Seven years of blogging — and a return to the very beginning

Eternal Hunt is officially seven years old as of today — little would I have expected the blog to last so long when I started it back in 2012, as a way to chronicle my way back into the tabletop wargaming hobby. Since then, I have beeen fairly productive, if I do say so myself, and explored parts of the hobby I would never have considered beforehand. I’ve gotten in touch with lots of hobbyists all over the world and received lots of bitz drops and awesome models — let’s not forget that! In fact, a particularly awesome gift arrived just the other week, as you may remember, a bit early for the anniversary. Anyway, it has been quite a ride!

The blog currently stands at 414 posts, some 1.200,000 views, 450,000 visitors and 410 followers — all pretty cool numbers, considering the fact that this is merely little old me screaming into the void here 😉 In fact, after a somewhat slower year in 2017 (with just 25 posts), I would say 2018 saw a bit of a rebound, with 40 published posts, and arguably some of my finest hobby work (especially in the field of INQ28) to date. Joining different, forum-related painting events as well as Azazel’s community challenges on a fairly regular basis, as well as getting together with my friend Annie for joint painting sessions fairly often, has given me a fairly steady stream of new content to share with you all, and I fully intend to keep up the pace!

At the same time, as I’ve said before, it has become more and more difficult to keep people interested in this place, given the encroaching age of Instagram. I’ve already beaten that particular drum quite enough, however, and remain committed to keeping this blog alive, in spite of everything. At the same time, I have also discovered (or, in some cases, been pointed towards) some truly cool blogs in the very recent pasts, such as Larsonic Miniatures, J’ai un planning chargé, or Eastern Empire,  to name just a few. And some of the new blogs I have been following were even started fairly recently — so maybe blogging is not quite dead after all?

In any case, let’s make a deal: I’ll keep posting here if you keep reading, liking and – most importantly – commenting. Sound fair? I think we should give it a go!

Now then, since absolutely nobody is interested in boring numbers, it has become a bit of a tradition here at Eternal Hunt to illustrate each year’s anniversary post with a look at something that is truly retro — and boy do I have some old skool goodness for you this year!

In order to discover just what the heck I am talking about, let us return to the beginning of the year for a bit and, ultimately, all the way back to my very first steps in this hobby: Back In January, I had a hard time getting my arse in gear once again and deciding on which model to paint next, when my gaze fell on this unlucky fellow:

The Dwarf from Advanced HeroQuest, horribly mangled from my earlier paintjob — this must have happened sometime during the early-to-mid 90s, but that’s still no excuse: That poor model was a stain upon my honour, so I decided to try and salvage him, just on a whim, and it spite of it not having anything to do with any of my current hobby projects.

Here’s what I ended up with:

Ahh, much better, wouldn’t you agree? In fact, the heroes from Advanced HeroQuest have aged pretty poorly, but I am still reasonably happy with the outcome. So happy, in fact, that I next eyed up this guy, the warrior, from the same game:

Seriously, what was I thinking? The tip of his sword had snapped off years ago, so I quickly replaced it with a newer Empire sword and decided to finally paint him up properly. And at the same time, there was this model:

The Wizard, this time from HeroQuest proper. As you can see, I really did a number on these poor models back in the day. And that’s not even mentioning the HeroQuest Barbarian, one of the first models I have ever attempted to paint. He was already repainted during a previous attempt at salvaging ancient models.

