Chaos kniggits

Keen eyes may notice that the header for this, and future, Chaos Army 2017 project posts is a quick cut'n'shunt job on the way that Dale Hurst's eye-catching warband was presented in White Dwarf 135.

Readers of previous posts, particularly from when I chopped about some bits to make a demon, will know how inspirational that article was for me, so it seemed only right to keep a touch of that as I expand the warband into a whole 3,000 point army over the course of this year.

So far I have units/individual characters painted to a total of 907 points. There are also several figures painted for other units, but I'll only count them when the whole unit is done, including bases, shields, and banners. I'm going to be strict!

The next unit up for sharing (although you'll soon see that they are bare metal/plastic/putty) are the most expensive, points-wise, and therefore I wanted to do something special with them - the knights. I have them as "chaos warriors" mounted on "chaos steeds" so my bitzbox was brought into play. In the end I left the riders as they came, but I didn't want a full unit mounted on normal horses, it didn't seem fitting.

The start of something chaotic

This year, as you may have read in my plans for 2017 post, I aim to turn my motley collection of painted and unpainted lead into a fully functioning (i.e. painted, based, shielded and bannered) army of 3,000 points for 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I've decided to go for generic Chaos as per the main rulebook, although it will have a blue and yellow Tzeentchian theme, and a wizard on flying disc for flavour.

I own all the models needed to complete this task, and have assembled and/or converted almost all of them to the stage where they are ready for undercoating. This then, is The Plan, with a couple of old photos of models already done:

Fantasy Warlord

About a week ago, a fellow Oldhammerer on the FB page enquired about the value of a copy of Gary Chalk and Ian Bailey's 1990 publication, Fantasy Warlord. Now, I'd been aware of this, vaguely, as being the source of some of Gary Chalk's fabulous illustrations alongside the first eight Lone Wolf books, Talisman, the Redwall books, etc, but never really looked into it.

Cue a 1p + postage purchase on Amazon, and I have a copy myself.

Planning ahead

Assuming that the fallout from the more unexpected political events of 2016 isn't actual fallout, I've made some hobby-related plans. Although last year's Geekstarter worked quite well, I'm going to go for something even simpler, if no less grand in its aspiration. My plans are...

[drum roll]

Main Goal
Complete a 3,000 point Chaos army, as per the Big Orange Book*, but with the simplified equipment points costs (and centaurs) from Warhammer Armies. I'm going to give it its own Page tab at the top.

Optional Extras
I've various other bits and pieces I'd like to get sorted as well this year and will turn to when I want a break from my Main Goal.

• finish my orc Blood Bowl team
• add "water" to my terrain board dry rivers
• trees for the terrain boards
• finish the retinues for my medieval reskin of Space Hulk, Catacombs
• get more gaming rules writing done, and shared

And that's it! I'm going to assist in maintaining my focus by also undertaking a Pledge

Pledge
Not to buy any new miniatures for myself. Ok, I'll allow myself a couple of exceptions: bargains, if they won't be available again, or if I've sold a similar number already. Ideally, I'll end the year with no more miniatures than I started it.

There you go. That's it. Do you have plans? Feel free to share them in the comments below.

Happy new year,
Rab



* i.e. the 3rd Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook

BFRPG character sheet

A while back I posted some sketches of a character sheet I'd made to put a handmade touch to my Basic Fantasy roleplaying campaign (click the Averaigne tab in the title bar for more on that), but I realised I never shared them. This was remiss of me given ho much I have cribbed, copied, and been inspired by others; you may detect a massive influence from Dyson Logos in my efforts.

If they are useful to you, please use them, improve them, whatever. Roll high!

The front is the same for all classes and the rucksack and hands are how we cover encumbrance (although I crossed out three sections of the rucksack for halflings) which has exercised me somewhat in the past.

For the reverse, I have different sheets for magic users:

Deadcember 16 champion

I've thoroughly enjoyed curating Deadcember and will do so again at the end of 2017 - if the quality and variety matches 2016's entries then it will be a pleasure to do so once more!

First of all, I must congratulate all of those who completed the challenge and submitted an entry (or several more than one in some cases!), particularly as I didn't - I have five skeletal horsemen in need of about an hour or two to finish off bone highlights, saddles and bridles, remnants of hair, and basing. Hardly a way to lead by example, eh?

"Now I am the (dungeon) master..."

Yesterday evening I got to play, rather then DM, in a game of retroclone D&D using the Basic Fantasy (BFRPG) ruleset. It was my first time as a player in any rpg! One of my usual players had volunteered to run a one-shot in a remote part of the kingdom our Averaigne campaign is set in using characters he'd pregenerated (he'd made ten and the six of us chose our favourites), and it was great. Not only had lots of effort clearly gone into preparing for the session (see the awesome character sheets below), but the level of inventiveness was pretty cool.

Averaigne campaign - sessions 29, 30 and 31

[The story so far]

Sessions 29, 30 & 31 - The tomb of the iron god (ix), and back to Corcelle

NB - this uses Matt Finch's excellent Tomb of the Iron God module and may contain spoilers.

After a week or so recovering in the small village of Marcigny, the party was ready to head back to the Temple and the catacombs below; there was unfinished business they had to attend to and a spellbook to recover.

2016? Least said...

Well, 2016 certainly seemed to be determined to cause as much damage as possible, didn't it? Still, this blog isn't the place for my thoughts on current affairs and/or politics, so let's get back to pretendy-elf-games.

I rather let my monthly review of spending/painting/gaming slip over the last couple of months but here is the full round-up, with Deadcember to follow soon in a separate post. Way back in January 2016 (when it was just Lemmy who'd left the stage), I posted my idea of "Geekstarting" my hobby year. While I've by no means fulfilled all the goals, it has kept me semi-focused in terms of my geeking.