They're making a what now?

Well now this is interesting.

Even if I wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool computer game addict, I think my other hobby fanaticism would be stoked by this recent announcement.

It's got rats!

It's got men!

It's got rat-on-man action! Hot hot hot!

A Canadian company are making a Mordheim game for the PC, is the gist of what I learned on PC Gamer's website earlier tonight. It will be turn-based and tactical and seems to promise to stick to the source material quite closely. This seems to be in keeping with most of the recent GW translations to game, actually, I suspect they stipulate the terms of the game to be made very closely so they don't lose control of the IP.

All of GW's titles are going to end up on PC sooner or later, I suspect, but I suppose their deceased back catalogue of specialist games will make it there sooner. As Space Hulk (solid but dull), Talisman (why?), Warhammer Quest (for tablet, so I haven't played it, but supposed to be excellent) and Bloodbowl (actually surprisingly good if graphically and sonically irritating) already have. Necromunda still remains my greatest hope as I liked the game and the fluff better, but this, well, this could certainly fill some holes in the meantime.

Such as a running online Woffenheim that I wouldn't need to pay airfares to get to, for example...

Forces of Chaos, Bow to Me!

With the inclusion of the good ship Bully's Special Prize, my army for this year's Woffboot is now complete. Wish they were actually going to be there. Sigh. 

Look at what you could have won

The photos below include no models that I wasn't going to field in one of my five army lists. Not all at once, obviously, that would be hilarious cheating.

Tallest at the back

Mutantiest at the other back

I've had my putative army lists somewhere, but I seem to have lost the file. From what I recall, I had the following themes: -

• Khornate, led by Daemon Prince, lots of marked troops
• Tzeentchian, with multiple mounted Sorcerors, lots of marked troops
• Marauder Horde, with all fifty, the warshrine, both chariots and I think an Archaon wannabe
• Heavy Heavy Infantry, with Shaggoth, two units of Warriors and the Chosen
• Mutant Capabilities, with both Mutalith and Warshrine to max my chances of bonus spawn or princes

Blancvik? Is that you?

Sarah Vaughan, Take It Away

Chaos maracas. Cha cha cha.

My shrine has sails that proclaim your doom

The decks are trimmed with spikes

Starboard

Port - got my running light colours backwards, but, never mind. Chaos. 

Skycutter

While the glue I'd smeared over the hull was drying (a waterproofing layer, I thought, seeing as it wasn't sticking anything together), I started thinking about what the ship would be flying over. 

I did at one point consider a model ploughing through the ground. Just after the Mk. 3 hull, I think it was, when the idea of an actual ship-shaped ship felt like a rapidly receding possibility. Just as chaotic, I supposed, but also kind of tame. Not as iconic of something or other. And a total copout on the whole hull front. 

The rest of the chaos army has a bunch of crudely slopped-together carefully researched arctic tundra on its bases, and this would have to be no different. But it was going to be tall and top heavy as well, so it needed weight. 

Reluctantly, I ventured outside into the cold light of day. I took a heavy blanket to protect my nerdy skin, and by fumbling blindly around for half an hour I managed to come back in with some lumps of local rock that would do the trick. 

These, plus a length of extra-heavy-duty paperclip and the top third of a DnD skeleton, would do the job.

Pesky modeller, come back here with my legs! Why, I oughtta...

The hull was dry. So I made up as much green stuff as I dared from my tiny store, slopped it round the edges of the warshrine deck, put it on top of the hull and pushed. After a bit of scraping with a penknife, I had this:

Blobby greenstuff joint! Because of chaos reasons. Like, mutant flesh and stuff. Or molten metal.
Not shit modelling, no sirree. 

Drydock

Well, the vote was in. Once I finished counting it, I realised I was now commited to a project way beyond my abilities or resources.

But what the hell, it's not like I've got a lot else to do these evenings.

Having originally suggested it as a joke, I was actually pretty glad that this particular shrine was the winning entry. Most of the other ideas I had were just as impractical and fiddly, in all honesty, with the sole exception of the idea I was originally going to go with, the Maggot Wagon. But I just can't sit on an incomplete model for another six months. It rankles.

So, off to the planning board for me.

Giant axes for oars. That's probably authentic for the Viking Age, right?

These went beyond mere doodles, in fact. Because my idea included a bit of scratch building, I wanted it to look as good as possible. And that meant taking measurements and actually thinking about what I could or couldn't achieve with the kit I've got to hand.

