Le'me hear a Hoo-Har Sargeant!!

Just a quick one to show off my Space Hulk Terminator Sargeants.

I've taken my time to "set the tone" for the troopers to follow. Having been impressed by the individual fluff and heraldry in the books i've been balancing that against my retro feel by adding a few extra pallete tones and colours. The critical thing was not to add too many.

In all, i'm rather pleased and 5 points for the pair seems fair. I've also "fixed" the 'stealers so will have the points for the outstanding pair :)

Scarily, i've ordered a case from Kaiser Rushforth to provide adequate storage. I honestly believe that a fortnight will see the project complete......... honestly!!

Have you been to a harvester before??

Long story short; I had to run an errand up to Angel today and so popped into the recently opened GW up there to pick up some paints.

I got the standard spaniel-like greeting though thankfully the leg humping was fairly brief following a bit of foot swallowing on his part.

Well done that man :)
You see, the thing is that I worked for the Evil empire as a store manager for 6 years before moving on. As such my gradual move away from the GW hobby has been a bit schizophrenic at times. The dirty little secret is that, at times, i've missed it :(

The new Warhammer Fantasy release has been an excellent case in point. I REALLY want to believe that it'll be great and i'll love playing it BUT I know it's a lie. It feels, strangely, like a dream has died or that Santa has been put away for house-breaking.

However, seeing the poor bloke stood in his one man store, sweat and desperation dripping from him in equal measure, I found myself explaining how, other than Blood Bowl and Space Hulk, it's just not for me anymore.

He didn't say a lot to that and I smiled as I walked away feeling strangely lighter..........WIERDO :)

In Town with Time to Kill!!

As far as 20th Century Fox is concerned he's Heresy's "Hurn the Hunter". As far as the Star Wars boys are concerned he's a potential nightmare to take on. To me he's another of Heresy's "alternative" sci-fi figures added to the collection.

Good fun to paint, he should be excellent fun on the table-top. I'm already thinking through Flying Lead stats and wondering how many points a personal cloaking field will cost!
I've ended up going for an SS pea-dot skin tone, which is original, as some semblance of his chameleonic abilities. Just recently, I rarely seem to be painting a "standard" skin tone. Might make for a nice change of pace.

I've also expanded my Bone Griffons with a squadron of three Phantom class destroyers. A quick three PPs courtesy a la drybrush and wash. They're slightly late for the campaign the final round being this Tuesday but will deploy for the mutli-player "fun" games to follow.
I did have some trouble ordering them from one of the growing horde of independant internet sellers. As part of a larger order, mainly paint, various bits went in and out of stock that took several e-mails and almost a month to be despatched and i'm STILL due a minor refund.

I don't think i'm alone in thinking that discount sellers shouldn't be allowed to provide discounted service. I'm aware that they're operating on tight margins with minimal staff, stock and space but they chose to do so. I have choice to........ rather a lot of it!

Rant over :)

Rattle and Hum

As a bit of birthday treat the missus said that I could pick any location for a weekend away and she'd sort out a hotel in the area.

So, Bovington it was! The hotel was a quaint independantly run village affair, which kept the missus happy enough

She was fairly impressed actually, if not so much with the exhibits themselves, then at least with the info boards and their presentation.

We then shot off to Corfe Castle which was impressive, depsite being blown up by Cromwell. Interestingly you could see a lot more about how the place was built and functioned once various bits had been blown apart!

Saturday was then finished off with a quick stroll by Swanage beach and harbour. I was still thinking about the Stug. Mmmmm..... Whermacht armour (drool)
Sunday was another National Trust visit to a house and gardens that I forget the name of. No tanks, but we had a picnic in the sunshine involving pork pie and flapjack. Winner.

As our third National Trust visit of the year membership has now paid for itself and every further visit is effectively free. I do NOT however feel the need to invest in any open toed sandals with white sports socks!!

As much as I do like Whermacht armour, cold war soviet armour simply reaches the parts that other armour simply cannot. Anything from a T-55 onward just hits a certain spot. It took a great deal of will power to not by a T-64 kit from the gift-shop.

