Monthly Archives: February 2013

Wednesday Workbench

Funny, as much time as I spent goofing around my workspace this weekend, it doesn’t really feel like I’ve gotten all that much done!

I’ve started working on Sammael, but it’s slow going. He should paint up, like, lightning-fast… but he’s such a big damn chunk of metal that I can’t mount him to a grip while I paint him. So, instead I’ve got to grip the model, which would result in paint getting rubbed off.  I don’t want that, so I’ve been hitting it with some Dullcote once a night, which translates into slow progress.

It’s good that I’m finally getting around to painting him; the Sammael model is what inspired me to pick up Dark Angels back in 4E. It’s some sort of shame that I’m only getting around to painting him now.

The base is shaping up great, though, huh?  I literally cannot get enough of Cryx Bane Base -> Cryx Bane Highlight -> Khaki -> Sepia.

Also: I converted a Librarian on a bike. I feel like I spent a lot of time screwing around with greenstuff on him and, yet, I don’t really see it on the model. C’est la vie. He’ll be done when a power axe shows up in the mail.

WFRP 2E Winds of Magic Table(s)

Winds of Magic

Someone on the WFRP 2E Refugees group asked about a Winds of Magic table. Since nobody offered up one, and someone had mentioned Storm of Magic, I crapped one together.

It’s rough (since I literally threw it together in a few minutes); the Lores are from WHFB, not WFRP, and it’s never seen use at the table… but it’s a start. Furthermore, several of these lores are not, I think, actually represented in WFRP.  That’s cool, though: a appropriate situations’ll present themselves for their use or they won’t.

Roll d10 to determine what Wind is in ascendancy.

Roll Lores
1 Doldrums
2 Ghyran Life Nurgle, Skaven Dark
3 Azyr Heavens Chaos, Orc & Goblin, High
4 Ulgu Shadow Beastman, Slaanesh Dark
5 Purple Death Necromancy High
6 Aqshy Fire Orc & Goblin, Skaven Dark
7 Ghur Beasts Beastman, Ogre High
8 Hysh Light Necromancy, Ogre Dark
9 Chamon Metal Necromancy, Tzeentch High
0 Storm (All Lores)

Rune magic, rituals and such should probably not be affected. Petty Magic either isn’t significant enough to be affected, or should be affected regardless of the roll.

Roll d10 to determine the strength of the ascendant Wind.  All other Winds and lores work normally.  There’s probably a lot of room for refinement here, mind you.

Roll Strength
1 Becalmed – Cast as if Mag = Mag-1 (min 1)
2-5 Normal
6-8 Strong – Roll 1 extra casting die, drop 1 casting die
9 Dangerous – Must cast at full Mag
0 Tempestuous – Must cast at full Mag+1

Thoughts?  I’m not likely to use it any time soon: stuff’s getting Weird in my game, but it’s not going to run weird in this particularly direction.

Free RPG Day Hexcrawl Entries

About a month ago, James Raggi posted about the now-underway LotFP Free RPG Day Kickstarter.  The module (“Better than Any Man”) is a hexcrawl around Karlstadt during the Thirty Years War, and he put out a call for “‘random’ and placed wilderness encounters that aren’t connected to the main ideas of the adventure but that support the atmosphere.”

Since I’m theoretically running a game that takes place in Germany during the Thirty Years War, I’ve got a notebook full of Stuff To Do… so I pinged him and offered to throw together a few.

The Kickstarter’s closed out (successfully! yay!), and it looks like they’re not getting used (and, to be honest, I didn’t really expect them to), so I figured I’d post ’em here.  Silly to let content go to waste when I’ve got a blog that’s starved for attention.


Foul Fruit

A village sits near the edge of a field. It’s unnervingly quiet: no voices are heard, no sound of livestock, no smoke rising form chimneys.  In the field, certainly a place for local celebrations and fairs years ago, stands large tree.  Dozens of nude corpses are hanged from it, like foul fruit.

The village is thoroughly looted. All of the bodies are adult and male, but there are no other people to be found.  Similarly, all of the livestock is missing.

(Mostly this is just an excuse to reference Callot’s Les Grandes Misères de la guerre: #11 – The Hanging which is, to me, one of the most evocative pieces about the period.)

The Patrol

A few miles away, there’s a group riders in the colors of [Karlstadt], armed dangerously.  They’ve noticed you and are galloping your way, readying their weapons!

These riders are looking for trouble: they’re searching for scouts from the Swedish army to capture or kill. They’ll likely assume that’s what the party is.  If they’re not traitorous, heretical troops, what are they doing wandering the German countryside when they should be in Karlstadt, preparing to fight off the same.

(I’m saying [Karlstadt] because I’ve forgotten who’s supposed to be in control of it.  Someone Hapsburg, I expect, but Tilly? Wallenstein?)

