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!
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 silhouetteWings cut from cardboard and glued to the fuselage with a mix of PVA and superglue, eyeballed the angles with the help of a rulerAnother viewDrinking straw thrustersAnd 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 mixBases! 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 platoonRebel air defence teamAnd from the best angle – two feet away – the army on parade!Stormtrooper support assetsSlightly better angle here!TIE Fighters on patrol, overwatching the Galactic Empire – painted black and some edge highlighting done with thinned Duck Egg Blue house paintLord 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!
It’s almost lunchtime, so I guess that’s time for a new edition of Warhammer 40,000 then…
Honestly, it doesn’t seem but five minutes since 9th rolled up but that’s age for you, and while we’re honestly quite jazzed for 10th – the free data cards and rules, and the apparent abandonment of Codexes as a “must have” mean we might conceivably be looking at the first genuinely playable free edition of 40k – we all know that whatever the speculation about the contents of the box set, it’s going to COST.
It’s also a racing certainty that whatever the rules rewrites, it’s still going to be hamstrung by the phased IGOUGO turn system, and then a lashing of special rules to negate the inherent clunkiness of said system. We’ve written before about the design constraints that 40k appears to be under, and the reason why they can’t simply scrap it and move to something more elegant and free-flowing (our opinion, of course- YMMV).
But what if they could? One of the best systems I ever played as a nipper was an unassuming small unit skirmish set that came with an A5 dot-matrix printed rulebook and about a dozen miniatures in a nondescript cardboard box, set in a cyberpunk future of the early 21st century – I know, you have to smile, right? That said, they don’t mention COVID or Twitter…
I’ve been racking my brains for months on and off trying to remember what it was called – little did I know Jim had got his considerable Google Fu on the case, and so for my birthday rocked up with this:
Combat Zone from EM4 miniatures! He reckoned he was 90% sure this what I’d meant and after having played a couple of quick pickup games to figure the rules out, he’s nailed it, this feels every bit as fast and fun as I remember from circa 1993!
So much so that I was inspired to do (drumroll please) an “unboxing” video, as these seem to be all the rage on YouTube- hopefully I can figure a way to post it here…
Thanks to Jim for helping me sort out… Ooh look, we’re YouTubers now!Shades of Mad Max, Aliens, Robocop… all the classics!Rulebook – full colour and pretty nicely doneIt’s a bleak vision of the future, but notice the lack of COVID…Definite shades of 2nd Ed 40k in the production values..There’s the plastic crack!!! Gangers, Cops & Mechs…Bases and dice – a mix of D6, D4s and D8sPress out cardboard scenery – again, capturing the 2nd Ed vibeQuick reference rule sheet – we should do one of these for Apocalypse Earth (no, we haven’t forgotten about it..)Roster sheet – we actually did do one of these, if memory serves….Templates and status tokens, again all pre-punched cardboardAnd there’s your starter scenario!
So, onto the game itself- players alternate model (not unit) activation (although overwatch is a tactic you can use), and each model has a set number of Action Points that they can spend doing various things – the better your troops, the more action points they get. The instructions on firing are a little convoluted, but a couple of read throughs and you’ll be good to go.
Interestingly, the focus is on individual models for things like Panic reactions – a model only panics if they get hit, but are apparently fine seeing their friends gunned down all around them.. which I suppose matches the tone of 80s action films.
Like any system, it’s a bit clunk initially but by our third game just pushing the models around the kitchen table using books and salt shakers for terrain we were getting right into it – now with the models assembled and ready for priming, you can expect a few battle reports as we play through the campaign in the box.
If you’re in the mood for a quick blast of sci-fi skirmish.. and arguably what Necromunda should have been.. I thoroughly recommend throwing the £25 or so down to get this box set, you’ll enjoy it. And I’m pretty certain you could stat up basically any 40k army for this, and if you really wanted to the models in the box would make a fair set up for Necromunda itself at a fraction of the price!
