Getting Distracted

I had intended to work on the Tech-Assassin, but this morning as I was feeding the cats and making coffee for P, my eyes fell on the undercoated ghouls I'd begun uhhhh some time ago. Possibly last year? They're Heresy Miniatures' ghouls, sculpted by the excellent Paul Muller (who has also gone on to make more ghouls for Bad Squiddo Games). I picked them up to add to my Vampire Counts army, which - once I finish this bunch of cannibal monsters from a B-movie, will only really need a Black Coach for me to consider it complete. Although I could probably always add more zombies... and skeletons... and another ten ghouls..

Anyway!

Unhinged cannibal nightmares from your favourite Hammer Horror (probably)

These are really nice miniatures, if a bit gnarly (you can't see the child eating a head in the photo, for example) and I think they're much better than the currently available Games Workshop ones. I'm going to be painting them quite simply, and all I have to do now really is a few highlights and some details - hair, bone, belts, that sort of thing. I should probably be able to finish them tomorrow, assuming I don't get distracted.

Also, P and I went on a birdwatching walk in a nearby wood today which was very pleasant. We saw a very shiny beetle, too:

A shiny bug

On top of all that, I spent a chunk of time bashing out a new version of the venerable Return To Thorskinson's Island campaign that was published in White Dwarf numbers 111-114 many years ago in 1997. Now I'm near a wargames club that plays Warhammer Fantasy, I might actually be able to run my own version - thanks Jervis. Anyway, nothing to add painting point wise today, but hopefully tomorrow will be fruitful!

Assassins At Last

It took me a lot longer than I'd hoped, but the two 'classic' Death Cult Assassins are done. The sculpts are not the best ones GW has ever produced, and Finecast is not the right medium for them really - as I was painting them I kept finding flash in weird places that needed removing, and I don't think I'd've had that particular problem in metal. And I'd have been able to bend the blades into a proper shape, too. Yes, I know, I could have done the hot water trick but... I couldn't be bothered. I have successfully reduced the Pile of Opportunity by two, and that's the main thing really.

Front view, showing the small differences in the sculpts... and the *very* strange position of the left hand on the one on the right. You try waving a sword around like that!

They look much more similar from the back, but honestly it doesn't matter - I like the textural differences between the shiny bodysuits and the metal and parchment.

I also blocked out some of the colours on the tech-assassin, who I think I'll say is some kind of Mechanicus-based Death Cultist, and had a crack at putting some Black Templar Contrast on the Tomb Kings carrion I've got to do. For some reason despite contrast being very watery as befits what is in essence an ink, it just. did. not. flow across the mini. I think the white undercoat is a bit grittier than the contrast likes. Oh well.

Tech-assassin and three Carrion for the Tomb Kings in The Old World.

The Carrion should, in theory, be pretty easy to paint with just a few colours being needed - but, I suspect, they will be much more of a pain than I expect. We'll see!

I spent much of today thinking about Necromunda, and plotting where I might want to go with my gang as it grows. I have some options, but I think I'm going to be OK for figures in the short term - more Gangers and Juves are never a bad idea - but when the Juves in particular level up I have quite the shortage of special and heavy weapons, so I can forsee a purchase of the Weapons and Upgrade Sprue (and another box of Escher) coming up.

Tomorrow I hope to make more headway on the Tech-assassin and maybe even the Carrion, but I'm also going bird watching with my partner P and playing a game of Wolf Packs and Winter Snows in the evening, so I might not be able to get anything done painting wise.

Painting Points:
Today: 2
This Week: 4
2024: 60

 

 

Rolling Dice In The Underhive

Tonight I went to the local wargames club - the Warwickshire Gamers - for my first game in the new Necromunda Dominion campaign being run by a chap called A. I ended up playing a lovely fellow - F - and his very nice and quite intimidating Goliaths, the Slagpit Maulers. We rolled up the scenario Border Dispute and the winner would get a nice Settlement to add to their campaign territory.

