Robosheriff / Malifaux: Guardian

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This rather crudely sculpted cowboy robot makes me smile every time that I look at it

Its part of the weird but oddly appealing range of Golgo Island miniatures that I picked up from East Riding Miniatures.  I bought the figure with plans to use it in post-apocalyptic/sci-fi western games where it would form the strong arm of the law in the Standard Falls Sheriffs department.

While that use remains valid, Robosheriff  will also serve well as a proxy Guardian robot in Malifaux games.  Thats why the figure got bumped to the top of the painting queue recently, seeing as Malifaux is the new black at Chateau Sho3box.

The sculpting on the figure really is pretty crude, which made painting it a little less enjoyable than I would have liked.  Therefore I went for a simple and quick drybrushed metal effect rather than doing anything too fancy, as I figured that it wouldnt be worth the effort.

Sculpting aside, the rigid pose is quite suitable for an obviously not-very-bright robot and the clunky design and lovable dopey expression make it a fun figure to put on the table: it always gets a laugh.  That definitely counts for something.

This is how the rather tall figure scales up with some rootin’ tootin’ Mali-folk.  L to R is The Judge, Robosheriff, Santiago Ortega.  The boys are on 30mm bases and the Robosheriff is on a 40mm.  Would I watch a movie that had the above image as a poster?  Damn straight I would.

Edit: a helpful Malifaux player knocked this card up for me so that I can use the figure as a proxy Guardian with minimum fuss.  Very kind.

Judge Dredd in the Cursed Earth

PB and MT visited a few weeks back for a gaming weekend.  In addition to the boardgames that we had planned we also wanted to get a game or two of the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game and In the Emperors Name played.

We set up the post apocalyptic shanty town of Standard Falls as shown above.  This was the first game to use most of the scenery shown, as I put the majority of it together earlier this year.   I got a kick out of simply setting it up to be honest.  Standard Falls isnt finished just yet (more stuff in the pipeline) but it is satisfying to have got it even this far.

L to R: Psi Judge Geller, Riot Judge Barrabus, Street Judge Giant, Med Judge Trapper and Rookie Street Judge Lacey

A lot of factions were added in the most recent JDMG update.  I have suitable minatures to field many of them, but as I have most recently been working on Mega City One Judges, I wanted to use some of them again (above).  I was sorely tempted to use a zombie or robot force, but the Judges won out in the end.

As there were three players we decided to keep things simple and go for a game with two sides, rather than three.

Both MT and PB wanted to play using zombie forces so they each chose a force using half the points of the Judge force.  Above is PBs force of sickos led by Patient Zero (the Zombie Master) plus his henchman the horribly mutated Hoo Hoo and five former humans.

MTs force of rather gorier cadavers was led by the kinematically redundant, cybernetic demonoid, Adam.  MT had sunk a chunk of his points into Adams formidable psychic arsenal.

The scenario was set to be the assassination of the opponents leader(s).  Street Judge Giant was the most senior on the Department side.  In turn the judges had to apprehend or failing that execute both Patient Zero and Adam.

The Judge force proceeded Northward while each undead force attempted to flank them.  Which is kind of tough seeing that as yet, the only zombies sighted in Judge Dredds world have been the traditional slow variety.

Patient Zero psychically impels his rotten rogues down the abandoned street.

Riot Judge Barrabus has dealt with the walking dead before (or at least has seen a lot of old Horror tri-vids) and knows that standard projectiles have reduced effect on the living impaired.

Riot Foam on the other hand is just as effective on the dead as on the living.  With a jet from from his foam gun Barrabus locks Hoo Hoo and one of the zombies in place, still gnashing their teeth but completely incapacitated.  Patient Zero starts to get nervous.

The Judge force proceeds with the refused flank (not that difficult against shuffling undead) and concentrates the attack on Patient Zeros forces.  Spotting the danger Adam begins the slow redeployment of his force.

After another devastating display of Justice Department riot foam drill, Barrabus tops the zombies forces “Most Wanted” list.  Anticipating this, Med Judge Trapper moves close enough to administer stimm packs when Barrabus is dropped by a psychic assault.  Giant and Geller provide Hi-Ex covering fire.