Stay thrifty and see you soon – Combat Zone can be found on the EM4 site here
Ebay should come with a health warning. “Based on your previous purchases, you may like…” it simpered innocently at me. And before I knew it I’d snapped another 10 Genestealers for a project that was an accident in the first damn place.
Still, it WAS a good deal – £4.95 including postage for what turned out to be 10 minis, all in more or less good shape.. and after a little bit of selfless internet research, I discovered that Andy Champers (praise be upon him) had in fact written a Genestealer Cult army list as well as a Tyranid Invasion Force for the 2nd Ed Tyranid Codex, and you can download it FREE (and I believe legally) here. I got my copy and have yet to be held to ransom by Russian gangsters… (touches wood just in case).
This is just a quickie post as there really is nothing new here, I painted these lads in exactly the same way I did the previous two waves, but we’re up to 24 models now which is a fairly decent horde (and I’ve probably given the game away for my next plans for them…)
Note a couple of tentacles bodged from greenstuff in place of missing arms.. arms which I subsequently found in the packaging… sigh.A couple of subtle differences in the shades of wash and basing as I had to hand mix these colours having run out in the period since we last encountered them…If you look closely you’ll see the basing materials are a little different as I lost my pot of Garage Floor Dust (TM) and used a dab of Dry Garden Soil (TM)…But on the whole I think they mix pretty well!Ole’ Six-Eyes leads his newly reinforced brood forward…..and here they are in action against their spiritual foes, Dan’s 1991 Blood Angel Terminators!“They’re coming out of the walls! They’re coming out of the Throne-damned walls!”
I’m actually quite chuffed with these, for an accidental maintaining-sanity-during-COVID project they’ve come out OK and are forming into a nice little army.. of course, in Skinflint style these lads will be pulling extra duty, not just for 40k (and if all the rumours surrounding 10th edition having free rules and datasheets and no codexes are to be believed, then HELL YES we’ll be all over that!), but also different flavours of Space Crusade and another Space based GW classic.. plus of course a ’90s classic rule set that was rather overlooked back in the day that we’ve been trying like hell to figure out..
..and maybe these lads will crop up in the junglesof Armageddon too? I mean, you never really know what’s lurking out there…
Stay safe and thrifty out there, and keep watching the skies!
As the frosts of winter begin to recede and the rain gets steadily warmer, it’s time to warm up the shed once for more for some 2nd Ed 40k!
Recent terrain builds have all been of a certain retro theme and that’s been no coincidence, as we’ve been planning the next scenario in our vaguely narrative 2nd Ed 40k campaign featuring the 1991 Blood Angels against the miscellany of Da Black Ork Cav, and in their previous outing my red lads took an absolute kicking and were for the most part unable to hit the side of a barn door before their morale broke. This left Captain Tycho largely unsupported as he attempted to salvage Chapter honours by barrelling into the Warboss and his command section in a last ditch effort to deny them their objective.. and despite dishing out a beating to the various greenskin oiks around him, ultimately fell to a barrage of choppas.
Of course, Space Marines don’t die easy, and we figured it would be much more thematic for a second game if his 2ic, the Lieutenant, led a rescue party on the Black Ork Cav HQ building Jim put together some weeks back. This time, the Marine objective would be to reach the building (presumably Cap. T’s power armour has some sort of emergency distress beacon on it), while the Orks would be attempting to kill, break, or otherwise prevent them – so not quite true to the 2nd Ed Mission Cards, but should be fun.
