The Waaagh-Bash Kannonball - 40K Ork Train Update

Hi everyone,

Supreme Warbosses Fork and Spork are making progress on the Waaagh-Bash Kannonball (their looted Ork Train)!  They are now up to two ENGINS' and two KARZ with quite a few big shootas of several types.

Fork and Spork are hard at work because they have agreed to take on other armies in some kind of death race!  So, they have their Big Mek and his crew hard at work.

Supreme Warbosses Fork (left) and Spork (right) are ready to use Ork-style motivation!  Meks need to hurry up and finish the Waaaghbash Kannonball!

Here is the Waaaghbash Kannonball so far.  The Dakka Chugga is in the front, followed by Da Pain Train.  Karz behind that for more dakka!

Dakka Chugga [Link to earlier post]

The Dakka Chugga is the first Lionel Steam Engine which our Orks looted.  Lots of Tyranid power at work here.  The TENDA is willed with Tyranid bodies -- being chucked into the ENGIN.

We've had lots of fun with the Dakka Chugga.  Took it up to Canada and played against Matt (in a Beat Matt Batrep) and his Tyranids.  And, since then have had a few other Tyranid battles against our friends back at home.  The best moment was rolling some Tyranids off the board (nothing better with a looted steam engine)!!

Da Pain Train [Link to earlier post]

Da Pain Train is nearly finished.  We have the main firepower set-up.  Though we do need to connect the main Eldar gun to the top turret.  Also need to put the engines inside and hook up the wirin' and plumbin' from the engine to the rest of Da Pain Train.

Da Pain Train is being built by Fork's meks.  So, the paint scheme will be yellow, black and red.  Will probably paint over the original Lionel train model's yellow painting of the base and front railing -- and make this black and/or metallic looking.

We'll post more with details of the engine and wiring as we go in the next few weeks.

Here is Da Pain Train so far.  Lots of looted Eldar parts.  Figure it should have the firepower of a full-blown Battlewagon!

The Kannon Kar

What we're thinking here is to mount a looted Space Marine tank onto the low-boy flat car you see in the photo.  We'll mount it so that it is turreted -- and the while tank will be able to turn.  Then, we're going to connect the Tyranid shoota to the tank and wire it up to a Tellyporta type power supply -- which will be in the form of a small plasma ball (such as the great Ork master managed for his Morkanaut).  We'll fit the 12V battery needed to fire up the plasma ball down inside the tank.

The thinking will be that if the Waaaghbash Kannonball hits an Obstrukshun -- and can't plow through, the Kannon Kar's tank can drive off the flat car -- and go "deal with" the issue up close!

Here is our Kannon Kar so far.  We got a beat-up Space Marines tank off of eBay -- and have now pried it open.  We'll be fitting our 12V battery for the plasma ball inside the tank.  Then, we'll mount this looted Tyranid Kannon to the front.

Kaboose

Lastly the Kaboose of the train will be looted from this Lionel "observation car" type passenger car.  As you might have guessed, Fork and Spork are thinking to load this up with as many boyz and dakka dakka as it will hold!!

Only question for the Kaboose is....  How many Boyz can we fit in here!

3D printing tokens for use in Pathfinder home campaign

Hi everyone,

We have been enjoying a Pathfinder home campaign for several months now.  And, it has been lots of fun to get together with a consistent set of friends for some RPG fun.

One of the characters we have been using is Dartmouth -- an Oracle of Pharasma.

Dartmouth has recently reached 5th level.  And, as we worked on the list of feats available for her advancement, we stumbled upon the "Fated Channel" feat.

Reading up on the Fated Channel feat, it seems that people have enjoyed using it -- but have found a challenge with remembering that they can elect to roll twice on a d20 roll in the next few turns.  [And, Wow! that reminded us of the trouble we had remembering things playing Warhammer 40K!!]

So, we had the idea of creating some little tokens we could use as a reminder piece for everyone -- that they could roll twice on something in the next so many rounds.

Ideas....

1) Pass out Pharasma colored d20's to everyone.  Certainly practical.  But, didn't seem to include very much flavor of Pharasma or Dartmouth the Oracle.  And, while it would be really cool if there were Pharasma d20's, didn't see any easy way to make custom dice for our small group.

