Dreadfleet Ship: The Swordfysh

This is the first of my Dreadfleet Ships, the Swordfysh, as captained by Mannan's favoured pirate Aranessa Saltsite. 

Dreadfleet is a wargame/board-game made by Games Workshop. I picked a copy up at Salute 2012. I was thinking of painting them up for the last round of the Lead Painters League, but each one has taken me 2-3 hours, so I thought better of it. They are lovely models, and are fun to paint, if a little fiddly.
There are ten ships in the game- five pirates (the good guys) and five evil monster ships. There is lots of islands ans sea monsters too. Pretty cool!

The Avengers Assembled

My regular Thursday night gaming buddies skipped the game last night to take a trip to Cinewolrd to watch The Avengers Assembled (As the Avengers movie is called here in teh UK). Without wanting to give too much away- what a cracking movie it was! It's long, as just under 2 1/2 hoursm but it was well worth it. The casting is amazing, even the new characters, Hulk, Hawkeye and Black Widow, are well cast, while most of the others have been in  he previous movies. 

Dialogue is snappy, funny in parts and poinient in others. The characters are all well thought out and consistent with the comics and with the other movies. The action is high octane (although I thought that it sagged a little in the middle) and the special effects are every bit as good as you would expect.

With such a great all star cast and some of the best superhero characters around all assembled in one movie, it was hard to pick a favourite, but I think that Hulk gets to steel the show, with the best laughs and some of the coolest fight scenes. 

For anyone who is a fan of the genre (and I am betting you are) this is an unmissable movie!

Salute 2012 Report

I have recovered enough from my mammoth gaming and shopping trip to Salute 2012, in London yesterday, to post some of my pictures here. I had a great day, and spent too much money!
Amongst my purchases were some VBCW figures from Muttonchops, Empress and Hasslefree, some Victorian Zombies from West Wind Games, some cows from Redoubt, a couple of carrying boxes from KR muiltcase (perhaps not that exciting, but I saved the postage), a USMC recon unit and some Victorian SciFi stuff from Eureka. My biggest purchase was a copy of Dread Fleet I bought from Stafford Games.
I had a chance to meet up with a few VBCW gamers, and with the creative team behind Pulp City. Best of all, from an eye candy perspective, I got to see some of the most impressive boards and table tops I have ever set eyes on. The standard of board at salute is exceptionally high- just take a look.

An ice station by 7TV for Crooked Dice. Perfectly executed!

MicroArt Studio did this superb VSF board. They will be releasing these buildings in laser cut HDF later this year, in the autumn. The MicroArt figures were lovely, but oddly scaled and very costly.

This is my favourite. A Force on Force board made by Chemins de Feu, with Russians vs Nato- 28mm scale. Absolutely stunning.

I couldn't miss out VBCW. There were two VBCW tables at Salute. The GWP one had some lovely looking scenery. There was another one, involving naval battles, but I never got a chance to photograph that.

Fish Folk Hench Men

Lurking in the depths of the sea, inland waterways and even sewers, the Fish Folk, as they are often known, are said to serve their dark masters and prey on unsuspecting humans. No one knows where they came from- perhaps they are alien, or demonic? Mutants or the result of some vile experiment?
Recently the Fish Folk have got more bold in their attacks, and the rumor persist that they have got a new king, who is said to come from the 'Dry World'. The identity of this messianic figure is as yet, unknown, but the Superheroes are doing all they can to stop the Fish Folk and find out the villains true identity!

I have been acutely conscious for some time at the lack of 'Four Colour' content in the blog. My African stuff, and the Lead Painters League have been taking up so much of my painting and modeling time that I have been slacking on the four colour front. I decided to rectify this, at least in a small way, by slapping some paint on these chaps.
I opted for a nice Kermit the Frog green as I thought it would make them look a bit more 'four colour' and a bit less CoC. These figures are Deep Ones made by Black Cat Bases, but I think that they are great for Supers, for SciFi aliens, or even for Conanesque demons- a very versatile figure really. As all way my resin bases are by Fenris Games and are available on eBay.
I see these guys being used as henchmen for any aquatic villain in my supers campaign. In Pulp City they will be slaves for the aquatic alien race known as the Ulthar.