That table is set – Black Ork Cav HQ garrisoned with Gretchin, the rest of Da Cav ready to counterattackBattlewagon with Warboss BludGuzzla and co ready to counterattackDa Dread stands ready to lead the push backGretchin stand to on the walls of the HQMarines dash forward hugging cover where they can, with missile launcher team providing cover“MOVE OUT”Closing in on the objective…Missile launcher attempts to take down the Dread.. misses.. of course!Gretchin fire patters off Marine armour.. at least they hit something, unlike the Dread!Battlewagon darts forward and drops off the Warboss and entourage.. like all sneaky Blood Axe gitz, they eschew a good honest charge forward and prefer to skulk around in cover… “taktix”, as they call itMarines gun their jump packs and leap into combat with the Warboss and his entourage Assault Marines fight a deadly brawl with Ork Warboss, Nobz, and OddboyzAssault Marines and Ork Nobz take a healthy toll of each other..Meanwhile, the second Assault Marine combat squad clears the hill in front of Black Ork Cav HQ Marines take the hill…Warboss & Bigboss take a toll on the Assault Marines..Da Black Ork Cav Don’t Quit! One lone Ork Boy disputes the hill..Marine Chaplain engages the Warboss in melee while the Bigboss barrels into the Assault Marine squadBEHIND YOU!!!!! Despite jamming it’s heavy bolter Da Dread turns it’s lascannon on the missile launcher Marine, turning him to superheated mist…With nothing but bolters to face down the Dread, support team leg it into coverMeanwhile, the assault group close in on Da Cav HQGretchin gulp down their fire and let fly with their autoguns, to little effect..The Chaplain finally batters the Warboss into submission, but the Bigboss is still well in the fight and presumably having the time of his life…A volley of frag grenades massacre the GretchinSurviving Assault Marines jump pack in onto Cav HQ roof top and go to town on the poor Gretchin!And that’s 20 Gretchin despatched without a scratch… raining Grot copses off that roof! (We figured it was quite a nice cinematic image to imagine these 7 foot behemoths hurling Gretchin off the roof with each swipe of a chainsword)That’d be Objective Secured then.. as the surviving Gretchin break and run for the hills
Right, so that’s Captain T rescued then. and the survivors of Da Cav legging it over the horizon.. a Dread, half the Gretchin, a Battlewagon and most of a Boyz Mob.. along with Da Snipa… so what shall we do for the next scenario? Jim has an idea for a “chase” scenario – stay tuned, and most importantly stay thrifty!
It’s been said before on this blog, but it deserves saying again – the people that make up our little hobby, that create the community and each add their own touch to it.. can be absolute and total legends.
We’ve seen it before with Whittlesey40k – we got in touch to ask if he’d mind if we linked the 1991 Blood Angels pics he had on his blog, and not only was he fine with it but got in touch a few days later to offer us some decal sheets, free of charge!
And so it was that at the very start of 2023 that Roger from Rantings From Under The Wargames Table who we’ve been following for a while got in touch to offer “a few bits and pieces” that he happened to have lying around and wondered what we might be able to do with them…
Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, a package arrived in the post.. with a couple of little ziploc bags…
And a HUGE amount of plastic bitz!
LOOK AT ALL THIS!!!
So, after an evening indulging my OCD I can see we’ve got a little baggy of Epic Imperial Guard infantry with some custom Rhino conversions, some great bitz for vehicle conversions (Da Black Ork Cav will be VERY happy to see those), enough torsos and legs to allow about 6 Marines to be built – which, given another recent eBay score, will give me a good chunk of a 16 strong Crusader platoon for Firefight.. who will also be pulling double duty as a Raptors force for 40k.
And then there are the bitz – HUGE resource for conversion here, particularly for anything with a Chaos-y kind of vibe.. Certainly enough to keep us going for the foreseeable!
So this is something of a short fill in post before a biggie in a couple of weeks’ time, with the intent of saying a huge THANK YOU to Roger, and to thoroughly recommend go check out Ranting From Under The Wargames Table, you won’t regret it!
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!
