+ inload: Fire up the Bigmob +

+ Painting Gargants +

+ Waa-ork! The boiler's nearly at full, so let's go full steam ahead on getting a Bigmob of Gargants ready for Adeptus Titanicus play. +

I'm having fun picking away at this Gargant – I hope that the slightly mismatched look almost inevitable with this approach should add to the feel. For all my protestations of disliking painting big things like tanks, this year seems to have alternated between giant Titans and teeny-weeny Epic figures, with very little in between. Funny how things work.

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Since last time, all I've really done is work on the muted olive green of the superstructure with washes. I've had a variety open on my painting desk, ranging from Gryphonne and Seraphim Sepia to Agrax Earthshade and whatever the red, green and blue ones are called.

The effect gives a textural result that I really like – I think once some contrasting plates are in place, it'll provide a bit more 'pop'. Regardless, I'm finding more and more that I'm simply enjoying the process of painting, rather than the finished result. 

I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing – I can't imagine it's quite so interesting to everyone else, but the relaxing nature of gradually building up and refining is certainly relaxing.

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+ Fire the secondary batteries! +

This Gargant has been a bit of an experiment in avoiding primary colours, and substituting them for secondaries. I've used lots of reds, blues and yellows recently (along with highly-saturated greens), and thought another palette might be a fun experiment.

Enter the secondary colours, and in muted, earthy hues. I like working within restrictions like this – it'll help to give a coherent finish, and the nature of picking a colour scheme means that groups of colours like this (a triad) will always tend to work.

The washes have been laid in around the seams and rivets in a fairly hotch-potch fashion; varying the colours across the surface. While wet, I've used a clean dry brush to selectively lift out some of the pooling wash from raised areas, as well as dropping in other wash colours for variety here and here. I've also used some kitchen paper and swiped with my thumb to remove washes in more textural ways.

As I hope you can see, the results are starting to build up into the appearance of mottled, dusty, rusty and oily textures across the surface. I think this sort of textural greebling goes a long way to selling the idea of scale. Compare the effect on the front with the back, where things are mostly at an earlier stage.

I'm planning to have some brighter areas to suggested internal lighting – showing through in the various little 'huts' and portholes/windows, and to have some plates made up of metals taken from looted foes.

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You'll note the base has been worked up in various browns up through yellow ochre to an ivory colour for highlights. This matches my Iron Skulls (Legio Metalica) forces and the rest of my Armageddon-themed miniatures. I'll probably add a few tufts and bits and bobs. The huge bases of Titans and similar War Engines provide a great canvas for stuff that helps set the scale, like barrels and infantry figures. You'll spot a little mek poking out of the hatch at the top of the Gargant's head. He's from Vanguard Miniatures' Skinners range [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+].

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+ Plans and plots +

The eventual plan for this is to have a 'maniple' of each of the 40k factions I find iconic for Epic – Eldar, Orks and Imperials. I'll be using the Bloodsong expansion, [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+] which is entering its final beta testing stage over the next couple of weeks.

Duplication is anathema to the orks, and I managed to find another Great Gargant sculpt, which a friend of mine has kindly printed. This version is a bit more refined than the other, I think; a bit more natural looking. 

I've not received the figure, but he should fit in very nicely alongside our unnamed friend above.

Speaking of names, it struck me that it might be fun to have name generators or a list of suggestions in Bloodsong, so I'm very open to any ideas or suggestions for Ork Gargant and Eldar Titan names – exload 'em into the comments here, or pop them up on the +Death of a Rubricist+ Facebook group [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+], where you can ask any questions you like about the project.

A couple more 'glamour shots' of the WIP Great Gargant. He's magnetised at the head, and the torso is also unglued in order to allow things to rotate freely. 

The weapons are magnetised, mostly using 5mm rare earth magnets – apart from the shoulder guns (part of the gun decks, rules-wise), where I realised I could use some spare corsage magnets instead. These Gargant models are quite substantial, and so larger, cheaper magnets seem sensible.

I haven't got a pict-capture of them on the Great Gargant, but you can see them nice and clearly on this smaller Gargant:

... and while they're at an early stage, I thought I'd show the rest of the bigmob as they currently stand:

This head is based on the original Great Gargant one – I found a couple cheap second-hand, and have bulked it up a bit (it looked a bit pin-headed originally!)

