Halloween Night Horror 2017 Diorama Competition

Another year and we limp towards the evil aura of that most dark of festivals...call it All Hallow's Eve, Sahmain or all Hallows Eve, you'll be lucky to survive it with either your life or the thin thread of your sanity.

Over on the Night and Gothic Horrors Facebook page we're running a competition to create a diorama themed around one of the classic Night Horrors range from Citadel designed to chill your bones and get your heart thumping in your chest. If you follow this blog you'll have seen me blog about the miniatures from it numerous times.

A classically inspired horror scene with victim prey to an ancient menace or a B-movie slime monster about to consume the teen who went out by himself if this sounds like it might interest you, come and join us!

The Villager's Party grows

Some of you may remember I painted up Corabell from Terror of the Lichemaster some time ago. She also features as 'Libertine' in the excellent C46 Villager range from Citadel Miniatures.

I've finished her basing and now given her a couple of companions of questionable character!

 The old fella in the middle is the 'Pedlar' from the C46 Travelling Players range of 1987. It's my favourite of all the civilians so far. There's so many small details and hidden surprises in the miniature and it tells a real story. Obviously the guy is tired but still ever so keen to sell his wares - presumably he's pointing the feathers trying to claim they are from some exotic bird? It's a Copplestone sculpt - a great sculptor and a concept that really plays to his strengths.

The second fellow is far less wholesome - he's named 'Scragger Luke' and from the C04 Thieves range. Apparently designed by the Perry Twins but it does beg the question, which one of the brothers? Maybe not as clean a sculpt (the knife isn't well formed and the legs are bandy) but an interesting sculpt nonetheless. He seems to be defending his loot - maybe from the local law enforcement? Something about it shrieked Native American to me so even though such a nation never existed in the Warhammer World this is how I painted him.

I have more from these fascinating ranges sitting untouched in drawers at the moment and I'm really keen to paint some more once my busy painting schedule quietens down a bit!

 

Watchmen Crew complete

Huzzah! Finally finished painting my Watchmen crew. Finished Ozymandias a couple of months ago, and then Comedian, Silk Spectre and Rorschach in quick succession.

They were a challenge as they are very detailed minis but it certainly felt rewarding finishing 'em. I'm particularly happy with the last two I completed.

"I used to be a masked avenger too, remember … I mean, I'm used to going out at three in the morning and doing something stupid."

"None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with me."

Now to pound on some villainous fresh meat!

Rogue Trader battle : Ork Versus Squats

I managed to find an opponent for Rogue Trader at my local games club and had a skirmish this week with my Blood Axe Orks versus his Squats.

There'd been a miscommunication and I'd brought 500 points while he'd brought double that so there was a lot of Nob promotion and additional equipment brought to bear to bring my total closer but I still ended up 200 points under.

  I'd brought the warboss and his retinue riding in their rhino, a large squad of 10 boyz with bolters, a smaller squad with bolt pistols and a mek, runtherd and a shok attack gun with a couple of bases worth of Snotling ammunition.

  

I'm no stunty expert but he'd brought 3 (or 4?) squads of squats, a trike and a couple of heavy looking dudes in exo-armour.

  

  The foot troops slogged it up the table with minimal casualties on each side, while the heavy weapon squats nestled up in the building took pot shots at my rhino. The trike shot at my smaller squad while took casualties but eventually both squats riding it were shot with the bike careering off the battlefield.

  My rhino got bogged down in terrain so my warboss took the executive decision to disembark with he and his nobs dodging heavy weapon behind walls and craters.

  Meanwhile the shok attack offloaded its frenzied snots behind the middle squad and into a protracted combat with the middle squat squad. Another squad joined that combat and eventually got rid of the nuisances but they are a right pain with spore weapons!

  

The larger ork squad eventually engaged a  squat squad in combat and was eventually defeated. But after the middle of the battleground battle with the snots, the rhino proceeded to drive up and down over the squat almost obliterating them all. The remaining squats used their krak grenade on it, immobilising it and rendering it all but useless. 

  Meanwhile the remaining nobs (and humie advisor) legged it to the building and engaged in a prolonged combat with the heavy weapon squats. We called it a night at one point at which time there were only two nobz and the stationary rhino on my side and about 5 squats on the other.

  All in all good fun but the vehicle turning rules are very clunky!

  

40K Chaos Cultist and Genestealer

Just a couple of finished models tonight. First up, is a 40K Chaos Cultist I converted just because I hadn't assembled my own converted creation for many a month and I had an itch to scratch.

Work in progress pictures

This smelly devotee of the Plague God was made up of Empire, Fantasy Chaos, Imperial Guard and Gorkamorka Ork parts and was a pretty easy job to ease myself back in. Here are the pics of the final painted model.

The second model is a test model for the Genestealer v Genestealer BOYL game next year. I'm sold on the colours but I think I might go for a lighter pink on the extremities. The purple is quite rich - it's just that the colour seems to have become washed out in the shot.

