A Brief Diversion to a Galaxy Far, Far Away…

Waaaaaay back in May last year, I backed my first Kickstarter, details of which can be found in this post.

It was supposed to ship around September 2021, but various issues led to delays, but finally my pledge arrived last Monday! Yay!

However, I wasn’t in when the postie turned up, so had to wait until last night to collect my goodies. I pledged £30 ($40) for a squad of 28mm Astroguards cast in white metal, which would have been 8 Astroguards, so £3.75 a figure. However, due to the success of the campaign, I ended up with the bonus add-ons, so ended up with 22 figures, which works out as £1.36 a figure. Result!

Here is the Astroguard squad, with two female Astroguards swapped out for the duplicate sculpts from the original squad, along with two of the bonus figures, armed with heavy weapons – a light repeating laser on the left and a meson blaster on the left.

They kind of remind me of the cloud car pilots from The Empire Strikes Back, so I may very well paint them to resemble that uniform.

Next, more bonus figures. These are, left to right, top to bottom, “cantina celebration” aka party walrus-man, Gary, Beefhead Elder, Rod Roebuck, Space Cadet, Ensign Packman and Man Hunter.

Obviously, you can see these were inspired by Star Wars, Star Trek and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, but all will join my Distant Stars project.

Finally, we have the droids…er…bots. A Power Bot at the top, with a selection of arms and four Scouter Bots, all with a different head. I may add the two spare arms to one of the Scouter Bots, if I feel inclined.

Nice clean sculpts, although some flash on a couple of the figures, but nothing major. Strangely, they were supplied with 20mm slotta bases, rather than 25mm, which is fine for the Bots, but look too small for the others, so these may have to get swapped out.

These were just the figures from the basic pledge, so there are more in the range. Should you be interested in getting some for yourself, this is what the Kickstarter page has to say;

“Missed the campaign? Don’t worry, there’s still an opportunity to pick up figures from the Star Schlock Astroguards Kickstarter. 

Visit starschlock.com for info!“

That’s all for this brief diversion, as I still have a giant made from Shredded Wheat to paint up before the end of the month – then we’re in to Forgotten Heroes territory!

God knows what I’m going to do for that… I’m not quite as organised as I was last year. I have a vague idea, but we’ll have to see if if will work.

And The Dead Shall Rise…

I’d taken the day off with the intention of taking my wife shopping, as it was her birthday.

However, as she was thick with cold and did not want to venture out, I spent the morning doing all those little jobs I’d been putting off, then offered to wash her car. She was of the opinion that as it was my day off too, I should do something I wanted to do…

Result!

As there had been some tedious modelling stuff I’d been putting off, I decided to combine that with assembling my Chainrasp Horde, which have been sitting unassembled for a fair old while.

The tedious stuff was adding sand to the bases of a shit-load of figures, as I’d been following Soroastro’s guide to painting Star Wars miniatures for my Distant Stars figures, in which he uses basing medium after he’d assembled and painted the figures.

Not having any basing medium, I decided to use watered down PVA and sifted sand, which actually works quite well, but is a bit long-winded and messy.

Basically, watered down PVA on the base, dip into the sand, knock off any loose grains, more PVA where coverage isn’t great, re-dip, knock off the loose stuff, repeat until brain dribbles out of head.

Once, completed, I thin the PVA solution down a bit more, then paint this over the top of the sand to seal it and glue it in place a bit more.

As I said, tedious and long-winded, but I now have 31 figures based in this fashion, so this saves me from doing it later.

Mainly from my Distant Stars project, but I’m also doing a conversion for my uncle, as he’s a massive Tolkien fan and styles himself as Adrian, Lord of Menadine, so decided that one of the HeroScape vikings was a pretty close match to the painting he’d done of this character (he’s an artist, who works in oils mostly). And as the Chainrasp wraiths are mounted on normal 25mm circular bases, I did them as well.

