The chances of anything coming from Mars...

While not exactly being a million to one, did seem increasingly remote as it has been almost a year since I joined this Kickstarter (entirely the fault of Michael Awdry, I should say),  This may seem like a curious project for me but I spent the first twenty years of my life pretty much only reading and watching science fiction and so, actually, it is merely a return to my cultural roots.  Anyway, a nice big box turned up yesterday with more alien goodies to come.  It does add another 40 figures to the pile, however!  More on the Martians when I have time to look at them properly, as I am fighting off another potential South American trip in as little as three weeks time, if I can't get out of it.

I really am trying not to get any more figures at the moment but I am very tempted by these new North Star 1672 civilians.  Utterly gorgeous!  Thoughts of pirates and Donnybrook spring to mind.

Last week I had two games at Eric the Shed's in a game-packed evening that saw us start with another Very British Civil War game.  I won't say much about it as it was a play test for a game that Eric is running in the near future.  It was a very balanced scenario as it literally went down to the last dice roll (my side lost - ending a run of victories in the shed).  This was primarily because I didn't spot a unit of the enemy lurking in the latest addition to his town: a garage.  They promptly erupted from inside and destroyed a whole unit of mine in one go.  Added to that my armoured car broke down on it's first move.  Given all that, it is amazing that I kept going as long as I did!

It's a jungle out there

We had time for another game and such is the capaciousness of the shed, that Eric had already set up a jungle which must have had aquarium owners in Chessington blubbing into their fish tanks as they wondered where on earth all the plastic plants to add interest to their piscine environments had gone.  This was a game based around the film Predator and had just five figures involved. 

It's quiet!  Too quiet!

Two of us had two humans each and one of us was the predator who had the advantage of hidden movement.  These were Eric's own rules and worked brilliantly as a game which generated real tension in a struggle that was, again, resolved on the last throw of the dice.  As we moved up the jungle board different landscape and hazards where revealed on the grid-based board.  This would also work for things like dinosaur hunting.

Ola - a good frock (I'm sure she is)

Looking forward I don't see much painting getting done for a while as I have been asked to co-author a book for the World Bank which is going to take much of my time.   There are also, potentially, two trips to South America in the next two months too.  We have also seen the return of Strictly Come Dancing which puts paid to Saturday and Sunday nights as we watch Aliona Vilani, Ola Jordan, Iveta Lukosiuta and Kristina Rihanoff undulate around the dance floor.  Ola's frock this week was an engineering marvel!  We also like Pixie Lott who we (literally) ran into once at The May Fair Hotel a couple of years ago. She had splendidly toned legs then so what a couple of months of dance training does to them will be well worth following.

Squashed! Plus goodbye to the big battalions.

Given the number of figures crowding my workbench it is amazing that I don't end up with more bashed up figures, as I am constantly knocking them onto the floor.  The problem with plastics is, of course, that they are so light that if you inadvertently catch one with your arm you may not here it hit the ground.  This was the case with this Warlord Games plastic Roman who was destined to be part of the crew of my galley.  I stood up and there was a nasty sound and a pain in the ball of my foot leaving the poor chap looking like he had just had an encounter with s scythed chariot. 

Also taking a pounding lately were my part completed Perry plastic Prussians whose bayonets are very delicate indeed.  In order to protect both units from further attrition and because my desk is covered in skirmish figures at present I have decided to confine them to a file box until I am ready to finish them.  In go the ACW Federals too, as there are so many steampunk, samurai and Argonautish figures on the table at present there just isn't room.  This means my workbench now contains figures for In Her Majesty's Name/The Lost World, Empire of the Dead, Latin American independence, Jason and the Argonauts, Copplestone 18mm fantasy and a few odds and ends.  More than enough to keep me busy until Christmas anyway.  I am painting so little at present that it just isn't worth trying to finish units of 20 figures or so but I can do the odd bit on individual skirmish figures.

In fact, shock, I finished two more this weekend for my Lost World/IHMN company.  Here we have Edward Malone and the faithful Zambo.  I made good progress on Professors Challenger and Summerlee as well yesterday, before the horrible weather caused bad light to stop play, or I would have finished them too.  I am back in Copenhagen again this week (a 4.45am, taxi pick up tomorrow) but I hope to get them done this weekend.

Charlotte is on the far right

More travel next week as the family is going up to Edinburgh to see how Charlotte is getting on at university.  Today her photograph is in three newspapers there as part of the Edinburgh Bhangra Crew who were performing at the celebrations for the Hindu festival of Dussehera on top of a freezing looking hill.  In three weeks I am back to Colombia again for ten days or so which is why my British Legion is the only unit still on the workbench.  It's been too cold and wet to undercoat them yet, though, as I always do that outside.

I set to work with my Games Worshop razor saw during Strictly Come Dancing this weekend (my goodness, that Rachel Riley from Countdown has a splendid figue) cutting the mounting bar on my Empire of the Dead figures to the depth of a normal base so I could mount them on washers so that they will match my IHMN figures.  This is Captain Nemo but I managed to base another seven as well and am looking forward to getting started on these when I finish my Lost World figures. These are really gorgeous figures with no flash and hardly any mould lines.

As I increasingly come to the conclusion that I enjoy painting more than gaming my choices of figure are tending towards the individual rather than the unit.  Recently, I bought a few Japanese figures to complement my Samuari, which should be a real painting challenge.  I also ordered a set of five figures from Hasslefree (my first order of their 28mm figures I think) which I bought just because I like them, I liked the TV series they were inspired by and I thought I would like to have a go at something different. Hasslefree are in America for some time, though, so I don't expect to see them for three weeks or so.  My particular friend, S, made a (unsuccessful) pass at one of these actors at a party in Vancouver.  We won't tell which one, though!

After all this non-gaming talk my latest purchase is, therefore, bizarrely inconsistent and is entirely the fault of Mr Michael Awdry in pointing out a Kickstarter I had no knowledge of or interest in.  But then my mind was invaded by the wailing theremin music of Mr Daniel Robert Elfman and I was lost.  From as early as I can remember until I was about eighteen I read nothing else but Science Fiction and, in those pre-Star Wars days, I watched all the classic fifties science fiction films from the fifties and early sixties on television.  So I love the whole rationale behind Mars Attacks.  My only disappointment is the fact that the manufacturers of this new game have chosen to go with modern US-style troops and not the early sixties look of the trading cards and, indeed, the film, which despite it being set contemporary times had the American troops in retro uniforms and with equally retro tanks.  Still a few plastic WW2 infantry should solve that.  Also I would have liked to have seen the Martians rather smaller than the humans as they were in the film.  The game's creators say that the Martians were the same size as humans in the original trading cards but actually they weren't and to quote original card number 50 the Martians were "puny in size".  Easier to paint, though!

Some time ago the Legatus had a meeting in 10 Downing Street and ran into the wife of the then incumbent.  I couldn't for the life of me remember who she reminded me of.  It was only a few days later that it came to me.  Ack! Ack! Ack!

In other military news this week I have just found out from a friend in the US that a girl I was at college with and went to the Rhodes House Ball with has just been made a Lieutenant General and the first woman Superintendent of the Air Force Academy.  For two years she was one of the Presidential military aides who carried the nuclear "football" containing all the US nuclear reaction options and codes.  She'd know how to deal with the Martians! Well done Michelle!