The Great Paintening

I finally put putty to steel the other day and finished attaching a bunch of figures to their fender-washer bases. The putty provides some sticking surface for the figures with snipped slottas, and camouflage for those with integrated bases.

And there they are. Aren't they lovely?

And here are their friends, all lined up on my windowsill. All told, they number 101.

...Hmmm. 101. A mighty number. A leaden brotherhood awaiting in patient meditation the time of the Great Paintening.

Well, my tiny acolytes, the time is nigh. The prophet of pigment has declared it's coming. I'M GOING TO PAINT YOU ALL.

I hope to keep you (the readers, not the miniatures) updated semi-regularly on my progress. Hopefully come the glorious spring I'll have moved lead mountains and, with a be-paintbrushed gesture, called down a plague of painted figs.

(Of course there's still the not insignificant matter of my February painting pledge for CSW. Much work ahead.)

Got any tips for tackling HUGE SWATHES OF LEAD? Leave them below. I'm going to need them.

Chronicles of Yore: Outpost Raiding for Fun and Profit

Here follows a battle report from a while ago now of a couple games of Nuclear Renaissance that I played with fellow CSW member, Tim. He brought his Neo-Soviet future men, and I, of course, brought my Slagscape Conservation Collective mounted up in their brand new Mayhem Machine.

It was a cold, fluorescent dawn over the crossroads community Orehill, last outpost of the Inner Outlands after the Unthinkable Incident.

...reason being, they had a well protected community bunker. Word was that it packed full of Canned, Hyper-Enriched, De-hydrated Dietary Aid Rations—commonly known in the wastes as C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s

As luck would have it, both bands of Wasteoids came across the same rumor. Informants are scarce out here. The Neo-Soviets roared out of the alkali dust on choppers and a land vessel.

Meanwhile, on the other end of town, the Slags rolled in off the hard pan. Slow going, since the Professor couldn't fit in the truck, what with his lobotomised gorilla body.

The Neo-sovs didn't waste much time getting into the center of town to crack open that bunker full of C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s.

But then neither did the Slags. As soon as they realized they weren't the only ones interested in a few recommended monthly allotments of calcium, they revved up the old Mayhem Machine and gunned it into town, with Graf Moxie and Janx Moogin spittin' fire from the copula.

Even though they commanded a full field of fire on the bunker, the Slag's were unable to close and make off with any of the cheez (the obvious outlander slang for C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s).

Meanwhile, the Soviet bikers buzzed along the flank, past the food carts, emptied of their cheez in the final minutes before the Incident.

Graf Moxxie got gunned down as he tried to leave the safety of his rolling fortress to make a dash for the bunker.

But the Slag's gave as good as they get. Downtown Orehill quickly becomes lousy with wasted Wasteoids.

It was at this point that the Neo-Sovs withdrew, figuring this particular haul was not worth the havoc. As it turned out, they had another trick in mind.

We decided to play another game representing the Slag's attempt to transport their hard-won C.H.E.D.D.A.R.s down the main road leading out of Orehill. This time, though, the Mayhem Machine was so packed with rations that none of the collective could take up crew space.

And it just so happened that the pissed off Soviets were waiting in ambush.

It didn't take long for them to start pouring hot lead and hotter plasma into the Mayhem Machine's hood.

Nor to start springing on their adversaries from the side streets.

Unfortunately, they were not counting on the as-yet un-tested Gatling prowess of Professor Parcival-Blythe.

After a flurry of exploding gas tanks and a hail of bullets, the road was clear...

...while the erstwhile bushwhacker met with the business end of Sprightly Jiles's Stunbrella.

It was hard fought, but the Collective won its way out of Orehill with the cheez in hand. There was much toasting on the Slagscape that night. The Conservation Collective celebrated with a fun do.

The Fur of the Bear that Bit You II: Finished DIY Gaming Mat

It's finally finished. I'm a little embarrassed that such a simple project took this long, but the important thing is that my gaming mat made from teddy bear fur (wip post here) is finished and ready for action.

The most grueling part of this process is trimming down the fur. Even ordering the shortest pile, I found that the fur was too thick to be able to place miniatures on reliably, especially when I factored in the extra stiffness that paint would give the fur.

The solution? Yup, go at it with a pair of scissors. If you feel like throwing an extra $15 at the project, you could invest in a pair of clippers—but that's just not where I was at. Furthermore, I found that the scissor treatment gave a rather uneven 'tufty' finish that appealed to my idea of what a matted, unkempt field should look like. And for all the tedium, I found that four evenings working at it for about a half-hour each while I watched a t.v. show saw the job done. I would recommend wearing a mitten or similar on you scissor-hand to prevent discomfort.

I took a couple of WIP pics of this stage, above and below. It's a little hard to make out, but in the image above, the trimmed section is at the bottom. In the one below, it's to the right. If you look very carefully, you might make out the difference in the fur's texture. Untrimmed, it's very smooth, trimmed, it's rough and wavy.

Unfortunately during the painting stage, I temporarily lost my camera. Luckily, however, the process is literally as easy as taking some very thin acrylics (like, skim milk consistency) and rubbing them all over the fur one patch at a time with your hands. (I used rubber gloves, but don't let me tell you what to do.)

I used a selection of three dullish greens, some brown and some yellow. I'd splash on one or two colors and then run through it with my hands until it was spread through the fur. If it needed more variation or there were portions without color, I'd splash in some different colors and repeat until I was satisfied. Once I'd covered the whole mat in this manner, I hung it up to dry.

Above is the finished, folded mat. There's no beating this thing for portability: It's light, packs small, and does not wrinkle or curl.

