40K: Tau Stormsurge

Has it really been a week haha, with the kiddies off school and a couple of trips out my painting slowed to a crawl last week... and what time i did have was taken clearing through all the magnetised weapons for the various suits and tanks in the project.

I guessed the world wouldnt want to see 50+ grey guns haha!!!

Well that lot was cleared yesterday morning and i got straight on to the Stormsurge, the biggest model in the project:

On with the tanks now!

40K: Tau Drones n dudes

The back is well and truly broken on this now, here are all the Drones from various squads, commanders and vehicles, and also 5 more warriors & pathfinders i found in the weapons bits box haha

40K: Tau Riptide

The second biggest model i will paint for this project is now finished (Bar the big weapons):

The Riptide, again i dont really know what it does but i know it has a massive rail gun and several missile pods so must be pretty handy in a scrap haha

Ironjawz: Legendary Emissary for RAW

My Knight Questor arrived and is now painted up as the Legendary version of my Aspirant, featured earlier:

I have to admit i have enjoyed painting the stormcast up in my ironjaw scheme, who knows, maybe an army of them may appear at some point!!

Black Gate Miniatures

The kickstarter for the awesome Ogre army is just over halfway through now and has had a fair few updates so its time for a catch up!

The following have been unlocked:

Armoured Warriors

Warriors

Black Gate KS Dice

Base Packs

The stretch goals have been rejigged so it looks like this now:

Cannoneers unlock at 2500GBP

 Chieftain unlock at 3000GBP (One free to Chieftain+ pledges or 3GBP each)

Mammoth Riders unlock at 3500GBP

Character Mammoth Rider unlock at 4000GBP

Those Mammoths look fantastic and i really hope we reach them so i can get my themed force on the fields of battle haha

40K: Tau Ghostkeel Battlesuit

Next up for this project is the first of the big Tau walkers in the Ghostkeel Battlesuit:

Im not 100% sure what it does but it looks really cool tho haha

Moonstone: Painted minis and the kickstarter is a go!

Ive painted my two Moonstone minis! And just in time too as the full game kickstarter has just launched: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1138228733/moonstone-fantasy-skirmish-game?ref=user_menu

Baron Von Fancyhat (Commonwealth)

Firespitter (Dominion)

40K: Tau Battlesuits

Time for some of the bigger stuff for this project!

Crisis Battlesuit Team

Shas'O Commander

There are no weapons mounted on the Crisis suits (And the upcoming skimmers) as my client has magnetized all the hardpoints for freedom of choice. These will all be painted at the end! 

Circle Orboros Commission: Death Wolves & Alten Ashley

A few more bits on this, works been a bugger this week so only had time to get these finished today:

Death Wolves

Alten Ashley - Minion

Ironjawz: Updates for the RAW Campaign Wkend

A bunch of the Bunker AoS guys including myself are off to the Realms at War campaign weekend in a few weeks, being hosted by the Eatbats chaps in Cambridge.

As well as our regular armies we need to bring a pair of realmgates and a couple of models to represent our narrative characters throughout the event.

Yes that is a Stormcast haha, he is representing my "Aspirant" model, at the beginning of his quest, im using a spare liberator with a greenstuff cloak and an ironjaw paint job to be an emissary from sigmar. My "Legend", the second stage of our character will be a Knight Questor from the warhammer quest box! 

Warmaster: BGM Ogres scale shot

I got hold of some for casts of Black Gate Miniatures Ogres to paint up so i decided to base them up as a unit. Here they are completed along side some other 10mm minis for scale:

I clipped of some of the excess base tab on them to fit better on the base, and despite being three different types of unit models they work really well together!

40K: Tau Stealth Suits

The project merry-go-round continues with these 12 Stealth Suits for the Tau Commission!

Circle Orboros Commission: Tanith and Minions

A few more pieces for this ongoing project:

Minions - Wrong Eye & Snapjaw

Tanith the Feral Song

Minions - Lanyssa Ryssal

There are a few more bits to do on this stage of the project but i have to split my time between other jobs too!

Moonstone: Firespitter and Baron Von Fancyhat arrive!

A pleasant surprise awaited me when i got home from work today, my Firespitter and Baron Von Fancyhat arrived from Gobling King Games;

First class packaging, great artwork and the minis are well protected with foam inlays. I really love the art for the game, and the full cover works on the boxes will be great to use as a painting guide.

On to the minis themselves and both come with the full stat cards for the game, and also instructions for Firespitter and a use of resin leaflet for new modelers.

Last is the models built, and i cant wait to get started on them! the ks cant start soon enough!

Over the coming weeks i will have a painting post up and hopefully a small battle report using the paper stand ins.

Black Gate Miniatures: Ogres Kickstarter is a go!!!

