Three week genestealer cult part 4: the results

August 2, 2017, 12:36 am

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Stealers up inside yerrrr, findin an entrance where they can.

Charlie: Now that the dust from Saturday's game has settled, I can reveal whether or not I did indeed succeed at batch painting a genestealer cult in three weeks, particularly since the models are no longer swathed in a blanket of secrecy. The answer...?

Hell yeah.

Now I should couch this triumphal tone in reminding y'all that I had help. Andy joined me for a ten-hour painting binge in the run-up to Saturday's game, and on the Friday night Jeff spent a few quality hours on the magus so that I could scamper upstairs and spew out stat lines (we're using the RPG engine we developed, which of course means rules for 40k characters only exist if we write them!).

After all these posts, I'd be remiss if I didn't provide a photo of everything that got painted over the last three weeks, so here it is:

Much as I can't claim any of these are masterpieces, I am satisfied that they look solid on the tabletop, and this has been the most concentrated dose of painting I've had for years. Possibly since I was working in the FLGS, which was... yeesh, about six years ago. Hobby whiplash much?

Since I posted about it in a previous episode, the goliath has gained some crew.

Inevitably there were some flies in the ointment, among which were the fact that following the exact same sequence of paints on both the goliath and the cultist's armour resulted in different shades of yellow - largely because of the black grime wash the models got, and a difference in primer colours - almost all the models were sprayed with Mournfang Brown, whereas the truck was sprayed with Averland Sunset.

Basecoating

This seems like as good a time as any to sing the praises of Mournfang Brown spray. It's not advertised as a primer spray, but as a basecoating spray. I confess I sprayed it directly onto the plastic without a primer, and it worked ok, but produced a slightly chalky texture that probably wouldn't have happened if the models had also been primed. This generally wasn't a problem, although the magus was the most pronounced victim. Basically, don't cut corners with your character models. Or at all, if you have more pride than me.

Jeff painted this! Well, Andy and I did the basecoats, but basically, Jeff painted this. Notice the bobbly texture on the staff from my primer sins.

Technical whoopsies notwithstanding, the advantage of a brown basecoat is that the transparency of most paints is mitigated by having a midtone beneath them, and if you miss a few bits, it just makes the cloth look dirty and the metal look rusty. Ideal for batches of grungy troops.

Basecoats were slapped over the brown undercoat, starting with the messiest (the metal drybrush) and finishing with the tidiest (the yellow). The cultists don't have a uniform, so a variety of colours were used. Once fabric, metal and rubber areas were all basecoated, the whole model got a wash made of thinned black paint, which provides more low-lighting and a more matte effect than GW's nuln oil. I used Army Painter's black paint, since it tolerates being thinned out quite well.

Once the wash has dried, the metal areas were given a light silver overbrush to give contrast, the fabric was highlighted by using the same colours used for the basecoats, and the flesh was painted.

Skin tones

I wanted the cult to have a variety of skin tones present, but I also didn't have time for infinite variety so I stuck to three different tones. All three tones follow the same method: basecoat, wash, highlight with basecoat colour. Here's what the three skin tones look like:

So the sequences go thusly:

• Pale skin: basecoat cadian fleshtone, wash reikland fleshshade, highlight cadian fleshtone
• Brown skin: basecoat gorthor brown, wash agrax earthshade, highlight gorthor brown
• Dark skin: basecoat rhinox hide, wash black, highlight rhinox hide

With the skin painted, any models with long hybrid tongues got Blood for the Blood God on them. Everyone then got a thin dark blue wash about the eye sockets and bugman's glow on their lower lips, plus bone for the teeth and white/black for the eyes.With darker skin tones I find eyes and lips to be completely un-skippable, even though I was going for speed. The second generation hybrids also got a thin wash of red gore around the back of their craniums to give an added hint of alien weirdness, although it's hard to tell from my sub-standard photography.

PDF reinforcements

One of the secrets to keep was the presence of some military cultists. I painted some neophyte guardsmen up in the same colours as my platoon of mechanised infantry, then sprinkled them among squads of guardsmen to temporarily convert my whole guard army into a big, tank-filled problem for the kill team.

Acolytes

The acolytes were painted to have the same insectoid brown-black carapace as the genestealers. This is an extremely simple method that's hard to photograph, but basically, bone is drybrushed over the brown basecoat, then the whole area gets a wash of undiluted black ink (specifically ink, normal washes don't have the coverage for this). Tongues and sinew are spared the ink, instead painted with blood for the blood god.

Purestrain genestealers

Finally, we come to the stealers. My hope was to hint at the xenomorph from the Alien franchise, hence the slightly brown-black coloration. They were given the same treatment as the acolytes above, so were extremely quick to paint, and rather satisfying. They also scared the the everloving quiffle out of the players, except Maisey, whose Dark Angel was a member of the Deathwing and took such problems in his stride. That said, he looked about as unhappy as everyone else when the Patriarch showed up.

As with any light sources on a model, the lamp on the patriarch's base was painted white then got a thinned-down layer of the old Red Gore so that it was brighter than everything around it. The surrounding area, including bits of the patriarch, were drybrushed with Red Gore for a quick half-arsed OSL effort.

In case you're wondering, I also sculpted some alien goo onto the patriarch's base to help blend it into the Sector Mechanicum base I'd plonked him on. Said goo was then painted gloss black because grimdark and... shiny.

I also have to give a fan-squee shout out to the sculptor of the patriarch. None of the players had seen that model in the flesh when it was put down on the table, and they all came close to peeing themselves. It is one of the most imposing minis I've seen for a while, and a large part of that is its menacing pose. Well played Mr Sculptor, well played.

That's it for the three week cult! Hopefully it's been at least somewhat amusing. If there's some element of the painting you have questions about, such as "why would any sane man paint all those cultists in one giant batch?" or "why aren't the genestealers blue and purple you heretic?" then ask away in the comments.

I'll be back soon with photos Jon (and others) took of the day itself, with all the scenery and marines and the Storm Eagle thwooshing overhead.

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Deathwatch mission: the Fall of Kursanov Prime

August 7, 2017, 9:47 am

≫ Next: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

≪ Previous: Three week genestealer cult part 4: the results

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Charlie: This is the final post about the Deathwatch scenario I GMd recently. This time I’m going over the scenario concept itself, accompanied with in-fiction snippets and photos from the day. The concept is simple enough that you could probably adapt it for a themed 40k skirmish; we were playing it as an RPG using our in-house ruleset.

The first thing the players got was the briefing. This came weeks before the mission itself, so they had time to choose their marine’s gear (and make a model if necessary; Andy rather wisely magnetised his marine’s arms so that he could swap out the weapons in future scenarios).

This is going to be a hefty post with a fair few photos and fat chunks of screed, so if you're down for that, hit the jump.

Mission Briefing

Obligatory green text on dark background, replicated below for your convenience.

++++AUTHOR: Inquisitor Erasyl Nurzhan, Ordo Xenos

++LOCATION: Kursanov Prime, high orbit

++++++++TO: Watch-Captain Lucius Valerian, Hydraphur, Caerostrum

+++SUBJECT: Petition 

+CLEARANCE: Ω5/xenos/adjunct/454934QS/uplink&castifastropath=G9+\\

Honoured Captain Valerian,

Kursanov Prime, the most industrious hive world in the Macharian Sector, has succumbed to a xenos cult. The infestation must have taken years—possibly even generations—and yet once the cult revealed itself, the world was theirs within eighteen hours. They have control of the infrastructure, significant elements of the planetary defence force… even the planet’s sub-orbital defences, including multiple squadrons of aircraft. Billions are dead. Whilst there are still some pockets of resistance, it cannot be denied that their victory is total.

Three days elapsed before the navy arrived to enact a quarantine. Since then, nothing has been allowed to leave the surface. Just one of these alien life forms (known colloquially as ‘genestealers’) can damn a world to a similar fate given sufficient time to… reproduce. My stomach turns at the fate I must deal out to the planet of my birth, but my duty is clear:

I have sanctioned exterminatus. 

This amputation will prevent further infection to the sector, but we do not know how many xenos might already have left on ships bound for other systems in recent months. This is where I must ask you for aid, Captain.

There are two objectives. The first is to secure an uplink with any one of Kursanov Prime’s starports, so that we might acquire accurate records of which vessels have recently visited the system.

My dear colleague Inquisitor Yelizaveta Fyodorova confided in me that she suspected some cult was at work in Hive Corvum, and had set up a base of operations there. Upon arrival in-system I attempted to contact her, but to no avail. If anyone has valuable insights into the cult’s machinations, it would be her. Your second objective, therefore, is to reach her base of operations in Corvum and retrieve her or, if the worst has come to pass, to retrieve whatever intelligence you can from her facility.

If you are unable to render assistance, I will endeavour to achieve these objectives myself. A futile gesture, perhaps, but when faced with a tragedy of this magnitude one cannot stand idle.

Sincerely,

Erasyl Nurzhan

Arrival

A fleet hung above Kursanov Prime like a headsman's axe over a  waiting neck. Frigates and destroyers drifted next to kilometers-long ships of the line, all silent. The quarantine was in its fourth week. Crews grew listless; many of them hailed from Kursanov and even more had relatives only a few thousand miles below them. They stared out of viewing ports, starting to suspect what was to come, and wondering if they'd refuse to obey when the order came.

One by one, the fleet's vessels detected a ship approaching. A gladius-class frigate. It gave no response to hails. Moments later, the ships received word from the commodore: radio silence was to be observed. The ships stopped hailing the frigate and merely watched as it shot past them into low orbit in the skies over Hive Corvum.

A single gunship left its hangar bay.

Scenario one: the docks, Hive Corvum

Objective: extract shipping records held by the Planetary Shipping Authority so that the Inquisition can determine which vessels could have carried genestealers to other worlds. Secure both a port office and a communications array to broadcast said information into the Inquisitor waiting in orbit.

The black-hulled gunship was still glowing from atmospheric entry when it shot between the uppermost spires of Hive Corvum. It cut its main engines, flipped, and re-engaged them, initiating a brutal deceleration. Inside the passenger cabin Ganzorig hollered his excitement, making Hytius and Unik smirk. Acting Sergeant Jophiel remained silent, as did Kyaneus, the former through reticence, the latter through habit.

In the cockpit Uzziel watched the dials as the gunship’s velocity dropped. When the speed became manageable he grinned, and flipped the storm eagle back over. A mountain range of towering hab stacks and ancient spires swung into view, and in the distance, their target: one of Corvum's tertiary dockyards. "Thirty-four seconds," he voxed. 

Back in the passenger cabin, Ganzorig and Kyaneus rose from their seats and helped each other into their jump packs, then signalled their readiness to Uzziel. Air rushed out as the two marines made their way to the opening ramp. Ganzorig turned to face the others as he reached the ramp's end, spread his arms wide, and allowed himself to fall backwards with a laugh. Kyaneus waited a moment, then stepped off the ramp without a word.

Since scenario one required the team to simultaneously hold two objectives, and Jeff (Ganzorig) and Tom (Kyaneus) both had jump packs, they decided to secure the orbital comms relay (pictured below) whilst the rest of the team landed outside the port authority office.

A few surprised dock workers with suspiciously bumpy foreheads barely had time to look up from smoking their lho sticks before getting some well-placed bolter rounds to the chest, although another dock worker managed to escape into the bulk access elevator and fled the scene - presumably to alert his fellow cultists that some large chaps in chunky armour had just expressed themselves all over Dave and Bob (who definitely had backstories, I mean, you can't just have two random spods smoking a cheeky lho stick without giving them family lives, amiright?).

The relay is from the Sector Imperialis Objectives kit.

You can just about see the whole board here, with Ganzorig and Kyaneus perched on the scaffold near the top right, and the Storm Eagle having just landed outside the port authority office, top centre-left.

Jophiel, Unik and Hytius disembark the storm eagle and kick in the door to the office of the port authority.

Hytius guards the door as Uzziel makes ready to take off and provide air support.

Ganzorig (foreground) and Kyaneus keep a look out, in case the one bloke who got away comes back with friends.

Three dozen neophytes of the Four-Armed Father readied themselves as the bulk access elevator took them up to the surface level. Biran must have been exaggerating about the invaders; he'd clearly fled from the scene so quickly he'd not taken things in properly. The neophytes hefted their autoguns, and the foreman led them in a chant.

All for the father, all for the children, all for the father, all for the children.

They watched as the lights on the wall switched on and off as they rose through the last few levels, then tensed as a soft ding sounded, and the surface level light came on. The doors had barely opened by a hand span when a grenade flew through the gap. There were a few panicked shouts, then it went off.

In the confines of the elevator, the effect was devastating.

As the doors continued to open, a hail of bolter fire chewed into the neophytes amid screams of abject terror. Some of the people at the front had survived the grenade, but were pinned to the floor by the writhing bodies of those behind. Someone managed to reach up from the floor and slap the descent icon on the control panel. The attackers continued pumping bolter shells into the elevator even as the doors closed again, then there was nothing but the sound of the wailing wounded and the whirring of the elevator.

After the first wave of attackers never even made it out of the lift, Tom and Jeff felt they had the comms relay pretty well secure, and made to shift position and provide flanking fire for the rest of the team. To their confusion, Maisey (playing team sergeant Jophiel) gave them strict orders to stay where they were, even though a crowd of cultists were advancing on the port offices, threatening to overwhelm the other three marines.

Cultists advance on the port authority offices, supported by a goliath truck.

Hytius and Unik brace themselves.

With Jophiel busy pulling files from the cogitators inside, it fell to Hytius and Unik to hold the offices, with supporting fire from the storm eagle gunship.

Unik sniped at the cultists carrying industrial lasers, and Hytius' infernus heavy bolter mowed down the front rank, after which the storm eagle passed overhead and launched a salvo of missiles into the goliath truck, thus taking it out for a lovely night on the town and finishing with a slightly upmarket seafood restaurant full of locally sourced detonations.

I wasn't the only one with things to paint; Jeff managed to get 30 neophytes ready for the game like a baws.

Maisey's instincts proved correct when the doors of the bulk access elevator opened again. Kyaneus and Ganzorig fired a volley of bolts through the doors, but this time, the cult used aberrants to hold up big metal plates to shield the cultists behind them, allowing the primus' acolytes to spill out into the street.

The acolytes swarmed up the tower. While Kyaneus shot those closest to reaching the top, Ganzorig called in an airstrike from the gunship. Uzziel obliged him and met with spectacular success, sweeping the tower clear of hybrids with a pair of heavy frag missiles.

Meanwhile, Jophiel finally finished the upload. Clearing a path by using up yet more of the gunship's limited supply of missiles, Jophiel, Unik and Hytius boarded the storm eagle and joined Kyaneus and Ganzorig at the bulk access elevator.

It was time to descend into the hive and say goodbye to the air support.

Notes on the terrain layout
To ensure the team faced some tricky decisions, I ensured that they had to be on opposite ends of the table, and of course their gunship couldn't be everywhere at once. They had to hold both objectives until Jophiel finished the upload, which took quite a few turns. Maisey was kept busy managing the storm eagle and its monstrous payload of missiles.

