Rothenburg ob der Tauber

On our recent family holiday, we drove down from Frankfurt to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg is in northern Bavaria, and has a particularly well preserved medieval old town, and of interest to this blog, has its original walls.  These survived the end stages of the war due to an understanding on both sides of the historical value of the town.

We were not in town very long, but we did manage to see the town center, St. James, and walked a bit of the wall before we had to hurry on our way. I must say that I really wanted to work on a 10mm castle after seeing this town!

 Here are a few picture highlights for your Saturday perusal:

Pedestrian Gateway.  Check out that stone work, not as regular as you might think from looking at models.

St. James' doorway with inset smaller door

Narrow streets

Altar cover in St. James'.  Interesting for the costumes depicted aside from its beauty

Tower over the gate

Gun loop in the wall

Some lovely tile texture ideas here

Wall walk

This view of the wall shows how it has changed over the years, and that it probably had a fighting platform previously.

Wall with fall ivy

Cobblestones around an old well

I have some more of these if there is interest in any of the particular subjects.

 

Upcoming: faux-castles, a fortress, and the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum.

The lure of Chaos

A current development in the "Games Workshop Hobby" (as they like to call it) is that there are both people willing to buy individual plastic parts clipped from kit sprues, AND that there are people willing to set up and manage web or ebay stores to enable this.  I have long been a buyer of "bitz" to use the GW parlance, and when the company decided that it did not want my money in that way anymore, I gradually turned to online suppliers to meet that need.

Sometimes when perusing lists of bitz, you notice that there is enough commonality to make it worth while to buy a kit outright.  Instead of spending $20 on parts to get 50% of a kit, you could buy the whole thing for $30 and so on.  The risk (besides spending more money) is then that you become interested in the original purpose of the kit, that is to build a certain unit for a certain army, and before you know it, you are setting out on the path of building a new army, something few need to do in this era of belt tightening and other responsibilities.  Anyway, looking for chaos knight bitz led me down the darkest of dark paths, reawakening a desire for a chaos army.

I have long harbored desires to have a chaos army (something I clearly need in addition to Dogs of War, Empire, Dwarves, Goblins, and various random things), and looking for bitz made me start thinking about the kits, and the army, and now here we are (that the current White Dwarf has a few new Chaos kits does not help).  I already have a Marauders as Dogs of War Northmen unit (converted to have great weapons and to look more like vikings) and most of a box of chaos warriors.  I also have a mounted wizard (as a White Dwarf subscription bonus, from the last time they had those), and most of a unit of Bestigors, which in 6th edition can be added to a Warriors of Chaos army as allies.   So I only would need a few things to make a valid, if under powered army.  Enter the chaos battalion. 

 

This particular battalion is one of the few left that gives pretty good value for the money.  For $110 retail, you get 20 marauders, 12 warriors, 5 knights, and 10 hounds, which would cost $128 if bought in their own boxes, and you get a "free" sprue of marauders as well.  Not at all a bad deal by GW terms, as you are paying only $2.34 a figure.  To that I would add another box of marauders, a box of marauder horsemen, a box of beastmen, and a box of three Tomb Kings chariots to convert to nurgle marked chariots.  So for about $260 retail, I could have a sizable army ($2.85 a figure including 20 cavalry figures and three chariots), which would be 99% plastic, and easily expanded when the new rule book comes out in 2013.  And have a substantial bitz box contribution as well.

 

In the past I might have already reached for credit card, but now I am made of sterner stuff, as well as being all to aware of the massive backlog of figures to build (let alone paint) that I already have.  But I still WANT one. 

New Workbench

For my birthday this year I got a new desk to serve as a workbench.  Previously, I had either been using my painting desk, or moving things around from closet to kitchen table and back.  Not ideal, and it really has held a few projects back. 

When we were able to allocate more room in our house to hobbies, the wife and I discussed how to lay it out, and having a real workbench with a roll top desk to cover up the mess was discussed.  Thanks to her instigation, and hard work searching craigslist, my parents bought a beat up used desk for my birthday.

 A number of coats of wood cleaners, sealers, and wax, some reassembly of drawers, major unpacking, and we have this:

Note the cool art my wife got for me.

Quite nice, and I find that just having it open starts to give me ideas on converting figures, and now I am itching to build up some kits too.  It is not completely organized, and obviously the drawer pulls need to be fixed, but it is coming along nicely.

