The Book Golem, fearsome minion of evil sorcerers, or faithful companions of a bookish magic wielding superhero? No one really knows for sure. Many believe it is nothing but an urban myth, a local 'ghost' story told by the night watchmen at the library and the museums to scare the new guys. But the night watchmen know better: They know that sometimes things really do go bump in the night!

This rather unique and wonderful mini is from Black Cat Bases, a curious model company who do an eclectic range of minis. This one is from their range of Call of Cthulu inspired models called "The Lost and the Strange", But I thought it made an excellent minion for some super-mage.

It has been so long since I have posted anything, but fear not, I have not forgotten you, my loyal readers. The fact is I have been away for a couple of weeks, but during that time I have been prolifically painting.

Currently I am on a scenery theme, finishing off lots of half done projects, assembling lots of bits and bobs that I have been mail ordering over the last few months and generally making a lot of progress towards assembling enough bits of scenery that I can put together boards for VBCW and LotOW. So far I have painted lots of barrels, crates, cactus, fences, buildings and so forth, but rest assured, I have also been painting a figure or two.

Here is my finished Mexican Bandito gang, the Tequila Boys. This is the third posse I have completed for LotOW. I plan to do at least one more. This will ensure games don't become too samey, with two gangs just slugging it out time and time again. I was also inspired by the Xbox game Red Dead Redemption, which is partly set in a very lawless Mexico. Deadhorse (my fictional Old West town) is situated close enough to the Mexican border to suffer intermittent raids by these dastardly villains.

These figures are a mostly by Artizan Designs, but there are also figures by Reaper (from their Chronsocope range) and Black Scorpion. Both Reaper and Black Scorpion are very generous with their proportions (probably closer to 32 mm scale than Artizans usual 28mm scale) but I think that they work well enough together. This has been helped by the fact that I kept the pallet tight, just using a few colour, to give the posse a consistent look, without trying to make them too uniformed. I have done this with each of my gangs, to avoid any confusing on the battlefield, and I think that in this case it has worked very well.

You can also see a few of the bits and pieces of scenery I have been working on in the pictures. The cactus are from Pegasus Games, and the fence is some 1/35 scale picket fence my old mate Leon picked up from somewhere. The barrels are by TSS. The barrels were not very well molded, but look good enough on the battle fields to be worth using.

Check this out! I found it amongst the amazing art of Deviant Art, my favorite online art website. I have to say, this is an inspirational piece of knitwear.

This is the Cthulu Ski mask- and I love it. The artists gives the

details of the designs so anyone as crazy as he is can have ago at making their own! Do check out Deviant Art, if you are not familiar with it already. I loose hours of my like browsing the art there- It beats the Tate hands down, in my humble (and biased) opinion

These two chaps of advisors for my Liverpudlian Socialist army for 1938: A Very British Civil War aka VBCW (If this means nothing too you yet scroll down for a more detailed expansion of what VBCW is all about).
The strapping Johnny Foreigner on the left is an advisor from the Russian army, Commissar Boris Lavrov. Although the Soviets are keen to maintain the image they are not getting embroiled it the British civil war, they are already supplying the Liverpool based soviets with weapons, training and even three tanks. Lavrov's task is to help train the officers of the Socialist army.
The older gent is the distinguished political thinker, and left wing activist professor Ernest Ramsbottom. When the civil war erupted, Ramsbottom left the relative safety of his Essex home to join with his socialist comrades in Liverpool. The old professor is not much of a fighter, but is towering intellect and his academic authority have been recognised by the leadership of the Liverpool Socialists, and they are glad to have him aboard.

Both these excellent figures are from Artizan Designs Trilling Tales range, probably one of the best rangers of VBCW-type figures around. They are a great pleasure to paint.

Poison Thorn is believed to be a mutant Supervillainess who has the ability to telekinetic control plants, causing them to become animated, as if possessing a malign intelligence of their own. Some claim she is an Eco-warrior, fighting multinational corporations in an effort to protect the environment, but others claim she is a terrorist, or even a thief out to line her own pockets.

This figure is part of the Mutants and Madmen range. I picked it up at Salute, and have to say that I was rather underwhelmed by it. The mini is very generic, which is a good thing, as it lets me paint it as any sort of super I like, but the pose is so bland, and the figure lacks any dynamic movement; even the face is blank and expressionless. I had to work quite hard to get some sense of character into the model. By the way, the over the to tarty make up is deliberate, as I was trying to evoke the image of Uma Thurman from that dreadful batman movie (with, I would have to admit, very little success- it would take a better painter than me to make this mini look like Uma).
All that aside, at least this is another four colour super mini, for all you fans of this blogs Core content. Hopefully that should stop Leon moaning for a bit longer. I have a few more supers in the pipelines, so keep checking.