The basic idea was a flying viking longboat. But when I actually committed some more scibbles to paper, it started feeling like a pretty major challenge. The hull was the big sticking point. What could I make it with?

How To Get Ahead With Battle Standards

It was about time my Savage Orcs had a Battle Standard; a dominating centrepiece to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy, and give the army something to rally around:

Hmmm.
I have to say, it's not really that impressive...

Oh, I see.

Next Top Model

Hello, and welcome back to The Chaos Wastes Next Top Model, with me, Ogre Tyrant Banks!

This week, we'll be hearing the pitches from six top teams, all of whom want our panel of hellish deities to pick them to create a shrine truly worth going to war with. We'll be finding out which of them makes it through to the final cut later this month, and takes home the top prize of getting their vision realised by General Kraken as he finishes the lineup for his WoC Woffboot Army!

First, let's take a moment to meet our judges, each one a bona fide daemon prince!

Representing the Blood God, Khalash the Violent!

 I AM FURY INCARNATE! SLAUGHTER IN MY NAME!

For the whimsical Lord of Subtle Changes, it's Tz'plyn the Unguessable!

I've decided at the last minute not to take part in this. Or have I?

All the way from New Jersey, new home of the Grandfather of Decay, it's Noigle Pa!

Hobba hobba hobba! Let's have a feel of yer dumplings!

And to represent the Prince of Deceit, Master of Surreptitious Pleasure, Slaanesh, we've got Symoan the Curdled!

I don't care what you say, it's not my baby. 

Without further ado, let's bring in our first team and see what they've got for us. 

Shamans - They're Grrrrreat!

I've been looking forward to this one for a while: my original Savage Orc shaman. Now he's got a couple of shaman flunkies, I decided to promote him to a Great Shaman.

Being just an infantry model, I thought he needed something to show his elevated status, so I made him a little cairn to stand upon.

The rocks are cunningly sculpted from rock.

Butchers of Men VI

"Please," Pavel screamed. "Please, don't! No, please, let me live!"

And the Northman shrugged, turned him on to his back with his boot, and stamped in his groin hard enough that he could hardly breath for minutes.

The ambush almost worked.

Gavril stuck a couple of the mercenaries with arrows, but not enough to incapacitate any of them. Before any of them got too badly hurt, they split up and hid amongst the ruined machinery in the lower room. Vras and Gavril shot desperately through the hole in the floor, but they couldn't stop them getting to the foot of the stairs. And then the elf wizard started chanting from somewhere in the shadows below, and another, unseen mercenary starting hurling slingshot up, forcing them back from their sniper's positions.

Aurel and Tusk were cut down when the Northman stormed up. Aurel stabbed him, but he might have stabbed the mountain for all the effect it had. Majewa almost killed the Empire veteran with his well-worn halberd, but Pavel had already folded by then. He wasn't going to die, not like this. Not for lies and stories and threats. Not under the edge of a cold, Northern axe.

Butchers of Men V

Pavel opened his eyes.

It was almost as if he could see the pain, tenebrous purple clouds of it blotting out the edges of his vision. The room was a fuzzy mess. Early cold daylight was spilling in through the roof and windows and mixing with their untidy camp of the night before. The other Slaughtermen stood or sat around, apart from Aurel. Aurel was lying on the floor next to him, grey of face, looking thin and wretched. Gavril stood over them both, sharpening a knife.

Majewa and Tusk were sharing rashers of bacon that Vras was cooking on a well-used skillet over the embers of the fire.

"Naughty boys," Majewa said, looking them over.

Butchers of Men IV

Vras was half asleep. Full sleep was impossible, hunched against the side of a long-derelict rock crusher. It was freezingly cold in the room around him. His blankets were thin comfort against the hard stone. He'd tried to clear a little nest for himself amongst the dust and chips on the floor, but for every knobbly lump he threw away, another seemed to burrow its way underneath his back.

And all that was nothing compared to the fact that he was camping out on the Barlog.

He knew the stories. The Black Banner, the sleepers under the mountain. If they were just tales to scare children with, why did the old men in the town square mutter them under their breaths with pale faces, and never after dark? Why had the Prince, who wasn't even originally from Zenres, bricked up all the palace windows that faced the craggy mountain?

Why had nobody from the town been up here in living memory?

Butchers of Men III

They reached the quarry late that night and set up camp in the upper storey of an old bunkroom.

It was a desolate barn of a building made of huge grey stone blocks. The dwarves who'd built it made it to last, and the walls certainly had. But the roof was missing most of its tiles, was even open to the frigid night air in places, and there was a huge circular hole in the thick beams of the floor. Whatever mechanical device had rested there before had sunk through the mouldering wood and smashed into rusted cogs and bent metal plates on the grinding room floor below.

