My, what a wyrd inquisitor you have...

 o/

No doubt he is still hired out to the highest bidder (The Emprah!).

This is my second and final entry for Neverness' 2023 Inquisitorial Conclave painting challenge. This guy is wyrd in more ways than one. First off, he is indeed an old, old Wyrd from Necromunda, albeit one who has had a gun swap. Secondly, despite having him for well over a year, up until this challenge he was neither shown nor even mentioned (well, at least not specifically) on this blog. 

While an inelegant weapon to say the least, his laspistol packs a punch comparable to that of the standard Imperial bolt pistol.

I'm hoping that the taro plant will draw your eye away from the just plain awful sculpting of his cloak.

Lastly, despite his operating behind the scenes, he has had a Rhino-turned-Razorback, which is now instead traveling in the Warp to it's new owner. At least he still retains his retinue which I painted up (among other things) last October during the Dreadtober painting challenge.

Somewhat unfortunately, they're all based to match my now defunct Adeptus Mechanicus force.

Hopefully this guy and his little band of flunkies will grace the tabletop sometime in the near future.

WYSIWYG in Kill Team...

o/

In the Grim Darkness of Kill Team, Chaos Marines
once again come across as pretty bland...

Okay so, I originally made these guys to be 30k Blackshields in pariah armor with pariah bolters (i.e.: kinda shitty power armor and bolters). However after going in a different direction with my 30k army, these guys suddenly found themselves unemployed. Instead I'm thinking of just using them as chaos marines in Kill Team, but as recent turncoats like the Relictors, or the Avenging Sons' 3rd company, but their color scheme/theme really isn't my concern.

What is my concern is their weaponry. 

I like my forces to be as close to WYSIWYG as is possible (well, I do plan to run Tau 'Muppets' so there is often some ambiguity, but even their weapons are kinda obvious). So...do you think folks would be opposed to using these guys' weapons as the actual Necromunda Goliath stub cannons that they are, rather than the flavorless, generic bolters that virtually every fucking flavor of marine has? 

Stub cannons have no KT stats, however they're easily convertible to KT as: 18" range, Assault:1, S:5, D:1 AP:0 with no special rules. Point cost would be zero like most basic weapons, as Strength 5 aside, they're really kinda meh.

God I love this mini!

Another question would be my leader's Goliath Renderizer. I figure a powerfist would be obvious as it does look rather unwieldy, though a power maul/axe would probably be a better fit. However only the Deathwatch has access to those weapons. 

So, what do y'all think?

On a different note, My Beloved Wolfy has finally expressed interest in playing Kill Team. I was supposed to give her a demo game this past weekend, but real life being what it is, that didn't happen. So perhaps we'll give it another try one night this week instead. Curiously, she wants to play Chaos marines (but not the guys above) rather than her Fem Fa'Tau. 

She's complained many a time of her dismay at my selling off of my old chaos marines which was the first army she used. However she's taken a keen interest in the new chaos marines in the shadowspear box (well, all except for the obliterator). So there's a good chance we'll get that set. The chaos will all be 'hers', I'll probably just keep a chunk of the primaris marines, and we'll sell off the remainder to recoup some of the expense...or rather that's the plan at least, I guess we'll see...

The first 8 Chaos Cultists are complete!

Khorne would be pleased...that is his number right? Speaking of:

 Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows... 

They look kinda like an IG Penal unit that got the better of their captors...

Conveniently, the battlefield debut of these guys is happening this coming Saturday in a KT game I have set up with Matt. As such, they're no doubt doomed to die as all newly painted minis rightly are. This will nominally be a grudge match/turf battle as Matt is fielding his genestealer cultists...or rather I think he is. 

It seems he was intending to bring only genestealers. I mentioned that that would make for a completely 1-dimensional game of 'shoot them before they kill us in close combat'. Even a horde of the deranged followers of Chaos will ignore any given scenario in preference for mere survival when there's nothing but 'stealers coming for 'em!

Looks like they've turned tail and are running for
their lives...an all to possible scenario!

In hopes that he'll mix his force up a bit, I mentioned that I haven't faced genestealer cultists since a game of Necromunda played almost 20 years ago vs. Warfrog. I remember little from that game (and none of it good actually). 

