Book Review: In Her Majesty's name

This is a book review for a set of steampunk skirmish rules. We've not yet played the ruleset, a new review will be posted as soon as we do.

The ruleset caught my eye in the Wargames Illustrated. Greet mini's and great setting. We are playing Chaos in Carpathia but that is more Victorian horror. This is more the steampunk variation in my opinion. The book is accompanied by a blog with latest findings, errata, additional material and reference cards.

The book is good: Nice size book, softcover, good pics and not a ruleset with 500 pages. Read the book within the hour and flipped through the warbands. I love the setting and quick paced skirmish rules (as they read, how they play has to be experienced yet!).
I am enthusiastic on forming a warband and the fact that you can come up with your own themed warband is great. A solid ruleset for creating warband members including the formula's to calculate the points for your warband members is ace. Playing these kind of games leads to coming up with ideas of your own. It is then difficult to create such a thing. You need a lot of playing hours with existing warbands to get a feeling for points value. When eventually you come up with your own it needs loads of play testing and tweaking (and discussing with fellow gamers) until you have a balanced set (if you didn't quit in the process).
This set of rules bodes well for creating your own warbands in the steampunk setting. Love to get to grips with the game!

Some random ogre's appear!

A short while ago we decided to start a new campaign in Mordheim. I decided to go with Ogre's this time. This post is the first update on the progress of creating the models for my warband.

I really had some fun creating these guys! Not included is the Halfling btw.

Mind you, this is also my very first attempt with milliput ever!

All I made tonight.

A random base with tiles.

The full group thus far, front view.

Full group thus far, rear view.

Mountian Guard and Boss, I guess.

Again, but front view this time.

painting Mournfang

As mentioned in the previous battle report my mournfang are finished painting. It took me a while but they are done. I tend to like to start up multiple paint projects with models I like, ending up with 4 projects progressing very slowly. Plan to paint is good thing here and I put away 3 other projects in a shoebox (literaly so you can't see them near the paintstation) and focussed on the mournfang. This proved good tactics since they were done in 2 weeks (just painting half hours here and there).

The base of the mournfang was done by airbrush. Great stuff to paint the hide and add cool highlights. Finished of with a wash and a final highlight with the airbrush. This was done in say 2 hours. I also undercoated the riders and the saddles separately. In total 6 parts to paint separately (2 riders, 2 saddles and 2 mournfang). The mournfang itself finished quickly after the airbrush session. The saddles as well since only leather painting needed to be done. I did the tusks and bones on the saddles with a colorflow from brown to red to yellow to white. They are more magical creatures and this gives them that look I had in mind.

With the mournfang ready I started work on the bases as well. I wanted these simple and snowy to focus attention to the model. Simple layers of snow were added with watered down pva glue. I also added clumps of snow and put drops of watered down pva glow on them so it could soak through. It gave nice patches of thick and thin snow. With some added rocks covered in snow, for now it's done.

Meanwhile the ogre riders were started. Mainly your basic ogre although I wanted to give a nice print to the pants. It became a cloud pattern that works well. The troop is now called the cloudriders and the entire ogre force named: skytitans of null. Always nice to see this naming following from the models and paintschemes themselves, works more organically that way.

A lot of work went into weathering the armour and waponry. The first order to make it less 'clean' and further more to give more color to the model that has a lot of reds and browns. Green-blue oxidation on brass is great here.

Fianlly assembly of each model with the 3 parts finished and then all comes together. A quick layer of matt varnash and the models are done. Good to see how focussing the work leads to quick and good results here. Next up is the stonehorn but maybe I'll do 1 leadbelcher in between to do something different then furry brown beasts.