I always tire of typing it, but it has been a while. I’ve been distracted towards the end of last year, not so much from hobbying, but more from keeping the blog up to date. Daily life and writing have been getting in the way, though I have been able to use painting and building minis as a stress reliever.
The last couple of months, I’ve been looking into skirmish gaming, looking to do more with the collection of minis in my cabinet. I was looking into Assassins & Templars: A Ruckus Game, from Wargames Illustrated’s November issue, as I really liked the models that were being used to show off the game. These are from Gripping Beast, which has a lot of very cool pieces in their shop. I had to show some proper restraint; I started with a small retinue of assassins, which draw in part from their Arab military kit, as well as a few standalone metal minis. Pictured below are two assassins, a long range character, as well as a priest mini I was using as an imam.
I have also been working on some fantasy minis, including my Lord of the Rings models, and finishing up work on this proxy mini of Buhdur the troll cheiftain. I had recently acquired a pot of AK Interactive’s snow terrain mixture, having really enjoyed their battlefield mud tub, and used it on our wholesome troll here; my plan is to use him as a random encounter in Frostgrave, which is another skirmish game I have been diving into.
My son recently showed an interest in Mordheim and Frostgrave, and I have been grouping many of my minis into warbands with a new spark of excitement. I also picked up a few sprues from the Frostgrave kits and began kitbashing every manner of unit I was planning, including many Mordheim warbands. Pictured below are a Grave Robber warband, the rules of which I found on the Mordheimer site. These include a lookout, a graver, a junior medic, a couple of grave diggers, and a thug.
Trench Crusade remains in my brain also, and I have been chipping away at the remaining minis that are grey, of which there are few. The Observer has been relatively straightforward to paint, sticking with the colour scheme from the rulebook, as I liked the contrast between the red and gold.
Finally, I have been painting up a warband for Frostgrave, as my son has also been showing an interest in playing the game, mainly due to the wizard creation system. I’m helping to paint a warband of his own so we can play together, as well as some terrain. There are many scenarios in the rulebook that we’re keen to try, and I’d like to write about these as I go.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and I wish you all the best for 2026.
After a few weeks’ break, I jumped back into a game of Five Parsecs from Home, returning where my crew had left off. In turn 3, Griff’s crew had faced off against a small group of swarm, and although they had come away successful, their encounter with the bug-like aliens triggered an invasion on the upcoming turn.
In the invasion turn, we rolled the dice and found that we didn’t escape the world during the opening phase of this invasion, instead being forced to hold out for 6 waves of combat, or until we Hold the Field. With Glitch in the infirmary, I was having to lean on my less combat-enthusiastic companions to pick up on some of the heavy lifting; this mean bringing Derrick, Vul, and Maimar into a fight against 6x swarm brood in this battle. The weapons loadout remained the same from the previous turn, as if the invasion caught our heroes completely off-guard (which… it kinda did).
With the swarm brood falling under the behavioural bracket of ‘beasts’, they were deployed in pairs, stuck together in pairs, and would mainly seek out cover unless there was a clear opportunity to make a successful charge. Their lack of projectile weaponry (they only have claws) did not present much of an advantage to Griff’s crew, as the swarm were always in cover, and if there’s one thing Griff’s crew can do consistently, it’s miss the most basic of shots in the open. Cover was a huge problem.
Klano, still wearing the jump-belt repaired by the team in a previous turn, leapt towards the nearest pair and became locked in a brawl with them. Despite his ingrained K’Erin tendencies to love close combat, he did not manage to wound the brood. Instead, one of the bugs landed a natural six after rolling to hit him, and removed him as a casualty. On the right flank, Derrick stuck with Vul and blasted one of the brood to the afterlife with a squeeze of the shotgun’s trigger.
On the far left flank, the pair of bugs snuck up on Salisi and dove into combat. While they didn’t manage to wound her, she herself was able to land a blow on them, albeit with no wound; this pushed one of the bugs back. When she was free on her next turn, she took aim with her colony rifle and put it down.