All I recall was first, that I hadn't even ever heard of their being a legal list for Genestealer Cults in Necromunda. Followed shortly thereafter by the nightmare scenario of both Vansaar heavy stubbers jamming simultaneously, leaving their gunners to get torn to ribbons by Genestealers in close combat! In the aftermath of our game, so many of my gangers died (including both heavies, along with the loss of all of their gear) that I rage-quit the league we were in. 

Anyways coming back to the present, I'm hoping this weekend's game of Kill Team goes a bit better than that one did...

Chaos conforms to no posting schedule!!

Which sounds like a valid excuse for no Monday post right? Right. Notta whole lot to report actually as we opted for a lazy weekend after three weeks solid of waaaay too fucking much going on! Seriously my Beloved Wolfy and I needed the break. 

The Cult of unpainted conformity, coming to a hellhole near you...

So we skipped the game shop, though as you can see, I did manage to assemble these guys for use in Kill Team and now Necromunda! But that's it I'm afraid. We're still settling in to our 'new normal' so hobbying will continue to be spotty for the foreseeable future. I may have a 2nd late post this week, not sure yet.

Neverness on cardboard...

o/

Now, normally I don't call people out by name, but this time I just couldn't resist. Friday I was chatting with Neverness at the FLGS (where he now works), and he was looking at the store's selection of X-wing and Armada quizzically.

NN: I just don't get it, its cardboard.Why is that fun?  
ME: Well, there are miniatures too...
NN: Yes, but most of it is cardboard. Why spend all that money on just cardboard?

Well...let's tug on Neverness' ol' heart strings a little bit shall we? lol, he's right of course, cardboard sucks! Everybody wants what's inside the cardboard (box). Who the hell plays with cardboard anyways right? Well, all of us actually. We've done it for two decades now. 

Let's take a look back to the Golden Age of GW, the olden days where GW's games, arguably their best games, all relied on vast quantities of...gasp! Cardstock? Meh, really that's just thinner cardboard!

wha...the hell you say?!?

First up: Space Hulk. You know you love this game buddy! The original, the re-release, and the re-re-release, without all of that cardboard, all you really had were some Termies and genestealers. Not much of a game there, right? Hell, I sold I.R.-Voril's re-released Space hulk game WITHOUT minis, all I sold was the cardboard!

Epic? I forgot about Epic, but it popped up in an image search and yeah, buildings, tokens, damage/unit cards...Cardboard everywhere!

Mind you all of this this was back before you youngins' had all the fancy new plastic terrain available for 40k. Speaking of...

Here it is, the boxed set that ruined me financially from then on to the present day...

40K itself! The boxed game was loaded with cardboard terrain! We used it till it disintegrated, and then ya know what? They sold us some more! Boxes and boxes of basically just cardboard, and we ate it up, hell we loved the stuff! Because we were sick of fighting around soda cans and crummy (plain) cardboard boxes...

He has that cardboard Dredd and still threatens to field it...

What else is there...oh, how bout Mordheim? Yup you guess it, cardboard ruins everywhere!

Sadly its hard to find good terrain pics for this game...

Warhammerquest, yes basically it was Fantasy Space hulk, and the same scenario.

I loved this game soooo much!

Necromunda? But wait, that was the age of plastic bulkheads, the grandaddy and forerunner of much of the 40k terrain mentioned above, right? Yes, but without the cardboard in between, all you had was a pile o' useless bulkheads.

The game that turned laser pointers into a required accessory

So, having beaten the horse to a bloody pulp on this little walk down memory lane...yeah, sorry buddy but, that argument isn't valid. So why not give it a try? Come on...ya know ya want to!

What? Ah yes, the canon argument, what wasn't in the movies doesn't count.  Well I fielded 150 points of almost entirely nameless scrubs in all canon ships last weekend, so it can still be done. Sure the Z-95 Headhunter is debatable, but then again, it looks a lot like this fighter right here, so maybe it was all canon after all...

Love ya, mean it!

...and for today's random assortment...

o/

Just have some various, unrelated odds and ends for this morning. First up, I finished painting my Stirland army's mascot, the mounted mockery of Elector Stoutfart! It was a really fun mini to paint, though at times a little tedious as paint tends to easily wear off of some of the detailed bits as I was holding it during painting. All in all though I think its a great addition to the army.

Not sure if I'll use him as a character, or just a unit champion.

Next up, I painted two more Mechs for my company of the Legion of the Rising Sun. The Dragon (right mech) is silhouetted on the legion's logo, so that will be my company commander's mech.  The Cicada on the left is one of my favorites, as its so friggin fast! In a stand up fight, its dead meat vs. just about anything. Instead it spends the game running around at high speed while sniping at enemy units, and often threatening to get into the enemy backfield.