You get enough components to build 10 wraiths on the sprue, most of which are two-piece models. Detail is nice, as you’d expect from Games Workshop, but I did lose a bit of one of the chains due to it being in an awkward place. Here’s the first three;

And the next three;

The next three;

The final figure you can assemble as either a standard Chainrasp wraith or as something called a ‘Dreadwarden’, whatever that is. I went with the latter, as I thought it looked cooler;

This one will receive a different paint scheme than the others, as the intention is to make him a personality &/or leader, so I’m thinking tarnished brass and dark red robes, rather than whatever colours I go with the others.

Won’t make a huge difference to the Rookhaven Ghostbusters, he might just take a bit more effort to trap.

That’s all for this time, but at least I’m posting more regularly, so that’s a good thing. Until next time…

New Year, New (ish) Project

If you’ve been regularly checking in here to see if I’ve been actially doing anything, you will have been a little disappointed, as it has been quite a while since I’ve been anywhere near anything hobby-related.

However, with the imminent (hopefully) arrival of my Kickstarter goodies and a financial windfall in the shape of some Christmas money, I decided to splash out a little on some hobby stuff.

Way back in 2015, Michael Awdry of the 28mm Victorian Warfare blog posted about a game called Space Cadets. Now, whilst I quite liked the idea of the game and the way it utilised hexagonal tiles to represent the exploration of a derelict spacecraft, the price point was above my available funds and I was only really interested in the tiles.

This had been on the back burner for the last 6 years, and with the Distant Stars project, I decided that I would still like to do something of this ilk, but using my existing figures from that project.

As Kallistra produce a range of interlocking plastic hexagonal tiles, 100mm across the flats AND do packs of ten individual hex tiles in black, for a very reasonable £7.50, I ordered a set, to see if they could be used for this.

They arrived yesterday, so out came the camera and some figures, so I could see whether my nascent idea had any legs.

As you can see, you get ten hexagonal tiles, hollow on the underside and 20 clips, which allow you to clip the tiles together.

The edges of each tile have a recess, so that when the clips are attached, the tiles sit flush with the table and are a pretty tight fit, so they won’t become detached during play.

They can be attached along each flat edge, so if you have a tile attached to every edge, you’d need 6 clips, hence why you get 20 in the pack. I’d not realised this when I ordered, so had ordered a further pack of 50 clips, in case I needed anymore – which I didn’t.

Using all 10 tiles, I set them up as a random complex of corridors. The initial idea was to spray them with a metallic dark grey, and use thin card or plastic card between the tiles, held in place with the clips, to represent walls. However, the clips are designed to hold the tiles quite tightly together, so this won’t work.

However, as the tiles are designed to be be stacked when not in use, they do have a recessed edge, so when clipped together, there is a recessed channel around each tile edge, so I might be able to slot a suitable ‘wall’ into these.

Now, whilst I’ve given a measurement across the flats, this doesn’t really help with working out whether they’re any good for 28mm figures, so let’s dump some miniatures on them and see what it looks like…

A couple of Protectorate Outriders, accompanied by a Androne, explore an abandoned facility…

However, it would appear that the facility is not as abandoned as they believe.

“Danger! Danger! Hostile entites approaching…”

We shall leave the brave folk of the Protectorate to their potentially grisly fate.

So, I’m pretty happy with both the size and price for these and think they should work pretty well, but feel I may need at least another pack. As they’re only £7.50 a pack, this isn’t a great expense, but bear in mind that the minimum order quantity is £10.00 before postage, so you might want to have a look at some of the other stuff on the site before ordering.

They do single hex terrain features which sit on top of the standard hex tiles, including craters, hills, broken ground, etc. which are only advertised in the standard brown colouring, but I did query this with Kallistra and they would make them in the other two colours (black and blue). However, as this would be a special order, it would take longer to produce.

If you’re planning on spraying them anyway, that probably doesn’t matter, but it’s good to know that the option is available.

That’s all for now, but rest assured that the Crow is on the wing once more, so expect more regular posts.

Especially since I’ve now seen the new Ghostbusters movie (which is what the 2016 one should have been, but wasn’t) and I feel that the Rookhaven Ghostbusters franchise needs to have their uniforms completed and be sent out to bust some heads…in a spiritual sense.

