Evokation of Place #3

The grave of Jean Rollin

Taken around 8am on a crisp Autumn morning, as dead leaves fell from the trees, the sun glinted through the shade and utter silence within the walls of the city of the dead.

Wargaming in film #2 - Battleground

Battleground. The 1970s wargaming live on TV programme, which I've been watching lately.

Presented by Edward Woodward - himself a gamer - who gives an overview of the battle, introduces the opponents and then adds some airy commentary as the game progresses. "I think he's going to regret that attack on the flank there" and the like.

The games are pruned down to just the major incidents, with little sound effects driven vignette close ups of the action used as fillers.

Last night was the battle of Edgehill, where a school librarian took on a dairy inspector to the death in finest 70s rollneck display. Very gentlemanly play (no neckbeard rants happening here, especially with the fuckin' EQUALIZER overviewing proceedings) and fascinating to see how things were played back then.

I liked the fact that the wind was a factor in how accurate artillery fire was, as well as the nifty wooden painted range rulers in use.

Sgt Howie then gives us a summary and overview of who won, how that matches with history and the "join us next week for........" outro.

10/10 for the flared dogtooth check trousers on our man

Well, I enjoyed it. My wife was literally "what on earth is this you are watching??", but I don't care. Dark wood panelled studios with finest polyester jackets and heavily glossed models beats Greg Wallace bellowing at a computer screen any day.

So - Waterloo. Be having some of that!

2019 Plans and Thoughts.

Right, lets get next year sorted......first of all:

No more big grand historical periods. Thats a rule. I've basically got all of my periods of interest bought (except Vikings, but I had a couple of boxes of them sat untouched for about 5 years before I binned them, so thats not happening again) and I don't intend to add any new periods. Of course, that doesn't stop my adding things to my current ones, but many are essentially all bought and done.

Games are rarer now. Fact of life - you get older, it becomes more difficult........so the fewer games means the better they have to be. Thats just how it is. The hobby is a creative outlet for me in a number of ways, so I need to focus around those elements I can manage to achieve in between my responsibilities.


1. My terrain project for the year will be a graveyard. I'm a bit of a slag for a graveyard atmos, so I wanna build a big one of these. I do actually have a dark grey board from yonks ago when I played more city based games, as I double side my boards for maximum storage effectiveness. This'll be fairly simple really and I'll probably Dadhammer it.

Of course, this gives me an excuse (AS IF ONE WERE NEEDED) to rewatch all my favourite Jean Rollin films, as nobody does a cemetery like ol' JR

Of course, the green wild is the graveyard of Pan...............so who knows?

Of course, this needs consideration and A Plan

2. This is twenty years old this year

We'll have to do something with that :) I'm much more of a fantasy chap than a 40K one, so I want to have a game based around Mord20. Except I like fantasy with a bit of shit on its shoes.


3. Children of Pan.............a beastman/folky/horror project, possibly for Mord20. I'm not sure about Age of Sigmar as I tried it when it came out and didn't think it was very good, but I do like the whole "Dark Age of Sigmar" /AOS28 business generally:.

Being a horror tart anyway, this is kind of a thing I've had cooking away for a number of years in my head, except that was based more around the English Civil War and all the good stuff can be done with that as a haunted strange setting.

Satans Claw, you know? Just like Satans Claw..............my old title was "Folkgore" for this project, but we'll see what comes out.


4. Keep working on my historical stuff, as I fancy. Generally its going to be about smaller, more characterful projects as the focus in '19, but I'll obviously keep working away on the big brigades.

Who knows, I may even finish a Napoleonic brigade at some point??


5. New painting style. Bit freer and looser. The Nurgle warband I've painted was the first step in this, shaking up some dust and breaking habits. Quick, but effective and characterful painting. Impressionistic attitude, almost. I've learnt some lessons* straight off from the Nurgle gear, so thats doable. I'm not fussed by the "what if it doesn't work??" concern :)


*not least that I really don't like painting bloody Space Marines!! Its no wonder I never used to paint sod all back in the day.


6. Get my ephemera in order. I like trinkets and beautiful objects, high end books, that kind of stuff, but I've rarely applied it to my gaming. Maybe because transport was always a concern back in the day? Highly HIGHLY inspired by Ana over at Gardens of Hecate's rather beautiful dice box, so lets see where that takes me.


7. Get rid of some of the crap and clutter that builds up. Theres a number of dead projects that I'm just not going to do anything with, frankly. They can probably all go to the great leadpile in the sky (or tip, to be more exact) or freecycled and therefore free up space for whats coming.

2018 Hobby Review

Right, all done and dusted for the year - I'm taking my break in the other home for Oshogatsu, so no hobby until '19 beckons.