This example is in need of a certain amount of TLC, as do my 'Stealers.

On Friday afternoon I took my two casualties to GW Plaza following a quick stop of at Orc's Nest for some brush-on matt varnish. Jon suggests that this may do the trick. Cheers for the pointer mate :)

After an initial "well what you did wrong is" lecture I stood my ground a touch, feeling somewhat patronised, as I WAS actually aware that the "dust" was likely to be propellant from the can.

After a further 10 minutes I walked away with some useful pointers, a replacement can of Purity Seal and the promise that if they wouldn't fix I'd get one for one replacement. A fair result.

Monday night is 'Stealer night. Boo and yah!!

I won't actually ever be using Purity Seal again though as the "how to best use" advice ran more as a list of faults. Coat D'Arms stuff isn't cheap but it does a good job and it's all about peace of mind and that's priceless!!

Tooth and Claw

In the cold depths of deep space no-one can hear me grind my teeth. Grrrrr!!!

In short, I finished all of my Hulk 'stealers this weekend and a very happy chap I was indeed. I'm particuarly happy with the retro 80's colour scheme and believe that I've achieved the slighty vampiric look that I was after.

They've been quite a bit of work, especially the pink, but it all came out good in the end :)

The gnashing came last night when I realised that the two coats of Purity Seal has gone a bit cloudy. I have no idea why, though relatively new i've used the can before without a problem. Maybe it's the recent heat but I can't see why.

Only two figs have come up particuarly badly so it's not the greatest disaster and it doesn't seem to come up on these photos at all.

At worst they look a bit overly drybrushed and i'm sure that I see it worse because I know that its there.

But the point is that I KNOW THAT ITS THERE.

I don't want to repaint them and more than likely won't. I will take the worst couple and the can back to GW but its not as if they can replace the figures.


I do think that they should do SOMETHING about it and it will be interesting to see exactly what. Its not one that i'd want to deal with myself in all honestly.

So i'll take my 40 painting points from the 20 that are acceptable and move on. ACCEPTABLE, it just takes the gloss off of them..... literally.

Nothing else to do but roll up my bottom lip and crack on with the Termies, which is exactly what I did. It's ONLY a game.... apparantly!!

Club tomorrow night, that'll put me right :)

One man and his Shed

No need to worry lads but I went to the flower show at Hampton Court yeterday with the missus and her folks. It was rather warm.

Quite bizarrely the main flower tent was just as oppresively moist and warm as many a gymnasium wargames show that I've attended so it wasn't all alien to me.

I bought this bloke, Dave the Demon, to gaurd the shed. A quick visit to the nursery this afternoon acquired him so appropriate "hair" as he is, unsurprisingly, a plant-pot!


Rich informs me that lemon-balm is a natural mozzy repellant, so I may need to remodel his "do" at some point.

Otherwise, it's been quite a busy week for the shed.

Tuesday night was our first full night of D&D and Jon set us well on our way to fame or death. Some of us would seem to prefer infamy as according to Charlie "being chaotic evil means never having to say sorry. Well said that man :)

An important part of any campaign is the area map and here it is. It's a pretty good one for a fantasy map as its not an upside down country and there's a lack of incovenient seas around the edges. Huzzah!

We picked back up from where we left off in Winterhaven (North West), travelling East through Fallcrest and on to Thunderspire. Excellent names, Dave would be impressed :)
My main role as a Halfling Thief, other than trying to cut a variety of dodgy deals, is to scout ahead, locate the enemy and then stay well out of the resulting ruckus other than to dash in at the end with a bit of rather over-enthusiastic back-stabbing.

I feel that, from a personal perspective, it all went rather well. Two takedowns for just some minor magic missle singing.
Thursday night Rich and Shaun came round and we got a game of Black Powder in, my first, with Sahun's 10mm Seven Years War figures.

