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Grimtoof Redux

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My house was recently invaded by a trio of Danes keen for shooty-death-kill in space, and so for the first time in literally years, I wheeled out my army of Speed Freaks. The impending game served as ample excuse to paint up the Stormclaw warboss, so as to replace my rather low-rent nob conversion from back in the day.

Young Grimtoof looks a bit diddy next to his older, hencher self.
Older Grimtoof be gert hench.

Normally, I'd have too much pride to leave a model unconverted, particularly since combi-skorchas are clearly superior to combi-rokkitts, but you know what? Life is short, and rokkitts go fasta.

Now this model is still the same character: Grimtoof Boomshanka. He's just older and tougher, as is his ultra-loyal squig Niblit, seen perching atop the bosspole in version 1, and bounding merrily forward in version 2. The squig is actually chained to the warboss in the Stormclaw model, but the chain got snipped off as I liked the idea that Grimtoof finds it more amusing to have a free range squig that just bounces around being a nuisance, sort of like a really irresponsible yet infuriatingly proud dog owner. "E's biting me face off boss!""I know, bless 'im, 'e loves faces."


If anything I've actually been lazier with the paint job second time around, although I prefer the less saturated green skin tone. I've never managed to get super excited about painting orks; it's very easy to make them look okay, but for some reason I really struggle to make the skin look excellent. Lack of trying, I guess, but I don't mind... for me, the main lure has and will always be kustomizing vehicles.

-Charlie

Empire Battle Wizards: now with headscarves

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The lady in the image above is Elsa Gerhart, and she's the latest effort in my ongoing attempt to paint one wizard for every lore of magic. Previous entrants came with ovaries, bangles and herbs.

As her semi-clandestine vibe suggests, she uses the Lore of Shadow. As such, I wanted her to be far less conspicuous than the other wizards. The Grey College is in the poor quarter in Altdorf, and it seemed appropriate to have a model that could vanish in a crowd. Other than her skin tone, everything on this model is drab, neutral, and generally hobo-tastic.

Here's the above photo without all the Photoshoppery:



Elsa is actually a level three wizard, and a fairly senior member of her college. Why she's come to Hochland remains unknown; indeed, most people probably don't even know she's there.

The model is another Hasslefree sculpt, with one minor alteration: I sculpted a headscarf on. You can see the original sculpt here.


There's not much to say about the paint job; it's deliberately unremarkable. Some blending, some glazes, some dusty glazes and some drybrushing.

The next wizard on the hit list is an idiotic level one pyromancer, which will, I suspect, be slightly more conspicuous.

~Charlie

It's a Bomma! Part 2.

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Welcome back to the second instalment of the Blasta Bomma project log

It’ll seem like I've made a lot of progress since the last post - I haven’t (sad face). These posts are retrospective and any progress is progress that has happened in the past.
At some point, the progress in the past will become (in respect to this point of time) progress that happened in the future. Of course, the future progress will be past (or current) progress when I blog about it. If I report that progress that will happen in the future as if it were progress that occurred in the past; everyone will get confused. Also, I won’t be able to take photos of it unless I invent a tachyon camera. I don’t think I'm very likely to do that, because if I had done so in the future, I should already be receiving photos from it in the past, which is now; well, then.   And I'm not, so I didn't, or won’t.

Well, I'm glad that’s all cleared up.

In respect of taking pictures: I haven’t done enough of that either. Some of what I have done, you can’t see in progress, so you’ll have to take my word for some things. Some of what I have done will happen in a big “yay, everything is complete now” plot jump thing.

Take me on your mighty wings
Bearing that previous comment in mind: wings have magically occurred. I deviated significantly from the A10 pattern on this - the wings ended up at the top of the fuselage rather than at the bottom.
This is for aesthetic and practical reasons.
       Aesthetic: I think it’ll look better this way.
       Practical: I couldn't put the wings at the bottom as there was nothing there to give much support to them.        - See previous comments on planning - or lack of.
The wings will be packing much ordnance, and I didn't want that ordnance to foul the ground when the plane was being used as scenery.

The wings will end up being heavy, so I wanted something more than plasticard at the core of them.
My second maxim states “If in doubt, apply copious MËTAL” and the black strip running through the plumbing pipe tube is a steel strip.
To stop the metal strip from moving laterally, the strip had two holes drilled in it at either side of the plumbing pipe and cotter pins made from steel rod inserted.
To cement the joint, two part epoxy resin (specifically Unibond Repair eXpress power putty) was moulded round the joint and this has set like granite. These wings aren't going anywhere.

To create the wing cross section shape, a template was made, cut and copied. A central section was removed from each for placement on the steel strip.
Channel strip was glued between the sections for strength and to prevent the sections from moving along the wing. When the plating is laid down on the wings (one of the final sections of the build) the sections will help to set the shape of the wing.

The tail section was also created at this stage. This was going to be much lighter than the wing and I was happy that plasticard alone would support the weight

Come on and let me see you shake that tail feather. 
The rest of the tail piece was built up with rectangular tubing for the flat sections and twin layered plasticard for the uprights. Again, the built sections will be scaffolding for later plating. Holes were left for me to build up the rudders later. 

I've perched Ug the Unpainted (an Ork boy) on top of the Bomma for scale. It's going to be a big 'un.

I've run out of rubbish captions. 

And that’s it for now. The Bomma is beginning to look a little like a plane.

The next post will be about the cockpit, which is retrospectively taking shape (has taken shape) in the the future (the past) nicely.


What goes whurr, chop, clank, zzap chop, clank, squeak?

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A rat on a steam powered death machine (Natch).

A bit like this one:

The Skaven Doom-flayer*
(* another classic Citadel ‘lottery of grimdark’ name)

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this model, apart from it looks a bit like the late and demented Dwarf Deathroller from Bloodbowl.
But... I think of the Doom-flayer as something that the rat has to sit in and carefully operate, rather than stand on and ride - more like a steam train than a cross between a lawnmower and a Segway.

