Restarting StarVigia

I used to play a lot of sci-fi RPG back in the day at various clubs and amongst friends at each others' houses. It was mostly a very much amended version of the original small black book Traveller which was renamed Auslander by our referee due to those changes, and the occasional tabletop battle. As the years went by, real life got in the way and we all moved away to different parts of the country. Our face-to-face gaming sessions dwindled so much so that the small group of us that were left began to play via email (PBeM). Although it is slower paced than face-to-face, it is still just as immersive.

These PBeM games mainly moved to new "eras" from sci-fi and consisted of a variety of fantasy/faux-history strategy games, as well as games that were higher level that involved manoeuvring forces around a map culminating in occasional face-to-face tabletop battle games. But, that said, Auslander was slowly developed into StarVigia by our referee, so the few of us gamers who are left still manage to get our sci-fi fix.

Free Space Photo from t'Internet

Eventually, though, the remaining group of us have had to settle on only playing RPGs via email. The latest iteration of StarVigia I have played on and off for about four or five years, but I have played prior to this latest resurgence and I think its first iteration was several years prior to this whilst we still managed to occasionally play face-to-face.

My particular character for this scenario, Thomas Aquinas, first saw adventure back in 2020, but there have been delays in playing recently due to real life getting in the way. I had also played one or two other characters by email prior to him and also a number of characters post-Auslander whilst we still played face-to-face.

I won't go into too much detail about this particular StarVigia game here, only to say that gaming takes many forms, and depending upon our individual circumstances, we must play what we can, where we can.

Off on a bit of tangent now as this is mainly just a free-form chat post - I am very lucky that I have had a very full gaming life. It started when I was a mere nipper at primary school in the 1970s with Basic Dungeons and Dragons, which then moved onto a solid group of friends I met at a local gaming club with whom I played with (all sorts of games ranging from Runequest and the sci-fi games mentioned above) for decades slowly moving from meeting several times a week, sometimes with up to 30 players over weekend sessions, to just a handful of us playing by email today. Since having a family, my two sons have played several tabletop games with me and I have had the fortune of meeting a number of other Dungeons and Dragons groups in the last decade or so, including the latest group where we play online TTRPGs.

On top of all of this, I spend a lot of my time solo-gaming and thinking about gaming. This blog is my repository for games played, figures painted and thoughts I have about gaming. It keeps me going.

Alien - Hope's Last Day

This weekend we tried a new RPG/boardgame - Alien. The RPG is from Free League Publishing, who produce many great RPGs including The One Ring, Dragonbane, Mork Borg and Symbaroum to name but a few. This game is a one-off scenario that details the final hours of Hadley's Hope as it falls victim to the xenomorph incursion depicted in the film Aliens. Six players sat around the gaming table to suffer the stress testing of our GM.

Alien RPG - Hope's Last Day

The game is very much based on the mounting stress a character undergoes as a scenario plays out, using a very neat d6 mechanism to portray the stress and what can be achieved whilst under the influence of fear.

Another promo picture of the adventure

Anyway, onto the scenario, which takes place on the mining colony of Hadley's Hope - LV426 (from the log of Samuel Sung - mechanic)...

Dramatis Personae (to be edited as and when I get further information)...

G : Science Officer

J : ?
K : Chief mechanic
M : Samuel Sung (Mechanic)
R : Base team leader
W : ?

The grinding sound that came from the underside of the tractor got worse as we headed away from Hadley's Hope. We were ten clicks out when the drive train gave up altogether. We tried to call base but all we got was static on the comms.

As it was no good trying to carry on, and we were closer to home than our destination, we decided that we would suit up and walk back to Hadley's Hope. The walk was wearing on some of our number due to the harsh weather and terrain, but we all made it back in one piece.

The South Gate looked OK on our arrival although it was closed; the green light was on but things were very quiet. We pressed the button and opened the door, noticing a strange clear, sticky substance on the hand rail of the entrance.

Inside the base, the lights were flickering, a sure sign that the main generator was experiencing issues. As we stepped over the threshold, we noticed that the main entrance floor grid had a massive corroded hole in it - it looked like the corrosion also affected several levels below. We found a few cones from the storage rooms to either side and marked it off as unsafe and proceeded to enter the base, closing the door behind us to shut out the worst of the weather.

