Category: miniatures
Necromunda – the Riot WIP
As mentioned recently in my glorious return to actually posting about a miniatures game here on Rats East, Necromunda is up and running here, and I have been painting. I’ve finished some of the minis I was working on, and started more, so today is going to be primarily a gang post. Painting details on some, nothing on others; some of these I’ve posted about previously (likely during other Necromunda seasons, when I painted them).
So, without further ado, I give you…
The Riot.
Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, Queen of the Riot.

Painted for previous Necromunda seasons. From the Raging Heroes jailbirds crew box. Name from Haggard’s novel She and the bonkers sci fi film that’s so loosely based on it.
Reggie Belmont, Matriarch

Started during a previous season, but finally finished the other night. Cracked open and remixed a bunch of paints that haven’t been used in entirely too long. Also from the Raging Heroes jailbirds crew box, with a gun from Judge Dredd. Name from Night of the Comet.
Sam Belmont, Matriarch

Previously painted. From Hasslefree. The miniature is named Louise but it’s basically post-apocalyptic Velma. Reggie’s blood sister, name also from Night of the Comet.
Rebecca ‘Newt’ Jordan, Specialist Sister

Previously painted for Infinity. This is the old Caledonian Volunteer miniature, painted with a little nod to Tank Girl. Name from Aliens.
Hundra, Wyld Runner

From the new Escher box. Just getting into this one. The pants design seems pretty bonkers, though, doesn’t it? Like, she puts on pants. Then her weird hip-wader boot/chaps hybrids. *Then* she pulls a series of concentric rings up over those? Very extra, as the kids might say, haha. Name from the movie Hundra, of course.
Nicodemus and Jaeger, Phelynxes (Exotic Pets)

More fun from the new Escher box. The third one may or may not find its way into the gang before season’s end (these things have been a bit of a bust for me so far). Names pulled from The Secret of NiMH and Finder.
Daria, Little Sister

More Hasslefree. This girl started the season with only fleshtone painted, so she’s come a long way. Daria and Tisa are both named for the leads in Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity.
Tisa, Little Sister

Tisa here, also from Hasslefree, was painted by my friend Rob. Looks pretty great.
Vic, Little Sister

Another Hasslefree, another work in progress. This one’s more dwarf-scaled. Turquoise and Vermilion, just Vallejo thus far. Name from A Boy and his Dog.
BL00D, Ambot (Brute)

Painted last season, almost two years ago now! Name also pulled from A Boy and his Dog (Blood is the telepathic dog).
Rachael, Shivver (Hanger-on)

This miniature came out of the Kickstarter that Hasslefree did a few years back. Jaguar Boudi. With all the dark yellows and light browns, I’m wondering if maybe I should have gone with one of Citadel’s more pinkish fleshtones, but it is what it is. I’ll have to see what I can do with washes and further layers to differentiate a little more. Name from Blade Runner.
Vasquez, Ammo-Jack (Hanger-on)

Not much has changed here since last time. Barely started. Another name from Aliens.
Trixie, Rogue Doc (Hanger-on)

Trixie is from Statuesque. I fielded her as a juve in a previous season, but this year she’s my doc. She saved a Phelynx, so I guess she at least paid for herself. Name is from The Crazies.
And that’s the current roster. Might add a couple more before the season ends, and of course some of these have some more painting to go, but for now, that’s The Riot.
Necromunda – We’re back!
I painted!
As we careened into the first covid lockdowns almost two years back, I thought to myself, “wow, I’m going to get *so* many miniatures painted.” But then I couldn’t actually play the games with anybody, and miniatures sorta fell off my plate as a result. So instead of painting so many, I painted nothing. I watched some movies, played some video games, read a bunch of books… But no painting.
I thought about it. Part of me knew I enjoy it and should do it again, but the longer I waited the harder it was to convince myself. My painting space was cluttered, my miniatures were put away… honestly they were all terrible excuses, haha. Not painting was just easier and there was no extra push from their impending use.
But now? Necromunda has started up again! There’s only a few of us and we’re all in masks but – oh! – we’re playing a miniatures game and it feels glorious! And I am fielding some new miniatures, and some totally new units, and they’re in need of paint!
So this week I painted. I started with some brush on primer, just getting a bit of a feel for the brush against some totally unpainted stuff. And then I broke out some paints that were very badly in need of a shaking. The Vallejos are mixing up pretty nicely but the Citadel colours are a real chore so far. Probably doesn’t help that the first one I broke out was Cadian Fleshtone, which I hadn’t used in ages even when I *was* painting regularly. Anyhoo, some works in progress:

Daria the Little Sister (let’s run with House of Blades terminology since that’s what I’m using to play this time). I put fleshtone and nothing else on this a long time ago, so no idea what colour it was, but a Vallejo of some variety. Added some Vermilion Red for the clothing and Charcoal Grey for the hair. The bear is Flat Earth. I feel like I’ve totally forgotten my processes so it’s like I’m starting all over again. Changing colors too frequently and not working on enough miniatures simultaneously, but we’ll get there. Miniature by Hasslefree.

