Hello again! As you may have gathered from the last article, I’m currently somewhat fascinated by Tomorrow’s War simply because it’s very unlike most wargaming I did so far. I enjoy the greater “realism” (note the huge inverted commas there) and the endless possibilities this ruleset gives to the players. So just ten days after the first game and review I sat down for another one, this time a scenario involving only vehicles.

As I gathered from the interwebs the first edition of Tomorrow’s War was severely lacking in that department and the guys at Ambush Alley made up for that in this second edition book big time. Essentially vehicles don’t work unlike regular  infantry units but of course with somewhat different stats indicating front, side, rear and deck armour, main weaponry additional MGs, number of crew and so on as well as a host of various extra bits to choose from ranging from reactive armour over back-up AI and improved sensors to detonation fields that make incoming ATGMs (Anti Tank Guided Missiles, I had to look it up myself. The book is full of modern-day military terms like that.) explode prematurely, severely hampering their punch.

Using all these rules you can make up your own tanks from scratch or making rules for vehicles from any sci-fi universe. The types of vehicles are basically all you can imagine. Apart from the regular wheeled, tracked and hovering vehicles there are walkers, anti-grav vehicles (of various levels), dropships, gunships and so on. Even a section on gigantic vehicles which of course immediately conjours ideas for scenarios for anti-tank teams trying to down a gigantic tank in a ruined city or something like that.

Anyways, without much further ado let’s delve into today’s scenario!




Scenario: Lynxes at Dawn

Background: The Liberation of Derpian VIII was a prolonged campaign in which imperial forces aimed to cleanse the world of pesky Eldar of the Biel-Tan craftworld who had chosen this planet as a new Maiden World. Despite Derpian VIII not being of any strategic worth to the Imperium – it was once falsely deemed  an asset to the Imperial war efforts for seemingly having rich deposits of rare earths which eventually proved to be nothing but worthless dust – the sector command wouldn’t let the world fall prey to alien invasions!

Swiftly Derpian VIII was declared a Fortress World which is to be held at any cost and a handful of regiments of the Imperial Guard were dispatched to liberate the planet. The campaign didn’t go so well and after only eight months additional reinforcements had to be brought in, supported by a few elements of Ultramarines Space Marines whose heavy battle tanks should prove to be especially useful in breaking the Eldar’s resistance and turn a stalemate into victory.

The scenario follows Commander Heniokhos’ heavy tank platoon’s way to the front lines to support a major offensive against Eldar lines. Due to the Eldar’s unchallenged air superiority the Land Raiders are only able to travel by night (Derpian VIII’s nights conjure up the famour electromagnetic storms which force airplanes to stay on the ground and hamper sensors and communication) but Heniokhos decided to take the chance and travel the last few kilometers to friendly lines past the break of day instead of covering up the tanks. It was just a few more hours to go down a rather well-maintained road and the lead elements reported no enemy contact. Little does Heniokhos know that his platoon is already being stalked by invisible hunters…

As with last time’s battle report the occurances in game will be written in normal font while small explanations about how any why things happened the way they happen plus some rule explanations and “out of character remarks” if you will are written in italics.

The scenario is a converted version of Tigers by the Tail, the scenario at the end of the Mechanized Combat section of the Tomorrow’s War rulebook.




The opposing Forces:

Ultramarines Commander Heniokhos’ tank platoon consists of Heniokhos’ Element B (two Land Raiders which will be called B-LR1 and B-LR3 in the report plus Heniokhos’ Command Land Raider B-LR2) and the Lead Element A (two more Land Raiders: A-LR1 and A-LR2). The Land Raiders are equipped with Lascannon sponsons and a heavy bolter. The troop quality is d8, morale d10 and the confidence is High, as can be imagined when you’re sitting in the imperium’s finest heavy battle tank.

Their mission objective is to either kill both enemy tanks (unlikely), or, and this gets them more victory points, they get victory points for each vehicle that leaves the table via the south end of the road so that’s basically their mission objective.

The Eldar Hank Hunters are two Lynx grav tanks (called E1 and E3 from now on) with Pulsars, co-axial shuriken cannons and shuriken catapults.  They are chock full of advanced sensors, improved main gun and additional crew protection but the thing that will play a role more than any other thing is that they have on board stealth field generators. They count as Stealthy Units which means that they have to be detected before enemy units may shoot at them and that they may attempt ambushes. The troop quality is d8, morale d10 and the confidence level is Confident. They got the better hardware and an advantegous situation but are still outnumbered by more than two to one.

They get victory points for each immobilized or destroyed Land Raider and receive a Decisive Victory if they take them all out without any loss on their side.

Essentially the Land Raiders are meant to be heavy tanks of low tech level with so-so anti-tank capabilities while the Eldar tanks are very advanced heavy tanks with incredibly dangerous anti-tanks weaponry and a host of additional bonuses. Due to the size of the models I’ve used I liked the idea of them being Lynxes very much because they are a bit longer than Land Raiders and have one very deadly gun. On the Space Marines side of things, Predator tanks possibly would have reflected the difference between the tanks on both sides better but I don’t have any Predator models at hand.

Again, I played on a 2′ by 2′ table, 6mm miniatures and halved all ranges. The terrain consists of dense jungle (block Line of Sight and impassable to vehicles), large rocks (impassable to vehicles, block LOS), some administratum buildings that were built but never used and the road. Terrain special note: While the road leads through the jungle the vegetation makes the section too narrow for tanks to turn around. Also, vehicles may only move at tactical speed (remember, units move at either Tactical Speed, which is basically normal speed or Rapid Speed which is basically double speed but gives them a little negative modifiers for shooting and reaction checks after having moved at Rapid Speed). when travelling on the jungle road.
The game will last for six turns.

Turn1

This is the setup at the beginning of turn 1.  The Eldar Lynxes E1 and E2 deployed as deep into the table as they were allowed to, E2 planning to get into the backs of the rear element while E1 would take care of anyone leaving the junge, hopefully turning the leading tank into wreckage to obstruct the road for any of the following vehicles, hindering their advancement towards the table edge.

Another thing that has to be done before starting is to declare which tanks are “buttoned up” and which are “unbuttoned”. “Unbuttoned” means that the tank commander of the vehicle is peeking out of the top hatch, scanning the surroundings instead of simply relying on looking out via periscope or relying on the tank’s sensors. This gets them reaction bonusses but also makes him an attractive, soft target. Of the Ultramarines Land Raiders, the command tank B-LR2 and A-LR2 are unbuttoned. Eldar tanks are not designed for their commanders to stick their heads out like the less advanced races of the galaxy have to and will stay buttoned up for the game, using their super-advanced sensors, thankyouvermuch.

As per scenario special rules, the Eldar get the Initiative for the first two turns. E1 advances to the southern fields of rock at rapid speed while E2 advances at tactical speed. Both take positions to take out any tank that comes in sight. The Ultramarines, unknowing of the enemy presence, advance down the road.

Turn2

Eldar still got the initiative. E1 comfortably sits hull down at the side of the southern field of rocks and goes into Overwatch to shoot up any tank that would leave the jungle.

E2 attempts to ambush B-LR1 to keep the element from entering the jungle where they would be harder to approach and to cut off the command element from the lead element. E2 messes up the ambush check and attacks regularly instead, giving B-LR1 a chance to react. B-LR2 and B-LR3 don’t have Line of Sight to E2 thus can not react. B-LR1 declare to react by moving into the jungle which would bring them out of LoS of E1 but fail their reaction check and E1 opens fire. The Pulsar doesn’t hit directly though, only stunning the vehicle. A mere inconvenience to the Space Marine tankers.

As all Initiative units either have acted or are in Overwatch the Non-Initiative units may be activated now. First, Heniokhos’ command element move into the cover of the dense jungle as quickly as possible. The crew of  B-LR3 are commanded to turn on the spot and follow the rest of the element in reverse to cover their rear.

There are no rules for moving in reverse as such because the game doesn’t really need to. You just move your units as you wish, turns being part of the movement of the unit. This very special situation required some rulingthough so I ruled that vehicles may move no faster than tactical speed when driving in reverse (which they wouldn’t be allowed to anyway when moving through the jungle road).

As soon as A-LR1 activates and moves out of the jungle E1 starts overwatch fire but in succession fails on his overwatch check AND opposed reaction check versus A-LR1, missing out on the chance of geting a shot off while the imperial tank zips by and out of LOS again due to the rocks. Must have been some kind of technical hickup on the target lock.

E1 loses Overwatch status due to the failed check and may not react in any way any more unless he’s being shot at (which isn’t possible because he hasn’t been spotted by anyone).

Turn3

First turn both sides roll for initiative and the Ultramarines win! Heniokhos’ Element (B-LR1, B-LR2, B-LR3) advance through the jungle as quickly as the surroundings allow. Of the lead element A-LR1 leaves the table unharmed, earning the Ultramarines their first victory points. A-LR2 is relieved about the seeming lack of any enemy measures beyond the jungle and advances out into the open as well.

E1 declares reaction fire and this time wins the opposed check. The sleek alien tank uncloaks, main gun lighting up, and a blinding energy ray pierces the side of A-LR2, turning the tank into a fireball. Out of the three crewmen, the commander and the driver manage to escape and flee off the table while the gunner got vaporized by the initial hit.

In this scenario I didn’t take much time working out the exact fate of the vehicle crews. In fact I should have placed crew miniatures next to the vehicle wreck, roll First Aid checks for the gunner beginning of the next turn and so on. If I had some more single 6mm models I probably would have done that but they don’t really play a role in the mission.

The second non-initiative unit, E2,  is activated, invisibly moves up to B-LR3, just outside their spotting range, and ambushes the tank.  They succeed on their Troop Quality check, fire without any enemy reaction pierce straight through the front armour of the Land Raider and destroy the vehicle which goes up in flames and thick smoke.

There are no rules for vehicle wrecks  but for this game I decided to keep them on the table and block LOS, at least when they Brew Up and burn out for at least two turns.

