Rogue Quest level Eleven - The exodite ranger

So this is it. The end of the first part of the Rogue Quest for me ! I'm reaching the 6th model and today's entry is the ranger ! 

The ranger is an essential class to my eyes in any good dungeoneering party and to represent that class I had plenty of opportunities. The 40k universe has plenty of scouts of all kinds and Jes Goodwin has sculpted some excellent eldar scouts. Of course eldars are a must as rangers as the ranger class is usually one favoured by wood elves. But if I had to choose an equivalent for wood elves in 40k, it would undoubtedly have to be an exodite...

Good thing is I just happened to have a model looking like an exodite scout and commissioned by no other than Axiom with whom I happen to share this Rogue Quest project ! The opportunity was too good to ignore.

The model is really nice and was sculpted by Patrick Keith (or Kirsten Dunst, don't know, always tend to mix those 2...). I had to slightly alter the model to adapt it to what I wanted though.

Design sketch by Axiom

For some reason I had decided I wanted the model to represent a female eldar. Just because. The pose was not spectacularly feminine and no real physical trait helped. That wasn't a problem though.

Rogue Quest Level Nine : The Druid

I'm reaching the end of this little journey in the future dungeoneering Axiom and I wanted to explore as this is the 5th out of 6 models I'm about to present you. This new entry is the druid. The druid was introduced as a subclass of clerics with specifities that made him a little more characterful. 

To represent that kind of character in the grim darkness of the far future and especially in the depths of the underhives. Thing is, I actually didn't pick the class first but the model, I was considering doing a cleric as it's a type of characters I fancy but I couldn't find any suitable model (Alex did find a very good model though). That's when I fell upon this confrontation dogskin (who would be replaced by ratskins in Necromunda) which I 'd had for some time without knowing what to do of it.

Like many confrontation models, this one is very small and delicate and if you look closely the base somehow seems a bit too large while the arms are also slightly too big for the model. With thiselement and the fact he's wearing a dog pelt, I knew I could use him for something really nice. I gave him a unassured pose on purpose to show combat with guns is not necessarily is forte. The druid's power lies somewhere else...

Rogue Quest level Seven : Mad Dog Finnegan the Barbarian

Level 7 of the Rogue Quest ! This time is my turn after Jon's brilliant bard and I decided to go into the heavy weight category this time. 

As you know, the barbarian is one iconic type of adventurers renowned for his delicacy and very refined approach of things...

Yeah OK, laugh all you want, wether you want it or not, the barbarian is the hero we all admire as kids because you can immediately understand what he's all about, generally one goal, and almost one way to achieve it : violence. When violence doesn't solve a problem for a barbarian, it basically just means he hasn't used enough of it yet.

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 !

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 :

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.