Byron's Quest #9 The Race Against Time - March Rank and File (237 points)

 "A guide has led you into an underground maze that is rumored to hold a great secret. He has led you down many dark corridors and finally you find yourself in a room with three doors. Suddenly the guide puts out his torch and in the darkness you hear him laugh. 'Farewell, my heroes,' he sneers as he makes his escape. You realize to your horror that it is a trap! you must escape (make it back to the stairway) or perish in this dark, forgotten hole."

Our heroes must decide which door to take in order to return to the stairs.

Our bewildered heroes steel themselves
for the unknown

First they kick in the center door to find 3 orcs

The right door, 2 goblins and an Orc

The left door, another orc and 2 goblins.

3 doors and no way out! The methodical, and otherwise unhelpful (when it comes to the messing work of killing goblins and orcs anyways) wizard, begins searching for hidden doors while the dwarf searches each room for treasure. 

After finding the secret door, the party wander down
the hall to find an orc waiting for them.

Opening the nearest door, the Dwarf bravely lunges
at his ancestral enemies, leaving his comrades
to defeat the chaos warrior.

Two fimir team up to master depth perception

Two orcs in a closet. Clearly up to no good.

Once again, the methodical wizard tells the barbarian
 to walk through the secret door he found.

Orcs lie in wait around each corner of the long corridors

Another orc in the far corner

The last foes before the stairs, 4 measly goblins 

To fulfill the needs of this quest I painted:

10 orcs

10 goblins

2 fimir

2 chaos warriors

All the minis for the month in one pic.

This brings my total to 237 points for the month.

Now, some pics of the entire army so far:

To date, the army is made up of:

19 Orcs

14 goblins

11 Skeletons

9 Fimir

7 Chaos Warriors

6 Zombies

5 Mummies

2 Gargoyles

For the next month I will be painting up the minis for Quest 10, Castle of Mystery and all of the remaining rank and file heroquest models.

Byron's Quest #5 Melar's Maze - February Rank and File (578 points)

 "Long Ago, a powerful wizard by the name of Melar created a Talisman of Lore which would enhance the wearer's understanding of magic. It is rumored that Melar hid the Talisman in an Underground laboratory at the heart of his maze, fearing it might be stolen by the evil minions of Zargon. As you search for the Talisman, beware of many traps and deadly monsters." Come along, as we travel deeper into the world of HeroQuest and tackle some rank and file minis.

Our heroes find themselves undaunted (and still unpainted) entering Quest 5, Melar's Maze, only to find 3 Orcs baring the door. 

The nasty orcs are no match for our four brave heroes!

Following the brief scuffle with the Orcs,
the party bravely walks by an eerily still gargoyle.
I mean, yes he's made of stone but still,
they were expecting some Zargon shenanigans.
The wizard's not packing a healing spell for nothing.

   

Moving on, the heroes find skeletons
and a devious floor trap of Zargon', nothing they can't handle.
 They also spy a treasure chest guarded by two of the skellies.
Our heroes rush in, hoping to find some paint hidden away inside.  

Finding no paint in the chest,
the heroes continue their journey through the maze of Melar.
A lone zombie shuffles down the hall while bravely the wizard looks on,
probably wondering how he became the front of the party. 

A lone zombie hides in the closet,
has Zargon hidden the paint in here? 

A skeleton hides just around the corner, the barbarian
 is ready to meet scythe with steel

A slow shuffler in a long hall. The elf readies himself 
to ensure that another mummy will bite the dust.  

"Hey," shouts the barbarian, "I'm gonna get you too"
And another mummy bites the dust.

Finally, the heroes have worked their way to the laboratory
 of Melar and must fight the undead to win the Talisman of Lore.
It's just another day in the life of a hero of Mentor. 
   

To full the needs of this quest, I painted:

3 orcs
6 Skeletons
1 Gargoyle
4 Zombies
3 Mummies

But, since there's only 6 months in OWAC and 14 HeroQuest adventures, I need to paint more minis than the quest required. This month I've also painted:

2 Chaos Warriors
6 Fimir
1 Skeleton

This brings my total to 578 points for the month.

And, finally, photos of the entire project thus far

The army so far featured on their custom-backed bookshelf. Maybe the only
time you'll see heroes looking like something other than red plastic. 

Mummies, Chaos Warriors, and Fimir

                                                     

Not just one, but TWO, Gargoyles

                                               

Zombies and skellies

                                              . 

That's all for this month, next month I'm thinking of doing Quest 9, the Race Against Time, with the kids and writing the blog post up like a battle report. 

