In Praise of Second Hand Models

I picked up eight very old 28mm Macedonian Companion Cavalry from a second hand dealer for £6 including postage.

Are they great models? Um no.
Well painted? Well, they were painted.
Based? Yes, and quite decently.

But all it took was a bit of paint freshening, some new spears and a touch of diluted Army Painter Dark Tone and I have a perfectly acceptable unit for my Hellenistic armies after just a couple of hours work.

No they're not going to win any awards but they do the job for a minimal outlay of time and money.

IHMN - Life on Venus

Venusian 'tiger'

Venusian 'mongoose'

Marsh 'scorpion', a mongoose's rightful prey

Boomer, named after the mating call amplified through a hollow crest

Venusian 'parrot', a popular pet because of its talent for mimicry

Models by Tamiya except for the scorpion - anyone recognise what that is?

Russian Guards on the Attack

Mixture of Warlord, Tamiya and Plastic Soldier models for a '44 Soviet Guards Armoured army.

North Star tea bag

My Artizan French colonial troops, crow man and George Orwell order arrived from North Star this morning complete with complimentary tea bag.

Life on Venus

A red-legged booby takes exception to a tree-lizard on the hunt for eggs. Meanwhile, a tortoise plods past a pile of dragon pooh.

Models by Tamiya and my local pet shop.

IHMN, Newt Rider of Venus

I wrote a couple of well received novellas in the 'Storming' series that are Wellesian fantasy space opera. The second was entitled Storming Venus and introduces the Venusian natives, the newts. You can read it free here. Go to the link and click on Chapter 3.

Following Mr Darwin's theory of planetary evolution, Venus is a young planet at roughly the same stage as Earth during the Age of Terrible Lizards.

Here, a newt rider flees through the swamps from where the sun threatens to break through the thick Venusian clouds.

A slightly less digitally mucked about with image.

And another.

That's not a real flower, incidentally, as true flowering plants have not yet evolved on Venus but one of Venus' carnivorous pseudoflowers.

Warhammer Chaos Nurgle Daemons

I have almost finished my 40K Nurgle army. The last units to complete the detachment are some allied daemons.

One more unit to go and the base on my Titan to paint and  I am done, done, never call me mother.

The irony is that I don't play 40K at the moment. The last two versions have utterly failed to capture my imagination.

Oh well.