Violence Solves Everything - Modelling the Mordant 303rd Part 2

I arrived back from holiday late last Saturday to see an unexpected package waiting for me, then it dawned on me the Victoria Miniatures Arcadian Rifles miniatures I had pre-ordered several months ago had finally arrived. They are rather lovely resin figures with pretty reasonable prices in comparison to Games Workshops resin products (and free postage from Australia).

With some proper female miniatures in place I now have the job of converting and painting figures to represent my long term Dark Heresy character and the PCs and NPCs in the Only War prequel campaign that I am running. In the roleplaying game roughly half of the Regiment is female, I doubt I'll manage anywhere near that in the 40K army but I aim to create all of the important players from the campaign

I am planning on making two versions of my character, Veteran Sergeant Rizpah Jair.



Female Arcadian Guard from Victoria Miniatures.

Metal Cadian with head sawp for size comparison

One will be "Riz", the fresh faced hyperactive teenage punk that features as an NPC in my Only War game, featuring Tank Girl-esque bright pink hair and a slew of tattoos showing her allegiances prior to joining the Guard. Actually in my version of the Regiment all of the Mordant troopers use tattoos to show their allegiances to gangs, mining companies and fellow troopers (They also have their ranks tattooed to their arms - if your uniform is sleeveless what better place to put them).

The second version will be the hardened veteran who faces the horrors of purestrain genestealers when her company are almost entirely destroyed whilst reconnoitring a space hulk. The bright hair is long gone, now dyed black, and her face is heavily tattooed in the style of black metal makeup. In addition to her standard regimental equipment she also now carries a pair of Triplex pattern "Fury" assault laspistols and a trophy knife fashioned from the claws of a Tyranid.

In my next Mordant related post I'll introduce the other PCs and NPCs of the Only War campaign that I intend to convert for my 40K army.

Men Must Die So Man Endures: The First Squads of the Mordant 303rd

1989 Imperial Guard Commissar.

 

Over the last month or so I have been putting together some miniatures for the start of my Mordant army. I already had 2 old metal Cadian squads, however some of these are already pained in other colour schemes and I don't want to use the old flamers or heavy weapons. I also have an old Cadian Lieutenant model with shotgun, an old Cadian Comms trooper and a very old (1989) Commissar with power fist and power sword. Added to these I have a squad of old metal ratlings, who I may or may not use, a Mordian Lieutenant, who will be used as my Captain, and a Chimera.

Cadian with sleeveless arms

from Victoria Miniatures.

 

I've been lucky that one of my friends is converting a Genswick guard army and has gifted me a load of plastic Cadian parts, which I have used as the basis for my next squad. These Cadian bitz were pretty much complete models but without the arms, looking around I found that Victoria Miniatures produce sleeveless arms, and I have bought a handful of these to use. Rather than just use Cadian heads I plan to make everything a bit more varied, using Catachan heads and converting some heads from other manufacturers such as MaxMini.



One notable feature of the army will be inclusion of female guard, this is a bit of a difficulty because there is a distinct lack of suitable female miniatures. Head swaps with the old Escher miniatures would have been suitable but they are rather pricey now they are out of production. So instead I've bought some female heads from two other companies, Statuesque and Brother Vinni, and have acquired a couple from Wargames Factory via my friend. Sadly the Statuesque ones are simply far too small for use on GW minis and though the Brother Vinni ones are really awesome sculpts they are also a little on the small side. Thankfully Victoria Miniatures are currently pre-ordering for some female guard who will fit right in, so I have bought a squad of these.


Conversions for my Mordant Army. From left Brother Vinni Machine Gunner

 with Cadian Head swap, Cadians with Victoria Miniature Arms and Brother

Vinni Head, OOP Metal Cadian Head and Regular Cadian head with Victoria

Miniature Goggles.

My next move is to buy the Cadian and Catachan command squads as well as a couple of regular Cadian squads to finish the bulk of the troops before picking up some Sentinals and converting some more unusual pieces for the army, such as the sentry guns.