Perhaps it had once been a bustling centre of industry. Now it was a empty nest for finches, a sad reminder that the Dwarves were long gone and their kingdoms fallen.

Lonely though it was, it was a good place for an ambush. You could see the path where it finally made it into the step-cut bowl of the quarry. The sheer rocks all round made it unlikely that anyone would come up another way, and there were good lines of sight from the windows to the quarry yard outside.

The mercenaries would arrive, probably sometime the following morning unless they travelled through the night. And the Slaughtermen would be waiting for them.

Butchers of Men II

They were sat in the back of a cart as it crept out of town. The mule pulling it kept farting loudly as it plodded along. It was just about the only sound to break the silence that reigned over the six of them.

Ion and Alin were dead. They'd never come out of the Sow and Shoats. Cornel was in the town jail, with a Bretonnian leech looking after the gut wound he'd taken. Majewa said he probably wasn't going to recover. Markhu was locked up in the stocks by the West Gate, still unconscious after one of the Tilean soldiers had cracked a cobble off his temple. The Prince's guards hadn't bothered to revive him before locking him up.

And the rest of them were heading for the Barlog.

Butchers of Men I

Pavel's torch was starting to burn out.

The orange flames danced down the square-cut tunnel ahead of him, making the limestone walls glisten. Cold, damp air was seeping from somewhere deep below, sneaking up behind him and caressing his neck with wet fingers.

Damn it, Pavel, watch the entrance, he told himself.

But he couldn't. Every time he turned his back on the tunnel, that clammy breeze started stroking him. It was unnerving. It was like the dead breath of one of the sleepers, something flickering out of a corpse's mouth. It demanded attention.

Majewa laughed at the old superstitions, laughed at anyone who jabbed forked fingers at a mention of the Barlog or the Black Banner. Her rough humour had soothed their nerves on the trip up. No need to be afraid, she'd said. Not men like you. Not with me around.

Pavel wished she was still here.

Da 'Am Fists

"Da fastest and da smelliest Orcses. Dey rides about wiv da pork choppas, in one big rack, or two streaky rashers."

"Also, dey paintz a stripe down the middle of their 'eads, which iz symbolic of the Aristotelian principle of da golden mean. Waaagh!"

After much painting and assembling, all the Savage Orc Boar Boyz are now done. My original plan was just to smarten up the paint scheme of the handful I already had, and maybe switch around the banner and shields.

I should know by now that my meticulous (*cough* obsessive compulsive *cough*) streak would take over. And once I had the new boars on the chariots, I was always going to go the whole hog.

As for the new boars themselves - they make fantastic remounts (luckily the old metals fit onto them - I never thought to check), although their dynamic 'leaping forth' nature makes them a real pain to rank up (as do their long tails). This was why I had to assemble them all in one go, but I think magnets will help to keep them in place.

PIGS! ... IN! ...SPACE! THREE RANKS!

Th'Orc For The Day

I have arrived at a conclusion as to why this Savage Orc army seems to be taking such a long time to complete...

I'd get there faster if I stopped buying more of the damn things on eBay.

"Put him in the Dettol bath!"

This particular Savage Orc Big Boss stormed my letterbox this morning. It's the only command model of the '92 metal range that I haven't got - and so I really didn't have a choice in the matter.

In fact, totting up the collection, I have almost all of that savage orc range: command, boyz, arrer boyz and boar boyz. A total of 41 different models (we're not talking about the subsequent 7-type monopose range of change-a-weapon-and-repeat).

I'm short just 3 infantry models, that are apparently so unpopular (or carefully hoarded) that I've never even seen them on the market.

Of course, the army's complete now. So even if I saw them, I wouldn't want them. No sir, not at all...

Pigaro qua, Pigaro la

Remind me to never again to take on fifteen models in one go...

(And yes, I realise that statement sounds incredibly wussy after Kraken's 50-model romp through the zombies. A Rompie, if you will)

I usually like to paint in smaller groups, finishing them entirely before moving on. However, this project required everything to be assembled in one go - the new boars are nice, but they are hell to rank up - so fifteen boar boys it was, and it feels like it's lasted an age.

First up, the spear-armed boar boys...

You may recognise the middle one from September 2012

Three conversions here: a musician and a standard bearer demoted to the ranks.
The one on the right just had a weapon swap, so doesn't feel so bad about it.