And in case you're feeling in a philanthropic frame of mind, I'm doing a 20 mile walk with work fellows into the rugged climes of the Peak District and back again to Sheffield this weekend if the rain holds off. It's all to help assist UNICEF in their work to support children in war zones so any donations made are much appreciated! Just follow the link if you wish to contribute :)

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Ashley-Rogers2

Until next time!

Onwards and onwards...

  Bring Out Your Lead is an inspiring event and one that reminded me I really need to actually game more so with that flame being lit I've now committed to a number of projects and actually got a couple of things painted!
  I loved the idea of the Tale of Four Gamers resurrection performed by Paul, James, Chico and Steve so I've enrolled some like minded souls (Adam, Matthew and thantsants) to participate in the same challenge this year with Paul stewarding. 1000 points of Fantasy Chaos Slaanesh - 100 points a month. No problem (*cough*)

  I've also enrolled in Paul's 2nd ed 40K Genestealer Coven V Genestealer Coven bloodbath for next BOYL which sees one side try to cleanse the impure evolution of the other, much in the same ilk of a Dalek civil war. Test model for that coming soon!

My watchmen crew for the Batman Miniatures game has another addition (the Comedian). At the rate of one model every six months I might get a game in by the end of 2017.

   

The Comedian...

And 'pals'...

I've played some Dredd again recently and painted up this combat droid as a merc to accompany my mobsters. It's about time my Goliaths were retired as proxies for this game (I have a few unpainted minis hanging around for this game) so I'm resolved to get a proper gang.. and a non-PDF rulebook!

   

There's also the Freehammer event coming up this October at Warhammer World where I'm probably going to be playing a Mordheim scenario against Richard Irvine and some Rogue Trader versus Curtis. Quite fun putting together those unused and unloved models from my collection for the random encounters for Nordheim.

     The Facebook link to that event is here. It's an event where like minded people can play GW games from any era with Citadel miniatures with impunity and should be great fun.

And I still haven't talked at great length at the Oldhammer Night of the Living Dead event,  Warlord Paul's Blood Bath at Orc's Drift game (using Mordheim rules), my first stab at epic this winter, my ongoing Blood Bowl league or the Winter Chaos Blood Bowl tournament in November!

  Until next time...

  

Bring Out Your Lead - Epic Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd Edition 'Rise of Morcar'

Over at the Oldhammer forum some ambitious types had the idea of running a game based around the idea of a massive Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition battle based around on the attempt of the Forces of Evil to summon the Ultimate Dark Lord from Heroquest Morcar. The idea was for this to be the ultimate battle between Good and Evil with literally no limits to the types and number of troops.

   Ambitious? Maybe. Foolhardy? Definitely. Fun? Hell yes.

  Luckily we had weazil on hand to try and interject some kind of order into this chaos and set some objectives and GM this spectacle. One one side were the forces of Good (Men, Elfs (High and Wood) and Dwarves) and on the side of the forces of Evil were Chaos, Orcs, Goblins, Fimir, Undead, Skaven, Chaos Dwarfs.....I think almost all races from the Old World were represented although I'm not sure if there were any Dark Elves or Nippon (but I may be wrong!).

The game started with the Fimir force in the centre of the table with Bran the Blessed and the Wizards of Morcar at a standing stone attempting to summon the Dark Lord. Realising this the Forces of Good came onto one side of the table to thwart this while to rescue Evil came in on the other. Other  standing stones were there and were needed to be erected and used to power the ritual at the main one. It was Good's job to demolish them or stop them being erected.

The Fimir in the centre got torn apart by the invading forces while the Evil Hero Bran the Blessed fell. Two other standing stones eventually fell, the Elven forces managing to hold off the Chaos and Undead on one flank.

Meanwhile another stone had little chance due to the departure of the Orcs and the dastardly but inevitable treachery of the Skaven. (The Skaven general was heard to snicker 'We only got included in Advanced Heroquest ...' in the dying embers of the battle). Meanwhile dragons turned up to slay two of the Wizards of Morcar while the other two used to magic to fly away away from the main stone which was looking increasingly under threat as an Earth Elemental appeared to knock it down in the final moments of the battle which saw the death of Morcar's sorcerers. It still stood but as a testament to Evil's shocking defeat.


Sorry if it all sounds a bit vague it probably is but as you can imagine with a game that took 8 hours and approximately 5000 troops it was quite hard to keep track of the forces I was commanding let alone the bigger picture. But it was still a thing of outstanding spectacle ( "glorious chaos").

I'm on a mission to try and find all the pictures of this battle (of which these are just a taster) that there are and I have done a good job of collating a lot from Facebook and people's blogs. Would be great to hear from you if you have some!

 If I get enough and can discern went I may even set up a more detailed report and summary if possible but will certainly seek to find a way to publish them all!

On a parting note here were the objectives passed to me by weazil which made me chuckle. They ring true on some many levels ;)