Woops, where'd I go?

 September hard pose came and went

October came and I became a Dad. There went that month. What a joyous new life to begin with my first born son. I count myself blessed to be a parent now

November rolled in, I found a rhythm with my wife and son, and began to find a little bit of me (with napping son in my lap or next to me in a bassinet) time while my wife slept.

No New Projects was the goal set in the discord. Nothing New Purchased either. 

So, what project has weighed most on my conscience for the longest time? What wonderful task do I dread doing and just need to get done in a month of nothing new being started?

A bust, that's what, let's paint my mate's 30th birthday present (before his 32nd birthday rolls around)
 

I had set myself the goal for the longest time to get a 75mm bust of Strahd Von Zarovich 3d Printed and Painted for his birthday. 
Printing was half the battle. Painting was going to be the other half...
except both halves were wholes in and of themselves.

Printing this bust took a number of attempts and nearly 12 hours of back and forth supporting and confirming on UV tools that everything looked good for printing. 
And I still got failures on the final print.

Half of his upper arm and elbow just didn't print. So out came the miliput and green stuff and a new elbow was sculpted. Also had to patch up a hole where his robe clasp didn't print at all either.

 

 

 

 

Then came painting. I've never painted a bust in my life. The most time I've spent on a model is maybe 8 hours and that was for my Ghaz for my ork army, and it's the centrepiece of my ork force.

How on earth am I going to paint a bust and make it look good and be better than an action figure???
No better time than the present to start and finish it.

So not really thinking about how to proceed I whipped the airbrush out and began laying down base colours. Did I zenithal, did I pick a source for lighting? Nope. 

And that was where the wonders of learning began. Reaching out to Grom from the DUE discord, I hit him up for advice, Man knows how to paint and has a rich depth to knowledge about it all.

Just beginning by restarting and getting some shots of the bust under a light source to help assist the mind with placing highlights helped tremendously

So back to it I went with a renewed vigor and more knowledge than my brain could process.

You know how sometimes you read so much stuff you forget about the basics. I forgot entirely about the idea of wet blending. I had been reading and watching so much on glazing and how to glaze that I completely glazed over wet blending being another tool in the arsenal. 

Pun absolutely intended.

Getting the blend into the shirt to mix Payne's Grey with the red tone and having it so nicely show the shadows was a huge win and gave me so much confidence that I might just be able to make this look alright. 

So many more hours of work went into it and the minutiae of it all began to wear me down. The last week of November was met with a heat wave, my hobby room sat at a solid 32C most days and it was too much to get any quality painting done with the paint drying faster than I could apply it. 

But I had to get it done, so in between feeds, refilling my wife's water bottle and wiping sweat off my forehead, I knuckled through bits and just had to draw a line in the sand and call it after a certain point. 

 

Today was that day. 

I pulled the pin. Finalised the few details that I could call happy and get him onto his plinth/base.

Am I happy with him? As happy as I can be for a first take at bust painting and for not having a clue what I am doing.

It won't win any awards or place in a painting competition, but if it gets displayed on my mates display case with pride or even stuck up there amongst other cool models and is on display, I'll be content.

I can nitpick this till the cows come home, I could ask other professional painters and get feedback. And maybe for the next bust I attempt, I will.  I will also get more advice on how better to photograph my miniatures and busts as I would love to present them a little bit nicer in future. 

I have honestly found great joy in painting this bust! It's stretched my legs and got me to try so many things I wouldn't normally do with a 28mm miniature. Working on something larger in scale and size was also refreshing. 
I encourage anyone interested in bust painting to give it a go. Stretch and challenge yourself.

Although November was nothing new, I might've spent a little bit of time in the evenings searching the web for my next piece I want to paint. And find something I have indeed.

I have been Cyberpunk Pilled so hard recently, so I want to try something new, and work in the neon hues and colours with these 2 lovely busts by Ouroboros Miniatures. I love the 2nd bust, titled "New Skin" and feel its going to bust my ass to really do a good job of blending super smooth skin tones as well as incorporating that wonderful neon glow that is Cyberpunk. If I remember, and think of it, I shall post updates as I paint it here. The goal will be to paint it up to enter into a painting competition. To really get some feedback in person and learn and grow as a painter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the Strahd bust 'Done' it's onwards to the Realms of Chaos aka Rvvvvs vv Cvvvs and a chaos dwarf champion with tentacle arms for December!

 

Thanks for reading from this tired new dad!

