A Mixed Update

I realise, that it has been some time since my last update. It is not because I haven't painted anything new or done anything miniature related, but I have been really busy lately. Playing live with my band, visiting Belgium with some of my family, sorting out general chaos and all such stuff.

But when I made this blog I decided that I would try and make at least one update each month. So I dug through my recent photos and found some stuff to share with you guys.

Mercenaries from Four A Miniatures which I recently painted.

These guys had been lying around for some time and I did'nt really know what to do with them. I ended up painting them in blue and white, so in the end I think they are now looking like some space police of some sorts. I like the models very much and I plan to get more stuff from Four A Miniatures in the future.

Fishmen, Rogue Trader Mercenary and the Matakishi Cat.

I was so lucky to get the pair of the Rogue Trader Fishmen from Wargames Foundry. They have only been available as a giveaway when they ran some Rogue Trader game weekends. They were a joy to paint and I think they turned out ok.

The Rogue Trader guy was just some dude I painted to try and paint some old school yellow. I am not 100% satisfied, but I think he has an ok rough and dirty look and will do fine as a space pirate or other scum.

The Matakishi Cat is from Matakishi's Tea House. What can I say? I just love that cat and Matakishi has been a good inspiration for a lot of my previous projects. I can recommend anyone to visit his homepage.

A Scale shot: C. P. Models, RT Marine, Four A, GW, Four A.

Besides that I have been working on a mixture of different project. I am constantly stripping old and second-hand miniatures, removing mold lines, greenstuffing, basing, base-coating and generally preparing miniatures, but there is not much fun in documenting that. But one bigger project, I have been doing for some time now, is my ongoing Spacelords Phagon army. I am not going to use it for Spacelords, since the rules are only in German, but I love to collect and paint the miniatures and we have been talking about trying out No Limits from Wargames Unlimited. 

Here is some WIP army shots.

Army shot, a bit out of date though.

So far I have all the Beastmen, Battle-Beasts and the PSI-Wolves. I am still looking for some of the Battleclones and I think I am missing one or two of the Walkers.

Below is some old pictures of some of the finished models.

Hopefully I will soon have some updated pictures of my Phagon army and maybe some battle reports to go with them. At least I am pretty sure this project will continue, since I really like the Metal Magic miniatures.

If you got the hots for the Phagons, they are now available at EM4 Miniatures. Unfortunately all the Spacelords miniatures haven't been re-released yet and it has been some time since last new re-release, but we are still some who hope to see the complete line brought back at some point.

Great Cthulhu With a Hot Glue Gun and Sci-Fi Terrain

Me and a couple of friends have been having a few get togethers for building a small residential neighbourhood for our miniature games. So far I haven't been helping much and mostly done other stuff instead. So this last time was of course no different.

Instead I began to assemble my RAFM Great Cthulhu, but the kit is rather old, the pieces doesn't fit very well together and it is generally just a nightmare to assemble. So I decided to use a mix of hot glue gun, super glue and greenstuff and went on with it.

Pieces have been cleaned and assembly has begun.

Work in progress.

And Cthulhu lives!

Somehow I managed to assemble him. But in the proces I also managed to glue myself to all sorts of stuff, burn myself on hot glue and stab my hands and fingers on all the spiky parts.

Next step will be to give him some greenstuff to correct the ugliest places of assembly and then give him some paint with the largest brush I can find!

And lately I have also been working a bit on expanding my collection of sci-fi terrain...

Noodles box and a watchtower in the making.

Some solar cell lamps ruined to make a small powerplant.

And some single deathworld cacti to add to the cacti fields.

Deep Ones (From the Deep)

Ever since I discovered H.P. Lovecraft I have always been facinated by the universe of the Cthulhu Mythos. I learned about Lovecraft through role playing games and one of the first games I really got into was "Call of Cthulhu", so it was no wonder that I eventually would get myself some Cthulhu monsters after getting into miniature gaming.

I remember as a child, when my dad and I went to town, we always had some regular shops to visit. A couple of record stores, some second hand book stores and then we had to visit Comix. Comix was an awesome place for me, the stuff of dreams, they had comic books, role playing games and most importantly they had miniatures! Lots of them! I had no idea what games all those wonderful minaitures were for, so to begin with I just picked a few that I liked and could efford.

One of the things I always had to see in the shop was their glas cabinet where they showcased painted miniatures. They all looked so great and much better than anything I had painted myself and the crown jewel in their collection was (in my eyes) their painted version of the RAFM Great Cthulhu!

