A couple of ladies...

"I say! Girl!  Goodness, where are your clothes?" gasped Agnes O'Brien as she rounded the strangely sinister statue in Sir Lawrence Swann's garden in the Meon Valley.  The poor girl was practically naked except for a few barbaric trinkets and a very immodest loin cloth.  The girl looked back at her evenly, seemingly unashamed by her state of nakedness.  "Do you speak English?  Where is Sir Lawrence?"  The girl must be some sort of primitive savage who Swann had brought back from Egypt.  "Are you one of Sir Lawrence's dusky acolytes from Darkest Africa?  Are you, perhaps, a Hottentot?"  It was bad enough having to address a woman with no clothes on but one who just stood there and stared at you, as if you were the one prancing about in your natural state, was even worse.

"Nah, love.  I'm from Rovver'ive.  You ain't got a ciggie ave ya?" said the girl.

"What impertinence!" said Agnes, swatting the girl's rear with her parasol.  

"Ooh!  Do vat again!" grinned the girl.

Agnes retreated towards the house in some haste, wondering what else she was going to discover in Sir Lawrence's house.

*****

Mark Copplestone sculpted Foundry Darkest Africa lady and Egyptian Slave girl from new firm Dark Fable Miniatures completed last weekend.  The slave girl will serve double duty back in the Bronze Age.  The Sphinx was an unexpected present from the Old Bat who saw it in the aquarium section of the local garden centre.

The Prince of Wales' Extraordinary Company

Well, I am keeping up with the release of new North Star IHMN companies even if I am not painting them!  I had forgotten I had pre-ordered the new PoWEC until they turned up at home last week.  A nice surprise!

This is a particularly nice set for someone like me who enjoys painting Sudan and Zulu War British.  Basically the set consists of six figures in standard home service uniform (i.e. the helmet has the spike on which wasn't used in the field).  There is a  sergeant in a bearskin, a medic in a patrol jacket, a character with some sort of large support weapon (I can't be bothered to get up and have a look at the rules as I have hurt my leg so am trying not to walk unless I have to) and the company leader, Captain Napier.  The official version of Captain Napier has him, oddly, in infantry uniform but with a lifeguard's cuirass.  Or, at least an approximation of one.  The one on the model is too short and finishes above the infantry belt whereas the actual ones worn at the time would have finished lower down with the belt over the cuirass.  I shouldn't be worrying about this sort of thing!  However, because I pre-ordered I also got a version of Captain Napier without the cuirass too, which is much better.  He will become Captain Jonty Smalme in my company!

Anyway, it's very tempting to get on with these straight away (as you can see I have already mounted them on washers) although I do want to finish a company of Confederation of the Rhine first.  Maybe I'll just paint one!

I am thinking about combining some figures from this unit with some of my Naval Brigade to check out Sir Lawrence Swann's house in Hampshire, given Scotland Yard were repelled from the area lately. 

In Her Majesty's Name - my first game: The Servants of Ra vs Scotland Yard

Somewhere in Hampshire: my forces lurk in the hamlet while innocent bystanders mill about unconcernedly

Alastair at Guildford Wargames Club very kindly offered me my first game of In Her Majesty's Name, which we played at the club night yesterday.  Now, I have very many sets of rules, most of which I have never played, so it is particularly satisfying to christen a new set.  Fortunately, Alastair is well aware that as a wargamer I am very much a painter and was very patient with me as I stumbled through these rules for the first time.  

Brontosaurus (1897) by Charles R Knight (1874-1953) One of my favourite dinosaur pictures when I was a child and nothing to do with IHMN - yet!

Firstly, I had to assemble my force and work out their mystical powers which I did while simultaneously watching the addictive Revenge of the Egghead on TV.  I am shocked at the low level of general knowledge that most people display on this.  Why enter a quiz show if you have no general knowledge?  If they'd all read Look & Learn when they were young, as I did, they would know a lot more stuff.  Of course, it does mean that my scientific knowledge, for example, doesn't really cover anything that has happened since 1974.  That's why they are still brontosauri in my mind.  

