January - The Photos.

These are the figures that I painted in January. It does not look like that many when I gather them all together, but it sure felt like a lot.

Parts of Exeter's Command slog their way across Towton Dale towards the Yorkist lines. Baccus 6mm figures as usual with a sneak preview of part of the Towton terrain included. Flags are all by Freezywater and bases from East Riding Miniatures.


Colonel Throckmorton P. Gladiolus stands proudly in front of the newest additions to the Bwendi army, Two HAMR suits (Rebel Minis). The Colonel (15mm Laserburn) is convinced that these will really help prevent further Albion Defence Force incursions into Bwendi territory. The Colonel's brother-in-law would appear to be adept at sourcing secondhand military hardware. "One careful owner, a little old lady who used it to go shopping, you know. Oh, don't mind that hole there. We can easily patch that up with a bit of plastic padding."


The Road Warrior stands proudly beside his new car. He is a 15mm zombie hunter that I bought through TwoHourWargames (might be Rebel Minis, I cannot remember). The car was one of a pack of thirty that I bought for £1 in my local Wilkos. The gun on top is a spare piece from a GZG tank. We are planning a small post-apocalypse skirmish and are slowly gathering forces. Rules of choice are currently one of the Wastelands variants.

Maelynn, an Elven Mage

My brother used to like Confrontation. I don't know if he still does, but he never talks about it now. While he was still enthusiastic, I picked up some Cynwall Elves, thinking that I could use them in skirmish gaming and also try Confrontation against him. That never happened, but I finally got around to painting one of them: Maelynn, an Elven mage with some kind of construct on her back. I am not completely convinced by my painting, but at least she is coloured in so I can use her. The only problem is that she towers over all my other ordinary elves that I plan to use for games of Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, so I may have to relegate her to ebay or to the display cupboard. The same problem applies to the other Cynwall Elves I have. Perhaps I need to rethink how I plan to use them. One thought that occurs is to use them on their own as a Song of Blades and Heroes warband. I have enough figures for that with a couple of extras for reinforcements.

Maelynn:

Chaos in Cairo - My Warbands

I have intended to play Chaos in Cairo since I picked up the first edition rules a few years ago, but never got around to it. The rules looked like fun but I was not entirely sure about the approach to the game taken in them. With the release of the second edition, I find all my reservations removed. As a result of this sudden burst of enthusiasm, I dug out my pulp figures to see what I could do. I had enough figures already painted to produce a full Servants of Set warband, with plenty left over for reinforcements.

Servants of Set warband:


I had some figures ready for the Archaeologists, but needed to paint a couple more (the chap in the fez and the Connell look-alike):


It also spurred me on to paint some of my Wargods Eater of the Dead figures as well as their human accomplice. Here is the Mummy warband:


I am now looking forward to playing Chaos in Cairo and will report on our games as and when we get around to playing. Steve is also very keen to do a BlackPowderPunk version of Chaos in Carpathia, so I am working on a warband for that too. More on that at a later date.

Shadowforge Dark Temple Slingers - Mid-September Update

Just to prove that I am actually still painting figures, here is a shot of my newest unit. These ladies are some of Shadowforge's finest and will feature in my warband at the Wargods tournament in Canterbury this November.


I like the Shadowforge figures, but agree with their critics that some of the figures have a distressing tendency to look like inflatable dolls. Well, at least their faces do. Still, I like the figures just the same. They have clean lines and nice animation.

I originally bought these figures to use with a Wargods of Olympus warband. Wargods of Olympus is the Greek variant for Wargods of Aegyptus. It has been in playtest since before I can remember now, so I do wonder if it will ever see the light of day, but at least the figures are pretty and I shall probably use them in our Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures games instead.

Shiva - Urban War

I have not painted much 28mm recently and Shiva has been sitting on my painting desk for a while, half completed. I decided to quickly paint her up the other day and have just finished her.


Shiva is a human that has been infected with the spores released by the Koralon (greebly aliens) when they invaded. She is a character figure for the Urban War game from Urban Mammoth. Steve and I both really like Urban War but we play it all too infrequently, because we keep getting distracted by other projects. It's a shame really because it is a game that is well worth playing.

Looking at Shiva, I think she may well appear in our Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures games. She would make a great minor demon figure, as would a lot of the other Koralon I have. Now, where can I find these figures in 6mm for our Warrior Heroes games too?

What's Going On Now? - July Update

I'm sitting waiting for Steve to turn up so that we can play Dirtside 2 at last. When did we paint our 6mm sci-fi stuff? It feels like yonks ago, as if we have been putting off playing the game for years.

In the meantime, July seems to have gone slowly as far as painting goes. I did manage to paint my 6mm Border Kingdoms army and posted about that on the Talomir Tales site. I have been slowly working on painting my Totanem for Wargods of Aegyptus and have just completed them today. I need to varnish them before I can photograph them though. Pray for a sunny start tomorrow to give me time to varnish them then lots of rain to water our new lawn!

I did paint 130 15mm figures for my brother. I guess that took up some time too. Boy did I curse those Carthaginian figures with their nasty little overhangs. Still, they got done and I am being paid in lead. Thrift at work, or something like that. I paint his figures, I get new toys and the balance is maintained.

The Wargods figures mentioned in one of my recent blog posts sold, creating another opportunity for spending without upsetting the thrift balance.

I have also spent a lot of time editing and revising the Warrior Heroes rules for Ed Teixeira at TwoHourWargames. This seems to have taken rather longer than I anticipated. It might well have been easier had I just ditched his text and re-written it instead of trying to make his text conform to my ideas of how it should be written. I shall have the battle rules sorted out by the end of August at the latest. I promise (barring personal crises, existential angst and global apocalypse). I think they will be considerably easier to refer to than the old set. I hope so anyway, after my comments on this forum about the original version of the rules. Time to put my money where my mouth is!

Speaking of money, one of the goals of this blog was to chronicle my progress at reducing my lead mountain. Hmm. I seem to have slipped off the wagon a bit. If you have seen my posts on various forums, you will know what I am talking about. If not, all is explained on the Rather Large Towton Project Blog. It is clearly not thrifty to start such a large project, and yet, in some senses it is. Am I spouting nonsense? I don't think so. I am committing to buy for this project around £350 worth of figures. That's rather a lot of dosh. I plan to sell stuff to pay for it, which will probably double my workload but will result in clearing out things I do not need, while helping to build the new project. The other advantage of this project is that I am actually very interested in this period of history (mid- to late-15th century). It's not as interesting as Vikings or Scandinavia, but it is pretty interesting for a modern period. More on this later. Time for a game.