The original Hulk buster

Once again its been a while. Apologies, but hobby wise its been a bit thin on the ground. Things have been happening, but nothing of note to write about, until now. Readers will remember my recent disappointment at the revamp of the original dungeon crawler Heroquest. Well, all is forgotten as I have moved on to something far superior with guns, Spacequest. Sorry, Space Crusade.

Yes, Space Crusade, just as good, but with guns and a giant stompy robot. People rave about the artwork on the box of Heroquest, but just marvel at that Gigeresque trim around an image of Dolph Lundgren in the whitest of white power armour you have ever seen. It's a perfect example of eighties scifi artwork. Heroquest may have had Conan on its front, but Space Crusade has Red Scorpion.

A work colleague contacted me recently as he knew I had been after a copy and he was looking to sell his on. So, a quick suspicious looking transfer in a pub car park later (mainly due to my postcode being terrible to find on satnav) and I am now for the first time the proud owner of my own copy of this legendary game.

The game involves squads of Space Marines breaking into floating Space Hulks and dealing with the indigenous alien menance currently there. Or if you are the Alien player, defending your home made up of a ragtag mix of different races from invasion from a self important superior master race. 

In the box you get three squads of five marines with interchangeable weapons. The sculpts are pretty good even by todays standards.

Each player also gets this amazingly oversized "scanner" to keep track of their Commanders lives, points and any re-rolls they get on their weapons.

The player that controls the aliens gets this handy control panel to show the dice they need to roll for each creature. It is made vaguely 3D by popping on these plastic things on each end.

The frustrating part was assembling the board. Putting the four upright walls in a cross formation with these tiny pieces of plastic to hold them in place is not easy. 

The Gretchin are almost as tall as the Orks. They are all slightly jumping for some reason, and they are armed with blunderbusses and old fashioned rifles. They are still slightly cooler looking than the 2nd edition 40k plastic Grots though, so that's something.

The Chaos Space Marines are pretty cool too.

The Genestealer models are very familiar. In fact you could drop one of these into the newer Space Hulk box set and you wouldn't know the difference.

Finally there is the Android and the Dreadnought. The Dread comes with three interchangeable weapons, none of which I got to fire in my first game with my son. First game he attacks it in close combat, with Power Fist and Melta bombs and takes all three lives in one go. Now I did think maybe I should try stripping the Dread, but I really don't want to risk damaging the old plastic with any paint stripper, so I might leave as is for now.

Finally as a little bonus, ten of these little guys were included in the box too in a rather fetching light blue. Note the crazy position the Exarch is holding his sword, meaning he can therefore interchange his weapon too. They are part of one of two expansions to the game with a whole set of extra missions.

I never actually owned a copy of this game until now though, but I did however have plenty of experience of this:

Yep that's right, one of the few GW licenced computer games that worked. This and Bloodbowl basically. It works best when they just directly ported the rules into a video game to be honest. Many an hour was spent playing this. In fact, I recently got it up and running again on my computer and it still holds up.

The game plays in an overhead view for taking turns.

Then shows a 3D view for basic mini animations for combat. Then you can see the Dreadnought in all it's primary colour glory.

 

When something dies, you get a lovely little explosion.

The PC game follows the same format as the board game, you can work your way through the same missions. The first mission being kill the Dreadnought. The only difference being for some reason the programmers neglected to read the bit about the Dreadnought can't stop in a doorway. Yep, you can shut a door on the Dread.

On Skateboards, halfings and mimics

 

 

So, how have you been? Keeping okay? Hope friends and family are all safe? As you can see I have been painting a kid with skateboard from Crooked Dice. I did a bit of internet research to try and get the skateboard design to match that of the actual design of the one in that movie where that kid travels in time and likes to skateboard. I thought it might be a nice touch. I was quite happy with the final result, although I couldn't quite get a photo I was 100% happy with. You'll just have to trust me when I say it looks so much nicer in real life.

 

I'm not sure what I was doing with the base, I kinda figured he'd just stepped off the kerb and was about to skate, hence the grass behind. You can't skate on grass after all. 