A Monstrous Wait

It has been a while since I’ve posted on the Buffet, due to issues with work, but Keith over at Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodgings has tempted me back to my hobby bench with Monster May(hem).

Having looked through my box of unpainted miniatures, I decided that the figure that best suited the description of a monster was this one;

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This the Wendigo from ParagonStar, which I bought a while ago to see if resin 3D printed figures were actually any good – plus it’s a cool looking version of this creature.

As this particular resin-printed figure is relatively smooth, the challenge will be to try and give it some texture. I shall be doing this by adding some fine sand to the base and using sponging on the figure itself. We shall see how successful I am.

Now, as people who regularly follow this blog will know, I don’t usually back Kickstarters – however, I have actually backed my first one today.

This is because I have been following the development of these figures on this guy’s blog and felt that they fit the aesthetic I wanted for my Distant Stars project, as they remind me of the Bespin cloud car pilots.

So, the 1000ft General has released his first Kickstarter for his Astro Guards, which can be found here. The lowest pledge level is $40, which gets you 9 metal miniatures, all different, as shown below.

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He has already met and exceeded the amount he needed – not bad seeing it only went up today. I think they’re pretty damn cool and as they will be delivered around my birthday, I consider this as an early present.

Now, as the rules of Monster May(hem) mean that I have to complete my monster before the end of May, it won’t be as long between this post and my next.

Fighting Lockdown Ennui

When the first lockdown was announced, the hobbyist in us all rubbed its hands together in the anticipation of ‘extra time’ to indulge ourselves.

However, the reality of enforced isolation, especially when the second national lockdown was enforced here in the UK, was that with no actual end in site, what I have termed ‘lockdown ennui’ sets in, as you get into the habit of putting off doing things, because there’s no real sense of urgency about anything.

Case in point, I received a home brewing kit for Christmas (as I am a bit of a beer fan), and rather than immediately start on my first foray into making my own beer when the Christmas alcohol had been consumed, I waited until the 7th February…

However, it is merrily bubbling away in the corner of my dining room and has reached the stage where it is ready to be bottled for secondary fermentation, so when this is done and labels I’ve ordered arrived (as why make your own beer if you’re not going to name it?) expect to see it annouced here.

So, in the spirit of battling against Lockdown Ennui (LE from now on), I have not only finished the first chapter of the book I’ve been promising I’d write for far too long, but also based some figures I’d had sitting around for ages, built some more troops for Distant Stars and slapped some paint around.

I combined the legs, body and head from a Void 1.1 Viridian Interdict Marine, the backpack from a Void 1.1 Junker Legionnaire and the arms and heavy weapon from a Mantic Steel Warrior to create a Dominion Support Legionnaire.

Shown alongside a standard Legionnaire to show the slightly bulkier armour, as I decided that adding pauldrons would make them look sufficiently different, yet still appear as part of the same army.

Next up, three ‘drones’, also for Distant Stars, bought over a year ago at the last wargames show I attended. These are The Droids from Ainsty Castings, three figures for £5.00.

I was initially going to go for colour schemes inspired by R2 units from Star Wars, but then decided to use the same colour scheme as the droids they’re based on – namely Huey Dewey and Louiey from Silent Running.

Finally, just to prove that I do still love pre-Chibnall Doctor Who, we have my versions of the 10th Doctor and Clara Oswald.

The 10th Doctor is a converted eM-4 Miniatures Future Skirmish Suit, available for £2.00. I filed down his flat top and resculpted his hair, then tweaked and filed his gun into a sonic screwdriver. This will represent the 10th Doctor as he appeared at the Battle of Canary Wharf, complete with 3D glasses.

Clara IS actually a Black Tree Design Doctor Who figure, but was designed to be Vicki, but I always though the figure looked like Clara, so Clara she will be. It would also make a pretty good Star Trek TOS crew member.

As I seem to be winning in my battle against LE, let’s hope that the next post won’t be so long in coming.

And that I don’t miss the anniversary of this blog, as I should have celebrated my sixth year of inflicting my own brand of crazy on you all on 6th February – two weeks ago.

Bloody ennui…

“What a Piece of Junk!”