Anyway, we had agreed 250 points, which meant I could take most of the North Star company with the exception of the mummified priest.  Instead I took my newly painted (the kiss of death) Nubian as a Nubian guard for 25 points and a good investment he turned out to be.  I was a bit worried about this company because of the seemingly fragile nature of the cultists, of which I had seven, so I wanted the Nubian guard with his shotgun to give a ranged attack.  I had to quickly choose some mystical powers for Akhenaton, Sir Lawrence Swann and Zairah Al-Ghais.  Not knowing how they worked in practice I chose largely defensive powers such as clouding men's minds to try to ward off the long range weapons of the Scotland Yard men.  This was, indeed, effective and forced them into having to close into hand to hand combat; perhaps more than they would have liked.

Alastair's civilians mill around some crates of produce.  Probably rhubarb, rhubarb

We had an English rural set-up with a lot of well dressed civilians wandering around, thanks to Alastair's random direction dice, and generally getting in the way.  I deployed in the hamlet while Alastair's Scotland Yard men advanced through the fields, in two groups, with military precision. 

Pig alert!  Scotland yard advance in the distance as Akhenaton prepares to take cover.

Akhenaton took some of his cultists (all members of the Worshipful Company of Bankers -so no one cares if they die) over to protect his flank by the barn.  Alastair, who provided all the scenery and civilians had placed some livestock on the board too.  There was some discussion as to whether this should have been a steam powered pig.

Sir Lawrence urges Shabaka on behind the barn which would become the epicentre of the battle

After several turns of movement, where I sent more men to boost the right flank, Scotland Yard's redoubtable sergeant and Shabaka the Nubian faced off and exchanged the first fire of the game.  Alastair has played a few games of this and I had only had a quick read through the rules but it was very easy to pick up the basics.  The only thing we couldn't find (and I am sure it is in there somewhere) was what effect difficult terrain has on movement.  It is stated that there is a movement penalty for each of the three types of difficult terrain in the rules but while the shooting penalty is clear the movement penalty wasn't.

The inspector leads his men into the high street

On my left flank the Scotland Yard chaps soon shot most of my cultists and volley fire by the Special Branch put paid to one in the centre.  Akhenaton was safe because of his clouding men's minds power, which meant he could only be shot if in base to base contact, but he decided to retreat to the back of the barn anyway.  Shabaka successfully downed the sergeant but Dr Watson was on hand to use his medic's talent to revive him on the next move, annoyingly.  Things were not going well for the Servants of Ra.  I had lost four out of my eleven figures in two turns!

Brains vs brawn: Sherlock and Shabaka face off

Then I had a surprise!  One of the random civilian ladies turned out to be the consulting detective in disguise!  And he was right in the middle of my force which I had consolidated around the back of the barn.  He attacked Shabaka from the rear which was a bigger shock than holding off the assault from the constabulary with their electro-truncheons.  At this point I was down to just five figures while Alastair had eight still in action.  An enormous hand to hand brawl ensued with multiple attacks, shooting from melee and all sorts of other shenanigans.  This was where I discovered the almost invincible strength of Akhenaton.  He started to cleave through the opposition with his mighty Khopesh while the lovely Zairah did for Dr Watson.  Sir Lawrence, as all good cult leaders should, ran away and hid for most of this. 

Gradually, the tables turned and Scotland Yard started to lose more and more men as Zairah sliced through them like a Whirling Dervish and Akhenaton fended off the constables.  Holmes and Shabaka got involved in a massive slugfest which went on for turns while two Special Branch men went after the cowardly Sir Lawrence.  Outnumbered two to one he unexpectedly put one of his attackers down with a very unpainterly roundhouse punch.

Sir Lawrence goes on the attack 

Surprised by the eminent painter's aggressiveness the Special Branch man disengaged, only to have Sir Lawrence pursue him.  Meanwhile Akhenaton and Zairah attacked Holmes.  After a fight Holmes succumbed, as did Sir Lawrence.  The cowardly (sensible) Special Branch man fled the field leaving the hamlet to Akhenaton and Zairah.  A very rare wargames win for the Legatus!

Zairah rushes over to the fallen artist.  Can she revive him?  Will he ever paint a naked Egyptian slave girl again?  We'll have to see in the next game!

