Daleks

 

Many years ago I use to write wargame articles for a living, sort of anyway, as I mostly made my living by doing other stuff to pay the bills as such. Such is the glamorous life of a wargame author! I also wrote for club zines too, and I did a very long piece on the Daleks for Ragnarok, the magazine of the SF&SFW. Anyway, Daleks scared me as a child and fascinated me as a teenager and about 20 years ago I was given a bunch of 15mm castings of Daleks and Cybermen that were leftovers that had been produced for a demo game.

Foolishly I passed on the Cybermen, and again decided foolishly that I didn't need all the Daleks I had either. Oh how I regret that decision. Give them to me, give them all to me my preciouses. Anyway, I've recently been refurbishing my old figures, and I decided to re-base my 15mm Daleks and re-varnish them too, after touching up the odd chip of paint at the same time.

I had to convert a standard Dalek casting into a Golden Emperor, which is based on the TV21 comic series that I bought the reprint collection of a few years ago. The colours are again inspired by both the comic and the TV series. Now that they are all based I hope to be using them for games again at some point in the future.
   

Butterfly's & Ants

I have more on my plate at the moment than I can readily finish in a weekends worth of painting. Kind of stating the obvious, as most people who play wargames and paint miniatures have stuff hoarded away in handy shoe boxes. Heck I know that I have, but I'm not going to go into my shoebox collection now, as we all know that as long as you have lead figures to paint things are well with the world.

I spent the weekend painting. Two marathon stints of 7 hours each, and I still didn't quite finish the 80 odd figures that I worked on, and this wasn't the first weekend working on them either. I'm painting some 15 infantry, and I've not painted any 15mm figures in a long time. So it has been a bit of a learning curve, as I try to remember the right order to paint colours in, the correct techniques for the required finish, and practice some new techniques I've read about too.

Anyway, not ready to show any pictures yet. You will all have to be patient for a bit longer. However, when I was reflecting on my progress at the weekend, this morning before dragging my weary corpse to work, I did realise that I have a total of 16 trays of figures in progress. So I suppose it only goes to show that I'm a bit of a butterfly that flits from one pretty shiney thing to another. Rather than a more industrious ant who would stay the course until the job was done.
   

Catabloging

Some of the more eagle eyed readers may have noticed that I've been adding extra tags, and revising some of the posts I've made.The reason for this is that I write a blog to get comments, and engage in idle chit-chat with like minded people. Now while I don't mind writing a review and having no one comment on it, after all what is there to say other than I wish I had been able to go, or I shall try and catch that movie, I do want as much chat developed as possible. partly because this site is a relief valve from my work stresses. Now, while I sit at work, I sometime have idle thoughts, as one does, and in these idle thoughts I imagine blogs I've want to write, which is one reason for writing this piece on catabloging. A word I've made up, but assume that others have already thought of it before me, as it describes cataloging a blog with tags quite eloquently.

Anyway, another thing you will start to see are strange combinations of letters like WGIAGH , or WGIAWOL (edit). These respectively stand for War Gaming Is A Goddam Hobby versus War Gaming Is A Way Of Life (edits). This is my attempt to transfer some science fiction fandom geek speak into the wargamers lexicon. One of my favourite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, use to do this with such examples TANSTAAFL, which stands for There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, and this has become a bit of SF fandom culture over the years. More to the point the short hand is useful in identifying those posts where I'm getting my geek on with numbers and calculations, compared to more fluffy pieces about pink battlemechs.

Edits: Yep, I mucked up the contractions, so I've edited them here as noted.

PS: OSR added to my catabloging, which just indicates an article that is Old School Retread stuff.
  

335th Regimental Battlegroup Retrieved

  

Breaking news is that we can now reveal that the 335th Regimental Battlegroup, lost during orbital insertion on the planet Gainsborough at drop point Whiskey Hotel Sierra, were located by a special forces recon unit today. The 335th were brought to Gainsborough on transport units from Task Force USPS.

The orbital drop point co-ordinates were corrupted by enemy operatives from the PFDS, a breakaway ComStar faction whose aim is to disrupt interstellar communications. Though the agents have not yet been apprehended by our forces a spokesperson for the Gainsborough Ministry of Defense has said that all means necessary will be brought to bear upon the instigators of this damaging action by enemy saboteurs. 

Though casualties were suffered during the drop as the 335th were expecting to land at a prepared landing site, they are minimal, and will not affect the combat effectiveness of the command.