Finished SF Figs

I painted these two figures months ago - back in May/June 2011 - but only recently based them.

Santa Claus 2

This is the second part of my recently completed Santa figures - part one is here.

The bases on these figures were more involved than last week's, and one worked better than the other...

Santa Claus 1

Just before the pictures, a small cause for celebration: this blog has been going for a whole year, so happy bloggaversary to it :-)

Anyway, some new figures this week. I made the mistake of going down the "proper painting" route again, so these have taken a long time (a fact made worse by doing fancy bases, some of which worked better than others). One day I will learn...

Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A few years ago, I painted up some figures to represent the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence and Death.

Terminators

Following on from last week's Imperial Guard and assorted figures from the Rogue Trader era, this week brings some of the Terminators from that period.

Rogue Trader Figures

Almost finished some figures - I just need to complete the bases - so hopefully I'll have some new pictures in the next week or two. I am, however, starting to regret my "let's improve my basing" decision earlier this year, as they're taking ages, and don't look that great.

Anyway, back on topic.

When Rogue Trader came out (longer ago than I care to remember), Games Workshop released figures for it - not surprising, given that's what they do.

Dwarf Slayers

I posted some pictures of my Dwarf Berserkers a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd follow up with my Slayers.

These appeared when Games Workshop redid all the background fluff, removing the Viking mythology and replacing it with their own. All of a sudden we had Slayers, Daemon Slayers and Dragon Slayers, along with the guys with the axes on chains (I can't remember their name, and I can't find them on the Games Workshop site - perhaps they too have been consigned to the dustbin of history...)

Forge World Venator Saga

I have mentioned in previous posts that I was planning to buy a ForgeWorld Elysian Tauros Venator. I ordered one last week, and sat back to await its delivery.

I ordered it on Thursday, and it arrived on Monday - pretty good service. I opened it and thought "that doesn't look like a vehicle to me" - those 30+ years of modelling experience kicking in Ninja-like.

Dwarf Berserkers

Most of my Dwarfs are the solid, steady type of Dwarf. Chainmail or plate armour, helmet, shield and something heavy and/or sharp to hit the enemy with.

The Norse slayers/berserkers, however, take a slightly different approach: as little clothing as possible and loads of things to hit the enemy with.

Pig Iron Heavy Infantry

I have mentioned the Pig Iron Heavy Infantry figures in previous posts. I finally finished and based all the ones I have, so there are some photos below; I apologise in advance for the darkness of the pictures. The paint scheme is quite dark, and, although I was using my usual lighting setup, the pictures just came out very dark. Time to investigate new lights, or preferably just learn how to use the existing ones better.

Progress to September 2011

Three quarters through the year, the equinox a distant memory and the shops starting to fill up with Christmas stuff - must be October. That means it's time for another status report.

Figures completed since last report

The last report was in July. Since then I have finished the Dad's Army diorama. My Mum's birthday was last week, so it's now sitting in my parents' display cabinet, alongside the Blackbeard figure I painted for my Dad last year.

I'm just about finished basing a bunch of Pig Iron Heavy Infantry figures: the command group, wardroids and heavy weapons teams, so I should have photos of them next week. Other than that, the only other completed figures since last time are the first unit of Mantic Skeletons for my undead army.

Painting

Continuing my quest to complete the fewest figures in the longest possible time (I can't help but feel there's something not quite right with that goal), and having learned nothing from the grief of painting a number of unrelated figures at the same time, I am currently painting four semi-related and two random figures - to (hopefully) display standard.

The related figures are four Santa figures: Citadel Dwarf Santa, Citadel Space Santa, Foundry Plague Santa and Foundry Skeleton Santa. The two random figures are a Citadel Dwarf Big Game Hunter and a Citadel Dwarf Samurai. All the Citadel figures are very much from "back in the day".

The Santas are giving me a lot of trouble at the moment: red splashing onto white, black onto red and white etc., and they're taking a ridiculous amount of time for what are essentially going to be Christmas ornaments. I'm not quite sure I've broken the back of them yet, but hopefully another week or two and they'll be finished. I have the flesh on the Big Game Hunter and Samurai, but nothing else yet. The hunter will be in khaki, but I may try coloured metallics (using acrylic inks) on the Samurai. I think I was meant to experiment more this year, so that will definitely count.

