Revenge of the Daleks

Regular visitors to the Buffet will have no doubt noted that it has been rather quiet of late.

I have been suffering a crisis of confidence in my abilities and the value of my blog, so much so that I had considered giving it up.

However, two things changed my mind.

The first was fellow bloggers Hilary Gilbert and Tarot Hunt of The Game Cupboard, who when they became aware of my problem, offered unstinting and unselfish encouragement and support, and were unflagging in their enthusiasm.

The second was more recent. Your blog is your own personal expression of your hobby. By publishing this online, you are exposing your efforts, opinions and views to a Worldwide audience. Not everyone who reads you blog will agree with you, but unlike forums, those who disagree will usually just not comment or follow your blog.

Not long ago, I had a disagreement with the owner of a particular blog, the result of which was that I decided to no longer follow that blog, as the owner’s beliefs were not compatible with my own. Since this event, it appears the owner of this particular blog has created an avatar of me, which was then killed horribly in a batrep and publicly criticised the free rules I had published here. I found out about this purely by chance, and to be honest, this kind of petty vindictiveness is the reason I no longer follow this blog.

However, this particular person has now decided to target friends of mine, by undermining and belittling them and their ideas not only on their own blog, but also on other blogs I frequent. For a community that prides itself on acceptance and generosity, this kind of behaviour represents the ‘ugly’ side of our wonderful hobby. Currently, I am observing from the sidelines, but should this continue, I am quite prepared to speak up and ‘name and shame’ this person.

This is the line – the shit stops here.

By me giving up, I’m letting people like this win. So, Carrion Crow’s Buffet will continue, providing whatever content I bloody well decide I want to. It will be varied, on occasion it will be weird, but hopefully it will be entertaining, amusing and worth reading.

Right, now I’ve got that off my chest, let’s see what I’ve managed to get done during my ‘fallow’ period. First up, my ‘father of the Daleks’ has received a few more licks of paint and now looks a bit more Davros-like;

 

Strictly speaking, Davros’ skirt colour should be dark grey, but the contrast between the dark grey and silver ‘globes’ wasn’t working, so I repainted it black instead. Still a way to go, as he’s looking a little bit Mekon colour-wise, but he’s still pretty cool.

And a brief shout out to Roger from Rantings from Under the Wargames Table, who defended my Davros from those who criticised it on The Miniatures Page, for which I thank him.

Next up,  a bit of colour on Aggedor, the Monster of Peladon;

Having just decided to paint the figure without referring to pictures online, I initially gave him an undercoat of GW Orc Brown (which is the yellow on the base). I then realised that this was the wrong colour, so had to repaint him with Revell Tan. A few patches of yellow are still showing through, but at least he’s the right colour now.

Next up, we have progressed a bit further with the protagonists of the next Doctor Who AAR – Tara Hunt, the Third Doctor and Abslom Daak;

One more painting session should see these finished and ready to be used, which is quite convenient, because their opponents are finished;

Yes, that’s right, five battleship-grey old-school Daleks, and one Engineer Dalek in the livery of the new series Skaro Daleks!

As the nodules/globes are the part that usually put people off, I used a technique that I read online somewhere (thought it was Germy’s site, but couldn’t find it on there), which is to have a big blob of paint and then use a plastic tube of the correct diameter to ‘paint’ the globes. An empty biro tube or cotton-bud stem is ideal and this not only works really well, it’s really quick.

I’m really pleased with how these came out, as to me, they look exactly how I think they should.

Of course, this means that all I need to do is finish off my Doctor and his companions and the next AAR can be played! Hooray!

However, as June is Forgotten Heroes month, this may delay it. But my characters (yes, I’m doing more than one) are relatively simple, so there is a possibility that the next instalment of my Doctor Who adventure will be here before you know it!

Join me next week, when I reveal who I’ve chosen as the subject of Forgotten Heroes month and remember, it’s still not too late to join in – go here for full details.

