"Hey! You There! Stop!"

"Our Axon friend has just walked straight into the furnace of the main reactor."

This 28mm metal model of an Axon Monster is manufactured by “Black Tree Design” and can be bought as code DW310 from their "Doctor Who" range. "A scavenger entity which came to Earth, supposedly for fuel, the aliens' real motivation was "to drain all energy from Earth" and made their first appearance in the March 1971 BBC Television science fiction serial "The Claws Of Axos".

The model was originally primed with "Vallejo" Heavy Orange and washed with "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson. It was then dry-brushed first with more "Vallejo" Heavy Orange, and later with some Heavy Red. Finally, the entire figure was once again washed with "Citadel" Carroburg Crimson.

"Excalibur Captain Harris and first officer dead. Many casualties."

I don't ordinarily get the opportunity to post other people's painting on this blog, but Roy Williamson, who runs the excellent "Never Mind The Yankers!" website, very kindly sent me a rather splendid-looking re-painted constitution-class starship earlier this week. It's a plastic "Wizkids" model for their "Star Trek: Attack Wing" tactical space combat miniatures game, and comes complete with a mind-boggingly tiny hand-painted NCC-1664 registry number on top of its saucer section.

Of course that marks the 23rd century Federation vessel out as the USS Excalibur, with Captain Harris as its commander. Sadly, both the starship and skipper were destined to be destroyed by the U.S.S. Enterprise "during the disastrous M-5 Starfleet battle simulation war games" depicted in the broadcast episode "The Ultimate Computer".

Grishaks WIPs - The beaked-birds have all been primed and are ready for shading

In addition to the odd bit of painting, I've been sorting through my worryingly burdensome lead mountain and separating all the miniatures I've based, prepped or even started working on, from those I've never touched, and even more embarrassingly never even unsealed/opened. There's been a few trips down memory lane as a result, and once such quartet of models was four Grishaks by "Twilight Miniatures".

As I recall I picked these weird dinosaur birds up as part of a starter set bought at "Salute" several years ago, and clearly made some sort of effort to get them 'up and ready' as they'd all been based, primed and one even shaded. Sadly however, they subsequently fell out of favour and have been lost to time... until now. I have little intention of actually playing "The World Of Twilight" with them, but because they're on the self-same 28mm lipped bases I use for my "Doctor Who: Exterminate!" models I thought they might make interesting 'killer birds' for a scenario or two...