I have finally decided on bases for the Reaper Marine and Lt. Kara Black. I had cut out a plasticard wall piece for the Marine, but realised it would be supported by 1mm along its bottom edge, so thought better of it. Instead, both he and Lt. Black will be on VoodooWorx Alien Temple bases. October should finally see them finished, only six months or so after I started them.

Modelling

I learned a lot from the Dad's Army Diorama project, even though I abandoned it in the end. Even small lessons, such as only using one pin when positioning the figure, will prove useful in future projects.

The current Santa figures will all require some sort of scenic bases, and while I'm not planning to go overboard, hopefully I can do something a bit more adventurous than usual. Similarly, I have plans for the hunter and Samurai figures...

General

I mentioned last time that I was in a bit of a funk about painting. I'm happy to say that has passed and I'm puttering along again.

I didn't sign up for the Open University this year (plenty of chances next year, one of the things I like about the OU), so the long dark nights should see me painting, and lamenting my lack of progress, on a regular basis.

I swithered for a while, but finally bought Dreadfleet from Games Workshop, although I won't be picking it up for a few days. I'm hopeful that it can used with other ships, e.g. those from Langton, to give a more traditional Piratey feel to things. White Dwarf, when it eventually turned up, (GW have changed delivery from the last Thursday of the month to the first Saturday (which means it finally falls through the letterbox on the Wednesday following the first Saturday)) stated that the vessels were about four inches long. At 1:1200 scale, that would mean 480 feet (about 146 metres), which seems rather large for the time. I guess I'll find out soon enough, but even if they can't be used together, the mat and scenery will still be useful for both.

There are some ideas for islands bubbling in the back of my mind, and I've ordered some Irregular 2mm scenery pieces in anticipation...

Bonus Pictures

A few shots of the figures I'm currently painting. Nothing too exciting, but I'll hopefully have some new stuff finished in the coming weeks, so proper pictures then

The Samurai and Big Game Hunter, flesh only so far

Mantic Skeletons 1

I bought the Mantic undead army in November 2010, and finally finished the first unit last week (September 2011). At this rate, twenty or so years should see the whole army done.

I painted the unit in two groups, separated by a few other projects, which probably explains the delay. I may attempt larger groups when painting the rest of the units, although I find it difficult to fit too many figures into the painting time I have.

The painting went fairly smoothly, although the Humbrol Matt Varnish did have a strange effect on the bronze - dulling it down more than I expected.

I didn't do any shield patterns on this unit, but the plan is to so some on subsequent units. Mantic provide stickers with patterns on them, so they should be relatively easy to apply.

Basing wise, I did more than just my usual textured paint. I used sand, flock and some Poison Ivy from Army Painter. This was only a tiny packet, but cost £4.00; when the time comes to replace it, I'm going to look for something cheaper.

Having decided from a couple of previous posts that I'm starting to overuse of the phrase "and finally, the group shot", I merely present a couple of pictures taken at slightly different angles of the finished unit (you can see the second rank better in the second picture)

There is a "skeleton bursting out of the ground" figure on the sprue, so I built and painted it as well, giving a total of twenty one figures in the unit. No big problem in itself, but they only supply twenty bases... I've used a base from another unit, so I'll need to replace it at some point.

Dad's Army 6 - Finished

I was on holiday last week, so took the opportunity to finish the diorama (pictures at the bottom for the impatient).

Following the abandonment of the full church hall model, I scribed a new floor piece, and started painting it.

Painting the floor

I spray undercoated the floor in black, then used a mixture of drybrushing and washes to paint it. The original flooring in the show was very light grey. However, I decided that if I tried to match that, it would look like concrete, so I settled on a "scruffy brown" look.

I started the washes using a largish flat brush. A number of passes later, when nothing much had changed, I realised that this wasn't the correct approach. I was sure I had some foam brushes, but couldn't find them. I picked up a packet of twenty for £1.99 from one of the local discount book places, and tried again.

Using a two inch foam brush proved much faster, and gave a better finish. I ended up with an approach where I put some paint on, decided it was too much, then washed it much thinner with the foam brush. Weird, but it worked.