I was pretty worried to start with as I only had five of my gang on the board at the start to F's six, and Goliaths are tough. I've had trouble with them in the past because they can be the very devil to wound with basic weapons like las or auto guns. On the other hand, I did have my Death Maiden, Gang Queen, and Specialist with chem-thrower so hopefully I'd be able to do some damage to them.

End Phase of turn one - Vikki Vicious is OOA but so is Smash, F's gang boss

It's a pretty straightforwards mission; the two gangs set up and then have to kick each other's teeth in, with the twist that if your gang relic (mine is seen just to the corner of the green container on the right of the above picture) is defiled you can't win even if every enemy ganger is OOA or fled. We ended up weighting our gangs to my right flank and things kicked off pretty quick. I sent Vikki Vicious forwards to try and gas Runner, the Goliath Forge-Born, but he was made of sterner stuff and this let Smash charge in and put Vikki OOA with a few brutal swings of his massive great big power hammer. His triumph was short lived however as Fancy Fliss and Losse de Grey charged in and Losse ran him through with her stiletto sword, forcing injury rolls due to its poison-coated blade - and OOA he went!

Reinforcements don't always come on where you want them to...

 
Turn two saw a pretty brutal exchange with Cutter the Stimmer thundering into Fancy and taking her OOA with a truly unpleasant number of attacks from his paired axes, only to be first brought low by Losse's reaction attacks, and then given a coup de gras by Tia Venom. At this point I was really concerned because I wasn't liking the exchange rate of one-for-one, but as it turned out I needn't've worried. Losse danced over the moaning Cutter and took Runner OOA in a single fluid motion of elegant violence, while Sinnamon Kane lined up a careful lasgun shot on Pop the Goliath with grenade launcher and gave him a serious injury to keep him occupied. Both gangs broke in the end phase of that turn, with my Wyld Runner Roxy Danger turning up as a reinforcement only to immediately fail her bottle test and run away. Obviously she had more important things to do.

Mid-way through Turn Two, with Cutter lying on the ground moaning by the brown container and Pop doing much the same on the gantry at the back. You can see Spark and Lucky, F's reinforcements, yet to move, over on the far left corner where I'd been able to place them (mwahahaha).

Turn Three ended up being the last turn as the Wyld Kats continued to drive down the right flank towards the Goliath gang relic, shooting at the remaining Goliaths as they did so. With no damage caused to the Wyld Kats this turn, the Slagpit Maulers elected to leg it, vowing they'd be back.

In the post game sequence, it turned out that Fancy Fliss had evaded capture (phew!) but Pop had, um, "succumbed to his injuries" (cheaper than the Doc's fees, you see) and will have to be replaced. Vikki Vicious picked up an Old Battle Wound, but this has no effect on her as she's a Specialist rather than a Champion so doesn't do Post Battle Actions anyway. 

The Wyld Kats made bank, gaining 150 credits, 2 reputation, a settlement, a free Juve from said settlement, and a ton of XP - Losse de Grey getting 10(!), enough to buy the skill Spring Up. Oh, and a visit to the Trading Post meant that Fancy upgraded her chainaxe to a power axe, while Vikki Vicious, seeing how effective Losse's chym-synth was, got one for her chem-thrower. All told, after the little spending spree (including getting some gear for the new Juve, Wildsnake Bliss), the Wyld Kats ended up with 70 creds saved against something nasty for the future. Maybe a Khymerix. Who knows!

And before all that I also managed to finish the Crusaders! They won't win any awards, but they're done and in my display cabinet, so I'll take that as a win honestly.

Crusaders! You can see flames on their tabards. They're not... not Redemptionists are they?

Suppression shields! I did the black and white ropes to symbolise purity and evil.

So all in all a pretty good day really. Two figures painted and a game of Necromunda played (and won)!