Turn4

Things are starting to look problematic for the Ultramarines. The current score is:

Eldar:  4 (for two downed tanks)

Ultramarines: 2 (for one escaped tank)

Stress tests resulted in everybody keeping their confidence levels. Ultramarines keep the initiative and seek to find salvation in storming forward, hoping for the tank hunter ahead of them to miss or getting a lucky shot at them. B-LR1 activates and declares moving ahead, behind the wreck of A-LR2 and out of LoS of E1.  E1 reacts by shooting, succeeds on the reaction check and takes out B-LR1 as soon as he leaves the jungle. Heniokhos, cursing at the foul witchery that is alien anti-tank cannons, orders his driver to advance out of sight of E1 who managed to block most of his arc of fire with enemy tank wrecks! This way the command tank can advance in relative safety.

Meanwhile E2, being a bit left without any target in the back, decides to move up to the front as quickly as possible and starts moving around the field of rocks with rapid speed.

Turn5

Again, everybody keeps their confidence in the face of combat. The Eldar get the Initiaive back and without anybody having a LoS to any of the Eldar tanks, they are back in stealth mode.

E1, pumped up by two self-confirmed vehicle kills, decides to maneuver between the wreck of B-LR1 and the dense jungle vegetation to get in behind B-LR2 and ambush them, delivering the coup de grace. E1 fires up the engines but, due to moving at rapid speed and the reckless maneuver, clanks against the wreck of B-LR1, spoiling the ambush. B-LR2 react by firing but fail to beat E1 on the reaction check. E1 fires his Pulsar one more time, punching a hole right through the length of the Land Raider, rendering it useless. Heniokhos and his gunnerboth disembark (the unlucky driver used to sit exactly where a smoldering hole is now), kicking against the remains of their tank, shaking their fists at the vanishing sillouettes of the Eldar tank hunters.

End of Battle
Final victory points:

Eldar: 8pts

Ultramarines: 2pts

Final Thoughts: Right, this scenario teaches us that, while Troop Quality is an incredibly big factor, the hardware also plays into the game. At least very much so with vehicles. The main gun on the Eldar tanks is incredibly powerful, completely negating the armour of the Land Raiders in most cases, even when firing in the front. It has to be said that apart from the first hit on turn1, the Eldar have been very lucky with rolls on the damage table, killing a vehicle basically with each hit. Combine this with the Stealthy special rule and you got some very powerful tank hunters

I’m a bit disappointed that no Fog of War cards were drawn this game but if they come up too often they’d get stale as well. This game was much easier to play through than the previous one. Vehicles work a lot like regular units so the game didn’t add too much new stuff to me but mainly helped me getting into the core gameplay a bit more, especially when it comes to hiding, ambushing and all of that.

The game was also a lot shorter than the first one and I’m sure that I can get games done more quickly after a few more games. Despite this, preparations took me a whole lot longer this time because of two things: First, I really wanted this to be an Eldar versus Ultramarines game because I really like the look of these old Eldar grav tanks and they look perfectly suited for very advanced tank hunters. Unfortunately I had to notice that I’d need five Ultramarines tanks and only had three painted so I had to paint up two more Land Raiders (which took me inexplicably long. Don’t even ask.). Second, I needed some narrow streets, suited for 6mm scale. At first I made some from paper which were alright-ish but didn’t really look the part so I decided after that to just make another set of road sections from plasticard. That again took a while but I’m rather happy with the outcome on those.

All in all I learned a lot in this game again and I’m very much looking forward to the next one. Maybe I’ll make it a skirmish between regular and irregular forces because that’s an aspect to the game which I’m interested in a LOT. Let me know in the comments section what you think or what you would like to see!

Thanks for reading and see you soon,

- Sigur

Hello world,

I’m back! Yesterday I decided to finally sit down and play a test game of Ambush Alley’s Tomorrow’s War (second edition), published in conjunction with Osprey Publishing.

I did so alone for two reasons: First, I couldn’t find anybody available interested in playing the game but that wasn’t too discouraging because second, I preferred to have a first hand impression of how the game plays myself before I try to get people to like it. A few weeks ago I had a game of Infinity with my brother and wasn’t really well prepared which led to a few hold-ups. We had a great game but I feel that I should have been prepared better.

What is Tomorrow’s War?

It’s essentially a version of Force on Force (Ambush Alley’s widely acclaimed and well-supported rules system for modern-day skirmishes) catapulted into the future and turned into a Sci-Fi tabletop wargame. Here are the things that make Tomorrow’s War stand out from most Sci-Fi tabletop games:

.) You can clearly see its heritage lying more on the historical and simulation side of things and the book clearly states that these rules are for “hard Sci-Fi” settings, i.e. the designers went for a more realistic approach to how stuff works. This clearly is not “Fantasy in Space” or a Space Opera kind of game.

.) There is a big emphasis on action-reaction firefights. There is no strict I Go You Go system employed. Rather than that, you roll for Initiative each turn and end up with one side having the initiative and activating units one after another and the Non-Initiative Player reacting to what the Initiative Player does. This more often than not results in firefights between two or more fireteams reacting to each others’ attacks. Once the Initiative Player activated and acted with all his units and reactions have been worked out and rolled for the Non-Initivative Player may activate any units that haven’t done anything this turn and may act with them as he pleases. After that and some other stuff like morale checks, combat stress checks and working out First Aid for the wounded Initiative is rolled for again to see who’s got the initiative this turn.

.) The other big thing is Troop Quality. Tomorrow’s War bases combat effectiveness of the models less on the guns they carry than on how well trained they are. In many other games kind of weapon a unit carries often is a defining part of how the unit performs on the battlefield. In Tomorrow’s War this is not the case. The firepower of a unit is calculated based on the Troop Quality mainly, reflecting that for example hardly trained rebels raiding a local army base and salvaging 150 low-weight high velocity rifles shooting supersonic uranium-coated bees still won’t be as effective incombat as a team of highly trained soldiers with regular hunting rifles. There are some modifiers that get applied to that like the presence of support weapons in the unit or certain other situational factors.

.) Rolling dice is a bit different than in many other games as well. “The (nearly) universal rule” as they call it is that a 4+ on any die is a success, any lower is a failure. Now the way some units are better at something than others is not determined by modifying this 4 but by the number of dice you get to roll and the kind of dice you use.  Most checks are opposed rolls made by both players at the same time. Let’s say a fireteam of well-trained and combat-experienced soldiers (higher Troop Quality) fire at a team of hardly trained conscripts (lower Troop Quality). The soldiers will roll a certain number of Firepower Dice and the conscripts will roll a number of Defensive Dice. Due to their higher Troop Quality, the attacking soldiers use eight-sided dice (D8s) while the conscripts only use six-sided dice (D6s). It goes without saying that the chances of rolling 4 or more with a D8 are higher than rolling 4 or more with a D6. After all successfull rolls are determined they are compared and negated by the defending player if possible. The number of surplus successes the attacker rolled is the damage that’s inflicted upon the defender.

.) The game isn’t set in any specific background universe. The authors wrote up a pretty cool setting for the game that’s in the book but you can convert the rules to be used with any other games universe as you like (as I did in my battle report below). Apart from that you can apply the rules to any scale as well. The book says that measurements are worked out with 20mm to 28mm (standard Warhammer scale) miniatures in mind but there are tipps for how to play the game with anything ranging from 6mm to 40mm scale models which means that you can use any Sci-Fi or modern-day figures you got lying around really.

.) Last but not least, there is no points system. This is a purely scenario-based game any the possibilities of creating scenarios are basically endless. Some people might not like this but to me it’s really a new and interesting approach which again is very much rooted in many historical wargames. Many people don’t like points systems in anything historical or any game with a more “realistic” approach and critisize points system for often being arbitrary, not balancing anything at all and simply because of the fact that actual battles don’t work that way. However, the first thing people started doing when Tomorrow’s War was released was writing up points systems of course and rumour has it that an upcoming supplement will have a points system as well. I’m not wildly enthusiastic about this kind of “chickening out” but if people require it it’s okay. I think that I’ll be set with the ten scenarios you get in the book plus the plethora of scenarios posted online by various people.

After this introduction to illustrate what the game roughly is about and what the general design ideas are, let’s get down to business. I decided to play the very first scenario in the book. It’s called “Lost and Found”, involves only infantry fighting and originally describes the scenario of a squad of Marines having to retrieve a downed pilot from no-man’s land with the other side having set up to ambush the marines as they close in.

To make thewhole thing a bit more homely to me, I decided to change the involved parties a bit. Thus, we got…


Scenario: It’s a Trap!

Background:

Space Marines Renegades of various chapters were sent off to a smaller world to incite an uprising of the local population against imperial rule. After some investigation they find out that the people are very open towards the teachings of a local “wise man” who probably possesses psychic powers to influence the masses and lives out in the remains of a destroyed city. This would be a valuable asset to the Renegades’ aims so they decide to retrieve the wise man immediately.

Local secret police forces discover the investigating Renegates without their knowing and informed authorities. The Ultramarines Space Marines chapter  swiftly dispatched a force of Scouts to keep the psyker where he is until specialists arrive to deal with him. Until then the Scouts are to root out the Renegade Marines and, if possible, take prisoners to learn more about their plans.


The opposing forces:

The Chaos Space Marines Renegades warband (CSM) consists of one Commander with Boltgun and three fireteams of four Marines each. Each of the three squads (CSM1, CSM2, CSM3) is equipped with Boltguns,  a heavy stubber (light support weapon) and a missile launcher (medium support weapon).They have a Troop Quality of d8 which means that they use eight-sided dice for all checks they roll.

CSM Victory conditions: The CSM get victory points for getting into contact with the psyker, for escorting him off board and even more victory points for having him escorted off board by turn 6.

The Scouts force (UM Scouts) consists of one fireteam of five scouts plus a Commander with Boltgun and an Apothecary with a Boltgun as well. Three more scouts squads consist of five scouts each. Each of the four squads (Scouts1, Scouts2, Scouts3, Scouts4) is equipped with Boltguns as well as a sniper rifle (light support weapon) and a missile launcher (medium support weapon) each. They have a Troop Quality of d6 which means that they use six-sided dice for all checks they roll.

UM Scouts victory conditions:  The Scouts get victory points for either killing, seriously wounding or capturing any CSM. If the psyker is still on the table by the end of turn8, they win.

Just a quick note: What happens in the game will be written in normal font. Notes about rules of the game to clarify why things happen the way they do will be written in italics.

