Too much time at the gym

Hello again.

What do you get if you cross The World's Strongest Man, a bumper lot of steroids and protein shakes, a few severe knocks to the head playing rugby or American Football, some serious bad attitude and a cache of firearms?

The answer is a gang of Goliaths, of course.

The whole gang of ten.

I recently spent a few happy hours cutting and gluing these boys together, newly released from their sprues within my copy of the "Necromunda" boxed set. I built them pretty much as per the instructions, but have a number of parts left over, so if I want more with two-handed weapons or want another heavy weapon or two, I simply buy another box of these figures and build what I want, now I have an idea what goes with what.

They were very simple to construct and the shaped shoulder joints made fitting the arms a lot stronger in the join than previous GW kits, which were basically just flat faces butted together. My only quibble was with the two figures below.

The "quibbles".

These two were a tad problematic because they were running, with just one foot in contact with the ground, which means a greater risk of breakage. Now, the question of whether to pin these kits together or not is an oft-asked one, but I tend not to bother as my experience of these kits has not seen me break too many as a result of simply gluing them together. I am personally more likely to break off weapon putting them back into a foam storage tray! However, I decided to pin the left foot into the base on both of these and, with the one on the right still looking a little tenuous in his connection, I glued a piece of sprue rubble under his right foot for extra stability too. Job done.

They are not exactly top of my painting list at present, but they will be done at some point. I also have to build their opponents from the Escher gang and they look like they will need a lot more pinning to the bases for stability than the Goliaths did. Then, I might actually get a game in!

G

Musings and news(-ings...)

Hello again.

No pics this time, as the weather, real life and sundry factors have limited my ability to get anything finished, let alone write about it, so I thought I would drop in a quick post about general stuff.

Item 1:
I still have not finished the unit of Combined Grenadiers for my FIW project. However, I am now painting the last four figures for the 24-strong unit and hope to get them done this weekend. I may even get around to some varnishing and basing! This has been a real labour of love and it must be two months since I started them.

Item 2:
Not having been totally idle on the painting front (see Item 1), I have also managed to cobble together the 10 Goliath gang figures from my pre-Christmas purchase of the "Necromunda" boxed game from Games Workshop. Just the girlies of Escher to do, ten on to the inevitable need to paint them...

Item 3:
Last year, I managed to squeeze in maybe a dozen games at most, with a chunk of them coming at various shows with the "Wyrley Retinue". This year, however, it looks like we are having a year off, as life intervenes for many of us. Not a situation I am happy with, but there you  go. It also means I will now have to pay to get into the shows I do visit rather than spend all my cash, not to mention of chunk of available plastic, on purchases. Ho hum.

Item 4:
The future...

Hmmm.

I have so many potential projects, as many of you will know, and the aforementioned time constraints will mean I still have many potential projects this time next year!!!

So, what do I think I will get up to this year?

• The FIW still holds my attention so I expect to have a few more units done over the next several months, all of which I will display here on the blog for those who want to look.
• I also foresee the purchase of some cavalry and other bits this year to bring my FIW aims back across "the Pond" to Europe for some regular Seven Years' War activity.
• I also expect to get my Necromunda stuff done, along with some terrain. Whilst I can foresee some MDF purchases to facilitate that terrain, I can also see a few scratchbuilt pieces coming along as the mood takes me.
• Crimean War. Having bought loads at Derby last October, including extra reference material, this is still something I want to do soon. I can see me adding to what I have (Cossacks and Scots primarily, I think), probably at the WMMS show this March.
• I intend to buy a load of suitable bases for my 10mm ACW lead pimple which may see me kick-start this project.

On the subs' bench are:

• The French Wars of Religion, for which I have numerous figures already.
• A return to my Williamite and Jacobite forces for the Irish conflict c.1690, prompted by the "League of Augsburg's" release of various uniform and flag PDF's.
• Something totally out of the blue (as always!)
• A return to WH40K.
• An expansion of my Lord of The Rings forces for Mordor, now I have so many reinforcements to add to my existing stuff.

Being a less than adequate clairvoyant, who knows how much of the above will actually come to pass?

G

Penkridge Tabletop Sale

Hello again and a very Happy New Year to all.

Last Sunday, 7th January, saw yours truly drive the five miles or so to the village of Penkridge in Staffordshire, England, to visit this inaugural wargaming "show" of the year. It is not really a show, I suppose, but was full of wargaming goodies and people I had not seen for a while.