So I had a little think, looked at the available ratty kits and decided that I could make a better (or at least, different) one from parts of the Doomwheel kit. Hopefully mine would look more suited to the battlefields of the old world than a crown green bowls field.

Although this seems hopelessly extravagant; (the Doomwheel kit costs £5.00 more than the Grinder) there are a number of advantages:

1. It means I don’t have to work with Finecast
2. I get to make a thing unique to my army.
3. I get a lot of spare bits to work with. I can then use these bits to make more ratty contraptions of doom. I like bits - maybe a bit too much. 
4. It'll be fun. 

I started, and as usual, forgot to take enough photos.



So this is the build, about 70% in. The cockpit area has been cut out of the Doomwheel kit and the rear steering wheel brought forward so that the contraption (just) fits onto a cavalry base.
I started with horizontally reciprocating blades at the front. These looked rubbish and I had to change them for something else - But what?  
The Ork in me wanted choppas; the rat in me wanted warpstone generator. The schizophrenic evil genius in me picked both.
As they say: That which doesn’t kill you, will electrocute you with mutagenic lightning.

Sweet, sweet mutagenic lightning.
Sweet, sweet choppas.


That seems sufficient to look like it can achieve what it is meant to achieve - i.e. messy and bloody death. 

I have a ‘thing’ when I’m doing conversions - I like to give the impression that the thing I’m building could work, and it doesn’t have to rely on hidden mechanisms or (even worse- magic).
 So, using micro surgery and much patience, I stuck together a rod system on eccentric drive wheels to drive the choppa mechanism. Here it is drying in the vice like grip of my reverse tweezers.



I painted it, and the finished contraption looks something like this:


Voltik's photographic helper 'Chudders'. Helps with scale and make-up. 

I took it out against Charlie’s Empire and it got shot, pretty much instantly. I was sad.

So that's it. Just as they say; If you're meglomaniacal and ruthless enough, you can make your army of minions achieve anything for your glory. Or something. 



True Calibre Leman Russ

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There's plenty of folks around making 'true-scale' space marines, where you make an astartes look even bigger so he towers over the other wee men on the table. Well I've headed in the opposite direction, in that I've massively reduced the bore on my Russ' battlecannon.


Why would I mess with such an iconic design? Because I find the calibre of the standard tank to be immersion-breaking in its hugeness. It looks like it's designed to shoot beer kegs, not shells.

Kegs away!
[image taken from GW.com for illustrative purposes only]

This preposterous barrel width looks fine on the Baneblade, because the rest of the tank is huge enough that it looks mostly in-proportion, that is, like a battleship cannon on a land vehicle. On a Russ? Not to my tastes. Once I swapped the barrel for one of the four long-barreled autocannons you get with the Hydra/Wyvern kit, I was surprised at how much it changes the look of the tank.


In case you're wondering, yes, there was some conversion work. Here's a pre-paint closeup of the turret following some careful plasticard slicing and green stuffing:


Oh and here the tank is chillin' with members of the 2nd platoon of Echo Company, the 107th Ankran Mechanised Infantry. More of them to come. Mmmmm, basic-ass paint jobs.

Blatantly took this photo before I finished the weathering on the Russ.
Wot a nob.

Finally, since it doesn't really deserve a post all on its own, here's a photo showing almost all of my three thousand point ork fleet what I done finished the other week (there's a few squadrons of escorts not pictured that were in the other photos, but the other photos sucked too hard to use here, which is saying something).

~Charlie

No, they didn't get rusty in space. I imagine most ork ships are cobbled together
from reclaimed metal and built mainly planetside, which means they're rusty before
they've even had their first flight.

p.s. You may have noticed the astonishing rarity of posts these days. All I can say is that the hobby bug comes in unpredictable waves, and those waves can be few and far between when your brain meats en't treating you well. If this wasn't a hobby blog I'd talk about it, but I don't think anyone's come here for some deep insights into how depression makes you less interested in the things you love. If for some bizarre reason you do want to know how my faltering mind and my hobby intersect, or if you wish to share your own experiences, you're very welcome to say/do so below, and I shall respond.

Nerd Thunder 5: Warhammer World - Part One

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Hi folks, 'tis Jeff. A while ago now, the Beard Bunker performed one of it's regular invasions of that bastion of hobby happy in Nottingham: Warhammer World. We went up to fight a bunch of small games of Warhammer to determine who was to control a Warpstone meteorite but we nearly didn't get to play at all. Because we went into the new Miniatures Halls - note plural - and very nearly didn't leave. It. Is. Magnificent. I wanted to share some of the magnificence with you but... I'd taken about 500 photos, it took a while to whittle down. But here it is at last!

I'm presenting this multi-part series not really in the order they are encountered but in vague themes, first, classic dioramas and warhammer awesomeness, it's going to be a bit of a three/four part picdump, but I think worth it:

Classic Dioramas: Almost as a way of easing you in to the glorious insanity to come, the halls start with some wonderful dioramas which will be immediately familiar to those of my gaming pedigree (read old) from the pages of White Dwarf:

lovely old Bretonnian Jousting scene, one of my favourites

A knight faces off against a dragon, much bigger than you think!

Empire Conquistadors try to rescue their comrades from Lizardman sacrifice
Wood Elves try to drive out Heinrich Kemmler
A diorama so old that it is in my 3rd Ed rulebook. Still looks surprisingly good if dated
The Rock, great diorama mostly for representing something behind the scenes rather than just battle
Classic Space Hulk diorama, lovely.
 Orcs Attack!
 The next thing you see after all that nostalgia is a massive siege. Really, really massive:




Wyvern hunting wizards, also, check out the missed doom diver :)
 


Dwarf Hold:
And then you get to another siege, but this one a very different tone, one very much to my liking...







Nurgle's Fortress
By this point we were realising that we may have underestimated just how much awesomeness we were going to be exposed to. When the scenery looks like concept art you know you are doing well.











Well, that's it for today, next time, Warhammer 40k stuff... :)

2015: Year of the Butterfly

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You'd be forgiven for assuming that reports of my death are not even slightly exaggerated. 2015 has not been a blog-heavy year!