Here you can see the two armies involved. The top row is the Ultramarines Scouts squads with the red markings indicating the squad number and the red-and-white stripes indicating squad 1. The lower row is the Renegades. Again, squad numbers are marked on the bases and a Rhino was used to indicate the position of the leader simply because I didn’t have any more appropriate figure around. In games terms, the CSM Leader works like a unit of one model who can attach himself to friendly units.

The reason why I chose Chaos Space Marines and Space Marines Scouts was because the scenario required forces of the same morale and confidence as well as very similar equipment but the Troop Quality and Overall Tech Level of the ambushers to be a bit lower. Apart from that this is basically all (and a bit more as you can see) of the 6mm epic miniatures I got painted so far. I think that the scenario would also work well with Imperial Guardsmen and Eldar Guardians or Dire Avengers, Chaos cultists versus Imperial Guard and so on. As long as it’s similarly strong models with the army that is to retrieve the objective having a slight edge it’s okay. Of course it wouldn’t work with a bunch of Gretchins ambushing a squad of Grey Knights Terminators or something like that.

Due to space constraints I decided to play on a 2′ by 2′ board using 6mm Epic 40k miniatures and halving all distances. The game lasts for eight turns.




Turn 1

As per the Scenario’s rules, the Scouts squads lie in hiding around the psyker’s meditation spot (indicated by the cardboard marker) and may not be shot at unless they do something (like moving or shooting). If an enemy unit gets into their ambush range the Scouts may ambush the unit in question which in broad terms means that they get a very good chance to fire at them before they can react. If a CSM squad gets really close they may attempt to discover the Scouts.


The CSM get the Initiative and move onto the board from their table edge. They advance cautiously while the Scouts stay in hiding. The CSM Commander attaches himself to CSM1 and will remain with the unit until the end of the game.

Turn 2

Turn 2: First roll for Initiative which the Scouts force actually win but they want to wait until the enemy is closer and then open crossfire so they stay hidden while the CSM advance slowly. CSM2 and CSM2 decide to abandon the left flank in favor of taking position in a patch of green that used to be a park and now is used by the wise man to grow exotic herbs and a few trees. The CSM enter and take position. This spot would give them limited cover as well as a good view on the surroundings to provide cover fire if necessary. CSM1 advance to a similar position behind a bunch of rocks to their left.

Turn 3

Despite winning the Initiative Check again, the Scouts stay hidden. CSM1 stay put and scan for threats while CSM3 advance deeper into the park. CSM2 drew the shortest straw and quickly advance to the Psyker’s position to pick him up.

Turn 4

Just in time for things getting tense, the CSM regain Initiative and promptly CSM1 and CSM3 go into Overwatch. If something would happen, it would happen now.

Overwatch position can only be taken by units that have the initiative and allows them to interrupt enemy reactions.

CSM2 advance to the psyker and make contact. This very moment Scouts4 attempt to ambush CSM2 as they advance which would allow them to fire at CSM2 even before any of the Overwatch fire takes place! Scouts1 and Scouts3 also declare reaction fire to CSM2′s movement action to which CSM1 and CSM3 answer with overwatch fire.

In short – all hell breaks loose within a second. First Scouts4 attempt their ambush but fail to catch CSM2 off guard so their attack will be worked out as regular reaction fire instead of an ambush. This means that CSM1 behind the rocks can try to counter that with their own Overwatch Fire and manage to do so. CSM1 open fire at Scouts4 from behind the rocks and despite the cover and the Scouts’ carapace armour four scouts hit the ground. The only remaining combat-ready Scout, Quintus, must take a Morale Check but stands firm.

As soon as a unit takes hits it must take a morale check to see how they react to this traumatic experience. Other possible outcomes than standing their ground would be either being pinned or, if they take too many casualties, they start routing. Morale, as well as Confidence, and Supply Situation, are stats that are not linked to Troop Quality but still can affect the game greatly. Elite Forces can still suffer from starvation or oppose to the ideas of their leadership while an armed mob in the street can be completely convinced that they fight the good fight and are on the winning team and therefore will be less prone to retreat.

After that, the regular interaction between CSM2 and Scouts4 (which at this point consists of valiant Scout Quintus only) is worked out. CSM2 win the opposed reaction check and may finish their action whilst Quintus may not react at all.

Now Scouts3′s declared reaction fire at CSM2 is being resolved but CSM3′s Overwatch Fire at Scouts3 intervenes. Scouts3 and CSM3 roll for reaction to see if Scouts3 manage to fire at CSM2 first or if CSM3′s Overwatch Fire is quicker to react. Scouts2 win the roll and get to react before CSM3. On top of that, CSM3 lose their Overwatch status due to the failed check and will only react normally. Now that this is out of the way, Scouts2 have to roll for Reaction to be able to fire at CSM2 but fail to succeed.

At this very moment, one of the wounded Scouts from Scouts4 clumsily leans on his missile launcher and accidently fires it in the direction of Scouts1! The ensuing explosion downs two of the Scouts, pins the whole squad and preventing them from firing at CSM2 that turn.

As you can see, all kinds of stuff were happening at once at this point and due  to this being the first firefight I rolled but also involving Ambushes, chains of reactions and Overwatch it got a bit chaotic and I’m fairly sure that I got a few things wrong so bear with me. Now about this mishap with the missile launcher: Each time a 1 is rolled on a Reaction Check the player who did so must draw a Fog of War card and play it immediately. These can be good or bad for the player and this one, called “There’s nothing Friendly about it!”, definately is bad and indicates a friendly fire incident.

Now CSM3 fire at unlucky Scouts3 on the building to their right, downing three of them but the unit stands their ground.

The end of turn4 (orange markers indicate Overwatch [yes, I forgot to remove the one from CSM3], pink ones indicate casualties and the yellow one the “Pinned” status):

After all this was done I actually could have activated Scouts2, who hadn’t done anything that turn, but decided not to so they wouldn’t be exposed to CSM3′s Overwatch Fire. Or so I thought because, as written above, CSM3 had already lost their Overwatch status, I had just forgotten to remove the marker. D’oh.

Turn 5

While the dust of the first eruption of firefights settles, Scouts1, Scouts3 and Scouts4 look after their wounded to determine “how bad it is”.  Scouts1 have an Apothecary with them which makes First Aid much easier but still of the two victims of “friendly” fire one proves to be seriously wounded while the other only took a light wound.

If they weren’t pinned anyway they’d only be allowed to react this turn and all units with wounded in them suffer from Casualty Penalty which hampers their movement quite a bit until their wounded are either escorted off the table or evacuated by some other means.

Scouts3′s casualties come out to be one killed in action (KIA), one seriously wounded and one lightly wounded. They pass all checks though and may act as normal this turn.

Scouts4 suffer one KIA, one seriously wounded, one lightly wounded and one Scout’s wound proves to be just a scratch. Let’s hope it’s not the one who triggered the missile launcher, otherwise he’d have a lot to answer for lateron. They pass all checks though and may act as normal this turn.

The situation on the battlefield didn’t prove to be too satisfactory for the Scouts  so far and a certain amount of distress started taking its toll with Scouts1, Scouts3 and Scouts4. The CSM fireteams all keep their cool.

At the beginning of each turn after the first you do stress tests for all units on the table. This is a check representing the general level of stress each fighter is exposed to as the battle goes on. It builds up, gets harder to pass each turn and is modified by various factors like being under fire, having achieved any of the victory conditions so far and so on. If failed, the unit loses confidence which in turn may force them to do morale checks more frequently, thus being more prone to losing their nerve over the duration of a combat situation.

CSM keep the Initiative and have CSM1 and CSM3 go into Overwatch again whilst CSM2 started to retreat towards the building corner to their left, along with the distressed Psyker. Scouts4 and Scouts3 declare reaction fire as soon as CSM2 are out of cover. CSM3 open Overwatch fire at Scouts3 who, again, are too slow to react faster. Scouts3 gets mowed down by CSM3′s accurate Overwatch Fire and, being far off the medic and any other friendly squad, don’t have much hope left to get any medical attention any time soon.

Scouts3 rolled badly on their reaction check, triggering another Fog of War event. This time it was “It’s a good Day to die” which improves a randomly determined fireteam’s morale and confidence level permanently.

“It’s a good day to die”, Quintus of Scouts4 tells his comrade as they get up and aim their weapons at CSM2 who are running out in the open. CSM1 fail to get their Overwatch Fire in before Scouts4. They open fire at CSM2 but fail to do any damage as the renegades cross the open and get out of Line of Sight.

Now CSM1 open fire at Scouts4 and manage to down all remaining Scouts of that squad as well.

After all Initiative Units have been activated, Scouts2 finally spring into action, advance at full speed towards some cover and open Fire at CSM3. Again, no damage done.

Turn 6

Given the circumstances, Scouts2 get their confidence shaken, Scouts1 stay somewhat confident that they can manage to accomplish their mission if they get in some lucky shots and prevent the CSM from escorting the psyker off the table. All the CSM units keep their high confidence as well as initiative.

CSM3 are activated to open fire at Scouts2 but unexpectedly the Scouts react quicker, fire at CSM3 and manage to wound one of them, catching them off guard and pinning CSM3 who are more surprised than worried and return fire, wounding one of the Scouts but they stand their ground.

They may conclude their action despite being pinned due to their higher troop quality. If a Scouts unit (TQ d6) was pinned, it wouldn’t be allowed to fire at all.

To get rid of all possible sources of danger, CSM1 are activated and open fire at Scouts1. They win reaction and manage to down he whole rest of the squad!

CSM2, escorting the Psyker, start considering their options. There is only one enemy fireteam left and yet all they had gotten of the sweet action was getting shot at and picking up a weird old man.  Beset by the allures of Slaanesh, they decided to do something exciting too. Time to dish out  some pain!

At this point I noticed that I had made a mistake with the CSM. I had forgotten to take into account that they had to be off the table with the guy (via their own edge of the table) by turn 8 and that I had reduced movement values by 50% which meant that the board was a bit larger than planned and that they just wouldn’t make it off the board by half an inch or so. That’s why CSM2 decided to act like this as opposed to just getting the heck out of there. Apart from that, there was another rule I wanted to try out before the game ended and honestly, if this was just the way the game was over it would have been kind of boring.

