Author Archives: Rushputin

About Rushputin

I've been painting minis for 30 years, and this is my hobby blog!

Salzenmund Apophaſiſ – Prologue Part I

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The first session of the Salzenmund Apophaſiſ went down about a month ago.  This writeup’s a couple of weeks late, but c’est la vie.

Dramatis Personae

Amina Wegner – Boat(wo)man
Rosaria Gorman – Smuggler
Mannfried Orben – Noble
Nicholas Schlender – Burgher
Konrad Osterwald – Protagonist
Alberto Adriano Timoteo Raffaele – Camp Follower

Henchpeople

Bözsi – Messenger
Dalibor – Outrider
Heiko – Tomb Robber
Helfried – Scribe
Herman – Miner
Humbert – Camp Follower
Irmuska – Bodyguard
Körbl – Bone Picker
Magdolna – Militiaman
Melker – Rogue
Sven – Mercenary
Viktor – Protagonist

I gave each of the PC’s d4 Henchbros to support them and, in cases of dire lethality, eat a would-be killing blow in place of the associated PC.  My DM dice have proven themselves to be downright spiteful, so a safety valve seemed prudent.  How little did I know…

I actually had a lot of fun rolling these up.  I gave each of them a skill, and rolled once on the Henchman Traits table.  They were 45% male, 45% female and two of them… hard to tell.  This gave us things like Viktor, the Protagonist with beautiful, lustrous hair, and Körbl the Bone and nose picker.

As promised, the PCs were all soldiers in service to Johann Tserclaes during the Sack of Magdeburg, serving under Graf Luboš Winther.  Winther, hits the limit for the depravity he’s willing to participate in and suggested to the troops he’s with that they desert, tag out of the war, and flee too someplace safe, like the Swiss cantons.  They agreed; finished loading up their loot wagon, and rolled out of town.

Along the way, they encountered some other looters who decided that a wagon full of loot’s far more convenient than a city full of unbewagoned loot and decided to take it from the party.  This went down almost entirely as an exercise to run the players through a WFRP combat.  As a result, the three unnamed looters (this is a lie: they were each named “Dieter”) were butchered and Nicholoas knocked into critical range.

Besides a bloody fight on the way out of town, their escape was uneventful.  That is, until a week or so after they’d left town.  Several of the party went foraging and hunting to supplement their rations… including Alberto, who shot, killed, and brought back a baby bear to cook.

The party was awoken in the middle of the night: Graf Winther was gone.  So was his horse and a sizable portion of the party’s rations.  Before they could investigate further…

Bears!  The completely botched Outdoor Survial hunting roll was incredibly convenient, as part of the initial arc I’ve had planned very much called for bears.  True story, no joke.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, bears in WFRP are very much not something to fuck around with.  At all.  Battling bears (2 Bears, 1 Bear w/ the Brute advance scheme) took quite a bit longer to resolve than I’d expected or would like.  It was also deeply, profoundly lethal.

The sacrifice-a-henchment-to-avoid-a-critical-roll rule effectively made the fight an exercise in feeding henchpeople into a woodchipper.

I’ll let the list of remaining henchpeople speak for itself.  Look at the list above, and now look at the list below:

Surviving Henchpersons

Bözsi – Messenger
Helfried – Scribe
Herman – Miner
Magdolna – Militiaman

So, yeah.  The math speaks for itself.  I hope next session’s not nearly as bloody.  This thing I’m doing right now?  Just a prologue.  Setting the stage for worse things to come.  Hard to do that if everyone involved is being transformed to bear feces.

1650 Kickstarter

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Kickstarter / IndieGoGo’s really been kicking my ass over the past few months.  Could potential creators, like, take a few months off please?

Anyway, by now you should all know about the Reaper Bones Kickstarter, which has become such an insanely good deal it’s ridiculous.  There are so many freaking minis involved in this thing, it’s kind of all you can do is start laughing maniacally, eyes rolling back into your skull, while you try to figure out where you’re going to put all of them.

