Pow, biff, clunk, thwack, staple

It's that time of year again when one of the tiny people in our house has a birthday. We have two tiny people scuttling around the place, and their birthdays are evenly spaced apart (nearly six months to the day), so the long, decent break between them means the missus and me are always happy to make a bit of an effort.

Actually, scratch that. The missus is always happy to make an effort, it's me that's only happy to make a bit of one.

This year the tiny person in question is mostly fascinated by superheroes. Which is lucky because, as I'm sure you can guess, I'm not exactly anti that kind of thing.

He's also into dinosaurs and pirates, so putting that little lot together sounds like a pretty good theme. Some people might say it goes a little overboard, that it's lost all subtlety, and is a transparent attempt to cover all bases. And to them I would say, "yes, you are correct".

Actually, the tiny person also likes dumper trucks and similarly industrial-looking toy vehicles. But if I included a fourth element we would have lost that fundamental principle of good communication, the tricolon, or rule of three. Sir Winston Churchill didn't say "Never in the history of human endeavour has so much been owed by so many to so few, with so little change in return". Julius Caesar didn't say "I came, I saw, I conquered, I went home again". And Abraham Lincoln didn't say "Government of the people, by the people, for the people, and their pets".

So, you know what? Screw the damn dumper trucks.

In order to try to reinforce the theme throughout our home (the venue for the party) we decided to make bunting. I started with some liberal downloading of free vector images, which I then chopped up, edited, and put back together. The images were especially useful for the dinosaurs, which, frankly, I couldn't be bothered to draw. A few of the other bits and pieces were the result of redrawing images found with Google searches, and a tinier few were even my own work.

I printed them out at my office, turned the paper around, put it back in the machine, and printed them again. I then cut and scored each of the resultant double-sided sheets and took them home.

Meanwhile the missus started on the cakes. She found some images online and went off to Hobbycraft to buy a load of Renshaw coloured icing.

When we were done with all the baking, icing, piping, with all the printing, cutting and stapling, and the cakes were ready and the bunting was up all over the house and garden, then, only then, did I realise the party needed one more thing.

Your friendly, neighbourhood, giant, inflatable, helium-filled Spider-Man balloon.

He took up vigil above the door to the back garden, and the party began.

Finally, after all that hard work, the party was a complete success. Admittedly this may have had less to do with the decorations and more to do with the fact that all the parents were plied with alcohol and all the kids filled up on sugar, but that's a mere detail, right?

Bringing law to the lawless, one swing at a time

If you've been following my 'Dredd' style Abites project, and you've been paying an inordinate amount of attention, plus you've got an excellent memory for obscure details, you may remember there were two remaining footsloggers I was yet to arm up. And when I say 'arm' I don't just mean weapons, but quite literally their upper set of limbs as well. 

I was going to attempt a 'not-so-armless-now' gag, but I think, even by my own low standards, that's scraping the bottom of an already-well-scraped barrel.

A few weeks ago I started work on the two bike cops that will round out this Arbites squad. A few hours later I had switched my efforts to the two guys shown here. Basically once I realised how difficult it was going to be to build the two identical Lawmaster motorcycles, with their distinctive front fairing, lights, badge and weapons, creating the riot shields from scratch, and converting the mauls felt like it could be a comparitively quick win.

It wasn't. 

I'll come back to that. Here's the pic.

Building the mauls was actually a little simpler than I expected. I merely shaved off all the unnecessary bits from the Space Marine Terminator hammers (that I showed at the bottom of this article) and smoothed over any unsightly areas with either liquid poly or green stuff.

It only got complicated when I came to the hands. The Terminator fists looked too big to attach to the Space Marine Scout arms. It made the Judges look like tiny children wearing comedy Hulk gloves. I toyed with the idea of completely cutting them off, but decided I would never get the grip on the replacements to look as convincing. Instead I slowly carved tiny slivers off the existing mitts until I'd made them as small as I could, without them looking silly. Then I pinned them in place with bits of paperclip, and tried to create a perfect seal with more liquid poly.