Both Maimar and Griff made some questionable shots, though Griff was aiming through cover. Maimar’s needle rifle, despite getting two shots per turn, was only hitting 50% of the time, and scored no wounds throughout the game. Vul, with dual handguns in his tentacles, took down another of the brood, with Griff eventually cleaning up the rest.
In quite a strange battle, the crew came out on top, and relatively swiftly at that. XP was assigned and attributes improved; I’m looking to increase Klano’s defence somewhat in the turns to come, as well as the reaction scores of the less-combat-inclined members of the crew, who spent most of the battle operating in the slow phase of the turns.
There is nothing to loot, nor is there time to really sit and ponder the job as the invasion is ongoing, and with the field successfully held, Griff and the crew evac in their ship (which was thankfully fully fully repaired in the previous turn) and make for another world. We are allowed to role on the character chart, post-battle; Griff receives a hearty meal, which lets her shrug off an injury in the infirmary when next she is hurt.
As they head towards a new world, past rivals and troubles ablaze behind them, who knows what turn 5 will look like.
It’s been the usual marathon of holidays, interlinked with the kids running amok at the summer break. Goes on forever, unfortunately. I have mostly been editing my friend’s novel (as well as my own, when I have time), and found a little time to put some models together.
I’ve been trying to up my terrain game for a little while, though it isn’t the cheapest aspect of the tabletop hobby. I have found some good deals over at Artificers Forge, which specialises in various scif-fi, fantasy, and zombie apocalypse stuff, among others. One of the pieces I’d wanted for a while was the radar installation, which I thought would look good in games of Fallout, as well as Five Parsecs from Home. I primed the whole model in black, then wetbrushed with silver, before a wash of black, brown, and then dabbing some rust on with a sponge.
I love old buildings, old structures, Second World War installations, old towers and radar stations, you name it. This model gave me a little piece of that for my battlefields, and a central point for any games, or an objective point. Pictured a few pics below is a couple of Institute synths for an idea of the scale of this piece.
Since the beginning of July, I have also been interested in writing up some rules for a custom tabletop game, incorporating all the units that I loved growing up as a fantasy fan in the mid to late ’90s. I was able to get a hold of some Chaos Dwarves on Etsy recently, intending on using these minis as proxies for one of the factions, the hill-dwelling, corpse-grinding dwarven butchers of Dartswell Bluff. I have since the ’90s lost many of my own Chaos Dwarf miniatures, so it was exciting to see so many of the classic units recreated online.
Again, another shout to Artificers Forge for the pieces of terrain (above). The hangman’s tree and Elven shrine are to be big parts of the gameboard for my tabletop game, for which I am currently ironing out the rules and lore. Should hopefully see these appear in a future post, but for the time being, these are primed and awaiting painting.
Thanks again for reading, and I hope your summers are going well.
This is normally where I would say that it’s been a “hectic time of year”, but I feel I tend to start most posts like this. The truth is, it’s always a busy time of year, so just assume that it has been! So, what’s been going on lately is I’ve been flitting between several different minis, unsure where my attention is being dragged; this has been mostly between Five Parsecs from Home, Trench Crusade, my Lord of the Rings minis and some undead creatures, which I’ll get to.
Five Parsecs from Home, the solo sci-fi tabletop game from Modiphius, has been a lot of fun. I was initially unsure how much I would enjoy gaming solo; I’d enjoyed it with Fallout: Wasteland Warfare, but Five Parsecs felt like a bit of a different beast, as it was leaning even more towards the RPG end of the table. Three campaign turns in, I’m hooked, and have been grabbing all manner of weird and wonderful minis from eBay and Etsy to make up the cast and crew. Pictured below are some of my latest ruffians that I will be using for starport scum/gangers, along with one of many storage containers I’m painting up for terrain.
Trench Crusade is also weighing heavy in my pile of shame right now. I’ve finished up my New Antioch warband, and my Knights of Avarice, and most of my Black Grail. My Trench Pilgrims only just arrived a week or so ago (I genuinely feared they were lost in the post), so I have been carefully painting them up. Below is a pic of two of the stigmatic nuns along with an ecclesiastic prisoner; I grabbed some cool ruins from Etsy too, figuring they fit with several of the tabletop games I’m itching to play at the moment.
