Grumpy Gnome

Thank you!

Here is my Tinker, and his creations. A bit of conversion work on the creations. I added claws and eyestalks to make the Malifaux mini look less spider and more crab, with some a touch of the repair bots on Farscape. The warmachine has some added details including the small clockwork dragonling on its shoulder for aerial reconnaissance. The terrain the background is a mix of Dwarven Forge and Monster Fight Club, which were originally factory painted but I gave the pieces some of my own personal painting touches. Feedback welcome!

Thank you for your kind words. Depending on how my work on the Wargames Atlantic Halflings go, these three may be converted yet again to be Dwarves that can better fit in with the mix of Dwarf figures my wife and I use for our Middle Earth gaming.

Awhile back I was inspired by a gamer on the internet who had converted some Goblins into Gnomes. So I decided to try something similar but with my own style. Unsurprisingly, after I did this I found several other folks online had had similar ideas as well. Including JFA of Hagglethorn Hollow fame. https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/2019/08/02/the-first-of-the-gnomes/ A bit of greenstuff and a change in the usual colors… presto! Gnomes instead of Goblins. In hindsight if I was doing this again I think I would use different arms, weapons and shields on the two melee models but otherwise I am pleased with how they came out. Of course they are rather big Gnomes. The next Gnomes I convert will be from Wargames Atlantic Halfling Militia….

Great brushwork, you really bring the figures to life!

Considering the anticipated success of the upcoming “Pirate” ships… and the earlier request by another customer for longships… I would add the suggestion my wife wants… a Greek trireme with seated rowers. Seated ties into another request, seated tavern patrons with matching standing poses of the very same characters, and where appropriate the same characters mounted on horses/camels/boars etc as appropriate. Speaking of mounts… more pack animals. The donkey, camel, giant tortoise and packrat are great but more beasts of burden (in different poses, with different loads, help make a caravan look less like clones. Caravans are great narrative pieces and often objectives in various games. Speaking of caravans… Wagons and carts of all sorts with beasts in the correct harness to pull them. One wagon can do a lot of jobs if you design it to have a modular load. A cage for transporting people to their final justice as crowds throw rotten vegetables at them. A hollow pile of straw to smuggle people set on rescuing the doomed prisoners, boxes, barrels and crates of vegetables. Hussite war wagons. Wagons with a large crossbow/arbalest/scorpion/ballista mounted on the back for anti-dragon air defense. Traveling community/Romany home wagons. Traveling entertainers wagons that can turn into a stage for performances. Adventurers/monster hunters traveling wagon with appropriate accessories on display. Back to ships for a moment, a Xebec for Sinbad/Barbary Corsair/Corsairs of Umbar fun with some fantasy version of historical Ottoman Janissaries as crew. And not a shop but a boat…. river boats often feature in Medieval fantasy, Missouri keelboats may be a bit late but they look so darned cool and would work nicely for my Tarnished Splendor (Napoleonic Horror 7th Sea) project. And unsurprisingly, more Tinker Gnomes please!

Some beautiful work there RogaDanar! You make some very fair points. Balgin, You had me a bit worried so I went and did some quick experiments. 25mm bases seem fine, no matter the number, 32mm bases fit even the narrow pieces… but 40mm will not. The Dryad is a Games Workshop model on a 32mm base.

Perhaps my laziness in not pushing them all closer together is misleading. I do not see a problem with 25mm figures using the grids but obviously 32mm will not be able to. 28mm looks fine even in the narrow caverns, burrows and dungeons. 32mm fits the burrows. 40mm and 60mm you need to build specifically to consider those but DF still works for them. Notice in the first photo I have 25mm based, 28mm figures in narrow burrow, cavern and dungeon pieces. But yeah, these may not work the best for figures with ever increasing size. I wanted to use the figures from the recent Soloman Kane boardgame KS for my Tarnished Splendor project, I have gotten pretty flexible about using 25mm to 32mm scale figures with 25mm bases on average ,but getting out to 35mm scale is pushing things a bit too hard for even me.

I have seen folks on the Dwarven Forge forums refer to “Scalegate, five years ago” and wonder if that refers in part to that. But here is a photo of some minis with 25mm bases on a Dwarven Forge dungeon tile from their Dungeons of Doom line.

Dental plaster, ah! Interesting. I am not sure what plaster was used in those buildings I had. Part of me worries about the resin Hagglethorn Hollow has when it comes to chipping. It has not chipped on me yet but it feels like it could at any minute.

As far as I am aware there is only resin minis in 2 expansions, one of which is being replaced this summer with plastic minis.

While I have not yet played Core Space I have started painting the minis. I have to admit to being a big fan though of the game, it’s universe, and the folks at Battle Systems. I was originally not a fan of cardstock terrain but they changed my mind (at least for Sci-fi terrain). If you are curious to hear more of what I think… https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/2020/01/22/proper-core-space/ But what do you think? Do you enjoy it? Are you looking forward to First Born or the new expansions announced for this summer?

Fireforge makes some great figures. Here is their latest KS. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fireforgegames/stone-realm-hard-plastic-multi-part-dwarves-in-28mm-scale/description

My wife and I do not use grids in our gaming somit is difficult for me to say if this is an issue. I know I have seen some folks on the Dwarven Forge forums talking about their feelings on scale changes between different evolutions of the terrain. In my most recent blog entry I took some photos of figures with 25mm, 32mm, 40mm and 60mm bases on some DF terrain. https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/2021/05/24/some-more-reviews-dwarven-forge-burrows-and-monster-fight-club/

With Hirst Arts is it always plaster or can you use other material? I had some bigger plaster terrain but it kept chipping. The small plaster bits, like barrels and boxes seem to do ok but it was really frustrating when I kept chipping buildings.