Viremont and the Depths

 

The Town of Viremont existed long before The Depths. A quiet village of people tending fields and animals, trading only when needed with nearby towns. But mostly self sufficient.

It wasn’t until one dreaded night when the moon shone at its fullest, and the night lasted longest that the town and landscape around it were wracked with tremors and earthquakes. An unholy deafening, scream tore across the landscape, waking the remaining inhabitants that hadn’t already been by the tremors. None knew what to think of it, and the town psychic claimed the end of the world was nigh.

As the sun rose the next morning, the townsfolk were uncertain quite what had gone on, as no buildings had toppled or been damaged and the livestock in their pens nearest to the village seemed unperturbed.

The Shepherd’s son was the first to discover that all was not as it seemed after the night’s chaos. Taking their flock out to graze, he found himself sucked into a chest deep puddle of water, and the ground all around sodden, sinking well past the shins to walk around. His flock all becoming stuck and unable to move. His flock’s favourite pasture was now a fen.

Before long, playing children discovered the cleft amongst the rocks that had appeared amidst the trees. This clearing they would often frolic and play amongst. Curious, the children climbed in and down into the cavernous tunnels, that had appeared in their play space.

Minutes turned to Hours, and as dusk set in, a panicked set of parents raced into the copse to find their children. Only to find a hat and pair of shoes left piled up in front of the cavernous opening.

Organising local fathers and men to make their way in to retrieve the children, they delved. Packing lightly only a handful of torches and rope, assuming the tunnels didn’t go far.

Hours passed and no return, Hours became a day, became multiple, became weeks... The men and children were never seen of again. A cloud of sorrow fell upon the town of Viremont. A request was made to the nearby towns and to the Capital for any adventurers or brave folk who might attempt the delve. And so began the town’s newest and to this day boom in business, travel and intrigue, hosting any adventurers who were brave enough to delve, in their taverns.

As adventurers delved deeper and deeper returning with news, the caverns split into tunnels and those tunnels branched deeper into the earth. What gave this place its nickname was the stone “well” that was found. Inside this enormous carved and built stone column that descended infinitely deep into the earth could barely be seen floors, ledges and walkways crossing through and across it. Stairs leading further down. 

A torch was dropped from the edge, and disappeared from sight, without a sound of impact at the bottom. None know just how deep this column or well goes. Hence forth the dungeon became known as “The Depths”

Despite it being decades later, the people of Viremont still offer up a reward for bringing the children and men back from The Depths. In the hopes closure may be brought to the town and their families. 

Now the town of Viremont stands bustling with tourists and adventurers aiming to conqueror the dungeon, making a name for themselves and raising a fortune in looted goods.

 

 

So why are you here? The Depths are a treacherous dungeon and not all who enter may return. But all who do, do so for one reason or another. Be it personal glory, money, or a sense of justice for lost children in the hopes to retrieve them.

This setting primer was something that came to me in a fevered dream in the midst of the work day that I knew I just had to put pen to paper for. 

Taking inspiration from Media like Sword Art Online's first arc, Dungeon Meshi, Dan Machi. Flavour sprinklings of Bleak Falls Barrows from Skyrim and Dark Souls 3. As well as the classic old fantasy style dungeon crawlers from AD&D and OSR.

I wanted a Dungeon Crawler setting that still allowed space for some story to be told and Role Playing had, without it being an infinite supply and loot grind. 

Systems to play can range from D&D 5e to OSR, Shadowdark, Torch bearer. Heck leaning into a doom and gloom tongue in cheek you could slot this setting over the Mork Borg rules and have some fun with it too.  

Hail Caesar

 

A great start to a Saturday morning. My best mate Jack brought up his collection of 6mm Historical Minis, a whole spread of Greek Hoplites, skirmishers, and Peltasts for me to wield against his collection of Roman Legionnaires, Cavalry and Skirmishers. We both built forces of 700 points a side. Greek Hoplites vs Roman legionnaires.

We set the table up using an abbreviated and altered set of rules from Little Wars TV "Age of Hannibal". Dividing up the table into segments, dealing out cards, we alternated placing them in a segment of the board and revealing them to create a diverse range of board and terrain. Unfortunately 5 of the cards between us were wide of plains, and not covered in sections of difficult terrain, and I hadn't had the chance to at least get some green felt to make the board look like fields. (This will absolutely be the first priority now for the next game we play)

 

Turn 1 began and I managed to seize initiative, marching my troops down the field, passing all command rolls to ensure they all made it up the field. Managing to snag first turn seemed a great boon but as the game would progress, perhaps it mightn't have been.