What should I have done differently in scenario one?
The thing about deathwatch kill-teams is that they're, well, killy. The thing about storm eagle gunships is that they're even killier. As much as I hurled enormous numbers of cultists at the team, I think I should've hurled even more, and from more angles. That would've tempted them to waste the gunship's limited supply of ammo in the first scenario, or face some fairly bracing close quarter battles with only two marines. That said, the first mission was meant to be pretty easy compared with the second and third, so in the end I decided to keep the story moving.

The tricky thing about scenarios like this is that you only run them once, which means you don't get to learn from your mistakes.

Scenario two: hidden Inquisition facility, Hive Corvum

Objective: Yelizabeta Fyodorova was the first Inquisitor to sense something was wrong on Kursanov Prime. She set up a base of operations in a dilapidated hab-stack in Hive Corvum to investigate, but has not been heard from in some time. Reach the facility and locate the Inquisitor, or failing that, extract whatever intelligence can be found in her base so that the Inquisition can learn more about the genestealers.

The whole concept for this mission was exploration. Before the day of the game, I'd created a map of a layout of two space hulk boards combined with the tiles you get in Deathwatch: Overkill. As the players moved into the area, I'd reveal the sections of the map they could see. What the team didn't know (but let's face it, were probably expecting) was that since they'd butchered so many cultists, the Patriarch was now searching for them with his purestrain genestealers in tow, and the first purestrain scout would show up as an auspex blip after ten turns' worth of exploration.

Good thing Unik the Space Wolf remembered to bring an auspex, eh?

Floorplan of Fyodorova's base in Hive Corvum

I made the map in Google Sheets, and had it open on my laptop so I could see which tiles to put where as the team explored it. They began at the bottom of the map and explored from there. The rooms at the bottom right were a red herring - just the neighbouring apartment, bought out by Fyodorova to avoid discovery. The complex at the top right was another apartment, separated from the main facility, so that the Inquisitor could enjoy plenty of living space (by hive standards) and be nice and far away from the lab (and the specimens within).

It became pretty immediately apparent to the players that the facility was abandoned, at which point the team declared it was time to split up and search for survivors. Normally I'd say that's a stupid move, but if motherfudging space marines can't split up and search for survivors, who can?

Ganzorig and Unik explore the Red Herring apartment, while the others push on ahead.

You'll note doors in the above picture. It turns out doors are great for suspense, because while you can peek your head around a corner, you literally have to reach out and touch a door. It seemed like spending so long finding no-one only served to make them more nervous. Either that or they did an oscar-winning job of humouring me.

Yes, Hytius' infernus heavy bolter is a prototype held together with duct tape. He named her Ripley, but none of  his brother marines know why.

Shortly after Ganzorig and Unik found a room full of dissected purestrains and some cogitators full of sweet intel, Unik's auspex went beep. Something had just crawled out one of the garbage disposal chutes scattered about the map. Cue everyone except Maisey weeing themselves, and then wondering why Maisey wasn't weeing himself, and then wondering why Maisey's melee-focussed Dark Angel was going towards the auspex blip.

Now fair's fair, Jophiel's main achievement was managing to parry when the blip turned out to be (shock!) a genestealer. He then backed the funk up like a champ and shot it with a plasma pistol, and seemed unsure as to why everyone else was looking so relieved. Jophiel's from the Dark Angels' Deathwing, yo. He's seen some shiz.

Beeeep beeeep beeeep... this Dark Angel is reversing... beeeep beeeep beeeep

Initially the team figured it'd be best to head out the way they came, until they saw a wall of blips on the auspex, and bravely headed in the exact opposite direction, towards the apartment's front door and the underway beyond.*

*Underway being Hive Corvum's term for an underground highway. I know, I know, I'm a genius.

Um... guys? My auspex is playing the tetris theme at me. Is that bad?

At this point things became a headlong sprint down the corridors to get the hell out of dodge, led by Hytius and his win-cannon.

Hytius clears a path with Ripley.

Why yes, they are coming out of the walls...

...with predictable results.

Hats off to Jophiel, he did a solid job of surviving multiple genestealer attacks where the other marines, not as kitted out for melee, would've been shredded. He didn't escape unscathed, but was probably starting to feel like he had this whole space hulk thing locked down.

The the patriarch showed up.

Yay?

CHEESE IT!

The patriarch's arrival signalled the start of Operation: Enduring Bum Wee, in which the team did an amazing job of leaving, aided with a topical application of grenades and hellfire ammo. Even Jophiel wasn't up for duking it out with the patriarch.

Unik charged down the hallway firing from the hip. The genestealer fell from the ceiling and crumpled up like a twitching spider, its thrashing limbs gouging lines in the walls and floor. Just to be sure, Unik stomped on its glistening cranium and grimaced at the crunching pop that followed. His auspex showed that the room around the corner was lousy with them, and for a moment it seemed like they would be surrounded on both sides. Uninterested in giving up, he tossed a grenade around the corner and listened to the resulting explosion with some satisfaction, but only one of the beasts disappeared from the auspex screen. It must have wrapped itself around the grenade to save the others. As he resolved to turn the corner he heard bolter fire, not from his pack mates behind him, but beyond the hall ahead. Not one bolter, but three... no, four. The blips on his auspex disappeared one by one, and he seized the moment, rounding the corner and gunning down the last of the xenos as they retreated from the massed fire ahead. Running out onto the pavement, he saw a rhino APC bearing sororitas icons. Two sisters of battle, looking shaken but defiant, stood by the rear access ramp, and a third crewed the APC's storm bolter.

"What keeps you, brother? Get in, before more come!" shouted the sister superior. The rest of the kill team ran from Fyodorova's facility, concentrating fire at its front door to prevent pursuit by the purestrains. The sister crewing the storm bolter dropped down into the cab and gunned the accelerator as soon as they were all aboard. The genestealers gave brief pursuit but could not keep pace, and the squad breathed relief at their escape.

In a brief window of pure roleplay in an otherwise explosion-filled day of gaming, the squad learned that the sisters were Fyodorova's insurance policy, and had set off for the base as soon as the marines tripped the silent alarm upon entry.

Fyodorova hadn't been heard from in weeks, and was probably dead, but the sisters told the astartes that the populace hadn't given up and were mounting a patchy, if dogged, resistance movement. It became clear they had no idea there was a fleet in orbit preparing to initiate exterminatus as soon as the marines got into orbit with the intelligence they now carried.

The marines decided, on private squad vox, not to tell the sororitas what their plans were, and that they'd at least take the sisters with them off-world. All that remained was to escape; Estela, the sister superior, guided them to the Plaza of the Ancients as a space big enough for the storm eagle to put down.

As they made their approach to the surface, they saw Chimera APCs were converging on them from both ends of the underway, and Estela was pretty sure they'd be cult-led guardsmen.

What should I have done differently in scenario two?

I was quite openly counting off each turn as it was completed, so the players knew something was gonna happen at some point. My mistake, I think, was saying "ten" with such finality. It's a big round number. I should've given it another turn or so, which might have prevented the immersion-breaking thought process of "Charlie's counted to ten so I guess we'd better leave now."

Also missed was the opportunity to describe genestealers' creepy mesmeric qualities; I focussed too much on how they'll rip your limbs off. It's a shame to bungle that in a more roleplay-centric gaming session. Hopefully if we run future deathwatch missions featuring genestealers I'll get that right.

Scenario three: extraction

Objective: the nearest viable landing site to Fyodorova’s base is the Plaza of the Ancients. Clear away whatever anti-air emplacements the enemy control and await Brother Uzziel in the team’s Storm Eagle gunship.

The rhino got borked as soon as it got topside; an autocannon was waiting for them - it's almost like trained soldiers can co-ordinate with each other. This final scenario would be, I hoped, the most challenging - the squad was going to be ambushed by corrupted elements of the planetary defence force as well as more cultists, and they wouldn't have air support until they'd disabled the five AA turrets that were spread across the area.

Worse, the PDF forces had access to tanks. This meant the team, with their sororitas allies in tow, had to be very careful about hanging around in the open, even in power armour. They spread out, each one of them heading for one of the AA guns.

Ganzorig prepares to administer a lead suppository.

"Contacts in that building, maybe twelve," Unik voxed, pointing to a structure on their right.

"Acknowledged," Jophiel replied. "If they emerge, I will face them. Focus on the turrets for now."

They moved up into the shell of a bombed-out mansion. Torn strips of ornate wallpaper hung from the cracked plaster. The remains of a crystal chandelier crunched beneath Jophiel's boot as he raised his plasma pistol and took aim at the lascannon turret out in the plaza. It was a perfect shot, straight through the mounting ring, and the gun slid off its base.

Unik loped around the side of the mansion, and as he glanced back, saw that the hybrids had emerged from the building just as he predicted. Acting sergeant Jophiel - the "Blame" as Ganzorig had called him since he offered to take responsibility for the squad - seemed oblivious to the threat. Unik reasoned Jophiel was just playing it infuriatingly cool, and carried on to the next turret. If the Blame wanted the glory of facing the hybrids alone, he could have it.

But the hybrid acolytes were surprisingly stealthy; Jophiel only became aware of them when a three-clawed appendage grabbed his arm and began biting with unnatural strength into his armour. He tried to yank his arm free, but the cultist clung on like a dog with a bone, and as he turned, a dozen hybrids swarmed over him. Warning runes filled his helmet display as his armour registered damage to limbs, chest plate, and servos. Then he felt the claws scrape against his ribcage. He realised, too late, that he'd underestimated the wretches.

Unik, left, carries on by as Jophiel gets bundled.

His armour was badly damaged, but still stronger than theirs. An inelegant solution occurred to him.

He pulled the pin from one of his frag grenades and waited.

Two streets away, Ganzorig saw an explosion blow out the last of the glass in the mansion's window.

"Is the Blame ok?" he asked.

"Get to your next objective," came the reply.

"Such warmth," Ganzorig retorted, igniting his jump pack and soaring over the rooftops, getting a brief glimpse at the other turrets before plummeting down into a back alley.

Back in the mansion, Jophiel swayed on his feet, removed his helm long enough to spit out a gobbet of blood, then set about patching up the gaping holes in his armour with what was left of his repair cement.

One by one, the team took out the AA guns, and Uzziel swept in. The first order of the day? Firing three krak missiles right up the arse of the leman russ that had rumbled into the plaza. The only problem was that there were too many targets for the gunship to deal with, and Chimeras were now approaching from behind as well as ahead.

Chimeras approach from the underway while more cultists advance across the plaza.

Hyti is surrounded as men disembark from their chimeras.

At the western end of the ruined mansion, Hyti braced himself. The entire ground floor was surrounded, and while he could hear Jophiel moving about on the floor above him, there was nothing the Blame could do to prevent what happened next. Lasgun muzzles smashed through windows, frag grenades were tossed in, and the chimeras brought their turret guns to bear. Hyti became the centre of a whirlwind of shots.

Most of the weapons used were not designed to combat astartes plate, but the sheer volume of fire began to take its toll. He was forced to his knees. Chunks of plasteel spalled off  his greaves as multilaser volleys and heavy stubber rounds struck him. Suit systems went down, one by one. A chunk of spinning concrete struck the fuel tank of his heavy flamer, and the fuel guage started to drop as well.

Summoning every ounce of strength, Hytius hefted the infernus heavy bolter and pulled the trigger. Promethium spewed out of the broken windows, swallowing the guardsmen to his left. Roaring with pain and the effort of hefting the heavy weapon without the aid of his power unit, Hytius wrenched the gun around, dousing the guardsmen on the other side of the building until all the fuel was spent. That which had leaked on the floor ignited, setting one of his legs on fire, burning away some of the rubberised seals. He struggled back, away from the inferno engulfing the west wing of the building, not even noticing as Jophiel dropped a pair of grenades on the few guardsmen still on their feet.

"Hyti?" Kyaneus voxed with a rare note of concern.

"Clear," Hytius replied.

As Hytius dragged himself toward the eastern end of the building, Jophiel leapt from the first floor to the roof of one of the chimeras and set about carving his way through the driver's hatch with his power sword.

Over on the rooftop he'd claimed, Kyaneus assessed the situation. Two of the sororitas had been injured - he wasn't sure when - and another chimera was coming across the plaza. As he made ready to ignite his jump pack, a robed figure rose from the roof hatch of the chimera with a gilded staff in his hand. As Kyaneus took aim at the man, the man looked straight back at him.

Kyaneus blinked, and lowered his bolter, suddenly lost in thought. The sororitas had brought them to this plaza, this deathtrap. It was the closest any of them had come to falling; were Hyti not half-bionic he would have been dead already. If the sororitas lead them here, they did so at the behest of the enemy. Kyaneus took aim again, but this time at the bare head of Sister Estela. Cut the head off the snake, and it can lie no more, he reasoned. One careful shot would see the matter resolved.

Unik emerged from the alleyway he'd been stalking through and looked out across the plaza. The others had drawn so much attention to themselves that no-one had noticed him. That wouldn't last long, he reasoned, so his first shot needed to be a good one.

Across the plaza, a man in red robes had emerged from the roof hatch of a chimera. Between the red silk and the gold staff, Unik reasoned that he seemed important enough to warrant the use of an implosion round. He flicked a switch on his shot selector and took aim.

Estela crouched down to tend to her wounded sisters, temporarily obscuring her from Kyaneus' aim. He was reasonably certain he could make a decent guess of where her head would be, and adjusted accordingly.

Unik watched with some satisfaction as the implosion round detonated in the chest of the robed man. His ribcage collapsed in on itself and he fell back into the chimera.

Kyaneus blinked. Estela was dragging one of her sisters to a doorway, making ready for the gunship's arrival. He lowered his gun, appalled, and tried to gather his wits. An autogun round bouncing off his pauldron did the job for him.

The robed man had disappeared back into the chimera - Kyaneus had no idea why - but the hatch was still open. It was a rare opportunity and Kyaneus took it, igniting his jump pack, sailing through the air, and slamming into the roof of the chimera. By the time he landed, the frag grenade was already primed. He dropped it in and closed the hatch.

Kyaneus makes a three dimensional painting on the inside of the chimera.

Suffice to say, with the gunship coming in to land, the team managed to scramble into the plaza with impressive timing (it's fair to say Ganzorig and Kyaneus wouldn't have made it without their jump packs).

All aboard! (Including two bleeding sororitas.)

I have to say I'm stunned that no-one died. Jophiel and Hytius both played fast and loose with mortality, and Kyaneus was only saved from complete a complete mind-humping by Unik's timely implosion round.

Upon getting back into orbit, Ganzorig convinced some of the others to urge Inquisitor Nurzhan to hold off on the exterminatus to see if some of the civilian population could be evacuated. Incredibly, he was successful - what Jeff didn't know was that Nurzhan was so sickened by the concept of exterminatus that he was going to commit suicide once the order had been carried out. Much as Nurzhan knew it was the only option, I figured he was vulnerable to Jeff's line of reasoning. Kursanov Prime gets a stay of execution. For now, at least.

What should I have done differently in scenario three?

Actually I was pretty happy with number three. All the characters had moments of glory, most had at least one moment of despair, and many of them had moments of "am I about to die?" ...there will of course have been things I could've done better, but overall I was happy with how it went.

+++

If you made it all the way to the end of this monstrous post, I really hope it kept you at least somewhat entertained. If not... sorry!

