Casting the Primarchs, part I

After an intense conversation with a couple of friends about the Primarchs, their roles and their Legions and then coming across a couple of fantasy casting lists on other blogs, I was inspired to think about it myself and try to imagine the personalities required for a live action production of The Horus Heresy. A couple of things I should say before I embark, is that I did not particularly have a preference of whether this production be on the stage, a serialised, televised epic, an extremely long film, or series of films or perhaps another media of visual story telling. I feel like most of the actors I have so far thought of have experience in several of the aforementioned styles, so would work well in whatever form you imagine The Horus Heresy would be best presented in.
The other thing I should mention is that this is an extremely idealised and completely fantasised list, only considering the aspects of the thespians in question and no further logistics given any real thought. Many of the actors are stated with their age that I thought they looked most appropriate for their respective role, and some even being dead, but regardless of the impossibilities, I hope you enjoy and agree with some of my choices, as well as putting your own ideas up for consideration.

I – Lion El’Jonson

Lawrence Olivier, mid thirties. Generally considered one of the greatest thespians of the 20^th century. In my minds eye, Olivier, as pictured above but with long, fair hair is a good match to what we imagine The Lion to look like. He even bore the title of ‘Sir’ due to his knighthood, which was elevated to the peerage!
The performance that perhaps sticks out most in my mind as a character not dissimilar to The Lion, see Olivier’s portrayal of Crassus in Spartacus.
Something that crossed my mind however, was that Olivier invariably played characters that dominated the screen, which is fine, for Lion El’Jonson does dominate any vistas that he appears in, but no more than any other Primarch. I have often got the impression that although The Lion was not so much of an orator and had a little less charisma than many of his brothers, which is why Luther was so important to him. Would Olivier had needed to tone down his on-screen authority to portray The Lion?

III- Fulgrim

Peter O’Toole in his late twenties. As with a few of my choices, they were heavily influenced by a guy called Lightbringer on the Fantasy Flight forums. Lightbringer said that he had thought that Michael Fassbender would make a decent Pheonician based upon his performance in “Prometheus”, but rightly pointed out that he was channelling Peter O’Toole’s performance in “Lawrence of Arabia”, so why not go for the original. He has the sculpted, perfectly symmetrical features required for Fulgrim and has played vaguely asexual, or sexually ambiguous characters of messianic origins. Imagine him with long white hair, pale skin and lenses to make his eyes dark and I think he would come pretty close to The Pheonician.

IV- Perturabo

Ben Kingsley in his late thirties. There are a few of other actors who have physical and characteristic attributes close to those we imagine Perturabo to have. For example, I think that Mark Strong perhaps has a better face for the role, but Ben Kingsley is a fascinating performer and extremely versatile, able to transform utterly between vastly varying roles, see “Ghandi” and “Sexy Beast”.
Perturabo is meant to be a very misunderstood personality, seen as a dim witted and simple soldier by almost all of his brothers, but really a brilliant architect and aspiring polymath, haunted by his interpretations of his father’s few paternal endeavours.

V – Jaghatai Khan

Tadanobu Asano. No one sprang to mind for The Great Khan, and I looked for other opinions and found the actor who played Genghis Khan in “Mongol” and as we know, Jaghatai Khan is based heavily on the great historical figure. I also don’t know so much about The Great Khan as I do about other Primarchs, perhaps because only recently has he appeared as a main character in the novels and I have not read these particular tomes yet, so I found it a little difficult to think of a thespian for the role.

That is it for this section, thanks for reading and I would love to hear any opinions on the above choices. More soon.

First Game for the Last Days of Summer. Bumps in the Night.

I had my first game in the LDoS =][=munda campaign we are doing, using my Coven of the True Flesh warband the other day. It went well, didn’t lose any of my favourite characters and even made a net gain by the end of the scenario. So this is what happened:

A small group of Meat Seekers, led by Kass and Ferencz are scouring a precinct in the underhive. The area is dangerously close to an Adeptus Arbites barracks and thusly, no other gangs have yet searched the abandoned ruins for loot. Attempted infiltration of the precinct is a huge risk to anyone involved, but hopefully the rewards reaped will justify the Coven’s actions here. Here are some snapshots:
Kass and the Big One keep watch as a Meat Seeker searches a ruin for anything worthwhile. He fails to do so.