The shields were more involved. I wanted them to look like slightly modernised versions of the Enforcer shields released by Games Workshop's Specialist Games division, Fanatic, back in the late nineties (or perhaps early noughties). I knew what I had in mind, so started by looking at other manufacturers for proxy models. I can't remember them all now, but some of the contenders were as follows:

• Victoria Miniatures Riot Shields
• MaxMini Anti-Riot Gear
• Anvil Industry Ballistic Shields
• Anvil Industry Riot Shield
• Zinge Industries Riot Shield

I also looked through the existing Games Workshop and Forge World stuff, plus the Kromlech, Puppets War, Spellcrow, Fox Box, Ramshackle Games, Pig Iron Productions and Scibor ranges, not to mention brief dalliances with the shields from the Mantic Enforcer Defenders and After Glow Shield Warriors.

But it was all to no avail. Most of the shields I found had something about them I liked, but didn't quite fit what I had in mind. In the end I decided it would be easier (and cheaper) to make them from scratch. 

I wanted a slight curve on the shield so I started with a discarded shampoo bottle. (You can see it in the same article I mentioned above.) I cut a section out of the bottle, washed it thoroughly and lightly scored its surface with a scalpel to give the glue something to hold onto.

I then used plasticard, green stuff, some no-longer-available modelling rivets from Antenocitis Workshop and a Forge World etched brass imperial eagle to build all the details. 

During construction I decided they looked a little plain, so borrowed an idea from the Mantic Enforcer Defender shield, to reinforce the vision slit, as it added just enough extra detail to break up all those flat surfaces without deviating from the original design too much.

Anyway, after many evenings of fiddly work, glued fingers, and some far-from-inventive cursing, the two Arbites are finally ready to join their fellows on the parade ground.

So this completes the beat cops, leaving me with only the two bikes to finish. After that I can finally start painting. With a little luck I won't have grown old and developed arthritis by then. Fingers crossed. While I can still cross them.

Miniature giants, part one: Khador warjack

I try not to be distracted by new, shiny things, but when it comes to certain miniatures, I have about as much willpower as a three year old in a sweet shop. Except in my case there are no responsible adults dragging me away, and there might even be a paycheque in my pocket, begging to be misappropriated.

So it should come as no surprise that over the last 30 years my miniature collection has come to resemble a Games Workshop store. A Games Workshop store without the display cabinets full of finished models. Just boxes and boxes of unpainted toy soldiers, sitting sadly on shelves, hopelessly sighing 'pick me' every time I choose to randomly abandon whatever I was doing and flit to a new project that probably won't see any real progress for at least two more years.

In my collection of unpainted miniatures there are a whole bunch that aren't affiliated with any of my armies. And among these, one of my especially strong weaknesses* is particularly evident. It's an interest which has manifested itself in at least one other project visible on this blog.

Giant robots.

When I say giant I mean bigger than a man. So the category ends up being quite broad, including anything from a man-sized war droid (as they tend to be slightly larger than their human counterparts, take this guy for example), to the gargantuan walking forts of Battletech, Manga and the Adeptus Mechanicus.

I've just finished painting the first of this arbitrary collection of unaffiliated bots, so I'd like to share it here.

It's one of the original metal Khador Warjacks from the game Warmachine by Privateer Press. I don't own any other miniatures from that game system, but I decided on a little backstory all the same.

He and his Warcaster were cut off from their lines during a scrap in which batterings were liberally handed out by both sides. The Warjack's left pauldron was struck a crushing blow which thrust torn metal down into the shoulder joint, rendering the entire arm useless. Forced to make a tactical withdrawal the two Khadorans holed up in a barn for the night where the Warcaster was able to remove the ragged remains of the pauldron, free up the arm, and effect repairs using the meagre resources at hand.

Or, if you don't like that, try this: Originally I bought the model thinking I could somehow integrate it into my fantasy Chaos terrain project. It was after reading China Miéville's excellent Bas-Lag trilogy, set (at least partly) in the vivid and enchanting steam punk city of New Crobuzon. Without going into too much detail, the series introduces two ideas relevant to the above character. The first is of rogue sentience forming among broken machines in a scrap heap, and the second involves a specialist thaumaturge (wizard) who is able to pull together random inanimate materials to create short-lived ambulant creatures known as golems. My twisted take on this results in the above robot, anachronistically given life by a freak accident (no doubt involving Chaos), haphazardly drawn together from discarded junk, stalking the streets of the cowed and ruined city.