Only War Session Trois

After the surviving troops manage to hold back the Ork advance they take stock of themselves. Unfortunately the Operator and the Medic expired in the aftermath of the attack, the surviving members of the team manage to patch themselves up as best they can, before radioing high command. They get through after a few minutes and after a sit-rep command informs them that they are being relieved and flown back to base.

Relief arrives in the form of three Valkyrie troop transports, that unload imperial war machines and troops as well as a number of Xeno experts to study the Ork technology. After informing the new forces of the countermeasures they installed they quickly away back to base.

They have a few days R&R before their talents are once again needed, in this time they are given new recruits and comrades to bring them back up to full fighting strength. After their time is up they are requested to report to the command tent for a briefing.

They are given a mission, the Orks are using the wreckage of the processing plant they visited earlier to make a huge war machine, they are instructed to destroy it. For this mission they are given a number of pieces of tank hunting gear, A Lemun Russ Vanquisher, a crate of Det-Packs and a Orbital Relay to blast the thing from orbit.

Unfortunately somewhere in the pipeline these gifts morphed into a Salamander Variant scout vehicle, two Missile launchers, a Melta-gun, a barrel of acid, and a bag of dirty laundry.

The squad was familiar with the operational area, of course,  having been present when it became a blighted dot on the landscape and somewhat of a firework surprise for the Imperium, so they found it again with a minimal amount of fuss. Once there, however, they were greeted by quite a view. The wreck of the Chimera was gone, as were the to wrecked Ork Trukks in front of the gates, as a result they could see right inside the ruined refinery.

Lurking in the blacked out ruin was a gigantic battlewagon, covered with guns and launches and covering it like a living carpet was a swarm of Gretchin. Over the vast squabbling sound of the mob, one voice could be heard, an Ork Mek shouting from a large command tower built on the ruins of one of the holding tanks.

The squad divide themselves up, a few men take a launcher and a Auto-cannon to the wrecked Hab-block nearby and another man takes a launcher to the rubble that used to be a shopping promenade.  They come up with the idea that they could roll the barrel of acid towards the tank and blow it with a missile so that the acid splash hits the tank. Unfortunately the thousand or so meters from the salamander to the Ork Compound was strewn with wreckage and rocky lumps so that when the barrel got to the last few hundred meters every jolt echoed loudly, a solution was invented, wrapping the dirty laundry around the barrel muffled it enough to close the gap, they were almost there, and then, they were spotted.

The Orks delight in a bit of target practise and spotting a lone barrel rolling slowly towards them made a game of it, unfortunately for the guard. Orks are terrible shots, but they make up for it with lots of guns and enthusiasm. The Orks eventually managed to hit the barrel and the splash of acid only grazes the guardsmen pushing the barrel, unfortunately wounding them and forcing them to strip off there armour to rid themselves of the acid. The other guardsmen take the opportunity to start firing missiles at the Battlewagon, managing to damage to drive system and take some guns online.

The Ork Battlewagon slowly crawled out of the compound to engage the guard, taking shots and the ruined building that some where camped in and causing a small amount of remodelling to the superstructure but otherwise nothing else. 
Until Next time!

David

Fire in the Hole: Planning the Mordant 303rd

Having decided to build an Imperial Guard army and decided the armies theme, I have to decide upon what models to buy and what to arm them with. I'm not all that fussed about creating something that is completely legal to use in 40K games, more about creating something that fits the background and looks cool. I need to create an army that appropriately represents a force that is a veteran of five long campaigns against mutant rebels, Hrud infestations and Genestealer cultists. An army that is designed to fight in close quarters against the Imperium's many enemies, to cleanse the narrow sewers of ruined cities and corridors of spaceships.



No Tanks!

The first thing that is out for my army is tanks. Tanks don't really do narrow tunnels, so the mainstay of many an Imperial Guard army sadly isn't suitable for mine. Somewhere at home I already have a Chimera, so that may get used but anything else is out of bounds. Equally unsuited for small tunnels are Rough Riders and Ogryns so I won't be having any of those either, or any of the now ubiquitous flyers.



