Painting HeroQuest! A FAST Guide

 So you got the new HeroQuest and you are thinking of painting it, but you have no idea how to even start? This is the guide for you!

This post will guide you through the optimal steps to have the whole game painted with a time-efficient effort and more than decent "tabletop" quality, taking advantage of the "slap chop" technique.

I won't go into all the details of each technique, but instead provide you with a working road map for the whole journey of specifically painting the HeroQuest board game. For each step, you'll probably want to delve into video tutorials on youtube.

A painted HeroQuest is different level! Picture and paintjob by Ian Schofield, with models on an alternative board by Ian himself. 

0 Solve the storage problem

The plastic trays that come with the game are guaranteed to ruin your paint job very quickly, so first of all you need to find an alternative for storage. Most people use the dedicated Feldherr Foam Set, designed specifically for the new edition of HeroQuest. If you want to keep the minis inside the game's original box, this is the most efficient solution by far. If you are going to keep them on a display shelf, that's good too, of course.

1 Get your minis ready

Before painting your miniatures, you must prepare them.

• First of all, check them one by one and remove any "flash". "Flash" is the name given to the lines that MAY be on some models, marking the line where the two sides of the cast touch. Most models have no flash, or very little. If it is there, you can probably see it easily along the arms, legs, and weapons. Gently remove it with a cutter and/or sanding paper. If you don't, you'll regret it, because the most common (and easiest) painting techniques will make it x10 more visible.

• Get your minis straight! The HeroQuest minis are made with a soft plastic that is prone to bending into weird shapes and positions. This often happens with long weapons and extended arms, but sometimes you may get a whole figure that is slightly bent forward or backwards and cannot really stand up properly. Fixing them is really easy: put the bent miniature into very hot water for about 5 seconds, then pull it out. Now it should be soft enough for you to get it straight with your hands. Once the position is ok, put it immediately into cold water. This will ensure the plastic "hardens" again, this time without the undesired bending.

• Next, wash your minis! This is needed in order to remove the grease from production AND from your hands! And any dust that may have accumulated. Simply wash them with water and a drop of dish detergent. Rinse and let them dry thoroughly. If you don't do this, paint will have a very hard time sticking on the plastic, and the risk of seeing the paint chip away quickly while you play is much higher.

• Finally, check and fill any gaps. Check ALL your models (especially the Barbarian and the Abominations!) for parts that haven't been assembled properly, because this is the time to fix them. You do this by filling the gaps with a plastic putty such as Vallejo's. Again, if you don't, you'll regret it. After this, you are ready to paint!

Removing flash and filling the gaps is important because the slap chop technique automatically exalts all the details of your mini, so you want to remove the small flaws, or you'll make them super-visible.

2 Slap Chop!

The slap chop technique requires a very specific priming technique and then a very specific type of acrylic colors. It is the easiest and fastest way of painting more-than-decent looking models, even if you are completely new to miniature painting. Lots of videos explain this technique, one of my favorite is this one. But go ahead and watch as many as you can.

• Black primer. In order to take advantage of the "slap chop" technique, you must prime your minis with a black color. A spray is the fastest way to do it. You can get Citadel's, or Vallejo's, or Army Painter's, or any other brand, as long as it's black, matte, and specifically made for miniatures. Using a spray primer is an art of itself: the correct distance and angle, etc. Watch some tutorials before starting!

• Dry brush with grey. For this step, you need a large brush (say, the size of your little finger): a cheap make-up brush will be perfect. And a normal, matte, grey acrylic such as Vallejo's or Army Painter's. Dry brush means you dip your brush into the paint, then you "clean" it on a piece of cloth or paper towel until almost no paint seems to be on the brush. That's when you use the brush on the miniature, so that the paint will not reach the recesses: they must remain black! All the while, your brush must NEVER EVER touch water, not even when you start. It must be perfectly dry for the technique to work. Wash your brush when you are finished, of course. Or don't wash it and go to the next step now.

• Again, with white. After the grey, you do the same procedure with white, with even less color on your brush, so that the white only hits the most prominent details. Don't bother washing the grey away from the brush. Keep it dry!!

