Tale of More Warlords: It's Pledge Time!

The time has come! For an idea that's been circulating now for a little over a month, the moment has been both incredibly slow in coming and arrived almost immediately after suggesting it. #TaleOfMoreWarlords over on Twitter has a fair few regular posts attached to it and people seem pretty keen to get started and really get stuck into some Christmas presents and old projects that've been languishing on the pile for much too long. In part, that's served as the inspiration for what I'm going to try and tackle as the year starts out - a combination of something old and something new.


I've agonized over what to try and get done when it occurred to me that, in actual fact, I could do multiple things. I could make it a proper challenge! Once upon a time I painted a 1000pt Ultramarine army in a week, so what's to say I couldn't do that again? I've got two months to get something cool done and I figure if I'm trying to headline this event in some way, I better put my money where my mouth is and finish something big! I doubt my finished product is going to look the best (there are some remarkably talented people already hinting at what they'd like to do!) but what I can't match in quality, I'm going to make up in quantity!


So, between 1st of January and 1st of March 2019, my pledge for Tale of More Warlords is this:

• A 1000pt Adepta Sororitas army in the heraldry of the Order of the Bloody Rose.
• A 1000pt Crimson Fists army.
• An Adeptus Mechanicus Kill Team.
• A special character for one of these three choices - undecided, yet! - as a centrepiece.

We're going in and we're going in full throttle! I've done it before and there's no reason I can't do it again, particularly with a bunch of Sisters of Battle that I don't actually have to spend time assembling. All they need is a primer spray and I can get started! 

Remember that your pledge needn't be Games Workshop related or even anything new at all - as long as you've got a goal in mind for the end of the first two months of 2019, feel free to share what you've got in mind and what you'd like to accomplish. I know a fair few folks are going to be using it as an opportunity to #MarchForMacragge (and #MarchOnMacragge for its Chaotic and Xenos counterpart!) and others have mentioned Malifaux gangs, SAGA warbands, and more...

I hope everybody had a great holiday period and we're all looking forward to getting some models painted and on the table! Good luck, one and all, and have fun. Remember to keep posting updates and progress over on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube with the #TaleOfMoreWarlords hashtag. :D

Tale of More Warlords #2 - Forge World Sigma Iotia

A quick write-up intended to introduce and set some character for a Forge World of my own, this has been painstakingly typed on my phone during a long train journey - forgive any odd mistakes or turns of phrase that don't make sense! This should be taken as a draft, and will definitely be touched up and trimmed where necessary.

Mars has always been a beautiful world to those with the senses to appreciate it. Raw, windswept data sweeps across the ravaged red sands of the plundered world with tidal force. Ancient scrap-code and echoed binharic cants swirl and dance like breakers beaten to foam against the vaults and firewalls of impregnable Martian forges and saviour stacks. Man returned life to Mars only to savage it for its mineral worth and render untold glories down to fine red dust once again, but in those echoes whispers the knowledge that such things were once possible, and must therefore be possible again for the mind with grit enough to sift the shifting dunes of scattered nonsense floating through the noosphere for a glimpse of meaning.




Beautiful, yes, but maddening in turn. Ask the ocean how to build a world and see what it tells you. To the Priests of the Cult Mechanicus, failure means only that they lack the means, and if the Adeptus Mechanicus knows one thing with absolute certainty, it is this: Given sufficient time, the statistical likelihood of attaining insight to overcome a barrier approaches certainty. When a mind isn't linked to such temporal concerns as ageing, it allows the Tech-Magii to be extraordinarily patient...




In the closing years of M37, a small and distant world far from the light of the Astronomicon was discovered by augurs of an Exploratory Fleet dispatched centuries hence from the Red Planet. Fact-grabbers and data-miners expertly flensed useful information from the worldwide data network that the descendents of long-forgotten Terran colonists had developed. Crudely effective, it confirmed to the lurking Martian fleet the vast resources of this distant world; the Magos commanding the fleet designated the planet Sigma Iotia II, promptly dismissed the irrelevant cultural garbage flooding the primitive communication network, and fell upon it with the cold, calculated hunger of an apex predator. Organized resistance against the Skitarii cohorts sent to pacify the populace ended in days. The planet was deemed compliant within a standard month. Magos Dominus Okmyx-β made planetfall and declared it his sovereign territory. Forge World Sigma Iotia was logged dutifully by accompanying cartographic scryers and the information dispatched to Mars.