A Meat Seeker sneaks far into the precinct and listens to two patrolling Enforcers after having found a huge can of high-grade promethium.

The Big One turns moody when he is told he is too loud to go ahead and search any buildings.

The alarm is raised after Kass and Ferencz are forced to snipe two patrolling Arbitrators. The Meat Seekers, carrying their loot make a break for it, but are spotted and although The Big One is shot and manages to stomp away with nothing but a flesh wound, a single Meat Seeker is downed and unable to raise himself. Another Meat Seeker does exactly what is expected of him, and sprints back to his wounded comrade and takes the valuables from his shaking hands and leaves him lying in the dirty street.

Unfortunately, the downed Meat Seeker was arrested and interrogated which regrettably led to the Arbites finding out the exact location of the Ethnarch’s lair before they executed the Meat Seeker.

So, The Coven managed to get some decent Throne Geld from this endeavour, as well as some reasonably good quality meat in the form of a sniped Enforcer, and a peculiar, archaic power cell, which none of them can imagine a use for as of yet.

Thanks for reading, see you soon.

Another Little Bit of Background

It has been some time since I posted anything at all, so here is a follow on piece of writing for my warband in an Inquisimunda campaign, continuing from “The Coven of the True Flesh” article. Some of this might seem somewhat lacking context, but that is probably because it is referencing and responding to other pieces of background written by other participants in the Last Days of Summer games. I thought I would post it anyway though, since someone might like it and I am always wanting to receive more criticism for my writing.

Raw, the flesh of almost any mammal is somewhat lacking. Lacking in palatability for certain, but, perhaps more importantly, it harbours a tendency for disease. It lacks a seared, finished cleanliness. I look around me and see no evidence of this clean finish to my kinsmen, if they can even be called that. All of them however, know of what I muse over now. They may not think of it the same way I do, but they know it is there. These nights, I think about what we have in common and do not only see a society of lost and broken survivors. Not just deserters, outcasts and ferals.
We all know it on some level, whether the mind be a blunt and belligerent thing like Gunnar’s, a cold and concealed conscience like Kass’s or the most base and primal sentience like the Big One’s. We all know that we have lived our lives dirty, flawed and insignificantly. But in death, the end of the journey is tied up. We live our lives untidy and maniacally, but we strive towards our clean deaths, our journeys, our lives ended. The trials and ordeals of our short lives done away with.
That perhaps, is the deepest reason for searing the flesh. I look back to my pan above its little fire pit. This man’s journey ends with his physical form cooked to some form of perfection. First he was boiled, in one of the thick ceramic pots, large enough to fit one cut, or portion inside. Then he was fried on this dry, iron karai. The lightly broiled meat is seared and the tastes of the man seal inside as well as mingling with the flavoured of the dozens of other people whose flesh has known my karai as their final latent location.
This man’s name was Opadly. He was a Meat-Seeker and he caught a ganger’s slug in the gullet. I dragged his still blood-pumping body back to our camp, where I fry him now. Like everyone we kill, he had a quick death. Where some cohorts would see an enemy suffer, their death convoluted, their last acts as messy as their life, or even capture a rival for their own gain, we do no such thing. The Ethnarch doesn’t, so we don’t.
I tip Opadly’s thigh meat into a metal tin, juices and all, and coyly remember that a quick death also goes some way to preserve the meat, rather than let the stress of a prolonged and torturous demise sully the muscle matter with acidic toughness.
I was next to Opadly when he fell and heard the barking autogun as it fired the shot that half tore out his throat. He lay shaking, his hands flitting around his neck but not touching, keeping a distance as though he didn’t want to touch the mortal wound. As if he still had a chance at life.
I put down my lasgun and drew the kukri, to finish the work on his throat the solid slug had begun and he was dead seconds later.