To fit the theme of a force designed to board a spaceship I'll have some troops with equipment for breaching bulkheads (las-cutters, melta bombs, demo charges etc) but the bulk will be armed with weapons aimed for short range combat. Primarily these will be weapons that wouldn't cause structural damage to the hull of a ship (so shotguns, las-carbines and flamers). For some more heavy support I'll have some rapid firing sentry weapons (heavy bolters and heavy stubbers). The troops will be festooned with grenades so that they fit with the background for the regiment that I created in Only War (I am currently running a prequel to the long standing Dark Heresy campaign that I played in, charting how my character became an Inquisitorial Agent).

One of only three bits of artwork for the Mordant

Acid Dogs. Copyright Games Workshop.

There are only a handful of pieces of artwork for the Mordant Acid Dogs these show the troops being armed with a variety of equipment but broadly dressed like Cadians with a vest rather than a sleeved top. The conversions I've seen so far of Mordant troopers use Cadian bodies with Catachan arms, however I'm not a fan of the ridiculous body builder arms of the Jungle Fighters so will be looking elsewhere for some sleeveless arms. I'm also planning to use a variety of head swaps to emphasise the rag tag punky element of Mordant Troopers.

I've already stocked up on a selection of models and bitz to make my conversions but you'll have to wait until my next post for the details.

Only War: Session Deux

The team dig in and quickly find and repurpose an old sentinel power lifter to be a mobile fire platform by rigging the flamethrower to the main console. They also find plenty of piping and barrels of highly volatile refined promethium which they make into murder hole like weapons and land mines. After a couple of hours of hectic work night falls and they begin to take shifts to rest for the oncoming battle.

Unfortunately for them they totally miss the Gretchin scout party and it manages to abscond with a detailed layout of the defenders emplaced fortifications and traps. The diminutive little runts are however spotted in the morning light and shot to pieces. This was the masta plan of Big Mek Lugnutz who used the diminutive Gretchin as a distraction while placing breaching charges at the rear of the compound.

Our heros take the bait and are caught completely unaware as the Orks storm the compound from the rear. A force of five Burna Boyz, Loota's ten Gretchin and one large Mekboy burst onto the scene and critically wound two characters before being pulped. The Mekboy takes on the Sentinel in single combat with his Electro wrench and almost manages to wreck it, but is ultimately pulped by the vengeful fire from the surviving imperial guard!

So, with the first wave defeated how will our brave Imperials cope with Lugnutz next wave?
Find out next week!

David

Only War Campaign Update

Here is the first in a series of posts detailing the heroics of the Imperial Guard squad in the clubs Only War campaign - Darren

-------------------------------------------------

We rejoin our heroes regrouping behind the wreckage of an old Hab block.

They have just managed the salvage the internal gubbins from a power Klaw and the remains of the wrecked chimera's vox set.  Having got a message out to a distant Imperial guard flyer, the sergeant decides that there best chance for survival lies in getting back to the imperial lines as soon as possible, so he orders the troops into marching home. After a day of forced marching they break and camp, exhausted.

Next they discover a clearing that was not on the mapslate their operator was using, and when they stop to smell the flowers they get pounced on by some six legged indigenous mountain cats. The cats are quickly dispatched thanks to a flamer burst, knife to the gut and a very precise burst of heavy bolter fire. Proceeding through the jungle they hear the sounds of heavy gunfire as a Valkyrie roars overhead and crashes to the ground some kilometres away from their position. They decide to check it out, in order to see if they can help any survivors. Unfortunately they only find one wing bearing the designation of the troop ship they came down on.

Finally they return to the imperial compound where they are berated and sent of to defend another refinery against the ork force they were supposed to have routed.

David

The Mordant 303rd - My New Army

For my sins I have decided to start an Imperial Guard army. A foolish prospect given that I have played 40K twice in the last decade. I am going to collect a Mordant Acid Dog army....

I imagine a lot of you will be scratching your heads wondering what I'm on about, you think I'm confused with how to spell Mordian. But no I'm not going insane, Mordant are a regiment in the 40K universe and I didn't even make them up myself. The Mordant Acid Dogs featured in the Eye of Terror campaign that GW ran back in 2003 and renown as tunnel fighters.