So, what else has been going on in geekdom. Well I won't hark on about it too much (that's code for get ready for a rant) but I did have a bit of a damp squib of disappointment with the release of the new Heroquest board game. Yep, I waited in anticipation for the countdown to happen, I even set an alarm on my phone to go off when the launch time occured, then lo and behold Hasbro announce a crowdfunding Heroquest. Now I'm not a big fan of crowdfunders, each to their own, but personally so far I have preferred not to pay in advance for something that might not actually eventually appear. I'm not a big risk taker. I dont begrudge people using it as a way of releasing miniatures that might never see the light of day otherwise, that is their prerogative. I have no moral issue with it. I think it makes good business sense for smaller stable businesses to use kickstarter to ask for some funds in advance for products. I once looked into the startup physical costs of making plastic and metal models just out of idol curiosity. It's bloody expensive!

 

I would therefore be possibly inclined to invest in a kickstarter for a smaller company if I had done my research and trusted the company (they had good historical evidence of successful campaigns) and I felt this was really the best way for the company to afford to release this product. Some companies do this successfully. Kickstarter done, product out in a couple months. Happy customers.

But Hasbro, this isn't a kickstarter is it?, you can't call it kickstarter can you? You aren't kickstarting your company, are you? Or even kickstarting your board game division. According to Wikipedia (so take with a small pinch of salt) Hasbro is an American multinational conglomerate, wth toy, board game and media assets, and as of August 2020 over 80% of its shares were held by large financial institutions. I think they can afford to print a few copies of a board game in advance. No, they are just asking their customers for the money in advance because nobody at Hasbro wanted to take any kind of risk on a slightly non-mainstream boardgame. Come on, nobody asked for money in advance for that godawful thing that slaps shaving foam in your face! (True, it's retail price wasn't £100 but I'm going for the cheap joke, here people.)

Taking all this aside, as it is Hasbro and it is Heroquest, I wasn't going to cut off my nose to spite my face, so I was still thinking I still might be tempted to invest. After all, at first glance, the models looked nice, it was a sure thing, it's not like the product was going to fail to appear and the price was affordable. It wasn't some unknown company who were claiming to have some obscure regional licensing loophole to be able to publish the game in their own country then ship internationally (yep, that one is still ticking along somewhere on the internet) I was even going to forgive them the long lead of paying in advance for something I wouldn't actually get in my hands til next year.

 

Shipping to United States and Canada only.

 

Yep, with no plans to release to the rest of the world at any time soon.  

Well, that answered that quandary then. Guess I saved myself £100.

So, I consoled myself by converting up a set of four adventurers for my original set. What if all four Heroes Questing were all halflings, still a miner, a ranger, a wizard and a warrior though:

 

I started with some Wargames Atlantic halflings and then threw some leftover bits on them from Frostgrave plastics and a rather dashing hat from a free sprue from Wargames Illustrated. 

I've been pretty busy painting wise, I finally got round to finishing my Bad Squiddo mimics, something else to populate a dungeon with and maybe give the above halflings a bit of a challenge. I love the expressions on them, they look almost like they have jumped out of an episode of the Muppet show or Jim Henson's Labyrinth. (Well now I am going to have to have them start a conversation with the heroes as well, rather than just mindlessly attacking, maybe a riddle or two.)

Finally, this little fellow has been sat on my painting table for a while now. I think I grabbed him from Hasslefree miniatures at Salute last year (remember shows, those days out we used to have?) He is called Halvdan according to their website. I got him just because I loved the sculpt, I think I was reading Neil Gaiman's Norse mythology at the time and got excited by the hammer. I might have to find a use for him in my Barbarian army somewhere, but why is there a giant behind him that has finally been repaired and repainted following the house move last year?

(I'll admit the first reason is I was just having fun taking fun camera angles)

Another show passes by.

As I write this post I should be delving through my lead mountain to see what has remained unloved for another year and I can bear to be parted with to take to the bring and buy. Yes, tomorrow should have been Colours wargame show at Newbury racecourse. Regular readers will know this is my home turf show and so my first love when it comes to show attendance, so it bites particularly hard to know it should have been happening tomorrow.

I took my youngest to his first show last year at Colours, he still remembers being a Conquistador. It' amazing how many times it comes up in conversation. How many six year olds can even say conquistador, never mind casually drop the word into conversation. So obviously there is disappointment there that we aren't going this year. But I think I must admit, my disappointment is still greater.

