Jackals, Chimera Crane and WIPs

Welcome back for another wee update, I've been building more than painting this week, and first up I've got some bases almost built ready for some Atalan Jackals. I'm making them neutral to use with my Hive Guard force either as rough riders or just using the Atalan Jackal rules. It doesn't help that I now want loads and to recreate the Rohan cresting the hill scene from Return of the King and have them crashing into Ork lines.... We shall see!

I picked up the Galvanic Servohauler a couple months ago wondering how I can adapt it to some Necromunda terrain but then saw a few people attach it to a Leman Russ chassis. 'Thats cool' I thought, but debated whether there was a better chassis. After wondering if the lower bases Chimera chassis would be better I got hold of one and made this. Still bits to finish off but I'm quite happy with how that looks!I've flattened the top of the chimera off and then mounted the crane section onto some plasticard. Its not glued to the circular railing and I'm unsure whether to. It'll be sturdier but might be nice to be able to turn it... we shall see!

 I have paitned a little, firstly this guy I based from a leftover Genestealer Cultist from the Goliath kit mixed with some Orlock parts. Its what I'll be using predominently for the Atalan Bikers so had a little mess around with a colour scheme for them. I've retained the Thunderhawk blue main colour but used white on some of the armour and red casing for the gun. I'm unsure whether to stick with this for the bikers though, and may reverse it so the armour is thunderhawk blue.

 Little more done to the Exorcist too, having done some work to the Organists/rocket launcher firer. Theres a weird surface inside the Exorcist and I'm unsure how to paing this when I get to it, I can't make out if its stone or like a sheet covering something and the photo on the GW website isn't that clear either.

I also picked some other bits up with the Chimera, more Armoured Containers to go along with the three I already have, plus some Genestealer Cult characters to convert for the Hive Guard and Necromunda.

I grabbed these from The Outpost and they were quickly at my door to quench my hobby needs! The Alpus is such a cool model, and I love how theres very little to mark her as a Genestealer cult model. Easier for me to convert! She'll be getting an Escher head, as will the femala Atalan model in the main kit. The Nexos I'll probably use as a Master of Ordnance and the Clamavus either as a Voxcaster or even a standard bearer, I'm unsure yet but just liked the model enough to get! Also, both can be used for Necromunda too which is even better! 

So thats what I've been upto this week, what about you lot? Share any pictures below or maybe I've  sparked some ideas off for your own conversions? Either way keep safe and keep hobbying!

Guide to Roleplaying

Tabletop roleplaying has become one of my great passions in this hobby. Meeting up with friends to act out adventures that a dice (and sometimes a Dungeon Master) will determine is great fun and fantastic escapism. But what can you do to make yourself a better roleplayer?

First off, speak to the dungeon master and fellow players about what you want from the game. A bloodletting dungeon crawl can mean a lower amount of roleplaying and more fighting, whereas a grand campaign with a huge narrative arc allows a huge amount of scope for really delving into a character and backstory. This will help set the mood with your group at an early stage and put everyone one the same level.

When it comes to creating a character, think about how much you want to be involved with the roleplaying aspect. To keep it simple, choose a race and class that appeal to you and put a little of your own personality there. Humans are always a good start as we know how they act already, but Elves and Dwarves aren't too dissimilar to play either. If you're looking to push your skills then races like Tieflings, Dragonborn and Goliaths can really open up your perspective. A good DM will have the world react differently to differing races and this can be really interesting to play.

In terms of a backstory always converse with the DM. The first thing is to understand the setting, which will then spark some ideas as to where your character fits in. Talk to the DM about your idea and they may be able to link you into the story even more which will immerse you even more. The more immersion, the better the roleplaying.

When you begin playing theres some things to remember. Every player will, or at least should, get time to shine. This can be from triumph in a battle getting the last hit on a renowned enemy to being the focus of a story arc in which you'll do a lot of talking and roleplaying. These moments are great for your character so really try to lose yourself in these moments. Likewise, if its a fellow players time the best thing you can do is to give them the time to shine. If they are nervous about roleplaying then you can help them get immersed. If its in the heat of a battle, you can try to set them up for a finishing blow, either by an ability or spell that can buff them or by flanking or aiding them to give them advantage. If its more character based with conversations with NPCs then just help them with little questions the player may be unsure of to ask, ask them questions that will then inspire them to talk more with the NPC's. Being a great roleplayer isn't just about playing a good character but about helping the players around you be better roleplayers too.

