Those Who Were Undercoated

 Winter has come, and I am once again unprepared.

Undercoated Family photo

It's too cold to undercoat any of the projects that I want to concentrate on, so I've dug up a handful of already-undercoated models from projects I stalled on - most from years ago - and done a little brushwork on them. Not included here are three models finished from my Age of Sigmar Flesh Eater Courts, because I'm going to do a big project post for those when the whole army is finished. I also have the original Escher gang that I didn't finish for the last Old World Army Challenge I was in, but I haven't been able to do much on those yet.

I'm also working on some terrain, and I'm prepping a bunch of miniatures for when the weather warms up so that I undercoat tons at once. I really ought to plan these things better. Maybe next year...

guerilla leader

Daughter Ryla from North Star Military Figures's Stargrave range. Not exactly a civilian, she's in line with the mercenaries and other ne'er-do-wells I'm including in that project. A lovely, simple little sculpt, the hardest part was deciding what kind of camo to give her trousers and what colour her beret was. Turns out that beret colour is basically meaningless, so I could do whatever I wanted.

Her sword is quite grounded. Swords themselves are one of my favourite sci-fi concepts, but in her case she's a mercenary or freedom fighter and the sword should be quite pedestrian and worn.

definitely baseline human, no xenos dna whatsoever

A (definitely baseline) human monk of the Mechanicus (also North Star). I was trying to go for a very faded orange or saffron look here, involving lots of washes and thinned paints, and then hitting them with all kinds of washes. I think it turned out really well!

His definitely-not-including-any-genestealer skin tone was stolen from a tutorial I found online, but now forget -- maybe this Goonhamer collection? - because I realised his skin was quite knobbly and he only had three fingers on each hand. Because my civilians are grounded in 40k (albeit Rogue Trader-era space opera) rather than a Star Wars 'anything goes' style setting, I wanted a way to place him there. Think it works, and it's a fun contrast to his orange robes.

Biljo 'Buckets', ratling lay worker (and thief)

From Skull'n'Crown's Space Scrappers line (and therefore lying unpainted for a very long time), this guy was pretty easy to paint once I decided he was wearing a grey-blue jumpsuit like some other workers.

He is pretty well-armed though. I don't think this guy is doing his day job any more.

Spangdryll, Space Elf Pirate

Sprangdryll, Space Elf Pirate, also from Skull'n'Crown's Space Scrappers, a lovely classic style flat sculpt. Here he joins my Dark Elf Space Trooper as bodyguards to the Eldar Trader. 

He's in Alai Mercenary Corps sea green and pink with wraithbone weapons, something I prefer to do for Craftworld-inflected Eldar, although that power sabre might have seen better days and is notched and worn.

Eldar trader and bodyguards

Here is this tiny faction. If I used rules Necromunda18, these could work as one of those factions that lets you get extra guys. I'm not really sure how those work.

Arbites investigators

Couple of Arbites investigators (from North Star again). I was definitely inspired by axiom's old investigators here, especially with the touch of blue I added into their shoulder pads. I knew I wanted them relatively monochromatic and more grounded than leaning into their wonderfully cyperpunk style would otherwise go, and his similar work kept me focused.

Senior detective

I knew I wanted the lady to be Black, as in the North Star painting - her pink inner layer comes from there as well). In the end, I wound up using several shades of grey and white, with only the three pops of colour (and the tiny greebles on her cyberwear). Pretty pleased.

Enjoyed giving her a plastic gun. It's Weird and unlike anything else in setting, but for a senior Arbites investigator, makes sense. Let's you run it as anything you like, too.

Junior detective

The more junior detective is a little more grounded still. Ordinary hair colour, less cyberwear - a physical separate torch is a really fun touch. He has blue pants because uh that's what I decided.

Really enjoyed these two - very narrative sculpts.

definitely honest referees

And now for something different. These two have sat undercoated since before you could buy the damn things separately! I bought them from eBay because they looked fun to paint and then I immediately had painter's block. Even just now, they sat and stared at me for two weeks.

In the end, I just decided to do a bad job on them and push through it and they turned out okay.

elf referee

I mean, of course it's a red card. 

Unusually for me - probably because I decided these were being done badly anyway - I actually did add the fake writing to the scroll and, honestly? really pleased with how it came out. Good work, me.

dwarf referee

I think I originally planned not go make him a greybeard, but a) nobody would take a non-Longbeard seriously as a referee, first of all and b) it was way easier.

