An article appeared on Tabletop Gaming News recently highlighting One Monk Miniatures’ latest release. I’ve haven’t stumbled across this company before (they seem new) but they do a nice cheap range of printable 30mm printable paper Fantasy and Sci Fi armies. There’s also a free sample PDF of 30mm Fantasy Monsters.

These figure collections seem squarely aimed at Games Workshop Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40k players and they look like a nice cheap way of throwing together a representation of a GW Fantasy army in a few evenings. Alas at the moment One Monk only sell an Undead Battalion, but it seems they have plans for a range of Fantasy armies, amongst other things.

Given that it takes me a few evenings to paint one GW 28mm scale figure, I’m tempted to buy a few of these PDFs print them out and break out a sharp scalpel to round out my incomplete Warhammer Vampire Counts army. Building a paper army like this is also probably a more cost effective way of trying out a new Warhammer army before committing to purchasing hundreds (or thousands) of dollars of expensive GW figures - assuming you want to try Undead at the moment!

Another good use for this kind of army would be introducing your kids to Games Workshop games without the worry of having them game with your collection of fragile, hand painted figures! I’ll be keeping an eye out for future One Monk releases.

Eureka Miniatures recently released a new line of 18mm Fantasy Elves and Tabletop Gaming News posted about the release which was where I stumbled upon it. I was interested to see Eureka are an Australian manufacturer and actually do a whole line of 18mm Fantasy armies, from Orcs to Dwarves, from Centaurs to Men with large scale creatures thrown in.

The figures look reasonably well sculpted and both the scale and price is right for my tastes, however I have no idea what rule-set these figures are intended for? I assuming they’re designed to be used with Horde of the Things which is a Fantasy variant of the DBA Ancients rules.

Unfortunately after some searching I simply cannot find a distributor for these rules locally or on the web. The rules were created in 1991 so there’s a good chance they’re simply out of print! Can anybody suggest an Australian or New Zealand supplier that might carry a copy of Horde of the Things?

The last post I made on this blog was Anzac Day, which was roughly three weeks ago. It was also the day my Father was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer and went into hospital. Complications caused by that cancer ended my Dad’s life early last week, only two weeks later. He was 67 years old.

As you can imagine (or if you’ve been through something similar) this has been a shock to all our family and friends, particularly considering how healthy Dad had been for most of his life. Naturally it’s also made us all look at our own lives and how we’ve been living them and all I can say is don’t take anybody you care about for granted because they may be gone tomorrow.

We visited Dad every day he was in hospital and then we had to organise and attend his funeral, which explains the lack of posts in the last month or so. Hopefully I’ll start posting again soon.

Take care.

Today is Anzac day in New Zealand which is when we reflect on the actions and costs to New Zealanders in the various conflicts our country has been involved in over the years.

On this theme, John Campbell on TV3 last night mentioned ‘Expedition Saharan Saunter 2009′ which is a group of Long Range Desert Group re-creators:

“We are planning an Expedition to follow the footsteps (or wheel ruts) of the brave men of the LRDG and cover some of the routes and battlefields in the western desert. This will be a dynamic site updated regularly to keep all informed of our exciting project.”

Sounds like a hell of a challenge to me and I’ll be interested to see how they get on next year!

Following on from an earlier post I couldn’t resist picking up some Pig Iron Kolony Rebel 28mm heads from Scrap Dragon in Australia. They arrived late last week, so here’s a quick review of them.

I ordered two packs, and each came in a small baggie containing two copies of the white metal sprue you see in the above photo. In each pack you get twelve of the basic gas mask wearing heads, plus two each of the four ‘command’ style heads for a total of 20 heads per pack. Possibly ordering two packs was a bit of overkill, but they’re so cheap - working out at less than $1NZ per head it seemed a shame not to!

The heads are well cast with a reasonable amount of detail on them and I expect them to paint up well. There’s some fine mold lines to clean up, but sensibly no mold line crosses any face. Scale wise the heads are a touch smaller than related plastic 40k heads from Games Workshop. This second photo shows two Pig Iron heads compared to plastic GW Cadian and Catachan heads.

Personally I find the Pig Iron heads to be an acceptable match to the GW plastics. In fact I intend to use these metal heads to convert up a Necromunda Scavvie warband from various GW WHFB and 40k plastics. I think it’s a nice touch that the heads are fairly bare around the back (most of them simply have a strap) as it gives you options for converting on helmets or hoods. For my Necro scavvies I do intend to add tattered green stuff hoods, which I should be able to do without having to cut anything down.

Here’s another shot just to show you the head scale on a GW Cadian and Catachan bodies. I’ve left the arms off so the head/torso ratio is obvious and, given that we’re dealing with slightly oddly scaled 28mm sculptures, the heads looks fine. If anything the slightly smaller heads actually make the over-sized GW figures look more realistically proportioned in my opinion.

So in summary I’d happily recommend Pig Irons sci-fi head ranges to any 28mm converter or sculptor out there. They’re excellent quality and the price is perfectly acceptable given the quantity of heads in each pack. On a related note I’d also happily order from Scrap Dragon again too, in fact my receipt came with a 5% discount coupon code of my next order, which is a excellent way to guarantee return custom!

I’ve mentioned Scrap Dragon in the past and noticed a small story pop up on Tabletop Gaming News recently about how they’ve started carrying Pig Iron Productions lines.

So I jumped onto Scrap Dragon to have a look. They have the entire PI line including all of the packs of sci-fi 28mm heads which are very tempting at $11.09nzd each. I might just have to pick up a pack of the Kolony Rebel heads as part of a long standing plan to scratch together a Necro Scavvie gang. The PI heads mix very well with Games Workshop plastics, which you can see showcased in their gallery.

While I was on there I also noticed Scrap Dragon have also started carrying Hirst Arts molds, Avatars of War figures and even some Forgeworld kits! Clearly I should visit here more often!

Unfinished Armies has recently posted up one of the most inspirational Flames of War gaming tables I’ve seen in a while. It’s simply a beautiful table that makes me wish I was a regular in their gaming group so I could play on it!

What I find slightly distressing about the table is that it cleverly combines a few simple ideas we’re all capable of as modelers. First there’s a basic modular table built up from textured strips of land, with several levels of hills. Over this are scattered a set of nicely painted but mostly fairly simple Italian style villas and various other removable pieces of scenery like telephone poles, bridges etc.

It’s the clever color choices and detail work in the trees and other ground cover like vineyards that really elevate the table imho. I don’t think I’ve seen such well executed trees on a Flames of War table in the past - some of them are even bearing fruit! Definitely worth checking our Tankred’s blog for this table as past blogs also document the step by step creation of the table.