So, it’s been a fair old while since I’ve posted on here and no matter what Keith may think, I haven’t been on Barsoom…
October was a busy month for me, but regretfully not hobby-wise. Holiday had been booked and my wife and I jetted off to Lanzarote for a week in the sun.
And it was whilst there I had an idea…
I ran this past my father-in-law (we were staying with them) and then my wife, who surprisingly thought it was a good idea. However, I needed additional support – someone else to do it with, so reached out to my sons and brother-in-law, my sons agreeing immediately and my brother-in-law being somewhat less enthusiastic.
The end result is that I have now posted what I hope will be the first of many videos to YouTube.
Now, as you may have gathered from the title of this post, it’s a guide to beer, specifically those ales released by UK supermarkets for Christmas.
It’s a bit rough and ready, but if you have any interest in beer… or if you actually want to know what I look and sound like, then give it a watch. It’s only 8 minutes long, so I’m not impinging on too much of your time. It probably took you longer to read this post.
Feel free to leave a comment on the video on on YouTube or here, subscribe if it’s content that interests you and, of course, tell all your friends.
There will be more content on YouTube, as I do need to do Part Two, but rest assured, as I received a box of Eisenkern Stormtroopers for my birthday, my Distant Stars project has received a much-needed kick up the arse.
On a final note, I hve received feedback from someone who has read my entire novel and stated “I loved it, it’s a triumph, absolute genius, butwhat happens next?”
I can’t quite believe that it’s been over two months since I last posted on here. I could go into great detail as to why, but generally anyone visiting this site isn’t here to hear me moaning about how real life crap has got in the way of doing hobby-related stuff, so I won’t bore you. Suffice to say, some people are quite passionate about cardboard boxes and want them delivered with the sort of alacrity that you would usually attribute to urgent medical supplies, such as blood plasma or donor organs…
However, I haven’t been entirely idle in hobby-related pursuits, even if what I HAD planned to do was pushed to one side in favour of something else.
Those who follow this blog will know that, whilst a fan of Star Wars, I wasn’t keen on spending vast sums of cash getting into Star Wars Legion. Yes, I’ll admit the models are lovely, but I balk at spending £30 on seven miniatures, no matter how pretty they are.
Hence my Distant Stars project, where I find suitable proxies for the various factions within my version of the Star Wars universe. I’d been using the Void 1.1 plastic marines and junkers for my Stormtrooper and Scout Trooper proxies, but when I went to the Scotia Grendel website, I discovered that they had sold the entire line to Seb Games. After a quick search on their website, I couldn’t see the plastic sprues anywhere, so dropped them an email to query whether they wold be stocking them and got a ‘yes’, so all was right with the world.
However, if the particular style of the Viridian Space Marines doesn’t meet your proxy Stormtrooper needs, then why not get some Wargames Atlantic Eisenkern Stromtroopers instead?
£25.00 for 20 multipart hard plastic figures seems like a better option than forking out £30 for 7 genuine licenced SW Stormtroopers and that’s not because I’m “tight”, as my wife says when I refuse to spend £4 for a Starbucks when I can get a perfectly serviceable coffee from McDonalds for half that, but because if you have limited funds, you want to get the most for your money.
So, whilst I may be gathering my troops to either save or subjugate the galaxy, it occurred to me that I didn’t actually have any rules with which to fight these battles. I looked at the various free rules from Mantic Games, etc. and realised that I could potentially use them, but as I had a half-written set of mass combat rules languishing on my disc drive, I decided to brush them off and revise them instead.
So, that’s what I’ve been working on – Feast of Crows – a set of generic mass combat wargaming rules that should allow you to fight whatever battles you want, with whatever figures you have available, be they a snarling horde of feral goblins, a highly trained phalanx of Greek hoplites or Grimdark space marines allegedly saving the Universe from the incursions of Chaos – or any mish-mash of the above.
