Tag Archives: science fiction

A haul of DVD’s for GBS

Posted on by

Today was a good day for shopping.  I don’t mean the kind of shopping where I trail about after my good lady uttering the mantras of ‘that looks good’ and ‘your bum ain’t fat in that’ I mean the kind of shopping where circumstances provide a golden chance to acquire something you want at a great price and without hassle.  Well this happened to me today in Ayr at the local branch of doomed HMV store and also in the mail this morning.  Below you can see a picture of the haul.  Sorry about the lens flare but shrink wrapping does that.  I have listed the titles under the image with links to their IMDB pages if you want to learn more about them.

gbs_dvds_090213

Anime, World Cinema and Bargain Bin gold!

This lot cost me just over thirty five pounds sterling including the postage on the Amazon order for Gazariki which was superb.  The others were discounted on the racks, discounted and binned and then with a 25% blue sticker sale on top it was like Christmas at two pounds a pop!

I hope to review each of these films and series in the next couple of months.  If anyone reading wants something put to the top of the que just email me or comment.

GBS

A Day of Photography…painful on the eyes!

Posted on by

Its not often that I spend an entire day on one central task but today was such a day.  Today, with the assistance of my good lady, I photographed all of the professionally painted releases for the next three months for 15mm.co.uk.  This came to more than three hundred images of roughly seventy unreleased miniatures from the HOF, HOT, SHM ranges crafted by six different designers.  We take photographs very seriously with the aim of showing the actual miniature in the best light and with no software trickery involved.  So many hours of thousands of watts of light and positioning figures resulted in some great shots but left me with eyes like a Blood Hound!

The vast majority of the new miniatures are in the HOF 15mm Science Fiction range and all but a handful were painted over several weeks by Eve Hallow.  He is an excellent miniature painter with an eye for colour.  Its also his birthday this weekend so I will be standing him a Lady Juniper or two at the local hostelry and giving him a wee gift but for the moment I will tell you of his first gift.  He is not only a miniature painter but an aspiring sculptor too and his first miniature will be hitting the SHM range this week… coincidence or what…on his birthday weekend.

I am not allowed to show you all the images I took (don’t even ask…you would burst with the thrill of it!) but I will sneak out a few in the coming weeks and for now I give you what is coming out this week.  The Jelly Cube by Eve Hallow, the Criat Mercenary by Will Grundy (another first!) and the icky Biomorph by the excellent Eli Arndt.  Enjoy!

shm51_ws

The Jelly Cube

Jellies Cubed!

Jellies Cubed!

shm51_scale_ws

For Scale. He’s Jellified!

shm52_ws

Criat Mercenary…gurr!

shm52_scale_ws

For Scale with Human Cultist

shm53_ws

Eli’s Biomorph from the front

shm53_rear_ws

And the Rear…urgh!

GBS

Robo Basho – My Article in Irregular Magazine 13

Posted on by

Last summer I wrote a short article for Irregular Magazine for their thirteenth issue.  I was happy to be asked by a customer of 15mm.co.uk who is also on the staff of the magazine as they were looking for professional writers to create material for a ‘Mysteries of the East’ focused set of content.  My love of all things Japanese combined with giant robots (more on this next month…it will be worth the wait) gave me an idea for a piece all about a sport that replaced war in a ravaged future Japan.  Wrestling in the form of two hundred foot tall, two thousand ton machines, which shake a stadium and make a crowd of tens of thousands roar in approval.  Robo Basho 2115!

You can view and download the issue on Irregular Magazine website.

The article is part one of two with the first part focusing on the history and background of Japan in 2115 which then leads to the sport of Robo Basho and the customs of the giant machines themselves the ‘Roborikishi’ in their stables.  An account of that occurs inside the ring and the weapons allowed along with the Gyoiji or Referee too.  The Kuroboshi III type giant mecha is looked over and its super thick armour and massive muscle servo bunches compared to western war machines of similar size.  Ending with the roleplaying possibilities for Robo Basho the article explains what would be featured in part two.  A good read if I say so myself!

Irregular Magazine 13 was due out last summer and the delay is regrettable.  Here is a statement from the editor on this from their website:

First of all, we’d like to start with an apology to all of our readers and contributors. We were not able to publish Irregular Magazine in Summer 2012, which we deeply regret. We believe we’ve got through the problems that made this impossible and are now back on track with regular publications!

I do not want to get into this here but I think that the problems Irregular had are similar to those other online wargame magazines and indeed other printed monthly titles have had too.  Finding and obtaining content that interests an ever diverging readership is tough and adding to that the sheer speed of the online community and news feeds means that traditional formats are failing.  No point in putting news in a magazine these days.  Focusing on deep article content is the way forward, a more journal like approach.  This of course is hard to come by from writers and artists as it takes longer to create.  For those interested it took me eight hours to pen the article plus an hours proof reading.

