A sorting out of cultural differences.....Rogue Trader style.

I played a total of four games while I was back in Aus for the past two months......not ideal, but I'll take what I can get (gaming wise & anything else really) anytime. So here is the first of the batreps.

The first scenario was thought up by my gaming buddy Rob_s, but unlike all the other previous battles we have had against each other, batrep duty has now been passed onto me. For the game, GM'ing responsibilities were Rob_s' domain. My son & I got to play as the protagonist's.

The scenario:

The setting was a place called Radtown, in and around an old mining facility. It consisted of a few shacks either side of a narrow road that lead off into nowhere. The opposite side of the camp backed onto a shore line. The water wasn't drinkable, but the lake did provide a good transport route for mining barges to deliver & pick up goods from. The rest of the area was sparsely populated with trees & a few hills.

It was a poor mining outpost that had long ago been abandoned by the Squat mining guild. It's resources plundered, the Squat's had moved onto other more lucrative sectors on the planet. Fast forward three lunar cycles & other life forms had decided to move in to claim what little remained. These interested parties consisted of two rival gangs. 

The first was (played by my son) a Beastmen herd, led by a formidable Broo, who went by the name of Ram Man (oh well, they don't have a low Intelligence score for nothing). He & a group of eight other Beastmen had heard about an ammo cache in one of the sheds in the mining camp. They aimed to get there first so that they could gore as well as blast their enemies.

The second group was (played by the GM) a Human gang, called the Tunnel Snakes. Led by a dude going by the moniker of King Pliskin, he had eight other bad dudes in his retinue They had seen several goat tracks leading to & from the mining camp a few nights previous. This was not to be tolerated, sheep & humans had long ago been deemed "culturally divergent" on this mining planet (they still farmed their brothers for meat). Sooner or later they would come looking for the humans to extract revenge upon them. The Tunnel snakes thought it better to cull the herd before they themselves were eaten.

So, where did i fit in?

I had been given command of an Ork horde, led by none other than Thrugg Bullneck,. He had two 2IC's to lead the rest of his unruly mob. They were Snappa, who sported a mechanical claw...the Roboclaw 5000 model & Brad, who wore a blue imperial model power fist. These three leaders each lead a squad of five. 

They'd had a few stoushes with the humies a few times in the area & they'd heard about Goatmen having fights with them too. The Ork's had had enough of these other element's encroaching into their territory. They'd decided to surprise them, by using some of their stolen merchant barges to make a landing near the edge of the mining camp. They'd teach'em both a lesson they soon wouldn't forget. If they could pull it off, they'd be rid of both gang's for good. 

Here be pic's of the rumble in the interplanetary jungle:

So, the end result of this game was all the humies were wiped out, but not before BBQ'ing Thrugg, along with his cohort who had just managed to put him out! The Broo had kicked the hell out of the Ork's most of the game, before they got their act together (rolling high number's helps, so I've heard) and wiped them out too. But the Ork's victory had come at a very high cost, only three remained to plunder the spoils of battle.


I tried to do this batrep a little differently, by using speech bubbles in the pics to describe the action. I'm not sure if it's entirely successful, but it is a damn sight faster than trying to write out all the action blow by blow. I didn't take enough pics during the game & we should have removed casualties....so it wouldn't have looked so cluttered in some of the final shots, but overall I'm ok with the end result. After all, Tis my first batrep :)



Cheers & all that other mooshy stuff :)

Nostalgia trip...well, for me it is anyway :)

I've been back home for about a month now, and I decided to have a bit of a rummage through my old garage to see what I could find. I happened across three of my old high school folders that I used to enjoy pimping with fantasy pictures. 

For those who can remember, a while back l posted about how I regretted cutting up a lot of my old gaming magazines back in the day. The harvested images were destined for use in these folders. Anyway, have a gander at what my teenage "talent" was capable of at that time & make up your own mind if it was a great idea to hack these magazines to bits or youthful stupidity?

Spread eagle, for your viewing pleasure.

Blue headed dude, ROC & a bright red T-Rex ....ace!

Mmmm, Tuff arse termie, about to become a tasty snack. I
never played Toon, but TMNT was a fun RP game.

I've said it before & I'll say it again, Dave Andrews oldschool
 diorama's kick arse!

