The Biggest Small Project – Epic Blood Angels, 1991 Style

It’s back. And this time it’s slightly larger.

And AMAZINGLY expensive.

Yes, GW have relaunched Epic. And honestly, I’m so pleased. I mean, I have no intention whatsoever of buying it, but just like I have absolutely no intention of buying a Lamborghini I still like to coo at one when it goes past.

Of course, here at Skinflint Towers Epic never really went away – you may have seen some of our previous battle reports on the war-torn planet of Hazzard IV, the Redeemers Space Marine chapter, or the granny grating Imperial Guard, or the Squat Colossus built from an asthma inhaler…or the MONSTER that is Big Red… and you may remember we kicked 2023 off with a mega smackdown which featured all of the above. *SPOILER ALERT* – the Imperial side won, but the Squat contingent got absolutely battered while the Redeemers Veteran company hid in their Rhinos for a counterattack that never came..

We figured this would be likely to cause some political tensions (on our imaginary planet populated by imaginary races in an imaginary futue.. yes, we are ridiculous people) and this coincided by me acquiring some old 90’s White Dwarf PDFs from a Trove-style site (sadly defunct now :-/) and cooing at the luvverly luvverly teeny tiny Epic Blood Angels in issues 142 & 143… and getting a case of the “I wants”.

So to cool the tensions on Hazzard and to satisfy my inner child I set about stripping and repainting them, with the intent of re-creating the WD studio Blood Angels Army! And yes, I’m aware I had the same intent with the Epic Imperial Guard and Jim had the same with the Squats, but we are, as alluded to above, ridiculous people.

And so, to our ridiculous business we go.

I stripped the Warlord, Land Raiders and Rhinos in a Tupperware box using meths, THICK rubber gloves and an ancient toothbrush and once they were dry primed them white and pre-washed with thinned Vallejo Smokey Ink. Then, like their bigger cousins, they got thwo thin coats of Vallejo Hot Orange and a wash of Red Ink, before the metallic bits got based in black before drybrushing Vallejo Mithril Silver. Marine infantry got the same treatment, as did the Dreadnoughts and Robots I picked up off eBay.

So, pics so far then:

Assault detachment

Robot detachments

Dreadnoughts

No. 2 Battle Company (missing a stand, not sure where those lads have got too..)

Land Raider company

No. 9 Devastator Company

The full force so far

There’s a fair way to go yet, including quite a few scratchbuilt Rhinos, Vindicators and Thunderhawks but I have a fairly good idea how I’m going to do them – it’s going to be a real treat getting these lads on the tabletop!

Now, we have a slightly odd request to make to all of our friends out there in hobbyland…. we’ve been busy getting the rules for version 2.0 of Apocalypse: Earth together, and it’s looking pretty solid now. However, because we’ve both been playing the game so long we’re both a bit snow blind when it comes to writing them down and what we could really do with is a few folks who wouldn’t mind playing a few games with the rulebook as is and telling us what we’ve missed, which bits don’t make sense.. essentially helping us edit it. Obviously we’re not in a position to pay anyone but we’re happy to give everyone a mention and a good plug on the site wherever possible. So if you fancy having a crack, DM us and we’ll send you a PDF.. and you can tell us what bits we’ve stupidly missed out! All help will be appreciated, and as Future Force Warrior and Hyperian Wars are basically the same sets of ideas reskinned for sci-fi and fantasy respectively, it’s going to help all that along. The plan is that once launched, 20% of all proceeds will be going to the DEC Ukraine appeal, so hopefully we can make a difference there if only a small one.

As always, stay thrifty out there – Slavia Ukrainia – our thoughts stay with you

That Was Still Another Year That Was – The Inevitable Great Hobby Retrospective of 2023!

Le me blow your mind here. It’s the MID-2020’s X-O. How the hell did that happen? Well, with New Year’s hangovers gradually receding and the faintest hints of my toes reappearing under a belly strained to bursting point with mince pies, wine & (hopefully) medicinal whisky, let me see if I can pin down exactly where the bloody hell 2023 went…

Of course, we all know about the miserable international situation- but given that in early ’22 I was primed for the Threads– style end of the world scenario, it could still be a damn sight worse… against all the odds the Ukrainians are still hanging in there and have managed to chase the Russian Black Sea Fleet away from their attempt to starve half the world despite not technically having a navy, for example, so there are very definitely nuggets of hope to cling on to.. as long as our great and wise leaders don’t choose to suddenly snatch defeat from the jaws of victory… and who knows, maybe if the IDF actually do manage to stamp out Hamas once and for all then maybe the Middle East can start to find a modicum of peace for once and all the poor bastards caught in the crossfire can actually be left alone to live their lives… but that’s as political as I’m getting right now. Y’alls didn’t come to be lectured.