Once they are done, I will post them on here for all and sundry to give them a try. I’ve kept the rules relatively simple, so they should be easy enough to pick up and play without the head-scratching you get when reading through some rule sets out there.
And remember – The only real victor in any battle are the crows…
So, here we are, 11 days into July and even with the week’s extension that I kindly gave myself (because I’m nice like that), I still managed to fail to complete my Forgotten Heroes entry until last night. So, four days over. A pretty poor showing on my part.
Note to self: Must try harder next year.
Anyway, this is the figure I started with, a DC Heroclix Signalman, complete with weedy arms, which I removed and replaced:
And this is what the end result should look like, the Tornado, in all his pink and red glory;
So, having done the majority of the shading last time, the first thing I needed to do was reattach his painted cape with hot glue, which I was somewhat nervous about, as I wasn’t sure if the hot glue would react with the paint and result in me having to repaint various parts of the figure. I needn’t have worried, as this went extremely well and set in no time, allowing me to complete the details.
I started by painting a capital ‘T’ on his chest in Docrafts Noir (black to those of us who don’t speak French), then when this was dry, painted a smaller ‘T’ in Docrafts Blanc (i.e. white) inside the black, so as to create a black border. This needed several touches up to neaten the borders, but all was good at the end.
Next, the black was used to paint a tiny ‘T’ on his belt buckle, as everyone needs to know that it’s HIS belt. I also used some watered down black to add shading to the cavity in the top of his holster, to suggest shadowing.
I then moved on to his eyes. Now, I’m always nervous about painting eyes, as if you cock it up, you end up with a cross-eyed hero, which no-one will take seriously. Two blobs of white were adding to suggest his eye-sockets in his mask, then I carefully painted one eye, then the other, making sure that they were even. Then I tidied up the edges of his ‘mask-holes’ with some Cherry Red. A few parts of his cape, where the wash from the previous stage hadn’t taken, were over-painted with GW Tentacle Pink (at least I think that’s what it’s called) and a black circle added to the end of his gun barrel, to suggest a hole.
Finally, I mixed some black with burnt ochre to get a dirty wash, then liberally applied this to the base, which had previously been given a cost of dark grey. This was to suggest dirty concrete.
And he was done.
Even with the pink cape, he doesn’t look like someone you want to mess with.
So, done for another year and another unique figure for my collection. I’m pretty pleased with how he came out, even if he did take slightly longer than anticipated to finish.
So, what’s next?
Well, it occurred to me that I’ve not recently turned random crap into something cool and I’d squirrelled away the below;
A couple of months ago, I replaced the windscreen wipers on my wife’s car. As I’d bought Halfords own brand, they have a generic blade for the model of her car, but it comes with multiple fittings so it can be used on different makes. I used the correct fittings, but ended up with two of the above extra fittings. Not being one to throw away interestingly shaped bits of plastic, especially when they can be re-used elsewhere (single use plastic? I think not!), I kept hold of these, as I had a cunning plan…
So, what am I going to use them for, you may ask?
I’m not saying yet, but the image below may give you a clue;
Join me next time, when we will be voyaging to a galaxy far, far away, for some high-speed pursuit amongst over-sized trees, avoiding feral teddy-bears…
Waaaaaay back in May last year, I backed my first Kickstarter, details of which can be found in this post.
It was supposed to ship around September 2021, but various issues led to delays, but finally my pledge arrived last Monday! Yay!
However, I wasn’t in when the postie turned up, so had to wait until last night to collect my goodies. I pledged £30 ($40) for a squad of 28mm Astroguards cast in white metal, which would have been 8 Astroguards, so £3.75 a figure. However, due to the success of the campaign, I ended up with the bonus add-ons, so ended up with 22 figures, which works out as £1.36 a figure. Result!
Here is the Astroguard squad, with two female Astroguards swapped out for the duplicate sculpts from the original squad, along with two of the bonus figures, armed with heavy weapons – a light repeating laser on the left and a meson blaster on the left.
