Time for more heroes to enter the cursed lands of Sylvania, this trio is the more combat oriented and as such more fun to play with and, of course, to find suitable replacements for.
During the summer my children and their cousins played the game a lot and it was rather fun to see which characters they liked and which had to stay in the box, unloved and forgotten. The witch hunter and duelist were almost always in use, probably because of their strength at both melee and ranged combat. So let’s take a look at them.
Jelsen Darrock might very well be the best representation of Abraham van Helsing, at least as he is interpreted in that abysmal 2004 movie. You really should watch the trailer again, just to remind you how bad that movie was. Anyway, let’s just forget about that movie and take a look at the various Witch Hunters that Citadel has produced over the years. My first choice was the Witch Hunter from the original Warhammer Quest game as I had an armless copy of him. I know, I know, it’s becoming a bit strange that I have so many miniatures without arms. The Witch Hunter might just be the miniature Gary Morley ever sculpted. I also considered Wilhelm from the Dogs of War army, but he is a bit big compared to the rest of the miniatures I use. But then I sort of stumbled upon the solution in the form of Falcon from the original Dogs of War miniatures. I must admit I am not too familiar with the Dogs of War range (the one from Warhammer 3rd edition, not the 5th edition army) and what exactly it is that separates it from the Mercenaries and Fighters, if someone knows more then please tell me in the comments.
I got a strong English Civil War vibe from Falcon and he also reminded me of such great movies as A Field in England and Witchfinder General (it’s Swedish name can be translated into the Bloody Snare and it is just so perfect). I gave him colours inspired by our western neighbors, Sweden, and while it is a bit close to the Sylvanian colour theme it really helps him stand out on the board. Regarding his backstory and name, well I didn’t see much need to change anything as a witch hunter would have plenty of reasons to hunt in Sylvania.
Emelda Braskov is the archetypical knight and a bit of a dull character to play as, she just doesn’t have that many options to use. But the miniature is pretty cool and I don’t really have anything to complain about, except for the strange choice to paint the griphon’s eye. When you skin an animal to use the fur you usually remove parts that can’t be preserved, like the eyes.
While knights can be fun I preferred something a bit more worn down and shabby for my game. Enter Elena Braskov, hedge knight of Ostermark. She is based on Marauder Miniatures’ Fighter F20, sadly it appears the miniatures didn’t receive original names anymore at this point. I changed the head for one from the Coven Throne and gave a shield as that seemed like a sensible choice, to tie her to the original she also got a medallion with Sigmar’s comet on it and a bird skull on her base. Putting the whole bird and all on her seemed like overkill, instead she has a torn cape donated by a plastic Wraith.
Glaurio ven Alten III is my son’s go to character and to be honest he was less than impressed by my choice of replacement. The plastic miniature is pretty solid and I could see him being used in all sorts of 40k related projects, but he really doesn’t look like a Warhammer fantasy miniature to me so I didn’t see much point in trying to reproduce him in old lead. Instead I went in the other direction with him.
Gabriel “Tanglebones” van Alten III, a minor baron from Stirland that through convoluted dynastic breeding considers himself the rightful heir to old Otto von Drak. This lovely miniature is from the Eternal Champions range, a little known and mostly forgotten collection of 80’s gems. Apparently the range was released in 1986 and was some sort of tie in to the Stormbringer game, a game I have never heard of related to books I have never read, so I really don’t know much about this at all. Still, miniatures are miniatures and this range is really nice and I have my eyes on a few more of them. From my very limited google search it seems like this miniature is a character called Tanglesbones and he is supposed to be some sort of trainer or servant to the main character, he may or may not also be an elf. He certainly has a lot of charm and I just couldn’t not include him. I am actually quite happy with the ring on his finger, it was a bit of flash that I managed to trim down into a ring, nobility and their jewelry.
ECHOES OF IMPERIUM 
Very nice- Tabglebones looks like he was based on Richard O’Brian in the Rocky Horror Picture show….
Cheers,
Pete.
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You are quite correct about that, the likeness is uncanny. Maybe I should have given him a black suit.
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Personally, I love how bad the Van Helsing film is! There is a particularly funny outtake where Richard Roxburgh is addressing the vampire court in the great hall and says; “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you…VAN HALEN!” ^^
As for Glaurio ven Alten III, again, personal choice, I’d have gone with the old Marauder Dark Elf Beastmaster miniature as a base. :3
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I have never really enjoyed those “so bad they are good” movies, I just find them to be bad. But I get what you mean.
Regarding the Whelp Master, a very interesting choice to say the least. I don’t really see the connection, but with some heavy converting, who knows? 🙂
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You can’t really see it in the SoLegends photo, but he has the same kind of coat slung over his shoulder.
https://www.gshallmall.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=255186
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That’s true, I did also consider using that Valhallan colonel’s coat as I have it somewhere, but I ultimately decided against it since I didn’t see the coat belonging in this time period of Warhammer. Perhaps if I had gone with a more Kislevite take on him, but I went with rural Stirland instead 🙂
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THANK GOD SOMEONE ELSE THINKS IT!
