About two years back (probably at a similar time to when I actually bothered to write something for Corehammer, funnily enough), some friends and I were talking. We’d just been playing a game of Inquisimunda (also known as INQ28). Bit of background for those that don’t know what it is: it’s a narrative style of skirmish gaming at 28mm scale with an element of RPG, and typically revolves around inquisitors and their retinues investigating nefarious happenings in the grim darkness of the far future, with special emphasis on the “grimdark” element. Depending how you want to play, you can utilise a GM, which our little group does on a rotating basis. The system is community created and is largely based on the classic Necromunda rule set (although some people use the 54mm scale Inquisitor rules and perform some really specific technical calculations that make it sound overly cumbersome and doubtless dry as fuck – I mean could they not just divide by 2 and sacrifice a single millimetre? Some people like to take their chosen level of dunce-nerdery to ludicrous extremes, I suppose) with character stats ported over from Warhammer 40k, adapting where necessary in order to ensure characters and weapons are not over or underpowered, for like “balance” purposes and shit. You’ve seen Blanchitsu in White Dwarf, right? Well that’s basically the visual vibe atmosphere we’re talking. Continue reading
Category Archives: Warhammer 40k
Corehammer Single Figure Challenge
Despite the glut of (by my own admission) fascinating articles, reviews and interviews posted on Ye Olde Corehammer this past few months, it pains me to admit that we have been woefully bereft of hobby content.
‘Not enough painted moon men‘ was the cry from the peanut gallery, and who am I to deprive our readership of their bread and butter? So here we have the resurrected Single Figure Challenge.
It’s dead simple right, submit a single figure that you’ve been working on recently to be scrutinised by our readers. The miniature can be from any games system or manufacturer, just send some nice pictures alongside a bit off text telling us a bit about it. Sounds easy doesn’t it! Yeah well you’d be surprised at how hard some folk make this, anyway here’s our entrants. Vote for your favourite in the comments below, winner get’s a £20 Element Games voucher. Crack on. Continue reading
Trapped Under Dice: CH Xmas Mosh
“Human sacrifice, dwarves and elves living together, mass hysteria”
Once more the hour had come upon us for that finest of recent traditions,the Corehammer Christmas social. Typically plans were made, promises of attendance sworn in blood and games organised. In previous years we have held court at Warhammer World, Foundry and the Element Gaming Centre in Stockport. But I like to mix it up and visit new places so this year we gathered at Mantic HQ. Tucked away on the edge of a residential estate in Bullwell, Nottingham, it took Ager and I a few goes to try and find the place. After successfully navigating a gaggle of nightmarish traffic calming bollard children, we arrived. We were greeted by our host for the day Mantic’s very own perennially enthusiastic Scotsman, Andy Meechan, and ushered inside.
Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets: Building a Modular Ruined City
So at the end of April we gathered in San Diego for our first official Corehammer West Coast Chiller. A month or two before that I had gotten the crazy idea of building a modular ruined city for the event so that at least I’d wander up with something to add to the festivities. I ended up only having something like 3 weeks to build the thing starting at the beginning of April, but in the mad dash to produce something I did manage to document the process so I figured I’d share it with you all now. That way you can learn exactly what I did, ignore it, and make something way cooler on a normal human schedule. I’m going to describe what I did, and not go too far down the rabbit holes of ideas not considered or techniques not used. Feel free to ask questions in the comments about anything you want though. Corners were cut, designs were simplified, but in the end, I had a table that can host a number of games in all sorts of different setups.
Oath of Moment (Redux) – Ave Deus Mechanicum
Rock. Robot rock.
My original oath of moment was to make some headway into my Word Bearers going into 2015, and that continued nicely into 2016 with a load of new units, with more being added fairly regularly. I’ll do an update on how that’s going in a few weeks having re-appropriated a few units from the old III Legion army. Continue reading
COREHAMMER FEST 2016 Review – Swinton so much to answer for
This is an article nominally about my trip to Stockport to attend Corehammer Fest 2016 in October. If you can’t be bothered reading the whole thing, it was a great time and you should go to the next one if you can. If you can be bothered slogging through my ramblings, hopefully you come to the same conclusion.
