Editing STL files - Necromunda

Hi All,

So you may or may not have seen these great Sci Fi buildings that Bulldoglopez and Axiom have been building out of old Necromunda bulkhead sections.

Now I had thought that Bulldoglopez had blogged about it, I was wrong. Axiom, however, has here. In fact, he is such a consummate gentleman he has blogged Bulldog's as well at the end. I'll wait while you read it. When you do you'll realize why I got excited about hab building.

My first issue was that I didn't have any of the old Necromunda tiles. What's a guy locked in his house with a 3d printer to do? 

First, search the term "Necromunda Bulkhead" on Thingiverse. I tried several and they had real problems with ovehangs straight out of the box. I had to figure out how to get usable prints. After failing with the split, flat on the build plate, files I figured I could cut the vertical files in Meshmixer. 

I still had to print with supports, but  it seemed to print fairly well.

Not too bad, but those supports are a pain to get out.

So back to the drawing board and fix those parallel to the build plate files. That handle had to go. it started on the third layer and just made it a nightmare to print.

It's hard to get perfect in Tinkercad but it prints flat.

Seven and a half-ish hours, not too bad. This particular print made me realize I had some more tweaking to go as the top right door piece had a void around the sides and the top on the back. Why the OP did that baffles me.

But they did print. Just a little bit of lifting on a few corners.

I also realized after this that the fill in the bottom pair was too thin. So I thickened it up a little.

Now I had been super resistant to Tinkercad because I like to have software on my computer so I can work on things offline. After a couple of friends showed me what they were doing with Tinkercad, I got over myself. Now I'm addicted to adding stuff to the bulkheads.

Then I remembered there were some bulkhead frames. I had to cut off the top handle on the right and some connectors between the two halves.

But I wanted to rotate the halves so that they sat on the plate like the other models, but I didn't know how to separate the parts. As you can see here, I figured it out.

A little verbose GoogleFu later.

Here's this guys video. Thanks Chaos Core Tech.

He's using an older version of Tinkercad, but you can still do what he says.

Thanks for looking, and I hope to have some habs to show you soon.

Mek Life Crises - The Quarantina Mek Off

Hi All,

I painted an actual model the other day, I think my first of the year. A bunch of us were doing our usual trash talking and it devolved into Bulldoglopez calling out Captain Crooks to build a Mek in two weeks.

I had bought this Mega-Gargant off of Blue in VT as I got excited to go to BOYL 2019 and play some Epic. Unfortunately the Mega-Gargant was considered too OP and I had to build the one I ended up using.

I primed it using the airbrush. I think I'm getting the hang of it. At some point I may graduate from priming and varnishing to actually painting with it, but not yet.

I was convinced that I had to keep this unassembled in order to paint it. I think I was mostly right, but I did have the usual problems fitting it back together once painted. Just some very minor boring out of holes and shaving away a little bit of the shoulder crane.

Anyway, thanks for looking and go check out the really cool stuff the other guys did over at the Scale Creep blog here.

The Paint-A-Bob Challenge

Hi All,

I just wanted to share with you the figure I painted for the #paintabob challenge on the Oldhammer Community on Facebook.

I had intended to also paint a second Psyker and the Keg tappers from Reaper's Dwarven Brewmeister set, but I put the "pro" in procrastinate again. So I onlty finished the one figure.

I still need to work to get things ready for Monolith, and it looks like I'm going to be spending all day next Saturday roleplaying, so we'll see how much I can get done in October. Also know as Olleytoberfest here on the blog.

Thanks for looking.

Ash Waste Racer - Build Log

Hi All,

I thought I'd just take a moment to talk about how I modeled my Ash Waste Racer for the game at BOYL 2019.

For me it started with the fact that I knew I had some damaged Flagellants somewhere in the lead pile from an EBay purchase.

After stripping the figure I took my jeweler's saw to the bottom half and split it up the middle. This was actual more difficult than I thought it would be.

Next I had to source a mount. Terror Birds, Giant Insects, Dinosaurs had all sort of gone through my mind. I finally settled on a Basilisk. Who doesn't love a giant, 8 legged, lizard? I narrowed it down to two, but there was really only one option. The Reaper Basilisk sculpted by Bob Olley.

So some snipping of back spines, a few pins to hold things in place, and a weapon swap to make him "sci-fi" and Bob Olley's your Uncle!