Finally, and rather cheesily, I want to thank Jeff, Tom, Andy, Jon and Maisey. It's really hard to roleplay as a space marine without them turning into faceless badasses, and I've done a pale imitation of their characterisations in this post. I couldn't ask for better players; they kept me thoroughly entertained throughout the day, and their reactions to some of the situations I put them in were deeply gratifying. Between that and the effort they put in with helping to paint scenery and models, I'm a chuffing happy camper.

~Charlie

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

August 17, 2017, 3:07 pm

≫ Next: Dark Angels 3rd Company (ish)

≪ Previous: Deathwatch mission: the Fall of Kursanov Prime

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So… I’m back.

"Its been a while. What the hell’s going on? We thought you'd died in a freak cheese grater accident?"

Well. I’ve had a couple of things eating into my hobby time of late.

I’ve been busy with this:

Project House: A hole in the air into which you pour effort and money.

And he hasn't helped much:

Also, I’ve been helping to make this:

And this:

Whilst trying to keep the workforce from getting the weird and horrific sort of industrial diseases that you've only read about in a Victorian medical almanac. 

" So, on the hobby front… What have you been doing for the last two years?"

Well, not much. I've been at an almost terminally low hobby ebb.

Until very recently, 40K was still suffering under a bloated, moronic rule-set and GW merrily derped the well-developed and compelling Warhammer universe out of existence and replaced it with ‘Adventures in magic land for 4 year olds'. See Here for details.

It didn’t help that until recently, most of my hobby stuff was packed up and in storage whilst our hovel house was being ripped apart and rebuilt.


I did manage to make this though:

Squeak, Squeak, Zzap Splat.

And this:

Er, it's a shed. Captions fail me.

During this time, and having very little interest in GW, I started reading about historical scale modelling. In fairness, my interest in this started about a decade ago when Imperial Armour Model Masterclass Vol. 1 came out, which was the first time I’d ever read about how to achieve realistic armour, damage and weathering effects on models and seen just how ‘true to life’ scale models could be made to look.

Available from all good Forgeworlds.

IAMMV1(as no-one calls it) was a real inspiration to me and based on that book I did my best to incorporate weathering and armour effects into my vehicle (Ork) painting with mixed results. See Here for mixed results.

I was always a bit hampered in these efforts by my lack of an airbrush – a tool vital for carrying out many of the techniques in the book. Fortunately, I now have one.

Whilst cyber stalking researching Phil Stutcinskas’ historical armour work on line, I came across another modeler referencing his work. This guy was Mike Rinaldi and is the author of the frankly excellent ‘Tank Art’ Series of books. I think these books are excellent for a couple of reasons: Firstly, they set out painting, damage and weathering techniques in a logical order and they explain why techniques work as well as how to do them. Finally, he is a phenomenally talented painter and his models look magnificent.

Mike Rinaldi's books are available Here. They can be tricky to track down if they're out of print.

And it might have ended there if I hadn't been scouting for stuff in a local Hobbycraft, when this caught my eye:

Schneller Pussycat, Töten! Töten!

I chose a Panther because
- It was there
- There's something about German WW2 tanks that just looks so... BrÜtal.

Fifteen pounds lighter and I walked away with a 1:35 Panther tank, to which I added a metal turned barrel, Friul model tracks and drive wheels and brass etch engine port covers. (I also bought some side skirts, but these turned out to be incompatible with the Tamiya Panther A kit – Always check before you buy kiddies.)

As usual, I haven’t taken enough step by step photos for this to be in any way ‘tutorial-esque’. But in a vague order this is what I did:


I Built It!

I built the thing (including the tracks*) with some glue. Whilst doing this, I used plastic glue to soften the plastic and a dental tool to better define the flame cut edges of slabs at armour joints.

I also thought that too much track makes for a dull tank, so I scratch built a little rack for transporting water on the side of the hull because of a dodgy radiator and a drinking problem**.


I sprayed colours at it!

I then sprayed the entire tank a red brown. This is to represent the factory applied primer (red lead***) that will poke through where the paint work is damaged. Over this, I applied a hair spray layer, a layer of base yellow another hair spray layer and the green camouflage pattern over the top. The reason for the hairspray is that it allows you to realistically chip the paint off the tank, making it look like wear and tear and battle damage. For more information about what and why the hairspray technique is, there is a tutorial Hea-Yaaaar!

With the picture below, I've tried to show the effect, and where green has been removed to show yellow and yellow removed to display the underlying red lead primer.

Chipping close up - a lesser known part of the Cotswolds.

Once I’d finished chipping, I gave the whole thing a gloss spray coat with Vallejo gloss varnish. This helps to prevent any further (unwanted) chipping from occurring and gives a much better surface for both pin washes and oil paint rendering.


I Oil Paint Rendered it!

"You did what to it?"

Oil paint rendering is a process invented (or at least described) by Mike Rinaldi of blending oil paint over acrylic layers in order to modulate the look of the underlying colour.

This can portray faded paint, staining, dust, water run-off and the effects of heat. Most importantly, oil paint rendering adds definition to what might otherwise be flat, featureless areas of the model.

It’s something I’d been itching to try for a while as it can look amazing and can give real weight to a model. So I did

Whilst my results weren’t entirely what I’d hoped for – partly because some of the oil colours I picked weren’t quite right - I do think it helps to give the tank’s paint an exposed and faded look.

As an example, the image below shows the front deck plate (and glacis and side plates) that has been oil paint rendered against the engine deck plate that hasn’t.

The colours on the engine plate appear deeper and more vibrant, whereas the colours everywhere else appear faded, washed out and dustier – which is what the intention was.

The problem of showing subtle effects with shonky photography.

Further detail on oil paint rendering, written by someone far better at it than I am, can be found here: Oil Paint Rendering Explanation

I Made it Look Muddy!

I wanted to give the tank a proper ‘been churning through Kursk mud’ look, and that was going to involve a lot of weathering powder.

The muddiest areas of the tank would be the wheels and the hull sides, which would get caked in mud if carrying out much off road driving.

Boss, I done got the war tractur stuck. (Courtesy of Youtube)

(Full video here)

To achieve a spattered mud effect on the side suspension plates I brush applied a mixture of weathering powders of varying colours on the side and then fixed them in place with a mixture of AK pigment fixer and white spirit.

Caution. Pigment fixer is really persistent and sticky**** - don’t spill it.

Caution: sticky.

When using weathering powder, I think its important to use different shades so that you get a variation of tone: too much of one colour can make heavy mud effects look strangely monotone – like the tank’s been driving round a cement factory.

If you want mud... You got it.

I wanted to emulate mud splash on the side plates in proximity to the tracks, and for this I mixed weathering powder with white spirit and pigment fixer to make a sticky goo, which I then loaded onto a brush and flicked onto certain parts of the rear of the tank.

Another caution, this is really, really not good at all for your brushes, so don’t do this with brand new W&N 7s.

Not a happy brush.

I’ll leave this here for now as this has already been a long and arduous post.

I’ll show the completed tank and talk about the project as a whole next week. but I'll leave this here as a sneak peak:

Until next time, auf wiedershen.

*If you can find a hobby related activity more tedious than cleaning up and assembling Friulmodel track links (192 of them), congratulations, you must be having an awful lack of fun.

*(* I made this bit up. I've no idea how realistic this scenario may have been, but I just wanted to stick water cans on the side instead of more spare track.

*** Still does, only now they use a non lead based paint called red oxide.

**** I live with a 2 year old - I am a connoisseur of sticky.

Dark Angels 3rd Company (ish)

August 23, 2017, 1:42 pm

≫ Next: Evil Sunz Biker Gang

≪ Previous: Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

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Maisey: A little while ago Jeff posted about his beautiful and well thought out Blood Angels. Seeing that post made me glance lovingly at my Dark Angel shelf and I wondered if you guys would actually like to see them for once. I've spoken about my Dangels many times before but never really done a proper post about them.

Yes, I have a shelf of Dark Angels... and a bonus Knight

I wish I could go back into the mists of time to say how a young Maisey, inspired by some article was drawn into the cowled mysteries of the Dark Angels. I would also like to say that in his youth Maisey struggled to create the army as seen in his childish minds eye.

But I can't, because that would be a lie.

I didn't play 40k until I was in my 20's, so no childhood memories here. The initial attraction to the Dark Angels was with the 4th Edition codex release back in 2007 and the release of the Veterans kit with 5 robed marines. I saw the models and thought, 'They look cool, a whole army of robed marines would be badass'. That's about as deep as it went back then.

I can say that I did, back then make a completely cowled army. it wasn't a true Dark Angels army however, I was far too intimidated to paint that many bone white robes, so I made a successor chapter in a far quicker and easier scheme.

With the release of the 6th ed Codex in 2013 I decided to re-do the Dark Angels completely. I also decided to do them properly. With most of my armies until that point they had always felt like they had a functional paint job. Not a terrible paint job, but basic and speedy. So with this I really decided to try and up my game somewhat. I honestly think it's a good level of painting. It's not going to win awards, but I'm happy to say that I painted it. I did take the time to do as much free hand as I could. So all the squad, company, chapter, and other markings where free hand (unless there was molded details). The company standard also got a free hand paint job as well.

I got pretty good at those little square wings...

... and the curly numbers.

Not award winning but I did the best I could.

As with most of my projects I broke the army up into little themed chunks. So a squad, it's transport, and a support unit all geared towards one speciality. First up we have the characters, a Company Master and a pair of librarians. I decided that it made more sense in my head that a Deathwing Librarian would have the bone white armour of his brothers instead of the blue dictated by the Codex. I do have to confess I've never managed to get around to getting that chaplain model, you know the one, THAT interrogator chaplain model. In fact, I really should just order that one model, that wouldn't be breaking the 'no new stuff' rule for this year would it?

Large and in charge

Every playa needs a pimped ride and an entourage

Next we have the quintessential Dark Angel combo of Scouts, Deathwing, and Ravenwing delivering a heavy assault punch.

The little ones sneak in and find them, the big one's come in a subdue them.

Then the speedy one's capture them and take them for a spa holiday. Honest!

If those don't work, then I can always send in the company veterans with their land raider to shoot everything.

Here in my car, I feel safest of all...

Squad 2 are rolling around in their favourite Rhino and supported by a Predator with Autocannon and Heavy Bolters. This unit is intended to make any light infantry very sad with as many bolter rounds that I could (super) humanly fart out. The Rhino has a second storm bolter, the squad has a heavy bolter, but no specialist weapon, just to add another bolt gun. The Sergeant is also packing a boltgun. This unit tends to get taken out in pretty much every game as it makes for a nice solid core.

Dakka, dakka, and more dakka, cuz green onez are bestest... wait...

Squad 3 are packing all the plasma weapons you can technically carry, as well as a dreadnought rocking, you guessed it, another plasma cannon. This is probably the least used of the squads, mostly because I don't get to play against anything with heavy infantry very often. 

Also the sergeant forgot his helmet.

Squad 4 are my tank hunters. The Sergeant brought along his power fist, and the specialist is hefting around a meltagun so I can roll a 1 to hit at the most critical moment. Also have the heavy sporting a lascannon as well as the razorback carrying a twin lascannon. The idea here was to combat squad the unit, have the longer range stuff stay back, with the dreadnought and provide cover fire, while the short ranged stuff dashes forwards in the razorback to do some damage up close and personal. 

Tank hunting across the universe.

So there we have my Dark Angels. I've honestly not had the urge to add to them, I did intend to add a devastator and assault squad to get me up to half company strength but I've never quite managed to get back to the Dark Angel painting place with them. Gaming, sure these guys get a lot of table time. Maybe one day I will get the spark again and add a couple more squads. A devastator squad supported by a Whirlwind battery, or maybe a Vindicator and an Assault squad with THAT Interrogator Chaplain. Or I could do a few Primaris Marines as well...

Ok, maybe there is a little tingle to paint some more. 

Maisey

Evil Sunz Biker Gang

August 31, 2017, 2:34 pm

≫ Next: Tiny BFG Necron Fleet

≪ Previous: Dark Angels 3rd Company (ish)

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Charlie: about eight years ago, I painted my first ork warbiker mob. Three bikerz seemed a bit restrained for an Evil Sunz army, so over the years I acquired more... aaaand then failed to paint them. Now I've scrubbed off another stain on my honour by painting the nine bikes I had assembled, and frankly, 12 bikers looks a lot more like a proper biker gang.

Get da motor runnin' Head out on da highway Lookin for adventure And whatever comes our way Yeah zoggit, gon' make it appen Take the world in a waaagh of deff Fire all of my guns at once An' explode into space

The majesty of fat batches

I painted all nine bikes in one big batch. Increasingly these days I'm finding one huge batch psychologically easier than painting a smaller number of models and then realising: I have to do the whole thing again. Multiple times. Better to stick a good podcast on and settle down for the long haul.

Kustomising yer ride

One of the limitations of the biker box is that a lot of the components are shiny yet distinctive, which makes for really obvious repeats in a bigger unit. This was a problem for me since I've tried, so far as is practical, to make every vehicle in my army unique.

The problem of repeat components can be mitigated by stripping them down to varying extents throughout the unit. Take this front cowling as an example:

I like smoke and lightning 'Eavy metal thunda Racin' wiv da wind An' da feelin dat I'm undaaa Yeah zoggit, gon' make it appen Take da world in a waaagh of deff Fire all of my guns at once An' explode into space

It's pretty quick to do, and helps give the impression that some of the ladz have acquired their rides more recently, and haven't had the time or the teef for extra kustomisation. I also sprinkled in a few heads and arms from different kits to further increase variety.

Like a troo nature's child We was born, born to be wild We can climb so high I never wanna die

Different sorts'o'green

I experimented with having a variety of skin tones in the mob, just like I did for the genestealer cult and my imperial guardsmen. Honestly, though, I'm preferring the olive green with fleshy bits to the extent that I might just stick with that for future units, and while they'll look different to the orks already in the army, any army collected over a period of eight years is bound to have some issues like that. I don't want to paint new models with old techniques just to satisfy an OCD urge.

...Bornnnn to be waa-a-a-aaaa--aagh!

What's left?

I've got a few units of trukkboyz that need finishing, plus a few deffkoptas. The latter are currently my main way of attacking vehicles right now, so they're pretty vital. I'm also considering building a mob of tankbusters; I always struggled to deal with vehicles at range, and in the new rules it's even tougher! That said, no tankbusters until the new year. The Bunker's denizens agreed: this year, we must finish things we already own, and I am in no way likely to run out of things to do before January 2018. Or 2019 for that matter. Most of you can relate, I suspect, to having a chunky heap of unfinished gumf sitting in a dusty box.

Incentives for the waaagh!

To make sure I churn out the remaining orks, I've offered to run a GMd narrative campaign for Jeff and Tom's marine armies in December. That's three months from now. Very doable, but not so doable I can afford to rest on my laurels. If the three week cult project taught me anything, it's that I respond well to deadlines.

Tiny BFG Necron Fleet

September 13, 2017, 2:34 pm

≫ Next: Battlefleet Achernar grows (a bit)

≪ Previous: Evil Sunz Biker Gang

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Charlie: Some time ago, I secretly acquired and painted some Necrons for the BFG/RPG hybrid story I'm playing with Jon and Andy. Jon isn't very familiar with 40K lore, which means he gets to discover Necrons much like the rest of us did when they first started appearing in 40K: one horrifying detail at a time.