At the top of Jack's first turn his Javelins close the gap, almost blundering his command rolls, the drilled Roman's managed to march despite the chaos of the early battle field. The Cavalry of his first division charge into my Cretan Skirmisher Archers, and as they attempt to evade, the follow through movement catch them and slam hard into the evading skirmishers. 

So, as any good mates jamming games together to have a good time, it was at this point we made the first mistake of the rules, but it made no major impact. We both misunderstood the idea of Counter Charging. We played it as something able to be done by the infantry, turns out in the post game, we missed on the rulings that it was meant to be for Cavalry units only.

Jack's division of Elite legionnaires charged into my Heavy Spartan Hoplites. I counter charged. Heavy Shield, slammed with heavy shield, Elites against Spartans. With this proper opening clash the tone was set. Truly battle on an epic scale was being waged. 

As the combat waged on, our units traded wounds, not many but these would start to chip away, adding up bit by bit as the battle waged on. 

The first Shaken and then breakin' unit of my Cretans as they flub their break test roll at the end of combat, being utterly obliterated in a single turn. 

 

Top of turn 2 

My mistake of deploying my skirmished out on the far wing of the field, was not working, only managing a single 6 inch movement again, they trudged their way slowly around the forest. We began to joke and laugh that these skirmishers had missed the trumpet sound of battle and were off busying themselves foraging for food and berries for the army to eat.

I made a number of charges of units into the Cavalry units of Jack's. 2 units of Spartans attempted to charge into the archers and failed. 

A Blunder! from my Elite Hoplites! On a roll of Box Cars, the unit of Hoplites who were planning a charge end up drifting forwards and to the right, not completely out of the way of where they were heading, but definitely out of place and in the line of sight of a perfectly placed charge next round by Jack.

As combat phase kicked in a unit of my elite hoplites were dealt 4 more wounds, and later failed their break test, broke and fled being crushed and obliterated. My Spartan units that managed to connect charges crushed the Elite legionnaires forcing them to give good ground. Having managed a flanking maneuver the spartans caused the Vet Auxiliary unit to break. These spartans then made a sweeping advance into the Elite legionnaires who had been made to give good ground, locking them down for another round of melee the next turn.

 

As my turn ended, Jack made plans. His archers and skirmishers fell back, revealing another mass of legionnaires on the other side of the hill with the intention of charging me back. An unlucky roll in his command phase ensures his legionnaires can not charge effectively into my spartans, allowing me to stand my ground and being ready. Jack began to multi stack his troops into my Levy Hoplites, charging with his Veterinary legionnaires supported by the Elites. Backing this up, he charged his Numidian Cav into the flank. But little did he know, this was just the beginning of the tale of the Levy of Hoplites holding out against insane odds. 

Going into Combat the Levy Hoplites should have been obliterated, with the number of units locking them down. But Greeks have the glorious Phalanx rule, Allowing them to draw if they lost a combat by less than a difference of 2 points. With some less than glorious rolls from Jack, the Levy only managing to be made to give good ground in order, falling back with no major loss. 

My Spartans that were prepared for the charge managed to crush and break a unit of Elite legionnaires.

As the end of Turn 2 came to a close, almost half of all our units were engaged into a melee and the back and forth of the sustained combat would begin as turn 3 rolled in. But first, there were two hungry commanders in need of a feed. So we broke for lunch before taking up the melee of turn 3.

 

Returning well fed, the generals continued the battle.

My Skirmishers continued foraging for berries and advancing ever so slowly forward round the outside.

I charge one of my last units of Spartans charge hoping to hold up some more of Jack's legionnaire. 

Working through the Sustained combats before diving into the charging combats, my unit of Elite hoplites take another 4 wounds, being completely obliterated and breaking immediately. The first unit of spartans are Shaken and Breakin'! A crushing defeat in combat against elite legionnaires. The greeks don't shake yet, but the commander begins to see some cracks in his lines and realises that we might be fighting an uphill battle to take back any ground here and crush more units. 

The elite legionnaires that crushed the spartans make a sweeping charge into the next unit of spartans on the hill.

The slog of combat continued into Jack's turn 3. His horses flub their command roll, causing them to just mill around commandless for the turn. Unites of Aux Infantry also failing their command roll, thankfully being drilled and trained like all great Roman troops, are able to march themselves into support of other units engaged in combat. 