That said, I’m much more excited about the 1650 IGG:


It’ll be a skirmish game.  There will be rules.  Maybe they’ll be good: I don’t know.  With minis like this, though, I don’t care.

Dammit, more minis need musket rests!

I need these minis.  They’ll (probably) see use in my Empire army.  They’ll get pushed around in the context of the 1650 game.  They (might) see use in an English Civil War force.  They’ll definitely see table-time in an RPG context.

Get these minis to me.  Get these minis to you.  Buy into this thing, per favore.  It’s got 2 weeks left and only needs another $3,325 to go.  That’s totally doable!

As an aside, Tercio Creativo did totally set up their stretch goals all wrong.  (Not in a bad way for you, potential backer.)  When you need $8K to be successful and receive funding, there’s no point to having stretch goals that add additional minis at $4K, $6K, and $8K.  Contributors will get them if funding is successful, or funding won’t be successful and they won’t.  There’s no stretchiness to it, you know?

Hobby Doldrums

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I’m in a pretty serious hobby lull.

The project I really need to be working on, the remaining three Demigryphs, have sat effectively untouched for over a month.  In fact, a complete and full accounting of all the hobby things I’ve finished since April looks like:

  • 1 Demigryph (no rider yet, so it doesn’t get logged)
  • 1 Daemon Prince (assembled only)
  • 2 Warpfire Throwers 
  • 2 Spacers (so I can field my chariot-based Screaming Bell at the proper width)

The end.  That’s it.  Nothing else.

Now, there are a lot of small reasons for this: I’ve been sick, I’ve been busy, I’ve been travelling, I’ve been subjected to the Olympics (tough to paint when someone drags your attention to some flip or kick or toss every few minutes), I’ve been committing Orcicide in Orcs Must Die 2.

I think the real reason, though, is that my hobby and my gaming are so completely out of step.

See, I need to finish these Demigryphs.  The How of doing them is still fresh in my mind, and it’s only going to get harder.  Except, I’m not playing my Empire right now, I’m playing my Skaven at NoVA.  It’s tough to focus on painting something when you’re not playing it.

Of course, I don’t really want to focus on my Skaven, either. Not that I really have any active Skaven projects, mind you, but right now I’m so much more interested in playing 40K than playing Fantasy right now.  Heck, where I was super-pumped about NoVA last year, I’m at 2% enthusiasm for it this year.  If the entrance fees weren’t as high as they are, I’d probably just cancel on it.

I could work on a 40K project, but I don’t even know what I’m doing with that game just yet: I’ve had time for one (1) game of 40K, and likely won’t roll any dice in the grim darkness of the far future until September and NoVA’s passed.  I’d like to figure out what army I’m going to be playing before I start painting stuff for it.

I should go digging in the bins to find something small that I can work on just so I can get back in the swing of things.  I need to get out of this rut.

d10Commandments

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While ordering some square-edged dice I stumbled across a d10Commandments; it had to be purchased.

I’m definitely going to use this thing in the game. I think I’ll use it for NPC’s motivations and secret guilts. Or maybe for things that religious zealots can assume about PCs.  “YOU!  YOU OVER THERE! YOU DON’T HONOR THE SABBATH!  I CAN TELL!  GET ‘EM!”

I dunno: I like weird dice.  Give me a break!

Hunger During the Thirty Years War

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Dame Wedgwood thinks I let my PCs spend too much money on rations…

“The fugitives who fled from the south after Nördlingen died of plague, hunger and exhaustion in the refugee camp at Frankfort or the overcrowded hospitals of Saxony; seven thousand were expelled fom the canon of Zürich because there was neither food nor room for them; at Hanau the gates were closed against them; at Strasbourg they lay thick in the streets through the frosts of winter, so that by day the citizens stepped over their bodies, and by night lay awake listening to the groans of the sick and starving until the magistrates forcibly drove them out, thirty thousand of them. The Jesuits here and there fought manfully against the overwhelming distress; after the burning and desertion of Eichstätt they sought out the children who were hiding the cellars, killing and eating the rats, and carried them off to care for and educate them; at Hagenau they managed to feed the poor out of their stores until the French troops raided their granary and took charge of the grain for the army.”

