A Tower on a distant planet - Cheap Sci Fi Terrain

A Robot, a squat and a blind psychic walk into a bar. 

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. 

The Squat is an old Rogue Trader figure, while the psychic is from the Astropolis Kickstarter.  The Robot is a privately produced model that I picked up via the Oldhammer Facebook group and he is just lovely. 

I picked this up in Lidl for about the price of a pint.  At the price it seemed foolish not to.  I actually picked up two.  With Stargrave just around the corner I’m hoping that I’m going to be able to get some science fiction games in. 

Rangers of Shadowdeep has hit just the right kind of role playing game with miniatures feel that I really like.  I’m hopeful that Stargrave will scratch that itch.  I’m aware it’s more of a competitive skirmish game - but Frostgrave is very easily modded into a semi-RPG,  so I’m cautiously optimistic. 

The kit itself went together in about five minutes and actually scales well with 28mm figures.  To be honest, while it's not perfect - it's actually pretty good even without a lick of paint and wouldn't disgrace any tabletop it was on. 

These guys are old Rogue Trader era Space Marine Scouts painted by my pal, Kriztian Takacs.  I popped them up here to get a sense of scale and they seem to fit right in.  Which reminds me, I must do something to dolly up those bases. 

A long shot

In brief, these were an excellent buy for the money and while I might do something with them in future, they look fine to use as is, for the time being.  I might also need to invest in a new backdrop for my figures.  I can't imagine whatever God forsaken planet this is having blue skies with fluffy white clouds very often. 

Out for an Ambull

Mummy Ambull with two Bore Wyrms

Not much to say about this one except that I painted this Ambull figure from Blackstone Fortress as set out in the instructions and it worked reasonably well.  The monster is an interpretation of an old monster from the Rogue Trader era and I've always had a soft spot for them. 

I worked quite hard on getting the skin tones right

The "glowing" hive things were tricky, but I'm really pleased with how they turned out. 

The drybrushing on the grey skin worked out well

Cute little clawed horror

They look just like their mummy

Ready to munch some explorers

Mind Bullets

Being a psychic demands skill, talent and an interest in amateur dramatics

I've been neglecting proper toy soldiers of late and doing nothing with my Stalingrad project which is pricking my conscience. I had intended to pick up some Winter Russians in the recent Elheim sale, but didn't get around to it. Work and family has just been so busy that I catch myself running both ways.  

I really must clean up that base

The little bit of painting I have been doing has been for Blackstone Fortress.  I've been tipping away at the figures for this, a little bit at a time - I've found that I can get one colour done sometimes in the mornings. The most recent effort have been some rogue Psykers - chaps that we haven't seen much of in the game as of yet, but they have a certain something. 

I was quite pleased with how the glowing eyes turned out

"Dramatic? MOI??!?!?!"

I am quite pleased with how the glowing eyes turned out.  I followed a tutorial from Guy at Midwinter Minis  which I heartily recommend.  It was a bit tricky at first, but I cracked it in the end. 

Fur accents to ones frock coat are so this season. 

This picture did not do it justice, but I am pleased with the depth of colour on the coat. 

That's it for Joy & Forgetfulness at the moment, though I am looking forward to a game of Napoleonics at the weekend.  Probably going to be Waterloo, because well, it's Waterloo and we have the pleasure of a visiting Mad Padre to entertain.  Mike and Joy visited in what I hope will be the first of many trips.  It was a real pleasure to make their acquaintance and they demonstrated admirable fortitude and patience in the face of a disgruntled Kinchlet.  

I did discover, sadly, that our visiting clergyman is a raving Bonapartist.   I hope we shall be able to teach him the error of his ways.  

Space Germans

So I finally got cracking on those Traitor Guard.  The grey uniform naturally lent itself to some Second World War style stuff, but I wasn’t quite happy with it exactly.

As you can tell I didn’t go with grey or dark green in the end.  Stormtroopers of the Imperial German army during the Great War uses a sort of geometric camouflage on their helmets and I went with something like that.

I’m not sure if this is a replica or an original, but I regardless I think we can agree it is “pretty metal”.

One of the crazy things about this chap is that he’s the squad sniper.  He will also stab you with a trench knife!

I found various types of painted helmet on line. I can’t remember where exactly I found this one - but it looks postwar rather than Great War.  I know the Freikorps used to paint stuff like this on their helmets.

