A tribute to the creators of White Dwarf

Continuing on the theme of "catch up" blogposts, I realised there was a neat little project that I never got around to putting on here.

As you may recall, I'd been taking part in the White Dwarf Monthly Painting Challenge initiated by Jamie Loft - each month, a classic issue of White Dwarf was selected, and our challenge was to paint something contained within, or inspired by, its pages. Alas, Jamie's become the victim of his own success, with the growth of Old School Miniatures over lockdown leaving him with not enough time, so the challenge seems to have died. However, I feel like this was a suitable note to end on!

White Dwarf 90 contained a celebratory retrospective by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, looking back on the origins of the magazine and of Games Workshop. Well, what better theme for a White Dwarf painting challenge than to paint up the founding editors of White Dwarf?

Pirate Steve Jackson (aka "the Ruffler" from the C04 thieves - although this casting is from Foundry's re-release) was a sculpt apparently inspired by Steve turning up to the 1984 Citadel Open Day on crutches due to a broken ankle.

Ian Livingstone is apparently a big fan of baseball and so his likeness for the White Dwarf Personalities box set ("Livingstone, the 'ed hitter") is wielding a baseball bat - but the pose itself is inspired by his cameo appearance in the artwork for his Fighting Fantasy classic Deathtrap Dungeon; wonderful artwork by Iain McCaig with a figure based on Livingstone chained up and recoiling in horror.

Lord Blowfly among the unquiet dead

A place of the dead. But dry, sterile. His antennae twitched. In the sarcophagus. Not stench, not moisture, not flesh. But magic. A gift for his patron. He raised the axe aloft and struck the tomb, and again, and again, the stonework crumbling.

From the sarcophagus, dry bones. Dry bones shifting, becoming living bones. Living bones shrieking for vengence, grasping, clenching the magic sword, ready to strike.

At the moment, my table is full of unfinished/ barely begun painting for Bring Out Your Lead. But in the meantime, a small finished project: another month's entry for Jamie Loft's White Dwarf Monthly Painting Challenge. This month it was WD113, which features among its contents a taster of the Lost and the Damned.

I decided to paint the classic Citadel fly-headed Champion of Nurgle that I've had in my leadpile for a while (a better executed version of which appears on page 70 of that month's White Dwarf). I then placed Lord Blowfly in an encounter from the narrative generator on page 54: "The sarcophagus contains the bones of an undead Champion who immediately rises to engage those who desecrate his tomb." The undead champion is a Fenryll skeleton that came spare with a recent purchase for another project and who I hadn't been intending to paint, but now I'm rather pleased I did. No idea where the shattered sarcophagus comes from, I'm afraid; I inherited it with my father's collection.

Lord and Lady McDeath

With some trepidation... I've taken the plunge and painted Lord and Lady McDeath. I've had these for a while but was waiting for the 'right time' or some special occasion to paint them. But like the quote from the film Sideways, "The day you open a ’61 Cheval Blanc, that’s the special occasion". So when Jamie Loft's White Dwarf Monthly Painting Challenge asked us to paint something from or inspired by White Dwarf #76, and I found that it was the issue that contained the McDeath 'prequel' Glen Woe, I thought now was the time.

Ok, so readers of this blog have probably heard enough about my hobby psychodramas, but actually I found it was very hard to really enjoy painting what are basically a pair of antiques, because I felt more pressure than usual to 'do them justice'. Has anyone else had this problem? It's probably one of the problems I have with archaeogaming, too much pressure to 'do it right' rather than just to do it your own way. Anyway, they're done now and I'm glad of it.

In the scenario, King Dunco is on his way to visit Lord and Lady McDeath - but he really should have some very strong suspicions about Lord and Lady McDeath's motives based on the fact that their clothing is covered in skulls. Or maybe he just assumes they're goths? Anyway, to keep with that theme I gave the "King hereafter" a shield with a skull - it's one of the plastic Marauder Orc shields, I believe.

