Your gaming crew.

It's my mate Chris's birthday today. He was my oldest friend from childhood and he lived round the corner. Most of my gaming experiences were with Chris, so maybe another self-indulgent trip down memory lane...

6th Form at school looked pretty much like this:

These were most of the people who were defining my existence at that point. A group of friends, many of them who were gamers of one sort or another. The guy in the top right doing a fantastic impression of Bruce Dickinson was the guy my brother first played his Ninja role-playing with. The guy immediately below him in the Carcass T-shirt is my mate  Liam, he of the scratch built Warhound and Warlord. The guy at the back in the blue Jumper is Jay, he was the one with the Egg Shell blue Ultramarines and my mate Chris [who looks a little bit sloshed], who's birthday today is, is to the right of Jay and looks like he's got the hand of the guy in double denim growing out of his head.

Chris and I started with Blood Bowl, via Big Pete. Chris had Talisman and a number of it's expansions. When we moved into 40K he had a Genestealer army because he'd bought Space Hulk as well. I think he may have also dabbled in Imperial Guard because those guys were the 'cheap option' in 40K , when GW used to have cheap options! His Epic Army was Eldar and I have so many vivid memories of wargames in his bedroom on the offset diagonally cut gaming table we all shared that was regularly transported between Chris and Liam's house down the street. There was alsways snacks and music on the go [something I may cover in another post] and more bizarrely Chris got into Incense Sticks and Cones, so there were sights sounds, tastes and smells to assault the senses and bring back memories now.

Sadly photography wasn't big on the scene then so I have very few pictures, this being a great one of us as a gang but I know Chris had one of us on our first ever Live-Roleplaying jaunt to North Wales were we camped over-night and donned costumes made from a selection of curtains took to the hills to fight all manner of beasties under the eyes of the GM 'Yoz'! Occasionally we fell out, over rules, my constant losing and other trivialities. It didn't help that I had a Saturday job that allowed me to get whatever GW figures I wanted and I wanted a lot, so that became a point of ridicule some times. Regardless we always had a great time.

The discovery of alcohol and the ability to get into Rock Clubs at 16 impacted on the gaming to a certain degree. Tabletop battles gave way to more social role-playing - Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, Dark Conspiracy and a few others. We had a laugh, great times with great people. We may have drifted apart over the years, I haven't seen Chris in about 2 years since he's moved away, and I only get to speak to Liam via Facebook since he found the interwebz recently, but we'll have those memories for a long time to come. So cherish your gaming crew memories whilst you still can.

WFB - Empire swordsmen

When the Empire army came out for 4th Edition [I've done some research and it was 4th Edition our gaming group purchased] it was all about the Halberdiers. Honestly they were the poster boys for the whole Empire and if not them it was the Greatswords with their ever so great swords they only went and called them 'great'. What there didn't seem to be a lot of love for were the common-or-garden Swordsmen because lets face it there wasn't anything special about them... WRONG! Now having never actually played a game I could be totally wrong and they just don't perform but on paper they were exactly the same as their other Empire brethren except for the small fact they had Weapon Skill 4!

They didn't have the two-handed drawback of Greatswords and Halberdiers which I recall [but may be wrong] meant they struck last or some other disadvantage but it definitely meant they could use their shields which made them also more durable. Anyway I wanted them in my army so I struck up a plan to get some, cheap.

First up however is not a Swordsman, not a true one anyway. Here's another Marauder Miniature. One from a set of Heroes of the Empire. These guys are massive, super human whirling dervishes of the Emperor Karl Franz's elite foot knights. This fella is clearly running some magical greatsword but we'll gloss over that, he was the low level champion added to a quite small squad of Swordsmen.

And here they are [minus number VII], do you recognize them? 2nd Edition Blood Bowl humans. I bought a fair few of these guys and as you can see the early GW plastic moulding which made these oversized Fantasy Football folk actually scale quite well with my Hero. The only issue was the base which wouldn't fit a standard 20mm square base so I had to upgrade them to 25mm square. It was a simple conversion, I had all the High Elves from 4th Edition so I removed a load of their spear heads up to the spear shaft, the spear blade was then cut from the cone shaped connector to the shaft. The blade was glued to the front of the hand and the cone on the back as the pommel of the sword. The left arm was snapped above the elbow and glued twisted downwards. The High Elf shields were then glued on the hand and due to their size and gaps in the snapped arm were hidden from view. That's it, simple, effective and cheap, CHEAP, CHEAP!

