An Ode to Obscure Games: World of Twilight

 Hi!

Today marks the end of my current run of articles on obscure games and todays is a bit of an outlier as The World of Twilight is a current game that is well supported with new releases and supplements and shows what a small, niche game can do if done well!

Twilight is without doubt the best looking and most original game I've seen in a long, long time. Started about 20 years ago by Mike Thorpe, and gradually developed through small kickstarter campaigns and a very loyal fanbase, the World of Twilight is a wonderful success story in the independent game sphere.

Through the creation of an utterly unique setting that has races of bipedal lizard like creatures who succeed in having massive amounts of character and personality in each sculpt and an ongoing and evolving setting which periodically introduces new factions, areas to explore and a stunning array of miniatures, Twilight is the sort of game I'd love to see more people trying to develop. 

Its whimsical and engaging with some dark elements such as can be seen in a Jim Henson film but isn't all grim and gritty and more importantly isn't trying to compete with the likes of GW. It is not a game of mass battles but heavily scenario driven with simple but engaging rules and each small beastie has a real personality that many of the bigger games lack.

I love the fact that Mike has developed this whole fascinating ecosystem with unique societies, races and creatures that is at once grounded and magical and he's found this wonderful little niche where folks are drawn into joining him on the adventure of exploring the world he's spent decades developing.

Sadly I must admit that despite picking up a starter set during the lockdowns, I still haven't managed to paint up what I've got and have wandered off to do my own thing which is a real shame as there's so much to explore in the world of Twilight and alongside War of Ashes Shieldbash stands as truly original and different from the vast majority of games in my collection.

There's a thriving community of players, collectors and fans of Twilight but one doesn't see much on the interwebs of it. Instead there is this great little game that has chugged along, slowly developing into what we have now with multiple factions, guidebooks and some lovely sculpts, not only of combatants but also of the civilians of the world and the wild beasts that inhabit it.

I have to admit that while putting this article together I found myself wanting to rummage out the box of unpainted lead I have in my spare room and get painting as the game is just so beautiful looking with the creator developing something that manages to avoid all the usual fantasy tropes and cliches.

The game rules themselves are easy to learn and quick to pick up and as you don't need many figures to play, its easy to get into and even if you don't end up playing, the figures are really nicely sculpted and lend themselves to painting really well too.

Looking at the rules again as well as perusing the WORLD OF TWILIGHT website I find myself drawn to the game all over again and really will need to find the figures and paint them up as its got pretty much everything I'm looking for: It's quirky, original and doesn't require a large outlay to get enough figures to play a good game. It's also fully supported and getting regular releases which is a real boon too!

If you haven't heard of the World of Twilight, I highly recommend you take a peek as its brilliantly engaging and one of the highlights of putting these articles together has been reminding me that I actually have it and the game exists and is so visually appealing.

I hope folks have enjoyed my series of articles and I think one of the things I want to do as the year goes on is to actually get some figures painted up so I can play some of them! In some cases this may be fairly straight forward as the figures are either in my collection or available to order but in others I may have to proxy stuff...

We shall see what I can do as we trundle through the year but this retrospective has been a really enjoyable process for me as it has reinforced my enjoyment of old, obscure or niche games and reinforces my decision back in the day to leave the GW hobby and going forward I suspect I'll have a lot more interesting stuff to post about as I've barely scratched the surface with my collection.

In the meantime, All the best!

Richard

Lockdown day 53

Hi!

It's been quite a productive day here with odds and ends finished off and I even managed to try out a test game of Battletech Alphastrike!

I'll post more on my super cheap attempt at Battletech tomorrow but for this evening here's some painted gubbins!

First off, another Kuld:

 Blech the Kuld

He's another of my sculpts and I quite like the little chap who seems to be rather friendly for a small eating machine!

Next up, Here's the first of the World of Twilight figures I picked up recently, a Grishak:

Annoyingly, I managed to get a gloss sheen on it in every photo I've taken but it's not visible on the miniature when you look directly at it.

It's a really characterful sculpt but I had a bit of a wobble painting him as I'd originally intended to paint it green and even got to the stage of base coating and shading the thing before repriming it and going for a more neutral colour with just the touch of colour in his crest.

Despite the hoo hah of getting the finish I wanted, I really like the figure as his scaly skin takes paint really well and the figure itself has lots of character. Hopefully I'll have a second one finished at some point next week so watch this space!

In the meantime, All the best!

Lockdown Day 38

Hi!

Today has involved a lot more sculpting and not too much in the way of painting but tomorrow should see me catch up with the painted gubbins a bit!