Scenes from Courtly Life

"The court ministers will be as powerful as the king is weak" - Simon Nicholson, Scenes from Courtly Life, White Dwarf 98

As I've mentioned before, one of the ways I've been encouraging myself to paint over lockdown has been The Monthly White Dwarf Painting Challenge. For February the challenge was to paint something found within - or inspired by - White Dwarf 98 from February 1988.

I've gone a bit left field this month. I'm trying to use these challenges as a reason to paint up miniatures that have been languishing in the leadpile, not an excuse to buy more - but it turns out I only own one miniature featured in this issue, and that's a dwarf. I've painted dwarfs the past 2 months so I wanted to try something different.

Reading through the issue, I really enjoyed Simon Nicholson's article "Scenes from Courtly Life - Courtly Characters for FRP", looking at struggles for power and influence around the throne. That inspired me to paint up two spare miniatures that might never have seen paint otherwise - they're part of the Lancastrian Command set from Perry miniatures (so at least they have the Perrys as a link to true Oldhammer greatness) and are meant to be Henry VI and the Lord High Treasurer Longstrother, though I plan to use them as a prince and his minister in a petty domain amidst the Border Princes... I figured I'd start with these miniatures and then see how the story unfolds!

Simon Nicholson's article gets us thinking about the intrigue that surrounds the throne - the messiness of human frailty and ambition. What happens when a king is old and weak? Or if a king is too strong? What role does his physician play? How do the ministers work for him or scheme against him? What goes on in his servant's chambers? Although all this is written with fantasy roleplay campaigns in mind, given that battle is so often an extension of drama at court, all of this gives narrative shape for our wargames.

Recently I've inspired by Phil Dutré's Chronicles of Lowenheim over at the Tiny Tin Men blog - he's been playing a whole solo campaign based on events generated by rolls on random charts, and it's been great reading. He's taken inspiration from Tony Bath's magisterial book Setting Up a Wargames Campaign, rolling on tables to generate the personalities that inhabit the town and shape its destiny. I wanted to take a leaf from the same book, but focussing on the Intrigue and Court and then seeing how that might give shape to a narrative. I decided to use the system Tony Bath devised using playing cards to develop the personalities for wargames campaigns:

Tony Bath's Personality Generator, from Setting Up a Wargames Campaign

The first card determines the individual's overarching characteristic:
Heart, Good Nature; Diamond, Love of Wealth; Spade, Ambition; Club, Love of War/Patriotism. The higher the card, the more intense this characteristic.

Then, deal 7 additional cards detailing the personality:
Ace: Spade or Club, a disloyal intriguer. Diamond, loyal intriguer. Heart, exceptional good nature. (A reversed ace signifies a hunchback or cripple)
King: Spade or Club, Energy. Heart or Diamond, Courage
Queen: Great lover
Knave: Spade/Club, Unreliability, oath-breaker, liar. Heart/Diamond, Merciless, revenge-prone
Ten: Loyality (Absolute loyalty in Diamonds, grading down through Hearts, Clubs, Spades.)
Nine: Physical beauty, except for Spade, which is Ugliness
Eight Spade/Club, Cruelty. Heart/Diamond, Generosity.
Seven: Spade/Club, Personality. Heart/Diamond, Jealous of Family Honour.
Six: Spade/Club, Lazyness. Heart/Diamond, Charm
Five: Spade/Club, Wisdom. Heart/Diamond, Cunning.
Four: Spade/Club, Stupidity. Heart/Diamond, Cowardice.
Three: Spade/Club, Bad Temper. Heart/Diamond, Good temper.
Two: Spade/Club, Arrogance, pride. Heart/Diamond, Merciful.

Resolve any inconsistencies using common sense!

I love a good random generation table, so before I started painting up my two guys, I grabbed a pack of cards:

So, first I deal the cards for the Prince. The card that determines the overarching characteristic is a heart - ok, so we have a good-natured ruler. Then, the other seven personality cards. Straight away, an ace of hearts - EXCEPTIONAL good nature! How lovely for his subjects! The rest of the cards: stupid, energetic, beautiful, cowardly, good temper.