• Time to actually paint! Finally! This is the moment you get to paint all your sweet minis. In order to take advantage of the slap chop technique, you must use a specific type of paints: Citadel calls them Contrasts; Army Painter calls them Speed Paints; Vallejo calls them Xpress Colors. All of them will work the same. Watch this video again!

The three layers of black, grey and white will enhance the semi-transparent nature of such colors, creating an excellent effect for the time it takes.

For a detailed example of the whole thing, see this post.

3 The Devil is in the details!

• How about metal? You can paint swords, blades and armor with the above technique, or you can grab a few metallic colors if you prefer a shinier effect. Your choice!

• Eyes eyes baby! Eyes are hard. If you want your Heroes to look mad, paint each eye as a white oval and then paint a black dot in the middle. They will look crazy, so please don't do it. Instead: paint a full black oval covering the whole eye, then paint TWO white dots in each eye, trying to keep them inside the black oval. This is the easiest, simplest way to paint decent-looking eyes that don't seem insane.

• Bases. Painting the bases can be an art of its own. You can add rocks, sand, skulls, tufts, synthetic grass, or just leave them black and get the job done. Plain black (or grey) is ok, and if you're new to miniature painting, there's no shame in that.

• How about transparent minis!? The spectres and wraith from the newly released Rise of the Dread Moon expansion are made with transparent plastic. Maintaining the transparent effect is really easy. You prime them with a thin layer of matte varnish (a spray is ok). Next, you wash them with a diluted wash / contrast / speed etc of your chosen main color. You may add details such as eyes, as you prefer, with normal colors. Depending on the effect you aim for, you may consider a VERY LIGHT dry brush with a brighter tone to highlight some spots.

4 How to actually proceed: BE WISE AND FOCUSED

Keep in mind your job is to have THE GAME painted, not a couple models, so you must practice self-discipline, wisdom, and focus.

• Always work in batches. Prepare, and then prime, and then paint all the doors. Then move on with the other furniture pieces. Then all the undead; then the orcs, etc. This is how you get THE WHOLE GAME painted. If you don't work in batches, you'll grow tired after your third door.

• Begin with the least interesting models!! Really, start with the open doors and get them out of the way immediately. You only need three colors to paint them. If you're an absolute beginner, the open doors are great to get a feeling for using a spray primer and to learn how to dry-brush, and to feel how the colors flow. Closed doors are next. Then tables and cupboard. The bookcases, alchemist's bench, sorcerer's table, fireplace, etc are more interesting and more detailed sculpts. Save them for last among the furniture. After all furniture is done, you start with the monsters.

• Save heroes for last. You want the heroes, gargoyle and dread sorcerer to look cool! This is why they MUST be the last models you'll paint. They are your final goal, your prize. So after the furniture you must tackle the common monsters! The zombies, mummies and dread warriors are easier than the skeletons, orcs, goblins and abominations, so start with them.

• Choose a color scheme and stick to it. Check online for examples of painted figures. Choose a color scheme that you enjoy, and stick to it. I strongly advise against making each orc different. It WILL look bad when you play. A single color difference (hair, loincloth, etc) is ok, but avoid making each model different. They will look bad, and it'll also cost you a lot of extra time because you won't be able to work in batches. Also, choosing the color scheme before starting will make you work much much MUCH faster.

5 Shopping list

If you are completely new, this is what you definitely need to buy.

• A cutter or modeling knife.
• Plastic putty to fill the gaps.
• Black primer spray.
• Black, grey and white normal acrylic colors.
• A set of about 20-30 contrast / speedpaint / xpress colors. This one seems like one of the best deals at the moment.
• Optional, but recommended: gun metal, silver, and gold metallic acrylic colors.
• One or two cheap make-up brushes for the dry-brush technique.
• A set of brushes like this one, or at least a "2" brush for most of the job, and a"0" for smaller details.
• A matte varnish spray! You NEED this if you plan to ever play with your minis! Even if you plan to put them on a shelf, you would still be better using one to protect the minis from dust anyway.

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Into HeroQuest? Check the HeroQuest page with all the posts.