Barrabus backs around the corner to regain his breath while Trappers selfless heroism is rewarded with a psychic blast that causes his brains to run out of his nose.

Giant remains close enough to tempt the zombie masters into stalling their retreat.

The view from the Southern edge.  Note the Rookie (bottom right) who has been helping to hold Adams forces in indecision on the West side of the large building.

With the sort of efficiency that one would expect from a totalitarian police state, the zombie rising of 2143 is crushed in its early stages.

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Not a particularly tactical game, but I enjoyed it.  I did get to thoroughly lambaste two gaming buddies simultaneously with my newly painted miniatures over my newly built and painted terrain though, so that helped.

What was interesting was that some of the rules that were used had been modified since our previous JDMG session, in part due to feedback that we supplied on the Mongose forum.  Power to the people indeed.  Dredd would crush that sort of feedback under his reinforced heel.

JDMG is proving to be one of my favourite miniature gaming systems yet.  I am not sure exactly what it is about the system that I like (although I have a number of  theories that I wont blather on about here) but the whole seems to be greater than the sum of its parts.  Its pretty “clean” as systems go too, which is important.

And of course the fact that a system that is working as well as this for our group is officially based in the Judge Dredd licence is completely fantastic as far as I am concerned.

We also played a game of In the Emperors Name on the same terrain following this game.  I will report on that soon.

Lawless Vultures

Not a big update today, but some cute stuff nonetheless I reckon.

No western, post-apocalyptic or otherwise is complete without a few vultures.

I had originally planned to attach these Mega Miniatures figures to terrain pieces to add a bit of flavour but when they arrived I decided to simply base them like any other figures.

I plan to use the vultures as encounter markers for games set in my post apocalyptic terrain.  I also plan to use the vultures mark out areas on the board (like rad-zones or similar) as required.  It is always nicer to use miniatures or terrain pieces for that sort of thing rather than cardboard or plastic tokens.  I havent ruled out using the vultures as proper playing pieces in some scenario or other either.

Image from judgeminty.com. Used without permission (I do hope that the Minty folk dont mind though!)

The “No Law” sign was an idea that I had as I cut the head off a Judge Dredd Heroclix.

Although it was the figures body that I was after rather than the head, obviously I wasnt going to throw away a miniature judges helmet.  It then dawned on me to make a rough replica of the sign that was used during the filming of the Judge Minty fan film.

It is far from an exact copy, but it looks the part for me.  It was fun burning the writing into the wood with the soldering iron again rather than just painting on the lettering), just like the Standard Falls signs shown again below.

Some fun additions to my post apocalyptic terrain.

Da Bigdogz – Gorkamorka Mob #6: Runtherd, Shoota, Choppa & Big Shoota

The shoota boy above has a head from Kromlech miniatures ( the company that makes the cybork parts shown in this post.  The Runtherd is from the Gretchin box and is a cool little figure complete with vicious herd squig.

Lastly another pair of homicidal post apocalyptic aliens armed with automatic weapons, hooray!

Da Bigdogz – Gorkamorka Mob #5: Nob, Kannon, Choppa & Big Shoota

Dual Wielding Nob and Boy with Kannon

The gunslinging Nob above has a magnetised neck and head.  Mainly this is so that I can swap my preferred leaders head onto this body if he develops in a gun kata direction after a few games.

I have done a little conversion work on a specific ork nob head (details to follow at a later date) and I want to have as many weapon options as possible available for my leader, plus it was a fun exercise too.

The Kannon is a resin weapon from Ramshackle Games.

Boy with Choppas and A Big Shoota Boy

As the heavy weapons in Gorkamorka are not man (or ork) portable the big shoota boy will be used to represent a gunner on a vehicle or emplacement or similar.  The ork big shoota models are too much fun to leave out of my ork painting project anyway.

“Standard Falls” Shanty Town: Pt3

The prototype Town Sign. Still adequate for use, but I prefer the smaller one shown previously.

