Space Ork Super-attack Onslaughter Dreadnought

I've been very slowly building up a small Rogue Trader era Space Ork force, you can see the first ten painted minis here.

I'm not really collecting them for any reason, other than the sheer joy of revisiting my younger days, and I've no real goals. But one thing I really wanted was one of the original Ork Dreadnoughts. There's something so impractical about the design that I find really appealing, I mean, how does it even walk? It must need to swing from side to side, making accurate shooting nearly impossible. Mind you, these are Orks (though the BS of the Dreadnaught is surprisingly high).

They do crop up occasionally on evilbay, but always at a much higher price than I can justify.  I've seen some that I swear must have been built around a Faberge egg, so I had accepted that there would be a Dreadnaught shaped hole in my Space Ork force.

A Lucky find

But when recently browsing the FLGS (the same one where I got the Space Marine bits shown here) I saw this on the rack 

This is the Dreadnaught with the expansion kit added. It comes with a Heavy Flamer and a Heavy Plasma Gun, because in those days, orks used the same weaponry as the Imperium. It is missing a few bits though, the Gretchin pilot, the banner pole, and most significantly, one of the weapon mount arms.

Dreadnought - Seeks arm

Still, I bought it, hoping to cobble something together for the missing arm.

Then next day I found this on eBay, and for a reasonable price too (£3.50 plus postage*).

Not one but two weapon mount arms, and a lascannon

Now I have a complete enough Dreadnaught to build and paint, and a spare Lascannon. I might even magnetise the weapons so that I can swap them out.

Now this wasn't as cheap as when originally released (£3.50 for the basic Dreadnaught and another £2.50 for the expansion pack), but I consider it a good purchase, and, perhaps, a little reward for clearing out so much stuff recently.

Painting it (eventually)

I need to strip the new arm and the lascannon, and, as I mentioned, I'll look at making the weapons swapable.  I may even extend this to the one Ork with Heavy Weapon, in his case, a Missile Launcher.  I'm not sure what colour scheme to go for though.  The original models, both in White Dwarf etc and, IIRC my own, tneded to wards bright reds an similar.  It might be nice, given the khaki on my ten Raiders, to go for a similar sort of colour, it being Armour after all.  If you've any suggestions, please leave a comment.

I don't seem to be doing much painting at the moment, various other things, both hobby and otherwise, are taking up my time, but I'd like to get this done fairly soon. There are a few more infantry I'll paint first though, as I have a vague plan for my Space Orks.

*I'm baffled by this. Individual arm mounts sell for upwards of £8, and I've seen Lascannon fetch over £10. It does all seem to be genuine stuff.

More Crimson Fists

When I painted the first squad of Crimson Fists I mentioned that I was hunting for the missile launcher in the 'loft of shame '. Well there's been no sign of any more marines up there, so I was pretty much resigned to never completing them. They are available on evilbay, but they command very high prices, far above what I can currently justify.  So it looked like this project was at a dead end.

Discovery

Recently I was browsing a box of second hand minis in my FLGS* and found the following;

Three more partial RTB01 marines, including a missile launcher and a flamer (originally glued on to the arm of the newer metal marine bottom right). I've got plenty of the bits needed to complete them, so now I can assemble enough Crimson Fists for The Battle at the Farm. But I'll strip them first.

Stripping Plastic Minis

If you read my posts on stripping, I'm using Dettol as its far kinder to plastic.  Unlike the earlier trials I'm leaving the minis in the Dettol for several days, before dunking in washing up liquid for a day or two longer, then after scrubbing clean (and it gets the paint off very nicely), in Isopropanol, to make sure that all the Dettol etc is gone. 

I have heard that methylated spirit is also a good solution, but I've yet to try it. For now I'll stick to what I know.

Not More Marines?

Given my previous post discussing selling off minis, it may seem ironic talking about getting more. Well I have a double defence. I'll be sorting through Warhammer 40K stuff soon, and that means getting rid of a lot of the more modern Space Marines. Also this post was actually started some while ago, so the purchase of the above was long before the current cull and they are all stripped and cleaned up ready for assembly and painting.

These original RTB01 Space Marines are definite keepers for me, or at least, a tactical squad of them are. I may well sell off any surplus, though they are such fun to paint.

