Musings of a Green Man

Something that I love about the current edition of Warhammer 40,000 is the variable detachment system. I'm not that fussed about Command Points, and, playing Guard or Genestealer, I've yet to run out, and, no, i don't have a system that ensures I regain them, i just forget to use them. That being said, i found it fascinating watching the meta go mental over how many CP the different factions could get. By now, the Blessed 32 Guard Battalion detachment, or CP-battery has become ubiquitous. For those not familiar, this is 3 Infantry squads and 2 HQ, coming in at a little over 180 points, depending on options, generally with a way to recoup CP, whether an artifact or a Warlord Trait, that brings 5 CP to bolster the rest of the force, say a single Super Heavy Detachment of 3 Dominus/Questoris Knights. That bolster, for 180 points, gives 5CP, while the detachment that takes up the rest of the points In this 2000 point force brings 3. Before the Rule of 3, restricting access t...

I like using obscure units. Army lists that aren't seen on the table often fascinate me. It's an underdog thing. A year or so back, after finally making it to Static Games in Glasgow, after 8 years where i was, for the most part, reliant on the internet, and the local Games Workshop store for connection to the wider hobby, I discovered that the old Warhammer Historical had become a range of games by Warlord Games. World War 2 has long been an uncomfortable subject in my family: on my father's side, his father was a protected trade, and so couldn't enlist, his brother, my great uncle, dodged the draft; his mother's house had a tank crash through their front garden; on my mother's side, my gran, in Northern Ireland, found the Emergency great fun, since US service men brought with them money, records and other things that were nigh unknown in isolated Catholic communities; across the border, in a Donegal cut off by partition, the Civil War was still more of a con...

It's a bank holiday in most of the UK today, but not here in Scotland, where it was 3 weeks ago. It's very hot and very sunny, and most of my neighbours have taken the day off. As such, I'm finding it hard to get motivated. My mind keeps drifting back to Saturday's post on reclaiming the Land Speeder for the Imperial Guard of 40k. The biggest issue, beyond getting the relevant guns (multilaser, lascannon, plasma cannon), is the crew. The majority of surplus crew that collecting Guard produces are designed to be poking their heads out of or standing in tank cupolae. There are 8 that i can think of that aren't: the artillery deck crew from the Accessories sprue/Basilisk, the 2 deck crew from the Hydra/Wyvern, the commander from the Baneblade, who has legs allowing them to be assembled as a separate model, the commander for the Deathstrike/Manticore, the 2 crew in a Taurox and the crew of the Sentinels. The 3 standing models and the squatting one are completely unsui...

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when the Imperial Guard of Warhammer 40,000 used Rhinos as transports. Later these were replaced by the now ubiquitous Chimera. The Chimera had significantly more guns than a Rhino (back then, a multilaser, a heavy bolter, 6 lasguns and a storm bolter, compared to a simple pair of bolters), and so could function as a light tank, and, at the time, could be taken as such. The weapons fit back then was fixed. All Chimerae had the same basic armament. You could upgrade the heavy bolter to a heavy flamer, but that got you into the weird realm of Vehicle Cards, and was expensive in points. Over time, the Chimera evolved. First we got the Hellhound, then the hull weapon became an either/or, the storm bolter became optional and the multilaser could be swapped for a heavy bolter or heavy flamer. The model didn't accomodate the alternative turret weapons, so Forgeworld filled the gap. Forgeworld gave us turrets with autocannon and twin heavy ...

I've mentioned these a few times already. I'm in the middle of converting some space marine land speeders to Tauros assault and Venator jeeps for my Guard (since Forgeworld has discontinued the official models). With all of that, it's probably only a matter of time until I decide to convert some Imperial Guard Landspeeders. The thing is, they haven't any rules, or any equivalent vehicle to base them on, so, how would i handle them, rules-wise? In first edition, if you somehow managed to roll enough tech priests (you could take 0-D6, per 3,000 points, and needed one per speeder), you could mount a platoon on Landspeeders. This meant that, between an officer, a 5 model command section and a minimum of 1 infantry squad (16 models, minimum), you'd need 8 speeders, and so would need 8 tech priests, and so this would only be available in very large games. These Landspeeders came with a heavy plasma gun on a dorsal mount and a heavy bolter on a fixed, underslung mount. T...

