Elvses!

I finally got around to getting some photos of the Goodwin tribute wood elves I had a go at last year. These will be on Kickstarter next month as "wardens of the woods". They were fun to paint and look pretty nice alongside my genuine Citadel elves, heads slightly bigger but I think they style is complimentary.

Elvses!

A kind of fellowship

 

One of the good things that happened in 2020 was getting a bit of time and motivation to sculpt along with Rob Inglis reading Lord of the Rings. I know I am not alone in having Tolkien to thank for the considerable proportion of my life currently spent in worlds of fantasy! I also suspect I am not alone in having my image of Middle Earth cemented by listening to the BBC radio play and looking at the art of Alan Lee. The pictures that play in my head as I read or listen aren't well represented by the films (about which the less said the better) and as a result there aren't that many miniatures that capture them either, so I thought I would have a go myself. Last week I got to spend some time painting them whilst listening to the radio play which was a very pleasant experience.

Gandalf is the archetypal wizard right? The way I see Gandalf isn't actually based on an illustration of Mithrandir himself but on an Alan painting of Odin, and I have taken this quite closely as my inspiration. Because it's not an official Gandalf figure I have had to make some changes, he has a raven familiar and a hand on top of his staff (nods to the Odin/Wothan myth) and represents Weithand the Wise from the Mythic Heroes Woods supplement.

Hobbits/halflings tend to be represented in miniature as fat, with short legs and big heads. There are some good reasons for this. One is that it's hard to make slender models that are very small and also detailed, another is that they have been interpreted as comical characters in many derivative versions of Tolkien's world. My own picture of Hobbits is based very firmly on Alan Lee's illustrations from The Hobbit- paunched but not 'fat' and with quite slender, proportionally long legs. I have tried to do similar. The result is that they are a bit taller than many manufacturers' halflings whilst still shorter than a regular 28mm human. Not entirely to scale as I envisage them but the best I could get them and still have them cast ok.

Legolas is a wood elf, a type which has now become fixed in high fantasy terms but which has largely centred around the elves of Lorien rather than Mirkwood. My elf bowman is also based on an Alan Lee drawing, this time one of the Tuatha de Danaan which features in the Faeries book. He's rather more wild-looking, not so clean and refined as a 'regular' silvan elf. After all in The Hobbit the elves of Thranduil's court get up to some trickery not befitting of the elegant elves of the Golden Wood.

For dwarfs/dwarves the image in my head is wonderfully captured by Paul Bonner's illustrations. Kind of Scandinavian with their cloaks, moccasin-like boots and beards. He's smoking a pipe, of course.

In my head Boromir is dark-haired with a beard. Not a bushy one like in Bakshi's film (so much right with that movie, so much wrong with his viking Boromir!) but a groomed black affair. The armour of my bold warrior is based on the illustrations of Charles Keeping in an illustrated version of Beowulf my English teacher in primary school gave me. I still have it and it still has pride of place on the bookshelf! He's armed with a spear, a much more practical weapon and trvael-aid. 

So there we are. My kind-of fellowship for my dark age fantasy world. If anyone is interested in picking up a copy The Grey Company will be on Kickstarter at the beginning of February: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oakbound/the-grey-company

A kind of fellowship

The terrifying tyrants from the tor!

 It was a dark and stormy night and the captain said to the mate "Tell us a story". So the mate began, "Look what Oakbound Studio have just released..."

Yes, it's time for another Oakbound Kickstarter and since it's halloween we've picked the scariest thing we can think of, a country in the grip of a mob of ruthless, self-centred, arrogant and incompetent villains.

For one week only these old-school, slightly satirical lead ogres/trolls/spriggans are available in our KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN. Hopefully they'll be suitable adversaries for many a fantasy wargame/RPG (including, of course, The Woods. Keep an eye out for their warband list in the forthcoming supplement "Mythic Cycles").

The terrifying tyrants from the tor!

Dreamstone Kickstarter imminent!

Yep, after a long time and a couple of Covid-related delays the launch is next week! Just a few more tweaks to make to the page and we'll be ready to roll.

Keep an eye on the campaign page here.

Dreamstone Kickstarter imminent!

