Horus Heresy

Man, it’s been a while. I haven’t done any painting since the last post, though lately, I’ve started feeling the urge again. I should get in there and finish my Space Hulk Terminators, but, hmm, something else is calling. I played War of the Ring again about a week ago and I’m jonesin’ for more. I painted all the of the minis in that game except for the North and I really should finish those guys off – it’s only something like 24 figures. I think if I do anything next it should be that.

And then yesterday I saw this. I don’t play 40K but I have always liked the fluff, and the battle for Earth has always been one of my favorite stories (spawning, as it did, from the 4-page short story in the long OoP Slaves to Darkness). Ah, makes me wanna get my old Space Marine minis out and blow up the landscape! Anyway, this new Horus Heresy game looks like it does away with the (IIRC) shaky dice based system of the old game in favor of cards. I’ve been quite happy with FFG’s retreads of old games like Arkham Horror and Fury of Dracula, and seeing this get the FFG treatment makes me very happy.

Yah, it’s expensive, but I’ll find some way to justify it to myself (and most importantly, my wife)!

Lost the buzz

For some reason, I have no desire to paint anything right now. Just lost the buzz. It’ll come back though.

Space Hulk re-paint begins

I finished my “proof of concept” paint job on my old 1st edition Space Hulk Terminators. Well, on one of them anyway. I usually paint one figure in the colors I’ve decided on to see if it all comes together, before I go and do a whole unit.

For these Terminators, I painted them in the colors of my old WH40K Space Marine chapter, the Rising Suns. Obviously, there is a Japanese motif. The base color is grey, which reminds me of the color of old warships. The helmet is white, which symbolizes death. The left shoulder has the rising sun emblem. The various kanji characters are hi/fire (right shoulder), shi/death (storm bolter), and shi/four (left knee). The texture on the base is just painted on, and I added a thin strip of paper to give it a little relief and resemble the decking printed on the Space Hulk tiles.

It’s not the best job I ever did, and the camera reveals lots of flaws up close, but I think these Terminators will look good on the table! At least I think my technique has improved over the first paint job I did on them 20 years ago!

Ready to paint

I finally got all the old paint of my old Space Hulk Terminators. Took a couple of weeks in the Green Stuf to soften up that paint, and I scrubbed it off with an old toothbrush. Back to that beautiful bare blue plastic! Got some new primer today, and while I was at the store, managed to get in a couple of games of the new Space Hulk as well (Endgame was having a “Space Hulk Day” – woohoo!)

On that note, I have to say, my old instincts for that game are a little rusty but a couple turns in, I’d knocked it off and I was bringing the pain! I played the good ol’ “Suicide Mission” as the Marines and got ripped up (of course – that mission is usually death on a stick for the Marines), then I played the Stealers in a different scenario and ate the Marines’ faces.

The rules are basically the same as 1st edition with a few new wrinkles. For example, any Marines on overwatch that jammed during the turn automatically clear jams at the end of the turn w/out paying an AP or CP for it; as long as your Sgt. is alive, you can redraw a CP marker you don’t like (OK, fine, but hardly as hardcore as before); Marines can go “On Guard” which allows a forced reroll of one of the Stealer dice in CC.

Without more play and some analysis I can’t yet say if I like the changes or not. But my brain is pretty hardwired for the old game. But, I’m very happy the timer is still used. I was offered the chance to not use the timer (which I of course scoffed at – no self-respecting Old School Space Hulk player would ever consider not using the timer!).

And I like how the new game incorporated the old Deathwing and Genestealer expansions into it. Sigh – I still won’t buy it but it does look lovely. If I can paint my old Space Hulk models to my current standard, I think it might help alleviate my cravings for the new game!

Space Hulk – still soakin’

Well, my project to repaint my old 1st edition Space Hulk minis proceeds apace. However, I’m still soaking my plastic Terminators in Green Stuff to strip the old paint. I put them into a jar full of it almost two weeks ago and the paint is only just beginning to soften. I guess the paint I used 20 years really cured on to the plastic! Anyway, I’ll give them a few more days and go at them with a stiff toothbrush. Hopefully the paint will come off.

Green Stuff has always done the job with an overnight soaking. So I’m a little surprised it’s been nearly two weeks!

