A Dwarven Infantry Regiment Arrives

 Hi!

Slightly later than hoped for but here's some pics of my completed Dwarf infantry regiments for my Land Ironclads project!

Constructed from two sheets of EVA foam and scored to give a bit of detail, they are a quick and easy way to give me some really cheap and effective figures for my game!

1st and 2nd Brigades of the 17th Dur Zamor Guard

I need to make at least another regiment of the little guys and add some light artillery to give them some support but I'm quite pleased with the newest additions to my forces and hopefully I'll be able to add some opposing Orc regiments to try and storm the defences of the Great Wall!

Annoyingly I seem to have run out of bases to build any more so I'll need to purchase some more but that will give me the excuse to build more Ironclads, heavy artillery and all manner of other Dwarven inventiveness before they arrive. I've got to start making some Orc warbeasts and I'm also messing about with some Orc warengine concepts so they can get access to some Land Ironclads too, preferably of a super unreliable nature!

I'll add more stuff here as I get them finished so watch this space but in the meantime, All the best!

Land Ironclads Revisited

 Hi!

It's been a really busy few weeks and I've found myself seeking to get some hobby time in my much needed holiday.

Instead of working on the other gubbins I have, I have decided to revisit my 2mm Land Ironclads project with a vague aim of putting together enough stuff for my Dwarves and Orcs to play out a bit of a campaign in the coming year.

I'm currently working on getting a regiment of Dwarven infantry put together but will be building a load more stuff for the upcoming campaign as I got to thinking about having the Dwarves defending their great wall in the Axebite Pass against a mighty Orc Horde led by the mighty Khan Krull, chosen of Gorath!

There's a lot of fun bits and bobs that I have planned for the coming months including scenery and lots of warbeasts, war engines and flyers as I plan on starting small and building up until I can play a cataclysmic battle for the wall between scores of regiments and engines of destruction clashing including siege engines and all manner of interesting gubbins.

I'll try and get the infantry finished this evening and will showcase it tomorrow so watch this space and I hope to add some new units in the coming week.

In the meantime, All the best!

Nepharite Sighting!

 Hi!

I've had this guy on my paint table for some time having picked him up for about £3.00 a few months back. I had primed him and made a start on the paintwork a while back but finally finished him and managed to get some pics.

Once a respected scientist with the Imperial labs on Proxima, Reginald Covinn was accidentally infected with a really unpleasant and virulent xenos pathogen while examining an ancient Mimjip artefact. Fleeing the lab he stowed away on an outbound ship and vanished from Imperial space for over a decade. 

When reports came in that the Warped had raided an Imperial settlement in the Farpoint Sector Inquisitor Fisher collected the surviving vid records of the attack and spotted the revolting creature directing a horde of pox ridden scavvies. Analysis on the images identified the creature as being Reginald Covinn. Somehow he had survived the Mimjip pathogen which had grossly bloated his form and turned him into a hulking, disease ridden horror.

Interestingly, Reginald seems to be operating with some method to his raids which seem to hint that he is searching for something more than unwilling test subjects. As yet Fisher has not been able to locate Reginald's current whereabouts but Inquisitorial investigators supported by local troops are searching for him as it is imperative that he cannot be allowed to spread contagion to any further settlements.

Originally a Demnogonis Nepharite from the old Warzone range, I repurposed him to act as a villain for my Inquisitorial team to fight as part of a mini campaign. I still need to get some infected troops and zombies as well as mad scientists to act as his underlings but I'm quite pleased with how he's turned out.

Infuriatingly I managed to drop him whilst painting him and broke off his halberd but a bit of glue seems to have fixed it. I also played around with some gloss varnish on his gribbly bits and weapons to give a more wet and unpleasantly diseased look to him.

The figure itself is a bit silly looking but was fun to paint and weighs an absolute ton!

I'm currently without a gaming table as we have to keep the spare room usable for a bedroom in the coming months so I doubt I'll get to use him in a game anytime soon but I'll keep plugging away with the odd figure until he's got an equally unhealthy retinue.

In other news, I made the most of the recent Ral Partha Europe discount day to pick up some more Battletech gubbins in the form of rulebooks and map sheets so I'm hoping to delve into them in the coming week once they arrive so watch this space!

In the meantime, All the best!

Battletech Rumblings

 Hi!

