Cyborgs, motorbikes and dreadnoughts

Hello and welcome back.

No it’s not the title of a heavy metal album but a hobby update! March already eh? Where did the time go? Anyway, on with the madness. 

Four days march North-East of the Last City lies the Howling Hills. Deep in the hills lies the Giggles Valley home to the feared bunch weirdos known as the Giggles clan. The valley has many caves and abandoned mines in which the Giggles clan survived the end of Mattblackgod’s world. The Clan emerged and have continued to survive the harsh world by becoming cyborgs. These days most of them are more machine than human.

The most feared of the Giggles Clan in the huge Gilgamesh. Very little of the original man is left, just his skull of a man who should have been long dead can be seen. The power claw and cannons make the huge cyborg a fearsome opponent. 

Gilgamesh is a figure from the Nuclear Renaissance line by Ramshackle games. I also think this figure would make a great hazard in the ruins looming menacingly over your scavengers. Is the machine dead or alive? Noooo don’t push the button marked “START”!

The wastelands are a dangerous place on foot, it probably isn’t much safer for those lunatics who like to speed about on motorbikes. They are handy for reconnaissance work, fast attack or vehicle escorts. These two riders offer their services to convoys going out of Last City. 

Dag likes to get out on his dirt bike. He doesn’t trust the swirling toxic clouds and carries plenty of oxy cylinders to keep him alive. Dag’s weapon of choice is a meat cleaver which he uses to brain mutants and bandits that cross his path.

Spiker likes the classic chopper type bikes. Unlike others Spiker likes to camp out in the Wastelands mainly because he doesn’t like people or civilisation (or what passes for civilisation on Mattblackgod’s world). He likes to use a Lance on his bike to skewer mutants and bandits.

The Dag and Spiker bikers are from the Nuclear Renaissance line by Ramshackle games.

The Blackguard got a light combat mech recently known as a Dreadnought. This “dread” was found in a bunker on the edge of the Toxicity ruins that lie six days march due East of the Last city. Members of the 2nd Stalker Company found the relic mech and reported the machine to the commander of Patton Guard company stationed at Base Camp Skull (a salvagers camp that feeds Last City scrap and relics). The mech was hauled back to the base camp before being transported to the Last City.

The mech sports a pair of bolters and power fist on one arm, with a combination weapon featuring a twin laser cannons and missile launchers on the other side. The Dread mech can take a lot of damage and is used to back up the power armoured troops of the Black Guard. It provides capability to take out armoured vehicles, defences and those bigger mutant critters that sometimes wander into the Last City from the Wastelands. 

I picked up this old 40K Rogue Trader era Dreadnought on ebay. All I had to do was touch the paint up to fit in with the Black Guard and finish the base. 

I kept the 2000AD ABC warriors graffiti. 

Thanks for looking, stay safe out there.

Black Guard reinforcements

Hello and welcome back, 

This week I have been adding more bodies to the (Matt) Black Guard. 

These are also Space Rangers figures by EM4. They are a cheap way to build a power armoured force. It is a shame that they are so limited in poses. For the new additions I decided some lighter weaponry would be in order.

The full force so far. 

The Black Guard’s armour is made up from many different sources the Fortress City looted, raided, captured or salvaged in the years before the forming of the Last City. There are many different patterns of powered armour in use and many suits of power armour cobbled together from many places and parts. 

These figures are Space Marines (and a old terminator bitza) from Games Workshop from over the decades. While the Black Guard wear predominantly (matt) black coloured power armour they are allowed to customise their own suits somewhat. Stylised Matt Black God symbols are popular along with other decorations. 

The whole force. 

I will leave this force like this for now. There is enough firepower here to deal with most mutant invasions, future guard revolts or last city uprisings. These things tend to happen more than you would think. 

I still have a few old 40K beakie marines to paint. They will possibly be added to my Brittannia Queen’s Company who wear the same pattern power armour. The force needs beefing up a little and painting them in a stylised colonial British style is fun. 