Space Hulk 1st Edition – Operation Re-paint!

So, with the utterly lovely new Space Hulk out, and my not buying a copy since I still have all my old 1st Edition stuff, I’ve decided that re-painting the old 1E Marines and Stealers from the original game is going to be my next project (now that I have finished my Space Lords).

I have all the original minis from the set I first bought in 1989 (none missing), including the Genestealer Hybrids. I also have some lead to go along with all that – two squads of metal Terminators, a Genestealer Magus and even a Patriarch!

But I’ll keep my goals reasonable to start with and re-paint the original Terminator minis that came with the game. I recall painting them 20 years ago, and I think my technique has improved a little since then. This time, I’m really going to try and do them justice. I played dozens and dozens of games of Space Hulk with these minis and these battle scarred veterans have won more than their share of glory.

Here’s what these guys look like, 20 years on.

The original Terminator miniatures; two 5-man squads

Sergeant in the lead

Flamer

These battle-scarred Marines have served proudly for 20 years! Time for a re-fit!

The first thing I have to do is strip the paint off of them, so into the Simple Green they go!

Obviously some sort of Adeptus Mechanus rejuvenation fluid.

I’ll talk about my new color scheme once I have them stripped and re-primed!

Cybertech Bunkerbreakers – Finished!

I’ve got my EM4 Spacelords Cybertech Bunkerbreaker minis finished! I’m using these guys as a special forces unit in the Stargrunt games we’ve got going. They’re specialists in operating in hostile and difficult environments – vacuum, zero-g, poisonous atmosphere, etc. Yes, those are AT-43 Fire Toads. I’m statting these out as Size 2 walkers in SG. The factory grey pre-painted scheme matches what I’ve got on the infantry, though I may repaint – or maybe not. Anyway, I think they look pretty good alongside the infantry and the APCs. The two APCs are paper models designed by and available on the Toposolitario website.

Here we go.

Here’s the infantry.

Three sections of six men each.

2nd Squad

4th Squad

6th Squad

Plasma gunners

Plasma gunner aiming

Command section - Platoon leader, missile launcher, plasma gunner

Platoon Leader

Plasma Gunner

Missile Launcher

Overhead shot of the platoon

1st Platoon, 1st Battalion, 5th PAU Marines

Stargrunt AAR – City Fight

Jonathan and I played SG again last Thursday. For this game we had two platoons fighting over a downed recon drone in a dense urban landscape; lots of bombed out buildings and rubble. For added madness, we came up with a system for underground movement utilizing the sewers!

For minis, I was using my Pig Iron Heavy Infantry and EM4 powered armor. Jonathan was using Rackham’s AT-43 Red Blok troops. I have to say both forces looked fantastic on the table!

I must apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. Next time I’ll use a stand or something to mount the camera on.

Jonathan’s UDSS troops (space socialists!) contested control of a recon drone with my Ramstar mercenaries. The UDSS forces were trying to decode and transmit the data in the drone and my objective was to simply recover the drone.

Manning the barricades

Jonathan’s troops set up fairly close to the objective, then I was allowed to deploy a recon squad hidden. After that, the rest of my unit dropped on the opposite end of the board.

The first turn, both of us moved forward. The UDSS troops advanced toward the downed recon drone and set up a defensive perimeter. I got the bulk of my platoon on line and began advancing down the left side of the table with my infantry, while a squad of power armor troops went up the center and the APC moved around to the right.

My recon squad revealed itself on the floor directly above Jonathan’s HQ squad and pinned them down, only to come under heavy grenade launcher fire from his heavy power armor troops in return!

UDSS HQ squad about to get jumped!

Ambush sprung! So happy to see you!

Street fighting men

My troops going down the left chased a UDSS squad out of one of the buildings. Once I’d invested my troops in the forward buildings, Jonathan sent a squad through the sewers that came up behind my troops in the building they’d just left! This resulted in a furious shootout at close range, after which I turned my troops around and attempted to close assault. I blew my movement rolls and was only able to get right up on the enemy. Literally there was only a wall between us!

Chasing them out! That white poker chip is the sewer more enemy troops popped out of!

