Laser Cut Fort

One of my early laser cutting projects from last year was a fort loosely based on the one seen towards the end of the Starship Troopers movie.

I have posted photos of my kit on the blog before, but I have just received these photos of the finished fort from Dave Adams, and i thought they were worth show again!

 I am not sure who makes the landing pad and watch tower but I didn't make those...

 Dave has gone for a winter finish with his fort, perfect to go along with Four A Miniatures figures (also in my lead pile...

 The snow effect looks really good here, and I like the blue camo paint job, it works really well!

Thanks to Dave for sending me the photos.

I think i will finally finish painting my own fort, but use it as an (Aegis) defence line for my W40k Tau...

Update

I haven’t had much time to post anything on here recently.

I am still busy trying to get my head around the new CAD/CAM machinery, I think I have the 3D printers running fairly reliably now. So it is just a matter of learning to use the 3D design software to actually design something now…

I have been working on some more articles in my Quick and Easy Wargames Terrain series. So hopefully I will have them up in the near future. I am also near completion of my second and third Pulp/Retro Rocket, so you will see those in the near future too.

Finally, as I have mentioned in recent posts I have been getting back into doing some actual wargaming (rather than just painting and modelling). This has achieved though a rekindling of our regular Warhammer 40K games. I have been a huge fan of the Tau and Kroot figures ever since Games Workshop introduced them. I have been following a blog called Warhammer Tau for a while now and recently Adam, the creator of the blog announced that he was leaving his Tau behind so that he could concentrate on a new Eldar project. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have taken over the Warhammer Tau blog and I will be posting my trials and tribulations as I rediscover my Tau force, and also posting any related Tau and Kroot news and articles as I produce them. So you wont be seeing any more 40K battle reports listed here as I will be directing them over to the dedicated 40K blog.

SO, please drop by the Warhammer Tau blog, and let me know what you think!

It's official, I'm actually a wargamer again!

I played my first wargame, in several years, last week!

I never really stooped wargaming, and I have had a strong need to wargame for quite some time. However, my gaming group has gone through quite a few changes over the last few years and we ended up being more of a board game group (who talked about wargaming a lot), than anything else.

I considered going along to my local wargames club (Aberdeen Wargames Club), but as my spare time is pretty much limited to one evening a week that would have meant loosing touch with the friends I game with at the moment. Anyway, we finally got our act together and settled on a system that was familiar to all of us, that we already had armies for and wouldn't tax us too hard to get back into, Warhammer 40K. Del had been playing regularly with another friend and Jeff and I both played it a lot a few years back.

So, we had decided on 40K, Del has been playing 5th edition recently, but on checking my much used rulebook it turned out to be 3rd edition. I also found a mint copy of 4th ed. ( I must have bought it about the time we stopped playing, probably read it once and then put it aside until the next game). Jeff was in a similar position, he also had a 4th edition copy. Fortunately, Ebay is your friend when it comes to older versions of 40K. Both Jeff and I managed to pick up the the smaller version (from the starter box) of the 5th edition rule book. I got mine, including the scenario book, a new set of dice, those horrid plastic rulers and the new (day-glow) templates, all for around £5!

As Jeff and I hadn't played for a long time Del offered to referee the first game and introduce us to the "new" 5th edition rules. We decided to start small and work up to some larger games. So initially we will be playing 400 point games. I fielded my Tau and Jeff brought along his Necrons.

I like my games to have a bit of narrative to them and know the terrain I planned to use I came up with the following:-

Early in the game things look quite positive for the tau!

Planet QV973alpha (Imperial Designation): Located in the quarantine zone that exists between Imperial Space and the Tau Empire. The planet was surveyed and found to be barren and uninhabited, although it was also discovered that certain geological features (crystal spires) displayed fairly severe effects on the warp around the planet! A team of scientists led by the Inquisition was despatched to investigate the nature of these "Crystal Spires". It was found that too much work around the geological formations caused heretical mutations and the research base was soon abandoned. The planet received the"Restricted" designation and was scheduled for a planet wide bombardment to erase all taint from it. However, the Imperial fleet has been busy elsewhere, and as such QV973alpha has been forgotten.

The incursion by the Imperial force did not go unnoticed!

1. The planet may be barren, but it is far from uninhabited! Hidden by thousands of years of harsh weather, a Necron tomb (Jeff's Necrons) is located on the far side of the planet and the arrival of the Imperial teams roused a small force to investigate the unwelcome intrusion...
2. An Eldar Craftworld (Del's Eldar) was not far from the planet while the Inquisition was conducting it's experiments. The Eldar felt the disturbances in the warp and sent a scouting force to investigate...
3. The Tau (my Tau) had been watching the Imperial ships as the came and went from the planet. Fairly sure that all the humans had left, the Tau sent a small ship with an advanced scouting party to see what the humans had been up to and to see if there was anything of the humans primitive technology left that could be of use for the Greater Good...