Whilst exploring the Geolab, Sterile Lab and the Survey Office, we noticed that there were many half-drunk, still warm cups of coffee and half-eaten donuts - meaning that the rooms were probably only abandoned thirty minutes ago. Some of the team were hungry, so they gathered what sustenance they could and ate their fill. We also noticed a lamp on the floor of the Sterile Lab with a little blood on it, and an air vent that looked like it had exploded inwards in the Survey Office had some of that clear goo smeared on it.

We left J in the Survey Office whilst the rest of us headed towards the stairs (we didn't trust the lifts what with the current electrical issues). He returned to us very quietly and with a shocked, pale face to tell us that in a chair in the corner of the office by one of the computer terminals he noticed a dead body - the face was half-missing - but the person was identifiable as Miranda Reynolds, a Weyland-Yutani executive, from her pass card.

We made it to half-way up the stairs when the lights suddenly went out completely. This caused a few of the team to cry out but the emergency lighting kicked in a few moments later.

It was as the emergency lights began to switch on that the movement tracker carried by R sprang into life; there was movement in the ducts above us. We tried to get a bearing on it but as we passed the morgue, the movement stopped.

We managed to get to Ops without any further incidents but found that all of the systems were dead. A quick tweak managed to get the CCTV working but everywhere we looked was dark and we could make out very little except for a shroud-covered body on the table in the morgue and a brief glimpse of a humanoid shape that moved in the surgery room along with a worm-like thing.

Once we got a few more terminals up and running we were able to interrogate the system to see what had happened. We were able to ascertain that the Ops manager reported 34 people missing, many staff were locked in their rooms and that there were three or four creatures on the loose. We all looked at each other at this point and wondered whether the things that we saw on the CCTV were these creatures. We tracked the identity chips implanted into everyone's bodies who work here only to find that almost all were located by the heat exchangers - had they gone there to hide? K and I began to weld the vents to the room shut as we were a bit skittish about the mention of creatures on the loose and the movements within the ducts displayed on the tracker earlier.

It was also reported that Weyland-Yutani staff were present; Miranda Reynolds and Theodora Kominska. We had found Miranda but there had been no sign of anyone else so far. Theodora had made an entry in the station log stating that a parasite had been removed from a person's face, but the person had died. The specimen was in a suspended animation tube in the Stasis Room.

As the Stasis Room and med lab were close by we decided to go take a look but picked up more motion on the tracker in the maintenance centre, in the morgue and the med lab. Suddenly, one of the welded air-duct covers flew open and there were some massive bangs on the door to Ops, but as the cameras were down for the corridor outside we could not see what was causing it. K began to weld the door shut to keep whatever it was out there as the door began to buckle. The route to the med lab was easiest so we headed there only to find the room in an absolute mess; a large egg shaped thing was settled on the floor, a metal table was half-melted and two legs stuck out from below it.

As we looked at the legs, we noticed that whoever they belonged to was still alive; it was Theodora Kominska. She was in a frightful state and R, the only other woman in the team, had to slap her to get her out of her hysteria as nothing else would work. Whilst Theodora was being administered to we investigated the egg and looked for other ways out of the lab. The egg seemed to have something moving around in it. It was only when Theodora was fully removed from under the table that we noticed another opened egg was under there with her.

Whilst I was waiting to see what we would do next, some of that clear goo we had seen earlier dripped onto me as I was stood under one of the air ducts. This, and the fact that the banging at the Ops door had stopped gave us the wherewithal to make for the other exit from the room only for it to suddenly burst open. K slammed it shut again and locked it whilst we decided what to do. A small xenomorph ran around the room, over the table and disappeared into an air duct. It all went quiet.

Taking Theodora by the hand K exited the room with a curse and headed towards the stairs to get out of the base and away from the danger. Unfortunately, the large xenomorph that had been banging on the Ops room door only moments ago returned from the stairwell at that same moment. R shot at it with her bolt gun but the xenomorph shrugged off the projectiles. W was stood rooted to the spot so I took the only other weapon we had from him and shot the creature again. The xenomorph grabbed R and then, with some weird internal mandible, ripped her face off. This caused J and G to run away in terror (J to the Maintenance Centre and G back into the med lab).