There will also be many times when you know things as a player but your character may not. I usually mention to the DM 'I know how to do something but I'm unsure my character will, can I roll a check to see if he does?' to see if the character will know, or quite often not even mention it. Your character will have a different variety of knowledge compared to you and this works in the opposite way too. The DM mentions something you know nothing about but think your character will? Ask your DM and hopefully they'll ask you to make an ability check. You might learn something new!

 My final piece of advice is also to accept that you will make mistakes or bad decisions and have some truly terrible sessions where the dice rolls are incredibly bad. Yes its annoying, but don't get angry at such things as they will affect the rest of the players at your table. Remember TTRPG'ing is a game and a shared experience with a number of other players and a Dungeon Master. Player etiquette should always be a priority in a group, the happier each player is the more enjoyable the session will be for everyone. Someone roll a nat20? Give em a clap or a cheer! Someone roll a nat1? Have a collective groand but laugh too!

So there we have it! I'm learning all the time when I'm roleplaying so expect more thoughts on this tremendous aspect of gaming in the future, perhaps I'll be able to get other peoples thoughts too from fellow players and dungeon masters. If there are topics you'd like me to cover then please get in touch and I'll see what I can do, Don't forget my affiliate link with The Outpost above if you want to get some nice discounts from your tabletop gaming needs and I'll be back again soon with another blog post.

The Return

If I've stated it once, I've stated it several times, but I'm back. I've not posted since November, 2018 and I'll be honest it feels like a lifetime ago. What happened during this time is deeply personal, so I won't spare the details but over the last few months my hobby mojo has started to return. It has taken a little knock during this Corona Virus debacle but I'm still soldiering away on painting and crafting ideas for gaming and generally trying to make the most of this isolation. 

Necromunda, has been at the forefront. 

I picked up a couple sets of the floor tiles, and decided to paint them purple, using silver, rust and chevrons to break them up. The PLLX stands for Pollux, thinking my hive will be named after the Imperial Fists hero. I think they came out well!

My Necromunda gangs will all see use in my Hive Guard army for 40k, so twenty orlocks means two units of infantry for the force. I've got sizty in total, 20 orlocks, 10 van saar, 20 escher and 10 goliaths. Plus various tanks and vehicles. 

The Dark Uprising set really captured my imagination, and I'll get some better pictures soon as thats all purple too and goes well with the floor tiles. 

So whats in store in the future for Death By Die? 

D&D has been a staple of my gaming time, so I've been jotting down campaign ideas for when the group can get back together. In the campaign I play I'll be showing off some things I've done with my character, Tovus the Visceral. More on him later though! I may also post about a previous character named Elias Azure, and talk about how I create characters for roleplaying games. 

40k will also feature as I may get involved in a gaming club campaign and also running a very narrative based campaign with an Ork warlord. Look for world building ideas, force ideas to keep things narrative and painting and conversion ideas coming soon... I also picked some Sisters up....

I'll also be running a Necromunda campaign in the future at my local club so expect some news on that when social gatherings are once more allowed. I've been slowly building up some ideas for the hive and will begin crafting those into a solid background within the next month or two.

I may showcase some Kickstarters, other hobbyists work, maybe even some Q&A's with myself and others here too. One other thing I may do is some archived White Dwarf look backs, as my collection goes back to about 180... which is over 20 years ago! 

If you have any ideas or things you'd like me to share then feel free to get in touch. I'm still affiliate for The Outpost who continue to serve as the most excellent online shop of all things tabletop. Click the link above and take a look, you'll also be helping me too! 

Torkin' Bowt Da Orks

So with the Ork release finally coming myself and Bam spend a good few minutes talking about orks in general. From the leaks to release, how we view the orks and some of the social sides of gaming. 

I'll be doing a video looking more at the ork rules soon too, and have a game sunday to see how they play. Hoping to get a nice mix of units on the board with an emphasis on boyz! Rules wise I'll probably do a top 5 format of rules I like the most, and maybe some that I'm just 'meh' about. 

Are you a greenskin? What do you think so far on the ork release, in terms of miniatures and rules?

D&D and Exciting News!

First of all, lets get the news out there now. You may have already seen me mention The Outpost as one of the best online stores around. 20% discount on GW prices and many other ranges, releases always arrived on time, and I've had some excellent customer service. Well Death By Die is now an official affiliate of the store! By clicking the link above to make orders, it gives me some extra juice to get more new releases, produce articles on them and in the long term, allow me to produce more content for you hungry hobbiests.

