Bugbears in 15mm

 

These are terrific 15mm bugbears sold by CP Models. Although originally designed by Bob Olley as 15/18mm, they're marketed as 20mm, but to my eye, they're a bit short to be 7'+ in that scale (though they would make great hobgoblins. They would also make terrific 28mm goblins (of an especially fierce and hirsute sort).

I'm going to base these together on a 40mm square, so that they can be used as brutes (doubled warband) or behemoths in Hordes of the Things or as some sort of super-heavy infantry in Fantastic Battles. As I have at least three more bases to do, they'll be able to double up to give 80mm frontages for Impetus or work as goblin 'luggits' in Kings of War with a couple of individuals on 20mm squares between two 40mm bases (thus giving a 100 x 40 footprint). And for Hobgoblin, I'll just throw a few bases together to make a unit.

I've been trying out this simple yellow skintone on a lot of 25mm goblins for D&D. I'm quite happy with it - despite being such a bright colour, it's somewhat subterranean-looking, somehow, and it just squeezes into Tolkien's 'sallow' bracket for orcs.

(Below is a scale comparison with 1/72 Dark Alliance orcs and "15mm" Battle Valor orcs - base still to be painted and matt varnish still to be applied!)

A couple more bugbears

I rebased an Essex bugbear to join the last post's merry crew and added a goblin from the same D&D boardgame. I thought the latter would work well as a female or young bugbear, as it's much too big for a 28mm goblin.

Yesterday, she featured as the bugbear chief's concubine in the caves of chaos. She proved braver than her mate, who fled to the minotaur. But he was hit with a sleep spell an hour or so later, and that was that.

I'm fond of the Essex bugbears; this one was painted a while back and could probably do with some sharpening up.

A batch of bugbears

Our lockdown D&D game must now be hovering at over or around 30 session (we've been playing every day). On Friday, the party made their way north from the city of Kalbarad,* where they had been involved in much factional skullduggery, to return to the Keep on the Borderlands, now partially demolished by an ancient giant they unwittingly awakened.

I thought that they might raid the bugbear caves this time around, so got these fellows painted up on Saturday morning. As it happened, they confined themselves to massacring orcs. But the bugbears may well feature today. 

These miniatures are vinyl pieces from some D&D boardgame or other. The big one is actually an ogre, but he'll be a bugbear chief or shaman for me. I cut them off their thick integral bases and stuck them to the same square plastic bases as the rest of my dugeon-crawling stuff. I also converted two to carry different weapons, and added a few greenstuffed details here and there; I want each to be distinct for hit-point-tracking purposes. 

I like these figures for a few reasons. They were very cheap, which always helps, and they're very quick to paint up. And their relative crudeness should help them 'read' well over Zoom (only two of the seven-strong party are in the room with me). Also, the blocky way in which they occupy space means that they look suitably imposing on the table but still fit on a 25mm base (their original bases are about 22mm). So they fit in dungeon corridors, rank up for wargames and work well for the likes of MicroHotT and Book of War.

*A name I invented on the fly before it featured in the game, but which turns out to be a village in India.

Speed-painted bugbear

We're playing The Keep on the Borderlands with friends via Zoom - and that means, inter alia, bugbears. I have a few bugbear miniature kicking around, but they're awfully inconsistent. Somehow, different manufacturers' bugbears go together much less well than their gnolls, goblins or orcs. I think it's principally to do with the size of the heads.

Anyway, I like this chap. He's an old boardgame piece: quite crude but suitably big and blocky without intruding into ogre territory. And he took about an hour and a half to paint all in.