I also saw a cool knight I thought would fit well with the hordes of the Black Grail, and added a spare rifle holster to their back. In my 700 ducat list, my plague knight has a putrid shotgun, so I thought this would be a good representation on the model, and just something a little different. Out of the factions in Trench Crusade, the Cult of the Black Grail are my favourite, so I wanted to add this knight as an alternative to my army.
Finally, I have reading through the rules for Battlecry by Warrior Poet Games, which feels like a love letter to Warhammer of old. I was kind enough to be gifted a PDF of the rulebook by Scott Schlichter, the game’s creator, and have been building a couple of lists for Battlecry. From reading the book and checking out Warrior Poet Games’ videos, what inspires me is that this is a game that is trying to get more mileage out of your miniatures, the minis you currently have. It is a mini agnostic game, so you can use whatever you like to represent a unit (within reason, adhering to base size), and though you might want to eventually pick up a new mini here or there, this is about finding another use for the miniatures in your collection.
I have been putting together an Elves of Brilliance list, which feels like a blend of armoured and wood elves; for this, I have dusted off my Lothlorien and Rivendell elves, arranging them into a Battlecry-worthy army list. For the Undead faction, I grabbed some of my Angmar minis, bringing a barrow-wight in as a lich, and the wild wargs in as dire wolves. This was also an excuse to buy a small unit of skeletons, which, funnily enough, was the faction my Dad painted up some 30 years ago when I got into the hobby! I also dug out my unpainted Repugnance mini (Goetia Miniatures), as I really wanted to use them for the Undead army’s abomination. I love this mini, and enjoyed finally painting it up. My wife asked what it was, and all I could think to tell her was that it’s several skeletons fighting over one piece of skin.
So, there you have it. I figure this was pretty long-winded, but I’ve been painting a lot (for once), and I’m about to bugger off on holiday for a week, so I won’t be around to build or paint for the next seven days. The horror.
Wishing you all a decent summer season, and catch you soon.
It’s been a little while since the last game of Five Parsecs from Home, but I was keen to play a round today. The next mission had me intrigued, and seemed like a good challenge for a crew who had, until now, only fought gibbering sentry robots.
The enemies for this one were a small swarm brood horde (as played by my Genestealer Cult Acolytes). The 5 were set up in 2 sets of pairs and a solo close by, and they do not have any weapons apart from their claws, so this force is purely melee, with +1 damage. The swarm brood run on the ‘beast’ AI, so they should always try to gang up on their enemies.
Griff’s crew fails to seize the initiative at the beginning, but end up with 3 minis in the quick phase and just the 2 in the slow phase. With our engineer having recently mended the jump belt from the market, Klano puts it to use and leaps 9″ towards the nearest enemy. Glitch follows but finds she doesn’t have a clear shot on any of the swarm brood; Griff moves towards the caravan.
During the enemy turn, the brood moves around both sides of the container, sticking to cover. It isn’t until the next turn that they attack Glitch, rolling a natural 6 to hit and to wound. She is removed as a casualty. Having engaged another of the brood, he fails to wound and so stuns the creature. This shanty is in a toxic environment, and we roll to see if the creature takes any damage from the fumes while stunned; they do not.
In the following turn, 2 of the brood dive on Klano. One misses with its claws, while Klano manages to strike them down with the glare sword in return. The second brood creature lands an attack and sends our K’Erin warrior off the board as a casualty. With the bodies mounting up on Griff’s side, Maimar shoots at the nearest brood swarm with his needle rifle and puts them in the dirt. Vul shoots at the creature who took down Klano, blasting with dual pistols; he lands a hit, but the beast is too tough.
The creatures aren’t going anywhere; they are beasts and don’t know how to retreat. Griff finally lands a shot, killing Klano’s assailant in one hit. Maimar blasts another brood swarm with his needle rifle, and Vul puts the last one into the ground. Griff’s posse holds the field, but the swarm brood are an invasion threat…
The crew sweeps the battlefield, gathering loot and checking injuries. Glitch suffers a minor wound and will be out for one campaign turn. Klano is just unconscious and will be fine for the next turn. Salisi will be returning to the crew after her secretive business that took her out of play for 2 whole campaign turns. With the XP, Vul increases his savvy stat, and Maimar boosts his combat skill. We find a brutal melee weapon as a reward, and roll a 5 for the pay, +1 danger pay agreed beforehand. With 6 credits and a skip in our step, the crew heads back to the ship.