I have been spending a lot of my spare time playing Red Dead Redemption on the Xbox, and it is having a peculiar effect on me. For the uninitiated, Red Dead Redemption is a cowboy game. It is without doubt one of the best drawn games I have ever seen, with every screen shot feeling like it was taken right out of a Spaghetti Western. Needless to say, this has inspired me to push forward with my cowboy project, and so today I have spent almost the entire day making more scenery for my Western table. Leon and I have had one game of Legends of the Old West, by Warhammer Historical, and really enjoyed it, but I realised we needed lots more scenery. As well shops, a saloon, sheriffs office etc to represent the frontier town of Deadhorse, we need some hills, scrub and rocks to represent the desert too. Some of the buildings, like the shops, will be 'classic' western-style, but a few, like the barns, stables and fences, will be generic enough for me to press them into service for the Very British Civil War too, so I will be killing two birds with one stone.

There are a number of good manufactures who make western scenery, but it is sadly rather expensive, and due to the budgetary constraints I find myself saddled with I began ferreting in the garage and found enough balsa and card to make a start myself. Here's a couple of WIP pictures of what I have been up to today.

The first is a bank. The front was made by Snapdragon studios. Sadly they no longer offer this range, but Total System Scenic (TSS) offer a very similar product (Link). The back is scratch built. The flat roof is useful to add different dimensions to the game. The stable block and the shack are both by Warbases. I picked them up at Salute this year. They are very reasonably prices and well made. I just need to finish them off by adding a tiled roof. The picket fence is something Leon picked up. It was 1/32 scale, but works really well for the cowboys as a slightly larger fence. I based it on a strip of plasticard, and sanded it. I think they look great.

The second picture is of some cacti I have assembled from a Pegasus kit Leon gave me. He bought them with a project in mind, but decided he was probably never going to finish it, so generously gave them to me. I based them on 1p and 2p coins. I just need to sand them and paint them.

Well on the way to having the table ready now. I think I deserve a well earned rest. Time to boot up the Xbox and get back to Red Dead Redemption.

Two more cowboys for the Legends of the Old west. The first is Handsome George, pugilist, and reputed to be the 'Fastest Fists in the West'. He arrived in Deadhorse a month ago, and has already made a name for his himself, both as an expert boxer and as a ladies man. His good looks, muscular physique an supreme confidence make him popular with the saloon girls.

Deputy

Tombs has been a lawman in Deadhorse for just six weeks, and in that time he has had to kill two men. A baptism of fire for sure, but with the unruly cow drovers stirring up a hornets nest of trouble in the remote frontier town, it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better. If Tombs survives the next few months he might have the making of a good lawman. Handsome George is a Eureka miniature, available from Fighting 15 in the UK. He is actually one of their dashing Victorian gentlemen, in a state of undress, but I thought hi pose, and his lack of weaponry made him excellent as a pugilist. In LotOW, pugilist are hired guns (or should that be fists?) with exceptional hand to hand abilities. It just remains to be seen if he can brave the guns of the enemy to get close enough to beat the pulp out of them.

Tombs is another Artizan Designs mini. I like their old west range; most of my minis are theirs. They are nice to pain and look great on the table top.

More Evil Toy minions for the dastardly entity known as the Toy Maker. In this case the 'My Little Nightmare Pony' and the 'Don't-Care-Bear'. Fiendish!

A bit of silliness for my supers campaign. These toys are from Reaper, and I speed painted them in about half an hour, just for fun (and because Leon is always nagging me about the lack of 'four colour madness' in my blog these days). Not the best paint jobs perhaps, but then they are rather small. The Ted is about 6mm high.

I have just listed some old Games Workshop figures on Ebay (mostly from the 1990's), as well as some Role Playing Game books I managed to get my hands on when a local bookshop was shutting down. I am hoping to make a few quid so I can buy some nice scenery for my Very British Civil War gaming table. Why not take a look, and see if you can help me build a 1938 Liverpool?

This is Strongarm, brutish thug and yet another of Doctor Otto's failed experiments. While attempting to develop a Super-soldier, Otto injected Strongarm's right with a powerful mutagenic virus. The virus has altered his physical form as it has spread through his body from the injection site. On day he will succumb to the effects of the virus and mutate fully into a monstrous beast. Until then, he hires himself out as a mercenary and a hired killer.

Regular readers may recall that I used Strongarm as a minion in my last game of Pulp City with Leon (aka Pulp Citizen). Strongarm survived two battles, and I plan on using him again, and so Leon, being a bit Pulp City obsessed, made me up this card for him, using the minion rules from the game. I liked it so much I had to blog about it!
In our Pulp City games Strongarm is some sort of undead-demonic construct summoned from the necro-plane (or something).