*Actually, one of three in Huddersfield, though it's my favourite.

The Joy of Slimming (the Minis Collection)

I realise that it's been weeks since I last posted. I've not been idle, but I've done very little painting. In fact, I've finally got round to seriously addressing the minis pile, a job that I've tentatively been toying with for quite a while.

Can you have too many minis?

Like many gamers I've bought far more minis over the years than I've painted, (I've boxes of RPG stuff that's never seen a paintbrush, and don't even mention Trident Realm) and of the painted stuff there's a fair bit that I know I'll never need again. I'm not great at keeping my stuff well stored, so it's always been easier to just shove stuff to the back of the loft of shame, but I'm determined to finally sort this out.

I've recently come to realise that having all this stuff is actually harmful. It's a psychological burden that can take the joy out of the hobby. I've had episodes over the past few years where I the thought of painting minis filled me with dread. Very much a first world problem, I know.

I want to bring the joy back into my hobby and dealing with the horde of stuff is my best first step. 

What to thin 

I'm going through everything. I'm deciding what use I can get out of it, and if the answer is little or none, it goes.

As an example, I've collected minis for D&D for decades. As a result I have many different types of the same creature. I have kobolds from the early days (Minifigs), official kobolds from TSR,  prepainted WotC kobolds of several different styles and sizes, and at least three different styles of Reaper kobolds. Witness my efforts to find the perfect orc for another example. The same applies to practically all the humanoid races, undead, beasts etc, and even dragons.

I only need one style of kobold, orc, etc, so I have a lot of spare minis that I need to ge rid of.

How to thin 

I've started with the RPG stuff, collecting together as much as I can find then sorting by type. These go into ziplock bags, such as a goblin bag or a zombie bag. These are then stored in Really Useful Boxes by type, so a box of undead or a box of fiends.

Next I decide what I don't need/want. This is a very rough sorting, the intention is to further sort once everything has been looked through once. As an example, I'm hanging on to a lot of the WotC prepainted minis as they cover creatures that just aren't available elsewhere, such as decent Displacer Beasts, but a lot of humanoids and PCs/NPCs are much better in Reaper Bones. 

The actual disposal of surplus stuff is mostly through eBay or specialist Facebook sales groups. I might not get top prices, but so far just about everything has sold.

As of the end of January I've sold on over 400 of the D&D prepainted minis and over 100 Reaper minis that don't fit in my collection any more. I've also cleared a few boxes of minis games, such as Bluebird Toys' Havok, oddments of GW bits, such as the old plastic WH40K trees and far more Heroclix minis than I thought I had.

What's next?

I've plenty more of course. I've just started on wargames stuff. Here I'm going to have to make some difficult choices. I know that just keeping a few of something will lead eventually to regret (if only I'd kept that one particular mini or unit I'd have a great army). It's going to have to be "lots or none at all", as Bilbo might say.

As an example, I've loads of Forge Fathers, originally I got them for Deadzone, then I added a lot of the then new plastics when Firefight came out. Now I'd still like to play Firefight, but I've got plenty of Marauders and Enforcers, so all the Forge Fathers will go. Keeping a few, for, say, a Deadzone team, will just lead to me regretting selling the rest off and/or me buying more.

Lord of the Rings minis are next for sorting, and I have a plan for what to keep. Then hard choices over what Kings of War armies I want to concentrate on.

If all this sounds a bit 'anti hobby' it's not meant that way. I've been doing a lot of work on the online D&D campaign, and I've even done a little bit of painting. However, I hope that once the exercise is complete I'll be a lot happier with the hobby.

23/24 Janus Post

The traditional look back and forward hobby post for the New Year.

Firstly it's fair to say that my hobby effort has been erratic last year. It's a sad fact that as you get older, so do friends and family, and you find that the numbers decrease, or readjust. 

I've been far more active musically in 2023, but I still managed to get hobby things done as well.

Gaming in 2023

Whilst I'll always think I'd like more gaming, I didn't do too badly last year.

I managed some Kings of War, finally getting my Kingdoms of Men force to 750 points for a four player game with Bodvoc and the rest of the SADdos (sadly my last game with Phil).

I got a good amount of MESBG-ing done in a Battle Companies campaign with my son.  The intention behind this was to sort through our huge collection of MESBG minis and thin the collection considerably.  This is becoming a theme, and will be an important factor in my hobbying going forward.

