

Skeleton Horsemen (transfers by Veni Vidi Vici)


WHQ Bats


Heroquest Zombie


Undead Group Shot

And this fella...

Orc Arrer Boy

I like the Undead, they are quick and easy to paint, which for me is a good thing. The Orc was quite a lot of fun too - he only needed a simple paint job. I'm going to follow through with a bold red/yellow/black colour scheme on all my O&G.


QUESTING


Yesterday, I also ran my first quest for a long, long time. We took a new bunch of warriors, drew the Tomb Chamber and the 'Destroy the Idol' quest, and set a new band of novice warriors (Zzap the Wizard, Ragnar the Barbarian, Myzhor the Dwarf, and Eaglecry the Elf) cheerfully off into the dungeons.

Of course, it started quietly and innocently enough, with a long string of boring stairways and passageways.

After ages of mind-numbing passageways, the warriors got to the Guard Room and encountered an Ogre (not exactly easy pickings). Ragnar incompetently fumbled and failed to hit the thing, and the Elf only caused a few wounds. The Ogre smashed Ragnar with his mace, knocking him down to 0 wounds.

We knew it would be one of those adventures when the mighty wizard strode up and felled him with one swift blow. Zzap promptly resurrected the Barbarian. Ragnar, as leader, bravely kept the resulting Treasure Card for himself, a Lucky Talisman.

Then the warriors entered the Torture Chamber, triggering an event. A portcullis dropped behind them, blocking their escape. At the same time, a horde of Orcs (11) rushed them. The warriors fought bravely and cut a few down, and the Orcs dealt out some wounds in return.

The next turn came. The Wizard rolled the power dice, and it came up as a '1'. An event card was drawn - monsters - so we rolled on the L1 Monster Table - and got the dreaded 66. So we rolled again - and came up with 5 Plaguebearers.

Things promptly got worse. Ragnar the incompetent Barbarian missed left, right, and centre, and got taken to 0 wounds once more, but the Elf's Healing Potion saved him. Zzap the Wizard slaughtered the hapless Orcs in a series of impressive Deathblows, and even managed to drop a couple of Plaguebearers into a Pit of Despair. Myzhor and Eaglecry fought bravely, but were isolated in a corner, and had little part to play.

A foul Orc managed to catch Zzap unaware, and dispatched the poor Wizard. Ragnar fell soon after. Eaglecry and Myzhor leapt into combat, but it was a case of too little, too late. With no healing and few wounds left, the horde of green monsters swiftly overcame them. Eaglecry fell to a Plaguebearer, leaving Myzhor to fight alone.

Then all was darkness.


NOTES:

Using the D66 Tables on the 1st adventure was a really bad idea. That, combined with the atrocious luck of the warriors and the Wizard's 'iffy' spells (Pit of Despair, Rebound, Resurrection), left the warriors in serious trouble.

I'll give the warriors chance to come back and try a different adventure, but just using the card deck instead of the tables for the first adventure or two. I don't recommend using the Tables for your first adventure, at any rate!