Plans Plans Plans

I’m back again after a busy hiatus from hobby stuff.

Plus, it was just too cold to be able to sit still painting for a few hours. Probably still is but my hands are getting ITCHY to paint something.

Gaming wise there is not much news there except I did finally get to run a one-shot RPG session of Fear Itself (Pelgrane Press’ GUMSHOE game of ordinary people finding themselves in horrific scenarios) in which the players were a group of ‘content creators’ for not-Buzzfeed sent to cover a cheese toss festival in a Midlands town in which everything was not as it seeeeems.  All in all, it was very successful and managed to get everyone genuinely edgy, unsettled, and a bit scared. GUMSHOE is a bit of a weird fit in that Fear Itself characters are specifically not supposed to be good at what the system is designed to handle. As such it was a little bit of work to get everything to run but it ran smooth enough at the table after that work was put in. I am nothing like an expert in the system though so perhaps other more experienced GMs would not have as tough a time setting things up. All the players where brand new to roleplaying and massively enjoyed it though, so hopefully we can get another session of that or another horror focussed game (I have been informed they all want more scares).

Wargaming wise I now have two sizeable space fleets to paint, one from Brigade’s Neo-Soviet line and one from GZGs Kravak line. I have a scheme worked out for the Soviets but I’m still considering how to paint the Kravak (also how to base both fleet’s strike craft, probably armature wire and magnets, 4 to a base).

 Fleets minus strike craft (and turrets and bases in the case of the kravak below).

I also want to paint up some civilian stuff for 15mm, colonists, techs, scientists, construction workers, that sort of thing. I have some GZG construction vehicles already and a discount voucher I think I will use to round out what I have. I’m going to do them a bit ad-hoc rather than a more uniform construction crew from a big corporation or something. It will be nice to paint stuff without guns for a change. Partnered with this I think I will also get back to my 15mm Mars scenery.

 Some of the civilian gear.

 I have just realised I may have glued that front shovel's arms on backwards. oh well easy fix.

So projects I’ll be focussing on are: Mars scenery, civilians to populate it, and space fleets. Plus 28mm things when I feel like a break. I’ll aim to have some progress to show pictures off soon and to continue the quest to actually get games with the things I make and paint. To finish off here are some of the 28mm things I will do in between the main projects:

 Spectre Miniatures

 Lucid Eye

 Ramshackle Games

Games Workshop (booo hissss)

Glasgow Games Gathering

Very late article to give a bit of a write-up on Glasgow Games Gathering (took place on 29th of June), Glasgow’s first gaming show for a little while ran by and organised primarily by G3 Glasgow Gaming Group, a weekly gaming club. The show filled up one large hall and had a nice turnout of traders and clubs and overall, I think it had a nice balance between shopping and actual gaming. I got to the show about lunchtime and managed to get two demo games in, a lot of good conversation, and even won something in the raffle! Another nice touch from the event was the ‘passport’ which was a little card with five spots for a sticker that once filled meant you were entered into a draw for 3 vouchers. 2 pots where for playing a game, 2 for spending £10 with one trader, and one left that could be filled with either.

 Obligatory loot shot

Standouts for me were Gydran Miniatures and CS1. Gydran for their very promising looking Breaching the Rift setting (http://www.gydran.com/). While I picked up a couple of their miniatures with the intention of using them for 15mm SF I am keeping an eye on the game’s development and I’m quite interested in seeing how it develops in its own right. It is a very unique and characterful line of miniatures that is worth a look. I’ll definitely be picking more up down the line.

Second stand out was S.L.A. Industries: Cannibal Sector One (https://nightfall.games/cs1). I enjoyed the demo game enough to dive in and get the rules and some models. Unfortunately the models are a bit challenging. They are caste in very soft resin and while its quite easy to work with (so long as you are careful not to carve off too much while cleaning them, and you will have to clean them a lot, loooads of flash and some slipping too. I’ve seen pictures of models with quite bad bubbles too. Mine are ok so I don’t know what customer service is like but they seemed very friendly) its maybe not up to the standard a lot of modern wargamers may be expecting. Hopefully as time goes by they will improve their casting skills/equipment (whatever it is that makes a good model cast) but right now I would recommend them with the caveat that you will need to put your modelling skills to work to get the best out of them. As far as sculpt quality goes I would put them at around the same level of the good early Infinity stuff, though more 90s edge than anime gloss in aesthetic and posing. The setting has really captured my imagination which I would say is probably the main selling point, other than the rules which seem quite robust at creating interesting and exciting tactical situations with a ‘Ratings’ system (ratings as in tv ratings; camera drones film the battles and skirmishes for the consumption of the general public!) that gives you access to special abilities the more popular your actions make you with the audience (kills and melee mostly!). A few people at the club play this too so I’m hoping to get a game of it soon. I went for the Scav and 9^th factions. Scav’s are big tough smart elite mutants with abilities that focus around their ability to fix and modify their equipment on the fly, and the 9^th is the renegade (The first troops into the zone who got mismanaged and left for dead) version of the ‘vanilla’ faction, the Shivers, who sacrifice a bit of tactical mobility and a medic trooper for tactical knowledge of the Sector and a serious vicious streak (one of the characters can scalp dead enemies for ratings). 

 

So a good day and a really well executed event. I’m really looking forward to next year’s, and, if everything goes to plan, I might run a demo table there next year.

Forge World, Ultramarines Legion Herald

I have had my eye on one of...

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^these for ages for something to paint as a one off project. I always thought the Ultramarines were a frustratingly underdeveloped part of the 40K fiction. For all their 'vanillamarine' presentation and glory hogging (the Ward 'spiritual leige' era being the most obviously egregious) fluff there was some really intriguing stuff just waiting to be developed.

Ultramar being, effectively, the unnoficial capital of the Eastern Imperium. Ultramar being itself something of a sub nation within the Imperium. And their propensity for breaking codex tradition when it suited them, such as forming non codex tyrannic kill squads, refitting a battlebarge with increased firepower at the serious expense of Astartes carrying capacity etc etc. (I theorise this was largely an accidental by-product of unimaginative writers trying to keep the codex chapter interesting) Meant that, between the lines, you actually had an extremely divergent chapter, only instead of strictly doctrinal or genetic/gene seed divergence the Ultramarines were politically divergent. There was hints of Byzantiums succession over Rome in there. Really interesting. Apparently people in the Black Library thought similar things because we got 'Imperium Secundus' in the Horus Heresy, and now the Great Rift meaning Ultramar really is the Byzantium of the setting, 'Imperium Nihilus'. This has meant that the Ultramarines have become significantly more interesting and their more exciting elements haven't been left to implication and head canon amymore. Very nice.

So I'm looking forward to giving this model the best paint job I can manage and maybe a little vignet for it to sit on.

Khorne Bloodbound Test

This is the current state of my test scheme for my Khorne Bloodbound. I wanted to have a go at translating the heresy era World Eaters scheme of ceramic white and powder blue as I've always thought it was really striking but never intended to get into the huge money sink that is 30k. I'm hapoy with the way this has turned out although the test paintjob is pretty messy and unrefined as it stands. I'm going to prime the reavers white from the waist up before starting with the rest and work up a paler, pinker flesh tone that I will contrast with a much darker one for some of the other models.