Cronyism alive and well ...

Just a quick post to let you know that a mate of mine, Vishal Odera has set up a gaming blog with one of his comrades. It's called Cafe Turbo and is fast finding it's feet as a repository of gaming advice, hints and venting spleen. Vish is a fellow Pressganger and all round great bloke, and is always ready to give advice and I find it particularly helpful to have such a knowledgable Warmachine player as advisor.

They also cover 40K and the like, but as I don't play any GW games I can live without that shit. Language is a little fruity and coarse (Unlike this paragon of moral rectitude) but they do have a content warning. Great fun and well written, so go over there and join the community.

Bitches.

Rob
Angry at UA cost

Salute the afterglow ...

Well, it's been and gone. Salute, for those who don't know, is the biggest trade show on the indie calender. Held in London's ExCel centre at the same time as Virgin's London Marathon shindig, from the foyer (a space I became intimately familiar with during the 5 minute trek to get outside for a smoke) it was a place where wargamers and non-wargamers could mingle and pursue their disparate interests. In actuality, it was a place for the socially inept, hat wearing, low spending freaks that make up my chosen pastime's core demographic to ogle the hordes of trim, attractive women who had no interest in them at all beyond avoiding their personal shield of rectal gases and pungent masturbatory sweat while trying not to laugh at them for having pictures taken with Lord Vader, Luke Skywalker and the requisite Imperial Stormtroopers.

As has become normal for any type of wargames show requiring my participation, it began badly the day before. While transferring the shelf stock to the racking, the Germans decided to take a nose-dive. One rack of blisters all over the shop. Literally. Add to that the tension I was feeling because I didn't know if Studio McVey were going to reserve me the toys I wanted from their range of exquisite models and I was ready to petrol bomb the shop, strip myself naked, smear myself all over with Vallejo German Cammo Black Brown paint (I'm not covering myself in anybody's excrement) and head up the nearest high landmark with a paintball gun and a list of local councillors. Fucking emails. I'm sure they get delayed on purpose.

After watching the rack take a tumble I remained sociopathically calm, politely told the customer in the shop that I didn't need his help and had a coffee and a fag to calm down. The rest of the packing passed slowly but without incident. At the end of the day when one of the customers who had gracelessly agreed to help out turned up with the hire van, the second mistake of the day became apparent.

I had changed the van hire company we used because I didn't want another bollocking over leaving a van outside overnight in the quiet, untravelled street and how we were liable for any damage incurred blah blah fucking blah. So when I asked for a van capable of holding our racking, the guy suggested a Luton van. Not knowing what was what, I agreed. It turns out that the Luton van is so named because it is the size of Luton. We could have fit the whole fucking shop in the back.

Loading took next to no time, so let's skip forward to 4am Saturday morning. We're having a coffee at the shop, ready to head off. It is at this point that Marcus and Martin decide to treat me to their anal rendition of the frog chorus. Thankfully Sir Paul McCartney was nowhere to be seen, otherwise we might have had an ass gas operetta in the making. It certainly set the tone for the rest of the drive up there.

An interminable time later, broken only by a stop off for a coffee and a Krispy Kreme (I know, an American Icon in the UK that isn't a celebrity - go figure) we got to London. Then we started heading out of London as we went onto the wrong exit. All I could think about was missing out on the limited edition miniatures and the chance to see Mike and Ali's miniatures in the flesh. Hey, fuck you. We're talking legitimate art here. I don't see your individual fucking minis going for £200+. Eventually, amidst much cursing and anxiety we got to the ExCel centre. Marcus drove us into the venue (honestly, you unload from your van in the fucking aircraft hangar that contains this motley toy market) and we had about an hour and a half to set up before the advance ticket holders got in. That's right, for the princely sum of £9 you can get into the event a whole 15 minutes early. Whoop de fucking do. You needy bastards are keeping me from what I want with your demands. With all hopes of securing my minis vanishing, we begin setup and I'm in a real foul mood.

