Back when I was a kid, you could broadly divide robots into two types – the Transformers toys you wanted, and the offbrand Transformers-type toys that were available to buy here in the United Kingdom. I loved both.

While we were awash in the stories of the Transformers UK comic, Transformers Ladybird books, Transformers VHS cassette – the toys themselves were difficult to buy. The UK toy aisles were, however, awash with other companies’ robo-offerings – Grandstand’s Convertors, Bandai’s Robo Machine, Tek Toys’ Robo-Kats, MC Toys’ Moto-Bots, Tomy’s Super Alternators and many more. They seldom had any accompanying in-universe fiction, and sometimes not even a name! My imagination went into overdrive trying to shoehorn these pretenders into the official Hasbro Transformers universe, creating my own contrived space operas that justifed a steam train fighting an aircraft carrier.

Now my play patterns have evolved beyond simply ragging toy vehicles around the floor shouting their names and making explosion sounds and into sophisticated adult wargaming, I thought I’d resurrect some of the netherspace of non-canonical robot warriors and sculpt a gawky 1980s robot chonk. Presenting Autoborg, Robot Warrior of the Far Future.

Okay, I may have missed the point by not engineering him to transform – or sculpting an accompanying vehicle mode. But I feel his Popeye style forearms and spindly strut thighs really evoke the spirit of a transforming robot toy. I was tempted to paint him in big slabs of bright primary colours to get across the toyetic vibe, but instead chose a striking camouflage scheme which is instantly undermined by big slabs of purple that really contrast against the sandy yellow colour of the base. Generation 2 Megatron eat your heart out.

If you’d like to fight science fiction wargames with your own Autoborg, he’s up on my Cults3D.

Ninjabread out!

“In evil’s millennium, the squad-fate fell to Schiltron Toothcutter. The Rökthane’s commands combined metal and mettle so that worlds were won by iron arms and iron wills.”

– Hreddi Falsetooth, the Nethyrtruth Edda

I’ve taken to Kickstarter to produce a small range of resin cast 28mm scale Space Dwarf miniatures for collectors, modellers, painters, roleplayers and tabletop wargamers.  This Kickstarter will enable the figures to be professionally moulded for production, and vacuum-cast in high quality resin.

I’ve got a deep passion for the science fiction concept of squat and indomitable warriors heading out into the stars with an arsenal of hi-tech weapons.  I wanted to distill the essence of techno-fantasy metal mysticism into miniature form, and do it with an iconically 1990s twist.

Rökthane Schiltron Toothcutter

Schiltron Toothcutter, Rökthane of the Naudor Thronesworn, is a leader who has earned the respect of his troopers a dozen times over.  His far-sighted view of the battlefield gives his squad a significant tactical advantage – and many battles have been won by the relentless advance or unbreakable defence he inspires.  Famously Schiltron and his warriors defended the Nethyr Edge for 13 cycles, saving countless lives.  

Schiltron is armed with a customised binar-blaster, enscribed on the casing with his runic S initial, and clad in diamond-flak armour. 

Röknaut Trooper with Wyrmboltr Rifle

Each Röknaut Trooper is a hero in their own right, respected throughout the galaxies as bloody-minded and unyielding in the face of any enemy. Not only are Röknauts experts in combat, but void travel, toxic environs survival and hardware maintenance.  Their extreme technical aptitude lets them operate where other forces have been destroyed by mechanical realities – and their adamantine-hard will lets them fight even longer still.

Armed with the iconic Wyrmboltr Rifle, and clad in diamond-flak, the Trooper is a bold icon of the Röknaut Thronesworn’s might.

Röknaut Trooper with Helstrom Autocannon

Those Röknauts with distinguished marksmanship are assigned heavy weaponry from the Röknaut armouries to support their squads. Capable of hefting a weapon on their squat shoulders that a human would need a tripod and a loader to operate as efficiently, these warriors are a redoubt on the battlefield, and many legendary figures from Röknaut folklore are famous for their excessive weaponry.