Thanks for looking. Stay safe out there.

New additions to the Last City.

Hello and welcome back to my blog. 

Let me introduce to some new additions to the Last City. 

First up - the (matt) Black Guard - the elite power armoured troops of the Matt Black Authority. Thanks to their power armour they can easily soak up small arms fire while wielding heavy weapons as if they weighed nothing. These warriors can raise a compound in minutes. 

These figures are Space Rangers supplied by EM4. They are the only figures I have painted so far. There are more figures to add to the Black Guard force in the pipeline. 

All the rest of the figures in this post are other people’s reworks, although only one of them was painted by me.

Late last year I got a lot of well painted old Necromunda figures cheaply from evil bay. This lot has given me the chance to quickly create new gangs and characters for the Last City. As I bonus all I had to do was base them. 

Oggie’s crew: 

Oggie was exploring around Last City’s green zone, a wild jungle of strange plants. The tales say a bio weapon hit the zone and it caused the plant life to grow in strange and rapid ways. Even humble house plants have become huge and twisted. Stories tell of he plants acting in a intelligent manner. 

In the distance he spotted a hill covered in lush green plants. Forcing his way up the hill through the plants Oggie discovered an overgrown warehouse and factory. The plants seemed to be growing from these partial ruins. Pushing his way into the factory Oggie discovered that the plants were stored and processed there before the wars. They had mutated into a faster growing and more robust plant. After some experimentation he found that these “Baccy” plants were still good to smoke. Oggie and his crew set up base in what is now known as Baccy Hill and are now the Last City’s only supplier of cigs, cigars and pipe weed. The baccy has proven popular as it is something else to take the edge off life on Mattblackgod’s World. Oggie and his crew have grown wealthy on their trade. 

Iron Lord: 

Iron Lord is a successful pit fighter appearing in the Mars arena regularly and is regarded as a sports hero across the city. He specialises in fighting ghouls and beasts but will happily take on the criminals who end up in the Mars Arena. Iron Lord wears heavy armour (which is mainly the exterior of a scavenged power armoured suit) as he likes to take on large numbers of beasts/criminals or the larger nastier critters. He dreams of glory in the arena and he hopes one day to face a Ambull in the pit. 

The Machinists cult: 

The Machinists cult is obsessed with cyber argumentation and improvement. They think that mankind can only survive if they merge with machines. The less human and more machine, the closer to holiness and higher the rank within the cult. Many cult members are a strange mix of human, scavenged power armour parts, robot parts and everyday post apocalyptic machines. Their “temple” is a old argumentation hospital a few days walk from the last city. The cult is considered too weird for the Last City and are banned from the city. That doesn’t stop new recruits trying to find converts on the roads to the city. 

This group is a mid level machinist cultist and low level cultists are typically found on the roads near the city. Another job of these teams is to find old robots, androids, power armour, machines and bring them back to the temple. These machines are then cannibalised for future argumentation. 

I have extra figures to add to this cult, mainly from Ramshackle Games. 

Colin Robinson:

“Hey, you can’t park THAT there!” 

Introducing Colin Robinson, the Last City’s only Traffic Warden. The Authority do not like vehicles blocking roads vital to defence of the outer junk walls. They needed someone to to help keep the roads clear and something to keep Colin Robinson busy. 

Colin Robinson carries a autopistol because the Last City isn’t a real civilisation like the old days. Things turn ugly quickly and in the blink of a eye you are in a fire fight with a group of psychos angry at the ticket you just slapped on their old jalopy. Old Colin isn’t stupid though, he only slaps tickets when there is a squad of Future Guard or Black Guard nearby to back him up. 

The figure is a old repaint of mine. I just changed the hat band colour to yellow (a traditional colour for U.K. traffic wardens up to the millennium). The figure is a soviet commissar from a WWW2 line (Westwind?). I named him after the energy vampire character in the “What we do in the shadows” TV show. If there was ever a job suited to a energy vampire, a traffic warden is it. 

Thanks for looking. Stay safe out there.