There is a reason that In Her Majesty's Name is selling like hot cakes and that is because it is an excellent, well thought-out game that even an idiot like me can pick up very quickly!  Although I thought the Servants of Ra would have no hope against Scotland Yard their key characters are tremendously strong and the game was very close.  A lot of thought has gone into the composition of the companies and all credit to Messrs Cartmell and Murton for this.  During the game, Alastair and I were thinking of all sorts of other scenarios and periods we could play with these rules and he is currently working on some African cannibals against which I could try to devise a Belgian Force Publique company.  So it could be IHMN in Africa next!  I have the new supplement Heroes, Villains and Fiends but haven't read it yet; something I will remedy shortly!

There is an interesting, recent YouTube video of Mr Cartmell discussing some possible directions the game might take, which is well worth a look.  Pulp and swashbucklers, possibly.  I'd be in for both of those!

Now I am enthused to get on and paint my next company.  I have started Scotland Yard so that will be next I think!  I don't think, from what he said during his video interview, that Mr Cartmell will be too pleased with the figures for an unofficial company I am working on.  Too many corsets and goggles!  

Thanks to Alastair for putting this game on and providing all the scenery.  It was actually a game that didn't get me stressed!  He is a very calming and convivial opponent!

Excellent fun and a highly recommended set of rules!

Lost World Monster Hunters!

I finished another two figures today to complete my initial Lost World force.  From left to right we have Zambo, Edward Malone, Professor Challenger, Professor Summerlee and Lord John Roxton.  They are a mixture of Foundry Darkest Africa and Copplestone Castings High Adventure series.   Challenger was the one I was struggling with but I found I had a spare Foundry John Hanning Speke figure which had an appropriately large beard so after a bit of surgery and the addition of a Greenstuff jacket I had something usable and a little different from the original figure.

Now I may add a defiantly non-literary woman to the plateau-ascending group as a nod to all their cinematic incarnations.  However, finding a good adventuress for 1912 will be tricky.  By 1912 corsets were still worn (they would survive until just after WW1) giving a slimline look with long straight skirts and loose blouses.  Most of the female 28mm figures are either mid-Victorian (crinolines and full skirts), late Victorian, (small bustles, fitted bodices) or nineteen twenties and thirties (mid-calf skirts or jodphurs - first worn by women following Coco Chanel in 1921).  More research needed! 

Back from the Future: Lost World monster hunters for In Her Majesty's Name...

Lord John Roxton tracks something that has escaped the plateau

I've been wondering about putting together my own company for In Her Majesty's Name but every time I think of something someone else has already done it.  Now, however, I have an idea of something that might work and which will also help start me on another project I have had percolating away for some years now.

Neovenator: the Isle of Wight's very own dinosaur

I have been planning a Lost World project for some time and have been steadily collecting model dinosaurs from a variety of sources, including Copplestone Castings, the British Museum shop and various seaside shops on the Isle of Wight which is, of course, officially Dinosaur Island this year.

Copplestone Castings figure from the Dinosaur Hunter's pack

It was just a matter of finding the right figures for the Lost World characters.  Searching through the lead pile I found figures for most of the characters I need from Foundry's Darkest Africa and Copplestone's High Adventure ranges. So here is the first from my Lost World/Monster Hunters company, Lord John Roxton, who I painted over the weekend.  I really like this figure, with his backpack and blanket roll, but the shorts are really wrong for Victorian times.

Conan Doyle's version of the four adventurers

The Lost World project will look at the successor to the Professor Challenger expedition which, at the end of The Lost World novel, was going to include just Roxton and Malone.  I will have both Summerlee and Challenger join the expedition at the last minute.  I found figures for Malone and Summerlee quite quickly but Challenger was, er, a challenge.  I needed someone, ideally, with a very big beard! The problem is now solved and I hope to finish painting all three, plus the usually forgotten character of Zambo, in the next week.