Father of the Daleks

As the first half of the week had been ridiculously busy and rather stressful, I decided that I would dedicate the whole of Thursday evening to ‘hobby-time’, in order to actually get something done this week and to de-stress, as I find concentrating on painting, creating or playing does relax me.

So, I set up my painting station on the dining table and looked over what was currently in the painting queue, to try and work out what would be the most constructive use of my time. Obviously, as the Doctor Who Project rolls ever onwards, everything currently in the queue is related to this.

First up were my scratch-built Ogri, last seen here. They were almost done, but needed some dry-brushing and the bases painted in. They’re not quite done yet, but a bit further on than they were last time:

Looks like UNIT are investigating the recent spate of deaths near Boscombe Moor – I wonder if they’ve given blood recently…

Next up were some figures I’d based and decided to give a white undercoat:

So, we have the Movie, Fourth and Fifth Doctors, accompanied by Aggedor, the Monster of Peladon and two cyclopean aliens, which were a kind gift from Roger Webb of Ranting from Under the Wargames Table, from his own range of figures which, up until recently, were available from Wargames Supply Dump. These make ideal Doctor Who monsters, so were added to the painting queue.

And because I needed to get my protagonists for my next Doctor Who AAR painted up, the two characters I based last week were undercoated and given a bit of colour, as was my Third Doctor figure.

“But hang on, Jez,” I hear you cry, “You said that you had the whole of Thursday evening – even if you’re a ridiculously slow painter, you should have got a lot more done than just this…”

My reply would be to agree with you completely. Personally, I blame this chap:

This is Psion, from the Teen Titans Heroclix subset, which I recently acquired as part of Blue Rat Games order. As they were having one of their seasonal 25% off sales and I needed some conversion fodder for next month’s Forgotten Heroes, he was included in the order as I had specific plans for this obscure DC villain…

As regular readers will know, whilst I have several incarnations of the Doctor, some recently drafted companions and quite a few iconic Who villians, one thing I don’t currently own is a 28mm version of Davros. Black Tree Designs did make a figure of him, but it appears that the mold has been retired, as when I ordered my Daleks, Davros was not available. I am aware that Warlord Games do intend to release the most recent version of Davros along with some of the Time War version of the Daleks, but this will be their preferred scale of 35mm, which means that he’ll be too bloody big…

So, in true Carrion Crow style, I decided to make my own. As I had already saved an unassembled Dalek from the patrol set with a vague idea of doing this, all I needed was a suitable torso – which is where Psion came in.

Looking at various pictures online, I decided that I wasn’t going to go for an exact version of Davros, as trying to match the exact shape of his control deck would be extremely fiddly and frustrating, so I raided my ‘box of bits’ for suitable parts, ending up with three GW plastic shields and a comm-unit. These were cut down to size, dry-fitted, adjusted a bit more, then glued into place, and with tiny screams of “I can’t feel my legs…”, Psion’s torso was attached. And this was the result:

Now, at this stage, he doesn’t quite look like the classic era version of this character, as Davros usually wears clothing that appears to be made from a bin-liner, rather than an orange jumpsuit, so out came the paints. After an undercoat of white, followed by an initial coat of Elf Grey, we ended up with this:

Certainly looks a bit more Davros-like now, doesn’t he? I did consider adding some fuse wire to create Davros’ head frame, but decided this would be too fiddly, so will probably paint these details on. And to give an idea of how he scales up with my classic grey Daleks, here he is with a couple of his ‘children’:

So, now you can see why I may not have got as much painted as I could have, but I hope you’ll agree it was time well spent.

Before I sign off for this week, another quick reminder that Forgotten Heroes is creeping ever closer. We’ve had a good response so far, with the majority of those who took part last year also planning to take part this year – with the addition of a few new faces. Still plenty of time to ‘sign up’ if you’re interested in a bit of fun, with the full details of what you need to do to take part available on the ‘official’ Forgotten Heroes site.

