Collegia Titanica

All PCs are Created Equal...

2012-01-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

...but what if some are more equal than others?

Now, this isn't a dicussion of stat-based balance, but 'in character' power balance. In continuing with my discussion of my upcoming Rogue Trader game I'm going to talk about the obvious potential imbalance in the setting, and how it can mess with inter-party and inter-player relationships.

Pictured here we have a typical Rogue Trader crew, and there is one very important thing here - only one of them is the Rogue Trader. It's patently obvious and you're all probably wondering what the big deal is, but grok this: the Rogue Trader PC is in charge all the time and basically owns the other PCs.
It's perfectly in line with the background and dynamics of how a Rogue Trader would work, so where's the problem?

Well, simply put, are the other PCs going to be happy being ordered around all the time?

Consider your 'typical' adventuring party:

Art by Andrew Bosley

None of them is particularly in charge. Sure, one person might be 'the face' and do the talking for the group, while another might be the one who comes up with the plans - but none of them have the ability to simply go "to bad, I'm in charge so we're doing my thing regardless of everyone else complaining".

Having one PC as the group's boss can work, but it can also sideline the rest of the party very easily and even accidentily. It needn't even be a conventional command structure, but having one PC be the chosen one, bearing a sacred artifact or whatnot can guide the rest of the group at that player's whims.

A personal example would be a game I played in where one PC was the last of his temple, and was on a quest to find out why the rest of his order was exterminated. This obviously meant that the rest of the PCs were following his story, and had little input if the 'main' PC was going against their wishes.
This wasn't done with malice or greed by the destined PC, but it was quite difficult when character's goals and outlooks started clashing - if you didn't want to follow the chosen PC you were effectively out of the game.

The simpler, and hopefully less common, version is that the leader PC simply becomes a colossal jackass and pushes the other PCs (and by extention players) around. This is sure to unleash the drama llama upon the group, and it is a strange and terrible beast.

"So, how do I avoid this?" I hear you ask.

Easy - make them all ~~suffer together~~ be part of the big thing.

To continue with the Rogue Trader theme I simply made them all Rogue Traders. No, I don't mean everyone's class is Rogue Trader, but that they're all the children of a Rogue Trader, who has just died and passed Warrant of Claim on to them equally. They mostly grew up with their other parent, an Imperial functionary, who passed away some time ago, so they were scattered into various parts of the Imperium.
One character was sent to train as an officer in the Navy - he'll be 'the Rogue Trader', commanding the ship.
Another was discovered to be psychic and trained as a sanctioned psyker for the guard.
The third was sent to the Schola Progenum and became a Sister Hospitaller.
Lastly, one was inducted into the mysteries of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

One character will be in charge of the ship, but they all have equal say over their dynasty and how it is to be commanded. The captain may well want to set sail for Burnscour, but if the other three want to solve the mystery of forbidden Orn - to Orn they will go!

PC lead groups can work, but the leader PC and GM both need to have a very concrete idea of what's going to be happening, as do the other players. It can be quite disheartening as a player to have your GM never plan anything for your character to do as it doesn't serve to advance the chosen PC's plot.
As GM for this game I've been rather pushy in regards to making sure the PCs are all of different classes, so each would have a very different area in which to shine and be relied upon by the rest of the party.

To me, it is the GM's job to present an equally enjoyable experience for all players. Now, all the players don't have to be having 100% fun 100% of the time, but no one should ever leave a session feeling that they didn't need to have been there at all.

Not all NPCs are Created Equal

2012-01-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Following on from my previous post on populating a world with a group of constant NPCs, I’m going to talk at length about the different ‘levels’ of NPCs.

What I mean are that there are NPCs who are important but not plot critical – recurring bit players and the like, plot critical characters, people who exist solely to advance the story in some manner and those who are there to serve a specific purpose in an adventure or the campaign. There are also a great many permutations and even overlaps of these types, but they serve as a general umbrella to put them under.

To run with the Rogue Trader example, the bridge/lead crew of their ship has 36 named NPCs plus a variety of nameless extras – 30 odd on the bridge at any one time (serving to be slain by exploding control panels, shout out random cries of terror and such). Even though these crewmembers are named they’re not all going to be important or be terribly fleshed out beyond the most superficial. For instance there are three helmsmen (San Martel, Makeda Nuessen and Idriss Iseri) for the three watches.

As it’s possible one of the players will take over as the ‘primary’ helmsman these guys don’t need much beyond the basic background at first. They exist solely to fulfil a necessary role and have names to give the ship a more solid feel for the players. As the game progresses, depending on how involved the players get in ship-board life, I could start making noticeable differences between the three shifts – one is getting sloppy, rivalries and the like.

Characters such as the 1st Officer, Enginseer Prime and other high ranking roles will require more personality, despite being just as expendable in game terms. Now I don’t mean I’ll just kill them off for a cheap shock (more on that later) but that if they die it’s not going to screw up any of the plot. To this end I can just make them and let them loose in the gameworld, with no more too it.

Some characters, however, will have plot hooks built in even if it is not readily apparent. Extra care needs to be taken with them depending on the nature of the hook. If it’s simply an optional ‘side quest’ such as an old debt that catches them up or some similar personal event there are two ways to go about it. Firstly, if it’s something that will simply spring up don’t worry about it, but think of another character the hook could be transferred to in case of NPC demise. If it won’t fit with anyone, well, file it away for next campaign.

Secondly, if there will be foreshadowing of this side quest and you aren’t prepared to have the NPC cark it and lose all that work, you’ll need to work out why and how they’re invincible. This will depend on the type of game, both in style and system. If you’re running a game where everybody has stats and damage is always rolled for, it can be a lot trickier to do and keep your players from sussing out that they’re invincible. Hidden rolling can help, but there are some times it just won’t happen.
Similarly if the style of the game allows a more cinematic approach where any named NPC is invincible save for dramatic moments, things can be fudged more easily.

Examples I’ve got are one of the Vox operators, Thuy Pribenno, owes the Kasballica Mission for them getting his family out of a contract with some nasty types, and one day he doesn’t come back from shore leave…
This is a very easy backstory to transfer to another NPC should Mr Pribenno meet a sticky end somehow as it’s got a “wouldn’t talk about it” clause practically built into it.

One the more foreshadowing side either the Steward or Carto-Artifex had an affair with the player’s Rogue Trader parental (and possibly be one of the PC’s other parent). This is tied in with the backstory I’ve come up with where all the players, regardless of class, have an equal share in the Warrant of Trade – but that’s a story for another time. The plan to avoid them getting killed in the first place is that they won’t be on the bridge during combat (most of the time), so will be off screen, and thus completely immune to the effects of the ship getting trashed.

Now obviously the PCs are clever folk, so could wind up getting them killed anyway. Hopefully it won’t happen early enough that there’s no foreshadowing whatsoever – but if they know some and have questions it would be easy enough to have another NPC do some Obi-Wan exposition in their place.

The next group are those who may not even have a name but exist only for a brief moment (at least at first). These are the bartenders and shopkeeps who supply tidbits of information that send the player’s bouncing around the game. Now, they do sometimes need to be expanded upon on the fly when the players get fixated on them for some obscure reason (which I covered last time).

Now, sometimes NPCs are created with a specific purpose in mind – they’ll get slain by the bad guy to show how bad and tough he is, they’ll betray the characters when they get to point X, they’ll act as a contemporary whose fortunes will highlight the player’s own successes or failures. Others could serve as antagonists, or allies. This is similar to making an NPC with a plot hook, but as part of the plot rather than kicking it off.

In some ways these are the easiest NPCs to make – they have clear goals that will intersect with the PCs, and the adventure is likely mapped out to some extent. On the other hand they can be the hardest, needing to account for all the crazy things the PCs could do at any given time in the heat of the moment.
Some examples, using the eight rival Rogue Traders from the Fantasy Flight module Lure of the Expanse, which I’ll be running as the third or so adventure. These characters all have a purpose, and specific ways they’ll interact with the players.

Abel Gerrit will prove a potential ally. They won’t know him until the adventure, but he’ll be positively disposed to working with the players and, being the honourable sort, will even help them if they get stuck. As the campaign goes on he’ll be on a steady upwards trajectory, and will occasionally re-appear to work with the players or say hello in port (assuming they get on well and he doesn’t die), serving as a yardstick the players can measure themselves against.

Hadarak Fel will appear as a rival from day 1. He’ll be out to vex the players at every opportunity, but is more a dark grey character than darkest evil. He’s out to do the Imperium’s work, but is also out for himself and his House. He won’t kill the PCs unless absolutely necessary, and could even ally with them under the right circumstances. Fitting in with the tropes of the genre if seen to die he’ll likely come back at some later point with a new scar on his face.
He’ll be a smart, cunning and ruthless nemesis who should be really aggravating to the players.

Mademoiselle Charlabelle will appear early on, having offices near the player and start well-disposed to them thanks to a history of friendship between both Houses. Her purpose is to be unlucky. Her House is on the rocks and whenever the players run into her some seeming disaster will have befallen her. This will prove two opportunities: the PCs to absorb her holdings (especially if a PC romances her) to increase their power base, and for a rather sharp hook when a forbidden Ministorum sect leads a mutiny on her ship…
She’ll be there to test the PC’s morals and honour – do they pounce on their family’s long standing ally it its weakest, or help them out at the potential cost of their own fortune and reputation?

Using a plot device of 'beloved NPC is killed/kidnapped/whatever' can be very cheap. Cheap, but effective. RPGs by their very nature are full of this sort of thing, so as long as it fits with the existing gameworld and isn't done too much or too blatantly. One should also be mindful of how the players will react if it is done too often. Like anything in the GM's bag of tricks, it should be used sparingly and with great consideration.

Jeremiah Blitzis a neutral character. He’ll try and screw the PCs if he can get away with it, but will generally keep his word. Thanks to his roguish personality he can be whoever I need him to be. When they first meet him he’ll be on the rise and at full swagger. Later he’ll have been taken down a notch or two by reality. The next time he’ll either be still down, or have bounced back.

In some ways he’ll be the closest thing to a mirror for the players – brash, risk taking and cocksure. He’ll be serving to highlight the potential risks and rewards of what they’re doing. Anytime the players are being too conservative he’ll do something insane and become unfeasibly wealthy to provide some motivation.

Admiral Bastille and Lady Sun Lee are tied together as a joined plot device. The players will have little opportunity to interact with them and they will serve as a method to show how far the PCs have to go in this early stage to reach the heights of power. While the PCs race against them for the prize, the two will be fighting a bitter war that will end with Bastille’s death (spoilers!) by way of his flagship crashing into a planet as it is swallowed by a warp-storm – while the players are nearby! A suitably apocalyptic climax methinks.

But this leads to a great opportunity as the Bastille dynasty is now no more, and its holdings up for grabs! The first three adventures will be fairly tightly scripted to help give the players a handle on the setting and their own characters, and Bastille’s death will give them the first opportunity to go for it sandbox style – all his ships are looking for new masters, his worlds could be re-claimed and his treasures looted. Hooks, hooks, hooks!

They’ll be vying with some of these Rogue Traders and others if they do, and will hopefully be wise after seeing what a powerful House can bring to bear. These two don’t need to be fleshed out as they will never directly speak to the players – their minions will simply refuse an audience, which really gives all the character one could need right there.

Djenko Scourge has one purpose – to be killed by the PCs. A brutish thug, he’ll appear early on, act like a jerk and refuse to talk to the players. Later he’ll attack the PCs on the ground, and not give up until he is dead. Simple, but it’ll give the players a bit of a morale boost to see him wiped from existence, and set up a rivalry with his house for later…

Krawkin Feckward is the last, and most odious of the NPC Rogue Traders. The PCs will have heard of him beforehand via the Koronus Gazetter – a slaver and borderline pirate. While Fel is a ruthless businessman, Feckward is an outright murderer and criminal. If the PCs are foolish enough to make a deal with him he’ll betray them and try to kill them, and will try to kill or cripple them at any other time.
If they don’t do it they’ll see him drowned under a ravenous swarm of ex-slaves… but he’ll be back and will be plaguing the PCs for some time, perhaps right until the end…

So that’s it, how NPCs, despite having superficially similar qualities, can vary greatly. Of course one must be careful when creating plot essential NPCs that the players aren’t railroaded by what ‘should’ happen. Keeping things loose and having a general idea of what will happen is my preferred method.

It also helps to talk out of the game to your players – find out what NPCs they like, ask them what they think is going on, who’s hiding secrets or is about to betray them… don’t change everything based on their answers obviously, but it can be a good tool to quietly do some behind the scenes restructuring and put more work into favourite NPCs who were just one line wonders.

Review: Imperial Armour 11, the Doom of Mymeara

2011-12-28T12:02:00.000-08:00

Imperial Armour Volume 11: The Doom of Mymeara is the latest addition to the IA series of books. It is the story of the invasion of the frozen Imperial world of Betalis III by a combined force of Craftworld Eldar and their Corsair brethren.

Story and Background

Like all Forge World books it is lavishly illustrated, opening with a six page full colour spread. The internal pictures are all beautifully done, and I’d say it is the best looking IA yet. The story telling is the standard after action report style of the series, and begins with the initial Corsair raids and the cat-and-mouse game between the Eldar and Imperial Guard forces as the raiders prodded and probed the seemingly random outposts before disappearing.
It soon comes to heated battle, and an Inquisitor arrives and sends a distress call to the nearby group of Space Wolves – Bran Redmaw’s great company. They arrive as the Eldar forces are on the verge of overwhelming the Imperials, and turn the tide, driving off the Xenos. But did they stop the aliens achieving their true goal..?

The story is well plotted and has plenty of twists and turns, with the Imperials giving a good showing even as they’re getting overwhelmed by the superior Eldar forces. There has been some mention of the Phantom Titans seeming underpowered against the Imperials, but to my reading is fine. The Phantom and its two Revenants are wailing on a Reaver and two Warhounds. They are driven off after the rest of the War Griffons show up – that would be five more titans of indeterminate classes, but either way I think it’s reasonable for the Phantom to retreat in the face of that.

This links in with the book’s worst aspect – it is edited terribly. I don’t mean Forge World’s usual brain-fart typos and messing up the rules, but it’s like in the rush to get it out for Christmas they didn’t have time to proof-read. For example:

“As the Nightwings, Phoenix and Vampires soared down, they were met with a tremendous firestorm of las shot and artillery shell. What heavy armour his command staff could muster, but he had not sent the young colonel into battle empty handed.”

What?

It’s like they just cut out the beginning of the sentence, or part of the paragraph. There are a couple of other instances of this sort of thing, as well as glaring typos. Some include:

- Units being Jet Pack Infantry as their base type, but you have to pay to buy them jet packs

- Duplicating a piece of wargear in a units listing

- A superfluous mention of 0-1 and 0-2 restictions

- Webway portal wargear rules included… but nobody in the Corsair list can take it…

Etc, etc…

Now, Talima Fox’s prose is fine, but very uneven – the second paragraph of the book contains a 42 word run on sentence, and the focus on the macro and micro changes often. By this I mean that we’ll be essentially hearing a character’s life story, and then the exact details of how a battle was fought, then back to century spanning events in the next line.
The aforementioned editing issues don’t help at all either (I’m pretty sure I saw an ‘utterly decimated’ in there, but I can’t find it again). One particular example that stuck out was hearing how the Eldar were mowing through the IG forces defending a mining facility, “but it was at the entrance to the mines that the worst atrocities were committed by the Eldar.” We then read about how the mining vehicles (and militia behind them) blocking the entrance were destroyed by Fire Dragons… and that’s it. No massacre of cowering civilians, no revelling in the destruction, nothing particularly worse than what had just been described really.

Ms Fox seems to have a thing for Fire Dragons, and I can't blame her.

Compared to other IA stories, Mymeara feels short. The shortness isn’t a bad thing, the story gets to the point and never drags on or re-hashes the same type of battle over and over. Each piece of combat is different to the last, or a continuation that adds to the story rather than repeats it. In tone, aside from a few story callout boxes, it is very much a historical account. There are no real ‘character moments’ in the story. Generals command and soldiers fight, but aside from a few moments with particular notable officers or commanders (such as Bran Redmaw himself) most characters go unnamed. Whether or not this is a bad thing would be up to personal taste.

My gut instinct is that for whatever reason they cut sections out of the prose at the last minute, and didn’t have time to do a final edit before rushing off to print. I mean Forge World is renowned for its lax editing standards, but this is bad. Now you’re probably thinking it’s a terrible book – but the truth is far from it if you’re able to look past the superficial errors and enjoy the story. The ending section, written as the aforementioned Inquisitors account of a battle, is especially well done and I found neither the Eldar nor Imperials to be portrayed as weaker or too out of character.

One thing that is done very well is scale. It is an unfortunate thing that Sci-Fi writers have no sense of scale, but Talima Fox avoids this pitfall. The crapsack mining world of Betallis III still has a population of over six million, and the combats include large volumes of superheavies and huge numbers of regular vehicles. One example is that over a hundred War Walkers and five Cobras were recovered by the Imperials after the fighting – that’s just the salvage, not units engaged.

Coming back to that macro/micro thing, the Eldar section isn’t as fleshed out as I’d like – for the first real information on Corsairs in a 40k book there wasn’t much to go on about how they do things. We probably could have done without 14 pages of pictures of Space Wolf troopers and vehicles and had a couple more pages on Corsair society in my opinion. Fortunately the various Rogue Trader books have good source material on the various Corsair groups found in the Expanse, but it is a lost opportunity.

A dozen pages of this is certainly better than information about the Corsairs!

The same can be said of the Eldar special characters – namely that in a society with no gender divisions (and canon 50/50 chance of a warrior being female) it is a bit of a disappointment that neither the new Phoenix Lord, nor any of their new troopers, are female – especially from a boutique company like Forge World (and it’s not an easy prospect to convert the Shadow Spectres either). Another oddity is that none of the photos showcase the Corsair kits – they appear in the background of one or two photos, but as the new shiny toys they don’t get much play.

Army Lists and Units

First up are the Cadian regiments and a description of their notable actions. They are led by General Myndoras Odon, supreme commander of the Guard defenders. He has his own description and comes with a command squad and rules wise is Creed lite, including a special ability “Careful Planner”.
Next up is a brief discussion of the Cadian forces. It’s a generic description of Cadian forces, which seems superfluous given most people buying an Imperial Armour book would be familiar with the regiments already.
After this comes rules for the Malcador Infernus, Praetor Assault Launcher and Crassus Transport. Rules are the same as in IA: Apocalypse 2.

The Elysians get a brief write up, explaining they were hitching a ride with the Legio Gryphonicus detachment so were diverted by circumstances rather than choice. Legio Gryphonicus have a short bit of blurb, noting that one of the Reaver’s machine spirits was especially skilled at fighting the Eldar, having fought them before.

The Imperials continue with Bran Redmaw’s Great Company coming next. One point of contention I’ve noticed is that the Space Wolves are noted as a 2nd founding Chapter. It reads to me that this is meant to mean that as a Chapter they came from the 2nd founding, the Space Wolves Legion being noted as their predecessor. Regardless, it’s still a weird way of writing it.

He even gets a model before the Farseer.

The Great Company gets a lengthy write up, and the aforementioned 14 pages of pictorials.
Game play wise they aren’t any different from the regular Space Wolves, but their master certainly is. Skarvald the Troll-faced did a great write up on his rules for those interested. Story wise he’s constantly struggling against the Curse of the Wolfen, but no insight into the curse is given – it just is.

The Eldar section begins with Craftworld Mymeara, telling of their struggle to survive and the intercession of Phoenix Lord Irillyth that saved them. One interesting tidbit is that each craftword came from a single Eldar planet, so they already had separate identities from one another before the fall, explaining the different ‘personalities’ of the factions. There’s more to the Mymeara Craftworld, but that would be spoiling the story.

Alaitoc is also present, an ally of Mymeara, and has their own background section. It is odd, as half of it is dedicated to an account of defeating a Hivefleet Behemoth splinter (that macro/micro thing again), which felt too much like copying Iyandens shtick.

The Shadow Spectres and their Phoenix Lord come first unit-wise, and have undergone a few revisions since the beta rules. They’ve got an invulnerable save that varies dependant on enemy range and the Prism Rifle rules have been tweaked a little. That said the Exarch lost his ability to fire separately from the Ghostlight, so taking a Haywire Launcher does… something to the shot (rules for the Prism Blaster are included).

The combined range, rather than being 12”+12” per extra model firing is now 18”+6” per two firing models (rounding odd numbers down) in the squad. That seems overly complicated to me, as you need two to shoot 24” (as in the beta), but four to shoot 30” where four would fire 48” in the beta.
One big improvement is moving them from the clogged Heavy Support section to the Fast Attack slot. Phoenix Lord Irillyth is what you’d expect – standard statline and beefed up version of his aspect’s gear.

The second special character is Farseer Bel-Annath, supreme seer of Mymeara. He’s a combat focussed Farseer, having previously served as an Autarch after a life on the path of the warrior after a stint as an outcast. He confers Stubborn to nearby units and can optionally modify his army’s FOC, dropping two Troops in exchange for a fourth Heavy Support.

Background wise he and Irillyth have a really weird timeline. Bel-Annath was born “long after the fall”, and was a young seer when Irillyth was last seen on Mymeara. He didn’t become a seer until the second half of his life. Yet the Shadow Spectre aspect is said to have fallen into memory for all save Mymeara due to Irillyth’s disappearance. But if Irillyth was last seen by a living Eldar not noted to be especially long lived, how did everyone forget the Aspect?

Alaitoc only contacted Mymeara after Irillyth departed, and the Phoenix Lord came to the Craftworld in what seems not especially long after the fall. So either Irillyth spent nearly 10,000 years chilling on Mymeara (no wonder his shrines were abandoned…), or the timeline is seriously messed up here. Editing, people, editing…

The Corsair background is, as mentioned previously, sadly brief. The entire section for a previously unseen but oft-mentioned faction is shorter than the Space Wolve’s pictorial section (can you tell I think it was too long?). The text is only a little over a page long once you take out the pictures. Nothing about how the bands are organised, where they are supplied from, what they do with their fallen or how they prevent falling to evil. Only a brief mention of Craftworlders occasionally taking on Corsair groups they feel are too close to their dark kin.

Corsair Army List

The army list itself is very good, once you get past all the bone-headed errors plaguing it (see earlier list). You can even take a Gyrinx! The basic Corsair weapon is either the Lasblaster or Shuriken Pistol and CC weapon.

HQ

Corsair Prince (or Princess) - a cross between an Autarch and a Archon, they can be well kitted out for combat (ranged or close) and allow non-deep-striking units to do so anyway. They also get a free orbital bombardment type weapon, with three variants to choose from.
The Prince (or Princess) can take a retinue of Bladesworn Corsairs. They come equipped for close combat, but can be given more ranged/special weapons.

Void Dreamer – the Warlock equivalent. They come with three psychic powers by default, a reasonable shooting attack, a defensive power against psykers or daemons, and a morale re-roll ability. They’re nice and cheap.

Elites

Voidstorm Squad – Elite Corsairs, they come with jet packs as default, and can take more special weapons.

Harlequins – as per Codex: Coneheads, may take a Corsair Venom transport.

