2017 Year in Review

This was another good hobby-filled year. So here is a summary of 2016 for me.

T'au Empire (Warhammer 40,000)
I took my T'au to the Harvester this year. While my Index army didn't have too much success, it was fun. Let's hope they get a good codex in 2018. At least I have some newly painted battlesuits.

James' Necrons (Warhammer 40,000)
I guess you could call this a commission. Something I did for my brother so he could attend the Harvester of Souls with us. We will see what kind of codex will come out for it in 2018.

Censers & Tocsins (Nurgle Mortals - Warhammer: Age of Sigmar)
This is an army I have been trying to keep up on with painting. Compared to last year's summary, I only had some built, and none painted. My goal with this army is if I build something for it, I paint it, before building the next thing. There will definitely be more to come for this AoS force.

Forthammer Clan Throng (Dispossessed - Warhammer: Age of Sigmar)
I have had a ton of fun with this army. I took them to the Las Vegas Open, added some cool conversions, and am running them in a campaign, which is still ongoing. I have more on the painting table for these guys, so I am not done with them yet.

The Klad Barag (Dispossessed - Warhammer: Age of Sigmar)
This deserves its own entry here because I consider it quite the achievement. Still not 100% sure what I will use him as, but he will be a proxy for any big dude I want to run in friendly games. Perhaps not tournament legal due to being a proxy and all. I do plan on taking some better photos of this guy and sending them to White Dwarf. Let's hope something comes from that.

Forgesworn Eternals (Stormcast Eternals - Warhammer: Age of Sigmar)
I haven't really added anything to this army, just got completely caught up on painting. Lately nothing has really stood out for the line to get me to want to add here. At least with being completely painted, if I do add anything, I will be inclined to immediately paint it. Like my plans for my Nurgle dudes.

Tempest's Eye Rangers (Grand Alliance: Order - Warhammer: Age of Sigmar)
I only have a couple things here for the army, for now. They are only really ever intended to be for some Grand Alliance army, rather than a start of Freeguild. I would like to paint them this coming year.

Song of Blades and Heroes Stuff
For my favorite non-Warhammer fantasy skirmish game, I have added a lot of Reaper BONES minis to it here and there. And I made some nifty ruins for it as well. But most of all I am still slowly working on the Song of the Deep Empire campaign supplement for it. More on that in the coming year.

And that sums up the year. Lot's of fun projects, and of course, lot's of plans for 2018. Stay tuned.

Forthammer Clan Throng - Runelords

The Runelord is a great hero warscroll. It's cheap and has reliable useful buffing power. So far the only one I have is Bree, so I decided to add a few more. These are from Reaper BONES (this and this). They are also meant to be part of my Song of Blades and Heroes collection.

The one of the left has had nothing done to it outside of the painting. But the one on the right has had a couple bits replacements. The tongs holding the burning rune is from the original runelord kit (that sprue has a lot of good spare bits), and the hammer is a metal bit from an old GW dwarf engineer blister.

Song of the Deep Empire - Playtest

Over the weekend I had some friends stay over for the solar eclipse. We were lucky enough for our town to be smack dab right in the middle of the line of totality so we got to see the entire eclipse in all its glory. So to celebrate this wonderful celestial event (which some weirdos mistakenly predicted to be an apocalyptic event), we played out another apocalyptic event in the making:

Again, I am absolutely kicking myself for not having taken any pictures of the battle in progress. But I can at least give a little report on it. My friend brought several pre-painted D&D minis from his own collection and we hammered out a themed 300 point warband:

Left to right: Incubus Warrior, Elemestra, and Naga Warrior

Jake the Savage Slaver and his 5 Slaves

This faced off against a Deep Empire Rise:

Top left to bottom right: The Bride, Lord Mo'clor'rath'kritlor, Karkarion Warrior, 2 Spikeshell Warriors, 2 Naiad Warriors, Naiad Piercer

I had just finished painting these guys before he came over. They certainly set the tone for the entirety of the Deep Empire. I will do a quick report of painting bones minis: I certainly love it. It is true that they do not need to be spray primed. I just coated them with a some of Reaper's brush on primer, and they painted like a dream after that. The bottom 3 of course are not Reaper bones, but are from Mantic's Kings of War range. I bought a small kit of them off of ebay because they could fit the deep empire very nicely. As for basing I just used a mix of spackle(filler), sand, and paint. The idea is a marshland theme. For the grass tufts I used a very creative method found here.

