A return to Fakkhaven

How do fuckers, hope all is well! Still battling the yearly hayfever offensive, but I've managed to soldier on and add the first set of followers to Mr. Cohaagens little gang. Seven humans are now ready to help spread the word of the Father throughout the empire and beyond

While many of Fakkhavens original inhabitants have not survived, either from the pestilential presence of Father Wormtastes carnival or Cohaagens fanatical zeal, the village still has quite a substantial population for its size. Some of the original inhabitants immediately took to the worship of chaos, people like "Old Yurt", the village rat catcher, whose deformities made him a subject of cruel ridicule from the rest of Fakkhaven now finds unconditional love and acceptance in the new order of things. Brigands from the woods, once driven off with bow fire and halberd, now dwell in the shacks left abandoned in the culls, most are unconcerned entirely with the horrors that walk among them, happy to coexist as long as their business isn't pried into. Indeed, some have made a business of the occupation, and teams of thugs armed with clubs and mancatchers have begun to waylay travelers on the woodland tracks, dragging them back to Fakkhaven to "participate" in the vile festivities. For this they are richly rewarded, both in coin and favour in the eyes of Wormtaste, whose generous rewards are starting to manifest themselves amongst them. However, , the spike in disappearances in the area is starting to draw attention from the local patrols and it's only a matter of time before there will be a reckoning, at which time the rabble of Fakkhaven are ready and willing to stand with Cohaagen in defence of the village. 

The foul heart of Fakkhaven: 

Thanks for looking folks, be sure to check out The Work of Shaitan for Neds next entry (which is gonna be a cracker), and then tune back in here as I go back to space to start in a band of reavers to follow The Gentle!

Sneaky little bastard...

Hello folks! Absolutely fucked with hayfever at the minute so the output has dropped off, but I've managed to get my entry for the warbands project in with a chaos assassin for my Slaanesh renegade lads:

The assassin known as Shard has been the bane of imperial forces in the sector for decades, his covert operations disrupting everything from ammunition production all the way up to large scale troop deployments to the campaign against an Ork incursion along the Eastern Frontier. Shards needle rifle has taken the lives of both crime lords and admirals, what is seemingly a random pattern of murder has far reaching implications; the assassination of an arbites marshall for example, allowed the flourishing of a hidden slaaneshi cult hidden within the aristocracy of the spire of one of the systems major hives, eventually leading to a demonic incursion that required inquisitorial intervention, pulling vital military resources from the frontline of the greenskins campaign. The resulting ork breakthrough has enveloped three more planets, including one that contains an ancient eldar warp gate, the infiltration of which is Shards ultimate mission. 

Should Shard enter the webway, he intends to use his lethal skills to hunt the eldar through their own territory, in an attempt to disrupt the sensitive psychic network to allow his masters servants to finally finish what the eldar themselves started.

With the removal of the imperial presence from the planet, Shard now intends to venture to the supposed site of the portal and begin his endgame. However, while the chaos of an ork occupation is ample cover, it also raises the issue of tens of thousands of orks on the rampage, and as good as he is, even Shard knows he wouldn't last long against an entire warband alone.

And this is how Shard has come into the company of "The Gentle" and his reavers, hoping to harness the combat prowess  of his new allies as the perfect distraction to allow his mission to continue. Although he and the Gentle share the worship of their God, the renegade is nothing more to Shard than another weapon in his arsenal, to use and discard as he sees fit..

And there you go! I'll leave it there for now, cos I'm in a heap, but be sure to tune in to The Work of Shaitan for the next thrilling installment! Thanks for looking!

RoC project going medieval on your ass

Hello again! With Neds Khorne renegade in the bag, and our warbands taking (unpainted) shape, we've turned our attention to the Warhammer world and rolled up our fantasy warbands. As I already mentioned (hope you're paying attention), I drew nurgle for the fantasy side of the project, so I got rolling the other night and came up with an absolute beast! Anyway, here's some fluff:

The small hamlet of Fakkhaven lies in the shadow of the Drakwald forest in the empire, a benighted place full of bandits and other, much more horrific dangers. Situated as it is, Fakkhaven has been destroyed and rebuilt many times in its history, but it's hardy citizens struggled on stubbornly, and eked out a living as woodsmen and subsistence farmers in spite of the ever present danger.

However, for the past three decades Fakkhaven has enjoyed an unprecedented period of peace, and while its inhabitants have become aggressively insular, it has avoided the predations of the myriad creatures that call the Drakwald home. It has been this way ever since the carnival came to town all those years ago.

You see, the carnival, while displaying gaiety and bright colours, had as rotten a core as it is possible to have. This carnival was the noisome cavalcade of Cholerus Wormtaste, Great Unclean One of Nurgle, and he and his troupe had been spreading glorious rot across the back roads of the empire for decades before Fakkhaven even existed. 

But when the carnival came to the hamlet, they found it prepared for their arrival, in a way. A terrified survivor of their last performance had come to Fakkhaven ahead of them, and warned of the horrors about to befall the community. The carnival pulled up in front of hastily prepared barricades with a lone figure before them. The man was Ethbert Cohaagen, appointed leader of Fakkhaven and the best warrior among them, having served the emperor as a halberdier for a large portion of his adult life. While now in his fifth decade, Cohaagen was still formidable, his ex issue halberd, driven by his powerful swing, had ended the life of many a raider over the years. 

