Raiders of the Lost Hive

+++++TRANSINTERCEPT+++++
"--aise the Omnissiah!"
"Hold your station!"
"Engines to full, bring us into the shadow of the planet-"
"--vity well will pull--"
"Follow your orders, damn you! We have to outrun the wavefront!"
"--oomed, we're all doo--"
"--achine spirits have forsaken us! We can't break free!"
"We're spiralling in!"
"You've killed us all, you meatbag fool!"
+++++ENDTRANS+++++

=I= INQUISITORIAL REPORT EYES ONLY =I=

My retinue and I were aboard the last ship to leave the Atreus system; all the others were consumed by the Warp Storm that erupted from the Caliban Cascade. The loss of the manufactoria and forges of Hive Karhonnen was certainly a blow to the Padisha Sector but we have slowly recovered. To this date I have been unable to determine whether the storm was as natural an occurance as anything to do with the Warp can be, or if it was summoned by some activity of the Great Enemy. The details of my investigation are contained in CASEFILE SYCORAX but I suspect that the Ruinous Powers were caught as much by suprise as the sudden swallowing of the entire planet Leto as we were.

Given this, if the planet has re-emerged then there is a good chance it has been lost in the Warp and not colonised by the powers of Chaos. If this is so, then all the equipment resources and research contained in Hive Karhonnen should still be intact: and if, as I suspect, the Adeptus Mechanicus Research Vessel Rakkis crashed on the surface, then its cargo of [REDACTED] should be secured immediately.

I would recommend that strike teams small enough to infiltrate whatever is left of the Hive but large enough to deal with any possible interference be inserted. Astartes are the obvious choice but given that the Atreus system lies close to the border of many Xeno races, you may find it prudent to send some Guard Units and possibly even an Inquisitorial retinue if one can be found.

I remain, sir, your most obedient servant,

Inquisitor [REDACTED]

=I= ---------------------- =I=

His breath rasping in his mask, Georgiou looked up from the red ochre dust that caked his boots. It was still there. Vast. Impossible.

"Seriously, Sarge," he said again. "Where are we going?"

The Sergeant slowly raised his arms and pointed. "There, Guardsman. There."

Before them was a Hive, like a thousand others on a thousand other worlds. A spire, tens of kilometres high, a man-made mountain that would have once housed millions. Now, however, it was an impossibility. A vast spacecraft was embedded in the side of it, melded and fused into the very fabric of the Hive by some warpcraft Georgiou couldn't comprehend. 

"Ok, Sarge," he said. With a sigh he continued to march towards Hive Karhonnen. 

********                                       **********

With the games club at work doing very well, it seems like the time is right to kick the Shadow Wars Armageddon league up a notch. The idea is very simple -  a narrative campaign baseda round a number of different Kill Teams attempting to infiltrate an abandoned Hive.

At the start, each team will say secretly where they are attempting to enter the Hive - from the Underhive, from the Lower Levels, from the MidHive where the Rakkis crashed or the Upper Hive.

That will determine who meets who in the first matches. Underhive games will be tunnel fighting using the Necromunda Boards. Lower levels and the Upper Spires will be on traditional Necromunda/SWA multi-level scenery (although there will be some interesting enviromental effects). The mid Hive is the most dangerous area because of the structural damage caused by the Rakkis.

The final round for each team will be fought in the corridors of the Rakkis.

Each team has a secret objective - either a macguffin to acquire or another team they need to take out - and there will be a movement system for teams to move around the Hive.

The teams that will be starting the campaign are:

• Necrons
• Space Wolves
• Orks
• Space MArines
• Valhallans IG
• Plague Marines
• Inquisition
• Stalkers IG (this is my team but I think I'll be passing these over to one of the students who's joined late as I'll probably be busy umpiring and running some the other forces that have colonised the ruined Hive...)

We'll be using the scenery we've created at work, so we'll be all good to go over the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you updated on how it goes. 

