Doctor who?

I have had the police box sitting around for some time; finally got it painted. The basing is just to try to tie it in to a Victorian date.

West Wind Vampires - completed starter set

I grabbed a bit of time today to finish off the basing. These have painted up very easily; as far as I'm concerned, there's just enough detail.

Next up will be the North Star 'Servants of Ra' - flunkeys in robes led by the reincarnation of a Pharaoh.

Lord and Lady

Here are the lord and lady from West Wind's vampire starter set; very paintable figures.

Now that the whole set are done, I need to sort out the basing; maybe this week...

Fallen Dark Angels and Imperial Armour on eBay

In the interests of clearing out the 40k stuff I don't use, there are some books and figures on eBay. A few pictures below; these are my old Fallen Dark Angels. There is also a selection of Imperial Armour books and FAntasy Flight RPG rulebooks.

Vampires under the brush

I have started on my first faction for Empire of the Dead - the vampires I picked up at Salute last month.

I'm pleaed with the way they have come out - there's a strong colour theme running through them. I still have the lord and his lady to do. Minimal changes made - the only thing I did was to add a mask to the one figure without one, just to tie them together a little more.

Once the character vampires are painted, I'll do the basing - this faction will have dirt and grass, because the gravestones will look a bit odd if I set them on cobbles.

Lamp-posts painted

Just a quick update - a quick bit of painting this morning has done the job. Empire of the Dead figure for scale...

No Salute posts here

No Salute posts here - just lamp posts; mostly because I'm all Salute-ed out. I also do the Warlords blog, so you can find things there if you want.

Anyway; I have made a mould, cast a few test bases and started to assemble the lamp-posts. As suggested before, I will try to pretty up the bases a little - one here has a plastic Renedra barrel on.

I think I need to change resin; this one is very hard. It's also a 10:1 ratio mix, which makes producing small volumes of stuff a bit of a lottery; 1:1 ratio is so much more forgiving.

Victorian Lamp-posts

I picked up a bag of model railway lamp-posts on Ebay from a buyer called 'we_honest'. It turned out, he was. Anyway, I got a box of fifty posts for £13 including postage, which I thought was pretty good, and they turned up last week.

How to base them? Well, I have a few plastic 30mm bases which I have tried to texture myself. I'm not 100% happy with them, and I think I'm going to actually buy the bases for my Empire of the Dead figures as they arrive, but they're good enough for scenery.

I'm going to make a mould and cast a load of them; I might drop a penny into the resin while they set to give them some weight and keep them balanced.

I don't have any VSF painted yet, but this pirate gives you an idea of the height - they are 60mm, though you can get 70mm if you feel it's a bit short - personally I'm quite happy with them.

40k burnout

I’ve played 40k for years, but I have to say, I’m feeling a bit flat on it at the moment. Games are still fun, but the game/support/development structure has got to me.

I used to buy every codex and every WD as they came out. Now – well, I haven’t got the Daemons, Chaos Marines or Tau codexes. I didn’t renew my WD sub at the end of last year, and I didn’t bother to pick up issue 400 at the weekend.

I still like (most of) the figures, I’m happy with the rules, I like the availability of opponents; I just can’t be bothered to stay on the conveyer belt.

However, I still have loads of boxes of stuff that needs building and painting; I reckon there's a 2000 point Space Marine army on sprues in the loft; there's certainly another 1000 points of Space Wolves and about the same of Imperial Guard to paint. And that's without thinking about 1500 points of bikes and the best part of a Battle Company of Dark Angel infantry that's sitting up there. Oh, and a Forgeworld stockpile of a Contemptor, some jetbikes, an assault squad...

What to do, what to do...

Empire of the Dead Kickstarter

I'm kinda taken by the Empire of the Dead kickstarter; I love the whole VSF vibe, and if you're in quick, there is a really good deal going on. I sold on a load of 10mm French WW2 stuff, and I guess I'm recycling some of the cash into new shinys.

Anyway, while I'm waiting for the kickstarter to deliver, I thought I'd go through what I have sitting in the cupboards and play with it. This is an armoured car from Ironclad Miniatures, re-purposed as a police wagon. I'm going to replace the turret with a plain hatch, but I need the figures before I can do that, so it'll have to wait. Oh, and a drop of gloss varnish into the portholes...