                                                                        ***

When I have nearly finished with the meal, Opadly’s flesh augmented into a compound dish of nutrient paste stolen from Arbites and Downweed grown in the very upper reaches of the sump, I hear the scraping of stone that usually heralds the appearance of the Ethnarch.
I turn to the entrance of his cave like domicile where the warm light of the torches inside silhouettes his robed form and contrasts with the cold stone exterior. I put down the last scraps and walk towards him, picking my way through everyone else’s personal fire pits.
I come within conversing distance and look into the back orbs of his mask, attentive and expectant.
“My thanks and praise for your successes yesterday Ferencz,” his echoing timbre clear over the popping fires, low voices and sizzling meats, “It is good to know waifs and strays of the Imperial Guard fall all the same as gangers and arbitrators.”
“There were only a handful, my Sire, left behind by their regiment. It was not as if we were facing up to an armoured company,” I admit and glance away from his simulacrum visage.
Without a pause he moves on, “I received an envoy some hours ago, whilst you were still out of the camp,” I face him again, my interest piqued, “A mutant, demanding our fealty to one Johannus Davids.”
“I know that name,” I say, “an upstart noble scumbag, blue blood but made of the same flesh as us.”
“I have heard otherwise Ferencz,” the Ethnarch responds abruptly, “I have heard that his fluids destroy all they touch and his ambition is preposterous in scale.”
“And he wishes us to bend our knee to our mutant overlord? Why does he even think we would do such a thing?” I say, my choler raised by the idea of serving someone like Johannus.
“Calm yourself Ferencz, you are one of my veterans and my advisor, yet you start to sound like a stripling .” He pauses and I straighten myself apologetically, but remain silent and allow my Ethnarch to continue. “There is an alliance to be had here Ferencz… and you know I would not let another rule over us, force our hand or change our way of life.” He stops and draws a tinny breath, “come inside son,” he says before drifting into his stony domain. I follow.

***

“There are other things that people say about this Johannus my son.” The Ethnarch’s
words echo ever more so now we are inside his fane. “It is said he walks an eight-fold path, furthermore, it is said his actions are guided by a wyrd, a scion of the Gods himself.”
I clear my throat of the lingering flavours of Opadly, “so you are certain that we must meet with them, that we must work with Johannus? Have you seen it in the entrails Sire?”
“No, I admit, I have not,” he replies and I make no effort to hide my surprise, “I believe that this is the right thing to do Ferencz. To survive. This winter will kill most of the denizens of this hive, and although I do not fear death as such, I quite fancy the experience of winning this war Ferencz… we are a tough people Ferencz, and I have seen a future, one of many for certain, but it is a possible future.”
I carry on walking by his side towards the slab of altar where the Ethnarch would have seen these futures he talks of. “What happens in this future you have seen Sire?”
“We stand on heaps of blood and bones as the acid monsoon begins and the Maelstrom Star breaks through the poisonous cloud cover to stare down on us.”
I am utterly brain-deep in The Ethnarch’s words, and I see what he has seen, or at least I think I do.

Blood red skies tormented by too-bright lightning, the heavens a twisting vista, a backdrop for the mountains of femurs and skulls, streaked with gore.

The Great Eye, An Eye of Terror.

Even as I imagine the possible end results of what is happening on Passchale Delta, I hear a shuffling across the flagstones. I look away from The Ethnarch, whose alchemist like visage also rotates, to behold The Little One, his own stunted retainer, batman and assistant. The creature hobbles towards us, bearing some parchment in his arms, which are a wooden stick and a slightly curved steel blade attached to his truncated limbs, amputated at the elbow.
I nod a greeting and meet his gleaming, mildly frantic gaze, shining black eyes beneath a filthy, torn hood. He attempts a kind of bow but his contorted spine seems to stop him from doing so effectively.
The Ethnarch bends slightly to clasp the parchment and hands it to me. I begin to read and find it to be the words of Johannus Davids. As I read, The Ethnarch continues, “we will meet with Johannus and assure a relationship of equals, for that is what we are. I am sure that if our fighting cohorts faced each other on a level field, we would shred each other equally unto death, so perhaps our micro-societies should complement each other and rend our enemies in life as equals too.”
                                                                        ***

I also had my first proper game in the campaign a few days ago and took some pictures which I will put up soon. 