As the title says, the 10mm Ogres kickstarter i mentioned a while ago has begun and at this moment is nearly funded!

I managed to get Barry away from the forges for a little more info on it, Ogres and Black Gate Miniatures as a whole:

Readers will have seen the preview models that Sinister Squid Studios and myself have painted up over the last few weeks, which we both agree are fantastic minis to work with.

What prompted you to come up with and produce the range? And what made you decide on Ogres first?

First off, thanks for letting me share my creation with you! The history of Black Gate Miniatures (BGM) is relatively simple; i wanted to use a 10mm Ogre army and couldn't find a range to buy and that lead me to thinking about creating one. I've always loved Ogres, they are so different to any other race and really bring a lot of character to the table... The world deserves 10mm Ogres!!

I already own all the equipment needed to produce miniatures, namely a vulcanising press and centrifugal spincasting machine, and just needed a project to sink my teeth into, Ogres came along and gave me that opportunity.

As a new starter in the world of miniature production, how have you found the process to get to where you are now; first ks on the go and mini range being created?

The hard bit is finding the talent. I am a process kind of guy and really enjoy the production side of the miniatures. On the creative side, my imagination is good but turning that into art, sculpts or a decent paintjob isnt my strength. Luckily, i have some contacts, who have contacts, and we managed to put together a team of creative talent i am very, very happy with:

Production: Barry James Pittman

Sculpting: Robi Baker

Art: Christian Schwager

Painting: Jon Webb (Display Models)

Painting: Richard Bowker (Demo Armies and Units)

Web Design: Harvey Barrington

The kickstarter itself has been pretty painless to this point, although it is always a little scary exposing something you have worked on to public scrutiny!

The range is to be fully compatible with existing 10mm wargames, but we have seen talk of BGM producing its own system to support the Ogres and future ranges, how have plans progressed with this?

Ah yes, the three year plan! Year one is the "Year of the Ogre", year two will hopefully be the "Year of the Evil Dwarf" and then year three will see the release of the "Kings of the North" (KoTN) miniatures game. The game is set in the North and will feature battles between the different races that live in the cold wastes. I have some great ideas for the game but it will have to wait a while yet before being unleashed onto the world.

Best of luck in the campaign, Fanplastic Little Men is 100% supporting it and the minis will be featuring heavily over the coming months!

Thanks for your support FPLM (and Richard!) it means a lot to me, hopefully the world wants 10mm Ogres and BGM can help realise them! 

Cheers Barry!

Im getting hold of some more preview casts to paint up on unit bases to give you all a better idea of the size and scale, and how well they match up to existing miniature ranges, more on this in a couple of days.

Marvel: Avengers & Deadpool Commission

I was recently asked to paint up a force for the Marvel Universe game from Knight Miniatures, my client wanted to get playing asap but was working too long hours to get anything done so asked me to do the honours:

Captain America, Black Widow and Iron Man

Deadpool and Thor

Warmaster: Empire Crossbowmen

The last two units of this project are now complete!

They shall all be dropped of to my happy client on Wednesday hehe. Speaking of Warmaster, Black Gate miniatures kickstarter has begun today

I will be doing a bigger post later today on this!

Spotlight: Moonstone by Goblin King Games

Regular readers will know that i love a good skirmish game; low model count, great minis to paint up, interesting mechanics and the more internal synergy between faction models the better! Its a crowded market out there now but every so often a game comes along that really grabs my attention and that is Moonstone, by Goblin King Games.

Moonstone really ticks all the boxes, using between 3 and 6 models a side for an average game, amazingly detailed models, a great objective drop and poker style mechanics and bucket loads of internal synergy (More on these later!).

Earlier in the year the guys ran a small kickstarter to fund production of their first model, the Goblin Firespitter. The campaign was very successful and also enabled production of a second model with Baron Von Fancyhat:

These are now being sent out to backers (And late backers like myself!), so expect a painting article up soon after they arrive! They have also just announced that a kickstarter to bring the full game into production is planned for October 17th, the game having been in testing for a substantial amount of time now and is ready to be unleashed on the world proper!

I messaged Tom and Richi from Goblin King Games to get some more info on the game, the setting and the campaign which they were kind enough to answer:

As i said in the intro, Moonstone is a fantasy skirmish game using 3-6 models a side, how did you guys start on the development of your game? What prompted you decide to produce a new system in the first place?

Moonstone is about the 7th or 8th game we've created and played for our own enjoyment over the years, each one becoming progressively better as we learn from our mistakes. Game design seems to be an irresistible attractor for us so it wasn't much about why we decided to develope a game but more about the specific factors that lead into this game and why we decided to go public with it.

We play a lot of different types of games and wanted to experiment with some fresh mechanics that we have enjoyed in CCG or board games and see how they would work in a skirmish game setting. In particular, Moonstone's lead designer Tom practices historical European martial arts and had ideas brewing for a game that uses cards to represent different types of attack or defence, played simultaneously.

