Don't Look Back In Anger

As 2019 comes to an end it's time to review how I've done with my gaming resolutions for the year.

However, before getting to that, here's my last miniature of the year; a slave tech from Fallout.

As it's from the starter set, this miniature is cast in PVC and it suffers for that. The material seems to struggle with finer details like faces and, just like Reaper Bones, has mold lines that I don't see until the models are painted.

This was never going to be my favourite from the set, but he's done to an acceptable standard.

And now on to the resolutions I set for myself; let's see how I did...

1. No New Games - Fail

Despite my resilience earlier in the year in deciding to pass up the AVP game I won, the lure of new and shiny games got to me in the end. Pulp City, Rangers of Shadow Deep and Fallout: Wasteland Warfare have all dragged me into their orbits in recent months. In fairness, two of them are solo games and all three have a small model count, but a fail is a fail.

2. Finish Old Projects - Fail

I listed a number of games last year and I've only actually 'finished' one of them, Terminator: Genisys (by which I mean I don't have a backlog and have two fully painted forces). However, although I've painted some Batman and Dropzone Commander, I've actually bought more for each game, and I haven't touched the Walking Dead, Flames of War, Dropfleet Commander or my War of 1812 army, again.

3. Continue Solo Campaigns - Fail

Although I have entered into a cooperative Rangers of Shadow Deep campaign with my daughter, I didn't actually return to the solo campaigns I mentioned last year in the Walking Dead or Super Mission Force. I will return to these campaigns one day, but I'm still waiting for motivation to strike.

4. Paint More Than I Acquire - Fail

With the addition of the Slave Tech, a slight readjustment of what qualifies as a 'model' in the Mantic terrain I recieved, and a late secret Santa gift of an IS-2 tank (with infantry), the final score stands at a depressing 276-226.

226 is not a bad tally, and I have been somewhat hampered by Wargames Illustrated's constant stream of free sprues, but I've got into a slightly generous habit of giving these to people whole use them rather than hoarding. However this still wasn't enough to see the lead pile reduce.

5. Play & Paint More 7TV - Success

I've been to five 7TV events this year and played quite a few games with Matt as preparation and as a playtester for the Menagerie of Terror. I've painted more Masters of the Universe miniatures (and taken them to two events, winning best cast at one), loads of terrain, giant ants and a scorpion, a V cast, several vehicles, and numerous other miniatures. In fact, my focus on 7TV related projects is probably the reason I haven't made that much progress in other areas.

With such a weak performance this year, I'm going to keep things simple for 2020 and just have the one resolution.

I'm going to conquer the lead mountain!

Not the one in Colorado though.

I'm not going to get rid of the lead pile altogether, that would be crazy talk (let's not bring up Operation Unthinkable, m'kay?), but I am going to aim to finish off or get rid the backlog from those older projects that have been haunting me for several years. I'm also going to paint more than I acquire; and this time I'm going to build up a solid lead before Christmas ruins it.

And that's me signing off for 2019. Thanks for sticking with my meandering blog, and I wish you and yours a very happy new year and I'll see you on the other side.

On the plus side, my painting should improve as I will once again have 2020 vision!

The Customary New Year Post

Happy New Year!

As is customary in the gaming blogosphere, it's time for the annual review of the previous year's productivity and look forward to what's to come. It's quite text heavy this one, and I haven't done any pictures, but hopefully it'll be worth a read.

OPERATION UNTHINKABLE

This year I set myself the target of completing a previously unfinished project every month with the penalty of having to get rid of things I failed to paint. The goal was to become lead mountain free. This hasn't happened, for a couple of reasons, but mainly because I ran out of steam around September, and the project that remain are somewhat larger and more difficult to complete.

However, I have done pretty well, finishing off a number of old projects, completing a few new ones that arose and generally ploughing through my mountain of metal, plastic and mdf. Here's how I got on:

January - Bolt Action Soviets
HMG & 3 Crew
Medium Mortar & 3 Crew
4 Scouts
2 Mine Dogs with Handlers
6 Pin Markers

February - A Very British Civil War Royalists
7 Gentlemen Farmers
12 Armed Schoolboys
2 School Staff Members

March - Urban Terrain
A whole host of things including a chain fence, barrels, a chimney, pipes, a radio antenna, a rooftop planter, a roof entrance and 3 Park Benches.

