Wednesday 19 December 2012

House keeping, spammers move along...

Hi all

It seems our recent battle report has increased the number of visitors here nicely, but with that has come an enormous amount of spam posts I've had to moderate. I've changed the settings so only registered users can comment, and assume that means anyone signing in through Blogger, Google+ or whatever. I hope this doesn't cause too much inconvenience, but as pretty much the only people that posted as 'anonymous' were spammers anyway I'm sure it'll work out.

Regards

Thursday 13 December 2012

Cereal Killers from Planet RTB01

On the distant agri-world research station of RTB01, the planetary governor Kellog has been acting strangely, after initial reports on the development of a stain of ‘super cereal’ - hardy enough to grow on the most inhospitable planets - all communication ceased. Several Imperial recon teams were dispatched and all equally lost without trace, eventually Inquisitor Brand with a small contingent of Fire Angels space marines and an imperial guard battalion was sent to investigate. The Inquisitor found the governors Planetary Defence Force to be hostile and almost possessed by a manic rebellious fervor, his initial forces were decimated and the survivors have retreated into the foothills surrounding the research station in order to consolidate their forces and receive re-enforcements. Broadcasting a system wide distress call via their astropath it was with utter horror the survivors realised that in their exhausted state they had sent out an un-encoded message… now every pirate, renegade and chancer in the system would be on route to steal the super cereal! What happens next is up to you guys :) Come along and join us at Wargames Foundry's factory shop this Saturday and take part in a multiplayer mayhem Rogue Trader game.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Participation Maelstrom Xmas game -come and join us.

Heya guys and girls. We'll be running out Xmas game this year at the Wargames Foundry factory store in Nottingham City Centre and would love you to drop in and join us for a game. We're planning a multi faction incident on an Imperial World beset by rebellion and will be inviting blog followers to drop in, take control of a squad and have a game with us. It's totally free, we'll provide all the minis and scenery and GM the game for you. This is provisionally booked for Saturday the 15th of December but this may be subject to change. Please leave a comment here if you'd like to attend so we can have a rough idea of numbers. Ideally we'll have four factions, each sub diviable into smaller forces but will have to cap it to five players a side at any one point on a first come first served basis (although if you've come from miles away we'll fit you in somehow even if we're busy). The idea is to run the same two hour scenario twice on the day between around 11am start and a finishing time of 4pm.

Monday 22 October 2012

Tales from the Maelstrom Xmas participation game.

Early days yet but we *may* be running our Xmas game in a midlands wargaming venue and inviting fellow retrophiles to join in! details to follow in a few weeks (we've both got a very hectic upcoming fortnight) but there may well be the opportunity for you to come along and play a character or squad in out annual 'daft' game. Keep checking for updates :)

Thursday 18 October 2012

Eldar shuttle crew

Crew for the shuttle near finished. Trader (previously painted), Warlock (for navigating those webways), Pilot, Gunner and two Ghost Warriors for when negotiations break down :)

Monday 15 October 2012

WIP Eldar shuttle.

About half way through painting my Eldar landing craft/shuttle for my pirate/trader/explorer force. Quite pleased with how it's looking so thought i'd stick a pic up now. Pictured are the trader and some of the 'pirates'. I'm currently painting the crew of the pilot, gunner, warlock and two assasin drones.

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Angel Gang finished today.

These have been sitting on the painting shelf half done for about a year now so I spent this morning finishing them. Hopefully I'll run a Judges vs The Angel Gang necromunda game at some point.

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Recent paint jobs... coming to a battle report soon.

Finished quite a bit off today. To be honest these are not my best, rushed them out to get back into painting (not painted anything for months) and very much 'army standard' The 15 fire angels and their commander previously posted are now finished (as with all of them there is the odd bit of stray static grass to blow off before varnishing), the Inquisitor with them is an old paint job but the fire angels were painted to be his retinue. Equally there is an old 'space scum' mini who is in the Inq's retinue as an 'arch militant' type. Outside of that force i've finsihed a *very* old war droid mini to fight alongside my merc force, an old 'Jerry Cornelius' figure who will no doubt enter a game or too as a rogue trader and lastly (and unlikely to grace any battle report) I finished off my Dungeons and Dragons cleric character mini - she's been close to completion for quite some time but needed basing and a few glazes.