At some point I'll probably also have him turn up in my Warhammer 40,000 city, Kruenta Karoliina Arx Rotunda. I reckon he'd make for an interesting encounter in a game of Necromunda or 28mm Inquisitor. I can almost feel a backstory forming as I write this. But it's probably best to save that, and use it for one of the other robots in my collection. After all, when it comes to them, I clearly need all the encouragement I can get.


*You're probably not supposed to describe a weakness as strong. 

Mischief, thou art afoot

Today I need to get something off my chest, I need to vent. I have been the victim of plots perpetrated by the forces of Chaos. Two different events, both of which are related to the writing of this blog.

The first incident took place during my attempt to write an earlier entry. The one about Gshtaad the Abomination. It was meant to be a profile of my homegrown Chaos God, acting as an introduction to my old Chaos Warrior miniatures.

But before I wrote it, I knew I wanted to start with a longer, more complicated entry, discussing my thoughts on Games Workshop's Chaos Pantheon. This was to be my argument for why I felt it was okay to invent a new god, and where this fictional deity would slot into the existing Warhammer mythology.

But I couldn't keep this piece short and it started to become a bit laboured. And not just laboured, it seemed to be a story that didn't want to be told. Midway through writing, when I was talking about the Chaos Gods appearing in both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, I realised I needed to discuss the relationship between these two games before I could go any further. So an additional post had to be written. Then, as I was writing the additional post, more ideas sprung up, meaning a single extra post was not enough. I had other things I needed to say, so I ended up having to write yet another entry.

But I never set out to write either of those two posts. Several thousand words just kind of appeared within me and forced their way out. I really only wanted to talk about the Chaos Pantheon, and its potentially missing Gods. 

But eventually I got back on to that story and started to make some decisive progress. In fact I was almost in sight of my goal, having written about three quarters of the article, when my computer's screen flashed ominously. Everything I had written so far disappeared before my eyes, and while I was messing with apple z an autosave overwrote any chance I had of retrieving an earlier copy. No matter what I did I couldn't get the article to come back. It wasn't saved anywhere else, and I was powerless to undo the damage.

It was my bad, for not keeping a backed-up copy of the article, but that didn't make the fact that I had to start all over again any easier to bear. Quite a few hours of writing and researching needed to be repeated from scratch, after a journey that had already ended up running into months.

The fault was entirely my own, so I did the only sensible thing open to me, and laid the blame firmly at the feet of the Chaos Gods.

Or their tentacles. Whatever.

Not at all how it happened, but a better image than the blank screen I was faced with

And it probably would have ended there, never to be mentioned again, had another event not unfolded just a few weeks later. This second story centres on the tribulations of constructing and painting a large terrain piece.

The piece in question was part of a modular town project I've been working on since I was at college. That means it's been ongoing for nearly twenty years. Except of course it hasn't been ongoing. It's been sitting on a shelf somewhere, forlorn and forgotten about.

The original idea was to build part of an Empire town that had been attacked and overrun by the forces of Chaos. The Chaos connection again.

It started out as a single model, but when I moved house it broke and I had to separate it into component parts. Then the colours that I had painted the first part in were withdrawn and a whole new range of paints released in their place. Then I moved again and the models went into deep storage for several years. When they came out they had suffered all kinds of damage. Eventually after all those years (and repairs and rebuilds and additions), I realised I had to just finish the project and draw a line under it. So I took a day off work and committed myself to finishing. I didn't finish. But I did enough to mean that I was able to wrap it up during the next few evenings. Eventually, a few weeks ago, I completed the whole thing. I reached for the spray varnish, but instead grabbed the black primer. A piece of terrain that I have quite literally been trying to complete for twenty years, got partially resprayed matt black at precisely the moment I thought I was crossing the finishing line.

And now, after repainting the damaged area and repairing the base, all those years after I first started, the terrain is finally complete.