Here's a sneak peek of the Black Tribe Robots I've been working on:

Black Tribe Minions, Bully and Crawler

I still have a lot of detailing to do on the Minions and Bully and they will need arms too which I hope to do tomorrow but in the meantime, here's some doodles I did of possible loadouts of the little fellows a few years back:

 Minions

Crawlers

In other news, the small order I placed with World of Twilight has arrived so I'll need to have a good look through the packs and rulebook and I'll post my thoughts on it in the next day or two and may even have a bash at painting one of the little chaps!

World of Twilight Gubbins

I've also got the first five of my Kuld miniatures sculpted and primed and I should have pics of them tomorrow too as I continue on my exploration of interesting settings!

I've found that listening to an audiobook (Just finished Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd) whilst sculpting has been most productive so I'll have to see what I can come up with so watch this space.

In the meantime, All the best!

Lockdown Day 23: Interlude of Ponderment

Hi!

After I posted my last update, I spent the evening and this morning having a bit of a ponder on what exactly it is that I have found so enjoyable about painting all these older figures and why I get put off 28mm so easily.

I think I may have stumbled over the answer as I sat painting a Void 1.1 Assault Androsynth. It's a considerably more modern figure than the stuff I've been painting and enjoying and it's technically very well sculpted. The proportions are better than Flintloque miniatures, the sculpting is smooth and detailed but I have had absolutely no pleasure in working on it whatsoever.

Last attempt at painting Syntha

I will finish it but why have I had such a negative response to painting this one 28mm sci-fi chappy? I suspect that it is precisely because it is a technically good, mordernish sculpt. There's just no character or charm to it. It's bland and uninspiring and I just don't have the jolly response to it that I did with the old plastic GW Ork boyz or my Flintloque project. Similarly, I could paint something similar in 15mm and actually enjoy the end result. Maybe it's because at the smaller scale a not quite perfect paint job is more forgiving or the techniques for getting the results I want are different.

In 28mm I love the charm and quirkiness of Flintloque with it's chunky, slightly cartoony proportions and the older miniatures are very forgiving to paint but this new figure I have sat down to paint has had me pick it up and put it down repeatedly and just been a bit of an uninspiring lump of lead.

During the Lockdown of doom, my enjoyment of painting has really helped keep me sane whilst being stuck in the house for 23 hours of the day and having found myself frustrated with this one figure has irked me and I wondered what I could do about it.

The Boar Company

My first response would be to sculpt all my own stuff as over the years, I have put together quite a few different projects that I have sculpted, be it Rusty Robots, Somewhere on the Border, Battletech SD or even tiny Orks, each chunky and hopefully characterful but there have been none that I have balked at painting as I created them myself and therefore didn't find myself stuck with what to do with them.

Rusty Robots

As I mentioned in my last post, I have actually pulled out the sculpting tools and am nearing finishing a group of Rusty Robots which I hope to get painted up this week and I have got enough of my Somewhere on the Border stuff to play all sorts of small skirmishes but I keep seeing interesting ranges that fire my imagination and get distracted!

 SD Battletech

I think that one remedy to the situation will be to spend a couple of days a week sculpting during the lockdown to see what I can put together and the rest of the time choosing only the miniatures I enjoy painting to work on. I think that I need to go for my book approach, in that if a book doesn't catch me within 50-100 pages, I discard it for another with the discard going to charity, in this case, miniatures which don't catch me being sent to ebay for recycling into the hobby fund!

Boodaxe Boyz

The other thing I am keen to do is explore some of the new and for the most part still readily available ranges that I find quirky, characterful and charming with the following three being high on the list:

Relics is a fascinating range of stitchpunk figures with bundles of character and very unusual forces to choose from. The downside is that the range got sold and seems to have pretty much vanished into the Aether which is a real shame.

War of Ashes, be it Shieldbash or Shieldwall are both in production and the miniatures are available, even if it is from the USA so shipping and import duties become a bit of an issue. The only niggle is that Zombiesmith is currently reworking the sculpts into a slightly larger scale which puts me off picking up any more for the time being.

The final option for the time being is the World of Twilight which I briefly mentioned in my last post. I've heard so many good things about the game and miniatures and it certainly ticks many boxes for me. The figures are certainly interesting and I may have to dip my toe in the water so to speak and pick up a few to see how I get on!

I also plan on keeping on with the Flintloque/Deadloque stuff as I have really had so much fun painting them that it seems a shame to stop when there are so many other great figures to paint.

As for the rulesets that have interesting factions, forces and races, I think I will translate them to 15mm as I did with the Syntha chaps which will allow me to keep the inspiration but make it more usable in smaller scale. I've done this for Warhammer to a certain extent with my 6mm Goblins who will eventually be a decent sized horde but using 3rd/4th edition Fantasy Battle as inspiration.

We shall see how things go in the next few weeks but I also have my 2mm stuff bubbling away too which reminds me that I have a bunch of Land Ironclads to work on...

