Bugbears! ...and boardgames

A week ago I was inspired to design a new board game. It's a game of fantasy armies, battles, conquest, and heroic quests. I've been working on the rules all week and am really excited about the results. I think that its going to be a lot of fun. The working title is either:     Epic!  or Warquest. (Feedback?)

The next step in the design process is to create a prototype and playtest it. This is a critical part of the process as it tests all of the assumptions and mechanics, and allows me to tweak the game until its finished.

Since this is such an important task, I want to make sure that it's fun and looks great. To that end I have been ordering miniature fantasy armies online to use as pieces. When determining which miniatures to use, scale is always a question. There are many great 28mm fantasy figures out there, but they may be too large to work as board game pieces. 15mm are a little small and the detail can be hard to see much less paint well. I settled on 20mm, and started looking. In my search I found a very cool line of 20mm miniatures called Splintered Light. They have Dwarves, Goblins, Beastmen (Satyrs, Fawns, Minotaurs, etc.), Bugbears, and even a few Ogres.

They can be found here:

http://www.splinteredlightminis.com/20mmfantasy.html

I placed my order and received the figures very quickly.

This morning I painted up a stand of Bugbear Crossbowmen.

Here they are:

I really like the figures. The entire line was sculpted by Bob Olley, who is widely known in the miniatures community for his unique style. He is a genius in giving his sculpts character and individuality.

I can't wait to get to work on the rest of these great figures.