April - Flames of War Germans
3 Opel Blitz Trucks
Marder IIIM Tank Hunter
An Objective Marker

May - Dropzone Commander Resistance
2 Lifthawk Dropships
2 Hannibal Battle Tanks
Kraken Hovercraft
3 Jackson APC's
6 Infantry Stands

June - Guildball
6 Morticians Players
6 Union Players
A Ball

July - Muskets & Tomahawks
27 Woodland Indians

August - Batman Miniatures Game Tournament
This month I focused on preparing for the BMG World Tournament, the models I painted are listed in the Batman section below.

September - Dropzone Commander Resistance...again!
M3 Alexander Command Tank
8 Cardboard Buildings

October - Zombtober...sort of...
5 Zombies
Amy Pond
Elsa and Anna from Frozen

November - Marvel
Spider-Woman
She-Hulk
Black Widow
4 Hydra Goons
(I also re-based the other models I'd done previously)

December - Bolt Action Soviets...again!
T-34/85
SU-76
2 MDF Industrial Buildings

Overall, Operation Unthinkable has been a success. I may still have models left to paint, but I have really cleared the decks of those awkward little bits and pieces that hang around unfinished. I'm not sure the same format will work with the projects that are left, but setting clear targets has definitely had an impact.

BATMAN MINIATURE GAME

Throughout the year, I've also been keeping on top of my Batman backlog and during 2015 I managed to complete the following models:

Batman Crew
Batman (Arkham Origins)
Batman (Frank Miller)
Robin (Tim Drake)
Red Hood,
Alfred Pennyworth
Black Canary
Spoiler (Clix)

Joker Crew
Joker (Arkham City)
Knife Clown
Pipe Clown

League of Assassins
Ra's Al Ghul (DKR)
3 Ninjas
Lady Siva (Clix)

Poison Ivy Crew
Poison Ivy
3 Plants

Free Agents
Victor Zsasz
3 Arkham Lunatics
4 Blackgate Prisoners
Ventriloquist (Clix)

Tokens & Terrain
4 Lamp Posts
4 Sewers
2 Riddle Markers
SWAT Van
2 Arkham Warning Signs

On top of this I've managed to attend 3 tournaments and one campaign day, recording my biggest successes with the Batman crew, but overall, winning more than I lost. Stats for the the year in competitive games are: Played 13, Won 7, Drew 2, Lost 4. I definitely want to get to more tournaments and events this year as they're great days out. I also haven't given up on convincing our little gaming group to play BMG a little more often, but I've been laying off for a bit.

BLOGGING

This year has been a great year for blogging and I've written my highest number of posts in a year since I began the blog. However, I am aware that back in 2011, I wrote 55 posts in only 7 months. This was severely helped by being part of a 'Tale of..' project with several other bloggers which kept me motivate and enthused. This year, Operation Unthinkable and the 6MMRPC project have helped get that motivation back, but both were severely affected by my return to work in Spetember.

I'm always really appreciative of the comments I receive on the blog and I'm trying to ensure that I reply to as many as I can.

GAMING

This year has seen some of our previously common games like Attack Wing and Flames of War take a bit of a back seat to new kids on the block like Imperial Assault and Dropzone Commander, both of which I really enjoy and would highly recommend. I've also tried a few other new games like Frostgrave (which I've not made my mind up about yet, and need to play outside of multi-player), Guildball (which I really want more games of to give me a reason to buy official miniatures) and the different variations of 7TV (there's just too much potential in this ruleset, so much to choose from). Bolt Action and BMG are still there, although Bolt Action had a bit of a hiatus during Dropzone fever, and BMG is almost exclusively something I play at tournaments.

