FOLLOWING THE TRAIL

I started to play roleplay games when I was 11 (blessed age to start such life sucking hobby) after an iter that many gamers have in common: Tolkien books, great movies of the 80's like Labyrinth, Willow and Princess bride, great videogames with poor graphic but all the best intentions and tabletop games like Heroquest and Starquest. 

Surprisingly my first RPG had not been Dungeons and Dragons, even if that title was practically the only possible title you can reach in a small city like mine was.
My first contact with this world was "The ancestral trail" in 1994, during the rumbling age of AD&D and Cyberpunk I was playing a less known product sold in a gorgeous red box but without any cool dragon as cover image. 

Julek Heller knows how to draw an eagle man
 

It was love at first sight, not for the game itself, and not even because of the story sold in monthly booklets. Illustrations totally absorbed my interest, for the first time I was able to see some gorgeous fantasy tables, fully colored and characterized by a refined style. 

Since then I started to be interested in illustrators and I discovered some great artists that influenced my narrative style during game sessions and helped me to imagine solid and structured universes as backbone of my stories. 

Who was your first contact with fantasy art?  

Here they comes

This is the launch day for Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. Time to comment some of the miniatures I say, in't it? 

This will be Tzeentch's year, after a long age of adoration for Nurgle, Games Workshop decided to finally change a bit their view on gods of Chaos. Nothing to complain for us, modelists, since this new wave looks quite fine. 

Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower introduce us some models that looks tasty, and some that looks, a bit funny to me. 

This image is bigger, because bigger is better.

These guys are the acolytes of Tzeentch cult, a pleasant surprise because they change a bit the view of chaos cultists in Warhammer universe. Excluding those who play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, most of the people indentify Chaos worshipers only in Barbarians and warriors, while the roots of Chaos are deep in human culture, with big groups of hidden cults in cities and villages.
The idea to bring back to life the cult of Tzeentch makes me think about the good old Chaos thugs also seen in Advanced Hero Quest rules. 

In 1988 Chaos had archers, and they looked alike an hair metal band.

Yea, maybe they do not look exactly the same, but I can see some sort of common origin in those guys. 

Once upon a quest

My first game ever with figurines had been HeroQuest. My first love had been Hero Quest, those miniatures, those epic adventures that, to me were just seen in movies or fantasy books, where finally REAL, I was able to touch them, use them play with them, the 

The barbarian was a Clancy Brown look-a-like.    

That game gave a strong imprint to my life: miniatures, fantasy and games started to be more frequent in my everyday discussions; play started to be a costant part of my life, get better rules and better experience in game a sort of mission. Long story short: a game nerd was born. 

After the great HeroQuest and it's awesome illustrations, miniatures and board, came the moment of it's heir: Advanced Hero Quest.

The barbarian was a punisher look-a-like. I guess.

I admit that the cover art was a bit less catchy and epic of it's daddy; well, to be honest, this cover art was a tad sloppy, and definitely it would loose in a confrontation, but the inside was electrifying and mysterious at the same time, less miniatures (just heroes, skaven and companions) but the ramaining materials was just shocking and shockingly used, the origin of the dungeon crawling: without this game today maybe we would not have games like Binding of Isaac or enter the Gungeon.
Advanced Heroquest was introducing me into a dungeon randomly created with group of monsters randomly generated for an infinte number of hours of dungeon crawling (a new word  to add to my personal vocabulary). 

But only growing up I discovered the existance of games Workshop products, we can say that I was pleasantly ignorant of where those epic products where caming from, and I was happy. 

Then I grew up, and I discovered another piece of the 3D dungeon crawling  ( at that age there were nothing like Kickstarter and Coolminiornot, so you had to be faithful to a brand to get games, that's why we were all playing Dungeon & Dragons and Warhammer! )
Warhammer Quest came in shops! 

The barbarian here is  hmmm dunno, maybe Geoff Taylor's cousin look-a-like.. 

Warhammer Quest was the bridge between two big pillars of my life, Roleplay games and miniatures, this was nearly perfection for a young me, full of figurines and chances for adventures, this game was funny, hard and with some expansions (now we would say DLC) that came with White Dwarf. Aaaaah, those were days!

And this new Warhammer Quest? Beh, well... After years of silence, GW come back to make tabletop games and not only strategic games, which is good, but on the other side I have the impression that the restyling of Warhammer for some reason do not fit in the Warhammer Quest name.
I am not talking about the contant of this box (that sounds actually very tasty) or the quality of the product ( for what I saw it seem tasty as well ) but is just this background, this new background less fantasy, for us gamer of the old guard, has something weird that hardly could fit with the classic idea of a dungeon crawler...
Well, will I buy this new Warhammer Quest Silver Tower? Yes, sure. And you?   

Do you suffer from long term memory loss? 

Dark Vengeance brought back to my attention a Space Marines chapter that I never took that much in consideration, I'm naturally talking about Dark Angels.
I bought a Dark Angels veterans kit and start to enjoy the conversion, the funniest side of the hobby. This was happening about 8 years ago... Yea as I said I never took so much in consideration this chapter. 

Eight years ago I was drunk while taking pictures I guess...

But now I found again this guy and I decided to restart from whenre I left eight years ago, so more or less from 1/5 of the team. 

More pictures will come. 

A bit of history 

Hello everyone and welcome to the Longsword Inn! I am Dussack, the innkeeper, take a sit, grab a glass and share your story with us.

To introduce me I put here some of my old works, hope you can enjoy them. 

Ye auld "cold" Balrog

About ten years ago, I owned a games and comic books store, during that period I've been contacted by Games Workshop, you know, just to check if I was interested in selling their products. Long story short, I received an amazing offer, to test the quality of the kits (as I had to test... I was collecting Warhammer bits since I was 12 :D ) but the guy over here was a surprise to me, I never panted a LoTR kit since that moment, and I still think that the Balrog is probably one of the best models Games Workshop made for that line of products.

Ye auld detail of thy Balrog

This model came in two versions, this I painted was the second one, a plastic kit designed by Alan Perry, Michael Perry and Steve Saleh, with two weapon options (the flaming sword I choose or a fire whip, that prbably is still wandering in one of my bits boxes) big 60mm base already decorated with stones and some flames that can be sticked in the base that I didn't use.
The idea to use cold colours came to me just randomly, I took the piece and I thought "why not!?" sometimes the sparkle of a moment gives more satisfaction than a programmed scheme!
What do you think?