NEWS FLASH: We have received reports that a group identifying itself as the Penguins' Front of Antarctica (PFA) has seized control of the North Pole as of late last night. A group of some 30 Penguins have taken Santa's fully loaded sleigh, and elf hostages, and holding them at ransom.

Details are sketchy at this point but the group's demands have been made public. They have demanded that thirty million pounds of mackerel be delivered in non-consecutive unmarked fish to the South Pole by the start of the new year or "the fat man gets it".

There is no word at this point on whether anyone has been hurt but a handful of elves are being held at snowball-point. Whether or not the PFA has Santa or one of his body doubles hostage is also unclear.

An rail cart rescue attempt earlier in the evening has met with failure however as the PFA had iced over the Polar Express tracks in anticipation of the rescue attempt.

It is unclear at this point of the relation between the PFA and the Antarctican Penguins' Front (APF) which was responsible for the polar bear cave bombs this past Novemeber. We will continue to keep you updated as the situation develops.

Merry Christmas guys. :P

Well, the penguins are nearly done. All that's left is to base them and their snow balls with snow flock. After that a quick coat of varnish and they're ready to assault some elves.

Special thanks to Craig for the Squid Red and Penguin Foot Orange colors...

Work on the High Elves for January's tourney is going well too. I've given a third of the spearmen new spears using sewing pins.

And my banner bearers have some Warhammer Dragon bits on them now too.

Alright, so finally my secret projects revealed!

Warning: If you like any of the following you may be offended by the proceeding pictures and text. You have been warned.

• Blood Bowl
• Squats
• The New England Patriots

So... this gag gift needs some background I guess. I have this friend named Chris. Chris hates Blood Bowl. In fact, most of our gaming group agrees that Blood Bowl is stupid. With that being the case I decided that a Blood Bowl themed gift would really be in the "spirit" of the season. But, I couldn't just get him a Blood Bowl team. He's already got all these Epic miniatures that would be utterly useless for it. The solution? Epic-scaled Blood Bowl!

Now, my friend Chris, he also hates Squats (see the pattern here?). So, it goes without saying that the two teams for his Epic-scaled Blood Bowl field would have to be Squats. But, what colors to paint them? I was at a loss until Matt (Chris and my mutual friend) mentioned that Chris, being a Patriots fan, hates the NY Jets and the Indianapolis Colts just about as much as he hates Squats and Blood Bowl.

So, of course I painted him a Squat team in the colors of the NY Jets...

And the Indianapolis Colts...

Now granted, I'm a jackass (if you didn't know that already perhaps this post will have enlightened you to this fact) but I'm not so big of a jackass that this "gift of gifts" would be my only present to my buddy. So, begrudgingly, I also painted him up some "Spikey Bikes" in the colors of his Iron Warriors army.

Complete with yellow stripes I might add...

The presentation of the gifts ended up being this past Saturday, and let me say that Chris was speechless... Mere words just could not express his feelings... :P

In other news, I've continued on with my other gag gift for the season: the penguins. Their bellies are done. I'll be painting their tuxes tonight.

So I can't post pics yet on what I've been working on these past couple of weeks, so in the mean time here's something I've been wanting to do for awhile, army pics!

All told, this is 10,150 points of Marines which I painted over the past two years (my first Battle Company was an Epicomp 2008 entry). I would have liked to finish them this year but it just wasn't in the cards (in case you're wondering I still want to do 3 THawks, a Reaver and Marauders, along with some rare tank variants "just cause"). So, rather than wait until I paint the tardy 1.5k, I'm cunningly going to distract you with these pics.

Fast attack and armor.

The first Battle Company and scouts.

Air support and transport.

The second Battle Company and scouts.

Titan support.

Spacecraft and Drop Pods.

First Company support.

Turkey day played a bit of havoc on my schedule but here's what I managed to get done last week.

Most of the bug reinforcements have been been based and primed. Behold them in all there primered splendor.

I saw these trees at Home Depot over the week. 21 trees in total for $6. From left to right you get thirteen, four, two and two. I ended up picking up three packs in hopes of doing a snow setup for NEAT IV.

Harriot the Harridan also go her base done and a coat of primer. I also started working on her five sisters.

Finally, these little guys are for a gag gift. They're about 8mm tall. They'd make good LatD mutant proxies. :P

Switching gears yet again, I'm working on getting the rest of my Tyranid army built (hopefully by the end of the year) in preparation to paint it next year.

Some of this stuff has been seen before (I wasn't nearly as productive this week as this picture would imply... well I was, but I can't post pictures of that stuff yet :{) but it was on my desk to clean up the bases so I just took one big picture.

I'm hoping to have most of this based and primed by next week, along with twelve more stands of Hormagaunts.

I've still got four more Carnifex, Zoanthropes and Biovores to get done, along with five more Harridans, Bio-titans and Hive Tyrants to convert.

Short of some protective coating and shrubbery they're done. Let us never speak of them again.

I meant to get pictures of the progress up last Friday but got distracted by the tournament. Anyway, here we go, six nearly done Thunderbolts... All that's left is the bases and highlights on five of them.

Here's a pic of their bellies.

In other news, it looks like Mongoose Publishing is picking up the Noble Armada line of miniatures and they will be re-released in 2011. So for people that liked the designs they should be available again soon.

Some more work on the TBolts, one is pretty much finished and I the others (bar one) got their black details done. I hope to do the gun-metal on the rest of them next week and start the shading.

Still not 100% happy with the finished one, I might try to lighten the highlight and see what that does for me.

So Monday turned out to be just a regular night of painting, most of the day was spent gaming. I got the gray base coat done on the top of the TBolts.

I also started highlighting and shading one of them. I'm still not completely happy with it, I'm going to try finishing up the details on it though and see what that does for me before moving onto the other five.

This was also Tyranid inventory week, where I went through and checked what I have spare and still need to build. While Dominique the glossy blue Dominatrix is all right, I'd prefer one that was cleaned and puttied to work on, so I started on this one.

I'm not a big fan of the E40k era Hive Tyrants, so I started converting my own as well. The body is an SM/TL era Zoanthrope body, minus the tail/stinger, a Biovore head and a E40k era Zoanthrope head cut in half for the back crests. I have to figure out the arms and then putty it but I think this is a good start.

I was going to work on these guys Monday but I forgot my gray for their bellies. I ended up finishing it over the course of the week but I didn't make as much progress as I hoped. With this coming Monday off though I should make some good headway.

I did finish my destroyers Monday night though. They look a little less red and a little more dark merlot/purple in real life but whatever.

I wasn't too happy with the way the TBolts were turning out so they ended up getting stripped last Wednesday. At this point they are re-primed and I've got a few coats on their bellies done but that's it.

I did make some progress with my ships though. My Frigates are all done along with one Destroyer. The other three need to have the black details put in though.

Here's a close-up of a Frigate.

And a Destroyer.

I also based up my Fighters for this fleet.

And here's my weekly tangent, a Heavy Cruiser for my next fleet. I scratch built the pylons/engines with plasticard, the glare makes them hard to see though.