+ inload: Hearthkyn Salvager specialists for Kill Team +

+ Oathband of Trym-Eena +

+ Six weeks(ish) to go, and progress on the Squats for Kill Team is ticking over nicely. +

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Played a very enjoyable game to test out the new Kill Team, with Bob Hunk commanding his Flesh Eaters (using the Angels of Death Kill Team) and me trying out the Hearthkyn Salvagers. Alas, defeat for the first game – but probably deserved, as my models weren't painted!

With a game under my belt, and a bit more of a sense of how things worked, I've been trying to finalise the composition of the team – and more importantly, come up with silly names. Hailing from the Irnståv Dominion [+noosphericexloadlinked embedded+], part of the Mjalnar League, are the Oathband of Trym-Eena:

• Theyn with bolt revolver and plasma weapon – Albus Irnståv
• Field Medic with bolt revolver and plasma knife – Ketil Beinbrót
• Gunner (Ironkin) with HYLas auto rifle – J33VS
• Gunner with ETaCarn plasma beamer – Tomb
• Gunner with HYLas rotary cannon – Håndeld Bluetooth
• Kinlynk with Autoch-pattern bolter – Okkâ Sharpear
• Lugger with Ion blaster – Lûgs Portr
• Lokâtr with Autoch-pattern bolter – Cnut Carespelt
• Warrior with Autoch-pattern bolter – Sven Ovnîn
• Warrior (Ironkin) with Ion blaster – WSTR

This bunch of likely lads will be facing off against a range of foes, including from Myrry's Murderers, Lucifer216's Night Lords, the 'Excommunicables' of Omricon, Warmtamale's Vespids, LordBloodtheHungry's Beastmen. That's on top of the Space Marines Bob Hunk and Stuntwedge are bringing, so a nice range.

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A tap of his heavily-gloved hand opened his helm, the visor swinging back noiselessly. His face, already wrinkled, scrunched further as the whiff of distant manufacturing reached him, but his eyes were already fixed on the device in his hand. 

He ignored the cold, corrupted air of Tundrine Har as he ignored the nearby gunfire. The rising whine of WSTR and Portr's ion blasters punctuating the heavier crack-pops of the rest of Trym. 

'When you are ready, Okkâ.' The Theyn's reproving tone was distorted by patch-crackle. To all appearances, Okkâ Sharpear ignored his leader, too. The soft white underlighting from his comms device lent his craggy face an eerie glow as he paged through the intelligence.

There. 

Satisfied, he gave a small nod, tapped a few thick buttons on his forearm, and looked up. Trym's other Ironkyn gave him a jaunty thumbs-up, which – as always – annoyed him no end. Its projected face  cheerily rotated to its front, and the Ironkyn and Sven Ovnîn disappeared round the corner. Sharpear muttered to himself under his breath, then jogged up to the corner Sven had vacated, and readied his own boltgun.

From around the corner, the sound of gunfire redoubled briefly, before a sharp cry of pain rang out abruptly. Sharpear peeked round the corner.

The two Kin stood looking pleased with themselves, much to Okkâ's inward disapproval. Too much vim in the young these days, he thought to himself. He sauntered over to join them, rolling his eyes as he saw J33VS congratulate his partner with a pat on the back.

'Think that was the last, Sharpear.' Said Sven, his own helm retracted completely. The young warrior scratched idly at the stubbly base of his beard where his inner suit began. His face, leathery and star-tanned, wore an expression that bordered on the smug.

'I'll be the judge of that, young Sven.' He looked about briefly, scowled, then voice-patched the Theyn.

'Albus? The way is clear. You can bring the rest of Trym round now I've sorted things out.' 

The only reply was an amused grunt. Kin wasted nothing; even words.

After giving J33VS and Sven Ovnîn another admonishing scowl, Okkâ closed his visor with a tap on side of his helmet, hefted his boltgun, and motioned to them. They wore acquisitive grins on their faces; skin and metal alike.

'Toil earns, you two. Time you stopped playing at soldiers and learn something from your betters.'

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+ Kin is kin +

It's been fun exploring and reading around the Leagues of Votann. I'm very impressed with how the GW writers have re-integrated the old squat material, and included lots of clever ways to square circles to have in-universe nods to the real world absence of the squats.

