SpruCon

 

The other weekend, I went to SpruCon in Nottingham. This was a convention which focussed on the independent side of the wargaming community. The tickets were a little expensive, but this was because one of the deliberate decisions they made was to not charge any of the people with a table for having one - meaning that these smaller companies weren't paying to be there.

Some folk who were there weren't really selling anything, but rather just showing off some neat stuff they made. The table by Conjured Craft was a wild collection of models and things. There were a lot of modelling tools and old wood. There was also a little game where you could gamble your soul. Normal things.

My favourite miniature of the weekend is the one on the left of this photo - the "Not A Kobold" by Blightbones. He's just a scrungly little guy. I've seen people who've described him as "raiding the fridge for cheese at 3am energy". I can't disagree. I sadly faffed too long on buying him and he unsurprisingly sold out. I'm going to need to paint some of the things I did buy before picking him up now...

I loved this piece of art by Lett when I first saw it. The moment I realised they'd made prints of it, I knew I had to get one. It's framed on my bookcase now. I need to remember its there if I reorganise my office so it doesn't end up in shot on work calls. It might cause questions.

The Shining Metal Landlord Is Not Your Friend.

A game I liked the look of and failed to manage my time sufficiently to get a demo of was Aetherpunk 28. It's World War Wizards. There's a bit of a quirky Discworld vibe. I know little more at this point.

Another display that caught my eye was Fae Miniatures, who use a mix of 3D printed bits and scavenged stuff from nature to make miniatures that are intended to be 1:1 scale creatures having little skirmishes out in the woods.

War Dollies Collective put on "Everything Everywhere Brawl At Once", which was a skirmish game using bits of rules from loads of different games that were at the show. There was a lot of extroverted chaotic energy going on.

All in all, SpruCon was a great success. I had a lot of fun, and spent perhaps a bit too much money on bits and pieces. I still need to get more willing to commit to playing more demo games and taking part in activities. I love kitbashing but didn't sit down to spend the time at the Kamping Kitbash tables at all, and really should have. There was more than one game I wanted to demo and simply put it off until I ran out of time. Not sure how to fix it, as I seem to keep saying it after every convention.

It seems likely Spru will return next year. If you can get a ticket, and like weird little indie things, you should absolutely prioritise it. The general vibe of the whole place was excellent, and there were loads of folks doing a thing that brings them joy.

What I've been up to in September

 

My September has mostly been taken up with LARPing, so I don't have a huge amount to report right now. I did buy a couple of painted figures cheaply on eBay which have now arrived.

These are kit bashes by Ricki on BlueSky. I put in some low bids and was lucky enough to win them. I've grabbed them to use as antagonists in RPGs, so they'll be packed away for a bit until I have an in person campaign.

I had another game of Infinity down at Dice Cup. We're trying to have regular Nottingham meet ups every first Sunday, so if you're into Infinity and in the area, please do get in touch and pop down.

I wanted to get some bases for the Fenris KoFi models, so ordered some cobblestone bases from, unsurprisingly, Fenris Games.

As I was already ordering something, I also picked up another couple of bits. First were these resin Rubble City barricades. They're lovely, detailed resin casts. The large stakes mean that they're probably an "at home" only bit of terrain as they're quite challenging to transport, but I still love them.

There was also this lovely dwarf hero going, and I like a nice dwarf miniature. He'll go into the "to do" pile for now, as I need to finish painting a few more things before I assemble anything new.

First finished figure of the new house

I've finished my first figure since my house move. It's the Shieldkin from Krakon Games that I was working on last week. Once I'd got the base colours down, I drybrushed the green skin and shell, did an Agrax Earthshade wash, then lightened up a few points that had gotten too dark with the wash. He's still a little dark, but is fine.

I did the next stage of the Reaper Miniatures Gray Maiden. The metal got a drybrush, while the red got some traditional blending to compensate for the blotchy coverage of the contrast paint. I'm currently considering whether or not to paint the filigree gold, because it will be a big faff, but look great if I do it right.

Blending a red cloak is kind of a traditional "practice" piece to do, so I've had fun with it. It's not quite there yet. My dark red layer paint has separated so needs replacing. There's a couple of spots I still want to bring up to the lighter colours too.

We've got a few more colours on the Bad Squiddo Guinea Pig Witches. We're getting to the point of the last few details, and then any bits that need highlighting, like adding more contrast to the fur on this witch.

Thinking about "what next", I'll be starting on the Fenris Games plinth if I'm able to find a weather window to sort out the last few sticky spots where the undercoat hasn't properly cured. I'm a little torn after that as to whether I  do the Mammoth Miniatures dragon, which is the next oldest piece on the tray, or if I jump over to the 4A Minis Spirit Host, which will be super quick to do.