Andy, conversely, is extremely familiar with 40K lore, and thus when they discovered some seemingly inert metal pyramids in SCY-076, an uninhabited system in the Scyrian Expanse, his face expressed the dread of a man who knows what's coming.

Small yet potent, much like my first girlfriend

Andy and Jon are both new to the game of Battlefleet Gothic, and thus could not possibly have anticipated was just how ludicrous the Necrons are on the table. They're not unbeatable, but they're certainly not easy to deal with. Worse, they behave completely differently to every other faction Andy and Jon have encountered so far.

I'll spare you all the details of exactly what happened, since hopefully Jon will be writing more entries in his Captain's Log. Instead, I'll quickly run through the extremely lazy simple method I used to paint them.

Scythe class harvest ship

1. Black primer. Natch.
2. Drybrush a mid-silver over the whole model.
3. Wash with straight green ink (no water/thinner).*
4. Paint any gold areas with a light silver.
5. Paint gold areas with a gold paint of your choice.
6. Wash gold with thinned chestnut ink.
7. Highlight gold with a 2:1 mix of gold and light silver.
8. Paint engine outlets white.
9. Paint engine outlets pale yellow.
10. Highlight centre of engine outlets with a 1:1 mix of white and pale yellow.

*I technically used a 4:1 mix of green and blue ink, but whatever.

Shroud class light cruiser

Jackal class raiders

There you have it, quick and easy. As an aside, I also used this inked metal method on my tiny Dark Eldar warband, albeit with an even mix of blue and green ink:

Same method, different race.

Battlefleet Achernar grows (a bit)

September 18, 2017, 2:26 am

≫ Next: Captain's Log II

≪ Previous: Tiny BFG Necron Fleet

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Charlie: Last week I revealed that  Necrons had cropped up in the Scyrian Expanse. To meet this new threat, Jon and Andy would need reinforcements, so I expanded the number of painted ships in Battlefleet Achernar from my effectively infinite supply of old BFG models. There is a particular joy in seeing a ship go from 'slap-happy brush fail' to 'ding!'

The expanded flotilla, with the  rogue trader cruiser Zenith in the rear.

I'm not claiming my BFG paint jobs are even in the same country as amazing, but good lord they're an improvement on their previous incarnations. I probably should've taken before and after pics... maybe next time?

Dem boosters.

As is customary in our campaign, every ship has its own background and captain. As some readers may recall, the players' ships even have fully fleshed-out bridge crew serving as the recurring background characters. This brings a bunch of faceless space ships to life, helping the story become more emotionally involving and/or stressful. I figure if a player doesn't care about a friendly NPC dying, I'm not doing a good enough job.

The Vigilant

The Vigilant

The Vigilant is an overlord-class battlecruiser, and serves as Battlefleet Achernar's flagship. It is normally stationed at Kaprun to safeguard the shipyards, but is deployed when Admiral Tryphosa leads the fleet against substantial threats. Given the rarity of its deployment, its crew are well-drilled but untested, as a full fleet deployment tends to happen only once in a generation. To mitigate this problem, Tryphosa has been known to treat the Vigilant as a "retirement home" for old sailors with combat experience, and seeds these knowledgeable types among the untested crew. The advantage for the veterans is that they effectively have a job that keeps them safe and docked around a comfortable colony with frequent shore leave.

The Vigilant's captain is Aldous Montague. He has mentored so many of Battlefleet Achernar's officers, including Admiral Tryphosa, that he is seen as a paternal figure. It is said that the ship's crew spend much of their extensive downtime trying to guess his age. Advanced in years and the subject of a great many romantic portrayals of navy life, the triple amputee is said to be both fearless and unkillable. Those who have actually met him say he now runs more on tired habit, and has only avoided retirement because he'd have no idea what to do with himself without the routine of life aboard a ship. In this regard, Montague is cut from much the same cloth as the other old sailors aboard the Vigilant.

The Seraph

This was originally one of the Dauntless models with torpedo tubes. It's been converted to the lance version with a cut down nova cannon and some green stuff.

The Seraph is a dauntless-class light cruiser that has served Battlefleet Achernar since 993.M38. It was refitted with a prow-mounted lance in response to a surge in greenskin piracy in mid-M39. Her captain is Justyna Laerta, a famously blunt woman with little patience for courtly behaviour. She has captained the Seraph for five years now, and those who know her well say she has an excellent memory and an unrivaled attentiveness for those under her command. Her lack of diplomacy has stifled her career, and she is looked down on by more politically-minded officers who see her as someone with no social capital.

Squadron 25

I had to rush the lettering on these bases to get them ready for the game... at some point I'll force myself to finish them off properly. Probably.

This squadron of firestorm-class frigates is led by Captain Nalani Makana aboard the Percheron. Makana's family used their wealth to propel her advancement through the ranks, and she is comparatively young for a squadron commander. She often comes off as cocksure and smug, though to the frustration of her rivals she is also a competent commander who benefits from an expensive education prior to her time at the Naval Academy. The other frigates in Squadron 25 are the Augeron, under Commander Salomon Bouchard, and the Andalusian under Commander Liselotte Prinsen.

Man, I love me some spaceships. Mercifully, this love can be indulged by two players who seem to keep coming back for more.

Captain's Log II

September 25, 2017, 1:37 am

≫ Next: Progress Reports and Confessions

≪ Previous: Battlefleet Achernar grows (a bit)

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Charlie: back in June, we had the first episode of the Captain's Log, Jon's journal of his travels in the Scyrian Expanse. In this episode, the flotilla takes its first leap out into the Expanse... I'll hand you over to Jon without further ado.

The sub-sector map at the time of writing.

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LAIUS ORTANO

Captain's log, star date 3.151.999.M41

Journal Entry: 787

After some minor shifts in gravity during our stay in the warp, Azaryah has translated us back into real space, on the outskirts of a binary star system. Our first step into the unknown expanse of the Scyrian sub-sector.

Curiously, against statistical odds, our long range scans indicate signs of life dotted across multiple moons and planets. There are also mining opportunities available. Most are not in hospitable environments. However, there is a small moon orbiting a gas giant that has a livable environment and is rich with minerals. Another moon close-by harbours life.

The gas giant, B5, is about a day’s flight away.

Captain's log, star date 3.154.999.M41

Journal Entry: 788

A mining outpost is currently being set up on B5i.

The life we have found on B5iii consists of extremophiles in a high pressure environment.

There is a moon orbiting a different gas giant, closer to the secondary star: B4iv. It shows signs of life and has a breathable atmosphere. Perhaps more complex life will exist there?

I must confess, I am rather taken with the pace of this mission. It makes a pleasant change from fighting Ork and Chaos fleets! To discover new life and help expand the Imperium, rather than destroy in defense of it, makes for a welcome change.

I have instructed Westcliffe to have Squadron 17 remain in orbit around the mining facility while the rest of the fleet continues to explore the system.

Captain's Log: Star Date: 3.188.999.M41

Journal Entry: 789

It feels good to write again. The Intemperance is currently undergoing extensive repairs in the docks orbiting Kaprun.

I am not sure where to begin.

The life signs we had detected at B4iv were not simple organisms. As we approached the moon we began to see green landmass and large oceans, and in the planet’s umbra was an unmistakable site. The cobweb structure of night-lights; cities.

We also detected radio transmissions and signs of conflict.

I sent a broadcast on all frequencies, announcing our presence in the system, and sure enough a few minutes later I was speaking with a lost human civilisation in civil war.

The notion of interstellar travel was lost on them.

There were two sides to the conflict: the Anshan Republic, an anti-psyker government who controlled the moon, and the Commonwealth, a society of surviving psykers fighting for their lives. The Commonwealth fleet had already sustained heavy losses but were pressing their attack regardless; at the time we had no idea why.

Anshan Republic escorts; names unknown; capabilities unknown.

Our sensor operatives noted that the torpedoes being fired from the Anshan vessels were somehow tracking their targets. This was remarkable, although it did concern me that there may be some form of artificial intelligence at work.

Orvan, the captain of one of the Commonwealth vessels, also told me that the Republic’s concerns over psykers were unfounded as they had sophisticated collars that dampened latent ability. If this was true, it could save billions of lives across the Imperium!

My resolve was clear: we had to find a way to re-integrate these cultures back into the Imperium, and in doing so, acquire the technologies they held.

The problem: psykers are a part of our society. But they are also treated, rightly so, with extreme caution and often executed. Striking that balance has allowed our Empire to grow and defend humanity against xeno threats. But how to re-introduce these societies into the moderate centrism of the Imperium when they both place themselves at ideological extremes?

Anshan Republic cruisers; names unknown; main weapons: broadside batteries of homing torpedoes.

In a string of difficult exchanges with both the Republic and the Commonwealth, we learned that the Commonwealth fleet was attempting the rescue of two hundred psykers scheduled by the Anshan Republic for execution. I thought if we could broker a ceasefire we might have some hope of securing peace, and then later securing trade agreements with both sides.

Anshan Republic flagship; name unknown; weapon systems include homing torpedoes and gunboats 1.5 times the size of thunderhawk gunships.

I called Captain Humbolt of the Republic and attempted to communicate our position on this conflict, extolling the benefits of psykers in allowing us to travel between the stars, form a galactic empire, and communicate across vast distances. But the notion of us having psykers onboard our vessels disgusted Humbolt and she ended the transmission mid-way through my retort.

Dogmatism is not a trait known for its willingness to engage in open discourse.

Hassiq tried to salvage our position, having had more experience at diplomacy, but he didn’t get much further. In fact, he seemed displeased at me for having told the truth about us having psykers! Perhaps that was a little naive.

My father always wanted me to become a politician, perhaps even a planetary governor somewhere in the Gothic sector. It was not something I remotely wanted growing up. I joined the navy as a compromise. “Gain some credentials,” he said, “and see where you are in a few years.” It seems I was right not to have any intention of becoming a politician. I would not do well.

In any case, I handed diplomatic duties over to Hassiq, feeling more than a little deflated.

After Hassiq reiterated to the Republic my points about a twenty thousand year old galactic empire (albeit with more emphasis on the extermination of psykers) the Republic agreed to a temporary ceasefire with the Commonwealth on the understanding that we would take the two hundred untrained psykers onto the Zenith, and use our own traditional means of dealing with them.

In theory it was a good compromise, and it did at least bring the battle to a halt, but neither the Zenith nor the Intemperance had the facilities to subdue latent potential. We lied to stop the fighting, and a few hours later our lie resulted in a crowd of two hundred untrained psykers shuffling their way onto the cargo pads of the Zenith.

---

Progress Reports and Confessions

October 8, 2017, 9:22 am

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Maisey: 2017 was going to be year of finishing things. For the most part that has been true. Looking back at my to do list from the beginning of the year and this is what I have actually managed to get done.

• Orge Scrap Launcher. DONE
• Bolt Action German veteran Grenadiers. DONE
• Frost Grave warband, board, and scenery. DONE
• Tabletop world buildings. DONE
• Charlie’s Storm Eagle. DONE
• Desert board scenery. DONE
• Industrial scenery. DONE
• Thousand Sons. DONE + More

What is still left over from that list?

Vampire Counts - This was meant to be a tidy up and finishing thing. Sorting out all those little bits and bobs. I’ve not actually started anything here, in fact I totally failed and ended up buying some more models. In my defence, I picked them up off a friend and it was a time limited offer, so I jumped on it. Also, we’ve not actually been playing fantasy at all, so if something is going to get bumped down the priority list it’s going to be the thing that isn’t being played.

Empire. Ok, this one shouldn’t have been there in the first place. All the models I had for the army were painted and it was just my need to fill up the carry case. Also I HAVE NEVER USED THIS ARMY. So why it was on the list in the first place I don’t know, so I think we can discount this one. Honestly, since this one has never been used maybe it should go up for sale to make room/funds for something else?

Tyranids. These has been sold/donated to Em as she was far more interested than I was about doing some ‘nids. So that’s another one I don’t need to worry about.

Bolt Action DAK. Ah the Afrika Korp, I did start building them, then 40k 8th Ed came along and the priorities got changed around. So they are still there, but a lower priority.

Right, now here is the confessional bit. This is where I have utterly failed to stick to the plan, or at least have tricked and misdirected myself into believing that I can get new stuff ‘to finish a project’ when there is no need. THIS IS MY LIST OF SHAME

• Dark Angels Interrogator Chaplain. When doing my Dark Angels overview I realised I never had a chaplain model, which is frankly a disgrace.
• Necrons. These were part of the payment for the Tyranids. I had an idea for a cool purple and gold paint scheme for them. So these are now waiting for me to get that urge again. 
• Space Hulk. Erm, yeah, I forgot that I had these. It really needs painting properly. Oops. So not new, just missed from the original list.
• As mentioned above, some additional Vampire stuff. Vampires are my main fantasy army, so to me they will never truly be finished. I will always keep adding new units and bits to that massive pile of undead and never be complete.
• Thousand Sons have now got a couple of Helbrutes (one finished, one awaiting paint) and a huge pile of cultists. This is mostly through gaming and the need for more that comes from gaming. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

I really shouldn’t be too down on myself. Looking back I’ve completed a load of little things, a new 40k army in 9 months, as well as A GAMING BOARD AND THREE TABLES WORTH OF SCENERY. So a significant chunk of stuff has been finished off. However, I’m one of these people who seem to hate themselves and have never done enough, or gotten things right. So sitting down and reflecting on what I have managed to complete to keep things in perspective. 2017 has been a good year for finishing things and there is still lots of year left for getting more ticked off the list.

As I mentioned above with the Thousand Sons and Vampires. When you are actively gaming with a collection you naturally end up thinking about what you were lacking in the last game, what you want more off, or just having it in the front of your mind that leads you to wanting the new things. With the Vampire, we’ve not been playing fantasy so they have gone completely unattended. Even with the occasional glance at the to do list and mentally telling myself that I should get on with them. Without the gaming there is no impetus to do it. The inverse is true with the Thousand Sons. I’ve been gaming with them, so the need to get new things for the project is somewhat overwhelming and using the little lie that I need a pair of helbrutes to get the project finished I’ve justified to myself the buying of new things. This has gone against the idea for this year, which I’ll apologise for. What I won’t apologise for is enjoying my hobby, and if having a blob of 30 cultists in with my Thousand Sons means I enjoy my hobby and my gaming more, then so be it. The getting things done plan came from a place where we didn’t have an aim or direction. The new edition of 40k has lit a fire under us and we’ve started gaming, putting together narrative campaigns, and generally enjoying our hobby again. So I don’t see the harm in changing the plan now that the situation has changed.

Total War: Warhammer 2 review

October 30, 2017, 10:52 am

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Charlie: What a coincidence. Total War: Warhammer II comes out, and I go suspiciously quiet for a month.

When the first Total Warhammer came out it re-lit my enthusiasm for Fantasy Battle and made me paint more Empire soldiers, which was no mean feat given the funk Age of Squigmar left me in. Total Warhammer II has done it again; it even made me get out my dusty case of dark elves and think seriously about renovating them.

Despite there having been more than enough reviews of the game by now, I feel compelled to throw my own hat in the ring, even though the fine folk at Creative Assembly will almost certainly never read this. Since the main thing I have to offer as a reviewer is being a long-time Fantasy Battle player, I'm going to answer these basic questions:

Is it a faithful recreation of the Old World?
What have they changed/added compared to Total Warhammer 1?
Is it worth buying, given how recently we had the first game?