Craftworld Outcasts – One Codex Eldar fast attack or Elites choice. I think this is meant to be 0-1 but, despite the preamble on the subject, such a clear note is missing.

Dark Eldar Kabalite Warriors – from Codex Dark Eldar.

Troops

Corsair Squad – BS 4 Guardians, they can take Shuriken Catapults if you don’t like shooting things, or Shuriken Pistols is you like dying in close combat. They can also take Jet Packs, and min-max horribly: Five guys with Jet Packs, an Eldar Missile Launcher and Fusion Gun runs you 100 points. The Jet Packs come at a flat rate, so it is more pricey to do it this way.
They also have grenades and can take a squad leader upgrade, who can be given a fusion pistol and power weapon.
Jet Packless squads can take a Corsair Venom if they number five or less, or a Falcon if they number six or less… despite a Corsiar Falcon carrying ten. Dammit Forge World!

Wasp War Walkers – Changing slightly from their beta rules, they’ve gone up 10 points but can move as Jet Pack infantry normally now. Additionally after using their special Jump Jet move (now 12”, done in lieu of shooting after normal movement) they may no longer assault or make their Jet Pack move. You can’t have more Wasp Squadrons than Corsair Squads.
Overall I think they are great units, and the Jet Pack movement more than makes up for the lack of 24” jump.

Corsair Jetbikes – BS 4 Craftworld Jetbikes, whose unit leader can be given a fusion pistol and power weapon.

Dedicated Transports

Corsair Falcon – BS 4 Falcon, transport capacity ten.

Corsair Venom – Much like the Dark Eldar version, but with Craftworld guns.

Fast Attack

Hornet Squadron – as per IA:A2

Nightwing – a fast skimmer/flyer, it is not much changed from previous version, but gains “zAerial Assault” [sic]. Dammit Forge World!

Night Spinner – same as in White dwarf

Heavy Support

Phoenix Bomber – yes, you read that right. It’s hella expensive (just under a base Land Raider), but can rain unholy destruction upon your foes. It’s only AV10 though, so you’ve got to hope those holo-fields hold up.

Warp Hunter – as per IA:A2

Fire Storm – A pretty good ranged platform with the Fire Storm Scatter Laser’s 60” range (And twin-linking).

Overall I think it’s a great, characterful list hampered by stupid errors (such as the falcon issue and lack of webway buying ability.

The Eldar Engines of Destruction section details all the Eldar vehicles, Codex and Forge World, though does not contain rules for a couple of them (Wave Serpent, regular War Walker and Wraithlord). Everything else is detailed here, including the Wraithseer and Lynx. The Phantom gains the close combat weapon option, and Warlock Titans are mentioned.

Lastly comes the obligatory missions and Apocalypse Formations. These are all standard fare, with the missions as characterful as usual, and the formations taking advantage of the latest Forge World releases save the Space Wolves, which requires 2-4 Land Raiders.

Overall the book is a rough, or perhaps cracked diamond – it had great potential, but several missteps (poor editing, uneven flow of narrative, overdosing on Space Marines against the Eldar) keep it from achieving its full potential.

It may seem I’m harping on against the Space Wolves here, but given they only play a very small part in the story and we’ve just had two volumes of All Marines – All The Time (and this is the first appearance of the Eldar) it was a great disappointment that it was so Imperial-centric. Yes, it’s called Imperial Armour, but there are players who don’t play Imperial forces, or who would like to know more about the various Xenos races.

This is a very similar complaint to my thoughts on IA:8, Armour of Gork (or possibly Mork). The Space Marines could have been easily excised from the story and replaced with Karskin, Valhallans, or anyone really and it wouldn’t have altered the story too much.

Story and Background – 8/10 for concept, 6/10 for execution. Now, I’m not slamming Talima Fox here as much as it might seem. Most of the issues should have been picked up before going to print as they’re silly, avoidable errors for the most part. Her writing and concepts were good, with the only eyebrow raising moment being a bit involving a group of Wraithguard and Space Wolves which, given GW’s propensity to have one side dominate, was a welcome change.

I’d happily read another book by her, but I’d be crossing my fingers that she’d be getting more (or better) editorial guidance. For the record I’m of the opinion that writers usually make terrible self-editors, especially if they don’t have a good long break between draft and review. I know if I don’t leave something a while I’ll miss glaring mistakes in my own writing.

Layout / Graphics – 9/10. A very pretty book, it only lost a point for lack of art of the Corsairs. The only Eldar character page is for a Dire Avenger. It would have been good to see more of these forces as they play a large role in the story and haven’t been featured before.

Army Lists and Units - 7/10, would have been higher if not for stupid mistakes. The Corsairs list would be great, save the errors riddling it. As it stands it’s still a good list, and would work well in low points games nicely.

Extras – 7/10, good, but nothing exciting.

Overall – 7.5 / 10

I’m only giving it slightly higher than IA8 as I enjoyed the story more, even if the better plot was let down by worse editing. And, honestly, if I wasn’t a huge IA/FW fanboy and this was my first IA book, I’d be at least calling them up asking WTF (which I might do anyway)?

This all makes me feel that the book was rushed to make Christmas – there are too many obvious mistakes and Forge World’s constant “it’ll be out soon” message just makes me think they hit a deadline and either were forced to put the book out or decided ‘sod it’, and went to print regardless. Neither option is particularly good.

Still, the book, like IA8 for Orks, is a great resource for Eldar players and definitely worth a look if possible.

What to do when the PCs aren't murderous, sociopathic hobos

2011-12-21T09:48:00.000-08:00

Take a typical adventurer – they carry around three or four military grade weapons, wear armour 24/7, rent rooms by the night (uless they camp out in the woods), and kill whoever they’re paid to. I think that fits the description.

I'll only be staying the one night.

Seriously, they're basically this guy with the ability to not need to shower.

But what about when they’re not murderous hobos, and they have a home and a family (who aren't evil and they don't hate)?

You need to flesh out these characters, obviously, and this is how I do it.

Step 1) What / Where / Who

What is there home and where is it? For my upcoming Rogue Trader game it’ll be their ship, the Starrunner, and it will be moving around the Expanse stopping occasionally at various ports and planets. The ship needs a population in the region of 2,000 souls, but I’m not naming them all. Instead I need to figure out who the primary NPCs the players will be interacting with are, and work them out.
To do that I make a list of the bridge crew (Navigator, 1st Officer, Helmsman, Comms Tech etc) and decide who will be an ‘important’ NPC and who won’t. This isn’t an exact science and is based around both gut feeling on character creation and what roles aboard ship the players will be filling – for instance if one player decides to be the helmsman, I’ll simply have some named Redshirts to take the helm when he’s not doing it. On the flip side if nobody takes the helm I’ll need to flesh out the Chief Helmsman NPC as they have a fairly significant role.

Other roles include crew chiefs, medics, yeomen and land based minions of various types. I make a list in Word using a table so I can list out all the major positions and fill information as necessary. Information I include is a brief description (age, appearance, manner) and history, as well as a general personality note. The Captain’s Yeoman, Mister Cider, has the following notes:

“Young (mid-late teens), slightly built and nervously eager. Loves his mam, joined the crew after getting in trouble on home of Port Wander for drinking. Crush on junior bridge crewmember (Milly), female PC? Guided by Captain into adulthood. See also: Mrs Cider, Vds Takker.”

That little snapshot shows how he’ll interact with the PCs to start with (slightly awed), and how he’ll develop. One possible minor adventure hook is him getting into trouble with having a few too many drinks and winding up in trouble with the Arbites on Port Wander. Keen eyed readers may note young Johnny from the new series of Upstairs, Downstairs – don’t just look to action / adventure series when fleshing out the PC’s ‘home’ life, it’ll come across flat if everyone is a cynical, wisecracking hardass with a secret heart of gold.

Yes, she only costs 25 gold a day to hire, but what does she think about the geopolitical rammifications of the Orc/Elf war?

Mapping out the relationships between the NPCs is also important, especially if the PCs are in a command role. Does the senior Navigator get on with the senior Astropath? If not, why not? Does one of the junior Navigators, eager to advance his position within his house, try to leverage the situation for his own benefit?
Imagine the chaos caused by the Astropath and junior Navigator deliberately messing with a communique containing co-ordinates to discredit the senior Navigator. When it all goes horribly wrong, what do the PCs do? Both are highly valuable (and connected) individuals, but they did almost kill everyone…. plot hooks abound if you take the time to sharpen them!

The players will also need hangouts at the major ports to meet contacts, relax, tell tall tales and get well and truly hammered after a rip-roaring adventure. There’s this handy Random Tavern Generator for other occasion, but these home-away-from-homes need some prep-work. It’s essentially the same process, coming up with the proprietor, his family and regulars.
Having these solid points really filled out and detailed, even if some of it never comes up, will make it feel much more real. I’ve always found that a very detailed and well thought out world encourages better role-play rather than a totally on the fly world, which is more prone to random acts of stupidity.

Where everybody knows your name.

One resource, which should be mandatory for any PCs, is to put major NPCs through the 100 Questions to Ask About Your Role Playing Character quiz. Plot hooks abound, and it’ll even lead to the creation of minor NPCs and little background details you can use to make people feel more real.

Step 2) The Rest

Obviously it would be prohibitive to write up an entire Imperial starship and several space stations. My method to cheat this is simple, I have three lists:

Jobs, as worked out in Step 1. This is the ‘primary’ list.

Names, randomly generated. Some sample name resources include 20000 Names (can search via meaning or geographical location), Random Name Generator (derived from US census data) and Behind the Name (can filter via location/gender).

Descriptions. These are like the ones for major NPCs, but shorter, perhaps more exaggerated.

So when a new character is introduced I select a random name and description. This is now who he or she is.
Example: The PCs decide to go down to the cargo hold to check on something. They talk to the Loadmaster. As this is a recurring role I’ll take my ‘Jobs’ list and then select a random name – ‘Lovetta Schoenhard’, via the Random Name Generator on 70 – and a (semi) random description: “Calm, verging on icy, with well-kept clothes and hair. Muscular build, with an augmetic leg.”

So, using that I’ll play her as a straight to the point, minimal conversation type. It provides an easy base to work from using some Abductive Reasoning to flesh out the character if they become more important. One thing to be prepared for is the PCs taking an often bizarre shine to those characters who were to have one or two lines then disappear down a plot hole never to be seen again.

Players are weird like that.

This methodology can be applied to almost any ‘home’ situation, such as a small village or a bustling city. Regardless of the size there will always be a core cast of characters the players interact with, but it doesn’t mean the background should be left bare. Giving the PCs their very own below decks episode could be rather fun – I’m immediately thinking the PCs having to hide out in their own ship at some point in disguise and live the life of a menial aboard it for a while.

Another idea I’m toying with is a ‘meanwhile…’ type thing. It’s a little difficult to explain, but it would be a form of cutscene for the players. The best example I can think of is in a videogame we’ll sometimes see a cutscene showing what some NPCs are up to, to give the game more background texture and context. Similar to that I was thinking of having a short story series linked to the player’s exploits, showing how they have an effect on their crew – a story following the life of one of the gun crews or some such. Someone they’ll likely never meet, but whose life they basically control through their actions.

Koronus Gazetter Issue #1

2011-12-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

This is a handout I'm producing for the players of my upcoming Rogue Trader RPG game to give them plot hooks, rumours and background texture. It's designed to be printed double sided and folded in half, so "Rogue Tradin'" is on the back.

Click to embiggen:

I think you can guess what the first adventure will be about ;) But there are seeds for future endevours and encounters layed down here. It'll be fun seeing the player's actions move from the back pages to bigger and bigger stories. Or seeing their screw-ups on the front page for all to see, ha ha!

Higher quality PDF available here.

What is this I don't even...

2011-12-09T10:31:00.000-08:00

You know when you like a band but you've only seen a couple of their videos for some reason and then you look at one more and your brain just melts? Yeah, this is that.

In other news it looks like I'll be running a Rogue Trader RPG early in the new year - will post more about getting that up and running soon.

Reviews: Outcast Dead, Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Hive of the Dead, Aurelian, Snuff

2011-11-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

Real life, by way of jury duty, has gotten in the way of late - but it did afford me time to get some reading done.

The Outcast Dead, by Graham McNiell.

This book is a must buy for fans of the Heresy series, and fans of 40k lore. Some of the important things it lays out include the exact timeline of the Isstvaan attacks in relation to Magnus' stuffing around, and a lot of vital background on the workings of the formative Imperium.

Following Astropath Kai Zulane as he comes to grips with a terrible secret that could dictate the course of war (or end it entirely), the story shows how the ideals of the Imperial Truth are often at odds with the actions of its most trusted guardians.
The Outcast Dead themselves are a group of marines stationed on Terra, belonging to the mysterious Crusader Host. McNiell does his trademark 'refer obliquely to something and wait to explain it in another book' trick here, but it's not especially intrusive or distracting to the narrative.

Possibly the best part of the book, for me at least, is making the Emperor more human. In most of his appearances, especially in the early books (and the awful Last Church [ironically also by McNiell]) The Emperor was often portrayed as either excessively God-like, with everyone falling to their knees and weeping, or as a jerkface (who has the face of a jerk). This also extended to the Primarchs to a lesser degree.
The obvious problem with this is that he becomes either unrelatable or unlikable, not to mention the plot hole of 'why is there political strife on Terra when the Emperor just needs to show up and bling out and everyone falls before him weeping (always with the weeping)?' This is the problem of having to tell the really important stuff - ie Horus' fall - first, when it would have been better served to get a handle on the universe 30k style and then get to the good stuff. But that wouldn't sell books as much though. It's like when a new miniature line releases all the important characters first, and they end up looking really bad compared to later sculpts.

But I digress.

Having the Emperor shown in a sympathetic light makes it seem more tragic, and isn't the whole story meant to be bad for humanity? I'd love to quote some of the Emperor's best lines, but they're pretty spoilerific, so I'll abstain.

The book isn't without its faults, the fight between a World Eater and a Custodes is often highlighted, as is the Death Guard's resistance to injury, but they're fairly minor and easily overshadowed by the positives.

9/10

Eisenhorn and Ravenor Ombnibii, by Dan Abnett.

Six books, so I'll just be covering them all briefly. The Eisenhorn series tells the tale of Gregor Eisenhorn, and his pursuit of various enemies of mankind. A first person narrative it follows Eisenhorns' thoughts and has quite a bit of internal monologuing and reflection. This is one of the book's strong points as you certainly get a feel for the Inquisitor's mindset.

Ravenor, however, switches between first person of the eponymous Inquisitor and third person for his team of loyal minions. I found this a superior method to the wholly first person: as the books are essentially crime novels having the crime stretched out over three novels left the first person feeling a little thin - there's only so much reflection a man can do.

One of the things that really dissapointed me in the seires was that the Inquisitors, supposedly super smart and cunning held the idiot ball far too often.

There were a couple of times I wanted to sceam at them "how are you in the slightest bit surprised by this!" One example is Ravenor, despite having extremely good reason to suspect he's got a psyker on board and that they may be extremely dangerous, completely fails to monitor them in any meaningful way. And when one of his minions brings news of possibly prescient dreams to him, he doesn't seem particularly interested.
Their minions are equally culpable sometimes, not bringing up their colleagues acting strangely when there's a daemonic entity on the loose etc.

Derp.

Second thing is that Eisenhorn's supposedly unbreakable custom battle cant is laughably easy to descipher. Obviously this is for ease of reading, but I think it would have been better served to be formatted differently, such as how Mechanicus speach is ++marked out on the page++ or the like.

Still, the books are a most excellent, given I read all six in two days, so if you haven't read them definately pick them up.

Eisenhorn: 7.5/10

Ravenor: 8/10

Hive of the Dead gamebook, by Christian Dunn.

For those who don't know, a gamebook is basically a choose-your-own-adventure with dice for when you run into monsters.

Hive of the Dead is a simple tale, where YOU are the hero ('you' is always written in capitals in these things). A Guardsman afflicted with amnesia in a hive filled with plague zombies, you have to escape with your life.

I'm a big fan of gamebooks, so rather than reviewing the plot (which is almost always paper thin), I'll be discussing the construction and assembly of the book. Like the Fighting Fantasy series, Hive of the Dead is 400 paragraphs long, where each paragraph is part of the descision tree. This is a good length, and Dunn has a great mechanic where there is the occasional non-linear loop.
What I mean is where you have a choice early on to either: pick up a gun, look at a map, or use a radio, many gamebooks would have you do one then continue, or return to the original choice paragraph. What Dunn has done is to have each choice branch off, so you get different results depending in what order you do things.

For example if you look at the map and then the radio, when you go to pick up the gun a zombie attacks before you can grab it. But if you pick up the gun first a zombie will attack when you look at the map etc.

On the flipside the story is very linear and rather short. One of the biggest issues I have is that for each combat there is a 'turn to xx' if you lose. Each combat does have its own entertaining description of your death but they are, frankly, unneccessary and the paragraphs would have been better spent on their being more stuff to do.
As I said the story is quite linear, and there are a few false choices, where aside from a little flavour text change there is no real difference to the gameplay or events.

The writing, however, is generally good and written in a frequently tongue in cheek manner ("to disagree politely, turn to xx - to disagree impolitely and attack them, turn to xx). It does have the odd flat spot in the text, but its not too terrible.

The combat system itself is quite unweildy, being a stripped down version of 40k in some ways, and being overly fiddly for my tastes. There are damage multipliers, initiative, ranges and all sorts of things (and an advanced rules section). When 99% of the enemies are identical plague zombies, it is a bit ridiculous and is overengineered in my opinion.

For the Black Library's first gamebook it holds up well against the early Fighting Fantasy books (and isn't as insanely hard or frustrating), but the later books in the series show that BL has a great oportunity ahead of it. I'll definately be buying the next one.

7/10

Aurellion, Gold edition, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

The book that broke Black Library, and got us all free shipping. The book itself is essentially Inferno 40k, with a Daemon in place of Virgil. It gives reason for Lorgar's fall, as well as detailing the manipulations of chaos to make it happen.

But was it worth $70, or was the silver enough? I had a chance to look at both versions, and I'm not so sure the gold was worth the extra moulah. For the extra $35 you got some art, a signature and a placeholder. I mean I love a good exclusive, but the asking price is possibly a bit much, given the silver was so extensively cheaper. One odd thing was that the front of the dust jacket for the gold was tucked in to the back, so it covered the whole book - yet the silver didn't do this. One off oddity, or some strange thing that just made reading the book a little bit more inconvenient? Eh, either way it was a good read and an interesting, though not essential, piece of lore.

6.5/10 - this is based on the Gold, including relative worth of price. The silver could add a point.

Snuff, by Terry Pratchett.

The latest in Pratchett's Discworld series, Snuff is the story of Sam Vime's holiday to the country. It's a little bit Jane Austin, a little bit Midsomer Murders and a lot of fun.

Vimes is easily my favourite of the Discworld protagonists (just ahead of Moist), and Pratchett does not fail to deliver. There is humour aplenty, and a great mystery afoot with strange doings a'transpirin in the village (tis a local village, for local people). Here we discover the workings of one of the few traditional fantasy races not yet seen on the Disc - goblins. As can be expected from Pratchett they aren't what you'd expect, and there is no clear good versus evil except for Vimes versus crime, but that's to be expected.

The only potential downside for a new reader is that there isn't a great deal of time explaining the fairly extensive background (Vetinarii, the clacks, Old Stoneface etc), but the story is carried by the very real feeling characters and great dialogue so even if you don't know what's going on you'll certainly get the idea.

As I mentioned above about the Eisenhorn/Ravenor idiot ball situation, there is none of that here - it is a detective story at its core, and is constructed as such. Vimes investigates, he thinks and ponders, and when he does something stupid that gave his enemy an advantage he thinks 'argh, I've done something stupid that has given my enemy an advantage' rather than it being ignored. This is the book (and Pratchett's) great strength - the characters really feel like real people, and it is very easy to get deep into the story.

10/10

So that's what's been eating up my time lately... well, that and:

Wreck-Age needs a Kickstart!

2011-11-06T05:32:00.000-08:00

Wreck-Age, a (hopefully) upcoming post-apocalyptic wargame / miniature line / fully fleshed out universe have hit the halfway point with their Kickstarter.

If you don't know them, check out their blog, where there's some info about the world, concept art and the like. Here's a pic of one of the sculpts:

Kickstarter is a thing where you pledge money to give a project funding - if it hits the goal the project goes ahead and you get rewards. For instance if you pledge only $25 you get miniatures and a collection of short stories. Pledge $100 Wreck-Age will give you an 11x17 full-colour poster, all 12 models from the initial launch next spring, the Limited Edition Kickstarter Drifter miniature, and the hardcover rulebook when it's released.
Should the project not meet it's target, you don't get billed and you get your money back. It's run through Amazon, so the chances of getting scammed are low.

If you like post apocalyptic minis, check them out!

Edit: Another great Kickstarter is Effigy Miniatures - sci-fi and fantasy models.

Some not so light reading

2011-10-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

22 kilos worth to be exact:

Next challenge - where to put them...

Necrons release on 29-10-11 - GW youtube Teaser

2011-10-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

The video

Review: Games Day Anthology 2011

2011-10-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

This year's Games Day anthology features six short stories by the usual suspects in an A5 hardback format. I've only read the 40k stories so far, so will only be covering them here.

The book itself is well put together and the hardcover works with the small, thin (124pg) size. The only oddity is the printing of the title pages for each story - they are curiously faded as if they weren't printed properly. I can only assume it is a mistake involved in transferring from colour, as they feature their respective universe's logo (ie the Warhammer 40,000 eagle). Still, no problems with the actual text itself.

The first story is Death of a Silversmith, by Graham McNiell, set during the Horus Heresy. Unsurprisingly it concerns the death of a silversmith. In this case he is a specialised remembramancer aboard the Vengeful Spirit, who is so renowned for his work that Sejanus commissions four rings for the Mournival. But another commission, to make a series of small silver medallions, proves his undoing.
The story is well paced and shows a more peaceful side to the Great Crusade, taking place mostly in the memories of the silversmith as he dies, recalling his life.

The next two stories are interlinked - The Curse of Shaa-Dom and The Treasures of Biel-Tanigh by Gav Thorpe and Andy Chambers respectively. Shaa-Dom splits off from Thorpe's Path series of books, obstensibly telling the story of a White Seer as they travel from the chaos artifact harbouring human world featured in the series. Biel-Tanigh happens before this, and tells of a pair of Dark Eldar attempting to steal an artifact from the titular realm - the same realm the White Seer goes to dispose of his cursed item.
The stories aren't bad, but Shaa-Dom really feels either too short or too long. By that I mean that the first part is concerned with disposing of the artifact, and then the book takes a hard right and devolves into a slasher tale. If you've seen the movie Sunshine it's a rather similar shift. The story just feels like a connecting part of a larger piece (which in a way it is) rather than a work in its own right.
Biel-Tanigh, as mentioned, connects to Shaa-Dom, but stands on its own much better. It is an action piece, but still fits in some new looks at Dark Eldar culture and their nature.