The Röknaut is armed with the deadly dual-barrelled Helstrom Autocannon, capable of obliterating opposing hordes with sustained fire, or rending a hole in the side of a battletank with a tightly focussed salvo. 

Classic 28mm Scale

Designed to fit in with the miniatures of your youth, the Röknauts  are sculpted as a love letter to the 1990s, when miniatures were characterful chunks of awesome.  The miniatures are scaled to fit with classic 28mm humans – the Trooper with Wymboltr Rifle measuring 18mm from boot sole to eyeball.  

What you will Get

Pledging to this project will get you a complete squad of five Röknauts vacuum-cast in high quality resin.  Supplied unpainted and unassembled. 

I love painting miniatures – it’s the primary way I engage with the whole collecting/painting/gaming hobby.  When the first Röknaut prototype arrived, I completely flipped out, whacked on some Savage Garden and entered a fugue state, only to emerge some hours later with the Rökthane fully painted.  I’m extremely biased when I say these miniatures are a joy to paint, so to triangulate if they’re fun-with-brushes I sent a set of advance castings to Oldhammer blogging supremo Jean-Baptiste.  He absolutely ripped through painting a whole squad of them in a magnificent weathered industrial yellow scheme.  Here’s his photos…

You can visit the project here.

Rök on!

Back at the turn of the millennium, there was a hyper-rare Space Marine that was only available in England if you spent £500 in a Games Workshop during the Skulz programme. On a pocket money budget, it took the co-ordinated efforts of all my friends to get one. And over two decades later, here he is painted.

He’s a stellar miniature that was really ahead of his time for a number of reasons. First, he came with a solid metal base (40mm no less, when nothing larger than 25mm for infantry had ever been seen) depicting a fallen Chaos standard – at a time when scenic bases were incredibly rare. Second, he clutches a standard of Ultramar – a sculpted banner at a time when banners were paper affairs you photocopied from White Dwarf or came supplied as self-adhesive labels. Third, he was sculpted by Shane Hoyle, one of my favourite sculptors – and notable as he’s one of the first Imperial Space Marines since 1990 not sculpted by Jes Goodwin.

I wondered back in 1999 if he was Ancient Helveticus – the Ultramarines special character. But Helveticus’ defining feature is the Banner of Macragge, and this sculpted banner didn’t match the design from White Dwarf 195. Plus his wargear didn’t match the 2nd edition Warhammer 40,000 Ultramarines Codex (or the 3rd edition Chapter Approved incarnation). And critically, as you can just about see in the photo above, his left shoulder has a skull marking inside an Ultramarines’ inverted omega sculpted on – meaning his rank is more likely Sergeant than Chapter Ancient.

On the subject of shoulder marking – his right pad features a sculpted-on Tactical Squad arrow. This is a source of irritation to me, as I’ve copied the white trims of the original ‘Eavy Metal paintjob. If you’re strict about the Codex Astartes – and Ultramarines are strict – the only two Companies identified with white shoulder pad trims are First and Tenth, and neither has any Tactical Squads. I will conceptualise my version not as a Chapter Ancient (or Company Ancient for that matter), but as a Third Company Sergeant with non-standard trim markings denoting Veteran status (and will back this up by pointing to the Crux Terminatus on his left calf as further proof of Veteran-ness), holding a sacred Ultramarines standard (but not a Company or Chapter banner).

HIs release through the tertiary channel of exclusive Skulz retail incentives makes him one of the rarest Ultramarines miniatures, except for perhaps the 2004 Black Library Uriel Ventris diorama. So here he is alongside my other limited editions, marching for Macragge.

Ninjabread out!

Crocodile Games, the masters of mythical-themed wargames, created a limited edition miniature for their 2021 convention season. But as 2021 was a damp squib for conventions, they ran an online event to give them out. A painting contest, and a limited edition – the format could only pander to me more if there was free beer.

