Tales from the Maelstrom

A blast from the past.. minis i painted 20-25 years ago!

2012-01-19T17:40:00.003Z

I've been trying to assemble all the old minis I had (and later sold) in the 80s as part of a bit of a nostalgia trip/rogue trader project. I've bitterly regretted selling some of the stuff i used to have thats cost me loads to buy back again (not to mention priceless one offs like the 'orgus flyer').

So i was pretty much amazed when an old uni days house mate said he'd found a load of my models during a clear out and 'did i want them back?'

Well they're a bit battered and chipped and the assault squad have since been 'converted' to all have power swords (damn 2nd ed lists) but it was weird recieving in the post minis i'd painted when i was 15.

Even better still I had a landraider and judge dredd bike that were not originally mine anyway lumped into the package!

Quite a bit of repair and repaint to do (althought i'm tempted to leave a few of the duplicates as the are for the sake of it) and the landraider is missing a few bits...

So anyone got a trashed original landraider they can spare a top hatch and an exhaust off? (i can probably source the HB bolters off plastic squat ones and wire)

A departure... to the ends of Nu-Earth

2012-01-15T17:02:00.005Z

Well, again a quiet month (i've got a Fallout LARP event run that is taking up nearly every spare moment...) and we've all found it tricky to find the time to get together - the fortnightly Rogue Trader and D&D RPG sessions have been particularl hit hard.

Having assembled a mighty fou of us this week we were still a man down for the D&D campaign and so opted for a bit of a board games evening.

I'd been itching to play the Rogue Trooper game for some time, I bought in the late 80s and played it a *lot* with school friends but it not been touched for over 20 years and really deserved a spin.

So I was more than happy when the chaps agreed to play.

Set up took some time as we all had to skim read the rules, i'll say one thing rulebook layout has come a hell of a long way in 20 years as the booklet is a bit hard to find rules in quickly and one can't help but feel that while the 6 pages of Rogue Trooper comic at the start are really atmospheric they do cause the remaining pages of text to be unnecessariy cramped together. A collective letter to Mr Halliwell and Mr Johnson was considered but quickly scrapped as it's not like they could do anything about it :)

That said after the first couple of hesitant turns the game flowed fairly quickly and we soon appreciated some of the subtleties of the rules... in particular 'rogue'cards that can be played upon another player to snatch victory from his hands at the last moment - nicely echoing Rogues myriad frustrations in the comic.

All the players were plagued with ammo supply problems (i myself spent a whole three turns in a armoury in the hope of drawing some decent cards to help me across the mega minefield!) and it turned out to be the end of Owen. Not to worry though as in the spirit of the strip Andys GI was able to recover Owens still warm corpse, slot the bio chips into his equipment and the guys then played on as a team.

Graham was next to bite the bullet in the search for the traitor and eventually Andy and I, laden with dead players bio chips, faced down the traitor on the bridge of millicom. A slghtly daft combat ensued that saw us fight a few rounds, dash to the armoury to reload and then dive back in again (we'd missed the bit in the rules that said fights on milli com were settled with fists!). After some dicy moments the traitor was defeated and the GIs avenged.

All in all a fun game, the game itself is showing its age and I really dont think it would have been as much fun if we were not all great fans of the comic strip. In fact that one of the reasons i think the episode printed in the rulebook is doubly redundant... if you've bought the game the odds are you were a big 2000ad fan. I can't see many people buying it as a random purchase at the time.

We're going to give it another go (with the benefit of having the time to fully dgiest the rules) in a few weeks and hopefully it will be even more fun.

One or two pics here, its not the most exciting game in the world to look at but I did try and liven it up by using the Citadel Rogue Trooper range of miniatures for the players and the traitor general.

Xmas Battle Report - A fair exchange is no robbery...

2011-12-22T14:11:00.008Z

Tales From the Maelstrom Xmas Battle.

With Christmas rapidly drawing closer and the realisation that we hadn’t had a game for a good long while, when Andy suggested we should have another xmas game I not only thought it an excellent idea but jumped at the chance to host this one.

This was not an entirely altruistic gesture. For a start it meant I could remain in the comfort of my own home on a particularly foul day but more importantly it meant I could get a chance to use some old 80s limited edition Christmas models that had been sitting in the cabinet upstairs unplayed with for some time.

So with a date arranged and a prior evening spent running up a scenario and playsheets all that was needed was for the maelstrom lads to turn up – and this time nobody had to worry about forgetting any models as I’d provide all the forces (not entirely true as Colonel Kane was press ganged into bringing a fair bit of his own scenery over!). Regrettably on the day one of our number couldn’t make it down but this was no detriment to the battle as I’d planned this to be a GM’d scenario and I’d just take over the third party myself.

So on to the plot… On the distant imperial backwater planet of Yoole, Rogue Trader Saturnalius Klaus and his warband have arranged a clandestine meeting with the dreaded Eldar Pirate Prince Oberon. Klaus is hoping to obtain luxury Eldar novelty goods to deliver to decadent imperial xenos artefact dealers and in return the Eldar are expecting a shipping manifest of Imperial trade convoys ripe for the picking… simples eh?

Only there were, as always, a few spanners in the works. Neither party actually had the promised goods or any intention of handing the real items over (the elder crates contain the 40k equivalent of pound shop tat and the ‘shipping manifest’ is the known route of an imperial hazardous waste disposal scow); furthermore unbeknown to both parties the fanatical and zealous Inquisitor Scrooge and his retinue have discovered the deal and are waiting to ambush the traders as soon as contact is made.
Should our third player have made it he’d have found his own task fraught with complications, not only are his glorious back banners constantly getting in the way (moving through any doorway or window is barred on a D6 roll of a 1) but his veteran space marine bodyguards are blind drunk – having discovered one of the few alcoholic beverages in the Imperium that causes complete failure of the marines hyper efficient poison removal glands and implants!

So without further ado on to the battle.

At first both sides warily made their way to the town square to the rendezvous underneath the towering statue of justice, while the Rogue Trader causally screened himself behind a meat shield of Servitors the Eldar Prince decided to cover his own approach by sending small band of warriors to the high ground. In the few turns it took to meet up Andy’s Rogue Trader secretly used his astropath to scan several of the central building for any sign of an ambush but by chance failed to nominate the Tavern that inquisitor Scrooge was using as a hide out.

As both parties met a discussion was roleplayed out that reached an inevitable stalemate, the tension was broken by the Elda psyker prince casting ‘wind blast’ buffeting the rogue trader’s forces to the ground.

With the Rogue Trader floored, the Eldar wasted no time in running their hands over his sack for the shipping manifest and not a moment too soon as at roughly the same time as two of the burly servitors picked themselves up, the doors of the tavern burst open. The Inquisitor stated that they were all under arrest, however, the two drooling space marines flanking him obviously didn’t add too much gravitas to his words as at that moment the proverbial excreta hit the fan…

As brutal short range firefight broke out that would be somewhat tedious to explain in detail but needless to say the Eldar second in command leapt from point to point with his jump pack and flamed the marines while the remaining elder warriors had a shoot out across the roof tops with the Inquisitors own astropath, his tech priest and his loyal Gyrinx ‘sak-kat’.

Beneath the statue several rounds of a brutal close combat took place between the aliens and the Rogue Trader which eventually ended with the timely remembrance that the Rogue Trader carried a webber.. One blast of this in close combat literally wrapped things up with Prince Oberon immobilised! Still taking fire from the Eldar on the rooftops the retinue decided to scurry off with the prince as there prize rather than the gift crates!

At this point the firefight turned into something of a benny hill chase as the asropath teleported across the table carrying the bound elder noble and the elder gave chase led by the lieutenant born aloft on his jump pack... lumbering behind waving their bolters in the Inquisitor and his retinue began a long pursuit of both the miscreant parties.

Eventually the elder managed to jump pack their lieutenant to within flamer range and down the rogue trade with a burst of searing fire – at around the same time the jokearo managed to hotwire the power loader outside the tavern. As the jokearo slammed the walker into top gear to rescue his leader and the astropath, he came under a hail of shuriken catapult fire which did minor damage to the vehicle itself but did manage to cause special damage to the accelerator, forcing the jokerao to race around at top speed.

The inquisitor moved closer to the Rogue Trader in an attempt to rescue and then arrest him but was cut down by the remaining elder warriors – shot in the back of all things! His space marines were similarly disposed of and so, leaderless and without their ‘muscle’, the techpriest and asptropath decided discretion as the better part of valour and legged it.

Meanwhile a confusing climactic hand to hand combat took place as the jokearo and astropath took on the elder 2ic and his last few warrior... but alas las pistols are no match for a powerclaw on a 16ft high armoured walker and after several round s the jokaero emerged triumphant; with a bound elder prince carried aloft in the power claw and the body of the rogue trader draped across the back decks.

Conclusion

All in all it was an entertaining and classically ‘rogue trader’ game that really did need a GM as a lot of improvisation and ‘winging it’ became the order of the day. I’d attempted to put in as many classically rogue trader elements as possible (gyrinxs, jokearo, psykers, hidden items, porta racks, webbers etc etc) and perhaps there was too much as much remained unused or forgotten. A good example would be Andy’s jokero who started the game with enough basic and close combats weapons in component parts to potentially be able to make a las cannon in a few turns, but with so much else to think about this fun element was overlooked… luckily the jokearo’s mechanical ability came to some use in fixing the power loader that saved the day!

In retrospect I should also have assigned psychic powers in advance rather than letting players have a random amount of abilities and points… while on average this works, this time according to sods law Martini Henri ended up with an Eldar Prince with one measly power and only a handful of points with which to use it and for my own part I completely forgot the Inquisitor was a psychic also!

It might have swung the battle massively if i’d have remembered to give the Eldar the web solvent and webber I was planning to give their side too but to me the chaos and randomness is part of the Rogue Trade charm.

So with that one under our belt at the end of 2011 we all feel a little more invigorated to get in a bit more gaming in the new year.. I hope so as I need an incentive to actually paint the other few kilos of 80s lead sitting in the painting queue!

Cheers

Pontiff/Major Hazzard

Celebrating the Feast of the Emperor's Parturition

2011-12-13T11:39:00.000Z

The last couple of years we've published a Tales from the Maelstrom 'Christmas Special' battle report. It's looking like we'll be able to get together for a game of Rogue Trader later this week, so with a bit of luck we'll publish the report some time next week.

Cheers!

Xenos Beasties from the Outer Void

2011-11-27T20:12:00.000Z

Just a couple of shots of alien beasties I've finished recently. I've been reading a lot of HP Lovecraft of late, so if my hobby output gets a little gribbly he's to blame!

Enslavers, made using the old Grenadier Miniature Beholders (now produced by Mirliton - they were kind enough to sell me six individually.)

A Devourer of Red Arcturus (a Reaper Miniatures Darkspawn Devourer).

New Rogue Trader crew

2011-11-02T18:14:00.000Z

Another crew(wo)man for the Rogue Trader project! This is Andreah from Hasslefree Miniatures (with a weapon swap). She hasn't been released yet, but will be at the end of the month.

Zoats in Space!

2011-09-30T17:25:00.000+01:00

Continuing the old school theme, here's a set of Space Zoats I've just finished, for no particular reason except that out of all the many Rogue Trader era miniatures I think these are pretty much the best sculpted and the most fun.

Rick Priestley Interview

2011-09-25T19:08:00.002+01:00

Rick Priestley, last seen in pursuit of his arch rival Abdul Goldberg somewhere in the vicinity of the death world of Yimbo-Bim...

The Tales from the Maelstrom blog has been running for a couple of years now, and although we’ve been a bit slack recently, our voyage into old school sci-fi gaming has taken us into all sorts of strange places. While most of our games are set more or less within the Rogue Trader universe, we’ve delved into or just skimmed through other rules sets, including Combat 3000, Laserburn, Traveller and Star Farers. Its amazing how many of the same names keep coming up when flicking through some books, and one of those names is games designer Rick Priestley, author of Rogue Trader (and Combat 3000 in fact) as well as numerous other titles too many to mention. Rick’s recent output includes Black Powder and Hail Caesar, rules sets that, in many ways hark back to a gentler, nobler age of wargaming. Suspecting some kind of temporal loop (or possibly a severe dose of MACS - Mysteriously Acquired Crazy Syndrome), we asked Rick if he’d be kind enough to tell us a few tall tales of how things came about…

Rogue Trader and other games of its type bring to mind of the books of Harry Harrison, in particular the Deathworld trilogy. There’s also some Doctor Who and Blake’s 7, but seasoned with a healthy dose of 2000ad-esque anarchy and madness. What inspired you when putting on adventures for your gaming friends?

Well those things were certainly part of it. We read an awful lot of SF growing up – it was a very popular genre in the early 70’s. Harry Harrison, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Philip Jose Farmer, Michael Moorcock (of course), Arthur C Clarke, Frank Herbert, Philip K Dick… hard to remember it all to be honest! Bryan Ansell made a range of what he called ‘Trimotes’ based on the ‘Moties’ from Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s book ‘A Mote in God’s Eye’. Doctor Who and Blakes 7 – sure – but also Star Trek, UFO (great series) and practically everything from Gerry Anderson. 2000AD was certainly influential – as was Starlord (Johnny Alpha started out in Starlord). When I wrote Rogue Trader I’d only just done the Judge Dredd RPG, which had involved sitting down for many long evenings with all the 2000ADs printed up until that time, so if something of that rubbed off it’s hardly surprising! We were all great fans of 2000AD and in the mid 80’s we had a license to produce games and models. We worked quite closely with some of the writers and artists at the time – I have vague recollections of us all meeting up in the Salutation Inn (which was the usual watering hole for the GW studio staff in those days). A lot of the inspiration for the Rogue Trader style of game also came from earlier efforts such as Combat 3000 (Richard Halliwell and myself). That stemmed from the skirmishing wargaming genre which also gave rise to D and D and role-playing in the USA. When D and D arrived in the UK my gaming buddies and I felt that we’d been pipped to the post – because it was so like what we had evolved independently. Character progression, umpire driven games, and adventure style actions were all part of what would have been called skirmish wargaming in the mid 70’s. We played a lot of the Wild West Skirmish game from Mike Blake and his group – just called Skirmish Wargames. I eventually got to meet Mike many years later – a lovely chap – and a real enthusiast of the skirmish game.

Jervis doffs his hat to those very games in his section in the Inquisitor rulebook -is there anything those venerable rules sets can teach modern gamers?