But that's not quite the end of the story. There's an epilogue. Or maybe it's an epitaph? Because, with the release of Age of Sigmar a few months ago, in game terms the finished piece is now out-of-date. The Old World has been destroyed. The Empire and the Northern Wastes no longer exist. My little terrain project no longer has a place in the current continuity.

But I guess that's how Chaos works. Those pesky Chaos Powers. There's no order. No logic. Things happen randomly for no reason.

Or do they? Who knows? It's kind of impossible to tell when Chaos is involved.

Not just nutters, but psychopaths too

Nearly all my Chaos Warriors worship Gshtaad The Abomination. If you can't be bothered to read my post about him, he's basically a kind of halfway house between Khorne, the Blood God and Nurgle, the Lord of Decay, theoretically giving me the freedom to collect miniatures from both ranges, and integrate them into a single, coherent force.

But the boundary line between Khorne and Nurgle isn't the only one I've conveniently ignored for the sake of my Chaos Warrior force.

At various points in Games Workshop's history there have been Chaos Thugs, Chaos Marauders and Chaos Warriors - not to mention the uber warriors known as the Chosen. I always imagined these units, taken in sequence, formed a kind of career path for nasty bad guys. I thought a Chaos follower would start as a young nutter, in a pack of Thugs with little armour and equipment, getting bigger and better at fighting until he's collected enough kills, experience and gear to graduate to full-blown, armoured psychopath.

I therefore liked the idea that the demarkation line between Thugs, Marauders, Warriors and Chosen might not be so straightforward. It could be more blurred than the commercial miniature ranges have been able to portray. So some Warriors might not be in full armour, and some Marauders might not be bare-chested. I figured that the occasional hard-as-nails Warrior might even prefer to lead younger, less experienced goons into the fight, probably as an expression of his narcissism, but perhaps even as some kind of twisted, daemon-worshipper's take on civic duty.

Equally, some Marauders might be so blessed by their chosen God that they're way more muscular than the veterans who have spent a lifetime training and building themselves up. Hulking great youths, rapidly rising through the ranks, forgoing skill and experience in favour of sheer, mindless strength.

And you might also find troops who aren't super tough, dangerous-looking fighters. Instead they are skinny little dudes, press-ganged into the lower ranks, given ill-fitting armour and scrappy weapons, essentially just cannon fodder, desperate to unearth some hidden power before Darwin's selection process brutally removes them from the tribe for good.

So what I'm trying to say is that I actively endeavour to make my Chaos Warrior army as diverse as I can. To compose it from as widely dissimilar parts as possible. To achieve variance. Random variance. You might even want to call it Chaos.

Trapped with strangers

It used to be quite rare to see movies that focussed solely on a group of strangers trapped in a small space with one another. There was a time when Henry Fonda trying to deliberate with a bunch of knee-jerk, jury members in 12 Angry Men (1957) was one of the only choices a viewer had.

But recent years have seen the release of a growing number of these group isolation, bottle show films. Many of which are set in far more extreme scenarios than the backroom of a courthouse on a hot day. In fact there are so many of these movies – usually falling into the horror genre, but often including sci-fi elements – that they've pretty much formed a little sub-category all of their own.

At the risk of blowing all the plots, for some reason a fair few seem to end in mass murder. But the best films dealing with the subject make their extreme resolutions almost completely believable, and even inevitable. So think twice next time you get in a lift with people you don't know.

Here are ten movies where the stakes are high, the doors are locked, the claustrophobia is palpable and the clock is ticking.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
I've included George A. Romero's classic horror film mainly for its historical significance. Not only is it commonly hailed as having invented the zombie movie (although the film refers to them as ghouls, and they are able to use rudimentary hand weapons), but I think it may also be the first of the movement discussed here. A group of strangers trapped in a small location, trying to keep their sphincters closed at squeaky bum time, while all around them something utterly horrific is threatening to take their lives in a really nasty and imaginative way. The film starts a little slow, but once it gets going all the hallmarks of both zombie and group isolation movies are there to be enjoyed and/or abhorred. It's also well worth watching the arguably superior, yet slightly less isolated, second instalment in Romero's sequence, Dawn of the Dead (1978).