About Ruins of the Undercity

 Ruins of the Undercity is a small book written by Kabuki Kaiser. It was released in 2013, when the OSR was still relatively young: Labyrinth Lord was 5 years old and basically the go-to OSR system. It is a very faithful restatement of BX D&D, and almost 100% compatible with its most popular today's equivalent: Old-School Essentials.

Ruins of the Undercity is, in many ways, similar to more recent hits like The Stygian Library: in a nutshell, a procedurally generated dungeon adventure.

Why am I reviewing this ten years after release? Basically because it fell into my hands while sorting out my bookcase. I must have bought the POD book somewhere around 2013-14 and remember using it both solo and with my group, and I believe it to be one of the lost gems of the early(ish) OSR scene.

So what is it? RotU is, in the author's words, "a huge randomly-generated adventure spanning a full campaign and backdrop setting", that you can play solo and DM-less.

The book. My POD RotU is a digest-sized (A5), softcover, 70 page, black and white book. About six or so art pieces can be found inside, and the text is very clearly formatted and easily readable. I have no idea if my POD book was from dtrpg (the option isn't there anymore) or from Lulu.

What is it about? The adventure inside the book is a virtually endless, randomly generated megadungeon structure, designed to support characters from level 1 to somewhere between 10-14. The dungeon itself is an endless complex of ancient ruins that can be found under Cryptopolis, a thriving desert city ruled by merchants and priests.

It is the type of dungeon everyone in the city knows about, with lots of possible entrance points, and with a constant flux of aspiring adventurers going in, and a few lucky ones coming out alive. A great setup to get to the dungeoning and adventuring in no time.

Breakdown of the Book. After a brief introduction, the books gets you going with a one page background of the city and the dungeon. This is really good. In six paragraphs, it succeeds in painting the big picture and setting the tone and the players' expectations: a trade city the desert; a city of beggars, rascals, and corrupted merchants and priests; the city's main cult, based on an ancient goddess whose colossal statue was found in the underground ruins; the first explorers of the ruins who turned to liches long ago, and now dwell somewhere down deep. Very few elements, but all of them have some sort of connection with the dungeon. Very good!

Next is two pages of instructions to play solo/dmless. Basically a series of customizable exploration routines you set for your specific party, followed a double set of procedures to play in the city and into the ruins. These create a main game cycle of city/ruins/city or, in other words: down-time/dungeon/down-time.

Some reviewers have praised the exploration routines and dual game cycle as a great example of how to actually play OSR games. One such comment can be found on the reviews section on dtrpg.

The In the City section (12 pages) is pure gold. It gives instructions to mark the passing of time as the party tries to find equipment, hire henchmen, and possibly step into random city events and encounters. This three sections are brilliant because they make an excellent job of painting the picture of this desert city. Instead of a generic equipment list, you have 20 different shops, temples, and guilds offering different types of wares and services. So you don't just buy a scimitar: you visit "the curved shop" (which only sells curved blades), and while you're there you may also check if they have a magic weapon for sale. Next, you can visit "Sifforn's Bows", "The House of the Pole" (selling wooden poles, iron poles, pole weapons, and also pole dancer services!), "The Caravan Market", "Zavbira & Lobellia" (who only sell elegant clothes), "The Cloak and Dagger", "House of the Roper". There are also a temple and a magicians' society, and both offer exclusive services to special members. After that, the magic items that might be available for sale are described: four different pairs of magic babuschs, three different magic turbans, four magic weapons (daggers and scimitars). Finally, the henchmen paragraph describes the available types: men-at-arms, veterans, nomads, elves, dervishes, and scoundrels. Again, the desert-city-theme is coherently reinforced.

In short: the shops, services, and henchmen descriptions already help set personal goals for your character before you even start your first delve. And they do that while just being little more than a series of lists.

The Into the Ruins section (23 pages) is the core of the book. It gives instructions to finally get you to into the megadungeon. You get a set of six starting areas, and then a plethora of tables: area types, door types, illumination, corridor types & features, random items found, special corridors, room structure, special areas, room features, room contents, treasure types, containers, and traps, stair landing types, magic effects, gems, jewelry, and a matrix for monster encounters which sends you to 10 different monster tables based on encounter level. That's a lot of tables!