If you were following my progress in the run up to BOYL, then you know that I procrastinated a lot and was very pressed for time. I quickly abandoned elaborate ideas about stowage and ended up fashioning his saddle from some cut up popsicle stick. I still don't know where I put my plasticard.

Anyway, a little greenstuff to hide gaps and hold him on a little firmer. I may have gone a little overboard. Then black primer and paint to look weird and grubby.

I don't know why, but painting the eyes black (or dark brown) and dotting them white always goes much better for me than white with a dot of black.

Thanks for looking. Happy hobbying!

BOYL 2019 - The Great Ash Waste Race

Hi All,

For the final game of BOYL Saturday we were treated to a race run by Axiom of Magpie and Old Lead. Each player converted up their own rider and mount for some apocalyptic wasteland mayhem.

What follows is my somewhat sketchy account, in comic form. I hope it comes across as fun as it was.

Well done to Whiskeypriest on winning the race. Poor Mr. Saturday came in second because everyone was taking pot shots at his award winning figure, even yours truly.

Anyway, Axiom is a cat herder extraordinaire, and kept a huge game running smoothly. Next up I'l probably do my Racer build log and then a talk about a new method for comicafying photos that I've learned. This will give me time to try the new method out on my last BOYL report, Terminator: Apotheosis.

Thanks for looking.

Realm of Chaos Renegade Warband - rolling it up

Hi All,

So I started rolling up a Renegade Warband late last year with the intent of getting it ready for a game of Rogue Trader at Warhammer World this summer. After trying to roll up some fantasy bands, and having some issues, I tried to roll up this band with the help of some friends. I highly recommend going over to Axiom's blog on the subject here and reading about it. I am more or less following his lead.

While I was writing this post JB wrote about rolling up his warband here.

1. Generate your Renegade

Start by rolling to see the race of your Renegade. The table is on p233 of Slaves to Darkness (StD), and is different from the Fantasy table on p40.

My roll 71, Human. Next we need to roll on the Human sub table. My roll 16, basic human. (Uh oh!)

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
4	3	3	3	3	1	3	1	7	7	7	7

The next thing we meed to do is determine the Power of Chaos we are dedicated to. You could just choose your favorite or make up your own Chaos god, I chose to make my own table and roll for it. (So Chaotic!) 1-2 Khorne, 3-4 Slaanesh, 5-6 Nurgle, 7-8 Tzeentch, 9-0 Undivided. My roll 2, Khorne.

So now we go on to generate the Chaos Rewards and attributes. So this is where the nomenclature gets tricky. In my reading of it for this post Chaos Rewards are divided into two sub categories, Gifts and Attributes. On p232StD we see it stated that the new Chaos renegade "receives two rewards from his chosen Power: a specific Chaos gift from the Power and a random Chaos attribute. On the Starting Profile table on p233StD it says that Khorne Renegades receive Chaos Armor, stats on p100StD or p252StD. So my Renegade gets a 5+ Save and +1 WP to Psychic/Magic saves.

Next is to roll up the renegade's attribute. Now this is where it starts to get weedy. In the third paragraph on p232StD it says "The Renegade then gains further rewards from his patron Chaos Power. Each of these is determined randomly using the Chaos Rewards Table p45StD and could be one of two types. ... another Chaos attribute ... determined randomly using the Personal Attributes Table p113StD ... Alternatively he could receive a Chaos Gift:" Confusing to be sure.

Since the ealier discussion had been one reward then one attribute I took it to mean that the Chaos Armor was Khorne's "Gift" and now I had to roll an attribute on p113StD. My roll 753 Quadriped?Biped, sucked. So I rolled again and got 626 Mechanoid, so +2 Fear Points (FP), d6 roll of 5 gives me partially mechanical, d10 roll of 6 gives me hands +2 S and +20 Dex if we're playing WFRP.

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
4	3	3	5	3	1	3	1	7	7	7	7

What I missed was the rule about the further two attributes that we need to roll. Along with the 4 followers rolls to come this is meant to represent that our Renegades have been on the path of Chaos for awhile. This is to make the game a little more interesting and give everybody some figures to model and paint up. A worthy endeavor.

I noticed that Axiom rolled Khorne specific rewards table on p47StD to get his Face of a Bloodletter attribute. JB, since he didn't pick a specific power, rolled twice on the reward table on p45StD and then twice on the table on p113StD for his Renegade.

