Brass Goggles pt 3

Well, it seems that I can't paint her left eye.

So, she's a bit cross-eyed and I'm going to have to put up with it. I'm quite convinced anything else I do will make it worse.

She even got a battle in last night, along with some Space Marines (whatever they are, for VSF's sake) as I used her as a stand-in for a Space Marine Librarian with Plasma Pistol and Force Weapon in a game of 40k in which my regular opponent, Lyracian, reduced me to one surviving marine and two slightly-functioning vehicles in 5 turns.

When will she see action against Rivets and Whimsy? Not anytime soon, I suspect...

Brass Goggles pt 2

Slowly, ever so slowly, like an Aetheric Leviathan inching into harbour (one really can't say 'centimetring into harbour') I'm managing to get more paint on my Warmachine Victoria Haley (I find it hard not to type 'Jennifer Haley') mini.

Honestly, at some point she'll be finished. Really. And she can join the little gaggle of figures waiting for me to play GASLIGHT with them - as a sky pirate!

She'll probably see service first as a stand in Space Marine Librarian in a 40k game however. Ooops.

My first Brass Goggles...

Sky Pirate Work In Progress shots

The first is the mini (a Warmachine Victoria Haley) when I received it from snow_base_Gaz - he'd done most of the work already!

But there was work on the head - hair, face, goggles - that needed doing so I gave it a go.

My first pair of VSF goggles and I like the way they're looking.

Not so impressed with the hair though - it turned out a bit more purple than I thought it would.

A few bits to touch up on the staff and I really ought to make it clearer she's wearing gloves (I haven't just forgotten to paint her fingers), that might help somewhat. Otherwise, it's just finishing the face; then the base and she's done, the first of my Sky Pirates who will serve as Rivets' and Whimsy's real adversaries...

Peculiar female sky-pirate sighted...

Apologies first off for the bad picture quality - by the time I'd realised that the first two were a bit blurry there was too much superglue to pull the bits apart and photograph them again. My latest acquisition - from one of the very nice chaps over at Lead Adventure Forum - is this... a mini of Captain Victoria Hayley, Warcaster of Cygnar in the Iron Kingdoms... from the world of 'Warmachine' by Privateer Press.

She was in two bits when I got her - in attempting to put the body on a base the torso became seperated from the legs... who knew that would happen?

And here she is in the flesh (or rather metal): half Amazonian Warrior-Queen, half psychedelic cowgirl, those are definitely goggles on her head and thus she is without a doubt a ski-pirate. Probably a confederate of that dashed Captain Van Dango and a deadly enemy of Rivets and Whimsy. Kinda fitting that I should get one at last, as I've spent quite a lot of the last couple of years drooling over those Warmachine minis and indeed getting the rules from my mate Rob was one of the things that prompted me to start the blog in the first place...

Yet another month or more goes by...

...and an odd six weeks or so it's been since my last update.

A couple of days after I last posted, my friend Rob Marriott died suddenly. An artist, a gamer and a thoroughly nice bloke (as well as a maker of a fine cup of tea), Rob was also, through his insistence that I should play Warmachine, the guy that turned me on to the lovely minis produced by Privateer.

Thus, in a very real way, Rob is one of the inspirations for this blog, because it was in part my conversations with him about minis and gaming in general that lead to me kicking around the ideas that became the genesis of 'Rivets and Whimsy', and pretty directly the Warmachine minis have been an influence on my thinking about Victorian gaming, technology and aesthetics - hence some pics of them on this very page.

I never did play Warmachine with him, and I will always regret missing that opportunity. Farewell, Rob, I hope you're having a blast wherever you might be now.

What figures to use...

Having started this blog to devlop 'Rivets and Whimsy' and not really doing that, I thought I'd start to get my thoughts in order.

"The Extraordinary Adventures of 'Rivets' McGurk (a gruff aeronef engineer), and Miss (or Lady, can't remember which) Whimsabella Pootling (the daughter of McGurk's former employer)" and their fin de siecle high-jinks in a clapped-out aeronef... that's how I described it back in March.

Shortly after I described as "a sort of VSF 'Odd Couple', where 'Rivets' McGurk, an irrascible aeronef mechanic (probably played by Robbie Coltraine c1987), was thrown into a tangled love-hate relationship with Miss Whimsabella Pootling, the posh daughter of the man who fired him (probably played by Felicity Kendal, c1972), with corsets, flying goggles and big spanners..."



One of these two will probably end up as my 'Rivets' I think. I don't yet have a 'Whimsey', but I have a potential mini for McGurk's daughter, Peggy, who also helps run the 'nef, getting into much smaller spaces than her dad:



Both of these are from the gorgeous (but very expensive) Warmachine ranges.

After that there are a couple of other characters I want to source - one is Kapitein Horst Van Dango, the dashing but deadly Dutch sky-pirate, and a pistol-popping French assassinatrix called Anna Baptiste, one of the sky-pirates that are on Rivets' and Whimsy's trail... both of these I'm sure I could use Warmachine minis for... but I'm hopelessly undecided. Watch this space (or not)...