I got sick of painting undead so I did these

Well I ran into a common problem (well I understand it is pretty common from reading other oldhammer blogs) with finishing off the last of my undead units for WFB/KoW - lack of desire painting the same old things. But instead of doing nothing I painted up some figures I've had cleaned and basecoated for ages and which I planned to paint up as long term projects. So here they are - the first figure of my Blood Bowl Darkside Cowboys team, an elf wardancer and chaos dwarf:

Happy Australia Day

I thought I would post up some pics of two figures in my collection (the first one I painted years back; the other I finished this morning) that have an Australian flavour as it is Australia Day today. Here they are:

Oz Judge from Foundry minis

Orc with Boomerang

The second figure is somewhat problematic. I was rapped when I managed to get him for a reasonable price a number of years back when I was collecting Orcs because he has a boomerang and that is cool. He is though, to a fair degree, politically incorrect. For starters Orcs are pretty nasty in any ruleset/novels I've ever read. And this one is dressed in skins and furs with bone and feather decorations. Add to that the boomerang and one could easily argue that this mini is presenting a pretty poor view of Aboriginal Australians. But having said all that I'm struggling to think of a "good" range of WFB figures that citadel could have armed with a boomerang if they wanted to honor Aboriginal Australians by sculpting a figure that is brandishing such an iconic weapon. 100 year war French (Bretonnians) and Holy Roman Empire Germans (Empire) and the other historical armies that GW copied/used as inspiration for their fantasy armies didn't use such weapons. As such I'll take the figure as this - honoring such an iconic culture and weapon in the figure range that it can fit into.

Undead again

My latest work is mostly KoW/WFB undead. I also managed to finish off a couple of heroquest undead  which are part of a very long term project I have going. I might manage to finish off the heroquest villains by the end of the year...Anyway here are the pics:

Arcane architecture

A healthy shade of green...

Not my favorite minis but they do the job

I love these figures

Fun to paint but a bitch to clean

Playing Dark Future

I finally got around to trying DF out today with my wife (and kudos to her for playing one of my games!). I used the introductory/tournament rules that came with the game (not to be confused with those in white Dwarf 110). Basically the game involves rolling start race between 2 renegades both armed with a hood mounted machine gun and 6 mine counters - two are real and 4 are dummies. The race is the first to complete 8 road sections.

Well it was fun - and brutally quick. So much so we played a second game. I ended up winning both under quite different circumstances. In game one I started quicker and caused most of the damage that destroyed my wife's car by laying mines whist she tailed me firing machine guns at me most of the time (when she could of course). I didn't have many points left at the end of that game but the two real mines I laid did their work due to high damage rolls.

In game two it was the opposite after two early sideswipes (my wife copped damage each time whilst I copped it in one - i.e. I won one of the sideswipes and the other was a draw). My wife then put the foot down and I trailed after firing my MGs when possible. Again lucky damage rolls did the trick for me before my wife could lay any mines.

Anyway here are a few pics of the first game:

Sideswipe - I came off second best on this one

A mine does some serious damage

Ram!

The second mine destroys my wife's car

And a pic from the second game just before my wife's car exploded in a hail of MG bullets:

So what did I think of the experience? It was fun. I can see problems with the movement rules simply due to the "I go, you go" type of movement. It probably works OK when one car is going quicker than the other but it was a bit random when one had to roll for who would move first. And that can be important for shunts and sideswipes - and it makes a difference for range too. I did like the rule which limits you to a single action each phase though. And the weapon damage was realistic - after all even an armoured car would struggle to last long in such fights and each game turn represents only a few seconds of real time. As such one cannot do more than one action in each phase of each game turn. Makes perfect sense to me and it appeared to work well.

So what next? I'm going to have a look at the tournament rules in WD 110 and see if I can arrange a game with my wife and some mates of mine. Whether I graduate from that to the full on rules will be seen - guess it depends on whether they like the game or not... 

Bretonnian Unit Fillers

These are similar to the undead unit fillers I posted about recently - they have been painted to complete two KoW/WFB units and as such they are fairly quick paint jobs. The spear man does complete a unit of 20; I'm still a few figures short for a unit of 20 men at arms with double handed weapons so I still have some work to do there along with my ghouls and mummies. Anyway here they are: 

Is this a copy mini?

I need some advice. I bought an old Marauder Ogre figure on eBay recently and I'm pretty sure it is a copy. But before going back to the seller (I'm not blaming the seller BTW as people can make mistakes and I've bought from this seller before and had no problems) I thought I would check with others who know these things well. I have some experience in the area as I bought some copy figures from a shop in my hometown about 20 years ago - the telltale sigh for me being bubbles in the casting. Anyway here are the pics with some comments:

Double casting on the halberd - whilst a mould can slip I don't think a metal mould will produce this

Bubbling - again I don't think one can get this from a metal mould

Badly defined breastplate

Badly defined detail on the back of the mini

If you have any thoughts regarding this I would appreciate hearing them. A big thanks in advance

Undead unit fillers

As the title suggests I've been working on figures to finish off some Kings of War (or Warhammer if I want to use them for a game of 3rd edition) Undead units. Anyway here they are:

Night Horror Mummy

Early 90s Mummy

Night Horror Ghoul

Pre Slotta Spectre