2) Print out paper tokens.  Maybe even laminate them.  Was thinking that we could print out the Pharasma symbol.  And, then pass these out....  Worried about them just getting lost though.  A D&D or Pathfinder table quickly get cluttered with paper and dice.  Not a friendly place for a two dimensional object.

3) We thought about printing cards.  But, that seemed just as bad as using paper tokens.  Would be fine if we were playing with a group who used cards to keep track of spells and things.  But, heck, we're not.

4) 3d print a token!  Aside from the fact that we didn't know how to pull this off -- it did seem like a very cool option.  Doesn't get lost.  Has nice spirit of Pharasma and Dartmouth.  Plus, probably fun to make a paint.

So, we went at it.  Here were our steps....

1) We do have access to an XYZ Printing 3d printer.  It is a zero-bells-zero-whistles model, but has been pretty darned reliable for us so far.

2) We found a website called "embossify".  The website claimed to be able to take a 2d photo -- and turn into an embossed 3d STP file for printing.

3) So, we tested this out.  We took the Pharasma image -- downloaded it -- then uploaded it to embossify.com

4) Then, the trial printing.  Well, not so good.  We did not end up with something which looked ANYTHING like the Pharasma symbol.

 Our first attempt at 3D printing after the embossify process.  Not very recognizable!

Studying the problem, it seemed as though the nice coloring of the Pharasma "spiral" was causing the issue.  The embossify software seemed to be treating these as unique 3d surfaces. 

(Here is a link to Pharasma information -- including the colored in spiral:  http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Pharasma)

So, we went with the brute-force solution.  We colored in the "spiral" using Windows Paint.  Then, all we had was a black-and-white image. 

Here is our Pharasma symbol after coloring it all in!  (Pharasma symbol from Pathfinder.wikia.com)

After embossifying, here is the STP file pulled up in our 3D printer software.

5) Printing again with the file which came from embossify was money.  Printed out very nicely!

The good, the bad and the ugly.  The good one was generated after coloring in the Pharasma symbol.  The other two were trying to use the blue, white and yellow spiral.

6) We did some mass production -- printed out 9 of the little tokens.  (One for each of the players, plus a spare in case one gets lost.  And, one extra to light up.)

7) We did some priming and painting -- and bingo, little symbol tokens are ready to go!

Here are our Pharasma symbols after mass production.  We made one for each member of the party (plus a spare)

For painting, we primed 8 of them black - and then came back and sprayed the top surface white.  The idea was to keep the black in the groove of the spiral.  Did some dry-brushing to make the top a little bit more white.

On one of them, we kept the plastic clear.  Our plan was to put this on top of one of our lighted bases (We had gotten these from Powered Play Gaming -- and here's our Blog write-up about that.)  Turned out pretty cool!

PS:  After playing several home campaign sessions, here is our feedback:

- The little symbols really help.  When someone is healed, they get a token.  If we're in the middle of a battle and they use it up -- they just turn it over (they are black on the back).  Then if they get healed again, they flip it back over again.

- Interesting side-point -- it's pretty fun to have the Cleric start having such a big impact on offense instead of mainly defense.  We have certainly not had as many misses since Dartmouth started fateful channeling :)

Well, here is Dartmouth surrounded by her tokens.  You can see the one lit-up token as well.

Future thoughts....  Maybe build a magnetized attachment for Dartmouth which we can snap onto her base when she is spell casting....  Thinking of turning the spiral 90-degree so that it is spiraling outward from her toward her target(s)

Space Marines (Warhammer 40K) 30th Birthday at Warhammer, The Summit!

Hi everyone,

We had a fun time yesterday on April 16th - the 30th birthday of the Space Marines....

How did we celebrate?

Well, visited a new 40K store (new to us) in Reno.  The store:  Warhammer, The Summit.  :)  (Link to their facebook page.)

Cool Space Marines 30th Birthday pins at the store!

 And, the cool 30th Birthday Cake!

We had stopped in earlier and discussed the Dakka Chugga  (our Ork Looted Steam Train - link to that here) with the team there.  They had mentioned that they'd love to see it.  So, we had packed it up so that we could stop in and show them.