Lastly I must give praise to Sam Croes my good friend who created the superb Robo Basho artwork for the article which also features as the cover of the magazine too.  His talent always makes me smile and he was very kind in agreeing to craft this piece of art in his limited free time for me.  He has also produced a blog post on how he created the superb image for Sumo Basho, check it out.

GBS

The Razak by Eli Arndt – Out Today!

Posted on by

The Razak painted by Eve Hallow

Today sees the release of another miniature in my very successful SHM miniature line on 15mm.co.uk.  Its a milestone as its the fiftieth release in this single figure series and its a special one too as its a miniature that has sat on my desk here for several months patiently waiting its turn for fame.  The miniature is by my friend Eli Arndt and its called the Razak Bouncer.

Something about this little chap captivates me like no miniature has since Eli’s Vergan.  Heavily muscled, tough looking and patiently waiting for action (like me then!) the Razak oozes character.  I think he would be great for a mercenary force, a bodyguard, an enforcer perhaps even a frontier world law man (with a different paint job on his armour).  I am thinking of getting one or two for my 15mm sci-fi forces in the next round of buy and paint.

Well done Eli!

GBS

War in Catalucia and Zombie Dawn sold out!

Posted on by
soldout_5025_um009

War in Catalucia and Zombie Dawn

After a busy weekend on the website of Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk I went into work to find that two of my titles had sold out their current print runs.  The first third edition game book for Flintloque and the ninth title in the USEME series too.  Both of these will be out of print for a while as I have to organise re-prints but both will come back into stock as they are core books and popular sellers.  Indeed War in Catalucia will be in its third print run when brought in again and the total number of USEME booklets sold is nearing four thousand now.

While Zombie Dawn will be brought back into print just as it was there is a chance that I will take a few days to ‘update’ War in Catalucia.  That does not mean any changes to the mechanics of the game (third edition is the most awesome incarnation of Flintloque ever as it is) rather some more background material and art taking into account the three years since release with more stats and army list information and the like.  More as and when as normal on this.

The winter of 2012 and into this year has been good for Flintloque and USEME with new players taking up the offer of a free limited miniature called Gerrrard the Wolf and the masses of content on Barking Irons and the great new Orcs in the Webbe.  USEME continues at a pace with weekly messages stating ‘release more titles!’ a firm favourite.

Thanks to all those who bought my work!

GBS

The Ironclad Prophecy by Pat Kelleher

Posted on by

ironcladprof_300dpi

Back in November 2012 I got two books in the post and while I did not think I would get time to post a full review of either of them (and I was right too, time is short due to just now busy 15mm.co.uk is with orders!) I do want to say a little about the one I have just finished which is by Pat Kelleher.  I have pasted in below what I already posted about this book before moving on to an opinion:

Ironclad Prophecy by Pat Kelleher.

This is the second book in what is now three for Pat Kelleher placed in the ‘No Mans World’ setting.  I have the first one and Ironclad Prophecy has been out for a while but I wanted to read them in order so I got this one when I saw an advert for The Alleyman which follows it in the series.  Essentially the plot concerns the infamous 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers who simply vanished leaving a huge crater while fighting on the western front in WW1.  A mine you suppose…nope, they have been transported to an alien world where all manner of creepies wait for them.  The premise interested me as original and entertaining plus the author puts it across as a true tale by way of ‘letters and accounts’ from the period and a hush up by the British top brass.  Again begin with the first one Blackhand Gang, otherwise it will make no sense!

I enjoyed the book a lot.  It was slow to get going but once it did it was a racing ride of adventure packed with giant sky jellyfish and shoggoth type creatures.   There was no ending in the plot but it set up beautifully for the third book which I will be getting in my next book bundle in March for my birthday.  You can get the book from a lot of places but here is a link to Amazon which provides me with great service and you can read snippet reviews there too.  But from me I will say its a cracking read which if you like dark fantasy and world war one then you will love it.

GBS

BattleShip Movie Review

Posted on by

From Indian Cinema and why not….

Sorry everyone…I know you want me to keep on creating more wargaming content but I thought I would take a Sunday afternoon to watch a film and put a review of it up here.  I like movies, I like science fiction a lot, so it stands I would like a big budget Hollywood title along those lines.  Plus I own the game its based on and my three sons enjoy playing it.  But….

Ha,Ha,Ha…this is one of the worst films I have ever watched!  It is has one, yes, one plus point.  The CGI special effects are superb, really well done and the only thing worth watching in the movie.  What of the rest of it?

