Battlefield

So despite having various mini-projects to do and even some bigger ones that have been painted but not featured on here yet, it appears my brain wants to do something entirely different. This coupled with another furious bout of decorating and much of my hobby stuff buried under huge piles of other stuff, while we try to get the house sorted as much as possible with the current building work, means that embarking on an entirely new project seems like just the thing to do... 

Excellent!

"So! We meet again... Doctor!"

In a brief interlude to my Trolltooth series, I bring you the most emotional of the, normally coldly logical, Cybermen!

That's Snowman...

... It's a Yeti!

Another classic Who monster for the big game next month. Despite only appearing twice in their own stories (The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear) with the 2nd Doctor they do seem to be a favourite of many fans, my 8 year old son included! They are of course referenced by various characters in a number of other episodes and make an appearance in the Five Doctors too.

Nice Cold Ice Cold...

...Warriors!

Another bunch of Dr Who minis that never got photographed when I painted them last year. I've always had a soft spot for the Ice Warriors - they seemed a bit more complex than your average Dalek or Cyberman. From the first encounters with the 2nd Doctor when they were desperate invaders trying to escape their own dying world to the peace-keeping troops of the Galactic Federation during the 3rd Doctor's tenure, these Martian reptilians have kept the Doctor in his toes!

Resistance is futile. You Shall Be Like Us...

As my preparations for the big Dr Who game we have planned down at the Foundry in March continue I realised I hadn't photographed some of the stuff I painted last year. Last year I managed to expand my Invasion era Cyber-Army by acquiring a small force of Moonbase/Tomb era Cybermen. I've always liked this iteration of the cybermen - especially their creepy robo-voices and mouths that just slide open while they're talking!

Here be Dragons

Preparations for the big Dr Who game down at Foundry continue apace with just over five weeks to go! 

Guardians of the Galaxy

Something a little different I have on the boil this evening. It's been a while since I posted up any Dr Who stuff on the blog but thanks to a combination of several Black Tree Design Sales that I couldn't resist and an excellent trade on one of the Dr Who Facebook groups I have a large amount of unpainted Who once more.

Oh and a big game at the end of March down at the Wargames Foundry near Newark at which I'm hoping to get most of my collection on the table!

Death to the Daleks!

Another post dredged up from the vaults!

This was the climactic battle of the Dr Who scenario I wrote for the "Battle at the Farm" - a weekend I hosted for Ollie and Richard back in 2014 at my folks' place in the Lake District. This was made even more fun by Richard's excellent Imperial Dalek army - a fitting foe for my Renegades! Ollie took command of the Brigadier, the Doctor and the Unit forces.

One of our Dictators is missing...

Here is the second scenario of three we played as part of the Dalek Civil War, fought out over an excellent weekend of gaming I hosted a couple of months back.

A brief reminder of the three different factions' objectives for each scenario -

UNIT

Imperial Daleks

Renegade Daleks

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, the objective for all three sides in this game was to locate and recover/capture Davros. The Renegades want to apprehend the criminal, Davros to send him back to Skaro for crimes against pure Dalek kind (his use of Human DNA in creating the loyal Imperial Daleks in the Revelation of the Daleks story). UNIT want to capture him as a means of gathering vital intel on Dalek science or at the very least denying the Daleks access to Davros' strategic leadership. The Imperial Daleks of course want to rescue their creator.

The game started with Davros skulking in the centre of the wood in which his escape pod crash landed, having been ambushed by Renegade Dalek saucers in high Earth orbit.

War of the Daleks

Dr Who this time! As some of you will know I'm also a bit of a Dr Who fan and in fact it's also where the name of this blog comes from;

There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea is asleep and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea is getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do.
Seventh Doctor, Survival

Some time ago, Lenihan of Where the Sea Pours Out fame suggested that we get our heads together and, by way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of Dr Who and the 25th anniversary of the Remembrance of the Daleks story, play a Dalek Civil War scenario. Happily Black Tree Design were having a Black Friday sale last Novemeber so I was able to bolster my existing Dalek force to meet Lenihan's Imperial threat.