Jill St John in The Lost World (1960)

This also gives me the opportunity to field a suitably feisty female character.  Every film or TV version has added a gratuitous female adventurer to the expedition: Paula White (Bessie Love) in the 1925 version,  Jennifer Holmes (Jill St John) in the 1960 version, Jennie Nielsen (Tamara Gorski) in the two John Rhys-Davies 1992 films, Amanda White (Jayne Heitmeyer) in the 1998 version, Marguerite Krux (Rachel Blakely - rather splendid) in the 1999 Canadian TV series and Agnes Cluny (Elaine Cassidy) in the 2001 BBC version, which is probably my favourite dramatisation even if it does, as do all the versions, play fast and loose with the plot and characters.

A rather gratuitously wet Elaine Cassidy in the BBC's The Lost World from 2001

Conan Doyle was not always very internally consistent with his characters so, while she isn't mentioned in The Lost World, in The Land of Mists (1926) Challenger has an adult daughter, Enid, who Malone takes a shine to and eventually marries.  I have a few feisty females for my Darkest Africa Zambezi project and they would work for the late nineteenth Century setting of IHMN but not so well for the just pre-WW1 setting of The Lost World.  The Copplestone Female archaeologists pack has some good young ladies but the two best ones are wearing jodhpurs, which did not become fashionable wear for women until Coco Chanel wore them in 1921.

She designed her own costumes for the series, you know

I think there is also a place for a plateau-stranded wild beauty, like the potently named (for the Legatus, anyway) Veronica, as played by the lovely Jennifer O'Dell in the Canadian TV series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World (1999-2002).  One of the several not Jane figures will work for her, I think.

There is also the opportunity, as hinted at in some of the later Challenger books, of including German spies out to discover the diamonds of Maple White Land.

So, that's The Lost World project nearly sorted but how do I get characters from around 1910 back to the late nineteenth century?  The answer of course is a time portal.  I did toy with the idea of some kind of stargate but have settled instead on a sparkling anomaly.  This will transfer a plague of prehistoric creatures onto the streets of London followed, fortuitously by the group of experienced dinosaur hunters who ran into a similar anomaly up on the plateau.  It is a London slightly different from the one they experienced in their younger days, however.   In Conan Doyle's books Lord Roxton was a friend of Sherlock Holmes so there is no doubt who the consulting detective would call in to deal with the flocks of feral reptiles terrorising the East End as well as some of the other monstrous creatures abroad in the fog-bound alleys of Whitechapel.  Roxton was a great anti-slaver so it would be quite possible for him to appear in the Zambezi taking on the Arab slavers, who appear to have captured some form of monstrous creature: She-who-must-be fed.

The real problem will be working out statistics for the IHMN company but the authors of the rules have supplied (I think) the means to calculate these. Also others are creating their own, rather excellent, companies which can now be found on the In Her Majesty's Name site.

So, another project!  Hooray!

More for In Her Majesty's Name...including a police station

I managed about twenty minutes painting on some of my IHMN figures today which is more than I have done for about two months.  I am working on two companies: the Scotland Yard one and the Egyptian one.

I knew there was another rules supplement for IHMN due called Heroes, Villains and Fiends but now there is another one as well: as Osprey has revealed on it's 2014 preview on its website. They mistakenly call it Sleeping Dragon, Rising Surf in their website announcement.  I assume they meant Sleeping Dragon, Rising Sun and that it presages all sorts of oriental fiendishness.  Unless, of course this is the opportunity to create my Baywatch army (I have seen one on the web somewhere). "Yasmine has the special ability "distraction" which causes her opponents to freeze and be incapable of action for one move.  This increases to two moves if she is running."

In addition, North Star have announced figures for a sixth company: the Brick Lane Commune; a right bunch of anarchists and pinkos if I ever saw them.  I'm tempted to order them immediately but I think I better finish some more figures first!  Nothing particularly steampunk about these which, I suspect, could make them the range's best sellers to date.

Meanwhile, I continue to fret about scenery but have the beginnings of a layout in my mind.  Scott is making great progress on his second Victorian terrace but my modelling skills aren't up to that and so I cheated this week and ordered 4Ground's Victorian police station which arrived very quickly, I have to say.  It's a big heavy box and was absolutely stuffed with bits including, entertainingly, wooden clothes pegs and rubber bands to assist in construction.  It's what Warlord Games would call "replete" with wooden sprues.  Incidentally, the word replete is being used more and more lately.  When I was younger it had a more specific use meaning a person who was full of food but now it's used to just mean full, which although technically correct I find annoying, for some reason.