Not a bad year really, I have to say. I had a huge outpouring of project work after a couple of years having very little time to split amongst studies, work, family, drinking and carousing.........so when I finally finished my studies, those hours per week went straight into working on gaming, scenarios, building and generally engaging more with the hobby again............so lets have a look at them in order of my getting them photographed.

1. Started the year with a Sudanese Hadendoa brigade. Love these fellows.

Did actually build and undercoat another 40 of these to push this brigade up to full size. They'll come in time.

2. First part of my ACW Confederates. Think this took just over two weeks to hammer out during Feb.

3. Then decided to have a decent sized ECW game. This required building a new table, as I only had the desert one, plus a small 2X3 green board. We needed a REAL table for this one, so the 8X6 got made over a couple of weekends Dadhammering.

4. Of course, you then need armies to populate that table. I already had a small New Model Army force painted - maybe two units of 12 shotte, one unit of 16 pike and two artillery pieces............So off I trotted for 10 weeks to get this lot sorted for the day

5. After playing the big ECW game in May, I then fancied painting some Wars of the Roses stuff, so knocked out an army for that one over the next month or so. Basically, it was paint something or suffer Eurovision!

6. Back onto the Sudan, so my Egyptian brigade found itself being readied for the parade ground.......

..................and then an enforced break for about two months, as family commitments became bigger than they had been before :)


.........once I'd managed to begin carving 30-45 min session out in the night for myself again (you have to make time for yourself, noone else is going to make it for you, right?)........we're on again

7. 95th Rifles. Very quick and easy.

I did actually paint another three regiments of British line foot at this point, but they aren't 100% finished, based, flagged or anything, so they wait until another day.


8. Then we decided, for the annual Xmas game, that it was going to be ACW...........except, I wasn't going to be on the Confederates side, so had to paint a Union army

9. Then, one of the players on Union side found he wasn't going to be able to paint, so I boshed out another small brigade in quick order. Will do the flags tonight.

10. Plus the relevant terrain................not the fences as theres 16 foot and boring to look at.

11. And finally, in order to shrug off the uniform painting and do something really different, plus flex a bit of artistic muscle, I spent a few weeks painting a Nurgle army for 40K.

And there we are. I honestly have no exact number of the amount of models I painted, but its been a productive year. I did a count a week or two ago and its something like the 850 models mark, which is a hell of a lot of stuff. And it still seems like I have a bucket of unpainted stuff in my hobby eave. Mainly because of buying more stuff as I've been going!


Onto my planned 2019 projects next.............to be continued

Warband of Nurgles Garden

After a break of many many years, I had a twitch for some 40K/GW. Now, I don't really enjoy 40K as a game too much but projects are projects and I thought I'd act on it...........getting some money for my birthday and hammered these out in around three weeks.


The Plague Flies................I left the riders off as I thought they looked a bit daft perched on top

Thee Gardeners ov Green......................really enjoyed painting these.

The Death Guard warband of Kvlt Adominis...................can't say I enjoyed these as much. Took a lot of work removing and cleaning the endless clutter from the models, then I had a sharp reminder whilst doing them that I really don't enjoy painting space marines.

It seems as though colour schemes are much more prescriptive nowadays as straight away I had a comment of "oh, 30K HH death guard!" from a friend, but this doesn't really play into my considerations of the colours.............I'd had this method of painting kicking around in my head for many many years, and the primary driver behind the project.

Mainly painted with a sponge. Yep, a sponge! But..........marines are not much fun to paint, as I've learned. Still, as a palette cleanser for throwing off the uniformity of historicals, it worked and I learned a few things along the way, to be used in next years projects....

The full Kvlt.....

Bo'is thee Hidden Faced

Bo'is begane the shumble towards his elevated Greater Uncleaner position as a rakehell and roustabout, back in the mists of yonder faire shore, for he was not born of Nurgles creation, but created through his wanton disregard for all advice and contracted thee Nurgles Rot from slattern.......through his bodily kvrrption into a horn'd Plaguebearer and final entry into Nurgles legions of vilenss and debasement.

However, Bo'is was never content with his position as a mere tallyman of the Green Boil and forever looked upon the hideous visage of the Great Unclean Ones surrounding his domicle, the favoured status and rankness they held and desired this for hymself. And so began the walk of excremented verbiage to attain favour and grouwth withi' his Gods eye, surely inflating his own ego as he rose in ever higher power - not by ability, nor by graft, but by trickishness and sheer grotesquery, being found amusing by the Great Sore and indulged in this behaviour, elevated finallie to his desired station of Greater Uncleane One.

