"Colours" Loot 2019

"Crooked Dice Game Design Studio" WIP - The resin Giant Robot has been pinned and assembled

This past Saturday I was once again able to make the trip to Newbury Racecourse and attend the annual Newbury & Reading Wargames Society's show “Colours”. Last year's 'happening' was arguably the best I've attended since it was disappointingly reduced in length to just a single day, and despite not finding any bargains in the event's 'Bring & Buy' sale this time round, I felt the attending traders still put on a worthy gathering. It was certainly nice to once again briefly meet up with fellow blogger Tamsin Piper of the website “Wargaming Girl” fame.

"Crooked Dice Game Design Studio" have always held a special place in my hobby heart ever since I encountered their wares on the eve of them first distributing their "7TV" rule-set, and I have been patiently collecting their substantial range of miniatures ever since. Recently, amongst an Occult Statue, Mushrooms, Dead Forest and trio of Protoplasmic Terrors, they announced the imminent release of a 90mm tall Giant Robot and fortunately I was able to find a pair of these resin models available at their stall.

"Magister Militum" WIPs - A pair of feathered Velociraptors and an egg nest

Sculpted by Andrew May, each kit actually comes with two hands, a fearsome pincer and a death ray, so I've decided to build one as a right-handed maniacal clawed monstrosity, and the other as a laser-gun firing fiend. As the robots are cast in resin, I found them really easy to assemble using a little grey-stuff, some super-glue and pins, and even went so far as to pin my test automaton to its "Citadel" 60mm circular base.

My other purchases were actually motivated by a pang of nostalgia, and a sudden desire to return to one of my favourite vendors and scales. Approximately eleven years ago, back when this blog was hosted on "CoffeeCup", I began work on a 'War That Time Forgot' project using both the 10mm Prehistoric monsters and World War One figures of "Magister Militum". I actually managed to finish a fair few dinosaurs, British, German and French soldiers, and even played a few games using them, but soon found myself put off by some of the Salisbury-based company's military sculpts.

"Pendraken Miniatures" WIPs - Two British Airborne armed with rifles, and one with a Sten gun

Having more recently spent some considerable time painting both 6mm and 10mm models I figured a re-boot of a 'War That Time Forgot' might be in order, especially as I believe I still know where my antediluvian backlog may well be buried gathering dust. As memory serves I actually already own a fair few of the range's larger flesh-eaters, so with this in mind I bought several blisters of the smaller dinosaurs, such as Protoceratops, Gallimimus, and Velociraptors, as well as three egg nests to use as objective markers.

In addition, I thought I'd inject some extra enthusiasm in the project by turning to "Pendraken Miniatures" for my soldiers, and relocating my 'war' to 1939-1945 instead. As a result, I decided to pick up a British Airborne Army Pack, plus some Bren Carriers and Churchill Tanks, and establish whether from these I could possibly build some semblance of a force with which to triumph over a horde of angry dinosaurs using some homemade rules...