Of course part of the reason for that was that 2015 wasn't very hobby-heavy either. My focus lay elsewhere: roleplaying games, Elite: Dangerous, and professional sitting (which is like normal sitting, but where you convince yourself you aren't wasting time, or at least, don't think about how much time you're wasting until after you've wasted it).

That said, I do have two minor updates. The first is that I have embarked upon my biggest single model ever. It's a huge project, and will take many more months to complete, but here are some sneak peeks:



The second thing concerns the Beard Bunker's long-running Warhammer campaign. The Old World is still turning here at the Bunker, its inhabitants now certain that the whole End Times/Age of Sigmar thing was just a cheese dream.

In the past, a number of campaign updates have been provided by both short stories and mock-newspapers. Those have been fun but time-consuming, and whilst I may yet do some in the future, they were purely intended as an engaging way to provide our gaming group with updates on campaign events. For their intended job, they weren't actually all that effective, not least of which because those formats preclude concise, broad brush strokes.

To that end, I have created a campaign wiki, thanks entirely to the generosity and technical skill of Tom (known on this blog for his halfling character Cedric Sneakfoot). The wiki has the campaign's current state of affairs on its front page, a chronicle that records all the major events of the story so far, and also of course has the potential for the story's participants to add whatever details they wish about characters or events.

The wiki is still in a somewhat embryonic state, but the major events are all there, including those alluded to in recent narrative posts, so if you're curious to find out what happened to Amelia after she was abducted, click through the link below:


You might also have noted that I've put links to both the Hochland campaign and the Cetus sub-sector in a perma-link on the top right of the page.

That's all for today. Hopefully I'll return soon with further progress to report on said giant project. How was 2015 for anyone still reading this rather neglected blog? How did Age of Sigmar affect your hobby?

The obligation to invite everyone

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I should've known it'd take space ships to lure me out of hobby hibernation. And why have I been painting space ships? Firstly, because the Battlefleet Gothic models are great. Secondly, because I'm about to embark upon a campaign which will be a 50-50 mix of wargame and roleplay. Like Hornblower in space, what with BFG always harking back to the Age of Sail.

The Imperial patrol group.
The players, Jon and Maisey, will each command one of the two capital ships.

Naturally it's damn hard to photograph models on a black background, and a lot of the object source lighting simply doesn't show up in these photos, but oh well. I won't be talking about the paint job in this post. 

Instead, I'll be talking about a social phenomenon that is by no means unique to wargaming: that when you hang out with a friend, there's no obligation to invite anyone else, but as soon as you invite two or three people, there's a sense that you haven't invited everyone else. Am I alone on this one? I can feel guilty for not including everyone, and worry that they might feel left out (because hanging out with me is life-affirming, obviously).

In a wargaming context, this self-imposed obligation to include everyone usually rears its head when you have a thing that would work really well for three players, but know more than three players and feel obligated to invite all of them, thus creating a logistical nightmare and compromising the very thing you set out to enjoy. You endeavour to account for everyone's armies and gaming preferences, and then realise you have three Space Marine players, one other Imperial player, and only one non-Imperial player. Gutted.

All the lights/engines got a bit of an object source lighting drybrush, so on the board
you mainly see the ships' ornate prows, then the glow of their running lights.

This is a problem encountered even more frequently by being the guy who has boards and scenery and generally ends up being the orchestrator of things, what with it being a bit awkward for people to invite themselves over to my house to use my stuff.

Honestly I'm not sure what the solution is; some people won't care that they aren't invited to everything, and some people will be hurt, and you can either spend the rest of your life feeling responsible for other people's fun, or you can just get the hell on with it. Personally, I think I'll gun for the middle ground: do some things that involve everyone, and some things that are smaller and easier to organise. If they want to spend time with you, they'll let you know.

In short: you can organise some of the people some of the time, but you can't organise all the people all the time.

As you can see, all the ships have their names painted on, a) because yes,
and b) because it'd be unfair of me to expect the players to remember them all.

In the event that you're actually curious about how I painted those ships despite how badly they photographed, or wish to share your pain re: the above conundrum, thrust yourself into the comments section like a boss.

~Charlie

Nerd Thunder 5: Warhammer World - Part Two

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Back to Part One: The Warhammer Halls

Yeah... so... it's been a while since part one... this is honestly because I lost the photos. Put them safely in a folder buried somewhere in my computer and... forgot where. Lame. I have though finally found them and so we can launch on into the Warhammer 40,000 halls! Once again, I'm not going to do much - if any - talking, I'll let the awesome tables speak for themselves:

Battle of Istvaan V:




 




Tyranids Assault a Space Wolf Fortress:









Imperial Guard in Parade Order











Frozen Imperial Defensive Positions:





Tyranids attack Iyanden Eldar ON A FREAKIN' LAVA WORLD!



Imperial Guard desperately try to rescue  a downed Valkyrie from Orks:




How cool was that? Once again, this wasn't all the displays, just the shots that worked well (shooting through glass is a bear). Next time the grand finale, the biggest display table I have ever, ever seen. Astonishing... and I promise it won't take six months this time!

TTFN

Nerd Thunder 5: Warhammer World - Part Three

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Back to part two - the Warhammer 40,000 halls

Yes folks, this is it, the big 'un. We'd all been impressed going around, and even a miserly chap like myself (I can demand the change out of a penny with the best of 'em) had stopped grumbling about the price of admission and had just been going "WOW" a lot. Then we walked into the final hall. And saw this:


I don't think it is possible to convey through pictures just how massive this thing is. I even tried getting a shot with the guys in to for scale:


But even that doesn't give much as you can't see three quarters of the table in that shot. Seriously. Feast your eyes on some of the mini-vignettes that make up the mega-vignette of this awesome table:

the lower section of the table is a vast battlefield, for scale, the bottom left corner includes reaver titans

The bridges over the lower road, high enough for warhounds to walk under.