Who better to enter than this fantastic Demigoddess of Hecate, as the competition ended on midnight of Halloween, and Hecate is the goddess of gh-gh-gh-ghosts.

She’s a great Chris Fitzpatrick sculpt (I’ve frothed on about him before) with a striking and intricate silohuette. The miniature is an endless swirl of crisp details, swirling braids of hair and spiked diadem all echoing the crescent moon of her staff held aloft by the triplicate form of the goddess herself.

This wasn’t a competition competition, where only the judges’ favourite gets a prize. Everyone that entered got a Priestess of Eris. I hope to show off mine soon, alongside some of Crocodile’s Trojans and Amazons!

Ninjabread out!

Sometimes you’re playing your favourite science fiction miniatures game, and the random wargear tables generate a result for which you don’t own the miniatures. EVEN WORSE, the miniatures don’t actually exist. They were never made. Anger sets in. You feel yourself about to explode.

You refuse to reroll the result. You refuse to represent the wargear with a cardboard chit. The only option is to spend a whole year of your life learning how to sculpt so you can design your own version. After that, vacuum cast them in high quality resin so they’re proper playable, paintable miniatures.

I digitally designed these mine-droids as five pieces, so each droid could be assembled a bit differently, with bodies leaning at a jaunty angle, and turning heads.

To direct the trio of droids, I converted a Space Marine Comms Officer from Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader, adding a pair of aerials to his backpack with lengths of wire and plastic rod.

Here they are trundling across a battlefield of the far future, bringing their payload of high explosives into the heart of an enemy formation. Their armoured shells protect from light arms fire until they detonate with the power of giant fragmentation grenades. They can be programmed to explode at pre-set co-ordinates, or piloted remotely, allowing them to respond to shifting battlefield conditions, and even sadistically chase a retreating foe.

Right, I can finally get on with my game now. I had to cast a few sets up, so expect to see some painted in other colour schemes soon.

Ninjabread out!

Limited edition miniatures are entirely my jam. Limited edition Space Marines doubly so. When Citadel produced this “Imperial Space Marine” to celebrate 30 (ish*) years of power-armoured super soldiers, I giddily hoovered it up.

The miniature is an update of the very first LE02 Imperial Space Marine released in summer 1985. Loads of care was put into copying over the details, from the vacuum-cuffs on the calves, the ribbing on the elbow pads, the rivets on the helmet, and the noodly wiring on the weapon. Here are the two versions side by side.

So there I am, thinking that I’m on the cutting edge of Space Marine miniatures with this lad, and actually it’s been out 5 years and has already had his Codex entry deleted. And the modern range of Space Marines are as big again.

And if you’re interested in learning the hands down best ever recipe and method for painting Ultramarines it’s over on the Ninjabread Patreon.

When the Marine The original LE02 Marine’s weapon was marvellously oddball. It’s classic mid-1980s Bob Naismith sculpting, where wiring and nozzles were de rigueur. This design of bolter was phased out by 1987 in flavour of the blockier designs that endure to this day. However, the 2016 Imperial Space Marine gloriously recreates the original noodle-nozzle weapon, reconceptualising it on the accompanying rules sheet as a “disintergration combi-gun”.

Ninjabread out!

*The Imperial Space Marine was released in Spring 2016, which was 31 years after the original from Summer 1985.

Mario, Sonic and Zool: the Holy Trinity of video game mascots in the 1990s. Two of these characters are going strong to this day. Zool – the lovechild of Cool Spot and a Ninja Turtle – explored a visually intense platformer landscape deep with thematic heft, which let the Amiga gamer grapple with complex socio-cultural questions such as “What if world, but made of Smarties?”

If you want to express your personality through the consumption of Zool merchandise, there are only dog-eared tie-in novels from 1995 to collect. And that’s not enough for me – I dreamt of owning a plastic rendition of my hero from the Nth Dimension. SO I MADE MY OWN.

