Greetings Earthlings, sorry it has been a while, but I’ve been on a break, so meh :-)   I had a lovely time hiking with the kids last week – we racked up 60 miles (each) over five days, which is pretty incredible when you consider my youngest is only 8! I’d be back out there now if I could, and even though the weather was crap, the worst day out on the hills is way better than a sunny day in the office… But alas, RL demanded my return, so I have been easing back into the usual routine this week. As such, I only managed to finish up three more Eru-Kin for my planned BOYL army, but these three are kind of interesting because I didn’t really have a clear idea of how they would fit in to the overall army I have in mind… Undeterred, I’ve been painting them slowly in between other jobs & hoping for some inspiration along the way. See what you make of them:

Paint-wise, these guys got my usual Eru-Kin treatment, so nothing exciting to talk about there, (though I did try out the Windsor & Newton artist inks that I mentioned last month on the skin for a more vivid colouration). While painting, I did have the hoped-for inspiration in terms of how they would fit in with the army and theme. The two shield guys look kind of honour-guardy to me, so they could easily flank any character to provide some additional protection, but the other chap was more difficult to figure out… He is marketed as a Musician, and is a cracking mini, but I’m not sold on the whole ‘command group in space’ idea from the RT era – I don’t know why, but it doesn’t quite click for me, so I knew I wouldn’t be using him in his intended role. I did consider using him as some kind of sonic weapon specialist, or maybe a comms operator, but I discounted these ideas because I felt that he would become a bit too anonymous… To be honest, I love the mini and felt that deserved a more prestigious role! Then I had a major flash of inspiration:

Ya see where I’m going with this? That’s right folks, I’m going to use him as a Beast Caller – a rare and highly specialised caste among the Eru-Kin, and therefore worthy of respect and protection from an honour guard. I imagine that the Beast Caller uses his mysterious ululations to repel rare and dangerous indigenous reptiles from the settlement during peace time, but uses these skills to summon them and drive them to assault the enemy in time of war. I see four major attractions to this concept:

1: This should provide an interesting dynamic in-game, with a powerful assaulting force underpinned by a comparatively fragile single link… What would the beasts do if the Caller gets killed? Rampage? Escape? Revenge?

2: It gives me a perfect and long-awaited excuse rational reason to go and buy some lovely minis that I have had my eye on for ages – Toy-Hammer is well and good, but I have the perfect range of pulp dinos in mind for this part of the project… I’ll keep you guys guessing on that for a while ;-)

3: The visual impact on the army should be superb – it gets me out of the need for vehicles to add bulk and height to the force, but most importantly, Dinosaurs are frickin’ awesome, and any excuse to get them involved in an army should be grasped with both claws. Immediately.

4: I get to legitimately use the word ‘ululation’ in conversation.

So there we have it – a small but interesting development on the Eru-Kin project. So, what’s next? Well… I’m away on business the week after next so that kind of disrupts any major plans in the short term, but I want to get some more undead sorted out, and I have a load more Eru-Kin to get organised. It’s only(!) 14ish week until BOYL, and I still have heavy fire support, assault, and psyker support to add, plus some Dinosaurs to get sorted! It looks like I’ll be waiting a while for the weather to improve enough for a mass priming session so I suspect that the next week will be all about assembly & basing… It’s necessary work, but very boring for you guys, so I’ll try and finish a mini that has been sat around in her undercoat for a while & do a post before I hit the road again.

Cheers dudes, keep it (un)real ;-)

Greetings Humans, I have a super-quick data burst for you today. I have some more Eru-Kin to share with you – three duplicates of the second of the ‘basic troop’ sculpts, with further experimentation on the same basic skin colours… Not much else to say about these guys really, as everything I said in my last post applies to these guys! Here they are:

And with their spawn-mates:

More to follow on this project, but that’s not all folks – I also did this:

Aw Yeah!! My very own wargaming Tardis!! :-)  Ok, so this started life as a toy rather than a mini, and the scale is not quite there, but it’s close enough for government work and I’m really pleased with how it came out. Here’s an underneath shot to show how the bare plastic looked before I painted it.

A big improvement, I hope you’ll agree! I deliberately went for a beaten up & weathered look, and I’m so glad that I did. The wood grain in the toy was a joy to pick out with a drybrush, and the windows & signage just needed a few washes to tone them down a bit. Look! It even lights up!

I know this seems a bit of a random thing to paint up, but there is a method to the madness… Firstly, I can see this getting dropped in to many other games in general – Frostgrave, Necromunda, Rogue Trader – either as a scenario point, (in fact, I seem to recall that there was a Rogue Trader scenario that included The Doctor… I might have to dig that out), or just as a nice piece of scatter terrain. But more importantly, the games I run with my boys were getting a bit bogged down in the fantasy setting, but this will allow us to break out & play any genre of game in the future. Robots, pulp, aliens, dinosaurs, pirates – all are possible with your very own genre-busting Tardis to ride around in… as the 10^th Doctor tells us, ‘People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.’ I plan to use this as a surprise plot point in a Crimbo game with the kids – hopefully right after the Dr. Who Christmas special  :-)

Anyway, that’s all for now dudes – more Eru-Kin to follow of course, but I also need to get planning something for Deadcember as well…  ‘tis the season after all :-)