They kind of remind me of the cloud car pilots from The Empire Strikes Back, so I may very well paint them to resemble that uniform.
Next, more bonus figures. These are, left to right, top to bottom, “cantina celebration” aka party walrus-man, Gary, Beefhead Elder, Rod Roebuck, Space Cadet, Ensign Packman and Man Hunter.
Obviously, you can see these were inspired by Star Wars, Star Trek and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, but all will join my Distant Stars project.
Finally, we have the droids…er…bots. A Power Bot at the top, with a selection of arms and four Scouter Bots, all with a different head. I may add the two spare arms to one of the Scouter Bots, if I feel inclined.
Nice clean sculpts, although some flash on a couple of the figures, but nothing major. Strangely, they were supplied with 20mm slotta bases, rather than 25mm, which is fine for the Bots, but look too small for the others, so these may have to get swapped out.
These were just the figures from the basic pledge, so there are more in the range. Should you be interested in getting some for yourself, this is what the Kickstarter page has to say;
“Missed the campaign? Don’t worry, there’s still an opportunity to pick up figures from the Star Schlock Astroguards Kickstarter.
That’s all for this brief diversion, as I still have a giant made from Shredded Wheat to paint up before the end of the month – then we’re in to Forgotten Heroes territory!
God knows what I’m going to do for that… I’m not quite as organised as I was last year. I have a vague idea, but we’ll have to see if if will work.
I’d taken the day off with the intention of taking my wife shopping, as it was her birthday.
However, as she was thick with cold and did not want to venture out, I spent the morning doing all those little jobs I’d been putting off, then offered to wash her car. She was of the opinion that as it was my day off too, I should do something I wanted to do…
Result!
As there had been some tedious modelling stuff I’d been putting off, I decided to combine that with assembling my Chainrasp Horde, which have been sitting unassembled for a fair old while.
The tedious stuff was adding sand to the bases of a shit-load of figures, as I’d been following Soroastro’s guide to painting Star Wars miniatures for my Distant Stars figures, in which he uses basing medium after he’d assembled and painted the figures.
Not having any basing medium, I decided to use watered down PVA and sifted sand, which actually works quite well, but is a bit long-winded and messy.
Basically, watered down PVA on the base, dip into the sand, knock off any loose grains, more PVA where coverage isn’t great, re-dip, knock off the loose stuff, repeat until brain dribbles out of head.
Once, completed, I thin the PVA solution down a bit more, then paint this over the top of the sand to seal it and glue it in place a bit more.
As I said, tedious and long-winded, but I now have 31 figures based in this fashion, so this saves me from doing it later.
Mainly from my Distant Stars project, but I’m also doing a conversion for my uncle, as he’s a massive Tolkien fan and styles himself as Adrian, Lord of Menadine, so decided that one of the HeroScape vikings was a pretty close match to the painting he’d done of this character (he’s an artist, who works in oils mostly). And as the Chainrasp wraiths are mounted on normal 25mm circular bases, I did them as well.
You get enough components to build 10 wraiths on the sprue, most of which are two-piece models. Detail is nice, as you’d expect from Games Workshop, but I did lose a bit of one of the chains due to it being in an awkward place. Here’s the first three;
And the next three;
The next three;
The final figure you can assemble as either a standard Chainrasp wraith or as something called a ‘Dreadwarden’, whatever that is. I went with the latter, as I thought it looked cooler;
This one will receive a different paint scheme than the others, as the intention is to make him a personality &/or leader, so I’m thinking tarnished brass and dark red robes, rather than whatever colours I go with the others.
Won’t make a huge difference to the Rookhaven Ghostbusters, he might just take a bit more effort to trap.
That’s all for this time, but at least I’m posting more regularly, so that’s a good thing. Until next time…
If you’ve been regularly checking in here to see if I’ve been actially doing anything, you will have been a little disappointed, as it has been quite a while since I’ve been anywhere near anything hobby-related.
