Forest Guardian
After a few days of uncharacteristically consistent posting I find myself coming more-or-less back onto the main topic of this blog: collecting and painting old lead fantasy miniatures. Today’s offering is something I’d been keen to do for a long time; one of Games Workshop’s mostly original creations, the ‘forest guardian’, a Warhammer Fantasy zoat.
Read MoreThe Shin High Terror
I suppose today is as good a day as any to take this on. About a year ago I did some work on the overall design of this blog, including (some of you regular readers may have noticed at the time) a hand-drawn banner at the top. That banner features none other than the ‘Shin High Terror’ himself, my beloved dachshund Loki.
Read MoreWee Free Folk
Over the past few years I’ve bought a lot of miniatures, from a lot of different sources. I try to support small or new companies, because I want them to do well (and I like having a variety of different things to paint). And sometimes, they’ll throw in a freebie – often something small; possibly something miscast, overstock, or just to encourage me to start a new collection. Here’s a couple (and one that I bought, that kind of fits with the group).
Read MoreReturn to the Blinded Halfling
While I was living overseas – I’m not sure if this was in 2018 or 2019 but I think mostly the latter – I whiled away the evenings planning a return to my D&D campaign ‘The Blinded Halfling’. I drew maps using pen and ink and digital tools, sketched out character motivations, and chronicled world events. Since then things have fizzled – a lot of my friends have had kids recently, little halflings of their own. So here’s some maps from a campaign that might never be finished – you’re welcome to use them in your own.
Horns and Cloven Feet
When the flowery hands of spring
C. S. Lewis, The Satyr, 1919
Forth their woodland riches fling,
Through the meadows, through the valleys
Goes the satyr carolling.
While rearranging some shelves last week, I realised that I’d painted quite a few miniatures last year (and indeed, done some other arts and crafts) that I’d never uploaded anywhere. I’ll aim to start putting that right over the next few days, starting with a handful of Citadel ‘Beastmen’ from the ’80s and ’90s. I’m not sure at what point I picked these up, or where, or whether I was planning anything specific.
Read MoreNecron-omicon
“Beyond life there are” – his face grew ashen with terror -“things that I cannot distinguish. They move slowly through angles. They have no bodies, and they move slowly through outrageous angles…God, they are breaking through! They are breaking through! “
Frank Belknap Long, The Hounds Of Tindalos
There’s more than a few Lovecraftian allusions in Rogue Trader and the wider Warhammer 40K universe, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before my xenofauna side project spawned its own side project. A few models that I’ve picked up over the past few weeks don’t quite fit in either my growing genestealer cult or my alien bestiary. But what if I was to start a small collection of space age horror mininatures…?
Read MoreNew Members in the Cult
I’m on something of a roll painting genestealers (and their proxies) for the Cult of the Third Party Emperor. I think the last two posts were a bit too photo-heavy, so here’s a third with just a few new (and old) miniatures from the last couple of weeks.
Read MoreHive Fleet Mastodon / Xenofauna
It was inevitable, I suppose, that when I began collecting and painting genestealers and genestealer-like miniatures I’d also get sucked into some tyranids. It started with re-basing my ambull (mostly because I’d become dissatisfied with the base). Then I got fear of missing out on some very limited edition castings of fan sculpts on Facebook. Then I realised that the “alien” lists at the back of Rogue Trader were intended to use repurposed fantasy miniatures…
Read MoreTertii Imperatoris Cultus
I’m not sure if I’m so much back after another long absence, or if this is just another in an emerging pattern of long, image-heavy posts with months between them. Let’s get straight into it. about a year ago my friend Owen asked if I wanted to play Necromunda. “No”, I replied, “it fills me with fear to think about handling my miniatures after I’ve painted them”.
But whether it’s because I’m quite keen on the ‘new’ Games Workshop genestealer models, or because I’ve rather liked them since the early ’90s, or just because if I’m not going to play a game I’d rather it be by choice than necessity, I started to collect a small gang. And to make that more complicated, I decided that, in keeping with the model-agnostic ethos of the old genestealer army, they’d be a mix of third-party, old, and modern models: Tertii Imperatoris Cultus, the Cult of the Third-Party Emperor.
Read MoreNominus Malus
After taking first place in an (admittedly somewhat niche) art competition on the Oldhammer Forum with my entry “Characters of Chaos“, the sculptor Sjoerd Trouwee contacted me to commission a drawing for his project ‘Nominus Malus’. Sjoerd has sculpted a series of eight miniatures, inspired by Marauder Miniatures’ MM90 Chaos Dwarf range. They’re available to buy online on Sjoerd’s dedicated Evil Little Buggers website and you can read more about the project on his blog.
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Shin High Terror! 