 

There has been countless discussions about this online already and I'm not here to start endless debate. As much as I am disappointed, I agree with why the show isn't going ahead. We are so lucky to live in a digital age where internet allows us to order online and I have even seen examples of tabletop games being played by webcam. (unfortunately I don't have the space for the luxury of a permanently set up table but a man can dream) Conventions have been run online (Bovington Tankfest was a highlight), multiple Facebook groups have sprung up, companies are having weekly Youtube live broadcasts (Crook Dice on a Saturday and Bad Squiddo on a Sunday are particular interactive favourites of mine. Who's got time for terestial tv anymore?) The internet has allowed me to actually have more hobby interaction in the last few months than ever before, even if it has been of a different kind.

 

So, what next for actually playing with Lead? Well, I sent the brother in law a copy of Dragon Rampant from Osprey in the post as subtle hint that he might want to possibly start a fantasy army and stop painting those Spam marines of his. Luckily he took the hint. The rules suggest choosing an army of 24 points, possibly choosing less for your first game if you can't quite make that number. So, I have managed to work out a 24 point force using my recently painted Barbarians.

 

 

 

The whole 24 points

 

 

Frostgrave Barbarians with two handed weapons

 

 

Frostgrave Barbarians with sword and shield 

 

Mix of old GW wolves from the depths of my bits box 

 

Jarl Lathgertha from Bad Squiddo. (I'm not gonna lie I chose this model for the horse)

 

I've yet to come up with a name for my leader, but I'm sure something suitable will spring to mind. So, the Brother in Law has read the rule book and loves it so much he has ordered some models to paint up and we will be getting in a game at some date as yet undecided. His point total so far? 48 points. I better keep painting.

Beginnings of a halfling village.

Having recently been on a bit of a plastic binge, trying out some new sets, my stocks of mdf bases actually dwindled to barely nothing. In fact I had completely run out of smaller round bases. It's the kind of thing we all normally just pick up a bag full of at a wargame show, probably not even paying attention to the name of the company we buy them from. Well a quick Facebook group enquiry as to where I could get some currently from and I went with the recommendation of Sarissa Precision. (I did get lots of other great recommendations which I am sure would be just as great.) I'm sure there isn't a lot of difference when it comes to lazer cut bases other than the costs per base, so really my choice was down to what other products the company sold as well. After all, I couldn't just buy bases, could I?

I love Sarissa's work. I have a full table of Old West terrain, mostly from Sarissa. Their smaller Western buildings don't even need gluing, they just hold themselves together snugly. (Great for storing flat again for space saving.) I like that the price point is not increased by the kits being pre-painted either. I'm a wargamer on a budget and painting mdf buildings is not something I find a chore. So the reason I went with them was I knew I would do well treating myself to something. 

I decided I needed a couple of buildings for a fantasy table for playing Dragon Rampant. Something not too large and obviously fantasy rather than historical. The Burrow's and Badgers range of buildings have a nice quirky feel to them. In the end I opted for Salvor's Burrow and Brother Mortimer's Den. They both felt like they would make a good start to a halfling village, handy due to the fact I have a painting table covered in halflings.

A generous relative had gifted me some flock covered paper which had been sat in my craft drawer for some time. This felt like the perfect opportunity to use it. It had suffered some abuse from getting crumpled up in the craft drawer but a day with a heavy weight on top and it was good to go.

Using the cardboard roof pieces as templates and dry fitting the buildings to see where there would be other suitable gaps, I cut some pieces out to glue to the kits.

 

I sensibly pre-painted as many pieces as I could while they were on the flat making it easier. Again the dry fitting of the model helped with this as it showed where it was needed.

 

 

Salvor's Burrow was done first. The flock paper was just stuck on with PVA and even though my paper was really creased up from sitting in storage, it sat really nice and flat on the model.

 

 

When I started Brother Mortimer's Den, I immediately recognised the same style cardboard doorway/window and so didn't even pop them out before painting them. 

 

 

I nearly got in trouble with the door placement on this piece. The base is not symetrical and the door panel needs to be on the side with the wider base to fit the door steps on. The instructions from Sarissa are always clear and the fault is mine for a lapse in concentration, luckily I spotted it in time and didn't do any harm to the construction.

