Rough and ready terminators

So apparently terminators kick ass again now that power weapons are generally AP3 or strike last.  Well I've got a game next week and I'm not going to go out and spend I don't know how much money on a box of them when I've got a cupboard full of bits, so it looks like its time to dig out an old project...

Larry, Curly and Moe

Enter these guys.  This is a project from waaaay back when - there were originally going to be eight of these guys to take advantage of the free upgrades given when you have squads of eight World Eaters (that should date them) now that I'm finally getting round to doing something with them, after all the cannibilising over the years, there are just three to fill in the gaps and bring me up to ten Chaos terminators.

Not actually that bad...

Standing them next to a brand new guy they don't scale up that badly (although they are bulked out with plasticard). By the time I'm finished sticking guns and pointy crap to them I reckon they'll not look out of place at all - andn I'll still have thirty quid in my pocket!

How about that - mini's that I actually intend to use.  The sky's the limit!!

FPPaul

Going Rogue...

Well, less than a week and already failing with to show any painted miniatures.  Still from little acorns!

I'm going to buck the trend slightly though by staying on topic (kind of).  The reason I created the programme from my previous post was that Advanced HeroQuest was wonderfully table-driven and lends itself perfectly to writing simple excel and access based tools to help things along - I've written a programme that happily stores converts AND generates HeroQuest character and monster profiles that I will finish one day I promise...

That brings us to another table driven game requiring lots and LOTS of rolling of dice...

At least I painted these, even if they are a few years old!

Yes, good old rogue trader.  Where the points system for generating your own characters was... entertaining to say the least.  But years later, a little bit of wizardry with Access and we get this:

307.75 points.  Says it all really...

Now if we had all had something like this back in the day things would have been so much easier - imagine being able to generate rogue trader squads with multiple randomly generated heroes in a matter of minutes instead of hours. How much more time we would have had for painting and playing.  I'm guessing that somewhere out there something like this already exists - a game that is a hybrid of both worlds, using computer programmes to generate the characters, playsheets and maps and the allowing the player to run a pen and ink campaign with minimal rolling.  Now we just need 3d printers to drop in price a bit more and even out minis can be randomly and instantly generated!

This little toy also spits out random names for characters and forces (currently only loaded with Space Marine names, but one day...) which is where this blog's title came from.

Anyway, that's enough for now, here's hoping tomorrow actually involves the generation of new stuff that I will actually use in the next 12 months!

To finish here's a lovely little quote I found when I was re-reading the rogue trader rules as part of this project;

"It is unlikely that we’ll ever see a full range of plastic vehicles for Warhammer 40,000 from Citadel either"

Oh how times have changed...

FPPaul 

Old school/new school

For me Advanced Heroquest will always be the game that first started me on the road to wargaming.  While I no longer get the chance to play it very much its nice to be able to find ways to integrate some old favourites with modern technology...

Using this little piece of excel wizardry I can generate maps in no time flat - yes they're rudimentary, but they get the job done! Now all I need to do is finish my character and room occupant generators and find some guys willing to play a game that's been out of print for about twenty years...

FPPaul

A Seditious Start

Hello and welcome to my humble Blog! (Or something like that)

Like many wargamers around the world I struggle with the idea of beginning half the projects I want to - never mind actually completing them! With this in mind I have resolved to start Blogging about all the miniature-related crap that I do and that spills out of my head.  

As I am hoping this Blog will spur me on with some of my ongoing projects the sensible place to start seems to be with the new Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster minis which arrived on Monday.  I think it's a wonderful little package - I'll leave those with more experience to review it in full.

Here's my first test mini - both as a test of the paint-scheme and my photography skills:

What a wonderful start - look at that mould-line!! It really isn't that noticeable in person (and certainly won't be from the angle I will be playing at) but its just the sort of thing that I'm hoping to force myself to improve on.  Looking at this test-piece again I decided it was a little bit too blue and decided to have another go - this time without wasting a nice fresh mini...

Much happier with the colours this time, but perhaps a touch more blue is needed.  This time though I just don't care about wasting a mini as I have no idea where this one even came from!!!

Well I hope this start gives some indication of what this Blog is likely to be like - the first post features a game which I have yet to play (I'm a 40k man normally) and above and beyond that features a miniature that isn't even from the games own range.  Come back next time for even more off-topic ramblings!

FPPaul