You may wonder why pick a Regiment with about half a page of background rather than one the many regiments with loads of cool background. The reason for me collecting them takes us back to 2009 and the publication of Dark Heresy Ascension.



Darius Tarrantarm: Noble rogue and

chancer (and sometimes hero of the

Imperium)*

We had been playing Dark Heresy for a year or so and had a group of miscreants that bumbled around falling upon evidence of heresy in their service to the Inquisition. I played Darius Tarrantarm a noble born chancer and wide boy, my brother played Mercutio Harrigan a drug addled former ganger turned dubious law enforcer and our friend Chris played Kaarl Raga a smelly, feral world assassin. When Ascension came out we had the chance of adding some actually competent characters into the campaign. Chris chose to play Rhoda Roskruger, a hive gang boss, my brother Navonax, a Tech Priest Magos specialising in wave research, and I Rizpah Jair an Imperial Guard Stormtrooper.



A Mordant Acid Dog

Copyright GW

I had decided I wanted to play a female guard and had a quick look through my back copies of White Dwarf to find a suitable regiment. I stumbled across this picture of a Mordant Guardswoman and I decided it fitted the bill perfectly. A tunnel fighting specialist who find herself the other side of the galaxy as part of an elite Ordo Xenos Stormtrooper Killteam, fighting against the dreaded Tyranids.

Move forward 5 years and my Stormtrooper had moved on from fighting aliens to killing an Emperor's Children Space Marine with a Fury Pattern Laspistol (Stormtoopers in Dark Heresy are pretty hardcore). So it seemed the perfect choice to bring out some of my old Cadian models and create the ill-fated force that was sent to reconnoitre a space hulk leading to much death at the hands of genestealers and the induction of my character into the forces of the Inquisition. I might even play some games of 40K with the new army I create.

So over the next months expect to see more posts and photos cataloguing my progress in this modelling project.

* This picture was created using this photo fit web app provided by the Open University.

Kill Team 8th and 22nd March

We are going to be running 2 heats for the Kill Team Tournament the first on 8th March and the second on the 22nd March. Each week will have 8 places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. The date for the final is to be confirmed. The full tournament pack will be available at the club on Saturday but here are the basic rules.

  

Your Killteam

• Any current Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000 army list may be used to pick your Killteam. This includes those published in White Dwarf and Forgeworld publications.
• Your Killteam must not exceed 200pts.
• Your Killteam must adhere to the following force organisation chart.
• 0-1 Elite
• 0-2 Troops
• 0-1 Fast Attack
• You may not take Allies or Fortifications.
• Codex restrictions are still in place. If your codex says you must take 1+ of a unit (eg Tau Fire Warriors) then you must still take 1+ units of them. The only exception to this is if your codex requires you to take 1+ HQ unit or 1+ Heavy Support units.
• You must purchase complete squads. You cannot take, for example, a single Tactical Space Marine or a single Eldar Harlequin. Imperial Guard must fulfil the minimum requirements of an Infantry platoon, and may not take single squads from it.
• You may not take any Flyers or monstrous units
• Your Killteam must comprise of at least 3 models
• You may take a maximum of one vehicle
• No model in your Killteam may have more than 3 wounds (before Leader Upgrades)
• Your Leader must be the model with the highest leadership, if you have multiple models with the same leadership you may choose which is your leader.
• You must use appropriate miniatures to represent your army. Fantasy Knights cannot stand in for Genestealers, neither can Chaos Cultists stand in for Space Marines.
• If you are using non standard models you must explain what they are representing on the army list.

