Kickstarter: Many Ways To Spend My Money - April 2016

I like to keep one eye on what's available on Kickstarter. Aside from the usual 'pre-order' Kickstarters run by the larger gaming companies this month has seen something that particularly appealed to me.

Source: Kickstarter

The Kickstarter in question is The Pantheon of Chaos, a miniatures range with a distinctly old school, Oldhammer, feel to them.

Source: Kickstarter

I remember seeing the greens sometime ago, although where exactly escapes me, and instantly having flashbacks to the golden age of Games Workshop miniatures.

I really think it's a positive step to see new miniatures being released in this Oldhammer style as I feel the actual Oldhammer movement is a bit of closed shop, especially if your interest is a passing one. Unless you're 20+ year hoarder, involved in gaming groups or prepared to cave into the demands of eBay profiteers it's really difficult to get involved. Try joining their Facebook group. Time after time I seem to be refused, obviously I don't know the right people / secret handshake / code words etc...

So anyway, now the Pantheon of Chaos has gone live, and been funded within 2 hours, I'm sorely tempted to get myself a few of them. Although the €30 to €50 price tag for a decent sized set will certainly test my spending resolve for this year they do look too good to pass up. And given the ease with which they reached their funding target it bodes well for the post-kickstarter plans for the range, including a book and further miniatures.

If you feel like getting involved then you can find the Pantheon of Chaos can be found here and there's still 10 days left to run (finishes on Wednesday, May 4 2016 at  8:44 PM BST).

Kits I Want To Build - Aircraft

A few posts back I wrote about downsizing my stash in order to help me focus a bit more on what I’ve got and what I want to build in the future. A few kits have already been moved on and so now I thought I’d try and identify the aircraft I have an interest in, both from a historic point of view as well as well modelling point of view.

I have to confess it gets a bit difficult at this point, there’s still quite a lot of them. I had to stop eventually and that point was when I reached 25 aircraft, any further would be straining the credibility of the exercise.

So here’s the list, broken down into five categories. Four of these are Second World War categories, the first three being aircraft of steadily increasing sizes. A couple I have already built but would like to do again in different colour schemes, (Spitfire and P-51D) and so are not considered essential builds right now. Medium bombers present more of a challenge for me as a build although the Il-2 is looking like a distinctly possible build for the near future. Heavy bombers are the same plus I have to contend with the issue of displaying them due to their size so they’ve effectively been put to one side for now.

The WWII experimental fighter / jets category is pretty much a self-contained project that I’ve had in mind for several years now. It’s not been started yet, partly due to my inability to replicate RLM colours to a satisfactory likeness. I actually plan on writing further on this subject, but for now, like the heavy bombers, it’s been put to one side.

And finally we get to the Cold War era aircraft. Initially this interest was sparked by the late WWII jet fighters and by my Hobby Boss F9F-2 Panther build. And this is the point where I’ve decided to draw a line, just two kits will remain, and that’s because they’re really good kits with a whole load of extras that I don’t wish to part with at this time. I do have a couple of helicopter kits as well which I’ve excluded, and then there’s all the non-aircraft kits which are not with the scope of this post.

Does this help? Well looking at a list of 25, it’s still quite daunting. But the categories do help me prioritise a few builds, and then things look a bit better. With that in mind I’m going to get started on the WWII fighters list.

Advanced Heroquest Reborn - The Henchmen #1-3

Here's the first 3 of the 12 henchmen.

These are straight from the box, Bretonnian men at arms, which are unfortunately no longer available. Individually they have a lot of character and in small numbers I found them fun to paint, though they needed a lot of cleaning up. I can imagine painting an army's worth would be quite difficult as you soon run out of options when it comes to making them different to each other.

ADHQ Henchman - Source : Stuff of Legends

Interestingly these figures armed with halberds are closer to the figures that came with the game, however the actual character sheets show that henchmen are armed with swords.

Advanced Heroquest Reborn - The Heroes

The clocks went forward this weekend which means lighter evenings and hopefully more miniature painting. Unfortunately the lens for my camera has sadly expired and all my spares are either zooms or fixed focus lenses, none of which are suitable for photographing miniatures. Because of that I'm trying to use a tablet for photographing miniatures as you'll see below. 

For the Advanced Heroquest Reborn project the first two heroes are now complete, actually more to the point, the first two figures of the project are complete!

They are, the human fighter Heinrich Löwen and the dwarf warrior Sven Hammerhelm. 

 

Sven underwent a substantial change from when you last saw him to bring him closer to the artwork found in the rule books.

 Source: Terror In the Dark - Games Workshop / Colin Howard (1991)

The parts I used for these two figures are:

Heinrich Löwen
Body - Empire State Troops
Arms - Empire Free Company Militia
Sword - Original militia cutlass removed, replaced with an alternative militia sword
Head - Empire State Troops (preceding 5/6th edition plastic box set, now out of production)
Feather - As above
Pouch (dagger removed, side re-sculpted) , bottle, treasure chest - Bretonnian men at arms set
Rope - Mordheim accessories
Shield - 1990's blank circle shield, parts from dwarf shield sprue (unknown)

Sven Hammerhelm
Body, arms - Dwarf warriors (6th edition, now out of production)
Hammer head - Dwarf warriors
Head, helmet removed - Dwarf warriors (6th edition, now out of production)
Helmet - Dwarf warriors

Backpack, self sculpted, bag - Bretonnian men at arms set

Next I plan to paint a few of the henchmen before facing up to the challenge of painting twenty Skaven.

The End of An Era

Recent posts have sadly seen a few too many obituaries.This one is slightly different and is not entirely unexpected but marks the end of an era.

Empire Free Company

Bretonnian Men at Arms

Source: Games Workshop (2016)

This weekend the Games Workshop finally retired a large number of box sets as the Age of Sigmar moves forward and the Old World is consigned to memory. Two sets that will be missed are the Empire Free Company Militia set and the Bretonnian Men at Arms set. Even I can tell they're not going to fit into the new setting and so inevitably their time is up.

These sets have for so many years been the go-to henchmen across many games and gaming systems. For me they've been my first choice fantasy humans, not just in Warhammer but in Mordheim and potentially Frostgrave. Their latest use was as part of my Advanced Heroquest Reborn project as, you've guessed it, the henchmen.

I thought about bagging one more set however, with my last post in mind, I decided the let them go. I just about have enough spare parts for this project, but a future ones will have to feature models from elsewhere.

I've been brand loyal for many years but that loyalty is fading somewhat. The new Age of Sigmar models are a mixed bunch, the latest Dwarfs for example I feel are embarrassingly bad, which is quite an achievement given that the old Dwarfs weren't very good in the first place.

I feel, in particularly with the Empire set, that their demise is a bit short sighted. These sets went far beyond being basic foot soldiers in a Warhammer army, and they could be utilized in many different games, be they old Games Workshop games or those made by others.

All this means I'm finally going to start looking elsewhere. The new Frostgrave range looks excellent, and with the option of converting between sets to create henchmen, cultists and even undead.

Source: Northstar Military Figures and Osprey Games (2016)

So next time I'm in need of a few good men, I know where to to look.