The new battlefield. Part 2.

Just a quick image dump for those interested in how my board turned out.
Pretty darn good for the effort and price ratio.

I've recently acquired some second hand scenery on the cheap from Rottimus (He had more than he needed it seems :) ) and thrown them on the board at its largest setting: 8 by 4 feet. With a big game this weekend, a 3 Vs 3, I wanted to do a dry run to see how it looked.

A little bowing thanks to the paint, though I did note the table extensions were off too...

Overlord Hautsi for scale only.

As a side note, a bit of quick thinking on behalf of my wife drew me to the idea of getting these non slip mats.  Cheap and simple, it would ensure that the plates wouldnt slip so easy off the table if nudged by inelegant hips and arses as people went around it.

As I might have pointed out before, there is some significant bowing on some of the plates, probably due to a combination of the paint, humidity and the table itself.  Currently looking into postential solutions for that, that will involve drilling holes.  But this can wait.

Right now, its terrain time!  This Wednesday I'll be sitting down with William of "Space Elves" fame, and making some cheap and sturdy scenery to bulk this out.  More on that soon.

Then there is the game this Friday and Sat while my wife is away at Hobbit Con, leaving the boys (and girl) to transform this unsuspecting flat into a gaming bunker of doom!!

Any scenery ideas btw, please drop a comment below!

Thanks for reading!
R

Gaming board - simple and cheap!

Ok, so finally I managed to get space in our new appartment to feasibly have a gaming table.
APPLAUSE

Ok.  So I have the essential component, an understanding wife.  No, I mean the other component, a table!  The biggest limit in making a gaming table is the legs.  The support to the flat surface you work on.  Some get by this by attaching the legs directly to the table but this presents other issues.  For me, it was all about how big the dining table was gonna get.

I needn't have worried.

Table expands enough to keep overhang to a minimum.

The wood, was 4mm MDF from the local wood and hardware specialists.  Here in Norway its Maxbo, in the UK it was DIY, not sure who it is now.  Somewhere where you by a plate of wood and get them to cut it to size for a modest sum.

Lucky for me, the whoe section I bought divided neatly into Imperial measurement.  Perfectly.
Twas as God intended. O_O #makemeabeliever

So I took the bus over and called a cab back.  Simple! Next?

Well next was texture.  Traditionally this was made to be a shit ton of PVA glue and a deserts worth of sand.  Downside?

• Increased chance of the wood bowing.

•  Sand is easily knocked off. 

•  PVA comes off over time.

So... not that then.  Unfortunately the best solution was spray texture, which as far as I could tell was like blue food colouring, decent tea and someone who understand the law of the sacred queue.  NOT TO BE FOUND IN NORWAY!

The answer came from my wife, who remarked that "effect" sprays existed.  Genius.  Transferable results.  Plodding over to our local home improvement store, Jernia, I had a long chat explaining my intentions with the staff members. After several blank looks one finally flicked his fingers.  By jove I thought, I think he's got it!

Stone effect.  Paint that is water based and designed to turn whatever you want into appearing like granite stone.  Statues etc.  I had to order it in from another store, which took a couple of days.  Though in hindsite I should have asked them to try and mix it to another colour.  The answer probably would have been no, but could have asked!

Anyway, result.  One tub, 4 plates of 2 by 4 feet later and boom!

The next step was simple enough.  Having textured the boards I needed a colour.  Choosing something resembling Dryad Bark (GW), I acquired two tubs and went nuts.

NOTE!  Painting textured paint, even with water based acrylics, will take several coats and much correction.  The 3dness of the bumbs ensure that somewhere some freakin white will come through.  Persevier and be one with the OCD!

Black Forest C Base water based paint, with some basic bulk acrylic.

Sadly the end result over such a large surface area was rather streaky.  You can see where I have gone over in Grey, then a mix of White and Brown being a creamy highlight.  Where I buggered up, I tend to change the tone of that area, bashing out a full tone of grey or lighter brown before highlighting.

I did go back on the first two after I learned some tricks. (Like not screwing up!)

