Keep Calm And Blog On: A Painting Update For Chaos Dwarfs & Chaos Space Marines

Well it's all gone a wee bit weird, hasn't it?

My home country of the United Kingdom has had a rather big and rather surprising referendum result and as a politics nerd I've been following it, to the detriment of this blog which has had a few part-written articles on the to do list for a while.  Instead I woke up Friday 3am for the electoral count and fallout, continuing to hit Refresh on BBC news on an hourly basis ever since.

I could write paragraph upon paragraph about this turn of events, but it's not even vaguely what this blog is about.  This is a place about daemons, dwarfs, dragons, superheroes, holodecks, psychics and dice.  Real world issues stay off and do not interrupt.

Also, I think it would do me good to not think about it for the next wee bit! 

At least the Americans are seeing the bright side.

So let's catch up on what I've been up on the painting front instead and not even use the words Brexit, Farage, Eurozone, Constitution, Crisis, Denmark, Romanians, Neo-Fascist or Civil War.

Wait, that's two words.

Ach, you know what I mean.

A lot of drybrushing, the reverse of the usual "progressively lighter shades"

So you may remember I painted some Chaos Dwarf golems a wee bit ago.  You know, big lava looking monsters?  Neon orange with darker and darker shades over them?

"I could tell her they were gifts.  Yes, gifts from a friend in Edinburgh she's never met."

 You may also remember I got some more golems when I was in Edinburgh in April, as part of the alleged "weekend away for my anniversary with Sister Superior".  You know, when I got load of geeky things?  I told Sister Superior it was mostly a bargain and she didn't question it too hard?

Yeah, so if I'm going to get yet more unpainted bits of plastic I really need to paint them to justify the spend.  And paint them I did, with three more golems ready to roll giving me a unit of six silicate hard-men!

Knightfall: Chaos Knight Titan Progress, Good & Bad

Only part painted but still making it's debut.

In my last 40K campaign update you will have seen the part-painted Knight Titan, albeit only from the back, making it's debut on the table. 

However, I haven't really told you how it's coming along - last I mentioned it, I had assembled it but hadn't even undercoated it let alone done any sort "real" painting.

In the to-do pile for quite some time.

Way back in January 2015 I got the Knight Titan for my birthday, a figure I was very much looking forward to turning into an avatar of darkness.  Real life got in the way and it's been stuck in limbo for a long time, but I finally managed to break that in the last couple of weeks and get some paint on it.

First an undercoat of white went on the model, then some Tamiya pink spray.  Although I'd be painting over the pink, I figured that getting about the right colour on before that would help sell the colour.  The hue, along with some evil alterations, were going to be the main clue to my opponents that this was a force of darkness in front of them.


 So, click on for some pictures!

Anachronista 40,000: Campaign Turn 2

When the metal is hot, and the engine is hungry...

Turn two of six of our Warhammer campaign is over.  This was a turn that only saw two games played, both of which I was involved in, but it also saw two firsts for me.

Well, three if you count "meeting Charles' new dog Rogue" as a first.  In which case it's three

Or four if you count "getting my shoelaces eaten by an animal" as a first.

In the case of my first game, it was with Charles and marked the first time I'd ever played with the Forge World Horus Heresy rules for playing in the grim darkness of the 31st millennium.  I'd built my Chaos Space Marines army to be capable of multi-tasking as a Horus Heresy army but I'd never actually given it a go - however, Charles had similarly built his White Scars to be dual-use.  Why not play out our battle with the Legion rules instead?

My army prepares for an unlikely assault.

Still looking after a weeks-old puppy, Charles was unable to leave his house so we played at his.  We considered the current plot in our campaign and drummed up an appropriate scenario - a sort of lightning raid attack, in which both sides wanted to end the game with units in the defender's deployment zone.  This would encourage the attacker to head forward and the defender to hold position.

We had assumed that the White Scars, being both dominant on the planet and traditionally a hit and run force, would be the attacker but the dice suggested that instead Charles would be defending.  Therefore my somewhat slow, stand-and-shoot army would instead need to be repurposed into a blitzkreig on enemy turf while Charles' bikes would have to pull sentry duty.

The White Scars protect a very nice pasta dish made by Charles and his good lady.

Charles set up terrain, using some of his fantasy bits and bobs as well as sci-fi specific pieces.  The white bits of paper marked the weird and wonderful results of our dice rolls for mysterious terrain with certain forests and ruins dangerous, slower moving etc.

On my side was Fulgrim the Primarch leading two infantry units, a standard issue Bolter squad and a "Kakophoni" sonic weapon unit - yes, even in Horus Heresy I take the Noise Marine option.  Supporting them was a Contemptor Dreadnought, three bikers, a heavy weapon team, two Rhinos, a Vindicator and a Land Raider.