I decided in the latter half of last year, that the models i was working on at that stage, since they all had large bases, deserved scenic bases. My first thought was to have them standing over wrecks from armies that other players in my regular gaming group played. In the end, i decided against that, as it'd involve trying to colour match a different scheme on each of the 6 bases, while still tying them together. Instead the idea came to me to do them in something entirely different, like swamp/marsh, since, while they could be used with other forces, they could be used as a force on their own,  so, that's what I did. My Imperial Knights, House-Emeritus Johann, formerly of Elmo, were mounted on bases showing industrial construction slowly sinking into swamp waters. Since then, I've been slowly working on working out what an accompanying set of terrain would be like. A month or so back, the idea of an accompanying Guard division cropped up, hardened forest/swamp dwellers,...

I'm not back on the literal scale. I'm thinking about the size of forces used. In particular, I've been noticing how much the games of 40k have moved from small skirmish games through platoons to now being company level actions. In first edition, you could end up with obscure, esoteric equipment on a model by model basis. Then army lists came around. An example that can be tracked through each edition is the Imperial Guard. In first edition, a 3,000 point Guard force would cap out at about 90-100 models, max., and that's by taking barebones, minimum profiles for the officers. While you could take cavalry, a handful of tanks, etc., the 100 models drives my point, and is a nice, round number. This gives 2 officers, 2 command squads with a medic, standard and 2 lascannon, and 8 infantry squads with a lascannon and grenade launcher each, a couple of Sanctioned Psykers and the requisite D6-2 Commissars, with some points to get upgrades for the characters' kit, and mayb...

Nowadays we think of mortuary monuments as being limited to tombs, crypts, gravestones and occasionally commemorative statues, plaques or park benches. This is a fairly recent phenomenon, however. Many cultures have or have had mortuary practices that seem alien to the western mindset, whether collecting the heads of fallen foes to honour them, pickling the heads or other body parts of deceased kin so that they are always with their family, or collecting the severed hands of hanged criminals for magical protection, and that's just examples from Europe. One such practice, although rather less gruesome, arose in the 16th century and continued through into the 18th century: the mortuary sword. Mortuary swords sound a lot more funereal than they were. What they were, and many still are, isn't a sword to be buried with, rather they were weapons (usually swords, but other types do exist) featuring a depiction of a deceased notable, and/or inscriptions in their honour. The most famou...

Not that there's been much traffic on this blog thus far, but posts may be a little erratic for a few weeks as there's been another death in the family.

We're currently in the tail end of August. This means that there's only 2 months until the Samhain/Hallowe'en season, and 4 until the winter festival season (Hanukkah, Christmas, Hogmanay, Solstice, etc.). As such, it's time to start saving your pennies. In part i say that because of the consumerism of the "festive season", but primarily because the next 5 months will give a lot of opportunities for the canny hobbyist to pick up bargain terrain. Obviously, the scale in which you play will be a big factor in all of this, and the genre/period of the setting, but, look out for the following and you can dress your table fairly cheaply: Hallowe'en Shops that sell seasonal decorations will fill with skulls, gravestones and other macabre trinkets. While most of these will be too large for use in most games (unless giant skulls are a thing in the setting), many of these places will have little trinkets, such as necklaces, pins and bracelets, that will contain...

Yes, I'm back on the terrain bandwagon again, this time musing on something at the core of parts 2 and 3: density. How much terrain is just right, too much and too little? This isn't a post wherein i ramble on about the benefits of terrain, how to best interact with terrain, or the like. It's simply a rhetorical musing on how we dress the tables we game on. Primarily on the proportion of the table we cover in things that are immobile. As I've said before, I've been gaming for far too long, and so I've seen numerous ways of deciding the terrain. When I started, the norm was for the GM, a third party, to set up the terrain. Thus, in theory the set up was fairly impartial. Of course, finding a neutral third party could be difficult. We moved on, through pre-set maps to a loose system of alternately placing terrain pieces until both players agreed that there was enough, before deciding deployment zones. Since then we've had such rules as at least or at most...