Due to my current shift pattern, I work one Saturday in every three, meaning I get a day off in the week in lieu. Usually, this ‘day off’ gets eaten up by a list (lovingly prepared by my wife) of jobs for me to do.

However, yesterday’s list was quite short, so was completed in good time leaving me with some free time…so, out came the paints.

First up, my APC;

Black gloss enamel was used on the skirt and windscreen, GW Chainmail on the front nozzles and turret gun and Docrafts Noir on the side panels and turret.

I noted that every picture I took of this vehicle didn’t really highlight the sloped nature of its shape, so took so lower down photos to show this.

Looks a bit like Maximillian from The Black Hole movie – which although it was a bit naff, did have some cool robots.

Speaking of cool robots, I next went to work on my drone cargo sled, but I won’t bore you with the exact colours I used, just show you some pictures;

Just a little bit more detailing and I think it’ll be done. I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out.

Just goes to show that a little bit of creativity with stuff you’d normally throw out can produce a pretty cool model.

This Is The Way…To Save Money

Regular visitors to this humble blog will know that whilst I enjoy my gaming, I tend to balk at some of the prices charged by certain companies for the “necessary” components for <insert game of the month here>.

So, when inspired to try a new genre or game, I will tend to look for inexpensive options, rather than go for the official figure lines.

Such is the case with my Distant Stars project, which is my alternate reality Star Wars-inspired project, the last piece of kit I built for this being my scratch-built drone operated cargo sled, in this post.

Well, since last time, I have managed to slap some paint on it and it now looks like this:

The model was undercoated with Wilko Taupe spray paint on the top and Wilko Gunmetal spray underneath, which gave it a nice two-tone look. The drone ‘pilot’, terminal, thrusters and cargo bed were given a coat of GW Chainmal, with the cargo bed getting a wash of GW Brown Ink, to make it look oily.

The main body got a couple of coats of GW Orc Brown, which is a nice dark yellow, as you can see from the picture above.

Now that it’s got some paint on, it’s starting to look a bit more like an actual vehicle, rather than a conglomeration of bits.

Of course, whilst it’s nice to have some background vehicles, as the Dominion is a military force, it would be good if they had some war machines, right?

I knew roughly what sort of look I wanted and ideally would have gone for the latest iteration of the GW Land Raider – but wasn’t prepared to drop £60.00 on a single plastic kit. (NB: It was the Land Raider Crusader I craved…)

As with most things I do, I spend a fair bit of time trawling the Internet trying to find some thing suitable at a price I’m prepared to pay, before realising my time and money would be better spent just MAKING what I want myself.

So, after finally managing to secure an empty margarine tub (as I kept putting them next to the sink to wash up and my wife KEPT throwing them away), we were ready to begin.

I’s settled on this particular receptacle as a base for a tank/APC for two reasons; firstly, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no such thing as single use plastics and, secondly, when you turn it upside down, it looks like an armoured hovercraft:-

The next stage was to dress it up, with suitable “armoured panelling” and weapon mounts.

Two oblong panels of transparent plastic, scored and with portions cut out, were glued to the front and rear of my vehicle, to represent the cockpit and rear access door.

Two of the remains of the plastic ‘bulbs’ I used to make my Sontaran soldiers helmets were glued as forward-mounted weapons on the front, two GW cavalry bases were glued to either side to act as armoured panels and a turret was constructed from various plastic bits I had.

And to give a better sense of scale;

Unfortunately, as with my previous model, the use of transparent plastic means that some of the detail is not evident, so rather than leave it at that, I gave it an undercoat of Wilko Taupe spray, as this is the main vehicle colour of the Dominion.

And the rear;

A fairly substantial and imposing looking model, for very little outlay. And it actually looks like it could fit a squad of troops in, unlike some of the sci-fi vehicles out there.

Now, to fully justify my use of the above title, we have to mention The Mandalorian at least once.

Should you wish to add the title character of the above show to your tabletop games, a search of the internet gives you a few options, ranging in price from £10.00 to £15.00. However, all of these figures are 3D printed and whilst some are resin printed, the majority are not, meaning the quality of the figures are variable.

So, how about a METAL figure to represent Din Djarin for £6.00?

