I've had on & off plans for a return to sci-fi painting & gaming. There have been several project or potential projects brewing for years now, and I think I may not only move ahead with some/all of them, but I'm going to try to tie them all together.
Let me start with the brainstorm I had over the weekend on this topic. It all started with the Gothmower.
Yes, Gothmower. I bought a new electric lawnmower towards the end of last Summer. The start button, for some reason, looks like a green coffin. I usually listen to music while mowing, and last time I decided I should honor the Gothmower by listening to some music in that theme. Because I am of a certain age, the first band that came to mind was Bauhaus. Turns out I don't really like most of their music anymore. So this week I put together a playlist from another suitable band...
That went much better. I hadn't listened to ASF for a long time, but this was inspiring. The lawn didn't stand a chance.
As I rocked out and mowed, thoughts drifted to painting and gaming. What if I started with Rogue Trader as a base, and then drifted off into my own cobbled together crazy space-opera setting/theme, sort of like I started with Warhammer but made it my own Althammer. As the heat and music kept my mind drifting around, I remembered that Rogue Trader was already a bit of an "open sandbox". The 40k setting didn't start getting fleshed out with tedious officialdom until later editions. So I won't really be diverging -- sort of a retro-hammer sci-fi thing.
But I'm not sure how much Rogue Trader I will actually be playing. In fact, right now I'm on the hunt for some solo rules. I just bought Five Parsecs from Home and will be reading through the rules this week. I also have a few others on my radar. But eventually I'd like to play some games with live opponents someday, too.
So here's a brief summary of the projects/plans that I'd like to pull together:
- Meat Hating Robot Pirates. Previously mentioned, and I've already collected quite a few 'bots.
- Rogue Trader Eldar. They were my first RT/40k figures, before I even bought the rules. I just liked the figures. As happened a lot, I sold them in college. But I have been working on collecting figures for next year's Old World Army Challenge, which is opening up for 40k as well as fantasy.
- Spaven. Cheese Stealers. Not sure I'll go any further with them. Maybe a few odd figures if I get inspired in the future.
- Adeptus Mechanicus. I've been planning an AdMech Kill Team force. So I will hopefully break my block on building & painting the figures.
- Miscellany. Civilians, mercenaries, beasts... I don't know. I'm sure I'll add some oddball stuff in at some point.
- Gaming surface & terrain. Still thinking about this a bit. Thinking about a dark alien world look like on the Spaven bases, but also doing some sort of semi-modular starship/building tiles -- along with all the accessories.
Only one robot painted so far.
Some of the Cheese-Stealer Cult.
Eldar on deck.
Oooh, looks like you have more Eldar than me, you cad! Though I do have a full set of Harlequins.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be interesting to see where you go with these ideas, it might even inspire me to paint mine. I really should look into joining OWAC, it looks like a relatively easy workload by my standards and would encourage me to start a new project.
It's been reworked a bit for the next OWAC, but the the monthly minimum is no more than 10 infantry (or equivalent) in a month for four of the months, and having 1000 points at the end of 6 months. This year it's open to fantasy or 40k/RT. There's more detail to it, but those are big expectations. You should do it!
DeleteAfter initially striking out in hunting down old Eldar, I got some some lucky deals supplemented by a couple of late night drunk eBay purchases. Plus I had a handful I had saved from my youth. I didn't expect to pull together enough figures in under a year.
Some great metal figures in that box! One of the nice things about Eldar is that they have such continuity in design, so all the way from RT to recently you can use figures, which is great for building warbands!
ReplyDeleteThey do, but there is a certain appeal to the first few RT releases for me. They're a little more quirky than the Craftworld era figures. So that's what I'm focusing on for now. Looking forward to the challenge of painting them.
Delete