Painting Lord Curr's Company

My In Her Majesty's Name orders arrived from North Star Military Figures. I bought Lord Curr's Company. Scotland Yard and The Society of Thule. The set that I wanted to paint first was Lord Curr's. Now, I have not painted 28mm miniatures for a very long time. Lately I've been busy painting up my 15mm French army for Field of Glory Napoleonic.

I opened the box and had a look at the figures. There were more flash than I expected, but the de-flashing task was not unsurmountable. Or that was what I thought. Don't get me wrong: the miniatures were very nice. It's just that the flash seemed to be in the most unlikely spots. I did what I thought was a thorough job clearing out all the problematic areas, washed the miniatures and undercoated them black.

To warm up, I started painting four of the Incorrigibles...and I really enjoyed it. Makes a real change painting 28mms again. I forgot how fun it was to paint 28mms. :)

The painting was not without any untoward incidents. On several miniatures, I discovered what I though were integral parts of the miniatures to be flash, So, I had to temporarily halt the painting to get rid of the flash. This meant I had to scrape away some carefully-applied paint in order to extricate the offending lead abomination and re-paint those parts all over again. These incidences were a little frustrating, but overall, I enjoyed painting the miniatures.

Ready to be undercoated.

The first four lucky Incorrigibles.

Mohan Singh: My favourite miniature from the range and he was what got me into IHMN.

Mohan Singh leads!

These are my favourites too.

Having painted the Company, I can't wait to get them in a game of In Her Majesty's Name. I think I will design  a scenario! The game's afoot!

Digging Up Miniatures from the 80s

So, I went to look inside my lead-filled cupboard and managed to find some miniatures from the Call of Cthulhu range both from Grenadier Miniatures and Games Workshop. The GW official Call of Cthulhu miniatures were produced when they published the official UK version of the Call of Cthulhu RPG boxed set. My miniatures looked as if they were trapped in a time warp, as some of them only were partly painted. And the rest unpainted. I chose the miniatures that looked as if the could fit in a VSF environment and cleaned them up. I plan to start painting them soon, possibly tomorrow.

Grenadier Miniatures Call of Cthulhu/1920s Range

My favourite: Sherlock

Sherlock: Left profile

Date of casting: 1984

Date of casting: 1984 and 1982

Call of Cthulhu miniatures from Games Workshop

Bitten by Victorian Science Fiction!

My recent purchase of In Her Majesty's Name (IHMN) rules from Foyles Bookstore, London triggered a sudden desire to start a new wargames genre: Victorian Science Fiction (VSF). This is in addition to several genres that I had planned to start, which included the Seven Years War (Maurice), the French Indian War (Muskets and Tomahawks) and Vietnam (Charlie Company). As if I don't have enough new genres to start.

Now, my interest in VSF before the purchase of IHMN was zero, or close to it. My last brush with VSF gaming was Space:1889, a rulebook I bought ages ago (>20 years) when it first came out. I don't know what hit me. Maybe it was my visit to London, which had been my home many years ago. Maybe it was the hot English summer. Maybe it was the Mohan Singh character I came across when I was browsing IHMN in Foyles. So many maybes, but whatever it was, I am now hooked on VSF. In recent weeks, I have scoured various bookstores for VSF-related books and comics, sometimes blatantly reading these books in the premises for hours, and sometimes actually buying these books. As for the mother of all resources, the internet, I have repeatedly searched for terms like 'Steampunk', 'Victorian Science Fiction Games' and even 'Victorian houses'. I have also repeatedly ogled at pictures of VSF games and articles on the internet, eventually ordering some Victorian-era miniatures from Wargames Foundry and Eureka Miniatures. I had even gone so far as ordering some of the official IHMN miniatures from North Star Figures.

While waiting for my figures to arrive, I managed to dig out my old unpainted-for-more-than-20-years Call of Cthulhu miniatures by Grenadier and Games Workshop in view of painting them (at last!). OK, agreed that these are not strictly VSF or Steampunk, but they are definitely Pulp.