Monthly Mini Porn Issue 7

Each month I feature some of the minis that have caught my attention in the recent past, minis that one day I might get to own and paint. In the meantime, I just look and admire them from afar.

Regular readers will know of my fondness for dwarf minis, so no prizes for guessing they would feature yet again in my monthly motley collection of minis. The surprising thing about these from Copplestone Castings is that they are just 15mm in scale. Lovely design and detail, makes me want to start gaming at this scale.

Imagine these figures, small as they are, combined with these scenic bits from Scibor Miniatures. Regiments of tiny dwarfs fighting in a landscape dominated by gigantic stone statues of their ancestors, it would make a wonderful spectacle.

But who would the dwarfs fight? Again, Copplestone Castings have some potential enemies in their barbarians range. This is one set of mini porn I am seriously considering laying down my cash for!

That's it for this issue, short and sweet you might say, but nothing else has got me excited this month. 

Oh Yeah!

It's an exciting day for me. After all these years of using half a dining table for my painting, I finally have a separate room dedicated to just me, my paints and my camera. It sounds a bit pretentious to call it a studio, but it's as near as I will ever get, so what the heck. The studio is officially open. Oh yeah!

It's been a solid two days of sorting, shifting and re-organising all the junk collected over nearly two decades of geekery. I hate tidying, but the feeling at the end of all that tedious effort is so good. I have re-discovered a few things I had forgotten about, like this picture, on the back of an  old copy of 2000 ad.

Best of all, I have re-organised my glass cabinet and it now looks pretty good, stuffed full of my favourite minis and three of my armies, old and new. I want to get some pictures of it posted in the next few days, before it gets dusty and untidy again.

A return to Chaos

I might not be playing much Warhammer these days, but that doesn't deter me from painting. I have started work on some chaos units again. My rough plan is to build a unit or three over the summer months, then paint them in autumn. It's a bit risky doing this, as the number of half painted or just assembled units in my army can attest, but at least it's progress of sorts.

I thought I would start on some Khorne marauders. I have a few of  the old metal figures with flails, which will be retooled into axes. There's also a few plastic models to add variety to the rank and file. Just half a dozen done at the moment, but it's a start.

Dark Thoughts

Recently I have been sorting through my piles of Warhammer models, thinning out the stuff that will never get painted, and planning how to expand my main armies.

This dark elf belongs to the first category. If the whole range was as good as the corsairs and cold one riders, I would have been hooked. However, like so many of the armies, it's a mix of the old and the new, with the old looking really dated and poorly sculpted compared to what can be done.

The figure actually belongs to my son. A few years ago we enjoyed the occasional game together, he liked the dark elves so I bought him a battalion box and a few other bits. He assembled the models, even making this conversion of Lokhir Fellheart from the plastic corsairs (I filled in a couple of gaps on the shoulders with grey stuff). But I have finally come to admit that he does not really have an interest in the game, and with my own interest on the wane, the dark elves are to be sold. However, I thought it would be a shame to let this figure go, so I have painted it up, as a souvenir of good times gone by.

If I had unlimited time, pots of cash, and more interest in the game, I would have been tempted to build an army myself, based around cold one riders and corsairs. Instead, I have recently been looking at my collection of chaos warriors and planning some new units for that army. I also have a half completed unit of goblins that I really would like to get back to at some stage. For me, Warhammer is not dead yet, it's just not as all-consuming as it once was. On the one hand, this makes me a little bit regretful, but it does also make it easier to thin out the piles of unpainted and hidden models.

Men and Dwarfs

 Here's the latest batch of 10mm stands for the Battle of Five Armies game. These are the plastic dwarfs and men that are included in the box set. Now that I have this lot painted, I can try out a few games against the goblin wolf riders and wargs that I painted a couple of weeks ago.

The men are inhabitants of Esgaroth, the town built on the lake in The Hobbit. I wanted them to be fairly rustic in colours, these are hunters and fishermen rather than fully trained soldiers. Even so, the spear armed troops get unified shields, it's easier to identify them on the battlefield. The banner is a house or castle on waves, to symbolise Lake Town.

The dwarfs I painted in my usual earthy dwarf palette - muted greens, reds and browns. Their flags are a stylised axe and what is supposed to be a dragon, though up close it's more like a rabbit! Luckily, at 10mm these are flaws only I can see. The three dwarfs on the left are Thorin and his companions.