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.

The Pile of Opportunity Grows (Thanks, Annie)

A little while ago, Bad Squiddo Games ran a Kickstarter called Definitely Not Damsels 2. I'd not been able to pledge for any minis last time round, but this time round I had some money spare and there were some minis I absolutely had to have. Anyway I got a "posted!" notification yesterday afternoon and this morning they plopped through my letterbox in a lovely pink box with confetti and pink tissue paper and bubblewrap protecting them. Annie's customer service remains top notch!

So here they are:

From left to right, I have a Marauder Berserker for my Old World Sea Wolf army, a Psyker for a 40K Inquisition warband, a funky mini for ... something, a cat (aww) and two snake priestess which will end up with my snake worshippers from my homebrew fantasy setting. I think there's photos of them in this blog way back near the start, sort of around the 2009/10 mark I think.

And I actually managed to put some paint to models today!

The Penitent Engines are reasonably close to finished actually. The majority of what's left is highlighting and detailing on the, er, "drivers", with a bit of detail work on the machines themselves. For such large models, they're remarkably quick to paint if you don't mind a big block of metal!

All Quiet On The Painting Front

I've yet to pick up a paintbrush today, but I am about to. I'm going to work on the penitent engines which will go alongside my old 3rd-4th Edition Witch Hunters army. 

Anyway, I've been footling about on Bolter & Chainsword and I found a really fantastic painting log about some traitor Guard and cultists and it's made me want to drop everything and go back to my old Karaboudjani XV Kataphraktoi. They were a full fledged heavy infantry army in the days of 4th and have now been rebuilt as a Lost and the Damned army from the old Codex: Eye of Terror to reflect their status after a long time fighting and the collapse of their structure following the events of the 13th Black Crusade. 

But I think that should be a project for another day. And because a post shouldn't be a post without images, here's a photo of some Heresy Miniatures minis that I'm going to turn into a Corporate Security squad for... something. I just like the figures, ok? 

(Bonus points if you can spot the not-K9)

What's On My Workbench

Last weekend Games Workshop released the first lot of miniatures and the Arcane Journal for Chaos Warriors and forces in The Old World. Inspired by a post I saw on Facebook, I rummaged around in my pile of opportunity and found the Darkoath models I had kicking about that were, in theory, for Warcry (which I never play) and with a bit of judicious knife and clipper work rebased them onto 25mm squares to form the basis for what will, eventually, be a Wolves of the Sea army. Why?

Well... 

That's a new character, Frydaal the Chainmaker. She's a raider queen who brings various marauders from the Chaos Wastes south down the Sea of Claws to raid along the north-western coasts of the Empire, fighting down into Marienburg and even north-eastern Bretonnia.

Well, that's me sold!

So this is the putative beginning of an army led by her (which is very unusual for me, I really tend to avoid named Special Characters):

From left to right, we have five Marauders with great weapons, a Level 4 Wizard, four Marauders with hand weapons and shields, a Level 2 Wizard, and four Marauder Berserkers with two hand weapons. These minis are a combination of Warcry, Age of Sigmar, and Underworlds miniatures. I'm going to bulk them out with the (relatively) new Darkoath figures from the Age of Sigmar range, and Frydaal's bodyguard of Chosen Chaos Warriors will probably also be from the newer Age of Sigmar Chaos range.

And because I only had a little bit of time today to do some painting, I did something reasonably simple and quick that was set off by my retrospective post the other day:

Yep, it's painting some Penitent Engines in  Boltgun Metal  - er, sorry, Leadbelcher! The Night Goblin characters are looming at me menacingly but honestly I'm not hugely enthused about painting them right now.

Right, Tomb Kings stuff as promised:

Tomb Swarms! These are massive floods of scarabs, scorpions, and various semi-coherent skeletons from within the tombs of the Red City's necropolis

Rear view. I quite enjoyed picking out the scorpions!

Ushabti with Ritual Blades

Rear view showing off the skulls and tattered cloth robes

Ushabti with great bows, for when you really absolutely want something dead

Showing off the front...

...and the rear!

Still in the queue are three Carrion and a Casket of Souls. I probably need a couple of Screaming Skull Catapults and a Bone Giant, and then there's the Tomb Scorpions and... well. You get the problem. You know. You understand.

And that's that for today! Oh, you can find me on Bolter & Chainsword now as The_Worker.