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:
And so it has come to pass…. I have procrastinated as long as humanly possible after the MASSIVE disappointment of the Command Group – where, astonishingly, my never-before-practiced freehand skills proved to be abysmal – but after the lads got (spoiler) a kicking in their first outing, it was clear that some armour was necessary before we attempt to rescue Captain Tycho from Da Black Ork Cav’s lair…
Now, in fairness, I do actually havesome armour, but according to the laws of 2nd Ed 40K I’m not allowed to use them unless I have a Techmarine in the force… and according to the list in White Dwarf 139, I should have 5. So.. I scraped around the remaining bits from my 2020 eBay haul and put together 5 monopose “I LOVE MY BOLTER” models.
Except, of course, they don’t get bolters, they get.. some sort of weird, gothic, super high tech wrenches and spanners. Of which I had none. But what I did have was a lot of sprue – so, I chopped some suitably byzantine looking shapes (also converted one flamer to an oxyacetalene welder with a bit of paperclip) and using blobs of greenstuff, sculpted some hands on to them. Now, these aren’t going to win any prizes – so don’t go looking TOO closely. That said, they are roughly the right size, with the right number of fingers on them, so yeah, I’ll take that. Techmarines tend to have some sort of bionic gubbins around the eyes too, so each of these lads got a little blob of greenstuff shaped and prodded into something that looks like a bionic eye if you squint a bit.
Painting was the usual – white prime, Vallejo Hot Orange, Red Ink and drybrush – the main difference was painting the left kneepad with bone to facilitate a yellow with black hazard stripes.
Pics, you say? Very well….
Ready for some serious combat weldingStood at the back of the class with his massive tool out.. oh, like I wasn’t going to make that joke.
Mmm. Close up they do still look like a three year old painted them with crayon, but you’ll have to trust me when I say that from two feet away they’re actually not bad. Apologies for the background – the game table is in use (stay tuned) and the good lady has commandeered the table in preparation for New Year’s Eve feast and was (direct quote) “buggered if she’s going to move it all around for your toy soldiers”.
Which is fair enough. The Emperor knows and sees all, but it’s Cath who does the cooking.
And with that, allow Jim & I to wish you all out there a very happy 2023 – let’s hope that at some point, this decade gets its sh*t together and that sanity returns to the world at large.. and in the meantime, let’s make the most of socially acceptable daytime drinking!
Stay safe, stay thrifty, a happy (and peaceful) New Year
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 aboveAttached 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 InkThe 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…
It can’t have escaped anyone’s notice that our pet game “Apocalypse: Earth” has been conspicuous by it’s absence so far this year. There’s a fairly straightforward reason for that – the setting is based around a rampaging Soviet Empire under a genocidal lunatic trying to enslave the world and this year that hasn’t really been escapist fantasy, it’s just been.. well, the news. And as such, neither Dan or myself have really felt in the mood for it.
But after spending a month last yearpainting a wholeload of zombies for a specially themed Halloween game, we both rather fancied the idea of breaking out the Atlantic Alliance to fight out a scenario based on the Battle of Yonkers from the brilliant novel (and passable film) World War Z.. if you haven’t read the book – well, you definitely should… if you haven’t seen the film – well, it’ll be on telly again before long, there’s no rush!
Basically the Battle Of Yonkers saw the US military making a concerted stand at the town of Yonkers, NY against a crowd of zombies numbering in the millions. There’s some fascinating descriptions of the effects of MLRS and artillery against the undead, as well as the Land Warrior system (which correct me if I’m wrong, never did make it into service in real life) and the famed “Silver Bullet” tungsten / depleted uranium armour piercing shells.. if you haven’t read it, I won’t spoil it but let’s just say it doesn’t go too well for humanity… the US Army being a finely honed instrument of warfare honed for a completely different war than it found itself fighting.
With this in mind we set up a half urban, half rural board with a bunch of woods on the rural side and ruins on the urban side to represent Yonkers city limits, and put our big group of trusty Airfix civilians (who seem to be forever getting caught up in this sort of thing) in the middle, and with a randomly rolled up mob of zombies either side, homing in menacingly…
Civilians approach Atlantic Alliance lines with shambling hordes closing in from both sides…
We were winging the rules as we went, but the basic idea was that each zombie mob would get reinforced by (Turn Number)xD6 zombies each turn.. and behind the Alliance lines were four spawning points that would spawn (Turn Number-1)x D6 zombies each turn.. trust me, it was simpler than it sounded! At the far side of the table was a waiting APC to shuttle out the survivors.
