Dealing With The Doldrums; A Moving Story...

     It's been a funny old week since my last post and not just because the clocks have gone forward an hour. No, with the decommissioning of the McCubbyhole I have been left feeling rather rudderless and am just beginning to see how much I am addicted to building and painting miniatures. I feel exactly like Linus van Pelt without his security blanket!! The time is dragging by and I am itching to get moved into our new place and to start on McCubbyhole II...talk about first world problems...

The early days of the McCubbyhole

a shell of it's former self. I managed to get a lot of
stuff in here during the day, all things considered

     With all my more or less regularly used forces away in safe storage I still have stuff in my display cabinets that been sort of neglected but now is in need of storing securely including my Judge Dredd Miniatures Game figures. The Justice Department figures below are ones that came with the starter set.    

Warlord Games/Mongoose Publishing's Judge Dredd figures. Ready
for action or not, as the case may be, as I have put them away in a
box, safe and secure, for the moment.

THE best lawmasters in my humble opinion

Mega City 1 Defence Militia; gun tottin' bad asses

    And what with being in the doldrums and with a need to fill I have been buying stuff to cheer myself up including this post-apocalyptical vehicle from Ramshackle Games. I had an idea to use it as a Justice Department patrol vehicle but I am not sure if it will fit the bill now as it doesn't have a transport capacity. Once I am in our new gaff I'll order one of his Rhebok APCs for my Mega City 1 lawmen. It should do for Zona Alfa and/or In the Emperor's Name though.

     Speaking of which I bought these figures from Foundry Miniatures for ItEN; an Empirical Absolutionist and Liquidation Squad from their Ex Citadel/Games Workshop collection. I am thinking the three figures in the middle will do for my Arbites squad (I also picked up two more shotgun totting Arbites figures from eBay); the one of the far left might do for an inquisitor and the one on the extreme right as a cultist of some description (Your clever wargamer plans all this out in advance before buying stuff whereas I go about it the wrong way; figure first then lets see what we can do with them...hopeless)

    and as if proof were needed of that back to front approach I bought these WFB Orks mostly for Warlords of Erehwon then bought Dan Mersey's Dragon Rampant rules as I have a hankering to build some old school Warhammer terrain once McCubbyhole II is in commission and up and running. I reckon that the Dragon Rampant rules will be good fun for solo gaming.

For larger skirmish games these should scratch the
fantasy battle itch

I also found some more of these Bretonnian knights in my pile
of potential 

    Whilst decommissioning the McCubbyhole I have been listening to William King's Gotrek & Felix novels on Audible and have really enjoyed them. So much so that I think they would make good back stories for games of Thud & Blunder so I decided to search the interweb to see if anyone produced stand in figures as the original sculpts cost a small fortune, somewhere between £45 and £115 on eBay!! I think these guys will fit the bill though; they are produced by MOM miniatures who are based in Spain and whose figures look fantastic. Of course I will have to get some Skaven figures to oppose Gotrek and Felix...and Chaos cultists...and vampires...and...however..

     Not quite last nor least I bought some more railway terrain from Sarissa Precision. The idea is to paint the diesel shunt in a Cold War Soviet era colour scheme so that it can be used in Zona Alfa missions. The water tower will do for WW2 onwards.

This sort of colour scheme for the diesel shunt, methinks

     And that, dear, patient readers has gotten me to this point; typing and thumb twiddling and watching my bank balance suffer...but all in a good cause..

Pip pip, 

Linus

"Zippin' Up Ma Boots!" A Dalliance With Nostalgia

From back in the day; my WH40K Drop Troop themed army, the
Solar Lions tangle with Richie's Night Lords in one of the best, if
not the best, campaigns we have ever played. Unfortunately I
have lost all the details to my old Photobucket account so I had to
resort to photographing the picture onscreen...

    Following on from my previous update I bring you this glorious, multi game system, technicolour, nostalgia soaked follow up. 

