Spell Casting Under Fire

This probably has been thought up before but I've been considering easy ways to factor in casting spells while taking damage that don't require lots of fucking about with tables and such.

A roll against Int when you take damage while casting (Wis for a cleric I guess), plus your level, minus spell level, minus the damage taken. Pass and cast normally, fail and no spell.

Easy, no?

Plus you can add spell fumble tables if youve got the inclination, maybe stick some mutations in for extra fun?

Infinity Faction Number 2 - MRRF. Yes, the French are coming!

Having barely painted any of my Haqq or played many games I obviously (obviously!) needed a second faction and settled on MRRF, mainly because I love the style and colourscheme.

Having got really bogged down picking a colourscheme for my Haqqislam (which I'm still not happy with), being able to emulate the official one and be happy with it is a huge encouragement to get these done. Here's the first three, speed painted and heavily washed so a little shiny before the dullcote goes on.

Despite the fast painting I think these guys will look great when the rest are done.

Oh, and of course I split Operation: Icestorm with a friend so have some Nomads to paint too. Plus the Gecko Squad and Corregidor starter set. I may have a problem.

The Pink Knight vs the Sea-monsters from Beyond!

Here are some random models I've quickly painted recently. I guess they'd most likely be used for D&D if anything, though painting for fun is my main priority.

I don't know who the manufacturer of this is, but I think it's very characterful. I decided to make him chaosy and used Tentacle Pink and Scorpian Green as the main colours. I didn't use any inks of washes, trying to use simple highlighting to do all the work and give a different feel, though the photos don't capture it that well. The ogre face was my first attempt at a shield in that style and I'm reasonably pleased with it. Hopefully with practice I can make the highlighting of the features more subtle and natural.

Next are some fishmen from Black Tree Design.

I went for a peachy coral look on the weapons and shell shield and dark blue highlighted up to bright green on the scales. These were great fun to paint and took about an hour from start to finish, my favourite kind of painting!

Crooked Claw Goblins

 One of the few fantasy armies I'd like to own is a goblin force made up entirely (or as close to as possible) made up of Kev Adams sculpts. His models are so much fun to paint and ooze character, there's good reason he's called the Goblinmaster.

I started with the Goblin King's Chariot (more of which on a later date) and have few older sculpts but the bulk of the force will be made up of Crooked Claw miniatures. I bought about 25 of the blighters plus a catapult, here is the first 3 I've painted.

All my minis are based on round bases, I have an almost pathological hatred of square bases. I have no idea what rules I'd use if I were to play a game with these but I'm sure I can come up with a creative solution using movement trays if I did settle on WRB (3rd ed, obv).

Orktober!

 I'm always amazed at how long ago my last post was. I think not having a half decent camera kills my motivation to take photos of what I've been doing, I may have to try rectify that this Christmas.

I planned to assemble and paint up 10 of my Blood Axes for Orktober (check out the Oldhammer Forum for more details). Now obviously I didn't get all 10 done, but I got close. As usual, apologies for the crap phone pictures, even with 3 lights they haven't come out very well.

First the seven finished* ones.

*still need some grass adding to the bases, freehand motifs on backplates and varnishing

Next the two assembled/undercoated guys and the WIP Warboss

 This Blood Axe warboss is one of my favourite models, he's getting better treatment than the normal lads. The 2nd edition era boyz have Catachan plastic arms with modified weapons and the deathskull posing as a BA has WFB Chaos Maurauder arms. I've found the scale varies a lot on the 2nd ed minis so having a selection of arms helps. Catachan ones fit nicely on Blood Axes too, especially with more dakka added to the lasguns ;)

I also started assembling some Bad Moons and have a unit of 12 boyz, a weirdboy + minderz, 4 nobz in mega armour and a warboss ready to paint up.

The nob came without arms so I used modern plastics and some bits. The weirdboy will have a pointing or casting hand when finished, I'm hoping I can manage it without having to use my mediocre sculpting skills!

I've got a pile of orks waiting for paint and plans to do small forces of each clan, at this rate I'll need a year of Orktobers to finish them all!

Eldar Pirates & Scratchbuilt Grav Tanks - Progress

Ok, progress has been made, 5 Pirates are painted up and the grav tanks are taking shape. Prep on the other Pirates is nearly done and 3 more are sat on my desk and undercoated.

Some piccies

Grav tank 1

 Grav tank 2

 Both grav tanks will count as Vypers for use in 2nd edition rules, one armed with twin shuriken catapults and a missile launcher and the other armed with a scatter laser and shuriken cannon. They came together fairly well despite some problems getting the plastic from the headphones to glue securely, just some detailing to add like gemstones.

Pirates

The Dire Avenger is one of the squad leaders, the model on the right is a monopose plastic with Dark Eldar Reaver headswap, I think it's turned out pretty well.

The colours are pretty washed out but as usual there's no sun. I'm really happy with the paint scheme, super simple and quick to do, it gives them a nice dark look. These are finished but for markings (which I haven't decided on yet) and some flock grass basing.

I have 2 Warp Spiders which I've arranged in a trade, they'll be my first Aspect Warriors in the army. Fluff-wise I think I'll have to count their weapons as web guns or a means of delivering a paralysing toxin allowing the Pirates to take slaves during raids. The only other Aspect I could see fitting is Swooping Hawks, the fast attack style seems to work with Eldar pirates though I'd have to swap out the wings for some sort of jetpack.

Progress might be slowed this week due to Chico's Chaos Challenge, depends on whether I can get any of my Chaos Space Marines finished enough to paint.