'nids part 17 and 'List maker'

'

OK here's another army list from a while back. Some of it has changed but some is still relevant. First up I have to admit it isn't legal, there are 7 troops, but that's because the Alice 40k Warhammer club listmaker treats the Tervigon as a unit upgrade to the Termagant squad, not as a HQ that can now be taken as a troop. I think I later got round this by making the Ripper Swarms flying instead of tunnelling which would have achieved the same Deep Strike 'annoyatoit' antics that I see them as

HQ - Tyranid Prime with Pair of Boneswords, Synapse Creature

HQ - Hive Tyrant with Lash Whip and Bonesword, Heavy Venom Cannon, Synapse Creature, Psychic Scream, Leech Essence

ELITE - The Doom of Malan'tai 90

  Mycetic Spore with Barbed Strangler

Troops - Tervigon with Catalyst

Troops - 10x Termagants with Devourer

Troops - 16x Hormaguants with Toxin Sacs

Troops - 3x Tyranid Warriors with Barbed Strangler, Deathspitter

Troops - Broodlord Squad Member with 7x Genestealers

Troops - 8x Genestealers

Troops - 3x Ripper Swarms with Tunnel Swarm

Fast Attack - 10x Gargoyles

Heavy Support - Trygon

Heavy Support - 1x Biovore

1504pts

Prism Break

My son got an Eldar Fire Prism for his birthday the other month [and another 4 pack of Guardians]. I've tried to approach this with him doing even more - I gave him the clippers to remove the Guardians from the sprue which immediatley he responded with 'I can't do that!' I said 'well I'm certainly not' so he went at it and I cleaned any extraneous bits and mould lines with scalpel.

Now I did do some of the removal for the Fire Prism as he was busy gluing the Guardians so by the time he'd finished some of the Fire Prism was ready to construct which prompted a bit of shock on his part because he thought there was too much to glue and he only wanted to do the 'little things'. I said tough, he'd decided he wanted the tank and he'd be putting it together. Now I know this sounds a little harsh but heck I could make this thing all by myself and we'd be right back in the same situaiton as the 'nids. So if he complains then he's doing it and meanwhile I can still help out unobtrusively, like trimming the parts out while he was busy, and he still feels it's his project.

Now this isn't helped by GW, the Fire Prism sucks. Not in a major way mind, as you can see below we haven't made much of it but already I've had to make compromises. You get these extra bits to go in those engines if you want to represent Star Engine upgrades. I asked my son if he wanted them, allowing his decision making alone, he said yes, I go to put them in and there too big. There seemed two ways you could mont them inside the engine cowling, the diagram wasn't very clear. Both ways spread the cowling apart so there was a 1-2mm gap between top and bottom. So I had to deny his choice of adding the Star Engines. That's not my fault but it still feels like I've said 'what do you want? OK that's nice. We won't be doing that!'

As you can see in these two pictures elastic bands are a useful tool here. GW's moulding once again lets us down. The hinge cup that holds the back door is not big enough to house the door rods that go in it. This puts pressure on the join to the back of the Fire Prism and effectively rips it off the chassis. You can see above the poly-cement 'welding' I had to employ in the corners to join these suckers together.

On top of all this the hinge mechanism and the weight of the back door means this thing won't stay shut. There's all sorts of little nubbins on the thing that you'd think would hold it in place, but no, if flaps open like someone was 'born in a barn'. So we may well just glue the thing shut, it's not like it has transport anyway. A shame though as having something open and shut is just that little more interesting for a nine year old. Even bigger shame are the compromises made so early in it's construction, ruddy wraithbone!

