Slap-Dash's 'Savage Sword of Conan' Project...

My son has been painting a few D&D figures and learning the craft of miniature painting, so here you can see his Demon/Genie character. He painted this mostly himself, with a little guidance from his old man.

So I've been scratching my head a bit lately about tackling a new project for 2023.

My Cold War African retinues in 28mm need replenishing...

More Dark Ages? Maybe some Saxons in 1/72...

Medieval 1/72?...Well, of course, I love those little guys and they are an ongoing project. 

But I felt that I needed something else...another theatre...another scale.

Then while milling around one of our local op-shops I spied a bunch of these 'Savage Sword of Conan' comics. I bought a handful of them for my son, to encourage his reading over the summer holidays. 

All of the issues are from the late 80s & early 90s...and of course, once I had dabbled in them, I just loved them. It goes without saying that my 13 year old son thought they were weird & daggy old men's stories...but I have been hooked on them, and have since gone back to the store and picked more of them.

The thing I love about these comics is the heady brew of high fantasy & quasi-historical action & adventure. Exotic & dangerous cultures, beautiful & treacherous women, cruel despots given their comeuppance and just so much brutality from the stoic Cimmerian himself.

I get all this without wading through volumes of verbose serialised novels or hours and hours of television. In twenty minutes or so - over a cup of coffee - I can complete one of these magazines. The hand drawn artwork is amazing, the stories are just as good as a trashy action movie, often better. 

And to think my parents & teachers considered this kind of stuff 'trash' back in the day. To be sure, it's not Tolstoy or Hemmingway, but they had no idea what real trash was coming down the cultural s-bend...

Anyway, the penny dropped and I realised that I have a copy of the brand new HEROQUEST sitting on my shelf. It was gifted to me by my adult daughter last year for my 50th birthday, and the theme, the miniatures and the game are all a de-facto 'CONAN the BARBARIAN' game anyway.

So I dragged out the box and started dabbling away. Here are the first four 'Skeleton figures'. They were pretty easy enough to paint up to tabletop standard, and I can use these for my Dragon Rampant, Fistful of Lead and Conan the Barbarian (Heroquest) games this year.