Specialists

• You may nominate up to three individual models in your force as being "Specialists" that benefit from one of a number of special rules. These Specialists and the rules they have must be declared on your army list, as should which model represents them. You may give one of the following rules to any one Specialist and all Specialists in your force must pick a different one (e.g. You may not have two Specialist who can chose Tank Hunter rule),
• The Special Rules they may pick from are:
• Adamanteum Will, Armourbane, Blind, Counter Attack, Eternal Warrior, Fear, Fearless, Feal No Pail, Fleet, Fleshbane, Furious Charge, Hammer Of Wrath, Hatred, Hit And Run, It Will Not Die, Monster Hunter, Move Through Cover, Night Vision, Preferred Enemy (Everything!), Rage, Rampage, Relentless, Shred, Shrouded, Skilled Rider, Stealth, Stub-born, Tank Hunter.
• For details of these Special Rules please refer to the Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook.
• Your leader (explained above) may be one of your Specialist.
• Note: While it if fine to say "Ork Boy with the bandana is Fearless" or "The Space Marine with the Mark IV helmet has Preferred Enemy", it's far cooler to actually convert up your Specialist to represent their specialty.

Focus On - Necromunda

The original Necromunda Boxset

Taken from http://lawhammer.blogspot.co.uk/

Many of you in the club are too young to remember Necromunda, which Games Workshop first published in 1995 and finally stopped supporting part way through last year. The game is set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe and is focused on small scale skirmishes between criminal gangs in the lowest levels of Necromunda's Hive Primus. Unlike regular 40K games you only need a handful of miniatures to play across a table strewn with scenery to represent the twisted walkways and hazardous chemical dumps in the long forgotten hab domes of the underhive.



A Necromunda board, full of scenery on multiple levels.

Taken from http://www.dakkadakka.com  

The main rules of the game are pretty much the same as those of the 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40,000 and were developed from a game called Confrontation that was published in White Dwarf in 1990-91. Both the original Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader and Confrontation were heavily indebted to Laserburn, a game created by Bryan Ansell prior to joining Games Workshop in the late 80's. The basic stat lines for models in Necromunda will mostly be familiar to current 40k players, with the addition of a movement stat (which also featured in the earlier editions of 40k), however some of the game mechanics are quite different (particularly close combat).


A Delaque Gang

Taken from http://thewargamingcynic.blogspot.co.uk/

There a a variety of gangs to choose from in the main game from muscle bound Goliath's, sneaky Delaque's, Latino inspired Orlocks and the all female Eschers. The supplements add a variety of other options from Redemptionist firebrands and Muties to noble born Spyrers and Ash Waste Nomads from the desolate plains between the hives. Each gang is recruited from a stash of credits with a choice of Gang Leader, Heavies, Gangers and Juves in the main gangs and a variety of other miscreants for the outlanders. Each ganger gets their own equipment and as a campaign progresses their own stats and personality.


Kal Jerico Graphic Novel

I'm not much of a wargamer these days, but Necromunda is a game I still really like. The rules for campaigns are great, the fact that mostly your gangers survive between games picking up experience, injuries and grudges against other gangs makes it a cut above the rest of GWs products in my eyes. Sadly GW no longer produce the models but they are available second hand through sites like EBay. Alternatively there are a range of other models you could use, the chaos cultists from the Dark Vengeance box set can easily be converted to form a Cawdor gang, Heresy Miniatures produce sci-fi ganger minis that are pretty much Delaques and there is a whole blog post covering other suitable miniatures here.



Though GW no longer officially support Necromunda you can still download the rules for free from their website (along with most of the rest of what became known as the specialist games).

An Escher Ganger

© Antti Autio, used with permission

Necromunda is in many ways a product of a bygone era for Games Workshop, it is far more cyberpunk than the grim gothic imagery of the current game. Gangs are able to get some pretty high-tech equipment, from lascannons to plasma guns, which feels somewhat incongruous given the very low-tech feel of the recent 40k roleplaying games. There isn't so much leopard print or pink hair dye in the 40K universe these days and perhaps that creates a more distinct background for the game, but I do miss it a little bit. I'm looking forward to bringing my Eschers or Redemptonists along to the club to create some more mayhem in the underhive.

PS. Sorry about the wierd formatting, Blogger refused to let me automatically add the captions on the images so I've had to edit the html, which is rather badly formatted meaning its quite difficult to work out what the tags are referring to.

Look what we found when tidying up the office.

