Blue Drifts into Sci-Fi....eBay strikes again

Yikes! Nearly a month since my last post! I could bore you with a bunch of excuses as to why...but lets just say RL has been cramping my hobby time in a big way.

So since I've gotten very little done in the way of painting...Lets look at the ever expanding lead pile instead!!

As some of you who haunt similar forums as me know I've been selling off a lot of extra figures from my collection...this leads to money in the PayPal ...which leads to obsessive eBay trawling.... which leads to more small boxes and padded envelops randomly appearing in the mailbox...  which leads to exasperated looks from the wife...:)

One of my latest "successes" on eBay was the acquisition of some excellent Sci-fi models...both from the Rogue Trader Era Citadel range and from slightly further afield.  A gentleman from the States was selling a number of Chaos Renegades individually along with a Chaos Dreadnought.  I put some low ball snipes in on the whole lot of them and promptly left for a short holiday with my family.  Half way through my trip a received a flurry of emails from my eBay account letting me know that not only had I won a few of them...but I had won them all!  They weren't a tremendous bargain but at just north of $5 ($15 for the Dreadnought) each I was pretty happy.

The Dreadnought has been avoiding me for months!

A nice mix of Renegades here.

One duplicate...and the guy in the right is from 1993...but close enough for me!

These twisted disciples of evil will join the other 8 or 9 Renegades in my collection allowing me to field almost two complete squads...a squad of Chaos Terminators...and a dread...Nice!

As you may have noticed the two Plague Marines have different...non-RT backpacks...which I have to say I really like!  Can anyone tell me from what edition they are from?

I had also noticed that this same seller had a fairly large lot of non-Citadel Sci-fi figures and when I went to see what they had sold for I found that no one had bid on them...so I dropped him a message and offered to include some money for those in my payment as well...he agreed and added this lot to my box for only $10!

Thats a lot of metal for $10!

 These are all figures from Alternative Armies Ion Age Series of 28mm figures.  I first became aware of this through the amazing work of Pil....a regular contributor on LAF who painted up a bunch for a client.  I was pretty impressed with the figures then (and Pil's amazing brush work) and felt that they had a very RT feel to them so the chance to get my hands on a fairly large batch at a bargain price was a no brainier.

This lot includes a number of Retained Knights...which I will use as alternative Space Marines.  I think they are at least as cool as many of the old Citadel sculpts.

Perhaps its my fondness for Sallet helmets that makes me like them?

The rest are a batch of more lightly armed infantry...and to be honest I will have to do some thinking about what to play them as in RT...but the sculpts are still quite good IMO.

To Give you an idea what these guys can look like painted...here are a couple of Pil's Pictures (which I hope he doesn't mind if I use)

Of Course Pil's excellent scenery helps make them really look great!

This last shot is of more lightly armored human figures not included in my lot called "muster troops" which I think could equate to Imperial Guard...I see myself hunting them down soon...

Back in the foggy distance of time I had several squads worth of Citadel Space Marines...but stupidly sold them off a couple of years ago when I was focusing my attention on my dwarf collection...but with the discovery of these figures from Alternative Armies I don't see myself trying to rebuild that collection...These seem to be a fun alternative and one that is still in production and can occasionally be found for a pittance on eBay....unlike the classic Space Marines.

Thats all for now...if my painting mojo continues to elude me I'll let you in on a few more of my recent impulse buys.

Cheers for now!

Blue

Bret Halberds Complete...and something Chaosy this way comes

Howdy all...well the heart of the summer is upon us....my ankle is healing well and my work load has gone off the charts...seems no one did anything at work while I was laying on the couch for a month...lazy sods!  So my hobby time has been quite restricted but I do have a couple of updates to share with you.

First of all I finished off the last of the infantry units for my Bretonnian warband....these are the halberdiers I was working on for the Monthly Unit Painting Challenge over on the Oldhammer Forum.  They still need a banner and few shields but they are done enough for now.  This unit didn't inspire me the way the others did but I'm glad they are finished and I'm fairly happy with the way they turned out.....take a look for yourself.  Sorry about the crappy wooden movement tray...its a WIP

This shot shows the 3 R&F sculpts...nice but a little more variety would have been great!

Shields detail...these guys look better from the back!

With the completion of these guys I'm getting fairly close to being finished with this small army.  On my painting table right now are a unit of 10 knights as well as a general and army standard bearer.  The only other thing I have to add are more mounted yeomen....I'm still hunting a couple of the sculpts down but that unit can grow slowly.

On a completely different note....last weekend my painting mojo completely vanished so I found some time to clean a prep models for future efforts.  Recently my boy Clam sent along a set of his new Ewal Dvergar sculpts for me to play around with.  So I spread them out with a batch of the first release castings that were still patiently waiting assembly and I went to work....here is what I started with.

As you can see there are a LOT of options here....so I spent the better part of night just fiddling around and trying different head and weapons options on the various bodies.  By the end of the evening here is what I had come up with....a group of 4 with pole arms...

I particularly like the guy second from the left...

 ...a couple with two hand weapons

here I used weapons from both 1st and 2nd releases

....and a sizable group of hand weapon and shield warriors

A right evil looking bunch eh?

Additonally I built this guy on the left with the two handed sword and started on a couple of conversions with some of the extra bits...which are sill very much WIP.

Bonus points if you can ID the base bodies on the two models on the right...

I hope to get these guys primed up in the next few days so they can join the great unpainted masses awaiting my attention on the painting table.

Of course if you want some of these babies for yourself you should check out Clam's Blog HERE

...tell him Blue sent ya...

Cheers for now!

Blue