I haven't built a laser cut building kit before and am now thinking that maybe I should have started with a cart, or some such, first.  The instructions for the police station are on four A3 sides with one being a diagram of the parts and the other three being colour photographs of the assembly.  There are 146 stages in the construction!  The instructions were good but missed one or two stages, missed some of the part numbers out and even gave the wrong one once (so far) but they were pretty good on the whole.  The other problem I encountered were bits falling out of the sprues (are they called sprues if they are wood?) when they were handled which means some careful checking of loose parts against the diagram was sometimes necessary.  I also had one small part missing (or I lost it) but fortunately it was easy to replicate in using some left over wood.

Anyway, I got it out on the kitchen table this evening and started work on it. Some of it is quite fiddly as you have to hold together and place things at the same time but I was very impressed how well things went together with only one or two slight bits of trimming to get things to fit in the holes.  As the thing came together what had felt quite flimsy became increasingly robust.  

What I hadn't realised about this kit is that it includes some interior detailing.  I don't think any of the initial publicity shots showed these interior features, such as the cells and what I take to be a mortuary.  Anyway, after three and three quarter non stop hours I have got the basic structure of the ground floor done.  I would imaging that there is at least another eight hours work to go before it is finished.  It's really nice, though and my only complaint is that the outside is red bricks whereas nearly all East End Victorian London buildings have yellow bricks.  Yellow bricks in this area are much more common than red ones for buildings of this period but people think red bricks equals Victorian. Something that Ripper Street, which is filmed in Dublin, of course, perpetuates.

Here for example, is Brick Lane in the East End and most of the buildings have yellow bricks.  Never mind, I am thinking of giving the finished building a good coating of "soot" anyway.  The next part of the assembly looks like really fiddly doors.  Not looking forward to that!

Dr Watson and Tart with a heart and a gun for In Her Majesty's Name

Here is Dr Watson to go with last week's Holmes.  He is also depicted in country attire but Nick Eyre at North Star has dropped a hint that they may work on a "town" Watson and Holmes, perhaps based on the look of the characters in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series.  This is good news as it indicates that there will be more figures in the range.  Watson from the Scotland Yard Company was, like the whole of this new company, sculpted by Mike Owen rather than Steve Saleh who did the first four companies.  There is no discernible difference in style or size however.  Possibly the faces are better on the new figures.

I also wanted to have a go at one of the ladies so here is the "Tart with a heart and a gun" figure which was one of the stretch goal figures for those who signed up for the pre-order.  She does not appear in any of the official companies in the book but rules author Craig Cartmell in a comment on his excellent In Her Majesty's Name blog says he is working on a new list which will include her. 

Actually, I have an idea for my own company in which she will feature as Eva von Tarnhelm, an undercover spy for the Prussian Tarnhelm arms manufacturing company.  Daughter in law of Alberich von Tarnhelm her peculiar appetites have made her a liability even in German society so she was dispatched to London where, under the name of Hattie Eve she runs a superior brothel off Piccadilly.  This is located not too far from the United Service Club at 116 Pall Mall, the senior armed forces members of which are prime targets for the unscrupulous Eva and her talented group of Eastern European and very "professional" young ladies.

An aristocrat in her own right, the six foot tall Eva married the diminutive heir to the Tarnhelm fortune Michael von Tarnhelm (known to his family as Mime).  After just one month, however, after an evening of drinking too much Schanpps with Eva,  Michael fell down  the stone steps of his Bavarian castle; a vegetal folly of recent construction designed by Christian Jank and featuring massive underground laboratories where Michael, uninterested in arms, was trying to build a monumental organ which could replicate all the sounds of the symphony orchestra with just one player. He died instantly according to the second doctor who examined the body.  The first doctor who examined the body seemed to think that he had received several blows to the head as well but, unfortunately, he fell off the rampart of the castle into the gorge below while giving this opinion to Eva.  The question of whether either man fell or was pushed was never asked; not after Eva seduced her father in law Alberich on the evening after her husband's funeral, where he was immolated on a mountain top near the castle.  Eva, dressed in a black tunic, wearing chainmail and a black helmet complete with wings, sang Brünnhilde's "War es so schmählich" from Act III of Die Walküre in her thrilling soprano. She suggested that the laboratories in the castle be used to develop new weapons for the coming conflict, away from the spies which both knew the French and British had placed in their main factory.  Recognising a kindred spirit Alberich made Eva his heir and sent her to London to see if she could discover the extent of the British infiltration into his organisation.