So those of you who have been into the office to help move the gaming clubs boxes on a Saturday will know that that it is often a bit of a mess (it's because its a busy working space full of books and boxes and not because we are all untidy, honest!). Earlier today we were clearing out some unneeded furniture to be taken away next week and we found a copy of Once Upon a Time the Storytelling Card Game that was used on a project about fairy tales organised as part of Bournemouth and Poole Cultural Hub. Well I couldn't let that go to waste so its now part of the gaming clubs growing collection of games.

Lyndsey has been working on the latest newsletter and this should be with you all shortly. Keep your eyes peeled for more information on our Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team tournament, AGM and World Book Night.

Horus Rising by Dan Abnett: Book Review

Horus Rising by Dan Abnett

Dan Abnett is by far my favourite author in the warhammer cannon, His lively and descriptive prose really bring his characters to life in ways that other books in this setting don't.
His depiction's of combat lively and engaging, his reflections true and deeply touching. I must confess to being deeply enraptured while I read "Horus Rising", as the pure skill of the narrative shone through.
Those with only a passing familiarity to the war hammer 40k universe will enjoy this book a great deal, but the more you know about the history of the Imperium the more you will enjoy this book.

This is the first book in what has become the phenomenally successful Horus Heresy series, a series written by the greatest writers in the Black Library's arsenal, and, as such you can expect a great deal of depth and characterisation that goes beyond what you may expect from a "war" book.

Don't misunderstand, it is still a book about conquest and battle, with plenty of graphic and pulse pounding action to keep you reading until the conclusion, but as a singular work of science fiction it also stands on its own merits.

The book does however suffer from genre awareness, and it often feels that it needs to conform to the lowest common denominator. fortunately these moments are few and far between and overall they don't detract from the story.

Overall I would Heartily recommend this book.

David

 

This book is available from Bournemouth Library, you can reserve the book online using our catalogue, you will be charged 90p to do this - Darren

Normal Service Resumes

We are running as normal this week, well semi-normal anyway. The larger meeting room is being used for another group so we are going to be distributed across the smaller meeting room, exhibition space and the small 1st floor office. The plan is for wargames to be in the meeting room, board games in the exhibition space and roleplayers can use the office.

I won't be with you this week as I'm attending the local roleplaying convention Conception. This runs from today until Sunday so if any of you have a moment to spare, pop down and say hi (you'll probably find me playing Call of Cthulhu).

Next week we have a prime spot on the first floor just by the exit. We are hoping to play a variety of games that the public can join in with. It also gives you chance to practise some WH40K Killteam in preparation for the upcoming tournament (tentatively planned for the 8th March).

Sadly I haven't had chance to finish the post I was writing on the role of story and narrative in games, you can look forward to that for next weeks post.

Heretical Tomes

Look what arrived in our new stock this morning, its a whole load of Horus Heresy novels, free to borrow at Bournemouth Library.

If that doesn't float your boat you can see what new stock we have in all the libraries on our online catalogue. If you are looking for e-books we have those too, as well as e-audio books. And as promised in an earlier post I have started making lists of all our gaming related novels, here is one for Warhammer Fantasy based books.

...and a Happy New Year

Hope every ones Christmas was a good one and you weren't affected by the awful weather. Did Santa bring you all the toys you wanted?

Over the next months Lyndsey and I will be discussing the best ways to improve on our impressive start with our volunteers and the rest of the club. Sometime soon we will hold an AGM so you can let us know what you think we can do to make the club even better.

We already have a few things up our sleeves for this year. Our demo copy of Deadzone has arrived and the rules are sitting on my desk as I write this, we also have the prospect of the 40K Killteam tournament to look forward to. David is planning on running some Only War roleplay, which I can confirm is great game as I'm running a campaign using it at the moment. We should have all the old favourites continuing with more X-Wing, Judge Dredd, Settlers of Catan, 7 Wonders etc., plus a load of games we haven't played yet e.g. Flames of War, Necromunda, Mordheim, Risk.

Have you registered as a book giver?

Check out their website for details

Looking further ahead we will run an event for World Book Night, held on Shakespeare's Birthday, which is happens to be the club's 1st Birthday too. I may even get around to running the Neverwhere roleplaying game I had planned for last year. Even further ahead we have International Games Day, for which we hope to be able to do something even bigger and better than last year.

