Extra Life Auction Model

Quiet times in the hobby the past two weeks, D&D has been off and that cuts out not only my roleplaying but also my main hobby time each week.

However, to support Extra Life, and to get my hobby fix, I bid on a French painted Napoleonic trumpeter.

This is how he looked on ebay

New Look Blog

If anyone here remembers the blog from before then they'll see the difference clearly. Firstly I've dropped the Inquisitor Drake name for Drake Poldragon, this is to mark the change from being very 40k focused to more about what I'm doing within the much larger hobby. I've also gone for a lighter and more earthy colour scheme, again to pull away from the gothic dark past of the blog.

I'm hoping to include a much wider range of topics now, including the board games. I play and more of the background modelling I do. Terrain, gaming table, Dungeons and Dragons, the works. I hope people enjoy the blog, I'd love comments. I hope I can pull off a more regular posting schedule and turn my little corner of the hobby into something others can also enjoy.

Inquisitor Drake signing off. Welcome Drake Poldragon.

It's been a while, but...

Been a busy month here in Norway.

Little Sebastian had his Christening

 and his first Halloween.

So hobby time has been thin on the ground. Here is a little summary of the progress that has been made though:

The Kernewek Guard received their first Heavy Weapons Teams

Some entrenched for suppressing fire.

Others on the run to rear shot Land Raiders.

 

In training for #ForgeWorldOnly, MkVI's from the bits box.

The real action has been going on at the hands of Brother (Captain) Tiberius, a new member for his Deathwatch Killteam.

A unit of Bloodletters to become allies for a CSM army.

And the first unit for the CSM army of his, the Adherents of the Dragon (catchy name) have been built and painted.

He even detailed how he's done most of the work on the Adherents in case anyone else wants to join his rusty, Dark Mecanicum loving badasses.

Brass work:

Base Coat Scorched Brown/Rhinox Hide

Layer Tin Bitz/Warp lock Bronze

Layer Rune Lord Brass

Wash Badab Black/Nuln Oil

Highlight Mithril Silver/Runefang Steel

Blades and Horns:

Base Coat Chaos Black

Dry Brush Blood Red

Dry Brush Blazing Orange

Highlight Fortress Grey

Glaze Blood Letter

Purity Seal

Base Graveyard Earth/Steel Legion Drab rim and grass/sand flock mix.

Please let me know what you think of these models, Tiberius would love to read any comments I'm sure. Plus I'd like to know if people like the idea of the occasional guest spot from friends of mine, and if so how should they be done? Should I get people to write a piece themselves? Do you want lots of pics or plenty of text?

What I Read (Focused) - WarLlama 40k: Warllama is 1!

Tim of WarLlama 40k has now turned one! Well his blog did yesterday, as I've said before this is one of my favourite blogs and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the hobby. He is also running a competition goin into his second year to up his followers, so please head over there, wish him HAPPY BIRTHDAY and  if you don't already, follow him...

... NOW

WarLlama 40k: Warllama is 1!: So my humble blog has reached the huge milestone of 365 days! Sometimes it feels like I've been doing this for ages, but at the same time th...

Kickstarter–My £’s Growing the Hobby

Well I’m sure everyone who comes here knows the basic premise of Kickstarter.com. But to be sure,

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative projects.
We believe that:
• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.
• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.
Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

Kickstarter FAQ

In essence the public agree to upfront to pay for something, then if enough people promise enough money the Kickstarter is ‘funded’. Money is paid by everyone and (hopefully) the company can then make what they promised. If not enough money is promised then no one pays a thing. There have been some super high profile stories recently about videogames getting funded with massive amounts of support. And a D&D based super geeky stickman comic recently raised $1,254,120 for reprints, (if you don’t read it I highly recommend the Order of the Stick if you are a D&D fan). More appropriate to our little area of the community have been two very different and successful drives.

