Smeagol's Forbidden Pool

I love anything Halfling / Hobbit related and fell for this mini straight away. He just looks so royaly pissed off! It was also an opportunity to try something new - a fancy base and some water effects - and  I'm chuffed how it turned out. If anyone's interested, the water is Still Water by Vallejo and it was pretty easy to work with. The main take away is to add layers a few mm deep at a time and to let each fully set before putting on the next. 

Part 5: The Scrap Yards, The Hangars and Bazza

First thing - this awesome, disturbing mini isn't one of mine. It was painted by Sump Dweller from over on the YakTribe forum. As soon as I saw it I wanted to write him into a story and Sump kindly gave permission.

Bazza

The Scrap Yards, The Hangars and Bazza

The Scrap Yards didn't start out as a scrapyard; it was a recycling plant for Warpships. Three hangers, each the size of a small city and capable of housing spacecraft kilometers long, were constructed. Around them, the factories required to process the parts and habblocks for the tens of thousands of workers brought in to strip the ships to bare skeletons. Warp engines were broken down, weapons salvaged and slab-armour reforged. The parts not immediately re-purposed were laid out in neat, storey high rows that radiated out from the hangers and formed the maze that now makes up the current streets and lanes of the Scrap Yards. It was an ambitious undertaking. Too ambitious, it turned out. Soon the maze was so big it took hours for the crawler-transporters to make a round trip to the hangers and back. Then days. Then over a week. And then they stopped altogether and the lights in the hangers went out.

And for a while this is how it was, until, one day, some bright spark had the idea of using the plant to process waste. The equipment was already there, the vehicles still functioned and labourers were cheap. The rubbish came in and the maze once again started to grow. Eventually the majority of an entire planet's waste started heading towards the Scrap Yards and any semblance of trying to process it was abandoned. There was just too much. The workers went home and giant grav-vehicles began raining down scrap indiscriminately across the maze while titan-sized excavators pressed it in from all sides. The Scrap Yards grew and changed and grew - and all the while the Hangars waited in the dark.

Millennia passed.

Everyone knew the best loot was in the Hangars, but they also knew you had to be crazy, or stupidly brave (usually both) to think about setting a foot inside them. Years ago, back when he was a lad and trying to prove himself, Dave, who is braver than most, had ventured just few meters into the dark and was attacked by what looked like a butthole with legs. Which is why he was now hunkered down with Spike and spying on the main entrance to West Hangar. Going in was one thing, jumping someone who'd made it out alive and nicking their stuff was another.

'Over there,' said Spike, pointing towards some ancient engine parts. 'Something's coming.'

They both ducked down lower. There was definitely movement.

'Looks like there's two of 'em,' whispered Dave, peering round the washing machine they were hiding behind to get a better look, hand slowly moving towards his shotgun. 'They're coming right towards us ..'

Spike shivered with a now familiar cold, electric sensation. He liked this more than he was comfortable to admit.

'.. let 'em get get nice and close.'

They could hear talking now. And footsteps. Closer, closer ..

'Hang on, that sounds like Donny,' said Spike.

They both leaned out.

'Yeah, that's Donny, alright,' replied Dave. 'Gods, who's that with him?'

Whatever it was was tall and looked sick, flesh a pallid green, and walked like a puppet on strings. But heavy, limping and stumbling under the weight of a distended belly. It was missing a leg and where a right hand once was was a massive hook. In the other, an autogun. And while humanoid in shape, there didn't seem to be much human about it. Not in the eyes. Perhaps despair. Mostly nothing. And it was following a seemingly unconcerned Donny.

'Donny, you OK?' said the washing machine.

Donny and the thing stopped.

'That you, boss?'

'Yup,' replied Dave. 'It's me. Spike's here too.'

'Hey Donny,' said Spike.

'Whatcha mate,' said a cherry sounding Donny. 'Come out. You guys are never gonna guess what I found!'

Slowly, hesitantly, Dave and Spike rose up from behind the washing machine and immediately dived back down as the creature, with unexpected speed, raised his autogun and squeezed the trigger.

Click, click, click.

'What the shit, Donny!' yelled Dave, laying on his side and hugging his knees.

'It's OK, boss. He does that.'

'You what?!'

'Yeah, I think it's how he communicates. But don't worry, we had a long chat earlier and he's out of ammo.'

Dave and Spike looked at each other. Donny was a good lad, but sometimes you had to wonder if he was all there.

'You sure you're OK, mate?' asked Spike.

'Yeah, i'm all good. Come out, I want you to meet Bazza.'

Dave and Spike slowly lifted themselves up from the floor, edged their way around the washing machine and walked over.

'Bazza?' enquired Dave.

'Yeah, I named him,' replied Donny. 'He doesn't speak much.'

'Where'd you meet?' asked Spike, leaning in for a closer look and just managing to duck under the hook that cut through the air where his face had been.