Finally comes Emperor's Deliverance by Nick Kyme. Set during the third war for Armageddon focussing on Sister Hospitilar Athena and her struggle to keep the wounded and refugees under her care safe. Though the arrival of a pair of Marines Malevolant would seem to be a boon, it proves to be anything but.
Sister Athena is a great character, as are the two Marines, Nemiok, the senior and more brutal and Varik the (slightly) more compassionate.
The story is more a battle of personality, with Athena fighting the Marine's obstinate pragmatism and callous respect for nothing but strength. The standout moment is when she implores them to help her dig out a trapped carrier loaded with refugees, but they refuse, and she shames them by doing it herself with a few servitors - "I wanted you to know that, to know that a mindless flesh-mech slave showed greater compassion for humanity than the Emperor's Angels." And then the Orks arrive and things get much worse...

But even then the heartless Nemiok is shown to perhaps have been affected by Athena's actions and bravery, and at the end there is a small tie-in with Kyme's Tome of Fire series of novels.

Emperor's Deliverance is the standout of the collection in my opinion, and if you borrow a copy and only have time to read a single story, I'd make it that one.

Review: Imperial Armour Apocalypse 2nd Edition

2011-10-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Second Edition of Forge World's expansion for Apocalypse has arrived, loaded up with tons of wargear for the tabletop. However it is not all just for Apocalypse...

On the first page they display three handy logos, indicating whether or not the unit is intended for Apocalypse games, such as the Warhound below:

Or for regular games of 40k, like these Contemptors:

The third logo is for Apocalypse formations. However one very intersting thing is that the "Warhammer 40,000 unit" blurb reads:

This unit is intended to be used in 'standard' games of Warhammer 40,000, within the usual limitations of Codex selection and force organisation charts. As with all our models these should be considered 'official', but owing to the fact they may be unknown to your opponent, it's best to make sure they are happy to play a game using Forge World models before you start.

Nafka had a post recently on Faeit 212 about the officialness of Forge World, and you can read my opinion on the matter there. Suffice to say IA units are now as legal to field as any other unit in 40kdom. Because, you know, if my opponent tells me he's playing GK razorspam or a Leafblower I'm perfectly happy to not play him as well...

But I digress...

The book itself is the standard Forge World layout, but it broke a record! It only took me five minutes to find a mistake - it's usually a while before I spot those ;)
The special mission Rampage of the Beasts describes what forces and percentages they are broken up into for the Attacker twice. Also despite being an upgrade for 5th ed, the Eldar Serpent Rider Host still makes reference to Target Priority Tests.

Oops.

But minor points aside, the book is solid. Now on to some of the more interesting things:

Imperial Guard

- The Marcharius Vanquisher got a second fire mode for its AT shells, gaining the +1D6 pen on that shot only, losing the blast but also gaining Twin Linked.

- The Marcharius Vulcan can fire twice like the Stormlord. The Vulcan Mega Bolter is still over-rated.

- The Crassus went up a little in points, but can carry 5 more dudes (so you can fit a whole platoon + Command Squad in there!) and also moves 12". Great improvements there.

- The Dominus variant of the Crassus features a triple bombard. It is delightfully over the top.

- The Praetor, pictured below, feels a little underwhelming. It has three fire modes (HE, Incendiary, AA), but you have to pick one before the battle. The explosive ones are only Ordnanace Barrage 2, and though they are 5" and 7" templates, something with so many missiles on it (and an Apoc unit) looks to me like it should fire more.
That said it's good they didn't just give it an Apocalypse Blast weapon, and it's not that expensive really.

- Tauros Squadrons are there for IG or Elysian armies (the Venator is an upgrade, so squadrons can be mixed types).

- Plasmagun version of the Marcharius. It can overheat when fired on maximum, but I'm not sure it's going to be fired that way very often.

- Six of the formations are gone, as well as a number of vehicles like the Manticore.

Space Marines

- The Contemptors come in four flavours: vanilla, vampire, loup-garou and dakka.
The Codex version has more wargear options, including a special plasma blaster and the Graviton Gun.It can take a +1 BS option, two DCCW arms or a Chainfist (allowing an Ironclad Contemptor). It can also take all the standard dread weapons, though the Assault Cannon is the special Kheres model (more dakka!); mount a cyclone, regardless of other weapons; or take the heavy conversion beamer.

The Blood Angel version may take Blood Tallons, the Frag Cannon or a Magna Grapple. It can't take the beamer, plasma blaster, graviton gun or cyclone however.

Space Wolves is very similar to the Codex model, but less wargear. It also must chose a Night Saga...
The Wolves find that their Contemptors tended to savagry and excess in battle, tainting the sagas of those within. It bacame self-fulfilling as now the Iron Priest only inter those warriors already of dark disposition.
The three sagas are the Saga of the Black Cull, the Saga of the Forsaken One and the Saga of the Iron God. Each also comes with an Oath - Master of Slaughter, Oath of Sundered Brotherhood and Oath of Hubris respectively, guiding how the Contemptor will act.

The Mortis pattern starts with BS5, and must take twin heavy weapons on the arms, and may also take a Cyclone. A Mortis with twin Kheres cannons and a Cyclone sounds very tasty - 12 Assault cannon shots plus two missiles on the move would murder infantry and even armour would be afraid.

These guys are privey points wise, however. You can go mad and get some of them costing as much as a Land Raider without too much trouble...

- The Caestus and Achilles are reprinted here.

- The dreaded (ha!) Lucius pattern drop pod has not only gone up in points, but it is now risky for the Dreadnought to assault out of it.

- A formation was cut, but they left in the Automated Defence Force, which is odd as the rules for the Taratulas aren't in the book. You can download the IA2 update though to get them, but it is a bit silly.

Forces of the Imperium

- The Lighning, Valkyrie and Vulture are all out, replaced by the Sky Talon.

- The Arvus can take jury-rigged guns.

Da Orkz

- The Looted Rhino, Gun Wagon, Battle Fortress and Krusha Wagon are all gone.

- The Warkopta, Kustom Meka-Dread, Kill-Blasta/Bursta, Lifta Wagon and Grot Tank Mob from IA8: Armour of Gork (or possibly Mork) are all in however.

- The Grot Mega Tank is also in. It takes two 'heavy turrets' of twin linked Kan gunz, and three light turrets of Kan Gunz. It's better armoured than a Chimera, but not by much. Movement and shooting are very much like the Grot Tankz.

Eldar

- The Wraithseer has had a few tweaks to its powers. Foreboding is now -2 to Leadership or be Pinned, and Deliverence is now Feel No Pain.
Enliven still seems like a waste to me - I'm yet to hear an Eldar player lament the lack of Fleet on his or her Wraithlords. Something like Fleet or some bonus to shooting would have been good. Or making it count as Assault Grenades.

- The Phantom Titan has had a fair bit of work done to it. It still costs the same, but they have changed the shields, it's hard to hit in CC, Spirit Guides got reworked to not suck and the Star Cannon got an extra shot (yay?).
I'm still of the opinion that the secondary weapons are too short ranged, but it is a much better bang for your metaphorical buck.
Point to note is that it can hit anything in assault with a titan CCw, as its Towering Monstrosity rules doesn't prevent it.

- The Hornet gained Aerial Assault from the Dark Eldar codex, so is much more useful.

- Ths Scorpion, Cobra, Phoenix, Void Dragon Phoenix and Nightspinner are all cut.

- The Lynx hasn't changed from its beta rules.

- The Warp Hunter got a BS bump, and a bigger blast on the main gun.

Tyranids

- The Scything Talons of the Heirodule and Harridan gained re-rolls to hit. The Harridan is now a proper flyer, and the Gargoyle brood rules were tweaked a little.

- The Malanthrope got some stat changes, went up in points and now has a Synapse based boost to units around it.

- The Stone Crusher Carnifex went up in points, but had some stat changes and is harder to kill, with a boost to its Regeneration rolls.

Tau

- Added in Commander R'Alai in his XV-9 suit. He gets a special experimental weapon and has special ammo on top of that, though they Get Hot!

Necrons

- Have a unit! The Tomb Stalker is very gribbly. Able to Fleet, Deep Strike, Move Through Cover, Hit and Run as awell as assault units without having LoS first. It also has a special immunity to weapons that wound regardless of toughness (Hellfire shells, sniper weapons etc).
It's pretty pricey points wise, but cheaper than a Monolith.

Dark Eldar

- The Reaper is the Raider built around a giant haywire blaster, shown above. It has two fire modes, and can cause multiple haywire hits in one shot.

- The Tantalus is the big two hulled vehicle, and can carry 16 dudes. Unlike the model shown at Games Day it doesn't have the pintle mounted weapon, only the two Pulse-Disintegrators (which fire 6 shots each...). It can also bladevane infantry and vehicles (for 2D6 penetration), and is an open topped tank, so can ram and tank shock on top of everything else.

- The Raven fighter looks rather sad now...

Chaos

- The Tzeentchian mega-greater Daemon is absent, but the other three are represented.

- The Chaos Warhound can now be Possessed. It is a great deal for the points.

- The Chaos Contemptor is very similar to the Codex version, with a few key differences. It has some unique chaosy secondary guns, can take a Havoc Launcher instead of a Cyclone, and doesn't have the invulnerable save.
What it does have, however, is the ability to ignore 50% of glancing hits, and also ignore a smaller number of penetrating hits.
Dedications to the four gods are available, but must be modelled appropriately. The Chaos Contemptor is also not crazy, so won't go around killing your own dudes.

Missions

There are also four new Apocalypse missions. They are well written, including details of reccomended table size, points levels and detailed scoring information. Each is very different and would obviously require a lot of planning, moreso than normal.

Summary

Overall this is a great resource for anyone interested not only in Apocalypse, but in expanding their 40k options. Like always there's more for Imperial players, but both Eldar factions have some great things too.
It does suffer in that it references other IA books in a couple of places, and they also cut a number of units out that aren't in regular Codexes which, when coupled with removing the master unit list that listed what book everything was in, seems rather stupid.
Also, the Reaver is on the cover, but the rules aren't in there... that's not just silly, but a little misleading in my opinion. I'm not sure why anyone approved that, as a great shot of the Contemptor would have worked just as well.

In total I'm giving the book an 8/10.

Games Day Australia 2011

2011-10-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

So the first Games Day to be seen in Australia in seven years has come and gone. Here are my recollections and experiences, as well as some info from the seminars.

First up was the venue - it was spacious, well lit and no problems finding it. Funnily enough it was next to filming of the reborn Young Talent Time auditions... not sure how they handled all the Waaaaghing going on though.
Still, a few people got some odd looks, like this awesome Commisar who arrived at the same time I did:

Sorry, I didn't get her name to credit

There weren't huge lines like those seen in the UK and US, with ForgeWorld's line rather large when I arrived at 10:45 or so (having worked until 1am that morning). They died down considerably later in the day, and it was organised that people picked up their orders and were moved to a central payment area with six registers going.

Arriving late I unfortunately missed the Black Library seminar, so no comment there :(
So instead I had a wandered around for a bit, catching up with some people until the design studio Q&A with Phill Kelly and Adam Troke.

54mm scale in the Forge World Best in Show category

The Q&A was well populated and fairly interesting. Some points of note:

- In regards to new races they asked "raise your hand if you feel your army is laggin behind in attention?" and used the fair number of hands to illustrate the more pressing need to update the current crop of Codexes first.

- Adam did go on to mention Necrons and Dark Angels as two in need of help, but it didn't sound particularly to indicate any info on forthcoming releases.

- Phil commented he would change the Court of the Archon and Dias of Destruction if he could in Codex Dark Eldar. The Court was at one point planned for a boxed set so you'd have to buy one of each so it made sense to have it that way. The Dias was a last minute job, and needed more tweaking.
He also mentioned changing the Decapitator and making some units better and some worse, but no specifics on why.

- In regards to supplements like Cities of Death and Planetstrike they said the designers used tose as a change of pace or a reward "like desert", and they wanted to do more.

- This led into a discussion about global campaigns. They are limited as they can't have huge ones that change the universe as the results might mess up the story - Adam specifically mentioned that the results for Medusa V were not what they expected. The questioner brought up that it helps get gamers involved in the universe by having a shared goal. They did ask who would be interested and got a strong positve response.

- There was talk about the design process and how ideas come about. Phil said they are trying to change the process from "you will design this" coming from above to a constant stream of pitching ideas and having a more free-flowing creativity.
They have a giant whiteboard where the studio just put up ideas for anything and get feedback and response on it. Assignments are generally given to the most eager studio member as they'll put the most work in, "and lots of unpaid overtime". There is however competition, including knife fights in the carpark, for some jobs so they painted the studio as very free-flowing.

- Someone asked about FAQs, and the reply indicated there's an assistant designer who is chiefly responsible for them all.

- On playtesting, Adam used the example that for High Elves he personally played 40 games, recording the results, as well as other studio members, White Dwarf guys, "their external playtesting group", and other in-house team members.
There was no fixed amount done though, and it is an elastic amount.

- When asked what they thought on balance, the reply was having a tough but fun game where it could have gone either way at any point. They did acknowledge that they sometimes screwed up, and that they all find it terribly embarrasing.

- A question was asked about release schedules, with Dark Eldar getting more models while some armies are still waiting (this got a chorus of "Tyranids!" from the audience). The reply was that they were changing to try and do a single major release for as much as possible with only some Special Characters being delayed as they can be troublesome to get right.
Ogre Kingdoms was used as the example of this.

- Phil then went on to talk about how they won't be re-treading Forge World, and the Mournfang are distinct creatures from the Rhinox riders. Forge World is there to flesh out the fringes and add depth was they way it was put, and they do their own thing.

- Jervis reads every letter he gets sent, and tells everyone in the studio about them. Adam did a Jervis impersonation for effect.

Forge World Best in Show category

After that I headed down to get Graham McNiel (who had spilt coffee all over himself at some point) to sign my copy of Thousand Sons. The queue was only about 25 minutes, though the signing at the city store on Friday night was apparently much, much bigger. Two guys from Darwin in the line behind me had gone there and given up.

Graham was very nice to talk to, and we had a chat about writing and whatnot, including discussion on making Space Marines seem superhuman and their role in the story. No ground breaking revelations to be had, but it was great to have a good chat with him.

Henry Zou wasn't there, or if he was he disappeared before I saw him. I haven't read either Anthony Reynolds or Matt Farrer's works, so I didn't talk to them.

Single Model category

I didn't go to the Perry twin's Q&A as it started just as I finished talking to Graham. I didn't realise they were going to be there, otherwise I would have brought my copy of Rogue Trader for them to sign. They were here for Dreadfleet, having designed a large number of the ships.
It was rather odd seeing them in person as to me I always imagine them with the mental picture of their portrait in teh back of Rogue Trader or the early White Dwarfs.

40k Squad

I did have a caht with Adam, mostly about kitbashing Chaplain Terminators and the merits of scrounging for bitz around the place. He did mention that Dreadfleet had probably been in the works for around three years total, but would have been around six months work done in one big hit.
Another comment was on new Codexes comign out (someone asked about Dark Angels), and he commented that it was hard to get to everything, but Dark Angels, Necrons and Sisters of Battle need re-doing, though he did add "though Sisters just got a 'hold-me-over' codex in White Dwarf and it's awesome!"

Phil signed my Ork Codes, and we had a talk about games designs (he's a fan of the D10 too), going retro (the 1st ed stuff was an influence on him) and understanding girlfriends with both being horders of stuff.
No revelations here as it was more a hobby chin-wag than anything.

I did some shopping, pickign up the exclusive short story collection, the new artbook, a poster and The Outcast Dead. Wait in line was probably about two minutes or so.

40k Squad

Lastly was the All-In-One Q&A with Phil, Adam, the Perry Twins, Anthony Reynolds, Matt Farrer and Alan Merrit.

- I asked about any editorial control over what they create. I was told the only control there is comes at the start of a project, whether the pitch for a book/model is given a green light or not, and not in terms of any marketing team ("they don't have any" - Alan) or sales driven objectives.

- They were asked about the future of Finecast and the character plastics, and the inclusion of races such as Jokaero and Slyyth as minor notes in the armies.
The response was that they were wanting to include more when they could to give the feeling of a broader universe, as well as more opportunities for modellers. They can't guarantee that every race mentioned will be included though, as it still needs to fit in the army lists.

- Alan talked about introducing new ideas at some length, sparked by a question about computer games and how close they had to follow GW's mandate.
Basically they have to do as they're told, and can't introduce new things. If they have a gap they need filling they come to GW for a filler (such as the Orca in Fire Warrior). The only exception anyone could remember was Phil saying the Rail Rifle in Fire Warrior was designed by Kuju to fill the sniper rifle FPS archetype, and the studio liked it so much they adopted it - everything else is GW's doing. I was tempted to shout "metal bawksez!" or "spess mehreens" at them, but abstained.

He further elaborated that they won't be discarding and races, as they learnt from their mistake with Squats (and he did specifically call it a mistake) and that they realise now that "they can't pretend like things didn't exist".

- There was quite a lot of talk about plastic models and designing them and whatnot.

Junior Category

After that I had a bit more of a look at the Golden Demon entries and armies on parade, but had to leave to go to work unfortunately, so missed the awards ceremonies.

Relic also had a stand with Space Marine free to play on six TVs. I didn't have a go, but it looked pretty fun. I dont' think I'll be buying it just yet though.

All in all it was a great day, and I'm really glad I went. I'll definitely be going next year!

-

And if you want more GW goodness, head over to Tales from the Maelstrom where they've got a great interview with Rick Priestley.

Triple Review: Chapterhouse Farseer, Scorpion Exarch and Modern Rifles

2011-09-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

So I recieved the new "Scorpion Warrior Priestess" (cough cough) model from Chapterhouse Studios yesterday, so I thought I'd put up a review of some of their newer products.

First up is the SCAR & M-14 set.

In the set you get eight guns, tww each of the M-14, SCAR w lasgun magazine & muzzle break, SCAR w drum magazine, SCAR w drum magazine & 40mm grenade launcher.

The accuracy of the guns in is quite good, though if you want to quibble the stock on the SCAR is a bit short (and they don't accept lasgun magazines...), but that's a minor issue.

Casting quality is top notch, very sharp with very little in the way of flash or mould lines. The pictures are of untouched straight out of the box parts. Compare to Forge World Elysian lasguns below:

This pic does illustrate the one problem with production - the butts of the guns join straight on to the vent (the big block of scrap resin). This means it's a rather tricky process to remove the guns as the vent is a fair bet thicker than the stocks:

The warpage is not bad for parts this small IMO.

Adding a small bridge between the gun and vent would be a huge improvement to what is a fairly problematic issue.

As for useability I fear the actual guns, while lovely, will be hard to get to work. For instance look at how large they are compared to some Space Marines:

Not really an issue, and they SCARs will fit with Imperial Guard, though the M-14 might be a bit huge for Guard. The probelm comes when you try to go outside of GW's 'heroic' proportions to manufacturers like Corvus Belli, Hasslefree or Studio McVey:

For reference here are some real dudes with the guns:

This guy's M-14 has quite a story.

So yes, the oversized proportions really hamper their application outside 40k or maybe converting WarmaHordes minis. The M-14's rifle grip will be hard to convert easily, especially with GW's wonky proportions.

For me this is a bit of a disapointment as I'd been hoping to use the M-14 especially on some Black Scorpion minis to post-apocalyse them. I'm still going to use the weapons on either my Marines or Beastmen, but the lack of versatility is a shame.

Second is Doomseer Iyanna-Duanna:

Coming with all the parts shown, with two arms for each side - sword/staff and magic bolt/heil five:

Again, the mini is very cleanly cast and has little flash. Details are crisp, though the metal itself has a few pock marks and tiny bubbles.

By an astounding coincidence, she fits in very nicely with Games Workshop's Eldar line (I know, I couldn't believe it either!), with the armour style and her acoutrements matching well. She doesn't have a lot of the very fine details of the latest Farseers, so as a comparison I'd say she's about the same as a 2nd Edition era sculpt.

Scale wise she blends in seamlessly, and her pose isn't too static or overly dramatic, so she won't stand out amongst a seer council with GW's warlocks.

For those interested her head wouldn't be too hard to remove, though I'd use a saw or Dremel to do it.

Lastly we have the newest release, Armana'serq Scorpion Warrior Priestess.

.

In another crazy coincidence, Armana comes with all the options for the Striking Scorpion Exarch - Biting Blade, Chainsabres (w shuriken pistols), Claw w shuriken pistol. Aside from the Biting Blade the arms all have a small pin that fits into the shoulder socket, though it wouldn't be an issue to change the pose.

Detailing is superior to Iyanna above, but that may partly be due to Armana having less robes and so on. There is a grenade strapped to her belt, a couple of small stones and the weapons are very detailed. Her not-Mandiblasters and the Predator-esque dreads are sculpted as well as the GW ones, though the head weaposn are shorter. The highlight is that her face is very detailed and certainly one of the best I've seen on a ~~Games Workshop~~ 28mm heroic scale miniature.

Scale wise she is tall. Not hugely out of place tall, but were she standing upright she'd be close to a head over her counterpart:

Who I coincidentally had made female...

Maybe I should join GW in a class action?

One oddity is that she doesn't have a slotta-tab, but comes with a slotta-base. Now I don't know if this is a mis-cast or what, but there's no indication of a defect and it seems a very strange thing otherwise.

Not a huge deal, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

Chapterhouse Studios themselves were very fast to ship out, with reasonable shipping prices and good comunication. I got an email when the order was 'pending', 'processing' and 'shipped'.

The miniatures themselves were probably on the higher side, less than a McVey L.E. resin, but more than a McVey metal, Hasslefree or Reaper. I imagine Chapterhouse isn't producing in as great a quantity and they do come with a wealth of options too, so I would say it's worth it.
The weapon packs are good value, certainly cheaper than Forge World.

Final Scores:

Weapons - 6/10 overall, but as a purely 40k add on, 8/10.

Doomseer - 7/10

Scorpion Priestess - 9/10

Chapterhouse Service - 9/10 (docked them a point because the website looks like ass).

More pics

2011-08-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Been one of those weeks (or two weeks), so have some more arts.

All pen and watercolours.

Art Alart!

2011-08-18T12:25:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some clearing out of my cupboards and shelves, and as such have re-discovered many of my old (and not so old) sketchbooks.

Thus, a giant image dump is in order:

Most of these date back to around 2005-6ish and are related to RPG stuff, but some others are quite recent, such as this one:

Satu Veredesdottir, freelance berserk. Felt tip pen and watercolours.

"I have the fanciest hat, therefore I'm in charge."

Not from anything, just a sketch.

Character designs for Blinded Eyes do See. Drawing them helps to visualise hights (duh) as well as cement clothing and that sort of thing.

Ursula, Soni and Fiju - work outfits

Usrula, Soni and Mauer

Some other character sketches:

Dark Eldar / Corsair:

"Le sigh...."

This is where we get into some serious nerd territory - roleplaying character sketches. Brace yourselves...

This is the cast of a rather epic campaign (ergo why I felt the need to draw them all). And yes, that is a tiny pimp, yoda and a variety of fae creatures there. It was a blend of Exalted, Changeling, Norse mythology, traditional D&D, Dragonball Z, teen angst, romance, betrayal, true love, and a rastafarian turtle.

It was very strange to say the least... pic's in HB pencil.