The citadel has these huge arched walkways, landspeeders and assault marines flying through the archways

Dreadclaws hammer in and dispatch even more chaos marines

Heldrakes dogfight with space marine flyers around the towers.

titans support a desperate attempt to stem the flood of daemons



some very unlucky marines barbecued by a helldrake

far above the battlefield, Marneus Calgar duels a Bloodthirster






A massive force of grey knights fighting for the gateway...

...are practically a footnote in the overall battle!

well, that's one way to deal with a titan.






it just feels wrong to be dwarfed and almost vertiginous around wargames scenery for heaven's sake!



I tried to give you all a sense of it but nothing can prepare you for how awesome this is in the flesh. You owe it to yourselves to see these displays if you at all can. There are dozens of others which the photos never came out or are too dark or whathaveyou - a cracking necron one was particularly galling to shoot! - and they are constantly changing them. The ticket price is worth it. These are not the old miniatures hall. Just walking around them reinvigorated our excitement for the hobby and this was right after we'd been so disappointed by Age of Sigmar. These halls made us feel like bouncy kids again and all of us went around at least twice (you can go around as often as you like on the one day).

Hope you've enjoyed this tiny sample of the awesomeness that is Warhammer World these days.

TTFN

A Hard Days Knight

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Hello Everyone,

I've been working on a model. A big (ish) model. I don't normally share everything I do (Perhaps I should?). Anyway, I think you'll like looking at this one. Not much to say specifically, so here is a dump of, what I think, are pretty pictures.

If you do want to know what I did, or how I did it, then drop us a note in the comments and I'll explain myself.


















The Chaos of Interpersonal Relationships

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Good evening Bunkerers (or whatever time of day it so happens to be when you read this).

A little while ago (last August to be exact) we got rather excited about small scale fantasy armies. 750 pts, no units bigger than 20 (unless you are a Goblin or Skaven Slave), No Lords (looking at the Goblins again), the army must be at least 3 units + characters. I can't remember if there was any other restrictions we had decided on (anyone else remember?). Anyway, we had a lot of fun with these little armies and I got the notion in my head to use these rules to build a Chaos warband. There might have been some vague discussions about all of us doing something similar or that might have just been in my head and I was planning on talking about that (this sort of thing happens a lot). In true Maisey fashion I got rather over excited and read the chaos book from cover to cover (or at least looked at the pictures) and worked out what units I wanted in my warband. Then I went out a purchased a bunch of boxes and excitedly stuck them together. Then the butterfly wafted through the room and I went off and did something else (tanks might have been involved). In the meantime these Chaos models sat on the shelf doing nothing but pour guilt into my soul.

A few months back Em and I were having a bit of a spring clean and when we got to this little band of models there was a brief discussion about what to do with them. Do we offer them up to the gods of ebay? Do leave them where they are? Do I actually get on and finish the damn things? Well, the final solution was that she would adopt them into her ever growing Chaos hoard (she's up to 5k, seriously?!?). There was a catch, and catch was that I finish painting the warriors (wait, how does that work?). So I did, and here are the results. 

First up is a few Khornate warriors for maximum killydeathsmash. 




One of the other units that got absorbed was a trio of trolls (that was fun to say, in my head). I ended up painting these pretty early on, they just needed some finishing, they were fun to throw the airbrush at. 





The next unit was little block of converted Marauders. As I cannot be in the same room as the standard Marauder models without wanting to beat the sculptor around the head with an anatomy textbook I had to find an alternative. I started with Empire Flagellants and added some stolen Chaos weapons, shields, and the odd head.  In my head, the concept for the warband was a core of actual Chaos Warriors followed around by some nutty cultists. The Flagellant models fitted perfectly and didn't take a great deal of effort to kitbash into something half decent. Anyway, these I didn't paint, but Em bashed through them in a few days and gave them a far better paint job than I was either planning or able to. 





There was a fourth unit in the warband, some Marauder horsemen (which are far better sculpted). However, I'm going to leave them for Em to post. She's keeps talking about doing a post focusing on Ponies. When it comes to painting horses Em is by far the better of us (what, I can't just dry brush them brown and be done with it?) and her horses are something beautiful to behold. So I'll let her talk about them in detail next time.

Thanks
Maisey

I've got sand in all the wrong places...

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Hello, 

So, been a little bit slow on the old model front recently. Primary reason being due to a house move. Which meant packing everything away, and then moving things, then having to unpack everything again. Hobby stuff was about halfway down the priority list, far below the bed (who doesn't like sleeping?), the kitchen stuff (eating is my third favourite thing!), but above silly little things like clothing. Anyway, we're now safely settled into Nerd Cottage Mk.II. It's bigger, better armoured, and now carries a 57mm cannon... ok, maybe not a cannon, but it does have a shed with a light bulb in it!

Being a nerd, what does a new house mean? Well, it means a new project, and this summer's project is going to be a dusty one. My plan is to create a new gaming board, with scenery, and two (small) armies to play on it. Anyone who has read the title might be able to make an educated guess that I'm doing a desert board.

And the armies? Well, I'm in a bit of a bolt action place, so the first one is going to be a selection of Australian units from the British 8th Army based in Egypt. The second will be the Afrika Korp. I'm going to swapping between doing the 8th and the board. Then I'll be doing a mixture of scatter scenery. With the Afrika Korp coming later. The reason I'm holding on doing the Afrika Korp is being Jeff from Pirate Viking Painting is going be doing a North Africa based Italian Army (He loves the feathery hats they had).

Ok, enough words, here some pretty!

A rifle section from the Australian 9th Division 

Bren gun team

some rifles

some more rifles

... and that one has a Tommy gun!

Some fire support

A 2pdr QF Anti-tank gun

Crewed by some sunburnt Aussies

and finally, something to carry things

An Austin 8hp light utility truck 

or a Tilly to anyone who used them.

Battlefleet Gothic campaign finally over

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In March, I declared I was “about to embark upon a campaign which will be a 50-50 mix of wargame and roleplay. Like Hornblower in space, what with BFG always harking back to the Age of Sail.” At the time, several of you asked how I planned to run it. Well, we finished the campaign last month, which means I’m now in a position to look back on the whole thing and share what worked and what fizzled. Mostly it worked… mostly.