Cube (1997)

A group of strangers wake up in a cube shaped room that appears to be part of a labyrinth. But the labyrinth is full of deadly traps and ingenious clues. It's another low budget movie from the previous century, but the intriguing predicament and ambitious visual effects will keep you engrossed from start to finish.

Identity (2003)
I nearly didn't include this film because the characters are trapped in a motel – a much larger space than I felt was appropriate. Where do you draw the line? We're all caught on this little blue-green planet, right? But this murder mystery movie still manages to make you feel the confinement, while at the same time its whodunit plot unfolds in a unique and unexpected direction. It also gets bonus points for being packed to the motel's rafters with recognisable faces.

Saw (2004)
When I say Saw, what I really mean is the Saw franchise. There are so many of these films now that it's hard to keep track. And although I probably haven't seen them all, I've seen enough to know that they're well made, engaging and engrossing. (Or if torture porn isn't your thing then perhaps just plain gross.) The original had a slightly different flavour to the sequels, but it's hard to say which is the best of the lot. Purists will obviously go for the first*, but for me the sheer inventiveness of the traps from the later films, not to mention the franchise's developing aesthetic, further muddies this question's already blood-soaked waters**.

House of 9 (2005)
This was one of the first Saw-a-like movies to be released***, and probably one of the best. Nine people wake up in a locked mansion and are told that only one can survive. Clearly inspired by Saw, it's still easily fresh enough to deserve its place here. And besides, its strangers-trapped-in-a-house-and-forced-to-kill-each-other plot bears a lot more resemblance to Saw II than the original. And if my timelines are right, House of 9 was released before Saw II hit the theatres, so who's copying who?

Fermat's Room (2007)
This Spanish film is another one set in a giant trap. But it's the clever incorporation of mind games and mathematical puzzles which elevates it to a position on this list. It means it gets inside your head in a less literal way than, say, cutting out your own eyeball to remove a surgically implanted key (Saw II again). Although that's not to say Fermat's Room is a picnic – lives are definitely at risk here.

Exam (2009)
This is what might happen if, during a job interview, you were put up against the other candidates in a more exaggerated manner. If all the applicants were stuck in a single room and encouraged to really let loose on one another. Say, for example, someone offered to pay the legal fees for anyone who punched another candidate in the face. Kind of like what could happen if Donald Trump was in charge of The Apprentice. Oh, wait...

Devil (2010)
Everyone thought that M. Night Shyamalan only made a couple of good films, and that he only had one trick. And if it weren't for Devil, perhaps they'd be right. But this low-key movie, written by him, set almost entirely in an elevator car, was exciting, claustrophobic and suspenseful, and makes for a very worthy entry on this list.

The Divide (2011)
Don't be fooled by any of the promotional images for this film. It is not set in a crumbling post-apocalyptic New York landscape, filled with characters in teched-up Hazmat suits. Or, rather it is, but that's not the focus, and we hardly see any of it. Instead this chilling film details the collapse of a microcosmic society as a handful of survivors are trapped in a basement for what may well be the rest of their lives. Relentlessly captivating, yet bleak and disturbing, don't expect too many laughs.

Circle (2015)
By including Cube, back near the top of the list, it would be remiss of me not to mention Circle. You can certainly draw a very straight line between the two movies. But that's a tangent. What I'm saying is both films share similar names and storylines. A whole bunch of people wake up in an unknown sci-fi-esque location and have to work out how to stay alive. Except, in Circle if they move they die. And they're gonna keep dying, every two minutes, unless they are able to collectively work out a plan.

When thinking about the above films it became apparent that, like many genres, collections and categories, the exact parameters are hard to define. A whole tonne of movies follow groups of stranded strangers trying to deal with unexpected situations. It's not just a convenient way of keeping production costs under control, but a rich vein for drama. Films such as Alien (1979), The Evil Dead (1981), The Thing (1982), Event Horizon (1997), Battle Royale (2000), Cabin Fever (2002), The Descent (2005), Sunshine (2007), [Rec] (2007), The Mist (2007), and no doubt many hundreds of others, all have a close affinity with this movement, but narrowly miss out on fully-fledged membership. In most of these movies either the locations are still a little too large, offering the chance for too much unrestricted movement, and negating the claustrophobia, or the characters already know each other, and as such miss out on the shifting group dynamics and plays for power, or they simply don't spend enough of the film trapped. In my mind, for films to classify, the isolated characters should show development as a direct result of their incarceration, which in turn should lead the story into its eventual resolution.