Alright, not sure what I can do about beautiful (as you can see, I'm not a miracle worker with a paintbrush!), but the picture is clear enough: we've got a kindly but dim man, full of ambitious plans for his people but too cowardly to venture out much beyond the castle walls.

Now for his trusted minister. First card out is a diamond - so his overarching motivation is a love of wealth. Now let's see what the rest of the cards tell us: disloyal intriguer (!), wisdom, bad temper, cruel, unreliable/oath-breaker/liar.

Wow - that's almost a pantomime bad guy! Sneaky, cruel, smart but deceitful, and with a tendency to fly into a rage!

Quite a contrast between the two fellows! From here the story almost writes itself: the minister is a ruthless operator, taking advantage of a kind (but thick) prince. For his own enrichment, he has been embezzling charitable funds that had been meant for the realm's sick and poor. What terrible wickedness will the minister employ to stop his corruption from becoming public knowledge?

To be continued...

I am a dwarf and I'm digging a hole...

...diggy diggy hole
diggy diggy hole
(thanks Erny for getting that song stuck in my head when I played a game in his years back)

I take part in the Monthly White Dwarf Painting Challenge over on facebook. Every month Jamie Loft picks a classic issue of White Dwarf from the oldhammer era, and our challenge is to paint a model featured within it or inspired by it. January's challenge has been WD #109 from January 1989 and I've kept it simple, choosing to paint one of the minis lurking in the back page diorama: a Citadel dwarf sapper sculpted by the Perry brothers.

A humble offering... but a significant one for me, as this is the 10th and final member of Arka Zargul's Dwarf Miners for when I finally get around to playing McDeath! Here's the whole Militant Tendency in their splendour:

At this stage I've now painted 24 miniatures for McDeath: the miners; the Greevant clan at the Battle of Winwood Harbour; the Monster at Loch Lorm; and Raybees the halfling. I have a handful of the character models, but given that the campaign requires 202 miniatures (I think) and it's taken me since 2014 to reach this stage, at this rate it will take me another 50 and a half years to complete the project.

So may I take this opportunity to cordially invite you all to my 89th birthday party, where we will FINALLY PLAY MCDEATH! If the lead rot hasn't got to us first...

Undead Centaur

Where the rivers run dry, where there is only drought and despair and the bones of our livestock... There it is said that on the driest days, the days without hope, the parched lands cough up their secrets and cough up their dead. Mysterious creatures - creatures who had been noble, wise even, in some long past life - rise stripped of flesh, rendered hideous and viscious by their restless sleep. It is a terrible place.

In Oldhammer's calendar, December is traditionally "Deadcember" and is a month for painting your undead. (Some might think I've quite enough of death in the last month, but anyway...) Now, I don't know if I'll get around to anything else specifically Undead related this month, so this is technically cheating, as it wasn't a project for Deadcember, but my November entry for Jamie Loft's Monthly White Dwarf Painting Challenge. Every month a WD is selected and the challenge is to paint a model that appears in it or is inspired by it. November's selection was WD119. I took inspiration from the Undead Centaur conversion by Andy Warwick on page 56 and went about creating my own skeleton centaur.

The human torso comes from a Reaper Warlord skeleton archer, the horse is a plastic 4th/5th ed skeleton steed. It's hard trying to work out how to make a mythological skeleton appear realistically dynamic. After extensive google image and ebay searching, the Reaper skelly seemed the best option, reaching for his quiver, although it involved a lot of cutting away.

Centaur anatomy is troubling at the best of times. What are they doing with both human and horse ribcages? How can they have so many limbs? Stripping the centaur back to the skeleton makes these questions of anatomy all the more baffling. But as long as you don't look too close, I think the unity of the conversion works. Just about. A fun project, although the posing and sticking together was nowhere near as simple as I thought it would be.