To finish, as its all water acrylic paint in the end, I doused it all in Army Painter No Shine Varnish.  I'm still concerned regarding rub-off, but I think I will steal Zuzzy Mat's idea and layer some packaging sheets in between when in storage.

Although I have no plans to do Flock (BECAUSE F&#K THAT NOISE!), or anything further, scatter terrain is the order of the day.  Rottimus linked me this gem too!


Thanks for reading!
R

Story Time - A dream with no heart part 2.

Mass reactive rounds, crude devices made from a crude alien race, slammed into Hautsi's chest.  It registered the impact as pain, without the sensation it used to bring.  Hautsi missed that most of all.  Pain, suffering, despair.  These were the things that made It's people fight so hard and live so bitterly yet passionate lives.  The cracked ribs instantly began to bend back into shape, repairing on asub molecular level.

Hautsi felt the destruction of the Monolith.  Growling Its displeasure.  These aliens had come here to plunder the planet.  Yet this world was of Hautsi's people, and though a prison, It felt revulsion at the idea of them taking it as there own.

The Overlords original plans of flight evolved.  It would make a stand here, accrue assets through the Dolmen gates to the other Duat structures.

Already Hautsi was connecting with the underlying structures, long silent and abandoned tombworks, awakening all manner of ancient Cryptek constructs and more of the Duats prisoners turned warriors.

Thirty of them held the line infront of It, lazily laying into these strange creatures in curved armour of midnight.  Flesh and bone inside armour.  The symbol on their shoulders had been the thing which had made Hautsi change tactic.  A great Scorpion icon in blood red.

The symbol had caused Its memory pool to run an automated search, for something Hautsi had no memory of.  Yet that symbol struck a nerve.  A ... feeling.  And feelings were so addictive now.

Another artillary shell landed amongst the Lychguard.  They automatically raised their shields, luminescent green energy took the brunt of the primitive explosive ordnance but one of their number fell.  Unable to locally repair it disappeared as if disintigrating, returned to one of the many reanimation halls to be repaired.

The Silent King may well have sold their souls in the process, but in some ways the deal did get them what they wanted.  They were immortal and practically invincible.

But what a cost?!

Hautsi's palm itched, as if someone small was trying to hold it.  It found itself staring a space to Its side, half expecting eyes of brilliant colour to be looking up into Hautsi's eyes with pride.

The half complete memory burned.  Hautsi wanted to kill something.  Kill it and kill more.  Kill and kill and kill.

Across the courtyard, Its warrior phalanx had finally fallen, as had several scarabs and a spyder construct.

Tomb Blades shot overhead, impossibly darting between the ruins and trees to engage the enemies flanks.  Green lighting shot over Its head as another Phalanx of warriors, skulls with blood on their jaws, fired at range at the enemy.

Hautsi spotted a winged alien, his great axe pointing at him in a challenge.  The Overlord returned the gesture and made to charge into the fray with little support.  Suicide. A blissful and sweet ending to the nightmare.

One of Its bodyguard, a Lychguard, stopped Hautsi with a flat palm upon Its sternum.  An intimite and fatal gesture to a superior on any occasion.  Hautsi raised the titanic warscythe in Its hand to strike down the disobediant Lychguard but stopped inches from the strike.  The Lychguards mask was bowed, acceptance to the judgement.  But the flat palm, the gesture was so familiar.

We need you with us. Came a sluggish message across the Cryptnet, from the Lychguard.  The army was not yet fully awoken.  To risk Its own life now would be stupid and selfish.  Selfishly forgetting the revenge of all here in favour of Its own need for an ending.  No.  Such fun would come later.

Huatsi flushed away the rage and gave the order to back away as the enemy was bombarded at range by all the fire power in the area.  It felt humiliation in the gesture, watched as the winged alien was taken down, sensed it yet lived.  Good.  This was not yet done then.

The Overlord felt a confirmation that the flanking attack to the right had been succesful and the enemy withdrawing.  Excellent.

Hautsi turned around to continue Its work within the tombworks of the Duat.  The battle would continue without It.  But the aliens would be back... and in greater numbers.

It was time to see what else was imprisoned here...