The list above includes most of the figures from the previous inload, but I've swapped out some of the basic warriors for more specialists.

Pictured here is J33VS, an Ironkin with HYLas repeater; Lûgs Portr, a Lugger with an ion blaster; and WSTR, an Ironkin warrior, also with an ion blaster.

I confess that I didn't like the Ironkin idea at first, and fully intended my theoretical army (and thus this Kill Team) to include none, but after reading the background they've really grown on me. I like the sense that they are automatons in the old-fashioned sense – and that they're purely a modelling thing. GW have shown some rare restraint in not having different rules for the Kin and Ironkin.

Pictured at the top of this inload are the same figures, plus the Theyn. I've used the leader from the other squat kit (the modern take on the Engineer's Guild) as I liked the greatcoat. I'll have fun painting that up to look a bit like the Steel Legion.

You'll also see Tomb, the heavy gunner. With a heavy heart, I'm swapping out the heavy bolter for one of the other options. This Thunderkyn model is going to count as my third Gunner, but as I've already got the HYLas rotary cannon on Håndeld Bluetooth, I needed to pick another option.

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+ inload: Great Gargant musings and Deathskulls in Battle for Armageddon +

+ Great Gargant WIPs +

+ The playtesting for Bloodsong ticks along, and what excuse is really needed to paint up tiny Titans? In this case, it's an Ork Great Gargant that's had a little work done. +

Progress is minimal – this is behind my squat Kill Team in the painting queue – but since it's looking like the Legions Imperialis game planned for a few weeks time might be derailed, I thought I'd slap a little bit of paint on this Great Gargant, which has sat with uncharacteristic patience since Lucifer216 gave it to me.

The scheme's a bit of an experiment. A brown undercoat was followed up by directional spraying of dark green, khaki and finally off-white (GW's Wraithbone) to create a slightly spotty, textural feel like the cast iron of WWII tanks.

I've then gone in with some exploratory washes on the head, and picked out a few details with various blacks and browns. My taste for orks is to make them look a bit patchwork, so I've jumped from place to place. The plan is essentially to work gradually down the Gargant and then back up, getting things loosely in place on the first way down, and then tightening and refining things on the way up.

Back in the dim and distant days of 014.M3, I spooled out an inload on painting faces [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and since then I've often found myself working up the focal area of a model to give me the enthusiasm and 'oomph' to carry on.

Nowhere do I find this principle more useful than painting Titans and similar giant war engines like this Great Gargant. I find the wealth of structures and textures and odd bits and bobs across such a big model can feel intimidating – but giving the piece some character really helps to inspire the rest. Here, I went for a lop-sided approach to the eyes, having fun painting a swirly green eye alongside a simple orange one. 

I'm tempted to try developing the orange eye a bit further and building up a reflection of Armageddon's burning hives as I did on the Salamanders' Thunderhawk below:

I do like the retro sci-fi look of clean bulbous round glass, but I shall have a think while I work down and back up the War Engine.

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+ What clan? +

Indecision on this is a big part of why I've prevaricated on painting the thing, and the colour scheme is still very up in the air. For the moment, I'm content to keep it 'battle green', as that's a suitably generic colour for all orks, and reminds me of the Gargants from a battle report in White Dwarf 136 – one of the earliest issues I read, and formative in how I picture ork armies.

Killboss, pictured above, is a Smasher Great Gargant with a head turret. Commanded by none other than Warlord Burzuruk himself, it's a Goff Gargant – but not the all-black we'd probably expect today.

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+ Talking of Orks +

Back to Armageddon Prime [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+]: I've drawn the tokens up to match the originals as closely as possible, so they're all planned to be 25mm/1in square.

Ghazghkull's sent two forces into Armageddon Prime – the Blood Axes and Snakebites, while he led the Goffs, Evil Suns and Bad Moons through the jungle into Secundus. The Chaos Attack expansion had a  number of 'what if?' scenarios, one of gave you the option of swapping out the tribes. Supplied with that expansion were 18 Snakebite units and 18 Blood Axe units.  The service I'm planning to use can do sheets of 42 counters, which brings up a nice opportunity to include some Death Skulls.

