More lil'men that I painted.

These guys are Malifaux Freikorps.  I was in the FLGS in the Wirral and saw these; they were an impulse purchase, but I kinda like them.  Why anyone commonly known as Friekorps would be seen brandishing a Colt 45 and Kukri god only knows, but I get the impression that that is the point of Malifaux.

Anyway, they are two likely candidates for a close protection team (counts as bodyguards), intrusion team (counts as deaf cult assassins) or just wounds for an inquisitorial warband.  I dare say that there'll be plenty of excuses to field them, it'll just depend what box they end up living in.

Two PDF 2nd Regt (La Gardia Presidentiale) grenadiers.  Scion arms and legs, pig iron swedes and 3rd party armoured torsos from the old, old version of what used to be Urban Mammoth's thingy.

I seriously need to do something about the purple ink spot on the tops of their heads.  It's not too bad in the dim light of the garage, but shows up quite badly in the daylight photos.  Ho hum.

Three officers from the 2nd (LGP) Regt.  There weren't really any to speak of before these three- obviously GW tank crew bodies and legs, assorted GW arms and a pair of Tamiya 1/35 binos - still smaller than the GW 1/58ish giant binos.  No wonder Cadians have big, manly arms, lugging all that over sized kit about.

The Officers in gas masks are Puppets War and the other dude has an Eisenkern Officer's head and the GW Officer's body with the medals.

And this is the Ad Mech AAA for protecting the precious Titans from baddies with aircraft.  It was red when I got it; I was basically practising weathering on it.  Hopefully what you see when you look at it is successive layers of mud dried in different colours.

I now think that narratively, it would have made more sense to the casual observer if the older, drier mud had been the lighter colour and the newer, wetter mud was darker - a lesson for future models. In case you're wondering, Salisbury Plain is mostly chalk just under the surface, so the deep liquid mud churned by tracks and HGVs is a sort of bleached bone type colour.

Cdr 902 Div's Crassus

Over all, I'm pretty happy with this.  It's not supposed to be that badly beaten up, being the Divisional Commander's trundling HQ.  The stains around the fuel filler caps are better in the flesh.  The main disappointments are the sooting where the exhaust chucks out the diesel fumes - this looked great until I tried to seal it in with a bit too much varnish - hence it looking like a spray on coating, rather than an accumulation of soot - go figure.  Generally speaking I was a bit heavy handed with the varnish all over - you can see white patches on the tracks as well.

I will go back and sort those out.  The other track treatment that doesn't show too well is rubbing pencil lead shavings over the tracks (rather than highlighting/drybrushing with a metallic paint) - this normally gives a really good result.  However, I used too hard a pencil this time and it's just not showing up.  Sad face.

Anyway, here he is, side by side with the Korps Commander's run around.  It sort of points out the difference between the 3 Star Vostroyan Korps Commander - 30' high walking chimera.  And the 2 Star ASL Divisional Commander - large capacity very tough crassus.

Still - more stuff to go on the mid year report can't be bad, even if it does need a little bit of fixing. Anyway, having a little bit of time, I thought I would examine all of the ASL assets.

ASL Chimerae, very rusty tracks; the sky/eau de nile/rotting flesh needs sorting out before any more work is done.

The rest of the ASL fleet - the LRMBT need some euro dust on the tracks.  Those little curiously constructed gun carriages need some dust as well.  And the muzzles need a bit of work as well.

The Stormsword has been done once (by JTS) in grey.  And this will get some rotting flesh/sky/eau de nile as well. The whole lot do hang together quite well.  The Stormsword is technically Gen Welbahn's tactical vehicle.  In reality, it's command is delegated to his crew chief, Kaptain Hammith, as Gen Welbahn has a whole Division to command, which is possible in the Crassus in a way it isn't from the cupola of the Stormsword.

The un-usual world of COSPLAY.

So, I know a couple of LARPers (no names).  LARPing (google it if you don't actually know what LARP is) does by definition include a bit of acting and sleuthing and problem solving etc etc.  Where as COSPLAY seems to just be dressing up.



Picture from here

COSPLAY is popular in Japan, we know.  And it always seemed to me to just involve dressing up as an anime character.  But things evolve.

Idly browsing the interweb I came across these:

Pre enacting the guard

Young lady in various costumes

I used to not care for such things.  But upon reflection, these sorts of things are, perhaps, as much part of the 40k hobby as building an army of little resin, plastic, metal and failcast men.  It certainly takes dedication and effort to craft yourself a proper costume and then a dash of chutzpah to actually wear it somewhere. All good stuff, IMHO.

The browsing showed me a remarkable quantity and standard of artwork out there is quite breath taking.  Which had be thinking about the origin of it all; If you google 'John Blanche' there are a number of blogs and 'sites devoted to show casing the Grimfather's work.

And whoops there goes another two or three hours.  Oh well.

Anyway.  Here are some more people all dressed up: this time from Salute.

Black Library Audio Books

  

I've got one, "Black and Red" (I know, I can see it too) which is about SoB being called in to assess a world's piety immediately after first contact.

Anyway, the voice actors do the best they can and the direction is what it is and it's all a bit, er, how I would have wanted it to sound had I produced it in 1982.  Lots of forced reaction and caricature with a predictable shoot out at the end.  Now the idea behind the audio book was a good, solid premise for a Grim Dark story.  But it could have been a bigger story, in a book and been quite the piece, instead of being crammed onto one planet in an audio book.  Jus' sayin'.