In terms of looking forwards, Dropfleet Commander is due to hit us in the summer and we all backed the Kickstarter and have a stupid bucketload of miniatures arriving, hopefully in June. We also all bought the Kings of War Rules and are getting round to re-basing armies for it. We're going to give a Frostgrave campaign a go, and with the release of The Force Awakens, X-Wing fleets are being dusted off for the first time in a good long while. I want to do about ninety different things with 7TV, but mainly continue my solo 7ombieTV campaign. Games like Black Powder and Dreadfleet will likely continue to be one-offs, but good for multi-player fun.

RESOULTIONS

And here's the important bit. Theses are the gaming goals I'm going to commit to in the coming year:

1. Continue to set targets each month to maintain my motivation to work through my lead pile - format to be decided.

2. Complete at least three of the following projects:

• US War of 1812 for Muskets & Tomahawks
• Mid-War US Tank Company for Flames of War
• German Last Levy Army for Bolt Action
• 6mm ACW Union Army for Black Powder
• Rebase Wood Elf Army for Kings of War
• More heroes and villains for Marvel (oh and write some rules)
• Get DZC Resistance to 1500 points
• Penguin Crew and Two Face Crew for BMG

3. Respond to all comments on the blog and get back to commenting on other people's blogs.

4. Play in at least three BMG events.

5. Get a playable fleet painted for Dropfleet Commander at the same time as the others so that I'm not playing catch up like I am with DZC.

I'll be back to pictures and stuff next time. TTFN.

Assembling the Avengers

With the successful completion of a cell of Hydra terrorists, some heroes were desperately needed to prevent their nefarious schemes for world domination. So, like a one-eyed super-spy, I set about assembling the Avengers!

Enter Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, She-Hulk, Spider-Woman and...erm...Speed. Admittedly, it's not exactly the line-up from the movies, but my Avengers do all have pedigree as part of the team (or in one case, the Young Avengers).

My Spider-Woman is made from a Reaper Miniature from their Chronoscope line. The model makes for a good unofficial Spider-Woman model, although she shouldn't have her mouth covered, and probably has too much hair, but I like it. I'm quite pleased with the black and yellow detailing I've done on the suit. There's also plenty of gaming potential with this model as Spider-Woman has actually been a SHIELD-HYDRA triple agent, whilst at the same time being a Skrull infiltrator.

She-Hulk is another Reaper Chronoscope miniature, made from the appropriately named 'Incredible Woman'. Her costume is not exactly right, but I didn't want to use too much white on the model, so I kept it to her collar and cuffs...ahem...

On a separate note, this model stands significantly taller than most 28mm miniatures, and so would scale well with KM's 35mm miniatures and would be usable as a who range of female heroes and villans for whole their aren't currently models in BMG or SMG.

Black Widow, is my third Reaper figure. This one is Natalia, female secret agent - you'd be forgiven for thinking that Reaper have deliberately based this miniature on Black Widow, whose real name is Natasha. In my opinion this is a better, more dynamic pose than the official KM Black Widow miniature, and on that subject, I can highly recommend Reaper Miniatures. The castings and sculpting is excellent. What's more, the miniatures are all single piece. I just wish Reaper was more available in the UK.

Hawkeye, Iron Man and Speed have featured on the blog before and have been re-based. Hawkeye and Iron Man are from Crossover Miniatures, and although I've previously been very happy with them, these two are a bit clunky, and Iron Man is a bit small. There's a Reaper model that will make fore a better Iron Man that I might get, and I may have a go at putting together a more modern looking Hawkeye from my Wargames Factory survivors.

Speed is a Heroclix model. Technically, the model is Kid Flash, a DC character, but you'd be surprised at how similar DC and Marvel characters are sometimes.

I have a few other heroes to add to my Avengers, before I move on to other super teams that I've collected models for.

Keep Calm and Hail Hydra

Just when you thought I'd gone for good, I return stronger than before!

 

Apologies for the hiatus. We've been having our kitchen and dining room knocked through and done up, so the house has been a bit of a mess and I've not really had the space or time to get any painting done.

 

Anyway, remember some time ago, I began to work on a Marvel project using miniatures from a range of manufacturers? Well, Batman happened. Along with Operation Unthinkable, and a range of other projects I've just not had the motivation to get anything done.