This section has several merits but also flaws. What's good: again, everything is thematic! Nothing in these tables feels out of place. The monsters are a well-considered selection of classic monsters, plus the FORTY monsters described in RotU in the following section. The environmental details, traps, treasure: everything is coherent. Rolling on the tables gets you exactly the dungeon contents that you would expect from the premises of the book. What I dislike: basically two things. First, too much rolling! You'll proceed in 10-minutes turns in real time, because of so much rolling. Second: if you play this as intended (i.e.: rolling the dungeon live as you play) results will often be underwhelming, leaving you with a sense of having wasted your time rolling dice for nothing really, when the results give you details that offer nothing to play with. Knowing about the shape of the columns, is just not worth another roll, as it will probably be a useless detail.

And this leads to the broader issue of how randomly generated content often suffers from a lack of interconnectedness and meaningfulness. RotU has a lot of broad interconnections, but unfortunately fails at its main goal: consistently creating an engaging dungeon delve, if evaluated by today's standards of  theOSR adventure critique. When you roll a new room or corridor, you'll find details that feel like clues, but are not. They are general clues of the global environment, but there will never be any kind of foreshadowing (or telegraphing) of nearby hazards or opportunities. I did play a few sessions of RotU years ago, and this flaw was evident.

Fixing this would have required a completely different design approach of the generation procedures. Again, The Stygian Library comes to mind as an example of "less rolls, more useful results". I tried my hand at this too, with the Gold & Glory dungeon generators.

Another issue I have with this section is that the encounter generation matrix computes the party level into the types of encounters. This means that a level 1 party enters a manhole on the city plaza and finds skeletons, while a level 10 party entering that same manhole will meet terrifying 10+ HD monsters. In other words: dangers and treasure are dictated by the party's average level, not the dungeon level, so the traditional megadungeon structure and philosophy ("go deeper to find bigger treasure") is not here. The generators will produce "a dungeon adventure suitable for your current party level".

The Fiends of the Ruins section (16 pages) introduces 40 "new" monsters. I'm not an expert here, but I feel some of them are new with reference to the Labyrinth Lord bestiary, but are not completely original. Anyway, they are nice, thematic (again...), and those with a variety of powers of spells include a "tactics" paragraph. Nice.

The book ends with some extra tools, tables and an appendix: a table to thematize the treasure maps that can be found as treasure, and make them functional with the Undercity dungeon; there's also four powerful artifacts; and a final appendix with post-delve events and a series of nine possible longterm personal goals for the player characters, including becoming a high priest of the Goddess, a member of the city's council, a city hero, or even a lich. This section, like others before, is great: lots of ideas, interconnectedness, and thematic coherence. And for each goal there are clear instructions on how to achieve it. Perfect for both traditional and solo/gmless play.

Final considerations...  All in all I cherish my PoD RotU book. It's a piece of my personal hobby history, and it was one of the inspirations for my Gold & Glory series. I cannot say I would recommend using it as intended (i.e. to generate the dungeon as you play), with or without a gm. But, if you think you like the general premise of vast ruins under a desert trade city, I definitely recommend giving it a shot as a "thematized dungeon preparation toolkit": i.e. as a set of tools and tables to generate your Undercity dungeon before playing. Used like this, you may decide which tables to skip, which to roll on, and which to choose results from instead of rolling; you may decide to completely skip the map generation tables and simply use Dave's Mapper to instantly generate endless maps, or grab some of those amazing Paratime Design maps; you may decide to use the encounter matrix as is, and thus create dungeon adventures balanced for a given party level, or you may "cheat" and use the encounter matrix to create a 10+ levels megadungeon by simply considering party level 1 for dungeon level 1, party level 2 for dungeon level 2, and so on.

...and hopes? Despite its flaws, I must say I'm fond of RotU. I hope Mr Crespy will someday consider creating an updated, upgraded edition (possibly an Old-School Essentials version?), to bring the mysteries of Cryptopolis and the Undercity back on a thousand gaming tables. 

