Woody's now selling Games Workshop products

If you play Warhammer Fantasy or 40K and live in the Mid-Sussex area (or just fancy a trip to Burgess Hill), then you'll pleased to know that Woody's in Burgess Hill, are now selling this range.

Woody's is an independent retailer situated in the Martletts Shopping Centre in Burgess Hill, Sussex, UK. The Martletts is 2 minutes walk from the railway station, and also has lots of car parking. the owner is a guy called Peter Woodhams. He is very friendly, and will give you all the help and advice you need for whatever hobby you enjoy.

Mention my name or "petesminiatures", and Woody's will give you a 10% discount.

Independant Wargames Shops

Woody's, a thriving model/gaming shop in Burgess Hill, Sussex

Sadly, these have almost become extinct over the last 10 years. A lot of this was due to the mentality of gamers who thought it acceptable to look at the products and use the game tables in the smaller shops, but do all their actual purchases online. The same gamers then moaned whenever "their" local shop ceased trading!

Thankfully, some of the larger manufacturers and distributors have changed their supplier agreements in the last couple of years. In many cases it is not possible to sell certain ranges (Warhammer being an example) through an online shop, unless you also have a physical "bricks and mortar" store. Many suppliers also restrict the levels of discounts available online. This is a good move, as it now means physical (and ofter smaller) independent stores can now be viable again. Its just a shame that big companies like GW took several years to realize that although online sellers with no overheads could sell masses of product on narrow margins, the lack of physical stores killed of the next generation of gamers (example - most kids get into Warhammer by visiting and playing games at a local store).

More distractions...

It's another HassleFree piece that I think I picked up at  show. It makes me think of the Hancock film where the delinquent super-hero sometimes did good deeds while he was drunk and improperly dressed.

If you are a super-hero called upon in the middle of the night to save lives, why waste time putting on your Lycra suit and cape? Dashing straight out in your Y-fronts could save vital life-or-death seconds.

Distractions

It can get very boring working on 50 Falshies, so I feel this little bit of self indulgence is justified. I'm repainting this model. It used to have Space Marine shoulder pads and was a chapter standard bearer I used to put on the table at the start of 40K games to provoke my opponent.

I tried to paint the base with a disco/Manga or alien bar (a la Star Wars) feel. Not too unhappy for a first try with about 30 seconds of thought and planning!

Gallery

Finally, I have sorted out the gallery. There are only 2 entries so far: Empire troops and 40K IG troops. These are just to see how the JavaScript and HTML hold together. Having said that, I've tried to put a couple of colorful pictures in each.

The gallery has it's own static page and is accessed from the page menu in the right margin of this blog page. Feel free to leave comments. I'm also open to having a few guest pictures, so if you've something painted up that deserves a showing, let me know.

It seems i can have up to 10 static pages on this blog, so expect some more soon. I will probably do a site/self profile, and a couple of pages on stuff like projects, tutorials or related items (computer combat sims etc).

Old Dog learns from younger pups

Well, I had planned a 4 day weekend painting Napoleonic Old Guard, German Falshies and some Frontier Indians. All painted to correct colours after researching and reading a pile of Osprey publications. That was until I saw these hard boiled egg miniatures. Yes, that's right, hard boiled eggs. These were painted by my friend Rachel's kids, Rebekka and Alex. These are so colourful and look like a ton of fun. So I've now changed my painting schedule to something more colourful and enjoyable. Sometimes you just need a reminder that you started doing a hobby because it was fun! New weekend painting schedule:

• Indian hill tribesmen in India silks
• Mussolini....in pink
• Heterosexually challenged war orks in silks and **BLUE** feathers
• anything else that I think will be fun.

I just hope my painting is up to the standard of Rebekka and Alex!

Gaming Room part 1

Finally, I have made a start on the gaming room. Over the last 6 months or so I've played a fair few games on other people's tables. The one thing I've learned is that the scenery of the table-top battleground can make the biggest difference to a game. It needs to be functional, pleasing on the eye, and convincing(in a caricature sort of way).

Gifts from India

Haven't had time to do much gaming (or posting!) lately as Xmas, work and other things got in the way. One of those things was a business trip to Chennai in India. I've been visiting India for a good few years now (most IT work seems to be outsourced to there). Every time I go, I've always tried to get some India produced miniatures or wargaming stuff. I've always failed. The closest I ever got was a box of Tamiya German tank crew in a Delhi toy shop. The proprietor had got them years earlier as a freebie from a rep at a trade show, and happened to find them in his stock room. As he and his staff had spent ages looking for them (while I drank a complimentary cup of tea), I felt obliged to buy them afterwards. A massive sum of 200 rupees, so a bargain anyway.

Macro photography

I got a new camera. Its an Olympus SLR E420. Not leading edge, but certainly beyond my photographic talents and a step up from point and click digital cameras. Having said that, I got bored reading the instruction manual, and decided to do some point and click close-ups.

What I've learned is:

• I still have a lot to learn about photography
• macro photography can give great detail - which can be quite unforgiving to basic paint jobs

Be warned, some of the pictures below are very close-up for 28mm.

Giant Rat for sale!

