Godsworn Us, Every One

These were painted up to be Christmas presents, so hopefully I can post them here without spoiling the surprise!

(the average age of the recipients is 6, so they're not among our regular readership!)

Lunchtime HeroQuest #4 - Prince Magnus' Gold

A bank heist! Our heroes must traverse narrow corridors and recover three chests of gold from Gulthor, the Chaos Warrior.

The wounds tally up as the adventurers get singled out - will adversity forge them into a team?

All this, and more, on another exciting Lunchtime HeroQuest!...

Lunchtime HeroQuest #3 - Lair of the Orc Warlord

Warlord Ulag, captor of the aforementioned Sir Ragnar, has been marked for death and four dead-eyed assassins are sent into the dungeons to sanction him.

Will the Barbarian ever get ahead of the others? Will the Dwarf get a refund on his spear? Will the little Dungoneers get ice cream before 3pm?

All this, and more, on another exciting Lunchtime HeroQuest!...

Lunchtime HeroQuest #2 - The Rescue of Sir Ragnar

So much for HeroQuest as a semi-regular feature ... Sir Ragnar's been down there so long, he's developed Stockholm Syndrome.

The camera work was worse than usual, the protagonists kept swapping accents, someone came to buy a sofa in the middle of the quest, and one side of the Skype conversation had to content with two little dungeoneers.

If you've ever laboured under the delusion that wargaming was incompatible with parenthood, then watch on...

Lunchtime HeroQuest #1 - The Maze

I'm putting this one under the category of 'why didn't we think of this before?'

Read on, stranger...

Trick or Trick

Happy Halloween! Here's a selection of appropriately spooky models, freshly raised from the dead painted for your delectation.

Wooooo! Scaaaaaaaary!

...and the Predictable

The poor old Gargoyle from Heroquest, lord love it. A well-intentioned model that hasn't really stayed abreast of current monsters. Still, it's a good sculpt at heart.

Guess who's back? 

...The Bad...

Right, that's more than enough sickly goodies.

Stripes are slimming, you know.

Bad Guys

Someone asked me something the other day that I didn't have a ready answer for.

"Kraken," they asked me, inexplicably using my internet alias in an actual conversation, "in all the many wargames, roleplaying games and related hobby nonsense that you play, you always go for the bad guys. Why is that?"

"Don't ask me difficult questions!"

Break's Over

Back to the War. All these flying elves and manga robots - you start getting withdrawal after a while. I realise it had been over a month since I last painted either a horned helmet or a skull.

You know it's bad when you start seeing subliminal messages in a cushion shop.

I also had omens and portents, seen around Gothenburg as I wandered about. Things that told me I had strayed from the path and that the Dark Gods were not unaware.

Or when the Blood God appears to be behind building work at your local supermarket. 'Sweco' my ass.

Dungeon Saga: A Quest Fit For Heroes

My search for a simple out-of-the-box dungeon-bash board game is well-documented, and after a few missteps (always check for traps!) I think I've settled on one...

Behold your quest!

Entitled Dungeon Saga: The Dwarf King's Quest, it's envisioned by those plucky underdogs at Mantic. A spiritual successor to HeroQuest, it's being touted as a game simple enough to play with the kids (after all, who ever heard of a six-year-old playing Warhammer?), but with enough scope for advanced play. There will be expansion sets, no doubt, but you get everything to play in the box: heroes, villains, cards, boards and dice (and it's so hard to find dice).

From the Dettol it rises...

Dettol has long been my stripping agent of choice: cheap, clean and safe, and as long as you obey the rule not to bring in soapy water until the model is fully cleaned (otherwise your toothbrush gunks up), your model will be fully restored.

I live again!

(I guess the *other* rule is that you should use an old toothbrush, not your current one, but I hope that's evident).

But I've never really tested its limits. The majority of my restorations have been metal miniatures with water-based paint (often with no base and no varnish - the whole reason they were getting stripped was because the paintjob was rubbish) - and with metal, you could really throw any substance at it, scrub hard as you like, and still get the paint off without damaging the miniature beneath.

But what about plastic? Some of the early paint strippers I used were so strong they would melt away anything that wasn't metal. Dettol seemed to be okay (having tested it on a few slottabases), but would it remove a stubborn paint job, and still leave the model beneath intact?

Heroquest - 25th Anniversary

I don't mind that Doctor Who is celebrating 50 years. It always seemed so established that it was just waiting for milestones to be checked off.

But has it really been 25 years since Scott and Charlene walked down the aisle to the heartbreaking tunes of Angry Anderson? Yes, it has: Scott and Charlene from Neighbours are now celebrating their Silver Wedding Anniversary, and if that doesn't make you feel old, here's another:

It has been 25 years since I saw this commercial on telly, and knew what was going at the top of my list to Santa*.

*Yes, that would make me 10 years old at the time. Yes, I still believed. I have a vivid and magical imagination. Go and watch The Polar Express and stop looking at me like that.

Let's just dwell on that memory:

• Christopher Lee is narrating. Because of course Christopher Lee is narrating.
• Why does the child with the Broadsword card sound like Clive Owen?
• The player line-up doesn't match the ones of my experience (several family members dragged to the Boxing Day table, humouring me, dozing off or just complaining loudly)
• I think the 'Fire of Wrath' caster's voice is about to break.
• At the end, the kid in the DM chair becomes a monster (making it the most accurate disclaimer ever added to a commercial).

I still have my trusty Heroquest set (plus Ogre Kingdom expansion), although most of the furniture has been pillaged for spares, and some vandal has daubed all the miniatures with a crude enamel paint.

However, I now learn of a Kickstarter campaign to create a Heroquest 25th Anniversary Edition that looks absolutely cracking. I've never been led down the crowd-funding games route before, but at around £55, I might very well be tempted by this.

For no other reason that to atone for my very first paint job...

"What have we become?"