However, with the imminent (hopefully) arrival of my Kickstarter goodies and a financial windfall in the shape of some Christmas money, I decided to splash out a little on some hobby stuff.
Way back in 2015, Michael Awdry of the 28mm Victorian Warfare blog posted about a game called Space Cadets. Now, whilst I quite liked the idea of the game and the way it utilised hexagonal tiles to represent the exploration of a derelict spacecraft, the price point was above my available funds and I was only really interested in the tiles.
This had been on the back burner for the last 6 years, and with the Distant Stars project, I decided that I would still like to do something of this ilk, but using my existing figures from that project.
As Kallistra produce a range of interlocking plastic hexagonal tiles, 100mm across the flats AND do packs of ten individual hex tiles in black, for a very reasonable £7.50, I ordered a set, to see if they could be used for this.
They arrived yesterday, so out came the camera and some figures, so I could see whether my nascent idea had any legs.
As you can see, you get ten hexagonal tiles, hollow on the underside and 20 clips, which allow you to clip the tiles together.
The edges of each tile have a recess, so that when the clips are attached, the tiles sit flush with the table and are a pretty tight fit, so they won’t become detached during play.
They can be attached along each flat edge, so if you have a tile attached to every edge, you’d need 6 clips, hence why you get 20 in the pack. I’d not realised this when I ordered, so had ordered a further pack of 50 clips, in case I needed anymore – which I didn’t.
Using all 10 tiles, I set them up as a random complex of corridors. The initial idea was to spray them with a metallic dark grey, and use thin card or plastic card between the tiles, held in place with the clips, to represent walls. However, the clips are designed to hold the tiles quite tightly together, so this won’t work.
However, as the tiles are designed to be be stacked when not in use, they do have a recessed edge, so when clipped together, there is a recessed channel around each tile edge, so I might be able to slot a suitable ‘wall’ into these.
Now, whilst I’ve given a measurement across the flats, this doesn’t really help with working out whether they’re any good for 28mm figures, so let’s dump some miniatures on them and see what it looks like…
A couple of Protectorate Outriders, accompanied by a Androne, explore an abandoned facility…
However, it would appear that the facility is not as abandoned as they believe.
“Danger! Danger! Hostile entites approaching…”
We shall leave the brave folk of the Protectorate to their potentially grisly fate.
So, I’m pretty happy with both the size and price for these and think they should work pretty well, but feel I may need at least another pack. As they’re only £7.50 a pack, this isn’t a great expense, but bear in mind that the minimum order quantity is £10.00 before postage, so you might want to have a look at some of the other stuff on the site before ordering.
They do single hex terrain features which sit on top of the standard hex tiles, including craters, hills, broken ground, etc. which are only advertised in the standard brown colouring, but I did query this with Kallistra and they would make them in the other two colours (black and blue). However, as this would be a special order, it would take longer to produce.
If you’re planning on spraying them anyway, that probably doesn’t matter, but it’s good to know that the option is available.
That’s all for now, but rest assured that the Crow is on the wing once more, so expect more regular posts.
Especially since I’ve now seen the new Ghostbusters movie (which is what the 2016 one should have been, but wasn’t) and I feel that the Rookhaven Ghostbusters franchise needs to have their uniforms completed and be sent out to bust some heads…in a spiritual sense.
It has been a while since I’ve posted on the Buffet, due to issues with work, but Keith over at Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodgings has tempted me back to my hobby bench with Monster May(hem).
Having looked through my box of unpainted miniatures, I decided that the figure that best suited the description of a monster was this one;
This the Wendigo from ParagonStar, which I bought a while ago to see if resin 3D printed figures were actually any good – plus it’s a cool looking version of this creature.
As this particular resin-printed figure is relatively smooth, the challenge will be to try and give it some texture. I shall be doing this by adding some fine sand to the base and using sponging on the figure itself. We shall see how successful I am.
Now, as people who regularly follow this blog will know, I don’t usually back Kickstarters – however, I have actually backed my first one today.
