What are the two words most dreaded by wargamers? “Rounding out”? “Finishing off”? “New 40k?” (meow) – no, my friends, not even close. Brace yourselves for the full horror that is:
TIDYING UP.
Recently we’ve been getting our feng shui on in Jim’s gaming shed, informally christened “Apocalypse Junction”, and this has required some organising and rationalisation to make the best use of the space available – buying storage boxes, putting up shelves etc – and this has thrown up many a long-abandoned mini-project and piece of Interestingly Shaped Crap.
So while Jim was busy nailing himself to a wall, I got busy creating some more scenery from said Interestingly Shaped Crap with a view to big Apocalypse: Earth dust-up in the coming months.
Front and centre we have two soap dish holders, now surplus to requirements for several years. For the bases we have cut up CDs (soak in boiling water and then cut with kitchen scissors), and some offcuts of craft and insulation foam to create rocky outcrops. I used a mix of fast drying PVA and superglue to put these together – superglue gives the initial grip while the PVA provides are more durable and flexible bond when it’s dry. There was also a rogue piece of polystyrene Jim threw my way – or at me – which got added into the build.It’s filler time! Cheap stuff from the local Poundland, this goes in all the gaps and over the smooth surfaces, and over the bobbly surfaces on the polystyrene.Texture paste – PVA, filler, sand and black paint thinned with water. This gets applied liberally with a big and old brush – the idea being that black paint made it easier to see if I’d missed any bits. Then all likely nooks, crannies & crevices got painted with PVA and I drizzled cat litter on top. This is a ridiculously easy but effective way to add detail to pieces like this.Primed white with £1 shop spray primer.Leopard spotting! First we daub it with thinned yellow…. oh, noAnd then the brown… oh no no noAnd then a thin black wash… oh, okay, starting to see it now..and then the drybrush does it’s thing… NOW, I see it.. actually, this was where I realised I’d gone a bit heavy with the black wash and the drybrush was a bit too high contrast – a thin grey wash sorted out the balance and smoothed everything out a bit. See? And here they flocked, sealed, varnished and are in situ, with the Blood Angels fending off nasty beasties from Hive Fleet Imprudens… The rocky crag you can see in the background is a sister piece to his Golgothan Spire which Jim made and never got around to doing a blog entry for.Now that’s a bad day at the office.Defending the Star – no, best make that Space – Gate!I also found a last bit of insulation foam, glued some thick mounting card underneath it (figuring the foam itself would keep from any warping), carved a couple of slopes and got busy with the bark chip and the filler, and the texture paste..Close up of the stoneworkOff we go leopard spotting again…Black wash pulls everything togetherFinished and in situ with the rest of the new terrain – fine companion to Bose CliffINCOMING!“This would never happen if we were on a model railway”Genestealers REALLY interested in how we did the stonework…
So now we have few more eye-catching terrain pieces providing some depth and interest to the next battlefield – stay tuned for the write up! Stay thrifty out there…
So as has been discussed, recent events have caused our pet game system Apocalypse: Earth to be shelved for the mo – these days it’s less harmless escapist fun imagining the exploits of a demented Russian warlord bent on subjugating a continent to his will, more, well – Tuesday.
Off-topic for a second, Midwinter Minis did a recent video on a similar topic and although Guy got slammed for cringey virtue signalling (and I suppose there is a bit if you reallyreally squint and you don’t watch all of it.. we all know Nazis are bad, even though the term has now been rendered basically meaningless), there’s a solid point to be made there – certainly I’ve read several accounts from Team Yankee players who’ve jacked it in since the Russian invasion, as it becomes a little less fun when you see the same T-72s and Mi-24s you have miniature versions of on the news blowing up innocent people.
BUT – fast forward a couple of hundred years and we take the same ruleset into a future where a fractured Earth is taking it’s steps out into the galaxy.. the People’s State, NATO, the Unaligned and the Colonial Freedom Brigades ranged against the horrrors of the Orca and.. well, we haven’t figured the rest of that out yet 😉 Although we’ll be writing in analogues for most of the 40k miniature lines – the People’s State will cover the Imperial stuff, NATO will be the Tau, Orca the Orks and so on.