 

Until now.

 

Knight Models have announce that they are releasing a Spider-Man Miniatures Game using the same mechanics as BMG, and the intial four factions will be: Spider-Man (and his Amazing Friends...that's not the official faction title, but in my head it is), Goblin Cult, S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA.

 

Guess who's got a Hydra gang all ready and waiting to go?

 

 

So, this week, I set about rebasing the models I'd already done, and painting up my four remaining Hydra goons. Apologies, once again for the quality of the photos; I'm still having trouble fnding a way to get decent pictures from my phone.

 

 

I've not done anything special with them as I like to keep block colours on my comic book stuff as I like the fact that (to me at least) it captures the four colour feel of the genre. I've switched the bases from 20mm flat bases to 30mm bevelled bases. Primarily this is to make them compatible with the SMG (I like that abbreviation), however, I've grown to prefer the bevelled bases for skirmish games. You'll also notice that I've gone for static grass on the bases. This is mainly to mask the raised bases on some of the miniatures and although it doesn't really match the urban environments many of them will be used in, the separation of the bevelled bases tends to make this not really matter.

 

The leaders. Red Skull is from 'What The?' Miniatures, a really small scale miniature company, with a tiny range of Weird War II sculpts. They used to have a not-Captain America and Bucky available, but they clearly had some form of C&D from Marvel about it as he's no longer available. Fortunately, the unpainted 'Herr Totenkopf' looks like any number of skull-headed villains in popular culture and is still present in the store. Madame Hydra/Viper has been made using the Wargames Factory Female Apocalypse Survivors plastic kit. I may end up replacing her with a better model, but she'll do for now. Finally, Wrecker has been converted from 'Ram Jam' from Crossover Miniatures. Even though Crossover provide alternate heads for their models, I needed to file off the horns from one of the options and drill a hole in the hand for his crowbar. I'm aware that Wrecker isn't actually part of Hydra, but my thinking is that he's exactly the sort of hired muscle they'd make use of.

 

The Hydra Goons are Paramilitary Goons from Crossover Miniatures too. They are clearly sculpted to emulate the classic Hydra costumes, but are generic enough to be argued as any type of minion. Crossover also do heavy weapons goons, a goon officer, a female goon and a surrendering goon (which might possibly be a nod to Bob, Deadpool's sidekick), which all might find themselves added to my cell in time.

 

So now I have a fully painted and based Hydra crew for SMG. I know that not only are there no rules for any Hydra forces yet, and it's entirely likely that the Hydra henchmen in the game will have more varied weaponary. What's more, I've no idea whether Red Skull or Viper will make an appearance, but they're both likely. However, even if I can't use these models for SMG, I've also worked out that they make a handy 30 ratings cast for 7TV, so they are destined to hit the table at some point.

 

All I need now are some heroes to stop Hydra's nefarious plans. I'd better get assembling...

 

Happy Zomtober!

It's that time of year again when Wargames bloggers around the world push their painting queue to one side to make way for the shambling dead.

I won't go through the rules again, regular readers know the score and it roughly boils down to, "I'm painting zombies this month and so are lots of other people!"

Other Zomtober bloggers might also suggest that I'm a little late with my first shambles. However, I'd like to point out that:

a) this is still technically the first week of Zomtober,

b) I was busy this week and have only just found time to paint,

c) and d)

So, without further ado, here's my first batch shuffling off the production line:

These are some Studio Miniatures Z-Clips plastic zombies I won in a competition run by Lord Siwoc (that's his real name...I'm pretty sure...) of the excellent Brains and Guts blog (see the sidebar).

The Z-Clips zombies are significantly better that the plastic male zombies from Wargames Factory I've done before. However, despite being better sculpts they are somewhat 'samey', with only for not-so-different bodies with interchangeable heads and legs, and with the exception of the guy with his face ripped off, the models are notably lacking the injuries by which they were transformed into zombies.

It's for this reason, and the chunky bases they're moulded with, that I'm glad I don't have a full box of 60 to get through. With only a couple more to go they won't make my horde too repetitive.