I currently have a large scale ForgeWorld Skaven for sale. This is a new mint condition resin piece which is very rare. The model is very detailed and will probably take some effort to paint. Because I've gone totally mad, I've started the auction at £30 and I've thrown in FREE World wide shipping! with some nice insurance options (which could also be free).

I'd advise people to get bidding because new EC laws come into force next year that require every man, woman and child to have one of these resin models with them at all times. (OK, I made that bit up!).

I'll let the pictures describe the detail.....Click on them for more detail.

For clarification, these are 2 leather pouches under the rat's cape.....and not what I first feared they might be!

It is big......and it is clever.

This is a ForgeWorld large scale Beastman that I am putting up for auction on eBay later today. These pieces are so rare that anybody who gazes at them instantly falls to their knees (well the cat saw it and then he sat down on the floor near the radiator soon after). The 2 miniatures at the beastman's base are a 28mm night goblin and an empire soldier. The House rules I use for this model in 2000+ point games go as follows:

• Opponent deploys army.
• I deploy big beastman.
• Opponent removes army from table, packs up and goes home.

If opponent wants to play on, then individual combat rules apply as follows:

• attacker rolls a single d20 (twenty sided dice).
• On a roll of 1 - 19, the attacker dies instantly.
• On a roll of 20, the attacker re-rolls (and keeps re-rolling if they get a 20)

Basically, the above rule means you die if you attack Mr Beastman, but sustained good dice rolling can be rewarded by a lingering drawn out death. There is only one way to beat MR Beastman and that is with the "lucky marksman" ranged combat rule :

• Opponent drops a single D6 vertically from a height equal to the tip of the Beastman's raised axe.
• On a score of 1 - 6, the marksman's shot misses. The Beastman will attack the marksman next turn using the combat rules. (And you already know how that turns out)
• If the dice stops one inch from hitting the table, defying gravity and physics to spin in mid-air, then the marksman scores a lucky shot and the Beastman takes a wound*.

*I should mention another house rule here about large scale Beastmen having 250 wounds.

If you want to get your hands on this Beastman, the bidding will start at £50. Insured delivery will be about £3.50 UK, £7.50 rest of world.

Fixed it.....

...well, as good as. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So when I tried to amend the header graphic, I found it was stored remotely. I think this is so the template provider can get stats on usage. Anyway, I've re-directed the call to my own hosted graphic, and voila! (that's French for big violin?), the header now has a nice graphic of my Praetorian bugler.

I've photographed him at an angle and sized him bigger than the frame, to make it look like he's coming out of the screen 3-D style. I've left lots of space in the header so that I can edit in more miniatures occasionally. I just need to fix some side-bar widgets now ;-(

If it isn't broke.....

A site visitor told me the blog was a little hard on the eye as the 3 columns were very close, and there was no border or background colour to clearly differentiate them. Being the helpful person I am, I tried to make things better....and I'm still trying!

Please bare with me while I salvage the adequately functional XML template that I felt the need to b*gger about with. I've got the columns working. I just need to sort the header out and re-write some of the widgets. Until then, enjoy the 1:1 scale working model of a butterfly built by God.

Nothing for sale

I've not put anything up for sale this week due to the impending Royal Mail strike. As soon as I can work out the impact, I'll probably put some more items up. I was hoping the strike could be called off through negotiation, but it looks like both sides are set on it.

I reckon anybody striking should be charged with treason as its still the "Royal" mail;-) Everybody has the right to strike, but at a time of increasing unemployment, the strikers will find it hard to get public sympathy.

Since the implementation of letter, large letter and packet sizes for inland mail a couple of years back, there's not a lot of difference between Royal Mail and courier prices. I think we are just a year or so away from the government giving out general postal delivery licences to TNT, bundesposte, DHL etc. (Especially if the treasury can raise money from them like the G3 mobile phone licences).

Harry, Destroyer of Worlds

Once in a while, you find a miniature that resembles somebody you know. In this case, a Hasslefree produced miniature of an elderly man looked the spitting image of a guy I knew called Harry. Harry lived in an old peoples home who used to hold social functions in the same community centre where my gaming group held our games night. Harry, would wander in and watch some of the games, telling the younger players wondrous stories about his own military service as a younger man.

From other people I learned Harry had seen active service in Korea and was also in Malaya and Palestine for a while. However on games nights I recall Harry visiting nearly every table and recounting tales of his involvement with the battle being recreated by the players. It would appear Harry had been in major conflicts spanning a 200 year period, and he had served with the Army, Navy, Air Force and even had the honour of serving alongside Catachan infantry (in Cyprus for some reason).

Sadly, Harry is watching us from above these days, but I'm sure he'd love the idea of a miniature depicting him. The garish colours are intentional. Harry always wore a turquoise sweatshirt that seemed to have been badly tie-dyed. I think this was useful for the rest home staff when rounding up "wanderers" like Harry. His trousers seem to have been sculpted as leggings or "Max Wall" style trousers (Google Max wall if you are too young to remember him). These are pretty close as Harry always wore green Umbro tracksuit bottoms.

Once again I seem to have painted something other than the Brightorian Guard I should be painting.

Pete's Miniatures becomes a blog!

I've moved the miniatures website to this blog as it is easier to update than the miniatures website. I've been meaning to get a blog for ages as they make good pets, guard property, fetch sticks etc. Blogs are tons better than cats, any day.