Ten years after

Back in 2003 or 2004 I made the short trip from where I was working at the time to Britannia Miniatures in Runcorn having spotted their advert in Wargames Illustrated. I can't recall what I was after - I think it was driven more by curiosity than anything else.

Whilst I was there I spotted that they sold 4 packs of miniatures in their S.W.A.T. range - 2 each for the SWAT guys and the criminals. Whilst not being the best sculpts ever they were cheap (about £1 a miniature IIRC) and they were a complete change from my usual gaming habits of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. I think I bought the packs they had in and returned a week or two later to buy some more.

Having bought into this new genre I had to decide what to do with them. For whatever reason I decided to create my own rules set (Officer Down) and set about painting them up.The big issue however was scenery - none of my existing scenery was really any use and I lacked the talent to scratch build decent scenery myself. After a few (quite fun) games I ended up putting everything in a box and letting it gather dust for years.

Here's a photo from 2004 showing the state of things - I had base coated (but not highlighted or shaded) the miniatures but that was about it. That's a paper stand-up building by the way - IIRC it fell apart not long afterwards.



And now in 2014 I've dug them out again and given them a bit of TLC. I've re-based them, touched up chipped paintwork, shaded and highlighted them and finally given them a spot of satin varnish. As a result they look much better.



These are still not quite finished though. I anticipate adding some road markings to the bases but I am holding off until I have decided whether miniature facing will be important in the new version of the rules.