I sometimes wonder why I start some of these projects, rebasing and touching up the paintwork on these old Empire models seemed like a good idea at the time…
Questoris Knight #1
Although the base is not done and transfers have not been added, I am parking the first Questoris Knight for the moment. I want to come back to the bases when all the Knights are painted so they can have some sort of consistent theme. The same goes for adding the transfers and making sure I have enough of each type to go where I want them.
One lesson learnt is not to spend much time painting the Knights head as it will be covered with the helmet. It is a shame really as I was quite pleased with the eye lenses and the shading…
Salute Swag
When it came to my Salute 2024 purchases, it split into three sections; stuff I wanted to buy, stuff I bought on the spur of the moment, and stuff I wanted to get that was not there.
Stuff I wanted
One of the first things I wanted to pick up were some Black Scorpion models for The Silver Bayonet. I wanted some Spanish musket armed models for a new unit and a couple of other soldier types for the British unit.
For Turnip28, rather than scratch build a wicker man type model, it was much easier to just buy one from Crooked Dice. This chap stands at about 80mm tall and will be perfect as The Tall Man in a Turnip28 cult.
Die Hard Miniatures have some nice Madalorian models that I wanted for the “new” Laser Bayonet. There is a nice mix of models in herethat will fit a few roles.
Having a few extra models available that are just armed with pistols is usually a good idea in most skirmish games.
Seemed like a good idea at the time
Anvil Industries kept popping out pre-build models that could be bought for a very resaonable price, so I decided to pick up a bike and a model that can be used as the dismounted rider. And then then I just liked the Captain America style model in WWII garb.
A large Ogre with a blunderbuss was in on a 3D print stand that will go nicely into Silver Bayonet.
…and there was a nice Occultist type chap with some nice gubbins for my church.
These Shriekers from Crooked Dice seemed like a good idea for sci-fi games when some pop up creatures are needed.
Finally, yet another project for Turnip28 was to buy a base scuttlers model for The Feast of Charybdis.
I plan to build some sort of platform on top of it for three infantry models with long spears. It will also need covering in mud, flock and tufts and generally roughing up a lot.
Stuff that was not there
There were a number of retailers that were not at Salute that are usually present. Ground Zero Games, Ainsty Castings, Hasslefree to name a few. Even some of the retailers that were present did not have all of their ranges so there were a few items on my shopping list that I could not get.
Salute 2024
Saturday was Salute 51 at the Excel in London, the biggest wargames show in the UK of the year. As usual, it was painful on the feet, I do hate the concrete floor, but an excellent opportunity to buy loads of stuff for loads of games.
There were loads of amazing demonstration and display games to look at. The effort put in by all of the games clubs is exceptional, I usually end up with getting a few ideas for my own table.
There were several ship based games on some pretty big tables with some lovely ship models on display.
One of the biggest tables was a massive walled town. It did look great, but I did wonder how it could be used in a game as it would be impossible to reach anywhere near the middle of the table.
This chaos themed floating rock table was rather nice, a setting for a game of Chronopia.
I assume the most expensive display game was the combined masses of Warhammer 40K Titans fighting it out.
As a table is simply not big enough, the floor is required for a game of this magnitude. It makes my Imperial Knights look a bit tiny really.
There were several medieval tables with a nice mix of buildings, castles and harbours, something I like to incorporate into my own games.
There was a very nice trench setup on display, the earth looked like real dirt, but I did resist the temptation to poke it to find out for sure.
The use of resin water was included in quite a few displays, which makes me want to try again on some small terrain pieces to see if I can make it work for a change.
I have a pile of swag that came back with me and I will my purchases in another post here this week.
Missing Bits
One of the many problems of having a large model not quite finished for a long time, is…losing some of the small bits. I have no idea what happended to them, but given the size of these small mounts, I guess it was no surprise.
I had to make two new bits and paint them to blend in. Once they are in place, I do not think they can be seen when the carapace is fitted.
Laser Bayonet
As I have mentioned many times this year, my small but perfectly formed gaming group have been playing a lot of Silver Bayonet. A lot. It is quite simply the best skirmish game I have played for a long time. The activation mechanic is excellent, the 2D10 system is less swingy than the D20 system in Frostgrave and Stargrave and it is so easy to create scenarios and new bad guys!
So, I obviously thought that a sci-fi version of the rules would work really well.
So I have done it.
We have been playing games and rolling dice for a long time and have a lot of models lying around that do not get out much, so having another skirmish game for the sci-fi half of our collections was quite appealing.