Friday 21 September 2012

Fire Angels

Some fairly rough and ready 'work in progress' shots of my Rogue trader Inq's retinue of 'fire angels' marines. I chose to do them in a very 'dirty' white as given they are the pre 'trader' 85 marine I wanted a fairly generic 'space troopers' look to them (as in white armour) but didn't want them to look too much like my Eldar. Fire Angels seemed like a good 'white' choice of a classic chapter... i never really like the way GW went with the 'ghengis khan in space' of the white scars (my other consideration). I briefly considered doing 'silver skulls'
but where possible I like to avoid metallic paint in any quantity and i dont think i could do non metallic metal painting justice. as it is i think 'fire angels' will do nicely having a weird KKK meets crusaders look to them and also being 'badab war' loyalists to counter my copplestone and naismith scult marines who i'm doing as lamenters (i'm totally going to regret choosing a yellow chapter as i find yellow a pig to paint).

Thursday 23 August 2012

The Stainless Steel Inquisitor

Seeing the sad news of the seminal Harry Harrison's death, Andy and I agreed to do a memorial RT 'Stainless Steel Rat' game... Exactly *how* were going to do this i'm not quite sure but i'm sure it will involve mulitple heist locations, one player playing Jim and his associates and the other playing a special corp team waiting for him to make his move! If you have any good ideas to share before i write something up please do chip in here. My current thoughs are to use the cityfight boards. Three to five possible hesit locations that must have a guard in proximity every other turn and 30 to 40 'citizens' of which any one can be revealed to be the SSR at any time (only revealed once of course). The gm using the citezens to create interferance.

Wednesday 22 August 2012

Battle report now up

I've done my best to put in a brief narrative to accompany the pics from the last battle. I'm sure to have forgotten something as so much happened and it's over a week ago now! Anyway, rather than reposting all the pics i've edited the previous post to include the text, hope you like it.

Monday 20 August 2012

Block Mania!!

Found time for a quick game last week of Block Mania with my friend Carrie, while not one of our normal gaming group Carrie is a keen gamer and took part in last years 'agri world' game. Pretty quick and fun game by all acounts which as ususal was utter carnage until the judges arrived to Stumm gas everyone. Most notable indidents were Samantha fox having a huge crack appear right in the center at her bottom and Buddy Holly having his entrances set on fire. currently looking for a copy of 'mega mania' if anyone has one they want to part with?
Right as I remember it here is the report of the battle. Curtis's radical Inquisitor is convinced that the hive mind can be countered in a less direct method than all out war and has arranged a meeting with zoat envoys (and their human assistants) on an arid research station world. Unbeknown to him his nemesis 'Inquisitor Hand' is hot on his trail and arrives on Fergus's World shortly afterwards. Curtis' warband consists of his Inquisitor (i never got his name), a squad of marines with a medic, a psyker and a few combat servitors. Andy's force consists of Inq hand, a death watch kill team, a rogue Trader and his displacer field wearing Jokaero assistant and an 'observer' from the Adeptus Mechanicus... a power armoured squat. Army leaders are all Major heros, inidvidual character heros and unit leaders champions. Servitors are just that.. servitors.
Both warbands advance as the local populace tries to flee. Curtis persuades the farmer that he is on Imperial business and tries to press gang him into service. This is less than successful and later a casualty occurs when the livestock stampede.
Curtis Inquisitor makes a psychic link with the Zoat emmisary and the magus, at around this time Hands men uncover the Zoats hiding place and the Zoat engages them in hand to hand combat as the magus, eventually convinced that Curtis is genuine makes a run for it. Curtis' marines make a stand in the temple building and a firefight ensues as Hands warband attempt to kill the xenos emmisaries and arrest Curtis's radical. Each turn however karnak floaters have been drifting across the battlefield... if they are hit they tend to explode. for most the game this is uneventful until an agri tractor with some fleeing lcoals on is hit by one causing it to career out of control, running over one of Curtis's marines (he survives) and then coming to a halt still on fire.
Hand's men come of worse in the firefight depsite the Rogue trader's judicious use of indirectly fired stasis bombs (one manages to clip curtis's radical and hold him for a short while) and the plucky Jokaero who stays in the fight despite being on fire and wildy displacing around the table. With most of his men dead or dying Hand authorises 'exterminatus' and the Squat unleashes a virus bomb to make sure *nobody* leaves the planet alive. Here we improvised some rules and increased the effectiveness of a virus grenade to 3d6 spread per turn rather than 1d6. We also allowed it to spread without dead bodies... Curtis now was against the clock, or the dice, as he had to leg it with the xenos magus (the only character not in a sealed suit at this poinst) before the virus caught up. Each turn he ran towards the table edge (and safety of a shuttle)as the virus killed citezens and livestock in its wake... in a great moment of tension it looks like the magus was about to clear the board, the virus spread was approximately 18 inches away (or so it seemed) and unless Andy was very lucky and got a maximum spread he was scott free. Andy rolled for the final spread and got an incredible three 6's and a full 18 inch spread.. the magus seemed doomed but we measured it out and incredibly he was 18 and half inches away! So escaping by the skin of his teeth the magus linked up with Curtis's radical to enter talks with the Imperium. Whether he succeeds in seducing this tainted Inquisitor or whether the radical sees the error of his ways is yet to be seen.
All in all a cracking (if somewhat weird) game of Rogue Trader and my only regret is that with Curtis moving away for a while it might be some time before we have a rematch.

