Those Who Trade

Even a failing colony has a middle class.

get yer $small_good here

It feels like everyone else has entered a quarantine work-from-home hellscape that, while stressful, has at least allowed a lot more time to paint. In contrast, I have had a lot less time to paint or do basically any kind of hobby work.

It doesn't help that I have a new contract, which involves supervising my old team for the next twelve months and a lot more tedious meetings.

Anyway, I have finished these four members of Colony 87's limited middle class. Why don't we pop below the cut for a longer conversation...

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!

+ + + Gangs Grapple in Ghast Grove + + +

The hivequakes that have been causing the dustshowers in sector C8N-J017 have continued intermittently over the last few months. In the bowels of the sump, the shifting carcass of Hive Primus has caused microfractures to appear in the skin of the hive, allowing groups of wastelanders through. Unlike the nomads of the ash wastes, these snivelling bandits are scarcely more than rad-burned scavvies, stunted and sickly in the healthy phosphorescence of the hive.

Wastelanders by Jim

Their creepy witch, Moonchild, leads a tiny handful of the Wastelanders into the Underhive proper, sniffing out a local grove of Ghast-quality sporicles. Unfortunately for these interlopes into the outlands, the grove is sought after by several of the local gangs, including the Nightshade Crew of House Escher.

Nightshade Crew by Mangs

Of course, the grove is also infested with the skavvies that serve the Three-Eyed King. Glory to Him in Yellow! He infuses and blesses us! Hail!

Cult of the Three-Eyed King in Yellow by me
(missing Žuta!)

We played the mission Ghast Harvest. Being a straightforward 'loot the containers' scenario, this didn't really need much modification for three players beyond rotating priority among all three of us.

We randomly rolled up our gangers and got to work...

Oceanic Union ships at Star Ranger

 A short note today, friends.

Strike Force Wollondilly

The excellent Dean Gundberg, who manages the spaceship wargaming hub Star Ranger, contacted me a few weeks ago to use the photos of my Oceanic Union spaceships for his ship stats page. How could I not? Star Ranger is the first place to go for rules on Full Thrust ships that aren't part of the core books or from other fictional settings, as well as a generally neat place for starship combat games.

If you want to see my ships on the Oceanic Union Defence Force page, go here to see them.

Other Full Thrust resources are available on Star Ranger here.

Thanks again, Dean. A real pleasure to help out.

Gnome more Gnomes to paint

..lamented Alexgnomander, as he reached the limits of the gnome world.

i cast 'summon terrible wordplay'! ahaha

My project for the Old World Army Challenge is complete! OWAC is such a blast every year - I can't wait for 2021, which will see a different group of short, hirsute warriors...

Those Who Fly

Space. The #grimdark frontier.

two pilots and a navigator walk into a bar...

Thistle has meant that even when I am home and my partner is not, I am not able to get as much work done as I actually want. It's worth it, but a little frustrating. Now that the gnome project is wrapping up, I can concentrate on other projects. Although, having said that, I think I've started... three new ones this week? Don't look at me.

#maydur

Just some friendly Adeptus. Nothing to see here. Move along, citizen.

group shot came out a bit shadowy. appropriate.

I got into Warhammer in the late 90s. Like many of us from that era, I spent a percentage of my limited resources poring over White Dwarf each month. Many of those images and articles are burned into my memory, taking up space that I could otherwise use to learn Russian or Korean, develop project management skills, or figure out how to join gaming groups in my thirties.

Probably worth it, to be fair.

White Dwarf #224, August 1998, p.53.
Image © Games Workshop. Used without permission.

One of the images that I always vaguely remembered was Ed Spettigue's (mostly) Tallarn Imperial Guard army from White Dwarf #224. He'd gone with a striking white-and-bone scheme, including on his Sisters of Battle, assassins, and the Mordian Iron Guard he used for heavy weapons. It was cool as hell.

When it came to painting the handful of metal assassins I'd somehow acquired, I was stuck on a painting scheme. I also wasn't sure if I wanted to base them to match my Mantis Warriors, or the industrial setting of the Death Guard, or maybe do some generic basing - maybe even do something weird, like spaceship tiles or something. I then remembered Spettigue's Tallarn, and some thing clicked into place.

While my collection of White Dwarfs was apparently stolen from my father's garage a few years ago, that's not as much of a problem in the age of the internet as you might think, and I was able to dig up a copy. I took a slightly different approach, but am still pleased to have a pack of assassins that aren't the usual black-on-black.

Welcome to my Gno-May-n, as it were

(sorry)

May-n characters for the army

My May entry for the Old World Army Challenge is up! Check it out, and check out the other competitors. There are some seriously amazing painters in the group.

Those Who Play

Despite the bright colours, this might be the most grimdark set yet.

Children shouldn't have any place on a battlefield, especially not in the kind of warzones that Warhammer 40,000 describes. It's a bit bleak for tabletop gaming. At the same time, these were really fun models to paint. I imagine that they'll add a certain amount of charm to the townscape once I get around to some buildings and other terrain.

In the meantime, let's not dwell on the implications.

Those Who Work

The lifeblood of Empire.

♪ ♫ one of these is not like the others ♪

The end of the world has sapped a bit of my motivation, I'm afraid. The fact that I am horrific on my brushes doesn't help, and my usual small detail brush is getting a bit bristly, meaning that it's even more difficult to get any work done.

Also, we got a kitten.

Thistle

Still, I spent the past few days getting started on my Old World Army Challenge Project gnomes and doing these working-class folks as a palate cleanser. (I then ran out of white undercoat, so getting the gnomes done might be a bit of a challenge!)

Three of them are from the Colony 87 range, the same as the majority of my civilians. The lady with all the gear is from Crooked Dice's Paranormal Exterminators range, although I just picked her up cheap in an order from Bad Squiddo a couple years ago just because she looked like fun.

For more photos, we go below the cut...

Those Who Work: Droids

Robots are workers too! Synth rights!

these aren't produced by no STC I seen

A while ago, I was invited into an old school gaming group on Facebook, basically a treasure trove of people with way more talent than I have painting extremely cool shit, but without the seventeen mechadendrites and three-different-browns palette of the INQ28 crowd. (Who, to be clear are also a treasure trove of people with way more talent than I have. I can like two things.)

One of the admins of the group had made these little droids, and just after I joined he was selling the last few from his limited run. I hadn't yet figured out how I was going to do terrain and civilians, but I definitely had to have them.

I then picked up the Jackobot, from Citadel's long lost Paranoia range. A few other #oldhammer types have also painted up this model, and I struggled with how to do a colour scheme for him for a while. A mishap with undercoating meant that he had a kind of blotchy, uneven undercoat, which presented a perfect opportunity to practice chipping and weathering.

Under the cut, we have many, many more photos.