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When I first started miniatures gaming, my first game was the classic Space Crusade. That game will forever have warm feelings from me. However, I soon started converting minis from the set, and using their bits in other conversions and I found that I really wanted to play Space Crusade, but didn't have any of the parts that I'd need. So I went to my "bits box"- which is quite extensive these days, with parts catalogued- and found that I could pull a full Space Crusade force out of it. For painting, I've decided to create tributes to forces that I've painted in the past- some for clients, others for myself. None of them will match those forces too closely, as I'll be creating a new take on them. Here's the first squad I finished: Salamanders I painted up my first unit as Salamanders as a tribute to the Salamanders forces I painted over the years (they'll be 'counts as' Imperial Fists for the most part). This version of the Salamanders doesn't quite match any of the other color schemes for Sallies that I've done, and it was nice to have a slightly new take on them. PS- I've posted them to CMON for anyone who cares to vote.

In our current Iron Kingdoms / Unleashed RPG campaign, after my Nyss priest got one-shotted (and rolled 1-1-2 on the injury table -- a very bad thing, in case you aren't familiar with the rules) in our first combat, the GM came up with the idea that we each should have backup characters, just in case someone gets obliterated, or suffers another "Slow Recovery" result (as I did) and ends up effectively bedridden for long periods of game time while the plot demands that the others keep adventuring. I was inspired by a Hordes model, the Gobber Tinker. (Reference image.) ... And so I thought I'd try building my own. From a grab bag deal I got a while back, I ended up getting 3 or 4 copies of this same gobber model who's hauling warjack parts on his back (as part of the Cygnar Field Mechaniks unit). I imagined that one of them might work well to be the lucky guy hauling the cart ... and then I'd have the other copy to be the same figure, only minus the cart. (Sort of like having a mounted/unmounted figure pair, only "pulling a cart" vs. "riding a horse.") I started building a basic cart together with craft sticks, toothpicks, and craft "matchsticks." The wheels are some early attempts I made years ago at trying to make copies of a wagon wheel model with water putty. They really aren't sturdy enough to be used for a lot of things, but I did some patch-up work and textured the insides with some putty (which also served to reinforce them a bit), and held the wagon together with Tacky Glue (which seems to work pretty well for wooden pieces). My plan is to fill the wagon up with various "bits" left over from some of the plastic warjack conversion kits. (A friend of mine has a Khador army, and I've painted up several of his figures. He lets me keep leftover "bits," and the newer plastic kits in many cases have a base chassis and then you just swap out custom armaments for several of the different warjack types ... inevitably leaving a few extra weapon arms in the process.) ( ... picture forthcoming because "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this community" is giving me grief again via Google+ ...) In my bits box, I happened to have a mis-cast resin barrel. I had been keeping that around with the intent of "burying" it in a scenery piece or a base to represent some barrel half-buried in sand, but such an opportunity just hasn't come up yet. I figured I could use it just as well by stuffing it in the cart, where all the clutter might help obscure the fact that it's really only half a barrel. An idea occurred to me that hauling a cart full of mechanikal (deliberate misspelling) gear through the wilds is to put them at the mercy of the elements. Or, rather, I just happened to have a couple of little plastic/resin bits left over from some resin casts of a Hirst Arts Castlemolds shingled rooftop (a section had to be cut out to make room for a chimney), and I thought it might be interesting to make a little "roof" over the wagon. Sure, it's unwieldy, but the wagon is going to be more than a little unwieldy once I finish cramming it full of junk, and hanging all sorts of tools, lanterns, a sign or two, and various knickknacks on the sides. The matchsticks on the top are basically filler for the gap formed by the two (thick) pieces of rooftop resin coming together; I plan to use some putty to make a top ridge of shingles for the roof, but a bit of filler reduces the amount of putty that'll get used up as gap-filler. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle the removable gobber. Rather than permanently fixing one of the gobbers to the cart model, I'm pondering whether it might be feasible to remove a gobber from his base and put him on some sort of pegs, then alternate between plugging it into the cart base, or its own 30mm single-figure base. So far, it's just an idea; it remains to be seen what's practical.

So it turns out that coffee pods not only contain coffee grounds, which I'm accumulating for ground-cover on a piece, they ALSO contain (well, this brand does) two perfectly round, rigid plastic mesh screens per pod. Just in case any of you crazy scratch-builders needed to know.