Part-way through the scenario we are attacked by a xenomorph

It was at this point that the way was clear for K, W and I to run past the xenomorph whilst it dealt with Theodora in its grisly manner. Luckily, K had grabbed Theodora's pass card on the way out of the lab, so we could get onto the shuttle parked a short distance away on the landing pad.

The three of us got downstairs without any further incidents, and to the main entrance when there was a massive explosion from the Ops centre. G had managed to set off a seismic charge to blow out the windows in order to escape, but the only place he had to go was the roof.

We found a number of tractors outside in order to drive to the landing pad, but it took a few attempts to get one of them going. Just as we pulled away we saw G on the roof being attacked by several small xenomorphs, and a basic synthetic droid at the main South Door. We did not wait for it as we drove to the landing pad.

The gateway to the pad was locked so W got out and went into the gatehouse in order to try to open the gate just as another tractor smashed straight through it. W quickly jumped back onto the tractor and we followed what turned out to be J and the aforementioned android to the pad itself. We had to climb the metal steps to the pad above us but just as we got to the level top several of the small alien creatures jumped us. I was at the back so most of them got onto me and the android but K, W and J got into the shuttle.

This was when my main directive cut in. I had to save the xenomorphs at all costs, so I picked up two of them and flung them into the slowly closing airlock ramp without any of the ship's inhabitants knowing. I then tried to shoot out the windows of the shuttle with the bolt gun I had picked up but the plexi-glass was too tough.

I watched the shuttle take off knowing that I had secured two xenomorphs aboard, and the base was now overrun by them. The company would be pleased with my work.

Addendum: It turned out K was also an artificial person, and when the shuttle took off, with only two stasis couches, he volunteered to not go into one. W and J got into their couches and perished at the hands of K who found a nest of xenomorphs already aboard the shuttle.

Gaming Weekend 2 - Alien and D&D 5e

This weekend just gone, I was invited for a second weekender gaming session with my fellow D&D Thursday Nighters. This time round we got to play a couple of different games away from the ongoing Saltmarsh campaign. First off, we immersed ourselves into the sci-fi genre with an Alien RPG/boardgame, before returning to the fantasy realms with the first section of another D&D 5e adventure; but this time with some pre-generated characters.

For both games we had a GM and six players, although towards the end of the D&D adventure we lost two of the players and had to continue on without them. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a list of the character names, so I will have to refer to them either by their class or player's initial in this summary write-up. Hopefully, the DM can supply me with a list of the characters in each game and I will be able to add them to the after action reports on these soon; right after the write-up of last Thursday's Saltmarsh outing.

The Alien RPG/boardgame was called something like Hope's Last Day, and it involved a bunch of terra-formers trying to make sense of what happened to their home base when they returned from an aborted mission to the out. They returned to Hadley's Hope a few days before the colonial marines arrived on the scene; they are the last survivors (other than those in the Aliens film), and this is their last few hours. We each played a character that had their own agenda for the final few hours of the colony's existence.

Hadley's Hope LV-426 is the scene for this RPG/boardgame

The Alien game's characters were all pre-generated handouts:

G : Science Officer

J : ?
K : Chief mechanic
M : Samuel Sung (Mechanic)
R : Base team leader
W : ?

The D&D adventure was the first part of the Waterdeep : Dragon Heist campaign. Our characters were all 2nd level for this game. If we take this forward, we will most likely rename, or at least amend, the names of our characters.

Waterdeep - a new D&D 5e campaign

The D&D game's characters were also pre-generated:

G : Wizard - (had to leave early)

J : Fighter - (had to leave early)
K : Ranger
M : Rexius Trannyth (Bard)
R : Zorrion Oakwood (Rogue)
W : Cleric

Next up should be the latest Saltmarsh campaign session, followed by write-ups of the Alien and Waterdeep adventures.

Sci-fi Play By Email

Over the years I have played many sorts of games; board games, pen and paper role playing games, wargames with miniatures, play-by-email strategy games and play-by-email role playing games.

I have covered most types of those games on this blog at some time or another, but I don't recall mentioning or commenting on the RPG by email games I occasionally get involved in.