Intrigue in the courts of Annwyn

The next kickstarter for The Woods is rolling out next week. I managed to splash some paint around on holiday and now have all the initial figures done.

The idea was to take the venetian/renaissance aesthetic I'd set for the fae and use it to put out some figures that would have other uses in other places. I was fortunate enough to be able to pick up some lady pirates from Charlie Earl which have formed the bulk of the nobles (with addition of masks, variant poses and assembling them into single-piece castings). The fae martial I scaled to fit in with 4th ed Empire halberdiers which I'm told are curiously hard to come by. I'll almost certainly be getting a unit of them cast up for a certain birthday game.

The donkey-headed Hobyah (a-la Puck from midsummer Night's Dream) are dual-purpose. I've sculpted some axe heads which may supplied as separate pieces to make single or double-headed axes for them. In this form though they make up the bearers for a faerie palanquin which I'm hoping to get some paint on over the weekend.

Also in the sculpted but not cast pile are three faerie commanders which can either be mounted or on foot. The horses have been built onto the old sidhe horse that featured in the first Oakbound kickstarter. I'm toying with whether to have the commanders' torsos separate so they can be glued to standing or riding legs or whether to make up a full standing and riding figure for each option. I think probably the second, nobody likes having spare legs lying around.

 

 

There should be an article in the October Miniature Wargames magazine (out 13th September) discussing the use of fae in The Woods, with a scenario and look at the miniatures in the kickstarter.

 For anyone interested the kickstarter is going to officially launch on Saturday 14th after earlybird pledges open on Friday 13th. There's only one pledge level and essentially everything is an add-on so you can make up whatever combo you like. Earlybirds get you an extra 10% free to spend on miniatures. The campaign will run until Sunday 29th.

Intrigue in the courts of Annwyn

They're rats, Jim, but not as we know them!

It's not quite the end of January, and I have painted some ratmen! Not classic skaven (though they've gone on square bases to go into my skaven army) and nor do they add up to 500pts for this month's contribution, but at least they are painted!

 

They are 'gnawlochs' from Oakbound Studio's new The Woods book which is coming soon, and these chaps are on Kickstarter along with some fishy dudes right now: Deep One of the Powell Darks

They're rats, Jim, but not as we know them!

Putting the Waste in the bin?

Well, the second weekend of the Factious Waste campaign has gone past and by now it's pretty evident this has not been the success hoped for. After a really positive start the campaign has been coasting from 50-75% complete for a week.

It's pretty disappointing result given that every spare moment of my time (and pound in my account) has been spent on this project over the last 12 months, especially given all the positive responses the game has had from playtesters and those we've talked to at shows and shown the models to. Nevertheless it is not entirely unexpected given the imminent releases of Necromunda and Fallout (which were nowhere in sight when the campaign was planned back in June), not to mention the several post-apocalyptic skirmish games which have appeared since we first started on this four years ago. With a couple of them either on Kickstarter at the moment or taking to the platform in the next month competition was always going to be tight.

All these games look to be pretty conventional and I do believe there is still room in the market for a narrative-based skirmish which doesn't dispense with tactical elements and has a flexibility and depth which goes against the current trend in miniatures games. Whilst simplicity and speed of play are worthy ambitions in a tabletop game I feel too many systems achieve this by cutting out all the details that help absorb a player in the world. My aim is to balance the kind of modularity and 'complexity' of Laserburn and Confrontation with straightforward mechanics that don't bog the game down in endless referencing.

A lot of thought was given last week as to what to do should the campaign fail. Even if a last-minute push nudges the Kickstarter over the £2000 goal this would only allow the bare bones of what the game could be. The rulebook would have less artwork and no modelling sections (which are something I at least look forward to in a hobby game), the models would have been built for flexibility in equipment but would have to be supplied with limited options, the packaging would be a lot less glossy... I feel this would be a disservice to our backers and to the creative individuals who have put so much work in. We have therefore come up with a 'plan B' which we hope may actually turn out to be beneficial for the future of the game. Before we take any action, however, we would like to put forwards the plan for the comments and feedback of those who have been on the journey with us so far.

The first step would be to cancel the campaign. A cancelled campaign looks better than a failed campaign and in any case the trend of the last 7 days suggests it is unlikely to complete to any degree that would result in a product of satisfactory quality being released.

