Lizardmen warband

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

Happy Holiday Y'all

Through the Warp Portal!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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....

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.

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

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.

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

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...

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