But that's not it there are a whole host of other things we can do. For the younger members there is Games Workshop's School League to enter, we could run painting or scenery making workshops, a murder mystery, trips to local conventions. The list could go on. The GCN is looking to create better links between local clubs and I'm hoping to do some networking myself especially at Conception in a few weeks and at What's Your Game LRP kit fair after that.

On this blog we still need more contributors we are looking for book reviews, battle reports, game reviews or even simply your musing on games and gaming. I am planning a series of posts focusing on different aspects of gaming, imaginatively titled "Focus On - <insert type of game here>"

It should be a good year.

How did you start gaming?

My first White Dwarf, Issue 201.

Its Xmas 1996, The Spice Girls are performing 2 Become 1 on Top of the Pops and I'm opening my presents, including a copy of Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Quest (my Brother got a copy of Warhammer). Such was my first introduction to wargaming; that Spice Girls song is now forever linked with gaming in my head.

Though, actually, my first dalliance with wargaming came from buying a copy of White Dwarf off a friend a few months earlier. Without any models or actual rules to use, my brother and I played a makeshift game of 40K whilst on holiday in North Wales, using some dice and a load of tidlywinks counters to represent space marines. Even before that I had played Heroquest and Space Crusade in the early 90's.

After getting Warhammer 40K I played regularly for about 3 years before slowly giving up. I still played some of Games Workshops other products (in particular Mordheim and Inquisitor) but my days as a wargamer were behind me.

8 years after first getting Warhammer I was at Uni, representing the Alternative Music Society at the Freshers Fair. Sandwiched between the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Society and the Live Roleplay Society I asked which of them would be best to join to start playing some Warhammer again: "Granny" the President of the LARP society responded "You don't want to be rolling dice, join us and do it for real. Its much more fun". I ended up joining them and not playing any Warhammer but spending almost every weekend larping for the rest of my time at Uni.

I still roleplay every week, mostly tabletop these days but also at a large professionally run live roleplay system called Empire. The games of Warhammer 40K I played at our club were the first in over a decade. I enjoyed it enough that I may actually get round to finishing the Imperial Guard army I've been considering for a while.

Empire LRP. Photo by Charlotte Moss.

Used with kind permission from the photographer and Profound Decisions Ltd

How did you get into gaming?

International Games Day - 16th November

The time has come for us to announce what we will be offering for International Games Day and we are pretty excited about what we have to offer. We will be running games throughout the library not just in the meeting room and have a selection of traditional board and card games as well as the more  esoteric games that we love at the club.

Up in the meeting room we will have our normal tables set up for wargames (Warhammer Fantasy and 40K, Judge Dredd and X Wing) and roleplay games. In the Heritage Zone we will have a copy of the Round Bournemouth Game, which dates from 1969 and forms a part of Bournemouth Libraries' Local Heritage collection and also the game of train empires, Ticket to Ride: Europe.

Downstairs in the Teen Zone there will be a table set up for playing Subbuteo. Then in the Children's Zone we will have giant Snakes and Ladders and Ludo for the youngsters and in the main library we will have Chess, Draughts, Backgammon and packs of cards for the public to use. We'll probably end up with some of our regular favourites as well so expect some Munchkin, 7 Wonders or Settlers of Catan to make an appearance.

Between 2 and 3pm we will be taking part in the Global Gossip Game, will you pass on the Secret?

Let's make sure the rest of Bournemouth realises how much fun there is in games and maybe we'll get a few members as a result.

Events for November and December

12 intrepid gamers braved the rain on Saturday to play some 40K, Carcassonne, Munchkin and Word Thief. We've now welcomed 42 individuals through our doors and we have 17 official members in the club. If you haven't picked up a membership form yet just ask me or Lyndsey (or one of the volunteers).

This weekend we have our Halloween Special be prepared for a selection of spooky games.

Then 16th November is International Games Day. We aim to introduce you to as many different games as possible, so we'll be running lots of short games, from WH40K using kill team rules, to quick board and card games. More details to follow including a full list of the games we will be offering.