Unfortunately, the swarm brood were an invasion risk, and edging into the next campaign turn (out of pure impatience and curiosity), I find that we don’t make the escape roll and instead have to instantly prep for battle with a team of 5 more brood. Our upcoming mission is to hold out for 6 combat turns, after which we can retreat and leave this invaded planet…
In part 1 of the Five Parsecs from Home campaign I’m currently playing through, Griff and her team of misfits made 9 credits off a corporate job, angering another patron in the process and turning her into a bitter rival. They received a bundle of XP (and some grenades), and Salisi, our empath bounty hunter, had some other pressing matters elsewhere in the galaxy and left the crew for 2 turns.
Left to right: Amano (Glitch), Salisi, Vul, Griff, Derrick, Klano, Maimar
The beginning of turn 2 sees the crew going about their business; we pay off 4 credits from our ship debt, use our on-board purifier to cleanse and sell some water to the locals for 1 credit, and Griff explores the town to gain a rumour. Vul recruits a new crew member to fill the void left by Salisi, finding an Engineer named Maimar to join our cause. Amano hits up the market, selling scrap for 3 credits, while Derrick takes another crack at trying to repair the jumpbelt he found at one of the stalls in the last turn; he fails to fix it.
The crew is fortunate enough to get another job from Payton Malik, our patron contact. The next corporate job pays +3 danger credits and is urgent, needing to be done this turn. In return, we would receive the Persistent benefit, meaning this patron will still be available if we travel, and the condition Busy, which would guarantee a job offer from this patron next turn if this one is a success. The downside is the enemy is packing a VIP (one of their number has +1 Toughness and a +2 Combat skill).
Accepting the job, the deployment condition rolls as being Gloomy, reducing max visibility to 9″, so ranged combat is going to take place quite close. This also means that characters who fire can then be targeted at any range, as they can be spotted through the murk. The enemies are security bots once more, and we’re in another run-down slum beneath the pipework of this busy fuel refinery world. Time to get to work.
A run-down hovel in the lower levels of the fuel refinery world.
With no numbers restriction on this job, the current crew were in attendance for this one. While Griff, Glitch and Klano have their favourite arms, Vul brought dual handguns for the first time, and Derrick brought a shotgun; our newest recruit Maimar brings a handgun and a blade. Longer ranged weaponry would be of less use in the gloomy conditions.
None of the crew makes the quick actions turn in turn 1 of combat, and the security bots get the first moves. Being defensive in their behaviour, the 5 bots are posted in 3 teams, 8″ apart, and will remain in their half of the board (and within cover, where possible). They can’t fire with either their military rifles due to the murkiness, and they aren’t yet in range to use their handguns and rippers.
Derrick and Vul discuss how they’ll secure the old ruins, while Griff and Glitch return the bots’ fire.
Klano moves towards the ruins, and dashes into the shadow of a hulking steel structure, the topper from an old doughnut shop. By the second turn, he and Glitch are able to get into the quick actions round consistently, and begins brawling with two of the bots on the upper flank. Despite being able to roll twice during the Brawling phase, due to being K’Erin, Klano misses with most of his attacks, and those that do land fail to injure the bots. Glitch and Griff take opposite avenues around the ruins, returning fire; Glitch takes a hit, but like the first game this doesn’t amount to anything and she shrugs it off.
Maimar sees an item on the boundary, a piece of curios that was to be this board’s ‘Notable sights’. He spends several turns making his way to the crate, finding only junk that can be sold for 1 credit. Klano is bested in close combat by one of the twitching bots, and he is removed from the game. Vul and Derrick reach the ruins at the centre of the board, managing to hold the line undisturbed for a turn; this is a Secure mission, after all.
The security bots wound Klano and move to solidify their defences.