So, an hour later with setup complete and Alessio Cavatore (now unfortunately ex-GW) safely installed with Shuuro I leg it to stand TG12 and Studio McVey. It was pretty easy to find, what with the pillars of light and cherubim and the scent of lavender and all. All right, all right, enough with the Catholic imagery. I guess you realise how cool this was going to be for me by now. I was going to get to meet the guy that wrote the guide that developed and improved my painting 'skills' that lived in the house that Jack built. And I was sure as shit going to have my toys reserved for pickup later. I turn up at the stall and Ali is busy setting up the lighting for the display of Studio McVey models. You know, the painted ones in the gallery. Holy fucking shit. I introduce myself to Mike and explain about the models and he says 'Ah, you're the guy that emailed me. No problems, we've got your stuff put by.'

.......

To wrap this amusing little misunderstanding of mine up swiftly, it seems I'm a born worrier and there were models aplenty for me. Looks like I wasted a lot of energy over nothing, kind of like now, you know, typing with gritted teeth. Silly me, eh?

Sigh. Still, I did get to have a good chat with Ali. Turns out she's a classically trained fine artist. So she knows about painting and stuff even before she started painting minis. And, as she can draw a bit (she did the concept art for two of the Studio McVey minis), she's not a fine arts student in the usual, Hirst and Emin sense of the word (ie: not a talentless blagger plagiarising earlier work from the 60's and passing it off as new and unique. I'm talking about you, Hirst). However, I do think she worried about the lighting of the display cabinet needlessly. They're both really nice people, really approachable and honest, as I discovered when I tried to overpay them.

I also got to spend a little time with my mate Vishal, a fellow pressganger. I then discovered why I'm generally tired most of the time. Vishal is stealing my energy, and probably everyone else's too. He's really upbeat and enthusiastic. More so at Salute, I think, because he was on the energy drinks. That fucking battery powered rabbit thing couldn't keep up with him if it was nuclear powered. You know, that sex toy thing. I swear he's so full of enthusiasm you should hate him on sight with his youth and good looks. But he's cool, so you can't.

So far, this post has been a sickening luvvie luvvie smooch fest by my standards. But wait, here it is, the shit sandwich under the cherry topping that is Vishal and the McVeys.

It turns out that the manufacturer of our main line, the line we brought to Salute to sell were there. Yes, that's right, Bastardfront, manufacturers of Flames of War, had pulled the ultimate douche bag move and bought 30 square feet. Hold on, you cry. Surely they have a right to be there. It's an important expo, so shut your fucking mouth. Well I say fuck you. I wouldn't have had a problem with them aside from the fact they brought the entire range with them and were in the plumb area. Add to that the nice people were letting it be known they would match any discount offered and they took 80% of the money from the Flames market there. That left the 3 or 4 other retailers who carry Flames as a major line to scavenge for the remaining 20%.

Retailers cannot compete with the manufacturers of ranges as they generally don't have the staffing or buying power to compete with them. This isn't generally a problem with the bugbear du jour Games Workshop, because they won't discount their stock. This means that retailers can knock 10% off and be reasonably assured of a decent amount of sales. Obviously not good enough for Battlefucks, who wanted their cake and mine too.

So these dicks turned up to the big show and fucked over their customers because they could. I would like to meet the person who decided that would be a good idea and punch him so hard in his fat fucking face that my knuckles turn to powder. And thank you very much to the wankers who thought it would be a genius idea to put us in a row that contained Skytrex, Peter Pig AND had two other major Flames retailers close by. That's right, we were tucked away in the corner, well away from the huge Flames show in the middle of the fucking room. Looks like we were fucked before we even got there. So, if by any chance the South London Warlords are reading this, let's try not to clump every genre together next time, eh? Surely common fucking sense dictates the spreading around of competitors. Think of it like scenery on a battleground, where ... oh for fuck's sake I give up. The short of it was we got fucked.

Salute was a mixed bag. On the upside I got to meet the McVeys, get my line of their models completed and hang for a short while with Vishal and Phil. I got to see the Studio McVey studio models up close (and fuck me they are unreasonably well painted) and shake Mike McVey's hand. On the downside I don't think I absorbed any of Mike's talent (osmosis is bullshit) and the shop got fucked. We got back to home base at about 9.30pm, so it was a long fucking day for us.

