In Her Majesty's Name and other stuff...

Normally when  I've been to Salute or another big show I buy a few bits and pieces which then languish in a box or in the loft.  Eventually I might get round to painting them up and, who knows.... actually playing with them.

This year having bought the North Star, In Her Majesty's Name figures I was keen to actually make a start and get something painted.  I bought the Servants of Ra and the Scotland Yard set as well as the rules and decided to have a go at the Egyptian cultists.

Having looked at the box art I decided to stick largely to the red robes (it somehow seems appropriate for your traditional Cultist].  I decided the Eye of Horus on their chests looked a little too ambitious for me though and left their robes plain.

I'd been less sure about painting the group leader Akhenaton as the combination of a black suit and eye shadow seemed a bit daunting but the shading worked well on his suit and I decided to ignore the eye detail as it would have ended badly!

Eeek... a Mummy!!!

Sairah, the drug crazed Hashashin daughter of the groups magical professor [no stereotype left unturned here!!] was also a bit tricky... lots of silky clothes and a slightly flimsy foot joint which I'm still not convinced about... but worked out ok too... The robes looked kind of washed out in the photo due to the lighting but are actually a light turquoise.

Sairah...

...and her father, the improbably named Professor Abdul Abulbul Abir

I also acquired a large steam mole burrowing machine-thing from Ironclad Miniatures which doesn't quite fit with the Egyptian theme but is a really nice model....

...it'll go much better with Callum's Ironclad underground people or possibly some mad scientist types.

And finally I've made a start on my new Peter Pig ACW Ironclad ships....

CSS Virginia

The Virginia and the USS Monitor

On a different topic entirely, we've been rediscovering RPGs [there's a post on it somewhere from last year]... Call of Cthulhu has been a big success including the Cthulhu by Gaslight variant which all ties in nicely with the steampunk theme [or is it VSF...and what's the difference??]

Our latest venture is Space Opera, the old FGU game. 

Those of you who've played it are probably sniggering by now but I had good memories of this from many, many  years ago...in fact I have a soft spot for most of the FGU games from the 80's.  The game is, according to most reviews, pretty unplayable but I always felt it had a really nice flavour and is broad enough to let you play anything from the Star Wars high fantasy type game to a more gritty Traveller style campaign.  So far we've established it has a mind numbingly long character creation system but does include a 'Wind Factor' stat for characters [stop sniggering]....