Here is what I currently have on the workbench:

And yes, I do actually have the baneblade I have been yammering on about for the last... nearly 3 years. Needs some final finishing touches, and then it is off to primer.

Freikorps Werdenfels

I noticed that Tsuba miniatures had released figures for Frikorps before I left on vacation, but other than admiring the figures, thought little of it.  Today I was browsing around the web, as one does, and noticed that there was more information out on them... hmm, the unit was from Bavaria, and further, was raised from Garmisch-Partenkirchen (then just Garmisch and Partenkirchen), which is one of the places where I stayed on vacation!

Aside from the pictured figures, there are two packs of riflemen, a heavy machine gun, and one of "specialists" which includes a medium machine gun, a standard, and a figure with a hunting horn, so you could easily build up a little force with the produced figures.

Anyway, these are great looking figures, and aside from their strictly historical uses, they would be excellent for a variety of interwar or pulp actions.  German volunters for a VBCW?  "Alpine" units in a 1930's general war?  Who can resist Paul Hicks figures in lederhosen?  And for € 7.50 not too expensive either.  If they sell well, there are plans for civilians too...

Inquisitors ho!

 

After re-reading the Eisenhorn and Ravnor omnibus volumes (both by Dan Abnett), I am raring to go on converting some inquisitorial skirmish action. (and eagerly awaiting the new trilogy)

For those of you not in the know, Inquisitors in the 40k universe are something like their historical namesake, with a bit of detective, Batman (vigilante with gadgets), Punisher (vigilante who kills people), and Jedi (roving trouble shooter) mixed in for flavor.  They operate outside of the regular Imperial governing structure, and have ultimate authority, up to the level of ordering planets to be destroyed (subject to paperwork of course). Then they have retinues of helpers and minions, such as astropaths, navigators, acolytes, interrogators, servo-skulls, weapons servitors, death cultists, bound psykers, and daemonhosts.  On top of that they have access to the other more military branches of the Imperium, and can bring in anything from a single space marine up to a full army for a fight (including the aforementioned planet killing when needed).

Making things even more exciting, Inquisitors are by no means a monolithic group, with a spectrum of opinion on using the enemy's own weapons against them (Radical to Conservative) and a number of mutually conflicting philosophies on what the purpose of being an inquisitor is all about.  Philosophy aside, structurally, there are there are three main branches, or Ordos, of the Inquisition, concentrating on the three main threats to mankind.  (Xenos, Daemons, and Witches) Further, the size of the Imperium is such that the Inquisition is subdivided by sector and even sub-sector in wealthier/more populated regions. The end result is that far from being a uniform group, Inquisitors can be sub-divided until each stands alone with only their personal allies.

When you have independent investigator/destroyers with unlimited power and their own private military, and conflicting ideas on how to get things done (and even what should be done), you have plenty of potential for armed conflict.  Some of the other Imperial groups could also be in competition with the Inquisition, such as Rogue Traders, the Adeptus Mechanicium, the Ecclesiarchy and more to add further flavor (and conflict).

So Inquisitorial skirmish.  Games-Workshop themselves started this off with the game Inquisitor, which used 54mm figures in a sort of quasi-role play/hyper-detailed skirmish system.  Neither fish nor fowl, and using comparatively expensive figures that needed their own terrain, the game never really took off.  I happened to get the rules and a few boxes of miniatures from one of the Troll Boss Bob sales (I so miss those), and got the bug for large figures.  I ended up with about 30 or so figures in various states of conversion... none painted.  At the time $15-$20 a figure seemed expensive, working in metal difficult, and my interest fizzled out a bit. [which does not preclude me from hauling around a file box full of the figures of course]

Enter Inquisimunda/Inq28 and similar skirmish games using the concepts, and some of the rules from Inquisitor, in a more approachable scale, and using the massive expansion of plastic figures to make the modeling side easier as well.  Suddenly collecting a few little warbands is both achievable, and attractive, and there has been a flurry of interest about this on the various forums and blogs.

On top of that, Fantasy Flight games has come out with a number of role playing games set in the Warhammer 40k universe, which help to flesh out what equipment is available, what sort of missions could be undertaken and so on.  Dark Heresy addresses inquisitors specifically, and all of the source books and other rule books would be useful.

Figure wise, aside from the massive opportunities created by Games Workshop's own figures and the conversion of the same, the Reaper Chronoscope range is overflowing with figures that could be useful with a few GW bitz, and the Dark Heaven line could come in useful as well (wizards and such make for good psykers).