Again, of course the Big Book of Rules had to be red leather. I did enjoy making the other books various colours, though.

And that's it for the Undercoat Month of June. I have some miniatures to prep and some terrain I've painted and some new projects to plan but I doubt we'll get much more painted before I get warm weather... oh, yeah, those Escher. sigh. why am i finding these so hard.

Project: It's Still About Turnips

 There were worse things than crucifixion. There were teeth.
   - Stephen King, The Strand

action shot of the teeth swamp
(in a forthcoming battle report)

Having finished the Death Guard a few months ago, I decided that the next project would be making some terrain for Turnip 28. I've got mountains of terrain-making supplies, but it's something that gives me a lot of anxiety, being so far out of my wheelhouse. I've been planning terrain for the desert board that my Mantis Warriors would fight over for half a decade, accumulated tons of stuff for it, and am frightened like a little baby.

Turnip provides a way to do this kind of work in a fun, relaxing way, knowing that it's okay to screw up -- that's what the mud is for! Of course, it's still taken me like four years to turn teeth and horrible fingers into actual stuff that goes on a board. In that time, the 'swamp teeth' aesthetic has turned into one of the cornerstones of the Turnip 28 vibe. You see it everywhere - well, fuckers, I had the idea very early! Probably not first, but very very early! I'm just chicken!

cyclopean shepherd stands atop a sunken house
(in a forthcoming battle report)

Anyway, the time finally came to bite the bullet. I snuffled through the rulebook and scenario pamphlet that Max has put together and put together a list of core terrain and a few would-like-to-haves. Some of those haven't eventuated (I wanted to build a sunken windmill and a few terrace houses), but I now have a core list of pieces, which will cover the generic scenarios and some of the weirdo ones:

Impassable Terrain (6x6")

Rotting Fish

Drowned Tower

Defensible Terrain (6 x 6")

Sunken House

Ruin

Dangerous Terrain (9x 9")

Finger Forest

Tooth Pits (in three pieces)

Tooth Bog

Normal Swamps but with Weird Guys (in three pieces)

Walls/Cover (6x1")

Regular wattle fences x2

Tooth walls x2

a pus sheep hangs out at the edge of a tooth wall
from - that's right, a forthcoming battle report

As is traditional, I will go through these in the order I actually finished them. As is not traditional, I'll include a bit more discussion on how I made them and include some WIP photos as we go - so this is going to be a long post!

After Action Report: Reconnaissance in Steel

 A weak sun flitters through the grey dust. Shadows obscure the degraded hills around the township, itself little more than a scattering of concrete blocks hurled against the stone of the settlement like dice cast by a dissolute gambler. An empty god of chance. 

A wasteland planet named for horror fiction is the perfect place for the Canopians to hide a shame that beats in the heart of every liberal empire. Slaves, cast aside for their crimes, labouring to bring minerals to fuel her decadent wealth. Minerals that Lord Ethan would enjoy - but more than that, the labourers sharpen against their bleak stones an urge to revenge that is worth far more than gold or yttrium...

Freetown, Hastur
1100 Lockdown Time 4 May, 30[79]

A couple of weeks ago, Lord Ethan and I decided to throw down again. Actually, we were supposed to play Kill Team, but it's been a while for me and the new rules are different enough that I realised the night before that I wasn't confident in my understanding to play a game. So Mangs was kind enough to pivot twelve hours before deployment to Alpha Strike. A very nice guy.

'Hellhound' in his Archer ARC-2R back-to-back with a Canopian Commando COM-2D

"Remember those scenarios in Mechwarrior 2 where you had to scan enemy buildings?" I said. "Let's do that one with your beautiful city terrain. As you won the last scenario and I have a Recon lance, your pirates can be Defending and my mercenaries employed by the Magistcracy are trying to identify your caches or sympathisers or something and Attacking."

I think the Canopians and Goblin's Paladins are attempting to identify buildings containing partisans loyal to Lord Ethan's Exiles, or possibly access and download caches of information from these buildings - while being careful not to flatten the city. It's a bit much for two entire companies to be going head to head, but I wanted something that felt a bit more tactical than 'can we shoot each other to death'.

Two Exiles assault 'Mechs straddle an administrative building

The scenario is Reconnaissance. This is on p.193 of Alpha Strike but the short version is this: Defender picks 1-6 buildings that secretly are targets. Attacker has to spend a combat round in base contact with a building scanning, or otherwise use an active probe ability (which I forgot). Destroying buildings messes with this, but we avoided shooting them so that's fine. 