And, really glad that on a Space Marine special day, we were able to bring some Boyz to the party!

The Dakka Chugga and Spork, Supreme Warboss of the Pink Orkies - ready to bring some Big Killy down on that Birthday Cake!

In the store, they were enjoying Space Marines' Birthday Cake, and had very cool buttons.

Showed them the Dakka Chugga - and then talked about how we might have a battle using it....

One option we chatted about: Maybe we could set up track around the battle table -- and have other armies try to stop the Dakka Chugga.  Their idea was to make it kind of like a Death Race.

Sounded like a lot of fun.  Also seemed like a very good reason to have Da Pain Train (our 2nd Ork looting of a locomotive - link to that here) ready to go as well.  So, we are going to figure out when that could be and start getting ourselves ready.

The group in the store also mentioned some excellent ideas.  Like, how about taking a passenger car - and loading it with heavily armed Orks.  Maybe one Ork per window!  Going to start looking for an old-school passenger car which we could modify for that purpose :)

Following up on the suggestion from the Warhammer Summit group - we could Orkify a passenger gar like this one.  Lots of opportunities for Boyz to be lined up along the windows.  Plus, a second level to use....

Dice: Old school (clear, sharp edged) D&D RPG dice

Hi everyone,

It struck us recently that the old school clear, sharp-edged, crystal-looking D&D or other RPG dice seem to be pretty much a thing of the past.

Here's our original set from the days of the first D&D edition.  (Always wished that one of these was red to make the full rainbow.)

 Our original 1980's sharp-edged crystalline dice.  (Never had red.)

And, so started looking on eBay.  Sure enough some people are selling "old D&D dice" -- or "vintage D&D dice."

And, so, for a reasonable sum, we got the following just this past week.

 The lot of old dice we found on eBay.  (Look, a red d12!!!)

There was always one issue with these dice.  Very hard to read them!!!

My friend had showed me the white crayon trick.  You srcub your dice with white crayon to fill up the imprinted numbers with white wax.  Suddenly, "pop" -- you can read them clearly.

[Had never really thought through the fact that this just might change the balance of the dice a little bit.  But, since the imprinting removes material - and likely makes them asymmetrical.  By loading up with wax we're just fixing that a bit!]

We never really had a great solution for d20s.  We'd scrub crayon into one set of 0-9 -- and those would be the high numbers.  And, the non-scrubbed ones would be the low numbers.  And, yes, the low numbers were still hard to read.

Here's our process:

 Scrubbed the faces of the die with white crayon.  Then rubbed off excess with paper towel.  Sometimes this required some repeats.

 Here are the d12 and d8 after we've done a few of the sides.

Problem with the crayon method.  The crayon usually wears off over time.  Bits fall out.  And, then you need to repeat the process in order to see the numbers clearly again.

And, remember this old fellow?  The edge-roughened d12 which - also very hard to read - had been marked up with a good old black pen!!

 Old school, edge roughened d12 with black pen highlighting!

Have to say, do miss these.  The new ones come in great colors and roll nicely.  But, the sharp crystal edges were very cool!

And, here is our set with the red die added!  Yay!  A full rainbow :)

Our dice with the red d12 added to the mix.

(Battletech) More Mechs from Craigslist

Hi everyone,

This weekend, we found some a posting on Craigslist -- with lots of old Battletech Mechs!

 A few of our favorite newly added Mechs....

We called as quickly as we could -- and were able to arrange buying them.  It was a bit of a drive for us - but worked out to be more or less on the way we needed to drive - so it all worked out well.

This was really exciting for us, because the lot of Mechs we bought included quite a few we couldn't easily get these days.

When we talked on the phone - the Seller mentioned that he loved playing Battletech (just like us!), but hadn't had a chance to use his Mechs in quite a while.

The Seller had done a nice job of taking care of his Mechs.  One trick we learned from him is that egg cartons make a very nice and convenient holder for miniatures.  They have done a nice job of protecting these!

Unpacking the Mechs.  Very slick use of egg cartons to store the Mechs!

