Welcome, Wednesday!

We have a new public follower aboard. Welcome Nimrod, whom I am sure is a mighty hunter before The Lord (my readers did know I studied for the ministry at one point, right?), and who writes the excellent blog

Слишком много ножей, which Google translate tells me means "Too Many Knives."  Give the blog a visit -- we stomp much of the same ground, so I dare say you'll enjoy it. 

Now back to the boards everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon. 

Incoming correspondence from The Peregrine

As I've mentioned previously, I am amazed at the connections the Internet has allowed me to make. I try not to be too starstruck, but the fact that I get to exchange messages regularly with Patrick Keith and Vicky Morgan-Keith, Brian Roe, James Wappel, Chris and Debs FitzPatrick, Craig Cartmell, Bob Mervine and other creators whose talents and work I so admire, as well as bloggers who inform and inspire me and with whom I've become friends, like Vampifan and Hendybadger, just blows my mind.

Capt. Constance Bashford of the airship The Peregrine

Well, after my post the other day about purchasing RAFM's Abney Park airship pirate minis, I sent steampunk model Constance Bashford a Facebook friend request. I was happy enough that she accepted, but then I got a very nice personal message from her about how thrilled she was to hear about someone buying the mini based on her persona. 

She, of course, wants to see it painted up, and frequent readers of "Dispatches" will know that I paint at a rate charitably described as "glacial." But I will say I am excited to add these characters to my IHMN setting, so that will urge my painting forward at a better pace.

Toward that end, I ordered some bases from Fenris for my airship pirates and some cobblestone bases for the figures from the EOTD Kickstarter. The ones I ordered were the 30mm round DS Nags Tavern fine-grained wooden planking (as opposed to the rougher-hewn Black Freighter planking bases) and the 30mm DS Innsmouth Cobblestone, rather than the slightly more irregular Whitechapel Cobblestone bases they offer. I also ordered a set of "London Foul Sewer" manhole covers. Whimsy on my part.

Given that some people who follow the Northern Path believe a bit of prophecy indicates that the Twilight of the Gods begins this weekend, Ian is offering a 10 percent discount between now and the end of Feb. 22 (midnight GMT)  if you enter the code "RAGNAROK" on checkout at their webstore.

Love you all, my friends. Back to the boards, and I'll see you across the tables soon.

Welcome aboard!

Welcome to The Lord of Excess, author of the blog The Excessive Gamer, as a follower. He's currently doing the 40th anniversary D&D blog hop, as well as detailing the construction of a lizardman army for Warhammer Fantasy. Looking at his previous posts and his disclaimer, it appears he also covers Privateer Press, Fantasy Flight, Reaper products, Song of Blades and Heroes, and many others. Lots of ground you can cover in a blog that's been running since 2009!

Fred Jackson also joins us, who describes himself on G+ as a "gamer who has lost his way." Welcome, Fred. We don't know where we're going, but we're making great time!

And our third addition here goes by Brummielad1975, the force behind the Chronicles of Tantalus. His 28mm work includes come great recreations of film and TV characters, a special favorite of mine. His work really shows of Crooked Dice and Hasslefree's sculpts in a great light.

Welcome aboard all! Great to have you here.

Now back to the boards, everyone, and I'll see you across the table soon.

Sensors are picking up a counterblast ... oh, and airship pirates!

... this is Christopher Sheets, breaking radio silence to share the wonderful news that the Counterblast kickstarter has kicked off.

Counterblast is a pulp-themed adventure battle game set in an alternate Earth timeline where atomic testing lured aliens to our planet to investigate. Early exposure and technological exchange leads to an exciting universe of adventure among the various factions of the galaxy. The game is developed by Airlock Games, which is the new iteration of Patrick Keith's Bombshell Miniatures under its new name.

An Illyrian, a robot and a human from the world of Counterblast.

Factions for the game include the ragtag Lancers (think "freelancers"), the robotic Mekkus, the cephalapoid Edofleini, the well-armored and equipped Galactic Defense Forces, and the tribal women warriors of the Neiran Empire. The GDF and Lancers factions are made up of many humanoid races, some feline or sharklike, some more alien like the Illyrians we've seen from Patrick in other projects.

