100 Followers You Say?! It Must Be Competition Time!

Good golly!

I've just noticed I've broken the 100 follower mark on my blog!

Thanks for all the interest in my utterly random jabberings and inability to keep onto a single project folks and to celebrate I've decided to have a little bit of a give away!

As I make robots for a living, I figured I would offer one of you the chance to get your hands on a custom creation built and painted and ready to roll!

As this is kind of an Oldhammer inspired blog, I plan on giving a lucky winner the choice of one of the following for me to make for them:

An Imperial Robot
An Imperial Dreadnaught
An Ork Dreadnaught or tinbot
An Eldar Spirit Walker
A Chaos infested Dreadnaught
A Squat Dreadnaught
A Tyranid Gribbly

All you have to do is post a comment on this blog entry and I will choose a winner at random then all they will need to do is choose what they want and I will build and paint one for them!

Hopefully that will be a suitable thankyou for everyones kind patience and interest over the last couple of years!

All the best!

Pirate Crew Combat Droid WIP

Hi!

Having seen Whiskey Priest's fantastic crew over on THE LEADPILE, I found myself rummaging around for some suitable bits and bobs to create my own scurvy crew of spacefarers and found this chap:

 Shiver Me Timbers!

Its originally a very cheap rubbery plastic figure I picked up from Asda several years ago with some sort of idea of painting him up but with many moves, he sort of languished in a box till today.

At first glance, he may not look too inspiring but I find myself reminded of one of the Simon R Green Deathstalker books where the main characters head to an abandoned Imperial holiday world where something went badly wrong with the simple AI's who were constructed to look like popular childrens characters.

This got me to thinking of theming my own crew a bit and including Mr Snuggles, a long forgotten robot from just such an abandoned theme park world that the Pirates have recruited to act as a mobile heavy weapon transport.

Mr Snuggles Loves More Dakka! 

Now Armed with a heavy bolter and only in need of a proper barrel, the rather simple AI controlling a hulking robotic body makes for a rather fun and somewhat different addition to a pirate crew!

He actually has a second pair of eyes under the bunny helmet which should give him a very different look once he has been repainted and I can imagine him stomping about blazing away with his large gun while offering hugs...

Hopefully once our guests have headed back down south, I will get him painted. Any suggestions for colours would be much appreciated!

All the best!

The Sound of Tumbleweed...

Greetings!

Alas hobby time has been relegated to the long grass for the next month or so as work is going a bit mental and we have guests staying for the next three weeks forcing me to vacate my man cave for the duration!

Hopefully normal service will resume soon after as I have literally loads of ideas/plans and units I want to be getting on with!

In the meantime, heres a handsome Tumbleweed!

Rogue Trader 1889

Hi!

Apologies for the lack of updates of late but work has been pretty mental of late and I seem to get home and fall asleep which, unsurprisingly, has cut back on the hobby time!

Still, I have been thinking of using Rogue Trader as the basis of a bit of a steampunk spin off setting based in an alternative late 19th Century.

Imagine the Great Powers of Earth competing to grab land on Mars from the warlike locals, dinosaur hunting in the steaming jungles of Venus or exploring the frozen wastes of the outer worlds. Throw in a load of alien life forms and a little bit of humour and bobs your uncle!

French Hussars repainted as Evil Minions...

I already have a fair amount of Aeronef ships kicking around and may even have some redcoats in 15mm scale which will allow me to scratch build some suitably eccentric transports of delight for them to be menaced by.

Throw in some private armies, hordes of Barsoomian types, anarchist organisations, mad cults and it could just work...

I must admit that Steampunk and VSF has always been a bit of a passion of mine and I wouldn't mind getting a flotilla painted up to battle it out in the skies above while the British redcoat dishes out lead to johnny alien!

Looking at the Rogue Trader rulebook, it would be perfect with a very small amount of conversion work and it also clears another pile of stuff!

Has anyone else tried Rogue Trader with a different setting? I'd love to hear how it turned out. I do own GASLIGHT but haven't been taken with the rules and also own a fair few VSF sets which tend towards being a bit clunky while Rogue Trader always seemed more based on playing a fun game based around a scenario which is just the thing for skirmishes. The closest I have picked up is In Her Majesties Name which is great but has a more Necromunda type of vibe to it.

All the best!

The Joys of Stripping (Paint That Is)

Hi!

Well I've spent a rather satisfying evening stripping paint from the first two small tubs of Dettol soaking figures that I have had for an age. Its a rather smelly and sticky job but has proved to be worth it as the Dettol has done a wonderful job of clearing the paint off some great lead!

Amongst the mix there's 90s Catachan Imperial Guard, classic Rogue Trader Eldar, some ancient Citadel adventurers, Marauder Dwarves and even a Ral Partha figure too! Alas no photos this evening but I will try and take one tomorrow before I head out to work.