One of the NPCs (ballpoint pen):

My second character, a hard bitten, cynical, nihilistic elven ranger (HB pencil):

She was quite fun to play, being openly antagonistic to humans, and dismissive and condescending to the other PCs for being stupid enough to think adventuring was a good career choice. At one point she gave a 'stay in school' lecture to one PC and his friends.

She died in a volcano.

(to clarify the errupting volcano was a Kobold stronghold on self-destruct and she stayed behind to provide comfort to a bunch of trapped Ents we couldn't rescue, so it was quasi-heroic).

On the left my first character, Mirjam, and on the far right Cellor, one of the other PCs.

The main story is that Cellor ran away from home to seek out the great sorcerer Yoda as he wasn't learning anything in school. He eventually found Yoda in his Ent-top treehouse, where he met Mirjam (who hated him on sight).

She hated him as she had been cursed to turn into a wolf by an Elf, and was forced to flee her village for obvious reasons, though the villagers killed her father and brother whilst burning down her house. She was found and taken in, serving as Yoda's housekeeper when she wasn't getting blind drunk due to being horribly depressed.

It later transpired Cellor's dad was the one who curse Mirjam (dun dun duuuunnnn! He's the guy giving the death stare in the group shot), as well as a war brewing between the fae demi-gods and the like.

The guy in the middle is Ulrich, who was living in the Fae city with his daughter (who is Fae, and can be seen in the group shot) - he was just crazy enough to try and court Mirjam, and they later got married. Cellor later became an honourary kinsman and the northmen tried to make a man out of him, somewhat unsuccessfully...

I copied and colourised part of the above picture, adding a bit more dynamism to her dress as only the sheet and her hair seemed to be caught in the wind (it's magic wind!).

Mirjam's concept was borne out of my almost always playing the fighter / tank (or smart-arse rogue). She was a character with absolutely zero combat related skills, so was a nice challenge to play from the norm and definately one of my favourites.

Ulrich build her a house (with some help):

I either copied or heavily borrowed the design, and buggered up the scanning a bit.
Ballpoint pen.

The third PC, Arabella (a fairy who lived in the Ent), ended up with a castle:

The top pic is a rough diagram done by the GM, and I expanded upon the design.

Ballpoint pen.

A later campaign was heavily inspired by Chinese mythology:

The three PCs - mine is LiGang on the right (fighter / tank, see?). I can't remember the other two's names, but if you can read the script above them it'll give you a (probably terrible) translation.

Lastly a schematic for probably our most stupidly over-the-top campaign - high tech, high magic space pirates. We had a Lifejammer helm powering the jacuuzi:

Tech drawing in highschool paid off though. Other insanity includes selling a whole planet into slavery (well, it was a moon, and it got towed wholesale), our cargo bay full of angels in jars (and five H-Bombs), my character's equipment list was "Crate o' guns, Chainsaw"...

Good fun!

Baby Got Razorbacks

2011-08-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

I like small tanks and I cannot lie,
You other brothers can't deny,
That when a girl walks in with an Battlefoam Case,
And a Razor list in your face,
You get sprung!

Wanna pull out? Tough!
'Cause you notice that 'back was stuffed,
Assault meltas and a Priest it’s bearing,
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring.
Oh baby, I wanna play you,
And something so new,
My clubmates tried to warn me,
But that ‘back you got makes m-m-m-me so horny

Ooh, she’s Raz-o'-back-in,
You say you wanna Pitch Deploy?
Well, Flank Refuse me, Refuse me,
'Cause you ain't that average groupie.
I've seen them glancin’,
To hell with lancin’,
She's sweat, wet,
Got it goin' like a Melta 'Vet.

I'm tired of magazines,
Sayin' fluff-bunnies are the thing,
Take the average blog man and ask him that -
She gotta pack Razorbacks!

So, fellas! (Yeah!) Fellas! (Yeah!)
Has your girlfriend got the ‘back? (Hell yeah!)
Tell 'em to spam it! (Spam it!) Spam it! (Spam it!)
Spam that MSU ‘back!
Baby got ‘backs!

(Demon paint on an ‘ard Boyz booty)
Baby got ‘backs!

I like 'em small, and on wheels,
And when I'm clubbing a seal,
I just can't help myself, I'm actin' like an animal
Now here's my scandal:
I wanna get you home
And ugh, double-up, ugh, ugh
I ain't talkin' bout Comp Score,
'Cause playin’ nice is such a bore,

I want lists tuned, tricked-out and nasty,
So bring that Leaf Blower,
Mix-a-Lot'll knock it over,
Gunnin’ for a place at that top table.
So I'm lookin' at bat-rep videos
Fluff-bunny carebares playin’ like schmoes,
You can have them newbies,
I'll keep my opponents like Kirby,

A word to the WAAC soul players, I wanna get with ya
I won't cuss or hit ya,
But I gotta be straight when I say I wanna *win* -
It’s the way I was born.
‘backs got it goin' on,
A lot of wimps won't like this song,
'Cause them punks like to hit it and quit it,
And I'd rather stay and play,
'Cause I'm long, and I'm strong,
And I'm down to get the RazorSpam on!

So, ladies! {Yeah!} Ladies! {Yeah}
If you wanna roll trip Land Raiders? {Yeah!}
Then turn around! Stick it out!
Even Jervis has to shout
Baby got ‘backs!

Baby got ‘backs!
Yeah, baby ... when it comes to army lists, White Dwarf ain't got nothin',
to do with my selection. Vanilla Captain? Ha ha, only if he’s on a bike.

So your girlfriend rolls a Rhino, lovin’ to not move and fire fro',
But Rhinos sitting still are just time bombs,
My army list don't want none,
Unless you've got guns, hun,
You can do Storm Ravens or Dreadnoughts,
But please don't lose that ‘back.
Some brothers wanna play that "comp" role,
And tell you that the ‘back ain't gold,
So they toss it and leave it,
And I pull up quick to retrieve it.

So BoLS says Sisters 're back,
Well I ain't down with that!
'Cause the ‘dex is small and Faith is stinkin’
But I'm still thinkin' bout switchin’,

To the metal dames in that magazine:
You ain't it, Miss Thing!
Give me plastic, I can't resist it,
Lead and FineCast just miss it!
Some knucklehead tried to dis,
'Cause melta-spam girls are on my list,
He had game but he chose to nerf 'em,
And I roll up quick and table 'im.

So ladies, if the ‘back is around,
And you want a win at all costs throw down,
Dial 1-900-MIXALOT,
And bring them nasty thoughts,

Baby got 'BACKS!

I posted this in the comments on BoLS for some reason, so decided to share it with you all.

I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite blog on the Citadel

2011-08-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

So it appears I forgot to post pics of these guys finished:

Commander Shep Shepard, paragon Earthborn Soldier.

Base model is an Infinity Pan-Oceanea Orc Troop w shotgun. Pity about the shotgun as I mostly use an assault rifle in ME, but no biggy.

Dr. Liara T'Soni

Infinity Alpeh Sophotects with her assault rifle cut down and a bit of greenstuffing to add some more accurate straps and torso armour.

Tali'Zorah vaas Normandy

Infinity Haqqisslam Odalisques, with a rather large amount of modification.

Sisters of Battle WD Codex written by Forge World?

2011-07-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well it is if the leaked scans are any indication - typos, mislabelled pics etc:

Heavy bolter? You sure about that? Don't want to phone a friend?

No pics of new models either, though an almost army wide 6++ save is nice. Inquisitorial units such as crusaders and arcos are in as Ecclesiarchical death-squads, while the Hospitilars and Dialogus are in the Cannoness' command squad.

That's assuming this is a leak and not a very well done fake based on all available rumours.

Mass Effect Minis and a FireZone update

2011-07-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've posted, but I've not been idle - far from it!
With the help of the multi-talented Porky of Porky's Expanse (I'm convinced he's not a person, but some terrible blogging intelligence [seriously, he's a blogging machine, he's posted twice while I've been typing this and faffing around in photoshop]) I've been getting FireZone to a state of near completion.

The rules for artilley, airstrikes and the like are done, as are vehicles (took me a while to get to a point I was happy with the balance of simplicity vs realism) and I'm currently working on buildings, weather and hostile environments.
The environment will be fully interactive, with players able to blow holes in walls (or blow up buildings wholesale), ram cars through shopfronts and create all sorts of mayhem.

The last thing is to write up summary and roster sheets (black text on white for the guys at La Armarda ;p ) as well as write up some army lists. The plan is:

- Expanded Sedition Wars list (more stuff to what it is now)

- Generic list - the forces of the PDRG, E-Com and INV army

- Fallout / Mad Max / post apocalyptica - special rules for ammo and fuel shortages, radiation hotspots and such iconic elements

- Mass Effect - Shepard, Liara, Tali and all the rest...

Oh, there they are! I'll be making most, and hopefully eventually all the crew. Currently I have planned:

Commander Shep Shepard (a Spectre and Alliance N7 Special ops, some things she scans are anomolous but the rest are rocks), Earthborn War Hero Soldier and all 'round alcoholic.

Dr Liara T'Soni
Tali'Zorah vas Normandy
Jacob
Kaiden
Miranda
Kasumi
Garrus
Ashley
Thane

They're all based off of Infinity minis, with some obvious greenstuffing going on. I do want to do the others (Zaeed, Wrex, Kelly, Joker, Anderson, Conrad, Legion, Mordin, EDI) but I'm yet to find suitable base bodies for them. Still, more work yet to do before I get to that point.

Nothing New Under the Sun - pt 2

2011-06-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

Following on from part 1 yesterday, I’ll start off by answering my final rhetorical questions in reverse.

Where did it all go wrong?

Here’s where:

Ok, wrong is probably too strong a word, but Inquisitor was a huge opportunity for both Games Workshop and Warhammer 40k to expand that was missed. For those of you who don’t know it Inquisitor (or =I=) was released in 2001 as a hybrid skirmish RPG game, a narrative combat game, written by Gav Thorpe. It’s tagline was “Everything you’ve been told is a lie” and nominally focussed on the internal wars plaguing the Inquisition.

And the artwork was amazing.

Players controlled only around four or five models, as there was a much more detailed weapon and damage system along with ammo, bleeding and the like involved. It was Necromunda meets D&D.
It’s biggest draw was that instead of playing front line soldiers for the most part, the players took teams (or warbands) of operatives into urban areas, ancient ruins and the like to vie with the other players for dark secrets of the 40k universe.
Players could be Inquisitors, Tech Priests, Assassins, Arbites, Rogue Traders, Astartes, renegades, gunslingers, xenos and anything in between. The series was launched with a line of models (including one of Eisenhorn himself) in 54mm scale…

54mm?

Wait, what?

This, in my opinion, was a HUGE mistake.

1. Most importantly, who has enough terrain to go with 54mm scale models? Nobody aside from the few who play the large scale Old West games, that’s who. It’s large, harder to make and store, and given the narrative nature of the game you really need a lot of it.

2. Characters were as customisable as you could get. Want a Marine twin wielding assault cannons? You can do it. Want a female Inquisitor in carapace armour with an Eldar long-rifle and a plasma pistol? Sure! But I hope you’re good a sculpting as the range is limited…

3. Which leads on to the next point – all metal models means they were pricey, so people were loath to try and convert them as it was a big dollar investment to mess up. Then they stopped making any more designs.

4. While some of the sculpts were great, some were… less good shall we say (they're still available to see on the main GW site). Not bad models by any means, but the sculptors clearly hadn’t got the hang of the scale yet.

Before I continue I need to digress into a quick discussion of GW’s current nemesis, Privateer Press. Those familiar with Warmachine and Hordes know that when you buy a model for your army – that’s who or what it is. Sorcha is always Sorcha. PP had a sister line to WarmaHordes, the Iron Kingdoms series, designed for the RPG of the same name. These miniatures were more based around archetypes of their world, as well as a few characters. However due to the nature of WarmaHordes it was generally not easy to bring the IK minis into the wargame. I haven’t seen PP release a new miniature for the IK line in quite some time now.

Warhammer 40k suffers no such problem. GW as a company encourages “counts as”, parts swapping and making your own characters. Why they didn’t release =I= as a 28mm line still mystifies me. Tau had just come out, and Codex: Witch Hunters was not far off so would have been well into its design phase. They released an army based around the Inquisition and a game based around the Inquisition, but didn’t make them compatible… though they did re-do the Death Cult Assassins and Daemonhosts in 28mm later.
Think of the modelling and gaming possibilities of it had =I= been a 28mm game. New terrain (compatible with 40k, =I= and Necromunda), new models (character models for collectors, customising your HQs in 40k) and so on. It would have enabled them to explore the unlit corners of 40k with new models and units.

There was much discussion at the time of it being a pre-cursor or testbed for a 40k RPG, which as we know didn’t materialise until much later with Dark Heresy (which, as a relevant aside, I’ve seen people discuss which non-GW manufacturers to get models from to represent their characters).

This was, however, in some ways what many consider the darkest days of GW, with the soon to be purging of Specialist Games, the gutting of Codexes and the turn from ‘veterans’ to the younger market. For a variety of reasons I didn’t see / don’t remember much of this period of GW history, partly because I didn’t buy anything GW for a number of years – make of that what you will – but my main point is not directly about corporate policy, though it no doubt directed much of what we are seening now.
The lack of any real miniatures, by which I mean ones not designed entirely for the tabletop, has left GW hugely vulnerable to their competitors and lost a market share (though it may well be a smaller one, it’s still lost).

Warhammer Fantasy is the best illustration for this. People still play Dungeons and Dragons and the like. People need miniatures for it. GW used to make minis for it, and when they stopped doing it officially you could still buy an Orc Warboss blister or a couple of Mummies to represent just that. A while back when I was building my Heroquest set using contemporary miniatures I noticed a funny thing – my hordes of troops were GW but all the characters, the players and enemy bosses, were all from other company’s lines. This wasn’t out of personal preference, but a combination of $ value and availability.

Take the prototypical two main villains – the Lich Lord and Gargoyle. The first I could maybe kitbash with some skeleton parts and an Empire Wizard kit (and have a lot of stuff left over), the second I’d need to use something totally different and still do a lot of work. Or, I could just go to Reaper and get them both for less.

Now, I’m not saying that GW should start making a massive character line to compete with Reaper here, but when their main sci-fi game extols the virtues of a huge and varied universe there’s not many options out there unless you wear Power Armour.

To leave this topic for a moment I’ll head back to a point I raised before – the canning of Specialist Games. I remember going to the opening of the first Games Workshop in Australia, and standing in line for hours to get that much prized Deathwing Terminator boxset. I also remember the wonderment at seeing all the games there – Warhammer, 40k, Space Hulk, Epic, Talisman, Man ‘o’ War, Blood Bowl…
Yes, the ranges are better and bigger now so there obviously isn’t going to be the same amount of shelf space as there was back then, but let me tell you a story of Space Hulk.

When Space Hulk 3rd edition was released there was much rejoicing, and every time I went in there were people playing it, and the stack of box sets they had gradually got smaller and smaller. Then one day the last box was sold and nobody ever played Space Hulk in the store again.
Why? Because of a corporate mandate that unless the game is currently for sale in that store it cannot be played. Battle Bunkers are exempt from this, but not every store is a bunker. The manager explained that it would be unfair for someone to come in, see people playing a game and not be able to buy it.
For a limited edition like Space Hulk I can see the reasoning, but for a game like Epic or Blood Bowl where they can still order the game in to the store? Idiocy.

House of Paincakes recently had an article up discussing the importance of Specialist Games for getting new players involved in the hobby. I know my brother and I played more games of Ultra Marines than Rogue Trader back in the day, and when I went to NaSGuL I usually played Space Hulk or Blood Bowl.
Now, somewhat older and slightly wiser, Specialist Games provide a great thing – an alternate way to get a 40k fix without playing 40k. I can play a couple of missions of Space Hulk in an afternoon, including set up and teardown. Blood Bowl is timed, and Aeronautica Imperialis has limited turns.

We all have ‘off’ days with 40k. Maybe we’ve hit a funk list design, a losing streak’s rocked our confidence, or a game with That Guy’s sapped our enthusiasm. But we still want to play a game. Big Jim has given us Kill Zone, but I don’t rate my chances of getting a game of that in at a GW store. The options are to play anyway, or not play at all.
At a non-GW store the options are much greater… and a lot of them aren’t Games Workshop. WarmaHordes, Infinity, Malifaux, Dystopian Wars, Flames of War, Incursion and so on all beckon to sate the alternate playstyle bug.

Games Workshop’s discarding of both their Specialist Games and non-army based miniatures has come back to bite them, as if you don’t want to play a big game or paint a unit your options are slim. Slim, that is, unless you look anywhere else.

What would I have done / What should GW do?

Obviously I don’t know their corporate strategy, and I’m basing this off my personal opinions not a sound economic foundation here, so this is geared towards that end of the discussion.

Firstly, get in my time machine….
Secondly, put on my robe and wizard hat…
Thirdly, go back to the end of second edition…

Second Edition was, at the end, a bloated, convoluted, time consuming mass.

This is what a game of 2nd ed looked like, but with piles and piles of books everywhere.

It was a skirmish game playing at a full scale battle simulator. It drastically needed an overhaul to remain a viable system, no argument there. I personally would have split the game off into three separate, but interchangeable and fundamentally the same rulesets:

40k: Kill Team – 100 to 400pts – a game more like 2nd ed and Rogue Trader (or Big Jim’s Kill Team), with individual move rates, more variety of weapons and customisation.

40k: Battlezone – 750 to 2500pts – what we know as 40k today. It has issues, but works well for the most part. The main game.

40k: Apocalypse – 3000pts + - same as now.

Necromunda and Inquisitor would have the same scaling to each other, so you could play all the same characters and cross them over between games. The key thing here is that this wouldn’t have any effect on the main game, but would allow new players to get their feet wet more easily with a ruleset designed to be played at pocket money level, and give veterans and backgroundophiles more to chew on.
For releasing the miniatures it would provide not only more stuff for painters, but a constant stream of new units and upgrades to the main game (and give White Dwarf actual content outside the LotR articles). Those who remember the ‘glory days’ of White Dwarf oft recall that instead of the ‘splash releases’ we get now, there was a much more constant stream of units coming out.
As an example when the Razorback first appeared it wasn’t in a new Codex, it was in White Dwarf with some blurb, it’s stats and the new model on the shelf.

With my idea above it would mean that this month there would, for example, be a new model available (limited on shelves that a month, then direct only) the K’ruthian Marksman. It would list his background, show off the model a bit and give stats for Inquisimunda (a deadly underhive mercenary caste on the fringes of the Ultima Segmentum) and 40k stats (recruitable by Radical Inquisitors, Renegade Guard and Chaos Factions as a unit attachment).
Rather than having the meta game changing every couple of months with each new book, there would be a constant flux as new units pop up (and they’re cheap to add with small sizes), so people can try new things without spending huge amounts of money. With a smaller game actually being supported in store it would open up the opportunities for some crazy things like twenty warbands brought in from =I= facing off against a massive Chaos army commanded by the Inquisitor’s arch nemesis in an Apocalypse game!
Sure you could do something like that now, but what’s the bet the generic henchmen would be played by Imperial Guardsmen and the battle wouldn’t have much effect on anyone’s multi-player campaigns?

Games workshop is moving in the right direction with Finecast and the recent Storm of Chaos releases. Finecast gives them a better medium over metal for modelling and converting, while the single character plastics for the sorcerers are fantastic. All they need now is to do the same thing for 40k, and expand upon the offerings (for both games) beyond what is allowed strictly in the main games.
There's no model for a Techpriest, none for a Hrud, an Eldar Mercenary, or even a Rogue Trader. Wouldn't the 40k world and the GW name be enhanced by their making more of the rich background available to play on the table?

I think so.

Nothing New Under the Sun - pt 1

2011-06-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

מַה-שֶּׁהָיָה, הוּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶה, וּמַה-שֶּׁנַּעֲשָׂה, הוּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂה; וְאֵין כָּל-חָדָשׁ, תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ.

That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.

quid est quod fuit ipsum quod futurum est quid est quod factum est ipsum quod fiendum est

What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done.

So it goes that everything repeats itself eventually. While that’s great for philosophers and scholars, for miniature aficionados it’s a bit of a problem. See a company can’t constantly produce the same thing over and over expecting people to buy it ad nauseum. They’ll get sick of it, get ‘enough’, or get distracted by a new shiny thing.
This is why we get periodic re-designs of what are perfectly serviceable models. If people really could put up with just the same old models and designs we’d still have beaky marines, stahlhelm Orks and craxy machinist orang-utans (wait…).

GW periodically redesigns their lines to keep up with new materials and manufacturing procedures (just look at the Dark Eldar here), but in some ways the increasingly iconic nature of their designs is really hampering their long-term prospects.

How is that? Shouldn’t having an icon design (like the Jeep front grill or the Stormtrooper) help them?

In a way it does for brand association (oh hey, it’s a Space Marine, I know them from Dawn of War…) but I’m meaning in terms of retaining and re-energising the interest of more entrenched players. First this requires a slight digression to explain how I see it.

40k’s pull is it’s background and aesthetic. It is not a character driven universe. Sure, it has great characters like Cain, Eisenhorn and the like, but the core is the setting rather than the people in it. This is contrasted by, to use my earlier examples, Jeep which is associated with a lifestyle or image (and aside from a vague stylistic allusion to part of their vehicle for the most part the look is very different overall), and the Stormtrooper who is tied in with the movies, books and comics – character driven devices (though many would argue the depth of character).

I’m also deliberately ignoring the game aspect for the most part as rules development and changes is not an issue (quality is to some, but not that they are changing them). It will come into play later though.

So what we have is 40k is style over substance to a degree. It is a device to sell physical representations of that universe after all, so it’s understandable. However when that stagnates the ‘universe’ stagnates. It’s hard to get excited over a new model when it’s almost identical to the one you currently have. The “she’s got a new hat!” effect only happens rarely.

Quite a makeover they got really.

For me this was most apparent during the Grey Knights release. While most of the focus seemed to be on the rules and their relative levels of broken-ness, the model discussion seemed almost solely to fall on the Dreadknight. Why? Well, he was the only new thing there, and a lot of people hated him.

Sure we got teleporter backpacks, a couple of new guns and the plastic kits were very nice… but they’re the same guys as before with a couple of bits stuck on. Most discussion of the Grey Knight plastics pre-release involved discussion about how their new bolter magazines weren’t right, or how people would have to cut the halberds off their metal dudes to give them swords and the like.
Remember when the Dark Eldar first appeared at Games Day and the forums were flooded with people’s brains exploding at the awesomeness?
The difference was the power of redesign and giving it something new.

How does this relate to 40k being held down by its iconic designs? Well the more entrenched an idea becomes the harder it is to shake. Anyone familiar with Transformers fandom will be well aware of the “Trukk not Munkey!” arguments, now superseded by hating on “Bayformers” or Animated.
For a 40k example imagine the nerdrage if GW introduced female Space Marines, no matter how well done. There’s still that one line some 20 years old that hasn’t been contradicted before and has stood for so long that I’m pretty sure Jervis’ face would melt off Raiders otLA style if he read half the hate mail he’d get.

