More frugal monsters -- with bonus Rogue Trader content!

I've been to the zoo again, which means it's time for more cheap monsters from the zoo gift shop!

These plastic jellyfish are 40p each or 10 for £3.50 in the gift shop. Mount 'em on a length of floral wire, base them on a coin, cover the wire up with some foliage, and Bob's your uncle.

In the jungle ruins of the equatorial region, an Imperial officer and his Schweintruppen bodyguards
have a chance encounter with a stingpod.

I think they'll look great as juveniles of the larger floating space jellyfish critter I made from an ornament I found in a charity shop nearly a year ago.

Anyway, here's a writeup of these monsters for Rogue Trader, the first edition of Warhammer 40,000.

Stingpod

This lighter-than-air species is indigenous to Peterson's World. Typically found in schools of 1-2 adults and 2-6 juveniles, they drift across the landscape, paralysing prey with their stinging tentacles and consuming them. The gas that fills their lift sacs is highly combustible; ranchers and mine companies have encountered difficulties when stingpods collide with electrified fences or other energy barriers.

	M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
Adult	5	4	-	4	4	3	4	d3	8	2	8	8
Juvenile	5	3	-	3	3	1	4	1	8	2	8	8

On its first round of hand-to-hand combat, the stingpod attacks with its tentacles, attempting to incapacitate its prey. If successful, it will bite in subsequent rounds unless attacked by another opponent and driven off.

The lashing impact of a stingpod's tentacles inflicts no lasting harm, but causes overwhelming agony that can temporarily paralyse the victim. Each creature hit by a stingpod's tendrils must make a Cl test or be paralysed. It may test at the beginning of each of its turns to recover. 

When a stingpod is killed, there is a chance that its lift sac ruptures and combustible gas is released. Roll a d6: on a 6, the creature explodes like a grenade with S4, D1, -1 save, 1.5" radius. If the stingpod was killed with a las, auto, shuriken, bolt, power, or other similar weapon, it explodes on a 4+ . If it was killed with a flame, plasma, or melta weapon, it explodes automatically. 

Frugal gaming: more pound store monsters?

I was in London last weekend, and while waiting for the film I was going to see (Beyond the Gates, which my podcast co-host Jesse is in -- it's coming out in the US later this year and in the UK early next, so keep your eyes open) to start, I popped into a Poundworld (which I assume is a larger store composed of many smaller Poundlands). And I got some of these:

Ah, pound store toys. I got the Crashlings mainly because I thought I could do something with the meteors, but the little monsters are cool too. I thought the wrestlers might make a good source of parts for conversions. And I was happy to wager £2.

So here's what I got for my couple of quid:

These are the wrestlers. They are randomly packed, although I believe you can tell from the one on the front what faction the others in the pack will belong to. I think these ones are mutants, but there are also robots, insects, aliens etc.

They come in interchangeable parts, and I think the heads are particularly promising for conversions. I think that sludgey guy might actually wind up more or less unchanged in a game of Wasteman, which has that kind of horror-cartoon aesthetic already. And I do like models made of translucent plastic.

Here's one next to an em4 trooper -- as you can see, they're pretty big. I think they might have potential, particularly that sludge dude. Their backs aren't solid (because of the way they stick together) but I can probably putty them closed.

These are the asteroids. Sorry about the lighting, but you get the impression. The larger one is kind of rubbery and probably won't take paint well, but I think the little ones should be fine. I think they'll make fun terrain for Wasteman (again) or even Age of Sigmar, which has a crashed-meteor scenario. They're a little too cartoony for most space games, although I guess they might fit with the aesthetic of a game like War Rocket, which I don't play because I'm the kind of person who makes frugal gaming posts. If I ever win the lottery, though.

And here are the Crashlings. I think they look pretty OK, but I probably won't get much use out of most of them. I might use them as base decoration on Wasteman or Ork models (I guess some would be pretty nice squigs!). I will probably use the little king guy and the snail to his right, plus the meteors, so even though I don't want them all, that's still pretty good for a quid.

Frugal gaming: Dragonish

A long time ago I picked up this cheap plastic dragon toy at Poundland; it came in a pack of two for, y'know, £1. I didn't know what I was going to use it for, but I was pleased by its resemblance to Fin Fang Foom. 

Anyway, it lingered in a drawer for years until I finally decided to do something with it. I have a dragon-like monster coming up in my D&D game (not a dragon per se, but a creature that looks a bit like one), and dragon models are expensive, so I thought this stubby-winged abomination might do for it.