'Fuckk sake, mate!'

'Yeah, be careful!' warned Donny. 'He's pretty happy with that thing.'

Dave and a slightly shaking Spike both took a step back.

'He's from the hangar.'

Silence.

'You went in the hangar?' asked a distant sounding Dave, his mind racing back through the decades to the charging butthole.

'No mate, i'm not daft. He was near one of the side entrances and I lured him out with a rat. And then he started shooting and it got exciting for a bit, but he's calmed down and we're friends now. Look.' Donny put an arm amiably around Bazza's shoulders and Bazza grinned, revealing rows of broken gravestone-like teeth. 'Best buds!'

Dave groaned. He knew where this was going.

'I was thinking, boss,' said Donny.

'No.' Interrupted Dave.

'Can we keep him?'

Dave sighed.

'Every bloody time you find something weird, you do this. We're not keeping him.'

'But ..'

'Remember that fuck off big Goliath croc you found?'

'Yes,' replied Donny, looking at the floor.

'What happened then?'

'It bit Kev's leg off'

'Yes, it bit Kev's leg off.' Dave repeated. 'And why would you want to keep him anyways?! Look at him. He's the stuff of nightmares!' Dave pointed. 'He's got a fucking hook arm! He's not holding that hook, that's his arm. He cut his arm off and stuck a hook on it. It's a hook arm!'

Dave was in full rant mode now.

'How old do you reckon he is?'

Donny looked at Bazza. 'Hard to say boss. Fourty, maybe?'

'So for fourty years he's lived in the Hangars and he's not dead. Do you know what that means?'

Donny shook his head.

'It means everything else he's met, is. Now take him back!'

Bazza, obviously not happy with the way his new friend was being spoken to, frowned at Dave, lifted his autogun and clicked at him a few times. Dave flipped him the bird with his massive hand.

'OK,' said a sulky Donny. 'I can see you guys aren't going to get along.' And then, grabbing Bazza by the hook and pulling in the direction they'd come from, 'Come on, mate, time to go home.'

Gaslands nade dispensing rust bucket!

I'm chuffed with this one! The plan was to have a beat-up, people carrying truck that could dish out some seriously heavy nade damage - and it turned out pretty damn close to what I had in my mind's eye. This is quite rare! With the potential of adding a bunch of hazards to anyone who gets close enough, cars should be wiping out all over the place. And if not, there's the deterrent of messing with a vehicle with 20 nades on-board and being caught in the fireball should it explode (pro tip - it will explode!)

If anyone's interested - the mins are from https://www.elhiem.co.uk/ and the truck is a 30 year old matchbox from the loft. There's a tonne of these for pennies on ebay.

Gaslands!

There's so much to say about Gaslands that i'm going to have to have a stab at writing a review sometime soon. But for now, here are some of the reasons why updates have been a little slow of late. Don't worry, Necromunda will always be my main squeeze, but goddamn if Gaslands isn't the nuts!

Battle Report

I haven't had much hobby time recently for an update, so here's a few pics of a skirmish I had with my mate, Boris, from a few months back. This was actually our first game of new Necromunda and Dave's Gang's first outing - cutting their teeth against The Royals, a bunch of roided up Goliaths. 1750 point a piece - lots of boys and lots of toys!

The scene was set - an old factory surrounded by shanty shacks and old watch towers:

A mixture of GW Sector kit, various lazy man's pre-done stuff and a Gamemat.eu battle mat

Round 1

Dave and the guys (playing count as Orlocks) took the tactical decision to totally hide and run away as The Royal's, under the cover of smoke nades, rushed forward along what became known as ..

It's a  sobering sight seeing this come at you!

.. the 'road of death'. 

I see you!

This culminated in a massive street fight with the only thing saving Dave and the guys being some comically timed, mass smoke dissipation that left The Royal's leader and champion out in the open. Loads down on both sides, still working out the rules and with a new found respect for Heavy Bolters, we decided to call it a draw. Notable mention of Boris' Renderizer wielding champ who chased Donny around Benny Hill style for 3 turns!

Round 2 

This one played out very differently, with pretty much everyone up on the factory walkways. There was lots of hiding and peaking out of cover and nades flying about. While the first game was an immediate and drawn out exchange of shooting punctuated by melee, this was a gradual, tense build up of not much followed by two turns of total carnage! Again it was close. Spike and Moobs got very lucky with some sawn-off shotgun action and Boris was unlucky with his nade launcher.

In the end it all come down to a couple of krak grenades and Boxer rushing in like a total star and getting the final kill. The guy's done good! 

Dave, like any great leader, leading from behind!

Had it gone on for another turn, Goliath reinforcements would have turned up and their Ogryn, who had spent most of the fight running under the factory to attack from the rear, would have totally wrecked us. Ah well, too slow!