I did get a box of Krispy Kremes (a dozen assorted donuts but only one way of inducing a diabetic coma) so I ended up having a cop's breakfast (coffee and donuts) and am probably on my way to a heart attack.

So business as fucking usual then.

First review will be here by Friday (it turns out it really is harder to write nice than nasty). Until then, fuck off with your whining.

Rob
Angry with Kiwi game companies for some previously explained reason

Quick bullshit at late o'clock ...

Okay, here's how it's gonna be from now on. Regular updates for starters. I know, I promised this before but I've hit on a way of placating the moppets who read this shite/are waiting for their commission/are most definitely not hot women looking for a hook-up with a fat, chain-smoking geek.

Regular reviews.

The first proper review will be of Joek's limited edition miniature range, of which I have number 3 of 300. It's an Elf lord with sword upraised on a scenic base or, as we all know all Elves are really pre-menstrual teen girls, She-Ra. I'll then contrast it with the Studio McVey range. Not a comparison, a contrast. Why not a comparison? Because, you fucking idiot, The McVey range is more established. And it is by my idols. For fuck's sake I'll explain more in the aforementioned first proper review.

However, to whet your appetites, here's a quick teaser - a review of Army Painter Matte Black Spray. And a contrast with the Games Workshop spray. I'm in a mellow mood because I'm listening to James live in Manchester (the 'Getting away with it' concert). So not much rudeness.

The Army Painter range of hobby materiel has rapidly gained popularity with gamers because it knows it's target market. Most gamers want an army of models painted quickly to get onto the tabletop, hence a large range of coloured sprays, several types of dip (fucking cheating) and now some pre-clumped static grass. You know, that product that model railway types have known about for decades. However, the core of their range has to be the undercoat and basecoat range of sprays.

The spray I am reviewing is matte black undercoat. Competitively priced and in an area not totally dominated by the 3 ton, senile, nappy-wearing monkey that is Games Workshop, it is still only available in dedicated hobby shops (like Wargames Inc, ho ho) or online. It's the same size as the GW Chaos Black primer but the nozzle gives a much more diffuse spray, covering models more quickly and saving you money by being more efficient (in theory). In practice, it gets everywhere except where you want it on the fucking mini. The paint formulation leans towards the plastic side of acrylic, and it dries to quite a soft finish with no tooth for subsequent layers of paint.

The quality of the finish leaves a lot to be desired too. You either end up painting on a surface like oily glass or (as on my test model, Lich Lord Terminus) a surface like fucking cake. What cake? A two day old cream and jam scone from the fridge - soft and unlikely to accept paint well. I should have known better but I really wanted Terminus covered and ready to go. I have areas of oily glass, areas of cream scone and some areas of no fucking coverage at all. To compound this, I'll be mainly using P3 paints and they seem to need a bit of tooth to adhere nicely, meaning a fun time of painting him beckons.

In all good faith, I can't recommend the spray. It's deceptively wasteful and quality control appears to vary from batch to batch. There have been a few cases of frosting (propellant mixing with the spray) that I know of. This seems to have died down recently so maybe they have got their act together.

I'm in the minority in the store, but the GW undercoat range is still the best. It contracts slightly (a bit like gesso but much less pronounced) when it dries out on the model, forming a tougher coat, and has the slight tooth that makes it a joy to paint over. The nozzle gives a more tightly focused spray which gives greater control and, paradoxically, less waste.

I do like the Army Painter Gray undercoat spray, but you have to really dust the coat on from a slightly further distance than is recommended so you run the risk of a sandpaper texture in the finish.

Conclusions? Stick with the GW sprays (aside from the varnish) and if you want to do some flash painting effects, use black/white zenithal undercoating and be done with it.

So, other news. The Khador Behemoth is put together and waiting for an undercoat. I have the colour scheme worked out, and I shall start it soon. All I have to say about that is I shall never ever have one in my Khador Army. Oh, and thanks to Cris for letting me test out my Khador scheme and work out all the bugs on his model.

