Testing the board: Necromunda

The day has finally come! Trumpets and fanfares! After six years working on the vertical board of the mining town of Qala Debdou, it’s time to actually start trying it out for real :)

I’ve been building it for ages (and not building it for even longer), and up until now I’d only tested it with miniatures, checking if they could move around the board, if I could reach every corner with my hand... But I still hadn’t actually broken it in with a proper game. Well, I’ve finally done it!

First things first: the board isn’t finished! There’s still loads of stuff I want to add. But the truth is the whole main module has been ready for over a year now, and it’s good enough to put to the test. What I really want to find out is whether I’ve spent years building a genuinely playable board… or just an oversized dollhouse that’s totally got out of hand :D

For the occasion I got together with my usual geek crew, who very kindly set me up with a game of Necromunda. I’d never played it before (not even the original, which has been a thorn in my side for years), so I told them I thought it was a brilliant idea.

There was a bit of buzz about trying the board out, so in the end four of us got together. Two of them are regular Necromunda players and have been running a campaign for a while now, one with an Escher gang and the other with an Orlock gang. For the other two of us, they suggested a mutant gang and a group of Enforcers.

The idea behind the game is that the working population at the smelter/factory/mine/whatever has turned into a bloodthirsty horde of cannibal mutants thanks to the management slipping unauthorised additives into the food in a bid to save a few credits... Now riots have broken out in the district, and two rival gangs have seized the chance to loot everything. The foreman is under threat, so a small detachment of local enforcers has to escort him to the spaceport for evacuation.

But the local mutants are lying in wait! They see both sides as filthy invaders, and they’ll do whatever it takes to defend their home...

The outskirts

When I prepared the board I decided to display almost any other scenery elements I had, in order to present the town and its outskirts. In the end it wasn't such a good idea, but we'll get to that in a moment. Here you have the gangs:

Escher lurking in the shadows

Orlocks coming over to the party!

The escorted foreman

 I'll edit the first picture so you can have a better understanding of the situation. I'm marking the Orlocks on the left of the pic (green), the Escher on the right (red), the Enforcers on the lower part (blue) and the spaceport on top of the structure (blue arrow). There are several objective tokens scattered throughout all the board (which both Escher and Orlock gangs will attempt to get) and we determined six random points frow where the mutants will come out each turn:

 The goal for the Enforcer team was quite impossible to achieve. They'd have to go just across the battlefield, enter the town and go up and up through the maze, being caught between two way larger gangs and the upcoming mutants. The two gangs would have a more or less standard confrontation, having to capture the objectives and, ideally, the foreman (who was coming to them anyway). The mutants would only have to cause some mayhem, so their victory conditions imply keeping the hive clean of strangers.

Let's roll!

The gangs spread out and start eyeing everything around them with greed and hunger:

Come on, girls!

Come on, boys!

At the end of the turn we rolled the dice and the muties started to come out!

Come on, non-binary unwilling genetically altered people!

The Enforcers started to run with the foreman towards the entrance to the town:

But the gangs are already dangerously close

 On the next turn the Orlocks already ran into some serious clashes with the mutants...

But they just kept coming out of everywhere:

These minis are perfect for everything but what for what they were originally designed

One of the Escher Juves threw a demo charge at the Enforcers squad. They all held their ground, but the foreman ended up wounded:

Boom

I'm new to the game, but that result doesn't look good

The two gangs started closing in on the Enforcers, figuring they’d force them to hunker down and dig in. But for me that would’ve meant certain death — the goal was to make it to the other side of the board. So the Enforcer sergeant grabbed the wounded foreman by the leg and dragged him along while the squad broke into the open, firing at anything that moved within range.

Orlocks got their share too

The muties were more dreadful than anticipated:

Those steroids on the meal really made their effect

 An Orlock with a jetpack (they have two in the gang) got onto an Escher occupied roof, severily injuring two girls and capturing the objective:

Ouch

The mutants deployed their ultimate weapon, an Ambot (we used my mini of the Genestealer Cult Mining Suit)

You can ignore the posters in the background. Or not

The mutants caused an absolute bloodbath — they turned out to be lethal.

Both for the Orlocks

And for the Eschers

 As for the Enforcers, they made their desperate dash into the open — and honestly, I think I had possibly the best turn I’ve ever had in any game in my whole life XD

With a single shot they took down the Escher leader, which meant her wild pet (that had been attacking an Enforcer) was forced to flee:

Bang

 They also dropped a mutant that was charging straight at them:

Blamm

 And finished off the wounded Escher Juve (the one who’d lobbed the demo charge at them earlier):

K-pow

The Orlock with the jetpack killed the remaining Escher on the roof, meaning that the Escher gang lost five (five!) members in a single turn. Wow.