Tisa the Little Sister.
I play Necromunda with a fellow named Rob that is a fantastic painter, and he asked me if he could paint Tisa because he loves the miniature. My immediate thought was ‘no’ because I foolishly think I need to paint everything myself, but then I thought about my mountains of unpainted miniatures and thought better of it. So no paint on Tisa right now, but she’ll eventually be painted (post-campaign) and I’ll post her up then. Figured I’d get the ‘before’ in now. Another Hasslefree mini.

Hundra the Wyld Runner.
Barely started, but I’ll be very impressed if I get this fully painted without breaking it, especially that collar and leash(?) that she’s holding. These new miniatures are gorgeous but I’m very concerned for their survival. This is where I used that Cadian Fleshtone. I actually broke it out to paint some phelynx mouths but I think maybe it’s too light for that. Thinking she’ll get some yellow, but don’t know where yet. An actual official miniature from GW.

Jaeger and Nicodemus, the Phelynxes. Plus one.
More official GW miniatures. So far Hundra is only fielding with two but a third might be in the cards at some point so I’m painting it at the same time. I’ll be honest, at this point in the campaign these things and Hundra are a point sink. I’ve done pretty much nothing with them. I field them, I flub it, they go into recovery. Repeat. They’ve spent half the campaign in recovery, they all have have lasting injuries, and Jaeger would be dead if not for Trixie (more on her later). Mostly I am just really bad at using them (I only sort of understand how to, and in the heat of battle I forget the details of keeping them useful). Here’s hoping a paint job helps!

Trixie the Rogue Doc.
Welcome to hangers-on territory. Another one I started so long ago I don’t know all the colours anymore, but I started adding more detail. Boots, gloves, and belt by Vallejo. I have had really rough luck on the lasting injuries rolls so this was my first hanger-on. She saved a Phelynx one of her first days on the job, and he only lost an eye which was useless to him anyway, so she’s already paid for herself. This one’s from Statuesque.

Vasquez the Ammo-Jack.
Last week I added a Workshop to my territories, which came with an Ammo-Jack. Don’t know if I’ll get around to painting her but she’s at least assembled and primed at this point. She’s an Irmandinho from the Infinity range of anybody’s curious.

Rachael the Shivver.
The last hanger-on. Not sure which mini I’ll use, but leaming towards the Hasslefree one on the right.
And that’s it so far. Obviously that’s not my whole gang, but it’s all I’m working on painting at the moment. Maybe I’ll introduce the rest of The Riot in a follow-up post. More posts would be good, ha.
Necromunda 17 – Amanda the Raven
As long as I was on a roll, I finished up another member of my Escher gang this week… my gang leader, Amanda the Raven.
I got impatient with this one, and didn’t really give the shades enough time to really set. Unfortunately this led to some messy drybrushing that I’m not entirely happy with. Instead of a highlighting effect, it’s more of a shoddy mush, but I can’t be bothered to redo it all. Good enough for the tabletop, anyway…
In case anybody’s curious, the miniature is from Bombshell, I think (it’s been a while, haha).
Necromunda 17 – Jane the Whirlwind
Well, I have made good on my promise and finished painting Jane in recognition of her Pitfight win on the 8th.
We’re mostly just talking about some drybrushing and base work at this stage; most of the primary painting effort was done when I posted last week.
I like a lot of things about these Raging Heroes miniatures, but I do have a couple minor complaints. There a lot of low-relief detail that’s hard to pick out until after it’s been painted, and that sword, oof. Super crooked and twisty on arrival. It’s resin, so that’s sorta expected and it was pretty easy to reshape with hot water, but I never really felt like I got it perfect. Even after straightening, it feels a bit shifty.
Necromunda 17 – Mittens
Mittens is complete!
My friend Cadie joined me last night for an evening of painting miniatures. She had some weird little fantasy commissions to work on for another friend of ours, and I took the opportunity to paint Mittens. I got the bulk of it done last night (we painted until about 130) and finished up this morning while my boys did some painting of their own:
They were very excited to join in!
I went with a mixed bag approach, an Ambot that’s been sourced or repaired using multiple donor bots. Unless otherwise specified, any named paints are Vallejo.
The torso and right arm are painted in an Olive Drab that’s a little more military than my original goal, but it’s also a nice subtle core to wrap the more interesting colours around. The left pauldron and right leg are a Heavy Red, and the left limbs are both painted in a construction-themed combination of Deep Yellow and Black. Machine parts and cables are a varied mix of Bronze, Brass, Oily Steel, and some Citadel Warplock Bronze. A few joints are done in a Vermilion Red/Gory Red mix to give them an industrial casing sort of feel.
Overall I’m very happy with how he turned out, and excited to field at least 2 freshly painted models next weekend.
I gave him a bit of wear and tear to finish him up. I’d thought about working some rust pigments into the machine parts and joints and such, but ended up just settling for a bit of Burnt Cadmium Red in those spaces. Full blown rust effects just seemed unnecessary, and not entirely in line with the rest of the work I’d done here (especially since I tend to go a little overboard with the rust weathering, haha).
I *did* add a bit of light gore to go along with the weathering. Nothing too insane, but a bit around the sawblade hands, plus some under the lifted foot. Sorta like he stepped on somebody and now he’s tracking them around. Grin.
I cannot wait plop this guy down on the table next time. Hoping he’ll scare the bejabbers out of somebody,