Faithfulness to the setting

So, firstly, its faithfulness to the Warhammer Fantasy setting. If you've played the first game, it will come as no surprise to hear that this one is bang on, and it's nerdgasm-inducing to see some parts of the setting brought to life. Allow me to illustrate my point with pictures.

The Anvil of Vaul

The docks at Lothern

As with the first game, though, scenery is often my main bone of contention. Just as often as the scenery is excellent, with crazy attention to detail (right down to little alchemist's bottles on a side table outside an elven tent in the corner of a massive battlefield) it can also be preposterous (the giant skull-shaped mountains are back!). It also often looks too big relative to the people on the battlefield, with many of the trees looking... surprisingly large.

Whining about scenery notwithstanding, the tone of the world is spot on. The dark elves are vicious, kin-slaying bastards, the high elves are duplicitous, haughty bastards, the skaven are underhanded unpredictable sneaky bastards, and the lizardmen are hard bastards who don't speak English.

A lone skink foolishly gets in the way of the pain train.

Creative Assembly have come up with some nice gameplay mechanics to represent the vibe of each faction, which mean that, for example, the high elves are constantly nancying about with court intrigues and manipulating the other races through diplomacy and espionage.

In short, Total Warhammer 2 does very well with the setting.

If you think these hell pit abominations look grim, wait until you see their animation. Really rather unsettling.

What's changed since the first game?

Naturally, this game is very similar to the first in most ways. It would be better to describe it as a refinement, and I'll try and outline the changes that come to mind (beyond the obvious 'four new races and bajillions of new maps'):

• The new Vortex campaign adds real pace, structure and closure above and beyond that of the first game.
• The Mortal Empires DLC (free for owners of the first game) is commendably ambitious, since it combines almost every Warhammer race on four different continents. I'm playing it in co-op with a friend at the moment, and the sheer scope of it is enjoyably dizzying.
• Races can now inhabit any kind of location, but if it's not suited to their race they'll find it more expensive and tougher to maintain public order. This really opens things up, and means you often end up being torn between razing things to the ground and garrisoning it to prevent goblins/skaven/undead skulking back to the ruins later.
• It's a small touch, but sea travel no longer causes attrition unless there's a storm in the area, which makes sea travel feel more real.
• The game does a much better job of explaining its mechanics and interface than the first one did when playing the single-player campaign.
• To my surprise, loading times are markedly faster in this game than the first; presumably they've somehow made things more efficient? Witchcraft, I'm sure.

There are other changes, including rites that races can perform for long-lasting campaign buffs, but those were the changes that had the biggest impact on me.

Malekith: so badass he slouches in his  dragon saddle as though posing for a sculptor.

Is it worth buying?

Obviously that's up to you; video games aren't cheap, but they're far cheaper than wargaming. If you enjoyed the first one and wanted more, this will continue to please you. The game's animators deserve a particular shout-out; I'm consistently amazed by the way things move in the game, even if people do get flung cartoonishly far when hit by monsters/chariots/artillery.

I've played the vortex campaign, had a great time, and am now fifty turns into a co-op Mortal Empires campaign. It's like playing the epic Warhammer Fantasy Battle campaign I always wanted to GM, and continues to bring a nostalgic tear to me ol' eyes given the baffling popularity of Age of Plonkmar. I shall leave you with a few more sexy images, and if you have any questions prior to buying it, I shall gladly answer in the comments.

~Charlie

Kroq'Gar goes hydra hunting.

Lothern Sea Guard watch as Malekith and his army approach in the distance.

Malekith screens his approach with some sacrificial harpies, who end up falling out of the sky like hairy flappy raindrops.

A Series of Unfortunate Dice Rolls

November 6, 2017, 6:37 am

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Charlie: When someone tells me that they're unlucky, I assume it's confirmation bias. Some people seem oblivious to all the times they've been fortunate and bemoan all the times they aren't, failing to notice that things average out over a long enough time span.

Le sob.

That having been said, a universe of infinite possibility means that some people will be luckier than others, and some people... some people will be Maisey.

I've been gaming with Maisey for just over a decade now, and when things go wrong for him, it tends toward the ridiculous. So now, because it amuses me, here are my favourite top three Maisey dice fails. If you've had similar tales of woe, please brighten Maisey's day and share them in the comments.

Third place: the noble veterans

Losing a squad of terminators is painful. Losing all five in a single shooting phase is even worse, but at least the enemy usually has to use up their snazziest guns to get the job done, or win through sheer weight of fire. Even before terminators gained an extra wound with the coming of 40K's 8th edition it would take an average of 180 lasgun shots to bring down five terminators.

So what killed Maisey's terminators? A single platoon of guardsmen? One good shot from a plasma cannon? Maybe a freak psychic power?

Nope. It was a gaggle of gretchin.

With grot blastas.

How many gretchin, you ask?

Ten.

Second place: the mighty sorcerer

Normally this character is known as Phanek, but for now let's call him Squawkums McFail. He was involved in a raid on some ork-held ruins whilst in search of a MacGuffin, and Maisey was getting frustrated at how many things hadn't gone his way that turn. "Right," Maisey announced, "I'm casting Smite on those orks; I just want to get something killed this turn."

For the record, the orks were retreating. This was just an evil sorcerer venting his frustration on the nearest smiteable object.

Naturally, Maisey rolled snake eyes for the psychic test. No problem, he thought: we have command points in 8th edition for this exact problem! He re-rolled one of the dice. Another 1 popped up. Right then, miscast it is... so Squawkums inflicted three mortal wounds on himself which, since he was already injured from a previous miscast, took him out of play. Clap clap.

This would normally be the end of it, but we were playing a campaign with a very simple unit persistence rule: roll a D6 when a model's taken out. On a 6 it's fine, on a 5-2 it misses the next game, and on a 1 it's dead.

I think you can guess what Squawkums rolled.

There are times when Maisey's ability to roll 1s is so potent that even he is reduced to helpless mirth for the better part of five minutes. Credit where credit's due: he had at least managed to kill something that turn.

First place: the elite sniper team

Way back when Maisey was first getting into 40k he was immediately attracted to the Imperial Guard (that's the Astra Copywritarum to any young'uns reading this). Something about the poor bloody infantry's fatalism, and the boomy-ness of the tanks, I think. There was one fly in the ointment: he was constantly missing. A 4+ to hit might as well be a 6+ if you're one of Maisey's minis. As his frustration mounted, he flicked through his codex in search of something more dependable. Something that would be impervious to the malice of the cubed betrayers.

Then he found it: regardless of the model's ballistic skill, sniper rifles always hit on a 2+.

Perfect! Maisey immediately bought six snipers plus six spotters, lovingly painted them up, deployed them for their first game, and with a vindictive grin declared his first target, dice in hand. If nothing else, I knew I'd be taking some pinning tests.

We watched as six dice dropped from his unfurling fist. They tumbled across the table, spinning and bouncing between ruins and guardsmen.

They settled.

The universe paused for a moment.

Maisey stared in disbelief.

Stunned, I reached for a calculator, taking refuge from my befuddlement in statistical calculations.

He had achieved the nearly-impossible: six ones.

I love you, man. You're 1 in 46,656.

Freehand letter painting tips

November 13, 2017, 8:08 am

≫ Next: Ladies and Gentlemen, start your (daemon) engines!

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Preamble, context & inanity

Charlie: Being a renowned glutton for punishment, I recently put myself in the position of having to freehand twelve names onto some Battlefleet Gothic ships. Why did I have so many at once? Because we're in the run-up to the finale of the Scyrian Expanse campaign, and the Imperial Navy's flotilla needed serious reinforcements.

Such blank. Many base.

The first hurdle, of course, was to come up with names for all twelve ships. Even the escorts. They might be puny so far as the game is concerned, but naming them makes it mildly harder for the players to get callous about casualties, and improves immersion.

Bemoaning said lack of names to Curis, he suggested a few, including:

Hepatitus Alpha

Alphaherpes

Aedidas Traksuet

Aeileen Comon

Feel free to use those gems for your own ships/tanks/three door hatchbacks. Personally I resisted the temptation, and chose... others.

Having picked my names (most of them mercifully short) I got stuck in.

Freehand lettering: tips and tricks

Anyone who reads this blog (or has eyes) knows I'm not a competition painter, so these tips won't take experienced painters by surprise; hopefully they'll be helpful for people of intermediate skill and below.

Side note for beginners: anyone with a steady hand can paint letters given enough practice. Just make sure you have a brush with a decent point, and you know how to use a palette to control the volume and consistency of paint on your brush. There are plenty of videos on youtube explaining how to make a wet palette, and almost any non-porous surface can be pressed into service for a more bog-standard palette (as the long-suffering ice cream tub lid on my paint station will testify).

Thing the first: basecoat the area

As with my freehand painting tips, I suggest you paint letters on an area of flat colour. Painting on an area that has only been basecoated allows you to use the background colour as an eraser, which makes tidying up your text significantly easier than correcting a mistake made on five blended layers of amazingness. In this example, my background colour is... well... black.

Thing the second: pick the mid-point

It might seem reasonable to start painting at the start of the text, but actually, you want to start in the middle and work outwards. This ensures the word is placed where you want it on the miniature. Just count how many letters and spaces there are in the text, and paint the middle letter first. In the case of my example above, the middle character was actually a space, so I marked it with a small line.

If you've got a lot of letters, it might also be a good idea to put down a line of regularly-spaced dots for each letter to make it easier to keep the size of the letters consistent.

Thing the second: make sloppy letters

Seriously, don't be tidy, just mark out where everything is going. Get the shape  and spacing right before you start tightening anything up. Counter-intuitively I find doing things this way to be significantly more efficient than trying to be neat and tidy from the get-go.

Thing the third: tidy up the shape

Use the background colour to erase any mistakes. The great thing about doing this is that it becomes very quick and simple to get right angles and other shapes which can be tough to do precisely with a brush. If you look closely in the third image above, you can see a few drying lines of black paint which had been used to sharpen up the top of the N.

Thing the fourth: embellishment and detailing

This is the stage where I add serifs onto the letters and any other embellishments. You'll be alternating between your font colour and your background colour, blocking in a serif then sharpening it using the background colour.

Once you've finished the letters, you can start highlighting things if appropriate. I didn't use any highlighting, since the text is on a flat surface rather than a cloak or flag or whatever. 

+ + +

Hopefully that's been somewhat useful. Here be the fruits of my labours:

The finished reinforcements

The new cruiser squadron

The flotilla in its entirety

One time, I started extending a tape measure in the same room as Jack, and this freaked him out so much that as he fled the table, he knocked over a pint of water inches away from my girlfriend's laptop. Suffice to say, the above moment was one in which I avoided any sudden movements.

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your (daemon) engines!

November 28, 2017, 5:17 am

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Maisey: I know I have said this before, and I know I’ll be saying it again at some point in the future, but as of right now the Thousand Sons are done. Yes done. Completely. 100% totally farm fresh done. 5pm Friday afternoon type done. Take the turkey out of the oven because it’s done done. I’ve reached a very healthy 1750 pts worth of stuff. I was actually aiming at 1500 pts but I had a slight misunderstanding around the way 8th edition calculates points. So now being clear that nothing comes for free anymore I’ve arrived at 1750 pts. Which to me is a very solid core of a collection.

It's always hard getting everything into a single photo, but you get the idea.

The latest and last things added to the army, beyond what we’ve seen here before, is a huge pile of worthless cannon fodder glorious Cultists, 30 of them to be exact, more Tzaangor, a pair of Helbrutes, and a rather large Forgefiend. I do have some reasonings behind these choices.

Introducing Nuterhek...

Firstly the cultists, I’ve always seen Chaos Marines being rare and powerful, especially with the Thousand Sons, so it never felt appropriate to have huge numbers of marines, but the bulk of the forces being made up of cultists, summoned daemons, and auxiliaries like the Tzaangor. Cultists also gives me a third troops choice to fill out the minimum requirements for the Battalion detachment giving me a tasty 3 additional command points. This approach kept the painting aspect fresh as well meaning that each unit was different and I didn’t have that looming dread of having to paint another batch of 10, 20, 30 later that comes with other factions (I’m looking at you Imperial Guard).

... and Un-Nefer

The daemon engines, the Helbrutes and Forgefiend, where another easy and thematic choice. Even pre-heresy the Thousand Sons used large numbers of psychically controlled Automata and dreadnoughts to help bolster their lower than average numbers. Post-heresy it feels natural for them to have daemon infused Automata and Helbrutes (which I still tend to refer to as dreadnoughts).

The Forgefiend Ammit

and with his alternative weapon options.

Ok, maybe not completely done.

There are things that I want to add in the future, like I know I want to have a pimped out land raider totally worthy of the glory of Tzeentch, but that involves a whole bunch of conversion kits, parts, and work that I cannot afford and don’t have time for right now. I’m not the greatest when it comes to conversion work. In fact I’m terrible at any form of sculpting and scratchbuilding. I’m fine with making things fit but I just don’t have the vision to create new. I know that this is something that can be learnt and it comes with practice but it’s too far outside of my comfort zone for me to start.

Both Helbrutes have magnetised left arm options, when you need more long ranged boom.

I do have a longer term plan for the Chaos, as I’m very much into them right now and they have become my go to army for 40k games. I’m enjoying playing with them and it feels good to be bad. With 8th edition’s detachment rules, I can have multiple detachments from different factions all working together. I can have some Daemons and some Fallen and some renegade Imperial Guard and some (more) cultists and some renegade Astartes and some… you get the idea. This is me learning to embrace the whims of the hobby butterfly but keep it all loosely tied together and coherent.

Look at it's cute little tail!

So what is next on to the paint station? Well, I have a Platoon of Bolt Action Afrika Korp to be getting on with, also there is some Vampire things that need doing. I’ll have a sit and think and let us just see where the hobby butterfly leads me next.

Maisey

Making an interactive campaign map

December 18, 2017, 8:17 am

≫ Next: Salamut IX Campaign: After Action Report

≪ Previous: Ladies and Gentlemen, start your (daemon) engines!

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Charlie: I just finished running a five-day 40k narrative campaign, because nothing says top-notch adulting like spending annual leave on an epic wargames bender.

It was basically a roleplaying game where all the encounters were 40k battles. It was unclear to me if that would work in reality, but there was only one way to find out. I figured it was going alright when halfway through the campaign the players started saying things like, "when we do another one of these..."

When I was figuring out how to run this thing, a concept that occurred early in the process was some sort of interactive map. The idea was that threats and situations would be highlighted on it, and the players would then decide which of their units to send to each of the engagements. Obviously that meant the players had to be able to interact with it, and I had to be able to change things on it as the enemy reacted.

So then, today I'm going to go through three things:

• How I done made the map.
• How I done made it all interactive and stuff.
• How I'll improve on it next time.

Thing the First: how I done made the map

The four word answer is: Google Earth plus Photoshop. If you're willing to indulge me while I put on a stripy top and a beret so as to wax lyrical about how maps fit into my "creative process"and facilitate the creation of a "synergistic multimedia experience," then keep reading this section.

