Teenage Skumbo Baby!

17 Monday Dec 2018

Posted by in OldHammer, Scuplting, Wolf Time

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Greetings Terrans, just a quickie from yours truly today – it’s a busy time of year with lots of visiting and whatnot going on, but I’ve got my first skwad of Skumbos done:

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I decided to group all of the Hoodies into one unit, (hence the title), and they are led by an embarrassingly earnest Yoof wiv a snazzy beret. All of them have been converted quite extensively from old Fantasy Orc Archers (except the leader, and even he got a sculpted machete). I’ve tried out a pale yellowy-green spot colour for them – not sure if I like it or not, and I may tone it down with some brown washes further down the road, but they’ll do for now. Here’s a shot of their backs, showing various sculpted pouches & quivers turned into scabbards:

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Not much else to say on these guys really, so it’ll be more of the same over Christmas. I only have another 20 to go, and not the 25 I thought I had left, (I misread/misremembered the force requirements :-/ ), so I should be able to put a good dent in them during the Crimbo break. I’m also going to take some time to revisit my undead & do a piece for Deadcember, plus there is a secret little side-project I’ve been working on here and there – more news on that after the holidays!

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! :-)