"It's a fez, i wear a fez now, fezes are cool"

The crooked Dice minis sculpted by Kev White..... planning on doing the Steve B Heresy ones too...but the Amy arrived to late for the original purpose....

Ok... So My other half ..(@carmel141 on Twitter) came to stay.... and I thought I'd do something for her....she's a Doctor who/Torchwood fan and after Andrew (pockets2020) pointed out the crooked Dice minis to her a while she said "Gawuff I want one" ..... now i'm not the worlds best painter but gave it a go for her ..unknowing to her...but i have been teasing her and giving clues over the last month 0;)

Anyway... i ended up turning the idea into a bigger teasing Game and Designed a Pandoricawee ...

The old box within a box trick.... 8 stages of teasing ...with little meaningful special gifts and creative poetic cryptic messages along the way...until the last box...stage 8 was met.."The Pandoracawee" full of creative whovian treasure

i backed out of the evil plan of putting a post it note in the last box saying...the final gift is back home waiting for you ...hehe that would have just been teasing :wink:

the pandoricawee.... if you watched doctor who then you know what the pandorica was...... it was a box created to hold the doctor...... i tend to call carmel ..Cawee :oops: *blushes* so added that to the end..... the last box... i made to look like the pandorica...but with special crypic writing ...english said in welsh written in the greek alphabet.... the last box the pandoricawee contained a miniature 11th doctor complete with a fez and mop and an amy pond miniature....that i painted/made for carmel

each stage/ box had a card with a meangful little gift and a hand written poem thing..the gifts were a couple of crafted necklace things made by me and gem stone things each with meanings to us..... was meant to drag it out and tease until carmel got to the last box and the proper gifts... a captain jack torchwood mug, doctor who pin badges (she collects badges ) and the two doctor who miniatures i painted.....

so enough embarrassing babble here are the minis.....




i added the mop and fez



each figure has a removeable glass dome dust cover too

Your Questions answered about the Wargames hobby

... so I've been getting a few questions and comments about the sizes and stuff of some of my miniatures... so I'll try and explain and answer some of your questions here ......

What is this Wargaming?
it would take ages to explain about miniature Wargaming so here's the wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_wargaming ;)
most people think its all dungeons and dragons.... they couldn't be more wrong.... i've never played either of those.... I grew up on historical miniatures.... Zulu wars.. Napoleonic’s, dark ages.... and ww2....... only recently got into the Sci Fi and fantasy stuff.....

i rarely play games with them.... the fun bit for me is the making stuff and painting it... not sitting at a table rolling dice going ...oh, is that a hit??..... do i have to roll again?..... 5 hours later... erm attack bonus roll?...you say what?? ;) however i do sometimes play a game when my dad or someone forces me too lol

a lot of gamers don't game these days... there are many painters out there who paint and collect for fun or for competitions, where you can win some big prizes like money, miniatures and maybe even bananas ..or just the vanity of saying ah i'm the Diorama of doom blu - tack award winner 2008 ...kneel before me.... i am you know... no really i am ;) .....

Did ya make em????
No.... well not most of them... i have made some bits myself though, and converted some bought miniatures......all miniatures have been painted by me though..... many people don't realise that you can buy rather a lot of different miniatures out there... it's not just all Warhammer and Dungeons and dragons....
There are zombies, demons...historical stuff from any period you can think of.... TV shows like doctor who, Scooby doo...... girls with guns.... naked chicks ;) ....dragons, monsters etc etc....

think of it and it's probably out there...... roughly i have about 500ish 28mm figurines and 1000s of 15mm ... most of them unpainted in lots of different genres and periods..... us gamers tend to joke.. that's another one for the lead mountain..... we tend to buy 100s of the things and never get around to painting them.... we are addicted to lead ;)

What are they made of??
most are made of a lead tin alloy called white metal some refer to it as pewter.... and they come unpainted....

there are also plastic miniatures out there and their more expensive detailed cousin.... resin ...... i tend to call them poly miniatures.... most plastics and resins are made from polymers hence the name....

i'm not a fan of poly for miniatures.... much prefer metal..... to me poly is cheap, brittle and associated with children’s toys.... call me a snob but its true ;) poly has less weight to metal too, is a pain in the rear to paint, paint won't stick and peals off too easily..... also from a collectors and investment point of view plastic devalues where as metal goes up..... in theory even if i don't do any thing with the lead mountain... I’ll have made money, at least on the "scrap value" .... in theory ;)

although resin holds better detail than metal ... i think it is far better for scenery and vehicles than it is for miniatures...

something to think about..... white metal contains lead...... in theory shouldn't they withstand a nuclear war?? won't i be sheilded from the radiation if i surround my house with the things? ;) i'm safe from Nuclear war...are you??? unless of course it's dirrect hit.... or friendly fire... :/

"Say NO to Poly"

Where can i get them??
Google is your friend ;) ..... there's far too many places to list.... if you want some, type 28mm miniatures into Google and go from there.... or ask me if you want something specific and i tell you where to get it :)

