Greetings all. Still Alive and hobbying!

 Greetings all. Long time no speak. Certainly no posts on here that's for sure. Its been a bit of a stressful real life time the past few years and blogging has taken a bit of a back burner unfortunately. I've still been dipping my toes into the hobby however. Managed to attend a single 7TV event and the Games Expo last year but painted barely anything. 

Now one of my sort of promises I made to myself was to be more productive painting miniatures wise this year. I was just cleaning/,assembling and sometimes priming and then getting no further.

So I decided to try and get to as many gaming events as I could this year as well as try and paint at least a 1 figure a week. Now that doesn't mean 1 each week per say but by the end of the year I hope to have painted 52 miniatures in total

So far I am nearly on target. I have a been to two 7TV events and have a third one this month and I am working on two casts for it. Some will be existing models already painted.  But I plan on adding miniatures from the to paint pile for it for both casts. Anyway this is the what I've manage to get done so far this year.

So January and February I started myself gently back in with some lovely Burrows and Badgers miniatures mainly because I am still getting used to painting with glasses as these have more chunkier/simpler sculpts they were easier to paint. Various Guard beasts a Squirrel, Chihuahua, Yorkshire Terrier and a mole with a Border Terrier Knight in the centre.

This was an easy win as mostly it was just repainting his suit as I wasn't to happy with how he had turned out previously. This is a Copplestone castings KKBB not Red Grant.

Now in March I went to my first 7TV Event of 2025 and this was title Robot Revolution 2078 where all the players had to create a team of Robot Hunters and fight against the Hosts hordes of robots throughout the day. I though to myself who is an infamous Robot Hunter? Yep Sarah Connor! So this is my cast I took on the day formed around Terminator Dark Fate. So you have Left to Right Grace the augmented freedom fighter from the future (Spec Ops) Sarah Connor (Hardened Grunt), Danni (Everyman well Woman!) and of course 'Karl'  (Cybernetic Construct).

Mini's are Copplestone Future Wars female trooper with a head swap, Hasslefree Elite Sadie with the shotgun trimmed down. The last two are both Crooked Dice a Survivor and Cybernetic Organism.

Also whilst painting the Dark Fate cast I had a play around with the Crooked Dice Xenos Fighter B aimed at being a not Ripley. However I already have a nice Hasslefree sculpt for this purpose so I decided to have a play around doing a unnamed Colonial marine to test out the colour scheme. I'm quite pleased with how she turned out. 

May had my second 7TV event 'If you go down to the Woods today' This time the theme was Fantasy as this had just had a reprint and update to the latest edition. I wanted to do an evil themed undead/chaos cast but to make it would of having to spend a load of cash. So instead I decided to run my Dwarves again. I had a rummage in the todo pile and found a bunch that had been primed but not started. 

So on the left we have Hasslefree Dynamic Armoured Kayden. In the middle another Hasslefree Ari Wilhelmson (I think a Tre Manor sculpt) then the king on the right and two guards at the back are all Ral Partha Europe. They are a little on the shorter side but mix ok imo.

Ari was a bit of a challenge. It is a gorgeous sculpt but there was a lot of detail and a lot of different layers of clothing, furs, armour etc.

Dwarven King and his guards. Though I think I am missing a shield for the king. which I can't find anywhere.

My cast for the day a mixture of Ral Partha Europe and Hasslefree miniatures. It was a great days gaming and I got to play 4 games against some great people. Karl Perrotton being one who at the event playing!

Yesterday saw me attend the UKGE at the NEC it was even bigger this year with tons great stuff on display. Caught up with lots of gaming chums and spent a bit of cash.  Very much Fantasy minded this year. Though the Demon can be used for all sorts of gaming really. The Red box is to store all my 7TV cards in. I am missing having the boxed sets to contain everything in!

Crooked Dice Esoteric Agent 1

Greetings all man its been a long time posting on here. I think I underestimated how much time the extension and consequent refurb was going to take and the impact that it was going to have on hobby and especially my inclination to paint anything! I seem to assemble clean up and assemble a fair bit of stuff. But then have no mojo to actually paint any of it!

I've been doing a little bit of reading lately mostly Damien Lewis books about the SOE/SAS in WW2 so I've had a yearning to something from that period. I had a mooch through my to do pile and came across the Esoteric Agents by Crooked Dice. I'd started bits from this set of minis a while back mainly working on the Not Peggy and Not Nick Fury.

The Peggy from the set only need a bit of tidying up and few highlights and so was a quick win. I think she would make a good SOE agent beside being Peggy Carter in fact I watched The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare recently and she would work as Marjorie Stewart.

Danger 5 Nazi Cast

These were originally what I was hoping to get finished for the recent 7TV Pulp Day. However I only managed to get Hitler and Blondie (Hitlers dog) finished with the Shock Trooper squad only being 80% finished. I still also need to get another Co Star done Though I am still working on him but other things have had to skip the queue as I have a Burrows and Badger event coming up on the 1st October and want to get a few more models done for that. 

These were a free sprue that came with Wargames Illustrated a few years back. They are Warlord Games Bolt Action winter infantry. I went with mostly KAR 98K rifles and MP40s for the sergeant/Officer. But the sprue game with all sorts of weapons. Panzerfausts, MP44s, G43 rifles but as I wanted them to fit an earlier period I went with the weapons mentioned earlier. I quite enjoyed doing these both assembling and painting. Though I probably would need to pick up some different paints if I was todo an army as I don't have German Field Grey and the other colours were mixed to match as good as possible to the Historical painting guides I'd been looking at.