The final confrontation. Having made a precarious alliance with a band of Eldar
refugees, Commodore Ortano's fleet launches an assault on the ork flagship.

The problem is that there are so many things I could talk about. I’ve made multiple attempts at writing this post, and all of them have descended into a sprawling ramble. I’m left with no choice but to resort to democracy. Oh how the High Lords of Terra would disapprove.

It seems to me that talking about this campaign could be broken down into the following topics. If you’re actually keen to hear my oh-so-wise thoughts on any of the following subjects, leave a comment, and I’ll express myself all over that particular area like an elephant seal landing on a squirrel.

Potential topics of burblage:

  1. The story details of the campaign. How did a disgraced ex-rear admiral from the Gothic Sector end up defeating an ork armada with nothing but a reconnaissance flotilla?
  2. The essential ingredients of a good narrative: conflict and change. For instance, a conflict: Clarence the elephant seal wants to put himself on Nibbles the squirrel. Nibbles is frightened of this possibility, and keeps running away. The change: Clarence sneaks up on Nibbles while he’s asleep and puts himself on Nibbles. As a result of Nibbles’ tragic death, Clarence learns about both physics and consent, becoming a more cautious and considerate seal thereafter. Wait, what was this bullet point about? Oh. Yes. Er… yeah um basically I’d talk about how you can set up a narrative and poke it in interesting directions even though you’re letting the players make all the decisions.
  3. What preparation is needed to run a narrative game? I did a whole bunch of world building and character creation to run this story, so I could go into more details on that, including a rather granular take on the crew of an Imperial capital ship.
  4. Initial thoughts on how the Epic 40,000 ruleset works when used in 28mm scale. Yes, there was a big ground combat component to this campaign. Yes, I was being ambitious. It kinda worked…
  5. Finally, this campaign featured persistent damage. If an Imperial ship was damaged or destroyed in battle, it stayed that way until it was repaired, and there were no reinforcements available. I could talk more about balancing that.

Conspicuously missing from that list is an explanation of the campaign rules themselves. That’s because it’s the one part of the whole shebang that was incredibly simple: we used the Battlefleet Gothic rules for the space battles and ship experience, but no rules at all for the roleplay side of things, despite the existence of various 40k-friendly RPGs.

I’m not averse to having game rules for social situations in RPGs, but in a Hornblower-esque story, much of the narrative centers on the relationships between the ship’s officers, which are revealed through little gestures and snippets of conversation, be it on the bridge or around the dining table. It would’ve felt weirdly unsubtle to say “roll me a social perception check.” Instead, it was up to Jon and Maisey to pick up on whatever hints I gave by the way I described things, and for me to react to the way they dealt with their crew.

Finally, you will have noted the presence of some hitherto unmentioned eldar ships in the photo above. That’s because I painted them in secret and had them turn up during a battle. Here’s another photo of the eldar ships in all their pristine glory:


Since their ships are made of wraithbone, I braved the dreaded white primer spray. It’s not obvious from the photo, but the ships have had all the crevices lovingly painted with a bone/brown shade, and the sails are semi-metallic and glossy. The intention was to get as close to a solar panel as possible. You’d probably need video footage to see how that works. Or your imagination.

Finally, one issue with the prow cannons on eldar ships is that they’re quite tall, largely to avoid having fragile gun barrels and undercuts. To get around this problem, I painted some of the guns as though they’re double-barrelled, as exemplified by this hellebore-class frigate:


OK, that’s all from me for now. Did any of the five subjects mentioned above hold any interest for you? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll get blogging.

Given how long it’s been since my last post, I will of course be unsurprised if the comments section ends up being filled with nothing but crickets and tumbleweed, and I have no one to blame but myself. Bad Charlie.

Another freehand Hochland banner

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My love of the Olde Worlde has been rejuvinated thanks largely to Total War: Warhammer. I maintain they should have called it Total Warhammer, thus providing both a shorter title and a playground insult, i.e. "Jamie stole my biscuits and he peed in Archie's orange juice. Archie says he's a total warhammer." 

Before I get on with today's actual post, here's a flash review of Total Warhammer: it's an imaginatively faithful adaptation whose only misstep is to follow GW's suggestion of occasionally replacing a mountain with a giant stone skull. In every other respect it's fun and well-paced, and surprisingly tasteful compared to some other GW adaptations.

Anyway, I mention all this because I enjoyed Total Warhammer so much that it gave me the urge to paint more state troops of the Empire. This had the added advantage of clearing something out of my overpopulated WIP tray. And so without further ado, here are the Heedenhof Greenleaves:


This regiment was hastily assembled in the small market town of Heedenhof after Splendiferus/Emma captured the town just over the other side of the river, as per the campaign map. I wanted them to look like a bargain basement regiment, so they got spears (easy to manufacture) and faded green uniforms (because they didn't have any red dye at the time, and they were in a rush).


The only experienced soldier is the sergeant: a retired swordsman who thought his soldiering days were done. He's absolutely thrilled to be back in uniform and teaching a bunch of bumpkins how to use their stabby sticks.

Since having a whole human skull on your belt is stupid, I chopped it off and replaced it with a scroll from the flagellant kit to represent a map, or maybe something one of his kids drew. Or emergency arsewipes. Or a map his kid drew on which he now plans to use for emergency arsewipes.

Finally, there's the banner. As has been previously established, I tend to get a tad overexcited when it comes to this part.


The crossed keys are a common enough icon, but apt here: the Greenleaves are town guards, and Hochland's military use a lot of cross motifs in their heraldry.


The trees linked by the bridge take a little more explaining. I imagined that Heedenhof and Bergendorf, having always been linked by a bridge across the River Flaschgang, were effectively one large town with two names. Thus, I imagine when Bergendorf fell to the Norscans, it would have been like a twin losing their sibling. The Greenleaves' banner represents this, with two trees standing atop a bridge. One tree has new green leaves, representing new growth, whereas the other remains leafless. Whether that means Bergendorf is dead, or merely awaiting the turn of the seasons, is probably in the eye of the beholder. Given the extent to which Emma informed me her beastmen had shat all over Bergendorf, the local foliage will at least have plenty of fertiliser.

