Obi-Wan's Jedi Starfighter - Revell Easykit

When I started this blog my son was around two years old. A two year old can be delightful and tons of fun - my daughter is two and she's endlessly entertaining - but the toys of two year olds are, well, rather simplistic. Now that my son is four and a half he's started to get really cool toys for the first time - toys he'll actually play with and we can both enjoy together. So let's take a look at the first one:

This is Obi-Wan's Jedi Starfighter from the Revell Easykit range. These kits come pre-painted and the idea is that they just slot together without the need for glue. As T is a little too young to have the dexterity to put something like this together, I did it for him, and I must admit I glued a few of the major parts together - I suppose it's just habit!

Overall this is a neat little range and I imagine for older kids this is a great way to get them into the model building hobby. It's a short and satisfying project with a reasonable result - from this particular kit at least. The paint job is fine on the ship but the tiny pilot looks quite crap so I was tempted to leave him out. But hey, this isn't my toy!

I was also tempted to give the thing a spray and have a go at giving it a proper paint job. But again, this isn't my toy so I'll have to wait until I get one myself, or I can convince T to let me give it a shot. I was also thinking about how this might be converted into a very cheap alternative to Forge World's Chaos Hell Blade fighter. The scale though isn't quite right and it's not as if I need another crazy project to distract me right now!

A Couple of Properly Grimy And Gothic Tyranid Images

For me, the Tyranids should be grimy and gothic. They certainly shouldn't have the bizarrely clean look that GW seem to like giving them. They're a heaving biomass of death - they shouldn't look like they've just had a shower. So I was pleased to see these images on the GW site today, which capture the kind of aesthetic I like. Grabbed, copied and shared for your enjoyment.

Slaanesh Chaos Spawn, Probably

These are great miniatures, a couple of 'brutes' from Mierce Miniatures. They have a very gladiatorial look, as if they've been rebuilt by some utterly twisted mind, with the sole aim of a short and extremely brutal life in some wretched fighting pit. The sacks over their heads make them look all the more perverted. Lovely! I'm planning on using them as Slaanesh Chaos Spawn in my Realm of Chaos army so here they are in some of the basic colours I'm using - it's a nice palette to work with (also pinks and flesh tones), very different from both my Nurgle work and the colours for my Genestealer Cult. I'd like to have a fully painted playable RoC army finished by the summer. I suppose that almost counts as a new year's goal! That'll never come to pass then ;-) 

They would also make excellent Dark Eldar Grotesques.

Geek Crafts For Long Winter Nights

As today is supposedly the most depressing of 2014 - and with all the grim weather we've been having it's likely this mood will persist - here are some potential projects to stave off the black dog. I found these little gems in Waterstones recently while browsing for craft books with my wife. Does anything here take your fancy? I'm sure I've seen some of those Zombie Felties for sale on Etsy before. Some of the projects in the Star Wars craft book are wonderfully amateur! 

Happy New Hobby Year To All

Welcome one and all to the new hobby year. I trust you all have plenty of plans for the months ahead?

I myself have begun by tidying up the blog a little as it was rather cluttered. I hope you approve.

As for 2014 I have three simple resolutions:

1) More hobby in general. Now I'm more accustomed to my split living arrangements - and studying again - I'm going to get more modelling and painting done while in Oxford.

2) Regular gaming. Particularly with my brother, who has amassed a collection large enough to stock a small GW store. So I hope you'll see pictures of my armies against Marines and Eldar and Realm of Chaos battles with Khorne warbands. 

3) To GM and play RPGs. My regular Cardiff group should continue and I'll mostly play via Google hangouts or FaceTime. In Oxford I plan to take advantage of a willing gaming community among my cohort to launch a sandbox campaign in the latest edition of RuneQuest.

Let's have some fun :-)

Getting Back On Track(s): Genestealer Cult Leman Russ

No limos yet - I guess those will be Chimeras - so here is some tooled up Heavy Suppot for my Genestealer Cult. This Leman Russ is the first tank I've painted in about 25 years. It's fun to apply my messy and impressionistic technique to such large and plain surfaces, where I can really play around with light and texture. Still a WIP with plenty of overlayers to do (and not to everyone's tastes I'm sure) but I think the look of a completed army in this style with be very striking. 

The Oddness Of Adult Lego (Featuring Rivendell In Lego)

I really like Lego*. What I don't understand though, is adults who buy Lego for themselves or each other. It just seems rather odd. 