Monday nights gaming is now dedicated to board and card games, though we reserve the right to do a few one shot RPGs.  I've played Aliens, Era, Sushi Go! Azul, Moon and several others.  Generally they've all been fun, special mention must go to Era, Azul and Moon.

Sadly my D&D campaign was paused due to schedule problems, but I have started a game to introduce two new players to the game. This is progressing well. It's all online, due to geography, but I've been kept busy designing stuff for it. One day I'd like to be able to rerun an old adventure, simply so the majority of the work would already be done.

I played a couple of games of Galactic Heroes Star Wars style, trying out the Hero rules to see how well they fit for Star Wars (pretty well).  It confirmed how good the rules are for this sort of skirmish game, and also how much I wish I'd concentrated on 28mm rather than 20mm.

I also had a game of Fantastic Battles using 6mm minis.  This allowed me to play Fantastic Battles without the restrictions we placed on ourselves for the Middle Earth FB lists.

Painting in 2023

Painting wise I did a few 'Oldhammer', or 'Old School' minis, and I came up with a way of organising them, or is it justification for keeping them?

I got a bit more done for my Kingdoms of Men army, and I think it's time to get the initial 500 points up for sale, as was the original intention.  I also got around to basing (most) of the orc army I painted in lockdown.

I painted up a group of Haradrim for the Battle Companies campaign.  With only a bag of unpainted (and often broken) Harad minis at the start of the year, I now have 15 infantry and 2 cavalry painted. I'm at the point where I know, more or less, what of my Harad bag I'm going to keep and what I can get rid of.  

I also painted some more terrain for the games, GW's nice Ruins set.

A new project was 6mm Fantastic Battles. My first army is dwarves, and with a combination of stuff I did many years ago and newly painted minis I have 1000 points already.  Again the reasoning behind this was to see what 6mm fantasy I had and if it was worth keeping.  I had been thinking about more generic fantasy games of Fantastic Battles, this allowed me to use minis I already had, and, again, thin out the collection.

Other Stuff

I also decided to review the first few copies of Hachette's Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer part-work.  These have proven to be popular posts, and I've enjoyed writing them.  Thanks must go to Bodvoc who split the cost of the magazines, without which I'd not have done more that the first two or three issues.

I began 'Island 23' my version of the popular 'Dungeon 23' stuff that sprang up last January. As with a lot of other bloggers, I couldn't sustain this beyond March, and towards the end the entries were sporadic. However, I still have the file, and there are some good ideas there that I shall revisit. 

2023 saw my blog garner a lot more views, passing the 40 000 and 50 000 marks (currently standing at over 56 000).  I'm both astonished and delighted by this.  I must be doing something right.

The Future

Looking ahead into 2024 I'm starting off by finishing various projects from last year (and earlier!). 

Here's a list of some of the things I'd like to get finished, in, as they say, no particular order.

Finish painting six companies of dwarves and a couple more characters. This is to give me 1000 points of newly painted stuff.  I already have pretty much all I need to get this army to 2000 points, probably with a few interesting options, though I suspect a small order to Irregular is in the future somewhere.  I'll be selling off a lot of the armies and part armies I bought back when I first collected 6mm, so I'll finish up with less stuff, have an army I can use, and, hopefully fund any small additions.

I'd also like to get at least one more army done as opposition, and terrain is, of course, something else I'll have to address (indeed I'm already collecting bits for this).

I have a few more Haradrim to paint, partly to model changes to my Battle Company and partly to give me a good base for playing other MESBG stuff. I'd like to play through the journey books at some point, though I'd probably use Fantastic Battles for the larger games such as Pelennor Fields. If I thin my collection down to meet this goal then I'll have cleared a lot of stuff out.  Of course, once Harad is sorted, there's the other factions to attack.

As mentioned above, I'll get the Karpath Kingdoms of Men Ambush Force up for sale soon, and I suppose I should look at replacing those units so I still have a force to bring to battles. I think I've got enough unbuilt minis to replace the Ambush force, though I might go for slightly different units. I've also got plans for some more units to eventually expand the army to around 1000 points.