This is the first of three scenarios we played during the Battle at the Farm weekend I hosted up in the Lakes. I of course commanded the Renegades, Lenihan brought along the Imperials and Ollie took control of the Brigadier and UNIT.

Dawn of the Daleks

Well hello faithful readers and belated New Year's greetings to you all!

It's been a while (many apologies!) but I have finally risen from my hibernation.

The reason for my long absence - well the short answer would be work. The long answer would involve me blathering on about being depressed by the lack of balance between life and work, how much I hate my current job and what I would rather be doing with my life until the ripe old age of 72, when I might just be able to retire!

I'll stick with the short answer.

Anyhow, on to more pertinent matters - little men!



Not Oldhammer I'm afraid, although I do have a little something for my next post in that vein. Today I want to talk about Daleks.

There is a tenuous link to Oldhammer however. I really enjoyed (and failed miserably at taking decent pics or writing up a report) Warlord Paul's massive Floating Ziggurat of Mum Ho Thep game at BlogCon back in November. Afterwards myself, the Warlord and Lenihan (or Robotforaday as you may know him from his blog - Where the Sea Pours Out) retired to the hotel bar and, among other things, discussed doing a bit of Dr Who gaming for the New Year.

I must say I also thoroughly enjoyed GM'ing the Battle of No Bridge - a nice little skirmish admirably reported by Lenihan here.

Day of the Doctor

I finally caught up with some of the 50th Anniversary Dr Who shows that were on a while back -  I missed the actual day of televisual celebrations as I had retreated from civilisation for a very pleasant Birthday weekend in the Lakes.

Anyhow, very much enjoyed the Day of the Doctor - especially Tom Baker's appearance. Nice to see the Zygons back again, although I reckon they were a little overshadowed by the events on Gallifrey. They definitely deserve their own episode at some point.

All this Who goodness inspired me to dig out my old Blacktree minis and take some fresh photos - that and a great email from fellow Oldhammerer, Lenihan inviting me to join in a Dalek Civil War game as soon as his Black Tree Design order arrives. He's assembled a mighty Imperial Dalek force so I've reinforced my existing Genesis/Renegade force and look forward to a bit of Invasion Earth action in the New Year. Oh I should mention Warlord Paul is waiting in the wings to take command of a U.N.I.T. Taskforce to try and dissuade the Dalek menace from obliterating Earth in their little spat!

Enough jibber jabber - here's some new pics of my whole Dr Who collection.

Cursing like...

... Fenric!

Every Dalek has its day...

A slight change of theme here and yet another LPL entry!

Just once I'd like to meet an alien menace which wasn't immune to bullets!

Best Christmas pressie I got was a nice big cabinet to house all my painted minis in so set about last weekend digging them out of cardboard boxes and cupboards when I came across my old BTD Dr Who stuff and the rules for the old Invasion Earth game!


Well couldn't resist the urge so I set the table and had a little scrap between Unit and the new Dalek masters of Earth...

I won't go into too much detail to set the scene but there's a nice excerpt at the start of the nvasion Earth rulebook -

Zero Hour (Minus 12)

Big Ben chimed twelve times in the stillness of the summer night to signal the end of July, a month which had seen record breaking temperatures day after day. A warm, gentle breeze stirred the trees along the Embankment. Black cabs cruised the streets of London, ferrying late night revellers home, and the boys in blue carried out their foot patrols with little to report...  All seemed peaceful... but nothing could be further from the truth. The Dalke Invasion of Earth was about to begin.


From their hidden position off the far side of the Moon, the Dalek Fleet was preparing its assault, readying untold numbers of chemically primed missiles for launch. Choosing their targets carefully, the signal was given and the deadly storm of missiles bombarded the Earth. For twelve hours, missiles rained down on the Earth and when it was over, the planet was in turmoil! Governments around the world were in disarray, their leaders killed or wounded, their military establishments in ruins. It is a dark time for the Human race... but all is not lost!