As a child I adored Lego and played with it constantly, as far as my memory can be relied on. Back then - I mean the early-mid '80s - Lego firmly had a place in the child's play space. Toys were toys. Today Lego has a strange cultural position. Consider the Lego store. Here we can find toys apparently designed and marketed at all ages. It must be 'all' ages because there are simple blocks for the under 5s across the aisle from massively complicated huge kits that are surely aimed at adults. And these kits can be priced well over £100. 

But what is the adult desire that leads to buying Lego, I wonder? Do adults buy it for themselves or is it a gift-giving economy where people mutually feed the play-desires of their friends? I honestly cannot work out what is going on here. An anecdote: a high-level academic where I'm studying recently had her 40th birthday and was bought a Lego R2D2 by colleagues - a kit that retails for something like £150. 

What will she do with this? Build it, I suppose. I can kind of see the attraction myself, yet, I can't get away from the nagging feeling that about 30 minutes in I would feel a deep-seated, cold shock that I was doing something utterly silly. I mean, it's just Lego! More than this, my cherished Lego memories are not of building the kit and simply leaving it at that. The true joy of Lego is surely building - crafting - your own creations. Monsters, spacecraft, buildings, anything, springs forth from the creative maelstrom of the child's mind and feeds their play, either alone or with siblings or friends.

I cannot imagine someone giving an adult a jumbled bag of random Lego pieces. The adult Lego is all about building the kit 'properly', so presenting someone with what would amount to a child's Lego collection - all pieces heaped in an inviting, tempting pile - would be out of place. It's this disconnection that makes adult Lego such a hollow prospect for me: it is Lego as nostalgia, as a 3D jigsaw puzzle, with the real joy of Lego miserably absent. 

Or perhaps I've got it all wrong and all adult Legoists are sweating over amazing creations, such as this Lego version of Rivendell. But I doubt it. 

*Americans please note, the plural of Lego is Lego, not Legos. 

Knights Of Badassdom Finally Has A Release Date

Finally, Knights Of Badassdom has a release date. According to GeekTyrant we'll be able to see the movie on demand from 11th February. See the details and find the trailer here. 

I know that it's not going to be amazing, but any film that involves live action roleplay will always unmissable for me. So many memories of running around woods in the early '90s... There's a LARP society here in Oxford so I wonder if after seeing this I'll be tempted to join?

Picking My Bones, Or, Putting In My Reaper Kickstarter Pledge

The time arrived a few days ago to lock in my pledge for Bones 2, which led to plenty of chin scratching (and not because I'm particularly hirsute at the moment). I always knew I was in it for the monsters, so here are the beasties I went for:

Not a hard option this one as I loved it at first sight. I suppose that when I get my Marienburgers up and running again - and I do have some plans - that this could stand in for something. Or it could just be a massive squid with some made up rules. It could also slip into my Slaaneshi army. "Squids in" either way... (sorry).

This Cthulhu-style nasty is just plain stupid fun. I'll probably Nurgle him up in some way.

And this is the dragon I went for, simply because he was different to most things around at the moment and he's got that old school style thing going on - I think he's very Realm of Chaos appropriate.

So there you have it. A gentle easing back in hobby-town for me. I'm in Wave 2, so I believe I'll be getting these monstrosities some time next September. It's always nice to have something to look forward to, isn't it?

A Brief History Of Dragons

Here's a nice little article from the Guardian today on dragons, presumably stoked up by the forthcoming appearance of Smaug. Slightly lighter relief than all the chatter that seems to be going on across the hobby community blogosphere about how all our games are 'broken'. Perhaps some more on that in the days to come...

Whatever Happened To The Marienburg Gazette? Or, The Obligatory 'I Aten't Dead' Post

Recently the Gazette made the move to a shared-home scheme in Cardiff and Oxford. This has led to a temporary halt in the production of hobby-related ramblings. 

Readers are assured that this was not the result of some dramatic life event, but due to the decision of the owner to send himself to boarding school (a sensible decision for a father of two young children), where he is pursuing a second doctorate in an attempt to make himself so over-qualified he will never be employable in any sensible context. Ever.

In an effort to become an 'ultra' of 'uber' geek, the more-than-adequately-qualified proprietor has decided to match his PhD in Sociology with a DPhil in Cyber Security. Friends and family were unable to comment as they were too busy holding their heads in their hands and sighing.

