New Project for the New Year

Hey everyone, here's a birthday present I got. Or some of it, anyway. The other two warjacks I'm leaving partially unassembled for now, so I can magnetize their arms later on.

Even if you've never read a single word about Warmachine before in your life, you can maybe tell from the commander's hat that this is the fake-Russian faction. The warjacks (i.e. the robots) are very distinct and specific to this setting, but the rest of the miniatures might occasionally show up in my historical fantasy skirmish wargaming.

Merry Christmas!

...and happy holidays, and in case I don't post again this month, happy New Year's too!

I have two new projects for the winter. One is a diorama contest entry, and the other is still secret because I don't have any good pics for it yet.

The contest basically has just three rules: Warlord minis only, no more than 20 cm in any dimension, the theme is harsh/hostile environments.

I've started a thread on their forum to document my planning and execution. I've pretty much decided I'm going to model Erik Dahlbergh and his assistants on the Baltic ice during the Great Northern War, checking the thickness to see if Karl X's army can safely perform the March Across the Belts. I'm thinking Dahlbergh himself will be a metal infantry officer, the assistant(s) will be various gun crew models, and I'll also have the dragoon horse-holder minding their mounts, and if the base isn't too crowded by then, a couple reiters keeping watch.

Unfortunately, my card is having weird issues with foreign transactions, so I don't have the miniatures I want yet. But I've been playing around with a mock-up, and 20 cm isn't a whole lot of space. This will be interesting...

Pan Twardowski

I'd hoped to feature this guy in some Halloween Mordheim, but I didn't get him done nearly in time, and now I don't have the energy to play. So here he his, famed sorcerer and alchemist, Pan Jan Twardowski. You can get the gist of this folkloric character from his wikipedia page, though it doesn't explain why he rides a chicken.

The chicken is a cheap toy from a dollar-store farm animal set, embiggened with greenstuff. I wanted to make it a specifically Polish breed, and it just so happens that there is a breed called the Polish Chicken that is quite visually striking.

The guy himself is a old GW Kislevite from the waist up (except for the sword blade and feather from Warlord plastics). His legs are from Wargames Factory's WSS plastics, with plenty of greenstuff to make the two pieces fit the weird chicken shape.

And I'd be lying if I said I didn't have help on this project from another icon of Polish culture...

Vlad Țepeș

A couple pics of my Halloween costume. If only there'd been some way to get the 12-foot sharpened pole onto the train...

Be vewwy vewwy quiet, I'm hunting witches...

Pan Blaszkowicz and his men didn't dare repeat the story of their vampire encounter at the derelict village, or at least, not while sober. But the strange smoky-green gem pieces, some bearing fragments of Latin text, demanded an explanation, and a fair market valuation if at all possible. The hussar made inquiries among noblemen, jewellers, and scholars of his acquaintance, and was eventually advised, in hushed tones with the curtains drawn, to see a certain Jan in the city of Kraków. Blaszkowicz and his men set out on their journey, unaware that their drunken tale-telling and furtive research had attracted the attention of another monster, albeit a much more human one...

Spending the night on a small farm on the way to Kraków, the Polish adventurers were ambushed by the belligerent witch-hunter Laird Tregowdy and his grim Calvinist henchmen. Surrounded by musketeers and archers, the Poles prepared to fight their way out, or face execution for their ill-defined but presumably quite grievous sins...

Poles at the farmstead

Laird Tregowdy leads from behind

face-off

Halloween update

A before/after of my hair dye. Very nearly ready for Halloween...

Mordheim Monster Mash

Well, my costume was pretty much finished Friday night, so I needed to find another spooky diversion to last until Halloween. Fortunately, Mordheim is the spookiest, so I wrote up some warbands and brought up a small table and set it up for a quick solo game. Although, to be frank, I don't have enough terrain to really get the proper effect.

These warbands are completely book legal, although some of the other ones that might show up later have been slightly house-ruled to fit my collection.

Pan Blaszkowicz and his men were exploring an abandoned village. Leaving his musketeers and their sergeant in the village, to provide covering fire if needed, he went to investigate the church ruins with his loyal pancerni comrades. But once they left the relative safety of the village walls, the forces of evil attacked.