Wednesday 8 August 2012

Great game of rogue trader this evening with Curtis Fell (ramshackle games) and Andy. Some utter craziness that only the original can provide including teleporting monkeys on fire, exploding floating fungus pods, hit and run drivers, alien hybrids, telepathic arguments and a killer virus! Post on the blog soon.

Sunday 5 August 2012

Realms of Chaos warband pressgangs more crew



The first of two squads of Space Pirates/Chaos Reavers, plus a Chaos Navigator.

Saturday 4 August 2012

Fallen Rogue Trader girl


And here she is finished. I've started on her scurvy crew - two squads of space pirates made from a variety of Citadel plastic Chaos Marauders, Catachans and other bits and pieces, plus I have her trusty sidekick the Chaos Navigator ready to start soon, in the form of one of the new plastic Citadel Chaos Sorcerers.

Friday 27 July 2012

Renegade Rogue Trader WiP


Evening all!

Just a quick work in progress pic of the leader of my Realm of Chaos warband (see the post of a couple of days ago). I rolled a starting profile of Rogue Trader, she follows Slaanesh and has the Bestial Face and Tail Gifts. Being a Rogue Trader she has access to all manner of wargear, and using the tables in the Rogue Trader rulebook I rolled up a las pistol and power sword as basic kit, plus four digi-weapons, a stasis field, displacer field and all manner of other weird stuff. She's based off of Reaper's Hellborn Sorceress miniature, and the arms and shoulder boards are recently released by Victoria Miniatures.

Next up I need to make her side kick, a renegade Navigator (for which I'll probably use the new plastic Chaos Sorcerer from Citadel) and then two bands of Chaos-worshipping space pirates!

Realm of Chaos for Adults

As a follow up to the post about us starting a Realm of Chaos campaign, the Warhammer for Adults blog has an Army Builder wossname that allows you to do so digitally (though I suspect due appeasement to the Machine God musts still be made.)

Please to check it out here.

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Total Chaos.... 80s style.

Well after Andy and I had generated by new character for our upcoming Rogue Trader RPG campaign (a heretical technomagus of the adeptus mechanicus who is convinced things will work if you just press the button and don't worry about the candles)we decided to have a look through the old 'Realm of Chaos' books 'Slaves to Darkness' and 'The Lost and the Damned'.

Now i bought these as a 13 or 14 year old on sale at GW Derby in the late 80s (probably because of the 'adults only' type sticker on it that was to leave me sorely disappointed...) but never really did too much with them. All a bit too crazy with D1000 rolls that could have your rampaging lord of chaos suddenly loose his legs and grow a tail for a head even if you were doing well. But we thought in the interests of exploring old school gaming we'd each have a go at creating a 40k realm of chaos warband and have a few narrative battles.

Deciding to stick by whatever the gods of fate gave us (and only re-rolling impossible to model or *really* lame mutations like 'farts a lot') Andy opted for a Slanesh renegade band and I thought i'd be clever and go for the 'Sensai' warband. For those not privy to the old rare yellow chaos book, the sensai were essentially descendants of the Emperor and about as close to Jedi as GW could get without being sued. Andy's rolls started well. He started off with a Rogue Trader who had sold his soul to chaos, gaining a bestial face and a tail for his loyalty... His first folower was a tainted navigator who had his eyes on stalks but quite fortunatley a chaos weapon (staff) forged from the ribs and still beating heart of his enemy which gave him some additional wounds. All good stuff so far and I felt slightly intimidated when Andy's next two group of followers were a couple of bands of human (7 and 5 strong) armed with shotguns and lasguns. 