This is Brando from Diehard Miniatures. It comes with a resin base and alternate head, should you wish to have a bare-headed version.

And if you want to add some of Clan Wren to your games, but don’t want the full compliment from Legion’s £28 boxed set, then Diehard has you covered there to.

I mean, who wouldn’t like to get their hands on Katee Sackoff?

“This is the Way.”

If, like me, you are regularly clean-shaven then you will need some kind of device to remove your facial hair. And if, like me, you are somewhat wary of electric razors, you will wet shave with a manual razor.

Now, as the particular brand of razor I use has disposable heads, these come in a transparent plastic tray, which I squirrelled away for potential future use. And this is what the tray looks like;

Now, whilst I haven’t had much hobby time, I did manage to squeeze in episodes of the first season of The Mandalorian during the last couple of months…

Two things struck me from watching this – firstly, it is PROPER Star Wars, so if you’re a fan and you’ve got access to Disney+, watch it. Actually, if you like sci-fi Westerns, watch it. Even if you only sign up for the free period, it’s certainly worth a watch.

Secondly, there are a couple of episodes where vehicles with built-in droids – one a taxi, the other a cargo sled – which do look a little bit like my plastic tray above…

So, based on this (and the fact that during the period of non-lockdown, I finally relented and bought myself a cheap hot glue gun), I’ve decided to see if I can replicate this type of vehicle for my Distant Stars project. I’ve been collecting various bits for this, so it will (hopefully) be just a case of assembling the bits and then giving it a lick of paint. Let us begin!

So, having raided my bits box, I ended up with, for want of a better term, a pile of crap…

So, the tray itself, a couple of ink cartridges, some textured wallpaper, block of foam, cut down pen lid (that looks remarkably like a R2 unit), expired plastic gift card, empty shampoo bottle and some random plastic greeblies.

The cheapass hot glue gun I’d bought proved to be more of a hindrance than a help, so the DIY grab adhesive was duly…erm…grabbed and after much measuring, cutting, dry-fitting, trimming, filing, gluing and generally making a mess – we end up with something like this;

In the realms of Star Wars, this would be a droid-operated cargo skiff. In Distant Stars, this is a cargo drone. Same principal, different Universe.

Emptied ink cartridges as thrusters, textured wallpaper as the metal treadplate in the cargo area. Plastic greebly as operating screen, pen lid as drone ‘driver’ and the rest of the bits to make up the fuselage. A GW cavalry base was glued upside down to the base, to give the impression it’s floating.

And to give an idea of scale, here’s a Dominion Outrider cadging a ride.

Once the rain has stopped lashing down, I’ll be taking this outside to give it an spray paint undercoat. But what should the overall colour scheme be? Similar to Luke’s Landspeeder or, as it’s a cargo drone, more yellowish, like a taxicab? I wil have to give it some thought.

A Perfect Ten?

A recent poll of Doctor Who “fans” (and you’ll see why I’ve referred to them as such shortly) organised by the Radio Times was run to find the most popular incarnation of our favourite Time Lord. When the 50,000 votes were counted it was discovered that said “fans” had voted David Tennant as the most popular Doctor with 21% of the votes.

However, Jodie Whittaker came in a very close second, having only been beaten by Tennant by about 100 votes.  Which, based on who organised the poll (i.e. the Radio Times, traditionally a mouthpiece for the BBC) and that the REAL fans, such as myself, didn’t know about the poll until AFTER the results had been announced strongly suggests that these results should be taken with a bag of salt…

Anyway, this announcement and the fact that I’d not been motivated hobby-wise for a couple of weeks encouraged me to order some stuff online from eM4 Miniatures. Further incentive was that browsing their site showed that they have more ‘Sold Out’ items than ‘in stock’ items, so this might be my last chance to get my hands on certain figures.

First up, this chap;



This figure is 0057 Suit Shades SMG Hand Gun at £1.75, part of their Future Skirmish range, which were sculpted by Mark Copplestone for Grenadier way back in the murky past. In fact, this particular figure does have the stylised G on its tab, showing it came from the original molds.

