The Galactic Bastard, rogue trader extraordinaire

Today's entry is one that has had to wait for a long time to get completed. This model has been made for a facebook Hobby group called the Emporium of Rogue Dreams, focusing on wargaming in retro sci-fi universes like Rogue Trader, 2000AD publications, Starwars and others of the kind.

The Emporium keeper Mark has kindly had this model sculpted by the excellent Shane Hoyle as a group special miniature.

Now I've had the chance to get my hands on an early cast but the model came with 4 different heads :

All of them being excellent, there was no way I'd leave any aside so I decided to magnetise both heads and body in order to be able to change heads as I saw fit. 

My history with magnets is an old one as you can see with my Chaos army or my Kaleb Daark.

Problem was I was short on magnets so I ordered some and painted the body meanwhile... that was back in August !

Long story short : I finally got my magnets the other day and could finally complete the model !

Rogue Quest level Five : The paladin !

So here we are, time for level five of the Rogue Quest ! After my wizard and Axiom's Rogue, it's time to get on with some new characters !

This week's entry is special for me, I've always had a great fondness for Paladins as previously discussed. They are one of the most iconic and characterful classes you can have and because of the many rules and limitations for them, you have to be in tune with that sort of characters they are to fully enjoy them.

Interpretation by Olivier Ledroit, see how he's lawfully good AND gets the (dirty) work done ?

The ideal paladin is obviously a lawful good warrior that fights for the good of all, always puting his own safety and personal interest in second place. A good paladin will usually take the greatest care of his gear and body as they're his tools to do his duty. A paladin will usually have a great constitution along a high charisma. To represent that I knew I had to use a space marine but didn't which one to use. I've considered using a terminator at some point to represent their tanking role but that looked silly amongst very lightly armoured models so I opted for this one piece Space marine designed by Bob Naismith (IIRC). It had just the perfect heroic pose I was looking for !

Champions of Law - The seventh son and the roman blade

You guys know it's important to have the right soundtrack...

So here we are, it's Sunday and as usual I have a little more champions of Law done ! This one had to be special though as it was the 7th member of the warband I'd present (along with the 8th). Now I really think I'm not superstitious because I do not believe in any of the non sense associated with numbers and all but I DO follow the same rules as supertistious people because I'm a pathetic Maniac.

If none of this makes sense to you, it's perfectly normal, just accept that the 7th model HAD to be special and what better way to make a special model than to use a limited edition ?

As you may know, the 7th model (on the left of the previous picture) is the Warlock :

The Warlock was the Fighting Fantasy magazine published in the mid 1980's and while I won't tell the history of it again, I can at least state that the title and one of its covers lead to a miniature along the famous Amazone Gothique :

Variations on a theme : Pilots for warhammer 40000

Today's is a symbolic post since it's my 200th ! I'm making progress for my model to celebrate the 200th follower of this blog (model has just been primed) so celebrations are all going well !

I'd like to come back on a bunch of models I painted in a rush for my Rogue Trader game at Octogône, 

I wanted to have a bunch of pilots as they make nice supporting models and good potential NPCs in games. I used them as objectives in our game and it was nice to see players interact with them !

The intersting part about this group is the model selection I think. I'm not very selective about models I paint in general, my fancy often goes to older models because I enjoy painting them more than I enjoy painting modern ones but I find nice ones everywhere, whatever the maker and whatever the age. SO I thought it would be fun to paint 3 versions of a same concept but with very different models to see  :

- If painting alone can tie different styles

- which kind of models I like most

Rogue Quest Level Three : The Wizard

First of all, let me suggest a suitable soundtrack for this post with either a classic :

OR a suitably grim dark tune :

So here we are, already at the third level of the Rogue Quest ! After starting with my fighter for level 1 and after Jon/Axiom's barbarian for level 2 here is my entry for level 3 : The wizard !

The obvious way to represent a wizard in warhammer 40k is probably to use a psyker of any sort so I decided to pick one of the few I have. I'm lucky to have a good load of eldar psykers of all sorts but I have relatively few human psykers and the only one I had which looked heroic enough was this charming psyker from Bob Olley.

As you may know, I've become very fond of his models over the years for they often prove to be unexpectedly pleasant to paint. When I say unexpectedly, I mean I often struggle to understand what's what when it's unpainted but I usually discover the model as I paint. This makes the process very organic and enjoyable, something I've one-sidedly decided to call the "Bob Olley effect". I'm pretty sure most people who are not keen on his sculpts would change their minds the minute they actually paint one.

Since this model is meant to represent my wizard in cyber dungeon crawling stories, I wanted him to look a little different from the usual imperial psykers.

The wizard in a group is often stereotyped and amongst all the usually associated images, this kind of fellow was something I wanted to suggest in a discrete way :

Battle reports : Vengeance of the Lichemaster and Rogue Trader

These freaks are here to party !

Well it's quite unusual for me but for once I can tell you I managed to play with some those models I seem to paint for no other purpose than keeping my mind off of the utter non-sense of our world.

That's right, you read it perfectly well, I got some games in this WE and this was fun AND I didn't have to go to Canada or England to do it !

Pour une fois que j'ai pas a me bouger au Canada ou en Angleterre pour pouvoir jouer à de l'ancien il fallait saisir l'occasion !

Just look at how awesome that was :