Inside the mighty folder, where you can see when I first started getting interested
in the opposite sex. Which, as was expected, wasn't reciprocated :(

Can't even remember this tarts name. She was some TV/singer
"wanna be" that fizzled out. Still, she had it were out mattered
 most :D

TMNT was one of the first four player arcade games. It was
quite a good game too, along with Double Dragon.

Paul Benson dreadnought, ROC dudes & mutant dingoes riding oversized mutant grasshoppers, awesome!

Second one. Punisher & flying Ninja Turtle for the win!

Blocked out my name, coz you know, I'm a secret agent.

As you can tell I was on a TMNT kick for a couple of years.
Those freehand Eldar dreadnought canopies were really
something too weren't they!

Nobz, TMNT & GD runner ups.

Those Garbage gang stickers were popular for a while there too. If you haven't
heard of'em, they were basically Cabbage patch dolls all fucked up, groovy!

SciFi T-Rex in an RT setting. You can't see it in this pic, but he was
surrounded by eldar.....cool!

Lucky last. Over excited Chaos warrior, flaming Lamborghini &
a very deep, philosophical quote to motivate me during class.

Robotech was (and still is) a favourite anime of mine. First
cartoon I saw that had people actually dying in it!

So much going on in this back cover that I don't even know
where to start.

I used to really enjoy making these when I was a young'n. They helped me cope with some of the more demoralising classes I had to endure during high school.

So, now you know where all my WD's, GM's, C & VG's, 2000 A.D.'s and other fantasy stuff ended up.

I wonder if anyone but myself will be interested in seeing these? Unless it's obviously hobby related, sometimes it's hard to know what to post up & what should best be kept to oneself. Oh well, too late now, I've clicked the publish button.

Good gracious blessings to all you wonderful children of mother earth out there. May you all find comfort & solace in whatever debauchery you find appealing.

Cheers.

Helsreach Grav attack tank, done.

Yup, your reading it right, it's done.....and in record time too! Only two weeks.....amazing huh? I took a crappy Star Wars toy and converted into this thing;

The mighty jalopy of.......can't think of a cool name, it's just a floating wagon really.

 Can you not see the beautiful paint work?

Here you can see what happens when you don't pay attention to what's behind you in the wide, empty desert of Helsreach.
You  can quite literally become lunch for a machine, sucked into an intake & splattered all over the bonnet!

You can sort of make out the Battery cell numbers in the top right of this photo, rather poorly hand painted by yours truly.
Oh, and there's some big arse engines here in this pic too, just can't seem to find them. Look hard and you might get lucky.

Blood splat curtiosy of Tamiya clear red
mixed with a drop of black paint.

Running down vagabonds is a legitimate
hobby in Helsreach.

My OSL attempt & more gore for the engine.

Las-cannon manufactured by Marshall. The
 choice of champion's and/or degenerates.

Here's something that Australian's of a
 certain age will probably only appreciate. 

Felix was, at one stage, the proud owner of this vehicle, until one fateful day. While taking a leak out in the wide, empty expanse of
Helsreach, he had left the the reactor iding. A disgruntled Vagabond, taking refuge nearby clambered onboard
 & commandeered it. Hence, why there's now a Jackson Pollock on the front of his ride.

A reactor coolant leak doesn't cause any
issue's. It help's keeps the rodents away!

The smiley face has reached just about
every corner of the known universe. 

Control panel & joystick to fly this crate.

More OSL & a rear cannon, kpow kpow!!!

So, it's finished, set to go cruisin around the outer limits of Helsreach, or any other tabletop made up land for that matter :)

Now, for the nitty gritty;

Control panel;
I got that idea from Stro'Knor Macekiller. His laptop screen looked pretty snazzy to me & because he usually takes close up pictures of his stuff it was quite easy to replicate. I'm pretty happy with the result. I decided to put a target on the joystick/pin....just coz.

Battery label;
I just couldn't help myself using that, even though I'm quite sure that it makes absolutely no sense at all to most of you. It's a TV commercial that's been ingrained in my psyche! I had to endure listening to this stupid thing for most of my teenage/adult life. You know the type of commercial I'm talking about don't you? The one were the company could only afford to made "one" and because it rated well in the first run, they decided never to update it, even after twenty odd years!!! In all fairness, it was funny...for the first couple of years :) Oh, and it was a google images & colour printer to the rescue job.

Smiley face;
Why not?

