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.