Griffins Finished!

And now the fun can begin! =D

I'm so happy to finally have all of my Rackham stuff finished, and now get to look forward to battles in the dark labyrinthine corridors of the Hybrid Project!

So here is the Rescue Team, L-R A Knight of the Lodge of Hod, an Executioner of the Red Monks Order, The Venerable Ambrosius, The Griffin Minelayer (personal fav) and another Executioner.

I am not often struck with the urge to create scenic bases but just love these figures so much I thought it had to be done!
To be honest they were actually a lot of fun to put together and, surprisingly, didn't lead to some sort of unintentional drilling and pinning mishap!
My favourite character to paint has to be the Minelayer as he came together so easily and gave me no trouble at all (again, totally out of character with my usual "back to the drawing board" approach to painting!) The Knight and Ambrosius had their own challenges - lots of metal on the Knight meant that I had to relearn a few armour techniques I used to use (I have been painting dark, dirty Nurgle Chaos things for so long that metal without rust is strange indeed!)
Ambrosius has so much detail on his person that I think the sculptor must have gone insane after creating him! I wanted him to look grim and embittered - I don't know if the photo of his face does it much justice, but he looks pretty determined to me!
The Executioners were the most troublesome, again there is a wealth of tiny details to be picked out and this time through the swirling mass of their cloaks and robes. Not that I would complain, one thing the Rackham sculptors could do was depict flowing material, and I think it lends a majestic air to all these miniatures.

So, what next??

On to Glory!

Ace

Blam blam dakka dakka!

More trials and tribulations from the very 'Heavy Burtation!'

Here she is as of mission 6 (or 7... something like that)
Still finding small fish secreted away in cubby holes and panels due to a rather impromptu landing on a big wet version of the runway (the Channel...)

 This is what happens when you try to stop off in Amsterdam for a pint...

After being rescued by Mermaids the lads paddled back to the hanger for tea and scones.
Blam blam and Lance managed to get themselves a nice cushy bed in the infirmary for the next mission (Lance 'the dodger' finally copped a round to the knee and Blam blam pulled a sickie...)
making way for Darris' sister's former roommate Fingers to sully the left hand side of the cockpit with his presence and someone left the bomb bay doors open again allowing Hotlips to sneak back into the tail gun for a nap.

The next death defying (and sleep depriving for Darris) mission would involve a near suicidal attack on some ports near some place in Belgium that no-one bothered to write down.
Not suicidal because of the massed air power of the Luftwaffe concentrated in the area, but more from the fact that flying over the sea always confuses the shit out of Squeezy and Fingers was having trouble remembering how to fly the plane.

After some stirring words from C.O Total Bastard that went something like;
'You screw up just this much... you're gonna find yourself flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog-shit out of Hong Kong!'
Darris and the lads filled the Burt' with Bourbon, painted a giant penis on the plane in the next hanger and (nursing hangovers) climbed aboard.

Long story short, Squeezy totally fucked up. Wankeyes decided to drop the payload onto the 'water' bit instead of the 'Port' bit. The plane with the giant penis on it seemed to attract a lot of attention and, unsurprisingly, decided to make a vertical landing in a field near Antwerp. Darris snored the whole time which luckily meant that Fingers didn't fall asleep. Fuzzy added another German bullet to his collection and the Luftwaffe, who were obviously feeling generous, added a few holes to Dogmothers' Ball turret - and Dogmother...
Klum once again fainted when a BF110 came into view and had to be revived by Fuzzy, which was pretty impressive given how much blood he had just lost!

After landing the plane safely into the side of the nearest hanger the boys walked slowly to the de-briefing office to face the music...

...except for Ratbrain who was still waiting in the bomb bay for Dogmother to turn up with the cards...

The end.

Hybrid progress and some weird shit

Hello everyone. Look what I have for you today...

First off are the Seneschal and his merry band of Purifiers. The 'good guys' faction of the Rackham board game 'Hybrid'

The chance to finally get to play this game in the proper 'grown-ups' manner, you know with ACTUAL PAINTED MINIATURES, is almost here! 
There's still a handful of Griffin troops to go before I can sit down and get to grips with the rules - but it's so close, so very close...

Great models to paint. I cannot express how sad it makes me to think that this once awesome and passionate game company is now gone. I can only hope that Jean Bey and his team resurface in another effort soon!

And here are some of their adversaries...

The quick and slimy little Pests of Flesh. These were actually painted almost ten years ago! Time flies when you have to waste it working for a living!

The versatile Hybrids, again from my original attempt to finish the games mini's and play a decade ago.

Two of the big scary beasts; the Nemesis Clone on the left and the Aberration on the right. Can't wait to use these!

A few more angles...

Fantastic fun painting these up. I used to be quite frightened of tackling the large miniatures but actually find them easier to get to grips with than the standard 'human' sized figures now. That reminds me, I must do some more cavalry soon =)

Last but not least are my two Skorize Warriors - I believe I have already posted them, but I'll include them here for the sake of completion.

Scary. And awesome.

So, some weird shit then.
I never had an opportunity to play 'Rogue Trader' back in the day and have always wanted to give it a go, I just really enjoy the feel of the 40k universe as it was then - lots to explore and plenty of individual variety to the rules. I prefer games that are about playing WITH rather than expressly AGAINST another person/s, especially when the game has as much wacky shit going on as RT does!

So here are the first of many new additions to my figure collection for playing games from a more interesting GW.

I cant remember exactly when I posted the original 'undercoated' versions of these guys, here are the finished results.

From left - A Badlands Preacher venturing into the unknown to save the souls of the unbelievers. Space Marines Field Police, sporting ammonium veldt camo scheme and Plasma pistol. A rescued Space Crusade Chaos Android (seriously, you should have seen the painting originally applied to this guy...) now making his way through the wastelands as a rogue mech for hire. And finally my own original creation, a Jokaero mutant bearing heavy weapons!

Look at that monitor screen - any chance I get to use Scorpion green!

Cool, thats it for now - another round of painting should complete the Griffins and I hope to bring you a Battle Rep asap. More B17 has been played and hopefully a couple of 'big' projects will near completion soon. Also, Fighting Fantasy's 'Seas of Blood' play through is nearly there!

Now if I could just stop having to go to a job to earn money...

Ace