What followed was both squads using their activations (and extra HQ activations) to fire at each other right through the windows! In the end, the UDSS troops took some hits and wound up retreating back into the sewers.

Point blank shootout!

Jonathan got his tech squad over to the drone, picked it up, got into cover and went to work. Realizing I was getting bogged down on the left, I tried to press forward in the center and on the right. My PA troopers blazed up an enemy squad in a forward position, eventually close assaulting them and causing a lot of casualties. But the advance was not as fast as I would have liked.

UDSS squad seizes the objective

Power armor assault

With his tech troops working on the drone, I had to try and slow them down, so I drove the APC forward and right up on them! The result was an insane exchange of fire between his PA troops and RPG armed troops. Rockets bounced off the thick front armor of my APC, but I wound up with maximum Suppression markers, making the vehicle a sitting duck. Eventually, one of the rockets got through and disabled the APC.

APC coming up the flank

Rolling onto the objective

The UDSS cracked the code on the drone and although their first attempt at sending the data was stymied by ECW jamming, they would have eventually gotten the roll they needed. We had to stop the game there because of the time.

UDSS tech squad under the gun

It was a fun game and well played by Jonathan. His troops were Green but had High motivation (meaning they didn’t need to roll for 1st Suppression). That helped but he maneuvered them well. My advance on the left was checked by the well-timed emergence of one of his squads behind me (through the sewers) delaying me there.

The firefights and close assaults among the troops fighting in the ruins on the left were totally insane! I haven’t played a game of SG yet that had troops going at it at such close ranges! The back and forth there was a lot of fun!

My biggest mistake, which surely cost me any chance I had of winning, was not putting my PA troops into the APC and driving them forward to the objective. Although I could drive it over there and cause trouble, without troops to pick up the drone, there was no way I could win.

So, by my count, the UDSS is up two victories (the successful kidnapping of the Kryton Corp heiress, and this battle). Ramstar’s got one.

20 years of Space Hulk!

The most fun I’ve ever had playing a boardgame has been playing GW’s classic Space Hulk, quite possibly the best game GW has ever made. I’m serious about that. I’ve played lots of GW games from the era before they went totally over to 40K and WFB, and along with Fury Of Dracula, Space Hulk is the best.

My first few years in J-land, I played the game a lot. Dozens and dozens of times. I learned the best strategies for both the ‘Stealers and the Marines. I loved the tension of the timer running down, the dice deciding your fate moment to moment, the raw savagery of the Genestealer assault. I really love this game!

I had a look at the extremely good looking new (limited) edition of Space Hulk. Oh my god is it beautiful! The components are quite simply perfect. Fantastically sculpted minis, beautiful board pieces and components. I also had a look through the rules and it appears they’ve simply used the 1st edition rules, rather than the 2nd edition. That means use of the timer, and flamers taking out whole board sections, which is as it should be!

Am I going to but a copy? Believe me I went back and forth about it. But I still have my old set, all the expansions and the extremely rare campaign book. It’s all worn but perfectly playable. The minis aren’t as plush as the new ones, but hey, they were pretty damned good 20 years ago! I took it out last night and had a look through.

If I want to play this game, I can. The new game would be nice, but I don’t really need it. Of course in a year or two, when copies of the new game are going for $300 on eBay I’ll be regretting it but, oh well.

Anyone want to play a game of Space Hulk?

OGRE

I’ve always liked Steve Jackson Games OGRE. The whole assymetrical thing with one giant tank vs. a battalion of regular troops and tanks is just too cool. That and the casual use of nuclear weapons on a battlefield that is a bombed out, cratered boiling hell and what more could I ask for (except maybe, a life…)

Anyway, I got some Ogre miniatures a few years back and here they are. I went a brighter, more colorful paint job on these and I think it worked.

I couldn’t quite get the sharpness on the closeups so apologies in advance for the fuzziness. One of these days I’ll figure out how to get better at this without spending any money.

Ogre MkV – The undisputed King of the Battlefield

MkV and MkIIIs head on

These are the vehicles and infantry from the Ogre Deluxe game. They’re not the classic Ogre designs – those are found in the Deluxe GEV game.

Deluxe GEV – The vehicles in this set are the classic Ogre designs.