A lone, cowled figure emerged from the caravan and started towards him, his grip on his halberd tightening as he readied himself. From the outside he was the picture of determination, but in his mind he was wracked with doubt. He was old now, older than he had any right to be and he could feel his age catching up with him. He was slowing now, and wracked with dull aches and other discomforts, and if he was honest with himself, the blood in his piss was a very bad sign. The hooded figure stopped before him, and began to talk. It was a dry rasping whisper, and none that cowered on the other side of the barricades could make out what was said, but they certainly noticed the slump in Cohaagens shoulders as he relaxed his guard. Suddenly, the emissary stepped to the side and beckoned Cohaagen toward the carnival cart, and the people of Fakkhaven were both surprised and relieved to see Cohaagen make his way towards it.

After a time Cohaagen re emerged and made his way back to the village, his step noticeably more assured, a youthful swagger back in his step. He told the villagers to open the gates and allow their new friends in, their fortunes were about to change for the better in a way they couldn't conceive. The people were unsure, but did as he bid once Alfred Weissman was hacked in two for voicing dissent. Something had happened to Cohaagen in that cart, but terror at his newfound strength forced obedience. As the cart rattled into the centre of the hamlet and it's curtains drew back to reveal disease made flesh in countless horrible forms, Fakkhaven fell to its knees in terrified supplication.

However, Father Wormtaste is a generous leader, gregarious and jolly he delights in interacting with his new subjects, even if they usually end the exchanges wracked with hideous illness. Cohaagen has become the red right hand of Father Wormtaste, defending the passes that lead to Fakkhaven and hunting down escapees who haven't accepted the Word of the Father with single minded brutality. As for Cohaagen himself, he has never felt better, a new vitality courses through his now leprous flesh, and while he was strong before he is now capable of wrestling a fully armoured warhorse to the ground without any effort at all. He has even grown fond of the little mites that follow him everywhere, delighting in their ridiculous vicious antics. For Ethbert Cohaagen, life is good again, and he will do whatever it takes to keep it that way.

So there you go! Champion of nurgle with nurgling infestation and strength (+3!), so I followed that to its ridiculous conclusion and gave him a two handed weapon, because strength 9 attacks should provide hilarity down the road. For his retinue, I rolled 7 humans, 2 orcs and 4 chaos goblins, so watch this space! 

Now I'll hand the reins back to Ned for some Tzeentch magicky bullshit 😉 thanks for looking! Oh, and here's the man himself, Mr. Cohaagen 

Shameless plug time

Now then folks, how are we all doing? I'm sure the majority of you know about this already, but I'm involved in a Kickstarter that launched last night, and I'm wanting to spread the word!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554542735/the-pantheon-of-chaos?ref=discovery

It's a throwback to the 80s era of miniatures, where instead of rank upon rank of plastic shite getting pushed across the table only for a rules argument  to erupt,we're going back to a better time of warbands of individual metal warriors creating a story as they're used in fun scenario driven games. This initial wave has already smashed its funding target (in two fucking hours!), and we've got some very tasty stretch goals lined up, and with future plans including a hardback rule/scenario book, why not pop over and treat yourself?😉

Let our powers combine!!

*this is a fucking wall of text, but there's photos at the end, so stick with it!*

How do folks, been very busy in real life lately so the painting has taken a temporary back seat, but I have had time to start something a bit exciting (well I think so anyway). 

In the last blog post I was banging on about the Khorne warband I was getting all tumescent for, but that led me into a conversation with Ned Gladdis (I can't do links cos I'm shit, but check out his blog The Work Of Shaitan if you haven't already, it's fucking magic) about a possible cross blog project based on the RoC warbands. The basic plan we've bashed out is we take two gods each, and do a warband for each one. However, as we were chatting, we realised we don't see too many Rogue Trader based warbands, so because we don't already have enough to be doing, one of our two warbands will be Rogue Trader themed. The overall plan is to alternate weekly posts on our progress until we have another bunch of minis to display in our cabinets, but as always that could be subject to change 😉

Still with me? Sound! I've drawn Slaanesh and Nurgle for the project, so after a bit of a think I decided to do a slaanesh worshipping renegade marine, as I've painted a fantasy slaanesh army already, and fancied a change. And it's this champion that I present to you this evening, Adolphus "The Gentle"

Adolphus barely escaped his chapter with his life following his exposure as a chaos worshipper during a particularly gruelling campaign on the moons of the Githrak system. As the trench war ground on, it began to take its toll on Adolphus, his heavy MkII armour making him the spearhead of multiple assaults, and the constant violence began to dull Adolphus' sensibilities to the point everything became a crushing cycle of blood and death and adrenalin. When the voice began to talk to him, he revelled in the new acts suggested by the soft whispers, and his assaults became more and more spectacular in their application of brute force. Soon enough the other members of his squad began to notice, and he became isolated as they realised he was cracking under the pressure, but with no surviving chaplains there was nobody equipped to help. 