Mantic achieved an amazing $354,998 to fund their new hardback rulebook and beyond that 15-25 new sculpts and conversions of a load of their older metals to plastic. Whilst everyone expected them to crush their $5,000 goal and they themselves started off with plans a plenty through to $25,000 and even ideas for their first $100,000. What wasn’t expected is how much the hobby community would come together behind Mantic, their ‘final’ stretch goal was beaten by $65,000 and they launched an amazing Celestial Humans range which took off at the end. Mantic threw out ideas and concept sketches and let the backers decide and lead the way things went. It was a great example of company/customer relations and likely has done almost as much as the cash inflow for Mantic’s coming years.
Everyone had high expectations for Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster because of it being put out by CMON who had recently ran the highly successful Zombicide Kickstarter campaign. Sedition Was: BfA went on to reach an staggering $951,254. Run by CMON for Studio McVey this campaign was a masterpiece of Stretch goals adding up so as almost every backer (97%) put in at least $100 to get all of the extras.
The amounts that these projects have pulled in is in itself a clear explanation as to why companies in the hobby are jumping on Kickstarter. Yet at the same time there are a few arguments against Kickstarter; some people feel that firms shouldn’t be going out ‘begging’ for money but instead should create products and put them out for purchase. Others feel that Kickstarter should be reserved for only for the smallest of companies and the likes of CMON or Mantic are too large a concern to deserve this funding method. Now I’m not one to find problems or reasons to complain, so I find it hard to see the problem with any company using Kickstarter, it’s a great way of getting products directly to those who want it and of funding projects that have already been through a level of consumer research.
The only downside I really see to Kickstarter is the FLGS’ (Friendly Local Gaming Stores) not getting to sell the products, although compared to the amount of internet sales through normal lines I can’t imagine its a big effect on miniature sales, slightly more for boardgames I suppose.
OK the other downside has to be the waiting, following is a list of Kickstarts that I have backed recently, my levels of patience are depleting as I wait.

• Order of the Sitck (Comics)
• Chicken Ceaser (Boardgame)
• Wasteland 2 (Videogame)
• Blackwater Gulch – Gangfights in the Old West (Skirmish miniatures game)
• Kings of War (Army scale miniature games)
• Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster (Boardgame+)
• Run out the Guns! (Model ships)

So as you can see I’m a fan of Kickstarter. I’d love to hear what other people have backed on Kickstarter or on the British Indiegogo. What are peoples thoughts on crowd funding? And scariest of all… are their any campaigns going right now I should know about? Whilst I was writing this, I was contacted by Ballistic Skill Four painting studio about their Indiegogo campaign "Last Days of Angels", what do you think about that idea, and about funding it in such a way?
Finally I recommend you listen to the last few minutes (Timestamp 4:43:41) of The D6 Generation episode 108, Nicole has summed it up quite well.

Filling the Gaps

With the Littlest Inquisitor taking up so much of my time I’m getting very little hobbying done nowadays, but so as to not completely let the blog fall into oblivion I’ve decided to fill the time with other small posts about a variety of topics; such as:

The Works of the Inquisitor – A series of photo sets showing the armies I’ve built (and partly built) over the past eight years in the hobby. Some of my models are already photographed and others I’ll pull out and capture, as the series goes on they will become more wip styled as we reach more recent projects.

What I Read/Hear – A link to a hobby blog or podcast that I enjoy along with a brief description. When I’m in work I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts and I really enjoy and support a few of them. Whilst I have less time to keep up with blogs their are a few that I really enjoy and benefit from and that I’d like to share.

The Greatest Good – Simon from my Deathwatch campaign has written up an account of Kill Team Apache’s latest mission. Chapter by chapter I will release this once it’s been edited. I really hope people enjoy it for the great piece of 40k fiction it is.

Plus any other good ideas that I come up with. Let me know if there is anything you’d like to read or see and I’ll do my best. I hope to also add in occasional views on the D&D campaign I’m in, board games I play and perhaps one day some modelling progress or even…. a minis game played!

What We've Made Recently

So clearly very little has happened here in the past couple of months. After all the build up and preparation to the Deathwatch campaign it was nice with a little rest. And since then it's been full speed ahead on a nursery for my (then) upcoming first child.

 Then 12 day's early Sebastian turned up, tiny, lovely and time consuming.

So in all honesty I have done next to no hobbying since my last post two and a half months ago. D&D has been carrying on, even including a play test round of D&D Next, So far so good with that, I look forward to more. Before people start expecting more geeky discussion I am of course not allowed to tell about D&D Next, but I'm sure all that want to be in the know are involved in the play testing. I will say I like where it seems to be going. So far!

During D&D this past Tuesday I found time to start building my second Artscale Grey Knight. Excitement for the upcoming 6th Edition release has got me keen for more time to the hobby but with the little man in the house now I don't know how it's going to go. But I will keep a record of it all here for people to see.

At this point he is half built, a lot of sculpting is done but much is just blu-taced together.

On that front I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of you who have been visiting this blog, 2,500 (circa) hits since the previous post. I see from the stats that most of you have been in to see the Samurai Grey Knights so I'll use that as some extra motivation to make things happen with them. I have a few other plans for articles and posts coming up. The fictionalisation of the Deathwatch adventure 'The Greatest Good' is almost finished and will go up in a slowly rolling release. I also thought to show pictures of my collections of figures from various ranges and armies I have. 

