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Tag Archives: New stuff

Mag Bellum

11 Monday Mar 2019

Posted by Alex in Mag Bellum, Terrain

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

Mag Bellum, New stuff, scenery

Greetings Terrans, I hope all is well with you guys & gals. I have something a little different to show you today – I’ve spent the last week on a bit of a terrain kick & have a funky new skirmish board to show for my efforts! Now, as some of you know, I occasionally get to hang with Mark over at Heresy of Us. Mark is working really hard to get his business of the ground, making all kinds of weird and wonderful grim-dark pieces for 40K, and the terrain to game over. Mag Bellum is his flagship system – a series of 6×6 tiles that magnetically lock together, and that have these inserts that allow you to model terrain into the board, but then allow you to swap the bits out by modelling extra inserts. To illustrate this, here’s my new board:

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And here’s the exploded view, showing all the component parts:

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So just by buying more inserts, (available separately, very sensible money), I can use the same board but set it up for AoS, Frostgrave, Necromunda or whatever… The tiles themselves are the main (modest) expense, but they get reused, so it’s a great way to build a really good looking & flexible board in stages and without breaking the bank… and yes, the circles do work for Citadel trees :-)  As an added bonus, I can fit this lot (minus the big buildings) into a shoebox!

Mark is also expanding this range to include indoor spaces – think Zone Mortalis, but with the ability to build up as well as out… IMO, this is a very cool system, and Mark is only starting to scratch the surface of what’s possible. Of course, like any small business, Mark needs exposure & sales!! To help with this, he will be bringing Mag Bellum to Salute this year, and I’ll be there helping him! If you’re there then make sure you swing by & say hi, check out the system, buy some goodies, etc. If you’re going or not, make sure you order up a t-shirt & help support Mark in making his vision a reality, and of course, there is always the webstore too!

And here’s some eye candy to tempt you even more:

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Good old Imperial Sector ruins

 

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Plenty of hiding places

 

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Perfect spot for an ambush

 

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Loads of raised spaces to explore

 

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A nice view of the outskirts of town

 

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Obligatory drop pod

 

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Weird Jinmenju head-tree… picked this up in a kick-starter ages ago, plus a grim-dark ATM

 

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A failed print from Mark’s rubbish pile – a great source of bits!

 

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A colleague got a load of these coasters from Mexico as office gifts… One tap with a rock, and bam – perfect terrain :-)

 

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A ‘Writhing Flesh Statue’, also by Mark, and available on Heresy Of Us

 

Not bad for a week’s effort, eh? I hope you agree that this looks the business, and I really hope that you might be inspired to pick up a few bits & do a board yourself – any questions, just drop them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer :-)

Anyway, that’s it for this post – I’ll be focusing almost exclusively on my Wolf Time project from here on in… I haven’t been idle in that regard – all the Power Armoured dudes are sculpted & undercoated, so it’s all gravy from here on in!

Mag Bellum

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by Alex in Terrain

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Mag Bellum, New stuff

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 :-)

The Tower of the Dead

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by Alex in Terrain

≈ 42 Comments

Tags

New stuff, scenery

Greetings all, I have a cheeky little terrain post to share with you today – I recently took delivery of a rather sexy little pre-painted tower thingy from a Kickstarter that I backed ages ago. When I first got it, it looked like this:

 

Not bad for a pre-painted piece, but I wanted to embellish it a bit & paint it up to match my Garden of Morr. A quick lick of paint, and I ended up with this:

 

Pretty cool, but ‘so far, so what’ right? I mean, it’s a nice enough tower and all that, but not really deserving of a post all to itself, is it? Well dear reader, this tower does tricks… check this out:

 

How mad is that! The tower is actually the ‘Dark Crypt fog machine’ from Real Game FX, and it houses a pump & ultrasonic transducer (a what now?!?)… The bottom of the tower is basically a reservoir, you turn on the gubbins and voila – instant cold fog comes pouring out of the door & windows. Here are a few examples of me playing around with the photographic possibilities:

 

How good is that eh?! As an added bonus, the guts of the machine come out, so with some clever modelling, I should be able to make other ‘cases’ for the worky-bitz to go in – a venting sci-fi tower, mysterious jungle ruins, whatever I fancy really! Now, I should point out that the fog is (duh) wet… Sounds obvious, but it really is very very wet, and this quickly makes everything around it wet as well. Also, the wires are a bit unsightly from anywhere other than a front-on view, so the tower will only look good around the edge of your board. Also it can be a bit splashy… The pump draws the water from the reservoir at the bottom of the tower, up an internal tube, and on to the sonic doo-dah – it is quite vigorous, and I did find that a bit of water came out of the windows & door. It’s also a pain in the arse to set up, difficult to fill once it is set up, it makes watery noises while running & makes me want to pee, and all the drying & faffing really adds to the packing away time, (I had to leave the models used in these photos out to dry after taking these pics for example). To be honest, it isn’t hugely practical for gaming… But I don’t care – it’s just so cool! I certainly won’t use it in every game, but I love this idea for marking cinematic moments in specific scenarios or for special occasions. It’s also great for the occasional photo shoot, where the impracticalities of the system are less of an issue. All in all, I’m really glad I backed the Kickstarter :-)

Anyway, that’s me for the next couple of weeks – I’m taking the kids hiking next week and I don’t plan to be on line at all while I’m away, so I’ll catch you all on the flip side. After that, I aim to add more Eru-Kin to my BOYL 2018 army, and I have a load of undead to get based & painted as well… Should be fun!

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