Nice.

Rob
Angry that he didn't make the grade, been more loved and less afraid, scored the goal or got the girl ...

Don't lick the baby!

It's been a while since my last post. No, I don't care about what mundanity you fill your existence with, this is my blog so pay attention to me. In the time I've not been spewing typed bile over the internet, I have managed to run a painting contest at Wargames Inc that I placed dead last in. It seems that artistic ability cannot compete with size or a bare breast when it comes to miniature judging. Don't let the fact that my model has no genitalia on display or is small influence you in any way what so ever, eh? Anyway, here's Mr. Stinky in all his glory -

I have altered the levels to better represent the colours on the model (they are reasonably close to the real model) but it has had the effect of making him look green-screened onto the picture in places. But who gives a fuck, right? It's complete and a reasonable effort for the time and lack of sleep involved. No, I don't know what the sculptor was smoking when he made it. I'm only glad that people like Andy Foster will cast up the more outré models and give aspiring sculptors the chance to shine.

A quick aside - Heresy Miniatures is essentially 3d Palace but with miniatures, so if any members of that community want some great reference models, go buy some. No, you can't fucking torrent it, it's real, for fucks sake. Idiots.

Speaking of idiots, the other day, while selling some random chump a toy he doesn't need I inadvertently offered my services as minipainter to him on commission. Regulars and the fuckers that comprise my customer base will be literally shitting themselves with laughter when I reveal I have to : prep, assemble and paint to completion the Khador Behemoth in six weeks. Well, the muppet is paying my price, so it looks like I'll have to do my best to follow through with my end.

And, seeing as this sort of thing seems to get the Youtube geeks wet, I'll even do an unboxing post so those that don't know what the Behemoth is can get a good look. Personally, what I think you get when you pay your money is a box of what you've bought but you all seem to be masturbating over this kind of thing, so here's some gratification for you.

Please clingfilm the screen, otherwise your dried snail-trail emissions will give everything that special Twilight daytime sparkle.

Starting off, here's a picture of the box. It's reasonably sturdy, and can raise a painful welt on the forehead of random customers who piss me off:


As you can see, it's brownish with a picture on the front and has a price tag. This is the amount of money some random chump or chumpette with a 'Rick Astley is so uber' meme fixation will have to pay. Note it's in Sterling, the only real currency in the world. Why's that, I hear you whine while snorting coke through a straw made of your local monopoly money? By Royal Appointment to the Queen of England, that's why. Don't make me kidnap you and force you to watch Big Brother over and over again.

On to the next picture in our unboxing special episode ... the inner plastic container! Yes folks, included in the price for free is this fetching inner box made of modern plastic which, as we all know, is derived from oil! That's right, in your own little way you are contributing to the war in the Middle East. Actually, you're all responsible for it. Fuckers. Well here it is. The result of your fucking consumer whore lifestyle. Enjoy it, war criminals:

The next picture shows the white metal bits that have to be cleaned and filed and pinned and put together. That's right, it's a lot of work to put a mini together. As it's for olblue, I was tempted to put it in a bag with some superglue and shake it all about and post it off, but it will be painted pink and black so that's enough of the aggro, I suppose. It feels a bit pyrrhic, to be honest, as he's colour blind so it will all look like it's gray anyway. Perhaps he was abducted by aliens and crossed with a skinned chihuahua after being repeatedly probed with a sink. It would explain the baldness. Anyway, the picture:

I've sort of ran out of steam with this. I honestly cannot believe you have the slightest interest in an unboxing but one of the conditions of the commission is to do a stage by stage thing on my blog. You could, of course, buy one yourself and look at it in reality. Oh well. Fills the binary aether, I suppose. It's not like there's a limit to the amount of shit the internet can store.

The next post will have prep details, hints and tips on how to do it properly (i.e. my way) and maybe some other stuff. I was planning on doing a series of reviews on gaming product and an article or two on paint ranges. If I can be bothered. You can comment to let me know what you would like but I probably won't pay any attention to you.

No, I definitely won't pay attention to you. Bastards all.