So CSM2 activate and start running around the building to catch Scouts2 from behind.

The ensueing reaction check was quite remarkably a double 1 which meant two things. First: CSM2 win the check because Initiative units do in case of a draw. Sceond: Fog of War. I decided to have only one Fog of War card triggered and by the Initiative Unit. The card was “In the Zone” which means that for one turn, their Troop Quality and Morale are increased by one level to basically super soldier level and which I found pretty fitting for the sudden bloodlust of CSM2.

Skillfully (and possibly deliberately?) CSM2 shoot down all but one of the enemy scouts. The one fellow is too surprised to run away or go look for cover.

Turn7

First Aid checks tell us that one of the Scouts was killed right away, two are heavily wounded and one lightly wounded. Understably, the combat stress gets too much for the remaining halfway conscious scouts and their Confidence Level decreases to Low.

The CSM fireteams aren’t too happy either about CSM2′s reckless behavior. CSM1′s confidence is lowered but the leader recovers it immediately.

Confidence can be recovered if certain situations occur. Having a positive leader around is one of them. Yes, there are negative leaders as well which, as I think, is a very good idea and to my knowledge something you don’t often have in tabletop wargames. Negative leaders add to stress levels and afftect morale in other ways as well.

CSM3 check for their casualty but he’s only lightly wounded. Still, their confidence takes a dent. CSM2′s confidence also suffers a bit after they discover that only one of the enemy scouts actually is dead.

CSM keep their initiative and immediately activate CSM2 to have them charge into Close Assault.

Close assault works similarly to regular firefights but is more deadly to either side. It also involves a bit more of a risk for the attacker because he has to roll to see if the fighters really make it into the assault. Then the defending player gets to check if he may react which is either fleeing or trying to stop the assault by reaction fire (albeit at reduced effectivity). The advantage of close assault, apart from being able to more efficiently kill enemy units, is that there are special assault weapons like SMGs, handcannons and so on which are less effective at range but very much more so in close Assault.

The Marines of CSM2 charge into close assault. Scouts2 desperately return fire but are quickly overwhelmed, disarmed, taken prisoner and shown around as the imperial assassins who aimed to kill the people’s holy man.






Conclusion


Now who won the game? Despite pretty much everything that happened, it technically is the Ultramarines Scouts because the CSM didn’t manage to get the psyker off the table by the end of turn8 but in fact it’s of course the Renegade Marines who won.

I’m aware that the lower quality troops, especially in a scenario like this, have to delay the enemy troops more than seeking to openly fight them. They should carefully look at lines of sight and pick out isolated fire teams of the higher quality troops  and so on but whilst trying to wrap my head around the rules I didn’t really spend all that much time on tactical musings simply because I had to look up so much stuff in the rulebook, even with the Quick Reference Sheet at hand (which you can download from Ambush Alley’s forums).

I still am sure that I made some mistakes, especially on turn 4, in which all of a sudden everybody started shooting and I had a bit of a hard time keeping track. I’m sure that when it’s two players it’s way easier doing that. I kept a word file while playing just as a sort of bookkeeping really and to run the rules I had just applied through my head once again. This word file ended up being the skeleton of my battle report here and I thinkt hat writing this very, very long battle report helped me memorizing the rules better and noticing mistakes I had made during the game.

In hindsight I think that cutting all distances in half wasn’t such a bright idea. The book suggests playing the game on a 3′ by 3′ table at the usual distances when playing with 20mm to 28mm scale figures so reducing the table by one third and distances by a half PLUS having units of four to seven have the footprint that one miniature regularly would have led to a few things that probably would have worked out better with regular 28mm figures on the 2′ by 2′ board.

What I realized during the game was that Troop Quality really makes a grand difference. The Scouts had some pretty bad luck in that game but at no point were the CSM really at risk of failing their mission. Still, the scenario was made with that in mind so the Scouts would get lots of victory points for each CSM injured, killed or taken prisoner. It definately is harder to play the army with the lower overall TQ but if the odds are a little tuned it can make for really tense, exciting games with that bit of luck and a small portion of random events thrown in. I basically grew up on GW games and just love a bit of random mischief happening during games. Those are the things that get the freeing laughs into a game at points where it might be needlessly tense between the players.






So what do I think of the ruleset itself?


I think it’s really good. Getting the game done took a long time, especially getting to understand the reaction sequences but once that’s done I’m sure that this can be played rather quickly and cheerfully. The approach the game takes (troop quality above tables of weapons, all scenario-based, more “realistic” combat, …) is something I enjoyed quite a bit. What I’m looking for in a rules system is how it’s different to what I know. There’s no reason in playing the same game with three similar rulesets.

When first reading the book I have to admit that it looked pretty daunting and so far I only really covered infantry combat between regular forces. There is a huge range of additional layers to this game in the book though like vehicle combat of course, walkers, robots, various kinds of additional rules for infantry like power armour of all kinds, jump packs, animals, mounted combat, air and artillery support, electronic warfare, aliens and so on. Just a huge amount of stuff you can do with this ruleset. What I’m really interested in though is that this book, like Force on Force, puts much time and effort into the possibility of playing scenarios of regular forces fighting irregulars like rebels, uprisings and so on. These scenarios of asymetrical warfare is what really seems inspiring to me and which is a nice break from the norm of sci-fi wargaming in a whole new way.

It’s due to this range of things you can do with is is it that I think that the scenario-based approach works really well. It’s a great toolbox full of options for your own scenarios but on the other hand it’s not too outlandish or so abstract that only people who like setting up scenarios will have fun with this because it’s not too hard making up scenarios. Apart from that, as mentioned above, there are tons of people on the internet uploading their own scenario ideas. I’ve read various accounts of people even having made up co-operative scenarios in which small groups of soldiers have to fend off hordes of aliens or zombies while getting from some point to another.

My only slight points of critizism would be the layout of the book. It’s not like there’s not everything in it and I can’t quite put my finger on where the problem is but it somehow is written somewhat unintuitive. You don’t really get a grasp on how a turn of the game is played and at times you feel a bit like you’re playing “connect the dots” whilst scanning through the pages, looking for something you want to do now, stumbling across something else you forgot to employ so far (like it happened to me with stress tests). It’s not horrible or a big problem, especially with a user’s custom made quick reference sheet you can get on Boardgamegeeks.com which not only has all the important tables but – most importantly – the page numbers that go with the section of the rules that table is connected to. But again, only a minor complaint really.

All these things considered, this clearly isn’t a “pick up and play” kind of game and definately it has nothing to do with any kind of tournament gaming. This is a wargame which is perfect for clubs, gaming groups and so on. I think that this would work very well as a demo game of some kind as well because the rules actually are really simple to pick up as long as you got someone to tell you when somebody reacts to what and in which order. Next thing I’ll do is either getting someone into playing another infantry combat scenario (probably the same) or I do a solo game involving vehicles this time or a Regulary versus Irregulars game.





I think that at this price point (about € 23,00 / $ 23.00 in the US) you can’t do much wrong with getting this book no matter what kind of Sci-Fi you’re into. At worst you’ll get out of it is some very interesting and different rules ideas and a different prospect on Sci-Fi wargaming and if you happen to like it you end up with an universally applicable, really neat ruleset for any kind of background. I definately enjoyed reading the book and playing the game.

I got this model recently as a present and thought that it would be a nice piece to write a review article about. So let’s have a look at this futuristic Samurai and maybe the reason why he’s carrying a wheel on his back is revealed as well…

This is Ikazuchi no Tora from the Dark Messiah line of models by Kabuki Miniatures. These are high quality, highly detailled white metal miniatures in 35mm scale (so they are taller than your regular Warhammer miniatures). It somes in a nice blister along with a card showing “box art” of the finished model, name and so on. Let’s have a look at the single parts:

As you can see, this guy comes in lots of different parts – twelve to be precise, which is a lot for a model like that. You get two optional heads, one bare and one with a samurai helmet.

What’s really nice is that you get a 40mm diameter resin scenic base – a really cool one in this case – as well as a resin cast plinth into which the scenic base fits (with a bit of filing and cutting). The Kabuki Models logo on the plinth is a nice touch. The “box art” of the model displays some very nice looking and mood-inspiring bamboo stems on the base which are not included in the set. The casting quality of the parts is excellent and there is hardly any mold lines of flash to speak of. Really good quality stuff.

What’s notable about this set is that it most probaly is meant to give you more options than what head you want to go for. In my view, the shoulder pads and the additional armour on the upper right thigh are optional as well because all the underlying parts are really nicely sculpted and there are no visible connectors sculpted on (other than on the neck and wrist joints).

Once I started dry-fitting, I noticed something odd about the fur cloak:

In the second picture you can see how the back part and the right thigh armour part overlap. This is the thing that got me thinking that this part was optional as well. Looking at the back part of the cloak, it as almost as if the right end of the cloak has to be cut off to make place for the cloak part that is sculpted onto the thigh armour. Curious.

After some pondering I decided to just snip it to fit:

Now I may have just gotten the model all wrong and this was completely unnecessary but I couldn’t think of another way to have the back part of the cloak as well as the right thigh armour on the model. The cut I made was basically a clean, straight cut.

The rest of the building process was pretty straightforward. Washing the parts, assembling them with additional support via pinning and green stuff, done. The parts fit very well, especially smaller parts like hands to wrists really fit surprisingly well as those often are a bit fiddly. Speaking of which, that sword is about half a millimeter thin so watch out when handling that.

All in all this a really well made and cool miniature. It’s one of those pieces that aren’t primarily meant for gaming with them. Of course you can but due to the very fragile sword, the very dramatic pose and base and the fact that this isn’t a model that really lends itself to being used with some specific background it has much more of a showcase / display model feel to it. It’s a beautiful sculpt that really profits from the scenic base and a nice paintjob.

The perfect piece to do if you just like the model or if you’re getting bored of painting legions of models for your tabletop armies.

If you enjoyed this review or if you have any questions or comments pleasse let me know via the comments section below or via e-mail on battlebrushstudios@gmail.com

First off – I’m aware that these were released a few months ago already but I figured that it’s never too late to have a look at a product and there surely are a few people who haven’t heard of them yet and/or haven’t read a review on this plastic kit. Also, like everybody who posts reviews of stuff on the internet, part of what I’m doing here is trying to entertain you guys with this article.