I did what I usually do with cheap plastic toys; mostly ignored its mould lines, gave it a bit of a scrub with washing-up liquid, let it dry, primed it with Halfords grey car primer, drybrushed it, coloured it with ink washes and filled in a few spot details. Here's the final result:

I don't know, I think it looks OK!

Frugal gaming: robots!

I was passing by The Works the other day, and I recalled that Lead Adventure Forum user MalcyBogaten -- a constant source of inspiration -- had mentioned there were some cool, cheap toys there that would make useful miniatures. So I grabbed a Teutans Surprise Bag, which contains two blind-packed little robot guys. 

They look pretty nice. If you want to spray-paint them, you can disassemble the guy on the left and pop out the lens and eye decoration so that you can just spray the plastic parts. The muzzles of the blasters on the guy on the right are translucentish blue plastic as well, although you can't really see it in the photo. The detail is pretty simple, but the sort of Superman-the-Animated-series design of the models makes that OK. I bet they are gonna paint up nice. I think they'll be fun antagonists, possibly for D&D but possibly also for a future post-apocalyptic game.

With Copplestone Castings adventurers for scale. As you can see, they're a bit bigger than the humans. 

And here with some old Chaos Marines for comparison. 

Frugal gaming: two, count 'em, two, pound store monsters!

Just over a year ago, I picked up this ogre-type model from a local Poundland. It's part of a line inexplicably called Journey to Creation or possibly Mythical Creatures. Anyway, it's your basic Poundland toy, seen here with Torchy the Torchbearer for scale.

I always planned to make a D&D monster out of it, but my PCs at the time weren't really at giant-fighting level, and would just run away anyway, so I shelved the project temporarily. That is, for a year. Anyway, for this week's game I decided I needed a tougher level of opposition, so out it came. I snipped off the pony tail, shortened the horn, glued the legs in place and crudely filled the gaps with epoxy putty. I trimmed the mould lines a bit, although they're still visible in places. I stuck it on a spare base from the Reaper Bones II Kickstarter.

Here you can see the model with modifications. I also scratch built a weapon out of a twig from the path outside the house, some lengths of jeweller's chain, beads, cocktail sticks and sticky gems for scrapbooking; the original one a) didn't give a good sense of hugeness, and b) stunk. I also added some sand to the base and a little skeleton just for variety.

I sprayed the whole thing with Halford's grey car primer, then drybrushed up with cheap grey craft paint and Vallejo Medium Sea Grey. I painted it with thinned-down washes of various inks including Army Painter Strong Tone and VMC Russian Uniform.

Here he is in progress. As you can see, there's actually some OK detail on the toy, just obscured by its original crappy paint job. Here is the finished product, complete with weapon and some adventurers for scale.

Total cost: toy £1, twig free, chain maybe like 50p, beads about 20p, shield maybe 10p ... call the whole thing £2. The model's not perfect, and with more time I could have dealt with the mould lines better, but for £2 and a few evenings' work I'm calling it good.

This next model started life as a dinosaur skeleton I got for something like 30p from an Animix pick-and-mix box in a zoo gift shop. I thought he might make a fun opponent but that he needed something extra. I stuck him on a spare Renedra base I picked up at SELWG a couple years ago; I had spares after basing some mortars.

 I crudely sculpted some claws for him, then added a skeleton rider; the rider was part of a job lot of Warhammer Tomb Kings models I picked up in a charity shop years ago. I sold the character ones to recoup the cost, so honestly he was basically free.

I primed the whole megillah with Army Painter coloured primer:

Then just drybrushed up from a mixture of VMC US Field Drab and Ivory to pure Ivory.

Did the spear in bronze, painted the shield and Bob's your uncle.

Total cost: dino < 50p, skeleton basically free but we'll call it 10p, shield maybe 10p (I got a whole pack of them for £1) ... let's say less than £1 all told. It makes me want to play a fantasy wargame just so I can field a whole unit of these magnificent bastards. I might even make the future ones proper saddles and so on.

I used them in my D&D game, and the giant got walloped when the team's Eldritch Knight used her patented Gust of Wind rocket-jump to get up onto his shoulders and cave his melon in with her warhammer. The skeleton dinosaur fared a little better, but they both got a positive reaction from the players which is what I was hoping for.

