Concluding Tattered Fates

 Yesterday, Stu and I finished the first installment of the old Dark Heresy adventure series, Haarlock's Legacy.  Entitled Tattered Fates, we adapted this RPG adventure into a skirmish RPG format using my Techno-Fantasy Skirmish rules currently under development. Unlike the middle chapter that we played last week, we gave a good accounting of ourselves this time around, and we managed to save the decadent city-state of Xicarph, and the whole planet of Qaddis! 

The rules themselves are really rounding into form. There are things you just can't know unless you play them out on the tabletop, and we rounded off a few more rough corners yesterday. Check out some snapshots of the action! 

Our setup of battle number one. It was a rundown part of the city of Xicarph. The Spider Bride, our sometime ally, fed our target, Papa Grist, bad info. That gave us a chance to ambush him. 

This shows the TFS initiative system in action. The chits, or tokens, cut down the side-table management as you can place them right on the figures. It's great for solo and co-op play because randomly assigning turn order each round means you don't know who is going next!  

That's my scratch-built gun-servitor, Ergo-VI, next to my Adept, Septimus Dexrter. 

Papa Grist's bodyguard, Crackmarrow, really gave us a hard time last session, but this time we softened him up with ranged fire before he got to us. 

We got lucky and rolled the Xerxes result on the Strange Happenings table. This wandering Chaos warrior ended up fighting for us this game. His random placement put him right in the path of Papa Grist! 

Here we are finishing off Crackmarrow! Not pictured, but we also whacked Grist's other major bodyguard, the deadly psyker named Bliss. 

We couldn't let Xerxes have all of the fun! We piled in and finished off Grist in style!

At this point we earned our invitation to the revel that would put us face-to-face with the true horror behind the trouble in Xicarph. I will cover that climactic battle in the next post, but I want to conclude here by expressing my excitement for this current project. I am really satisfied about how these rules are coming together! 

More to come! 

North Star Military Figures Kitbashing

 Between North Star Military Figures and Wargames Atlantic, we live in a golden age of affordable, hard plastic 28mm miniatures. 

I have had a blast kitbashing North Star's Frostgrave Barbarians with Stargraves Crew and Mercenary sprues. They're just awesomely adaptable! 

Check out these pics of some of my recent work: 

I painted these guys with a combo of GW Contrast, Foundry, Coat D'Arms, and new Army Painter speed paints. The guy in the green pants has already seen battle in our play-test games for TFS. 

I hope to do a whole warband based on the North Star bodies and various arm options from other kits. 

Thanks for looking! 

--Scott

Playing The Game -- Part 2

 This past Saturday we play-tested my Techno-Fantasy Skirmish rules again. While we had a blast and I learned a lot, we also got our tails kicked in. The dice simply were not with us. 

One thing we did do was use grid maps instead of full-on terrain, and TFS can handle that just fine. 

I also finished up my 10-man Cannon Fodder unit from Wargames Atlantic. This company is really coming on with amazing releases and more in the pipeline.

This week I plan to get  another play-test in. I have a few more conversions to do, and I need to work on getting the final chapter of Tattered Fates converted over to TFS. Since we pretty much lost badly, I need to figure out how to get us to the last chapter. But that's the fun of it all! 

More to come! 

-- Scott 

Prepping The Game

 We've got a big game planned Saturday. It's the second installment of our Dark Heresy-inspired skirmish RPG campaign, and we're playing through Tattered Fates. 

As I adapt the module over to my own Techno-Fantasy Skirmish rules, I realized I needed some specialized models for one potential scene. I needed character models for the Spider Bride and her coterie of female assassins. I decided to hit my FLGS because I knew they had a decent selection of old Heroclix models. These would be ideal for re-basing and repainting. I bought six figures $3.00 USD. Amazing! 

Here they are! 

While the book describes the women as dressing in gauzy gowns, beggars can't be choosers! And I prefer the more martial appearance of this crew. The larger model was a female bride of Thanos from the Marvel 'Clix line. 

So they're done! Now I'll finish with something funny that's followed me throughout my hobbying life. Here's my "main" character for the campaign, my Magus, Nalan Sicarius:

I spent a decent amount of time painting him up, and the amount of time I lavish on a character generally has an inverse relationship with how long they live! And true to form, Sicarius "died" at the end of our second scene / battle last session. As I think I mentioned a few posts ago, Stu's main character saved him by rolling the "Resurrection Chamber" event. 