If any of you people visiting this blog read this please comment below and explain what brought you here and what you would like to see more of. Thanks

The Greatest Good

+++ Attached Briefing +++
+++ Kill-Team Apache +++
+++ Mission: KillerTeam +++
+++ Security Level: Gamma-Omega-Delta-Epsilon-Psi +++
+++ Thought of the day: Duty Prevails. +++

Killteam Apache's new Mission Brief is now available on the Ordo Xenos information portal.

Gird yourselves!

+++ Update: +++
+++ Target Image Acquired +++

Shas Gal in action against the Achilles Crusade on  Meniachus

Killteam Apache Construction & Blog Updating

OK, excitingly for me one of my players has taken the task of preparing models on himself. Simon made a few of the Killteam figures for last years game and has now started building a new Marine to take the place of fallen Brother Kain.

Brother Arius' player requested an Assault Marine of the Blood Ravens in a pose similar to the Sanguinor, here are the results so far.

 Simon has quite a task ahead getting these old biker legs to bulk up to current Marine torso sizes but is off to a great start. In his spare time he has also installed a Bionic arm on Brother Alatar of the Dark Angels to replace the one lost during The Depths of Atonement last year.

This blog is now month old today, and last night passed 1000 views. Many of them have come from Ordo-Xenos.com but many more are from all around the world so thank you to everyone who has read this. I really appreciate anyone taking their time to look on here and would love to get feedback on the posts I've been making. The Intro Story for example was the first part of fiction I've ever really written and I'd love to hear if it sucked or if it got some sort of feeling across? From the members of Killteam Apache I'd especially like to hear about their thoughts on it and views on the upcoming game.

I'm also now contacting a couple of blog networks that I enjoy to feature Inquisitor Drake to hopefully get a few more people looking here and not leaving only poor Brother Tiberius to comment alone. The Shell Case Alliance & The 40k n00b are both great blogs that lead communities of other great blogs so here's hoping the accept me.

Brother Alatar - Personal Log

Well, Brother Alatar of Killteam Apache has submitted a mission log. That is great news for him as he has been rewarded an extra 1000 Exp. to spend before the up coming mission. It's good news for the rest of the Killteam also however, as you all receive an extra 500 Exp.

So I implore you all to submit to me via the vox-network some form of detailed information. Everyone who does will also receive the full 1000 Exp. bonus whilst also providing an additional 500 to each other member of the Killteam.

Suggestions for what you may submit follow:
A Mission Log covering a Killteam action since The Depths of Atonement
A Mission Log from your time within your own chapter
A Personal Log describing an important event for your character
Another written piece of your suggestion

Personal Log – regarding outpost Alpha 1347 recapture.

It happened so fast, but then that’s the way it should. Speed is always necessary. There were twelve of us, 10 bikes and two speeders. In we sped in tight formation, our black battle armour and winged helmets striking fear into the weak minded orks. It should have been so simple, but we were just unaware of the danger. The orks had attacked the outpost, our job was simple; recapture it.

The ground sped past the orks moved into a defensive formation and grouped themselves together. The fools, it would be so easy. Multiple missiles left their enclosures and the orks doom was assured. My head burst in pain, my hand slipped from the throttle and my speeder slowed. I didn’t know it at the time but psychic forces had been unleashed. The missiles struck a strange barrier and exploded. Unable to stop my squad collided with the barrier, the explosions from the missiles still fresh. My battle brothers were extinguished in the blink of an eye. I was only saved by luck and lack of momentum. With the orks laughing I leapt from my crashing speeder. I landed neatly and trained my bolter on the first ork. It died with a bolt through its forehead. My speeder careened into the side of their group killing six or so more. Roughly a dozen remained but I wasn’t as alone as I thought. A battle brother was striding out of the outpost towards me. I had never seen this brother before but he was a fellow Dark Angel, but not from a unit i recognized. We had them flanked, they would soon be destroyed.

We both closed on the orks and I drew my bolter. My fellow brother levelled his bolter and we both fired. My shot was true and ripped the shoulder from an ork. His bolt missed the orks and hit my bolter and was knocked clean out of my hand. What ill fortune was upon us? It was then that I heard it, my battle brother was issuing commands, TO THE ORKS!. “Finish him” he said and the orks closed in. Had he fallen to chaos? What was going on? I grasped the only thing I could find, a rough branch. I swung at the orks and again, screaming “In the name of the Emperor I smite you” My head exploded in

pain, a blue sheen appeared around the branch and fire erupted forth from its tip. A cone of fire like a flamer shot out and burned the orks to a crisp. The fallen brother just laughed and retrieved something from the floor. He mounted a bike and drew level with me.