Painting Points:
Today: 2
This Week: 2
2024: 58

Terminators, Terminators Everywhere

Many years ago when I was at university, in the dim and distant past when 4th Edition 40K was the current thing, I had and ran a Deathwing army that I painted up as Righteous Fists 1st Company. It was reasonably successful, although I do remember one game where an Eldar Exarch single-handedly annihilated my Assault Terminator squad along with the accompanying Chaplain in a single round of combat. Mind you, such defeats were offset by quite a few victories, and the 2+/5+ save was a heady change from the 4+ and 5+ of my usual Imperial Guard armies. Alas, a few years later when I was poor and needed money I ended up selling that army, and thought no more of the Deathwing until the release of 6th Edition 40K and its starter set with Dark Angels, which included a Dark Angel Terminator Squad.

The boxed set starter squad on the right, and the multipart Deathwing squad I got shortly after on the left.

I got hold of it, and then it sat around for a while, and then I slowly painted it. I didn't want to do Dark Angels specifically, so I had a flick through their successor chapters for a colour scheme that I liked the look of. I eventually settled on the Angels of Redemption, with a nice half-and-half green and bone paintjob, and painted them up. Then I added another squad, and that was how it was for a few more years...

...until GW announced they were going to be updating their Terminator models! I knew that the new ones would be larger and wouldn't fit alongside my two existing squads, so at the end of last year I picked up all the squads I needed for the army itself. Then, in the early part of this year, I painted them up - and here is the retrospective of the army so far:

Second Cyclone MLRS squad showing Cyclone Terminator and Sergeant at front

Second Cyclone MLRS squad showing the three standard Terminators at front

Second Assault Cannon squad with heavy weapon Terminator and Sergeant at front, standard Terminators at rear

Command Squad, with Apothecary (rear left), Company Standard (centre rear), Terminator with lightning claws (rear right), Sergeant with thunder hammer and storm shield (front left), and Terminator with heavy flamer (front right)

Company Master with thunder hammer and storm shield, front view

Detail view of the storm shield

Rear view of the company master

Converted Blood Angels Terminator Librarian - I still need to do something with that blank shoulder pad...

Rear of the Librarian

I still have two Dreadnoughts half painted, but functionally I have a 4th Edition Deathwing army - Company Master, Librarian, Terminator Command Squad, and four squads of Terminators. A friend of mine has 3D printed two Dreadnought Drop Pods for me, so when I get my hands on them I'll finish the Dreadnoughts and that'll be the full force. No Land Raiders because the idea is the whole thing just Deep Strikes in all the time.

This, by the way, is a long-winded way of saying "didn't do any painting today"! Who knows, I might get those Crusaders finished tomorrow...

From Tabletop To Reality (Sort Of)

Some years ago now - in the dim and distant past of something like 2017 - I came across, through Facebook, a Warhammer 40K Live Action Roleplay (LARP) game called DEATH UNTO DARKNESS (DuD). I'd been aware of LARP for a while, and dabbled in a nearby university system a couple of times, but I was a serious novice. This, however, had a lot of hooks that grabbed me and didn't let go - the setting, the idea, and the fact I sort of knew a couple of people involved thanks to a Facebook group or two.

Hold on a minute though - what is LARP? Well, at its heart, it's children's games of make believe, but with a much better budget, more organisation, some rules, and (sometimes) foam swords. In essence, a bunch of people get together in costume at a location and spend a day or a weekend engaged in being someone else. It's like tabletop roleplaying to some degree, but crossed with amateur dramatics, improv theatre, and some running around yelling things like "REND" or "BLAM" at each other.

Anyway, back in 2018, with some thought and some planning, my first proper LARP character was created - Commissar Feliks Flowers! I and my partner P went along to DuD Event 5, I as a player and they as "crew". Crew are the people who provide all the non-player characters, from important plot characters to random mooks and big bad villains. The way DuD works is that typically you play a game and crew the next one, thus enabling the organisers to provide both an opposing force and a player base for everyone. Some people are what is known as perma-crew, and only crew, and some people will only play, and occasionally miss games due to missing out on raffle places (if you crew a game you get a guaranteed player place at the next event, you see).