We'll see what happens this Saturday when we continue the adventure. 

More to come! 

--Scott

Wandering in the wastes...

 I was mostly away from gaming for 3+ years from 2013 - 2016. I got a lot of stuff done during that time, and endured some hard times too. Once my life regained some stability in late 2016 I started thinking about gaming again. And game designs. The period from 2016 to the current day has been pretty productive for me. I wrote a lot of new games. 

The thing I am working on now is a deluxe version of a rule set I just released in Zine format: 

It's available quite cheaply on Drivethrurpg. You can find it here. 

What will make the "deluxe" version special, you ask? It will feature a full color cover and interior artwork, more character creation options, and more sample characters in the bestiary. 

Warzine is an ongoing experiment in game making for me. I pretty much did it all myself. My plan is to do more like it using that same rugged 3D6 game engine, but we'll see what develops. Meanwhile, I plan to release the deluxe version under the title Techno-Fantasy Skirmish, or TFS for short! 

I will keep the updates coming! Thanks for reading!   

Dark Heresy Lives Again! Well, sort of...

 

My buddy and I decided to play through Haarlock’s Legacy, a Dark Heresy three book adventure published 13 years ago. We’re playing it as a co-op skirmish RPG, and using Techno Fantasy Skirmish, some rules of my devising.

Yesterday, we kicked things off with the Red Cages, the first chapter in Tattered Fates. This is the first book in the three issue arc that is Haarlock’s Legacy.

The first encounter was very spare in terms of setting. We started off awakening from being drugged and thrown into a pit and blood sport arena with some other unfortunates. Then, while a mysterious masked marauder watched from above, deadly beasts entered from opening gates.

We were set upon, and while some of the non-combat NPCs attracted the beasts’ attention at first, we ended up having to fight hard. This impressed our mysterious voyeur, and they eventually dropped a ladder for us to escape the pit.

Barbarella, my feral world female barbarian, barely escaped with her life. Our other characters all survived with minor injuries and we moved on to the next encounter.

We found the mysterious Vault 13, where we recovered our stolen gear and weapons, and found the half-dead Inquisitor Karkalla, who bade us to continue his mission and avenge him. After setting a fire as a distraction, we battled our way to the elevator that would raise us out of the hell of the Red Cages. My Magus, Nalan Sicarius was brutally cut down by the blunderbuss fire of one of the beast slavers.

While he “died” in post-battle, my buddy Stu’s character, Roddick, rolled the Ressurection Chamber event, and Nalan was able to cheat death at the cost of 1 point of Charisma.

Next week, we hope to get in the next chapter, The Carnival of Blood.

 

Dark Sun Dwarf

What seems like many moons ago, I sculpted a Dwarf that represented what I felt one from the D&D Dark Sun world would look like. It took awhile, but I think that it came out OK. I decided to paint it up, and here is the result.

Who knows if there will be a 5th Ed version of Dark Sun? It would be cool, but I'd be content with an update of the original Greyhawk (I absolutely love the updated Keep on the Borderlands book/adventure/module).

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More Pulp action

In my never-ending quest not to finish my Orlocks, I completed some awesome Mark Copplestone Chinese Dare to Die troops, from Copplestone castings. As I've said before, Mark Copplestone is one of my favorite sculptors, period, and these figs are totally cool. They came in a small set with other Chinese figures, that I've had for eons. Hopefully I'll fish out the others and get them painted up (but hopefully not before I finish the Orlocks!).

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Star Wars Legion

I finished up my boxed set of Legion Stormtroopers from FFG (further procrastinating from painting my Orlocks). They are pretty nice sculpts, but whatever material they are made of is very difficult to scrape mould lines from. I primed them all in white (something that I rarely do) and highly recommend it. I did prime one in gray, and while it turned out decent, it was a royal pain painting all of the layers of white on it.

Close-up of captain and cannon fodder:

And, a comparison shot with the two Wookies from IA, which actually scale well enough with them that you could get away with mixing (I don't have a comp shot with an IA stormtrooper, but the IA ones are much noticeably smaller than the Legion ones):

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Old school metal

In between other projects, I put the finishing touches on a classic WotC iconic figure: Tordek (from D&D). Produced around the late '90's - early '00's, I believe. Tordek's been sitting around for awhile, and begged to be finished. WotC had some real nice sculpts back then, definitely worth trying to find.