This combat was killer for me, another unit of Spartans are shaken and breakin. Following them, the first of the Levy Hoplites also breaks. The Levy having been a tarpit for a good 2 turns of melee now, finally being overrun by 2 full units of Elite legionnaires. With the end of turn 3, my 2nd Division of troops were gone. I was down to 3 divisions worth of men left to fight, and my skirmisher division still hadn't made contact with the enemy yet...

 Turn 4 the division of skirmishers make their first contact with the enemy! Pelting away at the units of infantry on the wings of the hills. Except, the first contact was the equivalent of half the units just throwing handfuls of the berries they had spent over half the battle collecting at the enemy. Covering the infantry and bloody looking spots, but not actually causing any wounds. 

The unit of Peltasts that I had misunderstood and just read incorrectly as a skirmisher unit, pelted the snot out of the Numidian Cav, shaken and breakin them.

Levy Hoplites, in combat, were the most effective unbreakable tarpit! Rapidly rising in rank towards MVP units for me. The Levy held at bay the Veteran legionnaires and another 2 units of Elite legionnaires. 

2 more units of my spartans lost the combat, one unit being crushed and mowed down against the standard legionnaires. And the other unit retreating disordered. Very Quickly were the Greek's resolve failing. More and more units being removed was leaving me up a creek.

Jack's 4th turn kicked off with a crash, more of his units crashing heavily into my remaining units. 

A game of cat and mouse began as a number of my skirmishers are charged down by some of his skirmisher units along with aux infantry. They were able to evade and escape some of the charges and keep just out of reach.

My Tarpit Levy held the Vet legionnaires at bay once again. Turn 4's combat ended with draw's across the board and only a single unit of Aux Infantry broke.

Turn 5 was rather fast, across the board I managed to flop my command rolls, giving me no chance to get any units lined up for charges. My division of skirmishers really didn't do much having spent the time trying to evade being charged they couldn't wound all that much with their ranged weapons. Combat ended rather quickly too. Elite legionnaires managed to Shake and Break one of the units of Levy Hoplites. But the handful of other combats sat in a stalemate, for Jack to take his turn.

Which he charged his legionnaires into my final remaining spartan unit, both in the rear and the flank. I knew at this point things were not going to end well, but no Greek goes out without fighting to the last breath. 

Combat was brutal, my remaining units being beaten down and crushed one by one. Jack's legionnaires crushed my Elite Hoplites. His Medium Cav crsuhed the unit of Levy Hoplites. 

What broke the greeks and caused them to flee, was the last remaining unit of Spartans being completely obliterated by the Elite legionnaires. From the rear and the side the spartans couldn't about face fast enough to defend and were trampled swiftly. 

 

With another division obliterated, the Greeks had no other choice but to break and flee, retreating whatever remaining units they could and hoping the Roman's would leave them be. Shaking Jack's hand across the table, the Roman's secured victory today. 

 

 

Jack's Legion of Romans 

 

My Legion of Greeks

We made mistakes, we definitely misunderstood rules and did things not quite right. But we had an absolute blast telling a story, rolling some dice and spending a quality day in the Garage slinging dice. 

I didn't expect the drawing nearer of dadhood also bringing on a true enjoyment of historical games, but here we are. I am historical pilled and hunting online for 6mm models of my own so that I can build a force of my own to face down Jack another time in another game of Hail Caesar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

#HARDPOSECHALLENGE

 September is here

And with it comes Jackson's HARDPOSE CHALLENGE

Pick something hard, for the month of September and do it.

And as any idiot who loves pain, I figured why not make my challenge unnecessarily hard

So my goals for September are:

1. Prepare the house for my Child's birth. Cus home Reno's are the easy part of the hard part of having a child. So I'll take this as my burden 🫡 (Apparently that's only 6 weeks away .-. )

This includes:

• Painting the Nursery
• Building a door to the garage (so baby doesn't immediately become gassed out by my 3d print fumes)
• Upgrade the garage door to motorised for my wife to have easier parking

2. MOVE. Every day. For 30 minutes.

• In the garage before work, at work or after. 
• With a kettlebell, a bucket or just my own bodyweight and throwing a foot infront of the other.