Necromunda 17 – Jane the Whirlwind and ‘Mittens’ WIP 1
I recently fielded a long-primed but as-yet-unpainted Raging Heroes miniature in a multiplayer Necromunda scenario. I told my friends/opponents that if she came through and won the event, that Jane the Whirlwind would get painted before the next session in a couple weeks. I haven’t painted in a while, so this was a good opportunity to put myself on the hook, and sure enough she triumphed.
So here I am painting her up. I feel super out of practice (I haven’t really painted anything since my Saga vikings a while back) but it feels good.
Evening #1 was mostly just a few base colours, trying to get a feel for where I’d be heading, plus I put some grit down on the base. That particular jar of gritty stuff is getting a bit dry, but I’ve got a fresh one waiting in the wings. At this point I’m already noticing I didn’t clean this miniature up much, but I don’t want to start over. I’ll just have to pay better attention in the future. It would have been easy to get these mold lines off, but I’ve been picking away at this mini over so long that I think I just missed that step.
Evening #2. I’m not entirely sure I like the hair, but again, I don’t dislike it enough to set myself back. At least hree variations on brownish added, plus I blacked the parts I’d potentially be putting metallics on.
Evening #3. Washes, details, metallics, and a nice crackly power sword blade. Hopefully tomorrow I can finish her up and get started painting Mittens.
Right, Mittens. I put an Ambot in my necromunda gang, so that will probably be the next thing to get painted. For now, I spent a couple evenings putting him together before painting up Jane the Whirlwind.
There are a ridiculous number of nooks and crannies in this fellow so I’m sure parts of him won’t get much paint, but hopefully I can make him look pretty cool. Thinking I’ll mix a few colour schemes to suggest some donor parts, and maybe some rust effects. Nothing so intense as my Gaslands cars, just enough to make it look like it’s done some time in the bowels of the underhive.
Mittens feels like a pet’s name while referencing his ‘hands’; it was just a funny idea at first but it’s grown on me significantly. I’ll keep you posted!
Necromunda 17 – Downtime/Pitfight!
We have reached the halfway point in our current Necromunda campaign, which means everybody has recovered, we all got a pile of cash to buy some gangers and hangers-on, and we played a little multi player scenario called Pitfight.
Downtime first, I suppose. I spent an evening making some careful decisions to maximize the effectiveness of my 250 credits. A nice mix of gangers and juves. And then our Arbitrator said yes to Brutes being Hangers-on, and I tossed most of those plans out the window, because when else am I going to get my hands on enough credits to buy an Ambot? Muahaha! I had some credits left from the previous session, too, so I also picked up some better armour and a power knife for my close combat champion, Jane the Whirlwind. Then I tested her mettle in the pit…
Pitfight is a free-for-all where each player sends one champion into a ‘pit’ that’s only 24″ square; last champion standing wins. Limited ranged options for the first few rounds. Only three of us made it out to play, so the stakes weren’t as high as they could have been, but we did end up dishing out some pretty rough Lasting Injuries. James and I both fielded Eschers, and Rob’s Venator gang sent in a Goliath.
Rob’s Goliath held back for the first couple rounds while James and I closed and started an absolutely epic fight.
Both of our Eschers had Step Aside (which is pretty dynamite on an Escher) so that was one hit pretty much negated every time. James’s ganger had some rapid fire potential, but I had a parry and a 4+ armour save to keep me in the game. Rob had a few rounds to hit us both with shredder templates before I managed to get clear of James and take on Rob.
I ended up with a bunch of reputation and experience and a little bit of cash, and the other two ended up with head injuries. I had the only unpainted model, so I promised early on that I’d paint Jane the Whirlwind if she won. That will have to wait for another post, though.
Looking forward to fielding my Ambot next time. I just gotta spend some credits first…
Necromunda 17 – some very late initial thoughts
