Mag Bellum

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by in Terrain

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Greetings Terrans, how goes it? I wanted to get a quick post out today to show you some of the exciting work that my friend Mark at www.heresyofus.com has been working on in his Manufactorium. He has developed an ingenious terrain system called ‘Mag Bellum’ that uses magnetised 6×6” hard tiles, so it’s great for adding texture and easy to scale up & store. Some of the tile options also contain removable plates that allow you to model terrain features ‘into’ the board, (rather than plonking stuff onto the board), while still letting you swap the plates out for ones with other terrain pieces modelled in. He kindly invited me and my Brother-in-Lead Ross over to a gaming get-together last Sunday, and we got to see his latest set-up in person:

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All the buildings, objectives, trees etc. are completely swappable, giving an incredibly versatile system that really is very smart and perfectly scaled for modern skirmish games. I urge you to go and check it out if you’re considering a new terrain project, could do with a new underhive to battle over, need some scenery for your blog pics, or whatever. I picked a couple of sets up while I was over there, so I’ll be working on them in and around my Wolf Time project – watch this space!

In other news, during our game on Sunday, (using cut-down Rogue Trader rules), Ross and I were getting pissed off with the melee aspect of the system, and generally moaning about how GW systems don’t quite seem to hit the sweet spot for either of us when it comes to hand-to-hand combat… it’s always either too slow, too complex, or too simplistic depending on the system. Ross and I play a lot of Frostgrave, and we find this to be a much better rule set for skirmish than anything GW have ever produced. I know that is heresy of the highest order, but there it is. Anyway, long story short, we wondered how easy it would be to port Rogue Trader/40K gear & troop types into the Frostgrave rule set. As a result, project ‘Frost Trader’ is go, and I’ll be working on a 40K hack for the game over the next few months, doing some play testing etc. I’ll keep you all posted, but hope to have something worthwhile to show for it :-)

Skumbo Number 5!

01 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans! Ok, so dodgy post title, but I wanted to share some progress on my Scumbos for the Wolf Time campaign and it just kinda popped into my head… the ‘5’ in the title is misleading – there are way more than 5 of the buggers! As a reminder from last time, Skumbos are the generic name for the 30 cannon-fodder Orks that inhabit the top floor of Gov’ner Kulo’s fortress in the final scenario of the campaign. They are armed with bolt pistols & swords, and are described as being ‘low-caste’. I decided to use fantasy Orcs for the majority of my Skumbos – partly to get across the whole low-caste thing, but also because there are only a handful of actual bolt pistol & sword Space Ork minis of that era. So far, so simple, right?

Weeellll… turns out that chopping up 23ish Orcs and sculpting in all the pistols, swords and/or scabbards, plus the pouches and various other doo-dahs needed to hide cuts & make good is quite a lengthy process… My respect for professional sculptors has risen steadily throughout this project, but it bloody sky-rocketed during this phase! I’m just glad I had a few actual Space Orks to hand and didn’t have to convert the full 30… 23 was quite enough! But hey, I’m done with all the conversion work now, and we’re all based & ready for undercoating. I just thought I’d share a few pics of the work so far – before the paint goes on:

 

So there we have it – all those brown bits are done by yours truly! I don’t think any pro sculptors out there need to worry just yet, but I reckon these guys will do me just fine. I definitely feel that my technique improved as I went along – some of the early efforts are noticeably rougher than later attempts for example, and I found my speed improved significantly as well. The guns were the trickiest part, but I think they read as bolt pistols well enough… They may be a bit rough around the edges, but these Orks feel more ‘mine’ than any mini I have yet converted, and I’m super excited to get painting! At the end of the day, I reckon that’s about as good as it gets.

Until next time dudes! :-)

Teknishun Skwad 2

18 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in OldHammer, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, how are we all? Following on from the 1st Teknishun Swad last week, we logically follow on with Skwad 2 :-)  As I mentioned last time, the 2nd Tech squad show up in scenario 2, and these guys are packing some serious heat… Plasma guns, Conversion Fields, Bolt Pistols and Swords to be exact! Dat’s some seriously snazzy guns, so I went with a suitably snazzy colour for these wannabe flash gitz:

 *edit – spotted that I had missed the teeth as soon as I had posted! I’ll get that sorted out :-)

 

Ok, so I know some of these minis are actually packing flamers, and I know that I’m supposed to be doing this project with as much accuracy as possible, but the foot is going down and I’m reinterpreting the minis & calling them plasma… Because Orks… So there.

Speaking of minis, how funny is it that the actual plasma boys appear to be resting their chins on the plasma coils? Clearly they were sculpted in the days before plasma ‘got hot’ and tried to fuck you over far more frequently than the one-in-six frequency that the laws of statistics demand… In fact, keeping in mind that Space Orks have the same ballistic skill as Space Marines in Rogue Trader, this squad is going to be a real handful…

Here’s another angle showing off their swords & pistols:

 

While I was painting these guys, I realised that I got the base rims wrong for my first Teknishun skwad, so I quickly fished them out of the display case and corrected that oversight… Seemed a shame not to take advantage of the situation and do a quick group shot of the whole Techy crew together:

 

This little lot represents a bit of a milestone in the whole project so far, in that I’m around half way through the Orks. I’m also done with all the boys that I had built and undercoated, so it’s going to be a bit of a building phase for the next few weeks I’m afraid… I have the power armoured Guards to work through, and I also have a whole bunch of ‘Skumbos’ to get sorted out… Now, I like converting minis, so this bit is going to be great fun for me, but it might be pretty boring for you guys! I hope you can all bear with me though, because I think this is going to be the really interesting bit of the project.

The Skumbos should be particularly good fun. In the fluff, the poor old Skumbos are described as being ‘lower caste’ Orcs, and they are lightly armed with Bolt Pistols & Swords… Unsurprisingly, there aren’t too many pistol/sword minis of that era, so I knew I needed to think outside of the box for this little lot! I decided to play on the whole ‘lower caste’ thing, and picked up a few fantasy Orc Archers of the correct vintage. After a bit of chopping & some putty work, I ended up with these:

 

Whaddaya think? They aren’t finished yet, but hopefully you get the idea… I’m planning four of these per unit, plus a legit pistol/sword Space Ork to represent the unit leader, (who, bizarrely, gets Mesh armour). I need six such units, so maths tells me that I now need to finish these four, add another twenty, and round up six proper Space Orks to lead them… should keep me busy for a while! :-)

Until next time dudes, be awesome out there!