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...