In The Neighbourhood

Just a few street scenes. Apologies for the ropey camerawork, but these guys looked shifty and I had to work quickly.

Here we see a potential customer approaching the local Trading Post stall. Trading Post franchises its arms-dealing and shack-defence business to various wasteland settlements. Customers under eight years old require parental consent to purchase heavy weaponry. No warheads are kept on-site.

Bellvue Mews is a cosmopolitan melting pot. Many pots have melted here, owing to the nearby reactor. The power facilities are kept safely behind a chickenwire fence purchased especially by the council to deal with the town's supply of vast, irradiated mutant chickens.

As the police walk past, an entirely respectable civilian emerges from a side-street with his shotgun.

The Towering Reactor

Far back in the mists of time - round about Christmas, in fact - Mantic had a sale. One of the things was this:

It's an extra section for a tunneling machine that Mantic's not-skaven army use. I bought two, because they were cheap and had an interesting shape. However, I thought that they looked more convincing as terrain than vehicles.

I put one on top of the other to make a cylindrical tower. Then I started adding extra bits from old toys and other terrain kits to fill out the model and give it additional detail:

The original kits provided a lot of interesting shape. A lot of my Necromunda terrain is quite low - small houses, market stalls etc - and it's good to have something that towers over them to break up the monotony, rather like the reactor in the middle of Diamond City in Fallout 4. I was able to extend the tower to the side, using leftover plates from the tunneling machines. Then it got some extra details in the form of control panels and what might be fuel rods, and some paint.

As you can see, it's quite large and bulky. As with the favela-type houses that I made a while ago, I tried to paint some panels in bright (but dirty) colours to break up the monotony of grey. The base was an MDF frame from the local art shop. The reactor doesn't actually lean to one side - that's just my dodgy photography!

And here's a picture of the top.

Thinking about it, I wonder if I should add a lift to the side to explain how people get to the top. I've also got a strange mounted device from Warlord that could be used as a communications array or some kind of gun, which could sit on the helipad. But at the moment, I'm happy with how it's turned out.

My Fantasy Novel In Paperback

This has been a busy year so far in terms of hobbies. As well as the miniatures, I write books, and for the first time I've tried self-publishing a novel on Amazon.

Anyway, I'm delighted to announce that my novel, Up To The Throne, is available in paperback as well as for Kindle.

Copies have been purchased and they're looking good! You can buy copies from Amazon here:

Click HERE for paperbacks!

And you can read the first chapter for free here:

Click HERE to read Chapter 1!

And, what's more, here's me reading the first chapter out loud:

Click HERE to listen to Chapter 1!

Goblin Knights and Other Things

Every few years, I seem to feel the need to convert a hideous blob monster. This time around, I bought one of the large mutants from the Killteam: Rogue Trader box. It's a weird set, given that it's essentially an £80 add-on for an existing game - you need the original rules to be able to play it - and the models are much stranger than usual 40k models, as if they missed out the usual steps between John Blanche sketch and finished product. Anyway, the chap I got looked like this:

As with a lot of GW stuff, the model is perfectly well-sculpted, it's just that I don't like some of the concept. I removed the strange fly from his right shoulder and the dangly guts (I'm not big on dangly guts) and took off his rather normal head (normal except for the spike). I added various parts from the bits box and came up with this:

He got the standard Horrible Nurgle Skin treatment, which is worked up from a red undercoat for a sore, sickly appearance. I added purple glazes, to tone it all down a bit.

The blob-monster is probably either a chaos troll or a spawn of chaos, but it does look rather like something that would be tearing up anoraks and devouring beards in The Thing. So, I made him a little friend, in the tradition of the head-spider monster. They can be weird and pissed off together.

On a lighter note, I stumbled upon some models for sale from a game called Relics, which looks extremely odd and may actually be defunct. Along with Cthulhu-style monsters and puppets in Regency uniforms, there were some medieval goblins called "Ridend". I bought a few and found that they were really nice models. Shame the game seems to no longer exist. These two noble knights will be joining the goblin horde I seem to be building up.

It's always slightly disappointing, especially with GW's models, that the quirkier and more entertaining a model is, the more likely it is to be complete rubbish in the game. The "hero" models are generally giants in plate armour with interchangeable scowling bald heads. The models with real charm tend to be the little guys, who die like flies. I always liked the idea of a horde of these things scurrying around some larger creature, squeaking and getting in one another's way like the goblins from Labyrinth.