Coolant leak;
This was something I had to do to cover up an error I had made earlier. Originally, the "battery" was going to become a big induction trumpet. I was trying to run a flexible pipe from the rear of it, down into the hole where the headphone ended up being, but in doing so I had to cut out a larger hole for the tube. When I realised that it didn't look very good I scrapped it for the "Heatsink intake up front" idea. And so, I had to fill in the hole with something, a headphone looked good to me. I think it ended up looking good, having a large, radioactive "fuel cap" right behind the drivers compartment seemed quite logical in an RT setting.

Felix ride;
His name just popped into my head. And in my mind, you can't have an RT vehicle without some sort of graffiti.

Colour scheme;
Initially I wanted to paint it white, which i did. Then after I looked at it a while I began to think that maybe I should go for a different colour....didn't want it looking too much like my walker, that's got white legs. So, I gave it a black ink wash & then set about painting in the green crappy paint look. And actually, after I got close to finishing it I realised that the walkers' howdah is this colour green too! I must have some fixation with this colour, damn! Anyway, it looks ok.

Weathering;
I "was" going to weather it with oil paints, but from past experience, they take at least a couple of days to be dry enough to varnish. If I had the time I would have definately gone this route, as I was very happy when I used them last time. But I was under the pump, so I just used paint & pigments over a gloss varnish. once I was satisfied (out of time) I hit it with a matte varnish & added the Tamiya clear colours, three of'em in total, in three locations.

Overall, I'd have to say that I'm a pretty disappointed with the weathering, I over did it quite a lot. But there's no going back once you've applied it. Next project I'm gunna stick with oils, as I can clean them off easily during the application process & keep on trying until I get the result I want. But the jobs done now, and I'll leave it as is. I've learnt some more valuable kitbashing skills & recognise that I need to show a bit more restraint with my weathering techniques if I want them to look more realistic.

Now the only dilema I have left to overcome is how to pack the damn thing so it wont break in transit while on the plane :(



My apologies for the formatting, blogger was doing my head in with these different scaled images.This is the best i could do on my meds :P



Now, go forth & kitbash!!!

Space Ork Raider's.

That's enough of these guys for now. I have a sufficient supply of painted orks to play pretty much any sized game of RT that takes my fancy. I picked up a metric tonne of these guys at a convention a few years back (I think it was "Little Wars Melbourne" 2012/13). They were cheap, like me, and like most cheap second hand minis, painted terribly. Can't expect GD quality for peanuts now can you!

I put up their "Tubman's" quality paint jobs while I was back home last year, just so I could get some gaming in with them. But as soon as I got the chance I drowned these mofo's in Acetone & began painting in earnest.

Here's the culmination of almost a years worth of toil at my painting desk, gaze upon my (insert crude comment) & dispare!!!!

24 Greenskin's, reborn! Their ranks now swelled by the addition of six more suckers.

 Here they are, six freshly painted green gorillas. All except Thrugg has been converted or repaired in some way.

Hruk, with his dagger arm reattached, 2IC to Thrugg.

New barrel fitted to the heavy bolter, raped from a Gundham kit.

Hand & flamer conversion, ala Dave Andrew's copy. I used an RBT01 SM
flamer & a hand from....? I don't know, I can't remember. JB sent it to me,
cheers pal.

Red era dude with a new bionic arm/power fist & his top spike removed. His
buddy is an RT era standard bearer, with his mangled arm removed & improved.

I like the arm, but I'm not sure on the colour choice. Oh well,
the damage has been done and that's the way it'll stay.

I remembered after I took this photo that I've still got to add
some crusty blood onto his shoulder socket. I'll use my Tamiya
clear + paint combo for that task.

I'm pretty happy with how this guy turned out.

His name is Brad, his memory's not too good, so he's stitched his
name onto his shirt as a constant reminder. Clever huh?

"Where's dem pretty boy's in der pwastic arma? I gunna
carve some up!!!

I'm really happy I've got Thrugg Bullneck too. He really does add something intangibly badarse to an ork army, like his some sort of leader of an outlaw bikey gang. Maybe it's just coz he came in the first box set? I'm not sure, but I likes him!

He was kindly donated to me by Captain Crooks, a fellow convict. Much appreciated Crooksey :)

Ok, that's it from me for a bit, I've gotta crack on & finish off the Grav tank by the end of this week. Wish me luck!