Anyway, it feels surprisingly good to have removed something from my epic heap of unfinished crap. Hopefully the momentum thus generated can be sustained. Thanks, Total War. You made me paint little green men.

~Charlie

Let's get the band back together...

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Not a musical band, but a band of brave and/or foolhardy adventurers all heading off to lands forgotten and ravaged by a great calamity in search of fame, glory, and riches. Well, mostly riches. Also for the stories. Once our intrepid souls have a few heroic yarns to spin they will be able to hold rapt the patrons of any alehouse or inn they care to frequent. Not to mention turn the heads of any fair maid or strapping lad that catches their eye. 

So who are these daring men and woman? And what is their goal?

Say CHEESE everybody


The goal is a city dubbed Frostgrave, an ancient metropolis at the heart of a magical empire that was befallen by a great accident that left the city buried under the ice for centuries. Now that it has started to thaw, it's treasures are up for grabs.

Now let's meet the fellowship:

Arthur le Berre: Fire Wizard and Leader

The fingers are where the magic happens


Gourvan Mandroux: Ice Wizard and apprentice to Arthur

More pointing of fingers


Sir Jord de Rais: Knight

Yeah, I can't free hand tiny dragons that well

Lom Mason and Pierrick Dosser: Men at Arms

His colour scheme totally wasn't a Bretonnian reference at all

The unfortunately named Dosser

Katel Madec: Crossbow-woman

No sexy armour for this girl

Joran Verne: Archer & Hunter

I think his parents might have been related

Most of the models came from the Artemis Black section from Hasslefree. I really do like these sculpts, mostly for the little details. All of them are carrying bedrolls, packs, and various side arms so they really do feel like they are properly kitted out for an adventure.

Take a look at his horse
BFB?

As for the painting, I kept it natural and earthy for the henchmen. It was quite nice being able to take each one as a unique person and paint them all a little differently as these are all hired help and wouldn't be in any type of uniform. With the wizards I ended up being a little more vibrant with the paint scheme. Arthur being a fire wizard had to be in red (it's a Union thing, he has to wear red). Gourvan was a little more accidental. I wanted him in a frosty white tinted blue but it ended up being much more blue, but I liked it so decided to keep it as it was. 

Next up in our preparation for the Frostgrave campaign is to get the board and scenery done. Lots of snow covered gothic buildings are forecast for my immediate future.

Thanks
Maisey






Tabletop World Merchant's Shop

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Two of Tabletop World's beautiful buildings have sat unpainted on my scenery shelf for long enough that I don't even remember how many years I've had them for. If the Dwarves have the Great Book of Grudges, I have the Great Book of Unfinished Shames.



Thanks to a looming deadline and the continuing hobby bender initiated by Total War: Warhammer as described in my last post, another Shame can be struck from the book: the merchant's shop.

Note: when I took this photo, I didn't notice that the 1st floor wasn't sitting on the ground
floor properly, hence the visible gap on the right balcony support strut. I mention it
purely because I wouldn't want to make Tabletop World look bad on account of my doziness.




As with the other two tabletop world buildings wot I done painted, these models have such crisp casting and sculpting that they're just satisfying to paint. With this latest one I've introduced a little tonal variation to attempt an increase in sexiness. In as much as one can think of a building as sexy. All those firm timbers... dem saggy roofs...

Ding dong.

Like all Tabletop World sculpts the merchant's shop has interior detail, and requires no assembly beyond gluing the balcony to the first floor. Each floor is held in place via gravity and parts of the model carefully sculpted to hold the building in once piece until you need access to the interior in the middle of a roleplay/skirmish scenario, like so:



I should at this point add that in a fit of laziness, I only basecoated the interior. SHAME. SHAME. SHAMETo give you a sense of scale, here's the shop's stock room filled with... stock. And a captain of the Empire, since I don't have a painted customs official.



I'm curious as to how widespread the use of Tabletop World's stuff is. I have no sense of how many people buy and use their stuff, although I get the impression their rep is steadily growing. Is that the case? Have any of you glorious bastards got your mittens on them?

Next time, I'll share some photos of the smithy. In case you're thinking "pff yeah right Charlie never actually does the thing he says he'll do next," I'll have you know that (a) that's a fair point, but that (b) I've already painted it, so ha!
~Charlie


Secret Weapon's Tablescape Tiles: A Review

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Back in the glorious summer of 2016 I set about a little personal project to create a North Africa themed collection of models and scenery. I've already posted a little about before in I've Got Sand In All The Wrong Places. Well I've finished the British and Australian section of the project and now ready to get started on the board.

I had several options when it comes to creating the actual board it's self. Firstly I could try and lay my hands on one of the good old Realm of Battle boards from Games Workshop. They were great boards, if a little on the pricey side. We have successfully created a desert board from these before by sculpting mud cracks over the skull pits. This gave the board a dry feel and was pretty simple to do. A second one of these would mean we can take the one that Charlie owns and create a huge 6'X8' or 4'x12' gaming surface for those really big games. This plan met a fairly terminal halt when I discovered that GW don't actually manufacture the Realm of Battle boards anymore and they have been replaced with a 40k specific urban board and a AoS specific board that really didn't take my fancy for the price. 

I did consider trying to source a load of extruded polystyrene foam sheets, and it does have to be extruded not expanded polystyrene for it to work, to create my own gaming boards. I had started a design with both lowered and raised areas and a pile of scatter scenery. The cost of which, once you took into consideration the foam sheets, the varnish, paint, and various modelling materials to do it justice, had started to spiral into the same as a pre-made board. Then you would have to factor the time need to make into the equation. Plus also considering I've never done any serious scenery scratch building before there was a real danger of it never getting finished. Especially with my attention span.

I went back to scouring the internet. Eventually I stumbled across the Secret Weapon Tablescape Tiles set. The price was a lot closer to what I wanted to spend* and there was a good selection of sizes and landscapes. Currently available there are the following designs:


Forgotten City: This is a series of tiles with ancient city ruins. Could look really good done up as either a dark, brooding gothic city, or would work amazingly as an Aztec looking ruin.