Dried grass tufts being made from a really cheap paintbrush I already had.

Anyway about the battle. It was a lot of fun, and got really intense. His Gorgonites got beat out in the end though, and part of the failure was due to the encroaching waters, which is sort of the idea. The waters are intended to make the campaign an uphill battle for the participants. However I did figure something out: placing D6 water tiles onto the table each time a Personality activates is way too quick. The waters came up fast and after a few turns the board was pretty well flooded. I will be reducing that likely to D3 water tiles per Personality activation, or even just each time the Deep Empire player begins a turn, bring in D3 waters. This is why we are experimenting with this. He did have some cool moments though, like his Incubus Warrior leaping from building to building, and the slaves surrounding and taking out the Karkarion Warrior in a mass of naked bodies.

I would like to get some more of my Deep Empire models painted before I get the chance to play again.

Song of the Deep Empire - Encroaching Waters

I have been doing some preliminary writing for a set of scenarios and campaign for Song of Blades and Heroes. The idea is about an ancient evil from the deeps of the oceans rise up to flood the surface, destroy civilization, and recede again. The mortal races of the surface are tenacious, and always rebuild. Prompting this to happen every thousand years or so.

It is a campaign, minimum 2 players, and each player builds a warband that grows as the campaign goes along. But one player takes the role of the Deep Empire, trying to ensure the Rise happens. Other players make groups of adventurers (trying to stop it), treasure hunters (the Deep Empire is ancient, and bring a lot of relics of the past with them), or mercenaries, among other ideas. It's really up to the players how they would involve themselves in this.

I am still working out the campaign paths, scenarios, and story, but I have one idea I really do like that gives the Deep Empire an edge over the other warbands.

Encroaching Waters
All models in a Deep Empire force has the Aquatic special rule and have to pay for it, no exceptions. While this can make Deep Empire models a little more expensive, it works out because every time a Deep Empire Personality activates, water features begin to appear and spread across the game board. These water features generally may be about 3" to 4" square, and of course they will have no effect on Deep Empire models, but for the surface dwellers, it can be quite a drawback to have to move and fight through them.

So let's make some encroaching water tiles for use during a game.

I started with a display pocket. These are thick flexible pieces of clear plastic used to mount signs. So one of these provides 2 sheets when you cut off the edges.

Next I taped one of the sheets to a wooden board to hold the sheet tight. I also put a paper underneath with the basic 3"x4" squares drawn so all my water pieces are sorta around the same size.

Using my trusty hot glue gun, I write out the outlines of some water pieces.

Then I continue to work on filling the pools in with hot glue, doing an inner boarder on one, then moving on to the next while it sets, and so on.

Continue until all pieces are filled in completely.

Once the sheet has cooled, cut them out with a decent pair of scissors.

I think they work well enough to convey shallow waters. They are small enough to fit in or around most pieces of terrain. Usually water features are more elaborate, but these are designed to be put down during gameplay.

I first tried making them and painting them blue, but I decided they looked too fake and stood out too much. I realized the clear option was better so you could see the colors underneath and they would blend in with the map better. Besides, shallow waters are not blue.

As you could also see I have a selection of aquatic themed BONES minis for this project. That was intentional. I will do infrequent updates as this project comes along. Maybe even a battle report!

Song of Blades and Heroes Report

Just a few quick things. I demo'd the game of Song of Blades and Heroes with my friend from out of town. We both had a blast. It was a good experience for both of us, and he got a better idea of miniature wargaming in general.

I am absolutely kicking myself for not taking any pictures of the game, but I can at least give a quick summary of what happened. His Dwarfs entered the ruins and found out it was inhabited by a nasty warband of Nurgle worshippers lead by Lord Gagnus (or a variant of him). Dunhill's expedition had to make quick work of discovering any evidence of what happened in the town, and quickly found a chest full of important items and information. There were casualties on both sides, and they barely made it out alive from the inexorable advance of the followers of the Plague God.

Here are the warband rosters I used in this little adventure.

The strength of the Dwarfs here is some good shooting and heavy armor all around. Their weakness of course is their movement.

The strength of the followers of Nurgle is the common use of Poison and numbers, but weakness is varying degrees of quality.