Story Time - A dream with no heart. Updated!

* In honour of a game that's going on today, I decided to ahem, Forge the Narrative.



Adept Lywin was not required to eat.  The device embedded across his breast seemed to give him everything he needed, but it did itch, and his fingers tingled.  He fancied, as he looked as his paper skinned fingers, that he could see little lights running along his veins.

“ARE YOU DISSATISFIED?” The Necron asked.

Lywin looked up, across the table that sat between them.  Objects had been dropped across it, exotic xenos things that he had been toying with.  Probably seeming no less than a monkey playing with fire.

“I am not dissatisfied.” He said, still getting used to the Nectrontyr tongue.  So much etiquette had to be observed.  One could never say No to a superior, but you could reply with a truth.  So many laws and loop holes.  Luckily his… benefactor was patient, even curious.

“I was just remembering a day in my youth.  So long ago.  I was-“ Lywin stopped.

The Necron had raised his hand.  The gesture was new, something they had agreed upon.  Where usually he would be hurt or even executed for impoliteness, he had been gifted with this gesture, a friendly warning that he had exceeded his status.

“IT IS PROPER THAT THE HOST TELLS A STORY, BEFORE THE GUEST.  SUCH IS THE WAY.”  The Necron said.

Lywin sat up and nodded thanks.

“I see, I beg continued forgiveness, and thank your continued patience in my inferiority,” The adept said with no sign of insincerity.

The Necron looked down at the table, saying nothing for some time.  The room was very cold, the walls obscured in the darkness not alleviated by the limited lighting that had been set up for him.

“May… may I ask for what this tale may be?”  Lywin said eventually, feeling the hairs on his arms stand up.  Was he pushing too hard?

Silence. No movement.

“YOU MAY.”

Lywin licked his lips and cleared his throat. What he said next burned in his heart. He was curios, but this could end his life.

“You were not born in this form, but what was it like awakening like this?”

The Necron Lord made an odd sound, a moan?

“FROM A DREAM WITH NO HEART.”

***

It was a dream, of monochrome colour.  No pangs of emotion.  Vicarious and pointless yet the Dreamer gripped to the dream like It was hanging from the edge of a grey jagged cliff. The Dreamer was walking through a field of low crops, not alone. Soft young hands in Its hands.  Eyes of some forgotten colour looking up proudly.  It lead the innocent (Did this little creature mean something to the Dreamer?) across a field of dying grass.  A vista of towers, spewing smoke into the sky, stricken with a sickness of sudden bold incandescent green.  People, The Dreamer's people, were being herded into these great furnaces on foot or on the backs of Arks.  Screams could be heard, but they were so far away, meaningless yet itching at something that no longer existed: a phantom emotion. The little thing by the Dreamers’s side, with It’s smile and naivety, pointed in wonder.  While the Dreamer, felt the distant echo of horror, or rather the shadow of that horror.
"Hautsi?  Wake up." Came a voice the Dreamer knew but could not quite remember.

*

It awoke to the sound of barking paradox seals closing, watching as the impossible energies binding them together ceased, ribs of charred barriers rolled across ground lifelessly.  Falling to It’s knees with the sound of metal on stone the Awoken looked around frantically, trying to breath but panicking when it seemed impossible.  Bone coloured gauntlets flashed across Its vision, vision that was perfect and immaculate.  Too perfect.  The Awoken remembered that It had been going blind.

Bringing Itself up onto boots of dense metal, the Awoken side-stepped as a serpentine creature erupted from the wall, gliding through as if it was a hologram. Built like an insect of sorts, the creature flowed around on a large tail of gliding metal.  Attacking again, simple claws of metal struck out.  

The Awoken didn't dodge this time, but grabbed the claws as they came in, wrapping Its skeletal fingers gripping tight and bringing Itself in close to that face of contracting lenses and chattering noises.

Wraith.  The name came as if shouted from across an abyss.  Cryptek slave-tek.  This thing is a device.  A tool. 

Then the Awoken saw Its own reflection.

