Back to the Desert

I have recently been reading Patrick Macrory's excellent history of the First Anglo-Afghan War, titled "The Fierce Pawns." This got the colonial juices flowing again in my brain and I decided to rake out my 10mm Sudan. There was actually more painted up than I remembered, enough in fact for a small game. So I threw together some rules (which have since gone through several revisions) and had a few small games. I took a few pics of the first couple games. The rules are now quite different from how they were in these games, and I seem to be closing in on a good workable system. Perhaps I'll post the current draft soon if anyone is interested?

I also uncovered the many packs of unpainted 10mm Sudan minis I have lying around. Lots to paint! And I wouldn't mind ordering a brigade's worth of Egyptians...

I also need to make some desert hills, as the cliffs seen in these pictures are probably much better suited to the NW Frontier than the Sudan.

Chaos Terrain Piece

Inspired by this, I decided to try my hand at making some melted styrene Chaos terrain to accompany my in progress Nurgle army. I simply put some random chunks of styrene (of the thick blue insulation variety) onto a CD base and sprayed with a generic cheap black spray. The first attempt was a failure. I used too much spray and the foam just melted into a puddle. The second attempt I didn't spray as much paint and it worked like a charm. I used the end of an old brush to pull some of the molten foam around, which resulted in the stringy gooey look of it. I made some milliput balls of varying sizes for eyeballs and stuck them into the foam, along with a few arms and things from the bitz box. Once dry I painted it. I tried to go for a fleshy sort of look to parts of it, while other parts are just a toxic green mess of disgustingness. The camera flash makes the colours look a tad different. The puddles of toxic goo appear yellow in the pictures, but are actually a bright toxic green in real life. I added some clear shiny nail polish to the eyes and the puddles of goo to give them a sheen, which doesn't really show up in the pictures.

This was an easy and fun project, and I am very pleased with the results. It reminds me of early 90's death metal album colours, which seems fitting for Chaos.

Also note my first squad of Dark Angels making an appearance.

 

Something that may be of interest...

For anyone who might be interested, I run a tumblr blog dedicated to all things Victorian, Edwardian, and British Empire (with some additional oddities thrown in). Have a look here.

The Lost Battle And A New SNAFU

The following pictures are from a game I played over a year ago. It's been so long that I can't remember much about it, other than that it was a playtest of an earlier version of the SNAFU vehicle rules. Still, I thought you lot might appreciate the eye candy.

In other news, I had a great weekend at Trumpeter Salute in Vancouver. I picked up some of JR Miniatures' rubber roads, and got to play MERCS and Malifaux. I really liked MERCS, and wouldn't mind picking up the minis for it at some point, though they are rather pricey.

Malifaux was quite interesting. It is a diceless game, being entirely driven by a standard deck of playing cards (with both jokers left in). This got me thinking about the card based initiative system in SNAFU. The current card system in SNAFU is based on custom card decks for each game, not unlike the card systems of TooFatLardies rules. The problem was that I always found it a bit awkward with how activation cards worked, and specifically the number of them in the deck vs the number of units on table always seemed very flawed and didn't make much sense. After some thinking, I came up with a card system that uses a regular deck of playing cards. I have played two test games with this system and have found it works very well. I also removed all measuring from the game. Movement is from terrain piece to terrain piece, and shooting is at anything in line of sight like Arty Conliffe's excellent Crossfire rules. I used this new movement system in both playtests as well. Together, these new mechanics make SNAFU more dynamic and just plain better. I will be writing up a new edition of the rules in the near future, though it might take a month or two before it appears online, as I have been quite busy with my other hobby (music) lately.

Anyway, here are the pictures from the lost battle.

Men of Harlech!

With my recent jumping back into painting I finished the second unit of Zulu (that has sat half painted for around a year) and put together and painted my first unit of Brits. All are from the excellent plastic range from Warlord Games/Empress Miniatures. The Zulu are painted as the unmarried Udududu regiment (I think, some of my online sources from when I started them no longer exist!). The Brits are of course painted as the 24th.