I believe Ghus is ready to take his place in the war for the fate of humanity. I can’t say I like his gun. Everyone else seems to think it’s great, but if I was keeping Ghus I would probably rip of that arm and go with something more brutal and straight forward.

I should have his back story piece up here later this week.

So let me know what you think.

Mr. Ghus is coming along nicely. He has a nice yellow coat and a proper crusting of grime. He maintains a personal level of filth only a foot soldier of the arch enemy stationed on a daemon world can manage. He wields a weapon of alien design, from a different time and space, cast out of the warp at the whim of a dark prince. Ghus recovered the strange gun from the detris of blue scabs which form the no man’s land of his current home. He and all around him view the weapon as a boon of chaos and many now give Ghus a respectful distance while others plot to take it for themselves.

I put some primer on Ghus. Now I have to decide on a paint scheme. I’m seeing ochre in his future.

Oh Ghus, you horrible savage you. You’re all geared up and ready to spill some blood for the blood god.

Looks like it’s time for some primer.I’m going to try white primer this time. I have only used black in the past, at least for minis. Terrain being a different story.

Wish me luck.

I recently moved our Dark Heresy game to the blog front page. One reason is to provide more awesome content and another is to push my agenda of all these things I do are part of a greater narrative and it’s all art.

A third reason is I’m planning to model the characters and npcs from our game and maybe use them in a different skirmish minis game (Inquisimunda).
How’s that for over lap.

One of the npcs is a Dark Mechanicus Heretek who is basically a twisted robot with a daemonic frog in a bowl for a head.

That should be so much fun, which is surely the goal at the end the day, and the beginning of the day for that matter.
I feel I’ve moved into a sublime zone… where I’m only working on what ever my muse is holding between her tits at the time. Otherwise, I’m not doing it. I’m not forcing myself to be creative any more… to make things for the sake of “doing stuff”. That just makes my mind sour.

So far it seems to be working.

Renegade Ghus seems to be a resourceful scavenger. He started out with the elite archeo-tech rifle and now he has found himself a serviceable haz-mat respirator rig. He traded in his space marine scout knife for a more sinister looking storm vermin dagger as it suits his servant of chaos image better. The beast man arm in the fore ground was a second choice, but I’ve since decided against it. I’m still contemplating lengthening his legs. It seems like more trouble than it’s worth right now. I think he might find himself a hat too. Something a bit outlandish to show off his personal style. We’ll see about that.

Last year I built this little guy. Kurtz, the chaos renegade. He lives in Brazil now.

This year I really wanted to do one of the hired guns. The Rogue Psyker, Apostate Preacher, or a Chaos Gun Servitor would be really fun to build. These are so open ended conceptually you can really let the imagination run free. I have built or painted any figures in a long time. This project has me really excited so I went down to the shop and dove right in. I just grabbed up what was laying around and built this little guy. He is Kurtz’s brother. His name is Ghus. He is a renegade obviously built along the same plan as ole Kurtz.

I still intend to build one of the other hired guns. I might with any time and luck build them all and some one might get an entire mercenary retinue for their game.

I’ve put more work into Ghus since I took these photos this morning. I augmented his gas mask with some heavier hard ware and I’m planning on reworking his lower legs and feet I believe. We’ll see what happens.

Thanks for reading.

Sometimes things just don’t turn out the way you expected. Which is what happened with the scrap wastes piece I thought I had pretty much finished off.

I used up a truck load of premium bits and all I got was a bunch of impassable terrain. I didn’t like the single level of the place. So I added a few more elements.

A large gothic structural thing and some more convoluted pipe works. I can add some catwalks to the pipes and even toss some of my movable bridge walks over to it.

I’m happier now, even though the piece is much busier visually. I think I’ve increased its gaming potential with the additions.

Comments always appreciated.

By the way, I’m hoping to have this table ready for Historicon this year.

The over pass needs a lot of details yet. It’ll get underslung pipes, shanties, and probably a few sections ripped out to allow ladders and ramshackle stairways in. One section will get a Scavvies camp underneath and the other will get a fungus jungle complete with giant spider webs… and giant spiders (Thanks to Branson).

I’m hoping to paint the spiders up to make them look like they glow in the dark. Check in for more progress soon.

I built a bridge over the Soot Town Heights toxic sludge pond. I can’t wait to get some glowing green sludge in there.

I’ve added a large field of wreckage and junk. It also features some sort of abandoned engine/machinery. This should contrast nicely with the tall pieces and give the gangers some relatively open ground to scrap on. I added a few pipes and detail bits to the large red chemical tank piece, but it is far from complete.

I figured every good underhive settlement needs a seedy watering hole so I scratched up a bar/brothel from cereal box card board, plasticard and a few bits. I really like the way it turned out and now I want to build and entire main street of town area, which resembles an old west type town. It has it’s own water tower and saloon style doors. The surrounding area needs a lot of detailing but I think the building is mostly finished. Except for the signage, which goes up on the roof. It’s a big billboard with one of those mudflap girl silhouettes. I’m taking suggestions for off color names for the place. So far all I have is the age old tag line, “Liquor in the front. Poker in the rear.” Yuk yuk yuk!

I swapped out the vents on the pollution factories cooling towers. I also laid out the fittings for the pipe works design. Now I just have to cut all the interconnecting pipe pieces and assemble the whole mess. It should be nice and visually complicated when I’m done, but still have room to move around above and beneath.

I am definitely having a good time building all this mess. I’ll leave you with two POV shots I found appealing.

Thanks for reading.