Raging hands lashed out tearing the largest lens from the Wraith’s sensor array and pulling so hard that the lens and all its connecting lines followed, gutting the machine.  The Wraith reeled back and struck out blindly, its mewling digital-screams ignored.

The Awoken was looking at Its reflection:  A skeletal face. Emotionless.  It tried in vain to strike an expression, a smile, a grimace, a frown.  Nothing worked.  Twin orbs of burning green fell-light flickered as It tried to blink.  What was this?

Realisation was like a Ark Covneyor slamming into him and ripping him open. 

They did it.  They actually did it. 

The Awoken suddenly wanted to throw up.  Skeletal hands lay flat against the ground as It tried to heave food from a stomach that had long since been removed. With a mouth that would no longer need to breath, let alone eat. It tried to weep, but no tears could come, for there were no ducts to make them. 

The Awoken made the sounds of sorrow, Its voice unrecognisable and bass like the recorded sound of thunder, pretending to be as good as the real thing.  Fake. Artificial. 

It ceased trying, reflecting that this is what the Awoken was now.  Pretending to be life.  The life that had been Hautsi the fair, Hautsi of the passing priesthood of the 100 deaths.  Hautsi the just.  Hautsi the last of the honest.  Hautsi of the Old Gods.  Hautsi the rebel.  Hautsi the traitor to the Triarch.  Hautsi, the first to say No. It had said no.  Hautsi had drawn Its priesthood together to begin the resistance and the great transferance, this deal struck on their behalf.

But what then?  Hautsi remembered so little. 
But what was worse, was the emptiness.

A dull ache at first.  A notable pain that existed both in Hautsi's core and then everywhere at once. A hollow sensation that ate at It until it was unbearable a drowning feeling that happened ever so slowly and wouldn't stop, madness threatening on the outskirts of Its mind. 

How was it that Hautsi didn't implode from this abyssal void within!?

Hautsi's cream coloured fist shattered the Wraith's lens.

So be it.  What had been done, was now done.  The answers lay in the future, not in the present here weeping like some seedling.

A feint memory of someone crying halted Hautsi's thinking for less than a second.  But it had been there. 

Hautsi stood up, letting It’s senses scan the region, accessing the local Cryptwork as a man would read the paper.  A great process was under way it seemed.  This… tomb, was being evacuated.  It was… under attack?  Hautsi could sense thousands and thousands of similar skeletal forms freshly awoken, collected and forced through great Dolmen gates.  To other prisons.

A Duat Tomb.  This place was the Duat.  The style was drastically different but Hautsi recognised the lay out.  It had been Its own design after all.  The Duat.  The prison for those too dangerous to execute, in the days of flesh when life was so precious. 

Reaching down to the Wraith’s remains, Hautsi instantly accessed the machines’ Intellect and awoke it violently, ignoring Its begs for repair, It accessed the network for the Cryptek security and dominated as many automata as possible.

Nearly too late, It managed a couple of Phalanx and more besides, remembering some of the more conscious forms as the forcibly biotransfered remnants of his own temple guard. 

The Overlord dropped the Wraith’s remains and derisively stamped down on the machines head, exploding metal compnents across the obelisk black floor with a flash of expended jade light.

Much needed to be done and quickly.

Hautsi, First Priest of the Lord of Bones, Overlord of the Trazian Dynasty would escape this place into freedom.  Then, It would find the rest of his Kin.  Then, Hautsi would make the Silent King scream for his betrayel.

Anything for the Decurion! (An ode to Tomb Blades)

So, new codex.  Which has an amazing formation with formations in it.

The Necron Decurion is a new way of doing detachments and essentially is a Formation with an awesome special rule (+1 to all Reanimations and Ignore Crew Stunned or Shaken on vehicles), made up of Formations which use this rule in addition to their own.  It's new and heavy stuff. And is being seen as somewhat OP by those suddenly losing against Johnny McFail.

I am not sorry for this meme...

The catch?  Well its not really a catch, to get this amazing effect, you need a unit of Tomb Blades as part of the only compulsory Formation the Reclamation Decurion along side 2 Warrior Units, an Overlord (Edit: Or special character or Command Catacomb Barge) and a unit of Immortals.  Oh, did I mention that any Necrons within 12" of the Overlord can reroll 1's on their Reanimation?  Bye Bye Mephrit Dynasty, sorry, but Mommy and Daddy had a new child, and it's name is Better.