I don’t think there is very much really – times change and players and writers are more likely to be inspired by the things they grew up with. One thing I would say is that those early wargames rules, although lacking the snazzy production values of modern books, were often provided with clear diagrams and line drawings. Producing wargames rules in the 60s and 70s was damned hard work – no computers, no digital photos, all what we called camera ready copy – acres of white sheets with words stuck down using cow gum. In many respects, the fact that publishing was so hard was a good thing – the bar was set very high – you had to be really dedicated to do it!

Rogue Trader and many of the games that preceded it are fairly loose and open in their approach to gaming (though they do love their % rolls!) providing as many suggestions as hard rules. They appear written as tools for a games master to put on a show for his friends, almost as if the players don’t even need to know the rules or even bring their own forces to the game. Is that an accurate description, and if so, is it a reflection of the sort of games you and your friends were playing in your formative years?

Yes Rogue Trader and Warhammer both grew out of the role-playing boom of the late 70’s and early 80’s – in their original forms they were open format role-playing style games played with miniatures. I suppose our formative games were as you describe – someone would host a game and arrange a scenario, dress the table, prepare briefing notes and maps in some cases. That was all part of the fun. The most important rule was established early on – namely that the umpire is always right!

Quite right too – I actually find hosting a game more enjoyable than playing these days. I took it to heart when you included ‘snacks’ on the list of essential items to have to hand when playing a game of Warhammer!

We have moved on to the beer fridge – now that IS progress!

The introduction to Rogue Trader and the tone of the text in general encourages the use of a GM who assembles the armies etc, either according to his own tastes, the models available, or by rolling them up randomly. It seems that this approach didn’t last very long though, as more formal army lists soon came into play with the Chapter Approved supplement and subsequent White Dwarf articles. Why did this shift come about?

It was deliberate – the game’s development was pulled along by what the customers wanted to a large extent and we simply responded to that. Some of it was a consequence of us releasing models and then having to write about them and give them a place – usually an important place – in the universe. The original scope of the game was very open because there was no intention to make a large range of models. We expected people would convert fantasy figures. There was no initial expectancy that Rogue Trader would sell. In fact, I think I’d been angling to write it for years and it kept getting put off because the perceived wisdom was that, ‘science fiction doesn’t sell’. I kid you not. As I recall it became obvious Rogue Trader WAS going to sell as the book was being produced, and the internal enthusiasm for it gathered pace, but most of the text was written beforehand of course. It was the popularity of the game that drove us to make more models and start to introduce an army structure with lists that supported larger collections. None of this was planned or anticipated – it just gathered a momentum and happened.

Rogue Trader and the third edition of Warhammer were written around the same time, and are in many respects compatible with one another (we see what you did with the psionics!) Both make reference to a GM, but Warhammer seems aimed at more formalised, even semi-competitive gaming. Did you envisage the two games appealing to different crowds, and was it inevitable that by the time of the second edition of Warhammer 40,000 and the fourth edition of Warhammer both had become more mainstream still?

Well Warhammer already had a style and an audience and I think the 3^rd version was just a natural progression from the previous edition. The two books were done one after the other – but I don’t remember there being any attempt to draw them together at all. The audience for Warhammer grew up with the first three versions – and the game started to migrate into a battle game. We felt that the players wanted more formality and complexity in Warhammer – and the 3^rd version really goes to town on that doesn’t it! I know a lot of people remember that version fondly, but I think it was the least playable version of the game rules we ever did!

The rules for formations and manoeuvres being pretty detailed, that’s for sure…

Yes they certainly were! A lot of the complexity of 3^rd was inspired by standard historical wargames rules such as WRG Ancients. That was a tournament rule set really – with a great deal of fiddly movement post combat as I recall.

The Rogue Trader bestiary draws on a large number of fantasy archetypes common to a range of settings and game types, presumably to allow people to use any and all miniatures they had available. Are there any archetypes that didn’t make it into the bestiary for any particular reason?

I don’t think we missed anything out – certainly not deliberately! In the early days Citadel made figures for lots of current role-playing games as well as for LOTR and 2000AD under license. Part of the design brief was that we had to have rules in RT that enabled people to use all their collections. In the end players were asking us to make the things that we had put in to allow them to use the models they already had… ah well. The only reason I put Jokaero in was because we made a model Orang-utan in the 2000AD range (Dave the Mayor of Mega-City 1).

The intro to Rogue Trader suggests it was written so as to be used with a variety of settings (even making a sidelong reference to a certain Hollywood space opera blockbuster), but the 41^st Millennium is presented with such depth and character it’s hardly surprising the game and setting became so enmeshed. Did you originally intend the two to be so closely related, or did you intend gamers to use the rules in a variety of settings?

I think that was just my way of introducing the concept to new readers. Hard to remember really. The original setting was supposed to be so broad as to encompass anything the players wanted to invent- with plenty of room to introduce new things as we went along. The whole ‘big universe’ interlinked by a semi-random warp-space was supposed to free us from the kind of fixed geography that made it hard to expand the Warhammer world. I think I intended people to populate the universe with their own ideas, incorporating elements of the background to suit themselves.

What sort of scale did you originally envisage Rogue Trader playing out at? The rules, some of the narrative examples and the sections on randomly determining forces suggest a very small number of miniatures per side (we find it works great with 20ish per side). Did you ever think you’d see games with hundreds of models per side and huge war machines being used?

That sounds about right. The game was written as a skirmish wargame for about thirty models a side. That’s about the size we used to play. Again – it wasn’t expected to sell, so there was no imperative to facilitate huge games. I don’t think huge vehicles work at all – unless you really do have very large battlefields – games break down when the size of a vehicle starts to intrude upon weapon ranges and figure moves. Bit odd when a pistol shot can’t go from one end of a tank to the other! That wasn’t so much of problem back in the day, but as the models got bigger, and the vehicles especially so, it started to erode the relationship between the models, ranges and moves.

We’ve used many of the more leftfield elements presented in Rogue Trader in our own games, including Ambulls and the insanely detailed robot rules from the White Dwarf Compendium. Do you have any particular favourites yourself, or is there anything you look back on and think ‘what was I thinking…’?

Possibly ‘what was I drinking…’ might be more accurate. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Catachan Face Eater though. When we produced the book I wanted to have a series of frame photographs with a face flannel poised above a door and someone walking underneath, the flannel falling, and the person lying dead with this flannel over his face… sort of Deirdre’s Photo Casebook style.

While the ‘grim darkness of the far future’ was certainly there right from the beginning, Rogue Trader had a certain irreverent charm, with numerous pop culture references and in-jokes. These are still present in the modern iteration of the game, but are arguably more hidden. What’s your ideal balance between the two elements? Is humour important to you in your games?

Well you can’t escape it really can you – games are supposed to be fun surely! Some of the Warhammer gags centred on British industrial relations of the 1970’s have definitely lost their edge over the years though. As I stopped paying attention to the outside world about 20 years ago, I’ve no idea whether the current game has any such references at all.

We know that Rogue Trader was announced a long time before it was published, and differed significantly from the first advert, which suggested something a lot more ‘space opera’ (and made reference to a psycho-circus that makes an appearance in the Rogue Trader plot generator section!). How much did the end result differ from your original vision?

Also, we believe Rogue Trader had a lot more star ship combat elements than were finally published (some of which made it into Space Fleet?). Were there any other elements or ideas that didn’t make it to the final product?

Yes the original game called Rogue Trader was a spaceship role-playing and combat game that I’d written before I joined GW – I also designed a range of spaceships for it some of which ended up in the Spacefleet range. I brought all that to GW when I joined. The term Rogue Trader didn’t have any connotations of crooked City dealers at the time – and wouldn’t for quite a long while to come. The original RT universe was a proto-version of the 40K background. So, some of the major spacefaring races were already worked out Eldar (elves), Orks (Orcs), as was the idea of the Imperium as this sprawling medieval realm spread precariously throughout warp space. Hence the Rogue Traders –captains plying the boundaries of space ‘boldly going’ in Star Trek style. Some of the background to that game ended up in the back of the final Rogue Trader book, and some was used in Battlefleet Gothic. But the actual RT book was really a development of the Warhammer fantasy game for SF – and we’d started to do some of the groundwork for that in the Citadel Journals. So ultimately – the two games were different. Because we’d actually said we were doing this game called Rogue Trader we had to use the title for the new game (see the power of my advertising copywriting…J) But by then we had the 2000AD licence for Rogue Trooper and it was felt that this would be confusing – so we had to call RT both Rogue Trader AND Warhammer ‘something’ to avoid confusion. And the something ended up being 40,000. It looked like an awful mouthful at the time. I remember Bryan said we’d call it Warhammer 3000 or some such – which wasn’t unlike any number of SF games in style – and I said, ‘well – it’s set 40,000 years in the future so we can’t really call it Warhammer 3000’. So it ended up being Warhammer 40,000 – though it settled down to 40K fairly quickly.

Oh – Pete Gostello was one of our staff – renowned for his hard-drinking ways. He might have been a caster because he wore this white ‘doctor’ style coat to keep clean and that could have inspired the title I guess. Anyway, Dr Gostello’s Intergalactiac Psycho-Circus was one of the random encounters in the original sparefaring Rogue Trader game. I seem to remember it originated in a gag that Richard Halliwell scrawled across the copy; ‘You encounter Dr Gostello’s Intergalactiac Psycho-Circus – roll for extent of vomit.’

There were a few early ideas in Rogue Trader, some of which even made it into miniature form, which weren’t taken any further (Pisceans, Dominators, Space Slann, Gyrinx etc). Were there any we don’t know about?

Don’t think so. We weren’t exactly shy about throwing it all it. Cram it on in there.

For many years, there’s been a steady migration towards very rigidly presented rules and it’s all but unheard of these days for a rules set to even mention the use of a referee or Gamesmaster. I have my own theories on this (the world is becoming ever more left-brained and literal, moving away from the right-brained, intuitive approach!) and I wondered if you have any thoughts on this phenomenon? Are we ever likely to see a widespread return to rules aimed at the GM (as in Black Powder). Do you think there’s scope for this in sci-fi/fantasy gaming, or is it likely to be limited to the older crowd, who gravitate towards historical gaming?

Yes I think there is much in what you say. The same thing happened to D and D – what was a very free form, liberating and empowering (if I may use that word) concept slowly turned into formulaic, rule-driven, prescriptive drivel. It is not the world I grew up in that’s for sure (not last time I looked anyway). Anyway – is there room for an older, gentler style of SF or fantasy game in a world where everything is points values and games balance – dunno. You can’t get back to the past. Lord knows I’ve tried. Perhaps I’ll have another go one day – then we’ll find outJ

On that subject, reading Black Powder I can almost imagine a gaming career that’s come full-circle, with the focus firmly back on the group of friends gaming for fun, to tell a cool story and to enjoy the miniatures and terrain on show. I wonder if this is a road all gamers are fated to travel, with maturity bringing a certain appreciation of what appealed to you when you first got into the hobby?

I guess so! You have to separate the games I was playing socially from the work – and because I was so heavily involved with Warhammer and 40K as a job it meant I rarely played those games just ‘for fun’ from the 90’s onwards. By then both games had acquired a character and a commercial role that took precedence – so it was more a question of making sure they worked well within very narrow and specific commercial boundaries. I think that ‘head-to-head’, point value driven, army list moderated, competitive or tournament style game was just the ‘commercial’ side. And don’t forget we grew GW from about £10M to £100M so this was not a small consideration. I never stopped with the looser style of game outside of work – it’s just that the friends I continued to play with were primarily interested in historical games.

Lastly, I think we all have our favourite gaming moments, especially relating to Rogue Trader (that time the Squats and the Assassin got eaten by a carnivorous plant while the Rogue Trader and his Jokaero sidekick escaped the angry Zoats for example!). Are there any fond reminiscences of Rogue Trader or similar games you would be kind enough to share with us?

Yes I have fond memories of playing the pre-release game on the floor of the house I shared with John Stallard and Anthony Epworth – we’d invite all of our mates round including the renowned Pete ‘Pedro’ Cantor. Pete’s incompetent exploits earned him a place in the book and… little was I to know… beyond! Our games would usually involve an Imperial Inquistor and a few squads of Space Marines (all LE1 – it’s all we had) turning up at an Imperium outpost that had sent some emergency psychic signal or other – only to find the colonists had been taken over by Enslavers (using D and D beholders) and the resident psyker had been mutated into a warp gate. Pete always blundered into the obvious ambush and got eaten by the zombie colonists. In the game I mean. Not for real. We didn’t do that sort of thing even then. And still don’t in case you were wondering.

That sounds the like the next Tales from the Maelstrom blog battle report right there! (the bit about the Inquisitor and the Enslavers, not the stuff about being eaten by real zombies…!). Sorry, anyway, any last words?

Although it all seems a long time ago - because it undoubtedly is - it's still nice to know that the same spirit and imagination that went into the creation of 40K is thriving and even continuing to grow well into the 21st century. That can only be a good thing can't it!

A battered old farm truck for the agri world....

2011-08-09T19:30:00.006+01:00

Really quick job on this one done this afternoon. Not *amazingly* happy with it but it's just going to be scenery more than anything else. I was really happy with it then overdid the rust and chipping and it's a bit hard to undo that without starting again... oh well :(

Pretty much a stock Skeeta truck by Ramshackle with an extra spare tyre... ( i know there are bits damaged it was a free miscast).

New additions to the Rogue Trader crew

2011-08-06T17:28:00.000+01:00

Hey guys

Just finished a few more additions to the rogue trader crew. From left to right we have a Void Master (White Dwarf subscription miniature), a Seneschal (a Black Cat bases robot) and a Jokaero from Citadel's new Grey Knights range.

Cheers!

A better pic of the cudear, adventurers, Imperial Army in distress and some mercs

2011-07-20T01:51:00.005+01:00

Nothing new here but some compiled minis. I've a better pic of the Cudbear taken by Curtis who sculpted it... some Imperial army medics and wounded. All of the adventurers painted to date and all of the mercs range painted to date!

An Old School Inquisitors Retinue

2011-07-15T00:49:00.006+01:00

Taken far longer than planned to get these lads into action.

Inquisitor Siegfried a retinue including a few Alien types.

Oh and in other news a Cthellian Cudbear savaging an unlucky Guardsman

Alien encounter

2011-06-17T19:09:00.000+01:00

Just finished this miniature - its Reaper's Empress Messalina. Hopefully she'll be making an appearance in a Rogue Trader matinee soon!

