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Matt Clark wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:30 pm

I built a diorama/game board of the battle stance chart on which the figures are placed. I think having figures on a chart is rather jarring and is neither one thing nor the other but certainly practical as you have already pointed out. But, I did find it was possible to represent the battle stances visually without the need for text and boxes. More than this, in the same way that using words to tell and construct narratives is a creative and satisfying principle, so also is projecting one's imagination into the construction of scenery on which your carefully painted and evocative figures sit well in and serves as complementing or even adding or evoking the imaginal aspect for players and LM alike.

Depends. I mean, we played in the same group and the use of miniatures within a diorama had a detrimental affect on the game as, you included, effectively started to measure distances (eg, "I can't Protect Companion as I'm too far away") even after I stated such positions were only an abstract guide and should be ignored if necessary. My experience, after nearly 40 years of RPing, of such things is that they look great and are really helpful for games (eg, certain editions of D&D) that focus on tactical movement but simply get in the way for games such as TOR which don't require such positional detail. They add nothing to such games and can often handicap players as their focus changes to the board in front of them rather than what they imagine based on the desciptions of the players and LM. Add to that things such as setup time which ruin the pacing and tension that may have been built up at the table and the drawbacks far outweighed any positives.

I've found that Battle Maps (see my house rules and actual play threads) are far more useful then full-fledged dioramas as they act as an 'aide memoire' but are still abstracted enough to not allow players to 'pixel bitch' over where their characters are in relation to each other, etc.

Your game board of the battle stance chart was lovely but I'm not sure how it would have worked in play and it was the wrong scale as the miniatures we used were 28/30mm but it was very nice although perhaps could've been a little confusing as to who was in what stance and what order/sequence the characters could act in. Thing is with such things art often gets in the way of practicality and those things are only ever discovered through playtesting them extensively. It was really nice to look at though, gorgeous in fact.

Anyway, back to the miniatures...

This made a decent Gibbet King:



Now that I'm working from home on a permanent basis, I'm going to have (hopefully) more free time to paint. I've primed the following figures for various types of NPCs and potential PCs.

A nice elf miniature (on the left) along with a half-decent female character (why aren't there more such miniatures; too many female figures have their boobs and/or ass hanging out. Sick of it):



Daft oversized axe here but I do like the scoundrel-type character on the right:



Two nice figures here. Thinking the one on the left could be nobility and the right would make a good female elf or other such character:



Finally, two nice female figures but, aaaaaargh, crossbow! Sob:

Have two potential Balrog figures:



I do like the idea of the Balrog being a vaguely humanlike figure wreathed in smoke and flames which is why the efreet on the left fits the bill for me but you can't beat the classic horned demon look rising from the earth and his slumber deep under the Misty Mountains.

Not sure which to go with.

Picked up a Hill Giant figure which I'm sure I can worm into a TOR scenario somehow:






Been finishing off some Rohirrim figures as well which I'll take some pics of when done...

Hi, I manged to convert me some wild men of Mirkwood: like I mentioned before, I used Victrix naked Gauls as the base. The I used some Dark Age / Viking heads from Gripping Beast (I think?) and replaced the plastic spears with solid metal shafts, as the plastic ones won't take much handling to break.

Then I just addes some pelts/skins for modesty (!), and shaped some stone tips for the spears. Had to use both green stuff and Magic Scupt (white) because my GS was almost harderd to a solid lump even before mixing. I don't have much use for it, and have kept it in room temperature, which is not ideal I think.







I am pretty happy with these, as my skills in pushing putty are mediocre at best.

Oh yeah, now that I am looking at the pics, I notice I didn't do a beard on the hooded one. Back to sculpting I guess...

Looking forward to seeing the giant once its painted. It looks awesome!

Haven't checked into this thread in a while. Great stuff!

Rich:

1) The Gibbet King is freakin' awesome.

2) How will you make the Balrog wings?

Gorbulas wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:14 pm

A question has been on my mind since a while: exactly how do you use your miniatures in this system?

Do you just put them on the stance/journey map and enjoy their 'prop value'? That's the way I've been doing it and I think they're a great way to visualise monsters and very efficient 'size reference'.

But I gues you guys have other uses for them. I do understand that miniatures can help clarify pc/npc location in tactical situations. But as there is no real tactical movement in the game/only abstract stances there seems to be no real use for a scaled battle maps, large numbers of miniatures, etc.
Somehow I think I'm overlooking something. Could you please elaborate?

Hi Gorbulas...
After your post about using figures here is a link to a functional diorama/battle board I attempted for TOR and to complement figures. There is no measuring involved which will hopefully be clear in the notes alongside the pictures. The link is to a Facebook page called 'Wargames in Middle Earth...'

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... ater&ifg=1

Butterfingers wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 14, 2018 11:46 am

Hi, I manged to convert me some wild men of Mirkwood...

Really nicely done with those, they definitely look much improved and more suitable. Make sure you post the pics of them painted when you're done! I'll do the same for those berserkers I picked up.

Ramboromir wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 14, 2018 12:39 pm

Looking forward to seeing the giant once its painted. It looks awesome!

I will, but its a little down the list of those I want to do. I think it'll be nearly as challenging to work on as the dragon 'miniature' I did for Raenar - pics posted earlier in the thread. I say challenging because I'm not used to working on larger figures and found I had to use different techniques to get results I was comfortable with.