Monday, December 29, 2008

More Bloodbowl

This time the action continued at our house with four teams on two fields playing at the same time. Humans versus Dwarves and Khemri vs Orcs. I played against the dwarves and a lot of my players ended up in the sidelines although none were permanently injured.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Bloodbowl

I've just came back from playing Bloodbowl with Squire J. My first ever game and I thoroughly enjoyed it with my humans getting a good kicking from the opposing orcs. The result was a draw with a touchdown each and one of the black orcs dead. No pics but some entertaining and low dice rolls from us both. This may start a new period in my collecting.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

City fight Catachans in their new home







The new owner of the Catachans has kindly sent me some photos of his setup. There are some interesting figures there with Commisar Yarrick making an appearance. The Catachans have that Penal Battalion look about them for those of you old enough to remember the exploding neck collars.




Monday, December 15, 2008

Painting Pledge 2009 setting up II

uh oh 150 + 28 mm figures just turned up at my place. Probably not the best start to 2009. On a positive note i have finished 37 28 mm figures this month already.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

a bit of sculpting

Well you've got to start somewhere. Was making some christmas stars out of Fimo for SWMBO and i had a little left over. Some sandbags modelled on the ones on some GW terrain.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

City fight Catachans

I painted these up in an urban camo scheme which came out in White dwarf a few years ago. The bases were left deliberately plain as i've always intended to sell these after i'd used them for painting practice and I felt that a new owner would be able to fit them in better to their existing models.





Plastic figures have come a long way in the last ten years. Plastic above, metal below. The plastice came into my posession from a box of stuff that I bought. Assembled and partially painted they had to be repainted and now they are ready to fly the coop.

The aerials on the radio operator's are particularly fragile unfortunately. otherwise good solid figures for playing 40 k.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Painting Pledge 2009 setting up

Painted 200 or so (28mm)

Unpainted at least 300 (28 mm)
consisting of

1 giant
3? rhino (apc)
12 dark elf cold one riders
? LOTR
8 - 10 empire knights
60 dwarves
60 space marines
40 chaos space marines
24 terminators (chaos & marine)
10 EM4 near future troopers
2 dreadnoughts (40k)
50 skaven
20 skeletons
20 skeleton cavalry
various character models
4 minotaurs (the big GW ones)
1 orc war wyvern
1 rat ogre
2 orc boar chariots
2? orc boar riders
1 goblin wolf chariot
3 dwarf artillery
2 dark elf bolt throwers
etc

also
10mm - 100 ish
6mm - 100's
20mm - 100's

Cupboard madness


The reason the pledge may be needed, I was looking for some saurus sheilds.

Birthday Surprise II

Well after procrastinating for a couple of weeks I bit the bullet and got the base done.

  • Step 1 take a cd sleeve, not a hard plastic but sort of flexible vinyl with texture.


  • Step 2 mark the joints of the concrete with a scalpel, then run the blade at 45 along the groove and scrape out the excess. Glue to the base with some weight on the top.
  • Step 3 paint base and concrete then keeep applying colour till the texture looks right.

Voila!



Matchbox (now revell) III L


A lovely little (1:76) model. I don't know why, but when i was about 19 I threw my whole collection of these away. Madness I tell you. This is one i picked up in about 2001 when revell released them in a box set with german infantry marked as 1:72. The infantry where 1:72 but these ex matchbox models are definitely smaller at 1:76.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Brettonians for hire







Two groups of Brettonians which will be posted to ebay at the end of the week if I can't move them first.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Mystery German Navy Boat

Ok, you boat bodies out there, does anyone have any idea what this might be. The miniature dates to at least the 50's. There is a K number on the bow but its just too indistinct to make out.
It could be a copy of this toy




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Mystery 15mm figure

I bought this 15mm? figure in Melbourne in about 1986. I think from a shop called Tin Soldier which was upstairs in an office building. Does anyone have an idea of the manufacturer? The slotta base is a later addition, its on a rectangular base.





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Monday, November 24, 2008

Cabinets

Man in the Moon has been asking for some sizes for a miniature cabinet for his son's efforts.

So here are two, one which I made and one which I picked up from a Salvo's store.

B1's cupboard, which I made, sits in our spare room. The door came into my posession some years ago and was actually waiting for a cupboard to be built around it. B2 was on his way so the cupboard was duly built for his room. It originally had a hanging rail in the top, the two shelves were added and the rail removed when his clothes got too big for the space and the cabinet was handed over to B1. As you can see an eight year old can accumulate a fair bit of gear. The cupboard at the bottom has one shelf.


My miniatures cabinet sits on the other side of the room and was something I looked for for a long time.

