Film crew

Camera is made from bits of wood and wire.

Armed topside

Queen of the Jungle

Sometimes, I'll grab something unpainted off the shelf and go to work. I found this Barbarian Queen figure from Copplestone Castings, and painted her up as Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The witchdoctor is a Copplestone scutlp from Foundry's Darkest Africa range. I believe the panther is Ral Partha.

10,000 B.C.

Don't forget to click on the pictures to get larger versions.

Great pulpish cavemen by Copplestone. The big, brutish fellows are actually yetis painted up in furry browns. The dogs are made by Reaper. I use these to play Tusk (dinosaur and other prehistoric animal-hunting game.)

I've had these painted for almost a year; I just haven't gotten around to getting some "good" pics posted- or any pics for the blog, except for my first tutorial.

I think these my favorite of all my Copplestone figures. Here's hoping he has some more coming!

Mary Ellen Carter (and some teeth)

I set up a couple polls to let the public name my ship (from three choices I provided), and they chose Mary Ellen Carter. The name comes from a song (chorus here):

Rise again, raise again,
Let her name not be lost
to the knowledge of men,
For those who loved her best
and were with her to the end,
We’ll make the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again

Copplestone critter killers

Mark Copplestone, of Copplestone Castings (see my links) comes through again! I ordered some British naval officers and a gardner/nordfelt gun, anad he's sending me other armaments as well! Along with the gun I built last night, I'm set to have a well-protected steamer. I guess I can call it a gunboat now.

I'll look at the polls later I set up at a couple forums to help me decide on the name of the ship. A naval veteran informed me it is bad luck to name a shi on Friday, so I'll do the final check Saturday and paint up the ship's name.

I'm really happy with how my ship turned out. I didn't take too many shortcuts. The biggest one, though, was instead of actually planking the deck houses, I painted them to look as if they were planked. It still turned out nice. Along with the new gun, the crew and guns coming from Copplestone, I think the entire project will have taken about 30-32 hours.

Though she is relatively unarmed, my first game with her will be either this Sunday or next Sunday at Mayhem Comics here in Ames (Iowa.) She's headed to rescue an expedition trying to find it's way out of a Lost World.

River steamer gun

I couldn't find any naval gun I liked on the web, so I found some scraps and threw together this little daisy. She's roughly a 3 1/2 inch gun. I'm going to keep it as a separate piece from the ship, though I may drill a pilot hole in the base of the gun and put a pin on the bow of the ship to keep the gun in place when I place it on the foredeck.

I still need to find some machineguns, though I think I can make my own maxims. I'm starting to think about Lewis guns instead- there are a couple sources for them.

Some oldies but goodies

This is it; these are some of the first miniatures I ever bought (freshman year of high school, 1988.) Brand-spanking new back then, these are out of production now (Still can be found on eBay. Does GW still sell these as bits?)

A note though, this is not the original paint job I gave them- what a sad effort of applying color it was back then. I've learned a few things since, and have started to strip the old paint and repaint my entire (Games Workhop) Empire army. These were the first units I finished. The going is slow, only because I am doing the repainting between other projects. And, as you can see throughout this blog, I've given myself plenty to do.

But these two units sit on a shelf next to my favorite chair, so that every time I look over at them, I remind myself, "I should really paint up another unit of them old fellows."

Finished Nile Steamer (just photos)