Thursday 31 December 2015

The Final Journey

Throughout every day of your life, a man has been standing behind you. His arm hovers over your shoulder. He presses a blade against your throat.

When as a newborn baby you were cradled in your mother's arms, he was there, holding the blade onto your chubby little neck.

When you first touched the one you love, he was there with you, the metal touching your naked skin with the tenderest of intimacy.

At the hour of your greatest triumph, he was there. At your lowest moment, he was there.

He is there now, waiting, arm held still, cold steel resting on your throat. Call him your friend. Call him your deadly enemy. He does not care. Cajole him. Joke with him. Scream at him. He does not care. And one day, he will pull the blade across your neck.





With an hour to spare, my Deadcember contribution. Rab over at the Geekly Digest instituted Deadcember as a celebration of the undead, and although I've watched with interest I had little motivation to take part. Undead are useful for scenarios, but skellies and the like are not something that I have much interest in painting unless I need some for a specific game. But then while doing some lead archaeology a couple of days ago I found the perfect combination of minis and decided I just had to paint them up. A dying warrior from Prince August; a Citadel C18 Night Horror Wraith with Scythe; a Citadel DS3 graveyard tombstone; and a Grenadier boatman over the River Styx - combined to tell the story of the final journey we must all undertake. And presented here for your edification at the death of one year and the birth of another...

Sunday 6 December 2015

Late Gnomevember: Steam Cannon

Chuff chuff chuffety chuff
chuff chuff chuffety chuff
chuff chuff chfftety chuff
BOOOOM!



I had a little project set aside for Gnomevember, but as per usual I only get things done when I've got a game coming up. Today I had a game planned at Cambridge City Games Club (where they do a Sunday all-day gaming session every now and again), and prepared the gnomes for battle... and chugging into battle alongside them was this lovely Steam Cannon. Pictured here in front of my son's fold-out castle (at his insistence). A lovely 1984 Ral Partha model, sculpted by Tom Meier I believe and distributed by Citadel in the UK.

I bought the cannon a few months ago, in pieces but already quite nicely painted - so I took stock of what I thought needed new paint and what was better off as is, shoved some of the parts in the dettol for repainting and for the rest, simply decided to refresh them before reassembling. All in all, a really fun model and the perfect addition to any gnome army. Sadly, I only have a crappy camera so I can't give you any decent detail shots, in fact the ones in this blog post are the only ones I could do that weren't completely blurry! Anyway, I just wanted to show off my new toy, really...


Here it is alongside the rest of my merry (and growing) band of gnomes.


Will post up a battle report of today's action in due course. (Hopefully with some photos taken on a better camera!)