Posing as a high class madam and recruiting as "operatives" a cadre of disaffected women from the minor Baltic regions of Europe her London operation is so successful she plans to open a sister facilty in Paris.

As a widow in Victorian London Eva von Tarnhelm would be expected to be celibate and wear black for the rest of her life.  Her alter ego, Hattie, enables her to satisfy her base desires and act in as scandalous manner as she likes.  She remembers her husband by wearing black underthings (as widows should do) and a cameo likeness of him around her elegant throat.  She is most grateful for everything she has subsequently been able to do without him.

When on less horizontal service she is armed with a Tarnhelm Blitzwerfer arc pistol.

Next up: there's constabulary duty to be done...

First two figures for In Her Majesty's Name

I sat down and painted these two yesterday.  The "Consulting Detective" from the Scotland Yard company and a cultist follower of Akhenaton from the Servants of Ra company.  Yesterday evening I also cleaned up and based the rest of the figures from these companies plus the Lord Curr's Company as well. Still two more companies to go though!

A number of issues have presented themselves, however.  The first relates to the quality of the figures.  Not the quality of the sculpting, I should add, which is characterful and excellent. There are two issues here.  Firstly, several of the figures have been slightly misaligned in the mould which necessitated more than a bit of filing and some actual carving with a knife to get the two surfaces aligned. Nothing fatal, but time consuming. Several figures were also pitted and all had quite prominent mould lines. The second issue is that the metal they are made from is quite soft (usefully given the above) but, as a result I am concerned for the durability of some of them.

Lord Curr himself brandishes a long and exotic gun but the top portion of this is very susceptible to bending to the extent that I expect it to fall off shortly. Likewise he dancer, Sairah, is connected to the base solely by one slender ankle.  She is also looking fragile.  The upshot here is that compared to the Perry and Aventine figures I am working on at present, they have used quite a low quality metal.

The final two issues relate to aesthetics.  A large part of my interest in these figures was because of Kevin Dallimore's splendid paint jobs on them.  Unlike historical military figures, however, you can paint them any way you like and, yet, Mr Dallimore's artistic choices are so spot on that you are tempted just to follow his colour scheme.  If you did, however, you would just end up with an inferior copy of his figures.  This became an issue with my very first cultist figure.  Everyone knows that Pulp cultists wear red but I didn't want to go down that route for the reason given above.  Red would be appropriate for these figures too because of  ancient representations of the Eye of Ra (depicted on the mummified priest figure).  Instead I have painted mine a sand colour (Humbrol 121) as they look appropriately Egyptian.  This is the colour I use for my Sudan bases as it is very close, coincidentally, to the colour of the sand in Egypt and the Sudan, as you can see from my profile picture further down on the left.  The turquoise-blue shade is going to be used throughout this company to reflect the lapis lazuli used in a lot of ancient Egyptian jewellery.  I have decided not to attempt to paint the Eye of Ra symbol on their tunics as this would be beyond me.  I am amused to see that Mr Dallimore has used the Stargate version of this ancient symbol rather than anything more archaeological.

This wasn't such an issue with the Sherlock Holmes figure as a grey coat and deerstalker are common.  Jeremy Brett wore something very similar in a number of his Sherlock Holmes episodes.  I thought that the figure looked enough like the late Mr Brett to give him black gloves which he wore so often in the superb ITV series.  The other civilians, also, will be easier to de-Dallimore and I am currently researching late nineteenth century gentlemen's clothing which is rather more colourful than formal wear today.