On the assembly front, I've still got a bit of clean up on some Mammoth Miniatures scenery pieces to do, and I need to fix the annoying gaps caused by my own incompetence on the Dungeons and Lasers Minotaur. For the next assembly, it's between the Blood Bowl Treemen I need for my Halfling team, and the Dungeons and Lasers Ettin, who is annoying to store...

Remembering how to actually paint

 

I finally got my paint set up sorted. Due to it being a dining table rather than a dedicated painting table I've taped a bin bag to it to protect it from paint spillages! It isn't perfect - in particular I haven't sorted out the relevant extension cables to have a dedicated painting lamp on it, so it gets a little too dark to use during the evenings.

The original plan was to paint this Fenris Games plinth. It's a chunky bit of resin that I was planning to use for miniature photography once it's done. It's been undercoated black, then grey.

Unfortunately, I undercoated it while it was very damp out. As a result, it was quite sticky to touch, and I realised that the paint was coming off when I held it tightly. This is deeply annoying, but down to my own mediocre short cutting and impatience rather than the quality of the piece!

After a little bit of research online, the two recommendations I saw were to either strip it and redo the undercoat, or to varnish it. I decided to go with varnishing first, because it was the easier option. After a pass of spray varnish, and leaving it a few days, the problem seems to be fixed. There's a couple of spots around the sides which are still a little sticky - but I reckon one more pass should solve it.

But, this means the plinth needs to move down the painting list while it gets fixed - so what have I picked up instead?

Here's what I'm pai . . . ooh, that's a lot of back lighting. I definitely need to sort out that extension cable soon. Lets break down what we've got.

First up is a Gray Maiden by Reaper Miniatures. This is a Pathfinder figure with a "canon" paint scheme. I think I originally bought her to be a Slaanesh chaos champion, but now I play Pathfinder, she's getting returned to her original setting. The Gray Maidens were bodyguards to a particular queen in Pathfinder 1st edition who has since been deposed. I like having a Gray Maiden miniature available as the idea of a former bodyguard who's been hired by some new employer is an interesting option for a henchwoman level antagonist.

I started off painting her with contrast paints, but it got quite patchy in places. I'm going to go back in with some layering and drybrushing to try and fix this.

I got a free Krakon Games Shieldkin at an event last year, so I've used contrast paint to drop in some base colours. He's a nice simple sculpt so should be nice and quick to finish.

And finally, we have these three Guinea Pig Witches by Bad Squiddo. Again, these will be for Pathfinder, and I picked three fur colours to get started, and am just happily dropping in some basic colours with contrast paints to start off.

It's good to be back painting again. There is an itch in the back of my brain that I want to finish painting something. With quite a few models lined up that need painting, I'm really keen to get a feeling of progress. But that's for another day.

Infinity Battle Report: Uplink Centre, Combined Army vs Shock Army

 

A few players in the Midlands have decided to try and organise a regular Infinity game day at the Dice Cup in Nottingham. We're running on the first Sunday of the month, and our first attempt at this was back at the start of August. If you're local, please get in touch via the UK Infinity Discord, or let me know you'd like to show up and I'll get you in touch with people.

I brought along a first pass at a vanilla Combined Army list, while my opponent brought his Shock Army of Acontecimento. For a mission, we were running Crossing Lines. This mission has an unusual set up, in that you have a second deployment zone - a narrow strip of the board next to the centre line on your opponent's half of the table - meaning that they will also be deploying troops in your table half!

The big experiment for me was trying out the Vector Operator sniper, which I have heard good things about. I haven't assembled my Vector model yet, so the out of production Skiavoros was serving in its stead. Sadly, on its very first order of the game it rolled badly, took a couple of hits and died immediately. Bother.

My opponent, meanwhile, was running a Tikbalang, which did a very good job of whittling down pieces I hadn't been able to deploy defensively enough. I certainly caused a lot of problems, but took more casualties than I'd want on a first turn.

In particular, I lost a lot of the pieces I'd deployed in the centre, meaning I had to scrabble to get models into position to make sure I could score.

My Anathematic managed to neutralise Scylla, giving me hacking supremacy for the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the strong firepower my opponent still had was able to move defensively to keep the Anathematic at arm's length, as my order pool was slowly depleted.

A well timed Akali Commando proceeded to roll up my right flank, and cleared several order generating pieces on the flank furthest from the Anathematic.

In the end my opponent was able to leave me without enough models to swing back effectively, keeping the high scoring pieces well away from the Anathematic. The score ended up around 7-2 to the Shock Army from memory.

All in all, I felt like I learned a lot from the game. The Anathematic was a monster and rightly terrifying, but the Vector needed to use smoke more often and be very cagey about its shooting to compensate for its incredible fragility. Beyond that, I probably deployed too aggressively for Crossing Lines and need to think a bit more about the sort of units that should go in the central deployment zone. I'm already drafting updated lists for the next Infinity game day.

