When chatting about miniatures on events like last week's Mini Art Con, a subject that keeps returning is the demise of one of the greatest miniature manufacturers of the past 10 years: Rackham. When I started out with miniature painting, their figures had rapidly become my favorite. I followed their new releases every month, on the lookout of nice figures to suit my painting needs, often for competition entries. I also played their game Confrontation for a short while.

But then news appeared about financial troubles at Rackham. The production of new figures came to a halt and after a long silence they re-emerged with a new game called AT-43, which featured pre-painted plastics. But they promised to keep producing the existing metal miniatures range under the name of Rackham Legends and even introduce some new ones. I think they produced 2 or 3 new ones, all of them extremely limited edition and quite expensive. On top of that they even replaced their existing Confrontation game with a pre-painted equivalent.

I still had some feeble hopes that the company would return with some good quality metals, until I read this forum post. The announcement says:

In the last months, promotions on our webstore have given you the opportunity to purchase miniatures from our metal range at attractive prices.
Our stock of these miniatures has dwindled, but it’s still taking up a lot of space in our new offices. Thus we have decided to dispose of it. We will not commercialize these metal miniatures any more in the future.
The existing stock will not be destroyed; it should be sold to another company, which you will be able to buy the remaining miniatures from at a cost that’s bound to be very attractive.

A few posts down someone asks:

Do you know if this new company are going to have new metal minis commissioned, or jut sell the existing range/parts?

And then the reply:

That is very unlikely. The molds for the metal miniatures don't exist anymore anyway, so they would need to have them remade...

Expect the existing stock to be sold and nothing beyond that.

I think this says enough: "and nothing beyond that".

I still can't believe how this company turned their arse to the fans. I understand the company has had some hard times: financially, designers and sculptors leaving, but on the other hand why do they decide to completely discontinue something like the Confrontation line of miniatures. And then I'm not even talking about their other projects they failed to get off the ground: Hybrid, Cadwallon, the Cry Havoc magazine.

For now I will keep an eye out for Rackham minis I want to paint one day, and buy them while I still can. Fortunately I still have some old catalogues and Cry Havoc magazines to relive the old days :)

Mini Art Con 2009 is history! Last Saturday I took the 250 km trip to the small town of Reken in Germany to attend this event, and it was great! Like other years the overall quality was very good and the atmosphere was very friendly. I took about 150+ pictures and I have already made a selection to put online.

My good friend Michael Holzapfel was so kind to donate some of his web space and set up a gallery for me. It still needs a lot of work, but at least I have a place now to store my pictures.

Expect a more detailed review and the picture gallery later this week.

When the gallery is online and running I should really put some time into uploading all the pictures of my painted minis, and also to put the promised pictures of Crisis 2008 online.

Mini Art Con really got my motivation shifting into a higher gear, all I need to find now is some time :)

Here are some WIP shots of the Space Marine Drop Pod I'm working on.
At the moment only the metallics are done. I'm quite happy how the interior looks, this was done using a simple basecoat of Chainmail, then a was with black ink and then some cleaning up with Chainmail. Other, darker parts are done using Boltgun Metal and heavier washing.

I used two colours of primer on this model. First I opened the doors and sprayed the inside black. When that dried I turned it upside down and sprayed some more black on the bottom of the drop pod. Then I closed the hatches and sprayed the outside white. This will allow me to paint most of the metallics over black and blue over white. The interior also has some hard to reach places, this way I was sure everything is black so when I miss a spot with Chainmail it won't look as bad as with white primer.

As suggested in this post, I expected to have a lot less painting time than a few months ago. And yes, I was right.

Currently I'm not working on any big, or high quality projects. I'm mainly focusing on my Space Marine army. In the last couple of weeks I finished 8 Tactical Marines with special weapons and right now I'm working on a Drop Pod.

To get more painting done I constructed a paint station out of a cardboard box. When I have some time in the evening it's very easy to take the box and sit at the living room table or in front of the TV and do some work on the Space Marines. When I'm done I can close the box and put it safely away from little toddler's hands.

I will post some pictures of the paint station, as well as the Space Marines very soon.

In my small Crisis 2008 review post from last October, I mentioned the new French game Okko. Besides the fantastic miniatures the piece of scenery that was used to display the game was breathtaking. Here are two links to forum posts that display some work in progress on similar projects:

http://hazgaard.forumpro.fr/vos-creations-f18/tutorial-decors-et-plateau-3d-t474.htm
http://hazgaard.forumpro.fr/vos-creations-f18/decor-3d-le-fortin-du-col-de-betten-t482.htm

My best wishes for the new year go out to all the readers of my blog. May 2009 bring a lot of painting and gaming pleasure!

Last week my second daughter was born. Her name is Feline and she's doing very well. Here's a picture of her together with me and her big sister, Fiona.


Needless to say there won't be many updates in the next few weeks. Anyway: happy holidays!