Grots, gretchin, gobbos

There are still a couple of projects that I completed last year that I haven't had a chance to share, so I'm remedying the first of those now. Especially seeing as one of the units in question is about to receive a handful of reinforcements when 11th edition Warhammer 40,000 drops next week.

I first showed these diminutive lads, who basically serve as the cannon crew/fodder for my Ork Armoured Brigade, back here and here. At that point they were in a noticeably less complete state, but I'm now pleased to say they are fully painted and tabletop ready. At least until the seething contents of the aforementioned Armageddon 40K box spill out to bolster their ranks again.

My frontline 'shooty' Grots are a mix of the metal models created by Citadel designer extraordinaire Brian Nelson (released around the time of GorkaMorka), plus the contents of the Ork Gretchin box that followed soon after (when the range started to transition to plastic), and then a few minor kit-bashes based on bodies from the old Gnoblar range.

As with most of my armies and collections I like the idea of individuality. Wherever possible I try to vary markings, skin tones and clothing colours, even at a lowly troop level. Also, if appropriate, I like to have a few subtle size differences in there. Troops of different heights to mirror the diversity found in the real world. With Grots, if you get particularly small fellows, there's always the chance they might actually belong to the oft-overlooked Snotling caste.

In keeping with all my Ork vehicles I wanted the Big Gunz to feel heavily mechanical, brutally functional and a little haphazard in their design. So I eschewed the official Citadel models and instead spent some time (a good few years ago), scouring the internet for kits and parts that could help me achieve this. I ended up buying a few different cannons from various places, including an earlier version of this Orc Howitzer from Kromlech, and a bunch of others from a couple of now-long-forgotten Kickstarter campaigns.

And because my Big Gunz were either scratch-built, kit-bashed or converted, I didn't have any crew for them. As a result I then spent several months loitering on eBay, searching for more models. Most of my artillery, including the Lobbas directly below, are manned (or perhaps 'goblinned') by a mix of Brian Nelson's models from the legitimate Big Gunz release, the Forge World Grot Crew, some plastic lads from the Ork Mek Gunz kit, and whatever else I could lay my hands on at the time. 

'Whatever else I could lay my hands on at the time' includes a few old metal models from the classic ranges back in the 80s or 90s. These older Citadel Gretchin models had slightly different facial designs, so I gave them minor re-sculpts to subtly alter the shapes of their noses. I think one of them is holding the parchment sign next to the second of these Zzap Guns.

I also made a crew member by converting an older Orc model in my collection. The original model, from the Oldhammer era, had a much smaller body than contemporary Orcs and Orks, so I think I simply swapped his head for a plastic Grot one from the fantasy range. He's in the first of the below images of my three Kannons. 

I'm aware there's only meant to be two crew members per gun, but I think I got carried away. This project was such an interesting mix of different pursuits and skills that I lost myself in the enjoyment. Especially the construction of the cannons themselves. Below are some work in progress shots for those who like to see behind the curtain. 

Oh, and one last thing, one of the Grots was missing when I took all these photos, but I've just found him lurking behind one of my Orks, (which, let's face it, is fairly typical behaviour for a gobbo.) I've pasted a fresh shot of the culprit at the bottom. In a case of life imitating art, I was somewhat surprised to find it was the very sneakiest of these sneaky greenskins that had snuck off.

The hobby... but better: LoreKeeper.com

A couple of months ago I was lucky enough to visit Warhammer World with my brother and his friend Dave.* The trip was ace, and I strongly urge anyone interested in tabletop wargames or collecting miniatures to make the pilgrimage to see it for themselves. But even surrounded by some of the greatest dioramas on Earth, in the very beating heart of the Games Workshop hobby, one of the biggest revelations for me came directly from Dave.

Dave is a major hobbyist, just like me, but his obsessions lie in slightly different areas. Where my primary focus is on collecting and amassing toy soldiers, Dave's is much more about the actual gameplay. And not just miniature-based games. I think it's fair to say he is fascinated by the way games work. By the mechanics behind the gameplay and the total immersion into the world they create. And being of not dissimilar age, Dave has had several decades to master his passion. He's an expert in almost every area of the hobby, and as such focusses a lot of his talent on being a Game Master (or Dungeon Master) so that others can enjoy the hobby too.

This focus on having others enjoy the hobby has formed the basis of an incredible project that was the aforementioned revelation for me. With the aid of AI tools, Dave has created a website that puts an immense amount of creative power into the hands of would be gamers.