Landing party

2011-06-10T17:00:00.000+01:00

A couple more of the Rogue Trader crew reporting for duty. The pilot is one of Forge World's event-only miniatures, and the cyclops mutant adventuress is from Reaper (with a weapon swap) - I assume she's a tribute to Leela from Futurama! The shuttle is from Forge World too.

Pirates off the Starboard bow!

2011-05-27T15:55:00.009+01:00

Well its nice to finally produce some finished miniatures, and to be honest these Orc Pirates by Black Scorpion were a joy. They have enough detail to be interesting without being overloaded and distracting. So here are some of the Piratical Orc crew that will be terrorising some unfortunates in the near future!

The Red Corsair Kaptin Kindly

Lt Pores

Able Seaman Flashwit

The Heavies

Old School gaming - my take

2011-05-21T19:46:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Porky over on the Porky’s Expanse blog, there’s been a fair bit of chat recently about ‘old school gaming’, in particular as it relates to 40k, in the form of Rogue Trader. As someone who likes to mess around with this type of gaming, I thought I’d set down what it means to me.

Just to clarify, this is my own view of things, and not necessarily that of the other guys in the group who contribute to this blog. I’m sure they’ll be happy to chip in with their own views too. I’d also like to ensure anyone who cares that I play all manner of games, including the most recent editions of Warhammer and the likes, so I’m not preaching or trying to convert anyone away from their favourite game!

What I regard as ‘old school’ isn’t primarily about rules, miniatures or background setting, though these undoubtedly come into things with the type of game we play. To me, ‘old school’ is all about freedom and entertainment. It’s treating a game as a cooperative, story-driven activity, though one person is still actively trying to ‘win’ (because the characters represented by his miniatures are often fighting for their lives!). It isn’t competitive and it certainly needs no FAQs – the rules are just there to provide structure, not to confine the action.

I’d actually go a bit further, and make something of a leftfield suggestion. I’d say that we live in an increasingly technical, specialised society, and as such those who think primarily with the left hemisphere of their brains (that dealing with logic, reason etc) dominate many aspects of our world. ‘Old school’ harks back to a time before the rise of the ‘left brain thinking’, technological society, when the right hemisphere (that dealing with creativity and intuition) was more important than it is now. I’d back this up by observing how people fixate over the wording of rules, rather than over the possibilities they present, and how some people are always saying that ‘they’ understand the rule, but that ‘someone else’ may not.

So, to yank the steering wheel back and haul the juggernaut of nonsense back onto the hardpan, Rogue Trader is, for me, representative of everything I want from gaming. As a rules set, its all over the place, but that’s fine with me. It’s far from the most sophisticated of sets in content or execution, but its built in such a way that GMs and players can easily get under the hood and tinker to their heart’s content. Furthermore, the setting is incredibly open, relying as it does on familiar and well-loved archetypes, meaning that almost any cultural motif can be riffed off of, plumbing untold depths of creativity in us all.

For me though, the best thing about it is the way the rules continuously refer to this nigh-extinct being known as a ‘games master’ – a player who, because he actually wants to do so, sets aside his participation as a belligerent (for want of a better word) and assumes the role of ring master, entertainer, referee and conductor (as well as host and sometimes griddle cook!).

I’m a GM far more than I am a player, and I love nothing more hobby-wise than creating the whole set up for my mates to enjoy, including the table, miniatures, story and special rules. Fortunately, I have a small group of friends (and more on the interwebs) who feel the same. Other people struggle to convert their mates to this type of gaming, which is understandable, but worth pursuing. If you succeed, you’ll find this type of game is at once incredibly ‘grown up’, but at its source entirely childish, as you’re effectively entertaining, even channelling, the child within.

I may have strayed in preaching then, for which I apologise! Anyone have any thoughts on this issue?

New additions to the bridge crew!

2011-05-15T16:21:00.000+01:00

An Andromadan Bounty Huntress, from Reaper Miniatures.

The ship's Arch-Militant -the 2004 'Chick Challenge' special edition miniature, sculpted by Steve Buddle, (slightly converted).

An action shot, just for the fun of it!

Rogue Trader conversion

2011-05-11T09:42:00.000+01:00

Just finished up a 'Privateer Godwin' from Hasslefree Miniatures, which following a headswap with a plastic Space Wolves Wolf Scout is a Rogue Trader. I hid the neck join using the smallest eagle from the Forge World Imperial Eagles etched brass set, and overall I'm pretty pleased with him! I'm currently working up a retinue of odd characters, including several from Reaper's Chronoscope line, so hopefully they'll make an appearance in a battle report soon.

Pictures and new stuff...

2011-05-06T10:10:00.005+01:00

Here are some pictures of the APC that featured in our last game. It's my first attempt at using the (then) new weathering powders that I have had hanging around in my place for ages. I think it's come out fairly well, there are areas that could be improved but at least I have around 10 of these vehicles in various guises to mess about with.

I also have some teasers for the next style of game we are going to be trying. We are going to be trying out Cutlass from Black Scorpion games, and having read the rulebook briefly I really like the the system behind the game. So here are some teasers as to which crew I will be painting up.

Finally heres a trio of minis that I will be working on in the near future.

Only a brief shot, but there is more to come as soon as I can get my hands around a brush for a reasonable amount of time!

Urban Uprising - Rogue Trader Battle Report

2011-04-17T16:31:00.000+01:00

For this game, we used the Rogue Trader rules pretty much ‘out of the box’, (though both players decided to use Overwatch a few turns in, which isn’t technically from the core rules as this rule appeared later on in the White Dwarf Compilation. In addition, we used the vehicle rules from the Warhammer 40,000 Compendium.

The field of battle

The game was handled almost exactly as Rogue Trader was designed to play, with the GM (me) designing both sides, providing the miniatures, briefing the players and the likes. I made up each side to around 300 points, then allowed the players to add additional equipment to take the total up to 500 points each. Both choose make up a vehicle.

Civilians going about their business

Giovanni Clemp's cunning hiding place

The idea of the scenario was that the Adeptus Arbites have recently established a Bastion-Precinct on Jeriko Reach. Local anti-Imperium elements aren’t happy about this, and set up an ambush. The Arbites are tipped off that the wanted rabid interplanetary bankrobber Giovanni Clemp is hiding out the settlement, and in response they initiate a house-to-house search. At this point, the rebels, with xenos mercenary hired-help, launch their attack.

The Arbites player was briefed in secret that his objective (Giovanni Clemp) is hiding inside one building on the tabletop, and he must locate him and get him back to the Bastion-Precinct to win. The player could set up his Arbites anywhere on the table he wanted.

The rebel player was briefed in secret that he could place his Smoggers (the xenos mercs) inside one building, and they would be Hidden until revealed. His rebels could enter play later on by any table edge. To win, he had to wipe out or seriously defeat the patrol.

The Arbites deployed more or less in the open, in a single group supported by their tank. The Smoggers were hidden in the building right in front of them, so it was clear things were going to kick off straight away.

The Smoggers unleash their ambush on the Adeptus Arbites patrol

As the Arbites advanced through the settlement, the Smoggers revealed themselves and threw their rad grenades into the street. One judge and a civilian were killed in the opening salvo, and fortunately the rest made it clear in their turn. The strength and range of rad grenades is kept secret in Rogue Trader (unless a character has a rad counter) and so the GM took charge of their effects.

The techno-savages infiltrate the settlement

Battle is joined

A firefight broke out in the centre, and several of the Smoggers were gunned down. Their Shaman decided that discretion was the better part of valour and used his Teleport psychic power to redeploy to the top of the Bastion-Precinct.

Flamed

Meanwhile, the rebels started to deploy, coming on in three small groups on three sides of the table. One rebel was attacked by a Imperial civilian (a nun no less) though the rebel made short work of her...

A nun gives a rebel a piece of her mind

Most of the Smoggers had been wiped out by the guns of the Arbites tank, and so the rebels decided they had to deal with the vehicle. They had only one weapon that could deal with it, and this was a (one use) vortex grenade! This was thrown, and missed the target, but the scatter brought it back to clip the tank’s front. Though just a glancing hit, the damage was sufficient to wreck the vehicle’s drive train and flip it over, taking it out of the battle. In the next turn, the vortex grenade expanded to three times its initial size, then disappeared, leaving a smoking crater behind.

Tank vs vortex grenade

Meanwhile, the rebels’ flamer was causing havoc, but was eventually silenced by the Arbites Psyker agent using her Jinx power to snarl its mechanism. She went on to do the same with several more rad grenades thrown by the surviving Smoggers, though she took several wounds in the process.

Arbites robo-hound vs tecno-savages

Battle across the roof tops

In the centre of the settlement, a major scrap broke out, which lasted throughout the battle and saw several of both sides fall. The Arbites just about had the edge.

The final confrontation

The battle was ultimately decided when the Arbites Psyker agent saw the rebel leader swaggering into town like he owned the place. Using her Teleport psychic power to charge right across the table, she engaged the leader in close combat. The rebel leader was fresh to the fight however, while the psyker agent had already taken two wounds during the fight, and she was struck down. At that point, the last couple of remaining Arbites disengaged, and the rebels swept into town.

All in all, everyone seemed to enjoy the game. As a GM, I failed the Arbites player a bit, in that his mission was really impractical with the small, elite force he had. So at the end of the game Giovanno Clemp the rabid interplanetary bankrobber was still cowering in his hiding place and the rebel techno-savages had driven the Arbites from town. Plenty of ideas for the next game there…

Mooks in Space

2011-04-15T18:50:00.000+01:00

Just a quick question for all the old school skirmish vets - the game of Rogue Trader we played this week (full report to follow when I have an hour to type it up!) was interesting, in that the sort of rules and game we were playing occassionally called for more detail than Rogue Trader can provide, but still looked great with 10-20 models per side (about 500 points including a vehicle each). This got me thinking about using the Inquisitor rules (with 28mm miniatures) to better play the actions of the heroes, but as we all know, that ruleset is best suited to 3-5 miniatures per side, which isn't the sort of game we're often after.

It occured to me that there might be a compromise, and I wondered if anyone else has tried it. Has anyone written a set of house rules that allow the fielding of hordes of lowly 'mooks' in Inquisitor, leaving all the detailed rules to the 'stars'? Fantasy Flight Games' Deathwatch RPG does this, allowing the players to command 'Hordes' of NPCs against the enemy (who may be Hordes or NPCs too).

If not, maybe I'll have a go. That way, we could try a game where the heroes get to be heroes, and the red shirts do what they do best too!

First Contact

2011-04-09T20:55:00.000+01:00

I ordered myself a little treat this week in the form of a set of Smoggers from Moonfleet Miniatures (via Black Cat Bases). I plan to use these as Jawa-type scavengers in our Rogue Trader games, as I imagine the scum and villains living on the Imperium's frontier worlds would tolerate the pressence such xenos. Hopefully we'll be playing a game next week, and I'm cooking up an interesting scenario involving these guys.

Future Warriors Techno Savages

2011-04-03T16:24:00.001+01:00

Just finished off a bunch of classic miniatures from the early-mid '90s, in the form of Mark Copplestone's Future Warriors Techno Savage. These miniatures were part of a larger range Mark released, all of which feel to me very much part of the old school wargaming ouvre. To me, they fit right into the old Citadel Rogue Trader range, so I've almost meant to get hold of some and include them in our campaign. The range is still available, and at very reasonable price, from EM4 Miniatures, and I intend to get the whole lot in time!

Old Stuff Day post

2011-03-02T15:35:00.001Z

Just thought I'd re-post this picture for Old Stuff Day :-)

Mysterioulsy Acquired Crazy Syndrome!

2011-02-18T17:29:00.001Z

So then, we had a get together and some pizza last night to talk about the mass of rules we use in our gaming, as they've evolved over the last couple of years from 'counts as Necromunda' to 'almost Rogue Trader'. Below are the principles and house rules we decided to settle on, and we hope they might be of use to others doing something similar.

Gripped firmly by MACS, we've decided to go over to the core Rogue Trader rules, with the following House Rules...

Movement
As a matter of convenience, Reserve moves should be made as per the Run move rule from Necromunda.

Climbing, Jumping and Falling rules from Necromunda will be used.

The Stand and Shoot charge reaction may only be made if the charger is visible to the charged model at the beginning of the move, and over half his charge move away.

Chargers who wipe out their opponent in one move will be able to make an Overrun move.

Shooting
All of a player’s shooting attacks should be declared before any dice are rolled, as per the commentary in the GM section.

Overwatch may be used in small scale games, and at the GM’s discretion. To do so will require a successful Cool Test.

Ammo Checks may be used in small games, when the GM rules they are necessary, perhaps because the scenario suggests it or one side are true irregulars with no steady resupply chain.

In small scale games, the Necromunda Injury system will be used.

The ‘Duck Back and Shock’ advanced rule will be used.

Shooting at a Pinned target incurs an additional -1 to hit.

Flak armour will gain +1 Save vs Blast Weapons as per Necromunda.

Psykers
A psychic power may be generated or chosen as a mutation.

Mutations cost no points, but all those generated must be applied.

Psykers will take Perils of the Warp tests as per Necromunda rules when their psi-points drop below their Willpower score and they have to start rolling the use their powers.

Psykers specialising in esoteric disciplines (Pyromancy for example) or from primitive worlds may generate spells from 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles (to continue the Pyromancy example, taking fire-themed Elementalist spells), as the two systems are compatible.

Vehicles
The vehicle rules published in the White Dwarf Compendium are to be used.

Players designing their own vehicles should be mindful of the high Toughness value many of the pre-generated vehicles have, and limit Toughness to around 6 except for true armoured vehicles.

Robots
The Robots rules published in the White Dwarf Compendium will be used.

In small scale games, the rules programs will be used, but in larger games players should use the rules for issuing Specific Orders.

Players should limit the Toughness values of their robots so that small arms have a chance of damaging them.

Campaigns
In small scale games, warbands may be selected using the Rogue Trader rules for generating personalities, up to a total warband starting value of 500 points.

Any equipment may be chosen, as we trust each other not to take the Michael.

The Rogue Trader Injuries in Campaigns rules will be used.

At the end of a campaign game, whoever is GMing will award Advances to each side, which count as ‘Advance Points’ as detailed in the Rogue Trader Personalities section. A character may advance any one characteristic by +1 per game, up to the racial maximum (remember to recalculate the characters’ points values, as the other side may be a one-off warband made to an equal points value for just one game). The GM will also award Points to spend on equipment, new warband members etc, as befits the scenario.