Feliks Flowers, first iteration (2018)

I had an absolute blast of a time, running around and getting stuck in as best I could. I met some really amazing people and made some good friends and that was it - I was hooked. Flowers existed as a character for a couple of years and I attended a few player-run events as him, but E7, the next mainline event he appeared at, was his last - he was abandoned, near death, on a hostile planet overrun by Chaos forces at the foot of two Black Legion Chaos Space Marines. He survived, but I retired him as a character because by the time this happened it was 2022 and I had started to transition.

Senior Commissar Flowers, final iteration (2022), DuD Event 7

So Flowers passed into the annals of heroism and the surprisingly long list of my roleplaying characters who've died or been retired following various, um, mishaps. But I didn't leave DuD. Oh no. Instead, I got together with a few friends and we created a bunch of Sisters of Battle!

Sister Superior Humility, first iteration (2023), DuD Event 9

And thus was born Sister Superior Humility of the Order of His Sanguine Tears, directly seconded to the Inquisition. She was absolutely not there to do anything subtle, and neither were the others. We burned things we probably shouldn't've, executed people we definitely shouldn't've, and did it all with the total conviction of the faithful zealot. It was GREAT. I should note here that the armour was built for me by Sunrise Propworks and the amazing red robe was made by my friend and fellow Sister of Battle, H, who is an incredible tailor.

Humility is still alive (for now) and I'm looking forwards to taking her to a player event this November where we sit around in a room and take part in, essentially, a series of in-character lectures and briefings as though it was a work meeting. Which it is, except the employer is the Imperial Inquisition and your colleagues are a bunch of killers, murderers, witches, sadists, and computers. They're probably all heretics too, but they have permission from God, so it's ok. 

Just today I put together the base kit for another character in another game that I have been introduced to, GUARDSMEN: Siege of Tarris (no website yet, just a Facebook page). It's having its first run at the end of November, and I'm going to be playing Preacher Katyna Nurhayne, attached to the 404th Cadian Infantry Regiment:

Preacher Nurhayne, base layers (2024)

The base layer is a set of telo mimetico pattern Panzer crew overalls I got almost 20 years ago when I was doing re-enactment, the jackboots are the Finnish ones I picked up for Flowers (and the chainsword has been an intrinsic part of Flowers, Humility, and now Nurhayne), and the preacher's robe is Humility's. I'll be chucking on a load of other bits and pieces as well, of course, and borrowing a set of body armour from the system, so the final look will be much more detailed.

And I've played a variety of other characters and roles over the years since 2018, too, from rebels to spaceship crew and pirate leaders, and even an occultist who made a pact with a demon (this at a now-finished system called A Faint Hope Blossoms, based on the very good horror game Darkest Dungeon).

LARP is a fun and very silly hobby, and it runs the gamut from hideously expensive to under £100 an event (or free or extremely cheap, if you crew) and you will meet all sorts of people - like university lecturers, editors for major publishers, soldiers, artists, zoologists, environmental scientists, crofters, quiz setters, historians, engineers... who all have in common the desire to dress up and make their alter egos extremely unhappy indeed for a weekend.

It's well worth looking into and checking it out, particularly if you like roleplaying games already. I'll leave you with some more photos of me in silly clothes doing silly things throughout the years:

 

Lt Gabriel Rutger-Monforte, Chief of Security, HIMVS Saint Sanguinius - crewing, DuD E6 (2019)

"WARP SUNDERRRRR" - crewing as a warp ghost, DuD Event 6 (2019)

 

Joanna Quen, occultist, A Faint Hope Blossoms (Chislehurst Caves, 2022)

Lady Mildred Stanford, crewing, DuD Event 8 (2023)

A sad ghost servant, doomed to wander around spookily, DuD Event 8 (2023)

Crewing as a Skitarii (front right), DuD Event 10 (2024)

Action shot! Crewing as a Generic Sister Of Battle, DuD Event 10 (2024)

Oh, and finally, a piece of commissioned art of Feliks Flowers and his batman, the abhuman Dust-After-The-Firestorm:

One day I'll get that printed and hung on the wall.