Upon consultation, the procedure should be two "Rewards" then two "Attributes" so I have one reward (Chaos Armor) and one Attribute (Mechanoid Hands)

So I now roll on p47StD. My roll 13, Face of a Flesh Hound, gain a poisonous bite attack (A +1). But this screws me up for the figure I was intending to use so second roll of 86, Aggression Bonus, +1 to WS, BS and S. On p113StD I roll a d1000, my roll 607, Manic Fighter, hates any enemy unit within 12" and never makes a rout test as a result of hand to hand combat.

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Int	Cl	WP
4	4	4	6	3	1	3	1	7	7	7	7

Ok, so now we need some gear. Looking at what Axiom did, he keyed in on the phrase "according to his starting profile" which for him was a Champion. Mine is just a bog standard Human, so my stats would align with Administratum, Adeptus Astronomica, or Adeptus Mechanicus. On the fly table 1-4 Administratum, 5 Ad. Astronomica, 6 Ad. Mechanicus. My roll 5. So my guy was a budding young Navigator who gazed too deeply into the warp. The Navigator equipment chart is on p151 of Rogue Trader (RT). Pistols, my roll 21 Hand Flamer, 50% chance of a second (my roll 100, nope). 25% chance of Jokaero digital weapons (43, nope). 75% chance close combat weapon (34, yes), (92, sword). 25% chance of armor (44, nope). 25% chance Armor energy field (22,yes), 67 Distort. Additional equipment: Bio-scanner 50% chance (73,nope), Breathing Apparatus 50% Chance (13, yes) 46 filters, Cameleoline 10% chance (100, nope), Communicator, Energy Scanner 50% chance (13, yes), Eye Proteection 50% Chance (81,nope), Flight Pack 10% chance (95, nope), Immune 75% chance (68, yes) d6: 2 doses, Infravision 50% chance (84, nope), Rad Counter 90% chance (73, yes), Rad Suit 90% chance (32, yes), Sealed Suit, Suspensors 25% chance (30, nope), Teleport Homer (?), Web Solvent 90% chance (26, yes) d6: 1 use.

Well there you have it.

2. Generate your Followers

For this warband we were instructed to make 4 rolls on the followers table p236-7StD. My rolls were 08 2d6: 7 Beastmen, 12 2d6: 6 Beastmen, 64 2d6: 9 Humans, 08 01 1 Assassin. I re-rolled the 3rd Beastman unit and decided to swap out Orks for the first unit of 7 Beastmen as I had some figures in mind.

So now onto gearing up the followers and giving them some kind of Chaos attributes. We received instruction that all followers receive either Flak or Mesh armor and then roll for a Standard weapon and a Close Combat Weapon that everyone in the unit will have. For every 5 members of the squad, one can be armed with a Heavy Weapon. All character followers, ie my Assassin, also make 1 roll on the grenades table and d6-3 rolls on the Equipment/Bionics table on p255. There were also some instructions about rolling a d4 for psychic level, if you have a Psyker. Ignore results of 4, Khorne gets -1 to the die roll. II haven't rolled for it yet, but I think Assassins have a chance to have psychic abilities.

7 Orks

I rolled 94 Plasma Gun, 60 Bolt Pistol, 18 Heavy Bolter. This seems weird so I thought I'd take a look at the equipment table from p190RT the 94 would give me Bolt Gun, 60 just a knife, 18 Grenade Launcher. When I get to modelling these I'll see how I feel. I may perhaps give one guy a plasma gun. Attribute? p138StD 199 Extra Joints (increase move and initiative by 1). I'm not sure how I'll model that yet, if at all.

6 Beastmen

p255StD 37 Lasgun, 68 Chainsword, 34 Missile Launcer with Crack and 2 Random. Imperial Army table on p164RT 37 still Lasgun, 68 would be Laspistol for a Sgt, Chainsword if they hit the 25% chance of secondary weapon, 34 Heavy Plasma  gun. Again, we'll see what I have lying around and make it work somehow. Attribute? 385 Irrational fear. (87 Items/creatures of a particular color. GM's choice)

9 Humans

93 Plasma gun, 80 Web gun, 17 Heavy Bolter. In RT that would be Lasgun, Laspistol for Sgt and Chainsword if he made the 25%, D-Canon (whatever that is) for the Heavy Weapon. Attributes? 571 Multiple Arms (additional weapon attack for every 2 models, shooting or hand to hand.)