The Escher gang was essentially out of the game, and this was turn 4

Now that the Ambot had taken care of the Escher, the path was clear to its next target… the Enforcers

Whiiiir. Stomp. Stomp. Whiiiir

 The Orlocks were having a hard time dealing with the muties too. However, the guy with the jumpack and flamer guns managed to fry a couple of them:

Flames on! (flying flaming guy, come on)

The foreman managed to get back on his feet, but they could no longer run for it. The Orlocks caught up with them and the fight turned into close combat:

Orlock, Orlock, what a big hammer you have!

It's to smash you better with!

Things are getting rash for the Enforcers...

Yup, that one on the roof is a jetpack Orlock

Can you foresee the result of this encounter?

 

Well, but of course you can

Eschers were not doing any better...

Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!

Given the current situation, the foreman simply started running as fast as he could:

Nope. Not gonna stay here

But he got caught on the run by a jetpack Orlock (kind of true star of the game). He intercepted him and engaged to capture him:

Were you going anywhere?

The Orlocks got the ground and captured the foreman:

You coming with us, big boy

 So by the end of turn 7 the game was totally done. The Orlocks declared themselves the winners, having captured the foreman and taken down 16 muties. The Eschers, decimated, had managed to secure three objectives, but they’d only killed one mutant and were left in tatters.

Wow. Intense.

The game was really tense and a lot of fun. The chaos of playing with four different sides added loads of enjoyment, and I didn’t mind the imbalance between players. In fact, that’s what gave the game its unique flavour. However, as you’ve probably noticed while reading, the issue I mentioned at the start did come up. Setting up the whole village on the outskirts of the town was a mistake. In the end, the game focused almost entirely on the horizontal area of the board, and the city —which was what we’d actually come to test— ended up being little more than an oversized backdrop.

We never really got to test its true worth as a board: the corners, the LOS blockers, the chances for ambushes, the different vertical levels... all of that ended up untouched, which is a real shame. Maybe Necromunda (especially with so many players) turned out to be a game with too many minis. I’d have liked to try this out in the town itself. But my gang didn’t even get the chance to set foot on the board, we ended up stuck among the scenery on the outskirts.

For the next test game I want to try something different. First off, I’ll only use the town itself —no extra scenery on the side. I want to really test what the board can do, that’s what matters to me. Secondly, I think this will work better with fewer minis and with a more narrative-driven scenario, not just a standard match of fighting and grabbing objectives. I’m not sure what I’ll go for yet, but I’ll probably try out Stargrave or some other ruleset along those lines. I’ll keep you posted!

In the meantime, I hope you’ve enjoyed this battle. I promise more test games are on the way! 

Repurposing stuff

 Oh, August has almost gone by, time flies, I guess. I've done very little actual progress on any hobby front (real life meddled in everything, you know), but haven't been totally idle. There was a thing I had thought of quite some time ago, and at last it was time to go for it.

It has to do with my vertical board project, the mining town of Qala Debdou. I thought it needed quite a few landing pads. I can't build a huge spaceport (that would be a whole board itself!), but I could add some small pads here and there. Then I came with this crazy idea:

We need to recap a few years in time. We need to go back to my oooold diorama of the Sammath Naur. There's a slight chance you don't remember, but that's what links are for! I posted it in 2013 and actually build it a few years earlier. Again, time flies.

Tiny and naive, but cute anyways XD

 I've kept this diorama for ages on my shelf, and last year, when I "finished" (ahem) the lower module of the Qala Debdou board, I had a flash in my mind and envisioned it.

I was there, Gandalf, 3,000 years ago, when he started that board...

 The end of that walkway, the top of that rock, could be a perfect vantage point to set a landing pad on. The old diorama had fulfilled it's purpose for about 15 years, it was time to give it another life.

So here are the main elements: 

The walkway, stripped of its background and already spray painted

A round piece of eva rubber

This belonged to an old eva rubber carpet from the Suberlings' room, long time gone. One man's My own trash is my own treasure. Its texture looked nice and I had kept it for something like this for a few years. Unfortunately I forgot to take a pic of the "before". You can see I have already added some landing lights and it's more or less ready to be used.