When questioned about the hobby hiatus, the so-called 'Davey' simply stated "I aten't dead", in what is believed to be an attempt at geek humour related to the Discworld series of fantasy novels. He then waved his hands vaguely and mumbled something about trying to work out a better "life-hobby balance" and some kind of return in the next few days. 

Climbing Model Mountain: Genestealer Cult

I have considered re-naming this series of posts something like "sea of green" because of my recent copious use of the primer that graces my undead, devotees of Nurgle and these, my Genestealer Cultists. The Cult consists of a primary detachment drawn from the Imperial Guard codex and an ally force of Tyranids. Not strictly 'legal' but where would be the fun in that?! So much painting work to do on these you wouldn't believe it, though oddly this is army that's seen the most tabletop action.

I've picked out the first photo to show my non-Cadian derived infantry units. From left to right: five 90s Ratlings, who will soon be boosted up to a full 10 'man' unit with a converted heavy weapon team - you've got to love the abhumans (current models will fill the sniper team role); then there's a Steel Legion unit, who can either be regular infantry or act as veterans; and finally a unit of Squats - all 80s metal with a tiny bit of tinkering to make them fit the current game (see a future post for details...).

We also have Zoats standing in for Ogryns (more 80s goodness) and two different sets of hybrids acting as penal squads. And I couldn't resist buying a Leman Russ tank for a little added beef - let's face it, tanks are cool. There's also a Psyker battle squad tucked in there next to six heavy weapons teams and three 'standard' infantry units.

Due to a lack of space I've resorted to keeping the Genestealers on a mini-shelf (another display cabinet is being hunted...). I'm using a Carnifex model as stand-in for a Hive Tyrant, which is a proxy for a Genestealer Patriarch. Most of the Genestealers are from Space Hulk for the obvious reason that they're better than the regular box models, although I have a few of those too.

The human (and abhuman) infantry are really flexible because not only could I play them as a straight Imperial or Planetary Defence force (they've taken on the Tau in this guise), I can also employ them as Traitor Guard to fight alongside my Nurgle gang - a role they've already fulfilled against Marines. This multiple personality trait is great in gaming terms and in the era of an ever-tightening budget. 

Climbing Model Mountain: Beastmen

Rejoice! It's the next batch of dodgy photographs of an army in my collection. This time, Beastmen. 

As with everything I have, these are all works in progress at some stage or another. On the right you can see my Gors, which are based in a range of colours ready to be worked up with layers of highlights. I like the idea that these will all have a signature look built up on different shades of bases that will show through to some extent. On the left are my Ungors, recently obtained and dressed in bright white. To the rear, you can get a glimpse of my Harpies - I'm hoping to do some work on these soon so they'll stay out of the limelight for now. And yes, that's an Avatars of War hero and a Hordes Shaman at the front there.

Just to the front in this astonishingly well taken photo are my mostly hidden Spider Centaurs. Again, these haven't changed since earlier posts, so I'll work on them a little more soon and then share. At the rear are the big guys - Minotaurs from Scibor and Mierce. The Scibor guys are a good indication of where all this lot are going stylistically.

Finally, a trio of hero/lord models, with little done to them. Missing are my Bestigors, who also feature in my Nurgle 40k army as Plague Zombies. Thinking about it, I might focus on this Brayherd in the next month as my first project at my home-away-from-home in Oxford. Hmmm...

A Dollar For A Foot In The Door - Reaper Bones 2 Kickstarter (And The Smell Of Something Fishy...)

This is the princely sum that I've paid to have a 'foot in the door' of the Reaper Bones 2 Kickstarter. I thought this was a very low level risk because it allows access to all the add-ons that will come from the campaign. I do admire all the minis that are available at the $100 level, I'm just not that interested in owning them. As per usual it's the big monsters I'm most anticipating. And I'm already delighted because this fishy fellow will be available for on $15:

Artistic Inspiration On The March

On the weekend we took the children and their grandmother to the National Museum in Cardiff. The children loved the natural history sections as they always do and we had a few minutes to fit in some of the art galleries. As we had the kids in tow this was done at double quick time, but I did have a chance to snap a couple of what I think are new additions to the collection. Both of the following show the kinds of colour mix, blends, overlaying and shading that I'm experimenting with at the moment. Except that I'm doing it on a cyclops and a ghorgon. 

Woman at the bath - Edgar Degas.
National Museum Cardiff

Effect of snow at Petit-Montrouge - Edouard Manet.
National Museum Cardiff