Gosh they are tiny!!!!....
Well yes and no.... lol .. most of the miniatures seen on this blog are known to wargamers as "28mm miniatures" although i have some "15mm" and even "6mm" so in the scale of things these are quite big...

most 28mm miniatures are around 1:60 scale or at least that’s the scale i work to..... ie.. if a human man is 6 feet tall in real life he'll be 30mm (3cms) ... so 1 foot = 5mm

Sizes and scales tend to vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and gamer to gamer....... some say 1:56 scale others say 1:64th scale..........
sizes for a 28mm mini human male. Range from an average overall size of 25mm-about 35mm depending on who sculpts them.... gamers rule of thumb......if it looks right it will do ;)

the pictures below give an idea of the different sizes of the models from several mini manufactures

Click image for a bigger picture

NATO Vehicles

An Update on the vehicles..
So.... The Real military Nato paint arrived and the models have been coated with Infra-red Reflecting (IRR), NBC Warfare Restistant NATO Green paint ;) the stuff was quite fumey, took ages for the smell to go even after being outdoors for a while, gave me a bit of a headache, but they seem to be ok now :)

Click for a bigger image

so..i started to do a bit of work on them..... started to paint the snatch land rover, and made some window grills/cages out of some wire and mesh....
Also started to make some glass windows for the pinzgauer out of some thin see through plastic sheet...

Click for bigger image

so the plan now is to continue painting them..... :)

Whomobiles......

UNIT have called for vehicle support, and it has arrived :D .......
Following a thread on the lead adventure forum regarding a snatch land rover model from SandS models, i decided to check them out and perhaps purchase one for use with my British UN/UNIT type troops..... so i emailed Shaun fom SandS for some further information..... who sent me his range lists..... i soon discovered that not only did they do a snatch land rover but a larger range of 28mm modern vehicles in 1:60 scale........ finally i managed to come away with 9 models instead of just the one land rover as originally planned..... could have bought more but had to use some self control and say no... next time ;) lol

the models were as follows..
1:60 ..28mm modern...
1x BRITISH SNATCH LANDROVER
1x LAND ROVER 110 CLOSED TOP
1x LAND ROVER WOLF WMIK
1x CVRT SCORPION
1x CVRT SCIMITAR
1x CVRT SPARTAN APC
1x PINZGAUER 4X4
1x M113 APC
1x VAB 6X6 APC

so they arrived a few days ago (click for bigger picture)

The models themselves were clean castings and quite easy to put together, only glued my fingers to things once or twice......overall quite satisfied with them and will purchase more as and when new models are released or if i feel the need to buy more

so i quickly couldn't wait to get started on them.... and 4 hours later they had all been cleaned and made up ready for priming and painting :)


so now over the next week or so the plan is to paint them..... i've decided to go for the NATO black and green camo scheme rather than the white of the UN ...... and call me mad but i've purchased some real NATO Green military paint to paint them with lol...

so i'll try and keep you updated as and when i get stuff done..

for now.... Be seeing you

More 1980s UN/UNIT

Thought i'd post up some stuff i've been painting over the last couple of weeks...
i bought several packs of mofo brits from gripping beast at the crusade show in penarth on the 31st jan...... so i've been painting them up slowly to be used as UN/UNIT types in Doctor who games.....
still have 12 more to paint... As explained in an earlier blog post i went for the old UN blue beret..which UNIT did actually wear in the 7th doctors adventure called Battlefied..... I might get some more too and paint them with the mustard khaki berets....


and a group photo with the 11th Doctor and a Banana friend

UN / UNIT

It's been a while since i updated... :/ I've have had a bit of a loss of hobby mojo recently and haven't seemed to be motivated to do much since before Christmas...... today i got my mojo back and painted 5 Brits from the gripping beast mo-fo range, i picked up an army pack at the penarth wargames show "Crusade" jan 30th 2010..... the idea was to use them as classic UNIT troops for my Doctor who miniatures, but after i had painted the old classic khaki berets i decided i didn't like them, so i went for UN blue.....



Also on the painting table today was.... Banana Kev..... who is sold through Hasslefree Miniatures, and was sculpted/dressed by me. He was part of the Dress a Kev comp Hasslefree held back in 2009, turns out that mine was picked by the Hasslefree White children as the funniest of all of the entries..... :)

why i sculpted kev in a banana costume is down to a long running joke over on the forum of doom, i apparently have an obsession with bananas after i sculpted a rather joyful looking dancing banana based on a well known dancing banana smiley... lol ... why i gave kev a pistol though, i don't know lol.....

Who army so far

Just a quick update... i'm currently painting a whole load of Daleks..72 of them :/ so far i've finished 34...... here's a quick picture of my finished who stuff so far......




the paintings not great, just a quick tabletop job, hoping to finish the daleks by christmas for a planned doctor who game :)

still have to paint about 40 daleks 6 doctors 6 masters, a few sontarans and a guy in a chair called dave ross ;)

oh and half a douzen cyberman and judoon :/