GMs may use and award any of the skills from Necromunda, but should be mindful that characters don’t get too unwieldy or overly powerful (Space Marines should always have Rapid Fire for example, but most of their power is derived from their stats and equipment). Players wishing to give such skills to their characters as advances will have to clear it with the group.

Aside from pistols and grenades, all weapons etc should be represented on the miniatures.

New old content!

2011-02-11T14:08:00.001Z

One of our readers (Doom on You I believe) asked me a while back about the content of the old Jericho Reach blog - well, I've just worked out that it's possible to import posts from one blog to another, so all the old Jericho Reach posts are now on this blog. I'm not sure the tags have survived the process, but the posts themselves appear to be there for those willing to dig for them, so as I get the chance I'll update the tags.

Space Slann vs Deathwatch Old School vs New School battle report

2011-02-06T12:58:00.000Z

On a backwater wilderness zone world somewhere on the Eastern Fringe, a transmat portal blinks into life, and a group of aliens, their kind not seen in the galaxy for aeons, emerges. The Slann have travelled from the past to scry what the 41^st Millienium portends for their kind, and are horrified at what they find. Their world, so verdant and pristine when they left its pastures, is now a blasted wasteland, stained by the tread of base mortals. Evoking the transmat portal to return to their time, the Slann prepare to depart.

But others have noted their coming, and even as the Slann retreat, the hunters are closing in…

This game was fought using the Necromunda rules, but with psychics as described in Rogue Trader (Necromunda psychics rules are a bit mundane for our tastes!). The Space Slann force was devised using the profiles and points values in Rogue Trader, and these were multiplied by 10 to get an equivalent Necromunda gang rating. The Deathwatch Kill-team was put together using the stats, skills and gang rating of a Chaos Space Marine from the Outlanders supplement as a basis. The Deathwatch Kill-team came to a gang rating of 2500 with just the gear the models were carrying, so the Space Slann had to be loaded up with lots of exotic equipment to match, which was a bit of a balancing act as I didn’t want to overload the Slann player with unfamiliar rules. The Space Slann had a psyker, and the player would choose one power of each of the four levels.

In this scenario, the Space Slann deployed first, no model nearer than 8” from another (as they are still exploring the area). The Deathwatch then deploy onto a board edge of that player’s choice. To determine who goes first, the Slann each roll 2d6+Initiative; if there is a Space Marine within this distance, the Slann would go first, if not, the Kill-team went first.

The Space Slanns’ objective is to escape the ambush, and they must do so via the transmat portal. This will appear on a secret dice roll made by the GM, and would scatter 2d10” from the centre of the table. This the Space Slann player knew, but he didn’t know that once the portal had appeared he would have to keep it in place, by the nearest model making a Leadership Test – if failed, it would scatter again.

The Deathwatch Kill-team player knew only that he would be facing some form of alien, and wasn’t told anything about his foe or allowed to see their list once the game had started. His objective was to catch at least one alive.

So here’s the highlights of what happened...

Turn 1: The Deathwatch move in from the east, but the Slann psyker envelops three of their number in a Ectoplasmic Mist, slowing them down, and blocking the otherwise dominating position the heavy bolter had gained. The mist would stay in place for a random number of turns known only to the GM, which turned out to be seven.

Turn 2: The Deathwatch struggle through the mists, bolter and plasma round flying back and forth.

Turn 3 and 4: The Slann redeploy in the face of the Kill-team’s advance, and a shot from the heavy bolter causes a Displacer Field to kick in and displace the Slann right into the open.

Turn 5: The transmat portal appears, scattering just behind the Slann psyker (and almost taking him through it in the process).

Turn 6: The Slann suffer their first casualty, the Slann who was displaced into the open. The Assault Marine charges the isolated Commander Xix. The combat result was a draw, but Xix’s Initiative was higher, granting him a hit on the marine, who failed his save and died!

Turn 7: The Slann nearest to the transmat portal fails his Leadership test and it displaces, further to the east, meaning the remaining Slann have further to travel to reach safety. But, two Slann, including the psyker are near enough to flee, and they exit the table via the portal.

Turn 8: The Ectoplasmic Mist dissipates, opening up the heavy bolter’s field of fire. Wasting no time, the heavy bolter downs a Slann while another Battle-Brother captures himself a Slann (the Slann was down, so while the marine remained in base contact he had him subdued).

Turn 9: The transmat portal displaces again, this time ending up inside the giant skull, and closer to the remaining Slann.

Turn 10: The Slann pass their Leadership test to keep the portal in place. The heavy bolter wounds Commander Xix.

Turn 11: The heavy bolter continues its rain of death on the battle field, displacing another Slann in to the open.

Turn 12: Commander Xix guns down the Kill-team leader with his plasma pistol.

Turn 13: All the Slann make a bolt for the portal, and the heavy bolter slays Commander Xix.

Turn 14: Two more Slann escape, the Deathwatch close in a capture another.

The game ended with the Slann getting the majority of their war party away, but two of their number have been captured. Clearly, the next battle will see the Slann attempting to rescue their fellows from the alien autopsy tables of the Ordo Xenos!

More Space Slann

2011-01-29T17:58:00.002Z

This is the third batch of Space Slann I've painted. I have four more of the range to paint, and one more to find, and then I'll have the whole lot!

Pirates!

2011-01-29T17:57:00.000Z

Just a quick shot of some of the hobby I've got done today - a pirate crew for the game mentioned in the previus post.

Lizardmen warband

2010-12-29T17:00:00.001Z

Here'a little force I've finished in between other bits and bobs. It's a Lizardman warband, intended to go up against some pirates after their Slann gold. I plan to run this as a skirmish game for the guys sometime in the new year, so I won't give away much more! I'll base the lizardmen on the warband found in the Lustria: Cities of Gold Mordhiem setting (published in Town Cryer magazine), and the Pirates on the warband published in Town Cryer 6 (I think), with a load more Indiana Jones-style hazard added in.

Merry Christmas from the Maelstrom

2010-12-25T19:52:00.004Z

Happy Holiday Y'all

Through the Warp Portal!

2010-12-23T14:25:00.000Z

Just a quick update from me, as I mentioned a while back we were considering adding Warhammer content to this blog. I've recently won on eBay, and received today the booklet from the old 'Blood on the Streets' card building/background set released by GW in 1985. This was one of the first wargaming supplements I ever owned, so flicking through it again is great. I have a vague idea of recreating the setting using the modern plastic terrain, as well as townsfolk miniatures from the Mordheim, Hasslefree, Reaper and (hopefully) Lead Adventure ranges. Using the Empire in Flames supplement from Mordheim to add skirmish-level details should make for some fun, old school Warhammer action!

Something that was interesting to read was the fact that I remembered the background as being fairly generic, and not having much to do with the modern Warhammer. I was quite surprised to read the background and find its pretty much in line with the current setting, but with a few weird bits thrown in (like the shrine of the otherwise extinct Cult of Gadd). I reckon this was written at the time several developers joined GW from the old TSR UK studio to work on the first edition of WHFRP, so this may actually contain the first seeds of the more detailed setting information that went into the roleplay book.

Cheers!

Work in progress marines and eldar pirates

2010-12-19T22:40:00.004Z

Seeing as we're based in the maelstrom i opted for lamenters as the marines of choice.
Here is the WIP of a coms officer to test colour schemes.

Equally I'm building up 30 or so eldar corsairs, here's five of the provisionally titles 'wraith company'.

Quick update

2010-11-26T13:08:00.001Z

We've been a bit quiet recently, because being hobbyists we're easily distracted by shiny things. Some of us have been playing FFG's Rogue Trader roleplaying game, and others the new edition of Warhammer, so our old school hobby activities have been somewhat curtailed.

So, we'll get some hobby content up soon, but we also thought we'd expand things a bit and use the blog to track our pen and paper Rogue Trader adventures as well as the traditional tabletop ones. We use our RT miniatures for this anyway (and last session they were fighting in the bowels of their engineering deck using a Space Hulk board as the setting) so this seems to fit.

Also, we've invited the guys from the rpg group to post here too, so hopefully they'll be adding whatever content they want to as well.

Maybe we could even expand it to cover a Warhammer campaign we have planned (as I want to get some stuff from the 1st and 2nd edition of that game in too), but one thing at a time!

Any comments welcome!

Inquisimunda

2010-10-25T17:34:00.000+01:00

Just a quick one, Jeremy Olson, the Empire of Ghosts blogger has released a set of rules pretty much in line with the sort of thing we ourselves play (even if we never write them down!). Head over to Jeremy's blog and let him (and us) know what you think!

Rogue Trader command crew Work in Progress

2010-10-12T17:42:00.001+01:00

Just a quick update as I haven't posted in a while! Here's a Rogue Trader command crew, missing only the Astropath and some armed ratings.

Left to right, we have the Missionary (Citadel Uriah Jacobus miniature), Void Master (conversion), Seneschal (Citadel Master of the Fleet miniature), Rogue Trader (conversion), Navigator (conversion), Void Mistress (Chick Challenge 2004 miniature), Explorator (Citadel Skullz promo miniature), an Arch Miliatnt (based on Citadel Scout Sergeant Telion) and a Kroot Scout (Games Day special).

Hopefully they'll be finished in the next few weeks and we can run a battle report!

Rogue Trader Void Master conversion

2010-09-30T13:35:00.004+01:00

Now.. those that know me will know that I rarely if ever bother with the newer stuff for 40k, especially not plastics.

For me its all about the character, collectability and nostalgia of those early ranges - painting and collecting them as an adult (loosely speaking) brings back pleasant memories of golden summers fighting battles over rubbish home made terrain and using tanks made out of star wars toys in my mates garage.

Anyway... I was kindly invited to join on the Colonels Rogue Trader RPG game and in the spirit of the invite and inspired by his awesome Voidmaster I thought I'd have a crack at doing an 'avatar' of my own character.

Again I went for a Voidmaster but on a different track, my characters an ex imperial Navy pilot/helmsman. 'Isiah Crook' is loosely based visually on a certain famous sci fi smugler pilot and I tried to incorporate at least one element from classic RT goodness (its cunningly highlighted in yellow for those failing to spot it).

As a former fighter pilot I gave him some old Navy flight trousers, chopped up some cadian boots to maek pilot boots and used the upper body from some WFB empire free company and cannon crew to give him a more buccaneer look. Originally I'd managed to convert him to have one hand on his hip which was a better pose astride a bucketload of spent casings from his 'boarding shotgun' - but the 'shouting' head looked odd with a static pose. I really liked the head from the tank crew sprue and originally meant to use a valkerie gunner or pilots head but this looked better, especially with black gloss painted shoulder pad put on the front as a 'blast visor' (another nod to said film).

Lastly in a break from tradition I decided to base him in a less rural way as I imagine most of the action in the campaign will be aboard ship and station!

Rogue Trader conversion

2010-09-24T18:04:00.000+01:00

Here's a quick shot of the Rogue Trader I've just finished, before the light goes. He's built from so many parts I'm not sure I can remember them all, and he took about three builds to get right, so I'm fairly pleased with him. I'll take a better shot along with some of his companions when the light's better.

Rogue Trader Imperial Scout

2010-09-20T14:58:00.002+01:00

Just who do you think gets the dirty job of landing on all these planets first...

I tried to go for a slightly suntanned desert wanderer look and i'm not *amazingly* happy with the shemagh but it will do for now, if i find later i can paint it better I'll give him a repaint.

I particularly like how he's got an eldar pistol being on the fringes of known space and unlikely to get executed for xenos weaponry and also probably having had contact with Eldar several times in the past as the vanguard of humanity.

Rogue Trader RPG Voidmaster

2010-09-18T18:48:00.000+01:00

Just finished this miniature (literally, sorry about the glare on the wet paint on the base!). He's my character in the Rogue Trader RPG, a 'Voidmaster', which is character class specialising in anything to do with the running of a starship (could be the master helmsman, gunner, sensor guy, anything like that).

He's converted using the legs from a servitor, torso from a Catachan heavy weapon crew (with greenstuff piping and raggy coat sleeves), the left arm from the original servitor, right from the Catachan command squad set, shoulder pads from Mongoose Judge Dredd Street Punks, a resin Forge World head and the hat is from a Privateer Press mercenary Warcaster - so quite a rummage in the bits box for that lot!

An alien gribly

2010-09-14T10:31:00.002+01:00

A ten minute paint of one of the old familiar models.

I'm going to try and track down a few more of these to make a pack of them.

regrettably the citadel archive familiar packs you can buy dont have this one in them...

I'm leaving basing him until i've a batch of minis to do.

Maelstrom Marines Musing. Opinions sought....

2010-09-13T23:41:00.002+01:00

Right chaps, i've got about 30 or so RT space marines due for a paint job.

I've narrowed it down to a few ideas but would appreciate views from those of you who dig what we do.

Essentially i like old school marine paint jobs and i love marines in camo... I also 'got into' 40k with the old badad war spread in White Dwarf 101 - so much so i once wrote an entire campaign weekend based on it. So i really want a chapter from the Badab war.

I like the idea of space borne chapters so one idea was Space Sharks or Fire Angels... both have regular variants and a cool camo version to add some variety.

My number once choice would be lamenters but i'm still struggling painting large blocks of yellow and I think the shoulder pad would be a nightmare on 30 minis... however i do adore the concept and background of the lamenters.

A recent thought was the mantis warriors, again space born, again with a regular scheme and a camo variant... i also like the fact they seem to be a renegade jungle fighting chapter and woudl make great opponents for the swamp tigers.

So people thoughts?

Some more Swamp Tigers guard.

2010-08-31T15:35:00.004+01:00

I've recently added a medical section and recce element to the Swamp Tigers. Also for scenario purposes only (far too overpowered to be part of a standing force in our scale of games) I've added a Rhino APC for the guardsmen. The Sentinel was converted by our very own Dieselmonkey and normally alrering a classic sculpt would have me in a fit but i genuinly think his conversion is far better than the original format so i dint try and retrofit it.

In contrast the Rhino was made out of three utterly destroyed kits, i managed to salvage enough parts to make one 'runner' out of the three (which is pretty much how i imagine the 'tigers' manage their vehicles on long campaigns).

Oh and the sentinel is such a light vehichle i thought it prudent to make a 'dismounted and mounted' crewman set.

Here we go then...

