Fisk's Christmas Present

Christmas now seems an age away, but myself and a few mates decided to run a little Secret Santa and secretly send each other something fun to paint. We dutifully promised to paint up whatever we were sent by the end of January. I'm late, and I've only painted 50% of what I was sent - I'm barely coping with the excessive guilt!

Nonetheless, 50% of my Secret Santa gift has been painted - although it wasn't so much a gift for me, as it was for Silwon Fisk. I even received instructions to the fact:

Choose Your Own Adventurers #16: Judda, Space Eunuch

Sometimes models take on a life of their own. They become personalities through the games they're used in and the experiences they have. Add the character of the sculpt into the mix, and you end up with a firm favourite.

"No, Mister Fisk will NOT see you now!"

Judda was painted over a year ago, but I am choosing to use him as the next instalment of Choose Your Own Adventurers because I didn't blog about him at the time, and also he has become (through his highs and lows), one of my favourite characters.

The House of Yakob - Another Building for Helsreach

I know the title of this post says Helsreach, but I've decided I could do with naming my own distinct settlement as a different setting for all my buildings. Something like 'Blackdust Gulch' or 'Edge Town' perhaps. I'll give it some thought.

Today's post shows off the newest addition to the collection of buildings - a mid-sized two-storey house which has become the dwelling of the merchant Yakob Pento (now he's moved from Necromunda, where we last saw him!).

The Power Plant

When a mate pops round to your house and drops off a selection of wargames terrain because "it might fit with your Helsreach buildings", it would be rude not to take them up on the offer. What was kindly donated to me a week or so ago was a selection of dusty old resin Kryomek domes (still produced by Scotia Grendel), and a funky little plaster building.

The House of Bergat - Painted Scratchbuild

In my last blogpost, I shared the unpainted pics of my scratchbuilt large house, intended to sit alongside my other Helsreach-esque buildings. I kept on referring to it as a palace during the build and subsequently, but it's clearly anything but. I suspect it's more likely to be the abode of a relatively wealthy merchant - hence it is now the House of Bergat.

A Man's House is His Castle - A Scratchbuild

Whilst I've put together a small selection of buildings styled after the Helsreach illustrations in Rogue Trader (like this or these), I've not made any larger centrepiece type structures in the style of this hillfort:

Carl Critchlow's fantastic Helsreach illustration.

I've been thinking about making a building in homage to the above illustration, but its quite a daunting prospect. Happily, I discovered some cheap household items in my local discount store, which I figured would be good basic shapes to make a practice build using some of the techniques I would employ on a hill fort.

A pair of plastic bathroom tidies (for your toothbrushes and so on). These were on the clearance shelf and cost less than £5.

Notorious Personages, Flyboys and Fuel

A selection of a few things I've painted recently!

Mayor Snakehand 

The fabulous Curtis of Ramshackle Games was generous enough to sculpt, cast and distribute his own Mayor of Helsreach to attendees at BOYL last month. I chose to paint my copy as a rather sinister and self-important individual, fond of intimidating dark clothing!

BOYL 2017 (Part 2) - Saturday Gaming

Very possibly you'll already seen some of the excellent BOYL 2017 coverage elsewhere on the net (try Crucium Giger or Dear Tony Blair or Shadowkings), but it only seems right and proper that I give an overview of my weekend. After a Friday of fun at Warhammer World, I arrived with Erasmus Papafakis ready for gaming.

 

Olivia

First order of the day was to see how Olivia had cast. Who's Olivia? Olivia is the commemorative event figure, sculpted by John Pickford for the event, and cast by Foundry. I took on the task of organising the sculpting and liaising with John.

Fancy a Nice Quiet Pint? More Fogou Terrain

There are many unlicensed drinking dens in the streets of Helsreach.

The Listener of Whispers and Helsreach Grows

Without wanting to sound like I'm repeating myself, it's been a little while since I last added to my Astropathic Choir. So I pulled a suitable figure out and daubed some paint to swell the number of choristers.

Astropath Varees holds the title of Listener of Whispers. It is he who seeks out the quiet and the hidden - the secret messages that are transmitted faintly and furtively. Not for him are the mundane and strong signal of corporate entities, inter-planetary political announcements or universal broadcasts. Varees listens to subtler transmissions. Coded tense negotiating positions. Highly sensitive notifications of high ranking births, marriages and deaths. Perhaps subterfuge and espionage. He hears much and speaks little. For this, he is well rewarded by grateful, yet anonymous clients.

 

WIP Helsreach Building

I singularly failed to do any painting over the last few days, so instead I thought I'd share a WIP building I'm working on for my Logan's World / Helsreach-esque fringe world setting.

