A Return to Warhammer, and(not related) a whole lot of Blackshirts…

For those of you new to this blog, it may surprise you to hear that this started, originally, as a 40k-centric blog. While over time this has evolved, I always did play it, in the background, as well. I just get very focused on my passion projects of the moment, presently Zona Alfa, Very British Civil War, and many more.

That never diminishes my love of the lore of the distant future, but while 8th Edition was a great time, it had started to wear me down with constant FAQ’s and meta shifting. While my Clubhouse peers are not an overly competitive bunch, we do like to play hard with what we have, and we do have a fondness for shiny gubbins, which means a lot of Forge-World. Which, let’s be frank, hasn’t been always the most balanced of toys. So a new edition, promising balance tweaks, new Forge-World indexes done by Games Workshops own rule team, not the chaps who ought to be writing Horus Heresy stuff, and a spiffing new Crusade system that promised a lot of narrative goodness, was obviously going to cause a bit of a local hype-fest. My local store, the Giddy Goblin in Hanover, Ontario(No, I am not sponsored LOL) was awesome, and managed to secure a copy for everyone that wanted one.

My Clubhouse hosted(socially responsibly, in a low Covid-19 area, I’m talking one case here, and fully masked at all times…) Launch Party, which kicked off at 12:01. The boxes were dropped off by our friendly local store Manager.

We did a quick overview of the rules, then jumped fully into the new Crusade system. As a Narrative gamer, this makes my heart jump for joy(Or, is it the 3 Monster energy drinks coursing through my system….) and I am very happy to report my Vostroyans, Praetorians, and new Black Templars, which I purchased more then a Crusade’s worth from two people in December, will be seeing the table, and covered in more depth later.

 

While I was mostly busy building my new models, I did take time to do several things. Firstly, I took a few action shots of the games in progress, shown above. One guy was the painter for the stores demo copy, and thus had Marines from that set ready to go. However, they stayed in their Impulsor(think a weird floating Rhino if you haven’t been around 40k in a bit…) and thus I got no pictures of the dang models in action!

Of course, work continues on Zona Alfa. While I personally didn’t get much done, my friends have made excellent progress on 3D printed monsters and terrain. Some truly disgusting horrors await in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone…

But, as I am very easily distracted by my most recent project, I was reminded by a certain picture in the Clubhouse….

And remembered I had a veritable horde of Fascists for A Very British Civil War show up the other day, and that the faster I paint them, the faster I can play that game.

 

I had brought along the whole lot to paint at the Clubhouse, so after priming them all black, I decided, while we counted the hours until 12:01, to paint something to pass the time. A Sergeant model was selected for the honour, and I set to work.

Not perfect, but I now know what to improve for the full batch painting run. Of course, this does mean I have Zona Alfa crews, Canadian modern in…wait, didn’t talk about those did I!

For my Canadian Zone project, I needed modern Canadian military. A company in Canada called Full Battle Rattle Miniatures does a line of them! Representing ISAF forces in our countries foray into Afghanistan, they will do great work representing a uniquely Canadian Cordon Defense Force…

 

Of course, this means I need to paint CADPAT, which is going to suck. A lot. I hate painting camouflage, and this is one of the hardest to get right. I sure do pick em, right?

To finish the thought, I have Zona Alfa, Canadians, Black Templars, Praetorians, etc to paint. But I like to be too busy. These days, any distraction is welcome, and if one painting project bores me, I can simply paint something else!

But as I’m pulling an all nighter, and possibly longer, to fully cover the release of the Indomitus box for our Badly Painted Minis website, I should probably drinking a nice calming up of peppermint tea, and steady my nerves for a long day of hopefully eventually fruitful tabletop Journalism. If you guys want to check out what I did over on the other site, here is a link!

https://badlypaintedminis.ca/2020/07/25/the-era-indomitus-bringing-in-the-new-edition/

For now though, Happy War-Gaming, wherever you might be! From the distant future of a galaxy at eternal war, to radiation sunsets in the Ukraine, to rainy ole England in the throes of an abdication crisis, may you enjoy any hobbying you do today! Have a good one folks!