While the fleet's colossal spaceborne factories and generators descended to the surface, medicae units attached to the Skitarii began assessing the remnants of the local population for suitability as servitors and labourers in the grist mills of their new overlords. Oxmyx's acquisition was not without a curious, lingering blight on his attention, however. While the rapacious engines of the Mechanicus set about converting a moving world to the iron-blooded machine it could be, Okmyx became plagued by a nagging subroutine in an emotional capacitor he had set aside to excise and parse human reaction to sensory inload - namely, worry. Concerned that he had overstepped his bounds as an Explorator by having laid claim to the world without permitting rights of first refusal to his few superiors on Mars, he set himself on the path of righteousness with a fervour only a machine could sustain and a piety reserved for those few in the Mechanicus that allowed for a soul, and through it the possibility of damnation...

Sigma Iotia quickly became a Forge World in its own right, but one utterly devoted to the Martian ideal. Part manufactory, part shrine, every momentary fragment of data and every possible scrap of stray thought from lower level functionaries of his will was flash-cloned and saved by Okmyx's scribes and backup artisans. Sigma Iotia became a world steeped in repetition and rote, capable only of hoarding and collecting information rather than even the slightest hint of innovation or drive to discover. As a result, the information networks and noospheric capabilities of this relatively young Forge World are second to none, and its ceasless hunt for further information to stuff its librariums has lead to remarkable discoveries on the fringes of known space.

Some hold that Okmyx has lost his edge and that he serves merely as a glorified scribe servitor on an outpost of Mars, but those that have witnessed firsthand the pinpoint precision of the Iotian Skitarii and the skill with which his recovery clades pick through the rubble of civilizations judged extraneous to requirements know that Magos Okmyx-β still possesses the burning thirst to drag the Mechanicus out of the benighted Age of Waning and return it to the heights of its former power...

Tale of More Warlords Project Diary #1

I have a confession to make. I am a hobby magpie. I'll finish one miniature, maybe two, then flit to the next project that's caught my eye and finish another couple of miniatures for that before finding a third distraction. On it goes! You might know someone like me, or you may even be personally familiar with the instant gratification that comes of finishing whatever strikes your fancy at that exact moment. It's fun, of course, to paint what we're in the mood for, but it does rob us of one of the great satisfactions of our hobby: Something finished! A collection of miniatures with some kind of unified theme or purpose, whether it be an army or a bunch of characters from something we like. There is a unique sense of accomplishment that comes of having finished something which can be hard to describe, but I think it's one of those holy grails in our hobby.

Finishing any kind of project requires planning, forethought, an idea, a dash of creativity, and no small amount of investment of time and work, and boy oh boy, can it sometimes feel like work! The pride that comes of being able to hold up the culmination of all that you've put into it, though, is absolutely worth it, and most importantly, will never really fade. Once you've painted an army of miniatures, you have that army forever. You may learn better techniques and produce results you like better as your skills develop, but that shouldn't take the shine from those early efforts. You took some plastic, metal or resin and turned it into something that is yours. It can arguably be one of the hardest things to achieve, though, especially when we are exposed almost weekly to something new and shiny arriving on the scene that's so cool, that we must have!

It was with this in mind that Tale of More Gamers really came to fruition. An opportunity to state publicly that I was going to finish something, post regular updates, then be able to show it off and share my work once it was all complete. Time and effort focused on a goal - achievable, certainly, but that would require some real work - and then the celebration at the end! The way that I figure it is that if we're all working toward our own goals and sharing progress, there's the impetus necessary to keep working on a single project without floating away to something else every couple of minutes. Impetus is the right word instead of pressure, I think. This ought to be a project completely voluntary to all taking part, and if it feels like there's pressure to take part or something to be lost in not finishing one's pledge, there should be no shame in putting up one's hands and saying, "I am not going to finish all this on time, but here's what I've done so far and what I'm proud of."

Aah, but there's the question... What to do?!