I often find making the map is a good first step when creating a story world. This might seem arse about face, but I find making something visual often gives me more ideas. I started off with some satellite imagery (thanks NASA) being careful not to use an easily recognisable land mass (so, avoiding coastlines then...). Next, I dropped it in a bucket full of Photoshop juice, brought it up to a simmer, and stirred until I had it looking like part of a planet, with stars in the background and a tint for the atmosphere. If you actually want me to go into more detail about the Photoshop side of things, let me know in the comments. Technically, the attempt to make it look pretty is unnecessary, but I enjoy it. Plus if something looks like a toddler drew using haemorrhoids for crayons, I can't take it seriously.

The basic map

Having a map got me thinking about what sort of a world it might be. All that green said 'agri world' and all that desert said 'agri world with some climate issues.' This gave me the idea of having a pre-Imperial culture that had farmed so extensively that their main area of production ended up collapsing thanks to topsoil loss and subsequent desertification. That in turn gave me the idea of something valuable in the old capital that would be worth excavating. A few ideas later, I wrote everything down in the wiki we keep for our little corner of the 40k mythos.

Thing the second: y'all wanted some interactivity.

I'm not a computer programmer. I can't make a networked app that lets multiple people interact with a layered image with drag and drop functionality plus rudimentary text editing. But you know who can? Motherfudging Google, that's who. Enter stage left Google Drawings. I created icons for all the players' units, plus other icons as needed, such as the players' strike cruisers, enemy contact markers, and so on. I exported them all from Photoshop as .PNGs so as to maintain transparency, then created a Google Drawing, and dragged all the icons in. Every icon you see in the images below can be clicked and moved about at will by anyone with access to the file. These, in particular, are Tom's screenshots of the first campaign turn.

In case you're wondering, the E30 B45 type-stuff represents auspex readings; E means the amount of energy detected, i.e. vehicles, and B represents bio-signatures. Add them up, and you have the enemy army's power level in 40k 8th edition, plus a rough idea of how many lascannons you wish you had.

As the second day (in narrative time) began, a summary was added as a sidebar:

Note: the space marine units can't be seen because the players had put them in their deployable FOBs (Forward Operating Bases). They were in a margin on the left, like the strategic summary on the right.

The campaign had a specific sequence, with simple rules for injuries and persistent vehicle damage, but I'll go over that another time.

Thing the Third: what to improve for next time

The main thing was to increase the visual distinctiveness of the players' units. Right now, you have to use your army roster to know which unit is "Blood Angels Heavy Support Choice IV." The new convention will probably be squares for infantry, circles for characters, upward-pointing triangles for ground vehicles, and downward-pointing triangles for flyers. There's also something to be said for letting the players make their own icons; I made these as a stop-gap in case neither of the players had time, and sure enough, they were painting models right up until the moment of planetstrike.

+++

Right... hopefully that's of some use to anyone out there who plays map campaigns. If you're curious about other elements of the campaign, then the good news is that Jeff, Tom and I all have more posts planned on that front.

~Charlie

Salamut IX Campaign: After Action Report

December 22, 2017, 2:07 pm

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Jeff: Get yourselves a lovely hot cup of tea, settle down and enjoy the tale of the campaign to save Salamut IX (Blood Angels point of view). Five days of gaming makes for a lengthy report. But I hope a fun read. I've put in the comments my thoughts on the experiance from a player's perspective so if you want to skip all the in character stuff and get to my thoughts, head comment-wards. Otherwise, I turn you over to Captain Ioannis Machiavi:

+++INCOMING TRANSMISSION+++

+++TRANSMITTED:  Salamut IX; Achernar Sector

+++RECEIVED:  Baal; Ultima Segmentum.

+++DATE:  3.942.117.M42

+++TELEPATHIC DUCT:  Adept Maude Schumacher; Sabre of Baal

+++REF:  BAIII/53616c616d7574

+++AUTHOR:  Captain of the 3rd Ioannis Machiavi; Master of Sacrifice.

+++DESTINATION:  Commander Dante; Lord of the Host; Master of the Blood Angels; Regent of Imperium Nihilus.

+++SUBJECT:  After-action report Salamut IX.

+++THOUGHT:  By His blood are we made. In His name do we serve.

Master, I present the initial after-action combat reports of 3^rd Company operations in Salamut IX against the ork. Primary objective: To prevent the fall of Salamut IX for up to an estimated week for Imperial reinforcements to arrive.

>>ATTACHED PLANETARY DATA DOWNLOAD<<
>>PROCESSING<<
>>DOWNLOAD COMPLETE<<

initial auspex readings and complement of our vessels

Completed rendezvous with Raven Guard forces aboard the Sable Sword under Captain Yiraka within acceptable sidereal tolerances. Tandom jump to Salamut system completed successfully and in synchronicity. Initial approach in silent running. Established a force of five ork capital ships and an as-then unknown number of escort craft. Impossible to establish orbital superiority at that time thus operated on the basis of planetary appraisal and then hammerblow deployment of company to operate independently until assistance could be provided by the Imperium.

long range auspex pict capture of Ork fleet. Capital ships marked out.

Results of contact made with Imperial Authorities were most unsatisfactory. Governor Singhe was prisoner of ork forces in the besieged city of Tarno, her second was a nervous man unsuited to command and the General hadn't slept in four days. How this state of affairs was allowed to occur and then indeed how it was allowed to continue is beyond my understanding and care. The orks were demanding 100 basilisk artillery pieces for the Lord Governor's release. Unusual cunning but within parameters for established ork intellect. Secretary Shikoba and Lord General Nayeli were assured that her recovery would be a top priority for our forces.  Raven Guard scout units were tasked to infiltrate Tarno and identify the Governor’s location for extraction.

It is worth mentioning at this juncture that had we not been there the Raven Guard would have deployed with no communication to planetary forces of any kind. They remain, as they always have been, secretive to almost the point of obstruction. I should point out, however, that Captain Yiraka proved most cooperative and was open to Blood Angel doctrine. I know we cost him men and machines encouraging him thus. For this I do not apologise, but do appreciate and acknowledge his sacrifices in the name of allied tactics and the defence of humanity.

With the Auspex grid broken we had insufficient data on planetary approach to make useful dispersal of our forces possible, without data on enemy movements and strength it would be a blind drop into chaos. Captain Yiraka and I determined that we would re-take these relays with overwhelming force and gain us useful data to plan formal deployment on second pass.

Blood Angel and Raven Guard forces breach from boarding torpedoes.

Primary Far Orbital Augeries established that Port Damas had fallen. This was deemed an unacceptable risk to have operational above us during primary combat deployment. Terminator Strike forces from both chapters along with Brother Dreadnoughts Abraxus and Helios were prepared aboard deactivated thunderhawk gunships and manually ejected from both vessels on first pass and instructed to wait until T-1 hour of our second pass before assaulting to distract from our approach. They struck the auxiliary power generation substructure, slaughtering their way through an estimated 200 orks for the loss of two Raven Guard and severe damage to Brother Helios. Our returning vessels recovered the thunderhawks while preparing our next move.

Planetary deployment on second pass.

With the data from the recaptured auspex relays we learned we had a complex theatre to manage. The city of Tarno would, for the time being, be abandoned to fight alone. We had neither the numbers or time to embroil ourselves in urban guerrilla war against the ork. Instead we resolved to deploy our entire strength planetside and interdict two large northerly moving formations of orks to dissuade them from further such action. The forces moving on Sathis we felt to be manageable by the curtain wall guns and army units stationed within Sathis itself. Unconfirmed reports of orks in the forests caused us to recommend larger auspex garrisons although a lack of data means, to my shame, that these men were being deployed as canaerids in a mining facility. Their fate would tell us more than orbital scans ever could.

Raven Guard sortie flies over Blood Angel forces raiding an Ork column.

Forward Operating Bases were deployed, ours as a lynchpin between the cities of Bacca and Sathis. The Raven Guard FOB as a resupply and rearming facility in the largely untouched city of Apis. I am pleased to say that Imperial Air cover improved considerably on the restoration of the auspex grid. As we had suspected the orks in the west were indeed heading for Sathis and indeed were being reinforced. Worse, the Ork Capital Ships in orbit were moving over Sathis itself and readying themselves for bombardment. We also finally received the news that the Raven Guard scout formations had located Governor Singhe in Tarno. We needed orbital supremacy for the decapitation strike and teleport retrieval of the Governor. It was, I am sure, the Emperor’s guiding hand therefore that chose that moment to grant us Vice Admiral Laius Ortano’s arrival in system with his fleet.

The liberation fleet of Laius Ortano

There was now much to co-ordinate in little time. While ground forces moved to destroy both reinforcing columns of orks heading for Sathis, a rapid strike force was arranged to both cripple the ork artillery punishing Tarno and to distract ork forces so as to facilitate the governor's rescue. Aboard the Sabre of Baal and the Sable Sword, our terminators massed in teleportarum chambers to assist in the orbital battle and to be immediately available for deployment in rescue operations. As these engagements commenced, our vessels lit drives and joined Vice Admiral Ortano for the orbital battle.

I was planetside for the engagement, but Void-Captain Adeline has given her appraisal of the battle and I will summarise it here: Ortano’s tactics were superb. He committed in strength to the spinward flank of the engagement area in force. Imperial forces stripped the entire forward defensive screen of the orks before driving in to peel the bombarding capital ships from low orbit to allow their destruction and to protect the planet. Sathis reports that while the shields took multiple hits the city’s defences never fell thanks to this quick action. Our vessels engaged in the close-in, brutal fighting that we are made for while Ortano continued his sweep of the ork vessels. The Sabre of Baal came through almost unscathed. Sadly, we cannot say the same for the Sable Sword. I fear the Ravens do not practice a straight up fight as often as we do. Regardless, the Raven’s roost was still functional and we could proceed to phase two of the engagement.

Raven Guard airborne sweep in to attack Ork looted artillery positions.

While the artillery raid was conducted – peerlessly on our part I might add although I believe the Raven Guard took some casualties – our vessels moved into position over Tarno. Once the scouts signalled that they had the Governor in sight and the time was right, terminator forces assaulted, demolishing the orks and securing the governor. An astartes mortalis casket had been hastily repurposed into a crude protective container for the governor to shield her from the worst of  rigour teleportatis. With her recovered to the Sabre of Baal we tended to her injuries and then at her request returned her to the planet’s surface. My Sanguinary Priest Kyriakos Israfael spent most time with her and was impressed by her resolve and ability to adapt to what were some extreme circumstances. We now had orbital supremacy, the governor back in post and auspex coverage. Our war could truly commence.

Mid campaign dispositions.

Of course, as is always the way, this was the moment that the orks massacred the defenders of Relay 34 and knocked it offline again. Regardless, we had orbital track by this time and were more capable of acting independently of planetside auspex. With Tarno bleeding white, we attempted to access some of the forces corralled at as-yet un-attacked Apis to keep that fight going. We did not want Tarno to fall. At this time – and indeed throughout this phase of the war – Tarno was a tar pit in which the orks were trapped. We did not want thousands of greenskins free to roam wherever the whim took them. To my fury, not only did Lord General Nayeli refuse on the basis of fear of assault from the orks, she had also not undertaken any reconnaissance operations north of Apis to assess the level of that threat, considering it too great a risk. By this time I understand she had not slept for a week. Rather than wasting my time with a woman incapable of recognising mortal frailty we simply asked the Governor to set the Commissariat to force her to sleep and got on with the war ourselves. I want the record to show that the suffering of the people of Tarno was exacerbated by Nayeli’s cowardice and incompetence. Later, we would learn that the city of Apis could have defended itself against the orks hiding in the jungle even with the redistribution of forces we suggested. Her passivity is a disgrace to mortal soldiering.  

Blood Angel forces ambush an Ork armoured column

We moved to crush armoured ork forces heading for Bacca, with a combination of armoured column and orbital strike. Raven Guard anti-armour forces were largely needed to recover a downed Storm Eagle so this fell to us. At the same time we resolved to reinforce auspex 33 and retake 34. I assured the Raven Guard that we would handle 34 ourselves and thus found the opportunity to spend the five Lost Ones and the Lost Sarcophagus we had brought with us from Baal. Chaplain Raziel volunteered to lead the Death Company into battle and they dropped to Relay 34. We found we had underestimated the ork forces in the area. A large host of Kommandos reinforced by entire warbands of Stormboyz. This army was quickly dubbed Storm-Kommandos and engaged by our forces and orbital reinforcements. I am glad to say that all of the Lost found themselves the clalean death in battle that all of us could wish for. Although I regret that the explosion of the dreadnought’s power supply has left us with significant repairs before we can again spend a Sarcophagus. In orbit, at our request, Vice Admiral Ortano deployed his naval armsmen to retake Port Damas. We wanted the port operational again if we were to spend much longer here.

The Lost of the Death Company arrive to search for signs of life at Auspex 34.

Simultaneously to these actions, Raven Guard scout units deployed to the woods around Apis to do the General’s job for her. I am assured that her 2iC deployed sentinels to support immediately she was asleep. A welcome gesture but one that should have happened a week ago. Of course they found enough orks that the General doubtless feels herself prudent. I maintain that a ¼ to 1/3 redeployment could have been tactically viable and saved many Imperial souls in Tarno. A small detachment was also sent to scout troubling reports of a “large fauna” attacking villages with descriptions that better fit a maelific entity of the warp than a local predator. We were fervently hoping for a fanciful description of a large beast, but this was not to be. The scouts found evidence of a large, obviously daemonic presence. With no idea how this could have come to be on the world at this time we hastily pulled together a force of terminators and both Chapter’s librarians to assault the beast once the Raven Guard had eyes on the target.

Sanguinary Priest Israfael and Codicier Gabriel

This battle was brief but unbelievably violent. Our forces teleported down and engaged the beast – some form of shale-like entity calling itself Baraqiel according to Israfael. I would ask Codicer Gabriel but he languishes in a coma. According to Sanguinary Priest Israfael, the initial engagement was positive. Massive armament expenditure on target and grievous wounds inflicted by the psychic assaults of the Librarians. Then, almost faster than the eye could see, the beast was on Gabriel and had all but fatally skewered him as though he was a child. Apparently the beast engaged in some sort of psychic conflict with Gabriel attempting to consume him but our fierce brother held on. I am deeply indebted to Brother-Librarian Nironan of the Raven Guard for destroying the beast with the aid of the terminator corps. Brother Gabriel remains comatose and I would request that Lord Mephiston look at him as soon as we return to Baal and perform whatever psychic surgery is necessary to get this hero of the 3^rd back on his feet. Captain Yiraka and I flew directly to Governor Singhe’s chambers to appraise her of this new threat and to sternly advise her to invite the Inquisition to inspect the world as we would certainly be doing the same.

 

Blood Angels forces trap a Speed Freak warboss and his retinue and destroy him

While this was going on, we assaulted yet another armoured column of Orks heading to Sathis and conducted a major raid on the rear echelons of the ork forces besieging Tarno. This was partially to cover the insertion of Raven Guard scout units to co-ordinate orbital and air strikes on Ork forces in Tarno and to ascertain needs of the defenders. We packed four drop pods with ammunition, food and medical supplies and fired them into pre-determined co-ordinates. The Raven Guards acquitted themselves well in this role and I fancy would have liked to have been fighting in this fashion from day one.
 