     Firstly I have managed to get two of my Zona Alfa crews painted...just about. These lovely Copplestone Castings are...erm...lovely. I decided, as they were contemporary/near future I would go for modern urban camouflage for the first set and a Desert Storm/Gulf War camouflage for the second crew. I have still to play the game and to work out the crew statistics etc but I'm not going to let a trifling detail like that hold me back.

Painted Assault Troopers 

Copplestone Castings Civilian Militia painted up as American mercs

     As well as the figures I have bought some more terrain, again from TT Combat, for Zona Alfa, Judge Dredd and this little beaut, In The Emperor's Name, a skirmish game set in the 40K universe, inspired by  or written in response to GWs Inquisitor game, which I really liked. In the Emperor's Name (ItEN) was written by the chaps at the Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare and is now in it's third edition; it's available to download online for free, has it's own dedicated website with an online force list builder and it's own Facebook page...woo hoo!!

     This is yet another skirmish game I haven't played but being based on the same game engine as In Her Majesty's Name I am confident that it will be great fun. Aaaand it has given me the incentive to dig out the last GW 40K figures that I still own to make up opposing sides. Like a lot of you out there my gaming roots are firmly rooted in WH40K and I had bought, painted and sold on loads of figures; Space Marines, Orks, Chaos Space Marines, Saim Hahn Eldar (the latter three for my son, Stuart, back in the day) and Imperial Guard Drop Troops. Now I am down to a handful of stripped metal Blood Angels and other bits and bobs that I just haven't gotten around to selling on eBay and these are now going to form the core of my ItEN forces. 

     Straight off the bat I already have two forces to use from my INQ28 (the 28mm based version of Inquisitor which is, oddly enough, based on 54mm figures...but I digress) days. I have posted these on the blog before as I was using them for In Her Majesty's Name before buying more dedicated Victorian sci fi miniatures so that's a good start. However, having lots of metal 40K I have deicded to make up small warbands of Scouts, Space Marines as well as Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Cultists, Orks and Genestealer Cultists as well as a third Inquisitor force. Here's a selection below..

My original inquisitor, Inquisitor Hannus Pellen, a Monodominant
inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos

My second Inquisitorial warband that still needs it's backstory
fleshing out but they are less puritanical than Pellen

My third Inquisitor, this one clad in terminator armour based
on the old Space Marine captain figure. I have only just finished
painting him and as a homage to the old 40K wargaming days I
have given him a goblin green base that was so popular back in
the day

A bit of a mix, two Adeptus Arbites figures, two Inquisitorial
henchmen who will form the third inquistor's retinue and a
human psyker, originally a Sanctioned Imperial Guard psyker,
I think. Anyway, I have a plan to use him as part of a genestealer
cult

Gene stealers from the game that introduced me to wargaming, Space
Hulk. These aren't from my original game but ones I bought on eBay.
These will be part of my Genestealer cult...speaking of which,..

Not my minis but found this picture on the interweb; something

to aspire to methinks. I reckon a 1/43rd scale car would be a good

base for one of these cult cars

    Another thing that has fed into this GW 40K fest was an episode of the Cast Dice podcast from last June in which the host, Brad Williams, a die hard wargamer who formerly worked for GW in the US of A and one of his chums spent an entire episode talking about classic wargaming miniatures, predominantly Citadel/GW ones. This got me feeling all nostalgic and I have basically been immersing myself in GW fluff podcasts, Youtube channels, old White Dwarf magazines, old codices and rulebooks. My attraction to the aforementioned printed stuff has been the photos, I really, really like that lovely 'Eavy Metal style of painting that dominated back then. So for a few days I had a strong urge to paint something colourful too and I plumped for a squad of Blood Angel Scouts. They nearly broke my heart but I felt compelled to finish them. 

Not my first Blood Angels scout squad but definitely my
best painted. Painting them was educational and there's
still room for improvement.