Buffalo 2-7’s infantry component take up station on the city limitsA crowd of civilians rush toward them, hoping for sanctuary from the undead..Lt. Grant leads his men forward to link up and clear out the zombie mobs approaching from the flanksBehind you! Bravo Squad wheel around to discover zombies shambling towards them.. Keeping the rear areas secure would prove to be a major tactical problem for the Alliance in this battleOn the other side of the street, Alfa Squad are dealing with their own problems..Grant ushers the civilians under his wingAllied rifle squads sweep the rear areas clean of undeadAllied troops gun down approaching zombies, holding them off to allow the civilians to escape inside the city limitsOut of the frying pan…It’s a trap! Zombies boil from their spawning points, getting up close and personal with the civilians and soldiers..Undead to the left of them, undead to the right of them… it’s getting sticky for the Allied troops!And still they come!Beset by crowds of zombies from all sides, the undead get in amongst the living…Lt. Grant falls! We ruled a 50/50 chance of a living model being reanimated as a zombie.. which he duly was!With Platoon Sgt McAuliffe now in command, the troops blaze away at the encroaching hores of zombies but the sheer numbers are just too much…Another zombie mob appears, interposing itself between the civilians and their escape route – Alfa Squad rush to take them down!In desperation, Alfa Squad cut loose the frag grenades despite danger proximity to the civilians – they cut a swathe through the zombies, but at the cost of two civvies!HUGE numbers of zombies now on the table, homing in on Allied forces from all sides and blocking escape routes!Alfa Squad are surprised and eaten!It’s looking grim…“RUN! DON’T LOOK BACK!” McAuliffe screams as his surviving men turn to face the oncoming horde, desperate to hold just a little longer…Last stand… Mac & the boys knuckle up to sell their lives dearly“It’s been an honour, gentlemen…” Mac & the remnants of 2-7 lock & load, ready for the final actThe boys give it their all but vanish under a horde of flesh-eating ghouls.. the last civilian catches Mac’s eye as he boards the APC, just to see the sergeant mouth the words “Remember us…”
Well that was a belter! Took a little time to get going but the gradual ramping up of zombie numbers turned what initially looked like a walk in the park for the Alliance into a lethal and cinematic last stand where once again, Buffalo 2-7 died gloriously to a man in defence of freedom! Great fun and hiding out in the gaming shed kept us safe from the attentions of wandering trick or treaters.. bah humbug! X-D
So, what next? What zombie-themed scenario could we investigate for Halloween next year? There’s almost a year to figure something out… drop us a comment and we’ll see you soon!
Some of you may remember these lads from the dim and distant World That Was – pre-pandemic, pre-war – and although I scraped together enough models to fight the scenariosin the 2nd Edbattle booklet, I just… left them there. In order to make a fully legit 2nd Ed force. They were going to need the most dreaded phrase in wargaming parlance – “rounding out”.
Happily, I still had a few Orks left over from filling out the ranks of the Boyz (as well as a random Grot), a copy of the 2nd Ed Ork Codex from 1994 as a PDF from what I assume is a legal source.. and of course hope (Sorry, wrong franchise).
I planned out a list with the intent of making an “armoured cavalry” themed force of mercenaries using the scratch built Ork tanks that WD 136 came with cardboard templates for – cool quirky things that would make their way into Epic like the Gobsmasha, the Lungbursta, the Braincrusha and the Bonecrusha or Bonebreaka.. only to find that these no longer had rules in 2nd Ed. So after some wailing and gnashing of teeth, I came up with another plan – although the original paint scheme left these guys as largely clan-agnostic, most of the ladz had camo trousers of some description, meaning I could legitimately run them as Blood Axes… and that meant access to Imperial hardware.
