Castle Ravenloft with Dwarven Forge tiles

I'm always looking for ways to improve my board games - especially the ones which involve miniatures. I particularly enjoy the D&D Adventure System board games such as Castle Ravenloft, so experimented with a few different ways of replacing the card tiles with 3D ones to improve the look of the randomly generated dungeon.

I tried making my own tiles with my Hirst Arts molds, and while the results were pretty decent, I had some issues with them. The pieces were large, heavy and somewhat delicate, making them difficult to store. I eventually sold the tileset I'd made for Castle Ravenloft, and looked for something else.

Some of the tiles I'd made using Hirst Arts molds. 

I'd heard of Dwarven Forge for many years, but they were always out of my price range. After becoming a Software Developer I was able to justify the higher cost of the sets, although I'm still hesitant to spend a lot in one go. I bought a painted cavern set in dwarvenite and was surprised by how big the pieces were, but also by how I could probably achieve a similar paintjob without too much effort. I was also very impressed with the durability of the pieces. They can be thrown in a bag and rattle around together with no loss of detail or damage to the paintwork. This was perfect for my dodgy storage solutions!

One set is not enough for a game of Castle Ravenloft however, so I thought I'd paint up my own sets in future, as the price is considerably lower for the unpainted versions. A few months later I got myself an unpainted basic dungeon set and set to work painting it up.

Some close-ups of the tiles I painted most recently. I did them in batches of 4x4 to fit with the Castle Ravenloft layouts. 

I now have 2 of the basic dungeon sets as well as a set of castle walls and windows. I painted up the last tiles at the weekend and tested them out by playing a game of Castle Ravenloft with Laura.

Our mission was to enter the vaults under Castle Ravenloft and steal Vampire Lord Strahd's treasures whilst he slept. The remaining hours of daylight were our egg-timer, so we had to be swift.

For this task I took Aenur - the Sword of Twilight, on a brief reprieve from his explorations of the doomed city of Mordheim. Laura took Ingrid, a Middenheimer whose father was slain by the evil vampire - she took up his hammer and swore she would not rest until she had her vengeance.

Our first monster - a blazing skeleton! (which I need to paint - oops) Ingrid charges the monster and dispatches it handily whilst Aenur explores the immediate surroundings.

A zombie lurches down a passage towards the heroes, and Ingrid leaps forward to intercept the foul creature. Meanwhile, a scraping sound can be heard from a nearby sarcophagus... 

An animated skeleton emerges from the sarcophagus, wearing rusty armour and bearing ancient weapons. Aenur prepared to face off against the fiend whilst Ingrid dealt with the zombie.

The zombie falls, and while Aenur injured the skeleton, it mysteriously avoided him and went around to attack Ingrid. The Middenheimer is clearly capable of handling the undead so Aenur continues his exploration of the crypts. A mysterious runic area has a statue sitting in the centre of it. It's motionless, but its eyes glow red. Aenur readies himself.

Upon stepping on the runic floors Aenur is caught by foul magicks! He's teleported away deeper into the dungeon, and reappears surrounded by monsters! The gargoyle comes to life and staggers towards Ingrid, who swiftly manages to get behind its guard and strike it with her hammer.

Aenur fights off enemies from all sides.

A wandering ghoul is attracted to the noise of battle and approaches Ingrid, looking for something to add to its meal of a severed arm!

The monsters are no match for Ingrid's fierce warrior spirit, and she slays the gargoyle and the ghoul with a single swing of her hammer. She ventures further into the darkness, looking for her lost companion.

She finds a old armoury, filled with ancient weapons and armour. The equipment is covered in grime and dust, but is of superior quality. She takes what she can, this is an excellent prize to take home.

Ingrid manages to regroup with Aenur in the depths of the crypt.

Aenur faces off against a foul necromancer - likely the source of the undead monstrosities which have harrassed our heroes.

Aenur and Ingrid managed to slay the necromancer, and claim some equipment of his as treasure to take home as well.

Feeling satisfied with the haul, and aware of how close dusk must be, the heroes quickly scout the rest of the crypt then depart.

Aenur takes the spiral staircase out of the dungeon.

Ingrid makes a fighting retreat back towards the main entrance to the crypt.

A hideous giant spider bares it's bloodied mandibles at her.

A strange fane devoted to some dark god was discovered. The heroes did not dare to enter it. Ingrid took a wide berth around the corpse filled effluence in the corner as well.

Aenur discovered a room covered in bloody matter. He deigned not to enter such an evil place.

My history of Warhammer - and Bretonnians!

When I first played Warhammer it was when the 5th Edition boxed set was the entry point into the game (Bretonnians vs. Lizardmen). I'd gone into Games Workshop in Norwich after seeing some lovely colourful miniatures in the window, but didn't really know what it was about. The GW staff were friendly and enthusiastic and offered to show me how the game worked. They had a large board which depicted a valley with some small woodlands dotted either side. I saw knights and archers and some evil lizard guys and thought it looked great!

The staff member suggested I play the knights and archers, while he would play the evil lizards. I was 10 years old and didn't use anything resembling tactics so I just charged my knights in while my archers didn't do a lot. My knights managed to defeat the monstrous lizard people with ease, and the cowardly things ran away and off the edge of the table. I suspect the staff member was going easy on me, but I know any better. I thought it was great!

I pestered my parents about Warhammer for quite a while, and my brother was interested too, so at some point (my memory is fuzzy here) they got us both the Warhammer 40k 3rd Edition starter set. I think we'd been in to get the starter set and saw they'd just released the big exciting 40k 3rd Edition box set - it came with super soldiers, evil aliens and a cool flying tank!