Glitch lands a hit on a bot, but they roll a 6 for their save and continue to fight. Griff takes aim and blasts the bot who struck down Klano on the previous turn, and they fail their saving throw. After a second consecutive turn of holding the objective, Vul and Derrick secure the centre of the board, and on the next roll the remaining enemies withdraw.
Griff takes a moment to aim before putting a shot through one of the bots’ heads.
In the aftermath of the battle, the crew gains +3XP each, with Griff gaining an additional +1XP for destroying a bot. Klano receives +1XP as a casualty. They receive their danger pay of 3 credits + 3 after rolling 1D6, and a set of loaded dice as loot. On the campaign events table our ship seems to suffer 2 hull points of damage during routine maintenance, and on the character events table, Derrick receives a letter from his wasteland planet, and on the roll of a 5 we get a quest from it. Looks like we know where we’ll be heading as soon as the ship is repaired.
That’s all for campaign turn 2, however. Here’s hoping the 3rd turn is much kinder to Griff and the crew.
Back in a previous post, I think I mentioned I was waiting on the rulebook for the rulebook for Five Parsecs from Home, which is a solo wargaming book from Modiphius that I’ve had recommended to me by a fair few painters, tabletop gamers and general hobbyists alike. The book operates as a role-playing experience, allowing you to randomly generate a crew of 6 and begin working in the universe, where you will have to contend with various authoritative bodies, dangerous jobs, absolute scumbags, and the ever-growing threat of your starship being repossessed.
Everything was generated through the roll of a dice, including the crew, their backgrounds, their classes, the planet we start on. To begin with, I generated the crew, who are:
Griff– a human enforcer on the hunt for glory Klano– a petty criminal of the K’Erin race Derrick Desai- a wasteland nomad scientist ‘Glitch’- fame-seeking troubleshooter from a regressed world Salisi- a power-hungry empath bounty hunter Vul-Arol- a manipulator with dreams of wealth
After rolling to find out what brought them together (this being the group being pursued by the authorities), it felt right that Griff had moved into this section, picking up a lead on a local petty criminal, Klano, and in chasing him down she is caught at the scene of a crime meant to incriminate not just him, but also selfish bounty hunter Salisi Esperon who was looking to make a quick credit.
Klano, Griff, Glitch & Salisi.
We start off campaign turn 1 on Ilia, which, as a roll on the world chart indicates, is a fuel refinery world. The upside is that travel from this world will cost only 3 credit as a result, as opposed to 5. We’ve rolled already to determine our ship (a worn freighter with 30 hull points and 22 credits’ worth of debt tied to it), but the crew is staying on Ilia for the time being to lay low and look for work.
While Glitch stays on the ship to train, gaining +1XP, Derrick goes out to trade with the locals, gaining a rumour which leads to a quest. He also finds a damaged jumpbelt, and is keen to repair it in a subsequent turn, being so addicted to gadgets. Vul & Salisi explore, where Vul finds an instruction manual on the mysteries of the universe and gains +1XP for studying it thoroughly, while Salisi sells one of the colony rifles from our ship’s stash to a revolutionary for 2 credits.
In terms of work, Klano uses his contacts to hook us up with two possible jobs: one is a corporate job from local suit Payton Malik, with a sweetener of +2 credits on the danger pay scale: a mission to be done on the sly with a team of only 4; the second is a wildcard, a rich industrialist called L’renn Duvois, offering +1 credit danger pay for taking out a tough enemy. Both jobs were to be completed this campaign turn, so it came down to one or the other right now; we take Payton’s corporate task, a Secure mission in a run-down corner of one of Ilia’s fuel hubs. We roll to determine enemies, drumming up security bots, though are able to reduce their number by one thanks to this being deemed ‘low priority’ on the hazard table, cancelling out the bots’ additional one troop in their profile.
Our enemy was a lone security bot, armed with a hand laser and shotgun.