In the case that you haven’t heard of Avatars of War (AoW) so far: It’s a Spanish company founded in April 2007 who since then have come out with loads of very pretty character models in 28mm heroic scale (so they’re 30mm and up in reality) from various fantasy races for gaming and collecting. AoW is one of the most well-known companies who are making character models which miraculously fit perfectly for using them in your Warhammer Fantasy armies, not only in terms of equipment (which on many of their models comes with two or more weapon options as well as optional heads and such) but also in terms of looks and style. In 2010, AoW announced their fist multi-part plastic regiment kit and people (including myself) were very excited about the first prototype models for that kit. After a long wait and an exemplary online PR campaign of AoW, the Dwarf Berserkers Regiment box was released in late June 2011.

So much for the history of the product, now  let’s have a look at that box:

Avatars of War have always had top notch presentation on their products as well as online and this box is no exception. They had themselves original artwork made for this box, which is a very nice thing to do. I prefer artwork on the box front over pictures of the models. Apart from that, there’s a big, dwarfy logo and an even bigger AoW logo. Nice. The sides of the box have a picture of painted example dwarves on them and the back of the box shows the whole unit assembled and painted and lists everything that’s in the box which we will come to later.

You may notice that the upper left part of the box is dented in my case and that there’s slight damage on the front too. Well, I guess our postman hates me.

This is how I received the box after I found the package placed in the garage. It was pretty battered and the top was ripped off. That’s the reason I took the pictures of the box while it was still in shrink wrap so in the case of heavy damage to the models I could send it back and prove that the damage had happened during transport.

Anyhow, I was relieved to see that the interior of the box was in good condition. The box contains six sprues in total, five of which are regular Dwarf Berserkers sprues and the sixth holds extra bits to build the command miniatures (one Champion, one musician and one standard bearer). Here’s the main sprue of the box so to say:

As I said, the box contains five times this sprue which holds enough parts to build 4 Dwarves. Legs, torso, head (with beard), arms and hands (including axes) are seperate parts and allow for plenty of options for mixing, matching and posing your models. Each of these sprues comes with 6 different hand weapons (all axes, 3 with left hands, 3 with right hands) as well as a giant greataxe. In addition to this, there’s a plethora of various smaller bits: 6 brooches or ancestor icons, 1 nose-to-ear chain, 1 beer keg, a tiny dragon skull, a chopped-off Orc head, 2 body piercings, 5 different hairstyles (4 mohawk variants, 1 long braid, 1 top knot) and one hand that’s giving the finger.

Now for the command sprue:

The box contains one of those so you can turn three of the Dwarves into a standard bearer, a champion and a musician. There is an extra-large mohawk for the Champion and an ornamented giant handaxe, the musician gets a carnyx (imagine using a periscope as a trumpet and you’re pretty close to what a carnyx is), a huge 6-part standard as well as a comb (cute detail considering how much time these guys must use to get their beards and hair into shape).

Apart from the sprues, there’s twenty 20mm square slotta-bases in the box (they come as single parts in a little plastic baggy). It’s a bit of a shame that AoW didn’t get non-slotted bases because these Dwarves are to be freely glued onto the bases and have no tab that would go into the slot so you have to fill that slot up somehow.

Now let’s have a closer look at the parts which brings us to a topic surprisingly many people have strong feeling about – flash. Of course these models have it because it’s as good as impossible to avoid but it’s rather tame. Apart from that, the molding looks top notch. The plastic is soft kind of bendy and pretty resistant to snapping – just like the plastic you see used by other companies like Games Workshop. In fact, the company who does the casts is run by former GW employees who used to work in the very same section at GW so they know their stuff. Also, the common heritage to these sprues is evident – they look exactly like GW sprues.

The sculpts themselves clearly follow AoW’s business strategy of emulating GW’s style or at least be compatible with their rules and looks and fit seamlessly. It’s no coincidence that these models match GW’s Dwarven Slayers, a staple in every self-respecing Dwarfs army and fan favorite which so far got no plastic models from GW, to a tee. This actually goes so far that they do things some people would have preferred not to have. The axes are very large and the blades on them very, very thick (I heard comparisons to telephone books being muttered over the past weeks). If you can see beyond that, the sculpts look beautiful if you’re okay with “heroic” 28mm scale proportions and looks.

Now for the assembly. Here’s a few things you should be careful about. First: You have to be aware that, and this is the greatest downside of this kit, there are no optional weapon loadouts in this kit. Not all Dwarves can have two hand weapons, you will have to have some with greataxes in there unless you get inventive with beer mug holding hands, multiple dwarves giving the finger and so on. But right out of the box you’ll have to have some greataxes in there. And as you could read above – there is no option to have them all equipped with great axes either. Five per box maximum. That aside, the parts fit very well, you get lots of options due to the fact that they have arms and hands with axes as seperate bitz, the hairdos fit well onto the heads and all in all you achieve quite impressive variety among the unit.

Now if you want to have these guys ranked up, you have to be pretty careful when assembling the unit. Due to the huge weapons and the rather bulky nature of the models, they can be a bit tricky to rank up, especially with these greataxes amongst the ranks and big mohawks.

One word about that monster of a standard – I suggest not putting it fully together. Assemble the stone statue holding the dragon heads, add the book and any additional bits you like but don’t put the two parts of the pole together right from the start- Paint both – the standard bearer with the lower half of the pole in his hand and the rest of the banner – seperately and put them together in the end (by the way, this will require pinning!). I put the whole thing together right from the start and it’s just unwieldy, inconvenient and very prone to snapping the banner pole while you’re handling it because it’s got this huge bulk on top.

There isn’t much to say paintingwise. It’s a very fun kit to paint up. I suggest filling the gaps between the arms and the torsi with some putty before painting.

And here we got the bad boys all finished and ready to go seek a glory in death:

Final verdict:

The quality and looks are en par with current GW plastic kits of similar types of models and the density of extra bits and use of room is very good for the first plastic product of a company. With some of the smaller stuff like the seperate body piercings and such, AoW really showed off what they can do with plastic and I’m looking forward to see how they can expand on this. This unit will fit seamlessly into any Warhammer Dwarves army but will also be a great addition to your Kings of War army, Mortheim Warbands, your Pen&Paper roleplaying game miniature collection and last but not least they will look great in your showcase as well. Oh, and at EUR 25,00 (GBP 21,84 / USD 34,22) for 20 miniatures including command the price is also very, very reasonable.

Avatars of War released a new metal Dwarf Berserker character as well. The name’s Bör Dragonbane and I’m just putting the finishing touches on the model which you will be able to see on here soon as well. Many thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the article and found it interesting. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions concerning this article or painting/modelling/conversion commission inquiries just leave me a comment below this article or drop me an e-mail at battlebrushstudios@gmail.com .

See you soon!

a bit of time went by since the last post on here but nonetheless I want to thank everybody for reading and commenting, either here or on the forums. Finecast still is being controversially discussed but at the same time eagerly bought by everybody so I guess business as usual in regards to Games Workshop. But of course there are many other very successful companies out there who especially in the recent months gained a lot of followers and presence.

But first, following up on my last article, I finally got to take some pictures of the finished Cockatrice:

You will find more pictures of it in the gallery. This one really was fun to paint. I went for a more naturalistic looking colour scheme (that also would go well with the Averland Empire army I did earlier this year) and which frankly I prefer over the very magic-y colour scheme the ‘Eavy Metal Team went for. They did a great job and I can see why they went for a rather coherent choice of colours on all these Storm of Magic monsters but we talked about all that in my earlier article on Storm of Magic.

On a completely different topic – I finally got myself some Infinity models. Breaking with the theme of mostly showcasing commission projects on here (because that’s what I do 90% of the time in relation to working on my own projects). First, let me explain how I got to this: Eversince Infinity was released I was keeping an eye on this system and often chatted with people about it because the models looked  gorgeous right from the start and are such a fresh alternative to 40k’s and Warmachine’s aesthetics. The rules also looked very solid and interactive to me so when I heard that my local gaming store was starting up an Infinity group I had the perfect excuse to finally get into the game.

After hours and hours of doing research, writing lists of pros and cons and so on I settled for Nomads albeit having visions Ariadna and Haqqislam still poking around in my head. I took a trip to my local gaming store to pick up a model to play around with before I fully commit myself (even though I know I’ll be buying lots of these figures anyway). So I went there, they only had one Nomads model present anyway so I picked that one up. One of the beautiful aspects of Infinity is that you can pretty much get any model and put it to good use because compared to other systems, Infinity really aims to be balanced and to reduce the importance of list-building considerably in favor of making success or demise depend on what you actually do with your guys on the battlefield.

So here is my first Infinity model -  a Nomads Tomcat with a Combi Rifle and Light Flame Thrower:

He’s also sporting a rather prominent missile launcher.

Let’s have a look at the blister then: It’s a plastic bubble blister you can open and close again so if necessary you can use it to store bitz or transport a model in. There is a cardboard piece that holds the thing together with a staple. It wobbles around a bit and looks a tad cheap but that’s nothing that should cause us any headaches. The backside of the blister shows a neat little card that displays a picture of the model assembled, based and painted as well as the logo of the army it belongs to as well as a logo of their unit (units have logos in Infinity which can be rather diverse with Nomads due to the fact that a.) there’s three different spaceships they live on and b.) many of those units often make their money working as mercenaries in which case an easily identifiable logo can’t be a bad thing). Underneath the card tells us exactly what army the model belongs to, what it name is and what equipment is comes with.

To my knowledge there are no weapon options coming with any of the models. The company who makes them, Corvus Belli, seem to aim to do at least one model for each configuration and go for very individual and dynamic poses which makes providing different weapon options a bit complicated.

Now let’s rip this thing open and see what’s actually inside…

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We got the torso of the model itself and we got the single parts (the model comes in five parts total) in a little plastic baggy. That’s a bit unusual but given that the blister is only held together by the carboard piece and staple it’s nice that they make sure that nothing flies out that way. Also, you can never have too many of these baggies really.