My intention with this figure is to do something similar to how I created my version of the 8th Doctor, but this will be MY version of the 10th Doctor, based on his outfit from the Battle of Canary Wharf – including 3D glasses!

All I need to do is alter the pistol into his sonic screwdriver and redo the hair. The rest will just be painting.

After this is complete, that will just leave me two Doctors short – the Ninth and the War Doctors.

Next we have this;


This is one of the five multi-part (and by multi-part I mean three pieces) plastic Space Rangers sold by eM4 at £2.99. That works out at about 60p a figure – Bargain!

As I said above it comes in three pieces – main body, hands holding a weapon and the backpack. You get four of this pose, one squad leader/sergeant armed with a pistol and sword and a sprue of three heavy weapons. So you could have four rangers with the standard gun, or three with standard and one heavy weapon of your choice, or any combination of the above. Very similar to the Space Marines that came with the Space Crusade boxed game from GW – which they were probably based on.

Now, the idea with these was to add to ranks of the Dominion from my Distant Stars project, by making these the ‘heavy’ troops of the Dominion, with the Outriders being the light troops and the Legionnaires being the medium troops.

However, whilst the backpack doesn’t look too obtrusive from the front, it is a big hunk of plastic, as you can see below;


TOO big, in my opinion, so off it came, which gives us a more streamlined, but still imposing figure.


For comparison, here it is compared to the figures I’m using for my Outriders and Legionnaires.


As the ‘ribbing’ on the armour joints matches of the Legionnaire figure in the centre, I think that with an appropriate matching colour scheme, I can tie all three troops together as part of the same organisation, so the Outriders and Legionnaires will be joined by the newest Dominion troop type – the Siegebreaker.

Now there is one slight problem with not using the backpacks, which is this…


A big freakin’ hole in the back of the figure, which the backpack clips in to.
However, this is ME, so no doubt I’ll come up with a cunning plan to get around this.

I hope everyone is keeping safe and well in these uncertain times, but rest assured, I’M still here and will continue to do what I do, for both my and your entertainment.

Until next time…

 

Travellers in Time

It has been a while since I last posted, as the reality of lockdown is that you spend a fair bit of your time catching up on all the jobs around your home that you’ve put to one side until you had the time to do it – especially if your partner is of the opinion that painting figures, building scenery or playing games with them does not constitute a “constructive” use of your time.

However, as the list of jobs has been whittled down to a bare handful, I have actually spent some time progressing various miniatures, the majority of which are intended for the upcoming “launch” of my take on Doctor Who, as the events which happened in what the BBC claimed were series 11 and 12 are clearly some kind of fever dream that is thankfully now over.

So, first up we have a vehicle kit which was bought back in November of last year, the idea being that it would be used by my Dominion forces in my Distant Stars project – the Warbases Saracen APC, available from their website for a very reasonable £10.00.

This kit is a mixture of laser cut card and MDF, which comes flat-packed and complete with a set of magnets, so the turret can swivel in place. The kit doesn’t come with instructions, but these can be downloaded from the website and are reasonably straight-forward. However, there were two parts which were left off my build, as I couldn’t make head nor tails of the instructions as to how and where they were supposed to be attached, as the photograph was unclear and it wasn’t obvious where they were supposed to go. I used standard PVA glue for the majority of the kit, just using superglue to attach the magnets.

The barrel on the turret is my addition, as it doesn’t come with any kind of weaponry, and I wanted it to look a bit more sci-fi.

After it was assembled, both it and my snowspeeder conversion were given an undercoat of black spray paint, followed by a coat of Wilko Taupe spray paint, as I was trying to match the colour of the original snowspeeder.

The Dominion Outrider figure gives an idea of the how both vehicles scale with a 28mm figure.

Now, the Saracen APC had been sitting in my games cupboard, waiting to be completed, but one of the planned episodes of my version of Doctor Who required a military vehicle armed with “advanced” weaponry. As this adventure was on Earth, the modified Saracen would be ideal… other than the colour.