Here are the Mechs we are most excited about adding to our forces:

1) Warhammer
2) Wolverine
3) Archer
4) Marauder
5) Thunderbolts (he had two)
6) Stinger
7) Phoenix Hawks (2 painted, 1 unpainted, 1 missing an arm)
8) Longbows (he had two, one of them painted)
9) Griffin

Picture of the list of our favorite Mech additions.  :)

We know that quite a few of these are "Unseen" Mechs.  But, since we have been playing quite a bit of "early years" Battletech in our campaign, it's fun to have these models since they go well with the really early rule books we've scrounged up.

Also interesting to look at the Seller's Marauder.  We're not sure - but maybe that's the top of a Rifleman on his Marauder ??

It was interesting that he also had some plastic Mechs.  These look like different castings from the ones we got in our boxes sets -- or in the lance sets we have purchased recently.  The ones he had seemed a bit bigger and beefier than the ones we have.  (His Atlas looks like a football player compared to the ones we have.)

Different plastic molds.  Models from the beginner's set on the right; models from this batch on the left.  Some differences in scale and "bulkiness"

Repairs planned:

- We need to figure out some way to come up with an arm for the Phoenix Hawk.  (Maybe we can print something with the 3D printer ??)

The lot of Mechs came with this one-armed Phoenix Hawk.  We'll have to see what we can figure out as a repair.  (Or, maybe we just play with this one as-is -- figuring that the arm was blown off and not repairable.)

- We have some bits we need to sort out (not sure which Mechs they may have fallen off of)

- And, not 100% related - but we discovered that our not-so-great packaging has caused our Mad Cat to have both legs broken off.  Repair certainly in order!! 

How to make a MadCat "Mad"!  Clearly we needed to use some egg cartons!  Glue time....

Car Wars and Hot Wheels (playing the Steve Jackson Games classic!)

Hi everyone,

In the past couple of weeks we had a chance to play a classic game (one of us hadn't played in about 25 years) -- Car Wars from Steve Jackson Games.

First we got the remake of the basic set.  We had fun looking at all of the little pieces :)  And, we ended up deciding that all would be more fun with 3D models!

Some quick reflections on the Car Wars game system:

- The system where a turn is broken into phases -- and a faster car gets more actions per turn -- is very fun.  Strong reminder of what was fun about the Champions system from Steve Jackson.  Really loved playing Champions - and fun feeling of nostalgia.

- Was it easy to build our first car?  No - not really.  Took us a while to figure out the handling class rules - but we finally figured out that your handling class works sort of like hit points....

Here's the first car we built - a van with lots of weapons.  Still don't think we figured out the weight of ammunition properly!

Then, it occurred to us that it would be even more fun to play 40K style with 3D models.  We chatted about it.  We could see two options.  Use the box set exactly as is -- and use N scale models (maybe parts from Dropzone Commander -- which are N scale) -- or use Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars and modify some cars to play!

Well, we decided that Hot Wheels would be much more fun.  After all, we had lots of 40K equipment which would help us out :)

We had to figure out which scale to use for Hot Wheels and Matchbox....  First we figured out that the little paper set in the box was "N" scale.  And, since Hot Wheels and Matchbox are roughly "HO" scale, we did some quick research and math....

Turns out that Hot Wheels are 1:64 (or so), where HO scale is 1:87.  (And, this explains why Hot Wheels always looked a little bit big next to an HO locomotive scale-wise).

There are quite a few scales recognized as "N" scale.  Ranging from 1:144 all the way to 1:160.

Here's our quick set of multipliers from Car Wars to Hot Wheels....

After doing this we had read one blog where a person did a really nice job of setting up Hot Wheels for Car Wars.  (Here's a link to that!)  They used a multiplier of 3.  We took a look at that - and decided that it was just too large for our sense of things.

We went with 2.5 X.

Took a little while (and good practice with a protractor) to build our 2.5X Car Wars template.  But, we got it done!

With our new template ready, we set up a quick battle.

Here's our 2.5X Car Wars template for using with Hot Wheels side-by-side with the original N-scale template.

The scenario was that one of our friends had been captured by a rival gang - and we needed to rescue him in our weapon toting van.

We used some 40K fortification pieces to build a "base" for the bad guys -- and used our battle mat to create streets.