The building is a 28mm scale Casbah from Black Hat Miniatures Exotic Adventures range. The building is a great looking collection of interesting angles - here's it is unpainted:

Bringing it all Home - Fogou Terrain

I love it when I get the opportunity to paint up brand new stuff, so when I was sent a nice little package of some newly cast post-apocalyptic / science fiction buildings from Fogou Models (swapped for some of my Colony 87 figures).

I received the bundle of stuff below - a blockwork structure, an adobe building and a little tin shack. Also included was a nice selection of accessories - a barricade, some barrels and some pots and jars. I'm yet to paint up the blockwork building or the pots, but I devoted a couple of painting sessions to the rest of the items.

The Grand Tour - Ash Wastes Dune Buggy (Take 2)

As you may have seen over at Leadplague or Sho3box, this year the WIPsters guaranteed each other at least one hobby related present this year, with a Secret Santa gift sharing.

 

My Santa recognised that vehicles have been a bit of a theme this year, and that I clearly needed more racers. I was therefore as excited as a 4 year old with a full stocking when I opened my present:

 

That's right - a mint in blister OOP Grenadier Future Warriors Lightning Strike Buggy!

Easy Rider - Another Logan's World Outrider

The best thing about a Mad Max style setting are the vehicles. And the coolest type of vehicle is a motorbike! I actually finished the second of my Maniax bikers a month or so ago, but never got round to posting him up. In game terms he's been hugely unsuccessful, failing to turn up on 3 out of 4 occasions. He's probably too busy seeking out new business opportunities for his paymaster.

 

 

Sam & Rico - Maniax For Hire

We're now four weeks in to our Helsreach / campaign, and although I painted up the final two members of my Maniac Mercenary crew accompanying my water seller, I haven't had chance to post up any pics.

 

The figures are from a pretty diverse pair of sources (in as far as 28mm space punks can be!). One the left is Psycho Sam, toting his shotgun and rockstar pose. Sam was sculpted by Mark Copplestone for the 2015 Oldhammer USA weekend. The fantastic guys in the US shipped over a box of the figures to be liberally distributed at the UK equivalent event - Bring Out Your Lead 2015, held at Wargames Foundry. I was lucky enough to be there and to get a copy.

 

The figure on the right is Little Rico -  a civilian from Metal Magic's Spacelords range, currently stocked by Moonraker Miniatures. I'm particularly fond of his little space monkey!

 



 

Emergency Breakdown Cover - Ash Wastes Salvage Vehicle

There's something about big civilian sci-fi vehicles that really appeals to me, and it's been a lot of fun working on my Ash Wastes salvage vehicle which I finished off the last few touches earlier. Very little has changed from the build. I essentially sprayed it with a yellow car spray before weathering it within an inch of its life!

 

 

Ash Wastes Crawler - Finished!

Back in December 2014, I showed off a WIP scratch-built Ash Wastes Crawler I'd started making for my Ash Waste Nomads, based on the old Action Force HISS tank.

For the best part of two years, not very much happened with the crawler, other than sitting, gathering dust, unloved and unused. And then motivation in the form of the imminent Ash Wastes campaign came along. In a few weeks, I'll be playing with a new Maniac road gang, accompanying my Water Seller Journeyman on Logan's World. So I've been gradually adding to the crawler - a platform here, am aerial there. And then over the course of a number of painting sessions over the past week, I've finally painted it too:

Supressing Fire - Confrontation Maniac Ganger for Logan's World

One of the pleasures of making my Logan's World Mercenary gang, is that I'm painting up some pretty obscure figures. In fact, I don't believe I've ever seen all 4 Confrontation Maniacs painted before.

 

If you can't recall what I'm talking about, it's these guys:

 

Photo from the excellent Stuff of Legends.

 

I've previously painted up two of the armless guys, and decided it was high time to paint up the third (also my favourite of the three). As with the earlier pair, I've gone for a fairly restrained colour palette - a dun brown, white, dark blue and black.

 



 

Ash Wastes Salvage Vehicle - The Build

When you mention to a friend that you are looking for parts to make civilian vehicles, and the friend gives you one of these...:

 

...the only correct thing to do is to knuckle down and make a civilian vehicle out of it. If you don't recognise the nice big chunk of resin above, it's the chassis from the Forgeworld Solar Auxilia Dracosan Armoured Transport. Which usually looks like this:

Born To Be Wild - a Logan's World Outrider

Next up for my Logan's World Maniax is a bike-riding Outrider. In the Ash Wastes rules, Outriders are scouts for a Journeyman gang, so I wanted my Outriders to be mounted on rugged, well-equipped bikes. The first of my Outriders fits the bill - mounted on a heavy bike, laden down with plenty of gear!