Project: Wet Ømens

 I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite.
   - "Dagon", H.P. Lovecraft

Church of the Fleshkeeper

Welcome back to another installment of "I made a small warband as a break from my larger projects." This time, it's a gang of horrible fishy friends for Ømen Tide. Created by Paolo Boracchi and Simon Schnitzler, two of the luminaries of the Inq28/weirdos-on-Instagram world, Ømen Tide is a tiny skirmish game of salt-soaked body horror, religious fanaticism, and that icky feeling you get if you accidentally touch seaweed while at the beach.

You can find the rules and much more for free at the Patreon.

I found the aesthetic and the inq28-inflected 'make your own' bit as inspiring as always - plus, technically, you only need three models for a warband. I got carried away and made a miniature of every role in the Church of the Fleshkeeper, but I do have some things wrong with me.

I may even make a terrain board, but only if I wind up doing a Mordheim-y waterfront - I've got too long a to-do list to commit to that sort of thing... discipline is boring

Project: Imjin War

Those who seek death shall live. Those who seek life shall die.
   - Admiral Yi Sun-sin

Korean 'bushi' for Ronin

Little project, done over I think three evenings. Which is very funny, because I think I bought these like five years ago. Jimmy and I were talking one day about how cool it would be to play Ronin, an Osprey Games blue book for Samurai skirmishes. My interest in samurai-era wargaming is generally muted (although I did watch a bunch of Kurosawa movies last year...) but I've always been interested in the Imjin War - and Ronin includes Koreans!

Most Samurai rulesets don't, by the way, even including Warlord Games recent supplement for Pike & Shotte, Wars of the Samurai. Which is good, in a way, because it means I don't wind up buying an entire Perry Miniatures Korean army only to have nobody to fight.

Anyway, these guys have languished in a box since then, but we were talking about it recently, so I decided to dig them out. I had forgotten that I'd based them on hexes - must have been in an old-school mood.

A brief sunshiney day a few days ago let met get them undercoated, and so these were a nice little bit of 'finishing something off' juice for the brain.

Project: Hag28

 For a witch stands on the very edge of everything, between the light and the dark, between life and death, making choices, making decisions so that others may pretend no decisions have even been needed. Sometimes they need to help some poor soul through the final hours, help them to find the door, not to get lost in the dark.

    - Terry Pratchett, The Shepherd's Crown

The Hunt of the Death Hag Mother Skaïth

My friend Jimmy is the artist on one of the latest games to come out of the 28 Movement - Hag 28, written by TM Cibelius and currently on Kickstarter. Each player takes on the role of a Hag, be she of the Wode, Death, Desert, Brine. The Hag collects a Hunt of various creatures, and they battle over the soul of local villages, treasures, ancient arcane whatevers. The tone is a mixture of Terry Pratchett, classic folklore, the folk horror trend, and the 'kitbash whatever the hell you like' ethos of the 28 crowd. 

I love the idea, and I love even more the idea of supporting my friends... plus, I have all these horror miniatures I've bought over the years burning a hole in my backlog. So I bashed up a gang and got very lucky a few days ago with some weather clear enough for priming and here we go.

    Hunt of Mother Skaïth

    Mother Skaïth
    Death Hag
    Hex: Death is No Excuse
    Hex: Evil Eye
    Weapon: Basher (wand)

    Terror/Spawn
    Weapon: Basher (or maybe a Poker) (staff)
    Damn Spooky; Make your Entrails your Extrails
    Pretties: 9

    OR if Spawn
    Hex: Nightmare
    Mutation: Where There's a Whip, There's a Way

    Mercenary (x2)
    Heavy armour; Scarred veteran
    Weapon: Chopper (sword & knives or axe)
    Pretties: 4 (each)

    Goblins (x4)
    Ramshackle weapon: Choppers (scratchy claws and rocks)
    My Handiwork
    Mutation: Vicious OR Where There's a Whip, There's a Way
    Pretties: 2 (each)

The above is a 25 Pretty warband based on the 2.0 playtest rules. I think some of the models can be flexible, depending on what's more fun to play with. The Hex Death is No Excuse is a little redundant with the Whip mutation, and similarly with the My Handiwork trait, so we'll see how they interact in a game.

On to the miniatures!

Those Who Were Undercoated

 Winter has come, and I am once again unprepared.

Undercoated Family photo

It's too cold to undercoat any of the projects that I want to concentrate on, so I've dug up a handful of already-undercoated models from projects I stalled on - most from years ago - and done a little brushwork on them. Not included here are three models finished from my Age of Sigmar Flesh Eater Courts, because I'm going to do a big project post for those when the whole army is finished. I also have the original Escher gang that I didn't finish for the last Old World Army Challenge I was in, but I haven't been able to do much on those yet.