The only two plastic Blood Angels Space Marines left from my original
force that I had when my son, Stuart, and I played 40K "back in the day"
I am actually torn as to what to do with these guys; I can't decide whether
to touch up their paint jobs or leave them as they are.....

    

I also have the Space Marine Terminator Librarian from back
in the 90's.This is another figure that I love. The detail on it is
great.

    That's the painted, or at least primed stuff, here's a selection of the other stuff I plan to paint and game with; though I think they will mostly grace the shelf of my new display cabinet when we move into the noo hoose. I am fibrillating with anticipation and excitement at having my own, dedicated hobby room, let me tell you.

     Anyway, other Blood Angels and 40K stuff I plan to paint at sometime are the following...

Metal Assault Squad from the 90's. I have the matching
metal jump packs too

Blood Angels chaplain and a variety of metal Blood Angels
with lots of lovely sculpted, Blood Angels trinkets and knick
knacks adorning their armour

    

It's a long time since I painted 40K Orks. I'll only be painting a
squad of them rather than hoards which is as much as I need...
for the moment

Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Cultists. 

     The Orks and Chaos Cultists will feature in games of ItEN along with the Genestealers. I am wondering, though, if the Gates Of Antares rules from Warlord Games might do for some bigger games with 40K stuff.....

      That's it for the moment. As I write the McCubbyhole, my painting den, is in a state of disassemble; it now being out of commission, most of my figures are at my in-laws as I do not intend to trust their carriage to the removal men; no slight intended but I wouldn't feel the least bit comfy knowing other hands were responsible for their safety. I have at least two, maybe three weeks before I will be set up for painting again which will drag but hey, that's life, eh? 

"End of a bleedin' era, so it is" though of course it's also
part of my figure painting journey or sumfink like that..

Pip pip the noo!

GJB

ps. Finished the Adeptus Arbites figures that featured in one of the previous photos.

 

Deffo Pip pip for now....apart from that enigmatic post title which is the first kine from the disco hit  Going Back To My Roots by Odyssey released in 1981 but you knew that already, didn't you 

First Update for 2021 And Some Exciting News

     Well, as is ever the case my regular update output has been notably irregular, which is surprising as I have kept busy, hobby-wise, since the last one in November which concerned my Stalingrad table build.    

     I have gamed over that particular terrain a few times after the initial one whilst I was self isolating as I had a brush with Covid 19 and, apart from a slight cold, I got off very lucky, very very lucky indeed. In my period of self isolating I managed a couple of solo games, which is where the header photo comes from, and will write up batreps on both of them soon.

    As I said I have been busy on the hobby front as I managed to finish off and start a couple more projects. 

In Her Majesty's Name

     With a new edition of In Her Majesty's Name being released I felt compelled to crack on with some lapsed projects. I have a half formed idea for some games set during the period of the Great Game betwixt Great Britain and Russia that involves the plucky British Grey Section who appeared in an update last May! (told you this project had lapsed!) Those boys and girls will be assisted out in Central Asia by these stout hearted Indian Army soldiers dressed in native garb!

Soldiers of the Raj go under cover. Figures by Artizan Designs

The complete detachment with two Foundry Afghans in the foreground

     On the Imperial Russian side we have the Okrahna who's local detachment is under the command of the White Baronessa....which is as far as I have got with the back story of any of these characters

Three of the main Okrahna characters...back stories WIP

     The Imperial Russian Navy are also going to appear with the assistance of an Imperial Russian Aero-gunship, crewed by these chaps

Captain and crew of the Imperial Russian Navy Aero-gunboat

The Imperial Russian Navy aero-gunboat 

    Now as nice as the aero-gunboat looks I felt it needed something more so I have bought some fixtures and fittings from North Star. Not all of these will grace the decks of the aero-gunboat as I plan on getting one for the Royal Navy too, though not the same kit, something disticntly different..

