Homebrew Space Marine Chapter (Rogue Trader)

Work continues on my Rogue Trader era homebrew Imperial Space Marine chapter. I've assembled and painted a number of test figures and finally settled on a color-scheme for the power armour as well as a name: the Atomic Scars.

Shortly after releasing Rogue Trader, Games Workshop began publishing background fluff in White Dwarf magazine. One early article, famously republished in the Warhammer 40000 Compendium, introduced a number of additional Space Marine chapters including some oddball but cool selections like the Sons of Medusa, along with simply baffling ones like the Space Sharks.

I favored the Firehawks of all of these new chapters, primarily because of the more futuristic slant of their chapter insignia: a (presumably nuclear) mushroom cloud.

Designing my own homebrew chapter, I decided to blend obviously "space-age" iconography with other symbols at home on a medieval banner. The first symbol below, came amazingly quick, as did the chapter's name. I eschewed the more obvious "Atomic Swords" or "Atomic Blades"; "Atomic Scars" popped into my head first and still sounds the best to me.


A second insignia design followed the first, after concerns that the original symbol may prove too difficult to draw/paint by hand. I'm hoping a set of custom decal paper eliminates the need for hand-painting dozens of tiny shoulder insignia; regardless, I've kind of warmed to this second symbol.

Why is it so hard to place an image where I want it Blogger?  WHY?

So I'll put the question to the denizens of the internet: which symbol do you prefer as a Space Marine chapter insignia?  

Here's the alternate symbol.  I guess I'm placing it here...

Who You Calling Old(hammer)?

Or... Rogue Trader strikes again.

So glad I kept this stuff

I'm still alive out here, still chipping away at little gaming/art projects. I mentioned in a previous post that 2020 has seen a vast decrease in my blog posting but a monumental increase in actual gaming. 

About this time last year I found a really great local group to end a two-decade hiatus in roleplaying. Due to the global pandemic we quickly transitioned to Discord and didn't slow down. Nearly a year later and we're over 20 sessions into an AD&D 1st Edition campaign.

Even better, I finally got back into the GM chair after nearly 25 years, running a variant of FATE. It's supremely satisfying to create a world and have players tell me they are totally immersed. That immersion comes at a huge time cost however; the long interruption in my GM career made me forget just how much work goes into being a good GM. Therefore, even as I'm just getting back into GMing RPGs, I find my attention drifting to other, arguably less time-consuming interests. Funnily, this follows the pattern set 30 years ago in my gaming heyday.

It was 1989 and I was heavily into RPGs, running or playing campaigns every day at lunch and making monthly pilgrimages to the local small-town hobby store to spend my meager preadolescent funds on ever more gaming stuff. On one of these trips I picked up a copy of Challenge magazine, issue 37 specifically.

Flipping through the GDW magazine, I was enthralled by all this reference material for games I'd only heard of in TSR's "Mail Order Hobby Shop" catalog. When I reached the article titled "The Undead of Space" my RPG train derailed.

"The Undead of Space" featured a new faction and associated scenarios for Warhammer 40000, a game I'd never heard of. I still remember to this day reading the random equipment tables in that article and marveling over esoteric words like "chainsword", "lasgun", and "bolt thrower". I didn't know what to make of all this but even without knowing any of the actual game mechanics I was already hooked by the tone.

My friends and I dabbled in tabletop wargaming via Battletech but the look of this strange British game fascinated us more. Soon one of the group showed up, fresh from the hobby store, with the actual rulebook: Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader.

Roleplaying games quickly took a back seat as we collected miniatures and built terrain in earnest. We were never ones to paint our figures but we packed the games in; so many battles, so much fun.

Leaving for college broke up our game group and post-college time demands convinced me to give up gaming in the early 00s. Yet, even as I purged near complete collections of such classics as TSR's Marvel Super Heroes, Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu, and a respectable Ral Partha miniature collection, for some reason I couldn't part with my Rogue Trader stuff.

And now, the pattern repeats. I've returned to the gaming hobby and after years of searching I've finally found a stable RPG group. Instead of prepping my next GM session however, I find myself inexplicably drawn to the closet where my old miniatures lay waiting. Some, including two boxes of 60 or so beakie space marines, have lain dormant since I bought them off eBay nearly 20 years ago.

So, while I should be fleshing out NPCs, closing plot holes in my stories, making diagrams, and establishing plausible reasons for PC motivation, instead I'm stripping paint off 33-year old miniatures and planning new color schemes.