Atra Mors

A lone farmhouse quietly sits on the edge of a ragged, poorly tended field. No smoke rises from the chimney, but there are faint sounds of movement coming from within.  

The house is wreathed in a strong, foul odor which. The sounds are from rats, feasting on a family’s worth of corpses arrayed throughout the house.  The corpses are but a few days old: an ill-advised examination of the bodies will reveal large, tumescent buboes in the armpits and groins of the bodies.   The Plague!

(I have no idea if you think it’s a good idea for the PCs to catch the plague. I’m assuming not. Besides, it’s been my experience that PCs run, fast and hard and immediately, from anything that looks like it might be the plague… so it doesn’t really matter if I want them to be able to catch it or not.)

Looking for Pic-a-nic Baskets

While camping for the night, a large snuffling shape wobbles and shuffles in from the darkness: a mangy, gaunt bear begins pawing at one of your packs!

People aren’t the only things starving in the Palatinate. This animal is hungry enough to brave a group of people to rummage for anything to eat.  It will certainly attack anyone who attempts to stop it from tearing through packs and eating anything it smells and, depending on how much food it’s able to rummage out of those packs, it might attack the party anyway.

(Sorry; I’ve got to throw this one out here. This encounter killed nearly half of the party in my game; nothing fancy, just bears and death. :) )

“The war will feed itself.”

Screams and cries can be heard coming from a village: soldiers in Swedish colors are butchering its residents.  They’re too preoccupied in visiting misery upon their victims to notice you… yet.

These are scouts for the Swedish army, riding ahead of the main force.  They’re taking food because they’re hungry, shelter because they plan to camp here for the evening, and lives because of the horror of Magdeburg.  They’ll be wary of any interlopers, but will quickly become friendly to the party if they can prove themselves to be Protestant.  They will attack if they believe the party to be Catholic, however, fighting with an unusual ferocity and offering no quarter… just “Magdeburg Justice.”


It was a fun exercise to try to take what’s in the notebook (which tends to not be much more than Plague Village or Bear-baiting gone horribly wrong) and expand it out into more detail.

Also, regardless of not contributing in terms of words, I’m still very much excited about the campaign.  I’m in for more print copies than is probably advisable, but even at the lowest it was a great freaking deal and should turn up a lot of great stuff.

Wednesday Workbench

I almost forgot to do one of these!
I wonder who or what that could be a base for…  
I’ve clearly picked up the Green Stuff Industries Tentacle Makers, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.  It’s one of those things that looks useful but unnecessary… until you have one and want to do cables and wires and stuff on everything. That rubble looks dodgy, but paints up well enough. 
Anyway, that’s the only thing on the table right now. The Crusader’s been primed, but I realized I probably need to invest in some paint, first (which means a Warstore order, since nobody local carries P3).  Hopefully, I’ll sort out the above and start putting together some bikers.

Brood Horror!

I finished the Brood Horror!  Woooooooo!

After a couple of false starts, I finally knocked out the Brood Horror. Although I’m sure I could have finished it faster, I can’t help but feel like I got it done in pretty good time.

The ratskin came together pretty easily: I used an airbrush to do the midtone, then backed in some shading, then cleaned it up with a brush before highlighting.

The rashy skin was more problematic. So much of this thing is covered in disgusting, nasty rashes, pustules that I had to do something to keep it interesting. Although my mind’s eye had a much more multi-colored rainbow of diseases, I’m happy enough with it.

Now, I just need to put this stinking, foul thing into some games.

Anyway, behold the photodump!

There’s a tongue that goes in there, but the damn thing kept breaking off. Finally, I got sick of gluing it back in, so I left it out. The hole for it is probably creepier, anyway.

Some of the sculpting is more than a little dodgy. There are some things that are clearly not enormous pustules, and probably couldn’t be anything but rat… but are not very well sculpted. I did what I could; I doubt anyone but me will notice.

So, I finally got around to ordering Stars of Iniquity (along with a few other books), expecting a Renegade Crowns for the grim darkness of the far future.

It’s not quite that: there’s no turning the crank and having a sector plop out… but it does generate star systems and everything below that. So close.

I had President’s Day off, and the primer was drying on my Leviathan Crusader, so I grabbed some dice and paper and gave it a try.

There’s a lot of chicken scratch involved that I won’t try to replicate/articulate, but here are the final results. Room for names, particulars and such to be inserted.