This is because I have been following the development of these figures on this guy’s blog and felt that they fit the aesthetic I wanted for my Distant Stars project, as they remind me of the Bespin cloud car pilots.
So, the 1000ft General has released his first Kickstarter for his Astro Guards, which can be found here. The lowest pledge level is $40, which gets you 9 metal miniatures, all different, as shown below.
He has already met and exceeded the amount he needed – not bad seeing it only went up today. I think they’re pretty damn cool and as they will be delivered around my birthday, I consider this as an early present.
Now, as the rules of Monster May(hem) mean that I have to complete my monster before the end of May, it won’t be as long between this post and my next.
When the first lockdown was announced, the hobbyist in us all rubbed its hands together in the anticipation of ‘extra time’ to indulge ourselves.
However, the reality of enforced isolation, especially when the second national lockdown was enforced here in the UK, was that with no actual end in site, what I have termed ‘lockdown ennui’ sets in, as you get into the habit of putting off doing things, because there’s no real sense of urgency about anything.
Case in point, I received a home brewing kit for Christmas (as I am a bit of a beer fan), and rather than immediately start on my first foray into making my own beer when the Christmas alcohol had been consumed, I waited until the 7th February…
However, it is merrily bubbling away in the corner of my dining room and has reached the stage where it is ready to be bottled for secondary fermentation, so when this is done and labels I’ve ordered arrived (as why make your own beer if you’re not going to name it?) expect to see it annouced here.
So, in the spirit of battling against Lockdown Ennui (LE from now on), I have not only finished the first chapter of the book I’ve been promising I’d write for far too long, but also based some figures I’d had sitting around for ages, built some more troops for Distant Stars and slapped some paint around.
I combined the legs, body and head from a Void 1.1 Viridian Interdict Marine, the backpack from a Void 1.1 Junker Legionnaire and the arms and heavy weapon from a Mantic Steel Warrior to create a Dominion Support Legionnaire.
Shown alongside a standard Legionnaire to show the slightly bulkier armour, as I decided that adding pauldrons would make them look sufficiently different, yet still appear as part of the same army.
Next up, three ‘drones’, also for Distant Stars, bought over a year ago at the last wargames show I attended. These are The Droids from Ainsty Castings, three figures for £5.00.
I was initially going to go for colour schemes inspired by R2 units from Star Wars, but then decided to use the same colour scheme as the droids they’re based on – namely Huey Dewey and Louiey from Silent Running.
Finally, just to prove that I do still love pre-Chibnall Doctor Who, we have my versions of the 10th Doctor and Clara Oswald.
The 10th Doctor is a converted eM-4 Miniatures Future Skirmish Suit, available for £2.00. I filed down his flat top and resculpted his hair, then tweaked and filed his gun into a sonic screwdriver. This will represent the 10th Doctor as he appeared at the Battle of Canary Wharf, complete with 3D glasses.
Clara IS actually a Black Tree Design Doctor Who figure, but was designed to be Vicki, but I always though the figure looked like Clara, so Clara she will be. It would also make a pretty good Star Trek TOS crew member.
As I seem to be winning in my battle against LE, let’s hope that the next post won’t be so long in coming.
And that I don’t miss the anniversary of this blog, as I should have celebrated my sixth year of inflicting my own brand of crazy on you all on 6th February – two weeks ago.
Due to my current shift pattern, I work one Saturday in every three, meaning I get a day off in the week in lieu. Usually, this ‘day off’ gets eaten up by a list (lovingly prepared by my wife) of jobs for me to do.
However, yesterday’s list was quite short, so was completed in good time leaving me with some free time…so, out came the paints.
First up, my APC;
Black gloss enamel was used on the skirt and windscreen, GW Chainmail on the front nozzles and turret gun and Docrafts Noir on the side panels and turret.
I noted that every picture I took of this vehicle didn’t really highlight the sloped nature of its shape, so took so lower down photos to show this.
