A few months ago I mentioned that I had started pulling together some figures for a game of Fantasy Craft (and excellent system that has just had its first batch of errata). As usual, other projects got in the way, but I have finally got a significant number fully painted — more then I originally planned, but I’ll come to that in a minute. Today I applied a coat of matt varnish and can call the first batch “finished”, so I’ve taken some pictures and will relate the story of how they came to be.

The original plan was to paint a few figures to represent House Deneith mercenaries in my ongoing, but infrequent, Eberron campaign. (I also plan to paint some Orcs, and should probably up the priority of that little project as we are getting close to the session when they come out to play with the merry band of heroes).

When I want to get miniatures, I usually make Foundry my first port of call. They are a little on the expensive side, but produce some very nice figures — and the frequency of their 20% off deals helps a lot! The trouble with getting nice figures is that it leads the fanatical Warhammer players that you call “friend” to make comments such as “They would make a great core to a really characterful Empire army!”. To which there is only one response — “Yes, yes they would.”

So it seemed I was doomed to getting back into Warhammer, and I stuck my head in the Empire army book and tried to figure out what I wanted from an army. The answer was simple, cannons and other things that go “Bang!”. The fluff suggested a Nuln army and, while the text shouted “Black! Black to hide the soot marks!”, the pictures showed a number of units which had gone for a red and black colour scheme.

I took another look at the House Deneith pictures in the Eberron source books. Black and red was a common theme. It seemed the world wasn’t going to give me an excuse to avoid it.

I dabbled with various figures and eventually got to the point where I was painting my first cannon (I have another two still waiting in their blister packs). How was I going to apply my colour scheme here? I looked up and saw, framed and hanging on my wall, the answer in a holiday photo I had taken a couple of years previously.

Too many coincidences?

Meanwhile, Warhammer 8 has been released and given me another reason to keep painting. At the current rate, I should shortly have enough fully painted models to be a reasonably sized army and will be able to take them to the tabletop with some degree of pride.

Happily I managed to escape having bought nothing more then the three things I went in to buy (two pots of paint and some plastic glue). The afternoon was spent working on some House Deneith figures for my Fantasy Craft game. I have a long way to go, but it should make for an entertaining next session.

Copies are selling on eBay for quite insane prices, so I’m probably not going to be able to relive that particular part of my childhood through that channel.

Happily, Games Workshop have produced some rules that are supposed to recreate the feel of the original game. So, despite my intentions to aid the Green Tide in conquering the galaxy, I might just have to invest in a couple of squads of Terminators and some of those nasty Genestealers in order to build myself a pseudo-Space Hulk set.

Hopefully, it will prove to be a good system for quick games that don’t require much in the way of set up, and keep the measuring down to a minimum. I have quite a few friends who like board games, and this might turn out to be something that will appeal to them.