Do you disagree? Have I missed your favourite film? Is there something else you'd like to add? As usual, any comment or complaint can be aired below.****

*Is there really such a thing as a Saw purist?

**I’ve just realised that out of the first four films on the list, I’ve kinda suggested that two of them have sequels that might be better than the original. That’s both rare and controversial, so would probably make a good subject for a later blog post...

***See also Aquarium (2004), Are You Scared? (2006), Unknown (2006), Captivity (2007), Breathing Room (2008), Nine Dead (2010), Death Tube (2010), Vile (2011) and probably quite a few more.
****Although when I say any, I mean related to this post. This probably isn't the place to discuss that embarrassing rash, your late-night-guitar-playing neighbours or the fact that it's raining.

Motorcycle justice

You thought I'd forgotten about my 'Judge Dredd' style Arbites Enforcers project, right? I know. I get it. It's totally understandable. But to tell you the truth that's just not the case. I haven't forgotten about them. Quite the opposite. The project has been on my mind for months. Eating away at me, when I should be focussing on other things. I think about it when I'm trying to get off to sleep. I think about it when I'm at work. I think about it when I'm playing with the kids. I'm thinking about it now.

So I've done a lot of thinking.

But sadly, I haven't made much progress. Two things have blocked my flow. The riot gear Judges and the two motorcycle Judges. The riot shields and batons have been sitting on my desk looking a lot less fun to build than pretty much every other unconstructed toy in the vicinity, and the bikes have simply had me stumped, not sure how to proceed.

But after all that thinking there are, at least, a few thoughts I can share.

My Arbites/Judges take their look from the Karl Urban film, but I wasn't in love with its version of the Lawmasters (or, for that matter, the ones from the old Stallone movie). So I had to look elsewhere, and the comic was the obvious place to start.

Over the last couple of years a new mark of Lawmaster has appeared in the Judge Dredd strip, and I've gotta say I'm rather taken with it.

Because it's full of badassery

Artist Ben Willsher seems to be the man behind the new design. In this page from the Day of Chaos saga he compares it to one of the original Lawmasters

I struggled to find any different angles of this machine, but fortunately, Mezco Toys have a model based on it, due for release next month, as part of their One:12 Collective range.

Exactly the design I'll never be able to achieve

But let's not stop just yet. There are a few other designs that have also caught my eye. The next two share similarities with the above, and the third is the old school original Lawmaster in all its glory. I'll probably try to draw some inspiration from all of them, so at this point I'm imagining that my finished bikes will be based mainly on the Lawmaster above, but will also incorporate influences from the three directly below.

Fan art from Dan Cornwell (find him on Deviant Art here)

Jon Davis-Hunt's excellent new style Lawmaster with the old style lights 

Mike McMahon's take on the classic Lawmaster

Now, I have absolutely zero intention of completely scratch-building two identical bikes, so the next thing I need to know is which existing model kit to base them on. There were three that sprung out at me.

Forge World's Heresy era Legion Outrider bike

Titan Forge's Terra bikes

Games Workshop's Space Marine Scout bike

The final choice was made easy, not just by way of price, flexibility and availability, but also by the simple fact that it comes with rider's legs from the same range I've been using for the rest of my Arbites. So, although the bike will probably require more work than the others, it's the bottom one, the Space Marine Scout.

But that's not to say the other two images are useless. On the contrary they both offer a tonne of inspiration for this project. There's a lot of tough, riveted armour and sleek, dangerous curves on those bikes, all of which feels very in keeping with how I envisage Lawmasters to look in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

So there's the thinking. Now I just need to do the difficult bit. Can I replicate any of these ideas, twice, on the model bikes I promised to build? Only some serious work will tell. A little less conversation a little more action.