 Warlords of Erehwon/Thud & Blunder

      Another step forward in my WHFB Empire themed army for Warlords of Erehwon was my finishing of these lovely Front Rank War of the Roses mounted serjeants. This is a sloooooow build project and is following no definate plan other than they will appear in both of the games mentioned above at some point in the very exciting future

Bolt Action

     Plenty happening on the Bolt Action front starting with the addition of an M18 Hellcat to my US Cavalry Group. I have added a wrecked Bedford truck and a heap of Soviet casualties to my terrain collection and finished off a spare British M10 I have kicking about with the addition of a crew.

My late war Germans have receieved reinforcements in the shape of a 251/9 Stummel, a Horch heavy car and a Schwimmwagen

And on the theme of late war Germans I dug out my Hetzer and 251/23 recce half track and redid their camouflage in an ambush scheme

and for Normandy I have started a Panzer Lehr kamfgruppe; two 251/1Ds, a mortar 251 and a Panzer IV E...

and have treated myself to some of 21st Panzer Divisions oddities; a Geschutzwagen 39H(f) from Mad Bob Miniatures and two Unic P107 half tracks by Warlord Games. I am probably repeating myself here but I would like to use the Kampfgruppe Von Luck pint sized campaign by the Two Fat Lardies as the basis for a Bolt Action campaign and this is the next phase as I already have my British Airborne units for this campaign

two Warlord Games Unic P107 half tracks and more British
Airborne

VA 601 artillerie schlepper and light howitzer for 21st Pnz Div

Exciting News

     And so to my exciting news, pretty much all of my gaming projects have been put on hold at the moment as me and the missus have bought a new flat; one with many more rooms than our current flat and a garden with a garage. And as there is only me, Claire and our dog, Otto, I have been graciously granted my own hobby room and we, the missus and I, are to share the garage for our hobby pastimes (Otto gets the garden, the real reason for our move); wargaming for me, pottery and other crafts for Claire. 

A lucky dog and unwitting influencer

The majority of my terrain prior to departure to my
in-laws so that prospective flat buyers can see more
of the flat.

Estate agent views of the new hobby room

The hobby garage!!

     So with a big move in the offing I have decided to put my bigger projects to one side and to focus on smaller projects for the following reasons;

a) The garage needs electricity ran out to it as well as fitting out with lighting, insulation etc etc

b) The hobby room needs repainting, shelving putting up etc

c) Other stuff will probably need doing around the house but since I will be hiding in the hobby room who cares...I mean, we will need to get more electric sockets fitted, loft insulating, turf laid in the garden etc etc etc

     And so while we will be getting all of the above sorted and still going to work, walking the dog and all that day to day living jazz I won't be able to run games in the garage so what I plan to do is have a small, 3'x3' gaming table in the hobby room. And here I intend to play some skirmish games that have been on the back burner or on the shelf; amongst which are..

    My plan is to paint up the zombies and Walking Dead terrain for both games. Zona Alfa in particular is looking very attractive and, more importantly, doable

     Zona Alfa is a skirmish game set in a post apocalyptic Russia/Ukraine and is, as the cool kids say these days, miniature agnostic, and I managed to get my hands on a lot of Copplestone Castings Future Wars figures which will give me at least four gangs for playing Zona Alfa to start with, which will give me some solo skirmishing fun while the garage is being sorted. And I am really looking forward to getting them painted up, starting this Monday, using modern Russian and Ukrainian camouflage patterns for some of them. There are a lot of other really nice looking Coppletsone Casting Future Wars sets including Neo-Sov figures which would fit in wonderfully and are calling to me...

Citizen Militias

Road Warrior

Scavenger Heroes

Bio Chem squad

Assault Troopers

     So that's it for the moment; quite a bit done over the last few months and a whole, new, unexpected gaming venture ahead which I will be blogging about on a more regular basis. Especially as I have a few other mini projects in mind and I have a whole lot more room for terrain and a workspace where I can put more effort into.

Pip pip for the mo,

Jim Bob