But you DID come to see some toy soldiers, right?

In respect of Dan’s birthday, I managed to track down the latest iteration of a skirmish game that we’d both been hunting for for many a year, which yielded up a couple of great fun little games and some painting tips – we even managed a YouTube video.. and there’s a chance we might manage some more, more on that later…

We kicked off with old school 2nd Ed Space Marine action as conflict tore apart the world of Hazzard with the BIGGEST Epic game we’ve run yet – Redeemers, DIY Guard and Squats held the line against a horde of howling greenskin scum (who have subsequently been reinforced) – and (spoilers) it did.. just… but with a twist that may yet cause further ructions on that tormented world…

We also had great plans for our slow-burning 2nd Ed 40k campaign, cranking out a fair bit of suitably retro terrain, but failed to advance the story much (although you can’t beat the look of Goblin Green bases hitting the tabletop) – however, both the Blood Angels and Black Ork Cav have received some reinforcements (and shout out to Roger from the splendid Rantings From Under The Wargames Table for the very generous gift of MANY BITZ, one of which was used in this build!), and Dan has plans that involve clothes pegs to finish off the few remaining elements of the 3rd Company – which should be interesting…

And then there were our own systems. Atlantic Alliance vs Holy Soviet Empire is still too near the knuckle for either of us to actually enjoy it, but we DID throw down a newly reinforced League Of European Nation against the Atlantic Alliance, throwing a spotlight on some of the fringe conflicts of the Apocalypse War.. before we got into Hyperian Wars, which has been steadily escalating all year before culminating in an almighty conflagration currently taking place in the shed!

I should also give honourable mentions to one or two projects that might not have made the blog – my Epic Squat Goliath Mega Cannon built from a pen, repaints on a couple of scenery pieces… including a newly upcycled satellite dish made from a now defunct satnav holder:

and of course our now traditional Star Wars Epic game, reinforced with an air wing and new infantry! With the advent of GW’s Legiones Imperialis and Mantic’s own Epic game it looks like teeny weeny scale games are very much back on the horizon, so nice to be in the mix!

So what’s on the agenda for 2024? Well, there’s a fighting chance we might have some rules published (currently sitting in PagePlus being spellchecked and rewritten)- but in the meantime, plenty of playtesting, plenty of scratchbuilding… and we’re going to start with a game that kick started many folks’ hobby careers.. what could that be?

What indeed…

So that’s our 2024 (roughly) planned – what about you guys? How about our friends out therein hobbyland? Drop us a line and let us know!

May The 4th Be With You 2023 – DIY Epic Star Wars Reinforcements

I think we may be in danger of starting Yet Another Skinflint Tradition here… over the last couple of years, regular viewers will have seen me appropriate the granny grating techniques that Dan picked up to scratchbuild some Epic scale Star Wars armies, in a somewhat ambitious attempt to recreate one of my favourite old RTS games, “Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds” on the tabletop. It’s also served as an incubator for our “epic scale” version of the Apocalypse: Earth rules, nd believe it or not these are actually in a pretty good state, albeit existing as stapled together Post-It notes and scattered pages of A4 paper!

So this year I figured the Galactic Empire And Rebel Alliance might fancy having a crack at Outpost 44 again, after a pretty tasty fight last year, but this time with some extra support. In SWGB everyone gets basically the same units, albeit with different sprites and different upgrades to differentiate them, so I’ve been building each force to be symmetrical – we started with an infantry company, a pair of speeder bikes and of course Luke & Vader to lead them, and since then they’ve had reinforcements in the shape of a support platoon with heavy blasters and a squadron of mechs each.

This time I wanted to add an aerial dimension – so what else but a flight of TIE fighters for the Empire and X-Wings for the Alliance? And if you’re going to have air, you need anti-air assets, so that meant infantry packing SAMs.. and while I’ve got the granny grating out, why not add infantry packing personal mortars able to provide indirect fire support? Well, it would be rude not to, right? In fairness, I’ve no idea if this is “canon”, but Star Wars lore seems infinitely malleable depending on who owns the IP – and let’s not forget George Lucas was making it all up as he went along anyway – so I decided to stick by SWGBs template!