I've currently got five orks part painted to add to my slow growing Ork army. I doubt I'll ever play 40K. What I've heard about the latest edition hasn't changed my mind, but maybe, one day, Grimdark Future? Besides, I'd really like to have a go at scratch building some vehicles.

As mentioned above (and ad nauseum in earlier posts) I'd like decent terrain for my games. Ideally I want to be able to play good sized games without always using my old GW Realm of Battle. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's looking a bit tired now and even switching the boards around, the layouts eventually seem a bit samey. I've no idea how I'd replace it, space precludes having a 4ft x 6ft board. This is going to take a bit of pondering.

Possibly the biggest project, though easily broken down into small sections, is a complete overhaul of my RPG/D&D stuff.  I've given a lot of my various floorplans away to local gaming shops and I'm looking around for a system to replace them.  My current leaning is towards the Crooked Staff stuff (I made up some of the ruins here, and have a few of his Dungeon Tile files as well).

I'm going through my RPG minis and deciding what to keep.  I have a lot of different styles of, for example, goblins and kobolds.  I've even painted several different goblins and kobolds, but which ones will I use, and how many do I need? There's no quick or easy answer to this, but for kobolds I think I've settled on the most recent sculpts from Reaper. I've already got sufficient, though I do need to do a bit of weapon swapping. This frees up all the previous versions of kobolds (yes, even the ones I painted here) including a lot of the WotC pre-painted minis. 

I may well put the kobolds near the front of the painting queue soon.

I'm hoping that I'll make some good progress with all this. There's always going to be the risk of new projects, Warpath is one that springs to mind, Kickstarting soon. However, I doubt I'll get much interest among my gaming friends, so I should be able to avoid it.

So if I'm setting any goals for 2024, its just one very general one.

By this time next year I'd like to have more minis painted and games played with them, and considerably fewer minis overall.  This last point may be difficult, as Bones 6 is due to land this year, but I'm sure that with focus I can manage it.

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine, a Baker's Dozen

Last time I told you that I'd bought my last issue of Adventurer. However, I needed a new set of dice (a present for my son-in-law) and they had a copy in at the local newsagents. The cover price is close to that of a decent set of dice and I didn't have to wait for delivery.

So here we go, a bonus review.

Sage Advice

We have a second article on time. This discusses how different movement rates affect distance travelled and the differences between fast normal and slow travel.

Curses looks at a few of the ways that characters can become cursed. Given the wide variety of curses in the game, the effects of a curse are glossed over. Importantly it also addresses common ways of removing curses 

Character Creation

This issue introduces a new character, a Dragonborn Barbarian. Last issue we had an introduction to the dragonborn race (though no rules as such) this time we have the standard introductory page on the class and a page each for first and second level features. As is standard, any potential choices have been made for the pre-gen character.

Better Roleplay looks at adding quirks to your character and how different drives can influence how characters interact with the rest of the world. This is good advice, though as a DM I shudder at the thought of every player choosing an 'amusing' character quirk

Lore

We have a page on The Weave, which is where magic comes from in the Forgotten Realms setting and a page looking at the pantheon most commonly used in the Realms. This latter is intended to give players some choices for their characters to follow. It very nicely suggests how characters in a world with many different gods with different portfolios might interact with them.

Freebies

The dice are a nice silver and blue and come with their own dice bag. There are also character sheets for the barbarian at first and second level. As an extra bonus freebie there's a large sheet of card printed with a dungeon floor texture on one side and a plainer texture suitable for outdoor encounters on the other side. This is 21 squares by 25 squares, and is the same thick card as the map in issue two. This is an excellent addition to any DMs equipment, though actually using minis and floorplans has yet to be covered. Personally I'd recommend photocopies to allow a DM to cut out individual rooms or perhaps some form of laminated sheets for using whiteboard or dry erase markers.

Conclusion

This is certainly one of the better issues. The articles continue to gradually roll out the rules, and I've expressed my understanding of that necessity and my frustration already.  That said, there are some good points, such as a character's relationship with multiple gods.

The encounter is another very good one too, more details below.

The extras really make this issue. I'd looked on both Fauxhammer, to see what the freebies were and Hachette's website to try and work out what the articles and encounter were likely to be. None of that mentioned the dice bag or the floor plan.

Encounter Chasing Shadows

As hinted last issue, the party have left Phandalin behind them and are on their way to Neverwinter. 