And I'm loving it.

Two weeks off for the holidays gives me time to work, motivation, and a definitive goal: field two small painted forces on a table with some decent looking terrain.

I doubt I'll get the forces done before the new year but I'll give it a go, likely pitting a squad from my own homebrew chapter of Space Marines versus a handful of Space Slann.

So awesome... so tedious to put together

Even in 1997 I paid an absurd amount for these guys (11 of my 14)

Despite my love for the old Rogue Trader book, I'll instead use homebrew rules for the actual battles, combining original ideas with great nuggets borrowed from various systems like Stargrunt, Song of Blades and Heroes, and others.

I guess I could try the newest edition of Warhammer 40000 but... why?  Did you know GW is on the 9th edition? 9th?! They can't get it right after 8 attempts??

All joking and faux GW-bashing aside, I'm not using any contemporary rulesets because my fights will be solo and my homebrew is built from the ground up to be a solo skirmish game. And besides, for me there is no other WH40K than Rogue Trader.

My friends and I eagerly jumped on the Warhammer 40000 2nd Edition bandwagon when that boxed set came out in the early 90s. It only took one play for me to decide it wasn't for me. Too slick, too homogenized, too dumbed-down. The rest of my group embraced 2nd, and even 3rd edition, but whenever it was my turn to pick the game I insisted on using the Rogue Trader rules.

I guess even back in the early 90s I was doing "Oldhammer". In my mind though, it's just Warhammer 40000. The only 40K that matters. Stripped of mystery-killing "lore" and standing proudly at only 28mm.

Scratchbuild Spaceships: 27 Apr 20 Update

I completed assembling a new spaceship miniature this weekend, after sculpting and molding the master the previous week.  Normally I try to cast up a small batch so I can paint multiple ships together to ensure a uniform paint scheme.  I was so enamored with this design however that I had to glue it all together and paint it up.

 

(L to R): Impression mold, master cast, mold.  Cast miniature up top

Scratchbuild Future Micro-armor: Heavy Tank (Complete)

I finally finished assembling and painting the platoon of four heavy tanks I fabricated (sculpt, mold, cast) last January (2019!).  I'm not planning on any micro-armor games, I just want to clear off the workbench of these unfinished projects.

I only show one tank here because as I experimented as I applied the various dry brush layers.  It wasn't until I got to this fourth tank that I was happy with the results.  Or maybe not happy, more like tired and beaten, resigned to accept the crap job and just call it done.

About 35mm long

I started out with a bad-ass futuristic turquoise tone but as I piled on the paint it slowly evolved into a pretty mundane looking drab green.

I still love this sculpt though, especially the little touches like the notches in the main-cannon muzzles.  The turrets are removable and feature a small disc (not shown: forgot to photo) that sits perfectly in the central ring on the hull.

Solo Tabletop Spaceship Miniature Rules Playtest: Iteration 1000000

3x2 inch card for newest solo space game

I mentioned in my last post that a (non COVID-related) hiatus from work would give me more time to blog. Since that was early January, the evidence clearly points to the contrary. Actually I’ve been doing more gaming since my high school days and loving it; I just haven’t been writing about it. I’m lucky enough to be part of two RPG campaigns and, when I’m not gaming with those groups, my solo tabletop wargames continue.

Last year I released the final version of Greater Space Battles, my tabletop starship miniatures wargame designed for solo play. While I’m very proud of the production as well as the mechanics, I’ve found the game just lacks something. It’s smooth, it works, it just seems a little too beer-and-pretzels.

Accordingly, I’m playtesting another set of solo spaceship rules, this one melding ideas from all of my previous solo space battle rule iterations.

I think the reason Greater Space Battles feels lacking to me is that I was raised on Star Fleet Battles: if a space game isn’t tedious, it must not be right. All joking aside, there is something about “energy allocation” that just captures the feel of being on the bridge of a complex interstellar warship.

My newest iteration therefore returns to an energy allocation grid concept, similar to the one I used in Greater Space Battles Version 2.0. I’ve changed this newest grid from a 5x6 to a 6x5 matrix (rows and columns respectively) to facilitate some new, and I feel better, rules.

The new ruleset also reflects a huge philosophical shift for me, as I’ve abandoned widespread on-table token use and returned to paper record-keeping. My rules have always been token heavy, as I’ve found this vastly speeds up play. Pre-game construction and post-game storage of these tokens (often dozens, if not nearly a hundred) represents the prime drawback to this philosophy, and a major hurdle to set-up and hence play. It doesn’t matter if the rules mechanics support fast play if onerous set-up means the game will never start.