Right, enough talk, let us get to business – I won’t go into the infantry because it’s pretty much the standard drill now, granny grating & hot glue, granny grating lengths cut to represent SAM launchers and mortar barrels and bipods, 20mm wine box cardboard for basing, you can read all about that in innumerable posts on this blog… and, well, I clearly forgot to take any pictures. Whoops.

But the interesting stuff is here – the ships! X Wings first:

Fuselage crafted from sprue lengths (approximately an inch in length), whittled down with a craft knife to create the X Wing silhouette

Wings cut from cardboard and glued to the fuselage with a mix of PVA and superglue, eyeballed the angles with the help of a ruler

Another view

Drinking straw thrusters

And there are the TIE Fighters! Blobs of greenstuff with cockpit details etched in, wrapped around cocktail sticks chopped down and cardboard wings added with PVA/superglue mix

Bases! These are 30mm squares of Foamex (ePVC to some) bevelled down, and sanded the edges (right hand side)..

Tactical rocks added for cinematic style – and stability! Cocktail sticks driven into the Foamex and glued in place.

The lads take to the skies! Paint scheme was the same as the mechs and for the moment I’ve bodged the bases with Blu-Tack to keep the X Wings in the sky…

Providing air cover to the Rebel Scum (TM)

Close up on the mortar platoon

Rebel air defence team

And from the best angle – two feet away – the army on parade!

Stormtrooper support assets

Slightly better angle here!

TIE Fighters on patrol, overwatching the Galactic Empire – painted black and some edge highlighting done with thinned Duck Egg Blue house paint

Lord Vader leads the troops forward – there will be no-one to stop us this time…

Tune in next time to see how the battle went down, and stay thrifty out there!

A Green Christmas III – Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back In The Shed

Good God. Was it really 2017 when we last did an Epic battle report?

Apparently so.. aww, remember when we thought Donald Trump was a threat to world peace? And that Brexit was a genuine existential problem?

And so we come to 2023, having endured plague, economic catastrophe and war in Europe.. it really is true that you only realise you’re in a Golden Age after its’ gone. Still, at least it can’t get any worse, right?

RIGHT?

Anyway – we figured that a great way to wind up a pretty shitty year would be to get as far away from reality as possible, 38,000 years into the future and return once more to the world of Hazzard. Since our last scrap, we’ve added a HELL of a lot of kit to both the Ork and Imperial sides, not to mention a small contingent of Squat allies – so stay tuned, this should be a good one.

I rolled out Waagh-Bozzhog, recently reinforced with a Death Skull clan – and of course Big Red from a few years ago – and the order of battle was thus:

Evil Sunz clan reinforced with Nobz Warbikes, Gobsmashas, Bowelburnas, Spleenrippas and Mekboy Dragster

Goff Clan reinforced with Lungburstas, Gutrippas and Skullhamma battle fortress

Bad Moon Clan reinforced with Braincrushas, Squig Catapults and Weirdboy Battletowers

Death Skull Clan reinforced with Bonebreaka and Stompas

Ork Warlord & Stompas

Slasher Gargant

“Big Red” – Great Gargant.

This lot topped out at 6,600 points, so yeah – game on!

Jim pondered and decided that after the Redeemers had taken such a kicking in their last game and it would take time to replenish their geneseed, it would be my DIY Guard and his DIY Squats taking centre stage. Standing up to the orkish horde would be:

Squat Warrior Brotherhood

Squat Grand Battery

Squat Colossus

Guard Tactical Infantry Company

Guard Support Infantry Company

Guard Vindicator Company

Guard Leviathan

Guard Sentinel Platoon

Guard Rough Rider Platoon

Marine Whirlwind Battery

Marine Land Raider Company

Marine Veteran Company

So, with forces chosen, we rolled up a battlefield, placed objectives and had at it!

Look at all that delicious cardstock

Battle lines are drawn

The Imperial coalition

My ladz, Waagh-Bozzhog, bigger and stringer than ever!

More shots of da boyz

The Hazzard 1977th prepare to roll forward on the Imperial right flank

“We might need an Imperator…”

With an almighty “WAAAAAAAGH!!!”, the ladz roll forwards – Goffs lead the Death Skulls with Warlord Bozzhog on the Ork left with the Slasher, Big Red anchors the centre, the Bad Moons roll into position to provide fire support and the Evil Sunz zoom off in a furious charge to take out the Squat artillery and tanks

Goffs pour forward along the valley floor, Death Skulls in support

Imperial armour wheels to face the Evil Sunz and protect the Squats

Leviathan faces down the Slasher as the Guard rolls into position

Imperial guns open up on the charging Orks!