By mid-November I can have a PDF rulebook available. If you're anything like me then a physical release is a non-negotiable, but as a first step a digital copy would at least allow the game to be played. We would then work towards a print release in the next 6-12 months, possibly through a smaller-scale Kickstarter campaign. Personally I am really excited about the prospect of having Carl Critchlow involved, something we wouldn't be able to do with a 'bare bones' product from a barely-funded campaign.

Miniatures release is something that would have to be done as and when funds became available, beginning by prioritising a 'choice pick' of the sculpts created for the Kickstarter. In any case we are keen to promote Factious Waste as a game system that encourages the use of any models the players like and there is no shortage of post-apocalyptic miniatures around. I appreciate that not everyone likes an old-school, Rogue Trader-y style of miniature.

I have been working on revamping the old Factious Waste playtest community blog into a website for a live 'War 1984' campaign which will go online with the digital rulebook release. This will allow groups of players to link their games into the created world in such a way that their posses and adventures become a part of the growing and developing game background. This process (envisaged as a 3-6 month storyline) will further test and explore the possibilities of the campaign system and help iron out any creases so that the eventual print release is as perfect as possible. I'd love to have as many people as possible playing and contributing so if you'd like to take a look early, join the page and start thinking up your posses you can find it at http://www.factiouswaste.blogspot.com

If you have any comment, suggestions or ideas for how you'd like to see Factious Waste develop as we move ahead I would be very interested to hear them.

Putting the Waste in the bin?

The Waste has hit the Washer!

 

After 4 years' development, Factious Waste is now live on kickstarter!

 

FIND THE CAMPAIGN HERE

 

50 Miniatures, a 200-page rulebook, exclusive terrain from Fogou Models and tons of counters and dice await the lucky backer.

You'll probably be aware there's a lot of competition on Kickstarter these days. Right now Ramshackle Games, Diehard Miniatures and Knightmare Miniatures all have campaigns live or launching very soon. There's also new Necromunda on the horizon and Modiphius' Fallout game taking pre-orders so this is a tricky time to be an indie underdog trying to get a game out! If you could spread the word to all your gamer and wastelander friends that would be awesome. Many thanks!

The Waste has hit the Washer!

Factious Waste Kickstarter previews

Back in 2012 the story of Factious Waste began. It's been a long haul, with groups from across the world playtesting and feeding back on their experiences, but the final push to get this near-future dystopian miniature RPG to release is upon us! My to-do list has got pretty short now, with sculpting all but finished and final pe-launch costings done. So let's have a look at how the Kickstarter is shaping up.

Factious Waste c. 2013

It would be fair to say that I am a bit... apprehensive? Nervous? about the campaign. Necromunda is on the horizon and the Ramshackle Games Mini Gangs project has launched late- sci-fi skirmish fans have plenty to choose from and this will be the largest project we've done to date with a boxed set, big sourcebook (calling it a rulebook seems unfair, only a fraction is actually rules) and 50 sculpts plus templates, dice etc.

That being said, Factious Waste has attracted a lot of interest from games shows we've taken it to. Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated both offered to cover it, the Golden D6 is plugging it and the engagement on social media seems high.

Factious Waste on display at Colours and the latest edition of the Golden D6 featuring Oakbound articles

In terms of content I have largely finished the layouts for the rulebook and testing of the campaign system is well advanced. My initial plan to have the whole thing read as a graphic novel has gone by the wayside (sadly) due to art costs, but I'm delighted that we have some amazing artists on board who have captured the comic vibe perfectly. Simon Lee Tranter and Mike Tenebrae may be less familiar to you than our own Tony Yates (check out their websites- they do stunning artwork!) but I'm sure you'll all be aware of the work of Dark Future, 2000AD and Thrud artist Carl Critchlow who is lined up to produce the cover. Working with these guys over the last year has been an amazing experience and the world has grown in richness and sprouted out in fun and exciting new directions as a result of their concepts.

 Simon Lee Tranter, Mike Tenebrae and Tony Yates doing what they do best...