The model comes with a regular 25mm round slotted base with a slightly textured surface on top; just like we’re used to. With the blister comes a piece of grey sponge like in GW blisters in the olden days. For those of you who care: The sponge in this blister is about 25% thicker than the ones GW used last in their blisters. :p Again, something nice to have in reserve.

As for the card – I actually had hoped to see the unit’s cost and stats and all that on the back side of the card but it’s just plain matte black with an infinity logo. No biggie because you can get the army lists and weapon stats and all online from Corvus Belli’s website but I think it would have been convenient to have those on these cards as well.

Enough of that chit-chat about inane packing gimmicks – let’s talk about the model! It’s metal, the detail is amazing, the pose is very dynamic. There is very little flash and very little in terms of mold lines but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t. The thing about the detail on these models (and the whole models really) being delicate you have to take care to differentiate between mold lines and actual details on the cloth. I washed all the single parts with warm water and soap before assembly but that goes without saying.

The fit of the parts is near perfect on this one and the connections have little nubs and holes that make the gluing surface large enough in relation to the weight and centre of gravity so I refrained from pinning this time and just used a little green stuff to give the pieces a bit more support. Here’s the assembled model:

At this point it wasn’t glued into the base of course; just stuck in. As you can see, the model is much more akin to “true 28mm” scale than “heroic 28mm” but mostly in terms of proportions and slendernes. In terms of height, it’s much more going into a 30mm scale direction, especially considering how this guy is basically cowering. Here’s a scale comparison shot next to a Space Marine:

As you can see, despite the fact that he’s leaning, ducking and on a bare base, he’s almost as tall as the Space Marine. All I need to do now is to figure out a nice way to base and paint him. I looked into buying resin bases for the guys but especially when it comes to bases, I’m much more of a do-it-yourself kind of person. So let’s see what I’ll do with that.

As for various other things, my birthday happened to take place last week (what do you mean you didn’t get an invitation? Sure you were invited!) and I actually got a wargaming miniature!

A Reaper one even. It’s a barbarian type of character to get me into the mood for the upcoming (or rather here-being) new Conan film. Believe it or not, this is my fist Reaper mini and I’m pretty sure that the sculpt is rather old. Comparing it to the Infinity Tomcat, the difference couldn’t be greater. The style is completely different, the theme as well of course and pretty much everything. Which is great because of variety and all that. I got plans for this guy already, the only question is wether or not I’ll ever find the time to put these plans into practice.

On a closing note – there’s lots of new pictures online in the Gallery, mostly a large army of Space Wolves (in the Space Marines folder), pictures of the cockatrice and lots of Space Orks. Have a look if you can spare the time.

So that’s it for today. Hope you’re all being well and have stuff to look forward to this fall. If you have any comments, requests or anything concerning this article or painting/modelling commissions, leave a comment right here or drop me an e-mail at battlebrushstudios@gmail.com . See you soon!

It’s the new Cockatrice! One of the very first miniatures that are released in Finecast only and which had no metal predecessor.
Games Workshop advertised the coming of Finecast as the beginning of a new age. Let’s see if that proves to be true!In this little article I will record my thoughts and experiences from unpacking, cleaning and assembling a Finecast miniature for the first time.

First I should explain my thoughts on the old “plastic versus metal” debate which in my opinion is about 60% artificial anyway just so some people could rant on and on about. I got into touch with tabletop wargaming when basically everything was metal bar for a few kits (mostly vehicles). Working with metal miniatures is just something you have to be able to do when being into tabletop wargaming. I never got how some people find it “hard” to work with metal and dismiss the reassuring weight a metal miniature has as opposed to plastic miniatures. To me, metal miniatures feel more significant and less like toys. I won’t dismiss the fact that plastic casting progressed greatly in the past decades and it’s easier to make certain conversions with plastic parts. Still, I like the feel of metal miniatures very much and when Finecast was announced, I can not deny that I felt a little negative about the whole thing.

Games Workshop didn’t really prove much common sense with timing the introduction of Finecast miniatures and their annual price increase so a product which many people were already critical about (of course partly due to the effect that many internet  forums have on news concerning GW: generating negativity about them.). I don’t want to come across as a person who whines about the Internet Hate Machine, I just observe. The fact that there are some technical issues with the casting, negative reports of the resin-plastic-mix behaving like resin when exposed to strong and direct sunlight (softening), large amounts of mould lines/”flash” and so on didn’t help either. Combine this with a price increase timed in a way that makes some people think that it’s directly linked to Finecast made the release of this new range really problematic. Still, it seems to have sold very well so far (of course).

So, a few weeks after the initial release, I will have a look at this completely new sculpt that was directly made to be cast in the new resin-plastic material.

First, the contents of the box:

The casting detail is very good. Clearly resin-cast quality. Not much flash at all (I think that the single characters are decisively more plagued by that. Had a look at a Finecast Eldar Avatar at my local gaming store recently and the amount of flash was ridiculous. Not that it’s hard to remove with resin, it just looks weird mainly :p ), no bent parts and no visible miscasts or air bubbles. On a side note – I was really happy to see them keep the plastic containers they also use for metal miniatures that come in boxes. I really like those things because they are useful for all kinds of tasks ranging from basing containers to miniature transportation. Now let’s start cleaning and have  a look how the parts fit…

…and here’s quite an air bubble:

It’s two actually but one is simply amusingly placed where the knob that goes in the little hole on the torso should be so that’s no real problem there. The problem is the large, lengthy one in the lower left.

Next to the other wing you can see the scale of the problem and what it actually should look like:

The way the faulty wing is bent before the bubble started would indicate that this wing shouldn’t be as long to the back end as the right one but the slits on the torso into which the wings should go are equally long, thus indicate otherwise.

Apart from that, there are very little air bubbles. One smallish one on the end of the tail and two or three really minor ones on the feathers.

Cleaning otherwise was a breeze. The material really behaves like a mix of plastic and resin so it’s rather brittle and soft but also not quite as brittle as resin usually is on its own. The material is very light. Cleaning with soapy water (as usual with metal and resin) is not required but I read that it is advised to do so if a part looks really shiny.

Glueing couldn’t be easier. You can’t use plastic glue and will have to resort to super glue as usual with resin. At no point I saw pinning required, even on the wings or the tail which on a metal model I would have pinned without second guessing.

Here are some pictures of the model with all parts glued together:

The red spot is some thin red paint I painted on for testing. Some sources indicate that priming wasn’t required with Finecast (and I admit that the texture is rougher than on plastic). But after a few seconds of testing, my assumption was confirmed:

You can see that the paint even covers pretty well on exposed parts but in the gaps between the ribs the paint won’t adhere properly. Probably due to release agent residue so a bit of cleaning might be advised. Being the dashing fearnaught that I am, I will just use primer on the whole model. It’s not like paint would adhere any better on plastic miniatures when they’re not primed.

In this picture you can see the problem with the left wing. You can clearly see the gap in the torso which indicates that the wing should reach much longer on the Cockatrice’s back. To be honest, I’m almost glad to see this little problem. The assembly was way too easy up to this point. I will have to use some Green Stuff to fill this up.

Speaking of Green Stuff and filling – here is a picture to show the gaps between the single parts:

As you can see there are some visible gaps but it’s really not bad. Most basic filling will be required but nothing more grave than what we’re used to with metal miniatures.

So what’s my final verdict on this finecast miniatures and finecast as a whole? The casting quality is very good, the fit is satisfying and gluing the parts is really easy. Dropping the model on the ground from table’s height still will cause great damage of course (although I haven’t tested it obviously because I’m no loon) but the material is easy to work with. Mould lines are few and very easy to remove. Especially for those who until now viewed working with metal miniatures as a chore, Finecast is a godsent. The problem of miscasts and air bubbles is a severe one of a few models but I’m sure that GW are working on that to sort it out and at least it keeps a small challenge to modelling these things.

Material aside, I’ll echo my own words from my review article on the Storm of Magic models – I like this model a lot and I think it’s great that GW released a new Cockatrie. I’m very much looking forward to painting it and presenting the results to you as soon as it’s finished.

This model is again commission work of course and it will go with the Averland Empire army I painted earlier this year. If you liked this article, if you have any questions or ideas please let me know via the comments below. See you soon!

Be aware that I will mention Warhammer 40,000 a lot in this little article and that I will be comparing Warpath’s Beta Rules with 40k a lot due to obvious reasons.
My first impression: It’s a very clever product. Warpath is basically what Warhammer 40,000′s 3rd edition would have been in a better world. The designers had a good look at 40k, had a good look at internet forums and then went and made 40k very fast and very clear by the looks of the rules alone.

Here are a few points which to my observations make the main differences to 40k:

.) True Line of Sight is tidied up by increasing the importance of unit leaders in this regard.

.) There are no tables to memorize (like 40k’s to-hit and to-wound tables). What you need to roll to hit/wound is all pretty clearly put in the statlines.

.) If it’s one player’s turn he’s the only one who gets to roll dice.

.) There are modifiers. Not all that many but there are modifiers for hitting with fire arms as well as in melee. Again, a reason why this product seems cleverly done to me. It’s not all that many modifiers but they are there and I have no idea what devil rode GW’s designes to do away with modifiers when the glorious beauty that was 40k was wrecked by its 3rd edition.

.) Flyers are implemented. Another and much more recent mistake (in my opinion) that GW made with 40k was introducing flyers. Now we know why they probably did it (apart from the aim to sell big plastic models) – they probably worked out some nice rules for them for 6th edition 40k. But anyway, I digress. Flyers are handled interestingly – kind of similar to the Forgeworld rules for Flyers but much simpler and faster to execute. So a certain idea of “swooping by a shooting things” is kept but it works very simple and streamlined.

.) Single models don’t really represent “wounds” the squad can take and models are not being removed from play if a unit receives damage. Rather than that, “wound markers” are accumulated and each time a unit takes damage they have to roll a “Nerves” check which works kind of similarly to a Leadership check in 40k. I won’t go into further details but this check basically determines if the squad fights on, is suppressed or destroyed and the higher the number of wounds markers, the higher the chance of being suppressed or destroyed is. We will see what other miniatures ranges are in store for us with Warpath. The lists of allies indicate that we will see the following races added later: Corporation, Rebs, Asterians and “the eigth race”. I speculate that the Corporation will be human, the Rebs will be human (maybe with alien allies), the Asterians will be aliens (elves?) and “the eigth race” will be Mantic’s attempts to so something really unique.

