Champions of Law : Lord Aquila and elf

Another sunday past and some more reinforcements for my Realm of Law warband ! (greatly helped by me beeing sick and staying at home all WE...)

I'm adding 2 new members for the warband and this time I think the style evolves a bit. they are not chaotic as some of the others but both of them have been sculpted by the talented Jes Goodwin.

First on the left is Lord Aquila from the Heroic fighters of known world set :

Picture taken from Solegend

BORACHORKS !

You may remember I once wrote I needed a drunk for my 40k games, well I actually meant I needed drunkS because let's be honest, while being drink alone has got to be the saddest thing ever, being drunk in good company can lead you to... well unexpected levels of stupidity or fun (sometimes both mixed).

After getting my hands on a couple of nice old models I thought the occasion was too good not to expand my very little collection of civilians for Rogue Trader.

The 3 models on the right are part of the Orc villager set by Trish Morrison while he one on the left is a madboy by Bob Olley. As you can se both ranges are full of character and are just perfect to make NPCs in games. I could actually get plenty more drunken orcs if I needed...

Rogue Quest Level One : The Fighter

"Just what is Rogue Quest ? 

JB, I want to know what Rogue Quest is ?

Hey what's that thing? I have no idea but I want to be part of it !"

Ahaha, calm down my friends, I am going to tell you about Rogue Quest right away, I have no will to torture the millions of you any further with that doubt.

I'm pretty sure most of you will have played some form of dungeon bashing at some point in your life, be it Dungeons and Dragons or any other RPG, Heroquest (and its advanced form) or Space crusade (and its advanced form too), Space Hulk, you name them...

Illustration by Tony Ackland

Well I've had this idea for some time now to go back to the roots of dungeoneering but in the grim darkness of the far future. I know there already are some games to do just that (Space crusade and Space Hulk) but they lack something really important to me : Characters.

For me, the base of a good dungeon bashing is the motley crew which for some sordid reason decide to unite to rampage a dungeon.

Now I want that in the future now, I want a squat along an eldar with a marine leading the way in the corridors of a crashed space craft, the gutters of the underhive or the ruins of an old bunker. I want a bunch of heroes with their very own characteristics to seek treasures and encounter weird creatures.

I've talked about this idea here and there and one of my esteemed colleague Jon/Axiom has come up with the brilliant idea to make a group project between us to build a group of 6 adventurers based on the archetypes we all know :

- Barbarian

- Bard

- Cleric

- Fighter

- Paladin

- Ranger

- Thief

- Wizard

Inspired by the impressive work of Sho3box and Mr Saturday with their Judgement day project, we've decided to do something similar by painting a new model for our party one after the other.

That's how the Rogue Quest project originated ! Since we both are great fans of confrontation, it was only natural to replace our own dungeon quest in this setting.

For now, I'm still working on rules to play this and the choices so far are :

- Using Advanced Hero Quest (AHQ) rules and build characters and monsters based on Rogue trader and 40k in general.

- Using Rogue Trader rules with the dungeon generation rules from AHQ

- Using SPace hulk and giving more flavour to each character

So far I'm leaning for the first 2 options with a slight preference for the first one but this will have to be playtested and will be the object of future posts.

But let's get back to the point of this all : Characters !

To start this project, I somehow needed an evocative character, one that made sense. The perfect opportunity was this marine scout I had customised by the great Kevin Adams at BOYL this year. Not only is this model unique but it's also one meant to represent me and therefore is the perfect model to play in such a sort of game to me !

I won't lie, using a model Kev sculpted in front of me with a very dear friend and cider around while I could see Tony Ackland in the distance is absolutely priceless for the pathetic maniac I am. The model was one I got from Sho3box on the day and it was insane to see Kev build a whole replica of my poor self in the matter of minutes at the end of the day (I was lucky enough to be one of the very last to get my face sculpted) all of that while chatting with us and drinking. The final cherry on the cake is that all the funds gathered are meant for charity.  How right get this get ?

