N:AW Ash Wastes Game Mat

So something that you need for a Necromunda Ash Wastes (N:AW) game is in fact "ash wastes", that is a playing surface.  Your usual green felt or shattered future city is not really applicable.  N:AW has effectively two game scales, one which is the usual Necromunda scale skirmish, which you play on a 3x3 foot or 4x4 foot board, and "rolling roads" where there is some sort of vehicular chase/heist/etc. which needs a 6x4 foot or two boards that you switch to represent the road passing by. The boxed set came with a rather nice 3x3 foot printed paper mat, which has a day and night side, but it is glossy and already showing a bit of wear at the folds.  So the idea came to make a new game mat to represent this surface, and more to make it from a new technique. [who would be smart enough to use a tried and true technique?]

Googling around for various ash wastes mats, I somehow came across this video from Black Magic Craft.  He has a few more videos that use this same technique to make roads and rivers, which might have been where I found it the first time. 

I really liked how it seemed heavy and dense compared to caulked canvas, and the idea of using rollers and other things to mark the caulk seemed like a good one.  So after some research, I found a similar runner from Lowes (the same product as the video is not sold at Home Depot in the US), bought some caulk, and got to work.  

So to learn how to make one, continue after the jump. 

Necromunda: Ash Wastes (N:AW)

(Picture from Warhammer Community)

For Christmas this year (which since it is August, I note was now a long time ago), the kid got Necromunda: Ash Wastes (N:AW).  Released in 2022, this was officially an expansion to the main Necromunda game, adding vehicles, Ash waste campaign play, and several new gangs, including the Ash Waste Nomads, present in the box.  However, the hard back book in the box was in fact a complete Necromunda rule book, only missing the dominion campaign and specific underhive locations. In addition to the rules, the box came with two complete gangs, two vehicles, and four giant flea riders.  And a jolly lot of lovely terrain.  (as well as dice, templates, and cards)

This box triggered some what of an arms race in the house, as I bought first a Escher gang (new on sprue from a extremely cheap Ebay lot), then various books were bought, then various conversion projects were undertaken to get us to complete starting gangs of 1400 credits (to allow for vehicles), and after painting and a lot of rule reading, and production of a game mat, games have been played.  More to come on this, but it is pretty exciting.  

N:AW Teaser

 

For Christmas the kid got a box of Necromunda Ash Wastes, and this weekend with the house to ourselves we finally got a couple of games in with completed gangs and terrain!  Fun stuff, even if the first game did take nearly four hours as we looked stuff up!   Second was much faster, same 1400 cred battles but half the time. 

More to follow. 

Fleshy Tests

 Hello blog reader(s), it has been a while since the last post.  The kids have been busy with water polo, which means I have been busy driving, and with a couple of home projects and the season of birthdays I have had very little time for hobby (or gaming, I missed a lovely Quar game).

I have been working on a project which is inching closer to completion. 

The figures in question have a lot of bare skin, so I thought I would simplify things by using some newfangled Contrast paint.  Since I have not used this paint before, I thought a test would be in order, and this level of work was something I did have time for.

Gulliman Flesh test #1

I had a ton of old Chaos Marauder arms, so I selected a few that were similar, sprayed them white, and then undercoated them with the following colors: Flat white spray, pink as a highlight, all pink, ivory, Bugmans glow (a ruddy skin tone), and splatter paint with Bugmans. 

Here is the result:

Honestly, it was super fast to do the skin this way, but I did not get the look I was after for this project.  I may run another test (after all I have plenty of spare Marauder arms!), or I may just go back to traditional painting. 

What do you think?  Have you used Contrast, or another one coat paint for skin?

Beta Strike

This weekend past, I had the chance to play Alpha strike again with P, this time to celebrate the completion of his new hobby and gaming shed. 

It is hard to do justice to the space with just a few words, but it is pretty much every gamer's dream, storage, hobby space, art and books, and in the middle a nice sized table, ready for gaming. 

Lovely space, and very large! 

We were supposed to play a four person game, but sickness prevented the other two from coming, so we shifted around the game time to be more convenient, and essentially playtested the scenario.  In this game, the evil Clan mechs would come in from one corner of the board, attacking some sort of forward base held by mercenaries, and then later a couple lances of the real heroes from the Inner Sphere would come in to save the day.  The Objectives for the baddies were to destroy the parked leopard dropship and to get infantry into the bunker.

 

Start of the game, with two lances in reserve

This game was a reminder that while the Clan mechs are absurdly fast and well armed, they have effectively the same durability as the Inner Sphere mechs, so concentrating fire eventually can put them down.  Doing that while they blast away at your much weaker mechs is the real trick! 

Still one lance in reserve

As usual, I forgot to take many pictures once the game really got going, but the Clan mechs dumped off elementals at the edge of the complex and then supported them with pretty heavy fire.  The Inner Sphere eeked out a victory mostly due to time. 

Climactic action with the Elementals swarming in

Once again fun to get mechs out on the table, and P is always great to play against.  We had a good chat after about the 101 other games he has, now that they are all unpacked from storage and can be seen... so hopefully we will be back in the shed soon for more games! 

Holidaze 2025

Well hello again. 

Happy New year and Merry Christmas to you my dear reader(s)! 
Hopefully everyone is well, and you got what you wanted from Santa.
As for myself, my family was very generous, and I got a few gaming related items.

Nothing touched yet

The generic black box on the bottom is an Eldar Fire prism, which guarantees that GW will release a new one with the new codex.  I also got a new Kroot kill team, some bones figures, and the sprue is a Stargrave Crew II sprue that Santa put in my stocking. 

Over the holiday we did manage to play a single game of Splendor, a single game of Forbidden Jungle, and got in a good session of the kid D&D game with all the cousins, but little gaming or gaming related work has happened in the last few months.  Between work and driving to school or water polo I seem to have little time or energy.  I am nearly ready to reveal a fall project which should lead to more games, so watch this space. 

Also somewhat exciting is that the kid got the huge Necromunda Ash Wastes box and some additional stuff to go with it, so we have been talking Necromunda and campaigns quite a bit.  

Actual plans for this year look depressingly like plans for last year: Finish the Eldar army (complicated by a new codex and miniatures in March or so), paint something I got as a gift, and work on WWII Normandy. 

What about you, what are you planning on doing this year?