The forces opposite were twenty Bolter marines in one huge squad, two squads of bikes of which one was lead by the army leader, a Land raider carrying a terminator squad bristling with lightning claws, some air support and a very pretty Sicarin Venator tank. Charles kept about half of it in reserve: only the two bikes squads and the Sicarin started on the table, everything else was going to have to come on later.

So how did that go?  And what was the other first for me?  Lots of picture follow!

One-Off Season, Spring 2016

With Star Trek over, a short season of three one-off RPG sessions followed.  Molly had returned from her work abroad, so she joined us to play again and also to run a session.  As usual my goal was to run at least one game I hadn’t played before, as well as cleanse the palette somewhat between our longer running campaigns with some different tones, genres and rules-sets.

First up was a new game for us and one which has been on the to-do list for ages. Starchildren: Velvet Generation is a game in which players are rock-and-roll-fugitives in a totalitarian future where art is controlled by the government, music is an underground rebellion and hippy aliens from a distant star have to come to help free us from our nightmare.  My standard issue explanation is “Ziggy Stardust meets 1984” – and with the passing of David Bowie at the start of the year, it seemed like it was finally time to play the game.

Owned for years, finally using.

I made up half-a-dozen pregens, all members of the same band: the players ended up taking a singer, guitarist, bassist, drummer and manager.  (The keyboardist, alas, was left on the shelf.)  The Singer and Manager were the eponymous alien Starchildren, very much with a Man Who Fell To Earth-esque angle of mysterious wisdom and powers but a lack of savvy and a predilection for addiction.  The end result is that Humans are still very much capable as player characters and I didn’t feel like it was The Starchildren And Their Sidekicks in play.

Anachronista 40,000: Campaign Turn 1

So much prettier than my models... <sob>

Week one of our Warhammer campaign saw three games take place of which I was involved in two.  I missed the opener – a two vs one game in which my partner-in-darkness Jamie had to muster his demons to resist an assault by 40K Dave’s Sisters of Battle and Charles’ White Scars.

A bitter struggle in which daemon princes and Contemptor Dreadnoughts marched into war, the first victory went to the Imperials but only just.  The final score was 10 kill points to 9 and with it the White Scars claimed the command base on Acanthus from Chaos.  (Though the forests and hills are now laced with small bands looking to fight guerilla battles.)

We at least gave Dave's HQ Saint Celestine a thorough killerating.

A defeat, even a close one, was not a great omen and so I had to head into battle and regain some honour.  40K Dave invited me to his house for a small “Kill Team” style skirmish versus his Sisters, and a few days after that I would fight Doug and his Dark Angles for the first time in a battle hosted at my house.  I have hardly played 40K recently so two games on the trot would be challenging, especially when Chaos Space Marines are not exactly considered top of the power curve.

The nature of the board meant they could only claim one hex from me on the planet we all shared – Germanotta, an icy world of petrochemical drilling and blinding snowstorms – but we came to a way of making it work.  Inspired by rules form the Horus Heresy rulebooks which propose fighting small skirmishes before a main battle, and then letting the skirmish determine a boost for the victor when it comes time to set up the larger game, the skirmish would be a sort of set-up fight for the Imperials.

Victory would let them be the attacker in the next game as they sneak through defensive lines; failure would instead see my army having advance notice of their arrival and letting me choose a different scenario that might play to my strengths.

Anachronista 40,000: Campaign Premise

The Mungo Sector at the start of the Anachronista campaign.  Purple and Blue runes mark the Chaos squares; Yellow, Red and Green logos mark the forces of the imperium.

The first fortnight of our Warhammer 40,000 campaign is at an end and with it the first of six campaign turns.  We're doing pretty well, with a fair amount of new painting and terrain making happening and three games ensuring everyone got to play at least once in turn one.  Turn two promises to have at least four games.

I'll share the events of turn one soon, but first: for the people interested in the background to our campaign, I'm going to reproduce some posts from our Facebook group which were used to set the scene.

Silk Anniversary - What I Did In Edinburgh

Sister Superior has a lot in common with Lois Lane, but I'm way more of a Plastic Man than Superman.

April marked the 12th anniversary for Sister Superior and I being an item.  We didn’t do anything really big on the day – instead, we waited until the start of May then went to Edinburgh for the weekend for a wee adventure.  Accommodation was booked, entertainment arrangements were made and disgustingly coupley moments were had.

A new story from the day we first went out - April 18th 2004.

The missus was working last Saturday and so couldn’t come to Edinburgh until she’d finished work – I, on the other hand, was free all day.  I went in a few hours ahead of Sister Superior, then, as an advance scout party whose primary objective was to drop off the suitcase and pick up some little odds and ends in the shops.

Of course, releasing me into a city unsupervised inevitably leads to a secondary objective: Visit the nerd shops and hunt interesting things.  With hours to kill and no-one to question why I was walking so far just for a toy soldier shop, I set on my way.

Naturally, I wouldn’t spend all my money at the start of a romantic weekend when I was on my own and visiting geek shops, right?

"I can just tell her it was... um... a bargain?"

Right?