It's an ex police piece and still has the police id number on the side. I picked it up for $50 which is cheaper than i could have bought the glass doors and tracking for. It originally had three timber shelves but it now has four shelves with the addition of a glass shelf I picked up from the side of the road (in the middle of a thunderstorm mind you). I had to have a centimeter taken off the front and one side by a glass shop :(

This bigger cabinet is almost ideal for me although my wife has commented that its butt ugly which is fair enough. The bottom locks and the two halves , top and bottom, come apart for transport. I'll post some measurements later.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Painting Pledge 2009

Well its almost time to either ignore again or take the plunge and attempt a version of the Pledge for the new year. The Pledge came about after discussions on TMP a few years ago and I've been watching curiously from my ever growing pile of miniatures ever since. The first mention may have been by Hundvig on 2 feb 2005 and its been barrelling along every year with varying success. I have so far remained very behind in my ratio of painted to unpainted miniatures.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Not a Solo Wargamer?

Does this mean I'm no longer a solo wargamer? After finally meeting a fellow miniature painter and wargamer in our new city a couple of weeks ago we had him and his son around for a game.
Warhammer Quest was the game of choice, as we've both got young son's who would get the gist of the game and we both happened to have sets. Although my meager effort pales in comparison to the organisation going on here. We're talking three cases worth of game components and figures for the game.

Towards the end of the second game where the wizard came into his own dropping a cave in on four skeletons and putting the finger to a brace of chaos knights. Just before this photo was taken we had a total of about 16 opponents appearing on the board sections.

Two enjoyable games were played over about 4 hours with the last one being unfinished and packed up for another day. I was really pleased with the way it went with our gamesmaster being very capable with the rules and keeping everything moving pretty quickly. Although at times I'll admit I was getting a bit lost with what was actually happening with dice rolls.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Birthday Surprise

Well after a bit of secrecy and some accidental hints in the form of reference photos left on our computer my wife has received her birthday present ( or one of at least). This fine English holding cell? and call box made famous in a long running British science fiction program although this one is modelled on those used in Glasgow.


The model is cast in Resin by Fenris and was purchased from Hasslefree in the UK. The model looks awesome, there were some very fine bubbles at each bottom corner and one on the top of the light on the roof otherwise a perfect and very detailed casting. Painting it has been harder than i had expected due to the fineness of the police lettering on the four sides and the beading on the windows. It's not quite finished yet, as it needs to be based properly and varnished and I may yet repaint the windows.

One thing I have been surprised at is the number of people who don't know what the Tardis is... where have they been for the last 40 years?

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Anaconda Lorne Surfcoast preparations

On Sunday there was an outing to Lorne in Victoria for the second preparation day for the Rapid Ascent race to be held on the 7th December. So I wandered along and took some photos of my father and brother in law who are competing. Four legs including swim, kayak, run and mtb ride. The swim goes from the pier to the beach at Lorne, here are the assorted bodies getting in for their test swim. It looks sunny but it was bloody cold in the water.


Even though the organisers refer to the next leg as the ocean paddle and people use kayak a bit when talking about the paddle most people seemed to be using what I would call a wave ski, I would think they are a bit quicker than an enclosed kayak in these conditions. What was interesting was that no two boats seemed to have the same design. A briefing was held on the beach with some pretty handy pointers given out for the novices.

The next leg started and ended fairly quickly for our entrepid team. Here you can see the ill fated vessel being carried in. There are two wires that run internally from the feet pedals to the rudder. The left hand wire came loose in the breakers, we fixed that then on the second attempt and still in the breakers the right hand wire came off and dissapeared inside the hull. The paddler was not happy.

The run and mtb legs apparently went well, but we'd already taken off for the trip home so i didn't get any photos unfortunately.

Friday, November 14, 2008

The Maw continued...

Well the creature is together, it proved a bit fiddlly to get the legs attached so the feet all sit on the ground. The right forearm has a v shaped cut you can see in the photo below so was easier to position and glue than the others.


I would suggest get this one on first then its right rear leg then the front left leg. The rear left leg goes on last as it doesn't seem to quite touch the ground.


If you have a look at the resin versions on the Hasslefree website they don't either so its not a fault of the mould maker or yours truly and superglue fingers. It won't be a problem as the basing material will come up to the paw anyway so no drama. Allow some time and be patient, you'll be rewarded as its a truly imposing model.


After a bit of thought and some posing of the model I've gone with a smaller base than anticipated. Less space but should be more use in dungeons.


There are some slight gaps in the joins and i'll be making some small sausages with green stuff and smoothing them in over the next few days hopefully.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Heroics and Ros Dark age Norman and Viking

highlandbevan asked on TMP if you could see the chainmail on these figures, I don't think so :) . This batch of figures were purchased in the UK in the mid eighties but I don't believe the figures have been modified since. Something to remember is they are really small, about 6mm tall (1/300) so an impression of the figure when you are looking at them on the tabletop from a metre or two away is more important than the jewels on the kings crown.
The figures from one metre, imagine a thousand of these properly arrayed on a nice scenic table.
above - Viking archers and axemen
Vikings with sword and shield
Vikings with spear and axe

Norman crossbows
Norman archers

Norman spearmen
These figures were bought originally for WRG Ancients but I based them out of frustration just to get them ready for painting. The very basic paint jobs you can see are in Enamel paint which i haven't used for ... some time. They are so old they would have lead in the alloy mix which makes them a little less hard wearing than modern alloys as you can see in the Norman spears.