It was a bit of a reminder for Rich and Shaun so play was quite slow so everything got left set up for next time. The power of the shed :)
My first impression is that I really like BP's laid back style which suits and needs a friendly / flexible approach to play. I understand why criticism has come from the more tourney-centric players but I take that as a GOOD thing, in the nicest way possible.... of course :)

Shaun took the Austrians against myself and Rich with the Prussians. As part of the rules you have to announce your orders before rolling for number of actions. Cue dodgy accents!

After a bit of a cav on cav action on the western flank Shaun's dice stuffed him horribly and I got my cav into several of his infantry columns on the extreme eastern flank. Cue nightfall various retreats to bivoauc.

Black Powder shall return to this page very soon.

James May: Demi-God?

It's interesting as to how events can act in conjunction at times.

It was my birthday on Saturday and here are two of my, poorly lit, gifts. As you might guess the Falcon is for when the Star Wars RPG campaign comes out of mothballs and the Lightning is just because, a hobby foible if you will.

What was "interesting" was that over the weekend I and my beloved (she bought me TOYS!!) watched the James May: Toy Stories episode with the 1:1 Airfix Spitfire. An excellent programme, well worth watching, that reduced me to gibbering nerd status.
Thankfully she was more entertained than scared :)
It started me thinking about all of the kits I COULD put together. It doesn't help that I found a couple of excellent Cold War russian tank PLOGs on Warseer.

But that would mean finding a significant supply of the most precious hobby material, TIME! But the thing is that i've got a substantial list of upcoming projects looking for active service most of which have the capacity to involve chaps like these:
They are, in no particular order:

- 10mm ACW with Black Powder: I have an army list, SOME figures (ALL unpainted), SOME relevant bases. I do at least have the rulebook, the relevant websites as favourites and funds in the paypal account.
PLENTY to be done.

- 28mm AWI: Here I have British Light Infantry and Minutemen painted with extras, including a coach and horse, amongst the "lead-pile". A Perry farmhouse kit has been ordered. Rules will probably be Ganesha's Drums and Shakos.
Good to go in basic but I have PLANS for an extended scenery set (multi use) and a TWIST :)

- 10mm Ancients / Fantasy with Impetus: I have 2000pts of Warmaster Ancient Dacians, half of which are painted, a big bag of fantasy gigantic generic germanics, some riding bufallo, and bugger all else. I DO think that it would look and play really well :)

This is all AFTER I complete Space-Hulk which specifically involves finishing 22 'stealers, fully painting 11 Terminators before black-edging all of the tiles and sorting out appropriate storage.
THEN I have plans for some custom tiles which will, once again, be multi use to fit in with other projects.

All this does at least fit with the 28-10 theory of playing skirmish in 28mm and grand scale in 10mm. I have constructed an Excel spreadsheet. It even has colour coding :)

This evening, I type a la Tuesday, is Jon's first night proper for D&D in the shed. All I need to do is go home. I can manage that :)

The Magnificent Seven

Just a quick note.

This Tuesday was the fifth of the month and as such a bonus club night for which Rich had set up a 600 point Flying Lead mini-tourney. I decided to get the GI's some table time and Monday lunchtime sat with the army builder to sort out Rogue's Troopers.

Having only recently reminded myself of how to play I decided to go for a relatively elite force but without extra skills that I knew I would clean forget about in the heat of combat! This meant I could go for good Quality and Combat ratings with a decent number of figures.
I went up against Shaun's copper first off and was handed a comprehensive victory by his dice. Still a win is a a win and we both had a good laugh while we were at it.

It was a much closer result against Rich's super elite 4 man kill-team. We went down to one man each before I managed to grab my objective and made a very efficient tactical withdrawl! A win on points but at a very high price!

Good rules, great games, keen to do more with them :)
No more PPs and 15 is below target BUT I have 22 'Stealers ready for highlight and two weeks missus-less across July. Should be a biggie.

Meanwhile I have a positive plethora of exciting, for me, project ideas nibbling at my wallet. I SHOULD remain strong and continue the, boring, methodical approach that has served me well so far.

But that's a post for a few days time. Always leave them wanting more :)