Royal Society for the Protection of Squigs

The breeding season for the Lesser Moorsquig is short, and their habitat is threatened. So when spring arrives, the fanatical Royal Society for the Protection of Squigs leap into action to ensure a future for this most elusive of species.

One of my occasional "I'm still around, honest!" posts. It's been a poor year so far with illness and work stresses, and several things have suffered, including this hobby. I've only managed to get one game in 2023 (which I'll blog about shortly) and only painted 6 miniatures... 3 of which were an obviously rushed effort to get something done for the Odds and Sods Painting Challenge, which this month was themed "fanatical lunatics". So here are mine: goblin fanatics by Aaron Howdle protecting a classic 40k Tall Squig.

Hopefully more to come soon - not least as I'm meant to be getting ready for my trip to Gloucestershire to play The Woods in the Woods in a couple of weeks time, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Update: I was delighted to discover that this ensemble was chosen as the Judge's favourite entry for the Odds and Sods Painting Challenge for the month of May! Many thanks to them for indulging my silliness.

The Swan Ship

The Guardian of the Shifting Isles continues his lonely exile, his only companion the enchanted ship Eala.

I'm taking part in Snickit's "Odds and Sods Oldhammer Painting Challenge", the goal of which is to get us to tackle our leadpile and get paint on things that have been waiting for it for too long. For November the theme was grandeur - and the more I thought about it, the more I realised the time had come to tackle The Swan Ship by Tom Meier, a Thunderbolt Mountain limited edition from 1989 I believe. I bought this for my Sea Elves back in... 2014 I think? Unassembled in its box but at a very reasonable price (before the inflation really took hold of Oldhammer prices). However, at the time I was wary of painting it. I just didn't think I could do it justice. It's been with me through 3 house moves since, and every time my eldest has seen it over the past 8 years, he's asked me when I'm finally going to paint it. So he helped me out with the assembly - only fitting given that it's been sitting around in its box for the majority of his life.

Those of you familiar with the model will spot that I haven't gone with the original passenger Tom Meier sculpted for the Swan Ship. As you can see on the box here, it comes with an Elven Princess - and the boxed set includes a story by Richard S. Kerr to explain the tale of how the Swan Ship came to be and the Princess' voyage in search of true love.

I switched her out for two reasons. First, the Princess is so tiny as to be out of scale with all of the rest of my minis; secondly, I want to field the Swan Ship on the battlefield, so went for a more martial - though still suitable - captain of the Swan Ship. So I chose one of the three "Elven Kings" by Tom Meier - another Thunderbolt Mountain limited edition set (from 1988) waiting for paint - to stand on deck.

Having finally painted one, I thought it was rude not to get the other two Elven Kings in the set ready for battle, so here they are - just finished today.

Anyway, happy Christmas to everyone! I have a seasonal battle report which hopefully I'll be able to share before the end of 2022, but in the meantime, I hope everybody has a wonderful and blessed Christmas Day!

I'm holding out for a hero

Bit of a silent stretch on the blog - never got round to posting about BOYL (oops) so will have to do some retrospective posts, and been extremely busy working since then. But thought I should try and get back into the swing of things with the first mini I've painted since August.

Snickit has instituted an "Odds and Sods Oldhammer Painting Challenge" over on facebook to get us painting up some of the things that have been languishing in our leadpile. Each month there's a theme for us to paint, and the theme for the month of October was heroes. Now, I've got a lot of character models but for this I wanted a model that really looked the part and really had that suitably heroic feel to it. After digging through my unpainted lead I found this fantastic Old School Miniatures halfling sculpt by Drew Day Williams. Definitely a hero for the ages!

As a young halfling, Mike's first encounter with knights was when a bunch of them, while hunting, rode their horses through the village's communal vegetable patch, destroying much of the season's harvest of cabbages. From that day forward, Mike swore he would become a knight - but one who acted with respect for even the humblest halfling, never riding through their gardens without proper care or regard. The kind of knight who would never disdain any creature as too small or common, but instead would stand ready to be a hero for the downtrodden.

A rather crude paintjob I readily admit, but I think a reasonably effective one all the same, hopefully bringing out some of the character of this true hero.