The frugal gamer strikes again.

I never post about my D&D campaign

I mean, I post about campaign setting stuff, and I sometimes post about rules or products I buy. But I seldom post about how the game is going.

Good. It's going good. 

Early in the game, the PCs' strong motivation to get the hell out of an area before their misdeeds caught up with them meant that sandboxy investment seldom paid off, but it's starting to now; they've just been back to the same port for the third time, only to find that they have to deal with the consequences of their previous shenanigans. In this particular case, they need to steal an artefact from the local thieves' guild (or "the mob" as I like to think of it) in order to present the cabal of warlocks the thieves want to sell it to from discovering that it is a forgery, passed off by the PCs months before after they gave the real one to a cackling old hag. This is, by the way, not my idea at all -- they were inspired to do it as a way of getting out of trouble. 

Also, combat continues to have frantic action feeling and I continue to use car-boot-sale toys as representations in addition to lovingly-painted figures. 

Sharks, water elementals, fishmen, pirates, treasure ...
just another day on the high seas.

Yet MORE more frugal gaming: armour support!

Frugal gaming is good for more than just terrain and monsters. Let's take a look at some armoured vehicles I bashed together for my Neo-Soviet figures, who do double duty as the Planetary Defense Force in my Petersen's World Warhammer Sorta Thousand setting.

The first vehicle is a little tracked rocket launcher vehicle, based on a Robogear "Varan" model. Here's what it looked like when I got it off eBay at like £8 for a dozen vehicles. The driver would normally sit in that little hatch at the front, looking a bit (but just a bit) oversized for 28mm and, perhaps more importantly, completely stupid with his head sticking out at chest height.

Sorry about the lighting. GW Space Marine for scale. 

I added a canopy thing made of scrap card and an armoured slit thing from a broken Poundland army toy. I picked up a cheap 40K tank driver from Lead Adventure and then stuck on a spare Warzone assault rifle that was kicking around my bits box.

Then I slapped some paint on it: 

The heavily-armoured Guards models are Fantasian Stormtroopers from the old Legions of Steel game.
They were another cheap swap from the Lead Adventure Forum, I believe.

The rank-and-file are from Copplestone Castings.

I haven't given much thought to a background for this vehicle other than that welding two whacking great launch rails to a wee little tractor is exactly the kind of thing that the cash-starved, bomb-happy forces of planetary despot Viktor Glushin would do. Also, beause it started life as a Robogear toy, it does actually fire little plastic spring-loaded missiles.

Next up is the Lancer, known to Glushin's people as a "light tank," which is a nice way of saying "piece of junk." Underpowered and undergunned, the Lancer is dead meat on any real battlefield, but the Petersen's World forces were able to pick up a load of them cheap -- and why not? When you're up against no more than native rebels with antiquated small arms and swords or rioting mobs of disgruntled workers, the fact that you have a tank at all can make a big difference. 

The Lancer started life as one of a big bag of plastic army vehicles I got in a charity shop. You can get the originals for a couple of bucks. Mine cost less than that. I snipped off the gun and stuck on a long, slender weapon from a Robogear model (from the same eBay bulk buy that got me the Varan), with a pair of cut-down surplus weapons from the Wargames Factory greatcoated shock troops. The MG on the front came from a Secrets of the Third Reich model I picked up in the discount bin at the Orc's Nest, while the sensor doodad on the top is a bit from some GW kit or other. I suppose it should be green too, but I was getting bored. The exposed tracks got some crude armor cut out from layers of card. If I had that to do again, I would use something else -- it's a bit too obviously stuck on. I also created card panels to cover the fact that the chassis is hollow. The Neo-Sov theme is completed by a WWII Russian aeroplane decal and a hand-painted patriotic slogan.

So yeah, it doesn't look too great, but it was still about £2 all told, so I can hardly complain. 

As a tip: if you want to make one of these, you have to scrub the hell out of the plastic to make it take paint well. I think I actually sanded mine. In the end, that was probably unnecessary, but I didn't want to take the risk of that plastic shedding the paint.

Yet more frugal gaming: more poundstore monsters!

I popped into Poundland on Tuesday and emerged with some cheap plastic toys. For a long time I've been avoiding buying these guys because they're pretty big, but my D&D campaign is getting to the level where they're going to be beating up on ogres and trolls and stuff and maybe there'll be more demons and things later on. So I decided to pick up a few huge dudes. They're sold under the name “Journey to Creation” and I think they might actually look OK with a coat of paint on 'em. We'll see. Here they are, seen with D&D campaign regular Torchy the Torchbearer.

