Taking Stock

After detailing the Hows and Whys of my decision to turn my Warhammer games into my Oldhammer games, it's time to stop prattling and start doing something. To the drawing board!

The idea, as previously mentioned, is to quit being such a hobby butterfly and concentrate on projects with a predetermined goal instead. In keeping with the Oldhammer spirit, which is to tell a story as well as playing the game, I do feel that the preparation phase ideally does not start with drafting an army list, but already at the collection and terrain building stage. My desire to start fresh and stay focused means that I will have to separate my Oldhammer projects from the other parts of my hobby, which includes unrelated Warhammer stuff.

I currently own three 40k armies that are compliant with fifth edition rules: a Praetorian Imperial Guard force that can be played as an infantry or tank army, a Thousand Sons warband and a mechanized Iron Hands detachment. I may use parts of these as opponents in my games while I build my true Oldhammer forces, but apart from that, there are no plans for them.

My old school Orks have been getting repainted one by one to go into the cabinet for quite some time.  This is fine, they will wait. I have a lot of them and I know that if I start doing something with them, I will get sidetracked. Also, whenever I feel like taking a break from the painting chores connected with the current project, I can do an Ork in between to keep myself motivated.

Your time will come...

I decided that my first project will get the working title "the Sabbat Worlds Crusade". As mentioned previously, I have a handful of the original Gaunt's Ghosts miniatures that have been unused for far too long, and following the theme of the books, the exploits of Commissar-Colonel Gaunt and a chosen platoon of Tanith Ghosts should lend themselves well to the kind of small, scenario-driven games that Rogue Trader does best (the so-called Oldhammer contract at The Realm of Zhu lines this out pretty well). Sticking to the "small is beautiful" doctrine will also give me the chance to really give the models an individual instead of a "mass army" paint job. If you are not sure what I mean, have a look at Orlygg's latest Oldhammer picture round up to get an impression how striking a distinct or even unexpected color scheme can be.

Right now, I own the contents of the old "Gaunt's Ghosts" boxed set, which included some characters and a plasma gunner, as well as a couple of blisters' worth of troopers. Since the last time that I had a serious look at them, two manufacturers have come out with their own versions of the Ghosts, namely Blight Wheel Miniatures and Victoria Miniatures (click on the Departmento Munitorum tab at the top of the page to get the links). As partial as I am to monopose miniatures, using their parts would give me much more variety than the four poses that Citadel produced, and a little variety to tell the dudes apart will not hurt in a game as granular as Rogue Trader. Also, using the multi-part resin models, I could incorporate a few specialists much more easily than would be possible with their metal counterparts. So, after some humming and hawing, I resolved to get two or three of these kits to complement my originals. As I plan to run this project on a budget (more on that soon), I guess I will sell at least half of my Ghosts to pay for their replacements.

Monopose scout

Multi-part trooper

Also, they will need a battlefield to fight over. I have a fold up plywood board that I made two years ago to use at home; unfortunately, its finished side is desert brown, to match my Praetorians, which will not do for my Sabbat Worlds Crusade. The Tanith 1st and Only, masters of disguise, standing around forlornly in an open sand desert, sounds a bit like the set up for a Monty Python sketch. I will need to give them a different battleground... how fortunate that my board has an identical, and so far unused, backside! This will be painted grey to serve as a generic base for the desolate remains of cities long since pounded into dust that I am imagining.

Dark legends tell of Realms of Battle where the very ground consists of skulls,

but in the Sabbat Worlds, battlefields are made of... plywood and duct tape!

I want to keep the terrain itself old school as well. To really set the mood, I will use the cardboard ruins from the 2nd ed. boxed set to make a few blocks of ruins and supplement those with some old accessories and themed rubble sections from Games Workshop and Forgeworld, as well as some newer scenery by other manufacturers. This will not give me a lot of height, but since I will not be using many large vehicles anyway, this will not be an issue. It even has the added benefit of making it easier to reach everything on the table effortlessly without brushing against the spires that litter modern tabletops, rocking the building and sending all the models sprawling in the process. Yay!

I said that I want some flattened buildings,

but this might be too literal an interpretation.

Once all that is finished, I will be ready to play some test matches using my Imperial Guard as opponents. Naturally, this can not stay that way forever, so next up is a proper Chaos force. I do not already have a lot of models I desperately want to use for this project, so this will mostly be a completely new force. I am not entirely sure of the direction I want go in with these, maybe something Blood Pact inspired, maybe something more chaotic, maybe some pseudo-Ferrozoican troops; I will have to wait and see. In the end, I suspect that the models I acquire will dictate much of the character of this force.

After that, as a far-out vision, I will tackle my small collection of Dark Angels, who in turn can use the Chaos troops from the Sabbat Worlds Crusade as opponents while I am setting up terrain and finish a little Ork army for a proper Piscina IV-styled campaign.

That is the plan. Now, who wants to bet how far I will stray from it?

The next two posts are already in the pipe, so I might even catch back up with my "one post a week" goal.

Take care!

Allod