Rob
Angry at bread, because it doesn't taste like it smells when cooking.

The blog is closed, everybody get out.

Apparently (and much to the amusement of the other staff, customers and especially the owner of Wargames Inc) I am Bernard Black, crotchety book shop keeper and aggressive drunk of the sitcom 'Black Books'. Now, I do like the series, and Dylan Moran's stand-up is fantastic but I just don't see the resemblance. The hilarity stems from a staff member's wife saying 'That's Rob! Just replace the wine with coffee and it's Rob!' while watching series one and then it spread like a particularly virulent STD. Every time I interact with one particular staff member (you know who you are) I usually get the following response at least once: 'Jam jam jam jam jam eurgh!' followed by a mime of 'me' throwing toast to the ceiling. I think there has even been threats of sticking plastic toast to the shop roof. Irritating as this may be, I didn't think anything of it until the time came to go out and interact with real people.

A friend of mine, Amy, is going to work in China for a year as a part of the VSO programme, which means she has more balls than I do. Which also means she has far more balls than the rest of you, what with me having an American football as well as a couple of back-up testicles. This past Saturday was her going away party and I was invited for drinks. Yes, she is that committed to charity. The downside? It would be at a local pub frequented by people who don't play wargames. Not exactly my milieu but duty called (it had nothing to do with ogling her in her party dress either, before you start).

So when I got there I edged my way past the well-dressed people (I had chosen a rather fetching anorak and Primark t-shirt ensemble, complete with the requisite beige combat trousers of the sixty-year old), spotted Catherine's American beau Steve and quite quickly got myself a pint of coke and hid in the corner. Steve is a nice guy, automatically interesting because he's foreign so I could follow standard UK diplomatic policy and hide behind the nearest yank. Especially useful when the obligatory huge drunken guy from Nottingham demanded a chinwag.

As the evening progressed I eyed the svelte people passing in front of me. The women were like gazelles on the African veldt, graceful and alluring. Me? Was I some leonine predator on the hunt, you ask? Yes. Yes I was. If by leonine predator you mean fat, toothless hippo in a muddy, excremental wallowing hole. I steadfastly refused to move from my comfy, leather hidey hole unless it was to nip out for a fag.

Out of my depth? Considering that I can't actually swim it's a particularly apt metaphor. I got to meet some people who are so far out of my social circle I would normally need a fucking radio telescope to catch sight of their feet as they ran quickly away from me. All through the night I was having flashes of that episode where Manny locks Bernard out and Bernard is forced to brave the outside world for once. That was when it hit me.

Despite all of the good intentions from the lovely people I know (most of you can exclude yourselves from that prior statement. The people concerned know who they are) to include me in a broader social circle, I am Bernard Black. I am fiction made flesh and blood. Fucking typical. I'm not Batman or Raffles or Howard Carter, I'm the living avatar of a drunken Irish arsehole. Made slightly more ironic by the fact I am half Irish. For fuck's sake. When the party decided to decamp to a local bar for table dancing (the party were going to dance on tables, apparently. As I don't drink I wasn't going to do my Grandad shuffle and fall off a sticky, formica-topped table. That would have been the kicker, the sober guy breaking his leg while the drunken ladies in their improbable heels stayed safe) I took my leave. It had been a long day, I was shell-shocked by my revelation.

Seeing as the majority of you fuckers are so tight you fucking squeak, I'd like you to help Amy out here. You sure as shit ain't spending your cash in the shop, so why not do something unrelated to whining about the rising cost of GW products for once. Scroll down and you'll see that even I, grumpy Irish bully that I apparently am, have donated to the cause.

And yes, Amy did look alluring in her party dress. However, gentleman that I am, I didn't stare at her cleavage once. Or more than once. So there.

So onto a brief hobby update today. I have been painting (sort of) for a miniature painting competition I'm holding at the shop. The model I have chosen is Andy Foster's Feral Queen - a really nice female beastman type that could double for Valkyria the Bloody with the addition of some wings (and as long as you don't try to use it at Games Workshop).

