THE EVIL BRAIN EATERS

 Here's a little force of gribbly aliens I knocked up to fight my youngest son's Space Marines...The Evil Brain Eaters. All Reaper Bones minis with some minor conversion. Unfortunately they have gone all tacky after varnishing.. presumably a reaction of the varnish with the soft plastic these figures are made of.

The hive masters

The soldiers

The drones

Good fun to paint. Wash of contrast paints over white undercoat and finished. The hives are old flower arranging items I've had in my bits box for decades.....

A GAME OF FROSTGRAVE

Well it's been a while for various reasons, none terribly exciting fortunately. My oldest son Robin (14) inveigled me into a game of Frostgrave last night which was good fun. I'm not a great fan of skirmish games in general (they all seem the same to me) but it has to be said he had done a great job making all the terrain and preparing the figures. Here are a few shots of the table and his figures

Some scratchbuilt buildings

The Liche Lord

Gothicky pillars. The dragon is from a box of cheap toys found in The Works budget shop. 

A demon floortrap (pilfered from my bits box)

Skellies, cobbled together from leftover sprues.

Robin was short of skulls, so he ingeniously used some of these extra bits.... freaky eh?

Mix of skellies. The standard bearer is a rather nice figure from Warrior miniatures.

Robin's warband. The bishop is the wizard.

More warriors.

All in all a great set up. Frostgrave has certainly captured his imagination. I'll post my old Mordheim warband next which we used as cultists in the game.

THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (or what have I let myself in for now)

It's safe to say that I don't need any more projects on the go at the moment, not having enough time to concentrate on one, let alone nine  or ten , so I was astounded to hear myself saying to my 2 older sons (Thing 1 and Thing 2)"Why don't we collect the armies to re-fight the battle in The Hobbit?" Needless to say they thought it would be a good idea (particularly as I would be stumping up for the figures).

The Battle of The Five Armies by John Blanche

in A Tolkien Bestiary by David Day

We decided on 1/72 scale mainly for cheapness and there are a couple of companies producing really nice boxes of figures at about £6 for 40 odd figures. I need to sit down and work out exactly what we need to get, but I reckon we should be able to do the battle on a scale of 1:20 for under £100. Thing 1 already had some Light Alliance Dwarves on the go so these will form the basis for Dain Ironfoot's 500 grim warriors, and we have been sent a bundle of Caesar Dwarves by a kind fellow blogger (thanks Douglas).

Great figures based heavily (or copied) on the Lord of the Rings films. 

Not bad painting for a 10 year old (he's now 11, but did these last year for a Moria game).

I am thinking of doing the elves first using Caesar figures, and then there are an awful lot of goblins to do..

THROK THE FACELESS (AND HANDLESS)

 Work is going well with the Thistlewood armies (I've painted about 200 figures so far) but I am just deciding  on how to start the bases having had some good tips from Thantsants over at Somewhere the teas getting cold .

Meanwhile here are some more barbarians, my chaos pooches and their handler

The hounds are GW plastic wolves with spiky bits then coated in static grass and painted.

I really like this helmet from the first Chaos Warriors Speciality set. The hounds got a bit frisky one day and chewed off Throk's face and hand...

On the subject of hounds, I have always been a bit ambivalent towards our canine chums, but was pretty heavily converted by having this splendid dog (or bitch to be accurate but less polite) Pip to stay a week or so back

I think I was more gutted than the boys when she left and since then the pressure has been on from them to get a four legged member of the family...we shall see.

DADHAMMER MOMENT

A few days ago, Robin, my oldest lad (10) roped me into a fantasy battle he had set up in his bedroom, using his own fun rules and figures, all painted himself. A couple of turns in, his brothers turned up eager to participate in moving figures and dice rolling and for 40 minutes or so we had a really enjoyable time with all the youngsters attention held, not bad for Arthur 6, who is not so bonkers about soldiers as Robin , and George who at 3 mainly likes bashing things, but handled the figures reverently.

The lego tower holds a goblin hanglider by the way.  Arthur and myself were the diseased minions of the chaos god Nurgle, and Robin and George were brutish orc marauders. Although Robin seems to know all the ins and outs of the latest Games Workshop creations, his armies hold a healthy mix of different manufacturers, and he is particularly keen on Grenadier Barbarians to use as marauders. A true Dadhammer moment, and as Arthur expressed an interest in getting some Dwarves, I might invest in some of the rather nice EM-4 packs. At 50 figures for £9 you can't go wrong.