There we are at the very far end - and the "bad guys" base at the near end.  The yellow car tucked away belongs to our friend....

It was fun to play.  We used some 40K pieces to mark smoke and show bad guy cars on fire....  And, we ended up closing out the battle by ramming the bad guys (and realizing that we needed more front armor in the process!)....

Ramming time!  We took out the last bad guy by ramming him with our van.

And, the battle had a happy ending.  Rescued our comrade :)

So, what's next?

Well, we met some folks at Game Kastle in Santa Clara who happened to be working on exactly the same thing (but with some great skills).  [Here's a link to their website.  http://santacruzwarhammer.blogspot.in/2015/06/santa-cruz-fury-road.html  They have been using different rules -- rules from Road Wolf where you move the terrain -- not so much the vehicles....]

After checking out what they'd done, we happened to find a company in Florida who makes small pewter pieces which can be easily added to Hot Wheels for Car Wars -- little gun turrets and the like :)  (Here's a link:  http://www.stanjohansenminiatures.com/Road.htm )

Our parts arrived this week - so now we need to decide how and where to use them.  Also had the great suggestion from the person we met from the Santa Cruz Fury Road group to use Ork bitz on our cars.  Certainly going to work on that since as we see it the latest Mad Max movie had lots and lots of great Orky ideas.  (Here's a link to our Orky things posting.)

Here we are opening up our turrets and gun bitz from Stan Johansen Miniatures

Here we are brainstorming how to modify our cars....

We'll post again when we have some more cars modified!

Ork Barricades for Fork and Spork

Hi everyone,

Over the summer we had picked up some Ork Barricades at a swap meet at Game Kastle.

We hadn't ever seen these for sale before -- seems that they had been discontinued.

Bummer - they look very cool!

Spent some time thinking about which ones should be decorated by Spork's boyz and which should be decorated by Fork's boyz :)

In the end, we went with the big pink symbol as a Spork Pink Orkys barricades.  And, the lower mounted symbol for Fork's Yellow Boyz.

Here are our Ork Barricades so far....  Still need to add dirt to them.

For Spork's Pink Ork Barricades, we used our standard formula for bright pink.  Some white mixed with Valejo neon pink -- and then an over-coating of the pink.  Here is a link to our work to sort that out :)  Pink Paint for Pink Orkys!

Thoughts about rules:

Unless you go with the cover save afforded by the barricades in the Stronghold Assault book, there don't seem to be very many cool rules.

One idea we had -- why not allow buying a Waaagh! Banner with some additional points -- if you want the advantage.  The Waaagh! Banner could have a range from whichever of the barricade pieces you bought the upgrade for.  It would be nice to have the +1 WS.

Or, maybe a rule which would allow an increase in morale when near or behind barricades -- of course for a cost.  (It is a serious bummer when we have a squad of Boyz take a hit at the beginning of the game and then run off the board.)

After we were done, we wanted to add some slime, goo, gore, etc, to the Barricades.  So far we have just added some green slime.  Used the same formula we used when we were adding Tyranid icor to the Dakka Chugga.

Mixed in clear gel (Gel 351 from Grumbacher) with Nurgle's Rot.  The combination is fairly think and forms fairly well into drips -- then dries clear.  (Don't be worried that the gel looks white when gooey.)

 Our formula for green goo....

 

Green goo when wet (gel is white in color when wet)

 Green goo when dried :)

And, here's Spork with his favorite section of the Barricade!

Supreme Warboss Spork with Pink Orkys Barricade!  Got some dirt and rust on them -- looking more realistic (especially the bright pink!)

40K Ork Warboss "Spork" as Motivational Speaker

Hi everyone,

Got to wondering if Ork Warbosses might have more tricks up their sleeves to motivate their Boyz than simply being the biggest and loudest.  (Probably not - but it's fun to imagine!)

Had to reload our favorite font to set these up.  "Battle Breath" - http://www.dafont.com/

Link with more about Spork and his Warboss brother Fork here

Will also work on a more detailed write-up of the history of Fork and Spork.  Not done yet, though :)

Warboss Spork explaining the battle plan to his Boyz

Keys to success from Warboss Spork

Final words before the Waaaagh!

If we made enough of these, maybe we could print out a calendar??