Dance Macabre – the Mordheim Morrismen

Bad hair day?

Well Mayday is nearly upon us, and the special edition of the Wicker Man is in the DVD player.

My last post was about too many projects, and this is one of them. During times of heavy workloads I tend to prefer focusing on fluff, it's cheap and enjoyable. Like home-made vodka.

This is not so much a new project as a re-imagining of an old one. I really used to love Warhammer – as a game I preferred it to 40k. I first played 4^th edition, and the last that I dabbled in was 6^th, which I rather liked. As Scipio had never really played it before I thought it would be great to try it. Then I read the 8^th edition rules. I immediately agreed with the idea of unit fillers. This is supposed to be a game of manoeuvre. Two blocks of 50 models is not a game of manoeuvre. I quickly decided that “Warmapocalypse,” was not for us.

Too many projects?

Ooh, pretty distraction....

Time again for my weekly post...

Wow, in the last 2 weeks, I have had a 1000 more hits - what on earth is going on, it makes me feel even more guilty for not deliviering as much hobby stuff as I'd like. Again, it's been busy of late, with more silly things getting in the way of wargaming (damned Real Life), but also the superb British Silent Film Festival. On the plus side I have received a couple of commissions on the back of my latest animation snippets - which means more pocket money for miniatures but less time to work on them.

Animated about 40k

I seem to be doing more and more posts about fluff at the moment, I'm still working on the Scouts as promised in my last post.

This post is very much one about tangents. In my post-before-last, ironically on "distractions" I posted a doodle that got out of hand to become an image of my Space Marine Chapter's homeworld, complete with starfield and lens flare.

This week I thought I'll recycle that line drawing to make an animated gif of the planet spinning, in a wireframe style. In the end I had to redraw it having done some work for Colonel Scipio and accidentally overwriting my original. And the animation project evolved. A bit.

I, Me, He, She... Pen and Paper RPG Dilemmas

Order of the Stick

Well, I have to say that I'm rather astounded that in the past three-and-a-half months this blog has had 5000 hits. I'm sure that most of these have left immediately after realising what they have stumbled upon, but for those of you that keep returning I am genuinely grateful, it has added a whole new dimension to the hobby and the sense of community seems far greater than that on forums out there.

To business. I did state in my intro that this was also an "RPG blog" so I thought I had better deliver on that front before Trading Standards get on to me.

The real reason for looking at pen and paper (or tabletop if you prefer) RPGs is that this week I have been ambushed into acting as Games Master again.

Fluffy Distractions

The world of Mawdryn

This is a little less concise than my original post, which I managed to lose somewhere in the aether...

I often find myself doing work in a not-doing-work kind of way (a la Arnold Rimmer in Infinty Welcomes Careful Drivers). This often extends to modelling and painting. Modelling and converting I generally enjoy, when I'm not being clumsy and taking chunks out my fingers instead of a Space Marine Scout's shoulder pad. Painting I really enjoy when I'm doing it, but it often takes a lot of motivation to get into the swing of things - I am gradually getting more disciplined when it comes to painting but there's still progress to be made.When it comes to 40k however there is one thing that I always drift to, and that is fluff.

Arthurian / Celtic Space Marine Captain Conversion

UPDATED 03/04/12 (13:37 GMT)

Firstly, not sure what happened to my blog layout, got back to my PC after a week away and it looked like nothing I've ever selected. Anyhoo, sorted that for now.

This week I have purchased copious amounts of bits from Bitz Box for my Arthurian/Celtic-themed and Welsh-named Mawdryn Space Marines. As the existing ones were built rather hastily to get a few games in whilst myself and Colonel Scipio had windows in our hectic schedules, I wanted to go back to them and rebuild them with a little more loving care and attention.

Firstly though, I wanted to create a HQ figure as I only had a stand-in for my Captain previously......

40k Battle Report: Space Marines vs Imperial Guard

In case you missed it, here's Colonel Scipio's battle report of our 1000pt 40k game yesterday. It was very closely fought game featuring my brand new Celtic/Romano-British inspired Marinesand Scipio's superb 2nd Battalion, Palladian Guard - disciplined guardsmen in rather spiffing dress uniforms.

The Colonel asked me to provide some post-game comments a la White Dwarf in the good ol' days. This was clearly a cunning ploy to get me to reveal any subtle (as a brick) tactics. I still fell for it. My comments can be found below.

Space Marine Chariot Attack Bike Rules

Today saw the very first outing of my Spear of Mawdryn Space Marines after a several year break from 40k (and my word it showed). It was a shame that my upainted and hurriedly constructed miniatures had to ruin some fantastic photos of Colonel Scipio's beautiful Palladian Guard. It was a very closely fought game with some particulalry unlucky dice rolls for both of us, but plenty of sportsmanship - and most importantly, a fantastic game. Battle report with photos can be found here - Scipio kindly wrote this one up.

The game saw a few of our army specific house rules, a more complete set for the Palladian Guard and a handful for myself - I'm still working on these. Today's post will look at my proposed rules for the conversion that featured in my last post - the Space Marine "Chariot" Attack Bike.

Space Marine Chariot conversion and more...

Maybe not the most practical way to wage war, looks good though

I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post. I've been saying to myself that I wouldn't post until I had a solid horde of miniatures painted up, as that would give me a little more motivation to paint more quickly. As you may have noticed, that plan failed miserably.

And I really didn't expect this to be the topic. I thought it would be more WWII, or Confederate skirmishers modelled as if wading through some Louisiana swamp, or maybe some of Paul Hicks' fantastic RJW Japanese painted up in 1886 blue uniforms...? Instead my attention was turned back to 40k by Colonel Scipio, who waxed lyrical about his dream army of Mordians, and his talk of doing some 40k at our next gaming meet up.

Painting of the first Soviet begun

Still not the triumphant post I wished to make in which I gladly proclaimed all 20-odd miniatures painted, unfortunately with work and everything else I have only just found time to clean up the Warlord Soviets of the flash and mould lines and start painting the first model.

As stated before I was going to do roughly 2:1 winter:summer issue gymnastiorka where appropriate. This is still very much a test mini to allow me to play around with my palette. The main gym (tunic) colour is a mix of Citadel Graveyard Earth and Bleached Bone - and will be the same but with a tad more bleached bone for the extreme highlights. The shaded parts were originally Graveyard Earth mixed with Scorched Brown, but with my "arm length" test, the contrast wasn't quite enough, so I've gone with just Scorched Brown on this one. I'm not being to accurate with my mixes for the main colour as Soviet uniforms were notoriously haphazard off the production line, never mind the effects of weathering.

Volksgrenadiers are here (or Heer...)

Luftwaffe Jager of 18th VG Div.

This isn't the post that I was hoping to make today (painted Soviets will be making an appearance ASAP).
But nevertheless as I was getting up to make a coffee, the postman knocking at the door could only mean one thing: my Volksgrenadiers were here!

North Star sent my Artizan miniatures very quickly, the cost is the same as the Warlord stuff and the minis look great (I have a few minor quibbles with the Warlord Soviet sculpts, but nothing significant).The Artizan and Warlord sculpts can happily sit on the same table, but the Artizan stuff is slighlty taller. If I mix the ranges then it will be with stand-alone pieces such as Infantry Guns and the like.

"We'll keep the Red Flag flying here!" - Warlord Soviets arrive

I had expected today's post to be a more in-depth overview/review of the new experimental close quarters rules from Forge World, Zone Mortalis. However, a speedy delivery from Warlord Games has scuppered that plan - in a pleasant way.

Along with my comrades-in-arms, Colonel Scipio and Brother Knight I've been embarking on a WW2 project...