While it's not quite enough to fit all three on one sheet, I thought it'd be fun to work up the idea:

Still WIP, but it finally brings the Deathskulls into the party. Conspicuously absent from the original – likely because what makes their faction identity special didn't really lend itself easily to this scale of warfare – I tried to iterate from what was there. I therefore started with the seemingly standard five ork hordes of two different qualities; two Nobz, three gretchin and one Madobyz token.

To that I added a fourth Gretchin stand (in the Epic ork army list from White Dwarf 128, it notes that the Deathskull's penchant for looting attracts lots of mischievous gretchin), and then added a couple of tokens that appear in more than one of the other clans: Battlewagons and Bike boyz.

The others are innovations that are intended to evoke what's special about the Deathskulls. The Looted Tanks were a halfway house between the 'oomie vehicles of the Blood Axes and the Battlewagons of the other orks in terms of stats; while the three Lootaz counters use a mechanic from the daemons in Chaos Attack (rolling to determine their Attack and Defence values at random) to represent their rather temperamental/random reliability.

You'll note that the Deathskulls, like the Blood Axes and Snakebites, don't have Gargants. That was partially for symmetry with the other expansion forces, and also the lootas have plenty of potential to punch above their weight. Generally, they'll be around as effective as the Snakebites' squiggoths, and I didn't want to also give them a reliable heavy-hitter.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the Deathskulls – and if you get a chance to playtest them (or Gargants for Bloodsong!), please do let me know the fallout.

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+inload: Armageddon Prime tokens +

+ A holiday to Armageddon Prime +

'Come to sunny Armageddon Prime! The other continent on this key Imperial world!' 

+ Today's inload looks at some practical elements of this project to realise a fan-made second expansion to Battle for Armageddon; with respectful thanks to Jervis Johnson, Mark Gibbons, Richard Helliwell, Fangorn and Bill King for the inspiration +

Tangentially-related miniatures watch respectfully as a techpriest blesses the artworks.

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+ Progress towards Armageddon +

I've squeezed in two fun games of the original boardgame recently. We played the very basic game the first time, with the Imperials winning a Hail-Mary victory by offing Ghazghkull. The second game involved the Snakebites and Blood Axes from the Chaos Attack expansion, along with the treacherous Von Strab – and this was a thorough hammering for the Imperials. Both times were very enjoyable! 

It's a fun, simple and relatively quick game; if you can find a copy, I'd encourage you to give it a go.

Enthusiasm for this project has been running high, as it's firing off lots of interlocking interests. Squats, hand-painting, ork gargants (more on them in an article soon...), and even some gaming... 

Finding some focus in the hobby is good, but it's not everything!  Sometimes it's nice just to let enthusiasm carry you along freely.

+ Making tokens +

My set of counters for the game is looking a bit sun-faded, and as these things tend to go, I wondered if I could recreate them. The originals were given away as a print-to-play PDF by GW's Fanatic department many years ago, but I'm pretty sure they were created by scanning a set, rather than from the original print files, as the colours and resolution are a bit ropey. 

One idea crashed into another, and I thought it'd be fun to create a proper set for the Armageddon Prime expansion. I've been working on this expansion (the rules written by KillerKatana) on and off [+vis.ref this inload node: +noosphericinloadlink embedded+], and it seemed a great chance to polish up my Illustrator skills.

 

Here's a rundown of the Imperial tokens needed from the original boardgame:

• 8th–14th Armies 
• seven tokens with values 2 4 1
• 15th–20th Armies
• six tokens with values 2 3 1 values
• 2nd–7th Tank Divisions
• one token with values 7 4 2
• four tokens with values 6 4 2
• one token with value 5 3 2
• 3rd–6th Rough Riders and Light Brigade
• two tokens with values 2 2 3
• two tokens with values 1 2 3
• one token with values 1 1 4
• Hive gangs
• five tokens with values 2 3 1
• five tokens with values 1 2 1
• Fortifications
• eight tokens with values – x2 –

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I've taken a few creative liberties. I didn't want to copy them absolutely exactly for a few reasons. Firstly, it seems a bit uncreative – I'd rather iterate and develop the original idea than just make an carbon copy – and in any case having some differences future-proofs the set, so that you could in theory play both the Prime and Secundus theatres in an apocalyptic combined game. Finally, I have no desire to have GW looking askance at what is really just a couple of hobbyists playing about, so out of respect to the original designers and artists, and the spirit of the project, I wanted to add my own little flourish rather than just take.