Since those days I have gradually picked up a whole bunch of Cthulhu monsters, and related miniatures. But I haven't really been painting any of them since they did not really come in handy for any of the games I played. At some point I even bought that old Great Cthulhu model, but it still lies unassembled and unpainted in my cabinet.

But the other day I decided to get some paint on some of the old miniatures, and some of the stuff I had lying around was this "USX Modern Day Heroes" starter set. It includes 12 Deep Ones and 5 SWAT team members. It doesn't seem like the game is supported anymore, but I found some old scenarios on the RAFM forum and thought I could give it a try, and if it doesn't work out for me I do have a completely different approach to gaming these days, so I should have no problem about putting these Deep Ones to use with other rules and games.

Gaaaaahh....

I chose a rather fast and simple paint scheme, but I think they ended up looking good enough for me to be happy about it . Also, I must admit, that even though I spend far more time painting than gaming, I will probably never have the patience to become a really outstanding painter. So I always try to find a way to balance between the time I use and the result I get.

Hopefully I will get around to paint that Great Cthulhu model at some point, at least he will have a bit of company when he finally awakens.

Rogue Trader Gaming (With Nuclear Renaissance Rules)

I think it comes as no surprise, if I tell you, that we are a couple of folks who really like the Warhammer 40K universe and the models (at least the old ones).On the other hand the rules doesn't really do it for us at all. I won't get into details about all the things we don't like about modern 40K gaming, but the main problems are the huge amount of models needed, the general tournament oriented attitude and competetive approach towards gaming.

We have previously tried out Rogue Trader by playing Battle at the Farm, the scenario included in the original rulebook. Things didn't really work out that well. The system is great in the ways that it is narative, very open and free, but the rules are heavy and kind of hard getting into. So before going back to Rogue Trader gaming we decided to try and play some games using Nuclear Renaissance from Ramshackle Games.

Priviously we have played some post apocalypse games using Nuclear Renaissance and that worked out really well. We already played these games using a mix off all sorts of miniatures, which also included old Rogue Trader models, so we knew it would be possible to at least play succesful games with the Nuclear Renaissance rules and after the succesful Kickstarter funding of Tome of Tridlins (Nuclear Renaissance expansion) it was time to give it a go again.

Since one of my usual gaming buddies, Thorbjørn, just painted up some Rogue Trader Orks (See more at Dr. The Viking's Miniature Games Hell) it was obvious that we should do a classic Marines vs. Orks game.

After re-reading the rules we worked out some profiles for the Marines, Orks, Gretchin and their weapons and then we plunged right into the game!

"A mysterious space craft has suddenly appeared by a small Imperial research facility in the wastes. Investigation has shown that the space craft was hostile and a small band of Ork pirates have taken over the settlement.

As the station is in posession of some very important research results a nearby scouting squad of World Eater marines is sent to recover the documents and anything else important. They are accompanied by a scientist who has been working on the secret project."

The Orky menace at the captured research facility.

The scientist accompanied by a squad of World Eater marines.

The Orks are allerted and move into positions for taking on the marines.

Marines slowly advancing towards the shuttle.

An ork sentry shoots the marine commander with a lucky bolter shot.

The marines loses his armor and at that point we decided to end the game.

Well, that was ceartainly something else. The game was a test to see if the rules would work out for Rogue Trader gaming and in conclusion we decided that the rules worked out fine. But we still had some troubles with the game. We had already chosen to ignore the part of the rules about how to build up your gangs, so when we when we chose the profiles and equipment of the characters we just chose whatever sounded like it was fitting for marines and orks and this didn't really work out. We made up power armor and bolters by mixing different weapon and armor profiles and upgrades and in the end I think some of those things was just too powerfull.

We have not given up on trying out Nuclear Renaissance for Rogue Trader gaming, but we do need to work on the profiles of the equipment and such.

The problems we did encounter was mainly my fault, since I was in charge of reading the rules and making the chracters, and generally I have no idea if rules and things work out before I have tried out a game or two. But I think this first game has given me a pretty good insight in what things we need to change and I am sure that next time we give it a go it will already be much better.

Doing a project like 40K in another set of rules is always going to be a matter of balancing fluff against what will make a fun game and in the end I hope we will be able to make ourself a Nuclear Renaissance list tweaked for our likings and list of profiles for standard marines, orks, eldar and the classic weapons like bolters, chainswords, shuriken catapults and so on.