Terrain is everything - mo' fences

Here's an update on the fences - as you can see below my two test subjects are all growed up, the glue has dried with no warping of the cardboard base [yay!]. I think perhaps the grating provided some sort of tensioning effect that prefented this, that's my pseudo-science explanation there. The grating is a bit too chunky for my taste but I'll live with it seeing as it's esay to work with and I've a ready supply. I'm sure it'lll look better painted.

One minor concern is that I rushed a little too much and they don't meet neatly at the corner. Hopefully with a dozen or more of these there'll be some that fit others better but for gaming purposes we can live with this.

The last shot was after I undercoated the fences black. I thought this would stick to the granny grating a little better but I think it uses far to much spray to fully cover the sand and the rockcrete posts still come out as plastic so I'll be adding a coating of black art paint, PVA for adhesion and some plaster [my usual base]. This will probably be thinned on the fencing because it's chunky enough as it is. 

Before I do any more painting I'll be prepping a fair few more fences and some broken ones. I'm confident this test has served it's purpose so there's no stopping me from doing the rest.

Joining a blogging movement - Old Stuff Day

On Valentines Day Rob™ at Warhammer 39,999 suggested we all start a blogging movement to show a little love (♥) for some of our old posts.

So here's one of my posts that I think deserves a little more love via the filthy art of 'thread-o-mancy' my free wound markers [with an update]...

If you've got plenty of high wound characters, or if like my son you are running Tyranids then sooner or later you're going to have to deal with recording wounds. There's a number of options, put a dice down [preferrably a small one], buy wound markes or note it down on a piece of paper. The first two cost money, or are annoying if you're using all your lucky dice just to keep track and the last one's also a pain in the hive mind.

Alternatively you can make your own, so I did. All you need to do is print them out, attach to mounting card, cover in sellotape for pseudo one sided lamination and then cut them out, voila!

You can use the blue markers for your Doom of Malantai, thanks to his Spirit Leech having a maximum of 10 wounds! There's also a few 3-5 wound markers for you Tervigon, enjoy.

Of course you can also use these for your Dark Eldar pain tokes [that's the update].

On top of that I thought I'd resurrect some of these other blogs 'old' articles that deserve a dusting off and a little bit of love  (♥)

http://40kmaunderings.blogspot.com/2008/02/b2b-flamers-part-1.html

http://yearoffrugalgaming.blogspot.com/2009/03/blood-bowl-pitch.html

http://www.battlebarge.com/guides/terrain-guides/

WFB - Empire Flagellants (sort of)

I don't use LOL or OMG but in this case OMG! I love Flagellants. When we ponied up as a group for Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the first big box edition with the mighty heros  printed on card(!) not even as plastic, it was Flagellants that caught my eye in the Empire Army list. However, Marauder miniatures were theonly real option of sourcing them at the time. Marauder was a GW offshoot by Ally and Trish Morrison who modelled their own figures and sold them through GW. They we're all quite cute and cartoony, the Empire Dwarves in particular were darling little things. The Marauder Flagellants were 3 for £4 and even then that wasn't a price I was prepare to pay.

So in walked [shambled] these fellas. Some form of militia figures and I wanted them all flame like so went to the most extreme highlighting from red through orange, yellow and white! All wood and stuff was pure white and the odd item was picked out in a random, appropriate, colour. Here's the ten lined up, each a character.

The gormless halberdier, the piper, the thug, the childcatcher and a crossbow dude with a peg-leg!

A knife fighter, a drunkard, two butt-ugly clubber twins and the fattest halberdier in the Empire.

A view of the back of the guys.

The pure white sachels and the odd green glass bottle really look striking, moreso if I hadn't have added the highlights to the red clothing, still nothing a wash wouldn't fix, right?

Another view of all their gear from the back.

Now if I start looking at completing the Empire Army I first started 18 year ago I'd totally go with plastic Flagellants. They actually look like one of the best value sets out there. Quite a few figures and loads of bits for conversion purposes and bits that'd fit right at home with the Dark Angels.

I have one question though, in the current Empire rule book Flagellants are Rare [I think] but if you take a Priest they become Special [or core] is that in addition to the Rare unit or instead of? Let me know if you can answer.