The Secure job stipulates that the crew must spend 2 consecutive turns within 2″ of the centre of the battle board in order to win, though if an enemy is within 6″ of said crew member, this does not count. After rolling for initiative and reactions, we end up with only Glitch in the quick move section in the first turn; she advances, scrap pistol in hand. The defensive security bot lines up a shot with its hand laser and hits her, but the wound is shrugged off thanks to her toughness. Klano and Salisi attempt to flank, while Griff moves around to take cover near Glitch.
Both sides trade blows, though the security bot is in cover which means a roll of 6+ is needed to hit. Glitch misses, as does Griff; Salisi and Klano advance further, sneaking around a container to try and split the bots’ fire. Griff rolls a 6 and lands a hit squarely on the bot; not even its backup 6+ saving throw can help on this occasion, and the blast from Griff’s military rifle tears through its circuitry. With no more enemies on the board, the area is secured for our Patron, and Griff and the team begin to loot the containers, finding a set of grenades, as well as some scrap they sell for +1 credit.
The job a success, we roll on the pay and are awarded 6 credits, plus 2 credits for dangerous pay. The team all earn +3XP for surviving, and Griff earns an additional +1XP for inflicting the first (and only) casualty. Unfortunately, the other job, that being L’renn’s, runs out as it needed to be completed this campaign turn as well, and thanks to a roll on the conditions table, this Patron is vengeful, and she now becomes a Rival to the crew.
The crew advance towards the centre, looking to secure the area. Griff aims with her military rifle.
Rolling finally on the campaign events table, our crew makes a new business contact in the wake of their first job, adding a new Patron to the list (which is handy, as we have just pissed one off). On the character events table, we roll you have some business to attend to elsewhere, and lose Salisi for two campaign turns. Being a selfish bounty hunter, this felt natural for her to venture off, out of everyone. She’ll be back with loot and XP soon.
As for campaign turn no. 2, that is still to be decided.
I hope you’re all doing well. I’ve been on a bit of a painting spree lately, trying to get many of my minis battle-ready. While I’ve been hopping from faction to faction for the sake of variety and just painting whatever excited me more, I was leaving one such mini until near the end. This is the Sin Eater, one of the mercenaries available to the factions of Hell. She’s a swollen abomination in an iron suit, complete with flowing cloak and a human meat masher, and while the design is quite simple, I was most nervous about painting her up.
I’m not sure of the reason. I think it’s because this miniature shows up a lot in artwork for Trench Crusade, and there are a lot of paintjobs online for this one as well. A lot. I’d even consider Sin Eater to be one of the unofficial mascots of the game, alongside the Shrine Anchorite and Communicant Tank Hunters, appearing in countless painting tutorials, pics, and forums, and occupying several corners of the Internet with her foul presence.
I kept my paint scheme simple: leadbelcher with a brown ink wash, followed by a black ink wash. This makes the armour look worn, old, and a little dirty as well. I wanted to keep the process of painting Sin Eater as easy as possible, before focusing on the tiny details like the dismembered corpse hanging off her back, and her rotten teeth. The legs and feet in the mud before her are spares from a prisoner miniature I recently hacked up while building some Wretched for my Heretic Legion, and the blood was done with Blood for the Blood God, but I tried to use it sparingly.
So here’s Sin Eater with the Black Grail warband, ready to infect the world (and partially eat it). I’ve loved painting these foul masses, from their gibbering hordes to their hulking abominations. Now I can look forward to getting a game with them and seeing how they fare on the tabletop. There’s one more Plague Knight mini I’m looking to customise with some spare parts, but I’ll share this if and when they are complete.
I also mentioned in my last post how I was awaiting the Five Parsecs from Home solo campaign rule book on arriving. Well, it did, and I have been assembling and readying a crew for an adventure. I’m also keen to enter the crew in an upcoming painting contest on social media, which Modiphius are hosting. This includes posting pics of your Five Parsecs crew with their information and backstory, with the deadline being the end of June 2025. I’ll see what I can do on that front, but I have rolled for each of my characters in the meantime and I’m really just working on which minis to use, some old and some new.
Thanks again for reading, and catch you next time.
I’ve been painting for a few nights, steaming ahead with my pile of shame but enjoying it all the same! I finished my novel nearly 2 weeks ago and awarded myself a hobby holiday, so it’s been quite nice catching up with work on my minis.
