Robin of Sherwood - Returns in Audio!

How did I miss this?

It appears one of the greatest, and most underrated, fantasy shows of all time is returning in an audio drama!

For those not in the know, Robin of Sherwood was a British-made television show that ran for three seasons in the mid 1980s. It aired in the USA on PBS. It was a gritty and grimy show, in which Robin 'the Hooded Man' was the chosen soldier of Hern, god of the forest. While most episodes featured Robin taking on his traditional foes, the Sheriff of Nottingham and Guy of Gisborne, over the course of the show he would also battle a necromancer, a coven of witches, and other slightly horrific fantastical foes. The show had its issues, especially its sometimes dodgy soundtrack and lighting, but for a fantasy fan in the 80s, it was one of the best things going. A few of the episodes are pure genius.

Anyway, thanks to a crowd-funding campaign, it looks like they've gotten the whole cast of regulars back together to do a two hour audio drama. Okay, I'm not sure about the title, The Knights of the Apocolypse, but it is still exciting news.

I would love to read some reviews of this or hear from anyone who has a copy!

Xenos Scum

Finishing up that Space Wolf encouraged me to do a little more painting on the Death Watch: Overkill set. Not wanting to tackle another time consuming, heavily detailed marine, I grabbed a couple of genestealer hybrid models and got to work.

I don't want to spend huge amounts of time on the hybrids. They are cool models, but there are a lot of them, and they are essentially a 'horde of bad guys', and not really worthy of a lot of attention. (Also, as near as I can tell, they don't stay on the board very long in the game, as they are weak and crunchy!). I have a bunch of genestealers from previous games, and I have painted all of them using a colour called 'Middlestone'; it is sort of a muted, yellowy green. It was apparently a colour used by the Germans to paint some of their tanks in World War II, at least that is how it came to end up in my paint box. I thought the colour worked well for alien-insect monsters. So, wanting to keep my hybrids tied to my 'pure' genestealers, I used middlestone for the hybrid flesh.

Left to my own devices, I probably would have never thought of using orange as the basis for their suits. Orange is not a colour I use very often, but I saw someone else use it for his hybrids and thought it looked pretty sharp. Also, it fit well with the idea that the hyrbids are asteroid miners who would wear hi-visibility suits.

As you can see, for their armour, I just went with a grey drybrush and their guns are a pure flat black. I think they came out well, considering how much time I spent on them.

I mentioned in my last post, that the Space Wolf was closer to a true scale model space marine. Well, here he is next to the two hybrids...

Space Wolf

Taking a break from my normal fantasy painting, I pulled this guy out of my Death Watch: Overkill box. He is a member of the elite 'Death Watch' Space Marines, a force drawn from different chapters specifically to fight alien incursions. According to the text, Death Watch Space Marines are suppose to wear black and silver armour with only their shoulder pad denoting their original chapter. That seemed like a wasted painting opportunity to me (plus I hate painting black), so I painted him in more-or-less normal Space Wolf grey with just his Death Watch shoulder pad in the black and silver.

He's come out a bit dark in the photos, which is a shame because the figure has some truly great detail. He's also huge, towering over regular human sized figures, which is how a Space Marine is supposed to be anyway. It's a shame all of the ones in the box weren't that size.

A fun diversion, but I think it is going to be a long time before I finish all forty figures that came with the game!

As for the game itself, I can't comment. I haven't played it yet.

June 23, 2016

The Cotswold Softball Tournament

This past Sunday, I was in the pretty Cotswold town of Stroud, for their early season softball tournament. It is the first softball tournament I've been to in a few years, and only the second with my Oxford Knights team. Seven teams came out for the tourney and each of them played four games.

The Knights came as a bit of a hodge-podge team. We had a couple of old veterans, including myself, a couple of true rookies who had barely swung a bat in anger before, and a few players drawn from other Oxford teams to make up the numbers.

Our first game was against the so-called 'Sons of Pitches'. I took the 'mound' in the game, and was rudely greeted by their big bats. Eventually, we lost the game 17-2. I went a disappointing 0-2 at the plate, while catching one pop-fly. Although it was a somewhat dispiriting loss, we learned a lot from the game and modified the line-up and the positioning for our next game.

We had an hour break before our next game and had a nice picnic lunch in the quiet Cotswold town. The view of the high, rolling hills certainly made it the most attractive place I have ever played softball. Soon, the hour was up, and we went back out to the field. (All games in the tourney were about an hour long and thus tended to only go 5 or 6 innings).

Our second game was against the 'Dragon Warriors', and was a much closer contest. I was pitching again, and had much better command in this game (walking no one as opposed to the two in the first game). I also had a much better game at the plate. going 2-3 with a couple of singles, and even got in some glove work, adding three assists. In the end, we lost 9-8, but it was a fun, competitive game.

By the third game, we were definitely trending in the right direction. This time we took on the hometown Cotswold Chaos. I thankfully got a break from pitching for a game and moved over to third base. Our bats really came alive in this one, and we won 16-4. I added two more hits, again going 2-3, managed three put-outs, and one assist. The only down point was that my assist came after I essentially caught a hard grounder with my stomach after a funny hop. Still, a big bruise is one of the ways you know you've played softball!

During game 3, a light misty rain had begun to fall, and by game 4 this was turning into a light, but steady rain (that's how you know you've played softball in England!). This game saw us take on the 'Red Sox'. Although we didn't know it at the time, it was actually a game for 3rd place in the tourney.

I was back in the centre of the diamond for this one, and probably had one of my best games ever. I caught three pop-ups, and got for assists as well. (Being involved in 7 outs is a rarity for a pitcher!). I also went 2-2 at the plate, as part of our 8-4 win.

It wasn't until the game was over, and the rain had thankfully stopped, that we discovered we had taken third overall, and would be coming home with a small trophy, another bit of hardware for the non-existent Knight's trophy case!

A terrific way to spend the last official day of Spring!

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Career Hits: 130

You Can't Win Them All!

It was a good weekend for Fantasy Flight and Star Wars at the Origins Awards. They picked up Best Board Game for Star Wars Imperial Assault, Best Role-Playing Game for Star Wars Force and Destiny and Best Miniatures Game for Star Wars Armada. This last one, of course, beat out my own Frostgrave. 

Well, as the title says, you can't win them all. While I am slightly disappointed, I have decided that my disappointment will end by the time I have finished writing this blog. I've already had a great year, picking up two awards, and, while the Origin award is probably more prestigious, I wouldn't trade it for the wonderful experience of picking up the UK Games Expo Award in person!

The irony of the whole thing - I have never played Star Wars Armada, but I have been sorely tempted by Star Wars Imperial Assault which looks like a great (board) miniatures game. I even picked up the Boba Fett pack for the game just to get the figure! 

Hobbit Ranger

Did you know that in the earliest drafts of The Lord of the Rings, the character that would later become Aragorn was actually a hobbit ranger with wooden shoes named Trotter? I'm not kidding, you can read all about it in The Return of the Shadow (The History of Middle-earth vol. 6) by Christopher Tolkien. Thankfully Tolkien thought better of this idea, and Trotter was consigned to the literary dustbin. Still, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of a hobbit ranger. We know for a fact that hobbits due produce the occasional adventurer.

The hobbit ranger seen here is my latest completed figure (and the only figure I have managed to paint in some weeks). Although he's a Reaper Miniature, sculpted by Bobby Jackson, I think he fits in pretty well with the Games Workshop, The Lord of the Rings ranger standing next to him.