 This will also lead on to me hopefully within the next couple of months producing video content on youtube and linking on here, and possibly even doing some giveaways! And we all like free things don't we? Well I bloody do especially if it means I can spread the love and pass them over to the readers of my humble blog. This link now has a permenant home underneath my blog header so sign upto the Outpost and get shopping. 

Otherwise on Saturday (hence no Saturday Salvo) I ran my first session of D&D! Which also means I can soon start to going into what I've been doing in terms of narrative, miniatures painting and dungeon crafting for it! Set in a homebrow city called Cannahein, a party is needed to do the deeds that the City Guard cannot, such as deep investigation, averting great evil and generally being heroes!

So far we have Malekai, a human Paladin who is older and more experienced than the other party members. Mane, a Wood Elf Druid from the nearby Ardeep Forest looking to enhance his skills and learn from a respected kinsman that now advises the people of Cannahein, and a gifted Fighter called Throngir who grew up in Cannahein working in his fathers forge. The young dwarf has bested most of the City Guard already and together, the party were introduced and quickly put into action. Being sent on the northern path to meet a now late Dwarf Caravan, the party crest a hill after hearing a loud explosion to see goblins attacking the caravan, running off with some spoils and a hostage. They rout the remaning goblins and get the Dwarves safely back to the city. 

The party were then tasked going back to track the goblins, finding them eventually and discovering the goblins had a troll ally! After some trickery the party manage to get the troll and goblins to fight amongst themselves before the troll and a couple other goblins see what has happened and a fight ensues. Malekai goes down but Throngir, Mane and the rescued Borrick are able to down the Troll quickly and pick Malekai up. 

I've also got two other players lined up to play, so should make a good full party with some variety of playstyle and characters to roleplay, so looking forward to it!

In other news the 40k Escalation League continues and I've managed to pick up 2 very close wins against Genestealer Cult and Space Wolves, next step is 1250 points. I was hoping Orktober would be in full swing but alas, not even the new issue of White Dwarf (which arrived today) mentions of any new releases. I IZ ANGREE AN' WANNA KRUMP FINGS! 

I know Orktober will probably commence at the end of the month so may have to wait until the 1500 points tier to get the new Codex Orks smacking heads!

So thats it for now, look out for more posts soon and don't forget to visit the Outpost through the link at the top for some great wargaming deals!

The Farstriders: x2 Showcase

Greetings to another Death By Die showcase! This time, its two Shadespire warbands... don't worry you're not seeing double, this is two alternate schemes I did on the Farstriders. 

Even though gold is the predominant colour on both, the secondary colours give off two very different vibes.

See how the blue gives a cooler look, as if they may have been fighting near watery or icy areas. The red however is much warmer, and I think this makes them look more aggressive.

Deciding what secondary colour to use for a warband or army can theme your army despite what the main colour is. Even if the main colour on these were silver, the seondary colours would still give the cool or warmer feel to the miniatures. These Shadespire kits are fantastic by the way, easy to build (akin to the easy to build series GW has been successfully putting out recently) and I'd never in a thousand years thought I'd enjoy painting gold.

But here I am, enjoying painting gold! 

Which of the above schemes do you prefer? How has a secondary colour choice changed how your army feels? Do you regret picking certain colours? Leave a comment and pictures!

Chaos Chosen Showcase

Welcome to a showcase on Death By Die, this time of a Chaos Chosen team for Blood Bowl that I've recently finished!

As you can see, it includes 8 beastmen, 4 chaos warriors, 3 balls, turn marker token and coin, as well as the fantastic Minotaur from Forge World. I'm selling these on ebay and a quick search should bring them up if you're interested.

I've never painted an awful lot of fur and its still something I need to work on, but I think I'm getting there and am happy with how its come out on the Minotaur and Beastmen. 

Look how big this bruiser is, I've got another one sitting about so unsure as to what to do with him.... I am coming up to a significant number of page view soon so perhaps I could use him in a giveaway? 

As you can see, the Chaos Warriors have all had flames painted on their shoulder pads like the Beastmen. It was fiddly but its another thing I think has come out pretty well.

Blood for the Blood God! I love this paint so much, and had to find use for it somewhere and it suits being on the coin beautifully. 

The Beastmen have some fantastic poses, the GW sculpts for all the Blood Bowl teams have been amazing so far and I'm looking forward to cracking open the Nurgle Rotters team when I get them Saturday. 