The helmets used during the war itself were a bit more restrained.

On the whole, I’m very pleased with it.  I had to repaint the brown section as it was a bit too light, but it looks rather well now.  There is one squad of seven with black helmets and one squad of seven with the stormtrooper specials. It’s very handy from a gameplay perspective, being able to tell one from the other.

For me?

Life is bit manic at the moment as the Bear is not sleeping and it’s rather wearing.  One can economize on food and drink, but sleep is the one necessity.

Fortunately,  it is a life that has many other advantages.  Gentlemen, I don’t know if you’ve ever brought your toddler daughter a flower (tactfully removed from the bunch bought for her mother before I came in the door),  but I can assure you that you will feel ten feet tall as a result. She was absolutely delighted.

Fatherhood also means you also get invited to a better class
of tea party.

Decisions, decisions.

I’m torn about these two.  I’ve got two sections of seven lads each and I need some way of distinguishing them.  I was thinking about helmet colour, but I’ve seen them in white and didn’t care for it. 

Red maybe? Any thoughts gentlemen? 

Of course I should be doing something with my #Squaduary2019 pledge and therefore I should be working on my 1/32 scale diorama. However, we’re actually playing this game at the moment and I’d like to be able to play with a fully painted set before we finish. 

Review: Chaos Child by Ian Watson

Chaos Child by Ian Watson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ian Watson offers my favourite interpretation of the 40k universe, though Dan Abnett is a close second. Chaos Child, the conclusion to the Inquisition War trilogy, is a curates egg - good in parts. Watson's command of description and character is as good as ever, but sadly he doesn't stick the landing.

Plot is not Watson's strong point and he is far better at describing the dream like absurdity of the setting than he is at paying off the story points he's laid down for himself. The book as a whole undergoes a significant tonal shift half way through as the over arching plot he has been playing with for the previous two books is sidelined in the pursuit of what seems like a far more personal quest.

The characters are all still interesting and writing is as good as ever, but ultimately, nothing really changes as a result of the events of the book and that is a shame. If you are a fan of the setting and would like to take a tourist trip through some of its weirder locales, this is a book well worth reading, but if you just want to enjoy a story - there are better uses of your time.


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Lead Adventure Pysker

Blind Eyes

There is a small part of me that will always have a soft spot for the dark future of the 41st millennium.  The setting has always been rather better than the games in many ways, but strangely I always seem to find myself coming back to it.  I've never quite managed to recapture the anarchic freewheeling atmosphere games of Rogue Trader that we played using a mix of Heroquest figures and others in the early nineties - but I do enjoy painting suitable figures from time to time. 

From the rear

This lady is a something (I think a navigator maybe?) from the Lead Adventure Astropolis Kickstarter.  She shares a lot of the gothic punk sensibility of the early Rogue Trader figures and I've painted her up as a sort of blind Psychic. I think her cane is a sort of dowsing rod or possibly operates like a lightning conductor by siphoning off excess psychic energy. 

I think the canister on her back is connected to her inhaler which probably contains a bizarre stimulant, something like Semuta from the Dune books, for example. 

The Lead Adventure figures a fantastic and look like they've stepped off the set of a David Lynch film.  I hope to get some more of these painted over the coming months - but I won't rush them. They are a pleasure to be savoured and since I won't be using them for games, there's no rush. 

This lady was a lot of fun to paint, but to be honest I am not entirely sure why she has a brass apron.

But leaving all that grim darkness behind, I saw some lovely new cygnets - at least they were new when I started this blog post, they are probably big boys now.   Watching swans on the canal never fails to cheer me. 

The Kinchlets confront Flashman about his drinking. 

The Kinchlets are well.  Arthur is constantly climbing and the LadyBaby has started talking.  I'm not sure if this bodes well for the future, but her third word was "shoes". She is very fond of shoes, we've learned. 

Nostalgic for old telly

Once you saw this, you knew what was coming was good

Like many others I often get nostalgic for the television programmes I watched when I was little. Irish television tended to feature a lot of re-runs of British television from the 1970s. One that particularly sticks in my memory is "Warhammer 40,000 - The Rogue Trader". This somewhat obscure science fiction serial was produced by Thames television between 1979-1983. Younger viewers are probably more familiar with the 2004 reboot, but despite its vastly more impressive production values, I think the writing in the original series was better.