That said, GW has quite successfully changed a large number of their designs quite successfully – and I don’t mean an update like the Dark Eldar – I mean a redesign like the appearance of the brick style Dreadnought at the beginning of 2nd ed, the new Land Raider, replacing mk6 with mk7, the aforementioned Grey Knights and more recently the Dark Eldar Scourges and Haemonculus coven units.

This look isn't new, it's the plastic 2nd ed Epic design.

But why is this change important?

GW is in trouble at the moment. Price rises and increasing (and increasingly aggressive) competition in an unfriendly economic climate mean they’re competing in a tough market for limited funds. He who has the best product at any one time will get the dollar. This is doubly true for those of us whose primary interest is in painting and modelling over playing - I’m not going to buy a GW miniature out of loyalty when a Dark Sword, Red Box, Studio McVey, Maow, Infinity, Wyrd, Soda Pop, Hasslefree, Privateer Press, Reaper, GOT, Heresy, Scibor, Micro-Art or any other of a dozen manufacturer’s minis will do just as well.

By this I mean the last GW models I bought were the Scourges, before them the Forge World Corsairs, before them the Dark Eldar when they came out and before that…. Um I think it was probably Marines to continue building by Company. It’s honestly been quite a while since I’ve picked up a GW miniature on a whim because it was too cool to pass up. Most of their designs are many, many years old so unless I want something specific there’s no need to go in and check things out. I’ve bought quite a few character minis, yes, but they were for projects such as needing to finish an army or the like.

GW, despite claiming to make the best miniatures in the world, is not the miniature lover’s miniature company anymore. It all seems very much same ol’ same ol’ down at the design pits at Nottingham. Is all hope lost? Is there a future? Where did it all go wrong/miss big?

More on that tomorrow, but for now: No, yes and let’s just say that everything I’ve just said is a lie.

Edit: Part 2 is up here.

I live! and a (not so) short story

2011-06-03T13:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still here.

New computer (old one is almost kaput), probably getting glasses in the next couple of days (vision not so good all of a sudden, so no painting or the like).

Still, in 40k type news the folks over at the Astronomicon have finally gotten around to getting the story I wrote judged. If you're thinking I'm sounding rather bitter here keep in mind we still don't have the results, and the judging has gone on for longer than the contest itself ran for...

But, as the results are finalised (though not yet published...) I'm free to direct you to my story, titled Blinded Eyes Do See.

The theme is about unsung heroes, and you can view all the entries here.

Here are a couple of exerpts from my story (it's first person PoV from an [extremely cynical and bitter] Astropath):

++

It was only a few minutes before the rumble of engines reached us through the wind, growling low and threatening. Shadowy figures darted in and out of the inky mist at the edge of my awareness, technicians and labourers scrambling in last minute anticipation (or apprehension). Nerves were on edge for everybody, word must have gotten around.

Maybe the ship’s got a fifty foot long banner proclaiming “an Inquisitor has come to judge you all” and everyone but me’s seen it and started panicking.

Stopping my thoughts I cracked my jaw out – I’d been clenching it and grinding my teeth unknowingly.

I need to get out less. If I wanted fresh air I’d open a window.

“You don’t have to be possessed to work here, but it helps.”

++

Do you have to grow a moustache to get promoted, or do they only promote guys with them already? Maybe that’s why you hardly see any female Administrators? That and the inability of a bald woman to pull off a totally convincing comb-over probably doesn’t help either.

++

It's got romance! Action! Sarcasm! Bureuocracy! Gambling! Car chases! Accurate Tarot! Paperwork! Fashion! Pun names! Thinly veiled parodies of people I know! There are even some Eldar in there somewhere!

Blinded Eyes Do See - read it now!

Hello Cathy, Maow Minis

2011-05-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

Finished painting up Hello Cathy from Maow minis, mounted on a Studio McVey base with a Tamia 1/35th Tommy Gun:

She's an addition to my FireZone collection of various sci-fi minis mounted on the McVey bases.

More Forge World Corsairs

2011-05-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Here they are, dramatically lit (for the Antipope ;p ) I've still got to do wings for the rest of them (though they are painted), but it's a very fiddly and time consuming task to cut them out evenly and accurately so progress is slow (and I've got a cold).

Still, very pleased with how they're looking, and the bases are very sharp.

A Farseer, naming the TRONdar and some Haiku.

2011-05-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

I've just about finished my TRONdar's HQ, a Farseer:

You'll note I took the top of her staff off and replaced it, as well as the base which is made from black acrylic (via Litko) so it's super gloss. I'll be basing all the infantry this way, and the walkers on clear.

This leads in to the naming, both of the Phantom and her Craftworld.

Using Tolkien's Quenya dictionary I came up with Turonndor, roughly meaning "Kings/rulers of the Stone Land". Some of the word compounding is probably not quite right, but it's a good base for 40k anyway.

Now, rendering it in different (using TengScribe) ways nets some slightly different results:

These are, from top to bottom: Turonndor, Turondor, Tur on ndor and Tur Onndor. Personally, I like the shorter Turondor, even though it drops an 'n'.

The Phantom herself is Cehtelë-ráma, Hecilë var Tamin – Fountain-wing, Forsaken of the Forge:

Bit more complicated, but I'm not going to need to use it more than once.

Also, since I haven't done much painting (it's rather cold here - I'm wearing an ushanka as I type this), here are some Phantom / Apocalypse inspired Haiku:

Field of tears and pain,
No end to this life of grief,
Big can o' whoop-ass.

So many points spent,
To field the mighty Phantom,
Shame about the save.

Pulsar and cannon,
Reach out far to destroy foes,
Missiles only 48".

Weeks building, painting,
Ready for mega battle,
F-ing melta vets.

Necrons advance slowly,
C'tan no problem today,
10" blast = phase-out.

Enemy rent asunder,
Objective still lost this day,
Should have brought some troops.

Got a 40k Haiku of your own? Leave it in the comments!

Phantom Titan build pt 8: Painting (ii)

2011-05-10T08:22:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update with some more shading and detailing. I've also used 'ard coat on a number of areas to give a different texture. I've still got to go over her and ink the armour lines and finish the base, but otherwise she's almost done.

Painting minis to match the TRON colour scheme is quite a challenge as there are no metallics or other colours - it's various shades of black. Still, it's an enjyable challenge as it's forcing me to think about my painting rather than do the stock standard I normally would.

TRONsair, using the FW Corsair kit

2011-05-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

Made using the Forge World Corsair kit, Dark Eldar Warrior sprue, Guardian sprue and the cover of a document folder, styled after these guys:

Close enough.

It was a simple matter of cutting out the vanes from the wings, attaching the struts to the model, painting the model, then gluing in the plastic.

The struts needed to be heated and bent down as the glue was put on so they stuck, as they are naturally curved. I didn't fancy my chances of cutting the plastic to match the curve.

The plastic also has a nice rough (but fine) texture to it, so it matches the pattern from the movie - kinda. I tried experimenting with inks and such to bring the pattern out, but to no avail. Still, it's a very good effect for $2.

I am a "Stylish" Blogger

2011-05-06T10:04:00.000-07:00

The Antipope over at the 122nd Cadian nominated me for a Stylish Blogger award, though apparently I'm "not extremely stylish per se"... I greatly dispute that, being a seriously stylish dude ;)

But, joking aside (yes, that was a joke), it is rather flattering to be awarded kudos :) Anyways, Things I need to do now:

The rules;

1. Thank and link back to the person giving you the award

2. Share seven things about yourself

3. Select 10-15 blogs who you think deserve this award

4. Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.

Seven Things about me:

1. I've been collecting Marines and Titans for over twenty years now, starting with the Adeptus Titanics box of six titans and the RTB01 set.
2. I have too much stuff - recently I found a Battlewagon I'd forgot I owened, lost two Blood Bowl teams, and misplaced my Forge World Amon Sul set.
3.Aside from wargames stuff I also have far too many DVDs - around 500 last count, most of them terrible movies like Ice Pirates, Future Cop and the like.
4. I know all the words to Ice Ice Baby, U Can't Touch This, Baby Got Back, Bust A Move and Boom Shake the Room.
5. I've never won a game of Apocalypse (though I have drawn). This is because when I bring my Titans I generally can't be bothered bringing anything else, so while my enemies may be destroyed my objectives are still unclaimed.
6. I own five sets of Space Hulk, but have only painted five genestealers - the rest live in an ice-cream container.
7. I've travelled widely internationally (ten countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas), but only went to another state in Australia a couple of years ago.

Due to the circular nature of this thing many the blogs I'd consider nominating as a short list have been nominated already, so I'm going to do some shout-outs of a few blogs that I've picked up on recently and why:

Farseer Fail - I like Fonkin's writing style and philosophy match mine to a degree, very much relaxed about how serious it all is, but still going in depth.

Bellum Ex Machina - beautiful conversions and sculpting, his work on the AoBR set is most excellent.

Colonel Shofer's Mild OCD Model Blog - Aside from his own projects, the Colonel scours the interwebs and posts up anything cool, weird or a combination of the two - it's like a Top Ten and new release guide every day.

Digital Waaagh - not only Orks (including 5th ed rules for old units like Madboyz), but there is Feature Friday - currently headlined by interviews with Gav Thorpe and Andy Chambers amongst others. Not only are they the big names, but Auberoun asks some good questions that get some new answers.

Of Wolf and Raven - Despite the title it's not all Wolves. There are some mind blowingly crisp Eldar up at the moment.

Riders of the Cosmic Serpent - Dedicated to Siamm-Hann, you'll be jealous of KBelleau's massive airforce and ability to paint red.

Miniature Review - Reviews of miniatures.

Spirestone Wastes - A wide variety of projects, the noise marine WiP and starship interior projects are most inspiring.

Tabletop Fix - Similar to Mini Review and Col. Shofer's OCD, it is a miniature and tabletop news feed.

Wolves for the Wolf God - with a title like that, and authored by Skarvald the Troll-faced, how could I not? Besides, the writing style is very engaging and entertaining (and awesome ;) ).

Gaming all Areas - Nice in-depth thought on a variety of topics from board size to why LotR is a great game (and it is).

Hungry Ghost's Chaos Squats of Khorne - not only is it a blog about chaos squats, it features an exactinglly detailed timeline of the Homo Sapiens Rotundus through every White Dwarf and Citadel Journal.

Statues of War - Marcin's blog is only just starting, but his first post is a good one about the perils of perfectionism (titled "the perils of perfectionism" would you believe?). Looking forward to more.

Worlds Unimagined - reviews and discussion of sc-fi literature, including a great discussion of dystopias vs crapsack worlds (link to TV Tropes - kiss the rest of your night goodbye!).

Future War Stories - Discussion on military sci-fi, its realism and that sort of thing. Lots of good links too.

Dungeons and Drawings - Re-imagined D&D monster types by Blanca Martinez and Joe Sparrow.

Writing in the Crosshairs - Roland Yeoman's blog is oft strange and off the wall, but always insightful, inspiring and educational.

And to close out this rather long list:

The 512th Cadian - Menzies Tank may not update as often as he used to, but his battle reports are still the best out there.

Phantom Titan build pt 8: Painting (i)

2011-05-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

More like PhanTRON.

Obviously it took a couple of steps to get to this bit, but it's a good opening pic. First thing was to set up a spray booth, a much more significant effort for something the size of the Phantom.

Second step was to re-coat her with Chaos Black using the airbrush. Why the re-spray when I'd already based her? Firstly there were still some small spots that were missed, such as between the fingers, and the Chaos Black spray is matt, while the stuff from the pot has a slight gloss to it, and if I need to touch up with a brush it'll stand out much more.

After the black coat is finished I used Charadon Granite in the airbrush to lay down some bulk highlighting:

I chose Charadon as it has the slight greenish tint to it, avoiding the model looking too flat and lifeless (being a giant block of black and all). I applied a black wash to some areas after the Charadon had dried to give a slight change in tone to some areas.

Then the fun of taping out the lines:

This took around 45 minutes to complete. Where possible I used references such as the lines in the armour or ridges as a reference to keep symetry.
The lines were sprayed in white and then Spaz Stix Fireball Orange:

The glow effect was achieved after the tape had been removed by spraying orange lightly around the areas.

But before I could do that I had a near disaster, as quite a few sections had paint come away, as can be seen in the picture above (note the right thigh and rear of the helm). At first I grumbled a bit and assumed it was just loose and peeled off. Unfortunately, I discovered this was not the case.

The sections missing paint were oily in the extreme.

Obviously this was a big problem. Now it was likely not due to mould release grease as I had most definately cleaned the parts thoroughly. It was likely due to an unfortunate side effect of resin's makeup. Resin is a two part mix, much like greenstuff - only liquid, and sometimes it doesn't get mixed evenly. This leads to the resin seeming cured, but still being in a semi-set state bleeding the excess compound.
There was a great article discussing it a few weeks ago but I couldn't find it - long story short there's nothing to be done about it save keeping fingers crossed that it sets soon and doesn't do any more damage.

This is of course worrying for the next stage of painting where I'll be detailing and highlighting by hand, so any bad spots could get stripped by an errant brushstroke.

To ease that worry I was fortunate enough to pick up my vintage Nausicaa poster (original release, mint [not even blu-tac marks or pin holes]) from the framers today, so she's now hung on the wall next to me.

Next up: More painting, or a whole lot of swearing if it all goes wrong. I may do an interlude on naming the Phantom as it will take some time to have enough done to be worth posting.

Phantom Titan build pt 7: Helm & Steersman.

2011-05-04T11:12:00.000-07:00

Due to the pose I'm using the head/cockpit/helm/bridge/noggin is turned to the left. This means that despite being hinged the outer casing wouldn't be able to open.
My initial thought was to magnetise the neck joit so when I wanted to open the head I could turn it and operate the mechanism. My second thought was to not bother and just take it off to reduce the amount of movement and wear.

So I haven't assembled any of the hinge mechanism aside from the pins on the cowling, as they are aesthetic as well as functional. However, if I were to assemble the mechanism I'd replace the hinge mechanism with something more durable than resin, such as brass or acrylic rod and a metal ring.

Instead of doing that, I decided to customise the steersman, and in keeping with the TRON theme of the titan I chose to model the pilot on Quorra:

First step was to remove the previous occupant. I used my dremel with the large engraving tip, which made short work of his head. After that I removed his spirit stone and part of his shoulder strap thingy.
I selected a Hasslefree head, and mounted it on a pin, drilling a corresponding hole in the neck:

After getting a good fit I removed the head and, holding it in my pin vice, sculpted the hair on. I was careful to keep the asymetrical cut (it's longer on the left, most noticable on the fringe) and when I was happy added a neck and glued it in.
Then I did the basics of the chest armour and shoulder strap:

I made a fairly obvious mistake here: I didn't prime the head before fitting it, so couldn't get to the back of it to paint the hair (d'oh!). Luckily she's got black hair, so it was an easy fix, but it could have been very bad.
Brain farts aside, I finished up the armour and added a spirit stone:

Painting:

The blue lines need to be lightened more (they are closer to a whiteish aqua in the movie than pure blue), but I'm having trouble sourcing the white paint I need and as it's a lethal alcohol based paint I can't just mix with acrylics. It's not a big deal (yet) as she looks ok, and it is easy enough to go back over the lines at a later date.

I added a HUD made out of a blister pack cut to fit, painted with Spaz Stix neon paint, and glued it to the dashboard, which was stuck in place:

The (kinda) finished cockpit:

Next up: Painting!

Phantom Titan build pt 6: Arms, Shoulders and Accessories

2011-05-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

The arms, or more specifically the shoulders, gave me more trouble here than the entirety of the rest of the build. But first, I started with the elbows.
They came together in almost the same way as the knee joints, including the slightly annoying void space in the joint, though this time there was not too much of it. This is due to the elbows being designed to fit together with the arm bending at 90 degrees with very limited varience from that pose.

Of course, I'm not doing anything that simple. While the left arm will be bent, the right will be almost pointing straight downwards. There were two major areas that would cause problems:

1) The kit isn't designed to be posed this way - some work woul dbe required to make it work (no problem).

2) Due to the limited surface areas pinning will be a problem. Unlike the knee joints the gun wil be hanging free, so any pin will have to anchor the gun to the elbow in such a way to prevent it falling off. This will be a very high stress joint (also prone to being knocked), so this was more of a problem.

Unlike the knees, which were the size of a standard infantry figure, the elbows were much slighter, and they were fitting into smaller sections. As you can see above I opted to go into the gun first and then the elbow. To compensate for the change in posture I came up with a simple, yet timeless solution: big wad of greenstuff.

The left gun arm, being mounted in the manufacturer's recommended position, was an easier affair. All I had to do was fit a pin horizontally into the elbow.

Both upper arms were pinned diagonally down into the elbow, drilling down from the seam line on the upper arm. Where I drilled is visible on the picture marking the pinning positions below. I considered putting a small pin through the elbow, like a hinge, but decided against it as I was worried it would be putting too many holes in the material to make it worth while.

Next came trying to get the arms attached to the shoulders. The plan was simple:

- Glue outer and inner shoulders together.
- Place in position on torso.
- Drill hole into torso through shoulder socket.
- Tack upper arm in place with spot of superglue.
- Drill through reverse of shoulder into upper arm.
- Pin in place.
- Congratulate self on job well done.

Yeah... not so much.

I ended up taking two more attempts... and used the first hole anyways.

The problem with my plan is that, unfortunately, the design of the shoulders is really, really, really bad.

This isn't something I say lightly - I first noticed it when I was looking over the instructions and test fitting the pieces after cleaning, and was unfortunately correct on. The problem is the way the layered shoulder guards fit together in relationship to the way the arm and torso attach.

The outer shoulder fits around an extended ring on the torso, with a fairly small contact area. The inner shoulder clips into the outer, joining solidly at the base, but by a 3mm tab at the top. The upper arm has a ball that cups in the inner shoulder.

So the entire arm assembly is effectively being held by a 3mm wide, 2mm tall tab of resin. This is not good:

It also creates a problem as there is a large void space between the shoulders and torso, so trying to get a pin to line up between them is a right royal pain - not to mention everything is at odd angles, curved or underhanging the shoulder guards.

It would have been much better to have the torso rings extend out further for the upper arm to connect to directly, and have the inner shoulder join in the same way but be hollow.

In any case, the right arm had four attempts at drilling a hole that lined up correctly and allowed the outer shoulder to join on straight, while the left has a pin bent in a slight zig-zag...

There quite possibly was some way of doing things by packing out the cavity with greenstuff but where the other places I've done that have been due to my choice of pose of wanting to be sure of stability, this just seems like a big design oversight.

Pin positions.

Still, before the arms go on, some other parts need to be attached to make sure they're not going to clash - and before they go on they are undercoated.

The gun barrels are also fixed on at this point. I didn't pin them as I would rather they break off if hit than they take the whole shoulder out (I'm a bit paranoid about them). The gun's hoses and fins are glued in place.

The large shoulder guard mounting rings need to be put on now, as they can't be attached after the shoulders go on. The missiles, small wings and various decorative plates are also stuck on here.

Once they are all in place I fixed the arms on, with much cursing, but they seem stable enough now.

You may notice in the pic above the shoulder scatter laser is pointing a fair degree upwards. This is due to my failure to check the angle the missiles mounted on the torso when I fitted the magnet. It wouldn't be too hard to correct had I discovered it before I glued the missiles to the torso, but too late now.
Luckily it's under the AA missile pod, so it works ok.

Next up: The helm and converting the steersman

Phantom Titan build pt5: Torso and Mounting to the Base

2011-04-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

First step in the torso assembly is to pre-paint some of the parts. This isn't detailed work by any stretch of the word, but undercoating the sections that will overlap. This is becase some areas may not be accessable to paint at a later date, but will still be visible from certain angles, and having grey show through would not be a good look.
As the Phantom's base colour will be black I'm just using Chaos Black spray, but if it were to be a different shade or colour I'd use that instead.

Through a combination of dry-fitting and reading the instructions it is fairly easy to determine where the most likely problem areas will be.
It is not enough to simply spray the part in question in total as the coat of paint will prevent the glue sticking the parts together as well. To combat this I use painter's tape to mask off the areas where the parts will join before spraying:

The parts are the then sprayed, leaving clean sections for gluing:

While they dry it is time to mount the Phantom to her base. I'm doing this now as with the addition of the wings she's going to be extremely back heavy, so for work to continue she needs to be able to stand. It's also better to mount the model now before it becomes too unweildy, fragile or heavy.

I'm using 2.3 x 50mm nails for the heels, and 1.8 x 40mm nails at the toes. The base is made from two pieces of 3mm acrylic sheet glued together. They are effectively laminated to each other by copious quantities of glue (and left overnight under a stack of Imperial Armour books and a bench grinder), so are very rigid.

The pins are drilled, the toe holes being cut at an angle to go through the outer toe into the inner section, to give the maximum depth of penetration.

Once I was happy with the depth and angle I glued the pins in place and left to set for a moment, before beginning the pinning of the torso.

To start with I positioned the lower torso where I wanted it, and drilled a hole down through it (holding it in a clamp), and a matching hole into the waist. I'm using the same 2.3 x 50mm nails as before, and they are long enough to go into the waist, through the lower torso and out again, so there was no need to pre-drill of mark the holes.

The next step was to hold the lower torso and centre torso in the position I wanted them, and push the nail through the hole from the bottom. This left a mark on the bottom of the centre torso, showing where the pin would connect the two parts. It was only a join of a couple of mm, but enough to hold the parts in position to each other.

I then drilled a hole through the centre torso into the lower torso deep enough that it left about half the pin still protruding. Repeating the method of holding the loose centre and upper pieces by hand I marked teh upper piece and drilled it.
The centre and upper pieces are both fairly shallow, so the pin extends upwards into the neck slightly, but is still firmly mounted in the lower section.

It is important to note that nothing has been glued yet - I still have the freedom to change anything if I so wish, as once the glue goes on the model is not going to come apart without some serious destruction.

That said, I was happy with how the pose looked, so as the first step of gluing the stomach plate was affixe to the lower torso and the lower torso to the waist.

Next up I simultaneously put the centre and upper torso parts in place due to their interconnectivity.

After they were dry, I put two more pins in, one in the lower torso into the waist and one in the centre torso, both going front to back. This was just for a little more stability and security, as more is certainly better than less.

Pins shown in red - Marcin's idea of armature must have buried itself in my brain.

As a point of interest I affixed the large wings before mounting the upper torso. I did this purely to give me a better feel for the model's final pose, so I wouldn't say it's purely personal preference if they go on before or after torso assembly

One very important step I performed here was to get out the vacuum and go over the model and work area to remove the dust. There was far, far too much to simply brush off and since some of the next steps involve more pre-painting getting her clean was important.

Here she is posing with a dry-fitted shoulder assembly, missiles and noggin (which will be the next areas worked on):

Phantom Titan build pt4: Legs, Hips and Waist

2011-04-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

Continuing the upwards climb it was time to start on the legs. As I'm posing her in a "sort of a half turning back as it fires thing" both feet will be on the ground. This has advantages and disadvantages:

Pros:
- Stability
- Less stress on one side's joints

Cons:
- Can end up a more staid, boring model
- PITA to get the whole thing lining up right and stay level.