So they're now offering this:

Which I am really interest in - I really quite liked 'Flight of the Eisenthing'.  Any way.  Here's the rub; I have almost no time in my life to listen to things (really  listen, I mean.  The radio may be on the background, but that's background stuff).   Whereas I do read.  I'd like this as a book.  Or books.  Or e-book or e-books.  And having been disappointed by 'Black and Red' I'm not really in the place where I'm gonna blow £50+ on a punt that this might not be as awful.

Another thing is the way in which I consume my hobby product - bit of weird language there, but I hope you get what I mean.  I would want this to sit on my shelf, with the other books I like.  Not be crammed and lost in with the Jason Donovan and Take That CDs.  Oh well, £50 saved, I suppose.

Do I have a point ?  Not really, just sharing an opinion.

OBTW, Astrubel Vect has a facebook page !  Who knew ?

Salute 2015 (Post 3) Cogitation

Overall, my mind was well and truly boggled.  To find half of your browser history in the flesh (or plastic, resin and MDF) is breathtaking, even when you're expecting it.  I also got to see some people again (Mr Lee, The Responsible One, Col Corbane) although managed to miss a few others.  I did see Andy Foster (Heresy Miniatures) up close, but he was going to into the gents as I was coming out, so I didn't think it appropriate to strike up a conversation. 

One company's huge stand up banner.  For some reason I didn't get their name in the photo.

I ended up in conversation with Eric (in the red t-shirt with the water bottle) and Howard in the FW queue.  Howard had driven from the West coast of Wales that morning and was going to drive home again after the show.  He enters the painting comp each year, historicals I gather.  Dedicated and nice bloke.  Eric didn't come so far on the day, but originates from France and has seen quite a bit of the world to end up working in Nottingham (for Warlord Games).   They made queing a social event, rather than a chore.

Mrs Responsible One entered this Chaos Reaver into the painting competition.  The guy infront of me in the FW Queue bought one 'over the counter'.  He spent well over £800.  They had run out of the event only figures by the time I got there, but, being FW, they let queuers order them anyway (postage free) - FW customer service strikes again.

A Vickers Medium Tank.  I had a corgi one of these as a small person.

This four armed dude and the Chimera below are Darklands models, I think. There were loads of models on display from all the manufacturers and all we well worth looking at.  Big things (like Dragons) look great but what would I do with one ?

Salute 2015 (part 2) Terrain Pieces

Eldar scenery.  I did phone Forge World six or seven years ago and asked if they were ever going to make a web gate.  I guess this is the answer.

The next shelf down; a Chaos warp portal thingy.  What's sauce for Eldar is sauce for Chaos; apologies to geese and ganders for that.

Now, as I went 'round snapping terrain pieces, unfortunately, I didn't clock who made what.  The two stand out brands for me were 4Ground and Sarissa, I remember that much at least.  Possibly because there were large displays of their products as supplied (ie unpainted) showing the whole range and looking like a sweet shop of 28mm terrain.

All of the stuff presented on the tables was finished to show the product off to best effect.  There was a guy in the back corner who had loads of trees and hedges (including bocage) and his stuff looked great.

This I think is the Arkam Asylum.  There's a batman game going on there, so I think that's a fairly safe bet.

This is one of the ships from the Fort George game.  Outstanding modelling.

A really nice warehouse, although it's 15mm ( I so wish I started with Epic rather than 40K).

DZC City Scape.  Wonderful stuff.

The farm at La Haye Sainte (sp). in 28mm.  My pockets were already full.

Another one of the alien planets.  There were a lot of other games, including a couple of undersea ones (incl Stingray !).  The whole show was pretty mind blowing, but more of that next time. 

Salute 2015 (Post 1) Demo Game Tables

Well, I thought I start with some of the tables:

There was a table with Aliens (like the film franchise) facing off against the colonial marines.  Very nice presentation (as were they all) but I couldn't help thinking that there were an awful lot of aliens. Those marines will be needing an awful lot of bullets.

Next door was a jungly ziggurat with Predators on it.  Almost like someone had planned it.

Dystopian wars.  interesting how the flying hips were over the water.  This might be well fluffy for the game, I don't know.  But the game looked good flying over water, but if I had a flying battleship, I might fly over land.

Fort George - this was really impressive.  It all belongs to one man, the ships, the scenery, the figures, everything.  Great looking game.

TV7.  I think.  No idea where Mr Staypuff came from.

Pegasus Bridge.  Really nice too.

DZC.  Complete with hollow James Bond mountain.  I can see the appeal, especially with the city scape scenery.

Hell on earth war type game.  I was tempted to stuff this church in to my rucksack.

Just like shootin' wamp rats down beggar's canyon.

North Afrika.  Especially liking the stuka.  Don't fancy the Brit's chances much.

The Battle of the Bulge.  The start of the snowy bit.

The attack on the rebel base on Hoth.  Darth Vader was practically touching the Falcon.

Love the AT-ATs. If only I had a unit of four AT-ATs for my iggies...

Very late cold war game.  Beautiful stuff.  Personally, I found this very compelling.

Looking down a Harrier GR3 at the Bridging Section of a Motor Rifle Regiment and their T72 support.

I hope those of you who didn't get to go found these interesting.  I'll put something a little more coherent up soon.