Due to the washes going everywhere (as is the nature of washes), I had to redo the gaps between the boards, but the end result looks reasonably floor-like. Annoyingly, I forgot to do the edges, and only noticed when all the paint was packed away and I'd all but forgotten what colours I'd used. This was the first of a few occasions where I had to try and colour match what was largely free-painting (a term I may have just invented :-)), but I got away with it

The nameplate

I ordered a name plate from NameIt, with the inspiring text of "Walmington-on-Sea Church Hall". It's not very exciting, but should at least let people know what it's meant to be.

I had trouble getting the name plate aligned on a previous figure, so this time I was ready for it. I used masking tape to mark out the border of where the name plate would go. This also let me use pencil on the tape, so I could get it centered vertically on the plinth. A further piece of tape along the bottom edge let me drop the name plate against it, ensuring it was horizontal. This would be much easier to see in a picture, but I forgot to take any of that stage :-(

The name plate sticks reasonably well, but not was well as I'd hoped. The plinth is varnished, and I suspect it might be something to do with that. The next time I'll roughen up the plinth surface first, or use glue in addition to the sticky pad thing on the name plate.

Putting it all together

The final piece of the puzzle was drilling out the holes in the floor for the figures and gluing them in place. I was about half way through when I realised that I didn't have to drill out holes for both feet, and, in fact, one hole would give me more flexibility for the final positioning.

I altered the positions of a few figures from what I had planned. The biggest change was moving Mr Hodges to point at Pike, who's messing around at the edge of the board. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I had drilled two holes for Mr Hodges, I couldn't quite get him positioned as I wanted: to do so would have exposed one of the holes. In the end, however, it's not too bad, so I'm happy enough with it.

One very unexpected occurrence was that the superglue lifted the paint off the floor at a couple of the figures. Worst affected was Mrs Fox, where the paint between her feet disappeared almost back to the plasticard. I touched it up without too much trouble, although colour matching was (again) a pain.

Still, everybody's in and settled. Overall, I'm reasonably happy with it. It would have been great to have done the whole church hall, but it wasn't to be. I have learned a lot, even from the failed attempt, so there's probably one more blog post to come regarding lessons learned and future approaches to adopt.

Some pictures below of the completed piece.

It breaks down into five small groups:

Sergeant Wilson and Mrs Pike. Presumably Sergeant Wilson has upset Mrs Pike again, and is trying to apologise.

Mr Blewitt, Private Fraser and Private Godfrey. The Fraser figure is kneeling, which proved problematic when trying to find a reason for him to be there. In the end, I'm assuming he's pointing out Mr Blewitt to Private Godfrey, who's going to see if he can help - reaching, I know...

Captain Mainwaring and the Vicar having a chat. Warden Hodges is also part of that group, but has turned around to shout at Pike.

The aforementioned Warden shouting at Pike, who's probably acting out a scene from a movie he's seen recently.

Corporal Jones regaling Mrs Fox and the Verger with one of his old war stories.

Finally, the group shot

Final challenge

The final challenge is to transport the diorama, possibly in a rucksack, on public transport. I have some boxes that should fit nicely, but I need to make sure I don't scrape any paint off during the move.

Wish me luck

Dwarf Shortbows

I have quite a few things almost finished, and as I'm on holiday next week, I have high hopes of actually completing a lot of the stuff. Until then, however, it's more Dwarfs from ye olden days.

As mentioned on more than one occasion, I have no gunpowder in my army, and the army is composed of single figures (with a few exceptions). This may cause a few problems ranking them up, but does give, in my opinion, a much more interesting visual spectacle.

Memory is a funny thing. If you had asked me how many Dwarf shortbows I had in the army, I would have said about fifteen. However, on searching through the drawer for them, it turns out I have eight. I suppose with a musician and standard bearer (and possibly a separate commander), it takes the unit size up to ten or eleven, but still fewer than I thought.

Anyway, the archers below are from Citadel and Grenadier, circa 1980s, possibly 1990s.

Some members of the unit

Some more members

In the final group shot, one of the dwarfs appears to be armed with a spear rather than a bow. The picture below shows be does, infact, have both

I'm not sure where and when I got the Robin Hood figure below. According to stunties.com, it was a promotional figure from the Nottingham store opening. I have never been to the Nottingham store, certainly not back however many years it was, so I don't know what route he took to my army.

Finally, the group shot.