That second con is the big one. If I'm going to have both feet firmly on the ground (or at least close enough) the whole leg assembly needs to be put together very precisely. Unfortunately that is rather challenging due to the models very flexible design.

To try and overcome this I formulated a plan: get the whole right leg into position, then carefully build the right one from that. With lots of dry fitting and wishing I had Dr Octopus arms I arrived at the pose. Marking the postion of the pieces with a sharpie I began at the right ankle, pinning it in place (using The Inner Geek's greenstuff marker method). After that I put the knee into position.

Mounting the upper leg to the knee joint was looking problematic. To allow the full range of motion the upper leg has a large void space where the knee piece can slide into. Problem is that this gives a very small contact area and not much to pin into.

To solve this I put a pin in the knee thusly:

On the inside of the upper leg I put a corresponding hole and placed a wad of greenstuff around it, so the joint is braced more heavily:

...but I digress...

I now had one fully built leg:

And since I've been asked about it, this is how I left it to dry:

To continue the build the right hip and waist were glued into position, and then pinned in place. I simply eyeballed their position, setting them level with the leg turned out slightly.

Once this dried enough I was able to dry fit the left leg assembly so the model stood standing. Gripping the hip in place (being very careful) I drilled pin guide holes into the waist:

This gave me the correct position to glue the hip piece in, then I did the same on the upper leg. To make sure the lower leg correctly mated up with the foot and upper leg I fixed the knee in place to the lower leg first, before gluing both remaining joints simultaneously.
Doing it this way allowed me to wiggle the parts a little to ensure the feet remained flat on the ground.

"But wait - how could you move the parts? didn't you pin the joints?" I hear you ask.

No, these two joints I pinned after the fact, the knee from the back and through the kneecap, and the ankle on the side and rear.

Now the main structure was set I added an extra pin to the right knee, through the kneepad, and vertically at the waist. Pinning the joints on two axes inhibits the motion on all three. So for instance the first pins on the waist (running front to back) wouldn't have stopped the legs splaying out to the side, but the ones going up/down compensate for that.

Rought position of pins shown in red:

Next up: Torso and pre-painting (dry fit shown below)

Phantom Titan build pt3: Feet

2011-04-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

So begins the first part of the structural build. My weapon of choice for gluing the main sections is Araldite, a two part epoxy. I use the 5 minute quick dry version for obvious reasons.

For the assembly I glued all the parts save the heel and heel connector together before pinning. This allowed me to get the parts into the correct position without worrying about lining up holes, as the unit had to prettymuch be put together all at once due to the way the plates overlap.

After the glue had dried I got the dremel out and drilled holes into the foot module as deep as was possible. I'm using nails as my pins - they are strong, not too thick, and can be hammered in easily if they need to go that extra millimetre. It was not always possible to drill the complete depth of the nail, so it needed to be cut short.
To make sure I was cutting the correct depth I inserted the nail, marked it with a sharpie as seen below, and used that as a guide for where to cut.

The hole is due to an air bubble

Zap-a-Gap was dripped into the hole and the shortened nail inserted in place. As I mentioned before if needed they could be gently tapped a little deeper so they ended up flush with the kit.

These are the main points of connection for the foot, though the front ankle plate also connects to the toe ball.

Each foot module has five pins in it, following the red lines save the heel ones, as the heel will be pinned into the base. The top of the ankle will be pinned into the lower legs when they are constructed.

The feet are the most complex area of any Titan kit, with the largest concerntration of variably positioned parts and the greatest number of components. They are also vitally important as the positioning of the feet will play a large part in the final pose of the model.
If not familiar with a kit such as this it would probably be best to start on another section first. Luckily for anyone contemplating an Imperial Titan the feet are, while more fiddly, easier to pose due to having a sturdy foot plate everything attaches to.

Next up - Legs and hips.

Phantom Titan build pt2: Magnetising the Tertiary Guns

2011-04-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

The Phantom kit comes with a Pulse Laser and Long-barreled Star Cannon designed to be mounted under the AA Missile Launcher on the left shoulder. Obviously if you glue one in you can only ever use that one, so I decided to magentise the socket and make some more options.

The first step is selecting a magnet - I'm using 1/8th inch neodyium ("rare earth") magnets sourced from MagLab. Non-Australians can just google suppliers I'm sure.
These magnets are very strong for their size, and fairly inexpensive (20c each) for the utility they provide.

Second step is to mount the magnets. I begin by drilling a small indent in the shoulder mount socket, as this is the universal acceptor, so it doesn't have to match anything. Picking a spot roughly in the centre I made the indent around half the depth of the magnet.
The magenet is glued in place using Zap-a-Gap, and greenstuff packed around the edges of the magnet, flsuh with the top.

Next is mounting the magnet on the weapons. The key here is that the weapon magnet has to...

1) meet up with the socket magnet accurately

2) stay attached and not come out

3) have the right polarity (be the right way around)

How I do it is similar to how I pin joints, a method I learned at The Inner Geek, using greenstuff (or blu-tac).
Taking the weapon magnet I drop it in the socket, so it sticks to the acceptor magnet already fixed in place. I then take a blob of greenstuff and place it on the end of the weapon (as a side note I cut the back of the ball mount flat to give a little wiggle room).

Next, I wet the greenstuff to prevent it sticking in the socket, and push it in at the desired angle before pulling it out again, showing the impression of the two magnets thusly:

A small indent it drilled, using the imprint as a guide. The weapon magnet is then removed (being very careful to retain the correct polarity), and glued into the green-stuff bed. Repeat as many times as necessary.

The Shuriken Cannon and Scatter Laser are taken from the Guardian heavy weapons sprue, with the backs cut off. I didn't mount the Missile Launcher or Bright Lance as the Phantom is neither lacking in missiles or anti-tank.

Up next - Foot assembly.

Phantom Titan build pt1: Preparation (ii) - trimming & dry fitting

2011-04-22T11:26:00.000-07:00

The next step after inventory and cleaning is to trim the parts of flash and mould lines, and make sure everything fits together properly.

It is important to study the instructions beforehand to get a feel for how everything fits together before you start cutting. In the picture below it is not immediately obvious where the flash ends and a plug starts (or if there even is one).
Nothing is worse than making a cut then realising you just chopped off a vital connector. Taking a little extra time to be sure the first time will save a lot of time if you don't and make a mistake.

Also pictured are some of the tools I use. The clippers and knives people will be already familiar with, but the saw (known as a razor saw or jeweller's saw) is not a common item for some. It is useful for cutting thick sections that a dremel can't reach, or where a power tool would be too rough.
The flash above, for instance, is so thick and bulky that maneuvering the dremel in place is quite a juggling act.

In addition to the tools above I use a number of files and sandpapers:

I use the files to even out, and the (very fine grit) sandpaper to smooth out. Even with these it may be necessary to use some putty to smooth over any seams.

Another useful piece of equipment is a clamp.

This is a dremel clamp, and can be used to mount a rotary tool. It features a ball jointed base and rubber padded clamps. The moveable base is valuable in that I can easily rotate the parts about for better access, while the padded clamps prevent damage to the soft resin.

Before starting I sort the pieces into 'types', usually bits that go together during construction.

Click for larger.

Before cutting I check each piece against the instructions to see how it interacts with other parts, and test fit them together. Usually there will only be a small, obvious amount of flash that needs to be cut away for a smooth fit. Unfortunately there is sometimes a large amount of flash bonded with important connectors.

The knee joints of the Phantom have a guide peg on them that fits into a groove in the shin, keeping them straight. Without test fitting it would not be immediately obvious what the peg is, and it could be mistaken for flash and accidentally removed.
The test fitting will also show if anything needs to be reshaped to fit. For example, one of the Phantom's foot plates needs to be widened to allow the heel plate to fit under it.

Dry fitting the parts together also gives an insight into how the model will need to be assembled to allow for painting, showing points that will overlap or restrict access to other sections (or parts that will become totally hidden).

All this took around six hours, for 68 parts. It may seem like a long time but it is vital groundwork that can cause serious delays later in the construction.

Next up: Magnetising the tertiary weapons.

Phantom Titan build pt1: Preparation (i) - cleaning

2011-04-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

Here begins the chronicalling of my Phantom Titan build. I'll be detailing it step by step as the weeks go by, from the very early stages to the finished piece. Hopefully this will not only prove useful to anyone else considering a Phantom, but to other builders of Titans or Forge World kits.

The first step is to sort and clean all the parts. The instructions come with a numbered diagram of the parts - actually the body comes with an inventory, the weapon arms do not, so I must assume all the parts are present.
That said, the first step is to sorty the pieces and check them off against the list, also checking for any serious defects such as missing plugs or major warpage. I found none, much ot my relief.

I also trim any large bits of flash, though some are so large to require the use of a dremel (such as the D-Cannon's barrel above), so I leave them for now. Similarly and small pieces, such as tassels, view screens and the like are left on their tree so they don't go missing in the next stage.

The actual cleaning is done by running hot water into the sink with plenty of detergent. The bits are then dumped in and left to soak. I left them for around ten minutes before coming back. Pulling them out I went over them with an electric toothbrush, scrubbing out the recesses particularly, befre rinsing them under running water to wash off the soap residue.

This is a vitally important step. Resin must be cleaned thoroughly to remove any traces of the mould release agent, or paint will not adhere properly to it and that would be very bad to discover right at the end of the project.
I had a few parts come out a little greasy still, so I washed the whole lot a second time (yes, all of it - taking no chances). Seems to have done the trick.

There will be some leftover resin trimmings:

Next up, cleaning the parts and dry-fitting.

---

Also been working on the rest of my Trondar, with the aim of getting them ready for Armies on Parade in September, and with any luck on to Games Day Sydney (which I will be attending, woot!).

Converted up a female Farseer to lead the mob:

Dark Eldar head, and removed from her scenic base. It was easier to chop off her feet and attach new ones from the guardian sprues than to try to salvage her originals.

I kept the wraithbone breastplate simple for two reasons:

1) I'm going to have it glowing so I decided to make it bold to stand out.
2) It's easier to sculpt that way.

One side effect of her new feet is she's now really tall - as in a head taller than everyone else:

Works well for the HQ, I think.

And here's a finished Banshee, with neon paint applied:

Unfortunately it doesn't show as well here as in person, but I'm very happy with the results.

Safety Gear - dremel and airbrushing

2011-04-18T09:01:00.001-07:00

The neon paints I'm using for my Trondar project are highly toxic - they have a warning that they contain chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects. Said paint will be applied to resin minis for the most part (and some old lead ones), so more toxicity there.

So here's what I've got to protect myself:

1) Respirator - it is rated for both particles (resin dust) and fumes, so does double duty. I also wear it when drilling metal minis as it's probably best to not be breathing that in either.

1.b) Fan (not pictured) - If I'm working indoors, such as applying the neon paint to minis with a brush rather than an airbrush, ventilation is important. I keep a fan on to make sure there is circulation as only a few minutes with the lid off (and using thinner to clean brushes) will fill the room up with fumes.

2) Goggles - as I'm using power tools it's a no-brainer. Even when I'm only drilling a pin hole it's better safe than sorry.
They're not bad for using on the paint either as they stop the fumes irritating my eyes as much.

3) Gloves - I only wear the left one when dremeling (ah-heee hee!) so that in the event of a slip or breakage my fingers are slightly more protected. I keep the right free so that I maintain maximum dextereity with the tool.
I might get a pair of box handlers gloves, which are like the ones above but the thumb, index and middle fingers are missing.

They've already proved useful when this happened:

So instead of it shearing off into my hand, it bounced off the glove. Similarly I always wear long sleeves (and shoes if standing).

A bit of an investment, about $80 all up, but well worth it.

Final tip - make sure to mention to anyone else in the house you'll be wearing the gear, as you look like a serial killer with it all on (especially with a black jacket and pants).

Another good investment is the chuck attachment:

Some models come with this standard, but the cordless doesn't. It's much better than swapping out the collets and it can also close up enough to grip tiny drill bits, like the 0.6mm one above - perfect for pinning minis.

Arena of Death – Phantom vs Warlord

2011-04-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

Gleefully ripping off from Claws and Fist’s series of the same name I present a deathmatch between the pride of the Craftwords, the sleek and shiny Phantom Titan, and the mainstay of the Adeptus Mechanicus Collegia Titanica’s Divisio Militaris, the mighty Warlord Titan.
Both are equal points, the dice rolls are real, the results are written down as they happen.

Rules

The Warlord will have a standardised layout for each match:

1 x Quake Cannon
1 x Lasblaster
1 x Twin Turbolaser
1 x Apoc Missile Launcher

This is by no means the strongest, but is a good, balanced layout. The Phantom will be used with different weapon combos for effect.

Round 1 – Warlord Goes First

The Warlord fires all its guns, the AML hitting with all shots automatically due to the Phantom’s footprint, and the other weapons all scoring hits.
Armour penetration is rolled, with the AML scoring a glance, and the Quake Cannon two pens. The five turbolaser shots auto penetrate.

Saves are rolled:

Stationary Phantom (5++): Saves one QKC hit and one turbolaser. This gives it one glance and five penetrating hits (four with a +1 on the damage chart).

Moving Phantom (4++): I only managed to improve the roll by a second save against the turbolasers, not too much of an improvement.

Damage

Stationary – Gun Crew Stunned (saved), Driver Stunned, Drive Damaged, Weapon Destroyed x 2 (one saved), Structural Damage

Moving - Driver Stunned x 2, Structural Damage, Chain Reaction! X2 = Driver Stunned x2

The Warlord packed a hefty punch, doing a large amount of damage in a single salvo. Next turn the Phantom will be severely weakenedHardly surprising though.

Round 2 – Phantom goes first < 48” range

The Phantom fires its missile battery and pulse laser, hoping to take down some shields first. With some good rolling five void shields are taken out, allowing for the big guns to follow up:

Two D-Cannons: Both hit, inflicting 4 rolls on the damage chart (with a +1 on each), bypassing the remaining void shield entirely.
Results are Driver Stunned, Weapon Destroyed (save failed), Drive Damaged, Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Drive Damaged.

Not bad, immobilising the sucker and knocking off one of his guns, as well as two SPs, somewhat reducing the Warlord’s ability to get his shields back.

Two Pulsars: All eight shots hit, causing seven hits (one needed to knock out his last shield). For this example I’m adding both the AP1 and StrD bonus to the damage chart.

Results are: Weapon Destroyed (saved), Structural Damage x 3, Drive Damaged x 3 (third converts to weapon destroyed, which is saved).

A somewhat lacklustre round of shooting there, failing to do much in the way of reducing the Warlord’s immediate fighting ability, so come next turn it will be able to hit back with its full salvo of weapons (see Round 1 for how that’s going to feel).

So I rolled again, bringing up: Weapon Destroyed, Drive Damaged, Structural Damage, Chain Reaction! x 4 = Weapon Destroyed, Structural Damage, Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Structural Damage... but it doesn’t matter as it was dead already (it exploded).

So it is possible to ‘one shot’ a Warlord, but you need to be very lucky in both getting those Chain Reactions and taking down the shields.

One Pulsar, one D-Cannon: All shots hit, though one Pulsar blast is used up on a shield. The D-Cannon does 2 hits, for a total of five rolls on the damage chart with two at +1, and three at +2.

Results are: Structural Damage x 2, Chain Reaction! x 3 = Drive Damaged, Chain Reaction x 2 = Chain Reaction! x 2 = 23” blast Apocalyptic Explosion!

Impressive, but keep in mind that if the Phantom had been over 48” away, the Pulsar hits would have been absorbed by the shields. Twin Pulsars would have been needed to get two hits.
Also keep in mind that I’m using both the AP1 and StrD bonuses, so if that gets FAQ’d as not working the results would be less impressive.

Round 3 – Phantom (mixed weapons) at 90” range.

Phantom goes first, moving forward and firing its Pulsar, stripping off four shields. The Warlord remains stationary, firing all its weapons, totalling up two glances and seven pens (five with +1). The Phantom saves one glance, one Quake Cannon hit and two turbolaser hits.

As a note if the Phantom had moved all out and gotten a 3++ save it would have saved against four of the StrD hits.

Damage is: Weapon Destroyed (Pulsar, saved), Gun Crew Shaken (Pulsar, stunned), Driver Stunned x 3.
The Moderatii need to spend more time on the target range it seems.

The Phantom, robbed of the only weapon it can use at this range, shunts all the driver stunned results into Gun Crew Shaken ones (aside: does the attacker still chose the weapons? I’d say so). The D-Cannon, Pulse Laser and Missile Battery are now also stunned, so the Phantom cannot shoot at all next turn.

The Phantom (turn 2) moves all out and gains a whole extra 9”, closing the distance to 57”. Cannot shoot, but its save is improved to 3++.

The Warlord regains its four lost void shields, and fires again – scoring the same amount of damage as last turn. One Quake Cannon shot is saved, as are four turbolaser hits (it’s like déjà vu all over again).

Damage is: Gun Crew Stunned x 2, Drive Damaged, Structural Damage.
The Pulsar stays stunned, but the D-Cannon makes its save.

The Phantom (turn 3) diverts power from the stunned Pulsar and moves an extra 7”, closing the range to under the magic 48” mark (44” to be precise).
Firing all available weapon systems it knocks out three void shields and hits three times with the D-Cannon.

Damage done: Weapon Destroyed (Lasblaster), Chain Reaction! x 2 = Driver Stunned, Chain Reaction! = Drive Damaged.

The tally is now Warlord at half speed, minus a gun and on 6 SP, while the Phantom is at half speed, and 6 SP.

The Princeps, angry at the pointy-heads’ impertinence, pulls up his shields (regaining all the lost ones) and fires his remaining weapons at the enemy. His anger seemed to do him no favours as he only scores four penetrating hits (‘only’, ha!) – the loss of the Lasblaster was a serious one.
The Phantom saves the Quake Cannon hits, but still takes the StrD turbolasers.

Damage done: Driver Stunned, Drive Damaged (the Phantom is now Immobilised).

The Phantom (turn 4) hits back with all its weapons, knocking off four shields with the light systems, before the Pulsar takes out the last two and scores two hits. The D-Cannon does a further one.

Damage done: Chain Reaction! x 3 (all natural 6’s too) = Drive Damaged (Immobilised), Weapon Destroyed (Turbolasers, saved), Chain Reaction! (another 6!) = Weapon Destroyed (Quake Cannon).

The Warlord is now on 2 SP, Immobile, and fails to get its shields back online. It fires back as best it can, the turbolasers hitting twice, which the Phantom fails to save.

Damage done: Weapon Destroyed (Pulsar), Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Structural Damage.

The Phantom (turn 5) , on ONE SP, immobile, and without an arm, gives its best shot back. The Missile Battery causes a glance, while the D-Cannon scores two penetrating hits.
Damage done: Gun Crew Shaken, Driver Stunned, Weapon Destroyed (Turbolasers, saved [curse you Imperial dogs!]).

The tech priests pull up a solitary void shield and the crippled Warlord attempts to finish off its nemesis. The damage seems to have busted the targeters, as one of the Turbolaser shots goes wild, missing completely. The other hits though, and is not saved.
Damage done: Weapon Destroyed (D-Cannon, saved!).

Naturally the Phantom (turn 6) shoots back, causing a glance on the shield and two penetrating hits.
Damage done: Weapon Destroyed, Chain Reaction! = Chain Reaction! = Apocalyptic Explosion which, fortunately for the Phantom, is only 18” in radius.

Victory to the Eldar! Though I think it was a very narrow one and had the Warlord had more average damage rolls in the first round of shooting it would have been over more quickly and decisively.

The Holofield save was nice, being able to stop a StrD attack without question, but too unreliable. Having to sacrifice shooting to keep moving (and keep alive) is a big offset. The Phantom can do tremendous amounts of damage, but a single Driver Stunned result can cripple it – either you stay still and weaken your defences drastically, or you risk losing half your heavy firepower.

The above battle was also fought in a vacuum, so the Phantom would have to be dealing with getting blasted by all sorts of light support weapons trying to stun it and lock it down. That would really be the best tactic – hit it with infantry heavy weapons to try and get some stunned and shaken results before concentrating StrD on it next turn. That way you’ve either immobilised it so its save is only 5++, or it won’t be firing so is out of the game for a turn really anyway.

Relating to my earlier thoughts on the beta rules, I think if it was able to totally ignore Driver Stunned results and the Agile movement was 6+d6” / 6+2d6”, and the secondary weapon ranges were increased a little it would be worth it.
If AP1 and StrD end up not stacking on the Superheavy chart though, the Phantom will be quite significantly weakened. Being able to cause SP damage/wrecks on a 3+ is a massive positive in its favour.

(click for larger version with legible text)

I ran a Phantom vs Reaver match too –it went something like “Phantom fires, Reaver explodes” (especially with twin Pulsars), so I won’t bother writing it up.

* the images are from Codex Titanicus, an expansion to Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine.

Divisio Militaris: Is the Phantom worth 2500pts?

2011-04-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

So the Phantom is up for pre-order now, and the experimental rules are online to go with it (if you are not familiar with them already give them a read, as I will obviously be referring to them a lot).

Personally, I think it's overcosted for what it does. The current rules should be somewhere between 2250 and 2000, relative to other Titans.
A Warlord is 2500 and, while it would take damage (possibly a large amount at close range), could kill a Phantom more easily than the other way around. The extra movement and holofields the Phantom recieves is in no way comprable to six void shields and AV14. This isn't even comparing damage output, though the difference there is not as accute.

Armour, Defences and Movement

13/13/11 is good, and what I'd expect from an Eldar titan. The Enhanced Holofields are good, but giving up all shooting for only 3++ (sure, it's the new black, but still).
3++ is good, but for a titan to give up shooting its main guns it's not that good.

Holofields are also much more unreliable than Void Shields. For example a Warlord can take six hits from whatever before being damaged, but one krak missile could (theoretically) destroy the Phantom.

My version would be:

Stationary: 5++
1"-6": 4++
7-12": 3++
13" or more: 2++

This may sound a lot, but the difficulty of moving a titan with a 12" diamater footprint on a crowded Apocalypse table is a large one - this one can't jump like Revenants so has to have a large clear space to move.
The two brackets on the regular move is to stymie the cheesy "I moved my revenant 1/4 of an inch so I get a holofield save" stuff - if you want a better save you really have to work for it.

Being able to pass a Driver Stunned result on to the gun crew is possibly the worst idea ever in my opinion. I want my titans shooting the bejeezus out of everything in sight, not moving (I sometimes think they could do without legs at all personally).

If it was simply an ability to swap one for the other or vice versa it would be great - that way you are free to choose to lump all your Gun Crew Stunned onto your driver, or keep moving no matter the cost to your firepower.
Alternatively just have it ignore Driver Stunned entirely.

It seems the desigers (across all the IA and Apoc books) overvalue boosts to movement compared to how much they get used. The Agile / Fleet ability is terrible - sacrificing firing a four shot StrD weapon to move 2d6" extra? Well, it's not the Warhound's D6" at least.
If it was 6+d6" and 12+d6" it'd be better.
I'd hate to forgoe obliterating something to move an extra 2"... it's actually rather embarrasing to move a titan that little a distance.