Note: You'll have to forgive me, but most of this is culled from the relevant wikipedia entry and Rudyard Oldman's seminal "Terror in Television: British Science Fiction & Horror progamming 1965-1990. OUP, 2001. Currently out of print, but well worth looking for on Abebooks.

Nigel Kneale - speaking at an interview in 2006

Warhammer 40,000 was in many ways the brain child of two very different men, established science fiction writer Nigel Kneale, best known for The Year of the Sex Olympics and the Quatermass serials, and brilliant newcomer, Richard Priestly, who is acknowledged by most fans as the main creative force behind the show.

Kneale had been approached by producers at Thames Television for a television science fiction serial that would be Thames televisions answer to BBCs Doctor Who and Blake 7. The success of Star Wars the previous year suggested that there was a great appetite for science fiction than previously thought.

Rick Priestly posing with a promotional "Orc" toy shortly 

before his tragic death in 1982 at the hands of an obsessed fan. 

The genesis of the Rogue Trader project was a meeting between Kneale and Priestly at a parish fete in Nottingham in 1975. Kneale had been asked to judge a short story competition which Priestly entered and though Priestly story was not picked as the winning entry, his tale of an embattled human empire in the far future struck a cord with the veteran scriptwriter. Invited to meet Kneale again in London, Priestly brought his notebooks and according to TV historian, Rudyard Oldman, "...the whole idea of the series was hashed out in two days of intense work." Priestly's original idea of a crusading army, "...which while brilliant, would have proved bloody expensive to film!", was replaced with the idea of a single Imperial troubleshooter and his minions struggling against pirates, heretics and aliens. As Kneale put it in an interview with Oldman in 2006 "Rick had these amazing ideas and they were great, but most of them would have involved recruiting half of Wales as extras and remodelling most of the Lake district."

This was to prove a regular theme in the writing of the show; Kneale attempting to rein in Priestly's ideas and channel them into something that could actually be filmed.

Early concept art by Ian Miller

With the initial draft work done, Kneale took the idea to executives at Thames. The initial brief had changed somewhat - the success of "The Sweeney" had convinced Thames Television that audiences were eager for more hard bitten, less optimistic programming. Warhammer 40,000 - Rogue Trader was aimed firmly at an adult audience and seemed to be exactly what was wanted. This did lead to some clashes with management, particularly when the first run of six episodes came close to broadcast date. Rudyard Oldman qoutes an unnamed former Thames Television editor.

"There were those amongst the commissioning committee who were very uncomfortable with the bleak nature of the programme. The protagonists weren't your classic good guys, one of them is referred to as "A Hero of the Nikemmedian Genocide" in the second episode for example. The advertising guys went crazy about that. They did not like the level of violence present in the show - a lot of Orks got shot, lets be honest about this. They were all played by these Welsh rugby players and there was one shot in the second episode where one of the characters is literally walking over their bodies for a minute or so. Senior management had an eppy about it. if Rick hadn't pulled off his master stroke, it's possible the whole thing would never have seen the light of day."

Terror in Television: British Science Fiction & Horror progamming 1965-1990.

Concept art by Ian Miller for Season 2, Episode 4 "Seven Seas of Rhye". 

Ian Miller, the noted British illustrator and graphic artist, had been commissioned to produce several dozen pieces of concept art and production work. He had completed the commission and delivered copies of the portfolio to Rick Priestly in London. Priestly was having a great deal of difficulty finishing episode three and had taken to wandering London in search of inspiration. It was during one such ramble that he encountered Freddy Mercury in the Tate gallery. The Queen frontman was a regular in the gallery where he often found musical inspiration.

"'39"

Mercury was completely captivated by Ian Millers concept art, some of which Priestly had with him and was intrigued by the idea of "Star Trek with swearing". Discussing the matter over dinner, Mercury became more taken with the concept and was allowed to take some early drafts of the first script back to the studio where the band were working on a new album. As it happened Mercury was unable to come up with something that he was happy with, but fellow band member Brian May penned a science fiction ballad "39" as an introduction to the programme.

I may if there's interest try and dig through some of my old memorabilia and notes about the programme.