So what do you think? I've still got a long way to go before I'm a fantastic painter but with more and more practice I'm getting there and I can see little improvements on a weekly basis. What are you guys working on and how do you improve your skills as a painter? 

For any info contact me on Facebook on my Death By Die  page or hook me up on Instagram

Magore's Fiends Showcase

Its been a little while since I've posted, although thats probably the most common introduction I produce on the blog. But, bear with me for it is a good thing. Almost two months ago I decided to paint, challenging myself to get better. You've seen my stuff before, it was alright, but I think I've improved. So much so that I've grabbed up all the Shadespire I could and got to painting it.

So here to begin with, I present the recently released Magore's Fiends.

While I'm still not steeped in the lore of Age of Sigmar theres no doubting the models for AoS and Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire are absolutely beautiful. I enjoyed painting these as I love painting red, still working on blending and building up layers but its looking quite effective. 

Being a Khorne Daemon army player (well sorta, not played with them much as they're under reconstruction) but this is the first Flesh Hound I've painted and I need to do more. Riptooth is a good boy!

So there we have Magore's Fiends. I've also got the Farstriders coming in a post soon along with the other warbands I've painted, of which there are another 3. Like I said, I've really enjoyed painting them! I have also started to take on commissions so if you have anything you'd like painted to a good standard for use on the table please get in touch on my Facebook page where I can answer all of your questions or you can just keep track of blog updates. Thanks for looking, more soon! 

No seriously this time.

Honest....

Specialist Games Progress: Human Team and Goliaths

So following on from yesterdays progress on my 40k collection todays post is all Specialist Games! First up are my Ostermark Oracles human Blood Bowl team!

 First are three of my four Blitzers, all slightly converted with pistolier heads from the Empire AoS range and some slight tweaks to arms to give some different poses.

What team doesn't have coaching staff? Well heres the Oracles! Assistant coach on the left, Head Coach in the middle and apothecary on the right, all from one of the old Empire cannon crews. 

Now the fourth blitzer of the team and its the last metal Griff Oberwald miniature GW produced. I loved this model so it seemed only natural to have him lead my team!

Every team needs linemen to do the dirty work like blocking and covering the harder players on the opposite team and heres the Oracles linemen. All of their heads are different, and I cannot believe I've forgotten which company made these but I have one left to use that reminds me of Hanzo from Overwatch... to save for future additional player or something else.. that is the question!

As a human player the thrower and catcher combo is much needed, and I'll get myself a second catcher at some point to back up this one. A second thrower might be useful too!

 I love the Mighty Zug models, all of them! I use the newer one as an Ogre, as I have the last two previously also. Such a dynamic yet brick hard looking miniature!

 I fancied making a full on turn marker for the team too using some of the bits from the human sprue and I'm happy how its turned out. I also use my coaching staff as counters, the Head Coach being the score marker, assistant coach for rerolls and the apothecary to... well just heal someone!

Along with the Blood Bowl are my almost finished Goliath gang!

I've built them all as they are in the box, but I have another three of the stub cannon toting gangers to form up with three heavier weapons as I'll be using them as Veterans in my Astra Militarum list. Slam them in a Goliath(which will be a Taurox for game purposes) and I'll have a shotgun armed squad to slap some shots into infantry units to soften up or finish off. 

Some of the close combat guys who may also get in my list but using Genestealer Cult rules, as acolytes. Because they're hive gangers I love the idea of them using the ambush rules and surprising units and think it fits well in the narrative of my list.

Few more one with a Rivet gun, I have two of the other heavier weapons built too and they'll counts as special weapons depending on what I fancy. 

Finally my Leader! Yep, that cigar is the second attempt as I lost the first, its so small! I love the hammer too, although I wish it was easier to put in different positions but may have a go at one swinging a hammer at some point. 

Also heres how the bases look, which I'm pretty happy with! They have washes of Nuln Oil and Agrax on to filth it up with some verdigris on too just to add some wear. And of cause, chevrons! 

I've also been working on the escher gang but theres still a lot to do on those, all built as the gang in the box but will be making more lasgun armed gangers to build up an infantry squad for the AM army and then another 10 wth combat weapons to use as neophytes in the GSC portion of my army. 

I've got some other ideas for the list but I wanna do some crusaders and not sure what to use for them. I need to do my ogryns too and have another Leman Russ on the way for something a little different!