This is my digital sculpt of Zool, created in Blender. As he’s some sort of weird ant, I printed him the size of a two-pence coin and painted him up with a specially made Chupa Chups base.

And then, to recreate the sugary joy of the original computer game levels, I emptied sixteen packets of Smarties into my lightbox.

Now that I’ve found a way to conjure miniatures from my imagination into paintable pieces, I am completely giddy with sculpting potential. What next? Maybe a 1990s British pop culture Justice League, with Superted and Bananaman.

Ninjabread out!

I am that exact type of person that plans annual holidays using the Ordance Survey maps of Ancient and Roman Britain. I spend days hiking through the remote countryside in the rain with a napsack full of boiled eggs to find the spaces prehistoric people once lived and thrived.

Fancying myself as Lord of the Ringforts, Mr. Crabb at Fogou Models offered me the very first castings of his latest terrain project in return for photos of them painted nicely. And paint them I did.

This is the basic ringfort, built from seven wall sections and one gate section. All the pieces have an interlocking brickwork design on the outer face to disguise the component joins. I don’t know how Mr. Crabb got it all to line up so flawlessly, but I suspect dark Cornish sorcery.

If that understated rectangular doorway with its stone lintel are too low key for you, there’s also a fantasy style gateway with a pair of towers flanking a bronze goblin-faced gate sculpted by the Kev Adams. Now you can have much larger things get in and out the fort – like trolls, ogres and my reference library on prehistoric and Dark Age structures.

To accompany the ringfort, I also painted this pair of thatched buildings which can either go inside the fort as the defended structures, or act as standalone pieces. I’m going to pair the recentangular one with my Dark Age Church as a crofter’s dwelling.

But wait! There’s still more! There’s a nice pair of thatched stilted granaries, a pigsty, a well, firewood and pots that I’ve used to make a complete village.

I got a bit carried away painting freehand patterns onto some of the pots – I like to imagine them as vessels with histories of their own that come from the extensive trade networks. I also see them as a nice way of adding life to a scene, and they make for subtler representations of material wealth than the classic objective marker of a treasure chest full of gold coins.

There’s a desstroyed wall section you can use to represent a partially ruined fort, and even switch into your fort mid-game if you’re playing a siege.

Here’s a pile of Orcs pouring through it to fight the Fellowship of the Ring.

Stone buildings are pretty timeless, and with a bit of “set dressing” in the form of modern crates, here it is being used in the Napoleonic era.

Nicely, the doors are cross-compatible with the other Fogou offerings, so a quick switcheroo and this fort section is ready for science fiction wargames too. Thanks to everyone that’s pointed out the door looks like a Confederate flag.

Finally, my cat (who is coincidentally named after a ringfort) has also found a great use for the piece.

So thanks to Mr. Crabb for letting me be the first to get one! If you’d like your own, they’re currently over on Kickstarter and will be added to the Fogou Models site in the future.

Ninjabread out!

Last time I went to visit the great sho3box he treated me to a day out at Prince August – Ireland’s finest toy soldier factory. It was the greatest day ever.

There at the factory of dreams I feasted upon the piles of vintage Warzone blisters with great plans to rebuild the exact same Imperial Mega Corporation Army of my nerdy teenage years – starting with a squad of Wolfbane Commandos.

Wolfbane Commandoes suffered from the classic 1990s problem of feet spilling over the 25mm base edge, so Wolfbane #1 I painted (above left) got a 32mm base. But the more I looked at it, the more I feared I’d betrayed the Spirit of the 1990s, so Wolfbane #2 got a classic 25mm base with dark green drybrushed sand, with which I was much happier, and so I did the whole squad this way.

The colour scheme is a pretty straight copy of the original studio colour scheme, as I wanted to relive those days when “giant yellow shoulder pads” and “commando” could be unironically synonomous.

I really enjoyed painting these old metal nuggets, and hope to build the army up with some Imperial Blood Berets next.

Ninjabread out!