Basically it was a pretty straight forward porting of the Silver Bayonet rules with a new list of weapons, Soldiers and Monsters.
The most important consideration was to keep the basic rules rules the same, changing too much would cause imbalance and just break what is a very solid set. The temptation of course was great, a squad of super armoured super soldiers with devstating weaponry would be very easy to create, but would be very boring to play.
I still wanted to be able to have one super soldier in a list, so the answer is just to make him/her a lot of points so only one could realistically be taken in a unit.
We had our first test game and it worked rather well.
The weapon profiles were renamed to be more sci-fi appropriate and in some cases the profile was tweaked a little. We had to introduce a flamer, but that effectively is very similar to a shotgun.
The Soldiers were also renamed and some new types were created. I really did try to not get carried away, honest, but it is very easy to want to add too many new rules. For example, when it came to wanting to add Jump Packs, I added an enhancment to the Sprint rule making it a 4″ or 8″ move bonus. Another example was adding motorised cavalry, but we have yet to actually try out the bikes in a game. They will work similar to horses but have the extra Sprint option.
On the monster side, there were very few extra rules to add. I wanted to use my exotic alien plants, so needed an Immobile rule to make it clear they do not move!
As this game is set in a off-world futuristic setting, the country limitations of some model types in Silver Bayonet is not really practical without introducing a whole new set of headaches. My objective here is to be able to throw any models on the table for a game and have some fun.
For the casting of spells and miracles, I have combined the roles into one Mystic profile, who can choose any three abilites before a game.
We also tried out an Ambush rule, when ever a model rolled a “1” on either die a creature would appear 6″ away in a random direction from the model. However, I did not allow for the dice rolling of one of the units and in no time at all, there were planty of Giger Aliens all over one side of the table. On 2D10, I believe there is a 18% chance of rolling a 1 on either dice. I think this can be changed to any double which I think makes a 10% chance (I need to check the odds here).
There will no doubt still be some more tweaking during our next few games, the first set of updates are already in progress to simplify the weapon options and reduce the number of allergy types I created, but that is all part of the fun.
I may even share…
Going, Going…
There has been a bit of an internet wobble as Games Workshop have announced a bunch of models are going to be retired. These are all from the Age Of Sigmar range that is due to get yet another rules version this year.
As I do not keep up with current versions of Warhammer games, I see this as an opportunity to pick up some of these models on eBay for a decent price. In particular, I would not mind getting some of the models I already have so they can be used to fill out larger units in Oathmark.
Quite a few of the models are Warcry warbands which is a little surprising as they are not that old in the greater scheme of things.
Luckily I already have a good number of these models, some are even painted!
The Iron Golems were the first Warband unit I finished for Warcry from the original starter box.
The Untamed Beasts were the second, one of the first batch of models I used contrast paints on and the results were pretty good.
The Unmade are not painted yet, in fact they are unmade at the moment (okay, so that was bad).
Another of the unopened boxes is the Sprire Tyrants that are up in the Loft Full Of Lead somewhere.
I never really liked the big hat horny Hashut warband, so they will not be on the shopping list.
Mr Steinberg has a few of these, so no point in my picking them.
…and quite frankly I still have other Warcry warbands to build and paint sometime.
Demonic Fleas
I do not remember where these came from, but they make a good random demon creature for The Silver Bayonet.
As these are flying gribblies, I decided to call them Demonic Fleas and give them an appropriate profile.
…they have not made it on the table yet!
Whats Still On The Table?
Although it is a nice long four day Easter weekend, I have not made as much progress on my first Questoris Knight as I had hoped.
This one is a Crusader Imperial Knight armed with an array of decent weaponry. The Gatling Cannon is fixed, but I have magnetised the Thermal Cannon and the Battle Cannon so they can be switched out. I also magnetised the carapace Missile Launcher and Autocannon options for more, er, options.
A Lot Of Chaos
Another of the long term projects is my mish-mash Chaos army for Oathmark and other fantasy games. I seem to have a lot of models that can be classed as semi-chaos and have so far I have made a large pile…
Some are painted and need rebasing and a refresh whilst loads more have no paint and so need a lot more work!
In the trays shown here there are Dark Age Slaves, Koralon slug creatures, Confrontation Chaos Dwarves, Games Workshop Chaos Knights and a few Lost models from Helldorado.
I am trying to just do one unit at a time, starting with the easy wins, getting things rebased and touched up.
A loft full of lead 