Sunday 6 September 2009

The Eponymous Bat


I realised on Saturday that it is exactly 5 years since I launched the Bat that gave me its tag name, and I thought it might be fun to give him an anniversary outing on the blog.


"Batty" was built (over a period of 3 months) for the Berkeley HoTT contest in 2004. He represents the feared Crimson Bat, Weapon of Mass Destruction of the Lunar Empire.

The base he flies over is 6x10 cm. To keep him upright, I cast the core of the burning cottage of solid lead; a hundred or more little lead men gave their lives to keep Batty in the air. The crewmen are mostly Ral Partha 28s. His illuminating eyes were LEDs taken from MacDonalds toys.

The photos are hurried, and not the best, but are clickable. If you look closely you may be able to see the swarm of bats on the magus's staff, and the victim wrapped in Batty's tongue.

He doesn't get out much, but has featured in a number of games at Salute over the years...

8 comments:

Alex Palma said...

so you melted down minis to make the cottage?

BigRedBat said...

Yes; a sacrifice seemed appropriate!

However, they were all either very old or broken. I poured the molten metal into a metal junction box and built the cottage around it.

Cheers, Simon

Exmouth Wargames said...

Magnificent. Bonkers, but magnificent.

You missed a healthy ammount of Gloranthan fun this time - my Delecti army won best 15mm army, and there was a 25mm big battle in the evening.

BigRedBat said...

Hi Exmouth; I found myself missing Berkeley; maybe next year. I'm rather bogged down with my Dissertation with a delivery date looming.

Congrats on the best army! I was thinking abot the Broop this morning. My thought process ran something along the lines "if we had about a 1000 Broop and the Bat we'd have a Salute game that would look bloody brilliant." I don't suppose you fancy painting 970 more?

Who won BTW?

Exmouth Wargames said...

Pete Duckworth won, Benedict was second. A very good weekend.

BigRedBat said...

Aw, I wish I'd been there. Maybe next year!

So I presume that's a "no" on the 970 Broop? ;-)

Exmouth Wargames said...

That's a no... :-)

BigRedBat said...

Aw...

If I enjoy the Zama game in April, I might do an even bigger Ancients miniatures games in 2011. I have one in mind that would use most of the Zama figures, the same terrain with new bits added and which would be generally pretty easy to put together.