Looks a bit like Maximillian from The Black Hole movie – which although it was a bit naff, did have some cool robots.
Speaking of cool robots, I next went to work on my drone cargo sled, but I won’t bore you with the exact colours I used, just show you some pictures;
Just a little bit more detailing and I think it’ll be done. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out.
Just goes to show that a little bit of creativity with stuff you’d normally throw out can produce a pretty cool model.
Regular visitors to this humble blog will know that whilst I enjoy my gaming, I tend to balk at some of the prices charged by certain companies for the “necessary” components for <insert game of the month here>.
So, when inspired to try a new genre or game, I will tend to look for inexpensive options, rather than go for the official figure lines.
Such is the case with my Distant Stars project, which is my alternate reality Star Wars-inspired project, the last piece of kit I built for this being my scratch-built drone operated cargo sled, in this post.
Well, since last time, I have managed to slap some paint on it and it now looks like this:
The model was undercoated with Wilko Taupe spray paint on the top and Wilko Gunmetal spray underneath, which gave it a nice two-tone look. The drone ‘pilot’, terminal, thrusters and cargo bed were given a coat of GW Chainmal, with the cargo bed getting a wash of GW Brown Ink, to make it look oily.
The main body got a couple of coats of GW Orc Brown, which is a nice dark yellow, as you can see from the picture above.
Now that it’s got some paint on, it’s starting to look a bit more like an actual vehicle, rather than a conglomeration of bits.
Of course, whilst it’s nice to have some background vehicles, as the Dominion is a military force, it would be good if they had some war machines, right?
I knew roughly what sort of look I wanted and ideally would have gone for the latest iteration of the GW Land Raider – but wasn’t prepared to drop £60.00 on a single plastic kit. (NB: It was the Land Raider Crusader I craved…)
As with most things I do, I spend a fair bit of time trawling the Internet trying to find some thing suitable at a price I’m prepared to pay, before realising my time and money would be better spent just MAKING what I want myself.
So, after finally managing to secure an empty margarine tub (as I kept putting them next to the sink to wash up and my wife KEPT throwing them away), we were ready to begin.
I’s settled on this particular receptacle as a base for a tank/APC for two reasons; firstly, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as single use plastics and, secondly, when you turn it upside down, it looks like an armoured hovercraft:-
The next stage was to dress it up, with suitable “armoured panelling” and weapon mounts.
Two oblong panels of transparent plastic, scored and with portions cut out, were glued to the front and rear of my vehicle, to represent the cockpit and rear access door.
Two of the remains of the plastic ‘bulbs’ I used to make my Sontaran soldiers helmets were glued as forward-mounted weapons on the front, two GW cavalry bases were glued to either side to act as armoured panels and a turret was constructed from various plastic bits I had.
And to give a better sense of scale;
Unfortunately, as with my previous model, the use of transparent plastic means that some of the detail is not evident, so rather than leave it at that, I gave it an undercoat of Wilko Taupe spray, as this is the main vehicle colour of the Dominion.
And the rear;
A fairly substantial and imposing looking model, for very little outlay. And it actually looks like it could fit a squad of troops in, unlike some of the sci-fi vehicles out there.
Now, to fully justify my use of the above title, we have to mention The Mandalorian at least once.
Should you wish to add the title character of the above show to your tabletop games, a search of the internet gives you a few options, ranging in price from £10.00 to £15.00. However, all of these figures are 3D printed and whilst some are resin printed, the majority are not, meaning the quality of the figures are variable.
So, how about a METAL figure to represent Din Djarin for £6.00?
This is Brando from Diehard Miniatures. It comes with a resin base and alternate head, should you wish to have a bare-headed version.
And if you want to add some of Clan Wren to your games, but don’t want the full compliment from Legion’s £28 boxed set, then Diehard has you covered there to.
I mean, who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Katee Sackoff?
Carrion Crow's Buffet 