There is only a certain amount of complexity you can (or should!) put into a game so rather than trying to cram this into one of our existing games it felt like a new game should be born, with a fantasy theme. With the idea of using card mechanics in a fantasy setting the rest followed on naturally from there including the arcane mechanic which was inspired by Poker and Cheat.

This social element of the game was really important to us as not every game enjoys purely crunching statistics - sometimes you want to play the other players! This is also the reason we wanted to make a game that could just as easily support 2, 3 or 4 players as some of our most enjoyable gaming evenings involve multiplayer games.

Can you give us a rundown on your protagonists, The Commonwealth and the Dominion, apart from harvesting the all important Moonstones, what are their overriding goals in the fluff and stories?

Unlike many games, Tauber (the land that Moonstone is set in) is not at war, and there are no major boundaries or "countries". Instead there is an uneasy alliance of cohabiting races governed by two rival political entities - Commonwealth and Dominion. Supporters of each faction tend to split along racial lines (Humans and Gnomes for Commonwealth, Faeries and Goblins supporting the Dominion) bu this is not always the case.

The ruling elite govern from the capital city (Including the Wizards Guild - who remain unaffiliated from the casual party divides but are non-the-less an extremely influential group), enforcing laws and raising taxes while the common folk live their lives in the many towns and hamlets dotted all over the picturesque storybook land.

The game setup and scenario from the beta rules has the awesome mechanic of dropping 7 D4's onto the centre of the board for moon stone locations, is this going to be a feature of any other scenarios you have in the works? I have to say im a big fan of this and will certainly be getting a batch of custom dice made up for this... unless you guys are planning on your own hehe?

We are indeed hoping to offer special (very pretty) Moonstone Dice at some point, possibly during the upcoming kickstarter (17th October!). Although we haven't yet worked out anymore scenarios beyond the basic 'Collect stones to win' you can be assured the dice drop mechanic is here to stay - its just too much fun, and we love the moment when every player pears over the table like crones reading the rune of fate, trying to imagine how the game is going to play out based on their positions and numbers (The number on the die showing the depth at which you will have to harvest the stone from).

We have seen the art for the starter forces of the Humans, Gnomes, Goblins and Faeries, along with a few renders so far... All of which i have to say look wicked - in most games you might have a faction, possibly two that grab you from the get go but this is going to be really tough! The Faeries have it just over the rest for me, with the Goblins a very close second haha

Yeah i'm extremely happy to see how well the faeries have been received. There is really nothing out there quite like them at the moment and it was hard to tell at first if that was because no one wanted them ;-) Anyway, glad to see we were right to go with our gut and include them as i think they are going to end up as our best sellers!

Currently when picking a force you only have to decide on Commonwealth or Dominion, will this be the case with the full game so i could freely mix Faeries and Goblins vs Humans and Gnomes? Or will you be making it a bit more rigid?

Yes all the character cards either have a Commonwealth or Dominion symbol on the top right. You must choose one of the two factions and then only choose characters with the appropriate symbol (there will also be split symbol cards that can be chosen by anyone). This means you can mix your goblins and your faeries, and your humans with your gnomes, but you wont usually be able to mix humans and goblins for example (Unless its a rogue character that doesnt belong to its usual faction alliance).

All of the characters are designed with open ended synergies and there are a lot of combos you can build into your troupes - this is a large chunk of the fun in CCG's and we wanted a bit of that here too! Synergies do tend to be a lot stronger within races than between them however, so i expect to see all Goblin or all Faerie troupes more frequently than split race troupes.

To be honest we're very excited to see what players do and what troupe builds they come up with! We expect it to be an evolving meta-game as we have designed all characters with weaknesses that can be exploited by an opponent who chooses the right characters to face you so if one character rises in poularity the counter character will start to be seen more often, and then its counter will be seen more often etc...

   

The difficult one, cost... how much will we be looking at to invest in the kickstarter to get going with? Say a rulebook, any tokens and dice and two faction starters to get a mate playing?

We are still finalising costings, so don't hold us to this, but we are looking at about 60 pounds for a starter set that includes two troupes of 4 characters each, the rules pamphlet, dice, tokens, measuring devices and the custom card decks needed for two players to play a complete game straight out of the box. Obviously if people want to invest more there will be a whole load of additional characters up for garbs as well!

Thanks for all the great info guys cheers, readers can check out the game development via www.moonstonethegame.com or via www.facebook/moonstonethegame.

As is kind of customary with a spotlight, any chance of a cheeky preview hehe?

How about Baron Von Fancyhat's newest (Autumn/Winter collection!) alternate hat (WIP)

Boom! there we go, Moonstone! Check it out soon!