Medical section

Light AT Operator

"Raptor" Company Recce

APC

Some random pics of an old game

2010-08-27T17:07:00.000+01:00

Delving into my cogitation engine's archive stack I found some pics of a game I played with my girlfriend over a year ago, and thought I'd share them. As the game was set at night (it was basically two rival gangs of smugglers launching a simultaneous raid on a customs station) I filtered the pics to make them look like night vision shots. I don't recall much of the story line or even who won (though I doubt it was me!) but here they are anyway, in case they're of interest.

Forget Me Not Blues.

2010-08-18T23:13:00.006+01:00

Almost finsished the planets garrison troopers known colloquially as 'blues'.

This squad still needs the squad leader (the old 'slaughter margine' Judge Dredd mini 'mek' and if anyone has one spare, let me know...)

These guys will be supported by patrol wagons, squadspeeders (a converted Space Marine scout transport speeder) and Riot Droids (demilitarised imperial robots).

Battle Report using Book of the Arbitrator rules

2010-08-13T18:52:00.003+01:00

We had a game the other day, using a player-created variation on the Necromunda rules called Book of the Arbitrator. This set is a collection of house rules and a huge amount of work’s gone into it. The writer Torben Kastbjerg explains his reasons for altering things, making them just the way he and his own gaming group like to play. As such a lot of work had gone into Book of the Arbitrator we decided to give it a go.

The main change from our point of view was the implementation of an initiative based integrated turn sequence. Obviously this changes the game a huge amount and this particular variant on the concept took us a while to get our heads around. I’ve seen this idea presented in quite a few different ways, and this came across as one of the more complex iterations as it required characters to be given two new Initiative scores. We found it a little over complex for the game (perhaps just alternating between each player’s characters might have been better for us).

Another change is the way that injuries work – there’s no Injury roll, but characters generally have a lot more Wounds (and suffer stats negatives when they lose a certain amount). I assume this is because the integrated turn sequence makes Recovery hard to implement, so I can see why it was done, but we really missed this staple of Necromunda.

Perhaps the part of the rules that caused the most debate for us was the way the rules regarding moving and shooting, and the modifiers that go along with these have changed. In some ways more movement is possible as you can move while firing more weapons, and do so on Overwatch (at half Movement). In other ways, the introduction of an Aim action to make your shots more accurate if you don’t move would seem to mitigate against this. I think most people would agree that the more things happening in a game the better, and this is as much down to the scenario victory conditions as it is to the mechanics – after all, its all very well sitting back a firing but if you have to capture an objective or get off the opposite table edge you generally don’t win by standing and shooting.

Character creation has seen a massive overhaul, and this is where this set of house rules really shines. Characters start off with a base profile defined by their race, and then apply various bonuses to this based on their archetype. These are simple roles to define fighter, marksman, sage and scout type characters. Furthermore, there’s a huge amount of skills that characters can utilise, each serving to define the character more – great stuff there.

Torben has provided a great range of campaign options, including an implementation of the Mordheim Exploration-based campaign. In my opinion, this style of campaign is much better for open-ended campaigns, though the territory system is better suited to those looking to play exclusively within the Necromunda setting. This set of rules isn’t tied to gang warfare in the Underhive, so the Exploration system provides a more open backdrop that any faction could get involved in.

In general, the rules are (in character at least) a hybrid between Necromunda and Inquisitor. As a group, our reactions were mixed – we liked some bits and didn’t like others. Some things made us think how we’d do them differently and others what we’d alone. In all, Torben should be commended for writing a set of rules tailor made for his own gaming group and for presenting them to a wide audience. Even if people don’t use them entirely as written (and there’s no obligation to!) he has put a huge amount of work into the project and that alone should show others wanting to write their own variant rules sets what can be done.

I’ll leave the other guys to throw in their comments, as I’m sure I’ve missed some of the points we discussed. In the meantime, here’s some shots from the game we played, which featured a Sensei Warband (with a xenos Piscean which we counted as a Kroot) vs a human defence force patrol.

Cheers!

The field of battle - ready for the plunderin'

One half of the Sensei warband.

The other half...

The defence force musters.

The defenders close in on the intruders.

A fire fight breaks out.

Defence force reserves infiltrate closer.

The Piscean seizes his prize.

The Defence force hold the central temple and the game ends.

Many new things...

2010-08-03T21:47:00.003+01:00

Back into the old painting.. today i finished of the Sensai Band, made some scenery, painted two 'ships survivors' for another FNM faction, finished a tech priest and made a start on a Jokearo... PHEW!

So here we go:

Sensei Band

Survivors

Scenery (doubles for my Vietnam gaming hence the NVA trooper next to it)

Tech Priest

Jokaero

More WIP, four virtually finished and some new starts

2010-08-02T16:49:00.003+01:00

Right the sensai band are almost finished bar basing and some minor details - not the greatest work i've done but after a six month painting break so it takes time to pick up speed again.

The other four minis will be 'FMN' citizens from the wildlands.

Space Slann Work in Progress

2010-07-29T17:11:00.001+01:00

I've now painted five of my Space Slann (which includes all but one of the original range, plus a limited/unreleased one I got hold of). I was inspired by Major Hazzard's old-school hobby-fu to post them up (and it'll encourage me to finish them off...).

A little more work on the Sensei band

2010-07-28T22:31:00.001+01:00

A new Nom De Plume

2010-07-28T14:40:00.003+01:00

Some of you may be wondering where the Pontiff went...

Well it's me!

Now posting as Major Hazzard as no end of techno-faff ups made the old account unavailable... it's not such a bad thing as the character of the Pontiff was really very much for the Jeriko Reach setting and this ones a little more 'catch all'.

So for the record... Major Hazzard and Pontiff ohm Achara are the same person. :)

Hobby work in progress

2010-07-28T14:33:00.004+01:00

Lots of stuff in the pipeline for this Autumns gaming (i'm heavily involved in the Re-enactment/living history scene so tend to not have much time in the summer months to paint or play!)

As you can see a definite jungle theme going on for 'Forget Me Not' and some adventures set there including some ruined statues and some native Jokaero. Also working on four vintage Rhinos, i was lucky enough to get several in utterly wrecked states and by carefully reducing them to components was able to make two complete ones and two wrecks - these will be an Space Marine complete and wrecked of the same vehicle and a similar one for the Swamp Tigers.

Other stuff on the cards is an Eldar Trade complete with a bodyguard and my own Sensai band that you can sea at the front.. with some alien 'muscle' (or should that be 'fin').

Deathwatch Kill-team painted and ready for action

2010-07-18T17:30:00.000+01:00

Afternoon all!

Just spent the afternoon finishing up on the Deathwatch Kill-team. Just need to get some Hasslefree Masaans ordered (hopefully in the next few days) then I'll be running some alien-hunting games.

Kill-team Watch-Captain

Kill-team leader

Assault Marine

Devastator Marine

Tactical Marine

Deathwatch Kill-team conversions

2010-06-30T09:28:00.001+01:00

Checking out Fantasy Flight Games new Deathwatch roleplaying game, I was inspired to convert a bunch of Battle-Brothers for a game against some alien beasties (I've had some Black Scorpion aliens knocking around for a while, and really want some of Hasslefree's Mesaans too). As I've never really played Space Marines I only had a few around, which were all unusual or special miniatures I'd picked up. As I was unlikely to ever use them in an army, I thought a small, elite alien-hunting Kill-team was a good use for them.

So here they are- several of these are limited edition or even unreleased, so although they're converted no actual harm was done to the base model and they can, in theory, be returned to their original state!

Deathwatch Tactical Marine, made from an Ultramarines Tyranic War Veteran.

Deathwatch Assault Marine, made from a Games Day exclusive miniature with the Thunder Hammer from the Iron Hands Tactical squad boxed set.

Deathwatch Tactical Marine, made from a Bloodquest Sergeant Tranio miniature (I don't have the left arm, so could never assemble it as intended anyway).

Kill-team leader, made from the webstore exclusive miniature.

Deathwatch Devastator, made with bionic legs and head from the Iron Hands Tactical Squad boxed set.

Big Ead's Plasma Plantation

2010-06-04T22:08:00.000+01:00

Hey guys

My apologizations for the lack of posts - work has us all very busy, some are running around fields dressed as Tommies and others are spawning!

Here's some pics of a frontier power generator/hab building, cobbled together during half hour breaks between assignments. It uses the same basic concrete-style frontier prefab as the previous building, this time with loads of bits box components to make it a power generator building. Most of the bits come from Citadel's 'Manufactoria' Cities of Death building, with a couple of odds and ends from the Planetstrike Bastion set and the pylons from the Battle for Macragge set as some form of techno-gubbins generator whatnots (that's a technical term...).

Building front - the large white strip will have some text/signage.

Side view.

Electro-techno-gubbins, plus cables from a set of dead iPod phones (which it turns out are perfect for this sort of project!)

40k Industrial Frontier Hab-bunker

2010-05-03T16:11:00.002+01:00

Hey guys

I've been tinkering away on a 40k building for the last few weeks, just doing the odd half hour between work etc. I think its more or less ready to be painted now so I thought I'd post a few pics.

I was inspired by Pontiff's Old School buildings, and wanted to evoke something similar, but rather than using the classic yogurt pot, good old polystyrene packing instead. I wanted to make a building that looked like a huge lump of pre-fab structure with loads of techy gubbins added over the years. As a nod to the Old School terrain-making articles, I wanted to leave the polystyrene visible, but still have the overall building look pretty cool (as Pontiff did with his pots).

I've used loads of stuff from the bits box on this, plus various components I've picked up. Some are spares from the Planetstrike Bastion I posted pics of a few posts back. I bought a set of railway modelers universal pipes from a local shop, which I used a lot here, especially for the valves. I also picked up a single sprue from the Citadel Shadowsword, which I ruthlessly cannibalised too.

With a bit of luck I'll be able to build a few more buildings in the same style, so we can have a small settlement, sort of Wild West 40k!

Outland Raid Battle Report

2010-04-23T17:52:00.000+01:00

Pontiff, Captain Jack and myself had time for an impromptu game the other day, so here’s a quick battle report.

We used our regular Necromunda/Rogue Trader hybrid rules (which exist only in our collective imaginations, but work for us…) I was hosting and GMing the game so provided the scenery and the tea. Unfortunately, I forgot to tell Pontiff he’d need to bring any miniatures (to anyone who started gaming after about 1990 this probably seems like someone turning up without their pants, but back in the day the GM had to provide everything, sometimes even the pants…)

Anyway, as the game was to be a matter of scavenging pirates attacking an outland mining operation, Pontiff choose a bunch of appropriate models from my collection and knocked up some profiles and gear using the Rogue Trader rules. Captain Jack brought his ‘Confector Pirates’, which are Heresy gangers and who he counts as Delaques in the Necromunda rules. Once everyone was happy that both sides looked about right, we set up.

The battlefield, with the outland scav-dig in the centre.

Captain Jack's pirate gang

The story is pretty basic, but served us well enough. The miners have found something valuable in their outland scav-dig, which the dig boss has on him. The pirates know about the ‘something’, and their mission (known only to Captain Jack) was to take the boss down in close combat and then bug out.

The miners, busy doin' nothin'

The battlefield would also feature a few environmental nasties, if for no other reason than to keep the GM entertained. These were six of Heresy’s demonic slug things, which would use the rules for Sunworms from the Rogue Trader rulebook. The other was one of Heresy’s Waspquitos, which would use the Rogue Trader rules for Pycuinens. In the event, the profiles of these things proved extremely nasty, but that just added to the fun. I had a special rule for the wasp (I’m not going to keep trying to spell what they’re called in the RT rulebook…) but as it didn’t come into play I’ll use it in a future game and it’ll still be a surprise.

The local wildlife

The players also used two randomly drawn Necromunda Event Cards each. Pontiff played ‘Shakedown’ before the game began, which caused three of Jack’s gangers to get pulled over by the fuzz on the way to the battle and turn up late (they arrived in turn three in the end).

Miners, erm, mining

The game started out with one of the miners flaming a nearby Sunworm. This was actually a bad idea, as it only made it angry and go chasing after the miner. I had it in mind that the Sunworms would only attack models that came within their charge range (2”) or who attacked them, but as Pontiff said, the miner was paid to clear the dig site of vermin, so was just ‘doing his job’.

One of the miners decides to flame a perfectly innocent Sunworm

The pirates infiltrated from the east (GM’s vantage point), and a fire fight developed between them and a Squat bodyguard who’d been performing a ‘spade recce’ behind a tree nearby (both Captain Jack and Pontiff have served in the British Army, so I spend a lot of our gaming time deciphering such slang but manage to keep up most of the time…)

The pirates close on the dig site (their target is one of the guys on the ground, who was pinned at the moment this pict was taken)

Meanwhile, the wasp moved towards the nearest model, which was one of Pontiff’s miners. It survived a shotgun blast and a boltgun shot, which just made it angrier. The resulting close combat did for the miner, and the bolter-armed bodyguard dived into the vehicle to use its heavy stubber. The bodyguard checked the vehicle’s status, but found he couldn’t start it as it had a flat battery. The only option was to utilise the electrical charge of a nearby Sunworm to jump-start the vehicle, but Pontiff didn’t fancy that as the beasties were proving pretty nasty…

The wasp attacks a miner

Meanwhile, the main group of pirates closed in on the dig site, and the ganger’s who’d been delayed turned up on the northern board edge, adding their fire to the battle.

As the wasp couldn’t get at the miner bodyguard, who was inside the vehicle, it made for the dig boss. The pirates started to shoot the wasp. Pontiff didn’t know at the time why his leader was being saved, but it was of course so that the leader could be taken down by the pirates and his body looted.

As the pirates closed on the dig site the fight escalated, with the power-armoured ‘Ironbonce the Squat’ making good use of his mining laser (meltagun). The gangers who had turned up on the northern edge found themselves outclassed, and they thought they had Ironbonce when his meltagun ran out of ammo, only for Pontiff to play the Event Card that gave him a free reload.

Eventually, the pirates’ leader and one of his gang made it into close combat with the miners’ boss. The ganger went in first and the miner boss took him down, only for the pirate boss to charge in and take him out (looting his body in the process).

The two bosses clash

At this point, the pirate gang failed its Bottle Test, but we have a house rule that says this doesn’t end the game right away and instead the gang has to make a fighting withdrawal. A couple of the pirates whose weapons were dry withdrew, while the wasp closed on the pirate leader. If it had got into combat with him it would have ripped him a new one, but fortunately it wasn’t quite quick enough, getting a face full of lead as it chased the pirates off.

Having got what he came for, the pirate boss legs it

Then the Squat Engineer blundered into another Sunworm (which Pontiff missed hidden in amongst the wreckage of a crashed shuttle). The Squat survived one round of close combat, but decided to try to break in the next. The Sunworm got a free hack and blatted the Squat into the dirt.