Hovercoaster Pt 2

I've been working on the hovercraft/submarine/skimmer machine from last post. The first and most major addition was a pair of mechanical arms scavenged off the "Galvanic Servohaulers" terrain kit.

I decided to paint the large circular bits on the Devilfish's doors as portholes. However, that meant that I'd be using "painted-on" glass as well as the transparent cockpit bits I'd had planned for the turret. After conferring with the chaps, I decided that this wasn't really viable, and removed the turret altogether. Instead, I added a hatch made from parts of an old bunker model, and a funnel that had originally been the base of a street-light from a WW2 scenery set. The periscope was a chimney-pipe from an old Empire house, with a light stuck to the front. They go back to the nautical theme quite nicely.

(The pliers are in lieu of a proper flying stand, so I can hold it up without my fat fingers getting into the picture.)

The next thing was to actually paint this machine. Yellow for the hull seemed right, given the submersible theme, and white for the upper parts worked for a boat. I made sure both were dirty and heavily chipped: this feels right for an industrial vessel and hides the rather ropey state of the basic model.

So there it is! It's been a fun project - although this thing still needs a base - and once again I've made something whose function I've no real idea about. I expect it hovers out in the badlands, collecting scrap for repair back at the township. Something like that.

I think it would make a rather good objective, or an unusual terrain piece. Perhaps I ought to write some rules for this vehicle. Or maybe it needs a crew...

Hovercoaster Pt 1

I've had an ancient, broken Tau Devilfish lying around for ages. I got it second-hand off Ebay, and didn't realise just how gunked-up with paint and glue it would be when I paid for it. I always expected to end up using it as a wreck.

What a mess

For some reason, it occurred to me to make a sort of hovering tug, the 40k equivalent of this kind of picture:

The battered, rusty style would enable me to get away with the mucky finish on the Devilfish, which, turned upside-down, would make a decent hull.

To further get away from the Devilfish's shape, and to get the clumsy, bulky look of a tug or coaster, I turned the hull around, so my vehicle would have a big, square bows and a tapering rear. I attached two Tau engines from a Piranha to the place where the drones would go, and got to work adding as much extra detail as I could to make it into something new.

Still pretty nasty

The cockpit was left over from a steampunk Stormraven conversion that I made a while ago. Most of the other parts were odds and ends from the bits box, as well as plasticard cut down to fill up holes and break up areas that looked too smooth and high-tech. I was particularly pleased with the under-hull thrusters/vents, which are a pair of resin aircon units bought from a miniatures show recently.

I tried to keep some nautical concepts, taken from small ships and submarines, to suggest its function. The bulging Tau doors made good portholes. The satellite dish and exhausts are, hopefully, suggestive of a funnel. If this all seems very elaborate, that's because I was stuck in a very boring work meeting and had the chance to plan it all out on the back of an agenda:

Next time: final touches and painting!

I Love Lamp

It's been another rather bitty week, as I've tried to get various small models finished and sort out various odds and ends. First up, we have another street light. I mounted this one on a Secret Weapon base. The base is great, but how you're supposed to fix a standard miniature to it, I've no idea. I de-skulled the lampost, but otherwise, it's as it came out of the box.

Next up, two more yokels for the ever-growing yokel horde. These guys are a notch up from the usual riff-raff, possessing between them two hats, one lantern and one firearm. They are, apparently, a watchman and a coachman. As with the others, the style of sculpting is dated, but they've got a lot of character.

And on the subject of having a lot of character, I bought a discounted box of models from Raging Heroes, the French company that makes the Toughest Girls In The Galaxy range. A lot of their stuff isn't my cup of tea, but their sculpting is excellent. The models I got are - well, I'm not sure what they are. They're described as "little demons" from the Sisters of Eternal Mercy range (who are very much like the Sisters of Battle). They look like the sort of weird little beings seen in the background of Hieronymous Bosch paintings.

Huh?

The only problem is that they are tiny. Being resin, they were hard to undercoat without losing the detail - and being miniscule, hard to paint full stop. Anyway, here are the first three of seven. I think I'll use them as Faith Point counters for the sisters.