My attention has been flitting from warband to warband, so I’ve been working on just whatever has taken my fancy lately. I finished up one of the mechanised heavy infantry models for the New Antioch warband, which I am painting up as a Kingdom of Alba Assault Detachment. Being Scottish, this sub-faction love close quarters combat, and can source a good axe or greatsword (apparently- I don’t have either myself).
I stuck with Loren Green as my primary shade for the armour, and used The Fang for the blue pauldrons. I used an edged sponge to dab on the Saltire, roughing up the edges to make it look like it was a bit of armour personalisation done on the fly. This infantryman comes with what I would run as a Lochaber axe, and equipped with machine armour for extra defensive capabilities.
I have also been painting up many of the Black Grail faction as well, which are extremely disgusting. I was initially put off because I initially thought this faction was going to be quite like GW’s Nurgle, and I didn’t want to go down this route; after reading the lore and their various rules, I put a list together and started painting up the minis. I actually had a lot of fun doing so, and trying out my new Blood for the Blood God paint. They are one of my favourite factions in Trench Crusade, and there are loads of grotesque minis out there that can be recruited to move along in the shambling tide of infection.
Finally, I painted up the amalgam, which is the Black Grail’s heavy boy. Essentially a small unit of infected soldiers fused together, it can be equipped with numerous close combat weapons and/or guns and set loose on the battlefield. They are easily the most disgusting creature on the list, in my opinion anyway, and remind me fondly of the marksmen enemies from the PS2 game The Suffering (anyone remember this?), the particular enemy being a fusion of an entire firing squad into one hulking mass.
Anyways, this was just a brief update on what I’ve been doing. I’m hoping to have more to show in the coming weeks, as well as some WW1-themed scatter terrain for upcoming games of Trench Crusade. I’m also looking to getting a few games of Fallout in soon as well, now that the Minutemen are ready to go, and I’m awaiting the arrival of the Five Parsecs from Home solo campaign book too, so I can do some sci-fi adventuring as well.
The last couple of weeks have gone by in a blur. We’re hurtling into the warmer weather here now, which means more opportunities for priming minis, and I’ve reached the final chapter of my novel so I’m due a huge break in the evenings for a week or so after it’s done!
I’ve been getting into the skirmish game Trench Crusade lately, which is a tabletop game of recent years centred around an alternate history WW1 where the forces of Hell are bleeding into our world and it is up to the various armies of Earth to stem the tide. The artwork is incredible, the rules are designed to be straightforward enough that they can fit on two sides of an A4 sheet, and while there are officially-made minis available from a wide variety of sources, the game is miniature agnostic, so the designers encourage kitbashing as well as using your own minis or models sourced from other places, so long as the base size for each unit (stated against each unit’s entry in the free-to-download rules) is respected.
I picked up a couple of the warbands, as they aren’t too big; this is my excuse when it comes to skirmish tabletop gaming! I received many of these minis over the last week and set about putting them together. I’m working on a list for the Cult of the Black Grail faction (pictured), who are primarily centred around melee with swarm tactics, with the ability to burden your enemies with infections. I’m also working on another warband for one of the human factions, New Antioch, as there is a ruleset for an Alba Assault Detachment; this primarily consists of soldiers with claymore swords, a lot of melee-focused units, and a trooper with bagpipes to inspire increased movement and immunity to fear. I’ll post pics of those guys in the weeks to come.
While the sun is out and the gales are not, I’ve been making use of the opportunity to hit as much as possible with spray primer. The rank-and-file grail thralls for the Black Grail warband are mostly going to be painted in Rakarth Flesh, for that sickly appearance, and I have started to experiment with Blood for the Blood God, which is a much more disgusting paint than I anticipated.
Some of the sculpts are absolutely jaw-dropping, and it’s been a real treat to see them all together at last. I’ve mixed in some 3rd party grail thralls into the warband to bulk out the numbers a little more, and made a few weapon swaps between a couple of the troops to suit my list, too. I’m also keen to pick up period-specific terrain and get fashioning some trenches for upcoming matches, but that can wait for the time being.
Dreadaxe Games 