In addition to this, I'm actually starting sculpting proper - no more likenesses of Burke from Trapdoor, I'm going for a (reasonably) whole miniature. I will be starting it about a half hour after this long winded and picture free update, so expect to see pics of my progress ... at some juncture in the future. I will be using Fimo over a wire armature and trying to sculpt a male figure. Hopefully it won't end up looking like some ancient fertility idol but you can never be too sure ...

Rob
Angry at the whole Cerebus the Aardvark turn his life seems to be taking

It's all your fault, you encouraged them ...

Another day, another post. This time, it's my latest addiction - Firestorm: Armada. It's like Battlefleet Gothic but with no flying castles. I have chosen the Sorylian Collective as my fleet of choice to help the sales push at Wargames Inc. All next week I am running intro games for the peons who blight my life. I'm also proxying enemy fleets with BFG models, so you needn't feel like a lemon if you don't have the toys the cool kids have. You'll just look like that kid in the corner - you know, the outsider who no-one really likes. Which is why hugely muscular male barbarian miniatures are not homoerotic in any way whatsoever. Pictured below is 17cm of resin warship that actually fits together. That's right, it's nothing to do with Forge World at all.

A similar metal BFG ship (Cairn Class Tombship or Marine Battle Barge) will set you back £20, plus you won't actually be able to play a Games Workshop Specialist game in a Games Workshop store as the guys at GW Loughborough found out when the area manager bollocked the GW staff member who had foolishly allowed the regulars to play a GW game in a GW store. Apparently, as it's not a core game it's not welcome as it doesn't encourage massive sales of Space Machines. This was after the aforesaid regulars had done about £500 on BFG product. Really fucking professional to dress down a staff member in front of the customers and on the shop floor.

The above Sorylian battleship is in stark contrast to the latest bolus of plastic shit to be listlessly dripped from the sphincter of the GW design studio's derelict, rotting tract by some form of decrepit peristalsis. These atrocities are actually real models that are expected to sell. Looking like a skinned Damian Hurst exhibit, these things have been on the kind of steroid/antibiotic shit that are force-fed to beef cattle to the nth degree. Un-fucking-believable. Abdominal muscles all the way up to their necks and arms like Nelson's fucking column. All this screams 'I want to be a Rat-Ogre' in a loud voice. Not as skinned-rat looking like the 'Dire Wolves' in the Vampire Counts range, but rat looking all the same. Whoever put this shit together also understands nothing about anatomy, it seems, beyond the basic requirements of a biped - one head, two arms, two legs and a body.

I don't think that creativity should be stifled, but (paraphrasing from an interview with a GW sculptor I read a while back) you need to learn the rules before you can break them effectively. All this seems to have flown over the head of the deaf, blind, dumb and dead moron who okayed the go-ahead of this addition to the range of ungilded turds, who seems to not understand that you shouldn't have biceps over the shin bone. However, the number one crime that has been committed is the fact that they don't have cloven hooves.

Now call me a bitter classisist if you will (and I'll call you a twat) but having standard, clawed legs means these are just large Beastmen. That's all. I imagine that they will be really heavy hitters, but that won't change the fact that these models are just shit. And the fur - my God, the fur - looks like it has just got some doormats stapled to it's skin. Workshop has a shitload of cash invested in haptic sculpting tools and 3d software and spend a fortune on tooling these molds to pump out rotting smeg. They wouldn't do it if idiots (i.e. you) wouldn't buy the shit. That's the only way to make GW change their mind - hit them in the accounts department. However, don't take my rant for it here are the offending miniatures:

Now compare those to this green from Felix Paniagua (fired from the GW studio), a more traditional minotaur from his Avatars of War range:

Note how it looks like a minotaur, even though it is heavily muscled, and the hair looks like hair and not like a rug randomly glued to any extremity available. And it has the traditional cloven legs, not rippling fields of undulating meat contracting like an ocean of giant spasmodic penises. I fucking hate how they have completely ruined the flavour of the Beastmen army, leaving it bland and tasteless. Genericised for mass consumption it's like Big Mac special sauce but with the main ingredient being blood-flecked ejaculate. And it will be you fuckers that perpetuate this artistic blight. Twenty seven pounds sterling for three models. Like Tyranid Ravenors but shit. A massive let-down after the Trygon kit.