The Squat Engineer treads on something nasty

At the last, the pirates made off with their loot with an angry monster-wasp on their tail, and that was that. A victory for the pirates, and a messy health and safety claim for the miners…

The pirates depart, closely followed by the angry wasp

Yet more Deathworld Nasties

2010-04-03T18:47:00.000+01:00

These are intended as Sun Worms, a nasty beasty from the Rogue Trader bestiary that lurks half in shadow and half out, generating a powerful electric charge which it uses to zap anything that gets too near. The miniatures are Heresy's Giant Slugs, and they took about an hour to assemble and paint :-)

Death World Warp-Wasp!

2010-03-27T16:31:00.002Z

Here's the first of six death world nasties, a Waspquito from Heresy Miniatures.

As Andy says on his webstore, they're buggers to put together. I had to pin the wings, then apply araldite, then use superglue to set the araldite instantly (which makes for a very strong bond, which these wings need). The paint is GW Foundation Macharius Solar Orange, then Vallejo Scarlet, then a wash of GW Baal Red, then a highlight of Scarlet then a bit more orange. The wings are just black with a gloss varnish.

Not looking forward to making five more, but they'll be fun in a death world scenario! I may count them as 'psychneuins' from the Rogue Trader bestiary, which are pests that live in the warp, lay their eggs in the brains of psykers, then hatch out...nice.

"People called the Imperium they go to the house?"

2010-03-21T14:27:00.000Z

Hey guys

I've been a bit quiet recently as work has been busy, but I've just spent a few hours knocking up a bit of terrain for a campaign game I want to run, and had a bit of (very amateur!) fun mucking around with the pics in photoshop.

So, here's an Adeptus Arbite Watch-Precinct. It's made from two of the new GW Bastion kits (plenty of spare bits left over for other projects). Instead of all the weapons the kit comes with I've used all the scanner type bits, as this is intended as an Adeptus Arbites spy-tower for keeping watch on the scum, not as a military installation (plus, eight heavy bolters would ruin one of our skirmish games pretty quick!)

And here's the real reason I made the terrain...

Aztec Demon Frogmen...from Spaaace!

2010-02-19T17:14:00.001Z

Here's a pic of the first of the Space Slann miniatures I'm painting. I have an almost complete set (just one still to find) and so this is testing out the colour scheme. The green is Citadel Foundation Gretching Green, with an Asurman Blue Wash, which was highlighted up by way of 'translucent layers', using the wash to water down more Gretchin Green. Final highlights were Camo Green.

Hopefully I'll get time over the next few weeks to paint the whole warband, and then it can make an appearance on the world of Forget-me-not in some Rogue Trader B-movie-style old skool action!

It seems I've been a bit quiet lately...

2010-02-13T15:41:00.007Z

Greetings, just want to post a few WiP's that I've got going on for the blog. I feel like I'm trailing far behind in the production of new gangs and gangers, so here is a gang that I'm working on at the moment. They are an unnamed as yet security group, consisting of some armoured guards, and an investigative team.
Also I have been getting on with my Tech gang, but I don't have them handy to take pictures. It's been slow progress due to getting a bucket load of current Tyranids painted up! There are some pictures here now though!
There are also some new purchases from Heresy minis in the form of a sentry and rocket launcher for the Con-Fectors. Not forgetting a nasty, that I may be using as a special character.
Finally an update on some Hasslefree bits that I have been working at on and off.

Great minds think alike?

2010-02-12T18:22:00.000Z

Whilst trawling around the interwebs I've found some other groups using the term 'Roguemunda' to describe a hybrid of Necromunda and Rogue Trader rules they've cobbled together to use in their games. I guess there's something about the two rules sets that just do it for poeple like us! Whilst our own group tends to freestyle things by mutual consent, other groups have actually got around to setting their ideas down so others can use them too.

Here's a great example, and oddly, they do something which our own group has considered, which is taking the 'Logan's World' background from the Rogue Trader rulebook and using it as their own setting.

If anyone else wants to post links to their own, similar efforts here then please feel free to comment, with your links.

Keep up the good work everyone :-)

A non campaign pure RT game.

2010-02-07T23:30:00.011Z

This weekend I ran a battle for some mates on the industrial scene that I have known for years but not really gamed with (other than a few drunken post party games of Space Hulk with Carrie).

Sooo with Morgan, Carrie, Heather, Tom and Sian(the wife) over I put together an 'aliens' esque game on my agri-world for the guys.

The Battlefield

In this game advance elements of a hive fleet led by an bio-enhanced Zoat recce officer has landed on the world and homed in on the nearest life signs - Jadeberry farm and staff.

Hive Fleet Vanguard

Other elements of the fleets vanguard had seriously mauled beta platoon of the IX Iridian Regiment tasked with defending the the world and the survivors had made their way to the nearest defendable settlement - Jadeberry Farm.

Beta Platoon Iridian IX and Civilians

Sian and Heather played Beta Platoon, Carrie and Tom the Tyranids and Morgan played the unpredictable farm hands.

The Imperial Army enter Jadeberry Farm and are told by farmer Maddox to 'Get orff moi laaand!' until the seriousness of the situation is explained to him and his staff.

The game began with the tyrnanids moving through cover to the flanks with the rapid stealer unit racing down one wing. The guard moved into the settlement as Morgans 'farmer maddox' decided to throw his lot in with the soldiers even though they were despoiling his land.

Carries Hunter Killer units flank left and right guided by the Zoat leader.

While Tom's stealers scuttle around the fuel storage tanks on the right flank and fail their charge against the Imperials giving them a much needed extra few shots!

The tyranids rapidly advanced with the stealers while the hunter killer squads hung back seemingly more interested in scouting the farm. The humans put down some pitiful fire and before they knew it they were hit by a wave of stealers and the game turned into a desperate hand to hand battle with the tech adept managing to net a few tyranid stragglers with his webber and put them out of action.

Ogryn Sgt Te'Pow uses the trucks back cargo bay as hard cover while putting down suppressive fire!

And the Tyranid hoarde hit the humans like a wave of teeth, fangs and chitin! The civilians behind the baricades rush to help out the beleagured army troopers (and at this point the securi-pict system was disabled by the 'nids - or my batteries in the camera ran out... your choice ;) )

Luckily (amazingly in fact) the humans beat off the tyranids (even the halfling cook killed a stealer) but not before at their darkest hour the tech and astropath bottles it and climbed into the supply truck and sped out of the gates!

Eventually, cut to ribbons and reduced to a few wounds each Capt Le Bonne and Ogrun Sgt Te'Pow were the last two standing surrounded by a sea of dead beasties.

Iridian IX KIA List
Sniper (abhm) Adams
Chief mechanic Almond
Sgt Donovan
Trp Minogue
Trp Jackson
Tpr Cooper
Tpr Astley
Tpr Jackson
Trp Kemp
Trp (abhm) Roop

New terrain now painted.

2010-02-06T14:08:00.005Z

Very quick paint jobs in time for an RT demo game being ran this Sunday.

and here's the interior of the ruined hab and some more of the barn.

Todays terrain.

2010-02-05T12:37:00.001Z

Last pieces for the farm set (for now)

New stuff done today.

A ruined version of one of the hab blocks and a 'wriggly tin' barn.

The Battle of Dogtown - Roguemunda battle report

2010-02-03T15:50:00.006Z

Somewhere on the verges of the lawless Maelstrom, the frontier world of Forget-Me-Not is sliding into anarchy and chaos. The Imperium has largely withdrawn, leaving only local defence militia forces to deal with the upsurge in pirate activity.

This battle report tells the tale of a pirate attack on an agri-settlement on the verdant, yet increasingly chaotic world of Forget-Me-Not. We used the Necromunda skirmish system, with the Rogue Trader vehicle rules published in the White Dwarf Compendium. The defenders of the Dogtown settlement (controlled by Captain Jack) were put together as a Van Saar gang (with a pit slave and a cyber mastiff too), while the attacking pirates were Scavvies (controlled by Colonel Kane). Pontiff GM’d the game, throwing in plenty of extra fun events for both players to overcome.

In this scenario, the space pirates would be looking to loot the buildings and the crates, before escaping before the local militia arrives with the heavy weapons. The townsfolk can attempt to call the militia in early, by getting a model into the comms centre and sending a distress call. There’s a chance the militia will arrive each turn, which is increased if a model has made the call.

Here’s what happened…

The settlement of Dogtown, just ripe for the pickin’…

The townsfolk going about their business.

The pirates swagger into town, not expecting much resistance.

The pirates advance towards the centre of town, checking the crates for loot as they go.

One group of pirates peels of left.

The townsfolk don’t like the look of these strangers, and muster a posse to see ‘em off.

A pirate fires a flamer, taking down the agri-servitor (pit slave) and tech. Fortunately for the defenders, the flamer fails its ammo check and is now useless.

One of the townsfolk climbs into the cab of a handy land-crawler.

Rounding the corner, the crawler bears down on a pirate investigating the agri-dome.

The pirate fails to jump out of the way, and is run down, though he somehow survives the experience.

The crawler continues its rampage, bearing down on a second pirate…

…and splats him too (though he too managed to avoid death).

A defender reaches the comms centre, and the distress call is sent. The fuzz assure her they’ll be there any minute!

Little Dayv (a mutant who ‘counts as’ a scavvy armed with a pair of power fists) ‘has a word’ with the driver of the crawler, destroying the vehicle and killing the driver in the process.

The pirate captain rampages through the defenders…

…before Mayor Shaddy strolls out to insist that he ‘get off his land’. In the ensuing fight, the captain is slain.

The fuzz arrive on scene.

The pirates fail their bottle test, and leg it!

‘Put the gun down son, you’re coming with us…’

Wanted for grox-rustling and unlawful anarchy.

At the end of the game, the mutant Little Dayv and one of the pirates had been captured by the militia, so our next game will be a rescue attempt. Although the pictures didn’t come out to prove it, the most intense action was fought on the right flank, where the cyber-mastiff ‘Lulu the Terrorhound’ slew three pirates with her bare teeth.

Many thanks to Pontiff for a great game on some really cool, old-school scenery!

Jungle Patrol finished

2010-01-31T15:41:00.003Z

I've finally finished the jungle patrol I showed a few miniatures from a while back. I may also make them an ACAV style rhino at some point, but there's loads more projects to get on with first!

Patrol Commander

Signaller, posed to stand next to the commander so they appear to be talking.

Engineer, carrying a meltabomb on his back and a shedload of krak greandes on his webbing.

Flamer, for flushing out carnivorous plants and enemy ambushers.

Tracker, with motion detector, to accompany the flamer and direct his fire.

Gunner, for heavy fire support.

Patrol medic, carrying two medikits on his back.

Scout

Grenadier, carrying a looted Tau pulse carbine.

Sniper

Forget Me Not - Factions

2010-01-16T15:30:00.002Z

Forget me not has several factions and motivated group to game.

These include:

The security militia - desperatley trying to maintain law and order in a dying world.

Agri farmers - both independant and corporations

Bandits - Citizens in outlying settlements and outlaws degenerating into warring bands as resources grow scare in a second year of isolation

Eldar, human & ork pirates

The awakened Slann

and more to come.

Some Recent Developments & New Stuff

2010-01-16T12:29:00.003Z

Heya blog fans.

I've been pretty busy over the holidays working on terrain and factions for one of the new campaign settings - the imperial paradise planet known as 'Forget Me Not' (FMN for short or 'the 'not'.

FMN was once a luxurious paradise world for the imperial elite, in the hinter lands though many arcane tecnological artefacts from a pre imperial time had been discovered the Adeptus Mechanicus and gen-techs worked in secret laboratories and upon research stations on FMNs twin moons to discover the origin of these items. Until however disaster struck.

Highly secretive research on the planets second moon of 'shon' appears to have gone horribly wrong resulting in a cataclysmic explosion and destruction of the moon... the most dangerous consequence of this was that FNMs stable orbit began to shift sending the planet to the systems sun every year.

For yeas little changed , the temperature and climate became more tropical but once Imperial geographers and astrologers realised what had happened a decision was made to evacuate the imperial elite in secret but to leave the working and administerial classes in situ.

When FMN flourished the population lived in policed and protected hamlets and towns, food and material supplied by semi automated agro farms. All of these areas were electro fence protected form the local fauna (and flora) and connected by grav rail and travel tube. After the disaster the governor has ceased to be concerned with upkeep of the planer (hes too busy packing his wine cellar for departure) and many of the protective fences have fallen into disarray. This lack of repair has meant that many of the protected hunting reserves which housed dangerous game animals such as carnosaurs and bloodcats have been breached.

For the agri workers and those in remote outlets things have become even worse, destruction of areas of the transport system (many of these destroyed in the epic meteor shower that followed the destruction of Shon) have left small communities isolated for what is now a second year.

All in all the lack of law and order and the fact that the security defence militia forces (known as 'Forget Me Not Blues' after their blue uniforms) are hard pushed to maintain order in the civilised areas has meant that FNM has become a rich picking for Pirates and mercenaries who descend like vultures to pick at the dying planet.

Deep in the lush jungles, heartened by an absence of security patrols the native race of FMN (a primitive lizard like race) have been seen encroaching nearer to human areas wheras once they were only rarely seen around the xenoruins.

Some pics:

An FMN agri farm:

Security forces stretched to the limit employ ancient machinery in the form of a demiliarised robot to fend off pirate raiders.

New year... new terrain...old minis.

2010-01-02T10:19:00.003Z

Over Xmas I decided to make a 40k agri farm set.

Jungle Patrol moves out!

2009-12-27T17:12:00.003Z

Here's the first four members of an eight-man patrol I've been working on. They're made out of Catachan and Cadian plastic bits, with the new metal IG heads. As they're a jungle patrol I've painted them in UK Tropical DPM, just for fun. The scout on the right is armed with a Tau Pulse Carbine. The next guy along is the patrol commander, posed so he's talking to the signaller behind him. The last in line is the patrol marksman.

More soon!

Raiders of the Lost Archeotech

2009-12-14T22:54:00.002Z

....on a far off planetoid once home to an ancient civilisation, Xeno-archeologist Illinois James fends off a hoarde of rampaging Ambulls.

In other words.. latest paint jobs:
RT Adventurer 'bandit' and another ambull!

Above us the earth...

2009-11-26T15:31:00.002Z

More nasties for future games.