System
Haven system, Stellar Anomaly
Vigorous Star
Inner Reaches

  • Dust Cloud

Primary Biosphere

  • Rocky Planet (A)

Outer Reachers

  • Gas Giant (B)
  • Asteroid Belt (4 Mineral Resources)
  • Asteroid Cluster (1 Mineral Resources)

Rocky Planet (A) (Primary Biosphere)
Small & Dense, High Gravity
Atmosphere: Moderate, Tainted
Climate: Temperate, Verdant
Orbital Features:

  • Lesser Moon (No Resources)

Landmasses: Single
Territories: 

  • Plains – Fertile
    • Crater
    • Cave Network x2
    • Inland Sea
    • Reef
  • Plains – Extreme Temperature, Fertile
    • Canyon
    • Mountain
    • Volcano x2
  • Wasteland – Expansive
    • Canyon
    • Cave Network

Species

  • Apex Predator – Adapted
  • Behemoth – Impossible Grace
  • Shadowed Stalker – Vanisher

Inhabitants

  • Eldar – Orbital Habitation
Resources
  • Ornamental Minerals (46)
  • Ornamental Minerals (31)
  • Radioactive Minerals (31)

Gas Giant (B) Outer Reaches
Gas Giant, Powerful Gravity
Orbital Features:

  • Lesser Moon (29 Resources)
  • Moon (C)
  • Moon (D)
  • Lesser Moon (No Resources)
  • Debris Ring
  • Moon (E)
  • Debris Ring
  • Lesser Moon (35 Resources)
  • Dust Ring

Leviathan Crusader!

So, I got my Dreamforge Games Kickstarter reward in the mail on Wednesday.

I’ve gotten a couple of Kickstarter rewards so far (though, let’s face it, not as many as I should have by this point :cough:) and to be frank… as excited as I’d been about most of this stuff while pledging, I’ve been less excited about it when it showed up. I can’t muster the energy to assemble (forget paint) Sedition Wars. I’m debating eBaying my Mantic Orcs. The Red Box stuff’ll come out eventually.

For some reason, I wasn’t super-excited about the Dreamforge stuff when pledging; interested, but not pumped.  But, when it got here, I couldn’t wait to open it up and start putting it together.

Anyway, y’all don’t care about that.

I did some Twitterin’ about it as I went through the unboxing/assembly process. Might as well repeat it here.

That’s a pretty dang big base. Still need to figure out what I’m going to do with it in terms of terrain/decoration, etc.

On digging through the box, I noticed it comes with a screwdriver. That means it’s not a model, it’s a frakking Ikea kit.

That said: the screwdriver really kinda sucks. I don’t advise you using it; grab a different, slightly larger screwdriver and use that instead.

The leg is… big. Because it’s a big dang model. That’s why i took the photo, but on the second time around it serves a different purpose. See that hole on the top of the foot?  There’s a piece that goes there. It’s not there on the model, because it’s not there in the instructions. This is the first of several skipped steps in the instructions.

Mark’s aware of the instructions being imperfect, and has posted some updates.  Unfortunately, the Leviathan Crusader updates only address where the flat-out wrong piece numbers are used. They don’t really address the skipped steps.

Unfortunately, momentum carried me through assembly without thinking to take pictures or note the missing steps. If I had a second, I’d do that… but I don’t so, c’est la vie.  If you take your time, dry fit your pieces and then look at what the model’s supposed to look before you start the next step before you glue anything into place, you’ll be okay.

UPDATE: Updated instructions (that hit the missing pieces) can be found here.

Here’s the assemble-ished model.  I’ve taken it apart into sub-assemblies for painting (arms, legs, torso, pelvis, shield, pelvic pistons, smoke stacks).

The painting might start today, but probably won’t.

Wednesday Workbench

Just about done with the Brood Horror. I need to finish up the tail (which I’ve put off until the end, since it just kept getting in the way) and assemble the dang thing and I’m done.

Also, I’m trying to put all of my characters on cork in the Ork army. It’s something I did with my Skaven and it’s been Really Effective, and I’d forgotten to do it with the Orks, so I pulled the Warbike Warboss off of the custom base I had to build for him (did I post about that? what a pain) and put some cork in there.

Finally, I grabbed a Predator that I’d assembled a couple of years back, slapped some paint on it, and am experimenting with washes. (My previous Dark Angels were washed with a mix of inks.)

Wolf Rats

Finished these guys up with a good amount of time before the tournament the other week, and finally got around to photographing them.
Of course, in the process, I realized that I forgot to paint the triskelion on the leaping wolf rats. Weaksauce; I’ll have to touch them up.
Anyway: photodump!

Wednesday Workbench

A very messy desk this morning.

After the tournament last weekend (that I still need to write up), I just sat down and started banging away at the Brood Horror. I’m fairly pleased with how it’s coming along; I’ve still got a lot of disgusting pustules and unhealthy skin conditions to pull out; in the end it’s going to be a dang rainbow of disease. It’s coming along very quickly, actually. I expect that, this time next week, it’ll be done (or extremely close to it).

Also: still need to make time to photograph the completed Wolf Rats. I’m pretty happy with how they came out.