Now that the missile assault has finally ceased, the beleagured UNIT forces make their way out of their underground bunkers. With their world in flames and their families lost or scattered, the bitter taste of revenge burns brightly among the forces. As the Dalek dropships begin to release waves of troops around the world, the elite soldiers of UNIT have only one course of action to take: destroy the Daleks and reclaim their world.

As for the Daleks, they have taken the first step towards destroying the Earth and now they plan to claim it as their own!

Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!

Zero Hour (Plus 72)

UNIT's counter attack in London gave the Daleks a shock but it proved ultimately to be a pyrrhic victory. The Brigadier's forces had paid a high price for their early victories in the ruined streets of the once proud capital. Now they were on the run as Dalek reinforcements poured in.

The Brigadier now finds himself trapped in his makeshift HQ in the Cumbrian mountains as the hated Daleks draw the net ever tighter around him...

Robo-rodents - Activate!!

First bit of non-fantasy painting I've done in a while - refreshing change in between Orc archers!

Basically I couldn't resist painting these lovely little fellas (I have 9 more to go!!) from the rather excellent and brand spanking new Crooked Dice game design studio. They are dedicated to bringing to the tabletop classic sci-fi and action TV shows of the 60s and 70s through the medium of their upcoming 7TV game. It is definitely worth checking out their site if you have a hankering for secret underground lairs, suave heroes and supervillains!

http://www.crooked-dice.co.uk/index.html

Anyway these Robo-pests are quite at home menacing these intrepid space travellers...

Chocs Away!

So I've finished off painting up the Silurian Pterosaur rider (please excuse the terrible lighting) and what a bugger it's been! The brown top half of the Pterosaur wasn't too bad - building up washes and highlights, and I won't dwell on the failed attempts to paint on some bold black stripes/markings on the wings...
The under belly was the real faff! Found some great pitures to support my idea for the colour scheme and I wanted to go with white underneath (harder for the prey to spot when seen against the bright sky!).

The sky's the limit!

Happy New Year to one and all!

Didn't get anything done over Christmas except abuse my liver and digestive system until today...

Haven't forgotten the Elves or Orcs (batch painting a load of Skarloc's archers at the mo) but I wanted a go with some of my new toys, namely a pin vise, razor saw and assorted files...

I've long wanted to do a Silurian Pterosaur rider, as featured in the Virgin novel Blood Heat, and having bought one of Ral Partha's Lizard warrior on a Flying Reptile a while ago I've just been waiting for the right tools for the job.

Now I don't usually post pics of unpainted minis but I was quite pleased with my first (in my opinion) major conversion! There was of course the task of switching the legs round with the Lizard Warrior and a Silurian, along with a bit of pinning, arm repositioning and green stuffing to get a fairly dynamic pose.

I had to chop off the Pterosaurs horn/crest as unless it flew with its head constantly to one side it would have impaled its unfortunate rider! A couple of brain implant/reins leading to the Silurian pilot completed the build. The clear flying bases are temporary for the photos - waiting for a nice scenic one to come in the post. Now to the paint pots!

Look at the shiny shiny...

Just a little addendum to my last Sontaran post - the gloss varnish arrived a few days back and I've given them a coat or two - should pass muster at the next inspection parade!

Also felt the Rutan might like a wet look so he/she/it got a coat too.

Blobular Fever

Another fantastic mini from Black Tree Designs - the Rutan - enough to strike terror into the heart of... well nevermind. I do actually really like this mini for some reason - very 50s B movie, even if the colour scheme was inspired in part by my current cold! Thought I'd go for a Horror of Fang Rock vibe with the piccies, although this little fella is intended as the quarry for a Sontaran man/blob hunt in a WW2 Eastern Front scenario...