After preordering the box, and buying all the Gang War books, and the hardcover rewrites (with slipcase!), and some extra Escher cards, I have *finally* played a couple actual games of the new Necromunda.
I like it.
That said, let’s get the worst out of the way. The rulebooks. The Gang War supplements are a tire fire (tyre fire?) of retcon design, full of ‘Replace pages 17-24 from your first supplement with the following…’, etc. The fact that they parceled out the rules in this manner angers me to no end. It’s like the hardcopy version of offensively designed DLC; imagine you paid $90 for a videogame only to find out when you got home that it was episode 1 of 5 (providing only 4 hours of gameplay) and that each additional episode would be $35. Oh, and a year later $99 would get you the whole thing, with all the bugs worked out.
The hardcover rewrites are a definite improvement, but still manage to kind of fail all over the place, in glorious Games Workshop style. The rules are of course split (rather arbitrarily it sometimes seems) between two books, and constantly reference other rules in other parts of the book (or the other book) while rarely providing page numbers or anything else. It’s like everything is cross – referenced but with no actual references. Oh, and there’s no index. Just a minimal table of contents that’s pretty much limited to what are essentially chapter titles. Kind of reminds me of the second edition of Infinity; it reads okay, but looking anything up is a nightmare. Except that Infinity provided an amazing online wiki that pretty much negated any need to look anything up in their rulebook, and also *fixed* those shortcomings when it came time to release 3rd edition. The Necromunda hardcovers are literally the clearer *rewrite* of the new Necromunda rules and the only real improvement they seem to have bothered to make over the Gang War supplements is that they reduced the number of books from 5 to 2, and deleted the paragraphs that were retconned out of the rules. Grr. I like this game, but GW has pretty much hung themselves out to dry as far as my hobby cash is concerned.
K, just needed to get that out the old system, thanks. Moving on.
Necromunda 2017. First off, the game uses an alternating activation system that feels like they ripped it directly out of the Frostgrave rulebook, right down to Leaders and Champions having the option of activating additional models alongside themselves (models within 3″, even, haha). I’m fine with this – it’s a great system that keeps everybody more engaged and provides additional tactical depth – but I totally find myself mixing up the details with the Frostgrave method. Good thing they’re so darn similar, haha!
Close combat is *not* a face to face roll of any kind, which threw me off in my first game. Unlike Frostgrave, Infinity, or even the old Necromunda, being the one that charges in and attacks is a pretty big deal. If you can take somebody out fast enough, they won’t even get to strike back. I’m still up in the air about this, but I don’t hate it. I think I just need to get used to it. Might make armour more useful in this iteration. If they release a ‘slow’ gang at any point (I’m thinking of Mordheim’s dwarves right now), I expect they’ll be pretty much boned.
Shooting is pretty much what you’d expect, although they’ve tried to ‘simplify’ the stats as they’ve done with so many games recently. So your ballistic skill will be 4+ instead of 3; means the same but fewer charts. Makes some of the modifiers actually feel *less* intuitive, but that’s quite possibly just because I’ve used so many variations of the old system for so long that it feels more natural than it is. A lot of the heavy weapons are cheaper than they were in the old Necromunda, but on trying to use them in game, I think it balances out. ‘Unwieldy’ (N17’s trait for move-or-shoot) is pretty brutal. By making heavy weapons a double action instead of single (rather than just requiring no movement), one is prevented from aiming carefully, or even from using most of the sights and other upgrades. A suspensor modification negates this, but effectively increases the weapon costs by 60 each. Like I said, seems to balance them out okay, but it also means that some of the basic and special weapons seem a bit undercosted. Hopefully nobody tries to play this competitively, or you’d probably see a lot of lists spamming a lot of identically outfitted minis.