Squat Grand Battery, Colossus and infantry all open up on the Evil Sunz, but will it be enough?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FlqUsuTXEA88saT?format=jpg&name=large

Massed fire from the Guard infantry bite into the Deathskulls and strip the power felds off the Slasher, allowing the Leviathan to administer the coup de grace!

On the Imperial left, however, it’s carnage as the Breathless Vengeance falls to massed fire from the Bad Moons

Evil Sunz close assault the Squat Grand Battery, and a couple of the Guard Vindicators to boot

This ends pretty much as expected

Land Raiders & Warlord Titan combine to down Big Red, whilst the combined fire of the Bad Moons and their lethal Weirdboy Battletowers turn the town to rubble, slaughtering the Squat infantry

Evil Sunz are in amongst the Imperial lines, causing havoc but taking serious losses in the process

Goffs charge in as the Death Skulls retreat, whilst Warlord Bozzhog and his Stompa Mob turn their fury on to the Leviathan, destroying it utterly!

Goffs assault into the woods, capturing Objective 7 from the Guard

Carnage across the board! At this point Jim was keeping his Space Marines sheltered for a counterattack, having learned from previous games..

Hard to say who’s winning here…

…but as it turned out, the Imperials had the good fortune to explode both the Gargants from internal fires, and had caused just enough casualties to break the remaining clans! Despite having lost a Land Raider Company, all the Squats, the Leviathan and most of the Vindicators there was still a solid core of Guard forces plus a Veteran Marine company as yet untouched… so yet again, Warlord Bozzhog’s dastardly plans have come to naught!

Jim admitted he really thought that was in the bags for the Boyz, crediting pure luck with the destruction of the Gargants, and part of me agrees woth him… ah well, all the more excuse to reset and go again! And how will the Squat community on Hazzard feel about seeing their forces massacred while the Redeemers Space Marines cowered in their Rhinos, I wonder… might have the war on Hazard taken another turn??

Stay thrifty out there, see you soon!

That Was Yet Another Year That Was – The Great Hobby Retrospective, 2022

Before we start, allow me to apologise – I’m full of Christmas Lurgi, and therefore, whisky. For it heals ALL – well, I hope it does, at least.

It has been quite the year, and for all the wrong reasons – after the grinding misery of COVID and the shortages and disruptions that followed (and Lewis Hamilton being ROBBED, but that’s another story), it looked like this might finally be the year when the 20’s righted themselves and got going properly. And for a brief window of time that looked like it might happen.

And then… yeah, we all know what happened. A lunatic septagenarian with delusions of grandeur decides to try and resurrect his empire…  and back we go into permacrisis. I wrote a brief but impassioned – some might reasonably say hysterical – analysis early on but I’m not going to apologise for that. If you’re of a similar vintage to Dan & I, then the world was always divided into NATO vs Warsaw Pact.. and on Feb 24 2022, it looked like the Warsaw Pact was rolling West. Like most people I fell into the trap of over estimating the Russians and underestimating the Ukrainians. That first weekend, watching the Ukrainian authorities handing out rifles to untrained civilians to defend Kyiv, the monstrous Russian column rolling in from the north… you just wanted to weep.

But we were wrong, weren’t we? The Battle Of Kyiv never happened. That monstrous Russian armoured column ran out of fuel and food. The Russians proved themselves to be staggeringly incompetent whilst the Ukrainians have proved themselves staggeringly resilient, brave and ingenious and have managed to inflict stunning reverses onto what we all believed was a peer threat to the US.. I’ve said it several times but I think NATO should be applying to join Ukraine rather than the other way around.

But this is not an analysis of the war. There’s enough of that out there, much of it done by those far more studied than I – and let’s not forget, it’s not over yet. I have a nasty suspicion, for example, that Ukrainian casualties are probably far worse than we’re comfortable thinking about… anyway, suffice it to say that’s why you haven’t seen too much of Lt. Grant and Lt. Polikarpov this year – it’s no fun playing the cartoonishly evil Soviet villain when there’s a real one killing real people near where you went on holiday back in 2013.

So, with our own game on the back burner, what did we get done?

