I Am a Bad Man

I know, I’ve been mainly absent from updating this blog lately, but it’s not because I’ve not been gaming and doing game-related activities. I’ve actually been doing a lot of them, including work on the upcoming OshCon 2009 tabletop gaming convention on October 10-11, a Half-Day Game Day at House of Heroes a few weeks back, and working on starting a new miniatures wargaming club here in the area. I’ve also being painting zombies and RoboRally miniatures for an event at OshCon, I’ve been working on my modular urban terrain system, and I received my copy of the new Space Hulk, and those terminators and genestealers aren’t gonna put themselves together, no matter how much I wish they would. So I’ve been doing stuff.

Anyway, I’ll post some images of my urban terrain system in its starting phases this weekend, I believe. Plus, I have another terrain project that I need to get finished for OshCon, so I have photos of that process soon enough. Stay tuned.

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Saturday Night Gaming

My friends Peter and Lee came over on Saturday night and we played some Space Hulk (Games Workshop) on my dining room table. I forget the name of the scenario, but Lee and I each had a squad of five terminators that consisted of a sergeant, three soldiers and a soldier with a flamer gun. Peter had an infinite number of genestealers, and needed to destroy (in close combat) a back wall in a certain room by the end of the 16th turn. It had something to do with the genestealers stopping the terminators from using the vent systems to gas all the genestealers in a large portion of the ship, or something. Mainly, the issue was this: Lee and I had to survive and defend for 16 turns versus as many unholy genestealers as Peter could throw at us.

Kinda got a clump going on over here, guys. Guys?

I, personally, made a few small tactical errors. Also, my dice rolling was absolutely cursed. So as that progressed, most of the genestealers were finding it easier to traverse through the side of the complex I was trying to guard. You might say I was the weak link in our two-link chain. It was problematic at best.

The three of us just came by to say hello

In the end, our last two terminators fought valiantly in the control room they were tasked to defend, but the onslaught was too great, and they finally succumbed to the horde of ripping claws and gnashing teeth. However, we actually survived until turn 14, which upon seeing my earlier tactical mishaps and epically foul die rolling, was a lot later than we had suspected we would last. Our soldiers still died in vain (some more than others) but at least it wasn’t a total blow-out.

I think we all had a lot of fun, and playing with Peter’s painted Space Hulk set was awesome, as usual. I would like to host more game nights like this at my house. Hopefully, when our new miniatures game gets closer and closer to beta, we’ll be able to play more games like this. I do really enjoy the modelling and painting and terrain building and all that, but it really becomes fun when you can (finally!) actually get a chance to use all the little bits and buildings.

20-year-old Genestealers

So my very good friend Peter accidentally got me into miniatures back in the very early 1990s. He and I were in college, and he introduced me to Space Hulk from Games Workshop. He had just recently gotten it, and we started playing it in our group. I remember pouring through the booklets when I was watching him and our other friends play. I was keenly fascinated by the ‘fluff’ (the storyline and background and art and design) of the game and of the Warhammer 40k universe in general. I’ve been interested in the ‘fluff’ ever since, even if I really don’t like the game.

Recently, Peter decided to run Space Hulk for the kids in the gaming group at the high school where he works. However, after all of these years, none of the figures were painted. Many of the genestealers didn’t even have all of their arms glued on. He wanted to get them all constructed, simply based and painted before the group’s next game day, so he came to me. However, we only had two weeks to get it all done: 28 genestealers and 14 terminator space marines. It would be tight, but by splitting the workload, we figured we could do it.

The quickly-painted defenders of humanity

It turned out that by using plenty of the excellent Games Workshop washes, we were able to get them all constructed, based, primed, painted, washed, detailed and varnished in exactly two weeks. They were simple, but they looked nice, and we made our deadline, so that was what counted.

The quickly-painted horde

As it turned out, genestealers may be the nearly perfect quick-paint army. We spray-primed them with the bleached bone spray primer from Army Painter, painted the claws and tongues red, then just washed them several times with the Delvan Mud wash and picked out some other parts (mainly their backs) with the Badab Black wash. Hit them with the Dullcote and stick a fork in them, they’re done. I think they turned out pretty well, and he said the kids really liked them. Hopefully he (and I) have instilled the miniatures bug in the next generation of nerds. What more can we hope for?

Well, we can hope to play a few games of Space Hulk pretty soon, but I think we should be taking care of that next weekend. Maybe I’ll be able to shoot some photos of the figures actually in play.