“At Calw the pastor saw a woman gnawing the raw flesh of a dead horse on which a hungry dog and some ravens were also feeding. In Alasace the bodies of criminals were torn from the gallows and devoured; in the whole Rhineland they watched the gravyards against marauders who sold the flesh of the newly buried for food; at Zweibrücken a woman confessed to having eaten her child. Acorns, goats’ skins, grass were all cooked in Alsace; cats, dogs, and rats were sold in the market at Worms. In Fulda and Coburg and near Frankfort and the great refugee camp, men wnt in terror of being killed and eaten by those maddened by hunger. Near Worms hands and feed were found half cooked in a gipsies’ cauldron. Not far from Wertheim human bones were discovered in a pit, fresh, fleshless, sucked to the marrow.”

“By November rich burghers’ wives were seen in the market bartering their jewellery for a little flour. Horses, cats, dogs, mice were all sold for human food, and the skins of cattle and sheep were soaked and cooked. On November 24th one of Bernard’s soldiers, a prisoner, died in the castle; before the body could be taken away for burial his comrades had torn it in pieces and devoured the flesh. In the ensuing weeks six other prisoners died and were eaten. On a single morning ten bodies were found in the center square of the town, citizens who had dropped dead of hunger, and by December it was being whispered that poor and orphan children had disappeared.”

– The Thirty Years War, CV Wedgwood

On GW Stores

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So, my Golden Daemon entries showed up in the mail yesterday, in great shape, shipped by the ridiculously helpful Chicago Battle Bunker staff.  Everything went incredibly smoothly, and the Bunker folks went above and beyond in helping me get my entries back (which shouldn’t be surprising, because all of the GW staff that work a Games Day do an amazing job).

I’m deeply appreciative of their help!

I don’t do much with GW stores.  I’m fortunate enough to live in an area fairly well saturated with them, but there’s only been one convenient in the past couple of years (GW Fair Oaks).

The thing is, that store just cannot catch a fucking break from me.  The slightest thing off, and I start crabbing about it.  The store was transplanted from a less convenient location (in Potomac Mills), where the folks down there had screwed things up for me pretty colossally in the past.  Since moving to Fair Oaks, there’s been the occasional screw up that’s really set me off… but mostly because it’s stacked atop the sins of Potomac Mills.

But the thing is: I’m pretty damn confident that nobody involved in any of those screwups has anything to do with the Fair Oaks store anymore.  I’m crapping over a staff for stuff that’s not their fault.  And, if I’m being fair (and I haven’t really): they’ve been pretty solid lately.  I can pick up what I’m there to pick up without being smothered with the stereotypical redshirt hardsell.  Sure, one guy tried to talk me out of a potential conversion (protip: don’t do that, for a host of reasons), but that’s hardly grounds to give an entire store the perpetual stinkeye.

So, because I can’t really properly thank the Chicago Bunker staff by dropping off a case of beer or something, I’m going to try to make up for it by lightening the heck up on their more local comrades.  I haven’t been fair to them; it’s past time to start cutting them some slack.

Games Day Golden Daemon Photodump

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So, GW posted pictures of the Slayer Sword winner. Hot. damn.

Anyway, here’s my promised Golden Daemon photo dump.  Again, cameraphone, etc.

B-B-B-BONUS ROUND!

Conversion contest & staff army photos!

Games Day!

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I successfully made it out to Games Day!  I had an awesome time, because that’s what you do at Games Day.  Staff there is always super, but they seemed even nicer this year: I suspect that’s because they weren’t in Baltimore.

