The Emperor's Children Seek Allies! Enter House Seneca

Having played a fair amount of games with my EC army I’ve begun to branch out some. The main reason is due to encountering an opponent that my army is ill equipped to deal with. My latest challenge has come from a Thousand Sons player that fields all terminators usually with Magnus to lead. Being in a special Rite of War for Thousand Sons, all of these Terminators have force weapons and a 3++ save. I realized that I could really use a D weapon to cause some pain to this unit.

I decided to not only to begin including a unit of 10 Volkite Culverins, I also wanted to take an Imperial Knight Errant. Being a fan of Legio Mortis I decided that I would have this knight come from House Seneca, which has sworn fealty to Legio Mortis. Bonded houses tend to match the colors of the legion they support so that’s how I will paint my knight, in Legio Mortis colors.

My hope is that once one of the Thousand Sons Termies teleports in my knight will be able to charge in and dish out some D weapon wounds which have the best chance of knocking out 2 wound termies with one failed wound. My next game is coming up soon enough so we will see if this was effective or not.

Game Design: Revision Pain

Revisions on your game design project can be tough. I’m currently overhauling my game board to be more simplified (per playtest feedback) and the simplest, most cost effective option is to pull off labels and repaint areas of the board to fit my latest revision ideas. In hindsight I should have gone with a simpler medium instead of watercolors on cardboard.

New map in progress. Goodbye UK, India, and Brazil as playable nations!

Additionally I included some special order miniatures from Shapeways that I may end up not using. Per play tester feedback the unit options are a bit daunting. Considering this I will go with a “less is more” strategy. Sadly, I will miss some of these really cool minis!

US F16 and Russian Hind from Shapeways

Custom game cards still in use... For now

Making these choices aren’t easy, especially if you’ve already invested some money into the beta version of your game. I decided that I would rather build a game that is fun to play as opposed to looking really cool. If I could get both on target then that would be great, but I primarily want people to look forward to playing Rogue States.

On one last note, be sure to document your sessions so you have a reference of what went well and what didn’t. My friend Matty from 1000XP had these booklets made for their game design efforts.

Game Design, A Lengthy Process

Rogue States first playtest

Hello readers! Some of you may have visited this site during it's previous incarnation "Fulgrim's Stage." You may have noticed a name change. I wanted to broaden the scope of what I covered on this blog. I will still be posting miniature games articles periodically.

What I wanted to expand into was the process of game design. Most people who like to game have had an idea for their own game at one time or another. Sadly most of these ideas remain in the ether and are never realized. I'm going to share a project I'm currently working on called Rogue States: Axis of Evil. It's a strategy board game that I've had stuck in my head since 2004! I've only really begun the design process in earnest about 2 years ago. It took me a long time to get started because I really didn't know how to begin, but having some friends who have successfully kickstarted their own game and visiting a design workshop at Emerald City Comic Con I finally stopped making excuses.

Where to begin? Well, I started with a concept. I wanted a game that had some elements of Axis and Allies, but was based on modern day events. I started a word doc and wrote up a basic synopsis and what happens in a turn.

Once I got a basic game mechanic down I went on to find proxy game pieces from various board games. I made a map with pencil, pen, and water color on a basic cardboard trifold. I went a little beyond with my map so any basic drawing surface will do with pencil alone. Note: I already have to make a new map after the first playtest, so do something that is easily modify-able!

I consider this the first step. Next, find some playtesters to try it out and give candid feedback. I'll be posting some more articles about my Rogue States project so be sure to follow if you like strategy board games!

My word file "rulebook" is a living document

Painting Harlequins for Shadow War Armageddon

Having had the new Harlequin plastics for a while I finally decided to complete a few for Shadow War Armageddon. I wanted my theme to match my other Eldar armies with darker, cooler colors. Duncan has an excellent video guide for painting Harlequins. The diamond pattern is a challenge, but I thought it was necessary to learn it because Harlequins just aren’t the same without it.

Having played one game already with this warband I am impressed with what they can do. Opponents who aren’t aware of how good their close combat ability is will have a rude awakening. One tip I have is to pick off stragglers on the periphery and still use cover as you close in because a -2 to hit can really hinder any shooting.

I’m working on filling out this warband with a Solitaire, Deathjester, and Shadowseer down the road and I hope to share them in the near future.

