Friday 11 October 2024

How I paint Lamenter icons

 The Lamenters have a famously challenging chapter badge. Here's why I find it challenging:

  • straight, parallel lines
  • right angles
  • symmetry
  • perfect circle
  • perfect squares
  • painted on a curved surface
Each of these is its own challenge, and your brain will subconsciously identify irregularities and imperfections quite easily.

From @brushandboltgun

There are alternatives to freehand painting- transfers and 3D prints exist, but are not usable for every model. So here's how I approach mine. I use a #1 brush for every part of this process.

Key points:
  • Perfection is the enemy of good enough
  • Thin paints, careful strokes
  • The en masse effect of several models will override any individual flaws.
I do this somewhere in the middle of the painting process- after the yellow but before the final details. I start with two thin coats of white.


I then use a pencil to plan the checks. I've tried a few different approaches- this is my current preferred approach. I've demonstrated this with a diagram, the actual pictures follow.






Here's how it actually looks at this stage:



Now you've pencilled in the pattern, carefully fill it with black. I use Army Painter SpeedPaint 2.0 Grim Black. Work hard at getting right angles and parallel lines.


Here's an actual model:


You'll tidy this up later. Now it's time for the heart. This is challenging due to the symmetry and the need to replicate a familar symbol dozens of times. I use Army Painter SpeedPaint 2.0 Slaughter Red, then Vallejo Vermilion.





Here are actual process pictures of the heart stage.



After this, I tidy up with white and black to get rid of irregularities and pencil lines. Done! I usually do about five of these at a time. The group effect at arm's length is quite satisfying and buries a lot of little flaws.



Practice makes perfect!

Next time: can I get these finished?

Friday 27 September 2024

Halo Jones

The Ballad of Halo Jones was a 2000AD comic strip from 1984 to 1986 by Alan Moore, with art by Ian Gibson. Described as a "groundbreaking feminist heroine" by The Guardian, Halo is a futuristic everywoman who decides to leave her life behind to find herself in the galaxy. The epic ballad covers her trials and tribulations over decades of her life as she travels, fights, loves, and ultimately becomes a galactic hero and transcends time and space- or would have if Alan Moore hadn't characteristically had a falling out with his publishers.

The girl who got out.




Halo Jones has no characteristic uniform or look beyond her short blonde hair. I made this figure from the wonderful North Star ranges.

Friday 20 September 2024

40K Lamenters: Sternguard Veterans

These are veteran First Company Lamenters, marked by their white helms and kneepads, loincloths, and a decent amount of individual personalised equipment. Sternguard have access to combiweapons.

Sternguard Veterans

The sergeant has a black stripe on his helmet to denote his rank. The tilting plate/ ecranche has a decal from Impatient Tabletop.

Sternguard Veteran Sergeant with combi-melta.

Sternguard Veteran with combi-plasma.

Sternguard Veteran with bolt rifle.

Sternguard Veteran with heavy bolter.

Sternguard Veteran with bolt rifle.

I'm getting much better at freehanding the chequers and chapter icon!

Friday 13 September 2024

Five Parsecs from Home thoughts

Five Parsecs from Home is by Ivan Sorensen/ Nordic Weasel Games, with a very nice 3rd edition hardback book published in 2021 by Modiphius (also available in pdf). I've played one campaign of nineteen games, taking my crew through an unscripted journey of discovery and disaster. I've put up a summary page for my campaign here.

How it started.

5PfH is a solo skirmish science fiction campaign game. You run a warband of six figures. Combat is pretty simple, and a skirmish would usually take me about 45 minutes. There is a variable initiative system so it is not purely IGOUGO. On the tabletop, the enemy work with a simple AI. There are not a lot of special rules or abilities to remember in the heat of battle, which I appreciate. There were still plenty of things I forgot or overlooked! Some solo rulesets give you too many rules to play with and become too complicated-  the simplicity of 5PfH is a real boon.

How it's going.

The true joy of 5PfH is its campaign system, and numerous D100 tables of random events. Each campaign phase may see you travelling to a new planet, exploring a location, and having unexpected interactions, before even setting up a figure on the tabletop. When it comes to the tabletop, there are a vast array of potential missions and enemies. There are random events within games as well- enemy reinforcements, flanking forces and environmental changes have all affected my games significantly.

Gallius Marbec.
Wanted to become a rogue trader.
Last seen on fire.