Levels of awesomeness have reached critical figures here.

Aenuroid - The sword of grim darkness

Aenuroid, the cyber assassin

And here's another model done for a little group challenge ! This time there was no choice for me but to participate since I'm partly responsible for it taking place !
I've had an Aenur model for ages like many of us who once bought the WD that had him in it and like many people, I've never had a go at him because I simply didn't really know what to do with it...
That was until I bought the Adeptus mechanicus Skitari box and decided to try the simplest of conversions on him : a head swap.

For some reason I really liked the idea of making the conversion as simple as possible and the fact I've been playing Dishonored a lot may have been an influence...

Champions of Law - covered and naked dementia

After the 2 previous champions of Law I painted, I thought I could paint 2 in a row this time... well without a surprise it took me a little longer which means I couldn't get them all done on Sunday as usual...

In the last post about this warband, Two esteemed painting buddies, namely Jon/Axiom and Nico both suggested the same miniature to join this warband. Honestly, who am I to oppose such talented guys and clearly men of taste who pick one of the nice Jes Goodwin chaos warriors ? Good thing is I had the model so it was just a matter of getting it on a hex base really.

Inspiration from comics : Ranx (NSFW)

Warning : I should probably warn you that though I have kept most of the hard pictures out of this post, the Comic I'm about to talk about contains some adult material some may not appreciate.

During my review of the comics I have that prove to be inspirationnal for my hobby, I managed to completely miss one of the most evocative : RANX

I have no idea how I overlook that one but trust me, if a comic defines the 80's aesthetic and culture, it's that one (IMHO, YVMV...).

Ranx is an Italian-french comic whic was published in the early 80's in Italia and later in Heavy Metal. The graphic style is recognisable amongst thousands thanks to Liberatore's use of Pentone pens and his style employs many of the codes of his time.

The most fascinating bit about this comic is that it takes place in the late 80's/early 90's but many elements of the universe are clearly futuristic. The first one is obviously the fact that the hero, Ranx, ia an android built with the parts of a Rank Xerox copier but his technology seems to be quite advanced as he can hack sound systems, record TV shows for his girlfriend and things of the sort.

Like many comics of its time, the world of Ranx is a parody of the world in which it was written. Like you would expect in 2000AD publications like Judge Dredd or others or what you can find in the Incal and most of the Jodoverse, you can find all the features of our modern world exagerated to the extreme. Violence is ever present, sex is everywhere, drugs and rock and roll probably being the lesser evil of all in all that mix.

Lord Sergei of House Kalente - Rogue trader Noble

Ok so after painting my Space amphibian from the Colony 87 range in June, I have left the 5 other models aside for an unknown reason. It seems even more odd when you know how wonderful all those sculpts are.

After getting another load of models done for my Helmawr gang, I found it would be an excellent opportunity to paint a Noble from the upper hives, you know, those kind of places (see right at the top) :

I wanted the model to be visually coherent with the Helmawr gangers but with a richer approach and I wanted it to be significantly different to show those don't operate on the same level. To achieve this, I kept the same colour scheme but I worked on a much deeper red, darker and yet richer.
I broke the whole scheme by giving him a nice piece of exotic feathers. I first wanted to paint it like fur (like Tiger or Leopard fur) fut given the texture, I felt like making something even more exotic. I can imagine he decided to sport the feathers of an extinct species just for the pleasure to display his social status...

2015 Give-away results : and the winner is...

Well after a week or so now, I guess it's time to determine who won this year's little give-away to celebrate the 200th follower of this blog.

Just like for last year's event, I've decided to use my trustworthy Excel sheet. It does look like crap and it is terribly not romantic or poetic like rolling a dice but there are times when the cold hearted engineer in me takes control and does things the cold hard way...

This year, 26 participants have taken the time to state what they'd want to win and that just about the same number as last year with a few new heads in the lot.