3. Kick the phone to the curb.

• Instagram is gone. Reddit is gone. YouTube might follow shortly (weren't it for Trent's permadeath Vlog. And all the other awesome guys making daily blog content). Discord is where I'm at if anyone needs me

4. READ or WRITE. Every day!

• Literature is a necessity and there are so many great books that I've not let myself read yet because I let myself doom scroll for hours instead.
• Or, I'll write a blog. I've many an intro to an RPG campaign half loaded in my brain, I want to turn some of these out digitally and into some amount of a story. So prepare for more of my garbage authoring to appear on the blog more frequently as September progresses 

5. Get paint on this gorgeous bust

• I just received in the mail this Witchhorn bust. And I am utterly intimidated by it. I don't want to ruin the model with my below average paint skill... is what I would have said if it weren't HARDPOSE CHALLENGE September! So I'm just going to commit to it. No better way to start than by beginning, no better way to improve than by trying. And no better way to try than by doing.

So yeah

HARDPOSE CHALLENGE is upon us, I've set myself a mighty long list of challenges that might find myself crashing and burning, or might find me making endless leaps and bounds of self and home improvement. With habits that will continue into this new epoch of my life

Death to Meta! And death to the Mindless Doomscroll!

A (relatively) Short Gripe

I love 3D Printing!

The sheer genius that one can take either a roll of plastic 1.75mm in diameter, heat it up and layer by layer create something. Or the more crazy, Resin, a liquid, that when you expose it to some Ultra Violet Light cures hard, half of a tenth of a millimeter at a time!

From the moment I first learnt of 3D printers I knew I wanted one. I didn't even consider at the time that it could have been used to create Miniatures or Terrain for the Wargaming Hobby I so enjoy. Just the consideration that I could create random upgrades, fixes and trinkets for around the house had me sold on the idea of it.

Then along came incredible digital sculptors and designers who made terrain, and even Miniatures for printing! Along with it the printers became better and better and more and more affordable. 

Before I knew it, I had bought myself a Phrozen Sonic Mini. The 1920x1080p screen and a print volume of a whopping 130x70x130! What an absolutely wicked little machine it was! I ran that thing consistently for days on end when I first bought it. Printing Loot Studios miniatures and an assortment of cool characters and enemies for my Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I had been running for friends. 

The ability to design a combat scenario on a Tuesday afternoon, spend Wednesday searching the internet for the models and by Friday night have a printed and maybe painted enemy that fit the description I was explaining to my friends was unreal.

From there on out I knew it was only onward and upwards. Or at least that's what I believed. Buying "Presupported" models for relatively cheap, plugging them straight into the slicing software and exporting to a USB and off to the races is what I thought. 

I tell you what, that was a short lived hope. More and more incredible sculptors put out incredible models on Patreon or My Mini Factory on a monthly basis, claiming they were presupported and ready to print. When I started to see fail after fail after fail of prints with these "presupported" models that had been "test printed successfully" I began to realise that in everyone's race to release better and better models, that were more and more detailed, they were no longer easily printable. Just because you can infinitely zoom in on your digital model and sculpt more and more detail, doesn't necessarily mean you should. Kind of like the GW issue of overly sculpted and detailed miniatures with so many greebles and pouches it's unwieldy to paint. 

Now, I have worked my way up and have a good grasp on printing and supporting models, but for a newbie to the hobby who may have never tried supporting or wouldn't know where to look for quality supported models, they are bound to fail and be disheartened. And with the disheartening, the love for a wonderful hobby will be lost and left to gather dust. 

When one buys a model and the creator claims it is presupported, there surely should be some onus on them to have ensured the model can print and be properly supported. Instead they are seemingly just run through a single round of average Auto Support in a slicing program and shipped out as "ready to print"

Now maybe I am too finicky when it comes to printing and like to ensure all islands down to half a pixel in size are supported, but can one blame you when you are wanting a model to come out with as much of the detail sculpted onto it by the creator. The sheer amount of additional time that one must spend now checking a "ready to print" model to ensure it is ready for print seems ludicrous.

Comparatively when it comes to the FDM market, I am a little newer to all of it, but a majority of files don't advertise themselves as presupported, or give you a recommendation for the slicer that you would be using and suggest how to support or what to do to ensure quality prints.

Thankfully, there is a community of people who have created literally a mini rater, a website that has community voted and rated spreadsheets for an assortment of creators and sculptors. Giving one a better chance to make an informed decision before backing a Patreon or buying models. Should you find yourself in the position of considering buying models to print for yourself or getting someone to print for you. Give it a look at 

https://minirater.com/

 

Anyways, gripes aside, I still love 3D Printing, and still print and buy an unnecessary amount of models to gather dust on a hard drive with the plans that one day "yeah, I'll print them and make an army or a warband out of them"

I'll climb off my soapbox and get back to supporting some models and printing them out so I can keep growing the pile of shame in my garage.