I'm also working on some terrain, and I'm prepping a bunch of miniatures for when the weather warms up so that I undercoat tons at once. I really ought to plan these things better. Maybe next year...

Project: Kúrekar

 The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland.
  - from Grænlendinga saga

heathen cowboys

About a year ago, a friend of mine went off the deep end about cowboys. He had some criticisms of Dracula America's timeline and setting (which I'm still not clear about - I'm looking forward to doing some Congregationists once I can convince someone in this town to play it with me), so he pitched a different kind of weird west occult horror game.

I, mostly joking, suggested a Viking cult gang, like some sort of half-century early Heathenry movement, or as if the German Romantics got started early, or if the Norse settlement in Newfoundland had survivors who then wound up in... America? for some reason. It wasn't a very serious suggestion, but I did have a box of cowboys (I really do want to do Dracula's America!) and a ton of Viking bits, so - why the hell not. Let's bash up some silly cowboys, a berserkers with a six-shooter, that kind of thing.

A year later, my friend is no closer to rules or a coherent campaign but, despite my generally slow pace and a thousand other things to do, I spent this week painting up the warband. At the bottom of this post are some notes on converting them to Dracula's America, too.

It got the unpainted miniatures outta my head, I get to show up my friend, and it's a palate cleanse from a ton of grimy future space marines. Pure victory.

Old World Army Challenge: Wood Elves II: Swordsmen

 My work continues on Wood Elf II over at the Old World Army Challenge V.

Warrior Kithband

Head over to see the February results! Don't forget to check out the other challengers.

Old World Army Challenge: Wood Elves II: The Wood Elf-ening

 Been a little quiet here, as I work on wood elves for Old World Army Challenge V.

elves, falcons, and harps! oh my!

I've finished the January challenge already; to see more go here. Hard at work on February, if I don't get distracted by someth

Those Animals: Wild things

 A handful more critters for the desert.

small local fauna

I've painted a handful of small creatures to sprinkle around the gaming table. The lava dog thing comes from Northstar, the rest from an indie company the name of which I've misplaced. They sure are cute, though.

armadillo analogues

lizard analogues

thingies

some kind of heated-rock monster?

Those Renegades

 Just a couple of perfectly ordinary civilians...

Magos Biologis, Mechanicus

This is a medic from North Star Military Figures's Stargrave releases. I'm going to be putting together a different team to play the game, but this saturnine fellow is perfect for my civilian project, even if he's a little more armed than usual.

His weird tech greeble fits into the Rogue Trader aesthetic, and while the blue gloves hint at a different science fiction setting, marking him as an unpleasant sort of fellow. I see him as a low-ranking Adept Mechanicus who screens the citizens for genetic deviance, hence the red collar. He also works perfectly as a Rogue Doc in Necromunda. Multi-use!

Heretek, poss. former Mechanicus

Also from Stargrave, this I gave this hacker a goth aesthetic. I was tempted to freehand a cool skull on her jacket, but her cyberpunk tech greeble makes that too hard, and I'm very lazy.

I see her as a heretek,* running local hacking jobs for a reasonable price. They aren't all towering monstrosities of cybernetic cables and whirring gears, blaspheming with cogentities as scrapcode gods. Some of them are just folks who break open the cases and tinker without the proper rites.

I'm not sure if Necromunda18 has a specific role like this, but it would be easy to design scenarios around her! I wonder if her deck would let her hack Spyrer-style suits, or maybe even servitors.

That's it for this entry! I'm working on some more civilians and am very close to finishing an army for a different skirmish game...

Hear Ye! Fracas on the Fringes

 Out by the eastern gatehouses, some new bloods had come into town. The east gate's a shambles, see, an' it's easy to come in. Plenty of wyrdstone about, too, bein' as it's so close to the Pit. You'd think it'd all be scooped up by now, but the thing about a good entry means that there're always loads o' bands tryin' their luck...

skirmishin'

Mordheim! The City of the Damned! The Pit! The Maw-that-Ended-Ostermark! I haven't played in its grubby little environs in decades, but the two chums I played with at the end of August were very keen to have a jaunt down its storied streets, so we organised a match-up. I brought my Undead warband, while Mangs brought some mercenary scum; Jim had been putting together some horrible Beastmen.

The Crowgor's Herd

Kessler's Killers

Servants of the True Emperor

We played Treasure Hunt from the 2002 Annual to get us familiar with the rules. Below the cut for a pile of photos!