Rage of Sigmarines!

Discussion on Age of Sigmar has been wildfire in the Warhammer community lately. This is not merely in the way the conversation spreads, but also in the landscape that is left behind. Like many in the miniature wargaming hobby. I have opinions concerning Age of Sigmar. Seeing as how this is my blog this seemed like the sensible place for me to share those opinions rather than try to inject a little bit here and there. For those of you not into the miniature wargaming hobby, and probably many that are, this will be long, dry, and boring.

Warhammer 40K in a Boltershell

I had an idea for an article so started to write it. I realized part way into it I might want some basic information about the setting of Warhammer 40,000 as the article would make no sense for someone not already familiar with the background. I started to include a basic overview when I realized it was taking up a lot of space. This is one of those times when I can thankfully squeeze two posts out of one idea. I will be truncating Warhammer 40,000 as 40K a lot as I am lazy. So let's begin with the history lesson behind the Warhammer 40,000 setting.

A long ways into the future, in a galaxy right here at home....

Mankind was in a golden age. A time

that banished the wrongs brought

about by the Dark Age of Technology.

The Emperor had found his

genetically modified test tube babies

ejected out to different regions of space,

the Almighty Space Marines.

The emperor entrusted his son Horus

with leading his brethren on a crusade

to reunite all of mankind which had

become separated amongst the stars.

Horus became disenchanted with the

Emperor and his vision. He led half the

Space Marines in a bitter war against the

Emperor ten thousand years ago. Horus

died in the resulting conflict, and the

Emperor came close to death himself.

The Emperor has been a rotting husk

incapable of leaving his golden throne

for the past ten thousand years. He is

still the beacon that guides mankind as

without him there is no way to navigate

The Warp so no means for faster than

light travel. Should the Emperor perish,

Humanity will fall with him.

In the Grim Dark future, there is only War!

Yes, I know the scroll is supposed to line up evenly on the left, but I am not taking the time to do that.

That in a nutshell is twenty thousand plus years of history. There are a lot of nuances such as there are countless number of Human inhabited worlds. Humans are the most numerous species in the galaxy. Beings live within subscape or The Warp as it is called in the setting. Most warp beings do not care what us material beings do. Those that do care want to either destroy us or have power over us. There are two large sections of space where the material plane is rent apart to expose us directly to The Warp. The Warp is also the cause of most mutations and where psychics draw their power from. Space Marines are honourable sons of the Emperor. Girls in power armour are either nuns or =][=nquisitors. I am fairly certain I am legally obligated to use that symbol for the I in =][=nquisitor.

There are also many alien races. Most never receive a lot of attention. From Humanity's view, none of the Xenos races are good and should be shot on sight. There are Humans that have interactions with other species, but they are generally considered as not being true citizens of the Empire. They are therefore not trusted. Then you have the abhumans. These are Humans who spent so much time in an environment to cause their physiology to change. Some examples include Ratlings (Hobbits), Ogryn (Ogres), and the fan favourite Squats (Dwarfs). They are treated as a part of the Empire and have a place in it. That place is beneath real Humans however.

In addition to the Xenos and Abhumans, you should not trust other Humans as well. They might be hiding a mutation, or worse, be psychic. Both of these are evidence of Warp exposure. Mutants are slightly more tolerated as the less dangerous of the two and can be used for manual labour. The fear with psychics is not so much any mental abilities they might or might not possess, but the risk inherent with using psychic powers. Any time a psychic uses their abilities they are opening themselves up to The Warp. Anything could potentially come through should the psychic lose control or push too hard. Psychics are rounded up and tested. Those found unsuited for reeducation purposes or level of control are sent to Terra. A thousand psychics are sacrificed every day to keep the Emperor alive and power the navigation beacon he transmits into The Warp with his psychic abilities.

The number of psychics is on the rise. There are Xenos everywhere. This new age practically started with the arrival of Starship Trooper alien bugs drifting into our galaxy. Ancient races are waking up. New races are evolving and starting to explore and claim planets of their own.

Mix all of this with Gothic architecture, Emperor worship, few understand technology so it is worshiped as they perform the ancient rites as opposed to using technology as we think of it, and throw in some fake Latin. Humanity is a propped up corpse of it previous self. This is Warhammer 40,000.

We Can Kanban

One of my favourite hobby podcasts is the Independent Characters. They have been discussing for a while using a Kanban board to organize their hobby projects. A local player, The Professor, has also talked about it to me a bit. This post on the Independent Character’s blog finally pushed me into setting up a board.

Here is my board as it stands right now. It includes everything I either own or am likely to own for Deadzone over the coming year. It also includes projects that I am in the middle of as well as uncompleted models for my Khador forces. Everything is colour coded by game system with purple being a default colour. Since I do not foresee any Deadzone beyond what is already on the board, and Mordheim is not something I expect to see much play any time soon unless I run a campaign, they are in the default purple. The Privateer Press models are in red, Malifaux in orange, and 40K in blue for now. 40K is a pretty low priority for me right now, but one model has some paint on it and a couple of models are cleaned and primed.

