Newly-acquired forces...

Latest additions to the leadpile... quite when I shall paint them, who's to say?

Sherlock Holmes and some London Policemen from Westwind Games

Thanks to the lovely majorsmith at Lead Aventure Forums (who also supplied me with the Ironclad British Line Infantry ages ago that started this whole crazy business) for swapping these minis with me. A bit of a mixed bag here, the Westwind stuff will be perfect for those slightly more normal settings involving consulting detectives, the police, and angry London mobs (perhaps connected with the whole 'Food of the Gods' business).
























Sinister Prussians in Gasmasks from Ironclad Miniatures

The Prussians will of course be pressed into service for my Ruritanian forces, on Mars or some other sector of the Astro-Hungarian Empire. And the Sanwar too look like they'll make an interesting diversion on the Martian highways (or canals possibly). I feel a Martian campaign coming on...























Sinister 'Sanwar', Martian desert dwellers from Ironclad Miniatures

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...

A bit of housekeeping

As I've re-activated my old D&D campaign (at least, I'm ploughing through my old notes and attempting to cudgel them into order) I also thought it might be time to do a little housekeeping on the blog - as some time ago, the excellent 'Big List of RPG Plots' by S. John Ross of Cumberland Games went down, and I was looking for it to help with my general DMing activities.

Turns out that it's moved so I've put in the link to the current site - it's really worth checking out whether one plays old-school fantasy, sci-fi games, VSF, Pulp or whatever other genre one can imagine. Pretty much all the plots you could think of are listed with common and not-so-common twists and complications; also included are some suggestions about how to combine plots and move from one to another. A great resource to stimulate the gaming imagination. Please take the time to visit it and take a gander at the other Cumberland Games stuff while you're there - including various free downloads which I'm sure I'll be taking advantage of!

While I was sorting that out, I also took the opportunity to delete the Universal Engineering forum from the links list. It was hacked some time ago, and account details were pirated. I certainly ended up with a virus on my email account which originated the day after the forum was hacked and I can't help thinking the two things were related. The forum has now either moved or just ceased, there's no forum at the address I held anyway. Sadly Universal Engineering never really took off; conceived as a 'TerraGenesis for vehicle makers' - specifically, I suppose, sci-fi vehicles - it never attained the critical mass of modellers necessary to become a self-sustaining community in the way TG did. Partly, I think, because TG already had a huge library of articles and photos before it became a successful forum. UE didn't have that and never acquired it.

Hopefully, a new attempt to do something similar will be more successful... who knows? I'd certainly like to be able to go to a forum dedicated to the art of turning shampoo-bottles into grav-tanks and building cardboard dirigibles... it might help me to sort out one of the modelling projects I'm currently working on, some 'squad cars' for my 'space police' - 

Jo, Bo, Ho and Flo Judoon, Intergalactic Enforcers

- some Judoon from the Dr Who magazine that really need some transport. I'm sure they'll turn up at some point to bother my Torchwood and UNIT chaps... but maybe not with their hover-cars.

More British Chaps - post from the vaults

 

Some lovely miniatures that sadly haven't seen a drop of paint yet - four troopers and a bugler from Redoubt Miniatures 'Zulu Wars' range - you can find them here - and a chap who may be from the same range (though I can't find him on the Redoubt site) who may well surface as either Allan Quatermain, or one of my projected 'Kaptein Django's Boer Kommandos' who still need to see the light of day... though there are lots of very lovely Zulu and Boer Wars minis on the Redoubt site, it shouldn't be too hard to a) get some Boer Kommandos together (who could also serve as irregular horse and foot for my British Forces if fighting Martians or whatever, as well as characters for more general adventuring stuff, for instance a gamekeeper type for 'Food of the Gods') and b) get some British cavalry and officers... very lovely minis I tells ya!

 I haven't been very good at updating the blog lately, but then again I haven't been doing much painting lately either... Hopefully, these will have some paint on them in the not-to-distant future.