So being a visual person, I have started putting together a pinterest board of inspirational pictures for this project, and eagerly went 81 pages deep on the DakkaDakka Painting and Modeling Blog board, looking for ideas to, er, borrow.  Then, in the midst of organizing my new work table, I sorted out the horde of figures I have acquired that could be suited for this purpose.  I have held on to some figures for over 16 years, and now they will finally have a clear use.

I am very excited about this, and there will certainly be more posts to come!

Home Again

Just got back this weekend from our family trip to Bavaria and Austria, and it was great.  Seeing real castle and city wall fortifications was inspiring, the Austrian Army (and Navy) museum was amazing (Rothenburg and Salzburg), I also read the Eisenhorn omnibus while on the plane (and started the Ravenor one), and I got the new White Dwarf magazine.  So fired up on a number of subjects, which I hope to share with you soon. 

Unfortunately, I also traveled for over 26 hours to get home, and am currently a bit burnt out... so it will have to wait a bit.

New style White Dwarf Review

I have been thinking about how to review the new style White Dwarf, and realized I need to get my thoughts out before a month has gone, and the next copy comes out... 

To recap, the quality of the Dwarf has been declining for a while, and about a year ago, I let my decade long subscription lapse.  Then in the summer, there were some rumors of a relaunched White Dwarf, with new styles and new contents.  The rumors turned out to be true, and I purchased a copy at the FLGS at the new price of $10.  They had a large stack on the counter, and handed out 3-4 while I was in line, so it was clearly something that interested more than just me.

Thoughts on the new model White Dwarf are a bit mixed.  On the one hand, the presentation is improved, and on the other, the actual content is reduced slightly.  Paper quality is improved, but the price has gone up to a level that it will not be just an impulse purchase.  Here are some positives and negatives in no particular order:

Positives:
Authorial voice - Gone is the bland advertising speak of articles past, and returned is obvious authorial interest in particular aspects of the magazine and new figures.  This was a welcome change, and one that I had not expected.
Prices - the North American version of the Dwarf had for years listed new products without the prices, partly due to their rapid increasing, and partly as a result of some major pricing errors (Realm of Battle and Battle of Five Armies)
Foldouts - having a multi page
Photography - Muddy backgrounds for the chaos figures aside, the photography does seem like it has stepped up a level, and the higher quality paper seems to show it off well.
Table of contents - Strange, but I was most impressed with this aspect of the magazine, which was almost an exploded view of the magazine itself.
Studio behind the scenes - Seeing what various things the studio is working on is always interesting... even if we do not see the end results for years.
Blanchitsu! - Bonkers Inquisitor conversions? yes please!
Reduced advertisements - While there were more catalog pages, there seemed to be fewer of the traditional advertisement pages scattered in the middle of the magazine.
Conversions - Converting is the part of the hobby I enjoy most, and has not featured as much as it used to.  The Ork flyer is a kit that interests me as well, so a conversion article on it was most welcome.

Negatives
More "catalog" pages - Seeing a new figure from 6 different sides and then having a separate price page later in the magazine seems excessive, particularly since sprue shots are not one of the featured pages.
Store listings - While it is fun to see where stores are in other countries and states, it seems a bit excessive to see all of the GW stores world wide (but not independent stockists, except in North America)
Reduced text content - the new fonts and spacing seem to mean less words per page.
Huge staff photos - I like that they have new pictures, but do they really need to be half a page in size?  Until they hire more attractive staff, there is not much gained from this "feature".
No 'Eavy Metal - A feature from the early days of the Dwarf, and one that should be back.  The painting section was a pale imitation of previous ones, and needs to be improved.
Numbering - White Dwarf has been numbered since it started, and this copy lacks that.  It may be intentional to equalize the numbers between the US and UK versions, as they were one off.  Either way, somewhat annoying for a collector. (and how will we know when it is issue 400?)

In conclusion, I quite enjoyed the magazine, and am looking forward to the next one coming out (next week!).  I was not however, induced to renew my subscription, as the $100 price seems a bit much.  Possibly after reviewing the next one I will be able to separate the nostalgia of reading the magazine again from the quality of its new incarnation, and can make a better determination.

Ebay win(s)

After a year or more, and at least 20 bids, I finally won a high elf griffon from the Isle of Blood Warhammer Fantasy Battle starter.  I guess the market finally became saturated enough that my low ball bids had some success (fortunately for only one griffon and not all of the ones I was bidding on!).  As is my custom with ebay, I then checked out what other items the seller had for sale... and ended up with a Skaven regiment and some bits.