The man behind the rules is Brett Amundson, whose work may be familiar to those of you who are fans of "Secrets of the Third Reich." The miniatures are sculpted by Patrick Keith, whose work we know from EVERYWHERE, but most recently the many excellent sculpts he's brought to life through his company Bombshell Miniatures. Writing background and narrative for the campaign and characters is Vicky Morgan-Keith, an award-winning painter and writer who has also managed the many Bombshell kickstarters.

I'm basically paraphrasing the "Who we are" section of the kickstarter page for Counterblast, so any errors here are my own, and I trust Patrick, Vicky or Brett will set me straight.

Speaking of Patrick's excellent sculpts, I received my RAFM order of the Airship Pirates based on the steampunk band Abney Park, which were done by Patrick. There was a kickstarter for these that failed to fund, then RAFM brought them out anyway. Thank goodness. I hope they bring out all the concepts art that was shown during the course of the campaign. I bought the box set that contains the six members of the band, and I added another figure. They will become a pirate airship crew for my IHMN world, although not on the Ophelia, which is the ship they commandeered in the fictional background for their own steampunk personas. I'm not sure yet, but I think Captain Robert may be flying something called The Mighty Emerald before I get done with these rascals and rapscallions. The award-winning RPG Airship Pirates based on the band's work and published by Cubicle 7 got good reviews, and original copies fetch ungodly prices on ebay, so I think I'm going to have to break down and get a pdf of it (which I believe the band sells in their webshop, along with some really kicking apparel and accessories.) 

Abney Park guitarist Josh Goering, vocalist Jody Ellen and keyboardist Kristina Erickson. 

Abney Park founder and multi-instrumentalist Robert Brown, bassist Dan Cederman and violinist Titus Munteanu.

And this is Constance Bashford, captain of the airship The Peregrine. In my world, she'll be joining the crew. Constance is a steampunk enthusiast and model . Check out her work at her official Facebook page.

I have not yet acquired the figure based a character by the Canadian cosplayer Vortex called Baron Celsius von Fahrenheit. He's described as an "agitator." They also have an "Airship Engineer" figure that I didn't get yet. I don't know if he's based on a particular person's cosplay or not. I did read that the baron and the engineer were earlier figures moved to the Airship Pirates line. More pics once I get them out of the blisters and on bases.

WHOOOOOO are you, WHO WHO, WHO WHOOOOOO

Got my Heresy order in, folks! Andy Foster sent me a nice email when it shipped, apologizing for the holiday delay, when the holiday delay was the entire impetus behind my order, as Andy always takes a week or so off and offers a nice discount for orders placed during that time. Even if I can't order from him at any other time of year, I always make it a point to order during his holiday sale.

This year I added to the denizens of the Whoniverse that I can add to my gaming table. I have the Doctor Who Miniatures Games rules, which are free to download, and they run on the same rules that power 7TV, plus I plan on adding the characters to my VSF/steampunk universe as well. (I've got to come up with a name for my setting!)

So here we have my choices:

Dr. Payne, the War Doctor. On the sprue are either his
sound-based adjustment device or a laser pistol.

Commander of the Sharclons, an abbreviation, we're told, for short-arsed clones.
Above the body are the four head variants.

Two potato-like Sharclon troopers.

And this is a dancing zombie halfling. A real "thriller" finding this one.

Again, my apologies for my half-baked photography. And once I get more of my collection painted up, I apologize for the sheer number of Michael Jackson parody miniatures I own.

Next time, I'll tell you about the local gaming store I've finally been to. I know, right?

OK, back to the boards everyone, and I'll see you across the tables soon!

Wide is the path and broad is the way

Like others, I received my Hell Dorado kickstarter package the other day. I knew from Cipher's frequent updates that it would be arriving soon, but as they didn't send out tracking or individual notices that packages had shipped, it actually slipped in unannounced. So it was quite pleasant to receive it when I checked my post office box Thursday. (I also got my recent Crooked Dice order, but more on that later.)