A seasonal battle - The Spirit of Kristmaas

2009-11-19T20:32:00.004Z

‘The Spirit of Krisstmaas’ - A Tales From the Maelstrom Battle Report.

Hey there blog fans.

While most of our battles in the past have been campaign based games in which our respective forces progressed and developed we thought it might be fun to do a seasonal one of and go truly ‘Old School’!

Much of this was inspired by a group decision to reject the usual battle generation chart in necromunda that we use and try more narrative battles rolled up form the (often eccentric) charts in the Rogue Trader book from the mid 80s.

Colonel Kane (CK from here on) picked up his trusty D10 and rolled for us a ‘Raid and Capture’ scenario that ran thus:

“An unusual character has appeared in the city – a grinning maniac with strange habits and clothes. His questions and talk his questions and tlak have caused some disturbance – especially as he claims to be a traveller from the future. The governor is unsure of how to deal with the problem and sends a detachment of guards to capture the time traveller and any friends he might have.”

Now this we felt was a nod to cult sci fi TV series ‘Doctor Who’ but with a little thought we managed to put a spin on it to fit around existing models.

So in our battle the notorious house breaker Santana Klause and his band of miscreants, have been sighted on the outskirts of ‘Knoelle Wan’ - a small village on the planet ‘Liberty IX’. Klause narrowly escaped capture a year to this day when he was disturbed on the evo of the ‘Emperors Feast’ breaking into homesteads and leaving strange heretical artefacts (often carvings of animals in wood for Juves or strange firey tasting fluid in eldsters homes…). Alerted to this known criminals presence is super sleuth Agent Krupp of the Liberty IX Security Forces. Enlisting the aid of a minor station astropath, Krupp quickly gathered his squad of security troopers and had a grav car drop them on the outskirts of Knoelle Wan – hoping to catch Klause in the act!

In the objectives were simple; CK’s forces had to visit six of the seven homesteads and drop off the ‘heretical artefacts’ while Martini Henries’’ lads (MH from here on) had to try and capture as many as possible alive. Neither side wanted to have any civilian casualties.

To aid them in their pursuits Santana was equipped with a graviton gun (used to moving around heavy ‘gifts’) and a displacer field (used for when the door is locked and he is too big to fit in the chimney!) – this field could be used voluntarily to enter building but had a chance of failure on a roll of a ‘6’ for distance. Klause also varies a warp sack that allowed him to carry any number of the six ‘gifts’, all other figures could carry a gift but doing so took up one hands us, and so a character carrying one present could not use a basic weapon only a single pistol and with two gifts was defenceless. Lastly ‘Nub’ the ratling cook carried a vial of ultra hot chilly soup which would count as a melta bomb in the scenario!

The security forces were armed with a compliment of non lethal needle guns and choke and scare gas as well as some suitably deadly lasguns if the perps didn’t ‘come quietly’.

Lastly and to make matters worse for the psykers, the settlements in the district in which Knoelle lies tell tales on cold dark winter nights of an ancient Daemon called ‘Krisstmass’who is known to play tricks on the mean and cruel and in some cases… to take their souls.

And so, the table was set up and populated with a dozen innocent civilians (which would be controlled by yours truly) and the game as they say was afoot!

The first two turns were uneventful as both sides cautiously approached the settlement, MH’s boys opted to stick together and climb upon the roof of the town to get a better field of view while CK split his forces to reach more building leaving a small group of henchmen to confront the security forces. However, turn three saw the sand of the village market square turn crimson as a spectacularly inaccurate exchange of las gun fire caught two innocent bystanders unaware while missing all of its intended targets. Both CK and MH had managed to kill innocent civilians in their opening volleys.

(game note: to reflect a ‘police action’ and to persuade players not to take wild shots, we decreed that any shot that failed its hit role by two ‘pips’ had a 50% chance of hitting the first thing in its way to an inch of the line of fire either side. For example if you require a 5 or 6 on a D6 then a 4 or a 3 would be a regular miss but a 1 or a 2 would have a chance of hitting bystanders or scenery!)

Agent Krupp returned fire at two of Klauses men taking cover behind a moisture condenser and while his shot missed it missed so badly it struck the condenser… now this wouldn’t normally be an issue had MH not played a special ‘event card’ (each player had three which affected the environment) to cause the shot to hit a weak spot and toxic coolant to erupt from a severed hose… covered in lethal sub zero refrigerating fluid, Klauses henchman ‘Itchy’ was out of the battle!

During this time Klause made good of the distraction to enter several of the houses and leave his dodgy wares. Not knowing exactly which houses had been targeted, MH’s astropath ‘Kirl’ used his psychic power of ‘detect presents’ (pun intended) to locate one of the heretical packages. At around this time Krupp and his loyal trooper Vehrets bravely charge into CK’s henchmen and while Krupp is distracted by a clever feint, Vehrets is laid out cold by ‘Feltcher’. On the other side of the table Santans and his cool ‘Nub’ brave a fusillade of las fire from the security forces atop the building as they run between two shacks… while Santanas crew escape unharmed, local mob boss ‘Abdul Goldberg is not so lucky as he is hit by a stray burst and knocked out cold – seeing the faceoff organised crime floored by the security forces and fearing the reprisals those citizens still present decide that discretion was the better part of valour and begin to flee!

Meanwhile back at the shoot out, Kirl attempted to use the psychic power ‘terrify’ on Belcher as he blazed away but was unsuccessful and Belchers previously erratic aim found its mark.. luckily Kirl was wearing a refractor field disguised as an imperial rosary which absorbed much of the blast leaving him unharmed. The security forces on the roof decide it was time to get stuck in an jumped off, while two of the plucky troopers landed unharmed (despite MH playing a ‘slippery roof’ event card) trooper Ratz landed hard and putting himself ‘down’ thought still on the area.

During the next few turns Santana Klause used his displacer field to project himself into houses to drop off his payload while his psychic assistant ‘Kandy’ , upon finding the door to the next building locked (doors were toughness 4 with 2 ‘wounds’ and locked on a roll of a 5 or 6 at the first attempt of entry) proceeded to try and shoulder charge it down! Back in the square Kirl managed to ‘terrify’ Belcher into fleeing behind the house and while basking in his victory attempted to ‘sense presents’. At this point the air temperature dropped and a chill frost appeared on nearby surfaces as Kirl was assaulted by the psychic manifestation of the deamon Kristmaas (he had rolled a double 1 on his test and suffered a perils of the warp result!) – however the plucky astropath fought of the demonic assault but was left reeling…

In CK next turn he took advantage of Kirls disorientated (pinned!) state and leant out of the homestead window to fire his arcane graviton gun at the sightless wyrd, a lucky hit found Kirls body weight steadily increase to cripple him (hits form the graviton gun reduce the targets move by 1D6 with a move of 0 meaning the character is crippled and out the game) on half movement. As Kirl recovered he lashed out with his mind to terrify Klause (no doubt with visions of acrid sherry and soggy mince pies) who recoiled back from his window… around this time a wet ‘Kersploosh’ sound follwed by a cry of ‘Bollocks!’ signified Nubs Hot Soup bomb failing to find its mark on the Halfling chosen door.

As the security forces returned fire, trooper Mice threw a choke grenade at Klause which detonated on the windowsill – microseconds before the bandit was engulfed in acrid chemical fog his Displacer field kicked in - triggered by the exploding casing – and teleported him to safety outside the domestile. While Klause took stock of his new surroundings and recovered his nerve, kandy and Kirl engaed in a psychic battle of minds that was a dead stand off until an unwitting Kandy let her defences slip and allowed Kristmaas – although able to fight him off the feisty lass was wounded in the entanglement!

Turn 13 began and as if on queue the badluck began, Kirl once again tired to use Detect Presents to locate more heretical devices but again summoned the malevolent spirit (the amount of double 1 and 6s rolled in this battle was truly phenomenal!) . For the next few round sit was truly more ‘Scare Wars’ than ‘Star Wars’ as both sides assaulted each other with hallucinogen grenades, and mental powers used to terrigy or confuse… disorientate troopers and rogues ran from building to building firing upon friends in panic or refusing to move as they believed they were being attacked by swarms of insects. A respite form the psychically induced panic came quickly however when a keen shot from Klaus caused Krupps body mass to go off the scale leaving him alive but helplessly pinned the bloodstained sand. While it looked like it was now all over for the government forces this was clearly not the case as trooper Mice dropped the package he’d recovered to effectively use his lasgun to wound Santana (he had 2 wounds to start with). Seconds later Nub the cook popped out of a window across the square to drop trooper Sable with a well placed shot. In retaliation Kirl attempted to use the dark forces of the warp to terrify Klause into submission but is (once again believe it or not!) attacked by Kristmaas malevolent energy leaving him stunned.

Struggling to get abetter shot Nub climbed to the top of the homestead but at this moment MH played a ‘loose ladder’ event card causing the diminutive delinquent to loose his footing and crash to the ground and sustain a flesh wound – Kirl sends a bolt of terrifying psychic power at the ratling causing hi to break cover and run for the adjoining outhouse – he is never seen again! Back at the mind fight, Kandy ran across to the copse of trees behind which Santana was trying to take cover but was unable to save him from being hit once again and dying from his wounds. In retaliation she unleashes her digital flamer weapon but its flames die off just inches from trooper Mice, in a last ditch of spite Kandy unleashes her mental powers of confusion on the trooper escorting the crippled Astropath Kirl… confused and panicking the trooper mistakes Kirl for bandit and blasts him at point blank range - flooring the Imperial servant. As the surviving troopers rush to aid the Astropath Kandy tearfully shoulders the body of Klause and slips off into the wasteland.

All that was left was for the security forces to tend to their wounded, secure the area and recover the heretical items for examination at the Imperial outpost. Before long the affects of the graviton gun wore off and Krupp was able to walk again and assist the troopers in their clear up.

What can I say…. Colonel Kane.. YOU KILLED SANTA CLAUS, Christmas in the Imperium will be particularly dark and grim this year!

In all seriousness this game was one of the most fun I’ve GM’d for our group to date and while it was a novelty game some great rules came of it – in particular the rules for missed shots in crowd situations and the made up rules allowing psychers to ‘resist’ the powers of other psykers. I also felt that a game with six characters a side with more detail was a little more fun than the ‘mini battle’ engagements we’ve occasionally had with 15 or more models aside.

And the strangest thing about it all, well…. When Krupps patrol returned to the shuttle they found they had only been gone for 9 minutes yet their own chronometers showed the engagement had lasted over an hour! Perhaps this dangerous heretic had some form of temporal distortion device allowing him to suspend the passage of time and allow him to enter many many house all on one night?

New characters

2009-11-18T22:28:00.004Z

Some new characters for the campaign and a new planet to fight over.

Here we have a nefarious pirate gang leader known only as 'the toad'.

An imperial assassin and a halfing cook of the Imperial Explorator ship 'Dhorra'

All set to land on the Imperial Paradisse Planet 'Forget Me Not' in the near future...

Jungle Patrol WiP 2

2009-11-15T17:37:00.003Z

Just put together a few more models for the jungle patrol. As suggested by the Pontiff, I may green stuff their legs so their trousers are hanging loose over their boots, and also give some of them jungle hats. I'm very tempted to give a few of them the classic 'special forces mustache' too!

Flamer and motion tracker.

Downed pilot (for the rescuing of!)

Demolitions specialist and gunner.

Jungle PAtrol WiP

2009-11-08T17:40:00.004Z

Inspired by making some jungle terrain, and a combination of reading Harry Harrison's Death World trilogy and a load of Osprey bookss on the ANZACs in Vientnam, WW2 Jungle Tactics etc, I decided to make an Imperial Guard patrol for a game set in a death world jungle.

These guys are modeled after 22SAS in Malaya, SASR and LRRP in Vietnam, that sort of thing. I intend to make up some bad guys too - maybe some Kroot. I've also sourced a bunch of Rogue Trader Space Slann, so some games against them would be fun.

I'll be doing a flamer-carrying trooper or two (for protection against carnivorous plants) a heavy bolter, a demo expert and a trooper carrying a motion sensor. After that, if I haven't got distracted by something else I'll make them a rhino, heavily modeled on an M113 ACAV and loaded up with supplies.

Patrol Medic (left) - he has two medikits on his back. Sharp Shooter (right).

Scout (left). Grenadier (right) with 'liberated' Gucci Tau pulse carbine.

Patrol Commander (right) and signaler (left). They've been posed so the commander appears to be turning back to listen to what the radioman's reporting to him.

The Jungle is (not quite) Massive

2009-11-08T17:36:00.002Z

Here's a shot of the jungle I've been making. These are all multi-purpose jungle sections, just placed on a desert board with a scav-hab to set the scene. The next batch I do will have Slann relics and carnivorous plants all over the place!

Havildar Major

2009-10-06T09:46:00.002+01:00

Here's a simple conversion I've been meaning to do for ages, and have just got around to. It's a Citadel Vostroyan, with one of the turbaned sci-fi heads from Ramshackle Games. I wanted to create the look of a 40k version of an Indian Army NCO (a 'Havildar Major' for example). I'll probably use him as an Inquisitor's sidekick, and may convert up a whole squad in the same way to accompany him. To get the Indian Army during the Empire period look, I may even get hold of a Praetorian and have him leading them!

Jungle Trees finished

2009-10-06T09:43:00.002+01:00

And here's a finished stand of jungle trees. The bases were finished off with a mixture of ground up dried leaves (from the garden), some dried thyme and some flock. Only another 9 more to finish then we'll have a Death World jungle table :-)

Jungle Trees Part 3

2009-09-30T11:12:00.002+01:00

Just started the task of assembling and painting the trees themselves. Each is painted Citadel Foundation Gretchin Green. The leaves are then given a Citadel Wash Thraka Green, and the branches a Citdadel Wash Devlan Mud. I'll probably add a drybrush of Bleached Bone to the whole thing, to pull it all together before mounting on the bases and apply detail.

More soon...

More Terrain...

2009-09-29T14:48:00.003+01:00

Well, it's been a while in the making so I thought it's about time that I showed the Necromunda buildings that I had posted earlier in their painted state. So with no more ado, here they are.

Imperial building
Chapel
Pair of Bastions
Landing pad

Ruined 4 storey building

Jungle Trees Terrain Part 2

2009-09-29T09:59:00.003+01:00

Here's the second stage of the jungle trees.

The bases were painted with Daler-Rowney 'System 3' Burnt Umber, then drybrushed Burnt Siena, then drybrushed Buff Titanium. I tend to use DR System 3 on terrain, as when it sets it retains a flexible finish, so if the terrain flexes at all (as the GW plastic hills can) the paint won't flake off.