The Pig Iron Wide Boyz

After a few digressions and a family emergency (my 3 year old son broke his leg and so spent a week in traction and then 5 weeks in a full lower-body cast over Christmas), I finally got my Necromunda Goliath gang finished.

As with the previous members, I kept the Mad Max aesthetic and worked on the assumption that these chaps have come from the dust and filth of foundries deep in the Underhive; so after painting there was a liberal application of ochre and oxide pigments. As well as the usual dusting I also experimented with a new pigment binder which allowed me to really cake it on like thick mud. I'm generally happy with the effect - the issue, of course, is that we don't know how it will react with varnish which is always the unknown quantity when dealing with pigments. As soon as they are coated, I'll report back.

In the meantime, here are close ups of Smak, Gripper, Twos and the rest of the ladz.

Stix and Twos guarding the doors. 

'Gripper' Jenkins

Blade

Hive Karhonnen

I have the usual green flock mats for games on lush worlds, but I was missing some sort of base area for SF gaming. This started out as work for Shadow Wars: Armageddon, but given the news about Necromunda, it's going to serve double duty.

The tiles were bought from http://www.wargame-model-mods.co.uk/  It's a very clever magnetised system which I didn't bother with as I'll be using my own terrain. The colour scheme follows the Harkonnen palette I used before.


Once assembled, they were primed black and the silver was done with some Halfords car paint (a slight warning here, this seems to include some laquer in the mix and so it was quite resistant to washes: weathering of this paint had to be done with powders and pigments). The green was airbrushed on, fairly neatly using masking tape on 3 of the boards and then freehand on the fourth to provide some variety (and disguise that I had two the same).

Weathering was done with a variety of washes and pigments to get it down and dirty like the underhive should be.

Finally, I attached the provided lights. Simple little LED circuits which just needed fastening in place.

I'm really happy with these and I think they'll lift the look of any SF game immeasurably.

They came through the walls...

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE. Don't tell to to calm down, Sir. Don't tell me that. You didn't see them. They came the throne-damned walls. They still had grave dirt clinging to them. They screeched like an unoiled hinge when they walked. They walked. Through. The. Walls. The air tore when they fired that green light and Carbody was just... not there any more. But in the centre of them was one who just looked at us. Just... looked. His eyes burned the green at the end of his whatever the hell he was carrying. They came through the walls, sir. How can we ever be safe from that?

÷÷÷÷÷TRANSINTERCEPT÷÷÷÷÷165328.3

Message begins.

this world was ours and it will be so again

commence the harvest

Message ends÷÷÷÷÷

The games club at work is going very well, and I think the next step will be A Shadow Wars: Armageddon campaign. I've put together a few kill teams using miniatures I had kicking around. First off, I dug out some old necrons and tarted them up with some weathering. It was astonishing the difference it made. 

You can see here their original state.

The other big news is of course the return of Necromunda which fits very well with my current interests in small scale skirmish and converting individual models.

Evolution

I needed a slight break from the Terminators from Space Hulk so decided to have a fiddle with one of the ideas I had floating around for Shadow Wars - the more or less re-release of Necromunda.

The only real army I've ever had for 40k was Tyranids - and I've had it for a very long time: the core of it was Genestealers from the original Space Hulk in 1993 or whenever.

The problem was that the colour scheme I chose for Hive Fleet Typhon was based on a lagoon crab and was therefore pretty useless for urban warfare.

Given that Tyranids evolve to maximise their effectiveness, it seemed likely they would evolve urban camouflage just like moths and butterflies did. The trick was, could I design something that felt tied to the original but still worked for the Underhive?

Step one was to raid the leftover sprues in the garage to see if I could knock together some tyranid warrior forms. Spoiler: I could.

Anyway, this is the scheme I came up with.

The carapace is very similar to the original just with splintered camouflage under the glaze; the skin was given a dark grey glaze instead of progressive browns; the purple flesh accents remained the same.

I think this works as something that would strike from the shadows and hangs together with the old scheme. Not bad for an hour fiddlibg about!