Rolling Hills: This would be a good base for a temperate grassy board. Several of the tiles have a nicely sculpted river sections as well as rolling hills (funny that).

Scrap Yard: This one would make a great Mad Max/post apocalypse board with sculpted piles of debris, abandoned vehicles and tire tracks. Also anyone thinking of doing an Ork themed board should have a close look at this one 
Urban Streets - Clean: A gridded city street. Some of the sections seem to have some fairly sci-fi affections it would be great for a futuristic city fight board.   

Urban Streets - Damaged: As above but damaged.  

After careful consideration I ended up ordering the Rolling Hills, as it was plain enough to fit with any period/setting and the (dry) river bed would be fitting with the ditches and scrubby settings of coastal Libya.


At this point there was a little bit of a hitch. Actually, quite a big hitch. It transpired that I had somehow managed to order the wrong board! How, I'm still not sure, but I can only assume that because I had my shortlist open on different tabs I had clicked add the cart on the wrong tab. Let this be a lesson to you all, always double check your basket before you click the final button.

At this point I had four real options.
  1.  I do the sensible, adult thing and contact the store, explain that I had been an idiot and hope that they would be nice and let me exchange the board for a new one.
  2. I live with the board that had arrived and paint it up as a ruined city in the desert. This would mean ignoring my theme and just getting on with it but still could look rather good.
  3. I try and sell the board to someone, use the money to get the board I actually wanted and just suck up the difference in price.
  4. Have two gaming boards.
Guess which option I went for?

Now I own two gaming boards. It was clear how I was going going to paint the Rolling Hills set, but what to do with the Forgotten City set? After much internal debate, and some external debate, eventually I decided to just put the Forgotten City board to one side and wait for the opportune moment to use it. The Tablescape Tiles box is certainly sufficient is size to store the main set, plus probably a few extra boards, as well as all the clips, and takes up a lot less space than a realm of battle board. However it is only card and I can see it wearing out over the years and becoming an issue. There might need to be a creative storage solution in the future.


Each design is made up of 12"x12" tiles and there are around 16 unique tiles per design so there is very little duplication. Each design also comes in multiple sized sets. A full 6'X4' board requires the 24 tile set. It is simple enough to mix and match from different sets to get the landscape you desire, especially when they are all available in 4, 8, 16, and 24 tile sets. The sculpting and variation is top notch, there are very few 'huh? what is that doing there' type moments when looking into the details. No random objects that seem out of place or skulls that have been added 'for the aesthetic'. The tiles themselves are quite small, but the boards come with a rather neat system of clips that slot underneath. They actually fit really well, well enough that I have no fear of the tiles coming away from each other, and the clips are smooth enough. The corners do leave me a little bit nervous about the durability where they are particularly thin, and how that will hold up in the long term with the clipping and rearranging. The downside to the multi-tile system is setting up takes a while longer as you need to unclip and re-arrange things. This really is only a massive problem if you're doing a series of games during a day and want to mix up they layouts.


Painting the Rolling Hills was a very straight forward affair. The boards have a good amount of texture and detail already built in, and without any unnecessary affectations sculpted into the board. When we created the first desert board using the GW Realm of Battle board we went to our local DIY store and used their paint matching service to make up some large tins of Khemri Brown, Desert Yellow and Bleached Bone equivalents.  Now these colours no longer exist in the Citadel colour range, but the huge tins of emulsion paint we had made where still sitting around at Charlie's house. So armed with those, a 3" brush and the first 4 StarTrek films** I set about the board with gusto. One issue that has arisen from the moulded details. They great to look at but have caused some problems when it comes to placing scenery, especially on the Forgotten City board, as well as model balance issues. For the most part it's fine, just a few little raised areas that cause metal models to tumble.  

I primed the board using about 1 and a half cans of chocolate brown spray, again picked up from the local DIY store's give-me-the-cheapest-spray-paint-because-I'm-painting-a-huge-area-and-I-had-blown-my-budget-out-of-the-water-with-two-gaming-boards range(tm). Then simply painted and then dry-brushed the colours up until I was happy. Job done.

It wasn't until later last year, possibly December time, that we arrived at the decision to give Frost Grave a serious go. Suddenly the need to have a full sized urban board arose and I had the perfect thing sitting in our hobby cupboard***. So two trips to our local DIY store later (The paint I had picked for the base coat was too light and ended up as one of the midtones so I went back for something darker) we had all the materials we needed. Spray primer, a good sized tub of dark grey (that might look nice in the bathroom if there is enough left over) a mid grey, a selection of random tester pots of various different mid and light greys to give us some tonal variation on the flagstones (DING!) and a light grey for the final dry brush. For this board I was being a bit more adventurous that with the desert board. I planned to have stone, grass AND snow on this board in an attempt to depict an ancient and ruined city emerging from a long winter so I had picked up a cheap vat of PVA glue, a couple of boxes of soda crystals, and a pot of white acrylic paint. I started with priming the board black, then a solid coat of a dark asphalt grey, then went through with the mid grey tester pots painting a random selection of flag stones, rubble, rocks, with a bunch of different shades of grey, then a final dry brush of the lighter grey to blend it all in.


Next up came the grass, this was just a normal static grassing with focus on the crevices and areas where the designers had sculpted on soil/dirt patches covering the flag stones. After that I got messy with the snow. This was a mix of PVA, soda crystals and a little bit of white paint. I can't tell you in what proportions I added the materials in, but I just kept adding soda crystals until it was a slightly runny porridge consistency and a good squirt of white paint for luck. Then I just set about adding snow to where ever seemed like a good place to add snow. I think overall the effect was a decent one, if a little laborious.


In Summary

I'm actually impressed with both boards. The quality of the casting is decent and crisp enough for a gaming board and required no preparation beyond taking them out of the box. The clip system works well and hopefully will stand up to repeated use and changes. Both boards where nice and easy to paint. Hopefully the storage won't be a problem but I can burn that bridge when I get to it. The scenery not always sitting level, for me isn't a great deal of an issue, but I know I'm going to have to be careful with balancing models.  


