Grimdark words for wargame nerds
Our long-running Dark Heresy campaign has deposited our mid-high tier characters naked and unarmed in a pit of despair, deep in the bowels of a steel labyrinth. The ‘facility’ is inhabited by pig-masked psychopathic brutes – operatives of the shady xenos-smuggling ring ‘The Beast House‘.
Continue reading “MOTB: The Beast House WIP”
It’s been a long road to Hive Noon. You can catch up on the previous ones here:
Last week I’d put together the last few pieces – a gang relic and a genestealer-flavoured stand-in for the Ogryn-Servitor Brute. Now, with both of them painted up, it was a great opportunity to get a whole family photo as well.
Continue reading “MOTB: Hive Noon final wave”
Last time I’d pretty much rounded off the gang in terms of fighters – I’d used up all the bodies and legs on the sprues I had and was pretty satisfied I had enough variation in fighters to play the gang again in a new campaign. I just needed one or two bits to round off the gang…
Continue reading “MOTB: Hive Noon – Heavy Support WIP”
Last time we looked at the second wave of gangers added to Hive Noon and vaguely ruminated on the reasoning behind each assembly. This time, we’ve got them all gussied up ready for photo day, plus a couple of extras that didn’t make the cut last week. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading “MOTB: Hive Noon – Second wave”
Last time we looked at the finished lot of Hive Noon as it started the campaign, and as the weeks rolled round it became apparent very quickly that there was definitely some room for improvements.
Continue reading “MOTB: Hive Noon – Second Wave WIP”
Last time we looked at the WIP of Hive Noon, my latest Necromunda gang, and the tribulations involved in hand-crafting tiny cowboy hats. Wowee, I sure hope I won’t be painstakingly assembling any more tiny hats in the immediate future, thought I. Welp, let’s wait and see what’s on next week’s MOTB agenda eh?
For now, let’s enjoy the original gang in all their glory, ready to get stuck in to their first game.
With the colour scheme strongly in mind, the Baron was one of the easier models to pick colours for. The tricky part was tying it in with the rest of the gang, many of whom did not have large amounts of cloth.
I needn’t have worried – the skin tones, washes and base tied him in very nicely with the rest of the crew. A heavy application of gloss varnish on his tentacles moustache finished the look off nicely.
Inspired by the cowboy himself, I had decided to freehand all the designs onto the Acolyte’s ponchos. What I originally thought was going to be the world’s biggest ball-ache turned out to be actually rather pleasant. The South American flavour of design meant lots of straight lines and square spirals – something that lends itself quite nicely to freehanding onto complicated fabric shapes.
The Neophyte flesh tones were a very pale flesh tone washed with Druchii Violet ink, then highlighted again with the same pale flesh colour. Some areas needed a little wet blending to avoid them looking too high contrast, but overall I’m pleased with the effect.
They were undercoated in Army Painter leather brown, which aside from going on extremely thicccc is a very pleasant shade of brown to work from, easily taking washes or highlights and allowing you to cover a lot of the model very quickly. The dusters were done by applying two washes – black and brown – one after the other and giving it a light drybrush to give it a beaten leather effect. Other sections of the model were given lighter touch with a sepia wash and generally left at that!
I was pushing hard for my ‘finished, not perfect’ mantra for these guys – I knew I would be adding more to the gang as the campaign rolled out and I didn’t want to be stuck painfully wetblending my 14th cowboy jacket…
The same ‘Finished Not Perfect’ principle was applied to the metal. I’m really, really bad at resisting the urge to edge highlight but I’m glad I did – it would have been nightmarish on this many little fiddly bits. The metals were done with a medium metal colour and washed with Agrax Earthshade to mucky it up a bit, then Athenian Camoshade to give it an uncomfortable green hue.
Darn. You only notice that tiny bit of cotton wool fluff days after taking the photos and packing away all your minis.
The lash was a pale flesh colour, washed with Reikland Fleshshade. Once that was dry, a deeper crimson wash was added to the tip, and ‘artfully’ blended with my big sausage fingers rather than bother with any of that glazing nonsense.
Probably one of my favourite conversions, it’s simple but dynamic, and the combination of goggles, rebreather/scarf and cowboy hat gives him a wonderful post apocalyptic vibe. He could easily stand in as an informant or crook NPC. The goggles were done with a dollop of yellow paint and a light orange wash.
Another simple conversion, but I never quite got the kink out of his gun. I wanted all of them to look like they were wearing jeans (gold star cowboy attire) so these were painted in Ultramarines Blue with a light Agrax wash and highlighted with bone colours blended into the blue to make it stand out from the genestealer flesh.
Another poncho, this time a nice earthy orange but still with the same straight lines and square spirals to tie it in with the overall aesthetic. I gave both ponchos a light wash of sepia over the top to bring all the hues together.
I was very, very happy with how the whole crew came out. Inspired by a single model (that hadn’t even had a release date announced at this point) and a niggling idea to give him some friends to play with, I’d built this bunch of weirdos from the ground up. I could already tell I was going to have a lot of fun roleplaying this lot and I already had a dozen new ideas for minis! Roll on Wave 2…
Back in the wistful days of early 2018 a particularly interesting model turned up in blurry previews of the new (at the time) Genestealer Cult – a mysterious three-armed gunslinger. Perfect conversion fodder, we all thought. I’d never really been into the purple-skinned freaks before, and any interest in the model was strongly around it’s potential as something else.
Continue reading “MOTB: Hive Noon – First Wave WIP”
As some of you may recall, I fell down a bit of a Necromunda hole last year and had the BEST time and much of my work since has been reflecting on the grimy underdecks of the setting, Mercy. I had grand plans to make various factions, NPCs and scatter terrain based on the different scenarios that cropped up.
Since then, I’ve already put together some shooty beep-boops and a big angry Ogryn-servitor so it was time to turn my attentions to less metallic pastures. One scenario in particular stood out as being a) fun and b) in dire need of some miniatures – Downtown Dust-up. Two (or more) gangs bump into each other in a crowded area and go for their guns, but the area is populated by up to a dozen underhive citizens who don’t take kindly to gangers opening fire in their neck of the woods. Sometimes they flee, sometimes they draw a stub gun and take a pop at the nearest ganger, regardless of who set them off. The gangs are trying to drive their opposition off while avoiding civilian casualties, all the while the civilians are trying to kill them for starting a ruckus – it’s an absolute hoot.
Continue reading “MOTB: Citizens of Mercy WIP”
Our Dark Heresy campaign has made it to the planet of Syracuse -a dank and miserable affair perfect for acolytes tramping around in the mud and rot. For the campaign I wanted some epic set pieces, and even put together a game board to help build the mood.
It was time to return for another brawl, this time to defend an Imperial Cathedral (or what was left of it) from rampaging Undertow during a full-blown civil war.
For all my sins and Dark Heresy games set around investigations, I didn’t own any Adeptus Arbites models. They had cropped up in our sessions before, but only as set dressing or background NPCs. Now, with the finale of our Syracuse campaign looming, I needed some black-clad crime-punchers to either help (or hinder) the player’s assault on an Adeptus Arbites precinct house. They would need to be equipped at the appropriate level to my players, but could reasonably be used in future games in higher or lower power settings.
Continue reading “MOTB: Adeptus Arbites”