"My Lord! Your will?!"

So it's been a while since my last update, eh? I've not been up to a huge amount, but I have done a few interesting things.

First of all, I finally broke out my 2nd Edition Warhammer 40,000 stuff, and JY and I have decided to pursue that rather than try and hang in with 7th Edition for a number of reasons:

1) It's cheaper. A 1500 point army of Chaos Space Marines, for instance, comes in at 22 figures (all of which I found in my bits boxes - 7 Terminators, a Sorceror, a handful of Chaos Marines and some old Noise Marines).
2) The rules won't change unless we want them to. No Codex Creep, because the codexes are all finished.
3) It's a lot more tactical.
4) We're secret hipsters.
Anyway, we played through the first couple of scenarios in the Battle for Armageddon linked campaign as presented in the rulebook, with JY taking the part of the Space Marines, and me and then SB playing the Orks and Gretchin of Waaagh! Ghazgkull.

 The setup for the second mission. On the left, Space Marines of the Righteous Fists' 2nd Battle Company, IV Squad, defending the ruins of the Chapel of the Emperor's Grace. On the right, 15 Orks wanting to embed their axes into 'umie skullz.

Midway through - this is about as far as they got. Frag rockets and bad luck stopped the Orks getting anywhere!

We had a good time and the upshot is I am now painting up Iron Warriors while listening to this:



As of writing I've finished The Skintaker, the Aspiring Champion who leads the basic Iron Warrior squad, and Qorl of the Nine Tongues, the warband's sorceror. Siege-Captain Kuhl Leng and his Sworn Guard Terminators are drying off after a paint-stripping (they'd been undercoated white and then painted black at some point in their past by their previous owner, poor devils!)

I'm quite looking forwards to painting the Noise Marines in their psychedelic armour.

Dragon Age Hijinks

Tonight, AC, SB, DS and I met up to pursue our Dragon Age campaign. Currently, the party, consisting of Widget the city elf rogue, Ferryman, the apostate mage, and Iorek (deceased) were engaged in trying to liberate a magic necklace from the Lotherin Graveyard to bring to a man called Zeke who could give them the pass that Ferryman needed to get into the Circle Tower of Mages which they need to get to in order to fulfil their duties to the King's agent...

L-R: Ferryman, shade, Iorek (deceased), Widget - "What's that noise OH SH-"

...except, well, Iorek had, despite killing almost all of the reanimated demon-inhabited skeletons in the graveyard while his chums had gone for a nap, been killed by a Shade. The Shade jumped Widget and Ferryman, but was undone by magic arrows fired from everyone's favourite perky elf. After offing the spirit, the two divvied up Iorek's gear, and then a mischevious thought occurred to Widget. If she took Iorek's axe, and cut his head off, she could claim the bounty on him! Just the sort of thing that Iorek would have done in her place. So she hefts the axe:

L-R: Preventing anyone claiming the bounty on Iorek, and poor lonely Widget after the deaths of her drinking companion and the strange mage Ferryman whom they'd all come to like. Drawings by SB, who has a couple of websites: Lazy Bunny and Lazy Bunny Comics. Go! Read! 

...and plants it square in his face. So much for that plan! They then proceeded to get Ferryman killed by rage demons inhabiting reanimated skeletons inside the graveyard. Widget tried to save him, but her plan of "stopping him bleeding out then running away as a distraction" didn't distract the demons, who killed the helpless Ferryman anyway. Then she tried to run away. And didn't make it. But she did manage to kill the rage demons! Success!

Which means the party is now Widget, city elf rogue, and, er... that's it. Not so success!

But it's OK. Because I rolled up a new character some time ago (Kattrin an Mouire o Redhold) and DS, after some distress, as the poor chap had never had an RPG character die on him before - indeed Ferryman was his first one - started to create a Templar Knight who will be joining Widget, Kattrin, and the 'NPC' Shaman played by AC (as well as being GM - hopefully the GM's character won't be too tasty looking to the big monsters) at the meeting with Zeke. Which I imagine will go something like:

"YOU DIDN'T TELL US IT WAS GOING TO BE DANGEROUS, YOU SAID IT WAS A CASE OF DIGGING UP A GRAVEYARD!!!"

Either way I'm happy. I get to play as a 6'1" tall softly-spoken, hard-hitting, ultra-strong, pantheist barbarian warrior woman... and her dog, Iorek. What's not to like? "Foe-Splitter - we have heads to take!"