D&D Pig Faced Orcs

 

Warmaster Empire Halberdiers

 

D&D Pig-faced Orc Shaman by Otherworld Minis

 

Warmaster Pistoliers

 

Sketch of Owl's Head, Maine

 

Bolt Action at the Pint and Pawn

We played some Bolt Action at the Pint and Pawn in Biddeford, Maine. I played my British Airborne vs Derek's Soviets. It was super fun, I'm always impressed with how fun Bolt Action is to play. 

Warhammer: The Old World Empire Greatsword

 

        

I bought this model in high school in 2005, it was so fun to paint. I was really impressed with the quality of the model, and how everything was "to scale" and mostly historically accurate. It is amazing to reflect on how far Games Workshop has come in 20 years - their models are now out of scale and make no attempt at realism. 

For me, the best part of Warhammer used to be the contrast between the "over the top" armies and the more realistic armies: most Empire models wouldn't have looked out of place in a Landsknecht army, and they were fighting with trolls, skaven, and zombies. 

That was such a winning combination, and you could tell that Rick Priestly et al. were real history buffs. Given the popularity of Total War: Warhammer, I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way!

Landsknechts

Warhammer 40k: Nurgle Demons vs Necrons

 

My friend Elias and I played a game of Warhammer 40K at 1,000 points at the Pint and Pawn. He played his Necrons and I played my Nurgle Demons. It was a fun game, we ended up calling it at turn 4; the Nurgle Demons were running away with it based on the scenario scoring due to early board control. 

Despite the early end, there were a bunch of fun moments, including a Monolith vs Great Unclean One fight. 

Setting up for deployment

Demon Prince Gets Obliterated

Monolith vs Great Unclean One

Monolith Destroyed

Moon in the Fog

 

I took this photo at 5:20am as the moon was setting on Boxing Day. It was incredibly bright despite the fog. 

Quick Watercolor Sketch

 

This was a 10 minute timed pencil and watercolor sketch I did at the Portland Drawing Group. 

Perry Miniatures Mounted Samurai

 

Otherworld Minis D&D Hill Giant for Old School Essentials

 

Hill Giant

Hill Giant Back

Old School Essentials House Rules

Overview

These are my OSE house rules that I've developed over the last few years. My general philosophy is to change as little as possible to the original BX rules, while making them clearer. Most of these came up in actual play, and we wrote down the resolution as a house rule. All page numbers are referenced to the Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome.

Advanced Optional Rules

• Character creation method will be the “Basic Method” on pg. 16
• All combat rules on pg. 224/5 except “Missile Attacks on Targets in Melee”
• “Secondary Skills” on pg. 25
• “Casters and Staves” for casting classes
• “Limits on turning the undead” on pg. 111
• “Advanced Spell Book Rules” on pg. 112
• “Basic Encumbrance” on pg. 203

Combat

• Generally we’ll use the optional individual initiative rules for combat
• Some more complex combats will use the group initiative rules
• In each round of combat a character can move and take one action, in any order
• This action can be attacking, drinking a potion, casting a spell, shooting a bow, grappling an opponent, etc.
• Critical hits do double damage, fumbles fight last next round

Skill Checks

• All characters can sneak, climb, etc, with an ability check
• If an ability check is opposed, roll as normal with a penalty equal to the opponent’s attack bonus
• Thief-like skills are preternatural abilities that are rolled to avoid an ability check
• e.g. when sneaking the thief can roll their percentile “move silently” check to sneak past an opponent
• if they fail they roll an opposed DEX ability check as normal

Arcane Casters

• Learning a found spell takes one night, with a chance of failure as per the advanced spellbook rules
• If the attempt fails, the caster can’t learn the spell from that source, but could try again from a different source
• Any spells can be learned via the “creating new spells” magical research rules, including ones that already exist in the game’s spell lists

Rations

• Rations last for 7 days before going rancid, whereas iron rations last forever
• Edible monsters can be butchered into 1d6 rations per hit die

Experience Points

• The DM will award XP at the end of every session for treasure recovered, monsters defeated, and carousing 
• Monsters and treasure XP are as per the normal rules, except all characters get the full amount of XP earned
• Carousing is awarded for spending gold on non-adventuring activities (e.g. building a temple, throwing a massive party, erecting a statue in your own honor, etc.)

Magic Items

• Magic items that require activation, and don’t have a persistent effect, can be activated with an action
• Magic item use can’t be interrupted in the way that spells can, and their use doesn’t need to be declared before rolling initiative

Death

• When a character has 0 hp or less, they roll a death save
• If they pass, reset their hp to 1
• If they fail, they die

To The Strongest! at 10mm Scale

Some friends and I ran a fictional War of the Roses battle, with York and Scottish vs Lancaster. For the Lancaster army we used my friend's army he had painted as Tyrell's for Game of Thrones. 

It was a blast, I forget how much I enjoy To The Strongest! 

The Lancasters crushed the Yorkists, but it was still fun. I'll follow up with another post on what I think about the To The Strongest! rules set. 

Bones of the Head

 

Pen and Ink Quick Sketches

 

These are 20 minute sketches from life from last nights drawing group. 

Otherworld Miniatures Weasels

 

I'm running an Old School Essentials campaign at my friend's board game bar, The Pint and Pawn in Biddeford, ME. 

For this campaign, I'm painting every model that the players will fight or interact with. We play once a month, so that gives me time to order the models needed for the game and paint them. I'm also home-brewing everything, so I can just make sure they are only going to encounter creatures that I already have models for!

The models I'm using are from Otherworld Miniatures, and the quality on them is frankly outstanding. They have literally any models you'd want for an old school D&D campaign, and they are very high quality sculpts. 

I've been painting models since I was 12, and these are some of the highest quality fantasy sculpts I've ever seen. Games Workshop has higher quality sculpts, but they are out of scale, have giant weapons, etc.

On top of the sculpt quality, the models are understated in a way that is very hard to find now. Most models designed for D&D today look like a World of Warcraft character (giant armor, huge weapons, etc.) These models look like they could have been historical models (they have accurate proportions, the female models have realistic armor, etc.) I'm hoping to buy and paint a whole set for old school D&D as an ongoing project. 

Learning to Draw and Paint

3 hour oil study on Islesboro, ME

I've been learning to draw and paint for the last two years, despite starting from nothing. I started because I wanted to get better at freehand and color for miniatures painting. In retrospect, I wish I took every art class I could in high school and college, what a waste of credits!

It has definitely helped in those areas - it has also really helped with placing highlights on models. I have a way better understanding of where to place highlights than I did before I started. 

I go to a weekly figure drawing group, and I've been going through George Bridgeman's Complete Drawing from Life. I also did about 6 months of the Natural Way to Draw. 

2 hour study in oil

10 minute pen drawings from life

Drawings from Bridgeman

Otherworld Minis Ghoul

 I play a lot of OSE, and I've slowly been painting up models for it. My group plays online, and we meet up once a year to play in person with models.