Anyway, we still had a nice table set up after the Galactic Empire/ Rebel Scum battle for Star Wars Day, so we tweaked it a bit and brought out the Hazzard 1977th versus the renegade 237th Hazzard People’s Front (“F*CK OFF! We’re the People’s Front Of Hazzard!”). We set the table up and set an objective in each table quarter.
Skalk Point taking centre stage, Hazzard People’s Front 237th southern edge, Hazzard 1977th to the northCreighton Light Assault Vehicle anchors the centre, Rebel Squad 1 closest to the camera, Rebel Squad A snuggled up behind rocky outcrop, HQ, psychic coven and elite Striker squad huddle up in the ruined farmhouse.The 1977th deploy in response – the General closest to camera on the left flank, infantry clustered around the Chimera in the centre and heavy weapons squad take position in the gulley to their right.We decided that each of the psychics would contribute a Command Point to the sneaky PFH rebels, compensating for their relative lack of firepower and numbers, while the People’s State Liberation Army prohibits and interference in the command structure.. here the Rebels are infiltrating the primary objective, Skalk Point power station (having been given additional CPs to get them over the fence)On the PSLA side, Squad Beauregard capture a secondary command centre objective Hot rolling from the PSLA Heavy Weapons squad!!Resulting in the untimely demise of the Creighton – that’s the PFH rebels’ sole armour asset toasted before firing a shot!Buoyed by this success, the PSLA sally forth to attack the main objective, but dastardly psychic shenanigans by the rebel psychics result in the loss of the General and the tanks’ hulk being lobbed at Squad Alfonso! Rebels who have been hustling forwards are caught in the blast, but it’s all in the cause of equality and social justice, right?Pressing their attack, the Rebels unleash their close combat elite Striker squadPSLA HQ try to support the battered Guardsmen but are caught in an ambush by Rebels!PSLA HQ survivors – Commissar, Captain and Lieutenant – reach the objective and prepare to sell their lives dearly..Meanwhile Squad Beauregard are pinned down by fire from the other Rebel squad and Ed Milibandalorian sweeps in to claim the objective and the squad as POWs!Squad Beauregard are marched off for re-education..Rebel Commander Khorr Byn, Loretta the Simian Champion and the surviving Striker engage the 1977th HQ in meleeIt’s down to the PSLA Captain vs Loretta!Loretta downs the Captain – it’s all over for the PSLA…The few surviving PSLA troops from Heavy Weapon Squad Cletus decide that discretion is the better part of valor, as they’ve lost all their objectives, the General, the Chimera, and still face most of the psychic coven, a Rebel squad and one of the Milibandalorian boys.. pretty comprehensive defeat for the PSLA, I guess you can’t keep social justice down!
In retrospect, it was definitely the greater flexibility of the Rebels that let them carry the day, as with the psychics each contributing a Command Point and the higher Initiative rating the Rebels had, that basically allowed any unit to wind up doing anything, regardless of orders, while Dan’s PSLA might have had better numbers and firepower but couldn’t react to the situation as quickly.. let’s hope that’s an omen as the Ukrainians start their counter offensive. Slavia Ukrainia, slavia heroyem – god speed you all and let this madness end soon..
Back to the game – it was pretty cool how differently the two sides played and I honestly thought I was going to get my arse handed to me after Dan’s boys took out the General, so I think we’re on to something, and it’s kickstarted us back into actually codifying these rules rather than having them exist as bits of paper and Post It notes taped to the current Apocalypse: Earth rulebook. We used the same system for the Star Wars game last month and it’s working pretty well in a variety of scales, it’s just a case of evening out points values and those oddball situations that crop up every now and again…. And we do have plans for a pretty big game this summer, you haven’t seen the last of Buffalo 2-7 for a while!
And as luck would have it, this article has just appeared in my news feed addressing various perspectives on historical wargaming… give it a read
Til next time, stay thrifty, and we will see you soon!
Skinflint Games 