So, if the total points are going to be taking the agility and speed of the Phantom into consideration (which it certainly seems) I'd give that extra movement more certainty.
As a late random thought maybe even a Jet Pack style move in the Assault phase. It'd allow for some limited moving back into a more defensive stature after firing and be something very unique.
Even more crazy would be if the Phantom didn't move in the movement phase it could take its normal move in the Assault phase, allowing for some seriously cunning maneuvering.

Killing Stuff

The Phantom Pulsar is dead killy - two of those would very likely wreck a Reaver in one turn, or at least cripple it horribly (but being +50% the cost you'd hope so!). I would not change this at all. If the AP1 stacks with the StrD bonus on the Superheavy damage chart, then this gun is even better. I've not seen anything to the contrary, but it is a grey area.

The D-Cannon is brutal, and I think the range works well. The weapon is comparative to the melta cannon, so having an equal range works for me. The D3 damage vs Superheavies is especially dangerous, though it should probably have something against Gargantuans (D3 wounds).

The ranges on the secondary weapons feel too short though. The AA is ok as a point defence and aside from a Lightning or Vulture strafing with Hunter-Killers most aircraft will have to close into range to fire.
Increasing it wouldn't hurt, especially if the "Summer of Fliers" comes to fruition and every man and his dog has a Thunderbolt.

The ground attack missile pod feels too short though, and doesn't mesh with the main guns. It's primary purpose would be either killing light to medium armour or stripping sheilds. The problem is with a 48" range you'll have pummled anything with your longer range main guns or a close in target worth your titan's attention will be needing more firepower than four S8, AP3 shots.

I'd give it the following profiles:

Krak
12"-96"
S8
AP3
Heavy 4

Plasma
12"-96"
S4
AP4
Apoc4, Pinning

It has dual purpose now, giving the Phantom some anti-horde infantry and more synergy with its other weapon systems.

I'm sure it will be changed but at the moment the Phantom's Towering Monstrosity rule as written doesn't preclude any close combat weapon arm, when / if such a weapon is made, from striking a 'normal' vehicle. The ability to make StrD attacks at I3 against normal infantry would be a very strong one but, given assault is the last place any non-Ork titan wants to be (and it would mean sacrificing a gun) I wouldn't put it as a big pro.

Conclusion

If the Phantom's going to cost 2500pts one of three things needs to be done:

1) Improve the holofields, or at least make sacrificing shooting worth it. Make any 'bonus' movement more reliable or more easily used.

2) More than two long range guns - getting closer is a bad idea and those shiny missile launchers should be more of a threat.

3) Make Imperial titans cost more. Not a likely outcome, but the mark has been set by which others are measured and the Phantom comes up short when compared to these guys (but so do the Nid GCs).

The Phantom hits hard - very hard, but not hard enough to justify the price tag points wise. It's very good at killing superheavies, but not much else. Toe to toe with a Warlord, it'd be a close (favouring the Imperial due to survivability), but against a mixed force the Phantom doesn't have the same massive 'oopf' as comparative superheavies.

For the same amount you can get five Scorpions that have almost double the Structure Points between them and more StrD shots - they'll also be getting a 4++ save. So either beef the Phantom up, or bring the price tag down.

I vote for more destruction.

Glow in the Dark Test 02

2011-04-04T11:43:00.000-07:00

My Spaz Stix paints arrived today (supplied in Australia by Qikazz), so I gave them a test with the glow powder.

The top three are yellow, orange, and fireball orange mixed with the pigment over white. The three on the left are over marcharius orange.

The clear winner is Fireball Orange over either colour in terms of glow, but the plain orange looks a bit better in daylight. The issue here is obviously that I was planning to black and yellow.
So I'm thinking of doing two sets of lines - yellow ones by hand with citadel, and larger orange ones with the airbrush. The Spaz Stix line is nasty airbrush stuff (nasty as in it is carcenogenic and has a warning label on it stating just that - wear your respirator!) so any use of a brush needs to be cleaned with thinner like enamel paints.

Problem there is the pigmented paint is 99& likely to gum up an airbrush. My thought is to airbrush a base coat down then hand paint on the glow sections over the top. This would have the advantage of making the glow slightly irregular and allow me to do false shading by not doing in the recesses and such.

Here's a shot from six feet away:

The glow is quite effective on just an hours charge by lamplight, so it'd be pretty good after a fair bit of daylight I'd imagine.

Current thought is to do a 'fake' glow with citadel paints as a base, tape off the main section, spray white down, spray orange over that, then hand do the pigmented mix. More testing to come.

Glow in the Dark test 01

2011-04-02T11:24:00.000-07:00

So to follow up from the previous post I've tried a few different methods, including ink, water, isopropyl alcohol and different paints:

The best glow effect is from the pigment with water / alcohol, the good yellow one is from using sunburst yellow.
The trick is that the pigment isn't soluable, so getting the right amount of pigment to make a glow vs not having that horrible salmon colour is a bit tricky. Also it needs to be smooth enought to paint consistently with else the glow will be uneven.

Still, not a bad first trial run. I'll do another when the neon paints arrive.

On a related note I'm actually kinda pissed at Forge World right now, as "AdeptiCon attendees will be able to advance order the mighty Phantom Titan for despatch well in advance of the pre-order date" (from the newsletter).
I can dig Open Day getting cool stuff, but when it spreads outside of that it is basically a punch in the gut to loyal FW customers outside those attendees - "you like cool stuff? Too bad! You can wait because you're on the other side of the world!"

Keep in mind this was announced two days before AdeptiCon, which sold out ages ago, so it's not like there's any way to do anything about it unless you were already going.

Sent them an email asking for an approx release date and expressing my displeasure at the policy (though with less hostility than above). Australia gets screwed by Games Workshop all the time - look at the prices we get charged here* - but when Forge World does it, it's too much. If I don't get a reply by Monday I'm going to phone them.

* Marine Tac Squad - $62au, $37usd, £23. Convert $62au via actual exchange rates and you get $64usd and £39. Bit of a difference there, no?

Beginning of a new Project

2011-04-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

Bag of mysterious orange powder:

Turn off the lights, and it glows:

to the extreme I rock the mic like a vandal, light up the stage and wax a chump like a candle.

Going to play around with this some and see what happens. Also waiting on some neon paint to come in the post. What's is all for?

PhanTRON titan

Yeeeeeaahhhhh!!

Going to do some testing on a Wratihlord for concept and practice.

Hasslefree Tomoko and Vissarisa

2011-03-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

Finally painted up Tomoko (ie Major Kusanagi of Ghost in the Shell) by Hasslefree, in similar colours to her Stand Alone Complex guise. I think the shading came out very nicely on her jacket and bodysuit.

Here she is with the Firebrand Conscript I posted earlier. I kept the Major clean and smooth with a limited colour scheme to show her as a more professional fighter opposed to the Firebrand who is grittier and more thrown together.

She doesn't yet have a base as I'm going to give her a Sedition Wars one when they arrive to make her match the rest of my 'hard sci-fi' type minis.

Funnily enough Hasslefree put up a clear resin version of her, then sold out, while I was painting her. Oh well, I'll try and get one from the next run.

I've also been working on Vissarisa:

I still need to highlight her tabbard, face and give her shield a crest, but otherwise she's almost done.

I'm also trying (fairly unsucessfully) to fight off lust for the Phantom Titan. I'm thinking a dark greenish-blue colour scheme with glowing tracery over it, TRON Legacy style. I've played around in photoshop with the preview pics and I think it could work.

Astronomican Winter 2010/11 contest results up.

2011-03-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

Quick shout out that the entries to the Astronomican Unsung Heroes contest are now up to browse. I've got an entry in, though I can't say which one until the judges are done.

Sedition Wars Firebrand Conscript finished

2011-03-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

Here she is completed. Bit of a naff picture though, but that's what taking photos at five in the morning gets you.

Also:

Sedition Wars WiP

2011-03-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

After a painting absence of several months I've put brush to mini again, starting on my Sedition Wars minis. First up is a Firebrand Conscript:

I'm giving her a fairly mish-mash colour scheme on purpose. The concept is she is in civillian clothes (blue tee, khaki cargos, brown hiking shoes) with added on armour. The armour is dark grey with blue-grey strapping aiming for a riot cop type scheme.
For the gloves and respirator will be painted up with garish orange or yellow to give the impression of civillian gear.

I'm not decided on how to paint her gun or hair yet. Part of me wants to give her some really garish dye-job - green, purple or the like - but I'm not too sure how it'll work out.
I don't want to go black or metallic on the gun, though I don't have much of a choice really. End result will probably end up being a different shading technique or somesuch to differentiate it.

The models themselves are the usual super-high quality of Studio McVey (I got them all in resin, though metals are out now for the Vanguard line). As an example one of the Vanguard troopers has a backpack:

It fits superbly:

The only figure I had any trouble assembling was Akosha Nama (the sniper) due to everything basically needing to be glued in place simultaneously and my only having two hands.

Also today my Jaggernat arrived (or at least I noticed he was on the front step). He's a big boy:

FireZone v1 now available

2011-03-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

Yep, FireZone v1 is now available to download. It's a complete ruleset including army lists for Studio McVey's Sedition Wars line.

I've yet to add advanced rules for vehicles, artillery, air support and scenarios - but the game is still playable. I'll also be adding diagrams and such when I get some time to take photos.

So, have a look here:

http://www.box.net/shared/fkt3ml8uzr

FireZone

2011-02-22T10:12:00.000-08:00

Rargh, almost a month since my last post - I have been (as mentioned previously) working hard on my entry to the Astronomican's Winter (Summer) 2011 contest.

That is now done (sans some last minute revisions) so I have been working on other stuff - namely FireZone.

What is FireZone (besides 28mm skirmish)? No, not a rip off of Big Jim's excellent Killzone, but a game I've had in my head for the last 15 odd years. It started as a tabletop version of Syndicate of all things, and that has been its core design - small units in urban / jungle / CQB environments (the name is taken from the ancient Dos/Amiga game, I considered changing it but liked it too much - other contenders have been DropZone and CQB).
Design philosophy wise it is similar to GURPS - you can make anything fit with enough jimmying, but it is primarily designed for hard sci-fi, near future or post apoc type games.

I've finally decided to write it up properly due to one big factor - Studio McVey's Sedition Wars. As regular readers will know I'm a big fan of the Studio McVey minis, and the Sedition Wars line is no different.
I had been somewhat on the fence about getting them - I wanted to but I really didn't need another line - but then they released the Firebrand minis and I had to, they were too good to resist (side note: I'm getting them in resin but they're going to be out in metal soon. Once the metals are out the resins will be gone, so if you want them you'd better hurry!).
So in conversation with Mike McVey about some postage stuff (in which I might add he was most helpful and accommodating) I asked if there were plans for a SW game, and if not if he would mind if I made stats for the SW figures. He said there weren't as yet and I was free to do so.

In the spirit of that I got to work properly crunching numbers and mathhammering things and writing it all down coherently. I'm putting up the first few pages so you can all have a look at what I've been up to. Once it is done I'll have some 'generic' forces, as well as statting out for the Sedition Wars minis and maybe a few other sci-fi lines.

Have a look here: http://www.box.net/shared/7puh3jhhru

Highway to the Killin' Zone

2011-02-01T09:58:00.000-08:00

As many of you will be aware, Big Jim over at Galaxy in Flames has been spearheading an awesome project named Killzone.

Now, being the up to date and on the ball guy I've been pondering the rules and come up with a couple of lists.

The first is designed around using Hasslefree's Grymm as a band of mercenaries with nothing to lose (as their strongholds were eaten by 'nids).
The codex I'll be using is Space Wolves, with every model being a Wolf Scout. This gives everyone Infiltration, Move Through Cover and Scout (with a nasty Outflank), as well as carapace armour.

Halla - Bolter, CCW (team leader) - 15pts

Foggi, Silvia, Stondraeg - each with: Sniper Rifle, Bolt Pistol, (Crack Shot KZ skill) - 23pts ea. (69)

Sahmi - Heavy Bolter, CCW - 20pts

Auda - Bolter, CCW (Auspex KZ wargear) - 25pts

Stefan, - Flamer, CCW - 20pts

Gustav - Missile Launcher, CCW - 25pts

Kurt, Tomlinz, Kadlin, Dagni, Kyhli - Bolter, CCW - 15pts ea. (75)

249 pts, 13 dudes and dudettes, with a 'tourney legal' special KZ skills/gear loadout.

I can have the seemingly masses of special weapons due to the snipers being squad upgrades, rather than individual purchases. The snipers will most likely be using their Crack Shot skill to re-roll wounds as they are the 'weaker' roll. The Auspex is for using with either the heavy bolter or missile launcher.

Other options include Krags for an alternate leader, Astrid for a melta gun (it's technically a grenade launcher, but the effect is the same) and Aylton or Igna for plasmagunners.

The other ideas are an Elysian list, but they're not 'official' yet so it'll take some thinking to figure them out, and Orks and Eldar.
Orks are a mix of 'ard Boyz, Kommandoz and Storm Boyz. While the Eldar are an elite force of Aspect Warriors, Striking Scorpions and Swooping Hawks mostly. Another thought was Harlequins:

Shadow Seer, Death Jester, 6 Troupers (2 Fusion Pistola, 3 Kisses) all with Hard to Kill - 248pts.

Yet another was a Deathwing list:

Armoured Might

1 Sergeant - Storm Bolter, Power Sword

1 trooper - Cyclone, Pfist

1 tooper - Heavy Flamer, Pfist

1 trooper - Lightning Claws

1 trooper - Storm Bolter, Cfist

The best part is I only have to finish painting one guy to have these guys fully done ;p

However, much of this is theoretical as it is ludicrously hot right now (30+ degrees C overnight), so painting is not high on my to-do list.
That said, some KZ size games are a possibility.

Creativity, inspiration and other things

2011-01-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Hello all, things have been a bit quite here at the Collegia - not due to lack of hobby stuff, but due to working on my entry (or entries) to the Astronomican's Winter (summer) competition. Due to the closed nature of the judging I can't put up anything I'm working on for it, thus lack of posting.

However, I will ramble at length about the creative process as it is still relevant to my hobby workings in some tangntal sense.

Inspiration

Obviously, you need an idea to start with. I find there are two ways I come about an idea - as a reaction to something or as a goal. A reaction is the classic inspiration: I see something and get an idea. A goal is where I want to achieve a certain end, and figure out how to make it happen.

Some examples of inspiration would be:

My Titans are inspired by westerns. Legio Pallidus Mors are the Pale Riders - Pale Rider is a Clint Eastwood film. His character is Preacher, which is the name of my warhound etc.

The old Wing Commander game had a mission tree that was brutally unforgiving - an early loss would make the game unwinnable. This is common in tree campagins:

You might as well call it at game 1 here.

So I decided to make a campaign where you could lose a number of games but still pull off a win:

It also has 16 possible endings!

An example of a goal would be Mission 1 from the Cradle of Despair (CATs in the Cradle). I wanted a mission where the marines had to deploy CATs into air vents, so made it happen. Now, arguably this was inspired by pondering the air vent piece and how CATs are deployed, but the process of creation was more mechanical.

Never give up on a piece of inspiration. I carry a little notebook around with me to write down any names, thoughts, bits of dialogue or the like that come into my head. I've been kicking around a concept for a short story for about three years now - I've got the begginning and the very end, I just need to figure out the plot... I've not had it come together enough for my liking, but when it does I know the idea is a good one.

Creation

The real tricky part. When I make an army I don't just make a list, I make a bunch of characters. This is likely due to my Dungeons and Dragons influenced style of hobby, but that's how I do it.
I look at the big picture and zoom in on every aspect. Take Captain West (please!). Her entire life has been mapped out from her childhood to her death, along with friends, enemies and all sorts of adventures in between. This creation draws from a number of areas: things I like about 40k, stories I've read or seen, and the games I play with her.
The current incarnation of her model (the third) has a bionic arm, as did the second. It was added after a game where she was felled by an Ork power klaw. In her story that event happens and she loses her arm, gaining the augemetic one.

I find it easier to create the world around a character when the character has as much detail in them as I can manage. Once I wrote a piece of 40k fiction where a group of Imperial citizens and soldiers are captured by Orks, and seek to escape. Every cast memeber, even those without significant lines, have full stories. Where they're from, what their job was, their families and so on.
This makes them real, three dimensional people so when the story calls for them to act, they don't act as the plot requires but as they would in real life. From then on I'm not writing a story, I'm telling a story.

Aside from stories, this applies to drawing and painting. See my earlier picture of Brynn Skjasgaard. Now, she's not got a hugely detailed back story but I know she's strong willed, just and honourable. Thus the noble posture and somewhat far-away 'heroic' look.

Virgine here is happy, but wistful, thinking of relationships past that are now at peace.

The character's motivation has to come through or the art won't have a spark to it. Now you don't have to go to the lengths I go to, but it can't hurt. Even when putting minis together I try to give each its own personality, and it extends into my playing. My Rainbow Warriors Sergeants all have their characteristics - Nils stubbonly hangs on under fire, Saveaux ducks and dives, Sonnkila smashes the foe in the face etc. Obviously each squad is equipped to fight that way in game, but their weapon loadouts is as much a product of their character and style is it is the inspiration.

Give and take, I guess you could say, is the key here. If an idea leads somewhere go with it - even if it's something you never thought you'd do.

I opened up the last Space Marine Codex on release day, looking at the star map of the different chapters. I saw a familiar winged lightning bolt and the planet name of Prism. Then I saw the tag of 'record deleted'.
"Delete the Rainbow Warriors?" I thought to myself. "I sould show them they can't erase them, and make an army of them."

So I did, and now have over a full company put together (though not all painted yet) - true story! So yes, my RW army is the product of spite.
But it doesn't end there - back to the idea of focusing - I thought "why rainbows?". What's the most manly rainbow of them all? Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge. So it went on from there - solar cult worship, the significance of light and darkness, travelling across the rainbow bridge to the Emperor's golden hall etc.
Like I said, follow an idea and you'll be surprised where it goes.

Sound it out

Don't just get an idea and go with it - it needs to be pummelled into shape before it works. To quote 40k: "Beat the form of the universe to the mould of your will".
Refine what is the core aspect(s) of the idea, and why you like them. Get other people's opinions - they'll see holes you can't see or don't want to see. Once the essence is distilled go back to the original idea. Has it changed? Should it change? Maybe it's not such a great idea after all?

We've all had that moment where we've got a brilliant army list / conversion idea / paint scheme but something just isn't right or the forces of the cosmos work agianst us. The colours are too close to an existing scheme (or they don't make that paint anymore) . The parts don't fit right or the scale is weird. You realise your list has seven troops choices.

Yes, I've done all these.

So, do you keep going and grind out a solution? Or start from scratch? With a goal type inspiration starting over is much easier - making a list to a theme and it doesn't add up? Start it from scratch. Much harder than when you want to paint a mini a certain shade of blue but can't stop the cloak from clashing with the tabbard.
Get some advice, look back over old work for ideas, come back tomorrow with fresh mind. Sometimes making a mistake and analysing what went wrong or what we don't like is just as useful as doing a good job.
Example - I sculpted a head to resemble a friend of mine. The first version wasn't quite right, and after some feedback and leaving it for a bit I was able to see more clearly why it was off, and fix it up.

Just do it

Seriously, what's the worst that can happen? If you have an idea or inspiration strikes - give it a go. The worst that'll happen is you'll get some practice and experience. Creativity feeds on itself: the more you create the more ideas you get. Keep going and you'll never be short of potential awesome projects kicking around.

Cradle of Despair beta - 21 mission campaign

2011-01-21T10:08:00.001-08:00

To celebrate the launching of The Codex Project, I ask you:

Watcha gonna do when Space Hulk runs wild on you?

Answer: Download the Cradle of Despair (beta) and get hulking!

Each mission is accompained by an intro story (not all done yet) with recurring characters so you can follow the battles of the Rainbow Warriors 1st Company as they attempt to cleanse a tained hulk of the Stealer presence.

Includes:

- 21 missions in a story driven tree format. Even if you lose 4 in a row you can pull off a win!

- Detailed background sections, including Marine profiles and service records.

- 4 new Imperial units: Terminator Captians, Lieutenants, Chaplains and Techmarines

- 2 new Genestealer units: Magus (with 4 psychic powers) and Hybrids

- New equipment: Rosarius & Iron Halo, Crozius Arcanum, Photon Grenade Launcher, Auspex

- Rules for reloading heavy weapons, and self destructing others!

Not yet done:

Some illustrations and some of the mission intro stories, fixing up some of the credits in the intro and a few odds and sods (like putting the right cover on).

All the mission briefings and maps are there though!

Download from Box.net as a .rar file here:

http://www.box.net/shared/n0mx2jtd8z

Also for more Space Hulk fun get yourself my background noise file:

http://www.box.net/shared/klv13e3t9o

Full Review: Imperial Armour 10, the Badab War part2

2011-01-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

IA10, the Badab War part 2: The Badabening, is obviously the sequel to IA9 (review here) but as you may or may not be aware, it was originally not to be. The plan was to have a single book but writer Alan Bligh got a bit carried away and wrote too much. This is a mixed blessing honestly as extra information is never a bad thing, but this volume feels somewhat anti-climactic after such a good start.
The best way to explain this is by examining the background section.

We open with “The Wrath of the Imperium”, giving a brief recap of events as well as delving into the brutal subjugation of a planet by the Sons of Medusa. It also details the arrival of the mysterious, ancient and malevolent Carcharodons. These mysterious warriors are the most vicious loyalist marines we’ve ever seen. The only description of the interior of their ship features a massive pit where they discard the broken wargear, banners and corpses of defeated enemies in heaps. Their first action is to set about subduing the dug in Mantis Warriors in what is known as the Tranquillity Campaign.

You will build us

Here the terrible nature of the war is shown to full effect. While the Mantis Warriors, weary of the war and doubting its goals, strive to protect their ancient homeworlds the Carcharodons butcher, burn and destroy everything until the Secessionists could simply fight no more. The brutality doesn’t go unchallenged, and Fire Angels depart the war due to being unable to work alongside such brutal allies.

We get off to a good start here, but now the Astral Claws are effectively alone as the Executioners prove unreliable – attacking only who they deem worth a good fight, regardless of strategic benefit. We move on to a raid by the Salamanders and Minotaurs that uncovers more evidence of Huron’s corruption, and leads to the Executioners and Salamanders exit from the war.
These set pieces are well done and, as with the last book, different to the normal marine battle fare. We next get a bigger invasion attempting to get a foothold into Huron’s inner defences, and this is where it started getting a bit wobbly for me. There was a huge space battle, but I found myself often having to flick back to identify which ship was a Loyalist and which a Secessionist.

Eventually Badab is reached and the Tyrant overthrown (of course), and I won’t spoil the details. Suffice to say the Carcharodons prove to be utterly ruthless (again) and the Tyrant gets a melta to the face. This section suffers from padding out in my opinion. It has to be dramatic and sensational of course, it’s the climax after all. However I feel that splitting into two books was perhaps too much.