RT-style Eldar Pirates - WIP

So one of the projects I've been working on this week is a small force of Eldar Pirates (Corsairs if you're that way inclined). I picked up some RT Eldar cheap on eBay and from a trade on the Oldhammer Forum to add to the couple of random Eldar I already had.

I like projects like this as I can keep them limited which means a) I'm more likely to finish them and b) They're nice and cheap. Other than whats shown below I'm waiting on another 5 including a Harlequin who'll be the Pirate Captain, a Dire Avenger who'll be a squad leader and 3 basic eldar with various weapons. That'll be the full army for now, though I'd like to add a scratchbuilt grav-scouter at some point. I'd been drawing a blank for what would work as a base until I saw Area23's great idea of using a mouse, genius! Just need to find an old one now...

Models
As usual I have to apologise for the terrible photos, this is England and the sun only ever seems to shine when I'm at work.

First is one of the horrible monopose Eldar guardians which I used as a test model. I cut the head off first and repositioned it, instantly making it look 1000x better. What the fuck GW are thinking when they make the staring straight forward poses I've no idea, a slight head turn makes the whole think look more natural. I've another of these which I'm going to do a headswap on using a Dark Eldar reaver head, should look pretty good I think.

 

A quick photo of my first scheme test model. I want something simple and quick so chose a dark purple for the bodies (a few layers of light drybrushing + a wash) and went for an ivory on the helmet and weapon. The ivory was a pain in the arse and I decided before I'd even finished I didn't like the flat solid effect of the ivory next to the purple/black. I'm going to try dark green next and use a similar style of painting to tie it together better.

So far the scheme for the armour is:

Black undercoat

Drybrush Liche Purple (one of my favourite paints) & black (1:1)

Drybrush Liche Purple

Light drybrush Liche Purple & white (3:1)

Very light drybrush Liche Purple & white (2:1)

Purple wash

I'm going to try Scaly Green (another of my favourite paints) for the weapons and helmet, orange for gems and eyes and maybe a light blue for hair and accessories.

 Random pirates ready for paint. I'm not sure what the middle one is supposed to be armed with, its pretty chunky.

 Heavy weapon crew.

 Heavy weapon thrown together from a couple of reaver jetbike parts and an eldar lascannony thing, still to be glued and based. I'm really happy with how it looks considering it's made from my tiny pile of Eldar bits.The older RT Eldar are much darker looking than the modern ones and as these are pirate a few bits of Dark Eldar style stuff should fit in ok.

 The Eldar champion (left) was missing it's left hand so I've bluetacked this weird claw thing I found in my bitsbox. I've no idea where it's come from, weirdly it looks like a fantasy power claw with bits of rope between the fingers but it fits pretty well and should blend in nicely once affixed properly. The right mini is an Eldar musician. I haven't found any special rules regarding musicians other than they can be added to guardian squads in the RT Eldar book. They seem to just be unit padding with no special effects from what I can tell. I'm going to treat him as a low level psyker who uses music to focus his powers, almost like a Noise Marine.

Rules

I don't really play any 40k at the minute, though I'm hoping to change that at some point. I'm going to build these with 2nd Edition in mind as anything can be adapted for RT without issue and I've no plans on playing any of the more modern versions (I'd need a lot more models for a start). The list will essentially be:

Pirate Hero + 4 Pirates (close combat equipped)
Pirate Champion + 5 Pirates (lasguns and shuriken catapults)
Support weapon & crew
Grav-scouter (using Vyper rules maybe)

Should easily be under 500pts from the 2nd Ed codex (atleast looking at the Battle Bible)

Assuming I don't get distracted (I've got 3 other projects ticking over on my desk) I'll hopefully have these painted up and finished within the next couple of weeks, more photos then!


EDIT: I couldn't resist looking for a mouse in my junk pile. I didn't find one but I found an old pair of headphone where one of the earpieces had stopped working...

Tank 1

Tank 2

 I kind of like them, but I'm not sure the general shape is Eldary enough.

Jes Goodwin's contact details?

As I posted over on the Oldhammer forum I'm hoping someone has some contact details for Jes Goodwin. For those too lazy to click over (no judgement) Patrick Stuart over at False Machine has written an interview and I'm trying to help get it to Jes in the hopehe'll be generous enough to answer some (all?) of the questions.

Reasons I/You Should Help Make This Happen

A) Patrick Stuart has some interesting ideas about miniatures and sculpture, lets encourage him to pursue them.

B) He's already done a great interview with the lead designer at Hawk Wargames.

C) His other excellent writings related to sculpture.

If you can help contact me or Patrick, or just give Jes the link to the interview.

Highly Professional Relaunch

(Note, this post was started in January, that should give an indiction of how my year has been going).

Fuck you 2013, I'm glad you're dead.

Last year was pretty shitty all round, with 2014 not getting off to a particularly good start either.

At least I've scraped enough money together to build a new PC so witness the phoenix-like (see, a fantasy reference, stick around and there may be some more in this self indulgent drivel) rebirth of this blog. Gaming is likely off the table (jokes too! how great am I?) as gathering the energy to find opponents/players is way beyond me at the moment.

I have been doing more painting of a variety of things so I'll be getting photos up of some random models. Thanks to discovering the Oldhammer forum I've been able to trade away some unwanted lead for stuff I've always wanted so I've got a nice variety of fantasy and sci-fi stuff to work on.

There are also plans to broaden the blog beyond tabletop gaming, but don't worry, there won't be too much of that.

Have a (poorly photographed) taster!

Hope everyone else is having a good 2014!