I suggested Ottomans (Janissaries)… but in hindsight I wish I had suggested Tinker Gnomes. Landsknect Ogres came as a real surprise to me. Also, I hope their April Fools Day joke of Napoleonic civilian women becomes a reality rather than just a joke.

There does seem to be some inconsistencies on the products each of us received. It is interesting to see just how different the buildings look in this unboxing. My guess is, someone forgot the wood stain that day at the factory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM0PWj-x5q4 And I am glad I did not get the breakages they did. Sorry to hear of your disappointment Tasso. We all had such high hopes during the campaign.

CED1106, it is not definite that the next KS will be sci-fi. When asked during their last live Facebook video Q&A of the campaign they said things were still in discussion but that it was likely their next D&L KS will be, to paraphrase, “swamp biome focused, or perhaps some other outdoor biome.” This was said without a lot of emphasis, almost in passing, and that they still had other surprises in the works for sci-fi…. Which seemed cryptic to me. Mrs. GG and I think outdoor biomes for D&L would be a mistake but maybe they will surprise us.

It is always interesting to hear what folks think. And what works for one person might not work for another. I can understand your points. You mention Hirst Arts, and I always think of Hirst Arts when folks say 3d printing will be the Death of Dwarven Forge. And I understand your point of personal customization. As a modeler myself, I like to customize pieces too. I intend to customize Dungeons and Lasers more than Dwarven Forge but almost all of our pieces get some personal customization.

I am always pleased to hear when my blog posts have been helpful. Hagglethorn Hollow has been a bittersweet project. It has had its problems and I see a lot of work ahead of me but I think I can get the buildings closer to the true potential that had me and my wife fall in love with the sculpts the first time we saw them in the Adam Savage YouTube video.

As to the doors, any one please feel free to correct me if I am wrong but this is how I recall it going…. Dungeons and Lasers rooms ship with themed doorways as part of the rooms. Matching themed doorways with closed doors in them were an add-on. Then Archon came up with “functional doors” as an add-on. However there was confusion among backers as to whether this add-on included matching doorways. Some folks, like me, were surprised when the functional doors arrived without the doorways to mount them. This resulted in “Doorgate”. Some folks felt cheated or mislead. Personally I just scolded myself for not reading closely enough and letting my desire to have themed doors without having to buy the matching themed rooms blind me. Archon announced they would do an add-on for D&L 3 where they would provide the doorways at cost. A second scandal occurred when the add-on came at a price that did not appear “at cost”. Archon responded by changing the price (adding more doorways) and adding the small roof pieces that were on the preview sprue. This add-on is now the only way to get those small roof pieces. A third scandal was averted. I was very vocal in trying to get Archon to add some doors to match the new room themes because I knew people would be upset about building their new buildings with only open doorways. It was one of those things many backers took for granted. “Who sells buildings without doors?“ I asked people in several places to talk with Archon about this, knowing that the more people who raised the issue the more the chance of Archon responding. Finally Archon added closed doors in doorway pieces for the new themes as an add-on. Communication issues and confusion has been an on-going issue with the D&L kickstarters. There seems to be a lack of focus and editorial oversight in their campaigns. I do wonder how much of it is down to international language challenges. But also it sometimes feels like these are products that the Archon staff are not actually playing with themselves, unlike say for example the Dwarven Forge folks. The products that I have received from Archon however have been great. Maybe not always working as intended but doing fine for the applications I want. The material and sculpts are great, albeit with a slightly cartoonish chunky aesthetic that reminds me of 80’s sculpts at times. EDIT: Some videos of painting D&L sets https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dungeons+and+lasers+painting

Kickstarters have a way of coming at sometimes very unexpected and inopportune times. This can make budgeting very difficult.

My wife and I were pleasantly surprised by some MFC terrain we got recently and are keenly awaiting the much larger assortment of pieces we pledged for in Icy Wilds. DF Dreadhollow trees really convinced us to move away from the more conventional flocked trees we have traditionally used. Now we are keen to add more diversity to our plastic forest.

My first thought was that the durability would be a huge asset to transportability but yeah, weight is an issue. I did not consider set up time as that much more than other terrain but then I was focusing on certain builds and have done more theoretical builds than actual builds. We do have the advantage of a dedicated hobby room with a big table and plenty of storage space… so that will also influence our experiences. Looking back to my younger gaming days, with less money and space, I was thinking that with some of the newer terrain, the city, castle and forest pieces, that players who normally only have miniatures and rely on a host to provide a table and terrain, could have a couple of signature pieces to bring along each game to add to the table the same way they bring their army/warband/hero.

For a long time I thought that Dwarven Forge was too expensive and too focused on D&D. However, my opinion has changed and like many converts I am very passionate about my new love. It is a love shared by my wife and we want others to experience the same joy we feel. Yet often when we broach the subject we hear the same things being repeated that we once said. I have a lengthy blog post about our views on Dwarven Forge if you are curious…. https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/2021/02/25/dwarven-forged/ But we would like to know what folks here think about Dwarven Forge Terrain in regards to their gaming. How many folks use it? If no, why not?