Thanks for reading.

Coven of the True Flesh WIP and a lone scion of the Omnissiah

These are some unpainted examples of the newer additions to my warband. From left to right: “The Small One”, a mutant that follows the Ethnarch everywhere and carries some of his equipment and weapons. “The Big One”, a big mutie of childlike mentality and ravenous appetite for man flesh. “Trashman”, a near mute veteran extremely loyal to the Ethnarch.
And this, is Louise’s first Skitarii, called Aureus.

More soon, thanks for looking and have a good week everybody.

Four members of my Inquisimunda warband

These are the four models that I am happy enough to call finished, or at least for now. I am very pleased how they came out, with the exception of Ferencz, (with the lasgun) who I am just not 100% on, particularly in terms of composition but still happy with. What I wanted to convey in all of them was a gore splattered dirtiness and in the case of Gunnar and the Meat Seeker, a quickness and suggestion of rapid motion.
The Ethnarch of Tertia, The Goreseer, Grand Master of the Octed Cult
Ferencz, Equerry to the Etnarch


Gunnar, Veteran Meat Seeker

A Meat Seeker
More pictures coming soon, including some of the other warbands participating.

Mood Boards For The Last Days of Summer

Above is a colours and textures board, including ‘Merz’ artwork from Kurt Schwitters and venerable, somewhat baroque art from the Grand Master himself, Blanche. 

This is a general inspiration board, perhaps more inclined towards what I hope to achieve with the board and terrain. Includes some pictures of neil101’s Arrke/ Yggdrassillium board which is the work of a true visionary in the hobby. If the board I make to portray Hive Tertia is half as good as his stuff, I would be very happy.
I decided to make these both for myself and for my friends participating in the LDoS events. For myself, as guidance and inspiration and perhaps the same for anyone else who is designing their warband currently, but also showing the aspect and feel I envisaged for this when I first started talking about it. 

The Coven of the True Flesh

Here is a little bit of background for my gang or warband that I will be using for the Last Days of Summer campaign. I will write more, certainly after the campaign has begun, detailing some events and interactions between the characters portrayed and of course with other participant’s warbands. I quite fancy making sort of transcriptions for some of the choicest roleplayed interactions too, but that is many weeks away.
So for now, it’s just this, I hope you enjoy.

I was half blind by the time I reached the detritus strewn outskirts of Tertia. Walking was too painful, so I slowly dragged myself for some time, it was more comfortable somehow, but it felt like I was becoming part of the ground, I must have been moving so slowly by the end. I think I was sleeping part of the way, the kind of sleep where you fade from consciousness and awake again without knowing you ever rested. Hours ago, I had drunk the last of the brown water, but that was not the worst thing, not yet at least. The worst thing, more painful than my legs, more distressing than my eye, was that I was starving to death. I couldn’t stay awake for long. I couldn’t walk. The coat I took from the Death Korps trooper was wearing thin, and so was the skin on my hands from my dogged attempts to pull myself onwards. My breaths rattled in my dry mouth and I was fugging starving.
That was when the Ethnarch found me.

Two years later.