Then there all the other Formations, some of which are nothing more than a Formation of 1 unit, like Flayed Ones or Death Marks.

Regardless, I need a unit of Tomb Blades......

FINE!

Interestingly though, as I've been assembling them (READ: Suffering), the Internet seems to have fallen in love with these most odd jet bikes.  For me, its always been the look of them.  I mean they are as aesthetically pleasing as a banana skin to the eye.  They look like they were built by someone on fire, falling down the stairs while being shot with explosive bees.

But that's just my opinion.  And gods help me, it's changing.

F&#k these things!  SRSLY!

Post assembly (beware those shield vanes, read the instructions thrice to be sure), the hefty skeletal look of the Blades has started to become somewhat OK in my eyes.  That's right, I'm warming to them.
Shield vanes for a 3+ save was a must.  No question, for a couple of points you grab that save back from everything at Ap4.  3+ is the best base save.  Period.  Add in the potential for cover saves, throw on the inevitable 4+ Reanimation save, my gods, these things are amazing!

But the main argument regarding them isn't whether you should take them at all, but rather what to arm them with.

Tesla, felt nerfed by some players, arguably reduced with the Tesla rule being denied when snap firing, but how often will that happen?  Tesla, mixed with the Ignore Cover scope can be fun horde killers and at Str 6, can also threaten most vehicles in the butt.

Partical Casters have the bonus for blast markers.  Which Mathhammer-wise has been pointed out time and time again as far superior.  A lot of players seem to include 1 for every 3 as having particle weapons.

For me though?  As you can see, Gauss.  Why?  Well while all options have merit, for me I see these guys simply being a flexible threat.  Mixed with the Ignore Cover Nebuloscope, Gauss can rapid fire all the time, with always having the chance at wounding or glancing.  Its this potential for pain that will keep my opponents worrying about a really small and cheap unit.  Which in an army mainly of huge warrior units, is a bonus.

As usual, I began by spraying the unit along side two other units in Army Painter Skeleton Bone.  I like to work my mass production by Battleforce sized chunks.  The first few phases are so simple and easy that I tend to apply them to all three units at once.  Firstly, this was basing:  Superglue on the sand, building up with more where I didn't want boring flatness.  Then I lathered over this with watered down pva to seal it down and reduce dry friction removing the sand.  The PVA glue really helps give it a rubber like protection. After being primed its very rugged.  Frankly its what I used when I worked for GW for all of those Intro Figures.  Trust me, it is tough.

After priming, I went on to Ink the lot in Agraxx Brown, to freaking death.  I did miss some of the weapons as these would be painted over in a strong coat of Mechanicum Grey.

The bases as you can see were quickly painted a liberal amount of Dryad Brown and then dry brushed up with Mechanicum Grey and finally Bleached Bone. Its simple, quick and is a great motivator to those painting in bulk.

However, at this point, I put everything away except for the Tomb Blades, and began the detail.

Grey was applied to the weapons, Iron Belcher Metal to the pipes, Khorne red was the spot colour and Dark Angels Green up to Moot Green for the energy sources.

The none boney bits where washed in Nuln Oil or Army Dark Coat, whatever is handy.  Then repainted to develop a three tone job.  Though the red was touched up with Mephiston Red.

To finish I went over with the paint version of the spray primer: Army Painter Skeleton Bone.  GW's bone is much nicer to work with in hindsight, but Army Painter excel at spray to paint matching.  The Bone was worked up in watered layers, giving a bleached effect.  I'm a lot cleaner than I used to be, gotta accept that when you paint so often, your style or expectations will change.

A few sharp Inks here and there to return some definition here and there and voila! x3 Tomb Blades, ready to run interference, recon and assassinate.

Now I'm onto the 5 Death Marks, then 20 Warriors and thats another 400 some points ready for the war!

In other news... what is this?

Playstation controller for scale.