Golden Daemon

The primary motivator for me was, as I’ve said, the Golden Daemon.  My entries were:

The Battle Bunker folk were super-helpful in working with me on arrangements to enter these things and get them back to me, despite being at a wedding that afternoon.  (As it turns out, the wedding started late enough that, had I changed at Games Day, I could have easily stuck around for the whole shebang and then made it in time, but c’est la vie.)

I’d planned on entering the Fimir to Single Model and the Ratwyrm into Monster; I found out the Fimir had to be entered as a Monster, so I bumped the Ratwyrm down to the Open category.  On reflection, I should have put him in the conversion contest: I think it’d have done okay in that.  Also, I really should have powered through the Demigryphs to enter them: I think they’d have done well (I suppose there’s always next year).

It’s important to note that I could not win, because I had to leave early.  I have no illusions that, if I’d been able to stick around later I’d have done better, and I knew it going in.  My goal, as it has been since the first time I entered has been to put in as good a showing as possible (and hopefully make Final Cut).

The Ratwyrm failed to make First Cut.  The Flamers and the Fimir made First Cut, but went no further.  Although that makes this the worst showing I’ve had yet, I’m still pleased.  A few things made a cut of some sort, I got to watch people take pictures of my minis and say nice things about them.  My ego was sufficiently stroked.  More significantly, there was some seriously amazing stuff in the competition: you’re not allowed to feel back about losing out to some of this stuff.  I’ve got a photodump at the end of this post: you’ll see.

I have no clue how the competition actually turned out: I had to boogie while they were making the Final Cut decisions.  I really need to track that information down.

I think that, for next year, I’m actually going to try to compete.  So far, it’s been, “I think I’m going to put something in the Golden Daemon; what do I have that I think might do okay?” Next year?  I’m stepping it up.

Consumerism

Let’s face it: that’s basically 75% of why Games Day exists.  I hopped in the ForgeWorld line after submitting my entries, where I was successfully able to overspend.  Exuberance made it easy for the FW staff (who were freaking on it, man) to do things like talk me into buying a Marienburg Class Land Ship (“You want a Land Ship, too, don’t you?  …  Yes, you do.  … Here, I’ll just go get one for you.”).  

Aside from picking up a few assorted odds, ends, and show-only minis, my haul:

  • Wolf Rats (x2)
  • Warlord on Brood Horror
  • Manann’s Blades Command (x2)
  • Manann’s Blades (x2)
  • Theodore Bruckner
  • The Land Ship (:sigh:)
  • IA – Aeronautica (updated points costs = must buy)
  • Tamurkhan

Tamurkhan’s really the only purchase in there that I have buyer’s remorse about.  It’s gorgeous, but since I’m ultimately so likely to use so little of it (something like 5 pages?), it was a mistake.  I’ll probably resell it soonish.

Aeronautica’s recosting of the Barracuda down to 130 means now I can run it, which means now I should run it, which means now I should paint it, which means now I revisit my Tau.  :sigh:

Fantasy Flight Games had a stand, as usual.  I’d have loaded up on 40KRPG books, but they’re so much cheaper online.  Also, not buying them is considerably lighter than buying them.  I did pick up the two POD Death Angel expansions (Deathwing & Tyranid) I didn’t have, though.

Miscellanea

Did anyone else hear about this?  They announced it, apparently, the day before.  It’s Talisman… in Space.  They had two prototype copies of the game they were using for demos.  I didn’t have the chance to sit in on one, though.

I got to chat with both Chung of Wargamers Consortium and Les of AwesomePaintJob (mostly about how they’ve helped meake me not terrified of my airbrush.  Very, very cool dudes.

It was great to see the same dang set of faces that I’ve been seeing for years at Games Day.  Like, really, really great.

I don’t want to rumor-monger, but one of the staff suggested that it might be Games Day Dallas next year.  If that happens: I’ll definitely be there (and by “I’ll definitely be there,” I mean “we’ll definitely visit Mrs. Rushputin’s family in Dallas that weekend, so that I might go to Games Day as well”).

Anyway, I think that just about covers everything that isn’t photodump.  So, let’s get on with that.