LoreKeeper.com is a site designed to bring narrative gaming ideas to life. A site that can help you build worlds, create characters, invent plotlines and objectives, and visualise them in ways I thought were simply not possible. It puts an incredible level of ability in the hands of anyone who uses it.

In its own words: 'From zero to a fully-fleshed world in five steps. Upload your notes, chat with your AI Game Master, generate content, and export a professional worldbook.'

There are many levels to what LoreKeeper can do and the depths it can master, but on the surface, the one which immediately caught my attention was its ability to make short animated scenes based simply on notes or photographs. Dave fed it a still image of these three Deff Dreads, against a white background, and soon after we were looking at the below video.

I had a play around with it, and without any training whatsoever, was able to come up with the below (based on these guys and this board) in a few short minutes.

And just to drive home the point, while we were walking around Warhammer World, Dave snapped a picture of one of the Thunderbolt Fighters on display, fed it into the mobile app version of LoreKeeper, and showed us the below video, without even breaking step.

If you like collecting models, or are interested in narrative gaming in any of its iterations, then LoreKeeper will probably have something for you.

*Now my friend Dave.

Sticking it to the man... or the woman, or the machine, or...

Today I'd like to share some success I've had with a project that's been on the back burners for about 9 years.

When Warhammer 40,000 Dark Imperium came out, I decided it was time to start a new Space Marine army in the larger scale of the Primaris marines that the new box had introduced.

Space Marines are the poster boys of Warhammer 40,000, so Games Workshop puts a lot of thought into their design. I wanted my own unique custom chapter, so I figured I'd do the same by considering the following details:

• Colour scheme

• Name

• Backstory, progenitor chapter and specialisation (if any)

• Chapter badge and markings

Once I'd had a few thoughts on the above, I drew a concept sketch of what I thought one of my marines might look like, then turned it into a mock cover of one of the codices of the time. (You can see the image and read about my chapter, the Vexillators, in my previous blog post.)

But this is when the trouble started. When I came to actually paint my first miniature, I realised that the last item on the list, the chapter badge, was going to cause some serious problems. I wanted to avoid having to paint a tiny, complicated marking on every single model in the army by hand, so it would be much better if I could somehow get hold of a transfer sheet with my design. I thought about various options, and their cost implications, and realised I didn't want to spend a small fortune on this, so my brand new army immediately found itself on pause. Instead I went off and started playing with other toy soldiers that weren't nearly as needy. Mainly Orks.

But eventually I found the above product. It's a pack of waterslide decal sheets that you can print your own design on, using an inkjet home printer. There are a few different brands now, but these are the ones I used. You get twenty A4 sheets in the pack, so plenty of space to create all the markings and badges that you might need. You simply stick a sheet in the manual feed of your printer, and you can print whatever design you have prepared. I lined up a starter sheet, using Adobe Illustrator, that had a bunch of designs that I thought might come in handy.

A home printer can't print white (as that is provided by the substrate, the white paper that you are usually printing to), so this method only really works for darker designs. In fact I've found that anything that is roughly darker than a mid grey tone seems to be okay as long as you are positioning it on a patch on your model that is roughly lighter than said mid grey tone. So red decals on yellow background will work fine, but a cream coloured icon on a dark blue background will be a non-starter. More on this below.

Once you have your printed sheet you will then need this vital can of spray varnish. You might be able to use other brands, but this is the one that eventually saw success for me. After letting your freshly printed sheet dry for a few hours, you are meant to give it a single all-over coat of this. But that didn't work for me, as the decals curled up and folded in on themselves when I tried to use them, so I ended up giving the sheet an extra two coats of the stuff – leaving about 24 hours drying time between each spray. All those coats of varnish gave the decals more rigidity, but now they look a little too thick on the models. I think it might be best to try just two coats next time.

The other issue I encountered at this stage was to do with the clarity of my printed designs at such a tiny scale. I found that the spread of ink filled in the smaller negative spaces, meaning that the symbols and markings became blurry and indistinct. I fixed this by going in to every design, and increasing the size of the white areas. So things like the gaps between feathers, and the corners of the Crux Terminatus crosses all got a bit bigger, wider or thicker.

Once everything was dry it was time to improve my application method. I've always soaked Games Workshop decals in a beaker of water to remove the back paper, then applied them to the model with a paintbrush. But as I mentioned earlier, these homemade decals were initially curling up and becoming unusable when I tried that. So instead, after increasing the amount of varnish on the sheet, I used a thin tray (actually a cavalry base turned upside down) with just a millimetre of water in it. I only let each decal soak for between 30 and 60 seconds, then used the large tweezers to remove it, brush it lightly against something absorbent like a tissue (to wick away the bulk of the water) then place it roughly on the model, in an area that I had just given a light coat of gloss varnish. I then used a blunt wooden tooth pick to push and pull it into a much more accurate position, using the varnish as lubricant. The varnish soon dries and becomes a decent adhesive, so at that stage another coat of the stuff on top gives the whole thing some staying power.