As you'll see below, the magic happend right when I pressed F9 (yeah I know I should have used a VBA button instead) and the stress of all contestants could end :

Champions of Law - Suck my axe !

After last Sunday's model, I'm giving you another champion of Law today. I honestly don't know if this will be a tradition or something but for the time being I'm enjoying picking whatever chaos warrior or champion I have under hand to paint it like a servant of Law.

This one is kind of special to me. For many years of reading the pages of the Red catalogue, I've always known which models I wanted. Those familiar with my tastes will know Jes Goodwin's models have a special place in my heart and especially anything chaotic he made for the Realm of Chaos era.

The famous red catalogç

The model above had always been one of the best for me, with a slender body and a very aggressive facial expression, a warrior showing malevolence and might without being ridiculously big or anything, just the perfect balance for me.

Helmawr gang field agents

Quick post just to show a little group of models I finished for my Helmawr gangers.

Making a Helmawr gang for confrontation is a heavy choice. The most easy models to get are the leader which was never catalogued and only sold in the US and the trooper which is a limited edition figure... oh and the basic gangers are unreleased (pictures taken from the CCM Wiki) ...

 

That leaves you the choice between having a lot of money and patience OR having imagination and a bit of modelling skills. You will have figured out that patience and wealth are not exactly my forte so I've decided to make my own gangers. In doing so, I also wanted to get away from the existing gangers if by any chance I was to get some in future (a man has got to dream).

Celebration time... Again ! (with Give-away)

Well after the first celebration party organised to celebrate a couple of events amongst which my 100th follower, it's only natural I come up with something to celebrate the 200th (which might very well be Joe Kushner).

First things first, I'd like to express my most sincere thanks to you people who take the time to comment and follow blogs to list them in your own corner of the interwebz, to make them live so this hobby doesn't get like masturbating in the open. All this energy to share is what makes a comuunity for me.

THANK YOU !

Those who were in the first 100 might remember that I offered to convert a model selected by contestants from a list of models who don't get enough attention from me. Those models could be seasoned with 2 flavours.

Here's the time travelling gunslinger elf mage, Warlord Paul won last year.

Well let's take a formula that worked the first time (25 people entered the competition) and make it better !

Champions of Law - Age of Sigmar Oldhammer style

Some models have a funny story, some don't, well this one wasn't planned to be painted a day before it was done. How's that ? Let me tell you...

A couple of days ago, My good friend Colin posted a superb illustration on the Oldhammer Facebook page :

What really captured our attention was the sign worn by the champion (I think it's actually Stephen who spotted this). This triple crossed arrow seems to be the symbol of Law, the arch enemy of chaos. Those who've read the opening of their realm of chaos books and their Warhammer fantasy Roleplay book will know that Law was meant to be the exact anthisesis of Chaos but for some reason the concept was never fully developed and abandoned little by little.

If you do want to know a bit more about Law and its pantheon, you might want to read this thread on the Oldhammer forum.

Astral hound

Today's a quick one. A couple of months ago (well more like 4 couples of months ago actually) I got a funnly little sculpt amongst some Judge Dredd Citadel models. The figure looked like some sort of mutated pitbull and I thought at the time it could probably act as a good genestealer infested dog. teh style and scale though didn't do it for me so I thought about how to use it...

Now it did remind me of something I'm sure you'll recognise too : Slimer from Ghostbusters,

Confrontation hunters

Gibbons (left) and Bronson (right), 2 underhive hunters.

On today's menu I'm advising you a couple of confrontation hunters who have been saved from the limbos of abandon like most of my late models. It's kind of funny to find in a quite misknown game and model range as confrontation to find models that are even more misknown !

Those familiar with confrontation (brief history HERE) will know names like Bratts, scavvies, ash waste nomads, techs and all. If you've been on this blog before you might also have seen rarer gangs like the venators or Helmawr gangers.

Well today's gang is one of hunters but it is not a gang that was specifically described in confrontation's rule or background.