“Come to the fucking North”
This was the response I got when I floated the idea that I’d be over to London in early 2015. Not exactly the warm welcome I was hoping. You see, for Americans, the UK wargaming scene is often seen as a sort pilgrimage to be made. The motherland where the hobby in a modern sense was launched, where the biggest and most influential companies are based, and where every field and lane probably has dead soldiers from some medieval armor wearing era buried beneath. But on this trip in 2015, I saw none of that. I did manage to meet up with one very special Stevie Boxall, who took a couple Californians to a British Mexican restaurant and a walking tour of brutalist London architecture, cheers. But that was the start, when I returned for work almost a year later I finally made it out of London and to the wonders of GW and Wargames Foundry (covered in a previous DungeonPunx Podcast, you should listen, but probably won’t) and was shown an incredibly warm welcome by a bunch of good dudes. That experience planted a brain worm that burrowed deep, and ensured I’d be coming back again, and would make gaming a priority when I did. So, when the dates came out for the October 2016 event, I said fuck it and plotted a way to make it happen.
What did I get myself into?
Choosing a Legion – Andy Hoare of Tales from the Maelstrom’s Emperor’s Children
Emperor’s Children in black look absolute nails.
It’s been a while, but we’re back again with the What Legion series, this time Andy from Tales from the Maelstrom steps up with his Horus Heresy Emperor’s Children army. If you’re unfamiliar with his blog, and you’re reading this, you’re in for a treat. There’s a tonne of classic gaming and miniatures from the Rogue Trader era. This is an article that will take you down memory lane, back to flicking through those late 80’s copies of White Dwarf.
First up, can you let us know who you are?
I’m Andy, I’ve been a gamer since the mid 80s and worked as a games designer for Games Workshop, Fantasy Flight Games and various other companies since 2001. I’m currently product manager in charge of bringing the most beloved of the specialist games range to a new generation.
Oath of Moment – Bad Moons part 1
Since starting up on OoM towards the end of January, I’ve made some fair progress with the first stage of this plan – to finish off the bulk of the figures that I’d started painting over the course of 2015 but, for assorted reasons, fell by the wayside before they were completed.
Most of the models that fell into this category were bits and bobs of the 40K Bad Moon Ork army I initially started putting together way back in the days of 3rd and 4th edition, and I’d set about sprucing up and updating last year, following a decade-long break from the hobby. Also, several were additional members to add to units I painted the bulk of in 2015, so my first couple of update posts seemed like a good opportunity to show off the army so far, and share some thoughts regarding what’s changed since I was last having a crack at it.
This time round, I’m going to concentrate on the Troops choices – these were always what served in the past as the biggest stumbling block to me in terms of staying disciplined about completing an army. I’m pretty pleased with having overcome this to a sufficient extent to have well in excess of the bare minimum requirement.
This is the only guy in the mob entirely composed of post-2005 bitz, I think.
And They Shall Know No Fear: Female Space Marines in Warhammer 40k
Warhammer 40k is the most popular wargame on the planet, full stop. It is a sprawling franchise that encompasses novels, video games, a theatrically released film, RPG’s, board games and miniature games (that happen to dominate its industry). The grimdark future world created by the Games Workshop design team decades ago still captures the imagination of gamers across the world and drives sales of a massive product line and supporting hobby supplies. This doesn’t surprise me; the world of 40k (and 30k) is pretty fucking cool. Even as I’ve aged out of their core demographic, Games Workshops dark vision of space has a lot that can draw me back in. Powerful imagery, insane power struggles and every aspect of military cultures turned up to 11. Massive hive cities where 100’s of millions of inhabitants live on top of each other in Dickensian despair, in their midst hide alien conspiracies and brutal gang warfare. Powerful manifestations of chaotic gods pour forth from a rip in space and time so massive its swallowed whole planetary systems.A devout order of space fascists, sitting in a fortified monastery on a surviving chunk of their destroyed planet, secretly hunting traitors from their own order. This world is batshit crazy and insane in some of the best possible ways. It’s a Tolkien fantasy world ripped to pieces, thrown into deep space andstitched back together with a punk rock ethos, space opera drama and a heaping helping of gothic trappings. Warhammer 40k is without question the showpiece game of the hobby (for better or for worse). It is the most popular, best selling, widely known and most visible game of the entire wargaming world. Sadly, it’s a game that is still lacking in female representation, and that’s some shameful shit. It’s a world that quite frankly deserves female Space Marines.
40K Battle Report: Iron Warriors v Craftworld Iyanden
Who misses the battle reports in White Dwarf? You know, actual hobby content. I’ve always enjoyed typing up a rough after action report for the email list, but wanted to do something better for the blog. So, when Brinton announced he was travelling overseas, and making a pilgrimage to Nottingham, the shout went up and a game was arranged at Warhammer World with Matt. Yes, Warhammer World, the location of *that* Apocalypse game, and the 40K spiritual depantsing for a good handful of the Corehammer crew. Hopefully a good game would get us back into it, so I wrote a narrative, we chose our armies, decided to play an objective game with the mission cards, and rolled some dice. A gallery of all photos taken can be found here