I decided I wanted to try a couple of test models, to see what sort of improvements I could make, so I revisited this yellow truck and these riot-police-style Arbites Enforcers.

I knew I didn't want to be limited to dark decals on light backgrounds though, so I thought about a work-around for the problem. The decals could be designed as negative spaces, sitting against the darker background colour. So instead of printing the symbol, you actually print a patch of the background colour, with a symbol shaped hole in it. The area on the model where you are intending to place it can then be painted the proposed colour of your symbol or badge, and it will show through the hole in the decal. You may need to tidy up around the edges a bit, but that's infinitely easier than painting the symbol by hand.

The yellow A15 badge on the door of the truck below was actually a dark green decal of the surrounding colour, stuck over a yellow patch on the door.

I don't feel that I've perfected the process yet, and I'm definitely going to experiment with the Micro Sol and Micro Set liquids shown in one of the above images, but I do think I've found a way to finally move forward with my Vexillator Space Marines. More on them soon.

Vexillator Space Marines

The Vexillators are thought to be an Imperial Fist successor chapter, whose creation is usually attributed to the 23rd Founding (the Sentinel Founding) during the 37th Millennium. It was a major expansion of Space Marine Chapters in a concerted effort to shore up the Imperium's military strength, after a series of catastrophic losses in the preceding centuries.

The Vexillators were to be tasked with establishing a perimeter of Chapter-Keeps around the Acheron Subsector and the strategically important Medean Warp Cluster. They were meant to be principled standard bearers of Imperial doctrine, bringing protection and, to some degree, governance to a system that needed both.

But during their initial deployment, upon exiting The Warp, it is said they were caught in an unexpected blockade, possibly by a roving Ork Rok Fleet, which saw them embroiled in a bitter space war before ever being able to establish reliable supply lines and Recruitment-Chapels.

Without resupply or any kind of foothold in their new system, they soon found themselves depleted to such a degree there was little chance they would be able to fulfil their mission in the manner it was expected. So out went steadfastness and tradition, and in came spontaneity and improvisation. Guerrilla tactics favouring lightning raids and rapid withdrawals took the place of more honourable confrontations. Hitting the enemy fast and hard, became their norm. They gradually morphed from a rigidly disciplined chapter, focussed on siege mastery and defence to a more motley force, embracing speed and agility.

Over time these new strategies showed a level of success and the Vexillators were able to establish some ground and replenish their strength. By then many of the new ways had taken root, and they found they were less like their their proud legionnairy forebears and more like pugnacious brawlers. What they lost in righteous superiority, they gained in agile survivability.

In fact, having ward over an entire Subsector of previously embattled planets, started to give the reforged Space Marine Chapter a steady influx of resilient aspirants. It wasn't long before they were able to re-ignite some of the old ways, and even, in the late 38th Millennium, form their own Successor Chapter, the Storm Guard.

This younger chapter was left to fulfil the original role of shoring up the Subsector, while the Vexillators, as self-inflicted retribution for their earlier failure, headed off into deeper space on a crusade to bring the Emperor’s light to the darkness. Liberating and reclaiming lost worlds as they pushed through to long-forgotten systems.

But with the arrival of the Cicatrix Maledictum, and the opening of new rifts in The Warp, contact with the Storm Guard was completely severed, and the Vexillators made the decision to return to the Subsector they had, for a time, called home.

When the boxset Dark Imperium was released in 2017, heralding the beginning of 8th Edition Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K), it also ushered in a brand new range of Space Marines: the slightly larger Primaris. These taller miniatures had been redesigned to more accurately reflect WH40K lore, where Marines are meant to be post-human giants.

The average Space Marine is a genetically engineered behemoth, at least 7ft tall, built like a rhino, with a sub-dermal armoured carapace fused to his rib cage, an even stronger suit of armour worn for battle, dedicated to the art of war, carrying some of the most powerful hand-held weapons known to the Imperium of Man, and encouraged to be the toughest he could possibly be, by pretty much anyone he sees on a daily basis. The lowliest Marine would probably crush the toughest regular human in almost any kind of stand up fight.

