This is my garden in the snow, last week. Looks very pretty, but the cold weather was interfering with the Games Workshop black base coat spray I use, meaning I couldn't get any of the undercoating done on my new superheroes, which was annoying. I have been wishing for warmer weather...
The warmer weather is now here at last, but it's not all good news. This is a picture of my garden this week, under about three foot of flood water. I could go fishing off my patio! But still, at least I got my figures sprayed.

Yet another hairy biker just waiting for a good hiding from a superhero (this on on a Fenris scenic base). Somehow these gangers have got access to better firepower that the police!

This is another Copplestone Castings. The is one I had already spayed up (I was going to paint him as an evil Santa, but the Christmas Madness has subsided for now), but the warmer weather has meant that I can get some of my super hero figures spayed. I will be posting pictures as soon as I have finished them, so there's not long for you to wait if you are eager to get back to some true four colour spandex related action.

Here's some more cowboys from my Legends of the Wild West game. As I pointed out in an earlier blog this icy weather had been playing havoc with my painting plans, as I have not got any more super minis sprayed and ready for painting, and so I have been finishing off some of these lovely minis.

Preacher and the prospector are by Artizan Designs; the saloon girl is in fact a Victorian street walker from West Wind's Gothic War range (Jack the Ripper series I think); the sheriff is by Black Scorpion.
There a bit of scale creeping going on there, as BS stuff weighs in at about 32mm, while Artizan and West Wind are more like 28mm. Dixon, by comparison, are more like 25mm. I think that, by and large, I am going to stick with Artizan and Crusader, which seem to go together very well, and possibly get some of the excellent Wargames Foundry stuff, which I know will scale well together. Dixon minis can fill in gaps in my range, as they are cheap, if a little bit too small. BS will do for the odd character too, after all, some people are tall, and others short, so long as I don't over do it.

"How 'bout a nice mug of Old Joe?"

Here's Cookie and Old Digger Johnson, posing next to a camp fire, and helping to illustrate the scale differences between Dixon and Artizan. Cookie and the fire are both by Dixon.

This is yet another scumbag thug for the Superheros to beat to a pulp. Biker gangs, drug dealers and pimps are the terror of honest hard-working citizens. It's about time someone put some fear into them for a change!

This is another figure from Mark Copplestone at Copplestone Castings (although it uncannily similar to another figure from EM4 miniatures). I have had this one kicking around for a while, half painted, but I have finally finished him off. This cold weather is making it difficult for me to spray my newer figures, as the cold can make the paint gritty. This is giving me a great excuse to go back and finish some of my earlier projects.

My cowboys continue to make steady progress, and soon I will have at least two finished posses to duke it out at high noon, but progress on their one horse town is slower. That said, I have made some progress, ad to prove it, here are a couple of pics of the work so far.

This is a WIP picture of one of my cowboy town houses. These houses are part resin ans part scratch built. The resin parts are from Snapdragon studios. They are prices at £5 each, which I thought was a bit expensive for a single piece resin, but the quality is good, and I wanted to press on, and so I bought five of them. Snapdragon also make the backs of the buildings, available separately, but these are also expensive, I and I didn't think the looked very big, and so I scratch built mine out of foam card, balsa and card. I am delighted with them, but am dreading having to paint them (I'm no good at painting buildings)

This model is a plastic kit available through Perry Miniatures. I think it's supposed to go with their American Civil War range, but I don't think it will look out of place in a wild west setting, or even, for that matter, any rural American setting. It would do for a 1920's Call of Chuthlu setting (especially if it was more dilapidated), or even superhero settings. The abode of Mr and Mrs Kent, Smallville? Very versatile.

This is an image of one of Doctor Otto's latest creation, Code Name; Fiend.
Few can imagine what would drive a genius like Doctor Otto to create his army of Fiends. Some weakness in his character or insanity has lead him to become obsessed with developing a super-soldier, no matter how depraved his research gets.
The Fiends believed to be created using muteogenic materials, advanced nano-cybernetics, and a denatured form of the Zombie-contagion. Super strong, and near unstoppable, could Doctor Otto have finally succeeded in developing the ultimate weapon?
Not really a super-mini, this is part of the Gothic horror range by West Wind Games (who used to do superfigs in the UK). I have got a few more of these kicking around, and so I might base them up on the resin bases and paint them up to. I had to paint him in the old-school zombie green as a tribute to the Hammer Horror era Frankenstein's Monster. Love that.

Three deadly female adventurers from my Conan-esque range. The first is a borderer or thief, while the other two could be pirates, or perhaps thieves.
You can click on the image for a bigger picture. It's not the best photograph (I took it with the old camera), but I hope you can make out the details. These ladies are all by reaper, which is a bit surprising, given the obvious difference in scale. Reaper has a vast range of figure on sale, and many of them were sculpted more than a decade ago. It shoes how tastes and styles have changed over the years. It's not a major problem for me, as I will only use them for my Thursday night role-plating, but I know that 'scale-creep' is a real bone of contention for some collectors.

The Executioner likes to think that he is a fearsome super-villain, but he lacks imagination, and in reality is little more that a hired thug. He's strong and tough, but a little on the short side, and sufferers from a near-pathological 'small-man' inferiority complex. Woe betide anyone who jokes that he uses such a large axe to compensate for his lack of stature.
This is another Reaper mini. The moment I saw him on-line I knew he would make an excellent super-villain, but when I got him in the post I realised he was a bit under-scale. I was disappointed at first, but then I thought it would work if I made his lack of stature part of his back ground. I chose the bright colour scheme to make sure he looked 'four colour' and not like one of my Conan-esque range.

Reports have been circulating that the arch-villain known as Toymaker has returned from his enforced exile, and has been terrorising shoppers in the January sales by planting his minions amongst the other produce in the department stores across the land. These seemingly innocent looking bargains turn out to be anything but when activated, as can bee seen in this image of his scissor wielding 'toy' jack-in-the-box.This mini is one of a pack of 'evil toys' by Reaper. It was my favorite in the pack, but I was dismayed to discover that part of its arm was missing due to a miss-mold. I did what I could to sculpt a new one out of green stuff, and the results are satisfactory, if not a master piece. Given the fact that the mini is only about 25mm tall, I don't think it will be a problem.

Hello and welcome to the post-Christmas stupor. I am fully recovered from too much Polish Vodka and good food, and have completed my course of cold turkey (groan...bad pun). I was very lucky that Santa brought me a nice new digital camera with a Super Macro function, meaning I should get better pictures for my Blog. I haven't read the manual yet but I had a little play with it and it looks very impressive. I will post some pics later of some of the super-stuff I have been working on alongside the Christmas Madness.
I would like to say 'howdy' to my new follower- seven followers is very exciting, and a great complement. I hope you will spread the word, and that you will like what I have got planed to 2010.
Also I would like to welcome Leonmallett to the Blogosphere (I believe that is the technical term, but I am not very up on the jargon), as he has launched his own blog dedicated to Pulp City, a skirmish level super hero game I reviewed earlier. Leon has been a gaming partner of mine for over twenty years. He is responsible for my interests in all manor super hero games, and has always been an advocate for all things Super heroic. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of comic books, writers, miniature designers and so forth- I usually direct any questions about super hero stuff to him. His blog is called Pulp Citizen, and features some very nicely painted and photographed minis from the Pulp City ranges, as well as some very interesting and useful information about web based scenery makers and so forth. Please check him out. Oh yeah- he's also the same Leon who kindly supplies me with his spare lead so that I can bolster my ever growing pile of unpainted minis.