Again, he had a great time, and was already talking about the next time we would be able to get together in the future, he could make his own warband from his own little D&D minis collection.

Speaking of getting people into the hobby, while I was making all my terrain, my daughter's eyes glowed while I built up the ruins, and since I had some leftover bricks. She decided to take a stab at terrain building.

With the advance of the dreaded Queen Miranda, lone hero Pedro Pony decides to take refuge in the tower!

City Ruins Terrain

I completed several pieces of terrain in time for our game of Song of Blades and Heroes coming up tomorrow. I got the game mat from Frontline Gaming when they had a big sale going on. It was a decent price at the time, but an odd size of 30"x30". I guess it's used for a Warmachine/Hordes game format, but I knew it could be used for small skirmish games like this. The good thing is all this terrain I made was extremely cheap. Most of the stuff I needed I already had from past terrain projects.

First we take some 1/2" blue foam board (extruded polystyrene) and cut it into 1/2" wide strips. The board actually turned out to be a little thicker than 1/2", so these were not perfectly square, but as long as all your strips are cut 1/2" wide, you should be fine for creating ruins.

Next on the strips, you mark out 1" marks and cut them on those marks. This should create your little bricks. You will need a lot of them.

In making all the bricks, I realized they were cut too square and sharply, making for unrealistic ruins. So I started sanding off the edges of them, but gave up halfway through. It was a lot of work and I figured half of them helps sell the old look well enough.

Now we have all our little bricks done, you essentially have a bucket of Lego that you can use to build your structures.

I had spare pieces of MDF board that I initially bought for my Zone Mortalis project. They were not cut square enough for the tiles, but decent for this. I jigsawed out some shapes that seemed like they would work on the game mat, and sanded off the edges.

Using a hotglue gun because it's quick and easy, you start by laying out the base stones for your ruins. Then you build up from them, keeping in mind how things will look finished. It was hard not to try completing the walls and structures, instead make sure they end up looking dilapidated and ruined.

Here they are built up. At about 4 blocks high, I decided to add wood flooring to create other levels. I didn't do it on all of them, but some to create some dynamic terrain. I used popsicle sticks hotglued between some of the brick layers. Scraping along the grain of the sticks with a serrated knife, and generally breaking them off where they need to end in length helps sell the ruined look of them.

Last step before painting is gluing down sand. I did some on top of the bricks as well.

 

And lastly you paint and decorate.

For painting I just used cheap craft paints.

• For the ground I base coated it with a medium gray, washed with black, and drybrushed in a forest green in a blotchy pattern.
• For the stones and walls I based them with a dark grey and washed with black. Then I sponged a medium gray allover the bricks for texture. Finally I drybrushed a light gray especially around the edges.
• The wooden floors were based with a chocolate brown, washed with black, then drybrushed with a light brown (almost tan).
• Next I did some creeping vines using a very similar technique shown here (scroll down to Finishing Touches).
• Once the vines are dry, I gave everything a coat of Mod Podge. After the Mod Podge dries, it had a slightly satin or glossy sheen, so I did a final coat of a spray on matte varnish.
• Final step is hotglue on some cheap aquarium plants to create colorful vegetation.
  
  
  

  

  Thane Dunhill and his crew begin their expedition in the mysterious ruins. Ancestors know what dangers lurk therein.

Forthammer Clan Throng - Old Steamsuit and Runelord

I have a few extra minis for my Dwarfs that have been on my painting queue for quite some time. Well it took a little push to get them bumped to the top. I have a friend coming over this weekend, and he is an RPGer. We rolled together back in my RPG days. He knows I concentrate primarily on miniwargaming nowadays, so in order to help him better understand my hobby, I offered to run a demo game with him. Song of Blades and Heroes is the perfect game to intro people into the basics of miniature war gaming. It's fast, simple, and small scale. This video explains why better than I can.

So I am double timing it right now to get some fantasy terrain going (as I have none in my personal collection, more on that in a later post), and to get 2 warbands worth of minis ready for him. He wanted to try playing Dwarfs. For that I finished painting these 2 characters that I am proud to use in a SoBaH warband:

This is one of the renditions of Dunhill Forthammer. I showed this mini a few times a while and described it a little more here. Of course I have fascinations with the steamsuits, so this is one of the incarnations. I really should do a post about Dunhill's many different steamsuits. He's like Ironman constantly tinkering and adding more suits to his collection.