I didn’t notice it in IA9 as it was loaded with the political manoeuvring and manipulations, so there was plenty to chew on. Here there is only battles, and they blur together as it’s the same few guys fighting over and over again. It also suffers from being compressed – what would have been half a book in Vraks, or a whole book in Anphellion’s case, ends up being a couple of pages here. Not enough for a deep analysis and story, but more than a quick overview.
This is not to say the book is bad, I enjoyed it more than IA8 and it certainly completes IA9 without feeling disjointed. The problem is not much happens for the wait between books to feel worthwhile. While the Vraks series brought on the ever growing influence of Chaos with each instalment, Badab just adds the last couple of battles with some new guys. It's like a long adbreak near the end of the movie, rather than a sequal.

This cammo doesn't get an update :(

This book also suffers from having little of IA9’s big personalities. Huron and Culln featured large in 9, but are hardly present in this book. It is mostly the actions of armies that define this book, not the characters. While a natural progression as the war drew on and plans became more focussed. If it was one story it wouldn’t have been as noticeable, but I found the change jarring due to the wait.
Again, not a big issue, but it ties in with the two book thing.

What would I have done? With my perfect hindsight, I’d have released a two book set at once – one book the background (history) and the other with rules, army lists and scenarios (technical manual). That way I, as a reader, wouldn’t have been waiting to get the end of the story (which felt shorter, perhaps due to being basically just battles) and let’s face it – pretty much everyone who bought 9 is going to buy 10. Forge World is bundling them together now anyway, so it would have been better in my eyes to just do that from the start.

You know you'd buy it.
And by you I mean me.

Another thing I noticed in this book was what felt like heavy product placement. The Caestus Ram and Land Raider Achilles get a few notable mentions and are totally awesome. It could just be my being used to the other wargear mentioned so these stood out more, but I noticed it regardless.

Of course this book completes the write-ups of the participating Chapters, in:

Chapters of the Badab War, part 2

They are the Mantis Warriors, Salamanders, Executioners, Sons of Medusa, Minotaurs, Carcharodons, Exorcists and Star Phantoms.

The Mantis Warriors are individualistic hit and run/infiltration specialists whose territorial and loyal nature got the better of them, bringing ruin on them and their people.

The Salamanders are just as they always are, so no new revelations here.

Executioners are the descendants of Dorn, and see themselves as trusted to seek out and execute the Emperor’s enemies rather than to defend and protect. While appearing outwardly barbarous, they are cunning and wise in the ways of war, as well as honourable to a fault (which would both be Huron’s gain and downfall).
Each battle-brother must prove himself worthy of being remembered by the Chapter’s ‘Death Speakers’ (chaplains). One terminator is noted as being ‘chronicled for his remorseless slaughter’, so they sound like real fun guys to be around.
The section also detail exactly why they joined with Huron, and what happens to them afterwards.

The Sons of Medusa are an offshoot of the Iron Hands after an Adeptus Mechanicus related religious schism in regards to the future of the Cult Mechanicus and Ecclesiarchy. Probably one of the most original ideas for a founding, they also bear the Iron Hand’s unusual Clan structure so fans of the sons of Mannus have some interesting reading for them.

The Minotaurs are presented as maybe being the same chapter as from the 21st founding, but maybe not. It details the crazy, unpredictable 21st founding chapter and its unreliable nature, and the chapter’s vanishing from Imperial records for a long period.
When they re-appear they appear it is as a no less furious force, but a controlled one seeming to act as the will of the High Lords of Terra. Mysteriously well equipped (loads of Mk8 armour) and politically protected (people who ask too many questions tend to disappear), it is implied that the High Lords shield them and in return the Chapter destroys whoever they are told, be they enemy of man or one-time protector.

I'm just here to take up space.

Named for the Great White Shark and/or Megaladon, the Carcharadons (from the Greek karcharos and odous meaning sharp or jagged tooth) are dark killers. They seem to exist in isolation, possibly even in the blackness below the galactic plane, rising to the surface only to feed before vanishing back into the blackness. They are Space Marines without the pretence of honour and glory, killers in the Emperors name who exist solely to bring death and destruction.

Contrasting them Sharks are the Exorcists – studious, honourable, and thoughtful. Each battle brother is inducted into the mysteries of arcane lore and daemonology far more than any Chapter save the Grey Knights. They are a sort of Grey Knights lite, being able to withstand more than your average marine, but without the high standards of the Knights there are more of them so they can fight larger wars. Their description alludes to the possibility of warp exposure/possession for initiates, but does not confirm it.

Lastly are the Star Phantoms, another mysterious chapter shrouded in mystery. Though proven pure without doubt on numerous occasions, they have repeatedly come into conflict with other Chapters, including almost wiping out the Marines Malevolent. Additionally they were noted by Lord Marcharius as “unsuitable for tactical close support of other Imperial units” due to their somewhat relaxed approach to collateral damage.
A grim chapter, they see themselves as misjudged and outcast, and are eager to kick Huron’s teeth in, performing the final assault on his fortress-palace.

While volume 9 had an abundance of pious, Emperor-fearing chapters, IA10 is weighed down by enigmas wrapped in riddles wrapped in power armour. Again, this is due to the splitting of the story separating the ‘good’ initial battles from the ‘crazy’ later ones. Had they all been together it likely wouldn’t have been noticed (or I’d be commenting that they’re either pious or mysterious).

Engines of Destruction

A new section when compared to 9, this bit details the war machines of the Astartes.
First up is the Caestus Assault Ram, followed by a nicely detailed section on Dreadnoughts, then the infamous Land Raider Achilles. Apparently we can blame the Imperial Fists for it. The Land Raider section contains an allusion to a new vehicle type emerging from Magos Land’s research – a teaser for an upcoming kit or just some fluff? You be the judge.

The section continues through the Land Speeder, Thunderhawk and Rhino variants, and has some callout boxes about the religious rites performed by techmarines. Nothing groundbreaking here – it’s almost IA2 lite. It is nice to have it here if you don’t have that book though.
Lastly is a two page spread of Power Armour, marks 3 to 8 (with Apothecary variant). Interestingly MkIV is said to be the pinnacle of design, but is too hard to produce and maintain in the ‘modern’ age.

Lords of Destruction, pt 2

In the second batch of special characters we get:

Salamander Captain Pellas Mir’san – a master swordsman who has a Calgar like morale effect on his squad.

Salamander Venerable Ancient Bray’arth Ashmantle – a close combat dreadnought with flame/melta weapons who can ignore lance and melta, as well as being able to wreath himself in flames during assault.

Mantis Warrior Librarian Ahazra Redth – gives Infiltration as a chapter tactic, as well as effecting attempts to seize the initiative and reserve rolls. He also has a unique psychic power similar to GK’s shrouding.

Executioner High Chaplain Thulsa Doom,

Purging is at last at hand. Day of Doom is here. All that is evil, all their allies; your parents, your leaders, those who would call themselves your judges; those who have lied and corrupted the Earth, they shall all be cleansed.

Er, sorry Thulsa Kane –

I shall contemplate this on the tree of woe.
And by me I mean you.

Chapter tactics are Stubborn, gives his squad super Fearless and Liturgies of Battle, and is hard to kill. Nothing said about whether initiates have to push a big wheel around and around.

Minotaurs Chaplain Ivanus Enkomi – one of the simpler characters, he has only one unique rule, giving more attacks on the charge than normal.

Minotaurs Lord Asterion Moloc – gives chapter tactics of Preferred Enemy: Space Marines (any loyalist book, not chaos or renegades). He also is in Terminator armour and he and his squad count as having assault grenades. He’s also very hard to kill (think Lysander type toughness), but expensive.

Carcharodon Tyberos the Red Wake – chapter tactics of Furious Charge, and Rage after killing a unit in assault. As seen on his model he comes armed with lightning claws and chainfists, as well as being able to take Lightning Claw termies as troops. Regular marines can exchange bolters for close combat weapons for free.

Exorcist Captain Silas Alberec – a lean mean daemon killing machine. He has a special Thunder Hammer that auto wounds daemons and any model with psychic powers. Any marines on his side can re-roll failed pinning checks (not a chapter tactic).

Star Phantom Captain Zhrukhal Androcles – he is a ‘Master of Destruction’, and captain of the 9th. As such he can take devastators as elites as well as heavies.

Sons of Medusa Iron Thane Vaylund Cal – chapter tactics gives Fearless, and any devastator squad ‘appropriately modelled’ to show cybernetics gains Feel No Pain (but they can’t run or sweep). He himself is nigh indestructible, and has all the Master of the Forge rules.

These guys all look fun, and their special rules are very well written, with a definate slant on morale boosting effects. Many of them have a special notation that taking them prevents the taking of any other Chapter Master, named or otherwise, so you are locked into their Chapter Tactics if you take them.

Space Marine Siege Assault Vanguard Army List

Designed to represent the direct assault of a heavily fortified position this list eschews many of the toys of the standard Codex, focussing on in your face destruction. However keeping with the theme there are no drop pods, no scouts and no speeders or bikes.
On the flip side you can get squads of Predators, Vindicators and Whirlwinds. Dreadnoughts can be bought as multiples for one troops slot, thought they don’t form a squadron. Tactical squads on foot can get mantlets to protect them from shooting, and there are foot assault squads that count as troops (think Blood Angel assault squads for options).
There is also a special HQ choice (Siege Master), though he’s not that amazing. Unsurprisingly, all the Land Raider options are available here also.

The list has a load of flavour to it, and the restrictions definitely force the focus on the theme.

After the list are the rules for the Caestus and Achilles. The Achilles has gone up in points, and does not gain any extra defence against StrD weaponry.

It's powered by nerdrage

Finishing off the book are a scenario for the Siege breaker list, a section for BFG, and the ubiquitous Apoc Datasheets. Here is a bit more of the product placement I was talking about, with one being a three Caestus unit, the other a 4-6 Land Raider one (where half must be Achilles) and a six Dreadnought unit (which Chaplain, Siege or Ironclads are perfect for). They are actually pretty good sheets to be fair.

Summary

So, was it worth the money? Yes.
This time however I found myself liking the extra bits such as the descriptions of equipment and the Chapters and characters more than the story.

Story gets a 7/10 this time around, for reasons already espoused upon. Overall the series' story gets an 8/10.

The Chapters are a 8/10 here. While there was some similarity (they are all marines after all) it was not as noticeable as last time.

Engines of Destruction is an 8/10. I'd give it less though if you already own IA2.

Lords of Destruction get a 9/10 again, with a 10/10 for both books. While that may seem odd it is because they’ve done some really thematic rules without making it feel like they’re just going for power. Each one feels like they embody their Chapter’s style.

The Siege Vanguard List gets a 7/10. While I like it personally (it suits my play style very well in fact) it’s not a radical departure and certainly not going to be for everybody. Aside from the two new vehicles and some options there’s nothing really new.

BFG - ??? I’m not familiar enough with the system to rate this, sorry.

Apocalypse – 8/10. Giving it a higher score as it’s some crazy and different stuff. Also as someone who owns large numbers of Land Raiders and Dreadnoughts I can’t help but approve.

IA10 Overall – 8/10

This is a good book but while the story’s length necessitated the splitting into two volumes it didn’t showed that it wasn’t designed that way. However the story is still good and this book is a must for any die-hard Space Marine fan.

Badab War Series overall:

9/10

A few minor mis-steps and oddities here and there don’t hide that this is my personal favourite Imperial Armour series.

And the Imperials won!

He can hear fruit.
Apples scream the loudest.

Quick Look: Imperial Armour 10: Badab pt2

2011-01-13T10:18:00.000-08:00

At long last my copy of IA10 arrived after getting stuck in customs for an inordinately long time.

The very short review is that it's good, but not as good as IA9. This is no fault of the book, per se, but simply due to the fact that is describing an epic grindfest between the two marine factions, without room for much of the best bits of IA9 - the maneuvering and posturing of the two factions.
That's not to say it's in any way bad, it's still very very good, but IA9 set the bar very high.

Continuing the tale of the Badab conflict we learn more about the mysterious Minotaurs, the Charcharodons, and the Mantis Warriors get some page time too. There are some well done set pieces and even the siege of Badab feels energetic and fast paced.

Rules wise there are a bunch of special characters (including some pretty fearsome dudes), the Caestus Assault Ram and the imfamous Achilles Land Raider. The Achilles now costs a little more, and StrD hits are not subject to modification.

The book contains a Marine siege breaker list, which looks quite fun and has a few interesting units thrown in, but is otherwise heavily restricted (an assault list with no drop-pods or bikes, and limited fast support).

Another interesting point is that the Power of the Machine Spirit for Land Raiders is clarified. It specifically mentions the conditions for the extra shot being shaken/stunned results and "one more weapon than would normally be permitted based on its movement speed" - siding on the no side for firing with smoke launchers.
Almost all the extra rules are written with very specific clarity, which is good to see.

Lastly there are the ubiquitous Apoc datasheets, which include a 4-6 Land Raider one where at least half must be Achilles varients (they get a super shot attack though). My favourite is a six dread team that go crazy in close combat.

Packed with the book are the slipcase (which is much nicer than the Vraks one, and wasn't crushed in the mail) and the truely gigantic (A0!) poster decorated with the various colour schemes of the conflict. I'd love to put it up, but I'm not sure where I'll find space.

Why don't Black Library books have illustrations?

2011-01-05T08:07:00.000-08:00

A fairly straightforward question. Illustrations ('pictures', if you will) are often regarded as for children only, or the realm of comic books ('Graphic Novels', if you are too proud to say you read comics).

But one of the great things about Warhammer and 40k are the illustrations in the rulebooks and Codexes, so why don't they transfer?

The Fighting Fantasy series of books by Jackson and Livingston were illustrated, but still quite serious books (and had a great many artists who worked for GW). I've got editions of The Silmarillion and Children of Hurin that have colour plates by Ted Naismith and Alan Lee respectively (and nobody could complain that Tolkien needs pictures to prop up his writing, but they certainly make the book prettier).

Books already have maps and charts, so it can't be a typesetting issue (and really, it's 2011). Perhaps it is a budget restriction mixed with presentation - since GW no longer does the 2000AD style art found in Rogue Trader (which I miss) the art takes much longer to produce one imagines, so costs more.
Also a highly detailed sketch does not reproduce well on the pages of a paperback, while a comicbook style does much more readily. That doesn't mean it has to be cartoony.

Like this

Of course this is just idle musing, but I'd certainly like to see some GW books with illustrations - they've taken the step of making the covers text free for some titles, so why not some inside aswell?

A couple quick book reviews

2010-12-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

Ciaphas Cain does it again - The Emperor's Finest by Sandy Mitchell

This book is a prequel of sorts chronologically, jumping back to before his time with the Valhallan 597th, after the events of Perlia and taking off directly from the short story Shadows of the Tomb (as in the short story could well be the first chapter for this novel).

Whilst obstensibly dealing with Space Marines, they are more background characters, with only three ever being named and the book focusses more on Cain's dealings with them and their mannerisms.

The writing is some of Mitchell's best, and a great improvement over Cain's Last Stand, who's "lol Necrons show up and kill everyone (again)" ending was particulary weak. Emperor's Finest, however has a great ending, and some of the sharpest dialogue yet, with Cain meeting his match in Mira, a governor's daughter who proves his equal in many ways. I personally found their relationship arc very well developed though (highlight text to read spoilers):

I thought the very last scene was rushed. For Cain to be so easy going about what had been a rather long relationship ending seemed odd - not that he wanted out but I expected Cain to be a bit put out he was replaced so easily.
I also felt Mira moving on so quickly to be strange as she took a while to truely warm to Cain and it semed to be more than her hunger for status driving her relationship with him (and his with her - he does comment repeatedly about missing her etc).
Probably could have done with another page there, but nothing major.

Only criticism of the book is that the footnotes, one of the series' signatures, were fairly lacklustre and often, to be frank, pointless. Many were simply explaining Cain's military acronyms which are used only once. When the acronym is only used once, and there is no witticism from Amberly to acompany the footnote, having it abreviated and noted seems silly rather than just spelling it out in the first place.

But, a minor quibble - I still rate the book highly amongst the Cain series, and this one gets bonus points for a hilarious Casablanca reference.

9/10

Die For The Emperor - Dead Men Walking by Steve Lyons.

Again, while the book's focus is on the men of Krieg, they are only observed and never the focus for the narative's perspective. The perspective mostly comes from an attached, and somewhat jaded, Commisar; the planet's Governor and a pair of seperated lovers.

The book is flat out one of the best Black Library books I've read. It doesn't stuff around with nobody knowing what the Necrons are (well, the civilians don't, but the Guard do), there's no achingly long battle scenes that don't advance the plot (there are battles, but they provide character development), and the characters are all unique and have little overlap in function.
It is brutal and bloody, but not needlessly so as to feel cartoonish or ghoulish but successfully conveys the horror and confusion of the Necron attacks.

My only criticisms are that some of the dialogue between Arex and Tylar was rather odd - they were talking in a slightly crazed manner and totally different to everyone else. It wasn't bad, and worked in the circumstances, but it was never really explained.
The other would be the overuse of the word 'flensing'. No cutting, slicing, carving - it was all flensing, all the time.

Also, when I first read the name Arex all I could think of was Team America (probably because I've been watching 30 Rock recently and whenever the credits are on and Alec Baldwin pops up on I say 'Arec Barwdwin' to my girlfriend).

Now for a couple of spoilery points (highlight to read):

Arex's relationship with Tylar felt a bit forced to me, but I'm not quite sure how to put it into words. I think it might be because of the very last scene when Arex is hit by the bottle and Tylar scowls at the crowd. That just seemed like such an odd reaction, for him to react the way it was put. Their connection was based on going through the shared trauma of enslavement and Arex notes that where she was leaning on him before (and still holding out hope for Gunthar) they were later relying on each other for mutual support and she resigned herself that Gunthar was likely dead (I saw it as a mirroring of her hope that Tylar's strength was reflection of Gunthar's, and seeing Tylar's spirit broken made her lose hope that the more timid Gunthar could have survived).

When they were leaving it seemed to return to the position of Tylar being 'the strong one' in the relationship, protecting and scowling and all that, it felt like a quick recovery for him. It was also a very douchey thing for him to do, as previously he'd been very sympathetic and caring, and now he's scowling at people being left behind? The same guy willing to blow himself up with a grenade a few chapters ago?

That weird out of character moment probably made Gunthar's seeing them together more painful, along with his one man last attack at the end. I'd been hoping all book that he would have won out, or Arex would have at least learnt of his efforts (for instance she got to the Krieg HQ and heard of Trooper Sorensen going missing in the attack or somesuch). Personally I would have had Arex and Tylar learn of Gunthar's efforts, and maybe even see him at the spaceport but not have Arex and Tylar together - something like Gunthar manages to give Arex the ring in the crowd, but she's pulled away by the Krieg guardsmen onto the transport. More bittersweet than the somewhat depressing ending as is, but that's GRIMDARK for you.

All up though, a great read and one of my top 40k books.

9.5/10

WiP - Wyches in Progress

2010-12-06T10:20:00.001-08:00

The Wych squad is proceeding quite well - they are however much more time consuming than the Warriors with all the skin and such.

Pair of Hekatrii:

Both have a blast pistol and agoniser (I'm using the swords instead), but one has a phantasm launcher.

Group shot of the squad:

As opposed to the warriors I'm giving them yellow tabbards rather than black, mostly so they're visable at a distance rather than looking like a black smudge.

Hope to have them done in the next couple of days, then on to some Reavers.

1st Warrior Squad Complete

2010-11-28T22:33:00.001-08:00

Here is the squad:

They have an extra Sybarite due to my fiddling around with the kits. First Sybarite:

I painted the skin under her fringe as if it had been badly scarred (and addd some scar lines on the right side of her face) - I'm imagining she wears her hair like that to hide her disfigurement, like Meg Ryan in Captain Planet.

Second Sybarite and Splinter Cannon dude:

This Sybarite is made from a Raider crewman body.

Warriors:

Warriors... come out to play!

Very happy with how the colour scheme turned out. I obviously went for black tabbards with yellow stripes - I tested the reverse and it was too overpowering for the purple. Next up I'll be doing a Wych squad and finishing off my Lelith counts-as.

Raaarg, Gotthammer smash GW! and why I don't like mixing paints

2010-11-24T07:54:00.001-08:00

So I went into my local GW to buy some more small drybrushes and some more Tentical Pink, since mine is looking a bit gluggy.

Games Workshop no longer makes Tentacle pink! What the hell guys?

If I was female, a lawyer and a superhero I'd have done this and wrecked up the place.

The minion there informed me that they're cutting a few lines from the range, not just the pink I need as the final highlight for my entire Dark Eldar army. Probably some of the twenty shades of green they have.

I find this personally very annoying as, despite the minion helpfully telling me I could mix some purple and white, I hate mixing paints.

I really do - it ends up wasting a whole bunch and I can never get the colour quite right again, something important when it's a main colour for your army. I guess it is easier from GW's point of view that they have to make/carry less colours, and make more from selling multiples to mix, but the draw for me of citadel colours has always been the good range of shades available.

I'll probably stick with the pink I've got and thin it a bit (even though that makes my brushes taste weird), but later i guess I'll make a bottle of Liche Purple/White blend so everyone gets the same colour.

Dark Eldar II

2010-11-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

Captain Loressha is just about done - only need to do her back banner.

First time using line/edge highlighting, pretty happy with how it turned out. The coulours are Hormagaunt Purple drybrush over black, followd by a Liche Purple drybrush, then a 60/40 Liche / White mix edge highlight, purple wash, fine tentacle pink edge highlight and lastly a black wash.

Dassanta is coming along nicely now, though she was giving me serious headaches - the colours weren't working and no matter what I did the detail wasn't coming out well defined or crisp. It was getting to the point where I was thinking I'd have to strip her back to metal and start agian honestly.

But, fortunately it didn't come to that and all is well. It was only around the Gryphonne Sepia wash of her skin that it started coming together.
I'm thinking of giving her tattoos down her arms and back, Yakuza style, but I'm not 100% sold on the idea. Well, I like the idea... I just don't know if it'll look any good.

Who got da butt? Brak got da butt!
I couldn't find a clip of that, so have some Sisqo linkage instead.

With this army I'm trying lots of new techniques - heavier shading, line edging and a 'rougher' style. This is partly inspired by Ron From The Warp's Deathwing and Space Hulk minis (who also inspired me before) in terms of not having 100% paint coverage - by which I mean they're wearing purple armour, but the model isn't fully based in it, leaving the shadows black.

I've also been more immediately spurred on by THIS POST (read it, it's awesome) by Dave_G over at Wargaming Tradecraft. I'll just be lazy and quote my comment there here:

"I sometimes have to remind myself as a painter to not get stuck doing the same things with my models and to try new things rather than just playing it 'safe'.
It doesn't always work but when it does it is certainly more rewarding seeing the job done than simply going the tried and true."

So I'm pushing the envelope, thinking outside the square, going fastermax, reaching over the top and mastering the ass. I'm also using Dave_G's posting of the 'alternative styles' of Sketching and Outlining for a bit of inspiration (I liked Borderlands art style, pity I didn't like the game itself) - I'm being rougher and more carefree with the shading and highlighting. That's not to say lazy or haphazard, but focusing more on the feel of the model than getting it 'perfect'.
This could also be to do with getting back into drawing again as I tend to be rather sketchy there, so it's probably bleeding over into my painting.