With some decent shooting the Kroot could easily take out those metal aberrations...

You'd think the Kroot had the upper hand here wouldn't you...

The idea was to have two games over the evening. The first would have two opposing forces rushing to take and hold the base. The second game would have the winner of the first game trying to hold the base while Del's Eldar tried to take it from them...

Who is that coming through between the buildings?

We can take them! Not with shooting like that you can't...

Jeff contemplates a rules question...

As it turned out we didn't get enough time to play the second game, but the first helped us all get back into the rules without too much mishap. The game went fairly well (at least from Jeff's point of view). I made a couple of serious tactical errors early in the game and then suffered some appallingly bad dice rolling, which led to my small Tau recon force being completely wiped out.  As it turned out, sending the Tau up against another shooty army that was in many ways more resilient than them, and also putting quite a lot of cover on the table definitely went against me...

We haven't got another game for a couple of weeks, but we will be returning to 40K. I imagine the Necrons will be squaring up against the Eldar next time. We will possibly increase the army size to 600point as well, so that we may get some vehicles on the table.

Warhammer 40K: Time to Revisit an Old Friend!

I used to play 40K on a regular basis for a good few years, both with my gaming group and also at the local GW shop (Aberdeen UK). I even entered a couple of the Games Day tournaments that were held in Edinburgh although I am not really that competitive, I just did it for the fun of meeting other gamers.  However, when my sons came along my gaming time was reduced and our gaming group moved on to other games and genres etc. so I haven’t really looked at the game since then. We are talking 4th edition here, by the way.

I originally had a large Eldar army, an Imperial Army (yes pre-IG, still love those figures) army, I also had a Khorne Chaos army for a while, and I have enough Dark Eldar (from the original release) to build a sizable army. My Eldar army faded in my interests and with the launch of the Tau I was really attracted to the Kroot, they looked suitably alien, and savage, without the brute stupidity of the Orks! I built up quite a large Tau army, and was on my way to building a Kroot Mercenary army too. A friend gave me his Tau army as well, so I probably have enough for an Apocalypse game, although it is unlikely I will go down that route. When I stopped playing I stored my Tau and Kroot away and I have occasionally had a look at them just to stir some memories.

One of my gaming group friends has been playing 40K recently (with a guy who is not in our group). His tales of the developing campaign have rekindled my interest to some extent, and now with the arrival of 6th edition that has also attracted me back to the game. Initially I am concentrating on filling out a few missing units from my Tau army, some of the newer models weren't out when I last played with the Tau. I have picked up three Piranha flyers, a couple of units of the XV25 Stealth teams and the Firewarriors with Railguns. I will be tracking down a Sniper Drone team in the near future too.

Digging through my existing collection of Tau I found a scratchbuilt/kit-bashed chariot that I built as a scenic base for my Ethereal. I believe that the new 6th Edition has brought back chariots (as well as some other vehicles) so I might actually be able to find some rules for it now too.

I will be getting back on track with my Kroot Mercenary army. It is unsupported, but it is so much fun converting it and putting it together! At least there is an army list available from the Kompletely Kroot forum, so I should be able to use them at least in my own gaming group! For my Kroot army I have several units of standard Kroot, a couple of Kroot Ox, and all the Shapers that have been released. I have also cast up some wings to convert a unit to flying. I also have a couple of the Forgeworld Knarlox models. The units I will probably work on first though are a couple of units of Kroot Cavalry. I bought the GW conversion kit, to turn Cold Ones into Kroot riding beasts, and have already put those together. However I don’t feel that they look like fast moving cavalry, so I came up with a plan to use the older Chaos Daemonettes steeds with some modification.

I cut the daemonettes off of their steeds, then cut the heads off of the steeds. I replaced their heads with Kroot Hound heads (which turned out to be a perfect size for the steeds) and also added the Kroot Hounds “Dreadlocks” onto the steeds necks. To hide the area where I removed the daemonettes I built up a quilted saddle and then mounted the Kroot rider on top. These conversions work out fairly expensive, when you include the Daemonette on Steed, the Kroot Hound and a basic Kroot figure, but the effect certainly looks sleek and fast, which is what I wanted to achieve. I have only put three together so far, but I have the parts ready for several more so these are going to take priority over the next few weeks…

I am not sure if I will actually pick up W40K 6th Ed. just yet. My friends are still happy using either 4th or 5th Ed. I will have to see how much I get back into it before deciding that one. Also a new Tau Codex would probably help me decide to upgrade to 6th Ed…