After assembly painting and varnishing some tarting up of the pieces was the final thing.  I dont have the facilities to photograph anything much bigger than a 28mm figure terribly well, so my terrain snaps are a bit ropier than my usual “alright” photo standard.  C’est la vie.

Firstly I stippled burnt sienna (which is the base colour of the surface that I game on) onto the more expansive flat areas of the bases, such as fenced in area and between barrels/crates and the buildings.

Next I drybrushed the base edges and everywhere that the terrain touched the “ground” with the same colour.

Once that was dry I added some small patches of brown and orange lichen to the bases.  I was trying to quickly evoke a little bit of western theme here, reminscent of dustbowl tumbleweeds.

It was at this point that I finally worked out how to mount the freestanding doors on the buildings.  I had read that paper hinges were feasible for this sort of thing.  I tried it and didnt like the effect.  The project was coming close to the end now and I knew that if I didnt find a quick and functional way to make the doors easily remain open and closed that I would end up leaving them out altogether.

A plan view of the yard attached to the shack above.

So I had a rummage in my stuff.  I ended up sticking cheap plastic-y flat magnets on the inside floor of the buildings at the doorway.  Then I bent flat picture hooks until they sat at right angles and glued them to the back of the doors with room for the magnets underneath.  This allows me to add or remove doors as I wish.

You should be just about able to work out what I am taking about by looking at this picture:

I have yet to paint the inside of the doors and the hooks, but I will give it them quick coat of black, just so that they look a little neater.

Next on the to-do list was adding a whole load of posters and signs to the walls of the buildings.  Some of these were posters from the Foundry Rules With No Name downloads page.  The majority however came from images that theangrylurker had collected for just this purpose here, here and here (thanks Fran!).

Although the posters all have meaning (rather than just being abstract shapes) I wasnt terribly fussy about whether they made sense or not.  I tried to make sure that not too many duplicates would be visible if I lined up the buildings as a street but beyond that I stuck them wherever I thought looked good.

I also stuck some small printouts of a newspaper with the headline “THE DEAD WALK” onto the ground in a few areas.  It helped to break up some of the flatter base areas without presenting an obstacle to miniature placement, plus a bit of litter brings a model to life a bit I find.

Next up are some of the smaller scenic elements that I prepared at the same time.

Renedra Gravestones

I made the graveyard in strips for convenience for storage, set-up and during play.  I could have spent a bit more time varying the tones and colours in the stones but by now I just wanted to be finished quickly, so I left them all one colour.

GW Ork Barricades

Above are the six GW Ork barricades.  I really like how these came out, but I should have photographed them differently.  All six are in that shot believe it or not, but its hard to tell.  I am chuffed with how they look anyway

Pardulon Junk Piles

The Pardulon junk piles are nice and were very quick to prep.  As one of the games that I plan to play with this terrain is Gorkamorka the junk piles will be thematic terrain whether I play using the shanty or not.

The three larger scratch built buildings were difficult to photograph, so sorry about the shadows and the like.

Lastly the building with the unfeasibly large corrugated roof shown below is the saloon.

Like all of the scratch built buildings in this project, I originally put them together back in ’96.  Of the six of them the saloon was ever finished properly.

Saloon interior, complete with back room, barman and dancing girl.

I did the interior pieces sixteen years ago, but they are more than adequate for my needs all the same.  In fact, if I painted them now I would probably spend less time on them.

Although I have plans to make a few magnetically attached signs that could identify the buildings (Undertaker, Saloon, Marshall, that sort of thing) as and when required for scenarios, I had run out of steam at this point.

It wasnt fun any more, so I decided to leave Standard Falls as is for a while.  I imagine that I will get back to to those bits when I get around to making a clock tower and finishing the saloon.

Thanks for looking!

“Standard Falls” Shanty Town: Pt2

After assembling the elements of my post apocalyptic shanty town I sprayed most of the pieces black.  I left the wooden signs unsprayed as I wanted to try painting them with washes and a little drybrushing and to leave the existing wooden colour show through a bit.