Byron's Introduction - The Army of Zargon

 HeroQuest is the best game ever made and anyone who says otherwise is wrong! 1

A picture of me and my HeroQuest novel collection.

For this OWAC I am going to make an "Army of Zargon." Zargon is the Moriarty-like villain of the HeroQuest games who lies behind all the terrible travails that befall the heroes. I plan to make this army 100% Warhammer compatible while keeping to the feel of HeroQuest.

The Best Thing about HeroQuest is the minachures!

Part of the impetus for this project is that I accidently got three copies of the original game. The first copy was mostly complete, so I tried to get an additional copy to fill the few gaps that there were. Well, long story short, I tried bidding on more than one lot at a time after months of failure and ending up winning two at once. Now I have 3 copies of the game.

This means I have the following monopose minis at my disposal:

24 Orcs with hand weapon and light armor

18 Goblins with hand weapon

9 Fimir

12 Chaos Warriors

2 Chaos Warlocks

3 Gargoyles (tho I am missing some wings and a head)

12 Skellies with Scythes

6 Zombies

6 Mummies

In addition to these original plastic monopose models I will try to supplement the army with a few appropriate metal minis:

Orc command models
Chaos command models
Goblin command models
Skeleton command models


And, I am looking at candidates for Zargon, right now the top contender is
Joruus C'baoth - the evil jedi guy from West End Games Star Wars Heir to the Empire. 
post old school Zargon mini recommendations in the comments

I am a tad unsure what to do with 6 zombies. Do I try to get more to make a horde? or do I get metal ones like the Olley ones from Essex? Or Black Tree Harlequin zombies??
Post zombie ideas in the comments

Zargon is canonically a wizard who succumbed to the lure of Chaos magic, so I plan on giving his minions old school Chaos shields as a unifying motif. 

So far it's a lot of minis. Enough to surely meet the 1000 pt minimum, but if I find time for more I might start with some of the named characters from the quests like the Witch Lord, the Fire Mage, or Oolar the wizard. We'll see.  

The Best thing about HeroQuest is a dedicated bookshelf!

My partner and I are positively exhausted from November and December. We have been in and out of airbnbs and a VRBO as we had to leave our home due to air quality issues and then relocate to a new home. So, I apologize for the mess in the photos as we are still getting settled. 

But I wanted to show my shelf that I have prepared for this year's OWAC army. These shelves also hold my Gusseldorf Army and Kin'Lath's Scorched Pass Garrison (not featured since I am still unpacking).

Since I had 3 copies of the game I decided to cannibalize the top of one of the boxes. It wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole back of a Laiva bookshelf. So the back of the shelf is cardboard that I painted black, painted rocks on, and then glued the box front onto. 

The Best Thing about HeroQuest is the Terrain!

I think every army needs dedicated thematic terrain. So I am working on Castle Zargon and a few other terrain pieces. I am trying to keep the old ways and use common household objects and warhammer bits. Castle Zargon is meant to be a mix between Ian Miller's gloomy art work and Castle Grayskull

So I am designing it to be tall, with a foundation like it comes out of the rock, a skull with passage underneath, and lots of protrusions and hoardings to break up the form.

In addition to Castle Zargon I also have a small mountain range planned. I want them to be somewhere between the EPIC mountains seen in White Dwarf battle reports and the mountains seen in the Skaven Army book.

The Best thing about HeroQuest is the Painting!

For this project I am going with a super simple and rough object source lighting technique. The primer is Incubi Darkness. To further unit the color scheme I am using rotting flesh mixed with each base color as the high light and to suggest they are in some pale evil light. Otherwise, the army color scheme is simple: khaki and burgundy. I chose these colors because I wanted them to contrast well, look evilish, but also not imply too strongly that Zargon was subservient to some other Chaos God(s). I think Zargon is too conceited to (knowingly) worship a power beyond himself. 

Below are some test models I painted

The Best thing about HeroQuest are the stories it tells

When I opened one of my newer (to me) copies of Heroquest a story emerged. The lid was splayed out on each corner despite layers of scotch tape trying to keep it together. I was rummaging through it and I found a stack of old character sheets that had been used by the previous owners. There was something kind of fun seeing childish scrawl on the pages. So many character sheets. It was clear the game was well loved. Who ever they were, Allie and Ryan played it the most and inordinately wanted to play as the elf. I imagined two kids fighting over who gets to be the elf. Some of them had body points crossed through - 8, 7, 5, 3, 1 - someone named Sarah, maybe a friend? or a reluctant sibling? played the Barbarian and likely met a grizzly end. There were photo copies of the blank quest that had been filled in with pencil and crayons - "Chaos's world" written at the top of one. 

I love when objects have their own story.