I could say that making a film based on toys is a bad idea but it’s not.  Lots of good and average productions have come from Transformers, GI Joe, Thomas the Tank Engine and so on.  Making a film based on a board game though, aside from Jumanji I cannot think of any (not true, Mousetrap is a great comedy) is a bit more dubious.  Hasbro made it work with Transformers so why not Battleship?  Well here is a list of what I saw and thought based on watching it all the way through.

  • The plot is super thin.  Never mind physics or anything like that.  Talk to the stars so they send an invasion force to Earth to kills us all (an invasion force unable to steer their own ships incidentally).  They lose their ‘comms’ ship and need the messaging system here on Earth to send for extra troops…but they have tech that allows for crossing space REALLY FAST (light years in days) and they MUST have told their mates they were invading another planet!  They don’t need the primitive Human tech at bloody all!
  • The acting is ruddy awful from start to end.  Aside from Liam Neeson who despite changing his accent in every scene makes his dialogue work the rest of  the acting is turgid and at times actually ‘mentally handicapped’ too.  It reminded me of all things a 1980’s kids cartoon.  I will not quote examples but adding swearing would actually have helped.  Rihanna might not mime to her songs but she should have in this film she is not an actress and the real life navy veterans were just made to look foolish.
  • Formulaic at every step.  Painfully so.  The film is a like a path of falling domino’s or a tick list of idiocy.  The central character is a loud mouth looser and criminal (breaking and entering) but he is convinced to join the navy (why?) and is made an officer right away!  All the characters tell him he has skills and such but I never saw any and he never inspires any confidence as a lead.  He gets the girl which makes no sense.  He survives when he should not…and he smart mouths everyone (there is no respect for superiors in this mans navy!).  Best example.  When the alien ship surfaces he heads over to it on a launch and jumps onto it.  ‘Dude its like totally might be alien and shit’.  Rhianna ‘well I think so too duh’.  Then he turns to face his commander and shrugs…real professional.  Then as everyone says ‘bad idea dude, bad idea’ he touches a glyph and lost world style it begins the whole shooting match.   No First Contact trauma for this chump.  Then they make him a Captain!  A captain in a ship of cretins.  No First Contact trauma but at the sight of dead sailors…arrgh…panic!
  • The Aliens.  They looked great and that is it.  They were awesomely dense at all times, unable to use their own weapons and throwing away every advantage they had over Humanity.  With such bad acting, horrid lines and so on you want them to win but they cannot fly their ships or fight at all.   They seem to be psychotic pacifists…work that one out.  Is it flickering RED for kill it or GREEN for don’t kill it or is it RED with GREEN on it like a road bridge but we kill it anyway?
  • The Shield.  Yes, the aliens can generate a shield that forms a several mile high dome over a large area..kind of like a Battleship board game board limiting the pieces in play…  More awful dialogue follows…its not North Korea or some navy secret experiment….pathological avoidance of the bleeding obvious.  It cannot be Human in origin.  Oh the aliens are shooting at us…what do we do…oh no its like Battlestar Galactica none of our advance weapons work anymore…panic.  We had training and procedure for being shot at…what was it dude…I don’t know.   Oh, yeah its personal dude attack them Ok Corral style.  Plus we can confuse them with sunlight!
  • Sugar Coated Boak.   Boak is a Scottish word which means to be violently sick and it suits this movie.  I know Americans like to salute their flag and that is totally fine with me but this film takes it WAY too far.  It takes every heart on sleeve moment possible and wrings the life out of them while screaming ‘USA,USA’ over and over.  I am not American so I can’t say but it must have made people there cringe with embarrassment; it did for me over and over.  You can love your country, your navy, your service personnel without insulting them like Battleship did.  The final scene with the real life veterans was appalling.  If the characters from this film were real it would make me very scared that they had access to a handgun never mind cruise missiles and nuclear weapons too.
  • Putting the Board game in the Film.  Several scenes and events (tracking ocean movements, milk can projectiles etc) are put in for reference to the board game.  Nice touch, but it does not add anything except to confuse the thin plot further.
  • Final loss of Believability.  The USS Missouri is a 70 year old museum piece but that is ok we can take twenty geriatric former sailors and get her sailing again in hours with no prep and one hundredth of the needed crew.  These are real sailors and their dialogue is horrid!  Quick turn the battleship, the aliens cannot traverse their own weapon pods!  It gets worse…they beat the aliens with the ancient ship by dropping anchor and making one hundred thousand tons of steel skid in the water like a bloody touring car on a racetrack!