Sprayed Pardulon Shacks

I then drybrushed the shacks, the scrap and the barricades with cheap silver acrylic from Lidl.  For a little variation I also entirely covered some of the sheets modeled onto the shacks etc in silver at this point.

Two Pardulon shacks before and after a big silver dry/overbrush.

Next I painted a random selection of elements on the pieces with a ruddy red oxide colour (which has become a recurring colour in this terrain set for an unknown reason).

Lastly for this stage, I painted a number of details in suitable colours, such as the wooden doors, the tarp roofs on two of the shacks, tubing and other details on the barricades etc.

While I wanted the end result to look ramshackle, I didnt want it to look too gaudy.  Real junk and garbage obviously has a massive variation in colour.  That would have been time consuming to paint and the end result may have looked… well… like garbage.  So I used a limited palette on the lot.

Generally speaking I stippled those colours on.  I layered the colour on roughly in some cases and just used a base colour in others, whatever looked ok to me for each piece at that time.

What I didnt really do was any significant highlighting.  As I planned to lightly drybrush almost every thing with silver at a later point it wasnt worth while: the silver will provide the highlight.

I planned to apply some appropriate transfers at this point, hoping that good usage of them would imply that elements of the shanty had been scavenged from items that previously had another use.

As it happened I didnt apply any transfers.  I had an afternoon set aside to do more work on the shanty and if I had put on transfers then I would have had to leave the whole lot to one side to dry overnight, so I decided to leave the transfers off.

So the next step was to wash more or less everything with a mix of liquitex black ink, burnt sienna and water.  This deadened the colours a bit, shaded some other areas and gave some definition.

At this stage the wooden areas got a little attention with a combination of drybrushing, ink washes and all that.  It was a bit freeform and done on a case by case basis, but was all simple stuff.

After that most areas got a light of drybrush of silver.  Some areas had some detail picked out if it had become too dull from the wash or if it rewarded a small bit of effort.

Next: finishing touches.

“Standard Falls” Shanty Town: Pt1

The vulture model to sit on the sign is in the post.

I warbled about getting my post apocalyptic town ready for gaming with just over a year ago.  The setting and my conceptual plan are loosely detailed in that post.

I finally got around to working on the town itself over the last few weeks, only one year later than I intended…

The first thing that I did was assemble the lovely resin shacks that I got from Pardulon and then base them on cork tiles.  I have based a lot of my non-urban terrain this way for the last few years as its cheap, surprisingly sturdy, easy to work with and the broken edges give a rocky, wild west feeling.   Its a quick, cheap and easy solution to something that has always previously been a hassle for me.

As is apparent from the photo I also stuck some barrels, crates. wheels and other bits and pieces down too.  I tried to include enough to at least give a vague feeling of the buildings being lived in, but without clogging up the pieces so much that they limit figure placement to an irritating level.  Only time and gameplay will tell if I succeeded at balancing that.

I made five shanty buildings back in 1996 (above).  They were largely built from corrugated plastic poster board that I took from a skip on my way home from college.

Note the chipped edges on the old shacks shown. They will be either repainted or obscured in some way later on.

I decided to press these old stalwarts into service in Standard Falls and so I stuck them to cork bases too.  I didnt bother trying to blend the slightly battered existing card bases to the cork.  I would rather just assume that it is a sheet of scrap that the shanty builders built on top of.

I left enough room on the building bases to add bits of balsa, card and textured styrene sheet at the front.  That sort of thing can give a little context to terrain pieces and help them to look a marginally less like they were dropped from orbit into the setting.  Also I hoped that the addition of a post apocalyptic boardwalk would evoke a little of the western frontier town feeling.

Note the GW ork barricades (rear) and the Pardulon junk piles (fore).

Next I stuck half a set of Renedra plastic gravestones and a set of Pardulon junk piles to cork bases (I hope that the other half of the Renedra gravestone set will eventually be stuck to greener looking bases for use in zombie and Buffy type games).  I cleaned up a set of Games Workshop Ork Barricades at this stage too, but figured that they didnt need to be based.