I had planned on showing some pics of my latest additions to my Planet 28 forces this evening but was absolutely knackered when I got back from work so haven't had chance to get any pictures yet so hopefully tomorrow will see an update with some finished stuff in it.

Instead I've found myself shoving on some Death From Above Wargaming and Guerrilla Miniatures Games Battletech battle reports on Youtube and found myself once again drawn to the setting!

Interestingly it appears that many gamers are feeling the same way at the moment as a lot of GW gamers are making the move to the game of Armored Combat. Maybe its the fact that it hasn't changed much in 30 odd years or the rules are a bit like the old Rogue Trader, being a toolbox that allows you to really tinker with the size and complexity of game you want to play or the new and shiny and revamped miniatures which seem to be catching peoples attention but there is a real buzz about Battletech in the gaming community at the moment.

Coupled with the fairly readily available 3d printing tech that is increasingly allowing folks to print out their own customised mechs and the relatively low price point, with average forces being only four or five figures a side, it does seem that the latest round of kickstarters have got a lot of new folks interested in giving the game a try, be it classic Battletech on hexmaps, tabletop or the streamlined Alpha Strike.

I played quite a bit of both during the first lockdown but must admit that I've yet to play a game of it this year and am feeling the need to remedy this, either using my handy dandy cardboard counters, my own SD sculpted stuff or dare I say it, to buy some of those lovely new figures!

I'll need to rummage out my gubbins but annoyingly I've only got the digital editions which aren't that handy since my I-Pad went kaput a few years back so I'm thinking of investing in actually buying the box set, rules and tech readouts but have discovered that they are currently fiendishly difficult to get ones hands on, presumably as everybody else has had the same idea resulting in the usual sources drying up so I'll need to make do with what I've got for the time being. 

I'd be interested in hearing what other folks thoughts on the game are and if they've been tempted to dip their toes into the retro wonders of giant stompy robot combat.

In the meantime, All the best!

The Aeronaut's Windlass, or Inspiration From an Unexpected Source

 Hi!

Well I'm back from my hols in Wales and mostly relaxed, other than the car deciding to have a wobble with only 400 miles still to go to get us safely home but it made it!

We spent a really relaxing week visiting family and I managed to trundle around a few fascinating historical sites ranging from Iron Age settlements to ruined monasteries which was really great but we also visited a lot of charity shops and second hand bookshops and in one of them I found a copy of Jim Butcher's Cinder Spires book one, The Aeronaut's Windlass for the princely sum of £1.25.

Now I've read quite a few of Jim's other series, The Dresden Files and really enjoyed them but managed to miss the Cinder Spires entirely (something I am quite embarrassed about as I work in a bookshop!) and must say that I really enjoyed it. 

At heart its a good old fashioned adventure with plenty of interesting heroes, villains and sinister plots but the world building was brilliant as its steampunk but with a difference as it is set in another world where great city states live in great monolithic spires built thousands of years ago by The Founders. The land itself isn't really described other than being heavily forested and inhabited by all manner of monsters.

Its a setting that reminds me somewhat of a Steampowered 40k and it's really quite evocative, especially as trade and combat is largely carried out between airships of varying sorts and it got me to thinking of re-exploring my Land Ironclads project and working on some aerial assets for some city states to fight over.

Better yet, it will be a really cheap project to undertake as the whole thing would be made from scratch using whatever interesting gubbins I have lying around!

Goodness knows if I'll get much done on my remaining days off before returning to work but I highly recommend picking up a copy of the Aeronaut's Windlass as its a really good fun read and well worth a peruse.

In other news, I've almost finished a big bad for my ongoing Planet 28 project and I'm hoping to keep working through other interesting bits and bobs in time for the release of the new 2nd edition of the game later this year and will post pictures of stuff once its ready!

In the meantime, All the best!

Still Alive!

 Hi!

Its been a bit busy here at Spacecow HQ over the last month or so with a combination of work, visiting relatives and a total lack of hobby time. Coupled with the fact that my gaming room, our spare room come library has a double bed in it at present, I've managed to get absolutely nothing done!

I've got two weeks holidays coming up from next week but I'm off to Wales so I won't be getting much done there either! 

I do plan on taking my sketchbook with me to get my Somewhere on the Border and Rusty Robots projects a bit of fleshing out with a load of new designs, background and general gubbins planned!

