Like many here, I've been toying with various Talisman projects. One of my complaints about the dice is that they are nearly exactly the same colour as the board, and often disappear. They also tend to knock things over when rolled. I thought I might put together a Talisman dice tower, and populate it with Talisman characters who are not represented by miniatures. This means a bit of tinkering, which I've never done before. It's going OK so far...thought I'd share.

Here's the tower, slightly modified from a commercial piece of scenery:

Note the Ice Toad statues guarding the front. I cut out the bottom of the facade and put in cardboard baffles for the dice to tumble out of. Here's a closer look at the top:

The roof is removable, and the little hut on the top has a hollow floor, down which you drop the dice.

I'll populate the tower with Talisman-y type figures, and I'll paint the whole thing over time. Here's the beginning of the Lord of Darkness (fondly called the Dude of Darkness in our group): I started with a commercially available miniature, and cut off his cloak and parts of his helmet and hands, then sculpted his face a bit and added a topknot:

Here's a closeup of what will be one of his shoulder pads:

and shield (It's not exactly like on the Dungeon box, but I never liked that shield....):

Here he is standing up, with inspirational art:

The Tower will feature the Dude of Darkness, the Werewolf and Vampire and Pit Fiends from the Inner Region (Fiends are also useful to keep track of how many you've killed), and a whole bunch of "toadified" versions of heroes, like this Wizard, which I haven't finished painting. The Ice Queen and Toad King minis can also hang out there if they're not being used on the board.

Any suggestions or thoughts or ideas? I'm also working on some sort of way to integrate this tower with a card drawing system. Will report when solution found

It looks awesome, and time-consuming to make!

However, won't this have the same issue as what I hear about the 3rd edition's dragon tower? Everyone always yells it's in the way. With say 4 players around the table, how is everyone going to reach for it?

Also, what happens if two players must roll the dice, like in combat?

Roll more carefully and use a different coloured set of dice - purple with white spots works really well. Then no need for a tower lol

Seriously Zoz great bit of work you have done there my friend! You are very much like Jon "Junga" New on the tinkering front. That's his new nickname that I gave him for his birthday today.

Ell.

I never played the third edition....had no idea it existed, really, until recently. The tower looked kinda cool from pictures I've seen. Was it that much of a bother? Ah, well, if we don't like using it, it's still fun to make.

The combat thing: we do use different coloured dice for the monsters, so I guess one player would have to use monster dice.

Thanks for the thoughts; I'll update it as it progresses.

Zoz! Tell us more of this project. How's progress?

What is the mini used? More info!!

Heh! Well, it's going ... slowly. I did finish the Toad Mage (there are photos of him elsewhere in this forum), and I'm going to start soon on the other figures. I have an Eagle King and a Vampire and a Werewolf that I've picked out too. At this rate it will take years I don't get to work on this stuff very often, and I work very very slowly. I'm still just learning to paint miniatures well, and I've never really modified them before. I still don't have the hang of GreenStuff.

The Lord of Darkness is not much further ahead than before, though I've assembled his various bits and glued him together. The original figure is a Reaper miniature called "Murkillor the Wraith King"; you can see what he looked like originally here: http://www.reapermini.com/FigureFinder#detail/03446

I'll post a few pics of the assembled LoD in a minute, once I remember how to upload stuff here....thanks for the interest!

Here we go: I'll put his shield on after I've painted them both; it'll be easier to get to some of the details that way.

Awesome choice of donor figure. I shall be watching how this goes and might revive the features on TI about model conversion... Good work!

Not a figurine user myself, but this . . . this is both daunting and awesome!

Thanks, all. I've actually been inspired by the interest to actually get off (or onto, more literally) my duff and paint things. I'm working on an Ice Queen mini right now that should be finished in a week or two. (Like I said, I'm a SLOW painter, and I can only paint a couple of hours a night before going crosseyed...the Toad King took me 15+ hours to paint) She's another Reaper mini that I will Talisman-ize; I have wanted to get both the Toad King and the Ice Queen NPCs on the board at once for a while now. I haven't yet played with the Ice Queen, though the Toad King is now a regular, and a fun one! I'll post pics when I'm done.

Zoz, awesome work my friend. Ignore my comment on the other thread - I found it via a google search and didn't see this one.

Of course you have now shamed me into never attempting this - could not possible live up to these standards. Might just do a cardboard one. ;-)

Nice tower Zozimus

But is there enough room to place it next to the board?

Well, not on our table...