I enjoy painting miniatures. I spend more time painting them than I do with them on the table while gaming. As such, to me the three colour minimum is a hard minimum. I get obsessed with adding the little details to models, whether the layers in slashed sleeves for C14-17 European or the little collar patches and trims on C20 models. This is true whether I'm painting infantry, cavalry, vehicles or even terrain. It's something that, by now, i don't feel comfortable cutting corners on. That being said, I'm currently painting squat vehicles, which are, thus, covered in freehand detail. It's taking a lot of time. I'm not saying that I'm bored, just that I'm aware I've a significant backlog awaiting paint and i could probably rattle off a 1000 points of something where three colour minimum can work, like space marines or necrons, in the time it takes to do all the details I'm adding to a single vehicle. Now, don't misconstrue what I'm sayin...

As I've said before, I'm building a squat army for 40k. They haven't had a new, official army list since 1993, and that was a fragmentary one. As such, squats are one of the factions that get the most home brew army lists. Over the years, I've downloaded a few. As such, when I say that I'm building a squat army, it's a common assumption that I'll be developing my own custom army list. This, however, isn't the case. When I started my squats, i had the goal of being able to field them in a GW store or official event, so, an extant Codex and Citadel miniatures. On the latter point, i could trawl Ebay for the original squat models, but they are now 30 years old and expensive, so i chose to convert dwarfs/duardin from Age of Sigmar. As for an army list, I've seen numerous people use a marine list, but that just didn't feel right. Others have made the connection of squats being miners and the modern Genestealer Cult being miners, but i have a soft s...

No, this isn't a dyslexic post about the glories of video cassette recorders. It's a post about a much overlooked element in many games, often referred to as vehicle design rules. Within the hobby, we rely on army lists and points to try to ensure that the game is fair on a competitive front. As such, we constrain ourselves to vehicles and units that have preset rules and stats when building our forces. Turning up to an organised event with something with home brew rules and stats rarely goes down well. That being said, the diversity of vehicles that exist in the real world is huge, even before we start adding alternative weapons to existing tanks and such. During wartime, most countries have developed new technologies to try to outdo the enemy. Even the "tank" name we use to refer to a wide range of fighting vehicles has its origin in wartime counter espionage. These new vehicles often would see little action due to flaws in design that manifested only when they w...

Looking around on-line, one thread seems to keep surfacing: that, whether tools, glue, paint, or whatever else, you should always buy the best product you can afford. The implication being that the more expensive, the better or something like that. It's got me looking at my tools, glues, paints, etc., and looking at old articles from decades ago (some in publications that predate my entry into the hobby by a number of years). What I've found in those articles is that the current advice, to buy the best, is in direct contradiction to a lot of the advice from 30-40 years ago. There are articles saying that you should buy cheap tools, because, with any significant use, the tools will soon be broken and need replaced. Of course, back then, most terrain packs for gaming were cardboard cut outs. Back in those days, companies wanted you to spend as much of your hobby budget as possible on miniatures and products they produced. These days, the same can be said, but most companies hav...

Yesterday I rambled on incessantly about what units/periods work best on an open field gaming table, where scenery is scarce. Rather than slowly build up the terrain, today I'm going to jump to the other extreme, where there's little of the table that isn't covered in terrain. There's a huge middle ground, where most games will fit, and most games tables too. Hyper-dense Terrain This extreme of terrain is something most associated with small skirmish level games, like Games Workshop's Necromunda, Space Hulk , Shadow War and Kill Team, and other games that limit floorspace to a much smaller table than most company level games require . Infinity is also famous for dense terrain, but the actual density seems to vary between Europe and the America. For the purposes of this article, when i talk about hyper-dense terrain, I'm referring to the density of terrain in an American game of Infinity. I have always liked the challenge of a table absolutely crammed with...

Yesterday I rambled on and on about how important terrain is, and how it's nice to have a fully painted table of terrain, over which you can play games with your fully painted armies. In that article, i mentioned being able to cram a few large tables full of terrain. By that, i don't mean dressing the table with more than the required minimum of 2 items per 2' square, or whatever. By that i mean crammed to the point where there is little to no table visible, just terrain with occasional cracks where pieces meet. This got me thinking on what is the topic of today's post: terrain density. The amount of terrain you put on a table, as well as the type and size of such, can greatly affect the game in terms of how units move, where they deploy, and how they fight. To explain this further, I'll take 2 extremes, and look at how they will shape the game. The first is the open field, with maybe a few knolls, hedges and such; the second is the hyper dense terrain, say the B...