 

 

I was on a roll with the flock paper so decided this building should get the full roof covering treatment as well. This building comes with removable roof and the chimney top comes off as well. There is also a ladder that can be popped into the chimney, I think I might just put mine in my random scatter terrain drawer.

 

 

  

A couple of nice little kits and I had fun playing with the flock paper. I can imagine using this stuff if I was doing a whole table rather than using loose flock any day. It does have a tendency to moult a fair bit, but a spray with watered down PVA might help seal it. I shall see how bad the moulting is in future and maybe invest in a spray gun.

Another Dragon Rampant army

So the Dragon Rampant painting continues. I start with a Bad Squiddo "Jarl Lathgertha". I swapped out her axe though for a plastic spear from the Frostgrave Barbarians sprue. I felt she needed something more intimidating to match the drama of her rearing steed.

In both shots I have since noticed that she looks like she  is wearing sunblock on her nose. I assure you, she is not. After going all fancy with laying out flock for the photo shot I'm not retaking.

My first unit for her to lead are a twelve man two handed weapon bearing set of barbarians from the Frostgrave Barbarian box. I love these gruff looking guys, its hard not to give them all grey and white hair.

 

I've pretty much used the same technique I used for the other Frostgrave plastics. A base paint of colours and then covered with Coat D'arms dark brown wash. They were a joy to paint with lots of detail in furs and shaggy beards. The weapons look suitably hefty like they really could do some damage if you didn't get out of their way quick enough.

 

I kept the head with the helm for just one of the guys so he would be a clear leader. Not that it is necessary for Dragon Rampant, but in case I want to use them for any other system. 

I kept the palette of colours for them to a limited number and they all share the same pallette. They may have them in different places, but they all share the same colours with Jarl as well. Her only addition is the blue on her shield and horse blanket.

  

 I've been contemplating my painting lately. I love sharing online with others, but it is a double edged sword, I also see the highest of quality painting that people share that is far superior to my own. Then I decided it was okay. Luckily I have experienced nothing but positivity from the online wargaming community since I started my blog. (I think I'm just too smallfry to attract the weirdos)  I realised that just some peoples models are painted as one off highest quality pieces for display, or painting competitions and some are painted quicker. If I even tried to paint a whole army to that higher level, I'd never get the whole army painted. It's okay to paint to different levels of quality. A unit of 60 redcoats painted to basic standard looks amazing on the table all lined up, you don't need to paint the pupils in the eyes of each individual one.

Save the effort for when you paint Wellington, that is when you can take the week to paint the model. (I will admit though after a week my Wellington still looks like I spent a day on him) I love getting inspiration from other painters online, but I don't have to compare myself to them. I'm happy with what I paint, I love what you all paint.

Stan The Man

 Editor in Chief, from Crooked Dice

As well as being a wargamer I love comic books. Yep, I burden my life with two heavy box storage hobbies. I even recently took on the task of cataloging my entire collection onto a database. Yes, I will take on any procrastinating task to put off painting my lead mountain. Well, as a fan of the medium I bow down to the Legend that is Stan the Man Lee. So when I saw this model from Crooked Dice I had to paint it up to look like the Grandfather of comics. The model also happens to be holding a suitable item that could be painted up as a comic, so I asked in my last blog post for answers on a postcard as to what it should be. I actually got a postcard. 

The Dashing Duke

A suitable postcard I thought considering some of my other painting efforts, on the reverse addressed to "The idiot with the paintbrush" my Brother in Law with too many spare stamps and a practical sense of humour had requested Amazing Fantasy number 15. Well, as luck would have it, I agreed with the choice. Please excuse my clumsy brushstrokes, but I'm quite proud of the result...

Yep, I think it looks worse in close up, but you get more of the idea.

Marvel's original

What else have I painted since we last spoke? Well everything else is mostly in progress still. I have finished a rather dashing, stylised version of General Custer from Scorpion Miniatures.

 

Finally these little guys have arrived ready for construction. I thought I would share them with you as they are a reasonably new company so folks might want to see the actual contents.