I could have filled in the space for the bases in the diorama, but I feared the result didn't feel right, so I added some kind of strange cover with cables dropping from it. Besides, to avoid the whole base being just plain, I added... well, I don't know its purpose, but I had to add some bulky stuff:

Yes, I have an endless stash of Kinder Surprise eggs. Incredibly versatile

Cables better than tentacles, I hope

You can see it's enormously basic. From this point on, it all was just a matter of adding tiny details, such as the ubiquitous posters, some weathering and a couple of hanging cables:

Oh, and the stairs, right, you'll see soon why

Greenstuff cables from the landing pad to the Kinder eggs. Some kind of... coolant?

This is the result when in place!

Small landing pad granting access to the town

Fragile, ill-designed... all I could wish for!

It's a little bigger than the other platform I already had (which ony allows for the Arvus Lighter to land on!), so I can use slightly larger ships:

This is the weight test! Fortunately, it seems to hold enough

A few miniatures for scale reference

So this is the current iteration of the finished lower module of Qala Debdou:

Could I still add another platform there in the center...?

Bonus content!

I've used the Ornithopter to test the landing pad precisely because I've been putting some work on it recently. I guess it wasn't enough for a whole blog post, but this gives me the chance to show it anyway!

I had an issue with the wings, they made it really (really) difficult to storage, so I had to magnet them. To my surprise, these commecial neodymium magnets are way more fragile than I expected. I had some large (yet thin) ones. I wasn't planning to use them, as they were way too large, but one of them broke by accident and then I had two halves... which fitted in perfectly! Then I delicately broke three other magnets and...

You can see the ugly, broken magnets there on the hull and under the wings

They work surprisingly well!

Now I can storage the Ornithopter, and thanks to a happy accident, as Bob Ross would have said :D

Then... this is it for today... No!!

Even more bonus content!! 

Another piece of scenery I had been keeping for years is this wonderful, sweet, gorgeous kit:

Ha! Unexpected, right?

It comes from the Dust 1947 game (you remember it?), it's called the Babylon Lammasu Pillar, in case you are interested in looking for it.

Pretty straightforward work: Spray painting, agrax and highlights, that's all:

I could build a whole board with stuff like this

Detachable, but I think it looks more impressive when assembled

Look at the size of this thing

Now this is finally it. You see, some small works here and there, but they look like something when put together.

Oh, yes, you are right, I have unpacked the whole Qala Debdou board out of the cupboard again. How observant of you. Plans, you say? Oh, no, we don't do that here. "Plans" is quite a strong word...

But you can expect to see some stuff  anytime soon...

Some scenery (2D and 3D)

 Well, I'm back! As told in the previous post, I took some days off with the family, but unfortunately it's over! We stayed some days in the Canary Islands, in Lanzarote (Lanzarote is the Spanish for Lancelot; how cool is to be in an island called after a guy named Lancelot? BTW, totally unrelated to the Arthurian cycle). I wasn't able to paint (only made the silly videos you already saw!), but I managed to produce a few of my infamous doodles. As I have no shame left and have exposed my puny art before, I'll share my view of the little fortress of the capital town, the Castle of St. Gabriel, a small fort on a rock and connected to the land by a stone footbridge:

Not impressive, but it's only some minutes' work

 Ah, there goes my last recollection of summer vacation!

Back home again, I've been working on some Adeptus Titanicus scenery, something I was long overdue for, to be honest. I took the chance to join in and take part in Dave Stone’s Season of Scenery event too! (Mate, whenever you get round to reading this, I hope things are going well. Sending loads of strength your way!).

The bundle I bought from my friend included the scenery from the starter box, plus an extra set of buildings and the Manufactorum Imperialis box. On top of that, another friend gave me his own scenery — poor guy realised he was never going to use it. That’s the stuff that’s already built and primed:

This is like *a lot* of scenery! Glups

To get a feel for the kit, I started by building one of each type of building following the instructions. That way I could figure out how the pieces fit together and what sort of possibilities they offer:

By the book, like a good boy

But once I’d seen what the kits could do, I dared to get a bit creative. I mean, the whole point of having loads of scenery bits isn’t just to build loads of buildings — it’s to go a bit mad and put together something massive:

And now we're going crazy

My first idea was the building as you see it above, with a terrace in the front part; but very soon I was convinced that this other configuration looked in fact way better:
 

It's kind of Notre-Dame, but with the arms of the Sphinx of Giza

 

The trick here is keeping that good old concrete grey monotony (this is the Imperium, after all) while still breaking up the colour a bit — but without straying too far from a coherent palette. I decided to paint the rooftops a darker grey… but I definitely overdid it, and now they’re almost black.