Well, quite a bit, actually. A LOT of red paint applied on Dan’s side of things as the 1991 Blood Angels got a motor pool, some characters and – after a hiatus when my esteemed colleague discovered that freehand painting (if you have never done any of it before) is actually quite tricky – actually got their first game in! And in response, I bashed together all the Ork bits I had to hand and came up with an OPFOR – Da Black Ork Cav! There’s a lot still to do but it’s looking good so far.

I also managed to get my Levy platoon sorted for Firefight and the lads got their first game in, which is something we’ll be picking up again in the next few weeks, but my pet project for the year was (of course) Epic Squats! Evidently GW agreed with me as the Leagues Of Votann are the new big thing in 40k.. but my project is a lot more old school, based on the Squat force Commissar Yarrick fought with in the original Battle Of Golgotha (I’ve even done some themed terrain..)! So far the infantry complement is done, as is the Grand Battery, and although I haven’t tackled the Guild Biker force yet I’ve got some ideas on that… granny grating and greenstuff, is there anything they can’t do? 😉 And you may have seen my recent post in which a defunct asthma inhaler, with the help of some foamboard and various other bits and pieces, became a fully equipped Colossus! Which as we speak is out in the shed helping to shore up the defences of the world of Hazzard against the rampaging Ork hordes of Waagh-Bozzhog.. yep, we’re doing an Epic Rematch, so stay tuned for that!

Speaking of Orks, Dan reinforced them with a new Deathskull clan and -fanfare please – their 20mm fantasy counterparts are now complete! Although Dan – being Dan- is now pondering war machines and artillery support for them.. they’ve seen a few scraps to and acquitted themselves pretty tidily. And the flags are a very nice touch – as are the ones he added to the DIY Epic Imperial Guard.

And then there were the reinforcements for both epic scale Star Wars Empire & Rebel Scum – and a VERY entertaining game pitting them against each other over a brand new Imperial communications facility. Oh, and yes, we did do Yonkers – Lt. Grant did get to come out to play, if briefly!

So, we made it out of 2022, what of ’23? Dan has sworn faithfully to finish up the Blood Angels – and in fairness, he’s got the infantry complement complete – and we’ve got the next instalment of the Armageddon Diaries as the Marines can’t leave their gallant Captain Tycho in the villainous hands of Da Black Ork Cav.. for me, it’s building the aforementioned Cav up to full strength and getting the Squats into a more cohesive force.

And hopefully, this could be the year where history just stops happening for a bit – no more war, no more pandemics, no more upheaval. I think we can all raise a glass to that. Let’s end things with a couple of shots of the Epic game currently raging out in the shed:

Say thrifty out there, we’ll see you soon.

DIY Epic Squat Colossus – The Asthmatic’s Revenge!

So in the immediate aftermath of Da Black Ork Cav (SPOILER ALERT) absolutely battering Dan’s 1991 Blood Angels, it makes absolute sense that I should straight away follow up by doing something that is utterly unrelated.

Still, I wanted to do Epic Squats this year, and DAMN IT, I am going to do Epic Squats!

Now, I’d already got the infantry contingent and a Grand Battery sorted, and my plan was next to tackle the Guild Bikers, but…

…

Now, if like me, Grandfather Nurgle has blessed you with asthma from an early age, you’re either dead or you’ve amassed a fair collection of these:

I’ve got a fair few of these dead inhalers floating around my Box Of Interestingly Shaped Crap, and looking at them from different angles I’ve had a few ideas for things they could be… but then I saw this pic:

And something just clicked…

5mm foamboard, 80mm x 25mm. I made two of these to be the track sections

..and then trimmed them as shown above

Attached with the magic mix of PVA (for a longer lasting and flexible bond) and superglue (for immediate grip)

And now the fun begins! Tracks are chopped up IDE cables, cereal box cardboard over the track units… Superglue tube lid for mega cannon, with drinking straws for battle cannon, another drinking straw for the turret mounted defence laser.. the turret itself made from a kids juice bottle cap with the excess height sawn off. Cocktail sticks for the missiles, two calibres of drinking straws for the exhausts. Rivets were quick dry PVA dabbed on with a cocktail stick.

Ain’t she purdy?? Single corrugated card for the gyrocopter launch pad on the back, another superglue tube cap for the control tower..

Primed white & preshaded with thinned Vallejo Smokey Ink, but pics have apparently been eaten by my phone.. so you’ll have to make do with these!

