New spacelords sighted

That lovely man, Doug, from em4 miniatures has been slaving away over hot moulds to return the sadly departed Spacelords range into active service. Well, there is actual lead you can buy from him now. This needs to be done directly by email, rather than through the website (enquiries AT em4miniatures DOT com).

As an appetizer, here are some ship's crew:

A spot more recruitment

Blimey it's quiet around here! Almost as though every single waking moment recently has been filled with work (boo!) and family things (yay!)...

Still, I put the finishing touches to my unit of handgunners for Whiskey Priest's "How to do Oldhammer" challenge, the Muster challenge, and the "oh dear, I need some painted figures for BOYL" challenge. Triple use, so I reckon that makes them worth thirty figures, right? Suit yourself.

Here's a pretty crappy phone photo as proof:

Keeping myself a-moo-sed

I'm afraid that's the only pun I've got for you today, comedy fans, but I do have a spot of painting progress to report.

First up, some dirty old cows:

Spacelords

Several of you, dear readers, may be well aware of the (mostly) excellent line of miniatures that formed the Metal Magic Spacelords line. Some of them have been available, quietly, from em4 miniatures for quite a while. Indeed, it's where my brilliant Phagon beastmen came from not too many weeks back. Doug at em4 is a good chap to trade with, by the way, so give him all the custom you can... not least because he's gradually bringing back the rest of the line! Woo-hoo!

There's a pretty lively and enthusiastic thread running over on the LAF where Doug is taking votes on the next codes to reintroduce. Vote for your favourites to get them made again! I'm particularly hopeful that some of the S.E.C.S. troopers make it back into the lead as they may be just the ticket to solve my RT imperial guard conundrum...

I'll play you out with some of the fabulous pictures that Viruz from the Metal Magic Forum has kindly made available from the collection of images that he and others have painstakingly built up over the years. If you want higher resolution pictures, you'll just need to join that forum as well!

BOYL is coming...

Sean Bean will be there*

That's right, gamers with good taste and sophistication (and the rest of you goat-loving weirdos), it's time to sign up on Gaj's form to make sure Foundry know you're coming and save you table space in their new place in Newark..

Go on, go, sign up now!

Oldhammer blog post:        here

Oldhammer forum thread:   here

Online sign-up form:           here

Maybe I'll see you there?

Rab

*Well, perhaps in spirit, certainly not in body. Sorry.

Dice!

I got two great parcels in the post today, one was lovely lead from phreedh, and the other was the sample for the BOYL dice. I have to say, I'm quite pleased with them!

Craft challenge #2 - wet palette

If the last post (dice bag, remember?) was my magnum opus, this is far more straight forward but may actually be of more lasting use. A wet palette is something that many painters I admire have mentioned using, or recommended using, so I thought I should have one. After all, merely having one will make me a better painter, right?

Fortunately, this is dead easy and cheap to put together; I spent £1.89 to make my palette and the only tools I needed were a pair of scissors!

Step 1 - obtain a small, seal-able air-tight plastic pot (Tupperware is perfect for this, but other brands are available), a cheapo spongey cleaning cloth, and a pair of scissors.

Taming the beast

It's been an odd half term holiday, hobby-wise, for me. I've either had energy and inclination to paint, or time to paint - never both at the same moment! Aaagh! However, as well as the two separate games I played with my sons, I did complete two little geek craft projects which has given me a certain amount of satisfaction. This post will be about the dice bag I made, next time will be the oft-rehashed wet palette.

Planning dice for BOYL (samples on their way to me - hurrah!) got me thinking more generally about dice, as one does. Then, while doing a bit of tidying in the loft, I refound the cast-off sewing machine my mother-in-law gave us yonks ago. Now, this has caused my wife some guilt as she says she'll never use it but it gave me an idea - dice bag! After all, how hard could it be? I mean, I've never sewn a stitch in my entire life and the reason M-i-L got rid of it was that this was an "awkward little machine", in her words - and she made my wife's wedding dress!

Behold my foe:

A hatred for goblins

Last time, John Trollsbane and his as-yet-unnamed co-captain saw off the marauding forces of naughtiness from their pillaging of the village of... let's call it Frith (old Norman French for "forest", btw - I spent my school years commuting by train through a village called Chapel en le Frith up in Derbyshire and I always liked the name) on the edge of the deep forest. News soon got back to the Duke of their proficiency and bravery; as a reward they got sent to respond to news of further stirrings along the narrow but deep and swift-flowing river Guernotte, the official boundary of the Duke's land and often under the very shade of the forest. Some reward! Never trust a smiling nobleman...

This time I actually got a bit more terrain out, along with a balding GW grassmat - the munchkins were particularly keen to use the river and the tower, although the tower played no role whatsoever in the game except during pack-up when I dropped the heavy lump on two roofs and chipped a great lump out of each of them, dammit! Containing the vehement bad language that wanted to spew forth at that moment was a great effort of will!

Goblins to the left of me, skellies to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you...

The brief for the newly confident captains was simple: no fiend was to be allowed to set foot across the river, at any cost! This was a matter of pride (and probably political necessity) for the Duke.

Stuff from the interwebz #2 - Sergey Yuhinov

Sergey Yuhinov? Who he? Yes, he's completely new to me as well, but it turns out he's responsible for some truly extraordinary illustrations for The Lord of the Rings - and if you don't know what that is, this probably isn't the blog for you!

I was entranced by the Orthodox-style illuminations, reminiscent of both medieval manuscripts and proper devotional icon painting. Here are just four of his illustrations of well known sections from the books as a taster:

The Ents march on Isengard