Stop! House Escher Time

I finally got my act together and got in touch with the local wargames group, Warwickshire Gamers. And one thing led to another, and now I'm signed up for a Necromunda campaign that starts on checks notes this coming Monday, the 16th. Hurray!

So, please welcome - the WYLD KATS:

Rear, L-R: Sinnamon Kane, Vikki Vicious, Tia Venom
Front, L-R: L'il Septem, Losse de Grey, Fancy Fliss, Penny Diamond, Roxy Danger

 

 This little gang is quite small - only eight figures - but packs quite a close-in punch. It's a very different setup to my original Escher gang, the HellBitches, which rocked up with two plasma guns and lots of ranged capability to begin with, but I have reasonably high hopes for them so long as they don't run into anything super hard or extra nasty.

And I have a fair amount of stuff I can expand the gang with, too...

So that's a few more Gangers, a couple more Wyld Runners, another Juve, some Phyrr Cats and Phelynxs, a Khimerix, an apprentice Clan Chymist, a Shivver, not one but two Rogue Docs, a Gang Lookout, Dome Runner (not pictured), an Ambot, a House Agent, a Smuggler Shore Party, and a House Ulanti Court Advisor (and her Mirror Mask). Admittedly a lot of that needs painting, but hey! the campaign will provide all the incentive I need to get my Cybergoth girls and their allies sorted.

No painting today, for a variety of reasons, and the stuff about 40K LARP will have to wait for another day. Apologies about that (and the quality of my photos)!

Slowly Shrinks The Pile

Today I purposely managed to do more painting than I have done for the last couple of days, and used that time to finish the Arco-Flagellants. I now have a small, but full-strength, unit of these cybernetic drug-enhanced death machine-people to sprint down a flank and die horribly murderise something squishy, like some Space Marines or something.

Excuse the flash, I was trying to get a reasonable photo of them face on, but it was much harder than I thought. The one on the left is very reminiscent of the Inquisitor 54mm figure Damien-4521.

A less bright photo from the rear showing a bit more of the detail work on the drug auto-injectors and the skin tones.

They fit in nicely with the three I did back in 2020:

A whole squad of frothing bezerkers.

And in between all that I managed to get a little bit of the base work done for some of the details on the Death Cultists and Crusaders, too.

As you can see I redid the legs on the Crusaders to reflect the banded metal armour they seem to be wearing.

Lots of red and black, with some gold and the beginning of some bone too. I have a cunning plan for the Crusader's hooded coats - I'm thinking of doing some black and white checkerwork detail, but that might go out the window depending on how I feel - might instead do something less mind-bending.

I also hope to talk a bit about 40K Live Action Roleplay (LARP) tomorrow, so stick around for that.

Painting Points:
Today: 3
This Week: 13
2024: 56

Assassins, Bodyguards, and Cybernetic Death Machines, Oh My

I managed to get a little bit of paint on some minis today - I really need to carve out more time to do this but there we are. Anyway currently I'm working on two Death Cultists, two Crusaders, and three Arco-Flagellants, all of which will fill in slots for the Witch Hunter army list from 2003 that I use in games of 3rd and 4th Edition 40K - when I can find opponents, that is.

Essentially I've done the metals on all of them, and blocked out the areas that will be red, and the skin on the Arco-Flagellants (which is most of the models there really). The trousers on the Crusaders are brown to fit in with the Ecclesiarchy minis I have, which are mostly a sort of monastic brown. While painting them I noticed that they actually seem to be wearing some kind of banded armour plate on their legs, so I might have to redo that. But a pretty solid base to move forwards with and get the detail work sorted, so maybe they'll be done by the end of the week perhaps.

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed the unpainted black mini between the Arco-Flagellants and the Death Cultists. Remember yesterday when I said I had a plan for the third Death Cultist I can take in a unit of them?