Overall I'm happy with the boards and the niggles are just that, niggles that won't stop me enjoying my purchases.           

*The current price seems to be higher than what I paid, I can only assume that some of the global and political events of the second half of 2016 have affected the exchange rates, as Secret Weapon is an American company.

**Now TV had put ALL the StarTrek movies on to a single playlist.

***Or the cupboard under the stairs as most normal people would call it.

Tabletop World Blacksmith Forge

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As a rampant hobby butterfly, I'm much better at starting new and ambitious things than I am at finishing them. Everything I start is doomed to WIP-shelf relegation as a new sexy project tempts me away. Mounds of basecoated or half-assembled things lean against each other in boxes, exchanging disappointed glances and wondering if their time in the sun will come.

Screw that.

If 2017 is even a patch on 2016, we're going to need escapism and endorphins in equal measure, which means getting stuff done, gods dammit! To that end, as promised at the end of my post on the merchant's house, here is the blacksmith forge from Tabletop World.






It amazes me that this kit is just four components. It's like a diorama that requires almost no assembly. What I will say is that Jeff was wise to mount his on a base - the joins connecting the smithy to its house have patchy contacts. I got over this with an enthusiastic application of thick super glue, but structurally it's not very sound. So why didn't I follow Jeff's wisdom and add a base? Because he's building a rustic village, whereas I want my buildings to work in both towns and countryside. A grassy base would undermine that flexibility. Still, basing it is a damn good idea if that's compatible with your plans.

If you're curious about painting this kind of scenery, Jeff also wrote a solid step-by-step of his work on Tabletop World's windmill, and honestly he did a more conscientious job than I do on my own scenery. That said, if you do have any questions re: painting, I'm happy to answer them.

In case you're concerned that my sole plan for 2017 is to spam things I've painted whilst patting myself on the back for actually finishing something, I assure you that there are other things brewing. Frosty things. Grave things.*

~Charlie

*I am subtle, like happy mallet.

Bolt Action Italians in North Africa - Part one

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Greetings bunker dwellers! It is I, Jeff of the... well, the Beard Bunker actually. I've finally moved in permanently from the old site so you'll be seeing me rather a lot more going forward. To kick off, I thought I'd return us to the dry desert heat of North Africa with a companion project to Maisey's Aussies, my Bolt Action Italians:


This lot are the first squad of the army. Italian formations of the period are a bit weird to British eyes and making them fit Bolt Action's rules took a little finagling. I'll be talking more about the historical aspects of the army in future posts so stay tuned for that. Today, instead, we'll be focusing on the models and the painting. Let's get to it!

Ignore the base rims, that's not a mistake to be fixed later, no... it's a stylistic choice honest...
The models are Perry Miniatures' range of metal Italian WW2 chappies. Now, before we get much further, I have to have a tiny grumble: I love the Perry's plastic stuff, I've used a lot of it, this is the first time I've used the metals aaaand... I wish I could say I was very impressed. The posing and anatomy seems fine enough although the one piece castings cause the usual problems there. But especially the faces and hands seem very... rushed? Is the only way I can think to say it. Some of them look like Odo from Deep Space Nine. Combine that with a slightly rough casting texture and you have not a great result. It's not a real shame as the Perrys clearly know what they're doing it's just that the quality simply wasn't there on these.

All that being said: We aren't exactly over-endowed with Italian miniatures to use and these do seem the best of the bunch out there. It just knocked a bit of my enthusiasm for the project early on. Now I've got the first squad out of the way I feel a bit better about the project and am pressing on. I just figured I'd do a slightly more impressionist version of my usual painting and let the mass effect do it's work. So armed with a bunch of internet research (very useful thread here), an old Osprey book and pints of tea, I set to.


My usual approach to WW2 figures is to deal with the vast bulk of the uniform first, generally by drybrushing, as that gives a bit of texture to the cloth that contrasts nicely with the smoother helmets and other gear. I also make sure to add uniform insignia and squad markings as, lean in, I need to whisper this... painting monochrome WW2 stuff can be a bit boring otherwise. Handily, the slightly slapdash supply situation the Italians had also gives you a chance to scatter some of the grey-green temperate bits of kit among the units. That and the occasional cork helmet (rarely worn in combat sure, but I figure a surprised unit) means that there's a nice bit of variety. But for the most part the painting starts with a solid basecoat of Vallejo Dark Sand, shaded down with Seraphim Sepia and then highlighted with Dark Sand mixed with increasing amounts of Pale Sand. If you want to introduce some tonal variation (ping) to the unit you can do so here by varying the final tone. Some ending up a bit lighter, others darker, the sun tended to bleach uniforms. I'll confess, I didn't bother on this one. Might on some more veteran troops. 


Something I was pondering was how to get the darker skin tone that tanned, Mediterranean troops deployed to the desert would have. Fortunately, I recently realised that by adding Beige Brown and Burnt Umber to the skin tone spectrum allows you to portray most skin tones by adjusting what wash you use. In this case a Beige Brown and Cadian Fleshtone mix shaded with Reikland Fleshshade. Highlighting up gradually to Cadian Fleshtone left me with that "long time in the sun" look I was going for. The other problem was the rifle furniture which is a rather strange orangey tone. I then had memory turn a card and recalled Charlie using Chestnut Ink as a glaze to get the varnished wood look. I busted that out and voilà, orangey Italian rifles. Talking about all this, it's time for tips folks: there's always a problem with keeping things consistent across an army especially if there is a bit of time in between painting sessions. Solve them with a crib sheet that you write as you develop the colour scheme like this:


These have saved me many, many times. As an example, I'd have completely forgotten that I'd added that dash of German Camo Dark Green to the temperate uniform basecoat. Now, I could go on and on and on here but instead, I'm going to reign myself in and save some content for future chapters in the project. I'll do linking bits at the bottom of each part to help navigation

Like this! : Part two (this will totally have a link one day)

Until then lovely dwellers,

TTFN
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