We ended up coming away with the 40k Starter Set, but a part of me still wanted those knights, so at some point in the future I got a £5 box of 2 plastic knights and a £5 box of archers too. I think I was getting £10/month pocket money by then, so you can see where it all went! I was a terrible painter, but thus started my love for the Bretonnian faction.

I didn't manage to do much with my Bretonnians until I went to high school and made a friend by asking the guy I was sitting next to "Do you play Warhammer??" seemingly at random. My friend (Daniel) had a talent for painting and modelling, and he worked very hard at making his armies impressive. I was less dedicated but I still loved the game. My Bretonnians fought games against his Empire army (my Bretonnians usually lost - damn artillery!), they also fought against his Chaos (and usually lost - damn daemonic armour!) and occasionally fought against another friend's (Adam) Goblin army (and usually lost - damn fanatics!). My lads did sometimes have backup from Adam's Wood Elf army, but I don't remember the results of the collaboration. I can only assume my knights died a lot as usual - I wasn't very good at tactics.

I ended up selling a lot of my warhammer at some point in my late teens, but for some reason I kept a few Bretonnians:

- A badly painted Knight of the Realm on foot.
- A badly painted Damsel on foot.
- 7 badly painted archers.
- 7 unpainted & untrimmed men-at-arms with spears.

Not much else survived the purge. Years later when I was getting back into warhammer I discovered these faithful troops again and decided that this time I would do it properly. I'd get a proper 5th Edition Bretonnian army together, and I'd actually paint it this time. I touched up the paintjobs on the existing models I had, but didn't want to change them too much - so they're not the best looking models. Then I set about replacing my erstwhile troops, and getting the other troops I always wanted.

I've now got a decently sized Bretonnian army, although I haven't finished painting it all yet. Most are 5th Edition miniatures, but there's some suitable models from other manufacturers too. Some FireForge sergeants, which I'll be using as skirmisher variants of standard men-at-arms, and Fireforge foot knights too, which I'll use to represent knights who have dismounted from their horses.

There's also a block of metal halberdiers which look very classic Bretonnian, but I'm pretty sure aren't GW models. I need to get these identified at some point.

The entire army. A lot of them are eBay purchases which were part-painted, but some are my originals from when I was a young knight-errant!

The army's heroes. These are both models I bought back in 1999 or so. They were some of the few models I'd actually bothered to paint back then, so in honour of that I decided to neaten them up and apply some washes, but otherwise keep them the same. 

Foot knights made from the Teutonic Infantry box from Fireforge Games. I'm going to paint each knight with their own heraldry and colours.

Foot Sergeants from the same box. For WFB I will be using these as loose skirmisher versions of regular men-at-arms. These soldiers will be painted in red & blue to match one of my groups of archers.

Foot Sergeants with crossbows from the same box. I'll use these as armoured skirmisher versions of regular bowmen probably. I'll paint these in green & brown.

Unknown halberdiers. They definitely look the part but I can't find any reference to these being genuine Bretonnian sculpts so I think it must be another company. They do look a lot like Michael Perry's style though.

A group of 15 Bretonnian men-at-arms I got on eBay recently. I'm going to keep the original colour scheme but they need quite a bit of work before they're ready for battle.

A herald/courtier painted by my partner Laura. He will probably be useful for objectives.

Another Fireforge skirmisher group. I need to add something to the shields but otherwise these are finished. I wanted this group to be an elite special forces squad who perform recon/scouting operations. Maybe a bit advanced for Bretonnia but I'm sure the Wood Elves will have taught them something.

These are my original men-at-arms from the 90s. I recently painted them, but have yet to base them (and I need to do a flag for the standard bearer). I'm thinking of taking 3 of the red & black spearmen and repainting them to match these guys. That way I will have a unit of 10 and a unit of 12 instead of 7 and 15.

14 Bretonnian bowmen acquired from eBay. I've sorted out half of them so far (mostly just through the liberal use of washes!).

The painted models and the musician are some of my surviving original Bretonnians. I got the others from eBay to make this a complete unit of 10 archers.

The musician in the centre was a gift from my friend Rick. Lots of painting to be done here!

I managed to get two mounted squires on eBay for a reasonable price, and they're very nicely painted too! I'm hoping to get a third at some point to give them some company.

Another group of 10 bowmen, also from eBay. Once again I've managed to spruce up a few of them, but there's still work to be done.

The second group of knights of the realm. All of these need painting/repainting.

My main group of 10 knights of the realm. The three command knights were bought already painted on eBay and are pretty decent, although there are some chips in need of painting over. Two of the painted regular knights were a gift from Rick and are well painted too, so I'll just make some minimal adjustments to those. The final 5 are fresh off the sprue and built.

As you can see, there's a lot of work to be done, and only 1 of the units is really battle ready, but quite a few aren't far off, so I'll have finished a small army soon enough.

D&D Heroes

I recently did a commission to paint a set of D&D heroes. It took about 12 hours altogether, and I have mixed feelings about the results. One of the requests was for a black & white pin-striped cloak, so I had to do some freehand on a model which I found quite awkward.

I'm fairly pleased with the end result of the models, but I can see lots of little details which I would've preferred to spend more time on. I was charging by the hour though and didn't want to charge too much in the end so had to cut some areas short. The miniatures are all from the Nolzur's Marvelous Miniature range as far as I can tell, and I really don't enjoy working with that material. The models are a soft flexible plastic and a lot of the parts are quite small and not very well defined. The miniatures do have good poses but they often make it hard to get your brush in where you need it.

As I finished each model, I decided to pose it in a little scene to show to the client:

Here are the finished models altogether (picture taken by the group after they received the models):

The wolf was painted by my partner, Laura and thrown in as a freebie.