I would usually play a game, then complete all of the campaign events and roll to see the details of my next mission- objectives, enemies, battlefield oddities. This would give me a chance to join the events into a coherent story- I would often be somewhat amazed by how a narrative would emerge from a series of D100 rolls. Ivan Sorensen calls this 'adventure wargaming', which reminds me of the '3d roleplay hobby game' logo on the Oldhammer boxes.

Furthermore, by seeing what was next, I would then be inspired to print and paint up the upcoming enemies and think about terrain.

Julio Rybeck.
Wanted to escape with his girl.
Bled out alone by the drainage pipes.

I really enjoyed rolling up characters, but the crew log sheets given are woefully inadequate for all the info to keep track of.

Venda Hezel. Liked tinkering with machinery. Shot.

The combat results can be somewhat binary- figures tend to be alive then suddenly out of action. It can be a bit unforgiving, and a series of bad rolls can see fortunes change rapidly. I never got the feeling of my ogryn Chugger, for example, tanking multiple hits and eventually going down. It was more that he was fine until he wasn't.

EF-733.
Wanted to gather knowledge.
Shot by miners in the ash wastes.

Another issue is the lack of a guiding narrative arc. You will need to do some light DM'ing to tie disparate storylines together and come up with climactic battles. Otherwise, it could be a series of disjointed scuffles. That said, however, there is much more freedom to do what you want within a campaign than you would find in a more railroaded experience requiring specific terrain for scenarios. Once I became more comfortable with not having my hand held, the narrative opportunities with the campaign were limitless.

Lady Heldycryn.
Wanted a life of adventure.
Captured by Genestealer Cultists.
Fate unknown...

Money was never really tight for my crew. They paid off their ship pretty early, and then built up a large armoury of captured and found weapons and equipment.

Roma Jyan.
Her lover died.
She was shot by cultists.

The game is miniatures agnostic. I shoehorned it into a Necromunda setting, and enjoyed making weapons, enemies, and terrain fit the scene. It would work very well for Star Wars as well, and Firefly or the Expanse without aliens.

Konrad Rathgir. Left on his own terms to become a freelancer.

I highly recommend the Compendium as well. This is a grab-bag of rules variants and options that can be bolted onto your games as you see fit. The scenarios are not always balanced, potentially being either quite easy or devilishly unattainable, and the Compendium gives even more variety and stops your games being too one-sided as your experience grows. There are many more things in here which help alleviate some of the minor quibbles I've mentioned above- but it does run the risk of become unwieldy, looking for rules all over the place.

I would like to see some ideas for light vehicles and mounts- mechs, jeeps, bikes, skimmers, horses/ giant lizards etc. Maybe something for crew-served weapons?

Stazie Rendir, Underhive Guide.
Multiple gunshot wounds.

I've had thoughts of another campaign, with a smaller crew as they try to escape the Underhive. More milliasaurs and sump spiders, less reliable weapons and ammunition. The beauty of 5PfH is how flexible the system is and how it grows its own narrative.

Corvin Akenz. Traitoris extremis. Boo, hiss!

Highly recommended for solo campaign skirmish science fiction gaming!

Chugger, the people's champion.
Retired peacefully, gives circus rides to orphans.
Definitely not dead.

Monday 9 September 2024

Five Parsecs from Home. Necromundan campaign summary

I've completed a Five Parsecs from Home campaign set in Necromunda. Here's all the battle reports! 

0. Meet the Crew

1. Delivery. The Crew sneak into a guild facility.


2. Revenge! Roma's old colleagues come for her.


3. The Ash Wastes. Marbec's first encounters with the strange miners.


4. Holding out for a hero. Attacked by Orlocks, who will save the crew?


5. Fighting the squatters. Marbec confidently takes on the Squats.


6. Rogue Servitors. Can the Crew disable the device?


7. Vigilante posse. A bounty hunter comes after the crew!


8. Payback! The squats hold a grudge...


9. Squigged! Squigs!

10. The armoury job. The Crew take a mission to blow up an arms cache.


11. Old Friends. The crew encounter the sinister miners again.


12. Cornered! The miners ambush the crew under cover of darkness.


13. Assassinate. The crew goes after a rabble-rouser in the refineries.


14. Chugger vs the Iron Hounds. Have the Orlocks bitten off more than they can chew?


15. Death in the sump. Vicious fighting in a toxic hellhole.


16. Through the forge. The crew fights drug-fuelled genhanced Goliaths.


17. Ambushed! Professional soldiers hit the crew.


18. A secret revealed. Marbec takes the crew deep into the Underhive...


19. The close. Last stand of the crew!