I had to improvise with some of the arms so the trooper on the left is actually carrying ammo for a MG34 which the squad doesn't have. If I do decide to get some more and expand them then I will add an Mg34 armed trooper to the squad. The Sergeant and Officer got the MP40's 

Next up is Adolf Hitler himself. This model is from the Danger 5 set by Crooked Dice and is based of the rather amusing Series called Danger 5. Played by Carmine Russo


I went for just a black cross instead of the Swastika and applied the same to Golgo Satana below

Blondie is Hitlers dog both in real life and in the Danger 5 series however it is played by a rather amusing smoking puppet in the series.

I rebased Golgo Satana by Statusque and repainted her shoulder pips and armband to match Adolf's.


The Whole Cast together eventually I will have another officer and I may get some of the excellent Jet Troopers by Pulp Figures to round the cast out a bit.

Board in Brum 7TV Pulp Day Part 1

Saturday 10th September saw Board in Brum hold a Pulp themed 7TV Day. It was a smaller event this time with only 8 of us in attendance. It was 40 ratings and we played the usual 3 games throughout the day with a chippy lunch and we all squeezed in with a mini game during lunch with a Co Star from each of our casts fighting for their life against waves of Zombies!

The Five boards that were pup up for the day.

Shaun Pike's most excellent Jade Pyramid (Zigguraut?)  board which included a playable interior! Myself and Shaun duelled with our Co Stars in the first game. More on that in the next blog post!

Tavis Hill won best board with this excellent monochrome Jungle Temple board which even had its own special effects! The Giant Ape temple periodically breathed out smoke! What lurks within its depths?

David Browns ruined factory board. This was a pretty good board to fight over and one I managed to get a game on.

I believe this was one of Simon Coldrick's instore boards. I played my third game on this one against Tavis and his Jungle Ape Cast.

My own humble board which I had brought along just in case it was needed. I have a bunch of ruins I need to get painted and I also picked up a big ruined building to add to this. I hope to have the ruined temple board done for January's event.

Simon Coldrick brought along his Flash Gordon and Dale Arden Cast.

Michael's Brilliant crime fighting cast!

Kirsten Hill had a marvellous Cthulhu themed cast with some superb gribblies and one that even had a glowing pulsing effect!

Some of K's marvellous maguffins!

Simon Clarke's Jungle Adventure cast including King Kong!

Tavis Hill brought along two Monochrome Casts. Some Dastardly Belgians and Heroic Jungle Paragon and her 

David Brown brought along his Rick Rhodes Radium Rangers cast. I do love the scheme on these. 


Shaun Pikes's Fu man chu cast.

My own cast. The Crew of the Lonely Matron. Captain McRolland in command.

7TV Pulp day Cast : The crew of the Lonely Matron.

 I ran out of time to get my planned cast ready for the 7TV Pulp day at Board in Brum. I hastily grabbed a bunch of my Pulp figures from Statuesque and Pulp Figures and repainted the bases Friday morning so they all matched and then came up with this cast idea Friday afternoon whilst I was ahem 'working'

Meet the crew of the Free Company airship The Lonely Matron. On commission by King George V the Captain and crew are in pursuit of the nefarious Dr Von Klinkerhoffen an archaeologist who is a known member of Hitler's Occult research division.

Intelligence reports that Klinkerhoffen is heading to South America into the deep Amazon jungle in search of a huge emerald called the Eye of the serpent which is alleged to have mystical power over any plantlife enabling the user to control it with their mind. This would be a huge advantage to Hitler's forces if it was to fall into their control so McRolland has been despatched to intercept and capture Klinkerhoffen and the Eye of the Serpent or if not possible destroy both.

The Lonely Matron leaves its airfield near Edinburgh heading across the Atlantic on its vital mission for King and Country.

Starring

Captain Jimmy McRolland (Intrepid Adventurer)

First mate Reggie ' Ginger' Jones (First mate)

Guard Commander Dougie Finbarr (Rugged Veteran)

Chief Engineer Maddy Lane (Gadgeteer)

Second Engineer Smithy  (Grease Monkey)

Guard detail

(Officer and 6x Security Guards)

Front Row L-R Maddy Lane, Dougie Finbarr, Captain McRolland, Guard Officer, Reggie 'Ginger' Jones
Rear row L-R Second Engineer Smithy and Guard Detail

These are all pretty much ex-Statuesque Miniatures but I think owned by Pulp Alley so still available from them in the USA or Sally 4th in the UK and Captain McRolland is a Pulp Figure from the PHP10 Stalwart Companions set.

Otherworld Goblins and Crooked Dice Ettin

Apologies life has been just super busy of late so the blog has gone the back burner a bit. I went to the 7TV Fantasy event back in July over at Wargames Foundry and it was fantastic as usual! So good to see so many friends and play some casual games of 7TV. I managed to find enough time between things to get my goblin warband cast all finished off along with an Ettin (Ogre in the game). I'll try and get a write up on the blog with some of the pics. There were some amazing casts and boards all done to a fantastic standard.

Otherworld Miniatures Chieftain.

Otherworld Miniatures Shaman

Otherworld Miniatures Goblin Archers

Otherworld Miniatures Goblin Sub Chief

Crooked Dice Ettin (Resin)

The Complete Warband I took on the day. There were another 7 Goblins at one point but I change my mind and chose another co star instead as I didn't fancy moving around that many figures. Overall they did quite well. I'll do a more thorough write up in the coming weeks.

The 40 Rating Cast was below.

Wolfish Warlord
Vicious Henchman

Tormented Seer

Goblin King
6x Goblin Warriors

2x Goblin Sneaks (archers)

Shaman

There are quite a few 7TV events coming up.

7TV Pulp at Board in Brum (Walsall) in September 
Everything is Better with Monkeys 17th September (Tabletop Republic in High Wycombe)
Doctor Who Day 2022 26th November (Lenton, Nottingham)
Bears Army 7TV Toy Drive (Charity Event in Stoke on Trent) 3rd December