So, there is a bit of a change of pace with this post. This one actually relates to some gaming I am currently involved in! A few weeks back I began playing in a new campaign with a brand new character in a play-by-email sci-fi role playing game called StarVigia - designed by my friend Colin (the referee). It is a gritty low-level/low-life adventure game where the PCs work hard to extract themselves from a life of poverty and petty crime, and ultimately (sometimes spectacularly) fail in true future-noir fashion. The turn-around time for each "move" is approximately a week, and the scenario has been set up for my character who is an out-of-work, down on his luck, ex-planetary marine corp type.

Below are a few scenes put together by Colin from his extensive sci-fi miniatures collection that shows what we used to get up to in our face-to-face games of yesteryear. All are 15mm and the scenery etc. is created and painted by him.

A showdown between a gang of heavies and a local biker gang at Colita's Bar...

And what could be a rude awakening for a security force arriving after the alarms went off over an intruder alert at a top secret laboratory in the outback of some desolate world in the Outer Rim...

This sudden delve back into sci-fi gaming has renewed my interest in all things space related, so I am about to dig out my old star system and world creation notes in order to update them with the latest scientific facts and figures on exo-planets and their star systems.

That said, all the new scientific discoveries in our own solar system recently may make this quite difficult to boil down to a few dice-rolls as commented by Colin, but I will update the rules and see if I can perhaps open a spreadsheet to make creating systems easier. Up until now, it has all been rolling tons of dice, cross-checking tables, adding modifiers and so on - a very manual and time consuming process that I will streamline, but Excel may help me automate a lot of that. I am not a computer programmer in any way, shape or form, but I would like to try to write something that will collate all of the system stats, display a table of details and allow for a graphical representation of all the system components to be created.

More on StarVigia and the exploits of Thomas Aquinas in a future post.

The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking

As far as I can tell, Roger Waters did not have Vogon Constructor Fleets and Bowls of Petunias in mind when he wrote the song on his best selling album. However, as a fan of Douglas Adams and the H2G2 series of radio plays, books and TV series (I didn't get around to seeing the film funnily enough - one for DVD methinks) I snapped up these miniatures by Denizen when they first came out way back when.

I just finished painting them today and thought I would throw them up onto the blog for all to see. These were/are a small range of figures and only included the five main Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy characters and some kind of Space Beagle (which I did not buy at the time) when I last looked, but that may very well have changed since then.

Here are the Hitch Hikers ...

First up is Arthur Dent sans sandwich...

Second up is Ford Prefect - thumb outstretched in the hope of attracting the attention of passing space traffic...

Marvin the Paranoid Android, brain the size of a planet but only used to fetch the tea and open doors...

Tricia McMillan - or Trillian as she is known. Ditched Arthur Dent for Zaphod Beeblebrox as she would rather be hanging around a black hole than the dole queue...

Zaphod Beeblebrox with his extra head - not to be confused with Jake the Peg with his extra leg...

And finally the whole ensemble...

Dark Judges - 2000AD

I put a bit of paint onto some figures this weekend. The rain meant things were a bit dark in my painting area, even with the lights on, but I decided to just complete a few figures that were almost there and do some easy stuff that didn't rely on fine focusing.

I managed to complete the four Dark Judges from 2000AD (Citadel minis from the 80s - I like the new Mongoose ones too, but they are scaled differently and will not be compatible with these minis, so I may buy them and use them for the new Judge Dredd game, but leave these on the shelf as reminders of good times past)...

Judge Fire

Judge Fear

Judge Mortis

and finally, the meanest of them all ... Judge Death

I have actually just been reading some old 2000ADs and Megazines and what prompted me to get onto these figures was the story about Young Death in the Megazine.

All went well with the painting of the figures but I had a bit of a mishap on Saturday. I managed to get my paint tray a bit wonky when I moved it and a whole slew of figures slid off and hit the floor. Judge Mortis got broken off at the ankles but I was able to manage a minor repair - not brilliant but at least it is not as bad as a couple of my Norman Knights - the horses' legs got snapped off at the fetlocks, but are unfortunately completely beyond repair. A few other minis got away with just minor damage (spears snapped off etc., but they have all been repaired OK). In all my years of gaming and painting these are the first three that I have ever broken by dropping them. When I hear some of the horror stories on the net of people losing entire armies to mishap I feel I have had it pretty good so far.