You get eight of the following sprue inside the box for £25. There are no bases included, but then everyone has different preferences on bases anyway. Kits I buy that have bases included? I tend to squirrel them away somewhere and buy different ones anyway. I figure I can make a unit of bowmen, a unit of spearmen and then with a couple of conversions from my bits box a couple of characters.

So, give me a couple of months and I may have made a start on this. Now I just need to decide on which of the bizarre halfling cavalry out there to buy and add to my painting pile.

The state of the industry/ The Death of the Small Wargame Show?

Hygenic dice from Dice Shop Online

Now I'm no expert, dear lord no. I don't pretend to be. I'm just a man with a virtual soapbox, but you're here now, so pray lend me your ears. At the top of this article, let me start by saying I am talking in generalisations and my heart goes out to any individuals or companies struggling at present in these difficult times.

How are we all doing? Everything painted yet? Run out of lead mountain? Brushes lost all their bristles from over dry brushing? All of your cans of primer empty? I hope not. At the beginning of this pandemic we were debating whether or not Salute was to go ahead or not. Now it looks as though in the UK anyway, that that's it for this year. No shows. Well, I miss you guys. Hell, I even almost miss getting hit in the face by a backpack or two, or hit in the shins by a trolley suitcase.

I'm pretty sure most of the small companies felt they relied on some of the larger shows for big injections of cash throughout the year (especially Salute) so I was beginning to worry that maybe we would start to see announcements from some of our favourite companies having to call it a day and cease trading, we might still. Although I think there is yet hope. 

With people stuck at home and unable to go to the pub or on holiday, those that have been lucky enough to still be on full income have found joy in hobby time again. I don't know how the smaller companies are doing but I do know that the big GW (who as we know shut down for a whole period of time as well) have reported massive profits. If they are the industry marker it's a good sign. Crafting in general seems to have gripped the nation. At one point you couldn't get a knitting needle from Hobbycraft for weeks I'm reliably told. Social media right now is flooded with updates of long forgotten purchases finally getting a lick of paint, therefore paint supplies are running low and more lead is being bought.

I myself since April have probably spent the same amount of money on mail order as I would have spent at Salute, just instead of one big hit, its been a small trickle of spending. It's kind of the opposite of my supermarket shop. I've gone from buying milk every other day to once a week and toy soldiers twice a year to once a month. I don't know if I am the norm, it certainly feels like a natural progression.

There are a lot of the small companies in the lead belt that did manage to continue to trade all the way through the year so far, the one person companies, the family set ups, if you are one of these companies there is nothing stopping your mail order service. (with some careful social distancing with your postal collection service) I am even aware of one company that is so busy they have on more than one occassion had to turn off orders on their website to catch up with demand. Now obviously this may not translate to oodles of cash for them, they may just be making the same amount they would have made at a trade show or two where they would have had the extra help of maybe a couple of extra hands and the quicker transaction of take cash, give models. However, it is a good sign that maybe business isn't terrible.

So where does this all leave us? Well, there may still be companies that don't make it obviously. It doesn't take an economics expert to see a recession coming, but lets hope hobbying is something that thrives over the next few years and we don't lose our favourite companies. What we might lose I fear is some of our shows though. I'm sure a lot of companies have undone their display racks of stock and used it all up for internet orders and have probably enjoyed a few more Sundays without driving transit vans around around the country. If they can manage this year without the trade shows they might decide to cut back next year and only do the larger ones. I'm sure they'll still do their favourites or the big one at Salute, but I do think some of the smaller ones might struggle to get as many traders. I hope I'm wrong. I hope next year we all get back together, safely and sensibly and the industry thrives.

On a lighter note, what's on my painting table? Well, these little guys I couldn't resist from Crooked Dice. I'm drafting a small skirmish game and I let youngest choose the colour scheme for them. It's going to be a simple Deathmatch type scenario for us to play with cards drawn to decide what weaponry you are armed with.

And finally, I don't normally post works in progress, but this is also from Crooked Dice. I've finally given myself the ridiculous task to end all tasks. I'm going to try and paint a 28mm scale Marvel comic in his hand, so I'm looking for suggestions, which classic cover do you think I should do? Answers on a postcard to Idiot with a Paintbrush...