Warp Miniatures shop

 

A couple of weeks back I pottered down to the Warp Miniatures shop in Nottingham. I have been a fan of Warp Miniatures since they started, and I wanted to see how the shop was doing.

Rather than go for commercial looking shelves, they've taken an effort to get old wood furniture for the majority of their displays. This gives the shop a really nice local business feel rather than something corporate.

The shop has a couple of demo tables for Arcworlde. Again, a lot of focus has been made on presenting a clear aesthetic.

Arcworlde is particularly famous for its trolls and halflings.

You can also see the box art miniatures at the shop, such as these wizards.

Some other Arcworlde miniatures - this time the Wild Elves and a mix of undead.

The shop also stocks Siren's Oath by Twisted Spire. This is an indie roleplaying one shot about playing mermaids, and also has a number of miniatures for the game the Warp Miniatures produces.

All in all, Warp Miniatures shop is a great destination to visit in Nottingham. It's well worth a visit, whether or not they're hosting an event.

Getting set up for painting, a new project, and my favourite thing this year

 

I'm getting itchy about not having painted in a while. I'm perfectly set up to assemble a few more things (a Dungeons and Lasers Ettin and the Halfling team Treemen) but this won't make me feel quite the same in terms of getting something finished. So there's some set up I need to do in my hobby space to be ready to paint anything, so that's next on the docket.

I had XNOO by the Merry Mushmen arrive. This is a huge 276 pages of comics, articles and short stories with an old school fantasy feel. I've absolutely adored it. I definitely had some "misses", but it reminded me of reading 2000AD magazines as a child in terms of the type of content and the general vibe of the thing. It's quite possibly my favourite thing this year, and I'm really happy to have got it.

Also arriving this weekend was the new Necromunda. I'm deeply annoyed at the end of Warhammer Digital, but my reasoning for not getting into Necromunda before was always that the rules had gotten too complex across too many books. With some local folks interested, I decided to grab the new edition and get something sorted.

While I probably have all the models I need to paint up a Genestealer cult gang, I'd read some advice that indicated that they weren't a great idea for a starter gang. So I decided to pick up a box of Cawdor, the gang I played as a yoof, as a small and simple project. It'll probably be a little while before I start assembling these as I do need to read the rules a little bit and understand how gangs get assembled before I go and put together an unplayable combination of options or something.

PeachCon 2026

 

Last Sunday, I staggered out of bed, barely recovered from Bootleg BOYL to head over to PeachCon 2026 in Derby. We were arriving early as we were helping Bad Squiddo Games get set up, but once the colouring in tables were set up and Annie was helping customers, I was free to ramble as I pleased.

There were an assortment of different wargames going on, both demo and participation. In this case, a huge Napoleonics game was being set up to play.

Some companies were demoing their games. Here, Warlord Games were offering a demo of Konflikt '47. 

I shall add another mark on the "Times the Author has seen this Demo of Warmachine, Meant To Go Back Later, And Run Out Of Time At The Show" tally. It's embarrassingly high now.

There was also a lovely display of Relicblade miniatures / possibly a demo table.

I keep on eyeing up Relicblade miniatures to use as figures in roleplaying games, but currently I have no shortage of those already queued up to paint so I haven't quite gotten around to it yet.

A gentleman was promoting his hobby shop by offering a lucky dip bag of free miniatures. He had this amazing flag on his backpack to let people know what he was doing.

Satyr Art Studio was also at PeachCon, and his stall was slightly quieter, letting me snap a couple of photos of some of his range. There's so much of it I would buy if I had the funds / time to fit in the projects, but I only have so many hours in the day.

I do think there's a project in putting together an "Oldhammer" style army using all small independent modern producers, but I need to finish some existing projects before starting too many new ones.

The Tabletop Smithy was also there, selling an assortment of useful things for roleplaying games and painters. The item that really caught my attention was the teapot paint pot holder, where the handle has a mechanism to hold onto a Games Workshop paint lid. Absolute genius!

The free miniature I got from Penumbra Hobbies is this sci fi officer who was made from an assortment of resin bits. 

Someone had also brought several bin bags of slate bits for people to help themselves to, and I grabbed a few bits for both basing and miniature photography.

I also had a bit of a slip and grabbed quite a few bits of Krakon Games line from Bad Squiddo. Probably a bit more than I should have, but there's some really fun sculpts here that I think are hidden gems.

I also picked up a Peach the Unremarkable (actually my first purchase of the day and the most deliberate souvenir), and an air elemental from Warhost which will join my growing roster of RPG baddies.

And finally, I had a little slip and picked up some more Satyr Art Studio models. I'd been eyeing up a blister of wraiths which sold out before I made a decision, but I ended up picking up a couple of blisters. The dwarfs will get painted up as a dwarven town guard in case my adventurers get into some trouble with the law, while the motley crew of sci fi pirates will be joining a few other figures as a gang for a future Helsreach participation game, when I get organised enough to do so, anyway...