I managed to get the rest of the Norman knights I have been talking about recently fully undercoated this weekend, so I will start painting them proper soon. I was thinking of trying to do a knight a day, but the original title of the venture now has to fall by the wayside - I can no longer call it "40 Days 'n 40 Knights" as I now only have 38 of them left! :-( I may try to put an order in for a few more to make up the numbers, but then again might wait until I get my infantry side of the army sorted. This would mean a bit of a delay in getting them painted. I am going to use these Normans for skirmish gaming, so all are based on round washers. I have yet to find them an enemy to fight. I have a couple of boxes each of Gripping Beast Vikings and Anglo-Saxons. The Vikings would work well, but unless I called the Normans something else they are not early enough to go with the Saxons as they seem to be Alfredian.

Citadel Space Santa

"When Santa got stuck up the chimney ... "

Here is another view of the old Citadel Space Santa that I posted up on Christmas Day. I have rebased him in the same style as my other slotta-based sci-fi miniatures (not that I have that many).

I still have a couple of other sci-fi minis to paint, but they will have to wait until later in the year next year. I doubt I will ever get to play with these minis as they either do not fit into any existing canon or I just have too few to do anything with them for Warhammer 40K and such like. That may change if I start playing sci-fi tabletop battles again but that is not very likely - unless there is a sci-fi HotT variation out there that I can use?

Merry Christmas

Here's wishing you all a very Merry Christmas...

Early Citadel Space Marines

I have at long last begun to get back into painting after a long hiatus. The time spent not painting has been very productive gaming wise, as I have been involved in two rather excellent fantasy RPG games (AD&D and Pathfinder) and some long-term discussions about re-developing some old sci-fi stuff with one of my oldest gaming friends, Arlo.

My eyesight has not improved (will be going for a check-up in the next couple of weeks to change my prescription) with the time away from the close scrutiny, and it shows in some of the pictures below with the parts I have missed or gone over accidentally and not noticed even when checking for such errors - ho hum, the camera doesn't seem to lie in these cases.

Anyway, I have also managed to put a lot of pigment onto a rather large bunch of Norman milites, but it will be a short while before they are anywhere near completed. I have also undercoated a handful of clerics for AD&D to go with all of my fighters, thieves, barbarians and magic users that were completed a year or two back., and some old Denizen miniatures for the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Getting back to the sci-fi theme, here are the final painted versions of the first released Citadel Space Marines. I have already painted up a couple as Judge Dredd style heavy troopers, but these ones are painted as Dark Angels (my preferred WH40K troop type). I really like the womble-head style of the helmets, and think that Citadel/GW should have stayed with that style imho.

This figure, although bought as part of the same set, doesn't really fit in with the unit, what with the skull motif on his shoulder pads. I painted him differently, as if he was a baddie. I have also found another bunch of sci-fi style baddies that I bought around the same time that I will add to a menagerie of scoundrels - maybe the crew of a space pirate ship? Hopefully I'll get those painted before Christmas.

This one, with an old style chainsword I have designated the commander of my little squad.

And, here are the rest of the squad - all with the same weapons except for the last chap. Not sure why he was sculpted with a different weapon, but it does add to their individuality I guess.

Finally, here is a group shot of the whole squad. Those space pirates had better beware!

Alex has also been picking up the brushes again and managed to get a few more finished - I will post them up later when the basing is completed.

Space Marines

Alex finished off a bunch of Space Marines over the weekend. First up is the Emperor's Champion. Apparently he should be painted like a Black Templar, but Alex did him like an Ultramarine to fit in with the rest of the army he is building.

Here are four photos of his Veteran Squad - focussing on different members of the squad each time. I need to get a tripod and remote release for the camera soon, so I can keep the shutter open for longer and thus get more in focus within each shot.

Alex has almost finished quite a few others; a starter squad of four identical marines with a heavy weapons specialist and a tactical squad. He also has a few other one-off minis likeTyrannid Hunters, a sergeant figure and a bike rider. It is his birthday soon, and he has requested one of the troop carriers, either a rhino or similar, to complement his army. I have to say, they do look rather good on the table.