Major deployments to the west and harrying actions along the eastern flank

The final action of the day was a co-ordinated orbital bombardment of a massive ork force heading for Bacca. A Raven Guard Damocles was to pin point the strikes and we sent several predators to aid in this effort. Had they settled for a single shot we would probably have got away with all materiel intact. But the men on the ground elected to put themselves to the hazard for an additional strike on the orks. This exposed them to Speed Freak elements at the ragged edge of the army. We lost a Baal Predator and the command tank of the Predator formation. Our forces chose to scuttle them rather than let them fall into eager Deathskull hands. The Raven Guards risked their own lives to recover our men and ferry them out in the Damocles. In return our men coaxed some speed out of the engine and advised on Ork psychology to get the Damocles and the covering Stormtalons away clean from the engagement.

Entire companies worth of men and materiel form a thin black and red line.

Then, glory be to the Emperor we had the best news. Imperial reinforcements were early. Our ships had detected their signatures at system's edge. We had only to hold the orks for twelve more hours and only one place to do it: Tarno. Sathis, Bacca and Apis could all hold for twelve hours. Tarno would fall in three. We wanted the hosts of Orks pinned in their assaults not free to roam. As a result we relieved the defenders of Drover's Square, a weak-point in the crumbling Imperial line. We deployed the remainder of both our companies en masse.

The Orks assult on the entire front

The orks came in a great wave of armoured vehicles, walkers and never ending foot troops. Our deployment and firepower kept them at arm’s length for hours and might have lasted all twelve, were it not for a band of those accursed Storm-Kommandos that infiltrated the hab-block on our right flank and assaulted the roof simultaneously. Casualties on the right flank were horrendous and would have been worse had Captain Yiraka not intervened with his assault specialists. In the centre, weight of numbers eventually overwhelmed even our firepower and the ork warlord’s bodyguard pressed forward and assaulted us. I am proud to say that we carried the fight to him and that it was my hammer that smashed his filthy xenos carcass into lifeless jelly. Even as the orks' will started to break, contrails in the sky announced the arrival of Imperial forces. The relief of Tarno was complete.

A now deceased Warlord and his retinue

In the days following, we liberated the Tarkan Oil-Fields as the Imperial Guard relieved the towns. With this done, my Brother Captain needed to return to Deliverance; the Sable Swordwas in desperate need of refit and he had suffered many more casualties than we had. Total Blood Angels casualties at around 18% with 7% fatal. Will need to request several of the new scout formations. I am dispatching the Sabre of Baalhomeward to bear our wounded men and machines to be treated and fitted with whatever bionics are required. Once it has been rearmed I request its return to my charge. My company shall remain here to assist Imperial forces with the mopping up process. With none of the Lost in my charge any more I am the ideal Blood Angel commander to meet with the Inquisition also.

I remain, as ever, your faithful servant and ready sword.

Ionannis Machiavi

Captain, Blood Angels 3^rd.

+++TRANSMISSION ENDS+++

Captain Machiavi

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Samalut IX Campaign: the Raven Guards' report

December 30, 2017, 3:52 am

≫ Next: Green Stuff Moulds - A solution to missing bits!

≪ Previous: Salamut IX Campaign: After Action Report

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Charlie: Today we have a guest post from Tom, the otherplayer in the Samalut IX campaign. I understand he will also be posting in the comments section with his out-of-character thoughts on the campaign. If you enjoyed Jeff's after-action report from the Blood Angels, this is a chance to see things from the perspective of the Raven Guard. Commencing inter-legion bants in 5... 4... 3... 2...

+++INCOMING TRANSMISSION+++

+++TRANSMITTED: Salamut IX; Achernar Sector

+++RECEIVED: Deliverance; Segmentum Tempestus.

+++DATE: 4.942.117.M42

+++TELEPATHIC DUCT: Adept Mae Zerbe; Sable Sword

+++REF: RGV/ 4e978830e745

+++AUTHOR: Captain of the 5th Aremis Yiraka; Master of the Marches.

+++DESTINATION: Kayvaan Shrike; Master of Shadows; Chapter Master of the Raven Guard.

+++SUBJECT: Summary of learnings, Salamut IX intervention.

The Sable Sword is currently en-route to Deliverance for a major refit as we have taken heavy damage.  The hull damage is only a minor inconvenience, but without a functioning void shield generator we are unable to project the Reflex Shield and thus intolerably vulnerable.  A full report will follow upon our arrival but I felt it prudent to send a brief summary of our learnings from our intervention on Salamut IX.

Blood Angels

Salamut IX is an important agri-world in the Handrothian Cluster of the Achernar Sector, so when we received word that Salamut IX was under attack and needed assistance to hold out until Imperial Navy and Imperial Guard reinforcements could arrive, we made all speed to assist.  Along the way we learned that the 3^rd Company of the Blood Angles Chapter were also responding.  Since they have a reputation for propriety, I deemed it best to announce our presence in advance to prevent some foolish upset were they to discover us later on.

>>ATTACHED PLANETARY DATA DOWNLOAD: Samalut IX<<

>>PROCESSING<<
>>DOWNLOAD COMPLETE<<

As we entered the system together, with system status and enemy disposition still unknown, the Blood Angels’ ship Sabre of Baal lit its beacons and announced its presence on a broad spectrum transmission.  This kind of behaviour I soon leaned would be typical of the Blood Angels.  We engaged Reflex Shields and dropped back to counter-attack whatever forced the Sabre drew upon itself.

Fortunately for the Blood Angels we faced Orks, and we detected the five capital ships and numerous escorts long before they detected us.  The Sabre of Baal rapidly shut off its beacons and dropped into low emission mode.  My initial appraisal of my ally therefore was that whilst they lacked caution, at least they were not entirely lacking in sense.

It was only when we started to plan groundside operations together that I learned that the 3^rdcompany were operating entirely without scouts.  This at least explained their eagerness to communicate with the local Imperial forces, since without the ability to deploy scouts (or the skills to infiltrate the local datanet) they were entirely unable to gather intel on their own.  Curiously the Blood Angels claim to follow the Codex Astartes, or at the very least adhere to it far more closely than we do ourselves, and yet this would seem to be a contravention against its rules.

Fortunately the 5^thCompany is well named as The Watchful and we brought 35 scouts, equipped with Land Speeders for transport and led by Veteran Sergeant Khira.  When the Blood Angels learned that the Governor was a captive of the Orks, I was unconvinced as to the value of her rescue, however Captain Machiavi was insistent that it would help moral planet-wide and buy us goodwill.  I therefore had Veteran Sergeant Khira lead a mission to locate and rescue the Governor; this proceeded without incident.

Strategium display: Raven Guard infiltration units assigned to Tarno; other units assigned to retake auspex relays 33 and 34.

Raven Guard scouts (bottom left) approaching the hab-block where Governor Singe was being held captive.

The Blood Angels also seemed to struggle with the implementation of hit and run missions. They offered to assist in a raid on Ork-held imperial artillery around the besieged city of Tarno, but they were unable to infiltrate any units forward in advance for a surprise blow. Once the mission was completed, with a far stronger Ork resistance than anticipated, they simply fled the field of battle with no rearguard.  We took heavy fire, and the Stormeagle Kutcha was shot down protecting the retreat. The Blood Angels did at least divert their Land Raider to collect our downed pilot and passengers.  Techmarine Jadyr later led a mission to retrieve the Kutchaand had her flying combat missions again before the campaign was concluded.

The Kutcha picks up Squad Maun following a successful raid on captured basilisk artillery...

...and is then shot down moments later by pursuing orks.

Despite a lack of tactical nuance, the fighting prowess and bravery of the Blood Angels cannot be questioned.  When we send the Damocles to coordinate an orbital strike upon an Ork army heading towards the city of Bacca the Blood Angels volunteered some of their Predators to act as bodyguard, and further agreed to hold station to gain a second shot in full knowledge that the entire formation was likely to be wiped out.  In the end both predators were destroyed, although the crew managed to escape on board the Damocles.

Whilst Brother Solaro was smart enough not to mention it to the Blood Angles at the time, he later noted that the Orks seemed to be particularly attracted to the bright red tanks with big guns and completely overlooked his (ultimately far more dangerous) Damocles.  During the escape the Blood Angel drivers also tinkered with his engines to gain more speed, and upon later inspection Techmarine Jadyr revealed that the infamous Lucifer pattern engines of the Baal predator may be nothing more than a deliberate gimmicking of the safety limiters on the engine overdrive function.

 

Raven Guard aircraft and Blood Angel tanks hold off waves of ork speed freaks while the Damocles provides targeting data for strike cruisers in orbit.

Of course bravery must be tempered.  Whilst the five Vanguard marines charging across the field of battle towards the Ork lines was indeed heroic and noble, the fact that four out of five were casualties by the end of the battle is telling of the worth of such endeavours.  Nevertheless, I have highlighted here the moments where their heroism seemed to be more rash than rational, and for balance I must add that the Blood Angels have proven themselves to be honourable to a fault and peerless warriors.  I am told by those who witnessed it that Captain Machiavi taking on the xenos warlord and its retinue with his thunder hammer was a sight to behold.

Planetary Forces

As noted above, Captain Machiavi insisted on communicating and coordinating with the local Imperial forces.  Personally I felt there was nothing to be gained from such a manoeuvre, and nothing that happened on Salamut IX has changed my opinion.  The locals had very poor intel when we arrived, and their datanet was sloppy so what little information they had was ours for the taking. 

Even after rescuing the Governor, which I was assured would buy us goodwill from the inhabitants, the local commander Lord General Nayeli refused our request to divert troops to better defend her planet.  Indeed it seems she had been so afraid of losing men that she had not even scouted the strength of the Ork forced that were bottling her up in Apis.

Further, when we did manage to get PDF forces redeployed to garrison the Auspex Relay stations that we had recovered for them, they did not take our warnings about Ork Kommandoes seriously and the troops were subsequently wiped out to a man.  Once the relay stations were retaken yet again, further troops were more willing to listen to the advice of my Scouts who I sent to teach them basic concepts such as cutting down the trees to clear line of sight on the approach and other basic military strategy.

Imperial Navy

Whilst the local Imperial forces were somewhat wanting, I cannot fault the actions of the Imperial Navy reinforcements led by Vice Admiral Ortano. His arrival in-system was most timely and we immediately requested his aid in clearing out the Ork fleet, as it appeared that a bombardment of the capital Sathis was imminent. With his greater experience in direct naval combat I attached the Sable Sword to his command, as Captain Machiavi did likewise with the Sabre of Baal. Under his command the Sword took a fair amount of damage but he succeeded in destroying or driving off a numerically superior enemy fleet in a difficult situation.

Vice Admiral Ortano's flotilla approaches the ork fleet bombarding Sathis.

Orks

The motivation of the Orks on Salamut IX is still unclear.  An agri-world is not a typical target for an Ork invasion, with little in the way of enemies to fight or resources to capture.  Further we seem to have discovered a new kind of Ork, or rather a combination of two known types.  The stealthy Kommandos combined with the rocket-pack bearing Stormboys combined into units we dubbed the StormKommandos.  Discovering a highly mobile yet stealthy warband of elite Orks was like looking into some perverse twisted mirror of the Raven Guard.

Whilst they were first reported to us by the Blood Angels, once we learned about them I made it a personal mission to eliminate them.  In the final defence of Tarno I personally led The Unkindness in a decapitation strike, deploying from Thunderhawk to counter-attack their ambush upon the right flank.  The leader, apparently named “Bozzgit Kawsmash” I killed myself.

Daemon

Four days into the campaign my scouts investigated reports of some wildlife wiping out a town.  Whilst wildlife attacks would normally be a local issue of no bearing on the campaign, my concern was that it was some form of squiggoth.  The reality was much worse.  The scouts’ report clearly indicated some form of malefic entity.  Captain Machiavi and I agreed and gathered all of our Terminators and both of our librarians for a teleport strike, and I deployed a Stormhawk Interceptor to find it and coordinate the teleport strike.

The entity was powerful. After calling in the location, Stormhawk Fechínonly made a single pass as the creature was airborne.  The creature received a full volley of ordinance and still nearly smashed the Fechínout of the air.  Nevertheless the strike force, led by our Librarian Nironen and Blood Angel Librarian Gabriel was successful.  Before it was banished completely, Nironen learned the creature’s name was “Baraqiel”.  Nironen has further intelligence upon this creature but that will be compiled in a separate report to the Librarius.

During this battle Librarian Gabriel was extremely badly wounded and subjected to a mental assault.  With the permission and support of Blood Angel Apothecary Israfael, Nironen did a deep scan of Gabriel’s soul to check for taint.  Whilst he confirms that Gabriel’s soul was untainted by the malefic, the nature of Gabriel’s soul was slightly worrying.  He reports a barely contained battle rage like some kind of feral beast desperate to be unleashed.

This revelation has placed some other information in a new light.  The Blood Angels volunteered to retake Auspex Relay 34 alone, but when Veteran Sergeant Khira was patrolling the site later his assessment was that there were more Blood Angels deployed than were accounted for.  Our current working hypothesis is that the Chapter may suffer from a much more severe variation of the Sable Brand.  I believe it is in all our best interests that, if true, this does not come to light. Veteran Sergeant Khira removed all traces under the pretence of a precautionary sweep for boobytraps.

Raven Guard

I am well satisfied with the performance of the men of the 5^th.  We lost four scouts and three marines; their Corvia will be returned to Kiavahr.  Unfortunately all three of the Marines were from the elite Sternguard unit, Squad Maun.  Sergeant Maun’s men are the best of the 5^thand regularly take on the hardest assignments.  In particular their stubborn defence of the right flank in the defence of Tarno when overwhelmed by Kommandos was heroic.  The fact that most of the squad actually survived underneath piles of Ork corpses even after the Kommandos were purged by massed assault cannon fire elevates their actions to those of legend.  Chaplain Bran has already recorded it for submission to the Chapter honours.

The scouts also performed admirably.  Their intelligence gathering skills were the pride of the Chapter as they demonstrated again and again their ability to slip in an out unnoticed and recover valuable intel that neither the Blood Angels nor the PDF were capable of.  They also worked well supporting and directing local resistance forces in Tarno, and coordinating the defences of the auspex relays.  Finally they proved themselves in direct combat, standing shoulder to shoulder with their power-armoured brethren.  I am recommending the surviving scouts of squads Aajz, Oradias, Gherith, Zeed, Koryn and Binalt be recognised as full battle brothers.  Squad Syras performed acceptably but still require more battlefield experience.

The ork vanguard approaches the astartes line in Drover Square during the last stages of the Battle of Tarno.

Ork infantry and walkers advance behind the vanguard while lobbas (centre right) provide light artillery cover.

In Summary

The Salamut IX campaign was a success, and it could not have been so without the Blood Angels.  For all that I may find their methods simplistic and crude; they are very effective at what they do.  The sheer stopping power of an entrenched line of tactical marines backed by tanks is quite a sight to behold, and together we held the line.  For my part I look forward to being able to field more tactical squads once the scouts have been initiated, and I may even speak with the Master of the Forge to see what tanks we have available for deployment.

On the other hand I hope Captain Machiavi has seen the value of our more cautious approach to battle, and he did admit to me that he was hoping to add some scouts to his battlegroup; although I fear that may be slightly more to do with the envious looks he gave our Land Speeder Storms and their potential to rapidly deliver scouts into combat than their value in intelligence gathering.  Likewise I believe he was rather taken with our aerial units and the ability to deploy the firepower of a tank wherever and whenever we like. 