All in all its a terrible wooden movie which is so bad its actually funny.  It ends with a little scene after the credits which sealed it for me….Scottish Highlands…NO, totally wrong landscape, Scottish Barn…NO unlike any architecture you would see outside of Ohio, Scottish Workman…NO totally wrong kind of Asian van and equipment…if that is Scotland then I am an Admiral.  Sums up Battleship really..treats the audience like mugs.

In saying all this it makes me want to start a regular feature of reviewing bad or poor films that are in this or similar genres.  I get inspiration for wargaming from some strange places so both you lot reading this and me viewing might both learn something or at least have a chuckle in trying.

Seriously…wait for Battleship to be on free view television.  I did and it saved me a few pounds I would have regretted spending.

GBS

Gerry Anderson dies….

Posted on by

Its a sad Boxing day for me.  I had not intended to post on the blog until the end of the week (with a look at some of the films and books Christmas brought me) but I have just heard that one of my favourite film makers and innovators has died.  Gerry Anderson died today aged 83 after suffering from some ill health and Alzheimer’s disease as well.  Creator of supermarionation and programmes like Thunderbirds and Stingray, including my favourite Captain Scarlet he had a big effect on my childhood and I spent many rainy weekends watching videos (yes, not DVD’s!) and also BBC2 re-runs.  Programmes that, in an age before computer animation and digital effects did things that no live action film could hope to emulate on screen.

I wish his family well and its a shame that unlike the Captain, Jerry was not indestructible.  Follow the links to learn more and have a look above if you missed the tense and often very violent Captain Scarlet.  I have used it many times to inspire wargame scenarios and the like.  Honestly to me its one of the best spy genre series ever made.

GBS

Reading with total Abbadon

Posted on by

Two new titles from the postman!

Sorry for the bad pun title but I could not resist it.  I came home this week to find a wee package waiting for me from Amazon (too lazy or busy to get to the bookshop, you decide which) containing two titles from my ‘wanna read’ list.  I treated myself for the extra hours I had put in on Slaughterloo Redux over the last month and am now faced with the choice of which to read first.  I actually want to read both so I might try and read them at the same time, having done this already with a novel and a history book over a couple of days.  So what are they?

Times Arrow by Jonathan Green.

Times Arrow is the elventh novel in the Pax Brittania series by Abbadon.  Set in an alternate universe it is fantasy fun adventure in a British Empire which steam dominates the globe.  This is the eight book (yes I own all of them) with the hero Ulysses Quicksilver who could quite easily have been a member of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen taking on the hun, the foe, the alien and the monstrous for Queen and Empire.  The plot of this one concerns Paris, murder and a trip to the Moon.  Streampunk adventure of the highest order.  While the plot alone makes me want to read it, as a writer, what also interests me is that this tale was actually penned in three separate parts and published on Kindle before this paperback edition was collected.  I would recommend starting with Unnatural History though as its the first one.

Ironclad Prophecy by Pat Kelleher.

This is the second book in what is now three for Pat Kelleher placed in the ‘No Mans World’ setting.  I have the first one and Ironclad Prophecy has been out for a while but I wanted to read them in order so I got this one when I saw an advert for The Alleyman which follows it in the series.  Essentially the plot concerns the infamous 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers who simply vanished leaving a huge crater while fighting on the western front in WW1.  A mine you suppose…nope, they have been transported to an alien world where all manner of creepies wait for them.  The premise interested me as original and entertaining plus the author puts it across as a true tale by way of ‘letters and accounts’ from the period and a hush up by the British top brass.  Again begin with the first one Blackhand Gang, otherwise it will make no sense!

—

I might not get around to posting reviews of these titles due to time constraints but I should be able to put a micro review in the comments below…perhaps that will work.  Anyhoo…if this catches your interest go out and get reading with total abbadon!

GBS

‘The Zone’ blog entertains!

Posted on by

From ‘The Trojan Hovercar’ adventure

Back in October I posted about a brand new blog called ‘The Zone’ run my Math one of the fellows behind Dropship Horizon blog.  Since then I have reading its postings with excitement and a good laugh too.  Each posting is an adventure with a lot of back story and characters.  I have also spoken to Math by email and assisted him with an order to 15mm.co.uk to get some pro-painted Law Officers from the Laserburn range.  To that end he has sent me images of conversions of some Laserburn miniatures for The Zone.  Pictures below.

Col and Rayy – Laserburn 15mm conversions

Converted Laserburn flt car with crew

These images in this posting are from the most recent piece on The Zone, an adventure known as The Trojan Hovercar.  Check it out.

I recommend this blog to any wargamer who loves the 2000AD comic, classic or retro 1970’s sci-fi and a spun yarn to read too.  Keep up the good work Math!

GBS