A concern I do have is what I will do with the diorama when its done? I can’t show it in any Lego event as only 40% of it at best is Lego. I can’t show it at any Games Workshop event as only half of one of the armies will be Warhammer models. At least with Conquest, most of the undead army is using Old Dominion miniatures, so showing just those models at a Para Bellum event would still be possible but then you are losing a little of the army is truly suppose to be. To be clear, while I’m using miniatures from game lines that have their own lore, this is not my version of that lore. This is me making my own lore for an universe of my own creation by painting and converting other companies miniatures.
If I think its a bad idea, why do it? My primary reason is that I wanted a large project I can continually make progress on. I believe my ADHD has been sabotaging my effort to do creative endeavors so having a project that I can slowly make progress on over time will be helpful to my mental health. A side benefit is that it’s a secondary goal for some projects and an incentive to work on other stuff that may have lost its original purpose. For example, I’ve been struggling trying to putting together armies for war gaming for a while. I already own a lot of Idoneth Deepkin miniatures but every time I tried putting them together, I mentally want to second guess myself and change my hobby directions. I’m hoping having another reason for putting the miniatures together will be enough to break my mental block. On the other hand, I’ve started running a tabletop RPG for my friends and have purchase miniatures and other things specifically for that game. As my friends don’t want to wait the time it would take for me to be “ready”, I ended up running the sessions with some miniatures unpainted while others weren’t used at all. There were also a Lego parts order I made for the game that I JUST receive last Saturday the 21st, long after the sessions I wanted to use them has passed. This project gives me a reason to continue working on those miniatures/Lego parts.
A third reason why I want to do this project is that the diorama can capture the essence of what I’m trying to do with this blog going forward… using craft, miniatures and even toys to help tell stories. The two armies I’m building are important in the lore of the tabletop RPG I’m running. That game is in the same universe as the Halloween comic I’m wanting to publish during Octobers and plan to expand into short stories, war game campaigns with narrative fiction and novels. The Undead in the diorama is a specific army in my lore and the main villains of the tabletop game. The game is the reason I picked up Conquest in the first place because before I even started I knew I wanted to run a campaign with Undead invading the living. So I started looking for Undead miniatures regardless of brand. Ironically, 4 game sessions in and my players still have not fought any of the “enemy” Undead yet but I know its coming (unless my players come up with way to defeat the Undead without facing them). The Sea Kingdom is an underwater nation that my players have ally with. Its a mix of mer-people and sea elves. The mer-people core will be done with Lego minifigures along with a nice miniature. I wanted to say the sea elves will be mostly done with Idoneth Deepkin but after my initial purchase of Deepkin miniatures, I’ve been disappointed with the lack of unit options for a Games Workshop army. Outside of heroes, the number of different units for them is the same today as when I first look at them seven or more years ago. I have other companies’ elf miniatures I will be using to have more contrast in types of units. Not sure where I’m going to go once I paint up all the miniatures I already have for this, but that is part of the fun of doing a project like this. As I was finishing writing this post, I became aware of Kings of War 4th edition recently came out which includes a sea kingdom like faction. As tempting as those models were, they felt more monstrous, corrupt and evil vibes than what I want with my army. Here are two pictures showing the beginning of the diorama.
I've finally decided on a new direction for the blog that I'm happy with. I wanted to talk about the diorama and give reviews over the games Daggerheart and Conquest before talking about my last year review. With a new direction I wanted to start positive this year instead my usually "what went wrong" reviews. I will still do a review of last year because it wasn't all negative with something clicking in my mind to be hopeful now. I've also made some progress, just not in the way I was thinking of. I will discuss that after I talked about Daggerheart and Conquest and why they are important to me now.
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