So, a Gobsmasha could be an Orky take on a Vindicator? Scans Marine & Guard codex…nope, Vindicators didn’t have rules back then. However, the Leman Russ was new to the Guard back then, and there’s no reason why a Blood Axe Mek shouldn’t have looked at that great mountain of dakka and thought “Hmm…”… so I figured I could pretty reasonably knock together a Lungbursta hull, slap a couple of sponsons on it, and hey presto – Orky Leman Russ.
I came up with a battle roster suiting the kit I had to hand – 20 odd Orks, 41 Gretchin.. keeping to the theme of austerity (Orksterity?) I figured the rest would be vehicles and Dreads because I could scratch build them virtually for free – hell, I’d already done a Dread.
So here is the roster:
2 x Mobs 10 Boyz (bolt pistol, flak armour, axe) – 120 pts each
Nuvver Dread – Heavy Bolter, Missile Launcher – 145 (249)
Yet Anuuvver Dread – Heavy Bolter, Heavy Flamer – 120 (369)
2x Warbuggy – Multi Melta – 130 (499)
3rd 500 pt block
2 Leman Russ Demolisher w/Heavy Plasma Guns in sponsons – 250 each – 1999
As you can see, a fair bit to do! Currently I’m painting the remaining infantry and building a retro-style battlewagon:
Remaining Orks and lone Grot stripped, based – homemade texture paste, PVA, dunk in the mass of sawdust and general Garage Floor Grit, prime white and thinned Smoky Ink wash (partly for the gradation of colour, mainly for outlining details that my aging peepers might otherwise miss) Floorplans cut from foamboard – you can see the measurements marked on. Shaded parts are the bits to be cut off.Stroke of genius here! X-D Stacked up the foamboard offcuts to make the fron drivers compartment and the rear mounted engine compartment… I’m thinking BIG V8!Overview of the foamboard chassis, Ork Boy for scaleNOW we’re cooking! Card panels cover the foamboard engine & driver compartment, single corrugated card for the passenger compartment side panels, wheels are cardboard tube with cardboard added for armour plate and balsa wood coffee stirrers provide the cross bracing on the wheelsMore armour panels and rear wheels built from toilet roll tube – bigger rims… “Ghazgkull sez, ride big”Rivets! Detailed with hundreds of the bastard things, little dots of PVA added with a cocktail stick… tedious to do, but looks SO GOOD when you slap the paint on… Note as well the spikes filling in the gaps in the armour, these are just cocktail sticks trimmed to fit and held in pace with the magic combo of superglue and quick dry PVA.Rear view..
Now let’s finish off with a few beauty shots – there’s a fair bit to do to get these up to the magic 2000pts (let alone the hefty force of Marines Dan’s Blood Angels will add up to) but I rather like this idea of a renegade Ork mercenary force with a lot of dakka for hire.. an elite cadre of Orks with the Gretchin “hired help” pressed into services as supporting fire/ meat shields.. Look out for a battle report in the near future as we get the gaming shed ready for some 2nd Ed retro goodness!
All painted up and ready to roll!Base of red craft paint, washed with smoky ink and drybrushed up, pin washes of smoky ink and went heavy with the sponge chipping and drybrushed up some brown to represent mudThe new recruits! Boss WarBastard IV identifiable by snazzy kustom shoota (bit of lego jammed over an Imperial bolter by the eBay seller), sword and spiky armour – yes, I will be doing back banners!Da Black Ork Cav on parade!All together – WAAAAGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
And by my calculations I’ve got enough scraped together to field a legit 1000pt army (just need the banners) to go up against Dan’s boys in red for a proper legit retro 2nd Ed scrap – so Dan, is Captain Tycho ready to get his pretty face messed up again? Let’s do this!
As always, stay thrifty and we’ll see you again soon!
Skinflint Games 