Main colour was Goblin Green, shaded with Army Painter Green Tone.. twice over, I think.. then a drybrush up with straight Goblin Green and a lightened version. Brass was Vallejo Mithril Silver overpainted with a cheap craft bronze, which in turn got a wash of Vallejo Skin Wash… rivets were pin washed with thinned Smokey Ink

The force so far!

The Breathless Vengeance towers over her kin!

So there we go, there is an upside to asthma after all – even if it is a slightly niche one! Hopefully we can get these lads into action before long, and as students of Squat lore will be aware, this chassis was also used for the Leviathan and Cyclops Titan-killer… so watch this space! And of course, I still have to figure out how to make a Gyrocopter…

#Orktober! Teeny Weenie Greenie Meanies

Christ, that came around quick! Well, seeing as we spectacularly failed to accomplish anything Ork(c) related during last year’s #Orktober, Jim and I figured it was time to write that wrong.

And considering that we are now about to dive headlong into the Second Great Depression (according to most news sources here in the UK), it seemed like a good idea to paint the stuff we already had rather than go and do something as reckless as spending money.

Years ago, in The World That Was – in fact ye gods, I believe it was as far back as 2012 – we scored a major eBay coup and picked up a box of 2nd Ed Space Marine (or Epic, as it became known). Although there were no Eldar included, there was a healthy force of Space Marines and a ton of Orks. Jim took the Marines, and I got the greenskins, and we’ve had a good few entertaining scraps over the years. But there were still a good chunk of Orks left over that I never got around to doing anything with, so I figured this was a good time to start.

We have here a Death Skull clan – nice and cheap and very useful, as because of their place in Ork society as thieves and looters, they can nick other clan-specific cards – Evil Sunz Gobsmashas, Goff Lungburstas and the like – which means you can tailor them nicely for whatever plan you have in mind.

Each clan can be reinforced by up to five units, but I only painted up a couple – partly because they were the only ones ready to go, and partly to allow me to reinforce them with other units – so what we have here is a clan (roughly a company) of infantry reinforced by a mob of Stompers and a mob of Bonebreaka tanks:

I did the flesh and bases with Goblin Green, washed with Green Ink, blue was Wilko’s Duck Egg Blue layered with a cheap blue craft acrylic and then bolters in black. The banners were done the same way and I used snipped up paper clips as the mounting poles.

The red bits on the vehicles were Vallejo Hot Orange washed with red ink, and for the metallics it was Vallejo Mithril silver drybrushed over a black undercoat and then washed with a mix of Smokey Ink and Flesh wash for a rusty, battered look.

And now the entirety of Waagh-Bozzhog:

Towered over by Big Red the Mega Gargant, with Slasher in attendance.. Warlord Bozzhog & his Stompas at the front, backed up by Goff, Evil Sunz, Bad Moon and now Death Skull infantry!

Unfortunately it is very possible to see how my painting approach has changed since whenever it was I last put brush to Epic Ork, and the colours don’t quite match… so I’m going to have to do some more re-organising and homogenising before I’m really happy with them.. but isn’t that always the way?

Anyhoo, Jim’s up next with a really cool little build, the boy’s getting into his stride! Stay thrifty and see you soon

Goin’ Street Legal – Tidying Up The Guard

This was supposed to be an easy one….

So, back in the days of M2 992 when the 2nd edition of Space Marine came out, supplemented by Armies Of The Imperium, the Guard got a few tricks that haven’t endured to the present day. Crucially – as GW only had a limited number of model kits available – the Rhino was a standardised piece of kit available to Guard and Astartes forces alike.

Although your common or garden Guardsman is expected to footslog into battle and basically stand and die, under 2nd Ed Epic all Guard company HQs were all issued with Rhinos and furthermore each Guard company got issued a Commissar – essentially an independent morale/ political officer type, this is a useful unit able to act independently, handy in close combat and crucially able to reinforce the slightly inflexible Guard command structure by relaying orders and taking command over Guard units left leaderless. These units were free, and looked to be hugely useful – so in order to make the Granny Grating Guard a fully “street legal” playable force under 2nd Edition, I needed to make some.

Infantry were a piece of cake – usual cross shapes, with a slight alteration for the Commissar to represent his chainsword and a little smear of greenstuff for his cape. I painted the Guardsmen escorting him in the usual manner, while the Commissars themselves got funky red caps with black capes (I know, capes are pretty wizard) and shiny Vallejo Mithril Silver chainswords.