.) There are rules for allies and they are not very restrictive which allows for quite some freedom in these regards.

Sadly, as good as nothing about the background is being revealed in these pdf files, just a few artworks of Mantic’s Space Dwarfs, the Forgefathers, (who look a lot like their Fantasy Dwarfs) and some Space Orcs, called Marauders. Seems like they very much keep in tone with 40k’s “Fantasy in Space” mentality which isn’t surprising because this is basically Mantic’s business – providing alternatives to GW’s products, be it rules or models.

+++Update: We got more information on the background now. By the sound of it it’s rather effective. The Corporation is the big bad faction, Forgefathers, true to their Dwarven ways, are much older than the human-dominated Corporation and are heavily connected to their traditions (and flame weaponry) and generally work together with the Corporation but are willing and able to defend themselves if the Corporation presses charges or tries to overreach. The Marauders were once subdued by the Corporation, trained as shock troops in case of the necessity of hostile takeover but as always with these stories, the Marauders turned against their masters and now work as hired guns/mercenary types. Alessio Cavatore described the setting as “high sci-fi”. I like that background. It’s easy to explain and to get into but has lots of potential for development. Judging from Kings of War and Mantic’s general modus operandi, the background surely isn’t a too essential aspect about the whole thing and I doubt that we’ll see the more classic approach to background as we saw it in past decades (novels, comicbooks, maybe a computer game and so on). We’re talking about a company here who act very effectively, very resourceful, very determined and who have a clear direction.

I haven’t played it yet but just by reading the rules I am fairly sure that this ruleset works pretty well and it’s designed to be simple and inviting to beginners while also being close enough to 40k to get the players from there. In terms of Sci-Fi tabletop wargaming at army level it doesn’t try to be The Other System but rather than that Warpath aims to make people feel at home right away and I am very sure that as soon as this system is being officially launched we will see lots of exchange between 40k and Warpath in terms of rules for 40k armies/units in Warpath and vice versa.

I think that this is a good thing because the market and communities will get shaken up even a bit more which is great in itself. The only problem I can see happening (and it will happen) is that some people will feel the need to start arguing what the “better” system was, 40k or Warpath. They probably do already which is kind of weird. But with Warpath around the corner and very, very promising rumours about 6th edition 40k having shown up online I think that not only classic Fantasy wargaming but also the Space Fantasy genre is in for some very welcome new additions and changes. It’s a great time to be a tabletop wargamer!

This ends my short review of the Beta rules of Warpath. I hope that you enjoyed it and maybe found it interesting. If you agree or disagree with my views and/ or speculations, please let comment!

P.S.: Warpath: “Did we mention that we have Space Dwarfs?”

Here’s a link to GW’s site so you can have a look at the tasty preorders yourself: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/home.jsp

So we got pictures and preorders on Storm of Magic models and accessories now, yay! My thoughts: The terrain is nice as in most cases of GW’s recent terrain releases. I can see it being used in many narrative skirmish-level games and pen&paper RPGs. The stairs will see much use in duel dioramas I think.

The monsters look fun. I’m really glad there finally is a new Manticore, shame it doesn’t look like a Manticore that much. I mean it’s okay and I think that with a more naturalistic paintjob it can look more appealing to me but I wished GW would go for a more toned down, classic look especially on what should be lion heads and such. Less “generic evil monster face” and more “sticking to the original concept” would be great. Being a DE player, I’m of course happy about the Black Dragon and it looks nice to me mostly (could have done with some less twisted teeth though). But overall it’s nice. The pose is neat but don’t ever think of being able to hide this beast behind anything.

And then: Holy cow, a cockatrice! When I saw that they were doing a new one I actually laughed in glee. Out of all these monsters and even though I probably would have much more use for a Manticore or a Black Dragon, I’d probably get the Cockatrice just because it’s so much fun. The model itself looks nice enough. Thanks, GW!

The wizards are very interesting little kits, mostly because they are single models on foot but still made from plastic. Seems like GW are really betting on high sales volumes with those. Apart from that, they are an amusing little throwback to the old plastic mages GW released in the early 90s (and of some of which I had the honor to paint). I really have to point out that I GREATLY appreciate not having any “spell effects” (which I always think alook terrible, especially on GW’s plastics) sculpted on to these mages, nor having any of them float around in the air or something. Again, many thanks for that, GW. What I’m less impressed with is the faces. I think that the way GW’s plastic faces look in general has taken a huge downturn around 2005 (this may or may not be connected to switching to software sculpting on plastic figures. I think it is.) to a point that putting it in the most positive way possible, GW’s plastic mini faces are very hit and miss. In most cases they seem expressionless, very, very plain and symetrical and very synthetic. There is no character in most of them what so ever. And this isn’t a thing that’s limited to human or elven faces. I’m painting some Space Orks at the moment which are mostly sculpts that were released in 1999 if I remember correctly with some bits added to the box when the sprues were recut in 2007 and it’s very easy to tell apart the older faces from the ones that were done almost a decade later – the newer ones look very bad in comparison. GW really need to fix that.

Anyway, I really like the fact that the Dark Elves Sorceress’ hair consists of three different pieces. Just entertaining and very much along the lines of what I enjoy (big hair on elves, topknots and mohawks. ).

Apart from the miniatures, GW also release the inevitable magic cards. This 64 cards deck with all special spells for Storm of Magic comes in a plastic case that’s made to look like a spell book. Nice idea, it looks nice too and the price is actually pretty good I think. Then there’s the templates that are used for some magical effects. They’re sold in packs of six and are basically the same as the Vortex grenade templates (2″ larger though). They surely are sturdy enough, but I still can’t see the point to be honest. I’m sure that there are tons of new “remains in game” spells but the little domes aren’t really my cup of tea. I guess they will sell well enough though, judging from the sales of the Vortex grenade template a few years ago. The last item that will be released along with the expansion is a paperback novel called Razumov’s Tomb (I like that title). Unfortunately they won’t tell us how many pages it’s got but I guess for €4,00 it’s okay to pick up for a train ride or something like that.

All in all, the positive impressions outweigh the negatives by far and I’m really looking forward to maybe working with these kits in the future. Ruleswise, I can’t say anything of course but judging from the whole setup it kind of looks like 5th edition WHFB to me. Leave a comment if you made some different observations yourself, if you enjoyed this little article or if you disagree completely. Make your opinion heard!

Hello and welcome to this third instalment of my Step-by-Step painting tutorial articles. During the past few months I was asked repeatedly how I painted Space Wolves and battle-damaged power armour. After some consideration I decided that now is the time to finally put this plan into action. So here is my Step-by-Step painting tutorial III and we’re painting a Space Wolves Wolf Guard Battle Leader.

If you read my earlier tutorial articles you’re familiar with the modus operandi. For those of you who are new, here is a little explaining: Basically, this is a full commentary on how I paint a single miniature to what I call elevated tabletop level. What you will find here is straight up painting with very little fancy materials and techniques involved so with a little practice everybody will be able to recreate this work. For the first few steps I am using my trusty airbrush but the same effect can be achieved with regular painting as well. Especially with the way this miniature is being painted, an airbrush isn’t mandatory at all. All you really need is a miniature, a knife, glue, some basing materials and a few good brushes. For painting this miniature, I mostly used a size 1 brush. A size 0 was employed for painting teeth and doing some very fine blacklining.

One word about paints – I am using a wide variety of paints from a wide variety of manufacturers. For this project I mainly used Citadel paints (regular ones, foundation paints and washes), Coat d’Arms (CdA) paints and Vallejo paints of the Model Colour (VMC) and Model Air (VMA) ranges. I am aware that most people who read this probably mostly use Citadel paints so I will see that I always give Citadel equivalents or alternatives when mentioning a colour from another brand.

Step 1: Assembly, basing

This model is built from the regular Space Wolves pack box which has a huge variety of options. It’s really a treasure chest of bits and especially wild, barbaric looking heads. As you can see, this fella sports a Thunder Hammer and a Bolt Pistol. There are no conversions done on this miniature. After the cleaning and assembly the miniature is glued to the base and different kinds of sand, a few pebbles and a tree stump miniature were added.

I don’t glue the shoulder pads and frontal dagger sheaths to the model because the former would be much harder to paint if they were glued to the model right from the beginning and the latter would obstruct large parts of the front of the model.

After everything is cured the model is primed black. After priming I look over the whole miniature and fill non-black gaps with black paint and a brush so the whole miniature is covered in black paint.

Step 2: Basecoating

Now the first two layers of paint are applied using my airbrush. First a layer of Vallejo Model Air Intermediate Blue (a very dark blue-grey. Can be substituted by using a mix of Codex Grey and Black). The paint is not being sprayed all over the miniature but only from the top down at an angle of at least 60 degrees so we get a natural shading effect right from the start. It also gives us a good impression on where the light falls onto the model and where the darker areas are.

After this first layer, we do another one with Codex Grey. Again, only from the top and less heavy than the earlier VMA Intermediate Blue layer.

Now we start drybrushing. For the first layer, I use CdA Shadow Grey (just like Citadel Shadow Grey)

…and then another light drybrush using CdA Lupin Grey (the equivalent of Space Wolves Grey).

Now we got a very grey Space Marine already. Not bad. For the typically Space Wolfian blue tint, I give the whole model a wash with Asurmen Blue. (A note if you don’t like the blue-ish look on Space Wolves: Last year I painted a pure grey Space Wolves army of which you can see the pictures in the gallery on my website/blog. The painting recipe was slightly different but for the grey look, just use a Badab Black wash at this point rather than Asurmen Blue.)

Now we leave the wash to dry completely. Never paint on a miniature that still has wet washes on it – patience is key.

Step 3: Secondary colours, battle damage and highlights

The basecoat of the armour is done. Now we can start first detailwork. For this we start by painting portions of the model which are going to be black or differently coloured black again just so we get an idea what we’re doing next and to get some black outlines for later.