Nothing fancy, but far better than bare metal.

There's 9 of them in total.

And last up, my game room is closed! Temporarily anyways. My grandparents are moving to a house that's all on one floor and much closer to me in roughly a month's time. So to get them safely out of the way, this past Saturday we relocated their dollhouse collection into my game room for safe keeping. They're a bit fragile to be left to the not always gentle hands of the moving company.

While the scale is all wrong, they do have stairs, so I suppose I could fill one with barricades, and host a Necromunda up-hive gang raid or something...lol. Nothing like some viscous room-to-room fighting to change things up. Of course my game board can still just go atop the dining room table, which worked just fine for years.  That said, the next month or so will be rather busy for me, so I doubt there will be much time for gaming anyways. Will see...

Oh! One last thing, I just wanted to give a shout out and congratulations to my buddy Necron Bob. He took 4th in the Brawler Bash's WHFB GT this weekend!

Mutant auxiliaries

o/

I went out of town this past weekend, so nothing happened on the hobby front. However I don't post everything that I work on for just this sort of situation. One such item is my mutant auxiliary test model.

The Imperial Guard has conscripts (sometimes called 'White Shields'), the Vraks list has the 'Worker's Rabble' and the Tyrant's Legion has the 'Legion Auxilia'. Regardless of name, these units are essentially the same, piss poor BS:2 cannon fodder. Sometimes they can have mixed weaponry, and the occasional special or heavy weapon, but for the most part they just come with las/auto guns.

Generally I use Cawdor gangers from Necromunda. They're easily the best 'counts as' minis GW ever made (well, make that a distant second to the bare plastic Space Marine). However, while having 20+ Cawdor minis, I don't have enough with auto/lasguns and often proxy shotguns as such (and the proxies are always the first to die). Buying new (or even used) Cawdor guys is prohibitively expensive, so I went looking for an alternative.

I've seen plenty of beastmen/IG conversions online I figured that would work easily enough, and indeed it has. Usually I see Gor bodies used but that always struck me as being a bit out of proportion (which is an amusing concept when considering that these are mutants...). So I used Ungor with Catachan arms. No cutting, filing, or green stuff required, it was a perfect fit! To call this a conversion almost seems untruthful. I gave it a quick & simple paint job, slather it in Ogryn Flesh wash, and a quick drybrush when done. As such, I figure that I can crank these out in short order. The longest part of the process is waiting on the wash to dry.

So I asked the FLGS to order me two Ungor boxes, while I've been acquiring Catachan arm/gun bitz on ebay. I don't know if I'll bother with any special weapons for these guys or not. With a BS of 2, its probably not worth it. Probably not even enough chance to hit to convince a dreadnought to steer clear of them really. I dunno, will see.

My side projects continue.

o/

I've gotten four more BB players (and a ball marker) painted these past few days. I usually paint them in pairs, one lineman & one of the other position models. This brings me up to eight finished. Enthusiasm seems to be bubbling just under the surface here locally, so I suppose I ought to download & reread the rules again.

In truth this was probably a good time to pick up a team as I'm once again heading towards 40k burnout. I play minimum once a week, often two or three times. Plus, no longer having the vast array of armies that I once had, I cycle through my lists with greater frequency making it easy to get bored with what I've got (and due to the incessant price hikes, its even more difficult to change that). So we're kinda looking at alternative games. The cheaper the better (in contrast to that statement, I do need to get some more Heavy Gear minis).

Blood Bowl I can do (assuming someone has a board, dice, templates, etc.), Necromunda & BFG, good to go, and I recently ordered a handful of Skaven off of ebay to use for a possible Mordheim warband. NO, I'm NOT making a new WHFB army (I've already had to state a few times)! I figure all I'd need is a single regiment box, and I'd have all I need to play. My city fight terrain isn't quite right for Mordheim, but should be close enough.

Speaking of ebay, I finally sold off the remnants of the 110th Ryza IG. The funds from that in turn paid for a cheap guardian squad to use with my FW conversion kit, as well as two extras to make an extra Exodite heavy weapon team. I also got a dirt cheap ($11 with shipping) Scout squad (both squads are still on the sprue). That should bring the Exodites up to about 1200 points, and the Aurora....well I have some ideas for them, but that's for later as those plans are contingent on this week's ebay auctions.