The Rhinos were a slightly trickier affair – I went back to the Vindicators from back in… 2019? The Before Times, the Long Long Ago and copied the dimensions, just leaving off the reinforcement glacis plate and unfeasibly large gun and adding a couple of hatches from thin cardboard (the circular ones were done with my hole punch), and the details of boltguns and exhausts were done with granny grating offcuts. I’ve got into a new technique with these – holding them with tweezers und using a mix of superglue and tacky PVA. The superglue provides the initial hold, the PVA provides are stringer more flexible bond after it dries.

I primed everything white because 1992, and painted with the same pattern of Granite Dust house paint/ Green Wash/ Brown wash/ Black wash/ Granite Dust Drybrush for the uniform bits. Craft black for the commissars, and following the “Assault On Barbarius” battle report forces I added yellow and blue stripes for the HQ vehicles.

Back when I last gave this project some love, John@justneedsvarnish mentioned that they could use some flags… now, I could have got all smug and snarky -“Oh yes, everyone knows that all sci-fi armies use banners to denote their valuable command units, totally tactically sound” – except of course, that he’s dead right. You can’t do ’90s GW without flags. So I copied the infantry company HQ flags as best I could onto paper and superglued them onto poles made from about 15mm of straightened out, snipped up paperclip.. and I also added some flags to the HQ units of the other companies and the Leviathan, using the white/red/white army ID symbol the army uses on its’ right front quarters.

So with that done, pics:

Commissars rocking the black and red finish, HQs in blue (Tactical company) and yellow (Heavy Company)

HQs – I think these came out the best tbh

Commissars, all ready and decked out to ensure faith in the Emperor

The force in its entirety, all ready to hit the table!

So that gets us to:

Imperial Guard Vindicator Company – 450pts, Break Point 5, Morale 4+ ,VPs 5

Imperial Guard Tactical Company – 600pts, Break Point 17, Morale 4+, VPs 6

Imperial Guard Heavy Company – 600pts, Break Point 9, Morale 4+, VPs 6

Imperial Guard Leviathan – 350pts, 4 VPs

Imperial Guard Sentinel Squadron – 100pts, Break Point 3, Morale 4+, VPs 1

Imperial Guard Rough Rider Squadron – 150pts, Break Point 5, Morale 4+, VPs 2
3 x Commissars – Free

So that’s a cool 2250pts of Epic to throw down with, not enough for a BIG big game, but enough for a decent enough scuffle – unfortunately Skinflint HQ is out of action for the moment (redecoration), but it’s nice to know the Hazzard PDF can throw something into the field to combat Waaagh- Bozzhog!

Slava Ukrainia, see you again soon

The League Of Who? DIY Epic Squats!

It’s been a while, this. You ever get those project ideas which come really quickly but then take forever to get stuck into? This was one of those..

..which makes it all the sweeter to be finally able to show it off!

After Dan converted me to the Church of Granny Grating with his adorable Imperial Guard, I’ve fallen hook line and sinker for the charm of the technique, and after he decided to theme his army around the force featured in the 1992 (1993?) White Dwarf Battle Report, I decided to undertake a similar project based around the Squat force that fought against Ghazgkull Thraka’s Ork horde-

-and then, stuff got in the way…..

..and then this happened!

Yup. Stop the clock, as they say.

Now, the new look Squats are very much a source of controversy, but this army is firmly old school early 90s classic feel. So, to the pics!

Here’s how we start – wine box card and granny grating crosses, note slightly different shapes for assault troops (with swords) Hearthguard (greenstuff blobs to denote exo-armour) and banner poles to denote command stands.. no point going over the construction here as we’ve done it plenty over the last few years!

Thunderers – each of these lads mounts a shoulder fired heavy weapon, a granny grating clip off superglued to the shoulder

Grand Battery – 10 Mole Mortars, 5 Thudd Guns – drinking straw barrel, cardboard shield, granny grating undercarriage and wheels made by sling a sausage of greenstuff

Not fooling anyone yet, are they? But you wait till they’re based and painted!

Primed white, Vallejo Goblin Green for the overalls, cheap red craft paint for the flak jackets and Cadmium Yellow for the helmets, flesh tone craft paint for the faces. Everything then got a thinned Vallejo Brown Ink wash.. and then it was time to tackle the metallics!