I don’t care —they’re staying like that.

 

I'm most definitely not repainting all these

To bring in a bit of variation while sticking to the overall vibe, I went with a simple rule: treat absolutely everything as concrete wherever I reasonably can (handy excuse to make the most of the grey primer spray!), and then add metallics mainly in the bronze or copper range for contrast.

The windows… well, they’ve been both a challenge and a bit of a nightmare. I had to accept that doing full-on multicoloured gothic stained glass was just too much (even for me!). In the end, I went with classic dark blue with highlights to give that glassy effect. Not perfect, but it’s the only way I’m going to make any progress on this project. Honestly, the level of detail on these buildings is insane. This is the one I used as a test piece for the colour scheme:

Dull, boring, grey... Imperial

Oh, and by the way —the window grilles. Right, Brits, we get it, you love the Union Jack. Fair enough, no issue. Honestly, it’s fine. But seriously… you don’t have to stick it on literally every single window. Painting that over and over again, window after window — it’s absolute hell.

Hell on Earth. Oh, I hear you, it's just a couple of windows, no big deal...

[Redacted for verbal abuse. Sanctioned by order of the Inquisition]

Well, if you look too close you'll see all the mistakes. But at tabletop distance and at this scale I hope this will do.

Right, so with this setup, you’ll see there’s now a door on the upper floor at the front that just opens into thin air, doesn’t lead anywhere. I figured I’d cover it up with a couple of banners to add a splash of colour and stop it looking totally daft.

Then I thought, well, that space between the two wings of the building looked painfully empty. Perfect spot for a little plaza. My first instinct was to go big and make a fully paved piece to fit snugly between the wings, integrated into the building itself. But then I remembered: storage is a thing. So I went for something way more minimal, but it still does the job:

Notre-Dame of Giza

Those of you who already know me will know I’m not a fan of scenery being just a LOS blocker. I like everything to have a purpose. I’m still not entirely sure what I’m building here, but one thing’s for sure, this isn’t a city. Not yet, anyway. These aren’t residential buildings, not homes. They’re clearly administrative, unmistakably Imperial. This is architecture meant to project power. That’s where the idea of banners and a plaza with a statue of some long-forgotten hero came in. Yeah, I know, there’s a bit too much green for proper Imperial vibes, but come on, indulge me, at this point I needed it.

I wanted to add some benches, but that was definitely pushing it too far

No, I’m not adding a name plaque

 Here’s a shot with a Warhound for scale — just so you can get a sense of the sheer size of this beast:

Now I realise I should have added an Adminsitratum icon somewhere

A final shot with all the pieces I've already painted:

Seriously, this is crazy

I haven’t finished all the buildings I started, but to be honest, the whole experience has left me a bit burnt out. I think I’ll park it for now, switch to something totally different for a bit, and come back to it later with fresh eyes. Look, the buildings are absolutely brilliant, the level of detail is stunning, but it’s seriously repetitive work on a very small scale. You’ve got to take it slow and chip away at it bit by bit.

I guess the smaller buildings you can see in the pic will eventually end up as parts of bigger structures, but for now I don’t have any solid plans. I want to keep experimenting with the bits I’ve got and build a proper Imperial admin district full of ridiculously monolithic nonsense. Then I’ll move on to that Manufactorum box. As for housing and other infrastructure, I’ll leave that for later, but as you can see, I’m definitely not ruling it out.

But that's for another day!
 

 

Interlude: Video killed the pics

 Unusual post today, as I'm off the bench, enjoying some days-off. However, I haven't completely left the hobby!

A few days ago I discovered an app called Nauk Nauk, which essentially makes animations out of photos of miniatures (or any kind of toy). I'm fully aware that the Adeptus Mechanicus does not approve of any use of Abominable Intelligence, but this is almost the only hobby-related thing I can do now!

The machine certainly has its limitations and is not always able to perform the directions I provide. Even sometimes does different things when just repeating the same instructions. But with a little patience I've been able to get some funny videos.

Here you have some Titans: 

 The Bretonnian series look particularly appealing to me, but you see, I never know when the minis are keeping the bases or not!:

 Some fun with Space Marines (with different levels of satisfaction):

 You see, I've been doing it with different stuff:

 As said before, results are sometimes better and sometimes... subject to improvement. However, it's quite fun to see how the machine behaves XD

 Well, I've uploaded quite a ton of videos, I'll leave it here for now! I'll still be some days far from the brushes, but I'll resume normal activity soon. I hope you enjoy this little silly experiment!