The second aesthetic issue is more fundamental.  How do you depict the figures' bases when they may be deployed in both urban and rural settings?  Earth and grass would look odd inside a building (I am having grandiose thoughts about attempting to construct a museum interior).  Equally, a paved surface would be strange in the country.  So I have left the bases as a compromise bare earth.  I'm still not sure on this one.  My daughter says that obviously I need differently based figures for the different environments!  Given it took  me around seven hours to paint these first two I don't think that that is likely.

So, I have some more time today so try to get some more prepared.  All in all they are very enjoyable to paint but take a lot of time as I am using four or five shades rather than my usual three.  Watson is under way so maybe one of the young ladies next!

A post Salute frustration, Victorian fluff and nearly a nasty moment...

In Her Majesty's Name - not as much progress as I would have hoped

Usually on my return from Salute I immediately base a figure or two and try to get something painted straight away.  This is exactly what I intended to do today, given that I possess nearly five dozen new figures for In Her Majesty's Name.  I based a dozen yesterday and undercoated three today intending to finish at least one (probably Sherlock Holmes). 

In order to keep me focussed on a project I like to indulge in a bit of background fluff to engender the requisite engagement.  Usually this is just a bit of reading and appropriate music while I paint.  So I've been listening to the Hans Zimmer Sherlock Holmes soundtracks, the Patrick Gowers TV soundtrack and even David Arnold's Sherlock soundtracks.  Sometimes something more visual is needed and so the other night I watched the Sherlock Holmes (2009) film again as it is quite Steampunky in places.  I also decided to finish an episode of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes which I had started but not finished some time ago.  Quite a lot of these are shot in and around country houses rather than the foggy London I imagined would feature more often (which is why I need to locate my unpainted model mansion which I originally bought for using in ECW games).  This episode, The Man with the Twisted Lip, did have some good dark alley Victorian London scenes however which gave me some  thoughts about a London scenic board (eventually).

Eleanor David in The Man with the Twisted Lip

However the scene which really took my fancy was when Holmes (the North Star IHMN figure really looks like Jeremy Brett) and Watson turn up at the lady in distress's house in the country.  Played by Eleanor David, one of a number of splendid actresses to appear in this series over the years, she offers Holmes and Watson a cold supper after their long journey from London.

They never eat it but this sumptuous looking collation of pie, cheese, ham on the bone and cold pork chops quite distracted me from the action.  I proceeded to shop for a version of this to have tonight with a nice bottle of claret while I watch the next episode...  Inspiration comes in many forms!

In Her Majesty's Name: Steampunk is coming!

Now, of course, the one thing I don't need is to start a new range of figures but I've always had a hankering to do some Victorian steampunk. However, I have never really been that happy with any of the figures I had seen.  Basically, they all seemed too much steampunk and not enough Victorian.  Now, however North Star are coming out with  line that's just right: definitely Victorian but with certain fantastical elements.  They are very much in the vein of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Even better they have been sculpted by Steve Saleh whose work I have always liked.

The new line is to tie in with Osprey's new skirmish rules In Her Majesty's Name.  I haven't been impressed by any of these other Kickstarter type campaigns, especially the much vaunted Gates of Antares one, which suffers from the not inconsiderable problem of not having example miniatures to show, but I signed up for this one straight away.

The advantage of the Osprey/North Star initiative, however, is that they present (splendid) pictures of the first (of what I hope will be many) forces for this interesting sounding game.  I think the ultimate target of £48,000 for this is hopelessly optimistic for a niche subject but, at the very least, you get the four sets anyway although I think the discount for buying all four sets and the rules of £1.79 is a bit mean.  In the last year or so I have been enjoying a number of Victorian steampunk novels; particularly those by Mark Hodder and George Mann and have thought about splashing out on some Victorian figures without finding any I really liked. 

The big problem with the period  is its Victorian (and in my mind at least) urban setting.  Houses suitable for Victorian London are not a popular subject for terrain manufacturers in the way dark ages, medieval, Tudor and Stuart ones are.  That said, somewhere in the loft I have a large ECW period manor house which with the addition of a laboratory in the grounds might work as a setting without too many buildings.  Hmm!

The figures aren't released until Salute in April so I have plenty of time to think about scenery.  I will keep an eye on Scott's blog as he has been doing some lovely work in this area.

Can't wait!