A Tale of Ratspike: A few original John Blanche painted miniatures.

One of the great things about working in the wargames industry in Nottingham is that occasionally you get to see some really cool and rare stuff. In this case, today's was a collection of miniatures painted by the late and dearly missed John Blanche, some of which were actually featured in the Ratspike book. I was asked to bring in my copy so we could work out which ones were in there! 

 More photos after the cut! 

The SS Sirius, a 28mm scale ww2 Merchant Cargo Hauler

In my never ending quest to only print the largest and most pointless things, I'm finally calling this done! 

It's the SS Sirius, a civilian Cargo hauler that's been comandeered by the Handelsflotte, the German Merchant Navy for use in the Mediterranean. 

More photos after the cut!

GW's Weirdest Ever Release - Calamity!

 Here's an interesting one for you, what I consider to be Games Workshop's absolute weirdest release ever, a board game called Calamity! (with the exclamation mark!) 

Not only was it a game based in the world of insurance, it was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and also contained multiple suicidal insurance brokers on the front!

More info after the cut....

A quick 2025 Review.

 It seems like a bunch of other people are doing this, so thought I'd copy their lead, mostly to reassure myself I did actually get some hobby stuff done this year, as tbh, it's not felt very productive. 

As you'll know if you follow my blog, I kind of stopped posting for a couple of years, a combination of hobby burnout, not feeling enthused about posting, and tbh wondering if the blog format was still worthwhile anymore, but I came back in March and decided to make a bit more of an effort. 

This big guy was probably the catalyst for all that, as I really enjoyed printing, assembling and painting him:

Anyway, if you want to see more, then take a look after the break...

Altheim Part 11: The Docks

 Ok, so, time for a bit more Altheim. I've made a start on the docks area, so these are warehouses in the Dutch style, so narrow and tall, designed to fit side by side facing the docks, with living and working space above the storage area.

First up is the Becker Import Company warehouse, left to dereliction after being sealed up on the orders of the Guard due to irregularities with the quality of fish. Of course, the other story is that Old Man Becker wasn't paying enough in bribes to the Red Hand, a shadowy group of criminals that have high level connections and may or may not be secretly a choas cult...

More after the break! 

The Changer of the Ways!

 Something a bit unusual for me this time as I don't normally do bright colours on models, but here's the original model of the Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, the Changer of the Ways that came out for 3rd Edition WFB and Rogue Trader 40k. 

As you can see, I've also gone for a neutral backdrop this time instead of a scenic one, I'm not sure which I prefer tbh. Anyway, more pics after the cut:

Bringing Dark Future artwork to life!

So, I'll start by saying that Dark Future is probably my favourite GW universe, Carl Critchlow is one of my favourite artists, and that this piece of Dark Future artwork by Carl is probably one of my favourite pieces of GW art: 

So, as a follow up to this post (also all the way back in 2018!) where I copied another piece of Dark Future art to make a vehicle, I thought I'd do the same with the pirate radio truck, and here it is!

All the details after the cut....