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 Rescue of Sir Ragnar

Quest n. 2 from the main game questbook is "The Rescue of Sir Ragnar" (in Italy he was named Sir Manfred instead). He is one of the bravest paladin of the Empire and has been prisoned by the army of chaos. Once you find and bring Sir Ragnar out from his cell, you have to use the Chaos Srocerer miniature to represent him.
I've always been disappointed on this but fortunately here is a cool piece sculpted by the Italian artist Marco Partenzi (aka Bombur) that solve this problem!
Bombur sculpted this figure on his own, it fits perfectly the style of original HeroQuest miniatures so it has become one of the most wanted custom figure for the game.
Unfortunately only few copies were cast. Since many people were asking me to get one I asked him if it was possible to get more copies (I had six) but he replied me that he lost the master. A real pity. We hope one day he will find it somewhere and his miniature will be available again. Anyway, good job Bombur and thank you for this mini! 
 

Can you find the intruder?

 

 

 

Painted minis on eBay - gone!

Closed right now some auctions on eBay featuring some Heroquest figures from Germany painted very nice. I also tried to bid on them but they reached prices to high for my tastes. Here are some photos and the prices they were sold (for a grand total of 347,50!!!). So I am thinking to sell separate pieces is way more profitable!

The 4 heroes, sold for 52,00 EUR

6 Ogres (2 unpainted) at 71,00 EUR

 

 

20 cm tall Chaos Warriors!!

eBay user lunc created these impressive reproductions of the classic Heroquest Chaos Warrior and they are worth a post! These giants are made of ABS and are respectively 14 cm and 20 cm tall. He also told me that he is going to create a Chaos Sorcerer very soon. Just try to imagine how many cool details you could paint on them! So, lunc, any chance to see the four heroes in their 20 cm version?

Against the Ogre Horde - Tiles Restyling

I never appreciated the grids used on Against the Ogre Horde tiles, so I decided to try to give them a restyling by removing all the black lines and adding some extra details.
If you like the final result, click here to download.

The Wizards (x4)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More updates with my painting, this time is the Wizards post. again I can see lot of defects.
As told before, I like the classic colors but I like to experiment with alternate color schemes.
I tried a dark version of the wizard outfit, with purple trousers and dark blue shirt.
The other two are completely different, the one with the skull I wanted to applya heart on the chest with a snake and a second snake around his leg, but it was too much for my skills. The first three photos below show the work in progress while the last four represent the design I had in mind for the alternate outfits.

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.

Elf, Elf, Elf and... Elf

Now that my first heroes set is gone, I have to begin a new one. But I decided to save on time (and colors) by painting more of the same type and took four elfs. As told before, I like to go out of the classic schemes, so, except the one painted red/brown, I had fun painting the other three with uncommon color schemes. Unfortunately I was not smart enough to think to made at least one drow (but I'll fix this missing in the following days). I like to imagine Heroquest like a game in wich you can select alternate outfits for your character as you can do in Street Fighter, Tekken and other similar games. This also allow us to play a quest with two players using the same character avoiding confusion or even to add a 5th player to the standard team (years ago we even experienced an 8 players game by using two Heroquest sets and custom quests featuring two tabletops). So, here is the result, wich one is your favourite?

the alternate outfits for the elf!

 

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