In other news, I didn't make any headway on my Dropzone Commander stuff and so no joker for me, but I have managed to incinerate my last remaining joker by buying a few Bolt Action vehicles at the Derby Wargames show, along with a petrol station from Ainsty Castings, which might make it into this month's festivities.

Next up is likely to be a survivor for my solo campaign, which might also get added to during Zomtober.

TTFN

Ready To Take On The World

The first part of my goal for this month is done!

I've completed all the necessary bits and pieces for the Batman Miniature Game Worldwide Tournament, the British leg of which is being held at Wollaton Hall, Nottingham, which was used as Wayne Manor in the Dark Knight trilogy.

Here's my team that's going to attempt to take on the world.

Batman (Arkham Origins) - a beast of a character (rightly so), whose goal is to put the hurt on as many enemies as possible with both Batarang and fist. His mobility and toughness, should keep him safe, but I need to stay aware of models that can put out a lot of hurt quickly, as I almost lost him to ninjas the last time I used him.

Catwoman - fast and agile, she's going to be focused on her Primary Objective: Loot trait, which enabled her to rack up between 10 and 12 VP's per game in the last tournament. She needs to avoid fights, and I need to remember that she can climb to escape pursuit.

Red Hood (Comics) - the eagle eyed will spot that this is a new model to my collection. Jason Todd was the second Robin, but was killed, resurrected, went mad, turned bad, then good and now pals around with Green Arrow's former sidekick Speedy. He's got the ability to deliver devastating close ranged attacks with his pistols, and so I'm hoping that he can ambush a high value Free Agent or take out a few henchmen per game.

Agent Ron - The only cop in Gotham smart enough to carry a sidearm. Ron is largely a defensive piece, ideal for hiding behind an objective and taking shots at those who approach to closely. To help him in this, I've given him some extra ammo.

Male and Female Cops - these two are pretty much of a muchness. The Male Cop is marginally more aggressive and the Female Cop is a tiny bit more defensive. Their are my objective grabbers, who will also seek to Arrest those taken down by Batman. The Male Cop has a Whistle to interfere with enemy movement, and the Female Cop had a Med Pack to help keep herself, ore someone else in the fight.

I've also had to get some new lampposts and sewers as Knight Models ruled that players could only use their products at their event. This is a fair enough decision, but I had a couple of gripes with it:

1. The decision was made late in the day and KM's distribution network is less than perfect, which meant getting hold of them in time has been a bit of a pain. I was let down by one supplier after a two week wait.
2. I don't like them. The sewer entrances are too bulky for what they're meant to be, and the lampposts are top heavy, awkward to put together and are mounted on base toppers (which I'm not a fan of). The lamps themselves aren't a regular shape either.
3. The come in packs of two lampposts and two sewers, yet the basic rules of the game require you to have three.

Overall, I feel I've had my arm twisted to buy something which is over-priced and I just don't think is good enough. But they're done now, so at least I won't have to fuss about future events.

Finally, my objectives. KM made a similar ruling about these needing to be official, but back-tracked when folk pointed out that their objectives pack doesn't come with enough riddle objectives (which would require purchasing a second pack for a single objective) and that their decision was a bit boring and stifled creativity. To their credit, they adjusted the rule to say that objectives made by companies which are producing items for BMG without permission (such as Counter Attack Bases, who made the question marks I used for my riddle objectives).

Therefore, I set about making a point about creativity. I've always preferred my Ammo objectives to the official ones, so that was fine. I added some gold coins to my Loot objective, as it was the one I was least happy with. Finally I made Riddle objectives which not only contained actual riddles (and clues to their answers), but might possibly be making a cheeky point about crews which aren't available for the tournament either due to being unable to field a 350 rep crew, or not being released yet, even though they featured heavily in a recent, rather successful, console game.