This encounter gives them the opportunity to foil a nasty little scam which is well presented. Bonus points for suggesting that the villain should try to escape if found out, and there's even mention of including them in future adventures.

Definitely one of the better encounters, and another that I'm going to steal.

Yule's Delight

Season's Greetings in whatever guise you are most comfortable.

If you are a regular reader, many thanks. If you've somehow stumbled on this, welcome, stick around and I hope you like what you see.

And the foxes want to wish you a Happy Violet Night.

Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer Magazine Issue Twelve

Issue twelve marks the start of the second adventure. Apparently there will be seven adventures in total over the eighty issue run.  To mark the new adventure we have a new cover picture. Three of the original pre-gens (the dwarf cleric is missing) accompanied by a dragonborn are in an underground setting. Behind them lurks a beholder.

This is the last issue I intend to buy. I hope I've given the part-work a fair run to base my reviews on, and I wanted to see how the first adventure finished and what the difference was between the first and second adventure. I'll do a final post looking back on the first twelve issues, and perhaps even an extra post giving advice on running the first adventure.

Sage Advice

Sage Advice opens with an article on dice. Seriously, twelve issues in and we are just looking at the dice. If you've been collecting all the issues so far you have ten sets plus an extra d20. There are some suggestions on situations where certain dice are more likely to be used, but on the whole, a bit of a let down.

Then a DM guide to setting atmosphere at the table. Essentially this is a look at lighting, sound effects and music. There are some interesting points here, such as comparing film and video game music, and I'm delighted to discover that the BBC Sound Effects Library is now available online. 

I suggest you take the lighting advice with caution. At my age I need as good a light as possible, especially when reading character sheets and rulebooks. For me that's always going to be more important than setting a particular mood.

Finally a guide to grappling and shoving. This is useful, and I'll be using it for player reference. I do think that this should have been presented earlier though, perhaps in issue one's combat booklet?

Character Creation

Age first with a few suggestions how a character's age might affect their behaviour, and a table listing different species' lifespans and when they are considered adults. 

The Dragonborn article introduces the race as it appears in the Forgotten Realms. The next official pre-gen is going to be a dragonborn barbarian (next issue) so this is a bit of foundation laying.

The Life Domain is next, again a broad overview. Frustratingly it mentions that domains grant special abilities and access to certain spells, but these aren't actually covered.

The Folk Hero background gets a page, and we do get the associated rules as well as guidelines on how to play one.

Lore 

Ghouls get a page. As usual, this is just general history and a few suggestions on where they may be encountered and how they are likely to behave. No stat block, but you won't be surprised when you look at the end of this issue's Encounter.

Freebies

This issue we get another set of dice and a booklet of spells. This gives the rules for all the cantrips and first level spells relevant to the pre-gens. 

This is actually a great idea, though, of course, I'm going to suggest that it should have been included earlier. Presumably we will get more of these to cover other spell levels.

Conclusion

I found many of this issue's articles disappointing. I appreciate that the nature of part works means that there may be times when information needs to be imparted, but it might not be very interesting. Similarly, there are times when information can't be given early enough in the magazine's run, so it seems to come late (such as this issue's article on dice). However, I constantly feel that better page layout (and less artwork) would allow for more information to be presented on each page, allowing more to be covered each issue.

I'm not even sure that some of this issues articles are even needed.  The useful information on age could easily have been included on each race's pages (as it is in the Player's Handbook), and I feel that the dice article is long past being useful.

In terms of the Adventure, I'll address the Encounter below, but I will point out that there's no real difference between many of the Encounters in the first Adventure and the opening Encounter of the second (a basic escort quest). There's no sense of starting something new or different, though the PCs are moving away from the village at the end of the Encounter, heading towards Trentor.

Encounter; Plight of the Roaming Dead

The heroes are tasked with escorting an NPC. On the way they meet a pack of ghouls and have the opportunity to rescue more NPCs.

While there's nothing outstanding here, the Encounter is well constructed.  Once the Encounter is over, the party travels on to Trentor and the next Encounter, so the intention seems to be that they are leaving Phandolin.

The initial NPC is a relative of one the party already knows, so there's some continuity here, helping build relationships with the villagers (shame the PCs are leaving, but perhaps they will be back).