Note: Chaps, my apologies for not blogging more. Work and Kinchlets are consuming most of my time. As for the piece above, I wrote it for a laugh a couple of years ago, but never did anything with it.
The idea came from the fact that most wargamers only have a small selection of models and a limited number of terrain setups. The idea struck me that this was quite like a lot of British television in the 1970s where there was some wonderful programmes that had limited casts and budgets, but made the most of them - the Sweeney, the Sandbaggers, XXY man, Blake 7, Dr. Who particularly stick in my memory - creating huge sweeps of story with a few regular actors and a small selection of locations (industrial area, quarry, country house, etc).  What if rather than this being a result of limited wargaming resources - the ruined cathedral on a golf course/industrial wasteland look of many battlefields is actually merely replicating the locations the source material was filmed on?

Watchers of the Throne: The Emperor's Legion by Chris Wraight
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This the second novel from Chris Wraight that I've read recently and he has just gotten better. He deftly switches between three point of view characters and weaves a fast moving tale of violence and intrigue. What was also interesting was that this is one of the few warhammer novels that advances the grand narrative of the setting in any way, something which Wraight manages with a surprisingly light touch.

There is less of the overwrought description that was characteristic of his earlier efforts and ideally it could do with even more trimming, but ultimately this is finely honed and well delivered spot of far future action which kept me mightily entertained in my off hours. More of this please.


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And now for something completely different.

An unusual football player - I'm not sure if he's League or Union. 

One of the pleasure of the hobby is being able to share it with others.  I don't play Bloodbowl, the comedically overblown American football game from Games Workshop, but I have plenty of friends that do.  I recently came into a few spare figures, including these two goblins. 

Off to frolic on pitches new. 

I did these two for a pal who has very kind to Mrs Kinch and I last year.  He plays Orks and I thought they might make a worthy addition to his team.

The first chap is a fellow called Fungus the Loon, who brings a sort of giant morning star to the game.

That blasted "bomb" writing was a pain in the neck.  

The second goes by the name Bomber Dribblesnot - and he a football playing version of "The Professor" from "The Secret Agent".  I'm not sure II could swear to his politics with any certainty, but I think it could be safe to say he's a bomb throwing anarchist.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take proper pictures before I handed these figures over to their new owner, but I at least had taken some shots with my phone. Probably the trickiest thing about Bomber Dribblesnot was getting the yellow lettering on a black background right.  

I don't paint 28mm figures very often, but they are fun to do.  I think the next ones will be some Genestealer Hybrids.  I've been trying to find a painting guide for the Rogue Trader era ones, as I've had a look at the new version but they aren't quite the same. Something to mull over for when I next get a little time to paint.

Legio has said that he might put one up on his blog in the near future which would be ace. 

I had never encountered Sir James MacMillan before, but came across his work recently. It's very rare that I find modern choral or church music that I like, but this is absolutely fantastic.  Wonderful stuff. 

Aboard the Space Hulk “Memory Lane”

In the grim dark future there are only cardboard dungeons 

Target and Savage came over for a game last week.  We had intended to play "The Men who would be King", but Target's eye lit up when he heard I just gotten my paws on a copy of "Space Crusade". This and Heroquest were firm favourites when we were about 10-11.  So we pulled out the old girl and put her through her paces. 

Savage acting with typical magnanimity after snatching victory from Targets grasp

The result was interesting.  The game is simpler than I remembered, but has some intriguing wrinkles.  I enjoyed it's simplicity and the sense of nostalgia that playing it evoked, but also I liked the situation.  Heroic adventurers exploring a dungeon in space is evocative stuff.  I wish GW would release a game that bridged the gap between this and Heroquest.  The idea of exploring Space Hulks is a powerful one, but could benefit from some more "character". 

Mr Target damning the dice 

We used a mixture of the figures that came in the box and some painted 40k chaps I had knocking around.  One thing that struck me was that the game was quite luck dependent - the lack of an overwatch or interrupting mechanic made it difficult to deal with stuff that wasn't immediately blasted. 

Service in the Space Marines is a grim humourless  affair.

Space Marine Target giving the Chapter Approved signal for 

“Oh Dear, that is a Dreadnaught - isn’t it?”

We played two games in quick succession and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Target reckoned he'd give it another go, but Savage thought that it wasn't a game he would play again other than for nostalgia's sake. 

Lt. Randius Quaidius of the Imperial Fists bites the dust 

The final two marines stalk through the Space hulk before being mobbed by gretchin 

Honours were even between with one victory to the Marines and one to the Alien Commander. My love for the Rogue Trader setting might set me to do something more with the game, but the answer to that question remains a resounding maybe.