I think the sculpting is actually not bad here. 

Blargh!

I also picked up this bad boy on the left, who is a cyborg dinosaur. I think that his neck should be just narrow enough that I can get a pair of legs around it and build him a rider. I'll probably never be able to use it, but it'll still be pretty badass. The guy on the right is an earlier Poundland find.

However, I don't like the horns. I may have to do something with those.  

Trip report: SELWG

This past Sunday, pal Chris (of new steampunk fiction blog Dreadnaughts and Dragons) and I went to the annual SELWG wargames show at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in London. And it was pretty good!

I got some stuff -- nothing too exciting if you're not me, I guess. I'm mainly on this SAGA kick right now, and I got some Conquest Games Norman knights, discount Foundry Vikings (£8 for 10 figures, which is pretty good, especially for Foundry) and a Norman church from Timeline Miniatures, which is going to be a little 11th-c church for my Anglo-Saxon setting. No double-arch windows, but it'll do. With its later medieval crenellated top, it will also be the village church in my Strange Aeons games. I will be doing a more detailed blog on building and painting this. And I can use the last of my Renedra gravestones to give it a little detachable cemetery.

I also picked up a few bargains at the Bring and Buy, including this:

Compendium for £5? Well, all right. 

And from another trader, I picked up a copy of the Havok starter set for £1. I only became aware of this game recently -- it was a little game with plastic figures and stat cards and stuff, and it was one of those early attempts (1996, I think?) to do a totally-integrated game, where each figure comes with the rules for it. Mainly I got it out of curiosity, and for the robots! It has big stompy robots.

They are pretty stompy!

And of course there were games to see and participate in. 

Deal Wargames Society presented this Vietnam game in (I think) 15mm. I think my favourite thing about it was the little touches, from black-suited CIA agents stopping a car to villagers working in rice paddies. There were also some nice aircraft models, giving the game a multi-level appeal.

I really liked this rocket launch from Loughton Strike Force's "Hill 112" Normandy 1944 game.

Peter Pig were running a demo game (PBI, I think?). The thing I really liked about it was that the roads, ground colours and even some of the small terrain features like walls and haystacks were painted or mounted on the inside of this collapsing table. The trees and buildings were then added separately. If you look at the middle, you can see that it's hinged, sort of like a wallpapering table if the folding edge were the long edge. I thought that was a pretty cool idea. 

Southend Wargames Club did this "Talavera, but not as we know it" battle set in 1709. I really liked the fields, roads, and hills, which I felt were really lifelike. The makers informed me that they had actually chosen the terrain based on what was known to be planted in the fields around Talavera. That's more effort than I want to go to, but just varying the crops and patterns certainly makes the ground look very natural. 

GLC wargames club put on this Siege of Madrid game, featuring lots of MDF terrain -- the lightness of this material means nice tall buildings at a reasonable cost, and it really works well for an era like this one, where you have rendered walls and tall buildings. The added banners give it period flavour. I liked the command vignette, complete with Soviet military advisers. 

More MDF terrain on display in this participation tourney game of Crossed Lances. A big ring for the melee, lists, stands, archery butts ... it was pretty complete. We played a game of this. We also got to play in a chariot-racing game hosted by Crawley Wargames Club. Like all good participation games, there were hats: 

Chris models the latest in auriga fashions.

On the starting line. 

Chris at the end of turn one. 

Me, halfway through the last lap. 

     This was a great little participation game, with much reckless driving, breathless anticipation of cards turning over and applause when a young player took the victory and was rewarded with a free figure. 

I also picked up some free 15 mm sci-fi models from the Ground Zero Games stand, and Chris very generously gave me his. They will go into the 15 mm sci-fi pile, which is very definitely a project for next year, after the Vikings and the Normans and the 1/72 Romans and maybe some more Cthulhu stuff and then there will be the Reaper kickstarter arriving and and and ... 

Overall, I didn't do too badly. My painting score took a pretty nasty hit, but nothing I can't fix in a couple of weeks. I bought things I wanted, but other than the Havok box, which was a one-quid impulse buy, I don't think I bought anything I won't use or at least read. I even had a few pounds left at the end to put back in my conscience-free go-ape-shit-at-conventions tin.