This is his daughter, Bree Dunsdottir. Again, I touched on her story a little more here. If there wasn't such a strict GW-only policy at the LVO, I would have had her painted and added to my army then. I love the look of this mini. It's my favorite female dwarf sculpt. She shows so much power, and in our SoBaH game, she will be an Enchanter, sort of a buff-mage.

As you can see, I painted them up to match the color scheme of the rest of my Duardin army in case I want to run them there too.

Gamer A.D.D - Rogue Stars

I am a fan of the Song of Blades and Heroes game system. I've done a few posts on it before. It's a great little fantasy skirmish game that can be easily taught, picked up, and provides a dynamic gaming experience. When I head the creator, Andrea Sfiligoi, built a scifi ruleset that was published by Osprey Wargames (who also published Frostgrave), I knew I wanted to check it out. Also I learned the art within was illustrated by Johan Egerkrans who also runs one of my favorite blogs that I follow. So with some of my Christmas money I ordered a copy and read through it.

The game is advanced. It has a lot of rules and a lot of conditions. Your characters can have 3 different types of condition tokens on them at any one time, including pin tokens, stress tokens, and wound tokens. These tokens represent penalties for different types of rolls and bonuses for your opponent depending on the rolls. The amount of special rules available to making characters isn't as much of an issue as I am used to it with SoBaH, but the sheer amount of tables needed for referencing is pretty high. Attacking and damage alone has you go through about 5 different tables in a sequence. It's a little daunting, but you can quickly remember common roll modifiers and table look-ups to speed-up play. But a cheat sheet would sure help as I was flipping through the book quite a bit on our initial playthrough.

We were excited to play this game using my Zone Mortalis tiles, and it worked quite well on them.

However there were some aspects about it I really enjoyed. It borrowed a few key things from SoBaH which I thought were best about that system. It's still a bring-whatever-minis-and-stat-them-up type games. So I could use whatever scifi figures I wanted, and make their profiles to match the miniature. This is especially friendly to conversions as a lot of options in the book will cover most creative ideas I can think of for miniatures. The other aspect it took is the activations and initiative. Where you rolled on each figure to activate your minis, and your opponent got to react to them based on bad rolls and even attempt to steal initiative away from you, switching to your opponent's turn. The game experience can be active for both players, and that is very cool.

Some people are calling this a scifi Frostgrave, which I don't think it is at all. The model count per side is only about 4-6 models, and really can't go much higher with how activations and initiative is handled. It doesn't even feel like Necromunda. To me it feels closer to each player is bringing a team of  RPG Player Characters that face off against each other. Perhaps another good comparison is to GW's old Inquisitor game.

We didn't get through a single game as my brother, Jarom, and I played. We were both learning to play and things went really slow. We could tell though that it did start to speed up near the end as we learned about the common target number rolls and table conditions. But this game does take a lot of practice, so it's not as friendly to new players as SoBaH is, especially those new to wargaming. We do want to give it another chance. There may be a lot of rules to go through for actions, but it provides a lot of detail to them, like damage locations and weapon ranges.

My brother and I have had our own scifi setting homebrewing in our heads for quite some time. We had already adapted it to a simple RPG that I outlined on my other blog (which I don't do much with anymore). We were looking for a miniatures game that could do it justice, and this might be it. Our initial thoughts were for Deadzone, but that game is not as adaptable as this.

After a couple read-throughs, I made some useful reference cards for recording your characters. These are meant to be 3"x5" so they can fit into large card sleeves.

And here are a few examples of the cards in use. This is my 200xp team. The Oathbound. In our setting is a massive heavy world rich with minerals, and generations of Fairin (the common human-like race of the galaxy) have been working on the world of Urachbach. They formed the Urachbach Mining Guild. A people of hard work ethics and very dwarven policies when it comes to grudges and righting wrongs. One of the things they have are the Oathbound. When a group has wronged or shorted the Urachbach mining guild, the Oathbound are set out to track them down and get reparations, under threat of death. They can only seek this justice in neutral space, so a lot of it has to do with timing and investigation.

Obviously this is my little Deadzone Forge Fathers collection, which I am looking forward to painting soon. I like this game because it encourages you to give each model its own style and personality, while keeping with a theme for your force as a whole. There is no 'generic footsoldier', they are all named characters. Undoubtedly you will be seeing more about this game sometime in the future.