This is the hardcover expansion volume for Hell Dorado, Inferno.
 Very good writing, but the typos will make your head spin. Also, as Cipher Studios chose to ship in an envelope, I ended up with that healthy ding you see in the bottom edge of the cover.

I wasn't able to go in very large on the Hell Dorado pledge, as so many other worthwhile projects were soaking up my hobby budget. I got the Marbas package: the new Inferno expansion rulebook, the Inferno character cards, signed art lithograph (the size of a post card, but a beautiful rendition of the Inferno cover art) and the kickstarter-exclusive model of Anne Hale. I also plumped for the mini of Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King. He's one of my favorite literary characters, and I really liked the concept art behind this rendition of him.

The character deck for Inferno.

Signed litho of Inferno cover art. Small, but perfectly formed.

The Anne Hale mini and card. I apologize for the poor quality of the photo.
I was balancing all this on a piece of black felt on my lap when the cat attacked.

Sun Wu Kung, the Monkey King! I've always loved "Journey to the West"
and I really like this incarnation of him.

From Crooked Dice I received my order I placed with some of my Christmas cash I. I got Tweedy 2, Miss Temple, Belle, the Traveling Tweedy heads, and the set of Time Lost Investigators. In addition, Karl and Graeme saw fit to include a couple of freebies, a Captain Jim Barrowight and a sprue of Federated Security carbines. Now would be a good time for anyone interested to place an order with them, as they've got 25 percent off all non-new release minis until the end of January with the code JAN25OFF.

Miss Temple, a noble woman if ever there was one, Tweedy Madison complete with glasses
(and a certain sound-related device behind his back) and Belle, Tweedy's latest energetic sidekick.

Here we have the Time Lost Investigators, including Eliza, the Victorian Samurai (with human or reptile head), Genevieve, her martial maid, and their mutated manservant Sachs, who can be assembled with either furry face or spud-like noggin.

Group Captian Jim Barrowight is overexposed (oooh, matron!) along with the
traveling Tweedy heads (Stetson, Fez and beard), along with the Federated carbines.

OK, so those are my latest pieces of ill-gotten booty, or ill-booten gotty for that matter. Back to the boards, my friends, and I'll see you all across the table soon!

DC switches to steam(punk)power

In February, it appears DC's New 52 superhero comics will have a raft of alternate steampunk covers.

Aquaman 28

Batman/Superman 8

Batman and Two-Face 28

Earth 2 20

Flash 28

Green Lantern: New Guardians 28

Justice League 28

Justice League Dark 28

Nightwing 28

Superman 28

Superman/Wonder Woman 5

Batwoman 28

Action Comics 28

Batgirl 28

Batman 28

Detective Comics 28

Justice League of America 12

Teen Titans 28

Wonder Woman 28

Green Lantern Corps 28

Harley Quinn 3

I'm not in love with all of them, but I find several of them really push my pleasure button. Matteo Scalero's Batman and Robin for BM/TF looks great. Deadman on Tommy Lee Edwards' JLD cover I find really frightening. No coincidence, I guess, that both covers seem to evince some Mike Mignola influence.

I love the joyful exuberance J.G. Jones has captured in his Batgirl cover, although I find  it, like the Howard Chaykin Batman piece below it, more dieselpunk than steampunk. As someone who regularly mixes steampunk so thoroughly with Gothic Horror, I realize I am in no position to make any purity arguments for what is/is not steampunk.

My absolute favorite of all the above is Dan Panosian's Wonder Woman on the SM/WW cover. I LOVE IT! Oh my gods, I'm going to have to paint a mini version of her in this outfit for IHMN.

Perhaps Malifaux's Colette? It would be a nice change from all the versions we see of her as Mad Moxxi from Borderlands.

Or the steampunk Zara Craft from CMON? More conversion work, but the costume is similar ...

And I'm sure there are others out there I've missed. What would you suggest?