I had previously decided that whilst it was a cool model, it didn’t really fit in with the aesthetic I was going for with the Dominion. However, it would make a suitable vehicle for the Union – and their main colour was a dark green, similar to British military vehicles. So, I repainted the main body in Docrafts Jungle Green, the advanced weapon in in GW Chainmail and gave the tyres an initial coat of Docrafts Noir.

And this is what it currently looks like, with UNIT Special Operative Tara Hunt alongside, for scale purposes;

Looks very Action Force, if you ask me (which was the 3 3/4″ precursor to G.I.Joe figures here in the UK and was tied in to the Action Man line. Still have some knocking around in the loft somewhere.)

Next up, we have some additional progress made on the Black Pig of Sodor Gardens, destined to cause havoc upon the streets of Blackwell.

The ‘hell boar’ was given a cost of Docrafts Noir, followed by a wash of GW Marine Dark Blue mixed with more Noir, to give a midnight blue hue, which brought out some of the detail of the molding. Its tusks and lil’ piggy eyes were painted Docrafts Linen and the base tidied up somewhat.

Tara Hunt for scale, once more, as the previous picture I posted didn’t really give an idea of its size. It just needs a darker wash on the tusks, the snout re-coloured and some mad lil’ piggy pupils, probably in red, to show that it’s EVIL…

And whilst Tara may very well be allowed to play with heavy ordnance, encountering the Black Pig was not her only brush with the unknown, although she doesn’t recall anything about the second one…

Understandable, given that it involved the Silence. I managed to just about correct their tendency to emulate Michael Jackson is the Smooth Criminal video and gave them an undercoat of GW Corax White, followed by some Docrafts Flesh on hands and face, then a first coat of Docrafts Noir on their suits, followed by a coat of GW Elf Grey. Apologies for the blurry photo, as the camera focused on Tara, rather than the Silence, but as we’re just at the block painting stage, this isn’t an issue.

Next, as mentioned in my previous post, I decided I needed a figure to represent one of the Doomlords of Nox, specifically Servitor Vir, the fourth such alien visitor to Earth and a planned foe for the Doctor in the future.

And here he is;

The idea was to reposition the arms of the base Red Skull figure using the boiling/cold water trick. However, this appeared to be successful initially, but then the arms slowly returned to almost the same position. As this wasn’t that important, I decided to let him do what he wanted.

The addition of the ears caused a few choice expletives. Due to the fact that they needed to be both thin and small, I cast around for a suitable material, plumping for some coated thin cardboard (actually an old greetings card). I then had to cut two very, very small ear shapes – that were exactly the same shape and size – from this card. Suffice to say, this wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, but I finally got two ears that were roughly the same size and shape. I then used an old dental probe to create some detail, i.e. ear canals, etc. on one side of the ears. Then it was just a case of attaching them to the sides of the figure’s head.

More swearing, as tiny ear-shaped pieces of cardboard slipped from the tweezers a number of times and pinged across the table. One was irrevocably lost into the carpet, so another tiny ear was created and finally both were glued into place.

An undercoat of GW Corax White, then Tamiya Khaki for his raincoat, Docrafts Noir for the boots, GW Chainmail for the Lugers, GW Enchanted (?) Blue for his trousers and GW Rotting Flesh for his face and hands. Quite pleased how this has turned out so far, but the finishing touches will be what swings it for me.

And explaining the title of this post, we have TWO travellers in time, with their respective time machines.

First, he featured in a previous post, but was not identified, it’s Lord Edmund Blackadder and his time machine, ready to unscrupulously alter the course of history… as long as HE comes out on top.

And a complete counterpoint, MY version of the 13th Doctor and his Tardis, ready to prevent alien incursions, multiple deaths and people meddling with history.

Obviously, the Tardis needs finishing off, but I’m quite pleased with how the Doctor has come out.

“Hang on,” I hear you cry out there in your isolation cubes, “If you’ve now finished the Doctor, and you’ve already completed the other figures and scenery you needed for the first episode, does that mean the next post will be a Doctor Who AAR, the first adventure of the REAL 13th Doctor?”

Indeed it does, children. There’s a title sequence and everything.

Join me next time from behind your sofas, as the newly regenerated 13th Doctor faces his first challenge in… “Who Goes There?”