So after a bit more painting, I had managed to go from this…

…to this:

And by that point, a plan was already gestating in the back of my head: So I dug out my old copy of HeroQuest (only a few odds and ends remain from my original first edition box, received as a Christmas present, back when the game was originally released in 1989, but I was lucky enough to snap up an Advanced Quest – or “Master Edition”, in German – set when they were sold off cheaply at a local supermarket back in the mid-90s), and to my delight, most of it was still there, except for a couple of cardboard parts . So I set it all out and started to think about whether I could actually achieve one of my all-time hobby goals: to finally own a fully painted set of HeroQuest, the very game that got me into the hobby:

Illustration by Les Edwards

Because, like so many others, I was actually introduced to the entire wargaming/tabletop/roleplaying conglomerate of hobbies by way of HeroQuest. I remember playing the first games on the evening of December 24th, 1989 with my parents, and following that, many hours spent coming up with my own games, playing with or against friends and trawling fleamarkets and garage sales for all kinds of retro-GW games and miniatures back in the day — as long as it had HeroQuest-esque models, I bought it and entered it into my growing collection: HeroQuest, Advanced HeroQuest, Battle Masters and two of the “Dark World” board games (that were, weirdly enough, marketed as boardgame versions of longrunning German RPG series “Das Schwarze Auge” here in Germany) — it all grew into one huge pantheon of heroes and monsters for me, and I still have fond memories of that time. I also made my first attempts at painting models back then. And they were absolutely horrible, of course — you saw some of those abominations further up in the post 😉

Anyway, here I was, returning to the game at long last. And looking at the models I would need to paint, it did seem achievable:

Of course there would also be the furniture to take care of — and maybe the odd extra model here and there…

So I decided upon a plan: For this project, I would mostly stick to the models that were part of the original HeroQuest set, with a couple of additional monsters thrown in here and there for good measure. Once that was completed, I would add the Men-at-arms at a later date. This left me with a sizeable, but still manageable, amount of models to paint, which was crucial because I am a bit of a hobby butterfly and occasionally have the attention span of a chimpanzee that’s been set on fire — as evidenced by a prior, ultimately abandoned, previous attempt at painting a HeroQuest set.

As an added incentive, however, HeroQuest actually turns 30 this year, so that should give me an extra push to go through with it. And I have also discovered all kinds of places online that are dedicated to HeroQuest, Ye Olde Inn chief among them, and I was surprised how much HeroQuest seems like an entire sub-hobby unto itself. Anyway, down the rabbit hole we go…

My first port of call was to finish the four hero models, and those will be the main course for today. So take a look at them:

 

The Barbarian:

You are the Barbarian, the greatest warrior of them all. But beware of magic, for your sword is no defense against it!

The Wizard:

You are the Wizard. You have many spells that can aid you. However, in combat you are weak. So use your spells well, and avoid combat.

The Elf:

You are the Elf. A master of both magic and the sword. You must use both well if you are to triumph.

The Dwarf:

You are the Dwarf. You are a good warrior and can always disarm traps that you find. You may remove any visible trap in the same room or passage.

 

I already had fond feelings for those HeroQuest models before, but painting the four heroes has given me a whole new appreciation for them: I think they have really managed to age terrifically gracefully, given the fact that they are, when all is said and done, one-piece board game models from 30 years ago. Granted, they are nowhere near as detailed as modern GW miniatures. But their striking design and instantly recognisable silhouettes still work really well, and seem to draw out my will to really paint them well.

As for the actual paintjobs, I had a blast going for that classic, bright high-fantasy look. The paintjobs were mostly inspired by Les Edward’s art from the game’s cover artwork (and the character artwork from the different role cards).

Is this my Oldhammer moment, then? Possibly so. At the same time, and unlike a sizeable amount of the Oldhammer community, however, I fully retain my appreciation of modern day GW models (in fact, I should think the work on these bright, characterful HeroQuest hero models should probably be a rather helpful inspiration for my eventual – inevitable – treatment of the characters from Blackstone Fortress.

It’s just that this return to the distant past happens to feel like such a nice palate cleanser right now — and like a veritable breath of fresh air, if cou can believe it.

Oh, and lest I forget: All of those models should be a rather fitting contribution to Azazel’s “Neglected models challenge” for February — after all, most of them had been neglected for more than two decades…

So wish me luck in my endeavour — and here’s a little something, just to get you in the right mood for this project as well:

I would love to hear what you think about the finished models so far, so please leave a comment! And, as always, thanks for looking and stay tuned for more! 🙂