So with the new, bigger, plastic toy soldiers, which had gone some way to redressing the inconsistencies with the old range and the lore, I decided to create a brand new force. These were not just to be a bit taller than my previous army, but also more rugged looking, battle-hardened and unique. I wanted a force where every single warrior looked capable of titanic achievement. And, although I loved the new Primaris design, I also loved some of the older marks of (now short-looking) armoured warriors that Forge World had been releasing in the preceding years. So I wanted my band of ragtag Vexillators to wear mixed armour marks, to carry dirt and damage, and to look like individuality was encouraged within their ranks.

To achieve this, my plan was to mix and match parts from the various different sized models, using thin plasticard spacers, inserted into legs and waists to make the shorter warriors look taller. To use different heads and helmets, and a variety of boltguns. To paint their markings in subtly different ways, and to generally treat each and every one of them more like a character.

This is my test model, and I hope to have several more following in his violently rendered wake by the end of the year.

Plagued

Sometimes you finish a task, a chore or a project, put it down, move onto the next thing and then realise that you weren't particularly happy with it. The finished job sits in your mind, gnawing away at you, occupying your thoughts, because it wasn't completed to the standard you had initially intended.

So you have to make a decision. Do you revisit it, or just try to improve the next attempt?

I spent the first couple of decades of my hobby journey constantly repainting the same old minis, hardly ever getting anything finished. But I was always aware of the ever-growing pile of unpainted orcs, chaos warriors, marines, and other assorted toy soldiers, lurking in cupboards or to the side of my desk. Then one day, while moving house, confronted by the sheer discrepancy between finished and unfinished models, I realised this behaviour was totally unsustainable. I either had to finish more and move on quicker, or just stop buying any new miniatures ever again. Obviously I'm completely addicted to purchasing tiny plastic bad boys, and could never give them up, so I really had to change my painting habits.

And I did.

But occasionally that niggling feeling just won't go away. It sits there haunting me, like an unfinished chore. Like a front door that I'm not sure I closed, or a tap that I could have left on. So sometimes, just sometimes, I do go back and adjust old miniatures. It's rare, but it happens.

I was never happy with the skin on a handful of these guys, so this week, rather than painting something new, I went back in and revisited them. I only spent 20 minutes or so on each one, and I'm not even convinced that I actually improved them at all, but at least I've scratched that damn itch.

Boarding action

Before I gave away the two little copses that I mentioned at the end of my previous post, I took a couple of photos of them in-situ on one of the other projects that I managed to get started last year. This is something fairly vital to achieving that truly satisfying feel of a fully immersive, narrative, tabletop wargame.

It's the tabletop itself. Or, more accurately, the board or boards that sit on the tabletop.

Rather than having bespoke builds for every setting, I always favoured the idea of a more modular approach. A bunch of boards that can connect to each other in a few different combinations, spanning a selection of terrain types that can be mixed and matched to create a variety of different locations. And then additional structures that can be added to further change the detail and complexity of the warzone. Ideally, simply by adding or removing items, I would be able to switch between a wide open battlefield suitable for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB), Age of Sigmar (AoS) or Warhammer 40,000 (WH40K), and a dense, multi-layered environment more in keeping with Kill Team, Necromunda, Mordheim or Warcry.

Of course, the more you want to cover, the more you need to build. But by keeping elements as modular as possible, you can start to reduce just how much stuff you need.

Some terrain types made with a fantasy setting in mind might be compatible with a sci-fi set-up. A grassy Ghyran battlefield for AoS could double as farmland on an agri-world in WH40K.  And it could work in reverse too. With a little forethought some Mechanicus terrain elements for WH40K could be seen as steam punk style buildings in a fortified City of Sigmar, or a Kharadron Sky-Port or even a Skaven tunnel system.

I'm not really at a stage to test out these possibilities yet, but I'll keep it in mind as the project progresses.

My initial plan was to create a set of 2 foot by 3 foot boards, that had road points in the middle of each side. Some of the boards would be sci-fi, some would be fantasy, and some might blur the lines a bit. I figured grass, rock or dirt boards should almost definitely fall into that last category. 4 boards would be enough for a standard game of WFB or WH40K, but the more I make the more options I'll have.

With hindsight, I probably should have made each board 2 foot square, rather than these slightly larger rectangles. This would have dramatically increased the scope and flexibility of the final set by meaning boards could be turned 90 degrees to fit together. I'm a little annoyed I didn't work that out sooner, but I've already discarded my first attempt at this project, so I really don't want to start again once more.

