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.

But inside was a fully stocked gaming store just stuffed full of Reaper goodness. Now it’s not like you can’t buy anything at anytime over the internets, but there is just something special about standing in a real game store chock full of the things you love.

They also had a killer back room full of painting stations with free access to all their paints. I’m a bit sad I didn’t have time to try it out.

But we had a keg of Shiner to pick up for Matt’s house warming (wrecking) party so we bought our own weight in miniatures (weresharks everywhere!) and hit the road.

I was a happy man.

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!

A few days ago I busted out all my CoD terrain and laid it all out. It’s been a while since I had a game at my house and I’ve never used all this stuff at once. I wanted to see how it would go together.

Some of these pieces were made for the Vaustgrad Apocalypse Battle we played at Battle Hymn this year. I wanted to get everything that is complete on the table and see how it looks. I actually have about five little wall sections I forgot to put out.

The mechanicus temple is modular and I’ve only used individual parts of it at a time it I think it looks great for some Cities of Death. I might have to pull some stuff off for a bigger game of regular 40k.

I wish I had piled some orks in there to give some life to the place and make the pics more dynamic. I have a few more pieces in the works. One is a big 12″x24″ park and the other is a huge 24″x24″ three story Basillica, you may have seen pics of in an earlier post here. I think a canal and some bridges are next in line.

Although Dave didn’t pick my design, I was recently contacted by a gentleman from the UK, who did love it and who wanted to use the design for his own tattoo. I agreed and here it is freshly inked.

I think it turned out great and I’m honored he chose to have my work permanently added to his body. So a big thank you to the newly inked gentleman. Enjoy your new art, it looks great.

This tale is the stuff of legends. It is hardly believable and I’m still having trouble wrapping my brain around it.

About two weeks ago, I was browsing the /tg/ pages on 4chan. Yeah yeah… 4chan. /tg/ is different. I love it there. There is a gaming community there like no other. So I’m browsing the threads and I see one offering to give a rather large Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Warriors of Chaos army to anyone who is willing to write a short paragraph about why they should receive it. Everyone thought it was a troll thread, and rightly so. If anything those boards are full of clever and dedicated trolls. But what the heck, you can’t win if you don’t play, so here’s what I wrote and sent to the poster in an email:

“I’ve never played Warhammer fantasy, though I’ve always wanted to. I just don’t have the cash flow to support a two system GW habit. I can’t bring myself to buy little plastic men over buying things for my two year old daughter. I love to paint and I’m not bad at it (if I say so myself). I’d do this army justice. I’ll put it online so you can see how your army has lived on in painted infamy. I’ll even post some battle reports. The guys I game with have really become excited about WFB new edition and they really want me to play with them. Why? I’m the fun one. I may not win every time but I always enjoy myself and the other guys enjoy it too. Yesterday, my man, Jenkins gets me to meet him at our FLGS and then he tries to buy me the skaven half of the Island of Blood set (they sell it piece meal there) just to get me into the game. I had to decline as I couldn’t accept the gift knowing I would feel bad having the models sit unassembled and unpainted for so long in my basement, I’d see them all the time and it would keep me up at night. I don’t need to lose sleep over skaven. I want to play WFB with my bros. I love chaos and have for a long long time. I own both realms of chaos books for way back. So when I saw this thread my first reaction was, “huh? whatever…” But then I thought of Jenkins yesterday, offering to buy me 50$ worth of skaven just so I’d play against him. So I thought, what the hell. I’ll check it out. If you don’t pick me, nothing will have been lost. But if you do you’ll be making a whole group of gamers happy, your army will live on bringing the burning hatred of the dark gods to all foes foolish enough to stand against them, and you’ll know they are not just being played, but being thoroughly enjoyed.”

Long story short, here is what I received in the mail from California, about 8 days later.

Dude even paid for the shipping. This is a big ass box.

Individually wrapped with love. I think I got a whole roll of paper towels too.

Everything. It took me 45 minutes to unpack it all.

Juggernaut of Khorne with a nice paint job.

Awesome Chaos Sorcerer with custom flames.

Gigantic Dragon Ogre.

Custom objective marker, very nice.

Hard to see Hellcannon and Chaos Dwarf crew. I love this model so much.

I’m still beside myself. The whole event is very surreal, this kind of thing never happens to me. But it did, and I’m grateful. Thanks Anon, whoever you are. You’ve done yourself and /tg/ proud. Your generosity is epic. Thank you for the awesome army.

I’ll be painting these guys up (over the next 10 years probably) and posting the progress here and on /tg/.

Now I have to get a army book and see how all this stuff goes together.

This heat wave is really softening up my brain. A few weeks ago Rob from Spikey Bits blog and formerly of Battle Wagon Bits and the Warstore, opened up a new gaming shop in town. It’s the first new store to open up here for a long while and we are happy to have it.

I haven’t made it out there yet. Like it says in the title, I’m a little slow on the draw this time of year, when my work environment becomes like unto the surface of the sun. It seems everyone else in town has and the peoples on the street say it’s great and from the pics Rob posted, I agree. I’ll try to get down there this weekend. They have a Mordheim league starting up and I’ve got a new possessed warband to blood.

Check out the FTW Games site.

The back story for our apocalypse game last week at Battle Hymn goes something like this:

Vaustgrad, a long suffering imperial city taken and held by the forces of chaos for over 50 years is under siege by the Imperial Guard and a surprising army of Eldar allies. As the Imperials and Eldar advance, the warp haunted streets of Vaustgrad pour forth the Malignant Host, a great combined army of chaos marines and chaos daemons, to meet them.

Mayhem ensues.

Here is another set of pics from the game.

http://picasaweb.google.com/doomshoes/BattleHymn#

Thanks to Commander Krieg for the fine photography.

-Skeller

We had a large custom 6×8 table with a quarter of it ruined city, some roads, some trees, and a small outpost town. Daemons and Plague marines vs. Eldar and Imperial Guard. Chaos won by claiming more objectives at the end of the game, but I’m not sure it was fair conditions, even though we set it up as a take and hold scenario. Lots of stuff died and or blew up and then died, so I’m happy. For cinematic effect we fudged some of my bad rolls during the last turn of play and my giant great unclean one, played as the apocalypse unit Scabeiatrax, killed the reaver Titan in the last round which blew up taking most of the remaining Imperial Guard with it, which was a lot of stuff. It was rather spectacular.

Here’s some pics of the other units I finished up for the game but I didn’t have time to post before hand.

Chaos Space Marine Sorcerer of Nurgle.

Nurgle Daemon Prince.

Nurgle Land Raider.

You can see some pics of the 2010 Battle Hymn convention here.

Comments and criticism always welcomed.

-Skeller

Battle Hymn is a good time. The kind of good time where you don’t want to go home at the end of the day. Scott Craig and company, do a great job organizing this convention and this years event should be the best one yet. Goblin Mini-mart’s Commander Krieg, myself, and the rest of our crew will be there running a big narrative game of Apocalypse 40k, which I will be posting more about as it develops.

If you’re in Richmond, VA, or feel like taking a drive, come check it out.

Get all the info at their myspace site.

I hope to see you there.

-Skeller