I have entries organized with priority going to the models at the top of a column and going down from there. Playing around with the board I like the ease of use so far. I can see where the board will be helpful. I think I will be more likely to copy an existing entry in a given column rather than drag an entry straight over however as while subtasks are entry specific right now I am finding myself assigning the same subtasks to multiple entries in the same column and clearing out the subtasks from previous columns. It’s easier to delete the old entry then copy and rename an entry from the new column rather than copy the old entry over and change all the subtasks. We’ll see how this goes in the future.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in, then I encourage you to check out the blog post on the Independent Characters. There are some good tips to get you started. You can find Kanban Flow here.

Scout Formula

I shared this back in December of 2012 on some local forums. I'm stealing it from there to share here because I was checking on the colours I used as I am going to be working on my other Space marines that have been sitting here in their basecoats since some time in fifth edition. Long before I actually painted these Scouts. The main differences between the scheme on the scouts and the basecoated Space Marines so far is that the Space Marines were primed with white spray paint (not primer) and based painted with Apple Barrels where the Scouts were primed with black primer and painted with the listed paints.

Since the painting contest for the Squirrel is over I thought I would talk about the paint scheme I attempted for the Scouts.



I started with a black undercoat using Rustoleum sandable primer. My other space Marines are on a white primer, but I was trying to swap some paint colors around and the black would force me to try to create some higher contrast which is one area amongst many I feel I need to work on.

Key...
NGW: New Games Workshop
OGW: Old Games Worskhop
RMSHD: Reaper Master Series HD

The Black and White I used were both from P3, but any could easily be substituted.

Primary Armour
I left some black showing and layered up from there.
OGW Scaly Green/NGW Temple Guard Blue 1/1
OGW Scaly Green/NGW Temple Guard Blue/NGW Sybarite Green 1/1/1
OGW Scaly Green/NGW Temple Guard Blue/NGW Sybarite Green 1/1/2
NGW Sybarite Green
NGW Sybarite Green/OGW Rotting Flesh

I did the armour first then realized how messy I was being so laid in the base coats for all the rest after that. The armour required quite a bit of touch up at the end because of this.

Secondary Armour
OGW Tentacle Pink Basecoat
OGW Blazing Orange shade

Armour Trim
OGW Fiery Orange Basecoat
Shade down using OGW Blazing Orange
Further shade with RMSHD Rusty Red
Build back up using the colours already used and building up to RMSHD and a touch of white in spots.

Cloth
OGW Fiery Orange Basecoat
OGW Liche Purple
OGW Dark Flesh
OGW Bleached Bone

I based then shaded down then brought it back up... sort of. I had a pattern going, but painted over that as the pattern was similar to something I had planned for the cloaks and I was worried about making the textures too busy. These were the colors I used to paint on top of the first layers of paint so the paint is a bit thick in the pants.

Scaled Cloaks
OGW Liche Purple
OGW Liche Purple/NGW Genestealer Purple 2/1
OGW Liche Purple/NGW Genestealer Purple 1/1
NGW Genestealer Purple
NGW Genestealer Purple/OGW Space Wolves Grey 1/1

The plan was to paint scales on the back of the cloaks, but I simply am not fast enough. These were the colors I ended up using. All lenses were painted using the same colors but slightly different application.

Inner Cloaks
OGW Tentacle Pink basecoat
OGW Tentacle Pink/OGW Dark Flesh 2/1
OGW Tentacle Pink/OGW Dark Flesh 1/1
OGW Tentacle Pink/OGW Dark Flesh 1/2
P3 Carnation Pink

I was worried about going too dark which is the reason for so many mixes of OGW Tentacle Pink with OGW Dark Flesh.

Flesh
I was going for Brazillian, but I'm not happy with the results.

OGW Dark Flesh basecoat
Shade down using OGW Liche Purple
Build back up going into OGW Bronzed Flesh
Work in a little RMSHD Rusty Red to the cheeks and nose for a bit of color
Final highlights were OGW Bronzed Flesh with a bit of OGW Rotted Flesh

Leather
OGW Dark Flesh basecoat
OGW Liche Purple shade
OGW Dwarf Flesh
OGW Bleached Bone

I was originally working to make them a somewhat Caucasian skin tone so that people didn't think the actual skin tones were dark by accident. The leather was lacking color and didn't look right however so I went back and tinted and reworked it using the colors listed while mixing in RMSHD Rusty Red.

Hair
Black and RMSHD Rusty Red were the only colors used.

Chaper Emblem
OGW Liche Purple Base
Clean up using OGW Tentacle Pink
OGW Liche Purple/NGW Temple Guard Blue 1/1
NGW Temple Guard Blue
NGW Temple Guard Blue/NGW Sybarite Green 1/1
NGW Sybarite Green

I think that was all the colors used. I could be missing something.