If the attacker scans any buildings and finds a target, they get 100 VP. If they find all objectives and get off the board with a lance worth of units, they get a bonus 500VP. If the defenders prevent this, they get 1,000VP.

This is actually incredibly hard for the attacker, as I have to spend half the game not shooting my opponent's 'Mechs. I mean, that's probably fine if I win initiative enough, right? (I win initiative like once all game.)

Exiles assault 'Mechs

Working on this after action report several weeks after the fact, I have once again forgotten most of the details. While reviewing the photos for the blogpost, I further realise that nearly all of the photos taken are of deployment and the literal first turn. I'll do my best with what my 'my child just turned one' brain can manage to sift out.

Exiles Battlemechs take up positions in the mining colony's administrative centre

Mangs set up the board before I arrived at our local game store, as per our tradition of 'first arrives set up' and 'he owns all the 6mm scale terrain'. As he picked a grey landscape, I've since decided that the fight is set on Hastur, a penal colony within the Canopus district of the Magistcracy and therefore deployment distance for the First Canopian Cuirassiers. The terrain is a scruffy village, including a power plant and a sequence of skyscrapers, set against grey hills and open pit mines that look a lot like craters in a different scale.

Today the Cuirassiers deploy their Recon Lance while Goblin's Paladins mercenaries deploy their Command and Fire Lances. 

Lord Ethan's vermin deploy a company worth of ramshackle old spitbuckets that definitely don't beat the tar out of me.

Mining Settlement 37 'Freedom', Hastur

After Action Report: Resistance Training

 I'm working on a project that's taking longer than expected -- partly because I ran out of mud after procrastinating for four days and then hit the weekend, partly because Arthur has been sick, and then my partner and I were sick, and then Arthur was sick and look parenthood is fun but it never ends.

Bakunin Sectorial (c) Corvus Belli

I have a handful of Infinity models because I've been toying with getting into it for a few years now. My friend Musterkrux is a big Infinity-head, one of Goonhammer's subject matter experts on the game, and he offered to give me an intro game back in early April...

After Action Report: Perish in the Pit

 The ruins still gleam in the falselight cast by the engines of the gods, the spacecraft blasting the worldlet's atmosphere with artificial light. It gleams on the ancient temples built above the death-water-from-below, shadows obscuring the ancient, pre-Imperial glyphs and ritualised warnings. Pale-armoured warriors cluster in the dead temple, their plate clicking with the sacred signs that the death-water-from-below always whispers around their gods' wargear. The semi-man hisses a ritual of thanks, his bristling fur colouring with the proximity to the old, old water. The gods war, and death comes. His will be a place of honour once again.

the battlefield. some Death Guard are deployed

Another skirmish last Sunday, a 1000-point game of Horus Heresy against my old friend Camille, last seen in Vicchièneche, one of the chief cities of Saint-Saëns, where their Sisters of Battle were slaughtered by (but defeated!) by the Death Guard. This fight was ten thousand years earlier, with their Adeptus Custodes against my (less mutated) Death Guard.

Death Guard

Siege-Breaker, power axe, combi-flamer, phosphex bombs.
Contemptor with assault cannon, fist, twin-linked bolter
14 Tactical Marines with attached Apothecary
14 Tactical Marines with attached Apothecary
7 Marines with missile launchers

Adeptus Custodes

Helena
Several Squads of Guard
Contemptor with Spear Thingy

We set up the terrain, sort of accidentally creating a ruined temple with several crumbling fortifications and the War creeping in on the grounds. We were joking around that the temple seemed to have once been a nuclear reactor, and the lake and river had formed from the pool - so that's the setting now. Some pre-Dark Age nuclear site that had fallen into ruin and become a place of worship and that civilisation had itself collapsed, and then Compliance and now civil war. 

It's fun making maps and then accidentally creating layers and layers of history to a place.

look at this huge battlefield we don't use (spoiler)

After Action Report: Revenge!

 Reylissa brushed away the still-blistering scrap of pseudofabric. It was warm, wanting to glue itself to the back of her glove, but she shook it away, scowling as it disintegrated into ash. Danika hadn't really needed to torch the thing - it was no face-hugger - but the thick-armed heavy liked burning things. The juve squinted across the ruined stonework they were crossing at their ward. This von Cage, dressed in robes and carrying a very fine staff. There was something Danika should burn. The old man stank of blood, even to Reylissa's inexperienced nose for these things. But he also stank of money, so here she was, escorting the old fool through the rotting domes of Rustwater Gulch...

deployment - a long-abandoned dome

This Sunday just gone, I had my second game of 2025 against long-time usual opponent Mangs, half of over half the battle reports here. I should make some more friends.