In time, this was not found to be enough for Bo'is, who happily inflicted the sufferings upon lesser beings in the indulgences of his followers and equals, but this being of foul ego was not happy and became more and more lack and light in his work, until the eventual disaster of Dantzick, where his failure to entertain the Red Legions of Khorne to do their letting resulted in the banishmente and destruction of thee Chaotic alliance, the loss of a full Blue Legion of UnChange and the ruin of long centuries of work, with the particular loss of a blessed pox being the final humiliation...............found himself no longer in the favour of his deity.

Shamed by this humiliation...........Bo'is retreated to the shadows and found Nurgles displeasure resulting in a mockery amongst thee gardens of the warp. Wishing to regain his previous status, Bo'is reappeared at the head of a blubbery rotting legion of followers, his visage covered and unable to show his old, proud, now hideous, face no more..........less Nurgles wrath be further incurred and to be excluded from roaring as part of the collective invasion of chaos.........

Nice model this. Big, but a real centrepiece to the table and certainly draws the attention. I painted this in about an hour total.........working in 5-10 minute segments throughout the day as and when I could. Lots of washing, lots of sponge painting and lots of quick wet blends. So........fairly happy with it.

I felt I didn't really like the original posing of the model, as his sword was being waved above his head and not really being keen on that, I posed it to fit some of the classic GW artwork.

The hood was added to fit the character of Bo'is, made fairly simply by cutting away a section of face on one of the heads that had a hat of some variety, making a putty veil and shaping this to fit. Came out pretty well considering its the first time in about.......................8 years that I've worked with green stuff in any way.

On which note, ten years ago, I bought a load of the GF9 green stuff that comes in two tubes. I used it a lot at the time and had about 2/3rds left of each tube. Pulled it out of storage for the first time this decade and it was still good! Take that as a recommendation :)

The Green Mechanic - Prologue

"Of things faire and far, the Green Mechanic show that the innate order and turn of the Imperivm decline, alfo the trve way forward and growth of the Great God regarding rebirth, hence preventing mans rvin and fall." 

(Treatise on Bio Lyfecirculus and Man, Magus Clerke)


M-000.40.894

Within the structures of the research biologis sector of the forge world Mars, the Magos are left to their academic pursuits, collectives and apo-librarium, allowing research, consensus and debate within the society and publish key investigative insight to the records, scriptures and puretek allowances of the Red Planet, driving a wider societal adherence to the Machine God teachings.

It was within this relatively open air of academia, work and collaborative approach that Magos Clerke chose to undertake his Shumi bursary research work into the biologis cycle, the study of ancient musings upon this theme and sustainable ethos of tek growth. 

Working alone deep within Archi-Fond X-IML-3I, Magos Clerke eventually emerged with his paper on this theme, concerning that which, according to his research:

- The natural circle of life was the essence of basic humanity, therefore, Mankind, by virtue of having cut Himself off from the natural order of things, by suppressing all nature upon the ground of Terra, as well as on colonized planets during his winged spread outwards, had forgotten the concept of humanity being part of the natural world.

- Thus reducing his ability to sustain and to adapt to the local, regional, environmental and biological conditions Man had found himself upon and was therefore stunting the growth of His Kind accordingly. 

- The Machine God doctrines, likewise, promoted a removal of the flesh from the green and to be replaced with harsh metallics and ore, rather than connecting with the biologis natvre inherent in the variety of locale Man now held. 

- All knowledge is no knowledge against the natural regrowth and rebirth of the Biologis Way. 

- To Sustain is To Endure.

The key example of this theory was indeed the most clear - was not the Emperor of Mankind being held within stasis and held alive unnaturally, therefore not allowing a natural lifecycle and rebirth within His chosen vehicle of return in a natural form at some point in future, allowing the next stage of Imperial flowering and Mankinds expansion? Was this not an affront to the natural order of life and, therefore, could be considered academically as a reason for mankinds regression from the Crusade and Campaign of Enlightenment back into a dark age state of permanent war and nigh extinction?

This had been expected to be a provocative and controversial point of discussion, but dear Magos Clerke had not expected to receive as much of an aggressive reception as he received, being not just considered BLASPHEMOUS, but outright HERESY.

Within short time, the societal air had broken into of supporters and detractors, with the concept finding much worth within the more progressive elements of both the Machine God and Imperial Ecclesiastical groups as a concept with a key element of the truth behind the thinking. 

Nevertheless, the more reactionary elements demanded Magos Clerke be brought to a panel of seniors and give an account of himself and defend his work at the High Court of Deteckh SenCha.

Our dear Magos, now Magus, recognising a kangaroo court when he saw one, chose not to answer this summons, but fled into obscurity, taking his research records with him and his close associates, each disappearing into the separate corners of the sector to evade heretickal status.

Crucially, however, the research papers were condensed into a pamphlet broadcast and sent out under a variety of loosely scrambled vox casts, to allow the concept to promulgate where it would and to pan its way through the ether, giving rise to underground Green Kvlts and biophiliac cells throughout the region.