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts!

GM's Day Sale 2023: My OSR Picks!

 The 2023 GM's Day Sale is on at DriveThruRPG, and will be on through March the 14th. It is one of the largest sales on the site, with more than 72000 titles, and the OSR titles are almost 4000!

So what to look for? Whether you've never played OSR games, or you're a veteran looking for the hottest new games and adventures, here we go!

[This post contains affiliate links]

OSR GAMES: THE BIG ONES

Worlds Without Number - Kevin Crawford's masterpiece, and one of the most successful games on the whole DrivethruRPG platform. A great game in itself, and a book with tons of tools to generate everything, from world building to adventures, whatever game system you prefer.

Old-School Essentials - The Whole Line - The best retroclone around, a faithful reproduction of the B/X D&D rules, with an exceptional work done on the text to make it clear and user-friendly, with an egregious layout. Recommended if you're new to the OSR and want the distilled, simple experience of the original B/X rules. Everything you need to play in one book. Also, my favorite OSR game. If you are new to OSE or B/X, go with the Classic Rules Tome. The Advanced Player Tome and Referee Tome are also on sale, if you want to expand your B/X with lots of options without power creep.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Core Book - A glorious OSR game that is not a retroclone but captures the feel of old school games, with unique mechanics that build on a solid d20 system, generally compatible with other OSR stuff. Recommended if you want a more modern cut, while true to the spirit of OSR... and you like crits and fumble tables.

OTHER OSR GAMES

Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, and Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells - Both of Diogo Nogueira's original games are a blend of OSR and modern sensitivity, with streamlined rules and inspired tables.

GROK?! - by Lester Burton, an impressive little system for quick games.

ZWEIHANDER RPG - If you need to scratch that WHRPG itch with a retroclone.

Against the Darkmaster - The clone of the old Middle Earth RPG, minus Tolkien, plus metal!

OSR SUPPLEMENTS

A lot of supplements and adventures are included in the GM's Day Sale, including a bunch of super hot new adventures:

Brad Kerr's latest adventure anthology book, Wyvern Songs. Probably THE OSR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022. It's so good. I've reviewed it here.

Chance Dudinack's Secret of the Black Crag - From the author of the excellent The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (which is on sale too), a big island-crawl adventure with a big dungeon!

Pauli Kidd's big huge Wolf's Head Tor, a 233-page setting, with a megadungeon included, developed from the author's original '70s campaign! Can you imagine going more old school than that?

Peril in Olden Wood - An acclaimed, big huge regional adventure for OSE, level 3-5.

The Frozen Temple of Glacier Peak - A nice adventure for Knave. My review here.

Hideous Daylight and Temple of 1000 Swords - Two third-party Old-School Essentials adventures by Swordlords Publishing with awesome reviews. I've reviewed 1000 Swords here.

Bottomless Pit of Zorth - Another acclaimed adventure, with a slime theme and insane art, for characters level 3-5.

Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier - the acclaimed adventure by Gus L,  set in a fantasy wasteland with western vibes.

The Frost Spire - Another great adventure by Jacob Hurst. My review.

The Gardens on Ynn - A point-crawl adventure set in an ever-shifting extradimensional garden, with a system to generate content while you play.

The Stygian Library - Gardens of Ynn's twin, this time a dungeon set in an infinite, extradimensional library.

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford - An EXCELLENT sandbox-y point-crawl adventure for characters level 1-3, very easy to run, with lots of interaction between locations. I reviewed it!

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - A very good 10 room dungeon. I've reviewed it here.

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - Another very good 10 room dungeon with, well, a lot of well conceived puzzles! Here's my review.

And finally, my OSR stuff you may want to check:

Lands of Legends - A zine series with 500 areas and 500 unique encounters for your sandbox. Learn more about Lands of Legends here!

Axian Library - A collection of five zines with options and rules and LOTS of tables for Old-School Essentials and other B/X clones.

Falkrest Abbey - by Andrea Mollica and me. Well if you haven't picked up this adventure yet, you can grab it now for 0.85. People say it's a decent one :)

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts!