Snotlings

Well hello new followers! This post is going to totally phaze you, are you sure you’re following the right person?

This is something I wrote about thirty years ago and I was prompted to dig it out following a post on the Facebook Middlehammer group. Sometimes being a hoarder can be useful. This is written for WHFB 3rd edition so if anyone knows the formulae to convert this to 6th let me know.

Snotlings

Are you tired of limp-wristed elves, solid dependable dwarves, highly spiked chaos thingys or noisy dirty orcs? Then what you need my friend is SNOTLINGS! Yes! Those gibbering green creatures lurking in the corners. A bit of light relief to bring a smile to your battle weary face. “But theyse always runs away!” comes a voice from the back of the room. Well with a bit of beefing up they won’t, or not very often anyways.

Most of these charactors are based on figures produced by Citadel Miniatures.

Spit the Chicken Slayer

Snotling Major (Level 5 only) Hero

snot1Bravest of the brave. His tales of derring-do are sung (well sort of hummed a bit) after the Midwinter feast of roast ferret and acorn beer. His mighty thews armoured with the spoils of a thousand (well, more than five) dwarven rubbish tips. On his side he wears the mighty sword of champions “Stoatbanger”. Purloined from a visit to Ye Olde Reject Shoppe. Forged in the fires of chaos and twinned to its bearer in an unholy alliance of flesh and soul. Allegedly.

spitSpecial Rules

Spit commands a minimum of 3 Snotling bases and a maximum of 6 bases. When commanded by Spit the Snotlings will charge or receive a charge if they outnumber their foe by two-to-one. If they are charged by a unit they don’t outnumber they will run away.

Snotling Fanatic

snot2Worshippers of the dour god ‘Arikross these devotees are fed on a diet of muesli. They hide amongst ordinary Snotlings until 6 inches away from an enemy unit. Then irrespective of the normal turn sequence the Fanatic is loosed towards the enemy with squeaky cries of, “Brookie! Brookie!”

The Fanatic is pointed in the direction the Snotling Player wishes him to travel and moves 2D4 inches. If a double is rolled the Fanatic has suffered from a heart attack or the inability to control his whirling iron ball.

The Fanatic uses a 3/4 inch template for damage purposes. Any unit moved over by the Fanatic receives automatic D4 strength 3 hits with no saving throw for armour.

For more specific information please read the section on page 98 WHFB about Goblin Fanatics.

Grip’s Sheep Warriors

Far away in the mountains of Norsca live and thrive a tough breed of mountain sheep. Quite how they found their way to Grip’s tribe at the World’s Edge Mountains is unknown; although it has been suggested that a dwarf with a penchant for things four legged was to blame. This is usually suggested in a lowered voice many leagues away from the nearest dwarf.

Grip’s tribe is nomadic, wandering from pasture to pasture only heading back to the tribal caves in the depths of winter.

The toughest, hardiest rams are used for battle (the weaker ones for the cooking pot), whilst the ewes are used as draught animals.

The Snotling rider and beast seem to have a special bond between them, probably because neither can realise how stupid the other is. In the summer in the high pastures Snotlings and their mounts can be seen fondly head-butting each other. it is considered a sign of weakness if a rider is knocked out by his mount. In winter, flocks can be found wandering around with little hammocks slung underneath protecting the Snotlings from the wrath of winter’s might by the sheeps thick coat.

There is a Snotling tale about Fid the Wise who tried to light a fire in his hammock. much talk is made of the impressive turn of speed from the irate ram. Not much is known of Fid’s whereabouts after this.

gripSpecial Rules

The riders cannot wear armour as the noise distracts the rams.

The rams have a butt attack S2 with no armour saving throw.

Barp

Level 5 Magician

snot3

A chance encounter with a sorcerer, a chaos deamonette and a bag of “Magick Dust” left Barp in possession of one spell. Unfortunately that is all, Barp is now a drooling idiot capable of blurting out that one spell if left unattended. The Snotling tribe is incredibily proud of him and will wheel him out at every battle hoping he will use the spell contained within his noggin. Nobody quite knows what the spell is, “BUT A SPELS A SPEL INNIT!”

Special Rules

Barp has no stats, he has to stay in base to base contact with other Snotlings. These are to stop him from saying the spell inadvertantly (it’s the only thing he knows).

The Snotling player has to say in advance to the GM in how many turns Barp will say the spell, that is if Barp is going to be used. When the time comes the GM will pick at random ONE Level 1 Battle Magic spell, without telling the Snotling player what it is. The spell is then cast on the nearest enemy unit within 12 inches. If there is no enemy unit within 12 inches the spell is cast on the nearest Snotling unit.

Once the spell is cast Barp reverts back to a normal Snotling, never to cast a spell again.

 

The joys of the countryside

Altough it is very pretty where I live, if you don’t have a car you’re buggered. To put it politely. I had to go to the post office to post some orders.

Mighty Fortress doors


I have actually made something that people want to buy!
Usually my Wife drives me around. This week however she is off skiing with the children.
Geographically the post office is just under five kilometres away. Very manageable on the flat. We live just over two hundred metres higher and the most direct route is cross-country. Joy.
Add to this, Eugendorf is not designed for cyclists. It is a shopping nexus on a main road with an autobahn junction.
I won’t be doing this again in a hurry.

Gathering moss for Salute

I’ve been thinking about this project for the last three months and the best way to present a table.

I had a table coutesy of Electric Love and I had the game, Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago.

ga4

I wanted islands for the game. What was the best way to approach this? The initial thought was to create some irregular shapes and make the contours with foam. Although they would look realistic there was only one drawback, they would not fit together to create other shapes.

What to do?

I went back to the roots of gaming and thought about hexagons. Looking at how other people had made hex terrain I made a jig to cut the foam.

ga3

Things would have been set, albeit with some hard work, to have a table ready for Salute. Then two things conspired against this.

My Wife’s Grandfather died last year. 93 with a full (SS on the Eastern Front, travels to Africa in a minibus, mountaineering, greatgrandchildren and good-health) life, before you ask. The family wanted to clear his house, including his workshop.

And at the same time we got a new neighbour who after moving in decided she didn’t like the wooden floor in her lounge. So it was ripped out and thrown in a skip. It was 20mm engineered, if that means anything to anyone, solid wood. Ever since doing the floor in the hobby room I’ve wanted a nice floor in the workshop. I’ve never had the money (can you hear those violins?) but now was my chance.

The optimum time to strip out the workshop, lay the floor ready for shelving and tools was now.

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Trimming wood with my new circular saw. I still have all my fingers BTW

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First iteration of furniture arrangement

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Possibly final arrangement

This obviously cut into the preparation time for Salute. Through previous Salutes and laser cutting I had met another gamer, Christoph. Previously of the Grune Horde and now the Tabletop Knights. He was also planning to run a table with GA. I proposed we join forces.

During this time I also started a couple of money making (success so far €4) projects. When I have time and unrestricted access to YouTube, not very often as The Clone Wars and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are wayyy popular, I have been watching Mel’s Terrain Tutors channel. One personal project this year is to make a large amount of hedgeing for Flames of War/Tanks. To do this I would need a large amount of clump foliage. Mel showed how to make it relatively cheaply.

The main expense was purchasing the foam and over half of this cost was postage.

Don’t get me started on postage!

clump0

My Mothers old Kenwood came in handy

clump4

Mixing with PVA and Poundshop acrylic paint

A by-product of the manufacturing process was moss and litchen. Ground up even finer it was ideal for this.

moss

Different colours to be blended when dry

The second money making project was a flockbox. I was not very happy with the quality of the grass tufts I had been making. It was OK but I knew I could do better. Mel’s channel had a video showing how he made static grass tufts. In it he used a flockbox.

I considered buying one but I couldn’t justify the forty quid PLUS the postage.

Luckily YouTube came to the rescue.

So with the help of eBay and my genius neighbour I made one.

The results are great.

flockbox

Once all these jobs were done there was just about time to paint some scenery and paint my crew. See previous post.

disp1

Planning how to display my stock

The day of Salute arrived. The car had been packed the night before so we could set off without any panic or hesitation. Austrian Salute was at a new location, in Germany. The previous venue was looking for new owners, I wonder why? Christoph arrived and we set up. My heart fell a little. Although his modular terrain was a good concept the execution was not as good. No win for the best table then.

sal1

Walter giving his customary greeting speech

sal2

My tiny display table

sal3

Our gametable

The day went quickly although marred by another disasterous lunch. Why do culinary mishaps only happen to me?

On the plus side I did win second prize for the fantasy painting competition.

For the usual more eloquent description visit Sigur’s Battlebrush Studios site

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2018/03/show-report-austrian-salute-2018.html#more

I spent the next day wracked with a crisis of confidence. I make high quality products but nobody wants to buy.

Why bother?

Because I love doing it!

The Reever’s Arms

2018 is the year of extracting digit. My old gaming buddy, mugodice.wordpress.com, had wanted an inn for his games a couple of years ago and I had been putting it off.
The brief was that it had to occupy an eight inch square footprint.
So spoiling his birthday suprise here it is.

I have a cunning plan. Maybe?

Somebody yesterday on the Oldhammer Community page in Friendface posted an interesting question.
“Has anybody made replacement doors for the Mighty Fortress?”
The Mighty Fortress was a polystyrene castle made by Games Workshop in the mid-eighties.
mf
Due to the age of this many of the plastic doors have disappeared or have been broken.
The-Doors
Some people on the Oldhammer page suggested 3D printing. This got me thinking.
Why can’t I laser cut replacements?
I dug my Mighty Fortress out and I used a piece of scrap 3mm MDF to guage sizes.
scrap
It fitted perfectly.
Next project.
group

The OS Miniatures Company

Recently I got a parcel containing some miniatures from The OS Miniatures Company.
https://www.facebook.com/OldSchoolMinis1985/
This is a company aiming to fill the gaps in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle army books. Obviously with an old school feel.
So here are some images of what I have managed to paint so far.

A cheeky little chappie blowing his own trumpet


A Chaos Barbarian. This is part of a challenge to be completed before Christmas.



A Chaos Dwarf Arse Cannon.

Test paint


A Work-in-Progress shot of the whole group of Alpine Dwarfs

Hobby Cheating

I have just stumbled across this YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/PhatWOP001/featured
By a guy called Vince Venturella.
Full of interesting little nuggets of information. I’ve just watched one on oil washes which makes me want to ditch my Army Painter Quickshade which has been my goto solution for just about everything.
Now to find time to watch the other hundred or so videos.

Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago

gawinter
Winter is here
This really needs no introduction and a lot more eloquent people have written about this.
cover
Frostgrave looked very interesting, never played it but never mind, but the only drawback that I could see was that all your scenery had to be winter themed which could be quite restrictive.
Ghost Arcipelago is set in a more tropical environment so the scenery can be integrated into other games.
At my rather casual reading of the rulebook it appears that it can be a sandbox of a rule-set. You want pyrates, OK. Savages, no problem. Dinosaurs, why not? It seems it can be a lot of fun.
I’ve put out a request for players on my local gaming forum, but no takers as yet.
http://www.diefestung.com/forum/
Next year’s Austrian Salute is looming and I’d like to try and win best gaming table again. I’ve set a standard so I have to go one better and I’m up against Christoph from Grune Horde who does his own laser cutting. To win I have to have an oustanding table AND play the game.
ga4
I have my gaming table, thankyou Electric Love. And I have started planning out a possible layout. I wanted my island system to be as interchangeable as possible so I could go from small islands to large conglomerations.
ga1
You can see on the right the first iteration of the design process. Looks nice however the pieces don’t fit seemlessly, there would be a little gully between each cluster.
ga3
This led me to laser cut this little device which means I can have perpendicular edges enabling everything to fit together unobtrusively. Hopefully.
ga2
Laser cutting some islands.
Lush tropical islands need to be accessorised.
Here are some scatter plants. I need a lot more. Thank heavens for eBay and cheap chinese aquarium suppliers.
ga5
Some scenery from my bitz box. Who knows what eldritch terrors this statue has witnessed.
On a final note. I’m having to squint to type this so apologies for any smelling mistooks. I had my eyes tested and my prescription has changed very slightly. Trying to be sensible and grown up and looking after my eyes I took the new lenses. After a week of squinting at the computer, I thought my eyes took time to adjust. Sitting a metre back from the screen hunched at a weird angle trying to reach the mouse I’d have enough and went back to the optician.
“You didn’t say you wanted to read as well.”
Using the interweb acronym FFS!

Dark Imperium


This, I expect most of you know this already, is the eighth iteration of the Warhammer 40K rule-set. I hadn’t played since Rogue Trader, the first iteration, back in the eighties.
I was lured to this by a new streamlined ruleset and the promise of not having to lug around armfuls of codices like the previous editions.
Something simple for me and the Boys.
I used the money earned from gardening towards this coupled with a discount from my “Local” (ha ha) gaming store.
The box is rather beautifully presented and it feels value for money. Fifty odd figures, thick rulebook and dice etc.
No complaints there.

A unit of Pox Walkers from the box


Top left, an old Chaos Marine from the eighties. Centre three figures from the Death Guard “push-fit” box. Rear right, a plastic Chaos Marine from the nineties?


Also purchased were three Index books with the stats for the new rules. Had I have known that G’Dub were going to publish new codices immediately I wouldn’t have bothered and saved myself some money.
I visited my local WARHAMMER store to introduce myself to the new Red-Shirt and in chatting mentioned that I was a bit peeved about the time gap between Indices and Codices. “Well I knew that!” I was helpfully informed. “But I didn’t. Me customer, me spend money. Peeved customer not spend money.”
That didn’t go down too well.

The Saga of the T-Shirt

Some of my longterm readers may remember a post from early 2015
https://grumpyoldtin.wordpress.com/2015/03/02/januaryfebruary-work/
Well I never heard a word of thanks or received a t-shirt. I was a little disheartened by this.
Anyway, earlier this year somebody posted on the Oldhammer Facebook Community page that a group from Exeter was planning to attend BOYL.
BOYL, Bring Out Your Lead, is sort of THE event to attend for Oldhammerers. Hosted at Wargames Foundry it is a chance for people to meet up and play games with old figures and game systems.
https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/pages/oldhammer
I posted asking if anybody knew Joe Bloggs, the guy who’d asked for the illustration. I got a response asking why and I replied that I was the illustrator and I was still waiting for my t-shirt.
I did get an apology from Joe and the promise that the t-shirt would be sent.
But I did get another message. Would I be intersted in letting my illustation be used for a new miniatures company? There would be some lead and a t-shirt in exchange.
This company had just run a Kickstarter for a very Oldhammer Gnome army which I had fallen for big-time but didn’t have the funds to back.

My response was immediate and in the affirmative.
Just after this Joe sent the t-shirt. It was a less than positive experience. The shirt had been worn and then washed, for which I was grateful. I don’t know why, because most of my clothes these days come from flohmarkts (I’m not very cash rich at the moment),I just didn’t want to touch it. But more dissapointing was the fact that the design had been printed in white on a black t-shirt. Had I have known I would have produced reversed artwork. The t-shirt looked awful.
A couple of weeks ago I got a parcel from OS Miniatures.
In it was;
A t-shirt
tshirt
And some minis from a new Kickstarter
ski
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/882426675/old-school-miniatures-presents-the-alpine-dwarfs?ref=profile_created
arse
And a gnome which I couldn’t resist painting
gnome
I’ve had further good news.
My illustration is the basis of a miniature sculpted by John Pickford.
dwarf
AND would I be interested in producing some more illustrations, potentially to be used for future miniatures.
A nice little project for those long winter nights.
logo
http://oldschoolminiatures.blogspot.co.at/

Some little bits done before Electric Love

I did manage to do a few bits and bobs before and during my time at Electric Love, but I don’t seem to have photographed everything. I plan to remedy this before too long.

This was inspired by the Blanchitsu articles in White Dwarf and I rather liked the floaty bits that people had made. This is part of my ongoing Imperial Court which is slowly building up.

This is a little speeder I’d lasercut and will be putting up for sale.


My old gaming buddy Seb had sent me some figures. With them was this halfling which I liked but just didn’t quite know what to do with. So rather than having it sit on the leadpile I thought I’d paint him up and return him. I had a blast painting him and I made the most impractical gaming base ever.

This was the Mayor of Helsreach, a freebie figure from Curtis of Ramshackle Games.

Ramshackle Games


He was given out at the annual BOYL event at Wargames Foundry
http://bringoutyourlead.co.uk/
I really want to go to this one day.

Die Grüne Horde

As usual I’m far behind in my posts. Laziness, a trip to Legoland and starting work at Electric Love Festival. The ELF is my work for the next seven weeks with some very long days ahead the nearer the festival gets, so don’t expect much posting from me. If all goes to plan I want to by a small (400mm x 300mm) laser cutter with the money.
This was the event that I had been invited to the previous year and due to communication problems I didn’t make it. This year I did. Okay there were some problems with road signage and autobahn exits that were closed, but I was there.
It was advertised as a gaming day and it most definitely it was. There were three tournaments that day; Warhammer 40K, Infinity and Firestorm Armada. Also being played was Saga, Bolt Action, the ubiquitous Frostgrave, X-Wing Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Force on Force, Kugelhagel and a very brief appearance of Test of Honour (replaced by Halo Fleet).


It was held in a much larger space than the Austrian Salute. The thing I have found at gaming days is that I felt very slim. The average physique on display was, politely, well rounded.

My display


There was a painting competition, which obviously I entered. I ended up with a third place in the Unit Category. I did expect to be higher ranked in this one as the quality of the other entries was okayish, in the other categories there was better painting so I didn’t expect much there.

Painting competition area


Roll-the-Dice was trading there
http://www.roll-the-dice.de
And I had an interesting chat with Martin, the proprietor.
Walter (Austrian Salute) was there and it was nice to see him. We chatted about the new edition of Warhammer 40K coming soon. And he managed to chat me out of some money for when it is launched.
There was a pro painter there
http://www.crissis-bemalservive.de
She wasn’t up to the standard of Sigur of Battlebrush studios but she did have some interesting iridescent effects, but not using nail products which I am currently researching.
The lunch was mediocre, luke warm, but the service was excellent.
I didn’t demo the game at all and hardly sold anything. But I had some excellent conversations with people there.

Number One Son eying up a scratch built titan.


Overall it was a pleasant day, not sure if it is worth the effort though. Quite a lot of traveling for very little result. I’ll have to ponder whether I want to attend again.