We are spoiled for choice in this day and age. We are surrounded by awesome miniatures. Outside of the 'big houses' there are any number of awesome boutique-style manufacturers that're sculpting their own miniatures or working with sculptors to fill gaps in the collections available to us today. From obscure or historically minor events to the myriad choices available for fantasy and science fiction gaming, we need never lack for options. The trick, then, is to find inspiration! What we need - what I need - is inspiration and the interest in a project that'll last me the distance to get it finished. It doesn't matter so much if the effort put into it feels like work, but it shouldn't actively be a chore to pick up paint and brush and get cracking on the next colour on these miniatures.

So, with the earlier stipulation that the project should be something that I haven't painted an army of before, here's what I've got in mind for potential projects thus far on the Games Workshop side of things:

• Imperial Fists. These guys are a strong contender at the moment, owing to the mixed challenge of painting a smooth, consistent yellow finish across whole squads, but the sheer wow factor of dropping a bright yellow army on the table. It doesn't hurt that they're a consistent favourite in the lore and their rules are pretty damn good in 8th Edition at the moment.
• Adeptus Mechanicus. I love the Mechanicus. They tick a lot of boxes as far as interests of mine go - post-humanism, body horror, cybernetics - and they're probably the Warhammer 40,000 army that made the translation from concept artwork to plastic the most faithfully. They look like real nightmares built for purpose, and they're damn cool.
• Kharadron Overlords. I love these sky-mining dwarfs. The concept of the Kharadron is absolutely bonkers and I love how special it feels in Age of Sigmar. They're one of the armies that made the leap from 'just like Warhammer Fantasy Battles' and instead had fun being something distinctly Age of Sigmar, and it doesn't hurt that they're basically short Ferengi with cutlasses.

Contrary to popular belief, Games Workshop don't have a total stranglehold on my hobby budget just yet (though if they keep busting out things like Speed Freeks and Blackstone Fortress and those gorgeous Genestealer Cult miniatures on the horizon...), so there are a few other options to consider!

• World War 2. This is deliberately broad since there's a lot of potential choices, and I don't really have a specific project in mind just yet. I do have a fairly large collection of Warlord Games' fantastic Bolt Action miniatures in gorgeous grey plastic still - US, UK, German and Soviet forces - as well as both Deutsches Afrika Korps and British 8th Army from Perry Miniatures. All it would require is to write up the force and set a painting list. Good for my wallet if I'd actually do something with them!
• Dark Ages/SAGA. Something smaller scale and skirmish-based would be pretty neat. I've had the opportunity to visit some of the 'living history' parks around Germany such as Bärnau-Tachov and it could prove super interesting to delve a little further into a specific period and have some fun learning about the actual life and times of the people I'm representing on the table.
• Something else entirely...? Aah, but what? I'd ideally want to be painting more than ten miniatures, but less than a hundred! Maybe something from the Napoleonic period, maybe something in 15mm, or even take the plunge into the 6mm scale? Sengoku Jidai period, and paint samurai? The options are limitless, I'm just not sure in which direction I want to head!

Before we've even gotten to brush and paints the hard work really begins! I'm going to aim to narrow these down a little over the next couple of days and hopefully nail down a shopping list if I need one before Christmas hits and my friendly local game stores totally empty. Something that I can reasonably finish in two months but which won't leave me done in a week with nothing else to do for the time remaining. Something to pin down that hobby magpie and get me stuck into something I'll really enjoy holding up when I'm finished!

The Tale of More Warlords - Uncle Sledge Wants YOU!

It's that time of year. The Christmas markets have sprung up all around Germany - this year's in Dortmund is a neat fusion of a seasonal winter market and a few stalls from the local medieval reenactor society. The days are short, the mercury's low and if you're brave enough to be in stores for any stretch of time the calls between small children and their exasperated parents are becoming increasingly shrill.

Unless, of course, you're from the southern hemisphere, in which case your Christmas is a weird assault between predominantly American and British media featuring the fabled White Christmas and bundling in front of the fireplace with a hot chocolate while you're sitting around in shorts and a t-shirt trying not to explode at the thought of moving. It's such an odd cultural disconnect when all the songs and movies reference this frozen wonderland while you're dead certain that that fur-trimmed suit would incinerate jolly ol' Saint Nick the moment he crossed the equator, but I digress...