Warlord for my SAGA force

While it has been a long time in the creation, I have finally finished my Warlord and his Huscarls for my SAGA Anglo-Danish force, meaning I now have a small force of hairy men.
I bought the Gripping Beasts at the Wolverhampton Show last year without any real plans to use them for anything in particular. When the nice (if slightly odd) folks at Gripping Beasts brought out their new SAGA rule I knew I had to have a warband-two actually, as I am starting my Viking one next.
SAGA's rather elegent points based system lets me field either 4 Huscarls, 8 Warriors or 12 Levey for each point. I have a four point warband (4-8 points per side is recommend) consisting of my warlord, Four Huscarls with Dane Axes, Four Huscales with swords, and Two bands of eight Warrioirs with spears.

Here is my Anglo-Danish warlord and the Huscarls with dane axes. The horn blower is my West Wind, but the other figures are by Gripping Beasts. To my my warlord stand out a bit I have mounted him onto a 40mm square base with a horn blower/spear carrier as a companion. The horn blower will not add anything to the game, but looks cool. I am going to do the same for my viking warlord too.
These were my Lead Painters League entry for the last round- I didn't win, but I didn't do badly.

Defending the Shire

Yet another LPL entry- Many of you who are on Lead Adventure Forum will have already seen this entry, but for those of you who missed it, here is the 'Defending of the Shire'.

The theme for the round was The World of Tolkein. I went for Games Workshop figures just because I had some hanging around for years waiting to be painted. The Moria Goblins are my son Charlies- he's lucky because he gets five more goblins finished. Gandalf and the Hobbits will from the nucleus of my LotR army- basically lost of Hobbits, some rangers, Aragorn and Gandalf. This is very much an on going project-I haven't painted any for years until LPL. Odds are it will be next years LPL before I paint any more too.

Selling a Kroot Army

I don't normally bother reporting what I have to sell on eBay on my blog, but then again I don't normally sell an entire army. In order to raise funds for Salute 2012, I have decided to sell off one of my 40K armies, army a Kroot Mercenaries army I painted for the Grand Tournament. I am very proud of this army, as many of the figures have been converted into the unique troop types found in the Kroot list. All in all, it is 104 figures, of which no less than 32 have had at least some minor conversion or sculpting.

Here's a few pictures to show case them, and to give me something to remember them by.

My success at the Grand Tournament has never been that impressive, and I never qualified, but that despite that I have always had a soft spot for these hungry blue carnivores. It is with reluctance that I have decided to sell them, but I haven't played 40K for years, so perhaps it is time they went to someone who might get more out of them than I ever did.

Here's a link the the eBay sale, if you are interested. Kroot on eBay!

The People's Resistance Army of Zugando

Colonel Peter Umpanawana (shown here with his bodyguards) is a high ranking member of the People's Resistance Army, a neo-communist militia in fighting against the government of the Democratic Republic of Zugando, in West Africa. The PRA have been accused by the UN and human rights groups of committing acts of atrocity against the ethnic Matandi population and against supporters of the President, Edmund Mudanawanga. Colonel Umpanawana is wanted for various war crimes and acts of atrocity against civilians. He is currently being hunted by Special Forces, including SAS and Delta Force, as part of the I-COZ peace keeping mission.



All of the above 'fluff' is part of the background for my Force on Force campaign set in an entirely fictional West African country of Zugano. Perhaps Colonel Umpanawana will become something of a reoccurring villain, if he manages to avoid the special forces hunting him down.
These figures were painted for the Lead Painters League and the first of the FOF fire teams I have finished. As an 'elite' part of the PRA (and I use that term very loosely) they are wearing more 'uniform' than the rank and file soldiers. This batch of figures is made my The Assault Group, who have quite a large range of modern miniatures. They are well sculpted, with some nice details on the 'character' models. The Colonel has a pet monkey on his shoulder, which is quite a cool detail to set him apart from his peers.

Even More Spies for KKBB

Fredrick Ramsbottom is a man out of his depth- really just an analyst working for a minor government department, he has the misfortune of closely resembling one of the KGB's top agents. danger is never far away for the perpetually worried Mr Ramsbottom.



Yuri is a KGB enforcer. No subtlety or intrigue needed: He just break the bones of whoever he is told to. His loyalty to his shadowy masters is beyond question, as is his ability to cause terrible pain to his foes.

Some more KKBB spies for your amusement, again painted as part of my Lead Painters League competition entry. They did well for me, and I won my round.