It’s time to add another colour now and this colour is yellow. The shoulder pads are painted with Iyanden Darksun (with the great company insignia on one shoulder pad and spikes on the other shoulder pad getting painted black again) and a zig-zag pattern is painted onto the right knee pad.

After the yellow is completely dried, apply some Gryphonne Sepia Wash over it (watered down of course. Washes shouldn’t be used “right out of the pot” but always should have water added).

Now for the thing many people are curious about – battle damage. There are several ways of doing it but I found the sponge method to give me the most satisfying results.

It’s done using a piece of foam or sponge like in the picture here. I like to use either the foam parts you get in some blisters or from the pieces you push out of army case foam trays. You can also nick a piece of kitchen sponge as well though. I like to “sharpen” it a little to get a little more control. The basic idea is that with a sponge like that, you get much more random patterns and very fine dots or slashes of paint due to the sponge’s texture and depending on how you use it (“stab” it at the model and you get little holes like from shrapnel, acid sprays and so on. Lightly wipe it over the surface and you get cuts or slashes like claw marks or hits from sharp mêlée weapons).

For the colour, I use a very, very dark grey (black with a hint of grey or white mixed in). Just be sure not to make it too light otherwise you won’t see the marks on the armour later on.

You will notice that the black dots and marks have no three dimensional looks to them what so ever. It just looks like black sparkles. So now we have to give them some depth and outlines. Apart from that, we also have to highlight the armour itself of course! Both is done in one go and using CdA Shadow Grey (or Citadel Shadow Grey).

With this little picture here I try to explain the theory behind what these little “holes” and “slashes” are supposed to look like:

As you can see, “highlights” are only placed on the lower edges of the holes because this is where the light is getting reflected the most. This is how the three dimensional efffect is achieved.

The rest of the highlights are painted as usual and simply according to edge highlighting. Just keep in mind how battle damage on edges of the armour change how the edges go of course. Also keep in mind that you only have to highlight parts that are going to stay gray of course.

Step 3 – Tertiary colours

Now that the main parts of the armour are done we can proceed to the tertiary colours. First, the golden parts. This is rather simple once you got a good recipe for gold. If you read my earlier tutorials you’re already familiar with my two favourite recipes to do gold but just in case you haven’t, here’s the gist of it: People often ask me about what basecoat to use for painting gold because it’s really the thing that makes or breaks your attempts at painting gold. Simply put, gold paints don’t cover well when applied over a dark base colour. They need a basecoat that supports them. There are several colours to use for that but when it comes to dark paintjobs like on this Space Wolf, I favour Tin Bitz (that strange metallic fella I never quite knew what to do with for a long time).

After this basecoat it’s not a big problem to apply Shining Gold at the more exposed parts (leave the Tin Bitz bare at lower parts, in recesses and where no light shines in general) and get a satisfying effect. Apart from that, I also apply Boltgun Metal to the Bolt Pistol and other parts that will be silver-coloured later on and get a wash with watered-down Badab Black.

As soon as everything is dry I commence painting the final highlighting stages onto the metallics. For that I use Mithril Silver and just highlight the golden and other metal parts with it. Especially with gold you don’t have to pay that much attention to smooth transitions because you want sharp reflections rather than very samey-looking surfaces.

Larger silver surfaces like the front of the Thunderhammer need more attention and smoother painting so I use very thin layers of Chainmail, Boltgun Metal and Mithril Silver. I also use Chainmail to paint the larger holes in the armour silvery. These are the parts where some kind of impact didn’t just scratch the paint of the armour but also damaged the material itself. Technically, it would be good to also have deeper and lighter parts within these silver areas but we’re trying to keep this job within a certain time limit.

At this stage, I also finish the shoulder pads (highlighted the black parts), add battle damage to them as well and glue them in place. Now the Space Wolf is starting to take shape and we can start thinking about names and character traits for him while painting.

Now for a sip of coffee and off to the next step – adding more colour. The next largest surface to paint are browns. The Thunderhammer’s grip, the wolf tail on the backpack, the bolt pistol’s handle and the grips of the daggers given a basecoat of VMC Chocolate Brown which is a very nice brown base colour for many occations. (Can be emulated with Citadel colours by mixing Scorched Brown with Graveyard Earth and a little black I guess). I also painted some of it onto the base of the hair.

Now highlight the wolf tail with various mixes of VMC Chocolate Brown and Bleached Bone.First layer about 70/30, then 50/50, then 20/80, final highlights with the same mix as the last layer of highlights but with some white mixed in as well. Highlight the hammer’s handle and the dagger handles with CdA Mid Stone (which is a sort of a slightly lighter version of Snakebite Leather. Mix Snakebite Leather with a bit of Sand Yellow and you get something like Mid Stone).

Wash all browns with Devlan Mud and put a hint of Badab Black into the recesses where the brown meets with another colour while the Devlan Mud still is wet to get a pretty neat and smooth enhanced shading effect. Highlight the weapon handles with bleached bone.

Step 4 – The Face

Now we go for the first and usually main focal point of the whole miniature. A miniature’s face holds most of the character which is determined by the tone of skin, the look, the facial expression and so on. Tiniest differences can change the facial expression and hardly any face is the same, even with mass-produced plastic miniatures.

First, we gave the face a basecoat of a mix of CdA Tan Earth (pretty much mid-way between Snakebite Leather and Sand Yellow) and Dheneb Stone.

Now we apply a wash of a wild mix of Tanned Flesh, CdA Tan Earth, Ogryn Flesh Wash and Gryphonne Sepia Wash. Let it dry. Then I do a few layers of highlights for which I use Elf Flesh. I start out by painting the exposed parts (chin, eyebrows, nose, cheeks), then I connect these parts with the rest of the flesh by using very much watered down Elf Flesh and swipe from the darker parts of the face into the elf flesh parts. This slowly gets you a smooth transition between the very light and very dark parts. Just keep in mind that you don’t want to get any light paint into the dark recesses like those around the mouth or the deepest parts of the eyes.

To reinforce the facial expression I add a little bit of Leviathan Purple Wash around the nose, under the cheek bones, in the eye sockets and under the lower lip. Apart from that, detail has been added to the face: The tongue (mostly based on Tanned Flesh, Elf Flesh and White) and teeth (I’d never use pure white for teeth. Always use a slightly off-white colour. In this case I added a little bit of Snakebite leather and still had a tiny bit of black on the brush). Note how the fangs are worked out instead of just doing one row of teeth.

Step 5 – Details and hair

After all the fun that was painting the face I went on to do something a little less fun – black weapon casings. Nothing special, just plain old edge highlighting with mixes of black and white. As long as I don’t have to do a whole lot of the same range of greys I usually just go for using appropriate mixes of black and white.

Apart from that, I did some further detailing – the gemstones on the Bolt Pistol and backpack, the tubing between armour parts like the back of the knees, arm joints and so on. The Thunder Hammer got the details done as well – mostly tubing and cables again to add some colour to the model. On the daggers bit, I started painting the grenades.

Now let’s solve the mystery why the guy’s hair was half-painted in that weird way all the time. The hair is going to be red – appropriate for a space viking and to give us additional contrast on the mini as well as a proper frame to call attention to the face. The dark brown is now mostly covered with Bestial Brown apart from deepest recesses close to the face to have some sort of outline.

After that basecoat I proceed to place highlights. For this, I mix Bestial Brown with Bleached Bone.

Here is the finished hair now after a few layers of mixes of Bestial Brown and Bleached Bone and later with White. I really enjoy painting ginger hair like that.

After adding a tiny little more detail to the knives part it’s finally time to glue it to the model. I refrained from doing that earlier because painting the grenades would have really been more annoying than necessary that way. The frag grenade was simply painted green (CdA Russian Green but Dark Angels Green is just as fine), a little wash (Badab Black, Devlan Mud, Thraka Green – whatever you prefer) and then the single parts of the fragmentation mantle were edge highlighted. The krak grenade was painted with black, blood red and white. All silvery parts on this bit got a basecoat of Boltgun Metal.

Seems like we’re entering the final stages here. After some consideration, I decided to go for a leathery red colour on the dagger sheaths. The colour was achieved by using VMC Hull Red for the base colour and highlights of mixes of VMC Hull Red, something sandy-looking (you can use Graveyard Earth, Desert Yellow, Khaki, Snakebite Leather, … whatever you got on the table at the moment. I used CdA Tan Earth again) and bleached Bone later on followed by a wash with devlan Mud to darken down the whole thing towards the lower end. The dagger handles got the regular Tin Bitz-Shining Gold treatment and I’m sure you can guess what comes next.

In this picture you can see how the sheaths were reinforced, the metallics got highlights and the things that hold the braids together were painted in a silvery colour. The little piece of cloth and the small skull in the middle gets a basecoat and a wash (the piece of cloth is yellow-ish in colour; Dheneb Stone mixed with CdA Tan Earth again and got a Devlan Mud wash), the skull is basecoated with pure Dheneb Stone and gets a wash of Badab Black and Devlan Mud.

Some highlights on the little skull, the wolf tooth talisman on his bolt pistol arm and a basecoat on the rune stone that dangles from his daggers. Once that rune stone and the pendant are done we can have another look at the miniature overall, do the base and we’re done!

After some basing (static grass, some linden tree leaves and wet snow) and tiny little touch-ups here and there we can have a look at the finished product:

So that’s it for the third Step-by-Step tutorial article. I hope you enjoyed it and found it helpful for your own painting. or questions, suggestions and critique, please contact me via battlebrushstudios@gmail.com. For painting/modelling commission requests, please use the same adress. Have fun!

- Sigur

All of the above material (with the exception of single titles and names that are trademarketed by Games Workshop Ltd., Acrylicos Vallejo and HMG Paints Ltd.) are ©Battle Brush Studios, 2011

tons of stuff to do and lots of new pictures in the gallery section.

Amongst them:

.) Genestealer Cult

.) various Blood Angels Terminators

.) More Averland Empire

.) Blood Bowl

Coming up:

.) Space Wolves army

.) Malifaux (which I’m really looking forward to paint)

Apart from that I’m currently in the preparing stages for another painting tutorial or two. Let me know if you have any special requests for those! (no videos yet, sorry ).

So feel free to have a look at the new pictures in the gallery section and I’m always happy about comments and feedback. See you soon!