Ogres

I had planned in this post to lament the lack of variety among the new Citadel Ogres, and to show some of the far more characterful models they used to produce. However, while I'm certain the figures below are 1980s Ogres, I can't find many references to confirm that they are (other than the oriental Ogre which, ironically, was one I thought wasn't from Citadel). There are a couple of pictures on ebay, however, so hopefully I'm on the right track...

White Dwarf finally dropped through the letter box. It was over a week late - the second time in the last two months. I have read some rumours that they're only shipping to subscribers when they ship to retailers (a week later than it appears in their own shops), and I'm starting to think they have some credence to them. This is very annoying, if true, and yet another unannounced and unexplained change that makes things worse than they were (actually, that's slightly unfair, because I haven't bought any Finecast figures yet. My annoyance with the Finecast change is more that they pulled the metals without warning and without giving people a chance to buy any models they wanted. When they moved from lead to white metal, they at least had a big sale of the lead - and yes, I did just use the "s" word in an article on Citadel :-))

Anyway... grumble over and lament begins.

The description and background of the Ogres seems to portray them as nomadic, primitive and with a lust for war. To me, this describes a shambolic force with loads of individuals, rather than any coherent fighting force. However, when I look at the pictures, I see neat rows of marching figures, looking virtually identical. Possibly it's because there are so few figures in an "army" - I counted about 20 in a 2000 point force - that the similarities jump out; at least in a large force, you can spread the figures about, reducing the regular appearance.

So, having been saddened by the new figures, I turned to my few old Ogres.

made up of the following figures

The aforementioned oriental Ogre

and the standard bearer and musician

I have this old Grenadier (I think) one. No idea why I didn't paint the eyes, as they're considerably larger than on normal figures. Also not quite sure why I didn't have him as part of the group shot.

I have a couple of the old Ratmen Ogres lying about. I'll try and remember to include them in some pictures of my skaven models.

I only have a few Ogre figures, as I never really viewed the Ogres as "army" material - much more as a mercenary unit attached to another force. Given the blandness of the new ones (and the fact they're probably much larger),  I don't think I'll be expanding my warband any time soon. Another reason I don't think I'll be buying any new ones is that I spelt "Ogre" as "Orgre" pretty much every time in the first draft of this post. If I can't even spell the word, I should take the hint and move on...

Chaos Dwarfs

No Dad's Army news this week. I'm working on the new floor piece, but still have to paint it - yet another fun hour of scribing. I'm beginning to understand why people buy laser cutters: it saves so much time and effort. Sadly, it's not cost effective for me, but, when I win the lottery!!

I've just started painting the Pig Iron command group, wardroids and Imperial Guard Sentinels, so there's nothing to show with them either.

Instead, it's back to my Dwarfs and some more figures from many many years ago. This time it's the turn of the Chaos Dwarfs.

These guys were originally painted as a unit for my regular dwarf army, fighting alongside their less chaotic brothers (and a few sisters). Not sure how that fits with any background canon, but that's not my problem :-)

They go together as a unit as shown below

Being sneaky chaos types, as I was putting the figures away after photographing them, I found another one who'd been hiding (in a manly, Chaos way, of course).

I did pick up a couple of chaos dwarf centaurs at one point. It was during Citadel's "big hat" period, so I decided to replace the giant hat with something more sensible. It never really worked, so I didn't finish the test piece. It's still lying around, so maybe I'll revisit it at some point. If nothing else, it could join the Dwarf Cavalry unit.

Dad's Army 5 - Diorama 2

I've been working on the diorama layout all week, with very little to show for it; there's not even been enough progress to generate any worthwhile photos.

So little progress, in fact, that I'm giving serious thought about reverting to Plan A, which was to just have the figures on the church hall floor. It may not look as good, but it will be done in time. Given some of the problems I'm encountering, I'm unlikely to have completed even the left wall of the full project any time soon.

This week was largely concerned with the office door in the left wall. I have cut out the door surrounds, and have both 2mm and 2.5mm deep versions. The wall is 1.5mm deep, so 2mm is probably the correct size. However, 2mm doesn't really protrude enough and I'm worried it will disappear when I paint the model. The surround edges were mitred by sanding the pieces on sandpaper, and they have actually turned out quite well.

I have cut out the space for the door. This was done by scraper and scalpel, as I couldn't get the scribe and snap approach to work. Unfortunately, the edges aren't quite as clean and square as I'd like, so there's a bit/lot more sanding to do.