It was when they found Adolphus bathed in the offal of six chapter serfs that his true nature was revealed, the curses he spat as he murdered his battles brothers was not his usual gruff tone, but a soft almost feminine rasp. The whisper in his ear was now the voice in his throat.

Now, my first roll was a marine champion, automatically equipped powered armour, and rolling for his equipment I got a bolter and a chainsword. Rolling for his reward, I got attribute: blood substitution (acid), which wasn't half bad, and then his personal attribute was...... Silly voice...

Right, so now I have a space marine champion who bleeds acid and sounds like Mr Slave.. I can work with that! 

For his retinue, I rolled two units of humans (5 and 7 respectively), and an assassin!! I've already gathered up enough pirates and mercenaries for the human squads, and I'm about halfway through the chaos assassin conversion (I'm fucking rock hard to get that one going), but that's for another time. I will now hand over to Mr. Gladdis on his blog, where this time next week he should be starting his Renegade rabble. Thanks for looking!

#justiceforgary2 and more fucking distractions

Hello there! I'm back from the pit of blogging laziness I slipped back into last week with another round of pictures of dubious quality and s side order of foul language, so here we go!

My #justiceforgary campaign is still ongoing, with my personal painted Morley sculpt collection growing by four of his ghouls. Now, I'm a fuckin terrible Paul Muller fanboy, especially anything ghoul related, so this was gonna be a tough wank painting wise, but like a teenager with a Woman's Way magazine, I soldiered on and arrived at quite a satisfactory finish (if I say so myself)

Now, when I posted these boys on Facebook, the main point of conversation was the huge bones they're running around with, and the piss was duly taken, however, in a fit of paternal protectiveness, I've decided that the background of these particular lads is that they keep raiding the necromancers ogre spare parts pile (to fuck with him you understand), so I'll be theming more models around this, including a skeletal ogre who's missing a few parts, so watch this space (but don't hold yer breath)

Moving on, this week I also got a scavvy gang done for a customer, so I thought I'd fold them into the #justiceforgary thing, as they are genuinely lovely models. My own gang is still being picked away at (it involves a lot of converting), but I thought I'd get these lads in for the cause too

They speak for themselves really, don't they?

And now for something completely different

I was chatting to the multi talented spaniard Diego Serrate of Troll Outpost and Space Riders (and soon to be Patheon of Chaos project, I'll get back to that in another post), and as our conversations tend to do, it got on to chaos warbands from the Realms of Chaos era. Anyway, long story short, I got distracted from my next big personal project and rolled up a warband. I got:

Level 10 champion; mark of Khorne (chaos armour) and blood substitute: molten metal

Using the guidelines from Realmofchaos80s, a level ten champ gets 3 rolls on the followers table, and from that I got;

4 beastmen

6 skaven

2 minotaurs

That's some good fucking rolls if you ask me, so after a root in some boxes, I've put together the warband, and last night started painting my yet to be named champion. I'll probably never get a game in with these lads, but it's a nice little sideline to the commissions I'm working on, and also soaks up some of the lead pile, which is always a good thing! 

So that's me for now, hope I didn't bore you too much (and if I did, don't let the fuckin door hit you on the way out ye miserable cunt), and I'll just say thanks for reading, and leave you with a few glamour shots of the latest addition to my howling griffons, very kindly donated to the cause by Mr. Steve Casey, who I think we can all agree is an absolute gentleman and a credit to this mass midlife crisis that we call Oldhammer. Til next time folks!

Impending ultraviolence..

Hello! Got the first wave of my marine project finished last night, so rather than a fly by night photo dump on Facebook I thought I'd document them in a bit more detail here. This is a bit of a personal milestone for me, as even though I've been collecting these little metal and plastic bastards for over 20 years, this is the first time in dozens of attempts where I haven't lost interest (or the will to live) halfway through a squad, and I now have a full marine squad proudly on display in my cabinet! Anyway, enough bollocks, here come the Boys:

Firstly, the command section. Lieutenant Bisley, T.F.U of the second company of the Howling Griffons has a remarkably distinguished (and violent) record within his chapter, given that he's only been a fully fledged marine for just over two decades. He and his strike force have responded to inquisitor Annolucems request for aid in investigating the communications blackout from the systems main hive city, and woe betide anyone who gets in the way of their "investigations". Lt. Bisley is flanked by chaplain Constantine who has pledged to ensure the purity of the force given that inquisitorial duties are rarely due to natural phenomena, and medic 1st class Fulci, an invaluable addition to such an "impetuous" outfit 

Fire team Alpha, half of 3rd squad, second company, also known as "The Boys", this is Lt. Bisleys former unit, and his first choice for any undertaking that requires that "special" touch. Led by Sgt. Patricus Sharpe (seen in the middle), Bisleys former second in command, this fire team is the close quarters section, well equipped with assault grenades and flame units to get the job done 

Fire team Beta, led by Corporal "Deadeye" Jones, is the fire support element, normally equipped with a heavy bolter to keep heads down while Alpha team get into range

The boys are currently en route to the rendezvous point with the inquisitor, more on whom will follow at some point soon. Thanks for looking!