Featured Artist: Wyrmwalk and his Zombie Barbarian

Zombie Attack! Just found this supercool Zombie Barbarian art painted by Wyrmwalk on a 11x14 wood panel as a tribute piece to the great Les Edwards Heroquest box art.
He wrote he was a great Les Edwards fan and idolized him when he was a kid.
Wyrmwalk is a lover of all things sci-fi, fantasy, horror, heavy metal, and 70s prog.
We hope to see more of this in the future.
Visit his website for more great art or follow him on Instagram at @wyrmwalk to like the picture.
This picture will fit good as a cover art for a Zombie theme questbook.

Barbarian Quest Pack - Original Sculpts

Following the previous post with the Elf Quest Pack prototype figures, here are the 4ups sculpt from the Barbarian Quest Pack, one of the two rare HeroQuest expansions released in North America and Canada only. The photos are taken by Rod Phelps (aka Skyknight) who also owns the figures.
You can notice from the images they are yellow and bigger than the original blue miniatures we get used to see. Rod posted some of these figures for the first time in 2010 on Boardgamegeek and explained as follows:

"When companies make minis they used to make 3Ups or 4Ups. These were one of a kind oversized models that would then be sent down to the sculptors so they could have a larger specimen to work the detail into the mini."

On another post, Rod also explained why the Yeti figure is missing from the set:

"Glaringly obvious is the fact that the yeti is missing. Just before I got my hands on this, one of the wives of the employees got him because it reminded her of the bumble on Rudolph. Is what it is."

And also answered to people asking him to paint them:

"these things are the original heroquest molds, to alter them in any way would be sort of like dying King Tuts bandages to make him more colorful....while it may look cool it does affect the overall historic value of the thing. No, these will be left just as they are and well taken care of, I loved Heorquest as a young lad and an adult and to own a piece of that history is very cool in my book....

I have others but they were never released so I have decided not to post pics of them until I make some more inquiries into it."

With the last sentence he was referring to the unreleased expansions for the Dwarf and the Wizard!
Please note: I obtained from Rod his permission to publish this photos.

 Check the links below for more information about these rare figures:
- Barbarian Quest Pack - Original Sculpts
- Elf Quest Pack - Original Sculpts
- Wizard Quest Pack - Unreleased Sculpts
- Dwarf Quest Pack - Unreleased Sculpts

Buying a sealed/shrink-wrapped box

Are you after a brand new and still sealed Heroquest box?
Are you ready to pay a lot of gold coins to put your hands on a shrink-wrapped Barbarian or Elf Quest Pack? I know, sealed boxes are very attractive for everyone but first you must consider this:
It can happen (and has happened back in the 90's) that opening a new box (whatever game it is) you can notice that something is wrong.
I remember Ghar (if my memory s not cheating me), a friend from the Italian Heroquest community was lucky enough to find a double set of heroes inside his D&D The Fantasy Adventure board game.

He was very happy in his case, but pieces may also be broken or defected and sometimes even even missing!
How could you react in such situation? Imagine you've bought a sealed Barbarian Quest Pack and to realize that the blue sprue (it is the one with the monsters and the female Barbarian) is missing!!! Are you still alive? It is a manufacturing fault and yes, it can really happen!

For example let's check the photo below, you can notice a great mistake in the cut of the cards, it is just a manufacturing fault; the printer and/or the cut machine were not aligned properly, so the cards feature a bad cut on both sides and the artworks are coming out of the edges while the card title is on the bottom of another card; what a mess!!

The Barbarians (x4)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally some updates with my painting, I worked on four Wizards and four Barbarians (this is the Barbarian post). I'm still experimenting and improving my paint skill so there are still some defects. The four barbarians were painted several times over the previous skin until I found a decent skintone; at the beginning I tried to mix some colors to obtain different skintones, pink, bronze and pale, but at the end I was not satisfied and used a standard brown/orange skintone. Also some fur pants turned from green to grey, boots from violet to white and hair from brown to red. I like the classic colors but I like to use very colorful schemes too.
You can check the photos below to check the work in progress.

More heroes!

Here are some miniature that I own in my collection but that are not painted by me. I bought an extra Heroquest about one year ago on eBay and these minis were included in the box. I like the precision used by the painter on the small details but in my opinion it would be better if he used more shades too. In particular, I like the wizard's cloak and the barbarian's boots and the dwarf is also very well painted, while the elf looks to be a little poor if confrontated with the rest of the team.

Hulkster Barbarian

My four years old nephew also wanted a hero for himself to bring at home, so I (sadly) decided to gift him a barbarian and paint it with the scheme colours he preferred. For this one I didn't use an original miniature bur a resin recast instead (so you can notice some air bubbles on the model). After seeing some photos on my pc he sayd that he wanted his character as strong as Hulk, so I decided to paint the barbarian skin in green and he totally agreed. I wanted to paint his pant in violet but my nephews insisted to make it brown.
In the end, he looks like Blanka from Street Fighter 2.

earlier his eyes were yellow/red

Heroes... part 2

Well.. few days ago I finished to paint my heroes!!
So the Elf and the Dwarf are finally ready to join their friends.
While I used classic colors for the elf, I decided to try to give a blue armour to the dwarf.
I used a generic metallic paint on the elf sword that was looking good at the beginning, but I actually don't like anymore. Next time I'll try to use NMM (Non-Metal-Metal) style for a better result. Also, the barbarian at this point got a new face and looks a lot better than before. Some slight retouches were added to his sword and to the wizard's eyes too.

Heroes... part 1

Now that I felt more comforable with the brushes, I decided to start to paint the heroes. I've seen a lot of Heroquest heroes painted all over the net and for sure many of them are painted way better than what I can do, so the only chance I have to let them stand out of the masses is by using some unusual color schemes... or at least this is what I tried.
As for the wizard, usually I've seen him painted like the one on the side of the game box, where he is wearing a white suit instead of the yellow/blue used on the top cover of the box and on the character's sheet (and also on the new wizard's spell from Wizards of Morcar pack); so the first approach was to use the Les Edwards color scheme as reference.
Instead for the barbarian I tried to go out of the schemes and so his hair were painted red! I mixed some red to the skin tone too to give him more color and create some contrast beetween the skin and his pant. I also tried to paint the sword in blue but without good results (I will re-take it later).

he still had cat eyes here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

my first attempt with this barbarian