Right, it's midnight and I have had enough of the lack of taste that GW preys upon to shift most of it's fucking product. You may deserve this shit, but I don't.

Rob
Angry at the river of cash avoiding him

Madly in anger with you ...

Well, I'm back. I know, I know, I'm a lazy bastard who should blog more regularly. Obviously, I have nothing better to do because I spend most of my time snorting cocaine out of chorus girls' arseholes so I should be able to find the time to pause the hedonism and reconnect with the misfits who read the shit I post about. If I gave two squirts about the readership I would post more, but as I don't you can wait. The only way I'll be a regular blogger is if Metallica decide to follow this excremental tripe. And let's face it, I have more chance of becoming intimate with Gillian Anderson than that happening, so fuck you and your demands.

As to what I have been doing, well, that would be work. Fucking work takes up so much time I yearn for unemployment with it's scads of free time and high social status rather than the retail hell where I have to be nice to the life hoovers that suck away any vitality I have like socially inept, overweight psyche-vampires. Yes, I do mean you, fatty. The pointless tasks I have to perform daily grind down the poet in me like a particularly effective form of cult indoctrination. I am also less than keen on the almost exclusively male province of this past time. Far to many XYs about.

Hold on, I hear you cry. You said 'almost exclusively' which means some form of woman should come into the shop at some point. Why yes, they do. However, they are exclusively of the girlfriend/mother variety. I am reduced to purchasing the culinary services of beautiful women for my thrills. My only social interaction with the fair sex is purchasing a fucking breakfast sandwich or selling them something for their boyfriend/child and that is all.

Enough making you feel better about your lot and on to what little hobby I have been doing. After all, that's what you're here for. As you know, I have decided to do the Tyranid thing for my 40K army and here is the start: one Mawloc. Fully assembled and with some basecoat on the chitinous armour plates:


I am going for a more naturalistic feel than the standard 'nid scheme because I don't see why the most adaptable killers in the galaxy would forgo camouflage just because they are hard as coffin nails. I am also trying to get 20 points of my Skorne done for February, so here they are in their unpainted glory:

It's for a tournament and is as follows: Tyrant Xerxis, a full unit of Cataphract Cetrati, 2 Cyclops Brutes, an Agoniser and a Bloodrunner Master Tormentor - nice and simple and hopefully a quick paint as well. All the models will be painted with P3 paints (the colour on the Mawloc is P3 Battlefield Brown) so with a bit of luck I'll be able to use the fucking range soon.

I also have to paint a random fantasy miniature for a painting competition I'm running at Wargames Inc so if any of you fancy putting brush to model and entering pop on down before the end of February and I'll cave your fucking face in with the till. Or let you enter the compy. It depends on how capricious I'm feeling.

I haven't done any sculpting and my literary output has slowed simply because of the amount of time the shop takes up, which isn't sitting well with me. I always swore I wouldn't become a worker drone but it seems I'm becoming what I hate. Irony sucks. But not as much as you.

If you've managed to force yourself to read this far and are a regular (you really should have something better to do than read this bollocks) you might remember I promised a picture of the last miniature I painted before I had a break from the hobby (got a life and got some at the same time). Well here it is, one old school warrior of chaos (a Perry sculpt, I think):

The pictures are a bit blurry because I took them with my camera phone, but you can't have everything, can you? Otherwise I'd be a lottery winner in a posh whorehouse by now. Or I'd hire prostitutes to come to my batchelor pad. I wonder if you get a cheaper rate if you hire them to clean your flat with no sex? Send me a couple of grand and I'll find out for you.

Well, I'm running out of polite conversation, so I'll draw this entry to a close. I still haven't had any, I'm still a slow-ass painter and I still lose too much of my life to work. Status quo it is. That's right, my life is still the same three fucking chords all the damn time, even in this brand new decade. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I suppose.

Rob
Angry at the phallocentric nature of the hobby