A Tale of Duelling Gamers: First Figures.

Here we are, half way through the first month, and I have finished painting the first eight figures. They're not based - I always do whole units at a time.

As usual, my flash screws the photo a little. The champion's amazingly thin backbanner snapped during painting. NO surprises there really. The shields I have ordered are not here yet, but they WILL have free-handed shields.

Demo Gamers Style Stone Walls.

Recently, I played a demo game of Bolt Action with the Demo Gamers. And by recently, I mean three months ago at Cancon. More recently, I found a rather cool idea for making stone walls on their blog. Basically, it involves using an aluminium gutter-y thing as a mold, and pouring in a mix of gravel and PVA. Obviously, I had to give it a shot.

Here's Grot with the results.

I had a bit of a problem with these. Because the weather here is fairly cold, they took ages to dry, So I got impatient, and tried to yank them out too soon. They didn't like it. Also, I think I used to little WD40, so they didn't come out easily, and the bottoms fell out. I've come up with a plan to fix this - the batch which I have just poured have all got 2mm cardboard bases built in. I put the bases into the channel first, then poured on top. We'll see how it goes soon - the weather is sunnier this week so things should dry faster. I hope.

A Tale Of Duelling Gamers: The Beginning.

And so it begins. The six month oddyssey that is A Tale of Duelling Gamers commenced five days ago, with the traditional mis-information about it all being my idea posted on more than one blog. Let me just clear that up now. Greg challenged me to the original Duelling Paintbrushes. I just wrote the rules and posted them on my blog.  Then we collaborated on coming up with the ideas for the next two versions. A Tale of Duelling Gamers was my idea, BUT we collaborated on the rules. I do not seek to take credit away from the Hoodling. Mostly because he will unleash his mangler squig on me, and that guy is so fearsome he can actually wear a paper hat and make it look bad arse.

Now on to the real stuff and the reason you are here.
Basking in my magnificence.
Wait, what? That's not why you are here?
Fine. Have some pictures of my meagre progress then.

Behold mortals! Month One's complete collection. Man that's small. 26 models. Okay, so The Cookie Monster, Elmo, King of Warhammer, aka Nookie, lord of the many Nicknames, the Eternal Youth (ie: Nick) is doing 12, but this feels stupidly small for $200. Okay, I paid less than that due to the wonders of eBay etc, but still...

Now I suspect you are thinking "WTF you hippo riddled looney! Have you been sniffing the gloo again? Why are you making Dark Eldar when you promised Chaos Warriors? Well, I am doing SLAANESHI chaos. And I think that the plasitc chaos warriors do not look hedonistic enough. Slaanesh character all wear form fitting, sensually curvaceous armour. Chaos warriros stomp around in heavy plates and big boots. Fine for Nurgle and Khorne. Not so much for Slaanesh or Tzeentch. So I am converting Dark Eldar for a lot of my Slaaneshi army. Here are 16 (because I ran out of bases...)

"Hold on one more minute you hippo crazed madman," I hear you cry, "It's the fifth day and you've assembled sixteen guys? WTF?" Well, okay, I didn't start on day one. Day one, day two, and day three were spent doing things which earn money. Ie: building Mount Morin. The magnificent mountain seen above and the result of my first commission from my Bolt Actioneering associates at the LRDG. With that out of the way, and a little more commission stuff from the Muppets almost done, I'm pretty much free to work on ATODG.

Next time, Hippo Fans!