Christmas and the coming new year represent a period of immense opportunity to us wargamers. There's a symbolism associated with resolutions, new beginnings and the like which we can easily turn to our own ends. There'll no doubt be plastic and metal by the truckload delivered to homes around the world to be surreptitiously wrapped and hidden from the prying eyes of hobbyists both young and determinedly young at heart, and come Christmas we'll be up to our mistletoe in excited newcomers to our hobby, which is awesome. New blood, new ideas and new enthusiasm makes for a great shot in the arm - or a kick in the arse if that's more your speed - and can provide the impetus we need to get into our glue and paints and get to work on our own projects.

Many years ago - before I was even involved in the hobby, I think! - there ran in White Dwarf magazine 'A Tale of Four Gamers,' which has since become a staple and will reappear every couple of years. The premise is pretty simple: four hobbyists choose an army and assemble their miniatures, setting themselves deadlines and getting their new toys painted in order to end the series with a climactic battle featuring their finished projects. It's a lot more exciting than I'm making it sound! The format changes a little each time, but the idea is easy enough to replicate for hobbyists at home. All you need is a bunch of bare plastic and an idea in your head, and the loose framework of the 'competition' between these four warlords helps maintain momentum and encourages participation - you can't let your opponent get a leg up over you by finishing more units than you can field on the table, after all!

We're lucky in this day and age to have the internet. Instant access to ideas from around the world helps us get our models assembled and finished; the knowledge available from people steeped in their fields can inspire and direct our enthusiasm for something that we might not have known about before. From small groups of friends to local clubs where techniques would be shared we've exploded into an international community with hobbyists all the way around the globe. No matter where you are in the world, if you can get online you can find yourself in a conversation with someone interested in the same things as you, whether it's your favourite Space Marine Chapter or discussing cavalry tactics of the late Bronze Age. I was part of the generation that grew up right at the moment this began to take shape, and seeing the wargaming and miniatures hobby dive into it has been remarkable. If you're anything like me, you get a kick out of seeing what people are doing with their painting and modelling, and enthusiasm is infectious! So, began a few conversations on Twitter, we should definitely take advantage of that as Christmas and 2019 draws nearer. Let's try our hand at running a Tale of Four Gamers of our own, knowing that we won't necessarily be able to all meet up for a game at the end of it!

It was Mr @VincentKnotley that coined 'Tale of More Warlords' for our grand endeavour, and I like how that one rolls off the tongue. There's been a little discussion about how this ought to run, where it should be 'held' online and so forth, as well as talk about what people thought might be reasonable restrictions or requirements for participation. So, after a little thought, here's my thoughts on how we ought to try and tackle this:

• Twitter makes for one of the easiest ways to share and collect links, pictures and conversation. Facebook might prove useful due to its gallery functions, though some folks might prefer the relative anonymity of Twitter by comparison - for now, we'll concentrate on how this will work on Twitter and add to the concept as we go.
• Posts can be made anywhere (Facebook, off-site blogs, Instagram, Twitter, Mastodon) and then linked on Twitter for ease of promotion to one another. #TaleOfMoreWarlords is the hashtag we're planning on using.
• Warlords - because, really, let's have some fun with it - are encouraged to tackle a new project on something they haven't done before. A new army, a new game system, a new historical period; something unfamiliar and interesting to them. However: Warlords are encouraged to use this as an opportunity to do something they would like, so if that means adding 1000pts to an army you already have, there's absolutely nothing wrong in that!
• From December 27th to January 1st is when Warlords make their pledges. "I will paint a Blood Bowl team for #TaleOfMoreWarlords," for example, or "For #TaleOfMoreWarlords I will be painting an entire Soviet infantry company for Flames of War."
• Traditionally, Tale of Four Gamers ran for a few months. In order to keep momentum and avoid burnout, we'll keep this a little shorter. February is a short month, so our #TaleOfMoreWarlords will run from January 1st to the Friday of the last week of February - which actually turns out to be March 1st.
• Each week, Warlords should post WIPs, finished miniatures or squads with as many pictures as they like, and include a short write-up on something they like about the project, or some historical or lore-related tidbit they learned while working on it. "This Chapter of Space Marines was first mentioned in Warhammer 40,000: 2nd Edition..." or "This unit of Sikh infantry could have taken part in these significant battles..." Anything about the project that interests you!
• There's no official requirement for how much of anything should be finished during each week, except for a pledge to be complete by the 1st of March. If you're aiming to paint a whole army by then, you might paint a squad each week. Otherwise, you might paint a single character each week and show progress as you go. Again: There is no binding requirement for how much you need to do each week. This is meant to be encouraging and achievable, not to grind you down!
• On the weekend following the completion of the pledge period (2nd-3rd of March) Warlords are encouraged to get all their finished work together and share as many pictures of it as they can. Show off and be proud of your work!