I'll leave a few photos below of my old printers and the history of my different printing setups

 Where it all started. My Phrozen Sonic. Sitting on a coffee table covered in painters plastic, just in the living room of my rental house. The only piece of safety I knew was I didn't want resin on the carpet. No respirators, maybe gloves occasionally but that was about it. 

 

 I was a little better when I upgraded my printer. It no longer lived in the living room. Instead it was under my desk in my study and I ran a little Ikea Air Purifier next to it at all times. I did have gloves and a respirator this time round. 

 

This is my most recent and current set up. 2 Elegoo Saturn Printers. The S and the 2. As well as a Bambu A1 and P1S both with AMS for multicolour printing.

 

A glimpse into the Past

 

When your pregnant wife wants to use your main PC in the house for the afternoon, one must improvise and thus these two dudes were painted up. 

Back in January I picked up a couple individual Sprues of some Victrix Romans and Greek Hoplite warriors. Mainly for kitbash potential bits and great big shields. 

But my best mate is a history buff and into Wargaming too. So figured I'd get them to perhaps give a red hot go at building an army or force for Hail Caesar or some other historical game, whatever he'd have in store when we catch up to run some games. We've run some games of Hail Caesar in 10mm scale and they're a blast, but surely one must go bigger to 28mm. Especially with such cheap minis from Victrix and in such large quantities!

 

I wanted a minimalist paint job using only a handful of paints where I can, to reduce the brain space necessary for decisions. 

Both models were primed in a Crimson Red rattle can and then hit with a zenithal of a Desert Yellow.

I figured given both were from relatively dusty area's, the desert yellow helped give the feel of history and desert dirt and dust. 

I did a brief amount of googling to find a rough baseline image, especially for the shield that I liked or felt confident enough to give a shot at free-handing.

the bronze metallics were a mix of Vallejo Metallics Gold and Hoplite Armor Speed Paint, and the steel was as named by Vallejo Metallics. A Heavy Gold Brown was the Yellow for the shield and the Hoplite's garments.  AK Blood Red for the Roman's Robes and Cork for the skin. I did a Vallejo Turquoise for the Feather, but I don't like it, so it'll get repainted to a brown black colour.

 

The shield. That was fun! I traced in the lines with a light brown colour first to figure out placement knowing that it would make the patching over with yellow a lot easier. Once I was happy with the placement I went over them with a light grey up to white. I added a bit of AK Smoke Black around the outer edges of the design to try and add some emphasis to it as well as for the zigzags and banding in the middle. Some of it I'm less happy with but for a first go and breaking the slump of not painting, leaves me pretty pleased. 

 

 

I didn't wash these dudes down with anything, but would likely use a mix of Reikland Flesh and Agrax Earthshade to dull down everything. Then it'd be picking out some highlights here and there on skin or on clothing etc...Honestly though, for an army of these dudes, should I decide on one or the other, just the 4 or 5 colours and speed running would get them batched out, and looking decent. 

All in all for a quick hour or 2 of painting I'm pleased with these dudes and am keen to give a shot to painting a unit of them to rank up and have as a display or for slinging dice on tabletop with. 

 

[No Title]

 #### Incoming Signal ####

"Sir the lifeform has vanished"

"What do you mean vanished?"

"It was there, and now it's not. Ehrm, sir the Railgun, where was it?"

"Enough of this nonsense. It was right there. Find the lifeform, bring it back up on the HUD now."

Noises of rustling and cracking

"Halt, in the name of all things holy what is that thing?!"

#### Transmission Ends ####

A fun Sunday afternoon with the local crew kitbashing a warrior/champion/hero/entrants for a game of Skirmish in the vein and vibe of Quake // Unreal Tournament.

We each spent the morning trawling through an immense communal pile of bits. My original concept was the body of a beast man augmented with cybernetics and weapons.

Then I found the pieces of the flagellant from the Penitent engine and knew I was onto something

Thus birthed my entrant. With the currently place holder name of Cherubael, as its pose and manner reminded me of Inquisitor Eisenhorn's demon host of the same name.

The being fought well in the game, taking out other opponents with swift and carefully placed shots. The final blow was one that traded its life with its opponents drawing the game to a tie.

As the last remaining contestsnt peacefully rode the elevator on the battle arena to the top floor, Cherubael aligned its immense chest cannon with the split in the doors and awaited for the slightest movement. As the doors gently slid open there was a swift crack of shots and both Cherubael and its foe, slumped to the ground.  Bullet holes in the others skull

Now for some paint and a proper name!