Needless to say I'll probably get distracted by something during this time but hopefully I'll be able to keep my hobby mojo going and refreshed by my new approach so watch this space. 

In the meantime, All the best!

Lockdown Day 22

Hi!

As promised, here's some pics of the Witchlands shack that I built yesterday!

Constructed from cardboard, coffee stirrers and static grass, I was initially not liking the whole thing but as soon as I got a few drybrushes on it, I got a bit happier about it! I used a combination of techniques from the rather fun and retro Citadel Scenery book and the Wargames Terrain & Building book I mentioned in a previous post.

I even got a bit creative and made some tiny icicles on the building which was quite satisfying, if a bit simplistic looking.

I added a greenstuff skull to the side to make it a wee bit more interesting and covered the thatched roof with snow effect from Woodland Scenics. Sadly I'd had to add flow enhancer to it as it had almost dried out so it looks a bit watery now but still works for the most part. 

I need to make 2-3 more of these dishevelled abodes for my lowly undead serfs to live in and then I need to make the pine trees I've been pondering on for the last few months!

In other news, I've rummaged out my Shieldbash True Atronians and have cleaned them up and repaired them as best as possible but one has a head that's become detached, my one issue with the range is that although it's made in metal, the miniatures are really delicate and prone to breaking but I think I can fix it without too much hassle.

I'm also painting a couple of Syntha dudes who I found whilst looking for my Atronians and am using the miniatures as test pieces to try for a sleek, hightech look, much like my 15mm stuff that I posted a while ago.

There's also some sculpting underway which I hope to post some pics of once I have them finished and painted but that will probably be next week now as I have a fair amount of work to do on them before I get to the painting stage!

Commissar Moody has mentioned The World of Twilight and I must admit that I am sorely tempted by the wonderful world of the range. Maybe I'll dip my toe in and see how I get on but I really want to finish the Atronians for Shieldbash and my Flintloque stuff first. But they are really lovely figures and I suspect I would have a lot of fun working on them...

We shall have to see but for the time being, All the best!

Properly Original Stuff!

Hi!

I've posted some bits and bobs over the last few weeks of some of the games I have found inspiring over the years but here's a few really original miniatures ranges that I am sorely tempted to explore:

Relics as a game has been around for a few years now but it was only recently that I happened across some of their range on Facebook and I must say they look amazing!

Taking a quick peek at the current factions, there's some fantastic looking stuff available, with several more factions being developed:

First up there's the Nuem, which look like bionic Dwarves or Gnomes and have a selection of cracking looking sculpts ranging from near naked fanatics with missing limbs to ball like automatons and big, chunky fellows like this chap:

Nuem

Next, there's the Orcnir, a savage cross between Orcs and Trolls with odd, rocklike protuberances and a really savage looking range of miniatures to match!

 Orcnir Warband

The Vaettir are creepy looking faerie like race that look more Grimms Fairy Tales than the Disney sort and also have access to elemental beings of all sorts.

Lastly, there's the Britanan Empire, a patchwork bunch of voodoo like dolls which combine creepy and cute with a rather pleasingly period British army vibe:

That's not all though!

War of Ashes and Shieldbash are a really lovely range of miniatures available from Zombiesmith (producers of the well known Quar range) 

Its another range of figures I have found over the course of the last couple of months and I must admit I do like what I see:

Jaari 

 The Jaari look like the beasties from the movie Critters but crossed with an Imperial Roman legion.

The True Antronians

How about the True Antronians, a cross between muppet and Amazon!

 Evlodrix

The Elvodrix look like a super cute combination of Chewbacca, Cousin It and a viking!

Vidaar

How about some Muppets with maces?

Kuld

How about an anthropomorphic tortoise without a shell? 

I don't know what it is about the range but I do love the sheer quirkiness of the lot of them, there's so much charm to the range that it is really difficult to resist!

But there's more!

The World of Twilight is another rather well established range of miniatures with its own set of rules that has been around for a while but seems to have avoided my notice till recently!

Just look at the character that the miniatures have! Theres a bit of a Dark Crystal sort of vibe to the range that I really love! I am not sure to the background but looking at the figures, I am interested in finding out more!

Each of the ranges I have highlighted have their own rules but I don't know which, if any, I would go for as all three ranges are just too interesting to ignore!

Maybe it's time I explored some of them and picked up one or two interesting bits and bobs from each and gave them a shot at painting as well as writing a bit of a review on what I find. 

I can imagine combining all three ranges and creating some unusual scenery to create a really original world! 

I shall have to see what I can come up with but this post has really whetted my appetite for some non human or traditional fantasy fare! Are there any other ranges out there thats a bit unusual that folks have found? If so give me a shout as I'd love to see some other interesting bits and bobs!

All the best!