Inside the 200-page rulebook there's a load of background on outworld and the 7 main factions which inhabit it, the SystemMech rules with setting-specific Action Tables, a simple 3-step posse creation system, skills tables, traits, comprehensive equipment lists and rules for using and customising vehicles, location activities for some commonly-frequented settlements, a guide to narrative gaming and 25 objective-based scenarios. Definitely the work of 5 years' development!

 

Equipment lists- yes you can take a flamethrower and a chainsaw!

The miniatures are divided into 5 sets, one for the boxed game and 4 'faction packs'. The boxed game "War for 1984" contains 10 models and lists for using them as 2 pre-generated posses. They are all tributes to classic action movies of the 80s as a clear indicator of where the game draws its inspiration. There is no prize for listing them all! The faction packs are "Enforcers" (GenCorps and Doughnutters), "Reprocessors" (ReFrat and Trash Runenrs), "Wastelanders" (NeoPrimitives and Artisans) and "Workers" (Luddites and other boiler-suited types suitable for use as civilians). So even if you don't end up playing Factious Waste you should be able to find a use for one or more of these packs in your games, be it Arbites, pulp gangsters, wasteland tribespeople or civilians for a dystopian future.

 



 

A Frat Brat putting the Gangsta' into Gangster, Trash Runner and Artisan characters.

Over the course of the campaign I'm going to be stepping out into the world of videos, with streaming Q&A sessions and how-to-play videos (the first of which is below, comments and suggestions welcome!

Then there are the all-important add-ons. We've had great support from several companies who have offered casting services, bespoke items and discounts on their own product lines for kickstarter backers. I'm particularly grateful to Fogou Models (who also do wonderful Dark Age stuff) for making exclusive trash piles and barricades for the kickstarter and to Scotia Grendel who have put up some resin scenery as stretch goals and add-ons. There'll also be custom dice, counter sets and once again the opportunity to have yourself sculpted into the range so you can lead your posse in person!

Fogou Models specials, only available in the Kickstarter.

Cost will, of course, be an important factor. I have done very detailed spreadsheets to keep prices as low as possible. Despite my efforts to keep the boxed game under £50 it has ended up at £55, but balancing budget and content I think you'll be happy to spend the extra £5 for the bonus bits that will be going in! Faction packs are coming in at £25 each (£2.50 a model plus extras). There will be a limited opportunity to pick up the whole lot for £125 (saving £30) and offers for traders and clubs (contact geoff@propworkshop.co.uk if interested).

 

Add-ons and Stretch Goals

The kickstarter goes live on the 7th October and we'll be having a launch event at Blast-Tastic Bristol. It runs for two weeks, ending on the 21st. Please spread the word and let's make amazing things happen!

Factious Waste Kickstarter previews

the Circle of Chaos opens!

Remember this little dude from a while back?

Well, he was done as part of a group project with Curtis from Ramshackle Games, Jason Wiebe from Cargo Cult, Christian Af Bjargo, Andy Atom Taylor, James Sherriff (who may be known to you as Chilled Monkeybrains), Ross Whitehorn and Warlord Paul Mitchell. This project is now live for the next fortnight on kickstarter and is already past funding in two hours so there's something big and nasty (in a good way) looming in the background ready to pounce on all backers later in the week!

CIRCLE OF CHAOS KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

the Circle of Chaos opens!

A New Year's retrospective-futurespective for Oakbound Studio

It's nearly the end of the year, as I'm sure you've noticed, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to have a look at what happened at Oakbound in 2015 and ask some important questions about what I want to happen next year. For the latter part I'd like to ask your help, but more about that later down the page.

The beginning part of 2015 saw a couple of important events, one for Oakbound and the other for me. First we shipped (after a lot of unavoidable hassle which I hope not to experience again!) The Woods Kickstarter miniatures. Yes, it really did take five months to mould, cast and ship and since that period involved my having to make hasty arrangements to get bits resculpted and cast by three different companies in order to not keep backers waiting any longer than necessary the final sending of those boxes was a great relief. If you've noticed that there are still only a tiny fraction of the figures we produced on the webstore that's because of the rate at which my painting was able to go before getting caught in the next thing...

I got married! Not of enormous significance to Oakbound maybe (although my wife Solly has generously donated space in her studio and a substantial amount of her excellent artwork to the company) but certainly a momentous occasion for myself and one that kept me away from big developments with Oakbound for a few months.