Assassin

56 Boltgun, 38 Laspistol, 30 Anti Plant grenades, d6-3: (4) 1: 61 Conversion Field. Just for fun lets see what the Assassin table on p171RT. Well the first thing I noticed is that there is no standard weapon category and way more gear than what we've been doing. I also have the Vindicare body 1 model with Exitus Rifle, so I'll have to figure out what that means. *Oops, I forgot to roll an attribute. 527 Irrational Hatred (make sure you do it on the personal chart for single figures). He hates d6:(2) 1 thing. 40 Elves/Eldar. Now we're done for real*

So there you have it, a wall of text to make your eyes fall out. In future posts about this I'll be posting the figures I'll be using. I've sort of shown them lying about on the table.

Amburger Hill

Hi All,

Well I got my first game in with the local group, and got my ass handed to me. It was fun though. Two things. Vehicles are powerful! I don't think I have ever played a game of RT with combat vehicles before. The few times I've seen robots I've been fortunate to be on the opposite side of the table.

I also made the decision to "roleplay" them as cocky, gung ho types. So, although they tried to stay out of sight, they got caught running around in the open and were... I'll let the comic explain it.

More photoshop filters and added some effects in photoshop as well. The source photos were a tad blurry, I didn't spend any time sharpening this time around. So there's that.

So, what did I learn? I need some kind of vehicle with heavy firepower. I have a Leman Russ built up, but not sure exactly how to stat it up for RT or if I can afford it by jettisoning the command section. I have a sentinel or two that I could build. I need to check the cost, but they are fairly affordable. I also have those plastic flyer kits from Russia that I could press into service. Again, I have to read up on the vehicle build rules and points cost. The command section is 280 points in the Compendium.

Thanks for looking.

Paint Table Saturday 271 - Guard and Skeletons

Hi All,

A lot of prep going on this week. Well maybe not a lot, but zero painting occurred.

I continued assembling the Lieutenant and command section for my Imperial Guard for the local Rogue Trader campaign at the end of the month. I still need to build a guy with a grenade launcher for the squad and build a Sergeant for the command section. Still not sure what to do about the Vox Caster guy. Pictured above is the Lt, two man Lascannon, Medic and Orderly (carrying the platoon banner. Still not sure how to handle the difference between the old shoulder mounted lascannon (laszooka) and the 2nd Ed forward crew served Lascannon.

Death Riders basing is finally finished. I need to base coat that and some of the missed spots on teir under carriages.

I also did some base work on the catapult crew. I don't remember points values right now, but I think the cavalry and the engine with crew will get me to the 200 points I need for the OWAC this month.

Lastly I finished the base work on these gents. My intention is to prime them white and try the White Dwarf painting methods.

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Happy painting.

Operation: Side Hustle (An Ambull Adventure)

Hi All,

This was actually my last game of 2018, but I've had a lot of fiddly things to do lately so it took me awhile to write it up. Once again I met up with Lasgunpacker and Dai. This time Dai brought an extra gang and his son along.

We played another Ambull hunt scenario using the new blind counters. I followed Airborne's suggestion and put the two higher value Ambulls in the middle of the table. For this game we used the Shadow War rules, which are essentially Necromunda, give or take.

I used my cellphone to take the pictures and then tweaked them only in Photoshop with the Poster edge filter and some minor exposure adjustments.

Enjoy.

All this fuss over Ambulls.

Hi All,

My phone has been blowing up all weekend with pictures of the new Ambull and Ambot models. All I can say is, you're welcome. I'd like to think that my Ambull obsession over the last couple of years has helped to fuel the resurgence of these models. I am anxiously awaiting my first royalty check.

Let's have a look at my Ambull related posts.

Paint Table Saturday 197 - Matthias Mulders, Merchant is where I threw out the idea for Ambull husbandry.

Ambull Farm where I looked at the references in Rogue Trader and talked about sourcing affordable Ambull figures.

More Ambulls where I introduced Matthias's Ambull whisperer, Felipe, and found some rules for Ambulls from WD99. Which I don't think I ever ended up using btw.

Monolith Con 2017 - Ambulls on the Loose is the first Battle Report using the Ambull capture idea.

Ambull Extraction the next scenario where I tried to add more critters to complement the Ambulls.