So what would the Sensai have to stand against this force... not much to be honest. While i appreciate it says 'sensai bands are quite small' I was expecting a bit more than a basic profile navigator with a laspistol and a grumpy old squat hero with a bolter! Luckily Andy took pity on me and let me have another roll on the followers table, this fared only marginally better with a human minor hero as a sidekick. So I can see our initial clashes being *very* short and think we might be able to get a few dozen game in each night unless my Sensai can get his act together on the recruiting front. It was pretty good fun to mess about with though but it does prove that the products that nearly drove GW crazy (the ROC books) really were the true product of chaos... or perhaps one madman.. who just happened to be the studio manager at the time (i'll mention no names).

Saturday 12 May 2012

Me and my Monkey

Thought it might be fun to create a miniature to serve as my 'avatar' on the tabletop, so here he is - Colonel Kane (rtd), spy, xenologist and explorer extraordinaire. Scourge of the Obscura dens of Dread Mandragora sector, translator of the epic 'Transcendental Orbs of the Great God Vaul', and suitor of the Exodite Princess Lak'Shimbai.


He's made from a range of Citadel plastic components, with a head from Black Pyramid Games. I intend to use him in games of Rogue Trader in alien safari type scenarios. His weapon will count as a grenade launcher and he'll be equipped with all manner of unusual kit designed to bag himself some big nasties, especially stasis grenades and the likes.

Thursday 3 May 2012

Zoats vs Imperial Army, Deathworld Battle Report (of doom)

So then, last night we played what was possibly one of the funnest everest games of Rogue Trader ever. We made up a scenario more or less on the fly, deciding that there's a war being fought on a frontier world between a Zoat exclave and the local Imperial Army (a unit called the Swamp Tigers). Zoat infiltrators have ambushed a Swamp Tigers patrol by disabled its transport, wounding two important passengers in the process. The Swamp Tigers have called in an extraction but must hold out until it arrives. Meanwhile, nearby ground units are rushing to help in fending off the attack.

We used a load of different rules, some from Rogue Trader, some made up on the spot. For example, we had wandering Ambulls and Grox, and decided that once per turn, a Cthonian Worm would surface next to the model that made the loudest noise that turn on the roll of a 6 (this could be a heavy weapon firing, a vehicle moving, whatever).

Rather than me attempt to describe every dice roll, here are some highlights. I'm sure we can add more detail if asked or if we remember!

The battlefield. 

Imperial Army patrol awaiting extraction. 

And again from a different angle. 

Zoat infiltrators move in. The fourth, missile launcher-armed Zoat is covering them from a hill top. 

Nearby Imperial Army forces arrive. 

A wandering Ambull gets very close to the Zoat leader. 

The Zoat advance continues. 

An Imperial Army sentry spots the Zoats. 

More Army units arrive. 

Reinforcements approach through the undergrowth. 

An angry Ambull attacks a Zoat. 

Army reinforcements link up with the ambushed patrol. 

One of the relief units is charged by an Ambull.

Defeated, the relief unit flees, right into the path of a herd of grox! 

Now in range, the Zoats open fire and a flamer immolates the squad medic. 

The Army fight back. 

The Sentinel comes under flamer fire and is set alight. 

Zoat missile fire draws a Cthonian Worm, which causes the first fatality amongst the aliens. 

The relief unit is defeated by the Grox. 

Another Ambull charges into the ambushed patrol's flank. 

The Zoat leader overruns the ambushed patrol. 

A Zoat charges the Sentinel. 

The extraction vessel arrives overhead, but its not yet safe to land. 

Having killed a Zoat, the Sentinel is charged by an Ambull. 

The Zoats wipe out the last of the ambushed patrol, leaving only the wounded.

The relief squad's las cannon gunner, having been detached from his squad and ordered to fire at the big stuff, kills first an Ambull, and then the Zoat leader (before being gunned down himself by the last surviving alien). 

The extraction vessel comes in to land. 

Last charge of the surviving Zoat. 

And he's furiously beaten off...! 

Home in time for tea and medals.

And that's it! We now plan on playing more games set on this world, as the idea of an ongoing bush war between an alien exclave and the local Imperial Army is pretty cool. Next up we may play a game with the Imperium attempting to detonate a virus bomb and the Zoats having to get past the defending robots and disarm the bomb before it wipes everything out!