So that's me ready for the weekend. It's going to be a long day as it starts early and has unusually long gaps between games to allow people to fit in a tour of Wollaton Hall. If I'm honest, my hopes of overall success are fairly low as looking at some of the other crews people are using, I think I might find myself short-handed and out-gunned in some games. I'm aware that I was lucky with my match ups at the last tournament I went to, as in at least two of the games I had the gang better suited to the scenario. Even with Red Hood taking over from the ever useless Robin, I suspect that I'll still struggle to cause enough damage in some games.

However, the goal is to have fun, win at least one game and meet some people I've only spoken to online. Looking at the prize pool for the event, I suspect that everyone will be walking away with something, and in fact, if I'm in actually danger of winning, I might throw my last game, as I have no space for the first prize, which is a massive MDF Arkham Asylum!

Tune in next week for a tournament report and and update on how I've got on with the Dropzone Commander models I wanted to get done. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

Getting Back in the Fight

After a brief hiatus in my painting productivity, I'm finally getting back in the groove. This time of year always has this effect as the start of a new school year beckons, my painting output drops, and having not set myself a clear target this month didn't help with that.

What I needed was a deadline, and two have come along at once.

Firstly, after our initial forays into Dropzone Commander, the 'new game arms race' has begun in earnest as we all rush to add new threats to our forces.

First up for me is an M3 Alexander heavy command tank.

This unit packs a hefty punch and is the one unit in my army that can offer a serious threat to buildings and enemy heavy armour. Sadly, this makes it a massive target for artillery fire, and so far I've found it a bit of a race to get the Akexander to have an effect on the game before it's inevitably destroyed.

The other element that this unit brings to my army is that it houses my cousin commander which opens up the use of command cards to add another layer of strategy to the game.

It's a big beast, as you can see from the picture above, but it's slow and I'm wondering about the validity of keeping it aboard it's Lifthawk for another turn to help get the Alexander further into the action.

I've got a few more units to paint this month: an additional Lifthawk, some Freerider bikers and a couple of Cyclone attack helicopters. As such, I've definitely burned one of my three remaining jokers on Dropzone Commander. My goal is to get these done before the end of the month and before I buy anything else.

The other project I have is this:

In two weeks I'll be going to Wollaton Hall  (which was used as Wayne Manor in the Nolan Batman films), to play in the first official national BMG tournament.

Not only do I have to get another model painted for this, I also need to get some official lampposts, sewers and objectives done as KM have ruled that you have to use their stuff in their event. This in itself is not a problem, but I really could have done with more notice on this requirement as with just a fortnight to go I'm still waiting for the stuff I've ordered to arrive.

However, having spent more money on what I need, that's another joker gone, leaving me on just one. I consider myself to have succeeded this month if I can get all the BMG stuff I need for the tournament done as well as the models for Dropzone Commander.

Busy, busy, busy...

Building for the Future

A bit of a slow week for me. I e not actually managed to get any painting done. However, that doesn't mean that progress hasn't been made.

This is my new card Dropzone Commander Ruinscape terrain that I managed to grab for a tenner in my FLGS, Wargames Emporium. The reason I got it so cheap (RRP £30) is that it was second hand and incomplete. I've only got 15 tiles of 24, and 9 buildings of 20.

Although this leaves me unable to do a 4'x4' board as the rules recommend (nothing that a colour photocopier won't fix), my table is 3'x4' which will be plenty big enough whilst my forces grow. Also, I currently have no small buildings, but again, this is eniminently fixable given that. Hawk Wargames offer their building for free download.

As well as building in card, I've also been building in MDF.

This is partially finished Public House from Timeline Miniatures that I bought at Triples just over a year ago.

It has lots of nice details and features including internal walls, fittings in the barroom and a removable upper floor.

My only gripe would be that the fitting points are so snug that once I'd sprayed the parts, they upper floor didn't go together as evenly as it should and so took a bit of trimming to make it slide in neatly. Also, the instructions are a little vague and I got one of the supports for the upper floor in the wrong place and had to improvise another from a soar bit of MDF.

In addition, I've also put together a couple of Sarissa kits that I got for my birthday this year.

Sarissa are, in my opinion, amongst the best MDF kits around and this workshop/office and pump house are no exception, requiring very little glue to hold them together.

