Sigur in Space! - Update: GM Command Space Type!

[aliensurfer]

Lovely painting all round - yet again 

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@aliensurfer: Thanks very much! Comments are always appreciated.


Heyhey, surprise Battlemechs!



These will be with me this Saturday at a show in Bavaria. (Yes, in Bavaria, where the mountains stick out of the ground!)

Hope you like them!

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Very nice.

[Pattus Magnus]

Those look very sharp! The black and red is a striking palette and the details add some good variety. They look like tough customers, too, with that mix of mechs.

[LouieN]

Very sharp and crisp. 

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Ultravanillasmurf: Cheers!

@Pattus Magnus: Thank you. I painted a whole bunch more of these last year already.

@LouieN: Thanks!


I'm back from the event. No big reports on that event I think; maybe I'll write something on the blog/website, but I'm not sure I got enough material, even though there were one or two remarkable things about this event (in a positive way). On the whole, it was lovely; it was great to catch up with a few people and meet new people.

One thing about Battletech which I notice each time I got Battlemechs with me: Battletech is an undying force of good in the world. The amount of people who come over and chat away about how they've been fans of the world and the games for many decades is always astounding. In the end of the day I was one of the few people left, because it takes me ages to set up and tear everything down. So I asked a random guy who looked like he wasn't super busy if he could help me haul  the glass cabined into the car. Friendly man, helped me. Instantly we started chatting about Battletech (as we maneuvered the Detolf cabinet over a ton of flights of stairs). Interestingly, he's one of the people who prefer Alphastrike over Classic, and bemoaned the fact that it's twice as hard to find players for that.

Somehow it feels like I'm one of the few people who aren't intimately familiar with the world. But that's perfectly OK. Battletech is one of these things I have the utmost respect for from afar. Because it's cool, it's been around for ages, it's deep, it can't really break into being a broad thing and thus doesn't treat people like idiots, it has some very dedicated fans, it makes many people happy. And I can appreciate that sorta stuff.

[HerbertTarkel]

I love the Mechs!

And you’re right: EVERYONE knows and loves Battletech, in some form. I remember it from the 1980s, when cardboard standees were all we had to use.

I have a lot to paint if I get time, now that I think of it…

[Rick]

I love the Mechs!

And you’re right: EVERYONE knows and loves Battletech, in some form. I remember it from the 1980s, when cardboard standees were all we had to use.

I have a lot to paint if I get time, now that I think of it…

I remember using those standees. Then we were at the Minifigs shop in Southampton and saw they were producing the very first (6 or so) Ral Partha Battlemechs - boy was I excited by that, crude though those first few sculpts were!

[Storm Wolf]

I got into Star Fleet Battles and FASA BattleTech way back, before I even got into Rogue Trader.

I really miss travelling up to London and scouring the racks of Mechs at Orcs Nest for the ones I wanted and then walking to Oxford Street to visit the gaming bit of the Virgin Megastore for more, oh happy days It was only a bit later on that I also started to go a bit further down Oxford St. to visit the GW store at ? (can't remember the shopping centre now?).

Wargaming and record/CD shops - heaven

[Rick]

On a very rare visit to London, I remember buying a box of Sky Galleons of Mars ships in the Virgin Megastore on Oxford st. Came out, started walking and only realised after about 5 mins I'd got turned round and was walking back the way I'd come!

[DivisMal]

The good times of specialist shops in urban metropol areas…oh nostalgia striking hard!

@ Sigur: I hope your hand has healed up by now?! Impressive additions!

[Ultravanillasmurf]

I really miss travelling up to London and scouring the racks of Mechs at Orcs Nest for the ones I wanted and then walking to Oxford Street to visit the gaming bit of the Virgin Megastore for more, oh happy days It was only a bit later on that I also started to go a bit further down Oxford St. to visit the GW store at ? (can't remember the shopping centre now?).

Wargaming and record/CD shops - heaven

If we are going retro, does anyone remember "Gamers in Exile" at King's Cross?
Or the shop whose name I have forgotten that was halfway between Hammersmith station and Ravenscourt Park?
I still have a moment of nostalgia walking past 100 Oxford Street.

Oh, and GW was on the first floor of the former https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bourne_%26_Hollingsworth.
I do remember it as a department store, they sold computer games.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@HerbertTarkel: I think they still do cardboard standees actually.

@Rick: See, I didn't even know there was a physical Minifigs store! Surely many wargamers of a certain vintage would call that as their goal when asked where they would travel to anywhere in time and space.

@StormWolf: I also played Starfleet Battles twice I think a few years ago. It's more fun than people nowadays make it out to be. During my stay in London between mid-2008 and mid-2009 I went to the Oxford Street GW store. Bought an Ork Buggy and some paints. They also let me leaf through their preview copy of the Imperial Guard codex, which was pretty cool.

@DivisMal: Yup, everything good now, thanks for asking! Still a bit of a funny feeling on one side of the little finger and the tip (some dermal nerve must have gotten slit, but I'm getting used to it. Head doctor cheerily said "surely the feeling will return once another nerve takes over. And if it doesn't, it doesn't!" Fine by me, I was lucky. The scar is almost invisible too. Turns out I'm pretty much invincible, given excellent medical care and circumstances which allow for me to recuperate nicely.

@Ultravanillasmurf: When I was in London for a year from 2008 I stayed at a youth hostel while looking for a flat (what a harebrained plan that was But it worked out in the end.) near Kensington Road. So I did a lot of sitting at McDonald's, drinking tea, looking through flat ads and such. All the way down the road there was the lovely little Lancer Square GW store hidden away (pretty sure it's closed now.). After about a week of not painting i was so starved that I sat down and painted for several hours, the lovely people there tolerated me. Even gave me a cup of tea. Only thing they asked at one point was for me to keep the vallejo paints off the table. Which makes sense of course. One more experience that shaped my opinion that GW stores are just good. Never had the 'pushy salesguy' there either, just 80% lovely people.

Right, update. I finished the Anachrony boardgame figures:





















Made 50-55mm tall, made from the usual boardgame stuff, so mold lines suck. But they ended up looking nicer than I thought. Painted like a madman on them, because technically they're a "squeezed-in project". The sort that messes up my schedule. I also like the designs a fair bit. Some fun animal stuff, some giger, all different. Hope you like them too!

[Rick]

Those figures do look very nice - strange concept but excellent painting.

Yes, a long time ago Minifigs had a tiny little shopfront with a casting area behind it - just a glass topped counter with rows and rows of plastic boxes attached to a peg-board on the walls; you made your selection and they filled up those small printed cardboard boxes (does anyone even remember those minifigs boxes?) with your order in. It was really difficult to find down a little side street in Southampton.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Rick: Yeah, it's a sort of far-future sci-fi thing in which people split up into these factions (in that case I think the dreaded word applies) and build these big robots to reflect their ideology or something. Anyway, at least they aren't "low tech space horror with cthulu thrown in just because" for once. Imagine that minifigs store! I once placed an order at Minifigs for a whole lot of 25mm Napoleonics for a customer. Painted quite a lot of these over the past 10 years for that gentleman, and I have to say that I developed a taste for the 25mm Minifigs aesthetics. These things also teach you painting details free-hand properly. None of that sculpted-on rubbish; these things are bare and if you want piping along those trouser legs, you damn well paint it onto these 36 imperial guard lancers!