Growing the Army

I have been working on this Horus Heresy project for just over two years now and was at one point getting to where I would be adding in the last few units, namely a 10 marine strong Veteran unit which is about 90% done, a second chaplain, and the new FW Eidolon. Out of all my projects within the last 4 years I have had the most motivation going into this and I think it largely had to do with wanting to build a pre-heresy/heresy army for about a decade and also the quality of the models released by FW. They are some of my favorites.

Right now I’m sitting at roughly 2700 points and after I add in my final minis I should be able to field 3000 points with some options. The idea that I had going in to this project is being able to use a loyalist force of Emperor’s Children for Istvaan III scenarios or using a traitor army for later heresy gaming. I haven’t used this army in it’s entirely yet, only having played a handful of games so far. I tend to lose more than win right now so I've begun to rethink some ideas that I first had when building this army.

I'm going to try just running one chaplain with my assault marines and Eidolon to give them some much needed hitting power. I will likely drop the 2nd chaplain in favor of a Company Champion that will open up the Maru Skara. The assault marines might need to be larger than 10 since they are often the target in early game.

My footsloggers will need to be in larger squads or in a transport. The pic on the lower right is my last win and having the larger legion tac squad did help with their ability to soak up damage and hold objectives.

Phoenix Spears are almost a must have for and squad expecting close combat. Having to challenge in combat can be a liability if you don't maximized your chances of winning. Artificer armor is frequently used by my opponents and the phoenix spear can hit first on the charge and cut through at AP2.

Going into 2017 I will have more units to choose from. A land raider Spartan will be helpful for delivering Eidolon and his Phoenix Guard right to where they are needed. Some scimitar jetbikes might help on my flanks or working in concert with my assault marines. I will provide more updates as I am making progress. Stay tuned!

Horus Heresy Project: Abhuman Helots, Imperial Squats

Time for a much needed posting. After having hit my last project goal of painting 2000 points of Necrons I decided I wanted to switch gears back into Horus Heresy mode. I already have 2000 points of traitors (EC) painted up, but I felt like I also needed a force to represent the loyalists. I couldn’t quite get into the mood of painting yet more power armor so I considered my options, which there are a few non-legion armies available for Heresy Era gaming. I narrowed down my choices to an Imperial Cults and Militia list. By far I think this is one of the most flexible armies available and it appears in volume 5. I used to play a small Squats army in 2^nd edition 40K and saw that this army could be replicated somewhat by taking the options of Survivors of the Dark Age and Abhuman Helots. Some of the other forums out there like Dakka Dakka and BoLS have shown the Technomartyr Studio conversion before. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any comprehensive project log for someone making a Squat themed ICaM army. That is what I would like to do over the following months.

This army would represent one of the Homeworlds that allied with the Imperium against Horus, but also has a history of fighting xenos threats during the great crusade. I will have more vehicles in this army than in my EC traitors.

I already had a small amount of minis already painted that I will integrate into this list.

Classic Squats in all their glory

I think one of the hardest parts of a project like this is building up a collection of models from a discontinued range. Luckily I can find most of what I need off of Ebay, but I also wanted to do some converting based off of WHFB (AoS) Ironbreakers and Space Marine Scouts for my Grenadiers. Having to have a minimum of 20 in my army I thought this conversion would be more sensible than using Exo-armor or Hearthguard minis. This conversion is fairly easy, I only needed to do some trimming for the shoulders and filing down the feet. Some green putty is needed to close some gaps in the arms. I also used a Death Korps of Krieg backpack to give it more of a future battlefield element.

I will also be using some classic Squat plasics to represent my lighter armoured militia.

 

I’m gathering up more minis to fill out this army and hopefully I can make enough progress to display on this forum. Stay tuned for more!

Astral Claws Project Part 2

Despite the longer than normal breaks between my postings I am still working on the Astral Claws. The latest addition to my army is a unit of assault terminators. I envisioned them striding alongside Lugft Huron wreaking face.

Eventually I would like to have all of them mounted in a Land Raider Crusader since that is the best means of taking assault terminators into combat. It would be a great fire magnet, albeit expensive one.

I had a lot of fun painting this unit up and it was a nice break from painting ordinary line marines. The blue and the gun metal layered easily over the black primer. The only challenging part is the gold bits. I still use an old pot of citadel Burnished Gold, which is reaching the end of it's life sadly. I have to start with Vallejo copper, the work my way up to Shining Gold, and finally to Burnished with some 50/50 Mithral Silver highlights. I use plenty of Nuln Oil wash over 90 percent of the model.

If I am able to keep my motivation towards this project going I hope to finish up my line marines and start building up some transports. If I capitulate it will be because I couldn't resist the lure of the Genestealer Cult!