I drew up a pattern for the panels of the door in InkScape and printed it out. Unfortunately, the sizes were all wrong, so I redid them by hand on paper, and then transferred the measurements to plasticard. I'm using 0.5mm for the plain back of the door and another 0.5mm piece for the panel section, although I'm not sure how easy cutting very small rectangles from 0.5mm plasticard will be.

I taped "The Godiva Affair" episode last weekend, and it has provided a wealth of new screen captures, including some areas I didn't have, such as the main door to the hall. However, the downside to this is that there now seems more work to do than ever. One small example is that I noticed the insets on the office door are arched at the top, not straight as I had thought. This isn't a big change, but will make cutting out the insets that bit more complicated.

A bigger thing that I noticed was that the bottom section of the walls the whole way around is actually wooden panels. This means I'll have to scribe each one, probably 2mm apart. Having only just recovered from scribing the floor, I'm not looking forward to this.

As a break from modelling, I managed to get my skeletons nearly finished, and have cleaned and undercoated my next group, Pig Iron Heavy Infantry Command Squad,  Wardroids, and a couple of Citadel Imperial Guard Walkers.

I'll decide at some point next week on whether I'm parking the diorama and just building the floor, but the smart money says that's the most sensible approach.

Dad's Army 4 - Diorama 1

Just a quick update with some dodgy photos this week, as I'm spending all my time on the diorama. I wouldn't mind so much if I was making progress, but it's slow going.

The first picture is the cardboard mock-up I put together, to get an idea of what the size of the model would look like, and to see if it would be okay with all the figures in it, or if it would be too small/large.

The rough positioning of the figures below was taken before I started painting anything. It's still largely what I'm planning to use, although Pike and Fraser won't be on the stage (I'm not building the stage)

The current plasticard layout, complete with test figures, is shown below. Nothing's glued yet, so I have plenty of time to move things about if required. The positioning of the back windows will be changing, hopefully sometime this week. The layout is populated with some Foundry Assyrians and Victorian hunters because a) I had them handy and b) they're the same size as the diorama figures.

After a week, all I have to show for my time is:

• the wall sections. The back wall required trimming, after I realised that I had to have the walls on top of the floor piece, rather than around the edge (the office door would have been dangling in mid-air if the walls were outside the floor)
• the floor. This involved scribing 72 lines, each one 3mm apart. Each line took 10 shallow cuts, giving a total of 720 cuts. This took a full evening (I know you can get plasticard with these cuts; the problem is that the card isn't wide enough, and the cuts are the full length of the card, while I need them the full width)
• outline of the left wall in InkScape. I obsessed over this to a worrying degree, trying to get every measurement perfect. The thing that tripped me up was that moving something 1mm looks huge when you're working at 300x magnification. However, when applied to the model, it's barely noticeable. I'm going to try and relax when doing future pieces
• downloaded pictures of the posters that I'll need from a website. I haven't found portraits of the King and Queen yet, but I'm looking

The edges of the pieces aren't completely flat, due to the nature of working with plasticard (that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it). I have sanded them down, but there's still a slight slope. It's not obvious when you look at it, but it will cause problems when I come to glue the pieces together. My plan to work around any problems caused by this gap is twofold:

• use 4mm square rod to provide a surface for joining floor to wall and wall to wall
• pin the walls to the floor for extra support. Pinning will involve drilling 0.5mm holes through the base and into the wall, then pinning with plasticard rod. It won't provide much strength, but should be enough to help keep the walls straight

Next week I will get to grips with the left wall and ideally get it finished. The door will be tricky, and there's a radiator to think about, but hopefully I'll start to see some progress.

If worst comes to worst, I can always just mount the figures on the floor, but I'm still hopeful that I'll get the model finished in time.

Dad's Army 3 - Civilians Finished

I finished the civilians for the Dad's Army diorama last week. I'm reasonably happy with them, some more so than others...

The weakest figures are Mrs Pike and Mr Blewitt, but, to be fair, these figures don't claim to represent those characters. The Mrs Pike figure was pushing a bicycle in the original pack, and looks like she was simply meant to be a British citizen helping fight the Nazi invaders. Mr Blewitt is a fairly generic "old bloke with a walking stick", so again, I can't really complain (not that that will stop me)

I'm happy with the blacks on the Warden, the Vicar and the Verger. I used the Andrea Miniatures Black set for those, and I'm finally starting to understand how the different shades/highlights behave.