We are eight days into this year and I’ve spoken to not one but two apologists for that pile of shite film. I saw that in the cheap cinema back home when it came out, and it’s one of the very few times I’ve wanted my three quid back. Like what you like, of course, but don’t try to tell me it’s brilliant. Universal keep trying to make this “monster franchise” happen and it always sputters out for some reason.
Anyway, this project to do Cursed City with an OG WFRP filter on it seems interesting. I’ll have to go back and check out the rest. I think you went a bit far with Glaurio, but I can’t deny his Yeovilesque charm.
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The reason is that they want money now, especially when they are looking at the MCU but they don’t know how to slowly build up the same kind of juggernaut. So it results in “big” but shitty movies that flop.
I am glad you like the project and hopefully also the other posts about it. I would argue that you can never take things too far when it comes to the pathetic style of warhammer, but Yeovilesque is already a fine compliment 🙂
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I wonder if part of it’s the… flattening effect of Universal horror films? Bear with me here for a moment, because this isn’t a Fully Armed and Operational Battle Take – this is half-built and in geostationary orbit above a forest moon somewhere until the builders decide to finish the job. But Universal films tend to put Dracula and the Mummy and the Wolf Man into the same sort of “ancient foreign evil awakening and coming for our women!” kind of horror bracket, and when you have them all together there isn’t the clashing of styles that makes the Marvel films work.
By this I mean that you’ve got relatively down to earth, lives in one city, all his villains are friends and family Spider-Man in the same films as Cold War super spies with serious traumatic pasts and Norse gods doing slightly wacky hijinks. I’ve always thought of it as a weakness of the comic crossover – you chuck all these genres into a blender and what comes out is spectacular slush – but from the perspective of “this will look great on a YouTube clip reel”, the character conflicts that arise out of that mishmash are… well, they work to the films’ favour. If there isn’t that fundamental “your genre and my genre don’t fit together but now we’re buddies apparently” foundational tension, does the crossover thing work at all?
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That’s an interesting thought, I am not very familiar with the Marvel comics so I don’t really know how it works with crossovers and such. But I think you are on to something about the Universal monsters being very similar at their core. The plot of the original stories all center around defeating the monsters, which perhaps makes them rather unsuited as main characters. I mean, for how long will it be interesting in seeing an every man defeating a monster only for it to pop up again for the next movie. If they had gone for a League of Extra Ordinary Gentlemen approach it could have worked, but from my understanding that was never really the core idea.
The fact that Universal also went for A-listers where as Marvel has used mostly B and C listers might also make it harder for Universal to get those fun cross overs and team movie moments to work.
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We are only a few days into the new year, and you already have 3 posts on the blog! You are really starting the year strong. Of the three, I think Elena Braskov is my favorite. Good choice on the head replacement. That alone helps make the miniature more interesting than the original mustached head. The Sigmar medallion and the cloak are very nice additions, as well.
The Dogs of War army book was released sometime during the 5th edition of Warhammer Fantasy, and was GW’s excuse to make a bunch of cool mercenary regiments. From my remembrance, each of the different regiments could be “hired” and used with other armies (there may have been some stipulations where certain armies could not hire them). The Dogs of War could also be fielded as an army themselves, just made up of different mercenary regiments. There were lots of interesting regiments in the book. Some Empire dudes with mechanical wings, a group of hobgoblin wolf riders. My brothers and I did not play Warhammer Fantasy at the time, as we were young and had no money. But, I remember looking at all the cool models in White Dwarf.
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It will be a strong start, but then grind down to a full stop once I have posted everything about Cursed City 😀
Sorry, I was perhaps a bit unclear as I now realize all my links might not show up unless you highlight the text. When I mentioned that I wasn’t too familiar with the Dogs of War range I didn’t mean the 5th edition army, that one is a delight. What I meant was this collection of miniatures http://solegends.com/citfight/citf2DOW.htm from the Human Fighters, I think they were a proto Empire collection of humans before the background was calcified. Games Workshop has a strong tradition of reusing names, phrases and concepts which, while fun, sometimes makes it a bit difficult to know what miniatures one is talking about 🙂
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Oh, yeah, I did not see the link. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I should have known something was up when I did not recognize the model you used from that 5th edition Dogs of War range. I imagine there is a setting you can change on WordPress to have unclicked hyperlinks be a different color than regular text. As it stands, you can’t tell if something is a hyperlink unless you click on it or hover over it.
I like reading all of your thoughts about each addition to your rendition of Cursed City.
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Thank you for pointing out that the links don’t show, the CC posts are peppered with links to various sources and it would be a bit of a shame if nobody saw them. They are now all in bold to help them stand out a bit, it seems like my WP theme don’t allow for different colours.
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