Monthly Archives: July 2009

45 years of kit making!

I’ve just received the latest releases from Airfix and they reminded me of how long I’ve been making these kits….

My first ever model was of course an Airfix Kit. Airfix were the brand leaders and in the ‘olden days’, as my kids would call them, Airfix kits came in a poly bag with a stapled header. My first kit was the Golden Hind, Sir Francis Drakes’ famous ship. I remember it well, as I was traumatised because I made a bit of a mess of building it and I managed to glue the Masts in the wrong order. Still it taught me a lesson and from then on I made sure that I read the instructions first. Yes, in those days you had to read the instructions, not follow a pictogram. The first first line of the instructions was ‘Locate and Cement…’ To be fair the pictograms in todays kits are a bit easier to follow but with written instructions you got to learn what each part of the kit was, so I know what a fuselage is and where the cockpit is and so on. Oh! and cement was the glue, not readymix, in case you were wondering.

So back to Airfix and the new releases. I’ve just got sight of the new 1/76th scale Matilda ‘Hedgehog’ Tank and the WW1 Male tank. To be fair the WW1 male is a re tooling of an old kit (I made it years ago) but as far as I remember, the Matilda is brand new. So here’s a look at the New box art for both kits. They are available now from my ebay shop. If you would like to see more, just follow the link.

NEW From AIRIX! Matilda 'Hedgehog' Tank

NEW From AIRIX! Matilda 'Hedgehog' Tank

male tank

If you’re feeling a bit nostalgic about Airfix kits of the past, then I also recommend that you have a look at the latest book by Arthur Ward. The Title is ‘ The Boy’s Book Airfix ‘ and the subtitle ‘ who says you ever have to grow up? ‘ says it all for me.

The Boys' Book of Airfix

The Boys' Book of Airfix

Ah well, enough of this blogging, must get back to kit bashing!

Weird Boys & Immortals

Sometimes I think that my choice of Necrons as my Warhammer 40K army is a mistake. I’ve won the odd battle and I’ve badly mauled opponents but I’ve never enjoyed a really good massacre until I’d played Andy’s Orks. The last time that we met in battle at Warhammer world I thrashed him. So when he suggested a return battle I was looking forward to shedding another load of greenskin blood!

The battle was over three objectives with a dawn of war start, Necrons up first. No problem, protect the objective on my side of the battlefield, make a dummy attack on the left flank but sneekily use the veil of doom and Monolith to shift my army and take the objective on the right. What could go wrong…..

The orks came charging across the table as usual, looking to swamp me in close combat. Some devasting fire from my Destroyers took down one ork bike squad the other ran into a Tomb spider which took out the Ork nob and held the rest. Meanwhile the Necrons started their shuffle across the back of the table to set up the next firing line. Easy.

The Andy had the look of a beaten man already, his bottom lip was just beginning to quaver and his morale wasn’t helped by the ineffectual shooting of the Ork boys. Then he rolls for his Weird boy & gets frazzle or frizzle or some rock hard strength 10 attack. He aims at the monolith, it’s an auto hit but I am not too worried, he needs a 5 or 6 to penetrate. He gets a 5. Well he still need a 5 or 6 to do any serious damage. He rolls a 5…..bugger! My Monolith is toasted.

The unbeatable Monolith

Ah well all is not lost, carry on with the plan, I’m going to have to take a hit from two ork trucks loaded up with boys but I expect to hold and I’ve got more tomb spyders to counter attack with & plenty of fire power to shoot them down as they come out of combat.

Andy now declares a truck is going to ‘Tank shock’ my Necron Lord and Squad of 10 Immortals. Yeah right, like thy’re are going to fail their leadership test. Well actually they did, not only did they fail but they ran off the table, ALL of them. As Hudson or was it Hicks in Aliens said ‘it’s game over man’. Now who’s bottom lip was a quiver. I’d just lost over 600 points in a couple of turns and fade out beckoned. Well at least Andy was happy…….who needs tactics & strategy when you’re an Ork!

These Immortals are now demoted and renamed the ‘badly oiled retreat donkeys’………

Run, Run, theres a Nasty Ork in a big bad truck.......

We are up and running!

Welcome to the Arcane Scenery & Models blog. The blog thing is a whole new experience for me but I’ve had some great technical advise from Millie at Liquid Ozone so hopefully it will all work well. I aim to add at least one entry a week to keep you up to date with whats going on in the Arcane Scenery World.

So the blog will be a mixture of Trade News & Gossip, progress in the shop, and general thoughts about the business & hobby. I’ve been told to keep these thoughts as neutral as possible as I mustn’t upset customers. Well I wouldn’t want to upset anyone on purpose but sometimes an honest appraisal gets the debate moving. However, if you you have another perspective, please let me know, but try to keep it reasonably polite, as death threats are a bit depressing, particularly when it concerns a hobby!

Also on the Blog will be the occasional Battle report & campaign for all of you Warhammer 40k fans. I’ll also include a few articles that I wrote about my Necron Army. I’m a big fan of Warhammer 40K and I’ve recently shifted my allegiance from Imperial Guard to Necrons. It was a brilliant bit of timing as the New Imperial Guard Codex was published this year and it is full of my favourite models…Tanks!

Anyone that is interested in life outside of Warhammer will also get a look in. I’ll do some reviews of the latest kits & products that go through the shop. I’m also going to take a few retropective looks at some of the products that I sell so I hope that this will build into a hobby guide as well. I often think that there should be more of a cross over between the Fantasy side of the hobby and the Military scale side. There are many tricks & techniques each could learn from the other and many products that are suitable (and often better value) for both sides of the hobby. Hmm sounds like the basis for a future entry…

So that’s about it for now. I need to get on and pack todays orders but before I go here’s a few pictures of our new location. Yes, as well as a new web site, we’ve moved into new premises but as you can see it’s all now set up and ready to expand with even more gooUnit figure cases size editdies!