Arabian (k)niiiiiiiiiiights...

...like Arabian daaaaays.... More often than not, they're hotter than hot, in a lot of gooood waaaaaaays! Ah Aladdin... except imagine Aladdin joined a cult and decided to menace Conan:

Not only for Conan, they'll also make a nice Song of Blades & Heroes warband, or stand-in for Dungeons and Dragons. We have the Magister, flanked by a Hero and Champion looking pair:

(Crikey, photos are even worse than usual today, that's what I get for not finishing in time to use natural light). When I first pulled the central chap out of his ebay package, I thought about using him as some sort of town official, but it didn't take long before he'd been recast in my mind as some sort of evil magister. I mean, look how fancy his coat is!

Supporting them (and by supporting, I mean dying in droves under the onslaught of even the lowliest Hero type) we have a couple of henchmen:

I don't know why that guy even bothers with that shield, he's not even wearing a shirt!

Unsure of whether they're goodies or baddies, we have a pair of warrior princess types:

(pretend these photos are brighter)

When they're not part of a sinister cult, they can stand in for various character classes too.

Last but not least, we have the minis that shape the theme of the warband, dependant on their inclusion:

Zombies! With these, we have the entourage of an evil necromancer, without them, they're the bodyguards of an accountant...

Every miniature features a red sash or scarf, to tie them all together, but also to link them to the Snakeman I painted a while back, huzzah!

Actually finishing some miniatures brings the tally to:

27 vs 67 = -40 As soon as I can find a shade of pink I like for finishing off needlers, I'll have another dozen finished miniatures, but that still means I'll need another 28 to get back to zero - and Salute's in three weeks...

The tally's first hit of the year...

So, yeah, my high hopes for this year being different to last year have already taken a drubbing... A new pot of TCR came last week. Oh, and all these miniatures:

In my defence, I had a discount code for Black Cat, hence this box of lovelies - there's a couple of packs of Obelisk bits in there (zombies to menace Conan and Baboons because they're great) as well as some of Black Cat's own apes that I fancy painting for some Planet of the Apes style shenanigans.

Also arriving today was this package from em4 (which arrived frighteningly quickly, as usual):

Mostly bases, as I'd nearly run out, but yes, there's a miniature hiding in there too (they're just so cheap, it's hard to resist!)

With this little lot, this year's tally of painted vs purchased currently sits at:

0 vs 15 = -15

And yes, I took advantage of Heresy's Christmas Sale to pick up some Spyglass/Eolith minis, so it's going to go even further into the negatives in the near future...

Honestly, I have been painting recently, I've just not finished anything to post up! My young lady and I have a week off in about a fortnight, so I'm thinking of doing some sort of Mega Power Week (or Week of Mega Power, the name's not confirmed yet) whereby we pledge to try and complete something hobby related every day and post about it, with some sort of reward at the end of the week if we succeed...

Speaking of my young lady, today she hit some charity shops, and amidst the old vinyl and wellington boots, she picked me up this:

Which is fairly handy, as I'm almost out of sand...