This is her! She's technically some kind of information warfare assassin expert from the Horus Heresy range, but I liked the mini so picked it up a while ago for use as... something. So now she gets to be a Death Cultist! I'm thinking of painting her similarly to the Hasslefree minis ones I have, and she can be some form of super-specialist. Or maybe she could be a Mechanicus-aligned techno-barbarian cultist? That might be fun. Anyway, she's pretty funky, so she'll get some paint on her tomorrow to bring her up to speed with the others.

Until then, may your dice roll high and your paintjobs never chip!

Slowly Ticking Boxes

As I mentioned yesterday I don't have all that many things to paint to "complete" the Witch Hunters Codex entries. Actually, after I made that post I went and got my copy off the bookshelf and flicked through it, and I have a unit for every entry there already - only a tiny handful of minis need painting to "finish" them.

The reason I have the words in scare quotes is because I don't - and never will - have all the possible unit upgrades and the like. I don't, for example, have a jump pack canoness, or a thunder hammer wielding Stormtrooper sergeant, both of which I recall being popular picks in the days of the early to mid 2000s. 

On the other hand, I am inching closer to having six painted arco-flagellants and three painted Death Cult Assassins...

Well, almost. I already have two models I used for Death Cult Assassins, from Hasslefree: 

But I could never find a third one from them that matched those two, and the GW set (which I have started painting up) only has two minis in it which are both essentially the same model with a few tweaks. So I have An Idea floating about. More on that tomorrow!

Redemption Through Suffering!

At last I managed to break free of distractions like job interviews, YouTube, and Hearts of Iron IV and get some painting time. I finished the Penitent Engines which means I now have a full squad of three for my 4th Edition Witch Hunters army - and here they are!

I went for a very simple overall scheme of quite new looking metal because these things aren't meant to last very long - they get built, stuck in storage, then shoved into combat in the expectation that they get destroyed! So very little embellishment and not even any hydraulic leaks or anything - they haven't been around long enough to need lubrication or become particularly stained. There are a few details I probably could have spent some time on but these are more than good enough for gaming work and look fine next to the earlier one I did:

So that's the whole squad. They're a Heavy Support choice for 3rd/4th Edition Witch Hunter armies and can only be taken if you have a Priest in your army. Next up will probably be some arco-flagellants to finish that squad, although I do technically have to undercoat them so I might put those on hold until I have a new can of black spray. For some reason my old cheap go-to of Halfords Matt Black Primer is now drying with a textured finish which is... suboptimal, so I'll have to fork out silly money for a GW spray can probably.

Off the top of my head in order to have models for all the options in the Witch Hunter codex I think I need some more Death Cult Assassins and Crusaders, but I'll have a rummage in my pile of opportunity and see if I have them waiting to paint. I think I do, but we'll see.

And I've still got those Royalist Quar to do, and all...

Painting Points:
Today: 10
This Week: 10
2024: 53

Oops - Distractions

Today I wanted to finish my Penitent Engines. Instead while browsing YouTube for stuff to watch/listen to while I paint I stumbled across this video essay-review of the No One Lives Forever series of PC games that came out in the early 2000s, and which I played and played and played as a teenager. I got NOLF for my birthday in 2000 and was so excited about it I snuck downstairs and played it the night before my birthday. Some years after that, I forget when, probably around 2003ish, I got a 42mm figure at Salute (I think) that was meant to be Diana Rigg as Emma Peel from The Avengers. I, however, had different ideas.

That's Cate Archer, from No One Lives Forever, in the iconic catsuit that she doesn't actually wear all that much...

And that's the 42mm version I painted up in about 2003, when I was around about 15? I remember being really proud of the eyes... I think I can do a bit better now but I'm loathe to repaint them!

So yeah, anyway, I got distracted first with reinstalling and then playing NOLF (which you can get here) and haven't yet finished the Penitent Engines. Still, there's always tomorrow.