I climb back over the dark stones, towards our encampment, to see the Ethnarch. I am outside our home because I went to smoke some lho leaf, some of my last. I have enough for two, maybe three rolled sticks left and even that is stale, but it brings me some pleasure still. None of the others know I have it and I always like to smoke it away from them, though I’m not sure why. I think Gunnar would ask for some if he knew I had it and I wouldn’t want to say no to him.
I can see the small fires from here with my remaining eye and head for them, my lasgun slung over my shoulder like I used to when I was in the 5^th Columnus Regiment.
Most of the men and women are the way I left them, many cooking various scraps of fat and meat. Some are repairing robes, or wrapping their hands and feet in gauze.
I hear Gunnar before I see him. He isn’t shouting, just talking louder that he needs to, as usual. When I get past a mess of pipes and frayed wires hanging from the low and uneven ceiling typical of this part of the underhive, I can see that he is chastising a new Meat-Seeker, one of our lowest ranking noviciates for possession of a stub revolver.
I disprove of solid slug weapons for what we do, and most other projectile weapons that are not las weapons, but it is actually the Ethnarch that first decreed his distaste for weapons that leave dirty metal in their targets, such as autoguns, or worse, weapons that ruin the meat of the victim, detonating from within and leaving little of a body unsullied, such as bolt weapons.
I can tell Gunnar is having fun, he is in good spirits and that means he will probably fight one or some of the Meat-Seekers. I don’t fight him, not anymore, I choose to avoid it and he respects me too much.
But now he is slapping the younger man on his upper arm, goading him into the inevitable brawl.
Gunnar is, or was, a Guardsman, like me but I think the regiment he came from encouraged this kind of brutal behaviour between the troopers, unlike mine, though I know few educations are stricter than the Schola Progenium. He has talked to me more than once about how his company had sporting pit fights as he explained some of the scars that disfigure his ugly features.
I can see Kass too, standing nearby one of the fires, watching with her face the way it always is, a sort of look you might have when listening to someone explain a bad joke. She never joins in with this kind of affair and quite rightly has earned herself a reputation amongst most of the men as haughty and poor humoured. I can attest to this, and what is more is that I can certainly entertain the rumours that Kass is of noble blood. I would never ask her myself, I will never forget, when a Meat Seeker, only welcomed into our territory and community for some hours at the time, had breathed the words “I recognise you… you’re the daughter of- ”  and never finished his sentence. Kass had snicked his tongue out in about a second.
I carry on walking through the uneven rubbish that carpets our domain, leaving the grinning Gunnar and grimacing Kass, their dark eyes reflecting the firelights.
Soon I cross Trashman, who always sits away from the group, though not for the same reasons that Kass might. Trashman does not speak much at all to anyone, but I nod to him, and he returns the gesture in silence, his eyes glinting behind his obscuring leatherwork mask.
I look back to the cooking fires, where grunts of pain and the occasional “Come on boy! That the best you got?”
These three, Gunnar, Kass and Trashman are my subordinates now, though until recently they were my piers, my siblings of sorts…. Equals in the eyes of our Ethnarch.
But Gunnar is hot-headed and despite a sharp wit and a degree of cunning, doesn’t have much in the way of brains. Kass is a strong figure with many attributes of a leader of men, but she is perhaps too cold and aloof for the likes of the Ethnarch, though that he appreciates her dedication I am sure. Trashman has no wish to lead, nor the skills to do so even if he wanted to. I think he stands on par with the rest of us simply because he has been here a long time and is more than proficient with his flamer.
These, I believe, are the reasons I have been chosen as the First Acolyte of our Ethnarch.