Monolith-Con III - Ambull Safari where there were more Ambulls than you could shake a stick at.

There is one more report from late December 2018 that I haven't finished writing yet, I'll probably get it up in the next few days.

Anyway this is my case for being, in some small way, an impetus for the new Ambull release. Any other good Ambull themed posts out there?

Paint Table Saturday 268 - Undead and IG

Hi All,

Still unpainted, but slightly more assembled this week.

Here is the 1000 points arrayed. Nowhere near as far along as they should be. Oh well.

The Command section I'll be adding to my existing IG squad for the local campaign I've been invited to. I'm trying to ridge the gap between the compendium and 2nd Ed 40K IG lists with 2000 era figures. Above is the medic, Lieutenant, banner orderly and Lascannon team.

This is the squad they will join. I painted them last year. I will swap out the Vox Caster for a guy with a grenade launcher.

Thanks for looking, happy painting and happy holidays.

Monolith-Con III - Apes of Wrath

Hi All,

Last report from Monolith-Con. I think we were winding down at this point. Apparently I forgot to take pictures so this is a short one.

Kill team is an interesting game, but if you don't like status counters it is not for you. I liked that you knew exactly what you needed to roll to hit, no more Ballistic Skill charts, but all the special rules were a little hard to remember to use. The cards make it easier to reference, I just mostly forgot to use my command points all together.

Anyway, enjoy.

Thanks again for looking and commenting.

Probably be a lot of year end wrap up and prep for OWAC in 2019 if I can find the time to blog.

Realm of Chaos - goodies in White Dwarf

Hi All,

This excellent post by Whiskey Priest got me thinking about a lot of things, so I went ahead and started looking at the White Dwarf issues around WD 107 which he mentions.

After his post on Renegade Orks I had been starting to think about making my own Renegade war band. Off to the tomes (Slaves to Darkness, The Lost an the Damned) to go back over rolling a war band. I was able to complete my book collection (at stupid prices) a few years ago but the bug to actually do stuff with them had never firmly taken hold. I blame my usual gamer ADD.

So, which issues have Relam of Chaos articles in them? Lets see.

The first set of articles I found was in WD104

The introduction of Slaves to Darkness, the color painted figure gallery that was in the book, and an article showing the process of converting Chaos mutations on your figures, complete with stat blocks of the finished example figures.

Then WD106

An exposition of Beastmen. I haven't read it through carefully, but I think it is more or less the same as what is in The Lost and the Damned section of the same name.

WD107

Another article showing the Rewards of Chaos table. Again I haven't checked to see if it differs from what's in the book.

The Chaos Renegades article is different to what made it to press in the book. I refer you to Whiskey Priest's excellent article linked at the top of this post.

WD108

Now this one is interesting. I was chatting with Airbornegrove about a Warhammer Tabletop RPG light idea and he said I should take a look at the "Survival of the Fittest" article. Apparently Orlygg wrote about it quite some time ago here. (Apparently a little over 5 years ago.) He has the full article embedded in his post, but no indication of what issue it is from. It's WD108. This article is essentially the casualty recovery section from The Lost and the Damned, but it is slightly different. What strikes me is it is also similar to the Casualty Recovery from both Mordheim and Necromunda. Not that that is a bad thing, just an observation. I may delve into that in the future.

WD109

Didn't read the article and only checked a few more issues out. Looks like the same section as in LatD.

So there may be more articles before WD104 and after WD109 but I did not find them in my recent searches. Also I have no idea which numbering system is being used here. I have heard that the numbering for US and UK editions are different, all of the ones I'm referencing appear to have been printed in the UK.

Thoughts? I'm pretty sure I'm missing something, like the errata article for StD. I remember now I was also going to do a post about the terrain articles. I will try to get back to that.

In the future I will delve into how I will make my Chaos Renegade war band and that RPG Lite idea I have had.

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Paint Table Saturday 210 - Monsters and Monoliths

Hi All,

Had to get ready for a gaming weekend, so I pushed a bunch of stuff through.

Reaper giant worm and some monoliths I made out of styrofoam and foamcore.

I bowed to wanting to play with these and just redid the eyes and called them done.

More Reaper bones monsters. Two Mind Eaters and a sand creature (?). Once I decided on matching the Ankheg color scheme and adding the pink, things went pretty quickly.

Thanks for looking.