I love Necromunda every last bit of it, from the worst mutant infested underhive crawl to glittering 80′s hairstyles of the spire nobles. Sadly I’ve only ever played it once. Something I decided to rectify earlier this year and after hunting down several versions of the rule books from used book sellers and dropping some cash into ebay auctions for various vintage gang models I was ready to go. Then life came along and underhive gang wars were swept aside for things far less awesome yet far more necessary. So eight months later I found myself back in the basement with three huge tubs of bits, a great pile of cardboard from the recycle bin, and a big bottle of craft glue. Below are the results of the project so far. It is all still very WIP. But I’m very excited at this point and I can’t wait to get this stuff painted and play some games.

The shanties are stack up around what would be the huge vent and flues that run all through the underhive. These would keep the huts warm and maybe allow them to leech power or water at the same time.

I thought this style of building would allow players to move their gangers in a Q-bert style up and down the piles of huts. I also have lots and lots of loose gantries which can be placed after the terrain is set.

The over pass is a ruined service road. It still needs extensive detailing and will be getting it’s own piles of shanties and rubbish soon.

I’d love to hear what people think. Advice from veteran players about what terrain types are fun to play on would be greatly appreciated.

Last March I was having trouble staying focused on my hobby projects. So I wrote up a long list of the projects in hopes that being able to see everything cataloged in front of me would facilitate me getting some stuff done. This is a wrap up post to show what actually got finished. Below is the list with [COMPLETED] and [BUILT] edits to mark the stuff that I finished building and/or painting. I’m hoping that seeing how much I did will inspire me to get back to work.

Categories: Orks, Chaos Renegades, Terrain and Mordheim.

Orks-

1. Painting Battle Wagon.
2. Painting Stompa A.
3. Building and painting Stompa B.
4. Building and painting kustom weird boy.
5. Mega Armored Warboss Ghazghkull conversion.
6. Painting Ork Trukk conversion.
7. Building and painting Looted Wagon.
8. Paint Nobs mob.
9. Paint numerous boyz.
10. Paint two Mega Nobz.
11. Build and paint last Killa Kan mob. Thanks, The Barter Bucket!
12. Build and paint Biker Mob.
13. Paint Zap guns and crews and build and paint (1) crew.
14. Build and paint Ork Objective markers. [BUILT]
15. Building and painting Ork buggies and Trakks.

Not much happening with the ole orks.

Chaos Renegades-

1. Paint Chaos Dreadnought conversion. [COMPLETED]
2. Paint and build Chaos Renegade Guardsmen.
3. Paint Mutants.
4. Paint Renegade Ogryn.
5. Paint Plague Marines. [COMPLETED]
6. Paint Defiler. [COMPLETED]
7. Paint Rhino. [COMPLETED]
8. Paint Daemon Prince. [COMPLETED]
9. Paint DIY Great Unclean One. [COMPLETED]
10. Build and Paint Chaos Lord.
11. Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle. [COMPLETED]

Lots of love for Chaos last year. Lots of love.

Terrain-

1. Build and paint Mad Dok Morkenstiens Kastle.
2. Build and paint Great Basilica.
3. Paint Plasma Generators.
4. Paint Bombarded Park.
5. Paint Ruined Mechanicus temple. [COMPLETED]
6. Paint Machine Cut Imperial Ruins. [COMPLETED]

Mordheim-

1. Build and paint Possessed. [BUILT]
2. Build and paint Magus.
3. Build and paint numerous Henchmen.

Not to shabby, considering I really only worked on stuff the first half of the year. I even finsihed a few things that weren’t on the list, mainly terrain stuff for the city of Vaustgrad.

I’m hoping to be a bit more prolific in 2011. I’ve had to add a few new things to the list since a nice gent gave me a 3000pt WFB Warriors of Chaos Army and I won a whole Necromunda Scavvy gang on ebay. I also have a Necromunda/Forge World table idea I’m really dieing to get started on.

Happy New Year!

Here’s a look at my Imperial Renegades gang and their accompanying squad roster.

159 Commander – Gulu Sharkakan (65)
Chainsword +27 Hell Pistol +31 Carapace Armor +17 Combat Knife +0 Incendiary Grenade +19

133 Enforcer – Turgle Maquan (42)
Chain Sword +27 Las Pistol +27 Carapace Armor +17 Combat Knife +0 Choke Gas Grenade +8 Helmet +20

79 Apostate Preacher – Manias Fulk (44)
Mesh Armor +17 Combat Knife +4 Auto Pistol +14

110 Renegade Sergeant – Baln Davos (39)
Carapace Armor +17 Chainsword +27 Las Pistol + 27

162 Militia Men – Hanz and Fritz (23×2)
Helmets +20×2 Mesh Armor +17×2 Autoguns +21×2 Knife +0×2

123 Renegade Ogryn – Mongo (71)
Buzz Saw +32 Kurzikan Armor +20

That’s the team right now. Maybe I can get some paint on them before they see first blood.

You can pick up the new Death Squads Rule Books Here.

Happy Holidays!

Comments and criticism appreciated.

-Skeller

This is Kurtz. He’s a renegade guardsman out to spread the glories of chaos. Being a chaos grunt has left him a bit ragged and scruffy, but he has a really big gun, which makes him happy.

He is my model for the Death Squads Prisoner Exchange. A trans world miniature exchange program where participants build a character model and send it off to another participant. Everyone signed up sends a model and everyone receives one.

Kurtz here is now primed and waiting for paint. When I’ve got him all fancied up and receive my recipients address, he’ll be packaged up and shipped to parts unknown. Perhaps he’ll find himself some team mates and become a member of a real cool death squad.

Death Squads is a Mordheim based fan produced game set in the 40k universe. You can download the 224 page rule book and check out the awesome community which has sprung up to develop and support it HERE.

Special thanks to Rob at SpikeyBitz for the conversion ideas and to Mordheimer at Death Squads Game for a great community event.

-Skeller