Mangs is always a good opponent, generously letting me take lots of photos and notes on our games. This was Necromunda, an opportunity for me to finally bring out the ex-Slave Ogryns which I painted -- in 2022, sweet lord. These are a really fun gang to use, being incredibly daft (as we'll see) but also very hard to stop (as we'll see). Plus, Necromunda is always a great game, especially if you play it like Mangs and I do - starting gangs only, no fucking Tactics cards, relatively WYSIWYG. I'm sure we'd both like to do a campaign one day, but this style avoids a lot of the Modernhammer problems with the game (scale creep, Tactics cards, etc).

Mangs brought Valeria Sly and the Nightshade Crew, who we've met before over in Ghast Grove:

Nightshade Crew

The mission? Escort Guilder agent von Cage. Should be easy money, unless there are ex-slaves in the area who are looking for revenge...

Kanathion von Cage (from Mangs's collection)

Project: Kúrekar

 The nature of the country was, as they thought, so good that cattle would not require house feeding in winter, for there came no frost in winter, and little did the grass wither there. Day and night were more equal than in Greenland or Iceland.
  - from Grænlendinga saga

heathen cowboys

About a year ago, a friend of mine went off the deep end about cowboys. He had some criticisms of Dracula America's timeline and setting (which I'm still not clear about - I'm looking forward to doing some Congregationists once I can convince someone in this town to play it with me), so he pitched a different kind of weird west occult horror game.

I, mostly joking, suggested a Viking cult gang, like some sort of half-century early Heathenry movement, or as if the German Romantics got started early, or if the Norse settlement in Newfoundland had survivors who then wound up in... America? for some reason. It wasn't a very serious suggestion, but I did have a box of cowboys (I really do want to do Dracula's America!) and a ton of Viking bits, so - why the hell not. Let's bash up some silly cowboys, a berserkers with a six-shooter, that kind of thing.

A year later, my friend is no closer to rules or a coherent campaign but, despite my generally slow pace and a thousand other things to do, I spent this week painting up the warband. At the bottom of this post are some notes on converting them to Dracula's America, too.

It got the unpainted miniatures outta my head, I get to show up my friend, and it's a palate cleanse from a ton of grimy future space marines. Pure victory.

After Action Report: Asphalt and Blood

 A bleak and meaningless skirmish on the edges of a galaxy-spanning civil war...

an abandoned bunker amid the ruins of a worthless city

Early 006.M30. Nomirhast Minor. Nomirhüüs-Б. A crumbling suburb leeching off a nowhere township on a minor worldlet, in a meaningless sector of a self-defeating war. The dust of orbital bombardment and the curling after-effects of rad-phages drift over the sludge-grey ruins. Sergeant Caliel Gloss waves a pale gauntlet through the murk, leading his patrol through the silent rockrete guardians. The traitors are here, red-mouthed revenants in their old colours, loyal to the masters who betrayed their oaths. He will find them.

Across the square, past the empty eyes of an abandoned redoubt, Classya-Lablas licks blood from his athame, witchlights burning in his pale brow.

mortem tyrannis: finis

 Thus, all tyrants projects.

Daemon engine. Defiler-class. Cognomen: 3-9-ϴ-27

This is it! The last model for the (post-heresy) Death Guard! Except for that pesky Lord of Poxes, anyway, but I can get him when he's released. This is the last planned model. I've finished another project! Exclamation marks!!!!

mortem tyrannis: lil guys (and an officer)

 I was misinformed the other day when I said I only had four miniatures left for the project...

squirmy wrigglers

Lord of Virulence

I have been going back and forth on including some Nurglings in the project. On the one hand, they aren't really Death Guard. On the other, everybody includes them in lists (not that I've played a game of 40k in 10th) for holding objective markers. They're also cute little guys, and I would be building fun little dioramas for each lot... but I could 'finish' the project quicker if I didn't do them.

In the end, I not only did some (nine!), I bought new bases and some extra models from eBay...

mortem tyrannis: engines, daemon

 Good lord, I've been painting this accidental project for over five years.

Second miniature of 2025: a second Plagueburst Crawler, a Death Guard-unique artillery and battle tank. It was challenging making this different from the other (painted in 2020, apparently - I need to focus better on projects), as the kit is quite detailed and unique, but with limited options to customise.