From StuartL Around And Around We Go - From Noel's Comet to Vogsphere - 122 Points

Hello again,

This is my final post for this week and should see me completing the middle ring of the Challenge XII Quadrant. My last quadrant entry was for LV426, meaning that the next step on my journey is Noel's Comet, and the theme of friendship (and writing a LOT of words).

I didn't know Noel all that well, but I was sad to hear of his passing last year. We crossed brushes a few times in the Squirrel side duel, with me narrowly beating him in the first duel back in 2019, only for him to take the title in the second duel in 2021. He always struck me as a good humoured chap and it's a shame that I'll never have a chance to compete with him again. So, I gave my entry for this step on the challenge a bit of extra thought before I selected a mini. There are two parts to this story, so I beg your patience before we get to the mini itself.

Way back in the time-before-time (circa 1998), a friend of my younger brother was selling off his various GW collections. At the time, I was getting back into the hobby after a short hiatus and wanted to get going quickly. Picking up an already built army seemed the best way of doing so. So, I bought his Warhammer Fantasy Lizardmen and played a few games with them at my local GW store. (Middlesbrough, UK, if anyone cares). My brother's friend had already painted them in a rough and ready style, so I never saw a need to paint them myself. Moving on a few years, I emigrated to Japan, leaving my hobby collection behind. Over the years, I had my parents ship more and more of it over to me. By that time, I had bought several other armies and the Lizardmen ended up shoved into a box at the very bottom of the to-do pile. One of my friends in Japan wanted to make the move from 40K to WFB and asked if I had any minis I could part with cheaply, so I sold him the Lizardmen and he happily took them off my hands. Over time, he added some extra models to the army as well. At some point after that, he passed on the minis to someone else, using the money from the sale to but whatever the latest hotness was at the time. Shortly after this, GW decided that the Warhammer Fantasy game wasn't worth supporting and decided to blow up the setting and start a new system. The owner of the lizardmen, another friend of mine as it happened, tried a couple of games of Age of Sigmar and decided that it wasn't for them, selling the Lizardmen to me at the end of 2020 along with a lot of other minis. So, after over two decades, these models had had 5 owners and effectively 1 coat of paint in all that time. Last year I painted up some Skinks from the collection, but it went back to gathering dust for the most part.

The situation worldwide over the past couple of years has been truly dire and it has affected nearly every facet of our lives. Personally, I haven't been too put out by the various stay-at-home instructions as I am quite content to do hobby stuff by myself. One of my close friends however, hasn't been doing so well though. He runs a small teaching business and as you can probably imagine, Corona has been a massive headache to work around. Clients have cancelled classes, teachers have had to be trained to teach online, etc. My friend has always been a bit on the anxious side, and the stress from work, the worry about contracting the virus, the lack of real social activities and all the rest has not been good for him at all. To try to take his mind off things, whenever the case numbers have subsided, I have invited him to my place for some games and a chat. While my friend enjoys games, he has never been one for the complex rules or intricate strategies that I enjoy, he likes something simple where he can push his minis around the table, roll some dice and not have to think too much. In addition, he always liked the rank and file look of the old WFB setting and we got to talking about how GW may be bringing the old game back in some fashion. Neither of us really trust GW to do a good job and make rules that we both enjoy, and that got me thinking. I could probably knock together a set of rules that include the simplicity that my friend likes with the strategic planning that I enjoy. I spent a few weeks over the summer jotting down ideas, and once we had the opportunity I invited him over for a few games of my new system. It's not really my system, it is a rough mash up of Warlord's Hail Caesar, WFB 6th edition, the orders phase from the old Epic game by GW and other bits besides. At the time, I simply used card movement trays to push around some old WFB minis, but both my friend and I had a blast playing. The minis in question? My old Lizardmen. 

So, as a set of models that have been passed from friend to friend for years and with the intention of playing a game to help my friend relax and feel less anxious, I present the first of my newly repainted Lizardmen.

The figure is a metal Saurus warrior from back in the late 90's. I wanted to do something different from the usual greens and blues I see used for Lizardmen, so I asked my friend to look at some pictures of real world lizards on google and pick a colour scheme for me. I wanted to steer clear of the usual metallic colours I use for weaponry and tried to paint the sword as a piece of sharpened jade, giving it a coat of gloss varnish to make it stand out.

And after all that explanation, I am kind of tired, so the rest of my middle ring journey will just be a couple of quick entries below.

Perelandra has a theme of oceanic, so I painted up a mermaid. The figure is from Reaper Bones and is pretty tall as it is mounted upon a large rock. The figure itself is about 40mm not including the scenic base. I chose bright blues and greens for the mermaid and orange and yellow for her clothing, making for a very colourful entry. The scales have been drybrushed with silver to give them a more piscine appearance.

The next stop on the tour is Coruscant, famed for it's Imperial nature. So for this I painted up some old Empire WFB minis. I painted a Mordheim warband a few years ago and simply copied the colour scheme for these guys. As Mordheim is a particularly gritty game, I chose fairly muted colours for the uniforms, with just a splash of bright red for visual appeal.

And finally, we have Vogsphere and it's bureaucracy. I'll admit that this one gave me pause, but I eventually found what I think is a suitable mini. Most people never see the bureaucrats that make the rules, they just have to deal with the paperwork they create. Usually some jobsworth has a list of rules that they make people follow with a perverse sense of power. So, official looking nobody with a long set of pointless instructions? That I can do, thanks to the masses of Reaper Bones minis I still have in my stash.

"All adventurers wishing to hunt down the dragon must wear a high-vis vest and flame retardant safety glasses at all times. No swords, spears or axes are permitted unless the owner has the prerequisite license obtained at least 3 weeks in advance, and no blade may be more than 20cm in length. Armour must conform to ISO-45001 safety standards. Finally, everyone must have their mandatory tetanus shots in case of dragon bites."

And that should finish off the middle ring and this post. 

For my total, that is 1x 40mm mini and 7x 28mm minis for a total of 42 points. In addition I can add 4 challenge quadrant planets for a bonus of 80 points, bringing me up to 122 for the post.

Despite having a few GW minis here, there are no skulls. Weird.

Great story and great work on the old Lizardman Stuart  I like the scale tones that  you've used.  You are certainly rocketing around the rings here, so good on you for that.  I really like the bureaucrat figures with his hat and scroll, but I'm pretty sure that he's reading the instructions for the SPREADSHEET of DOOM.