You can not tell from my crummy camera phone picture, but the sculpting is amazing, and the skaven in particular are super sharp, and have no duplicates in 20 figures, something that would be inconceivable when I started in this wacky hobby over 15 years ago, when plastic meant "monopose" 99% of the time.

Now I just have to decide if I want to change the griffon's rider to something for fitting for the Empire, like a wizard lord, or if I like the model enough to leave it as a high elf, a testimony to an army that I will never start.  The skaven can be used in D&D games or WHFRP, or with some conversion in Mordheim, although I like the figures enough that I seriously considered getting a few more of these regiments and starting an army... but just for a few minutes.  Skaven armies are massive, and I do not need a fifth unbuilt/unpainted Warhammer army. (do I?)

 

Gentlemen of the Road

On the recommendation of Ckutalik(via this post on historical fiction for fantasy readers), I requested the book Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon from the local library. A short novel or novella, it is about the adventures of a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser type in the 950s in western Asia; a fairly gripping read, I knocked it out in a couple of hours. The book itself is lovely, with two color typeset, and illustrations by Gary Gianni, who is apparently currently working on the Prince Valiant comics in papers. I recommend it for those who like quick adventure stories.

However, like all good historical fiction, the real star is the setting, which here is Western Asia, and more specifically Khazaria, a Turkic empire established in 618 AD and lasted nearly 400 years.  This empire existed as a sort of third wheel to the conflicts between the Eastern Empire to the west and the early Caliphate to the south, and contains names both known to most, and strange. The empire was multi-ethnic AND multi-faith, and had both a diverse economy and significant military activity. For a while at least the country had a dual kingship, with one king responsible for administration, and the other more of a figurehead (and held as a sort of prisoner in a palace). Unusually, the rulers of the country converted to Judaism in the 8th century, possibly as a way to stand in between their Christian and Muslim neighbors.

Frankly, I think it would be perfect for a theft and insertion into a D&D game, or possibly outright use in a more historical game.  The silk road and the multi-ethnic nature of the empire make it perfect for any random character to show up, and there would be plenty of raids to defeat and convoys to attack.  With place names that are both familiar and foreign, and with a history merely sketched in by a few primary documents, it has much to recommend it for adventure.

Terrain from the past

When I first started reading about Warhammer 40k online, I somehow stumbled on to Terragenesis, back when it was run by Gary James as a sort of proto-blog. He had all sorts of great projects, and in particular a Gothic church that caught my fancy.  I decided to build something similar, when I turned my hand to terrain creation.

I created this as a sort of Sisters of Battle Chapel, since they had just come out at the time of its construction, and my then girl friend was interested in them.  Construction was common cardboard with drywall spackle over it, details with thinner card and from various wood bits.  Paint was common craft acrylics.  As a piece of terrain it was not very useful, since it was not accessible, and therefore became merely a large piece of LOS blocking terrain.

Sisters of Battle Chapel



Here you can see the damage wrought by time and exposure to the spackle

This cottage was one of two made to tie in with the chapel.  As you can see, it had an interior, which made it marginally more useful than the chapel.  Again it was constructed from cardboard and spackle, although in this case it had half timber work done with various bits of wood.

 

These last two buildings were part of a set of three that I made for an art project at school (and designed with an eye to using them for 40k).  As I recall, we were supposed to design a memorial, and this was to be a memorial to "bombed out cities ruined by airpower" or some such, where the buildings would be constructed in a pit, and then the viewer would see them from above as if they were in a bomber. Sounds very "art class" no?

 

Besides the stated goal of the project, my goal was to get some useful terrain out of of this expenditure of effort.  So I had three building ruins, roughly the right size for miniatures to fit in and fire out of the windows, and away I went.  Construction was foam core and PVA glue, supported with pins while the glue dried.  However, as with all school projects, I started it far far too late at night, and had to rush the production, most particularly the painting stage, as you can see here. 

Unfortunately, all of these buildings were packed up after I moved out of my apartment, and then languished in my parents' attic for a decade.  They recently cleared everything out, and the box of terrain came home with me.  I was going to toss it all out, but my son kept them to play with in the garden, where they have been suffering the effects of exposure for a few months.  Once it starts raining again, they are headed for the trash.  A pity, but they have not aged well, and I find them shockingly bad now.