There's an old saying that, in any wargame, there's a third player in the form of the terrain. It's one of those trite old adages that's been doing the rounds for years, mostly because it's so true. The sad truth is, for most of us, terrain is something of an afterthought. I know that there's a huge spectrum of players out there, when it comes to how painted their armies are, from the tinboys and grey plastic swarms, through bare bones paint jobs that meet the three colour minimum, to people like myself, who spend more time building and painting miniatures than they ever do fielding them. That same spectrum can be seen in terrain, from bare tables with a few chunks of expanded polystyrene through to lavish diorama style bases that look so good it seems a shame to game on them. Sadly, there's a lot more people who bare bones their terrain than their miniatures. I'm not preaching from a high horse atop an ivory tower, here. For all i design and paint ter...

Yesterday i rambled on and on about our nostalgia for old systems and miniatures, wistful memories of glory days when everything seemed so much better, when it actually wasn't. Today's topic is the homages to years gone by that are still shaping our hobby. Like those nods and winks to older pop culture that we see in films and television, games and miniatures are full of similar. The most obvious is the Chainsaws. These began as references to Tobe Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead , but s pawned miniatures with such, including Citadel's LE23, Chainsaw Wizard, and numerous models for Warhammer Fantasy and Blood Bowl armed with anachronistic chainsaws. It even spawned a game , Chainsaw Warrior. The homage's continuation should be fairly obvious, but for those who haven't had their coffee, there are numerous examples of chainsaws in modern sci-fi battle games, from the chainsword of 40k, to the chain bayonets on many of the guns ...

The miniature gaming hobby is old. The original Dungeons and Dragons came out 45 years ago. The first tabletop wargame is far, far older. Even if we ignore games like Chess and Go, which could be considered wargames, because they are played using set pieces, and on a set board, early, commercially available, variable wargames have been around since the late 18th century, the first commonly credited being introduced in 1780. That's nearly 240 years. With this long history, games have come and gone, scales have shifted, design ethoses have changed, and so on. Most gamers have fond memories of the first games they played, the first miniatures they bought and built and painted. When we first encountered the hobby, everything was new, games were so much better than the disorganised play we knew as children, miniatures seemed so detailed. Essentially, for those of us who stayed in the hobby, we fell in love with one or more aspect of the hobby. As lovers, it's all too easy to view...

Standard Template Construction (STC), was something developed by GW in first edition 40k to explain why a galactic empire had a very limited range of combat vehicles that appeared uniformly across its territory. It meant that, rather than having to design and tool a huge range of vehicles, they could have all Imperial forces equipped with Rhino transports, Predator battle tanks and Land Raider heavy tanks. It meant that they could make a standard bike for marines and Guard, and a single Land Speeder, with different crew and weapons, for both. Basically, it was a way of saving time and money, and the technology = magic setting suited that. Beyond the Predator being a single upgrade sprue for the Rhino, there wasn't that much cross compatibility, because there wasn't enough range to justify it. Over time, new vehicles were added, like the Whirlwind and Vindicator, originally as conversion articles for the Rhino, with some extra pieces like bases and shields, pen barrels and plas...

Yes, the title is a quote from Stalin, on how the Soviet Union repelled the Nazi invasion and won the Second World War. This, however isn't about Stalin or WWII. I've been playing 40k, Warh ammer 40,000, for the one reader unfamiliar with the the abbreviation, for far too long. I was sold on the idea of the Genestealer Cult, these groups who mixed alien and human, who were desperately ill equipped for war, and yet who rose up in armed rebellion to overthrow the Fascist government that is pretty much every Imperial world. It was a force that relied on a small, random, compulsory core of a Patriarch, Magus, D6 genestealers and hybrids, supported by huge swathes of normal people. It was truly a numbers game. That was all the way back in first edition. In seventh, they returned, still numerous, but now filled out, not with humans, although they can take such, but with a huge spectrum of hybrids. This, and the addition of mining tools and such, has made them a close combat army ...