Here's a look at the Imperial side. You can see the GW originals from the Fanatic download on the pasteboard (the darker area surrounding the white working areas):

Looking at things in detail was interesting. It suggested quite a bit about how the game was originally made, and how assets were re-used. A lot of the icons are from transfer sheets of the era, while others were re-used from Epic: Space Marine. Trying to find complementary typefaces and riffing on the artworks was a fun little exercise, and – even if I do say so myself – I think the result looks the part.

I was torn a little on whether to update things. Things like the Armageddon Steel Legion were still germinating at the time, so the Imperial Guard tokens are labelled rather starkly as (e.g.) 'Imperial Guard 1st Army'; things like Rough Rider formations were slowly being shuffled off into moth balls during this period as the main studio developed the Imperial Guard for 40k; and the colours are very bright and vibrant, as per the GW studio aesthetic of the time. There are lots more instances of little things like that – and of course the mechanics of the game rely to some extent on the names on the cards.

In the end, I thought doing a modern take would be a fun idea, but as this is really a bit of an homage to the original, I thought I'd split the difference. You can see how I've kept the 'Imperial Guard' text on the cards, but replaced '1st Army' with '1st Steel Legion', for example. You'll also spot the Imperialis (winged skull) symbol of the Guard in general has been replaced with the Steel Legion's logo.

(As an aside, the colours of the Guard Army Groups I used in The Ashes of Armageddon project was inspired by this game. You can see on the left how the 1st Army has a red circle with white logo; while the 8th–14th Armies are yellow with a black logo.)

This is slightly complicated because KillerKatana's rules for Prime suggest using only the second-rate armies from the original game, to represent the Hives of Prime being caught unprepared. A really cool and simple idea, but odd in isolation. I've resolved that by keeping the colours of the Army Groups from the original game, but renumbering them – that way there's no confusion between the armies of Armageddon Prime and Armageddon Secundus. The Departmento Munitorum will be pleased.

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+ Tanks and support +

Close inspection will also reveal that I've updated the silhouettes of the Tank brigades and Rough Riders; both also renumbered and noted as 'Prime' formations. The tank icons mostly  match those of the original game: a Stormhammer and Baneblades for the 1st–5th Prime Divisions (equivalent to the 2nd–6th of Secundus – the 1st there is a Shadowsword), but I couldn't resist replacing the old Basilisk with the more iconic Leman Russ.

The place of Rough Riders as quick response recon units has been supplanted in the Steel Legion background by Sentinels, so the walkers replace the symbols there for the 1st and 2nd Rough Rider Brigades – in much the same way as I justified the change in this article. However, I personally love Rough Riders – space cavalry really captures the degraded pseudo-historical theme of 40k for me, so the horseman icon is retained for the rest.

The Hive Gangs of Prime got a skeletal Eagle skull as their symbol – change for the fun of it, and to help distinguish between those of the original game; and the fortifications got a redesign, too – now closer to the modern 40k-era symbol for Fortifications.

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+ More challenges! +

Of course, not everything from the original was iconographic – quite a lot was hand-painted. The board was painted by Mark Gibbons, for example, and I'm guessing that the factories and hives were painted at the same time by that talented so-and-so, now working for the tabletop publisher Rookery Publications [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]. Here they are: 

 

Again, directly lifting this seemed not entirely cricket, so I decided to set aside a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon to try a bit of an experiment, and broke out the paints to try my own crack at things:

I worked at four times the size of the originals – I'm no Mark Gibbons, and shrinking things down would tighten my sketchy work up nicely. Above you can see an early stage of the 10 x 10cm square I used for the Hive city tile alongside the original counters from the game.

... and here are the finished artworks: the Hive City and Factory – and the shared 'smouldering ruins' that makes up the reverse of each piece.

  

I then photographed them, resized them and dropped them into my aesthetigraphical-engine automat servitor (Adobe Illustrator) before putting on the text overlays. 

In the pict-capture below, the originals are shown on the left, while my efforts are on the right. I'm pleased with how they've come out – and I hope that the designers would get a kick out of seeing their efforts still inspiring new work years later.

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