The sound was glorious, several krak missiles were inbound and moving in fast behind were two members of the Deathwing in their terminator armour. The fallen brother extended his arm, again there was pain in my head, and the strange barrier reappeared. The missiles exploded. “We will meet again” were his final words and he sped off. My injuries got the better of me and I collapsed. The Brothers of Deathwing retrieved me and my fallen companions.

I sometimes wish I had died there and then, to live with the shame of what I have now been told about Luther and the fallen will be hard. But it appears that I am still useful to Emperor and Dark Angels alike; I have Psychic powers and, while recovering, have been trained as a librarian. I am to be initiated later today into the Deathwing and will hunt down these fallen angels until they are destroyed or I draw my last breath. But before I go and join the first company I have been asked to report to Inquisitor Drake Pendragon, who is he and what does he want?

Remember: To Forget is to Forgive, Never Forget!

PC's Exp. & Renown Rewards

Brothers of the Deathwatch, you have fought, you have suffered and you have returned victorious. Whilst Brothers Alatar and Makradon have both been rehabilitated and augmented with bionics all of Killteam Apache have more to offer than they did as they set out towards Atonement a year ago.

Brother Tiberius: 2000 exp + 1000 exp for Mission Log Submitted. Rank 1 Skills only. Renown: Respected
   Brother Tiberius is to be assigned the rank of Captain (Junior) of the Deathwatch.

Brother Markus: 2000 exp. Rank 1 Skills only. Renown: Respected

Brother Makradon: 2000 exp. Rank 1 Skills only. Renown: Respected

   Brother Makradon has received bionic replacements for his injured cranium, this includes a augury array and targeting enhancement features.

Brother Alatar: 3500 exp. Rank 2 Skills only. Renown: Initiated

   Brother Alatar's left arm has been replaced with a bionic equivalent allowing him to regain all of his former capabilities.

Brother Anders: 2000 exp. Rank 1 Skills only. Renown: Respected

The passing of Brother Kain on the planet of Atonement left Killteam Apache short for a period of time, although the Dark Angels' injuries needing medical care meant they were non-operational for a period anyway. Kain's posistion has now been filled by Brother Arius of the Blood Ravens.

Intro Story 3

++++Incoming signal++++
++++Priority Level: Epsilon ++++
++++Thought of the day: THE ABSENT OF MIND CAN FALL INTO CORRUPTIONWITHOUT EVEN KNOWING!++++

I shall be meeting with Brother Makradon over the coming days to discuss how the replacement of his arm has affected his efficiency as we approach the annual review of his bionic implants. With this in mind I thought it prudent to inform all of you within Killteam Apache that I will soon be contacting you to evaluate the events since 3400817.M41

+++Be Grateful for the work of the Omnissiah+++

Lenara sped through along the valley base and only the solemnity of her mission stopped her from whooping with joyous exhilaration. The fragile slender jetbike a perfect extension of her body, and her control over it was equally as perfect as she blurred across the landscape. Weaving around rocky outcrops, under overhangs and up over natural barricades on this dead planet. She was one of just a few dozen living creatures on this planet, sent here by the ancient Farseer Eldrad Ultharn himself. Their mission was to recover and powerful piece of technology that was to be found here.

“When the Mon-Keigh vessel returns to the land in fire go to it. There you will find what we seek. Be swift for the Yngirbane dwell on this planet and they are becoming restless. I have seen this and see also that without us the Mon-Keigh will be unable to acquire what they know not yet how much they will need. And we need then to have this equally....

..Sorry.”

Depths of Atonement Slideshow

The Depths of Atonement was played on the Saturday of Easter weekend in 2011 at Warhammer World in Nottingham. We were there for 12 hours and had, if I do say so myself, an awesome day. Whilst most memories of the day are recorded only in our minds and the players character sheets we did take a few photos. So here is a link to a Photobucket slideshow of the day.

Slideshow of the first adventure

Brother Alatar went home with a trophy instead of a left arm.

First Post - The Depths of Atonement

Well here we are, putting up the blogs first post. I suppose there are going to be a mix of post types here, some information for my Deathwatch campaign, some in character as Inquisitor Drake providing Kill Team Appache with information and some (I hope) detailing my own hobby progress.

This first post will contain a link to a page on the Ordo-Xenos website that I am extremely proud of; the story rendition of the campaigns first adventure, written up by one of the players. Over eight chapters of fiction based on our game, I was honoured that Simon bothered to do this.

The Depths of Atonement - by Simon Rippin

You see the planet in the eye? That's Atonement

If anyone reads this post (I'll be surprised) then I'd love to have comments on both the story and the blogs UI.