FTL travel in games, books and on the screen


I have long pondered how to get around the conundrum of ships travelling faster than the speed of light (FTL) in my sci-fi games. I have seen various scenarios and ideas thrown about in fiction and on the silver and small screens. I have also had my own ideas that concatenate certain aspects of those ideas. I think FTL travel in science fiction can be broken down into three main categories:

Warp drive technology - where space around the ship is warped to allow it to travel faster than light, for example in the Star Trek universe
Hyperspace technology - where the ship leaves the known universe and sort of travels by short-cut through a different dimension, for example, Star Wars, Babylon 5, Traveller RPG
(Worm?) hole technology - where two points in space are linked so that travel between them is instantaneous even though the vessel is not travelling at light speed, for example in Iain M. Banks universe

There are also many other variations on a theme, but these seem to be the main plot devices to allow FTL to happen. Over the years I have been trying to find, for me, the best possible solution and came up with a combination of ideas from the above, sometimes before the authors of the books/films. I was not keen on the Star Trek warp system, nor the Jump drives in Traveller, but found some comfort in the Iain M. Banks stories as they were very similar to my own ideas. My ideas run thus...

A large space station/vessel creates a black hole and channels its 'energy' directly at the point where the travellers would need to exit, e.g. the next star along in the sky. Over a few(?) years, depending on distance, all matter and space is pulled into the black hole, thus bending the point from several light years away so that it now appears in the starting solar system. A gateway is then built to anchor this tunnel. When a ship travels through this gateway, it instantaneously arrives at its destination thus not breaking Einstein's theory (it probably breaks all sorts of other laws but I haven't considered those). All the time spent on a journey between one planetary system and another is taken up by intra-system manouevres. In my universe, all space travel takes approximately one week, no matter which system one wishes to travel to from that point on the network. It sort of works as a series of weekly 'jumps' but STL ships can have the appearance of travelling FTL.

This is very similar to what Iain M. Banks proposes in his novels, where he has a point in the starting system 'dragged' by a fleet of ships to the destination point. It is very similar to my idea but in reverse. In neither universe does any ship travel FTL but they appear to do so when they travel along the network of gateways.

However, if one wanted to pilot a ship between two stars in 'normal' space, then the size of the engines would have to be taken into consideration as the whole distance would need to be covered STL and could take several years to travel between the stars.

Here comes the cavalry III

Well, not cavalry exactly, but the heavy mob when all else has failed. These are the troopers that are called in when the going gets tough. Armed with heavy-duty plasma weapons and state of the art power-armour these guys are the 'cleaners'. They are some of the first of Citadel's Space Marines released way back in the early 80s - I still have about another half-dozen or so to clean-up and paint. I have painted them to fit in with my vision of a futuristic Justice Department that encompasses the law and war.

Here's another view of the same troopers - the view you never want to see when they are angry!

I had a good sort out and tidy up of my paint station today, so got a lot of those little hang-over things finished up. There are still quite a few minis in a half painted state that should hit the site in the next few weeks: Celts, Riders of Rohan, RPG Fighters, HotT barbarians and many more.

Sector House 29

I have finally finished the 2000AD stuff on my work bench. It took a while but I think they have been worth the wait. You have already seen the Judges and Lawmasters but when collecting the minis together I wanted to add a vehicle for support purposes. Most of my childhood toys have bitten the dust but I did manage to find a few Matchbox die-cast sci-fi vehicles from their Adventure 2000 range hidden away in a box in the loft. I have the Land Raider (as per the vehicle from Judge Dredd's Cursed Earth adventure) and a couple of others, including the one below. This is designated as the Crusader K2003.

It was originally painted in a sickly lime green, so I decided to paint it in a blue to match in with the Judges' uniforms. I also painted over the windows to make it appear as if it had blast shields down.

Here's the entire Sector House so far. I will try to add to it over time with some more Citadel Judges from EBay and maybe some Foundry ones. As mentioned previously I also have about 9 or 10 very early Space Marines who I will be painting up as 'heavies'. I also have that collection of Heresy enforcers to man the desks and a couple more of those Matchbox vehicles (the Land Raider and some kind of missile launcher).

Next up should be more Prince August Barbarians for Hordes of the Things. I have tons of other stuff on the workbench at the moment, so after the barbarians there could be almost anything appearing on the blog.

Tavern Knights of Legend is due to end soon, and I have been tasked with running the next play be email game. It will be a strategy game based in an imaginary country where the players take on the parts of warlords with their minds set on conquest to become overlord of the land. More details on this in a later post.

Wheeled Justice

Dredd and Anderson out on patrol on their Lawmasters. Instead of just sticking the bikes directly to their cavalry bases, I decided to buy a few sculpted bases to make them look a little better. I also noticed that the bikes are different marks of Lawmaster.

