Getting Medieval on the Summer

Due to an organisational cockup, my two delightful children have ended up having to attend nursery more than we intended over the summer. This means that I had an unexpected free day.

And, my word, I put the time to good use (apart from having a nap).

First, I completed the last unit of Neville serjeants at arms:

Secondly, I finished off a Witch King of Angmar I found kicking around in the lead pile. The trick here is how to paint black interestingly - I used what I'd learnt from Doc Holliday to highlight but then decided to cool it down. I created a glaze using Vallejo Transparent Blue and a lot of water. This lowered the temperature of the grey without giving it a noticeable coloured tint (this, believe it or not, is a trick I learnt from Photoshop). Finally, the most impressive thing about the Lord of the Rings movies was the verisimilitude; in keeping with this, I've always made a point of weathering my LotR minitures as much as possible, so here we get dust and mud splatters to ensure that the Lord of the Nine is grounded in reality.

Finally, I put together something I'm looking forward to painting immensely. A incredibly talented chap named Vermis on the Lead Adventure forum has sculpted a Victorian Villain, the Man Who Grins.

The sources - both Conrad Veidt and the Joker - are obvious; as is the inspiration for the Victorian Vigilante:

These will be my reward for finishing the Wars of the Roses retinues. I'm intending to use them for In Her Majesty's Name.

Last thing is just a bit of a brag; at the trawl round a car boot sale at the weekend, I picked up Memoir '44, a board/wargame with a very good reputation, unplayed for a tenner. Expect a review as soon as I can find someone to play it with me.

On the boardgame front, tomorrow night I will be playing Rex which I've been looking forward to for some time, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Odd Jobs

So this week has largely been a write off between looking after the bairns and catching up on sleep from last year*. I did, however, manage to get some bits and pieces of prep work done.

• I have undercoated some Neville Wars of the Roses serjeants for Lion Rampant, as I am determined to get both forces finished in time for open evening at school in September
• I've also stripped the Human Blood Bowl team so that me and the Good Lady She Who Must Be Obeyed can have a few games
• And while I was on, I stripped what appears to be a Moria Cave Troll I picked up from a car boot sale.

I'm suffering one of those periodic lacks of mojo that hit all of us every now and again. I think, in order to kickstart my painting, I need to move on to pastures new - that means parking the Wild West project. I know there's only four of them left but... yeah. For the moment, they're a sacrifice I'm going to have to make.

Hopefully some pictures of some hot painting action this weekend.

*I'm not joking - on Tuesday I slept from 8am to 3pm. I've never been this tired in my entire life. 

Back in the Saddle

A proper update with decent photos will come soon but I'm back. 

First day of the summer holidays and first order of business was to finish off some cowboys that had been languishing on the desk:

And then to basecoat and shade the last few hombres:

All Black Scorpion and the chap at the front there bears to much a resemblance to Uncle Jessie from the Dukes of Hazzard for it to be a coincidence, frankly. 

Obligatory THE BLOG IS NOT DEAD post

I am still alive.

I have played some games.

I haven't touched a paintbrush in weeks.

I haven't had time to read anyone's blogs for weeks, so I apologise for the drop off in comments.

For those people who used to work in education: I've spent the last few weeks writing history schemes of work for two new specifications and a new KS3 Programme. Between research, resourcing and writing that's left naff all time for anything except the occasional boardgame. Summer holidays are a week away, however, so hopefully the blog will come out of hibernation.

As an aside, Roll for the Galaxy is a great game. Review incoming.

Going Deeper Underground

Last night we played....

Yes, Descent. Also known as Lazy Man's D&D. A good old fashioned Dungeon Bash with no planning or set-up required. 

For those that haven't played it, you create a dungeon for each quest from a series of modular tiles. One player is the Evil Overlord - think Sauron, Randall Flagg or Margret Thatcher - and the other players control heroes. Each hero has a class and career and spends XP to gain new abilities as well as new equipment. For your money you get a lot of stuff. I mean, a lot of stuff. And all very high quality. 

That's about less than a third of the stuff, by the way. 

There are around 25 quests in the base game and last night we played the first two. I was elected as Overlord - fairly predictably - and The Good Lady Er Indoors and a wandering RS teacher (lord, random encounter tables have really gone downhill) as the mighty heroes. 

Look, I'm going to cut to the chase of this little mini-review. Descent is great. It deserves a place on your table. In two hours we had more drama, laughter and stupidity that you normally get in a month's worth of RPG sessions. Including but not limited to:

-The goblin archers being so distracted by the Cleric's manly ass they were unable to shoot him

-The same cleric getting bitten in the same ass by a spider

-A dwarf being thrown across the dungeon by an ettin only to waddle back and smack the ettin into next week

-and, glory of glories - a TPK:

Of course, the joy of Descent: like Jaws in a Roger Moore Bond movie, they pick themselves up and dust themselves off ready for the next adventure. 

We'll be playing some more next week. If there's any interest I'll do a proper write up/review explaining how the game plays and so forth. 

Sir Christopher Lee

I'll level with you, I've not done much towards the end of this week. I've actually been quite upset by the loss of the last legend of screen horror and British cinema. 

This man - in his guise as Dracula - was responsible for my lifelong love of cinema due to the late night BBC2 showings of the old Hammer movies when I was a kid. 

I'd've been 11 or so, I think. Lee sweeping down the staircase, his urbanity, the sheer adrenaline of his and Cushing's fight as Van Helsing forces Dracula into the light... It's fair to say that my love affair with film started there. My opinion of him was only confirmed when I saw how much pathos he was able to wring out of the Monster in Frankenstein, even when deprived of his voice and the helpful makeup that Karloff benefitted from. 

He could turn crap into watchable gold via the alchemy of his gravitas, and the Devil Rides Out proves that monsterhood's gain was heroism's loss. I am glad that the last scene I saw him in was Saruman kicking arse in a truly operatic fashion as he deserved a send-off of some magnificence. The film was pants, but once again he was good. He rarely disappointed. 

A life well-lived but I still feel I was robbed as I wanted him to be as immortal as the characters I grew up with. As someone else said, if you have grandchildren - they know who Christopher Lee is. If you have grandparents - they know who Christopher Lee is. That's what being a legend means. 

So this week I dug The Wicker Man, my Hammer box sets and The Man With The Golden Gun out of storage and didn't do much painting. 

I did do a little bit of construction today, though, so here's a sneak peek at the first building for my western games: 

Weekend Painting

Just a quick update to show off the work on Doc:



And a shot from the back to show off the shading and highlighting on the black:



Wild Bill:


and The Preacher:

Hopefully will have some more done this week and then a basing session.