The metallics were initially silver before I checked some pics online and discovered I needed to do bronze.. so initial basecoat of Vallejo Mithril Silver, overlaid with a craft bronze (that had virtually nothing in the way of pigment) and finished with a Brown Ink wash.

Hearth guard – yellow over white primer, overlaid with bronze craft paint and washed with brown ink.. yeah, I know, but from two feet they look pretty good!

Basing was a craft brown, layered with Garage Floor Dust (TM), dry soil and Jarvis mixed flocks

Grand Battery! I actually primed these guys gold with some spray paint I had from making Christmas decorations a few years ago, happily after a wash with Brown Ink they homogenised pretty well with the infantry!

So there we are, first tranche complete! Next up I’ve got a Guild Biker force to put together, and I’ve got some ideas for that… Granny grating is this stuff, so as you can see it’s an absolute steal, and one sheet has done all these Squats, Dan’s Imperial Guard, my Star Wars armies and there’s still a fair bit left!

Hopefully this has inspired you to give this technique a go – we can’t claim to have invented it, and sadly the original creator seems to have disappeared – this is as close a link as I could find. If anyone knows anything more, please let us know!

Stay safe and thrifty out there, and Slavia Ukrainia!

The Battle Of Outpost 44 – A Star Wars Story!

As the Grim Darkness of the.. present day.. grinds on, we fancied taking our wargaming as far away from reality as possible- the other week it was Hyperian Wars (which gave us a load of ideas for game development), this time it was our 6mm “Epic” scale take on our rules engine in it’s sci-fi skin “Future Force Warrior”…

I laid out a somewhat similar battleground to last week’s fight, substituting the ruined temple with plasma reactors and the Valiant 44th command centre – codename Objective Hamilton – which would be the objective for both sides… so theoretically at least, it would be best commander wins!

Rebels win the deployment roll off, getting to pick the side and forcing the Imperials to start deployment first. Support platoon with E-Web blasters set up shop in the woods on top of the hill towards the bottom of the pic.

Rebels set up using cover to screen their infantry from Imperial fire (they hope) – mechs lurk in the rocky gulch, speeder bike team in the woods to the bottom of the pic

Overview of the battlefield – Rebels stage left, Imperials stage right, Outpost 44 dead centre

Vader leads the Imperial attack from the front – “Leave them to me!”

Rebel speeders burst from cover, performing a hit and run attack destroying one AT-PT and damaging another, using a command point to move them back into cover before Imperial fire can respond

First blood to the Rebellion!

…aaand back into cover before return fire hits!

Rebel infantry storm forward to consolidate the objective

Yeah, we’ve got line of sight…. (say the Imperial support platoon)

Where’d Yellow platoon go?!? The Empire Strikes Back!

The first turn ends with the Rebels in control of Outpost 44 but they’ve taken significant casualties and Lord Vader is marching forwards…

Red platoon double time forward to capture the outpost, successfully using a command point to gun down a Stormtrooper platoon caught out in the open

Marching forward into cover, Imperial AT-PTs catch a Rebel speeder in the open and damage it

Imperial and Rebel speeder bike teams duel at point blank range in the forest

Inconclusive, but definitely bloody!

Imperial support platoon draws a bead on the exposed Rebel mechs… 6’s to hit?

That’ll do..

Die, Rebel Scum!!

Vader leads the remaining Stormtroopers in a last ditch attack towards the outpost

The moment we’ve all been waiting for! Vader engages Luke in close combat – “I AM YOUR FATHER!”

“NOW YOUR FAILURE IS COMPLETE!” Vader fells Luke and the Rebel platoon look at each other nervously..

…before annihilating him with the combined fire of a full platoon’s blasters! Actually in retrospect we should probably have done all this as close combat, maybe some form of Force shenanigans.. as it was, he took 18 hits, fluffed every Force save and every Hero save…. “NOOOOOOO!”

Rebel speeder team carries the duel in the woods

With the remaining Stormtroopers annihilated by the second Rebel platoon, the support platoon weigh up their options as the sole remaining Imperial unit and decide to retreat to fight another day… it was close, but the Rebel Alliance wins this round!

All in all, a fun little game – we need to finesse the “fighting in buildings” aspect, we were a little inconsistent with how we abstracted that, but on the whole, a solid rules engine and I think we’ve struck a good balance between alternate activation and IGO/UGO mechanics, as well as the range abstraction that dogs wargames… Till next time, May The Force Be With You (particularly if you’re Ukrainian)!