The one and only time I thought to take a picture.
I think that’s all I’ve got to say at the moment. I like the new Necromunda, and hopefully will continue to.

Gaslands – Death Race
A couple fresh new players this week, and Brad brought his terrain along, so it was a nice big chaotic learning game.

Racers on the line and ready to go…
We were running 60 can teams, so with new players it was pretty much a guarantee we wouldn’t finish, but lots of cars means lots of interactions, and that’s always a good thing when you’re learning (whereas finishing and somebody winning is a whole lot less useful).

Teams.
We got off to a gloriously messy start. The three cars on the road in the front line got off to a decent start, but the yellow truck had to get off the shoulder and that threw everybody else off.

Going into gear phase 2.
I managed to position the Cougar decently in the first phase and lined up a Slip Away opportunity for gear 2. The Cougar (silver) bumped the GTX (green), which put the GTX comfortably in the lead. As a performance car with only armour and smoke, I wanted him way ahead before the rest of the pack hit gate 1.

Going into gear 3.
The GTX was doing well at this point, but the Cougar and my Manx (the first buggy way in the back) got pretty bogged down in that starting pileup. I was able to keep them in good shape, but they were moving pretty slow. Some I tend to soft up early and fast, that meant a lot of swerves, veers, and evades.

Going into gear 4.
More cars started to get free of the pack around this point, so I made plans to leave the track and cut across the very busy centre of the table with the GTX. This would mean some risky high gear maneuvering.

The pileup.
The Cougar and the Manx were getting ready to break free of the mess at this point, but a wipeout for the Manx left it spinning into the path of the Cougar, slowing them both down again.

Some point in gear 5/6.
We started to spread out a bit more as the gear phases outstripped some of the vehicles. It also gave me the chance to get the Cougar back in the game.

Our first casualty was that orange Flash Drive performance car. It exploded.
The jeep with the big gun opted to take the long safe route along the track instead of following the GTX through the middle. This meant my GTX would approach it head-on, and my smoke would be useless. My Cougar suddenly needed to get its machine guns into play.

All lined up…
The Cougar was able to land several hits over the next couple phases, and the jeep became our second casualty just before it rounded the corner and escaped.

Success!
And that’s pretty much where we ended this particular learning game. A couple vehicles trashed, and the rest of them spread all over the place. Good fun.
Infinity – Quadrant Control
Last weekend we ran our monthly casual day for Infinity. We only played one game, but we took our time with it; Steve and I were both playing some unfamiliar stuff so there were a lot of things to look up. Steve was running Varuna; for me, it was Ikari Company. We fielded 150pts each against Aaron’s 300pt Nomad crew.
When the Non-Aligned armies came out, I was excited by a couple of them. Both StarCo and Ikari included some models I already owned, and when I managed to get some old Wu Ming and a Yojimbo for cheap, my decision was made (while I was certainly interested in many of the Nomad models in StarCo, the idea of Yojimbo leading a pair of Desperadoes was too good to ignore). Casual day is the perfect opportunity to try something new, especially because I have a pretty bad track record with bikes in this game (they show up, they blow up). I brought:
Keisotsu x2 (1 paramedic)
Brawler
Al Fasid (HMG)
Bounty Hunter (Spitfire)
Yojimbo
Desperado (Shotgun)
No lieutenant for me, as my crew were paired with Varuna, and Steve had the better lieutenant.
The Keisotsus performed admirably. They missed a lot of shots but managed not to get killed themselves. The paramedic attempted to save some folks but without success; all of his patients failed their PH rolls and died. The Brawler accomplished very little beyond taking a bullet that might have killed somebody else, the very first shot to hit him was the DA round that killed him. I definitely underused the Al Fasid. He made some good advances and claimed a Quadrant in the final turn, but the first two turns I barely touched him. He was a little too buried in cover to be especially useful in AROs, and those pesky Nomads kept landing repeaters next to him, which had me playing a little more hesitantly than was probably really necessary.
The bikes, though! This was quite possibly my first game in which I had bikes last beyond the first turn. Both were killed, but they both went down in admirably violent outbursts, which my friend Peter (who fields many a Haqq bike) assures me is what bikes are for. Yojimbo took out a couple of threats with his CrazyKoalas. I was a little surprised to see he had no rifle/long gun (since there is clearly one strapped to his bike) but he still took out a pair of serious threats; next time maybe I can get him into close combat…

I used crazykoalas!
With the way cleared, my Desperado sped up the left side of the board unopposed and took used his shotgun to do a bit of damage.

Before & After
Kablam. He managed to take out a trio, and it would have been 4 had the last fellow not had No Wound Incapacitation. This was probably the crux of the game; it left Aaron with neither the points nor the orders to claim sufficient quadrants in the third turn (we were tied after the first two, 2-2), and I still had the Al Fasid to advance into his quadrant to claim a couple points for our coalition.
Final Score: 4-2 for Varuna and Ikari Company.