Road Trip! Duxford: Land War and a Blackbird

Duxford also has a nice "Land War" section, where as a Guard player, I'm inclined to take a lot of photographs...

Of course, being me, I'm also inclined to take random photos of piles of boxes.

Or close ups of bits of interesting weathering.

Wider picture of the actual tank.

The photo doesn't really give an indication of quite how large this truck is!

And here's a smaller one that was an interesting shape.

Remote controlled exploding thingy. Didn't work well. Games Workshop do a Death Korps version. It is also rather flawed an ineffective rules wise...

Odd looking utility vehicles might be a particular interest...

There was also a small model of fighting in the Bocage to indicate how easy it was to miss things not very far away.

Only thing I took photos of in the American hangar was the Blackbird.

No really good angles to get a good shot, as it's backlit by the huge windows.

This was about the best I could manage in the circumstances!

Road Trip! Duxford: Planes

I recently went to Duxford, which is where the Imperial War Museum keep a lot of their planes and big stuff that doesn't fit at the London site.

I will be honest, this was mostly just snapping some photos of random things that caught my eye.

This plane was commonly used to drop agents off in occupied France during WWII - mostly because it could land on a runway 150 metres long! The little ladder on the side is to help the passenger get out quickly so the plane can take off again.

Lancaster wings!

Lancaster cockpit! I really am not great about framing some of these, but there's not a huge amount of space - things are layered up all over the place and sometimes you can't get far enough back for a good picture.

A Mosquito...

Some WWII plane or other. For some reason labelled it as a Spitfire. Clearly not. Observer plane because of all the side windows?

I took a picture of this because I wondered what Horsa was - they were an Anglo-Saxon chieftan. I was getting confused with Horza, who is a character in an Iain M Banks novel I should really read at some point. The plan is the last surviving example of the make that had one crash in the middle of a desert somewhere.

The inside of Concorde.

A tactical nuclear weapon. It's really rather terrifying quite how small it is.

Lancaster tail gun.

The biplane again.

Flying fortress, with the right hand side painted with one set of nose art for filming purposes...

While the left hand side has the original art...

Tale of Gamers: A little more Marauder Progress

Just a few more colours blocked in, and another wash or two down...

Tale of Gamers: Marauder Progress

Only a little progress this week as I was away at a LARP at the weekend. Starting to block in colours and washes on the Marauders.

Maps to far off lands

Tale of Gamers: Alternate Chaos Warriors

So, for my Tale of Gamers challenge with James from Gonzo History Gaming, I need ten Chaos Warriors. Now, I'm not a huge fan of the current Games Workshop plastics, and I keep picking up potential alternates, so lets see what I can find lying around...

Well, this is a good start. It's a Barbarian Warlord from Heresy Miniatures, and a Chaos Warrior from the Circle of Chaos Kickstarter. Even better, these two are already assembled, so less work for me!

This sealed bag contains a smattering of old Harlequin Templars. I found them during a trip to Foundry some time ago, and picked them up as they're not a regularly stocked item, but something they'd found a few spares of and had put up on the shelves in the hope someone would buy them. So I obliged...

And then, to round up, two miniatures I bought from Bad Squiddo Games. You may know BSG as "The Dice Bag Lady", but she does miniatures, not dice now! She stocks an assortment of awesome female sculpts and other useful stuffs. I'd picked up a "Gray Maiden" by Reaper from her at Salute, and had ordered an Adira Dark Champion from her own range when it came out recently.

So, there you have it - ten miniatures, old and new to form up a small unit of Chaos Warriors. There is a ton of choice out there at the moment, and I can strongly recommend both Heresy and Bad Squiddo.

Tale of Gamers: End of August Report

Some of you may recall I'm engaged in a bit of a painting challenge with James from Gonzo History Gaming. You can see how well he did in August here.

Target for end of August: 10 painted Forsaken.

Achieved at end of August: 1 painted Forsaken.

Only one number out!

It turns out, these Forsaken, while beautiful miniatures, are super, super fiddly and awkward to paint - making it more time consuming than I expected. I've finished off one, and will keep plugging through the other nine as time goes on. But September is a busy month, so I'm not going to try and catch up and do September's commitment at the same time!

The good news is that the Marauder unit is assembled on schedule and ready for paint. These are much simpler sculpts so should be quite achievable in the time available.

Meanwhile, the Chaos Spawn have very pretty bases finished, but I should probably finish assembling the actual models...

So, looking at the list, what am I aiming to have painted by the end of the month?

Lord of Slaanesh on Daemonic Mount
10 Chaos Marauders
10 Chaos Warriors
10 Forsaken
2 Chaos Spawn
Hellcannon

I also hope to have the Chaos Warriors assembled and ready to paint for October's part of the challenge.