The Summer and Autumn were more productive on the Oakbound front with the Legends of British Steampunk Kickstarter gearing up and a couple of trade shows where we sold the last copies of our first Tripods! board game print run and a significant number of The Woods miniatures. Completing the Legends Kickstarter at 500% was a very positive way to end the year and I'm now leaving the casting in the capable hands of Kieven at Lancer Miniatures whilst I go off on Honeymoon.

So, LOOKING AHEAD TO 2016 then...

There have been two very key developments from the previous year. The first is that Tripods! is currently earmarked for an international release and a significant amount of work has been undertaken to make the system more strategic for the adult board game market. The developments need some serious playtesting in the spring but we're hopeful it will be ready for print in the next 6 months.

The second development is with a game system called 'Factious Waste' which a number of followers of this blog and the Oldhammer Forum have been testing during 2015. Talking to visitors at the trade shows one thing that is apparent is that selling miniatures without a game system supporting them can be confusing for some people. A slight frustration of 2015 has been having a huge amount of background for The Woods produced for a couple of aborted attempts to work with people producing roleplay systems and which has yet to see publication. That, and wanting to release Factious Waste but knowing that the miniature and background development is a good year or so away from being ready, has prompted me to make a significant step which I believe is going to make some future developments much easier. I have stripped the rules-set (all 4 pages of it!) from Factious Waste and left it as a background-free system I'm calling Systemmech. Legends Kickstarter backers have had a chance to download and try out Systemmech with a Legends plug-in which gives a good idea of where I'm going with this.

So, my hope for the next year is to finish testing and release Systemmech, a cards-free, dice-free tabletop roleplay system consisting of a short, free, downloadable rulebook. THEN to release a series of printed supplements with equipment lists, skills trees, scenario ideas, narratives, character classes and, most importantly, a ton of background for each of the miniatures ranges to allow their use not only with Systemmech but also with any wargame or roleplay system players wish to plug the setting into.

All going well with the casting process, the success of the Legends Kickstarter  puts Oakbound at a position where I hoped we'd be this time last year, with a comparatively small but usable pot of money to invest in developing a setting.

NOW, this is where I need your help.
With the two Kickstarters we've run so far we've got a small but strong core of supporters. Kickstarter is something of an odd beast, I'm very keen on it but I know some people, especially with established businesses, aren't since it has taken a lot of trade away from the small companies who aren't using the platform. Meanwhile, companies like Mantic, with a customer base and reputation large enough not to need Kickstarter any more, are still using the platform for the coverage it provides for them. My own take on Kickstarter is that it is a wonderful opportunity for someone like myself with ideas I'd like to make flesh but no supply of capital to enable that to happen without the support of other people who think those ideas are worth pursuing. BUT, at the point at which the company has enough capital to go it without crowd-funding platforms I think it SHOULD, to allow others to benefit from Kickstarter without being overshadowed by established giants, and to grow the business practice of the individuals running company.

For this reason I would like Oakbound to not have to resort to Kickstarter in 2016 (or afterwards) As I say, we have a small but usable pot of money to invest in the development of our settings and systems now and I believe we should use it for that rather than banking it and then asking backers for more money through crowd funding. That doesn't mean necessarily we won't need to do pre-orders, but it represents a move away from the startup stage and I'm very excited about it.

HOWEVER....

From this point it would be very easy to crash back to the point of not having any funds rather than building on the funds we have available to invest in the necessary and hefty expenses such as getting artwork commissioned, printing books, paying painters and sculptors to work on the miniatures I find myself not having time to work on and so forth. WHATEVER WE DO WITH THE FUNDS WE HAVE NOW HAS TO REALLY COUNT! So I'd like to ask a few questions of this blog's readers if I may. It won't take long, but it really is important to me as the future of Oakbound Studio could really hang on this one decision.

The decision is... which setting do we go for as a starter? You can find a description of the settings and a few related questions
courtesy of Survey Monkey (here). You don't need to sign up or provide personal details or anything. I'd be very interested to see what you think, grateful for your participation and would love further feedback and ideas. Please do feel free to post on the Facebook Page.

Thank you again, and Happy Christmas!

A New Year's retrospective-futurespective for Oakbound Studio