The three colours I used equate to Citadel Scorched Brown, Bestial Brown and Bleached Bone, so everything should match up.

Next up is the plastic trees, then the ground cover.

Jungle Trees terrain

2009-09-27T17:45:00.006+01:00

I've just started making some jungle trees, and as Krug asked about buildings in a previous post, I thought I'd post the progress of these as I went along. The plan is to create enough 'stands' of jungle trees to dominate a 4x4 table. I'll be making them in two batches - the first will be pretty generic, so they can be used in any setting (we've also been playing a Vietnam game, so these will be used for that) and the second batch will be more 40k in style, with various bits and bobs on the bases.

I have loads of the GW plastic trees, so wanted to use them, probably along with some aquarium plant bits too.

I started out by cutting kidney-shaped bases from 5mm foam core. I then chamfered (is that the phrase?) the edges, first with a scalpal, and then with a sanding block.

Then I glued on the bases of the plastic jungles trees, and painted filler over the whole base. Once that was dry I dabbed wood glue around and sprinkled sand in various places.

So this is where I am after an afternoon's work. Once this lot's dry I plan to paint the bases and use ground up dried leaves as leaf litter, to give a realistic 'jungle floor' look.

That's it for now!

A Quick Battle Report

2009-09-23T13:55:00.011+01:00

Exorcists Space Marines vs Sensei Warband

This game was set up pretty much on the fly – Captain Jack and myself had a spare morning and so Jack brought some toys around to mine for a game. We decided to go for a change and use different warbands to normal. What we came up with was as follows:

The Exorcists
Captain Jack’s Exorcist Space Marines are really nicely converted. He used the stats for a Chaos Space Marines from the Necromunda Outlander bestiary, adding equipment as seemed appropriate.

The Exorcists

The Sensei
This band was put together using the rules from Realm of Chaos. They were pointed and stated using the rules from Rogue Trader. The psyker rolled up four Telekine Wyrd Powers, rolling Force Field, Assail, Crush and Fists of Fury. These three characters came out at an incredible Gang Rating of 1736, which seemed excessive, until the battle started!

Abiel's Redeemers

Terrain
We used a table dense with flora, and you’ll notice from the pictures an overall purple tone. This isn’t a picture error (honest!) just an attempt to make the terrain and light look like the action is taking place on an alien world. I really must get around to making a new terrain set, as the desert table is getting a little boring now!

The Mission
We decided that the Exorcists were attempting to recover a valuable relic from a crashed shuttle. The Sensei were simply out to stop them. Not an especially imaginative set-up, but hey, we hadn’t prepared and it seemed appropriate!

Complications
To add some flavour, we took turns placing, one at a time, a bunch of ‘gribbly counters’, representing death world beasts. Each would inflict a single Strength 3 hit on any model that ended its turn within D6 inches.

The Game
We set things up with the shuttle in the centre of the table, and each warband in an opposite corner. The Exorcists advanced, with half of their number providing fire support. As the bolts started flying at my armourless warband I was extremely grateful for the Force Field power – this worked by the Psyker taking a Leadership test every time a model within 2” took a hit, and a pass equalling an Armour save. As the psyker had a Leadership of 8, this saved pretty much every shot (though not all), although the risk of the Psyker rolling a double and transforming into a horrific Daemon that could wipe out my small force in one go was ever present!

As the Exorcists advanced, the Sensei relied on Assail to soften up their enemy for a few turns, but as it was, their power armour saved them time and again. As it turned out, the gribblies did far more damage to the Space Marines than the Sensei did, at least until the Sensei himself got into combat with the Exorcists’ leader, and completely chewed him up!

In the end, it was the weight of the Exorcists’ firepower pinning the Sensei while the Space Marines escaped with the relic that won the day for them. As the Exorcists withdrew with their prize, the Sensei gave chase, but were unable to catch up.

The Exorcists had their relic, though they had lost several of their number to the combined attacks of the Sensei and the jungle beasts. Perhaps next time the Sensei will have to stop the Exorcists using the relic in some nefarious daemonic ritual!

The Exorcists withdraw with the relic - next time!

Battle Report – Port Station Heist

2009-08-16T13:20:00.009+01:00

Port Station, Jeriko Reach.

This scenario was essentially the Necromunda Ambush mission, with Patrol Drake guarding a shipment of Joy-Sims, as intelligence had indicated a recidivist element was intent upon stealing them away. The Joy-Sims were set up behind the shuttle in which they’d arrived, and Patrol Drake around it.

The attackers were Captain Jack’s new gang, a bunch of near-do-well pirates calling themselves the Con Fectors. The Defenders were Colonel Kane’s Patrol Drake.

The Con Fector Pirates

Patrol Drake

The Joy-Sims

The Con Fectors set up in the buildings around the landing pad. In the first turn, the pirates closed in on both flanks, the heavy taking opening up from his position atop a building and unleashing a withering hail of lead at the defenders. His stubber wounded three of Patrol Drake, putting down a Sepoy, the signaller and the medic. Even more impressively, Corperal Drake himself, the leader, was taken out entirely. This caused another Sepoy to break for cover, while Lance Corperal Kash was forced to attempt to restore order. Fortunately for the defenders, the pirate’s heavy suffered a stoppage, and spent the remainder of the battle trying to clear his weapon.

Things didn’t go so well for the Con Fectors on the other flank however, as the other half of Patrol Drake rolled up that side of the battle area, gunning down pirates as they went.

Meanwhile, on the landing pad, the psyker adept Grammatrix Apphia ran behind the shuttle, and operated the controls to raise the blast shields, affording at least some protection to the remaining defenders.

In the centre of the battle area, Drake’s sniper rained down fire on the pirates, but the attackers closed in, one scaling the tower and bursting onto the roof to engage the sniper. The pirate opened fire at point blank range, but missed entirely. The sniper then turned his weapon upon his foe, but found the weapon ineffective at such short range, and missed. The pirate fired again, pinning the sniper, who was saved by supporting fire from his fellows on the landing pad.

On the pad itself, the attackers closed in, making use of the ladders on the underside to scale the supports and burst out of the hatches. A volley of short range shotgun fire ensued, and things were soon pretty much over.

Both sides were now at break point, but Drake’s patrol failed their bottle test first, and a fighting withdrawal ensued. After a turn or two, the attackers had claimed their prize, and allowed the defenders to withdraw unmolested.

After the game, it transpired that Drake’s medic, Trooper Reko, had died from his injuries. As they had withdrawn however, the patrol has managed to drag away the unconscious form of one of the pirates. Will the Con Fectors fight to rescue their captured ganger? We’ll find out next time!

Patrol Drake deployment, with Grammatrix Apphia inspecting the merchandise.

Patrol Drake flanking party work their way through the station buildings.

Con Fector Pirates infiltrate the left flank.

Con Fectors move through the alley ways on the right flank.

The Con Fectors' right flank bites off more than it can chew...

Grammatrix Apphia at the landing pad controls, raising the blast shields.

The Con Fectors close in on their left flank

The pirates work their way beneath the landing pad.

Patrol Drake sniper about to be undone...

The pirates leap from the hatches.

The Con Fectors consolidate their attack, dealing with the last of the defenders.

The pirates claim their booty!

Conversion Time Again

2009-08-14T18:17:00.003+01:00

We played a really good game a few days back, and once I've written it up I'll post it here. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a couple of conversions I've just done...

An Ordo Xenos Inquisitor. This is an old 'Cobalt-1' mini, with the pistol replaced with an old Legion of the Damned bolter, a scout biker stowed shotgun on the back, and a couple of plastic purity seals from the Tactical Marines sprue. I've always thought the character models from the Cobalt-1 range had a distinctly Old School Rogue Trader look to them (probably because they were scuplted by Bob Naismith, who made a lot of the original Rogue Trader Adventurers).

A long while back, my gang was awarded a Graviton Gun following a successful Loot mission. This conversion represents 'Filthy' Lucre, Patrol Drake's melta gunner, carrying the weapon. I used the same bits as I did on the same character carrying the melta, but made the Graviton Gun from a range of components. The bulk of the gun is the flamer from the Cadian Command Squad sprue, but to give it a real retro sci-fi look appropriate to the weapon, I gave it the coil from one of the power field pylons that came in the Battle for Macragge set.

Terrain Workshop

2009-08-02T12:44:00.013+01:00

You may have noticed that the terrain we have been using for the last few posts hasn't had too much in the way of vertical elements, so I've been working at making some modular pieces using a GW Imperial Sector box to make some wrecked Imperial buildings. Here are two of the pieces I have so far.

Exfiltration

2009-07-16T16:38:00.008+01:00

The Area of Operations - Blockhouse Delta 9.

The Swamp Tigers

Inquisitor Nix and retinue

So, we played game following on from the last, this time with myself as the GM. Pontiff was playing his Swamp Tiger renegade Guard, and Captain Jack his new Inquisitorial warband.

In the last battle, a Valkyrie arrived at the last moment to rescue the Xeno Biologis from the clutches of the Genestealer cult-infected Swamp Tigers. In this game, the Biologis has been dropped off at a guard blockhouse and is awaiting the arrival of an Inquisitor, so that he can report on his findings regarding xenos infiltration of Jeriko Reach and its moons.

I decided to give each of the players some secret info they could choose to act upon in game if they wanted to. An agent of the cult had secreted a bomb onto the Valkyrie during refuelling, and Pontiff had to tell me before the game which turn it would explode on. He choose turn 5, expecting the Inquisitors to attempt to board the ship and hoping it would explode as they lifted off.

The Inquisition have eyes everywhere though, and they got wind of that a bomb had been planted somewhere, though they didn’t know exactly where. This meant they were allowed to scan terrain features as they went along, needing an Initiative test to determine if the bomb was present or not.

There were a few more plot related points, but if I reveal them here the guys will find out and they won’t be a surprise in future games ;-)

So then, the Xeno Biologis and bodyguard started in the blockhouse, and the Inquisitor came on from a randomly determined edge. It turned out to be a bit of a slog for the (movement 3) Grymn, but they put down plenty of fire as they advanced.

The Swamp Tigers came on from the opposite edge, and were on the Biologis in short order with two Purestrain Genestealers. One of these put the poor guy out of action, but, mysteriously stopped short of biting his skull in two. It then continued across the table to intercept Inquisitor Nix, while the other purii skulked into the Valkyrie’s passenger hold.

The Swamp Tigers put down a lot of effective fire on the Grym, pinning them down for much of the battle. The force shield pylons were a nasty surprise too, as I hadn’t told anyone that they inflicted a Str 3 hit on any model passing through, as well as providing a 4+ save to any model shot through the shield by a solid projectile weapon.

Then, the Valkyrie exploded, spraying hot metal and squishy Genestealer all over those nearby. The Grymn has seen the stealer enter the rear hatch, and could only wonder why it had apparently committed suicide…

The battle reached a climax as Inquisitor Nix and the purii closed on one another. Nix judged the distance just right, luring the stealer out into the open where she could shoot it with her plasma pistol. She wounded it, and it went down. Next turn she charged in, and because it was down she finished it off with a clean sweep of her power sword.

At that, the Swamp Tigers withdrew. The Xenos Biologis hadn’t been captured, but was looking distinctly unwell following his close encounter with the Purestrain. Inquisition Nix is now aware of cult activity in the Jeriko system, so it looks like the uprising is coming to a head.

The Swamp Tigers move in on their objective.

Peakaboo!

He's behind you! The Xenos Biologis' day goes from bad to worse...

Inquisitor Nix has a word.

Incoming Battle Report

2009-07-13T15:39:00.000+01:00

Hey all. We've just posted a new battle report on the new blog.

Regards

Colonel Kane

Recovery on the Moon of Spite

2009-07-13T15:23:00.007+01:00

+++Posted for Captain Jack, whose cogitator terminal has run out of internets+++

Ordo Xenos Biologis, accompanied by bodyguard and Navigator

The background for this game is a continuation of a fact finding mission lead by part of an Inquisitors retinue to the Jeriko Reach moon of Spite. The set up for the Imperials had their rescue objective, three members of the Inquisitors retinue grouped in the centre of the table. An artillery dice was rolled for the direction of travel of the Scribe, which would move d6 inches per turn until contacted by the patrol. Half of Patrol Drake set up by the crashed Lander, and the second part of the patrol would turn up on a reserves roll on the opposite edge of the table. The Pontiffs’ troops were split into groups of two or three, and individual Genestealers. The pontiff had 6 D6 at the start of each turn, and one group would be set up on a randomised table edge on the roll of a 6 (this didn’t stop him getting 2 or 3 per turn).

Patrol Drakes mission was to meet up with the Inquisition, and escort them off the opposite table edge. The Pontiff had to prevent this from happening.

The first few turns saw the crashed half of Patrol Drake move towards the Inquisitorial retinue, while the Pontiffs’ troops organised themselves into good ambush positions (A lot of 6’s were rolled early on). A good rolling defence was set up by the patrol, but they ran into serious trouble when they made it to the Scribe and his two minders. The pontiffs’ troops made a good job of pinning the scribe and the patrol in the centre, and it was only the timely arrival of the second half of the patrol behind one ambush group that provided a glimmer of hope. Meanwhile in the centre two of the three Genestealers had been dealt with, but unfortunately for Drake the good camouflage of one of the Genestealers had allowed it to within striking distance of the patrol.

With a cry of ‘Where in His Name did that come from’ the first of Drakes troopers was knocked off his feet. Without hesitation the ‘Stealer followed up into more of the patrol, including the medic who followed his comrade into the dirt. All that was left in the end was for Drake to confront the beast with unsurprising results…

At the same time on the open edge the second half of the patrol had made hard work of clearing out the gangers opposite, but had prevailed. They now moved towards the centre of the table, but would be too late to have any influence. As GM I decided that on the roll of a 6 an Emergency call box carried by the scribe would call in a Valkyrie to pick up the beleaguered troops, and a 6 was promptly rolled halting the Genestealers carnage.

At the end of it all, not much of the Patrol was still standing. However much to our chagrin the injury rolls were (too) kind, with only Drake hating the forces of the Pontiff, and the rest making full recoveries.

Patrol Drake element move out from the crash site to link up with the target

Lance Corperal Kash leads a flanking attack

Firefight on the flank

Cult fire support group hold the patrol at bay

A Genestealer come out of nowhere!

Corperal Drake attacked by the 'stealer