The Ethnarch of Tertia… as I approach his fane, I roll the name around my head, along with some of the others. The Goreseer…  Grand Master of the Octed… the Meat Man.
He has only ever been the Ethnarch to me, same for many of us. I duck under the rough rocks of the entrance to his cave-like fane and start padding down the wet stone corridor, in which I can see very little, only the moisture on the sharper edges of the rocky walls catching what little light there is, thrown from a brazier down the corridor, upon the entrance to the Ethnarch’s chamber.
I reach the portal and emerge into the room, where I can see the greenish tint to the ramshackle walls. The entire place looks like the rocks and detritus might have just landed this way, not placed by human or any other being’s hands.
The Ethnarch does not notice me as I come into his chamber, or at least does not show any sign of it. He carries on sifting through the guts of a slaughtered animal lying on a raised slab of flagstone, rearranging intestines, occasionally taking up his knife to carve away pieces of bloody flesh, as I know he has been doing for some time.
I wait some seconds, then he puts the delicate, curved blade upon the altar with a scrape and clang. He turns to me and says, in his oddly metallic, echoing but deep tones, “Ferencz, my thanks for coming,” His expressionless, brassy mask give off a contrasting warmth and even now, with his hands and light coloured robes splattered with red viscera, there is a nobility and paternal mien to him.
“It is no thing Sire, how can I serve?” I reply.
“I’ll be plain with you Ferencz, you know we are going to war, we will be participants in this conflict for survival that involves all of Tertia, as I am sure you knew we would.”
“Yes Sire.”
“There are many factions moving against us, they will see us culled for our territory or way of life, or both. Fallen nobles seek to conquer with a vengeance. The Arbitrators descend through Tertia with the populace of the hive city in their wake and the authority of the Spyrers. Imperial agencies seek to plunder this world for what they can before they are forced to leave,” he pauses briefly and returns to his work on the altar, staring through his metal faceplate at things I cannot possibly envision, “There are many parties that have yet to reveal themselves and their intentions. There are even, Ferencz, factions that have interests compatible with our own, potential allies if you will, miracle though it may seem in this galaxy,” he sighs.
“I understand Sire,” I say, I can see where this is going.
“We must ascend the Two Hundred Steps of Contrition and arrive in the Underhive proper. None can be allowed to enter our domain in confrontation, but we must secure parlays and make blood bonds with like-minded warbands. Ready the men, we will take twenty of our Meat Seekers and tell Kass, Bahtol and Gunnar. The Fat One too, we will need them.”
“I will Sire,” I say, noting how he always calls Trashman by his real name.
“Thank you Ferencz,” he speaks, moving the innards like an artist.
I know there is no need to ask, but after a moment’s hesitation I steel myself, “Have you seen something? Something in the flesh? Have you had communion?”
The Ethnarch looks up, still facing away and stops sliding the guts around. “Just so, my son.”
I smile doggedly and utter, “By your will my Ethnarch, for through you, the will of the Gods reaches us on this mortal plane.”
“The Flesh never lies Ferencz, remember that.”

So I also found a huge block of dense blue foam in a skip the other day, the kind I have used for terrain projects before. I will begin making the terrain of the underhive soon…
Speaking of making things I have painted some of my band and constructed many more, so I might put some pictures of the state of them next week.
Louise, my girlfriend who is also taking part in the Last Days of Summer, has also made some of her warband, an ambitious Adeptus Mechanicus Exploratory team. The model she painted the other day was about the second or third she has ever painted and I was supremely impressed with the results. It also went some way to confirm some of my theories on taking an artist or artist in training, who has developed some kind of a painterly style with interests in particular metaphysical connections to expressive artwork and giving them a little advice on converting those skills and interests to miniature painting. I think it makes for some amazing looking and fascinating models.

The Last Days of Summer… an Inquisimunda Campaign

My gaming group for want of a better phrase are collectively embarking on a particular flavour of campaign, using the rules for =][=munda, a concoction mixed by fans of Necromunda and 40k Roleplaying games. It is somewhere between the venerable Confrontation 40k game, which is in many ways the predecessor to the original Necromunda rulebook, and the also much celebrated Inquisitor rules but perhaps most fundamentally it is an extension of the Necromunda: Underhive  setting and rules, simply allowing a player to stretch beyond the confines of the Necromunda Hive gangs and use many of the other races and organisations in the 40k universe. In addition, exploring some of the other settings for stories in a rich, stylised universe. 