The only one of this group with markings was the Warden, and I'm fairly happy with how they came out. It was quite warm while I was painting, so trying to do fine lines and writing before the paint dried on the brush was tricky.

The figures that do represent characters on the show are very recognisable; it was just a shame that the casting of the figures was so poor.

Finished civilians

Note - the damage to Mr Blewitt and Mrs Pike (hat brims on both models) occurred as I was photographing them. I knocked one over, and just as I was thinking "let's not do that again", I knocked the second one over :-(. The damage, however, has been repaired.

Diorama Layout

I have begun thinking about this and planning stuff out.

I'm setting it in the church hall, but the original idea of simply having them on the bare wooden floor has expanded to include the back wall and the wall with the office door in it.

I've been taking lots of screenshots from the DVDs, and each picture depresses me more. There is a lot of detail in the church hall set that I'd never noticed before: pictures, posters, benches, tables, a piano (on order from Dixon Miniatures) and flags, to name but a few.

The problem is that I've never really done a diorama, or a scratchbuild of this complexity, before, and this strikes me as jumping in at the deep end. However, I've started to decide on some measurements and have picked up plenty of plasticard and foam-card (I'm expecting to make lots of mistakes).

It all needs to be done by the start of October (otherwise it'll be turning into a Christmas present). That gives me about seven weeks, but it has to be designed, built, painted and finished in that time. I suspect my evenings have just been booked for the next few weeks :-)

Claymore 2011

I was at  Claymore yesterday, where I spent the morning and a chunk of the afternoon wandering around the show with my brother-in-law.

My to-buy list before the show consisted of a few paints and a hope that figures would leap out at me. Four hours later, I had spent pretty much all my money, and had a number of things that I'll be keeping an eye on as potential future projects.

As usual, no photos, as there will be plenty of those about from other sources. This post is about things I bought, and some of the ideas that have started bubbling around in my mind because of the show.

Paints

Seeing as this was my main reason for going to the show, I shall start with them.

I added some more to my Vallejo collection - gloss and satin varnishes and some light greys.

Foundry continued the white/light grey theme with the Austrian White (67) set. I have the Andrea Miniatures White set, but it's more of a warm (cloth) white, and I was looking for a cold white.

I also picked up some Coat D'Arms from Fighting 15s (eventually - people were buying a lot from the stand so I gave up and went back later). I bought chestnut brown, dwarf flesh and their dark brown "Super Shader". It looks like another dip, so it should come in useful for my skeletons and other figures where I don't need/want to spend hours shading.

Books

I actually picked up a few books this time:

• Fighting Men of WW2: Axis forces. I have plenty of books of British uniforms, but not really any of German ones. I have some 20mm WW2 Germans to paint at some point, so this should come in useful
• Pirates: Predators of the Seas. Yet another Pirate book, but looks interesting
• Battle for Malta - the attacks on the island during WW2
• Langton Miniatures' Guide to assembling, painting and rigging their 1:1200 Dutch Wars ships. Naval warfare doesn't really do much for me, but the ships of this period are from the Golden Age of Piracy, which does interest me. I have always fancied painting a couple of these ships for display, and I've looked at them in past shows, but never done anything about it. The guy at the stand pretty much talked me out of the idea (the combinations and parts of Langton models looks quite daunting), but I'm going to do some research and order them online
• Chaos in Carpathia. This is a set of Victorian Vampire hunting rules from BlueMoon. I have plenty of Vampires of that period, but my hunters are all modern. I hope that the rules will be flexible enough to cope (after all, a wooden stake hasn't changed much in 100 years), but I may use this as an excuse to buy and paint some appropriate Victorian figures

Figures

Purchased figures covered a wide range:

