+ inload: Painting squats' face and making Battle for Armageddon tokens +

+ Kin and countryside +

+ This Kill Team of *checks notes* Hearthkyn Salvagers is not finished yet, but ticking on smoothly. Today's inload looks at the trials and tribulations of painting tiny faces in awkward recesses – and also looks at some Battle for Armageddon custom tokens, which account for the rather strained pun in the title. +

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+ Hello there +

I find it endlessly fascinating what a difference painting makes to a sculpt; how you can – intentionally or not – add (or destroy) character or emotion with the tiniest paint stroke. I guess it's down to how familiar we are with human (or abhuman, in this case) faces – though I'll note the same thing seems to happen even with aliens.

There's a hint of Ewan McGregor in the face of this Kin Theyn. Unintended, but amused me. Think I'll paint his plasma-axe with a hint of blue.

Unlike the rest of the gang, I've started this chap with the face. This is something I like to do on occasion, particularly for one-off or character sculpts, as it gets me invested in the figure early on. On reflection, I should probably have done this for the whole Kill Team, as having them half-done for ages has been quite demotivating. Remind me next time.

Of course, the risk of that approach is that you're not happy with the finish and it puts you off entirely. That's nearly what happened here – I got stuck in and slopped on the paint, and then... it just wouldn't resolve. Sometimes that's 

This work-in-progress [+viz-ref: below+] shows the point at which I told myself to step back. It's okay at this point, but for whatever reason I just wasn't feeling it.

Few things are more likely to further spoil a face than pressing on when you're frustrated, so I took a break, pinged a pict-capture over to the PCRC group chat for a bit of perspective, then came back to it after a cup of recaff.

Whether it was taking a break to come back with fresh eyes, a more positive attitude or simply leaving the layers of paint to dry properly, when I came back the face came together much more smoothly and quickly. What's the lesson? Nothing hugely revelatory, but 'take a break and come back later' is generally good advice.

Within reason, acrylics will cover previous layers, and as long as you're thinning your paint you'll not build up a meaningful texture. This means that even if you feel a face (or any bit, really) has gone horribly wrong, you can just paint over it and start again. 

That's what I did here. Pretty much the whole face was repainted, using the original colours as a map. It was a bit like redrafting a bit of text. Everything's there, but needs to be tidied or deleted or supplemented. This approach is particularly useful if you tend to be self-critical, as you can use that to your advantage:

Stop and take some time to identify the errors. Instead of thinking that you're repainting the face, just go in and fix the bits that stick out. Rinse and repeat until you're happy.

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+ The rest of the team +

While the face above took up a chunk of time, I also had a go at some others while the paint was on the palette. The Kin are supposedly clones – albeit with quite a lot of variation created with genetic tinkering – so I was in two minds on whether to include much variation in terms of skin tone, hair colour and complexion. 

On the one hand, it's nice to make a distinction between 'normal' humans and the Kin; but on the other it's a bit boring if everyone looks exactly the same, so I've decided not to run with them as clones. If the force expands beyond a Kill Team, perhaps I'll intentionally do little fraternal groups where the skin and hair are identical, but for these specialists I figure the controlling mind of the Votann might spit out a more diverse group.

A hint of ginger in this chap. Space Dwarfs they are, and I like a bit of Tolkein/Norse dwarf in the group. 

Fun little sculpts as the Leagues of Votann are, it's very awkward getting your brush in to such recesses!

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Another little picture of the group as they currently stand. Together with the Theyn, they'll be ready to go at the PCRC event in a couple of weeks. The other specialists – a couple of Ironkin and a Kin in a weapon-suit – are also off the blocks, but I'll show those in a separate inload when they're a bit further along.

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+ Ashes of Armageddon + 

I got home to some awesome post – at the top you can see an Inquisitorial missive with directions for the PCRC event(!); thanks to Omricon and TrojanNinja for these wonderfully evocative letters, which I'll hope to share in another inload soon.

Secondly, my test sheet of Battle for Armageddon tokens arrived:

These will be part of a little souvenir-package for the people attending the Third War in 3rd event next March to use in the event and take away with them. I hope they're as tickled by them as I am. 

As you can see, they're a close match for the originals (top row). For any future ones, I think I'll tweak the colours a spot – the colours I used were based on those from the free digital version of Battle for Armageddon that GW gave away in the early years of M3; but I suspect those were based on (not particularly good) scans of the production version, rather than the original artworks. Secondly, the coating I've gone for on these is a matt one, and I suspect that's further muted and darkened the ones above.

Still, both as a little personal indulgence and as a giveaway, I think they look the part. In isolation, I think they're easily recognisable while still being distinct.

These were definitely a successful proof test; and for the Armageddon Prime tokens [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+], I'll be able to iterate further.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

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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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