So, the setting for this particular campain is the dilapidated Hive Tertia on the war world of Passchale Delta in the Jericho Reach. A planet ravaged by a war between invading Imperial forces and a largely Chaos affiliated population in which front lines have not moved for generations. A planet which is only truly habitable for 7 Terran months a standard year, the rest of the planet’s rotation spent in an acid winter.
And Autumn is coming.
The spire of Hive Tertia is partially collapsed, decades of being near the centre of a bitter war of attrition, has caused the upper most parts of the hive to fall from the heavens, killing the majority of the ruling house and driving many of the noble houses down the hive to escape similar fates. Now even massive swathes of the Hive City have lost atmospheric integrity, the air becoming poisonous with the acidic atmosphere leaking into the domiciles of the inhabitants.
Now the acid rain storms of the autumn and winter are near which will serve only to hasten the demise of the upper structure of the hive and make the air ever more deadly.
So the entirety of the hive population is migrating, downwards to seek refuge in the grimmest areas of an already over crowded pit.
Syprer Nobles hire mercenaries to capture and control locations for them to move into and secure their dynasty.
Hive City kingpins move to take land and resources to set up a new base of operations for their gangers.
Chaos Cults seek to protect their foetid realms from the invading masses.
Vile mutants rise from the sump to massacre and take materiel from whoever they can.
Hive Tertia… on its side.

So far we have about 7 warbands and a Game Master coming together to partake in this plot driven campaign with a heavy focus on the modelling and roleplaying elements.
I for one am looking forward to the first mega-session in December and will be posting not only my own works, but as many other examples of the warbands that will be participating, which so far have appeared very inspiring and promising.

An Idea for Portable Gaming Boards by Brother Josh

I have wanted a decent looking gaming board that is portable enough to be packed up and taken anywhere is a car, and also preferably in some kind of bag or case, for a long time. For some reason, playing games on the carpet is just not the same as playing games on a visually appealing battlefield, elevated upon a table. So I need something that can be at least 4 foot by 4 foot, preferably 4 by 6 and portable enough to set up in anyone’s lounge, or most tables, even kitchens have been the chosen battlefield for some of my groups games.

I am of course, aware of Citadel’s Realm of Battle product. I love it, it looks fantastic, is actually functional and is made of surprisingly tough stuff, but I cannot justify the price tag for some reason. I have always felt that I can make my own version for much less.

I am also aware of several companies who make mats that can be rolled up, but these are mostly grass, which i am not a fan of fighting dark futuristic warfare upon and in my experience they tend to shift during the battle, knocking terrain and such.

So my plan was to make 6 2 foot by 2 foot boards, inspired by the Realm of Battle set up. I was going to use a thinner MDF board for these so they would be lighter and easier to carry  but had not decided exactly how to texture and paint them. I wanted them to be a muddy wasteland to fit the bases of many of my models and in the past I have used sand, paint and PVA glue to achieve this texture on boards, but it adds a lot of weight and can sometimes chip.

But by happenstance, I came across this:
 This stuff comes from a few different brands and in several colours and whilst not as cheap as mixing PVA, sand and paint, I bought it on a whim to test. That being said, it costs about the same as a can of any 400ml can of non textured spray paint.

This is the result:
It looks a bit less streaky in real life than it does in the picture, but this is something that could be remedied by applying more of the texture spray. The single 400ml can was enough to spray three of the 2×2 boards to this standard and I am pleased with the outcome and another plus side is that the texture, when dry, is very resistant and has shown no signs of chipping. A quick dry brush of light brown goes a long way to make it a more realistic wasteland colour. So I hope some of this was helpful or somewhat inspirational to someone, as always thanks for reading and happy hobbying!

We are back

After a long hiatus, we have returned to focus on more blog posts. Both Brother Matt and myself have been adjusting the directions of our careers and have neglected the blog aspect of our website. What I want to do with it now is make it into more of a hobby blog, but of course we will still be taking commissions, but we are scaling down our business and specialising in more bespoke, higher quality and smaller commissions. So what can be expected from the Battlebrothers redux? I’ll be posting something about once or twice a month and Matt will be posting bonuses every now and again too with what we hope are helpful tips and showcasing of our own work and commissions.

Thanks for reading and here is a picture of some pretty cute Nurglings I recently completed.