The idea of setting things to a hashtag means that people can either set it as a bookmarked tab in their favourite browser or however they like to keep track of these things. Ideally, if you see someone struggling or wondering how they'll finish something - or outright asking for advice! - you can chip in with something you might know about the subject, some off-site links to useful information or anything you think might help out. As I mentioned earlier, we're going to see a lot of newcomers to the hobby like we do every Christmas, and it's an awesome opportunity for us grizzled old hands to welcome them into the fold and demonstrate the positive power of the internet to really build and encourage that international community.

Now, for my part, I'm torn between tackling a large part of the growing mountain of grey plastic in my cupboards or hoping that Saint Nicholas knows my new address and will show up with something shiny and new for me to paint over those couple of months. Indeed, the hardest part may be deciding what it is I'm going to pledge...

So! Feel free to jump on this now, share ideas and thoughts and start drumming your fingers on the table while thinking about what you'd like to achieve over #TaleOfMoreWarlords. We're about a month out from when we'll kick things off in earnest, so I'll be tapping on this again as we get a little closer to the date in order that folks who might have wanted to get in on it without realising it was actually happening will get to see it - and jog a few memories along the way!

It's about time. Again. For real this time.

I don't think I've ever entirely understood blogging. Back in the heady days of Livejournal I would happily share every waking brainfart that sprang to mind, where Twitter seems to have filled that particular niche in this day and age. Nonsense in 240 characters or less - now that's convenient!

The question to my mind has always been one of how much to share. I second-guess everything that gets posted online. Tweets, Youtube uploads; everything. There's a sneaky little voice that gets me to check if anything is actually 'worthwhile' before it goes into the wider world. Well, people seem to keep enjoying what I'm doing, so that little voice can take a breather for a while and I'm going to try putting my hand to this blog thing. For real, this time. Maybe a weekly round up of hobby stuff I've seen and done, or just thoughts and impressions that people might find interesting from someone else's perspective. I don't know, really. Let's just throw something at the wall and see what sticks.

That's ever the problem with these posts, you see. Is there too much text? Not enough? Am I waffling? Is this the right tone? I feel like I'm usually treading dangerously close to trying to ape the likes of Douglas Adams, or even further back, H.G. Wells. Perhaps, if either of those names strike a chord, you'll like to stick around and bask in the pale shadow of an imitator with less to say and fewer subjects on which he can hold court!

Now, if you're stumbling on to this for the first time, here's a quick look at what it is I'm doing these days - still painting miniatures, but finally having struck on a few methods I like the look of!

L-R: British Officer (Battlefront), German Officer (The Plastic Soldier Company), US Officer (Battlefront)

Nighthaunt Chainrasp painted using Citadel's range of Technical Paints and basing materials.

An Iron Hand Captain in Gravis Armour, from the Dark Imperium boxed set.

An Imperial Fist Sergeant kitbashed from one of the new Space Marine Heroes range of miniatures.

A 'counts-as' Imperial Guard officer kitbashed with several Adeptus Mechanicus bits.

A Wight King demonstrating drybrushing and shading techniques with more Citadel basing material.

Pretty pictures! I'd say I've probably improved a little over time, but I'm quite comfortable with how my painting style has settled as I've gotten into a groove recently. I'm not going to win awards, but I can turn an army out and have fun while I'm doing it, and that's what I'm into. Why, it's the subject of the Youtube channel I run in which I paint things, aptly titled "How I Paint Things." I really wish I'd thought of something better before I got started.

Go ahead and feel free to check the channel out from there if you haven't seen it already. The Celestial Vindicator there is probably one of the recent videos I'm most pleased with, and it gives a pretty good idea of what you're going to get in the rest of them. Simple techniques, easily replicated results and a good looking army when you're finished. Can't beat that!

I think I'm going to sign off on this one for now and actually post again when I've got something more concrete that I'd like to share. There's some wargame rules I've been puttering around with that could use a home, and it's nice to think there's a spot where some of this will remain in situ for a while without having to worry about clicks and engagements and all that kind of carry on.