The quality of these isn’t quite what I’d like: they were done with my phone’s camera.  Still, they’re not bad, and it’s not like GW won’t post much, much better photos of this stuff at some point.

Armies on Parade

On reflection… that’s kind of an ass-ton of pictures.  I’ll throw up the rest in a post tomorrow.

Games Day Chicago 2012

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I haven’t been to a Games Day since those jerks at Games Workshop moved from Baltimore to Memphis and took their incredibly fun and utterly exhausting excuse to drink beer at the Wharf Rat (which, let’s face it, might never have actually been called “The Wharf Rat”) with them.  This hasn’t ceased to bum the heck out of me.

Fortunately, in a bizarre twist of fate I couldn’t have predicted: a close friend of the patient and understanding Mrs. Rushputin is getting married, in Chicago, tomorrow, which means I’m going to be in Chicago just in time for Games Day!

Needless to say, I’m somewhere between Super- and Mega-excited on the Excitement Scale about this.  (Although I’m going to be in Chicago for the wedding, not Games Day, the bride-to-be and I don’t know each other very well, so I think I get a pass for being more excited about toy soldiers.)

I’ll be putting a few things in the Golden Daemon: we all know I don’t stand a chance of actually winning one, but I’ve got to seize the opportunity to enter the competition when it’s presented to me.  The Chicago Bunker staff is being incredibly helpful in this: I’ll be gone and at the wedding by the time the competition wraps up, so they’re going to mail my entries back to me.

Anyway, if you’re going to be there too, keep any eye out for this handsome hairy bastard, probably standing in line to overspend on ForgeWorld:

If you see me, be sure to say hi!  It’ll be interesting to go to something like this and not see the usual faces.

DC Geeks

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I’ve mentioned before that some of my friends are responsible for the DC Geeks site, dedicated to any and all goings-on in Our (well, my and theirs, but some of you are Otherplacians) Nation’s Capital that might be considered geeky.

As it happens, this toy soldier painting thing we’ve got going on: not mainstream. (Who knew?)

Since it’s something unfamiliar to them, they’ve asked me to write a bit on how to get started in the minis hobby.

I think I did a pretty decent job of remaining impartial re: the biggest minis games in the area. Malifaux’s not for me and, although I don’t talk about it much, I hate Warmachine/Hordes like only an embittered devotee who’s lost their faith can… but that doesn’t mean the hypothetical reader of the article won’t enjoy them.

I know Dust Warfare’s picked up some steam locally and didn’t get mentioned. Two reasons for that. 1) It’s just started picking up steam locally. We’ve had more than our fair share of flash-in-the-pan, game-of-the-months. I’m not saying that I won’t take it seriously until Bill starts a podcast about it… but if people are still actually playing it six months from now, we’ll talk. 2) I seriously wrote the thing, like, two months ago. I’m only so prescient.

Anyway, I’m curious about any thoughts folks might have about it.

Similarly, they interviewed me on their podcast. If you’d like to listen to me chat with some friends for an hour or so ostensibly about toy soldiers (but, frankly, mostly about GW stuff), tune in.

I’ve got a weird relationship with podcasts: I’ve got several friends who run their own (8-Bit Radio, the aforementioned DC Geeks Podcast, Gamer’s Lounge). There are some really good ones out there, that do valuable, worthwhile things (11th Company, Jennisodes, WTF with Marc Maron). And I can’t hardly listen to any of them.

I find interviews really, really interesting (the Marc Maron stuff is amazing, and I think what Pat does on the 11th Company is the easily the most worthwhile thing being done with 40K podcasting)… but that’s it. The conversational, bunch-of-people in a room format that most podcasts use just isn’t something that works for me. Definitely a matter of taste, mind you, and I know that I’m in the minority here, so whatevs. (It does make me feel mildly hypocritical to shill about being interviewed, conversationally, on a podcast, though; hence the digression.)

Anyway, that’s all the self-slash-cross-promotion I’ve got in me for today.