See you on Deliverance, or if not, good hunting Kayvaan,

Aremis Yiraka

P.S. Governor Singhe requested permission to raise some statues to the Raven Guard and the Blood Angels.  I saw no harm in it so I acquiesced.  From the tone of Captain Machiavi’s response I understand this is quite normal practice for him. 

+++TRANSMISSION ENDS+++

Green Stuff Moulds - A solution to missing bits!

January 11, 2018, 6:28 am

≫ Next: Ork trukk conversions ahoy

≪ Previous: Samalut IX Campaign: the Raven Guards' report

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It never fails does it. You do something "clever" like gluing your Land Raider together leaving the tracks off to paint separately. Then, the hobby butterfly wanders off, gets wasted on Buckfast in a alley behind an off-licence and starts painting Orks or something. Then, years later it sobers up, looks in it's boxes and goes "ooh, a Land Raider!" only to discover...

Yeah, I was missing a section of track. Now I contemplated a range of options for solving this ranging from the impractical (fairy godmother) to the expensive (bits sites will sell you a whole track run for about £8). I certainly didn't want to leave an ugly gap or not use my (how much are Land Raiders these days... good lord) £45 kit. So... solutions: well I could fabricate one from plasticard. But that's a hell of a lot of time and engineering to pull off. My scratch building fabrication skills are "neophyte" at best so probably not that. Then I remembered an old dodge we used to use back when moulded shoulder pads were a lot rarer than they are now: Green Stuff Moulds.

Now I am not an expert on this in any way, so we're learning by doing here. You can learn from my mistakes. For starters I wrapped a painting tile in tin foil to give me an easily removed surface to work on. I busted out my ribbon of green stuff, chopped off a lump a bit bigger than the part and set to mixing. Once it was nicely mixed, I smooshed it out onto the tin foil.

Next, I have to stop it sticking to the part. You could use a bunch of things here, olive oil for example, but I tend to use WD-40. Because it isn't a proper lubricant (it disperses water, that's what the WD stands for apparantly) it cleans off fairly easily but puts a layer of "sticky-be-gone" for just long enough. I squirted a bunch into a dropper bottle ages ago and use it when I need slightly more precise application than "those four square inches over there". Finally I summoned up the bravery and pressed the part into the blank.

And here is the result, and my first mistake. Wait a little longer before removing the part from the mould, see how it has dented a little on the left? That'll cause problems later but not too many. I'd also like to note that I learned this lesson on day one. Why? Because we'll be in day two later and I'll forget it already... sheesh. Anyway, speaking of "day two", I now left it overnight to cure and harden and we'll be back to check it out.

Above: a possibly unnessecary picture... illustrating my mixing up a nice pad of green stuff roughly the thickness of the finished part and then jamming a WD-40 re-lubed (few things are made worse by lube) mould down on the top and giving it a firm press. I peeled off the mould to reveal:

Not too bad. That left side screwed me but that was easily fixed by pressing down with the knife to redefine the edges. The result is pretty good. Here's where I make my next mistake. The same mistake I made yesterday. Sheesh once more.

I was worried about the green stuff curing hard before I'd cut it out so got on with cutting out the outside edge to release the cast. Had I stopped there then there probably wouldn't have been a problem. But oh no, I had to go ahead and start pulling away the excess from the still soft cast. Head-desk. So cue a bit of reshaping and re-squaring. Learn my lesson better than me. Cut out to be sure, but wait for it to mostly cure before you remove the excess. It'll be fine. Oh, and remember lessons from a mere 24 hours previously.

But even with those problems, the results are good enough that I don't mind at all. It'll disappear into the track links and won't stand out enough to cause a problem. This link is the one at the back that disappears into the track guard so it'll never really stand out. So there you go! We're Learning With Jeff and figuring out how to replace lost bits. Doubtless, the minute that I superglue this into place on the tank I'll find the errant link. Hope this was helpful/inspirational, more shinies soon.

TTFN

Ork trukk conversions ahoy

January 16, 2018, 12:25 pm

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≪ Previous: Green Stuff Moulds - A solution to missing bits!

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Wotcha! I’m Grinbad Oilsmirk and I’ll be your trukk salesman for the day. Honest trukks at honest prices! You won’t find better in Mektown. You definitely won’t find better down the road at Bozdakka’s Big Wheelz. Bloody thieves in there. You can tell because all their trukks is blue. The trukks in here? Top notch. They was made with a need. You know what need I mean, don’t you? Course you do.

Now you seem like an ork with teef. Probably got a mob of lads following you around, am I right? Need to get them into a good scrap without losing half of them on the way? Don’t worry mate, I’ll sort you out. Take a walk with me through the garage. Smell the passion. And don’t tread in what’s left of Pizzle, we ran over him this morning. ERGLI? ERGLI! WHY’S YOU NOT MOPPED UP PIZZLE? BEEN SNIFFING GLUE SQUIGS HAVE WE? SO HELP ME IF I DON’T SHOW YOU THE BACK OF MY HAND. Bloody told him. Sorry about that mate, right this way.

The Klassic

 

First up we have the Klassic. No frills, unless you count the nitro and the kustom red rims. One careful owner. Nice and cheap. But I can tell by the way your nostrils is flaring that you don’t want bog standard. I isn’t saying you is cheap, you looks like a bigger than average nob who wants the best for his lads, am I right? Am I right? No, sorry, won’t nudge you again. Sorry. I know, we isn’t mates. Sorry. Nice choppa, that. Let’s move on.

The Beast

This is the Beast. Liked it so much I even put me favourite skull on it. Heavier rig, with a high platform for a gunner so you can have dakka wherever you wants it. No guns actually mounted on it right now, but —well yes, our other trukks do all have guns. No, I en’t trying nothing on, this just gives you options. It’s not missing nothing, it’s about flexib… that really is a nice choppa.

The Scopa

 

We call this one the Scopa. It’s a recon rig. See the extra stowage on the front there? It's also got a raised turret, perfect for long-range gitfinding. One nob, alone in the desert, the eyes and ears and nose of the warboss himself. I’ll even throw in some hand-held optiks if you like. You’re right, that is a humie ram. Tough construction, very reliable. What? No, I weren’t saying you’re a pansy what only likes scouting not fighting. You want front line, top-end boss trukks? Over here mate. I don’t offer these other two to just anyone.

The Speedsta

This here’s the Speedsta. Fastest trukk in Mektown. One of the newest, too. Big shoota fitted as standard, slim lines so it goes more speedy, and extra protection for the engine. Solid kustom ram, too. It’s got some serious tricks under those armour plates; first time we got it up to speed I could feel me face  flapping in the wind.

You seem pretty taken with it, mate. Is that a tear in your eye? I know, we’ve all been there. This is probably the trukk for you, but I’ve got one more to show you. Our heaviest. You like heavy? You like shooty? Right this way. Mind that oil spill. ERGLI! SORT THE ZOGGING SPILL OUT! Sorry about that. Oops, mind the low cable.

The Tuska

Now this... this is the Tuska. You’ve got to be a real nob to buy this. Which you clearly is. Most people get distracted by the toothy ram, but I see you’ve got a good eye and you’re right, that is a humie rokkit launcher. All wired up to a big button so the driver gets all the fun. Spare ammo stored next to the driver to make up for the lack of aiming. Then there’s the kustom engine – a right grunter – and that means it’s got the heft to handle the extra armour. The semi-ard case keeps your lads safer but still lets them shoot their guns in the air and shout “Waaagh!”

So what’ll it be, mate?

The Suspension Spring Collection

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Charlie: What this post means is that, in 2017, I finally finished my Speed Freak army. There’s no half-done orks left in the Box of Shame. I am a happy man.

Goblin Shaman

January 22, 2018, 2:19 am

≫ Next: 40K narrative campaign sequence

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Charlie: Despite Dungeons & Dragons being the most famousest of the RPGs, I haven't actually played it that much. Thus, when Tom offered to run an old-school D20 adventure, I duly signed up in the interests of broadening my nerd palette.

We decided to play a group of total misfits, and thus there was Hadras the polite yet horrifyingly shooty warforged scout, Krog the existentialist barbarian, and Nozz the goblin shaman, who was neither polite nor an existentialist.

Playing as a goblin isn't exactly an obvious choice, but it was deeply enjoyable. I spent the day expressing myself via the medium of cockney viciousness and bodily functions. Let the record state that I did at least make myself useful. Most of the time.

The model I used is GW's grot shaman, and he went on a square base because I fully intend to use Nozz Brewsnik in Skazzwuzzle's goblins.

I've had my eye on this little chap since he came out. The hanging animal bits, the skully bowl, the stirring bone... he's just so classy.

The tatty cloak makes me particularly happy. Well done, sculptor.

As with Skazzwuzzle I went for more naturalistic skin tones compared to GW's iconic look, and furthermore I avoided any intense colours on Nozz as I imagine he's the power behind the throne type. Does this approach make for a good display model? Possibly not.

I made two little modifications: removing the topknot and softening the eye sockets. The cheekbones are very harshly sculpted, which I found at odds with the softer lines elsewhere on the model, so I did what I could during painting to offset that. Finally, for comparison, here's the studio's more stylised version next to my own murkier effort:

Image taken from games-workshop.com for illustrative purposes only.

40K narrative campaign sequence

January 29, 2018, 6:35 am

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≪ Previous: Goblin Shaman

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Charlie: In case it's of some use to anyone, today I'm sharing the campaign sequence I used for the Samalut IX campaign. This means it's meant to be used in conjunction with the interactive campaign map I made. These rules are written assuming that the players are using Space Marines. Were I to run something similar for players with other armies, some changes would be needed, and I'll postulate some adaptations at the end.

In a nutshell, the campaign was about two Space Marine commanders responding to a distress signal from an Imperial world. Their job was to prop up the Planetary Defence Force for a week, after which multiple regiments of Imperial Guard would arrive to crush the Ork invasion.

Playing a campaign sequence

1: Comms phase

Allied forces provide intelligence and call for aid. The GM updates the map with new alerts and dispositions, and provides a strategic summary of the previous day's events.

Units await deployment from FOBs and strike cruisers

2: Strategium phase

The astartes commanders decide where to commit their units, moving them from the strike cruisers/Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) onto the map.

Forward Operating Bases (FOBs)

Designed for swift deployment and minimal setup time, these forward operating bases are prefabricated structures with a 'one-shot' deployment. Each strike cruiser carries one FOB, which can be 'fired' at a planet's surface during any one strategium phase. Move the FOB icon from the strike cruiser to any point on the campaign map. Once deployed, the FOB may not be moved.

The FOB is equipped with defensive turrets and a perimeter wall, but cannot autonomously defend itself against an enemy assault - if you think it might be attacked, it's worth leaving a garrison force behind!

Orbital reserves

Any units capable of teleporting and/or deploying by drop pod may be kept in reserve on board the strike cruisers. Each unit held in reserve like this may be called upon during any one battle during the campaign turn.

This option is only available whilst the strike cruisers are in orbit; should the strike cruisers be forced to withdraw, any units on board must either deploy immediately to a FOB or stay on board the ship until it can return to orbit.

The units are now deployed on the campaign map

3: Resolve engagements

Fight the battles until they have all been resolved.

Injuries

Any non-vehicle model with multiple wounds who still has at least one wound remaining at the battle's end is assumed to regain all their wounds in the subsequent recovery phase.

Roll a D6 for each model reduced to 0 wounds during the battle, adding 1 to your roll if an apothecary is present on the battlefield:

1-2	Roll again: 1-3= dead, 4-6= gravely wounded, miss rest of campaign
3-6	Injured: place in medicae facility on strike cruiser or in FOB. It is best to have a box or container set aside for this purpose to prevent confusion. See recovery phase.

Note that models which quit the field due to morale are not considered to be injured.

Damaged vehicles

Keep track of vehicle damage during engagements and refer to the recovery phase.

4: Recovery phase

The astartes return to their FOBs and strike cruisers for fresh supplies and to tend their wounded brethren.

Resupply

Move all astartes units to a strike cruiser or FOB.

Medicae facilities

Marines in the medicae facility can rejoin their units on a 4+. If an apothecary spends the entire campaign phase in the medicae facility, recoveries are made on a 3+. Any marines that fail their roll must remain in the medicae facility.

Damaged vehicles

At the end of each campaign phase, damaged vehicles recover 25% of the wounds they suffered. Each uninjured techmarine allows two vehicles to recover an additional 25%, or one vehicle to recover an additional 50%. If a techmarine spends an entire campaign phase in an FOB/strike cruiser with a vehicle, it regains all its wounds.

Destroyed vehicles

If a vehicle is reduced to 0 wounds during an engagement and the space marines retreat, the vehicle is looted or destroyed by the orks. If a vehicle is reduced to 0 wounds during an engagement and the orks retreat, it is recovered and taken to a FOB or strike cruiser for repairs. See damaged vehicles above.

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Alterations for other races/armies

Imperial Guard

Since guard a slow, lumbering army, you might as well do away with cruisers in orbit, and have FOBs be more temporary structures that can be moved a short distance during each recovery phase. You might also want to have a radius around each FOB to define how far Guard units can stray from their base before they run out of fuel, and you might also give the player multiple FOBs depending on the size of the campaign.

Guardsmen are also significantly less durable than space marines, so I'd only use the injury rules for the officers, and assume that any guardsmen taken out of play are either dead or will take too long to recover from their wounds to play any further part. I would therefore suggest that any unit which loses more than half its members during one engagement is disbanded, its remaining members divided among those squads who only took a few casualties. Once the next campaign turn is over, you are then given a squad from the reserve companies, all wet behind the ears and crying for their mums.

Since the guard have techpriest enginseers, the vehicle rules can stay as they are.

Sisters of Battle

Treat sisters hospitallers as apothecaries and you're good to go. Whilst sisters aren't posthumans we can handwave that as their power armour absorbing the brunt of the damage, and their faith helping them fight through the pain.

So far as I know sisters lack the equivalent of techmarines, so unless they have mechanicus allies their vehicles will only be regaining 25% of their wounds per turn.

Skitarii

Given the proliferation of bionics in this army I'd say any techpriests spending their turn in a FOB have to decide if they're going to function as apothecaries or techpriests during the strategium phase.

Tau

These guys should probably have movable FOBs, ships in orbit... the works. I'd treat battlesuits as vehicles for recovery purposes, and maybe use the Guard rules above for fire warriors/kroot/etc. That feels imperfect, but I'm not sure of a better solution off the top of my head.

Tyranids

You'd probably want to have something that feels like spawn rates, i.e. all units recover 25% of their lost wounds at the end of every campaign turn, and any broods/creatures which lose >75% of their wounds are consumed and used to spawn a new critters, so must skip a campaign turn then come back.

Genestealer Cults

I'd probably just use the same rules as for the Guard, above.

Eldar

These guys should probably be slow to recover casualties, since they're roughly as fragile as normal humans but without the abundant numbers. Honestly, I'm not sure what the right answer is here.

Chaos Space Marines

I'm pretty sure I don't need to write anything here.

Necrons

Well Necrons pretty much fix themselves. I guess so long as their ship's in orbit or their tomb is located on the surface, they pretty much just regenerate, and you don't really need any extra rules.

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