• Pig Iron command squad. Having already got the troopers, heavy weapons and war droids, it was only a matter of time before I completed the set
• Lead Adventure Jesters. These will join my zombie clown troupe, although the figures aren't sold as zombies
• Lead Adventure Deep Dive Night 2. This is a deep sea diver and a figure with a large spanner. I didn't buy the figure when I first saw it, as I couldn't think of a use for it. However, at another stand (whose name I forget), they had various sea demons. An image of these guys fighting the deep sea diver immediately popped into my mind, so I picked up the demons and went back and bought the diver. It's a diorama idea, so whether it will ever manifest itself remains to be seen...
• Some Cthulu Cultists from the same sea demon place, along with a bloated zombie
• A Gremlin from the same manufacturer. What I really wanted was the base the miniature was on. However, it came with a blank base, and when I asked, I was told the base was from Fenris Games. I've tracked it down, but as they're an ebay store, and I don't have/want an ebay account, I don't think I'll be buying them
• Urban Mammoth Venom Drake. This was half price, and looks like it'll be suitable for my Demon Apocalypse, so it's in the lead pile
• Laughing Monk - Bearer of the Light. Bought this from Fighting 15s as I liked the look of the figure. Having looked at it in the cold light of home, however, I'm not so sure...
• Copplestone Terminators Robots. I had two of them already, so this will add some reinforcements. I have plenty of painted near future figures, so if I ever decide to have a Terminator style game, at least I'll have the figures
• Warhammer Vampire Counts Necromancer. This is the latest plastic release from GW. I think it's just me, but £8.00 for a single plastic figure seems to be a step too far. For metal or resin it doesn't seem too bad (although still expensive), but for one plastic sprue with no "extras", it just seems wrong. I got it at 10% off, but if it hadn't been at a show, I'm not sure I would have bothered. It's a shame, as it's a nice figure, and quite a few of the others in the range are nice as well. At the moment, however, it's a price point that's going to take me some time to get used to

Things I didn't get

One of the few specific things I went for was Dixon Miniature's "pianist with piano and female singer" set. I need a piano for the Dad's Army diorama and this one looked ideal.

Unfortunately, he brought the entire saloon set, but not the individual packs. It seemed silly to buy the whole lot for one item, so I ordered it online when I got home (not without incident, as clicking the "Add to Shopping Cart" button in Firefox 5 caused it to go into an infinite loop. I eventually managed to buy it using Chrome)

Inspiration for future projects

6mm ancients from Baccus.

I have a couple of painted 6mm armies from Irregular miniatures (Dwarf and some evil type army). I also have two unpainted armies from the same manufacturer (Orc and skeleton).

The main reason they're unpainted is that the casting quality isn't great, and it's sometimes difficult to tell where the flash ends and the figure starts.

The Baccus ones, however, look much cleaner, and I was nearly tempted into buying a 6mm Macedonian army pack. The things that saved me were:

• the old eyesight is not what it once was
• I'd have nobody to fight against, so I'd end up having to buy the Persians or Indians as well

Still, this is an area I may revisit, as the idea of a 6mm phalanx on the table is very appealing.

20mm modern British from Britannia

I have some 28mm moderns, although none of them are painted. These ones, however, looked amazing, and again, I was sorely tempted to purchase some. 20mm has the advantage that a lot of plastic kits are available in that scale and I already have some scenery (granted, it's WW2, but a bombed out building looks pretty much the same in every time period)

28mm, however, is more flexible, as I can use the figures with my zombies and other near-future figures (e.g. terminators). This means I won't be investing in 20mm moderns any time soon.

That's the end of my wargame shows for this year. There are still a couple in Scotland, but they're up north, so I don't bother with them.

Now I just have to wait patiently until next May :-)

Dwarf Wizards

Just a quick post, as I'm running late this week. The end is in site for the Dad's Army figures, and this week should see the civilians finished :-)

The diorama idea has changed slightly - to become more complicated, naturally. I'm still having it set in the church hall, but I'm now planning to put the back wall of the church in as well, rather than simply the floor. Anyway, I've just started thinking about that, so that's for a different post...

This week, some Dwarf wizards. In traditional fantasy canon, Dwarfs are not known for their magic use - in fact, they're considered quite resistant to it and unable to work with it, except through runes. However, this has not always been the case, and Citadel used to make quite a few "proper" wizards.

I think this one is a wizard - not sure what else he could be, and he was with the other wizards.

Finally, for the more traditionalists out there, a Rune Lord (I think. Mainly I'm going by the book he's carrying, but he could just as well be a standard bearer...)

That's all for now. I've just downloaded Google Sketchup, to help with planning the Dad's Army diorama layout, so I'd better go and have a play with that...