With WH40K in mind I also decided I wanted to be able to stack buildings to create different densities. I put together a diagram of how I see them slotting into the base. 

I tried to work out if this system could be applied to a fantasy castle or town as well, but decided it would probably impose too many limitations. In fact it might even stifle the sci-fi terrain too, so I'll just have to see how this plays out.

The two boards that I had to discard were made on thin MDF sheets, about 6mm deep. Once finished and covered in glue and paint they started to warp terribly. So for this reboot of the project I started with 18mm MDF. It's heavy, but its also sturdy, meaning it won't bend out of shape so easily, and is less likely to jolt when knocked mid-game. 

The other benefit of the thicker MDF is that I can carve into it to create depressions. This means a 3D feel can be achieved, while keeping the surface flat to accept buildings and other smaller terrain pieces wherever necessary.

The design of the road varies slightly on the countryside board, so that it can be used with both fantasy and sci-fi settings. I also added a slightly raised area in order to play with line of sight a bit.

This is just the very beginning of the project, but I'm pleased with the finish of these boards, and am really looking forward to having a larger set of them. Although, as ever, I'm not really loving the idea of finding the time needed to create them.

Not quite out of the woods

As an avid maker of models for tabletop wargames, I am constantly enthused and excited by the thought of something new. I spend a lot of time wondering what would look good in my collection, or what would offer up interesting gameplay, or how I could adapt an existing kit into something unique.

Unfortunately these thought processes have led to a completely unrealistic quest to build and paint every single model I've ever conceived of, or dreamt about. And not just centrepiece models like dragons and heavy tanks. I often find myself wanting to start with the basics – like a massive collection of troop units to base an army on, or an extensive collection of multiple terrain types to switch between. Not only does this take up a lot of space in my home, but it also leads to a significant backlog (the dreaded pile of shame), and the mildly terrifying realisation that I will probably never be on top of my hobby goals.

But on the plus side, it does lead me to try a bit harder. To be a bit more motivated. To organise myself and try to get stuff done. And last year I really managed to make a few dents in some of the projects on my wishlist.

One of those was something I was first introduced to right back at the beginning of my hobby journey, in the mid 1980s: a woods. In fact it's less of a woods and more of a copse, but the idea is that two or three similar models could be combined to create a larger wooded area.

So I made two.

I started by shaping a couple of bases from 12 inch by 6 inch rectangles of thin MDF. I gave each board a kidney bean shape, rounded all the corners, then tapered off the edges to create a slope. I stuck bits of an old, broken cork table mat over the middle of each board, in order to raise the height profile a bit, and give myself something extra to stick the scale model trees into.

The first couple of trees came from my old collection of random bits, but then I bought some new ones from Amazon and a couple of online hobby shops (most likely Element Games and Wayland Games), taking care to find trees of differing heights, colours and textures. I had to thicken their trunks with green stuff (two part modelling putty), and also, wherever I could reach them without knocking all the foliage off, give the obvious plastic bark areas a bit of a drybrush with a more matt-looking paint.

Once the trees were secured to the boards with superglue and a bit more modelling putty (roughly shaped to look like widening tree trunks, or exposed roots), I then used some polyfilla (or spackle) to fill some of the gaps in the cork, and shape it to have smoother sloping edges. A few flat but textured stones from my garden were also superglued to the boards at this stage.

When that was all dry, most of the top of each base was coated in PVA, leaving the stones and a few root or cork details exposed. They were then carefully dipped in a mix of coarse sand and small stones, left to dry, and then liberally soaked with a final coating of watered-down PVA to ensure everything was stuck fast.

Painting the base was a simple affair of washing and drybrushing, before various grass flock, tufts, leaf litter, lichen and foliage effects were glued in place. The very final detail was a small sprinkling of painted paper leaves, made with leaf punches, carefully glued into prominent, but natural positions.

After spray-varnishing, my wife saw them for the first time, and instead of her usual allergic reaction to all things wargaming, surprisingly decided she really liked them. Really really liked them. So much so that she thought they would make lovely little desk ornaments, even for those unfathomable folk that aren't addicted to the idea of miniature armies clashing on fantastical tabletops.

So I then started all over again, in order to create two, smaller, new ones. One for her, and one for a friend. (Hence the work-in-progress image above, where there are two smaller, rounder bases with bits of cork stuck to them, rather than the larger, kidney-bean-shaped one mentioned in the text.) I gave my wife hers at Christmas, and delivered the other last week.

Annoyingly for the purposes of my collection, I think these new ones are a bit better than their earlier prototypes. So... I guess that means I have to make at least one more.