Here's a frontal view of the pair of bikers, headlights glaring, sirens wailing about to accost the vile perps of Mega City 1.

Next up will be an old Matchbox vehicle painted up to look like a Sector House vehicle.

I have also made good progress on some more DA barbarians from Prince August. I should be able to get those completed and on show just after I finish these 2000AD minis. Alex is putting the finishing touches to his Lotr Elven army. It is looking very good so far.

Psi Division

A couple of Judge Anderson minis and another female Judge. Once again, early 1980s Citadel miniatures. This brings the patrol to 7 Judges.


I have a couple of Judges (Dredd and Anderson again) on bikes still to come as well as a Matchbox die cast vehicle that I painted up to represent a Justice Department battle wagon (not like any in the comics, but it fits in well). Foundry do a few Judge minis that I may buy to add to these, depending on how they rank up size wise. I also bought some Heresy Miniatures' Enforcers to act as Space Port security bods recently, so will add those into the mix for sci-fi gaming.

I had a really busy day today, setting up several more minis ready for completion over the next few weeks. These include...
3 more trolls
3 more stands of Prince August barbarians
1 stand of Amazon warriors
2 more Fifth Element/'Void' wizards
2 really old (I think some of the first released) Space Marines to be used as Justice Dept heavies

I also stripped and cleaned up...
15 Warlord Celt warriors
6 more wizards
5 barbarians (the RPG adventurer type rather than for use on HotT stands)

Alex was also busy. He finished painting about half-a-dozen LotR elves and a few leader types for a HotT stand. I will photograph these later on in the week.

Gaming wise, we are getting close to a half-sized HotT battle between dwarfs and goblins. I will set up a game between the kids in a few weeks time and see how they do.

I am the Law

They were a long time coming, but at last they are here. Hooray for Bank Holidays, that's what I say!

Anyway, these are some very early 80's Citadel 2000AD Judges. I can't remember all of their names, but there is a Judge Dredd and a Judge Giant.

Due to the Bank Holiday here in the UK I have been able to plan to do a lot more painting than on a normal weekend. I have very nearly finished the next batch of Judges too, so hopefully, I'll have another post up for them tomorrow.

Games Workshop at the local library

Games Workshop has pulled a pretty good publicity stunt at our local libraries (Bexleyheath's Central Library and Erith Library). They started off with a modelling and painting workshop on the 9th of January but we missed that meeting. However, we managed to pick up a leaflet advertising gaming evenings for the next few months.

Unfortunately it is on too early for me to attend the adult session at Erith library but Alex was able to pop to the Central Library for the 10-18 year old session on Thursday (yesterday) evening for his first ever game of Warhammer 40K with the Bexley Battle Gamers.

He did very well in his first ever game - he played as Space Marines versus Necrons and wound up drawing his game against an older and more experienced gamer. He really enjoyed himself and made a few new friends to boot. He is looking forward to the next meeting.

Club Meeting Times:
Central Library (ages 10-18)
17:30 - 19:30
Thurs 21 January
Thurs 18th February
Thurs 18th March

Erith Library (ages 10-18)
17:30 - 19:30
Tues 12th January
Tues 9th February
Tues 9th March

Erith Library (Adults)
17:30 - 19:30
Tues 26th January
Tues 23rd February
Tues 23rd March

Latest fantasy and sci-fi figures painted

I should have put these up yesterday, but the battery ran out on the camera. I have since recharged it and present my latest offerings from the painting table. First up is a troll. I cannot remember what make he is - answers on a post card to...

Next up are some Warlord Games Celtic villagers - a crone, a couple of kids and a mangy cur.

Finally, here are some old Citadel Space Farers Imperial Marines. These weren't actually painted by me, but I have rebased and varnished them to bring them up to date with my latest painting style. I only have a very few sci-fi figures - as I mainly hosted fantasy RPG etc back in the day - and I dug them out last weekend. I only have 5 more 25/28mm pre-slotta minis, they are from Dixon's Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy range. They are currently being cleaned up ready for mounting on round bases and undercoating.

What next? Well, I have about half-a-dozen wizard figures half done, the next batch of Harboth's Boys are undercoated and ready to go, as are a couple of giants and a bunch of 2000AD Judges.