Finally I got a some popsicle sticks, burned “STANDARD FALLS” into them with a soldering iron and hot glued them to cork bases.  I forgot to WIP photograph those at that stage but via time travel technology a picture of one of the finished signs is at the top of this post.

Lastly, for no reason other than I feel like it I will show you what two of my cats were doing right then as I managed to take a photo of them while forgetting to keep track of the miniatures…

I made two signs, once with each of the two sizes of popsicle stick that I had available.  I was trying to get a western feel and make signs reminiscent of the sign for the town “Redemption” in The Quick and the Dead.  I think that it worked well.  Scorching the letters in was fun too.

Next: painting.

Camping with Bugs

Two items today: Necromunda Milliasaurs and some dog tents from Renedra.

I picked up the set of dog tents from the Renedra stand at Salute along with another item.

Although I already have three feral, teepee type tents painted up I wanted to have models that represented tents that might feasibly be moved around easily, either on a models back or on the saddle (animal or vehicle).  Although the models dont take up a lot of space, they are cute little gaming props that help to create atmosphere.

The Mutie faction in Gorkamorka doesnt use forts, being more nomadic in their behaviour.  The original (stupidly named) “Digganob” supplement for (the equally stupidly named) Gorkamorka came with a set of small cardboard tents to represent the Mutie encampment, but they were lost or squished in some house move or another over the years.  These cute little plastics will be a durable and very serviceable replacement.

Painting the tents was fast.  I didnt want to spend much time on them so I painted the pegs metallic (that suits the Gorkamorka setting better than wooden pegs and stopped the models from being 100% shades of brown) and then washed the entirety of the models with GW Gryphonne Sepia, twice.  I then washed them again with GW Devlan Mud and finally painted some black ink into the door flap edges.  Very quick but perfectly ok for what the models are.

The Milliasaurs are creepy crawlies from the GW Necromunda setting.  Like my Ripper Jacks and Giant Rats, they were originally supplied as servants of Necromunda Wyrd Beastmasters, who could use them to do their amoral bidding.

I gave the Milliasaurs a quick drybrush followed by a coat of Tamiya Clear Red on the chitin areas.  It gave a nice cockroach sort of look I think.  I did a tiny bit of detailing on the teeth and spines too.

They are creepy looking figures.  The guy rearing up would stand at about 150cm in real life, which would be a pretty appalling thing to find at the door of anyones tent I reckon.

Giant Rat Swarm

These guys were assembled primarily for Necromunda games back in 1998, but I didnt get around to painting them until 2009.  I finally went back to them to add just a little bit of detail and take some photos this year.

As all Electric Six fans living in the current pre-apocalyptic era know, only robots, cockroaches (and probably Lidl) will survive the upcoming Armageddon.   Before you ask, zombies dont count as “surviving”.

My own in depth research has also revealed that there is a good possibility that mutant, dog-sized rodents will live on in the undercities and eventually spill in huge swarms onto the irradiated plains above.  Probably.

In Necromunda the tribal native human “Ratskin” faction (which I will eventually get around to painting) survive in harmony with their destroyed environment.  Part of this involves their nomadic lifestyle, with the Ratskin braves following the migrating swarms through the ruined industrial landscape.

Hi-freakin-larious in other words and way too good a gaming opportunity to miss.  Cue the theme from “Rawhide”.

Denim clad Foundry punk Nancy objects to being used to demonstrate scale...

I put together the swarm from the rather cool mutant rats from Necromunda, a load of eighties giant rats from GW, a few of the plastic giant rats that were first seen in Warhammer Quest and a handful of the titchy rats that sat on the Heroquest furniture making a total of 31.

The best figures are easily the Necromunda guys visible in the first photo, although a couple of the larger metal Warhammer guys are cool too.

I have yet to get around to playing my “Rathide” cattle rustling scenario in the depth that I would like.  I did run a prototype Rathide game of “Mutants and Death Ray Guns” testing the idea with MT back in 2009 though.

More post apocalyptic rat related miniatures are available at Megaminis HERE (post apoc ratmen) and at Black Cat Bases HERE (mounted post apoc ratmen).  Those guys are on my (gigantic) shopping list…