Next week, the Doctor Who project continues…but only ‘Who’ knows what will feature.

Companion Piece

As I had already decided that my next Doctor Who AAR, following on from the events in Day of the Master, would feature the third incarnation of the Doctor AND would also feature the classic grey Daleks, these figures had taken precedence in my painting queue, along with my scratch-built TARDIS.

However, what I failed to take into account was that the Doctor very rarely travels alone and I didn’t have any companions to accompany him on his next adventure.

Knowing that he would be facing the Daleks, who do have a tendency to exterminate those they consider enemies of the Daleks, I needed some companions who either had some martial prowess or could be considered ‘cannon fodder’. As I didn’t have half a dozen Adrics to act as human shields (the only companion whose death I actually cheered), I went with the former. But having already used UNIT, I decided to go with something a bit different.

So, here are the two companions who will be accompanying the Doctor on his next adventure:

The figure on the left is Pandora King from Crooked Dice, available from their webstore for £4.00, whilst the figure on the right is RSF 04 Pepperpot Hunter from Miniature Figurines Retro Sci-Fi range, costing £2.75.

Those with an extensive knowledge of Doctor Who will recognise that the ‘pepperpot hunter’ is a representation of Abslom Daak – Dalek Killer, who first appeared in a back-up strip in the Doctor Who Weekly comic book in 1980. A hardened criminal who, when caught, was offered a choice between vapourisation and a one-man suicide mission against a planet full of Daleks, he chose the latter – and turned out to be rather good at killing Daleks. Whilst Daak encountered the Seventh Doctor in the comic book, he has never met the Doctor on screen, but an image of his face was seen in the Twelfth Doctor episode ‘Time Heist’, which means he IS canon. Which is cool.

This figure was actually a gift from Simon Moore aka BLaxkleric of Fantorical fame, because he’s a thoroughly nice chap.

So, having already got a psychotic Dalek-killer, I decided that I needed a female companion, ideally one who had experience of the Daleks and combat training. My mind immediately latched on to Sara Kingdom, a character introduced in the 1965 First Doctor serial The Dalek’s Master Plan. She had the necessary skills and abilities, being a member of the Space Security Service, but was unfortunately dead. However, as the Space Security Service is a large organisation, surely they would have more than just one agent? Taking inspiration from this character and from my good friend, the lovely Tarot Hunt (with her permission, of course) of The Games Cupboard, thus was born Tara Hunt, Space Security Agent and second companion for my next Doctor Who AAR – once I’ve painted them, of course.

Now, as I realised that there existed the possibility that the Doctor may end up being “killed” by the Daleks, causing him to regenerate, I also decided to base up the Fourth Doctor. And, just in case, the Fifth Doctor too. As I still had some Milliput left after this, I also based up my second gift from Simon, Miniature Figurines ‘Chrononaut Grandfather’, which is a much better likeness of the movie version of the Doctor than Black Tree Designs one.

And there was still some putty left over, so Aggedor, the Monster of Peladon got based up too.

So, not a huge amount of progress, as post-Salute I’d lost my motivation/momentum due to various external factors, but I’ve got it back now, so expect more regular posts in future.

Normally, I’d sign off at this point, but I do need to make an announcement. It’s currently the 6th of May, which means that June is less than a month away. And in June, the madness that is Forgotten Heroes returns! Those of you who took part last year will know what this is all about, but for those of you that didn’t, follow the link to the official site, which explains everything. And also shows what everyone got up to last year.

If you want to take part this year, just let me know by commenting on this or subsequent posts before the 1st of June. My partner-in-crime, Roger Webb of Ranting from Under the Wargames Table, has agreed to update the FH site with all participants details and posts, because he’s nice like that.

So, the Doctor Who project will take a break during June, as Superhero madness will take over, but join me next time for more Who-related goodness.