Here it is laid out. I put a couple of small plates face down on the table to serve as low hills.

Here's what it looks like with some scenery on. Of course, once I had it dressed up, I couldn't resist taking down my collection and organizing a little scene...

A desperate coalition defend the standing stones from dwimmer-beasts

The odds seem insurmountable.

The lines converge. Ruin is nigh.

Evil Majickers raise reinforcement from the barrows.

The doomed defence looks to be overwhelmed...

...but for the horse-thegns of the north who ride upon the wing!

The dwimmer-beasts falter...

...the horses scream...

...the hill trembles....

...and something watches from the barrows.

Got something to say? Tell it to the turf.

New Toy

There are a lot of new posts that I need to get to, I know, but I'm currently somewhat occupied with my new toy.

I'll get to them soon, I promise.

"How to do Oldhammer"

Approximately an age ago, Collin Murray of The Leadpile posted this excellent challenge (and created this forum thread to go along with it) wherein participants assemble and share pictures of a small Warhammer warband, creating fluff and whatnot, in order to demonstrate how easy and accessible Oldhammer is. Warbands were to be composed (with plenty of leeway for creative nterpretation) of 20 figures in 2 or so units, plus a character.

I threw my hat in the ring at the time (I know, it's taken me ages to actually get on with it) not only because it was a fun excuse to put a dent in the lead molehill and to actually start sociallizing with these oldhammerers whose work I constantly admire, but also because of what Mr. Murray wrote:

"Let's face it, the whole reason that most of were drawn to this loose collection of like minded individuals is that we weren't happy with the way our games of Warhammer or 40k were being led. We were fed up of the constant rules changes, unimpressed by the latest in figure making technology and bored of a pointless face off between two increasingly large 'armies' of figures who may or may not have had any particular reason to dislike the other. We longed for the kind of games that we thought we remembered from our youths, games that we may have not actually played and armies that we only half remembered owning. We longed for the days when we scoured through the pages of magazines and ached for the miniatures we saw knowing that our paltry pocket money would never allow us to buy a fraction of he figures we longed for."

As I read this, I felt the words graze past the core of why I love miniature wargaming, as well as the reason I consider myself to be part of the Oldhammer movement—if only at the fringes—in spite of the fact that I don't seriously collect old Citadel Lead and I don't ever really play 1st, 2nd, or 3rd ed. Warhammer or Rogue Trader. Becuase as Mr. Murray points out, it's not really about the rules themselves, nor about the figures.

Because these games aren't even really games, not in the traditional sense. And they're certainly not competitions, really—we've all seen what happens when a game gets too focussed on tournament-style playability. Instead, these games are mutual explorations into worlds of narrative possibility, partly determined by the fall of the dice, but mostly created by—no, between is more accurate—you and your fellow player. While it is breath-takingly nerdy, it is also a very sophisticated, very open, and remarkably vulnerable form of social interaction, which, to me, makes it beautiful.

What Oldhammer really takes from the classic GW rulesets and miniature ranges is the broad, whole-hearted acceptance of this form of community story telling. You can actually feel it coming off the page when flipping through Rogue Trader; the people who made this game love playing in this world. And they want to make it easy, acceptable, and fun for you to love it too. Sure, it can be zany at times—and why not? These games are, as I said, aiming to achieve a vast multiplicity of possible collaborative experiences, rather than trying to narrow that experience down to the binary result of victory and defeat. I want all of my games to be as ambitious. And I'm lucky enough to play with a group of guys who agree with me.

That's why I'm taking part in this challenge even though I'm far more likely to use these figures to play Of Gods and Mortals or Open Combat than WFB2E. Because it's about way more than rare figures or arcane rulesets or only using original Citadel paints—though if you like those things, that's totally cool too. (In fact, that's kind of the point.) As far as I'm concerned, this is about stories and a community that loves them. All the rest is just how you like it dressed.

So now that you're all full of waffle, here're the first WIP shots of my warband, which I finally got based up along with all 101 figures of my lead molehill. Because the challenge stipulates that figures should either be incredibly cheap or easily attainable from a current manufacturer, I have decided to use a selection of EM-4 minis (who currently produce a lot of old Grenadier sculpts) as this satisfies both requirements. In keeping with what I see as the spirit of the challenge, rather than select figures based on one theme, I just went with those that I thought looked cool.

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Here's the first unit of 10 infantry—sort of a mixed band of ruffians, knaves, and villainry cherry-picked from the orc, barbarians, and human ranges.

Here's the second squad. This is a unit of irregular missile troops, lead by that hard-bitten looking merc in the middle. A bit of everything here as well. Since I mostly play skirmish games, the last thing I wanted was to have to paint up a bunch of identical archers. This was a nice comprimise, and I have to say I'm really excited to paint up that halfling!

And here's the boss of them all, one of EM-4's splendid giant orcs. This guy is a real fistfull of lead, and with tons of character to boot. I thought about using the barbarian mounted on a tiger instead, but how could I? That is the stance of command.

And here's a shot of the group, minus the final unit of 5...

...which habitual readers will recognize as part of my Dire Men warband. These were long ear-marked for this project, but got finished first over the summer so they could take part in this, rather oldhammery, SoBH campaign with my club.

The fluff will follow as I progress with getting the warband painted up. In the meantime, let me know what you think. Feel free to stuff the comments box full of waffle, because if you made it this far, frankly, you've earned it.

Slagscape Conservation Collective: Finished

Just a bit of a picture dump today, as I got all the finished Slagscape Concervation Collective models out and photographed them together. Here's some music to go with it as well (if you like the band, then by all means check them out here. They're from my home town and they're awesome.) Enjoy!

Got unwanted comments? Just leave them below!