As well as catching up with a number of notaries of my acquaintance, I no sooner walked through the door into the hall, which was free to enter (!!!), looked in the very first box on the very first table and promptly fished out 62 Mordor Orcs for the "Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game", bagged them up an handed over the princely sum of £20 for the privilege. A good start, at just over 30p per figure!

Moving on past sundry traders with assorted wares, I came to one worthy I know well and whose products I have bought in some number before, namely Walter Anstiss of Commission Figurines. He relieved me of £10 for four of his MDF figure storage trays, which should have cost me £12. Thanks again Walter.

Finally, rummaging through another box of Lord of the Rings "Evil" figures, I came across Gothmog the Mordor Orc, on foot and mounted on a warg, for the sum of £12. A total of £42 down, I left after more rummaging with a sizeable addition to my Mordor forces and something to store my burgeoning 10mm collection in. A quick visit to my local DIY store and I had a 9 litre plastic storage box to hold the four MDF trays once built. Job done.

I had gone to the sale looking for MDF bases and perhaps something to add to my Sci-Fi scenery for forthcoming intended games of "Necromunda", which I did not find, but was well happy with the stuff I did pick up.

A couple of hours well spent!

I believe there is another show at the same venue on the first Sunday in July, so get yourself along for a browse.

G

The pinkoes and peaceniks in society will no doubt baulk at the thought of a "war" gaming show being held at the "PEACE MEMORIAL HALL", but I just think it is indicative of how sad and deluded such people are to find offence at every turn simply for the sake of having something to shout at the world about. Obviously, and with due grace, the owners/ custodians of this facility are above such puerile and entirely spurious correlations.

The haul.

Crafty Christmas Purchase

Hello again.

"I wandered lonely as a cloud,
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a shop
Called "Titan Games", in Lichfield..."
(Sorry Wordsworth...)

Actually, I was out Christmas shopping, largely to get things for my wife, and happened upon this emporium, the aforementioned Titan Games in Lichfield, Staffordshire, so in I went. What an Aladdin's Cave of riches greeted me in the small antechamber at the front of the shop. Stacked floor to ceiling with various goodies, and with a table festooned with Christmas orders being prepped for despatch, I did not know where to start looking.

Just like in the "Mr Benn" cartoon series I loved as a kid, "as if by magic, a shopkeeper appeared". A very jovial fellow allowed me to breeze around his shop, whilst busily answering my questions around what was stocked, when his games nights were, etc., but mostly around the new version of GW's "Necromunda" game I had heard was coming out.

"I have it in stock," says the jovial shopkeeper.
"Really?!" says excited browser, a little too excitedly perhaps.
"I'll go and fetch a copy," ripostes the now departing proprietor, as he heads into some further chamber, soon to return with a large, colourful box in his hands.

"Excellent!" I cry. "So what do you get in the box?"

The next few minutes are spent discussing the two gangs that come with the game, the fact that the initial game deals with subterranean action in a sewer-type complex (thoughts drift to Stalingrad, Verdun...hm, options!) but there is a supplement out to take you up to the multi-level affairs of yesteryear's version of the game (thoughts drift to those wonderful MDF kits I have seen so often at various shows and admired...) And there are specialist dice sets, some card packs to assist in playing and developing your games...

I bought the lot!!!

I also bought some of the paint I needed, so it was not all whimsy.

There are two gangs in the game, as I said above. The "Goliaths" are steroid-sucking meatheads with serious anger-management issues. The Escher are pseudo-punk radfems with a passion for poisons. All I have to do is convince someone else to play as girls! There are also a plethora of stout, card templates to play on, templates for use with the game, dice, instructions...the usual cornucopia of richness that comes with these GW boxed sets.

So, I am now the proud owner of the new "Necromunda" and, with 2018 fast approaching and a desire to get more than a handful of games in for this coming year, and an even bigger desire to get my 11 year old son involved in wargaming in some way that does not involve computing/ X Box/ other consoles are available, I hope to get this going soon.

Finally, I would hereby like to wish one and all a very HAPPY NEW YEAR and hope 2108 brings you health, wealth and happiness.

G

The big box!

How do they get it all in? Figures to build, bulkheads to seal off passageways, game templates, literature...

And the other bits to enrich the game. The book covers taking your gangs upstage to the levels of yore, the dice are wholly unnecessary but wholly nice (!) and the card packs are there to help.