I was a little surprised that the pump house doesn't have a removable roof like most of their buildings, but given that it's so small, I can't se that being a major problem.

The workshop has a removable roof and upper floor and a really nice access stairway. It's worth noting that the detailing on the steps did cause a bit of a problem as the corners on some snapped off when taking them off the sprue and thus required me to trim the rest to a similar shape. However, this may be because I let my daughter do this bit... :)

All in all, things are moving on quite well. I'm aware this month hasn't been as productive as others, but I knew that would be that case and that was the reason I took the pressure off myself in terms of deadlines.

A Growing Collection

Progress has slowed a little on the Batlog as we've been out and about enjoying being not at work. However, I've still managed to get a few models done.

And so, I present my Poison Ivy gang...

I've kept thing pretty simple with these models, just using a very limited palette with washes and dry brushing.

The casting of the plants is a bit rough and ready, and I haven't spent as much time as I should cleaning them up, however, as plants, a bit of unevenness isn't too much of a problem.

Ivy herself caused me a few headaches as I was going to keep her legs bare, but I couldn't seem to stop her legs from looking grubby and so I changed tack and went for a look similar to the 1990's animated series.

Additionally, her right eye was a bit off and so I had to keep going back to it and I'm still not convinced her face is right. I also want to add some foliage to the base. On the plus side though, this particular model is unlikely to see a lot of table time, simply because the Arkham version I've had for a year is so much more scary, and makes better use of the plants.

I'm glad to have got these done though, and I'm happy enough with them. I suspect I may need to buy a Classic Harley Quinn to allow me to properly do a do a 'Gotham Girls' crew.

In other news, I've burned a couple of my 6MMRPC jokers recently. Firstly, I've begun to expand my Dropzone Commander army by buying a command unit for my Resistance army. I want the standard M3 Alexander tank, but my FLGS didn't have any in stock so instead I went for this:

It's actually a special character model, but it's technically the same tank as I wanted, but pimped up a bit. In game I'll use it as a standard Alexander, but for a few pence more, I got the command cards to allow me to use the special character should I want to at any point.

The second joker I burned was on these:

They're actually for my daughter. North Star Miniatures have these listed as 'Young Fire Elementalists', but with a different paint job, and a switch from fire to ice, they seem to be a pretty good, totally accidental, representation of these two:

What an amazing coincidence...

Operation Unthinkable: Muskets & Tomahawks

Another month, another target met. I'm doing quite well with all this.

This month I set myself the target painting all of the Woodland Indians I'd originally bought to play Musket & Tomahawks, but later got co-opted into my perpetually stalled War of 1812 project. 20 Warriors, 2 Chiefs and 5 Villagers stood in my way.

At the beginning of the year, when I began Operation Unthinkable, I'd mentally earmarked these miniatures as destined for eBay, but the timely intervention of Dave, from the Spider Web of History blog, inspired me to save the tribe from this ignominious fate and get them done.

To celebrate this feat, I decided to do a little photo shoot of the tribe launching an attack on a small group of settlers in their farmstead. The settlers are putting up a fight, but are hopelessly outnumbered and regretting their decision to not bother with any fences (I need to make some of them). Their fate looks sealed.

I'm quite pleased with what I've done, and along with my settlers, I clearly have the makings of a scenario. However, what I don't have is an opponent for Muskets & Tomahawks. Matt has said he'd give it a go, but that would require him to add to his massive total of seven British infantry, whic have so far taken him four years.

What's more likely is that later in the year, I'll set myself the goal of painting up my War of 1812 Americans and use them for a couple of games.

I'm guessing that this qualifies for another Joker from 6MMRPC, but I've no plans to spend yet.

August is hopefully going to be a big month. As I'm not at work, I'm going to take the opportunity to take a chunk out of my Batman backlog (hereafter to be known at 'the Batlog'), which should include at least a dozen models, three buildings and numerous other pieces of scenery. As ever with the Batman stuff, nothing is being got rid of if I don't get it all done, but if I succeed, I might be burning a few of my Jokers restocking.