For Somewhere on the Border, I have the Boar Company nearly complete with only a few odds and ends to sculpt and paint to give me the complete force but I do need to sculpt lots of other denizens of Aeroth including some random encounters for my adventurers to do battle with.

My Rusty Robots have kind of stalled with the Blue Tribe I'd been working on as the concept just didn't match the final sculpts so I'll be taking the opportunity to tweak the concept when I'm on holiday. Similarly I need to work on the other tribes, specialists, big guys and leaders for each!

I've also got some vague plans to work on my Planet 28 project as I've got a real hankering to do more for it so I may end up writing up a campaign while I'm away.

No doubt I'll get only a fraction of what I'm hoping to get done actually done but we shall see what I can actually do with two weeks of work free relaxation. I shall post an update when I get home in mid September but until then, All the best!

Delving Into Warzone and The Mutant Chronicles

 Hi!

Over the last few days I've found myself re-reading my old Warzone 1st edition rules and the Mutant Chronicles RPG sourcebooks that I picked up many moons ago and it got me to thinking about using it as the setting for a campaign initially using Planet 28 and eventually 1st edition Warzone and then Warzone Eternal once it gets released.

But why you ask? The setting and artwork that accompanies it is utterly brilliant! Warzone and Mutant Chronicles combines loads of brilliant concepts from corporate dystopia to cosmic horror, 80's action films to dieselpunk and despite having been around for the best part of 30 years now, it still holds together remarkably well.

Venusian Marshall

Set in our own solar system in a future where nation states have been replaced by five Megacorporations who have terraformed much of the system and abandoned the Earth as an irradiated wasteland, Mutant Chronicles has so many great scenario ideas and unique gaming options. Does the action take place in the dusty deserts of Mars, the steaming jungles of Venus, the subterranean caverns of Mercury or on some blasted rock out in the asteroid belt?

Imperial vs Bauhaus

Over the years Warzone has appeared and vanished several times but my favourite is still 1st edition as it really was groundbreaking and was at heart a fantastic skirmish system that brought the setting to life with small groups of soldiers with the odd hero or evil doer leading them fighting desperate battles for their corporate overlords.

It's been compared to 40k quite a few times with the Brotherhood, the spiritual leaders of humanity being somewhat similar to the Inquisition of the Warhammer setting and the Dark Legion being seen as just a chaos rip off but having re-read the source material, I found the Warzone stuff to be very much its own unique setting which differs from 40k in several important ways. Primarily Warzone is a setting which contains hope. Hope that humanity can unite to defeat the evil of the Dark Legion, hope that no matter how grim things may get it can improve and hope that the heroes can actually save the day rather than 40k's view of everybody being essentially doomed.

Vince Diamond, Hero of Cybertronic

Coupled with the setting itself being our own solar system which makes things a bit more relatable than the galaxy spanning madness of 40k, it is believable to see characters traversing the system fighting the good (or indeed bad) fight and the technology is much more grounded too, more so the fact that the unleashing of the Dark Legion saw thinking machines run amok and high tech stopping being reliable and showcasing the sheer determination of humanity and their unique will to carry on makes for a setting that I'm keen to explore further!

Looking online, it's been really heartening to see the fact that Warzone has survived in some form or another over the last 25 plus years and Res Nova, the newest company to acquire the rights are dedicated to bringing back the game to its roots with the classic aesthetic, forces and skirmish style game I love. 

Mitch Hunter and Co

The Mutant Chronicles RPG has proved to be a really rich source of inspiration and I'm slowly putting together my ideas which will hopefully see a group of Freelancers taking on a seemingly simple contract from some shady corporate suit before getting flung into a campaign which will see them crossing the solar system and mixing it up with pretty much everyone from the Megacorps to other freelancers, the Tribes of Earth and the sinister Dark Legion.

I need to crack on with some painting and rummage out what I can find of the remainder of my Warzone collection, which at this point looks to be very little but I figure I can use some proxies until I can get my hands on some new figures once Warzone Eternal launches. I'm hoping that I can get enough figures sorted out to build my team and begin the campaign at some point this autumn which gives me plenty of time to paint figures, build some scenery and really get to grips with the setting again but I highly recommend folks pick up a copy or at least a pdf of the 1st edition Warzone and Mutant Chronicles books as they're good reading materials and who knows, they may inspire you to have a bash!

In the meantime, I hope to keep putting together articles and as as we get closer to Res Nova launching the new edition I'm keen to share what news hits the net but until then, All the best!