In an attempt to keep the paper record-keeping minimal and preserve some production values, I designed some quick 3 inch by 2 inch ship cards, featuring the system grid on one side and a ship diagram opposite, used for recording offensive and defensive energy use. Clear packing tape laminates the cards allowing temporary grease pencil records.

Raiders at bottom, defenders at top

With the new cards in hand I set up a quick scenario. Side A, shown in the next two pictures, must escort the transport with vital supplies from the small terraformed moon to the airless moon, on the other side of the board. Side B, the raiders, obviously want to stop them. The next few pictures illustrate some of the rules concepts.

Defenders

Raiders

Energy allocation example

Since it’s a solo game, the energy allocation grid is used to constrain, but not eliminate, player choice. In the picture shown here, the dice dictates that the solo player chooses between only lines 1, 2, and 4; line 3, the weapon-heavy energy path with four “Attack” actions, including a special weapon, is not available.

Energy allocation roll: need a "6".  Oh no!

The next two pictures illustrate how random rolls add a great deal of tension to the game. The two medium capital ships (ship size 3) orbiting the large planet start at Speed 0 when long range scanners identify the raiders entering local space.

Obviously both ships would ideally use energy path 6, as it features the most “M” Movement actions. Unfortunately, the dice offered the worst possible choices instead, limiting the available options to the weapons-heavy line 1, or the defensive-based lines 2 or 5.

Auxiliary thrust roll: need 4+... uh oh.

Luckily, all ships in good repair still have auxiliary thrusters to help them move: they just have to roll above their ship size to earn an extra thrust point. As shown in the next picture however, the dice again declared otherwise, with the ships earning a measly one thrust, just enough to change facing. Obviously these captains were reprimanded for their poor readiness and sluggish response.






I’m four turns into my playtest and so far loving the new rules. I’m making tweaks turn-by-turn but I think it’s settling into the final shape.

Final thoughts: I originally envisioned these ship cards as generic, with an empty space to draw the energy grid in with semi-permanent alcohol pen. The technique worked for this first playtest but proved extremely time-consuming to roll up and fill in the card by hand.

I’ve since made a crude but effective “shipbuilder” file for MS Excel, which randomly generates ship cards that are ready to print. I’ll just print out (and laminate) new cards on junk mail or other pieces of scrap paper.

Automated Shipbuilder Input (bottom) and Output (top)

  

Scratchbuild Spaceships: Space Trucks Complete

Complete!

Very happy with the results on these, even if the pics don't do them justice.

The camera on this iPhone is incredible: it's too good.  The miniatures look great on my little phone screen, just like my eye sees them.  Then I transfer the pics to this computer and on the big screen I can see every gory detail, every errant brush-stroke and glue blob.

Tried to do a checkerboard pattern on the antenna... tough!

iPhone generates a moire pattern on the hex mat... not perceptible to the naked eye thankfully.

Scratchbuild Spaceships (WIP): 7 Jan 20

I'm lucky enough to have enough time recently to do what I love: making little spaceships.

I made the "glamor" pieces, the top hulls of four different designs and duplicated them using the techniques previously discussed here (three copies each).  The first design was shown last post; I already have those three bad boys on the game table, testing out some new rules.

I'm currently working on the second set of ships, shown here.  They're about 85% complete on construction; the bottoms still need one or two details.  The exhaust nozzles will get filled in with putty and details sculpted in.

Painting follows of course and I hope to have them done in the next few days.

Not sure how I feel about this design.  It's kind of pedestrian, like a space truck.  The scanner antenna on each ship makes the design pop a little.

mmmmm... medium cylinders

The second pic shows my spare parts bucket which keeps all my pasta building materials organized.

Early stage of construction

 

Flight stands make detailing the bottoms easier

New Year Scratchbuild Spaceships: Complete

I'm complete with my newest scratchbuild spaceship miniatures and very happy with the results.

My plans to pit these ships against some foes in a game of Greater Space Battles ran into a new wrinkle, literally.  Unfortunately, when I stored my vinyl gaming mat in the attic, I sloppily folded it instead of rolling it back into its storage tube.  The previous summer's temperatures means my beautiful space mat now features deep creases, making it currently unusable for gaming.  I'll spend the rest of the afternoon stretching the mat out and heating with a hair dryer; hopefully that will straighten it right out.