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Imperial Assault Wookiees

I finally put the finishing touches on the two Wookiees that I've been working on from Imperial Assault: one is just a grunt, and the other is the most famous Wookiee in the galaxy. They were a blast to paint, and a normal person would get them finished in a couple of days, but I don't like to paint metal, and usually save up several figures' worth of painting before I do it.

The Imperial Assault figs are really nice in most ways - much better than what I've seen so far from the Star Wars Legion stuff (although I do like the Stormtroopers for Legion). It's a real shame that FFG chose not to scale up the Legion figs with the IA ones. Oh, well - that's capitalism for ya!

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Interlude: GW LotR Dwarves

In between painting projects, I switched gears and finished up a small contingent of GW's fantastic line of Dwarves, specifically the Grim Hammers. Really great sculpts, and easy (and fast) to paint. Which is why I finally finished them, as I get easily frustrated/burned out with projects (hence the fact that I've got several going on at once). Well, here they are:

And the whole gang (well, at least the rest of the ones I completed):

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P.S. Still working on those Orlocks! I also succumbed to the Star Wars Legion figs, and picked up a set of Stormtroopers (who are currently primed). There's simply too many cool mini's out there...

D&D repaints

Here's a few D&D miniature repaints that I did for a friend a few years ago. Some were complete overhauls, while others were not as involved. I think that they came out pretty good, and they show that the line of figs from Wotc were pretty versatile and generally well-sculpted. Just more of my recommendation for miniatures on the cheap, with the end result being a good-looking fig, as long as you're willing to do a little work.

Cleric: not too much to do to this one.

Cultist: pretty much a complete overhaul (totally different colors).

Knight: not too much to do to this one, either.

Orc: a fair amount of re-working on this one.

Tannuruk: Seem to recall another decent amount of repainting for this one, as well.

All in all, I had fun re-painting these guys. The line of D&D figs really have a lot of good sculpts, and I have a fair amount that I'd like to re-paint (someday).

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Warlord Krong

While in the middle of painting up some Orlocks (well, beginning to paint up half of them, anyway), I thought that I'd put up a pic of my take on the great (and massive) Warlord Krong! A great Jack Kirby inspired extraterrestrial conqueror. Just one of the many miniatures that makes the Superfigs line (in my opinion, anyway) one of the most unique and characterful lines of Superhero figures.

I decided to go with a fairly monochromatic color scheme, with cooler, blue-ish tones. I also tried to go for more of a higher contrast look than I normally do, hopefully adding to the impact of the overall figure.

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Superfigs!

The latest Superfig that I've completed painting is none other than Ape Austin! I went for a pretty standard color scheme on this one - easy and effective. A great character, and a great Bob Naismith sculpt! Man - that line has a lot of great and characterful miniatures.

I'm still working on those Wookies (procrastinating on the metal areas), and have started the Orlocks. I'm just really slow, and a lot of times I see a fig that's been sitting half-done on my table for what seems like an eternity (i.e., Ape Austin), and I finally finish the damn thing!

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Reaper Ogre

I think that ogres are pretty cool, and I'm a sucker for well-sculpted ones. This Ogre from Reaper's Bones line certainly fits the bill. I prefer the plastic ogres to the metal ones: not only are they cheaper, but they won't chip or break when they get dropped (not that anyone ever drops them, no...). I really enjoyed painting up this one. I have another Bones ogre half done, and will finish it in between painting Orlocks, hopefully.

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LotR Gimli

Here's Gimli from GW's Lord of the Rings line. I tried to follow the paints as described in one of the old White Dwarf magazines (more or less). I still have an over-abundance of old White Dwarf mags, and should get rid of a lot of them, but I'll keep all of the ones with LotR articles, regardless. The fig is based in the old style, and maybe I'll get around to changing it one of these days. Great fig, though!

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P.S. I'm currently working on Star Wars Imperial Assault figs generic Wookie and Chewbacca. And I finally finished building the Orlock gang - what a royal pain that was! They are all built and primed, and I plan on starting them next week, after the Wookies are finished! All I need now is to figure out a paint scheme for them...

Ogre Mage

I finally finished up this excellent Ogre Mage from Reaper Miniatures. This is a great fig that oozes character and is dynamically sculpted. I have a soft spot for ogres, and I simply love this fig!

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