Its got me to thinking of all the projects I have started down the years and then given up on. Oddly the new approach I have taken of just picking whatever I fancy painting seems to be paying off as I have already painted more figures in the last six months than I did in the previous year. Yes they are a random selection of figures from a dozen ranges and an eclectic mix of fantasy and sci-fi but the fun has returned in painting again which is really important to me.

As much as I would love my hobby to be about collecting armies and playing games, I personally find it more of a way of relaxing and forgetting the stress and I feel that I am finally getting to the point that I am once again regaining my groove so to speak.

Speaking of projects, I have found myself having to brutally restrain myself from the temptation of buying more figures as I already have enough to do some of the following:

 Play a game of Epic, be it 2nd edition or Epic 40000!

 Play a game of 2nd edition 40k!

 More Excitingly, play a game of Rogue Trader!

 Play a small game of Warhammer in true Old School style! 

 Play a small game of Aeronef!

 Have a skirmish with Heavy Gear Blitz

Or play a host of other wonderful games that I have collected down the years!

The problem has always been that I have too many figures, most of which languish unpainted and the prospect of collecting and then painting lots of figures becomes terribly daunting before the dreaded Ooh Shiney Syndrome strikes and I go out and get a whole load more figures that are then consigned to the lead pile or Ebayed off.

With the removal of caring about getting a playable force put together and the enjoyment being in the painting and almost magically, small forces are indeed beginning to crop up, be it my Bloodaxes for 40k or my House Helios Elves for fantasy, or even my Davion Battletech stuff!

I suspect I need to have a bit of a catalogue of exactly what I have and as I have moved house in the last six months, and all my stuff is finally located in one room (having it in one house in the same country has previously been a rarity!) means that once I have stripped the two remaining big tubs of figures I should finally have a decent idea about what I have and what I want to do with it. Who knows, maybe I will even take a photo or two of it all and shove it on my blog!

The general idea going forward is to continue painting what I want and see what comes from it and I may even finally manage to get some games in as I go which would be an added bonus.

What I really do want to do though is to attempt the insurmountable and work my way through all my remaining miniatures before I allow myself the luxury of buying any more. Heaven knows, I have enough stuff to keep me entertained for a fair time to come!

All the best!

Creatures of Aeroth: Children of the Worm Blessed

Hi!

As promised, heres the first of the creature designs:

Blessed

The Blessed are favoured minions of the Children of the Worm. Created during a blasphemous ritual where a willing supplicant ingests a parasitic demonic worm. The worm warps and changes its host and its form bulges and swells until it resembles a troll sized hulking parody of its original shape. 

Capable of taking vast amounts of damage, the Blessed are almost mindless and driven by nothing more than a need to feed that is never satiated. The parasitic worm grows and eventually devours the host from the inside out but in the meantime, they make terrifying shock troops as the wade into battle, ripping and tearing into their foes and jamming gobbets of bloody flesh into their maw in a feeding frenzy.

Even death brings no end to the Blesseds rampage. Despite even the most terrible wounds, the worm will take over control of the corpse and erupt from its mouth or head in an attempt to gain a new host.

The Blessed in Miniature!

Imperial Shuttle

Hi!

Following on from my last post, I thought I would paint up a ship or two to represent the aerospace forces of Farpoint and have finished an Imperial Shuttle:

 The Ajax, Hammerhead class Stuttle

I must admit I am quite pleased with how it turned out having spent quite a while adding on chips, scratches and lots of weathering. I wanted it to look like a workhorse rather than it had just come out of the factory.

Handily it scales well for 6mm scale too and will probably see use in the odd game or two of epic! Originally a cheap diecast ship from Tron Legacy, the only conversion work I did on it was to add a couple of small turrets to the rear and underside. Now sporting a pair of twin heavy bolters on auto turrets, the ship is capable of fighting off pirates or even providing supporting fire for ground troops.

 Entry Hatch

Although it may not be the most maneuverable or heavily armed of ships, it was great fun to paint and will no doubt see action in scenarios requiring capturing enemy characters or transporting small, valuable cargos!

 Cockpit

Finally, heres a quick shot of it next to a Silent Death fighter from EM4 Miniatures. Although nominally 6mm scale, the fighters themselves are far better suited to 3mm but will do in a pinch and it handily means I can continue working through my leadpile!

 Fighter Scale

I must admit I was rather struck by the similarity of the lander to the utterly fantastic but sadly unreleased Epic lander which looks like a flying coffin:

I also spotted this pic while Googling for Imperial Spaceships:

Devourer Imperial Guard Dropship

Its a rather funky design, if a little massive for the games I plan on playing but it would be interesting to see about creating one or two for a more fleet scale type of game with fighters and light warships trying to defend the landers as they head dirtside while the opposition sends swarms of fighters to destroy them.

All the best!