The at the end of November we will be hosting our painting competition, again further details will be announced soon.

The Saturday before Christmas we'll be having our Christmas party and then the week after we'll all be trying out the new stuff we've received as presents (including those tasteful Xmas socks you're bound to be given!)


Munchkin. Photo by Darren Edwards

PS. One of you left your gloves last week, they are in our office at the Library.

The Greater Good by Sandy Mitchell: Book Review

With this post we welcome our volunteer David onto our blogging team. He's also working on another book review for us, so you'll be hearing more from him soon.

 

Darren





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The Greater Good - A Ciaphas Cain Novel

Sandy Mitchell’s “Cain” series is a much more tongue in cheek example of life in the Warhammer 40K universes Imperium of man. Where many books try to show the horror and futility of life in those dark times, the Cain novels have humour reminiscent of Blackadder.
Indeed the nature of the relationship of Cain and his aide is like that of Blackadder and Baldrick. (The books are also very reminiscent of the Flashman novels by George MacDonald Fraser - Darren)

This particular book is, in my opinion, a lesser example of his work. The book is a typical example of the Cain series, in that it is written in the form of the commissar’s unofficial memoir edited by an Inquisitor for distribution among a select few.
This style of writing is undeniably fast paced and humorous, the Commissars own take on events as well as the commentary from the Inquisitor makes for an entertaining read.

In the earlier examples of the Cain novels this style of writing is used to mention the future of past exploits of Cain as tangents. The details mentioned are self-contained and add to the overall narrative. Unfortunately this book relies heavily on the reader having read the previous book “The Last Ditch” and if you haven’t you miss out on a significant amount of the story of the book.
The title of the book as well as the cover art would suggest that the story would focus on diplomatic relations between the Imperium and the Tau, however those hoping for such will be disappointed.

However when all is said and done, it is still an enjoyable book and is recommended.
I would however urge future readers to read “The Last Ditch” first so that you can fully enjoy the story. Readers new to Cain would be advised to start with any other book from the series. They are all excellent ‘slice of life’ style books that can be enjoyed in any order.

David

October and November Events

It was nice to see some more new faces on Saturday, hope to see you all again soon. The new longer session allowed us to run a whole host of board and card games (including 7 Wonders, Rubik's Magic strategy game and Wordspot), another Dr Who roleplaying game and two games of Warhammer 40K. The forces of the Tau and Dark Eldar fought to a bloody draw but I managed to notch up a victory against the forces of Chaos with David's Tryanids.

This coming Saturday we will be in the smaller meeting room as a course is running in the larger room. The week after (19th Oct) I will be bringing a selection of boardgames to play and cake as I will be yet another year older. On the 2nd November we will run a Halloween special and on 16th November we will be running something as part of International Games Day @ Your Library.

Another Great Week

Our new Wall of Martyrs Warhammer 40K scenery piece. 

Scenery © Games Workshop 2013. All rights reserved.

Used without permission. Photo by Darren Edwards 

What a great turn out on Saturday, 15 people in total including 6 newcomers and our new WH40K scenery, which our volunteers have kindly assembled and base coated, got its first use.

Sorry if it was a bit squashed in the Teen Zone and the small office, we shall be back in the meeting rooms from next week. Next week is also the first of our extended sessions from 12 til 4 so with less restrictions on time we should be able to get some new games into our repertoire. Speaking of which Martin has offered to introduce us to some abstract strategy games, which is something the club has yet to explore.
 

7 Wonders Cardgame. Photo by Darren Edwards

You will probably have seen some of the nice new posters that GW have sent us, but we do a whole lot more than GW wargames and would like to make some other posters for the club as well. If anyone would be willing to draw some artwork for us to put on our posters we would be really grateful.

We are also in real need of some scenery for wargames, if anyone has pieces that they are willing to bring along or would like to make us some scenery that would be great. It should be noted that we have very limited space to store anything, so nothing too large (whilst we would love something like this, reality is that we can only really store a few small stand alone pieces).