The Cult rises again

No words and numbers today, just greenstuff and plastic. (Oh, and resin, for the bases... Sorta plastic too.)

I've been adding greenstuff to some of my little friends:

For some reason my Howling Griffons and Genestealer Cult just go together, can't work on the one, without giving the other some love as well. I guess it's because they're both offshoots of my long suffering Space Hulk project...
Same goes for the =I=Munda stuff, my Scavenger Crew, been eyeing them again as well lately.
For now, I'm content to pick up where the muse takes me. Today, that was gribbly alien bodysnatchers. :-)

Some of these Genestealer Hybrids (the two rightmost ones) have been finished somewhat longer, back when I had my previous bout of working on the Hulk/Cult. The three on the left are the most recent additions.
I'm thinking, five is about enough to set on a painting desk? So, they'll step up when I next take out the painting gear. (Which means clearing away the modelling kit, and for the time being, I'm having fun modelling, so I'm continuing that for now.)

Rules-mashing continues!

I could have responded in the comments, but I'd rather put this in a new post, seeing as it sheds some light on my reasoning and what I want to achieve with this IHMN/ItEN mashup.

Seems I've attracted someones attention...  ;)



Hi Craig!
Thank you for making such a wonderful set of rules! Twice!

I know the 40K you wanted to replicate! I just missed it (having only found 40K in 2nd edition), but veteran friends showed me the "good old stuff"...
I loved the wildness and madness of it. Still do, and I miss it in the current iterations of the game.
The way I see it, ItEN and IHMN do have that sense of excitement and freedom I seek.

Thank you for the encouragement!

I'm not too worried about balancing, I firmly believe one shouldn't let balance get in the way of a good game, or story. :D
Come to think of it, I think that IHMN being set in (and optimised for) an alternate 1890s, is actually a bonus. With the Victorian era being a transitional period from (often centuries old) traditional methods to modern industrial means (even moreso with VSF "weird tech" and Mysticism), means that it should be able to stretch the rules in both directions towards future  and past. In addition to VSF I could use them for Feudal/Questing games, moderns, as well as Sci-Fi/40k.
Heck, if I get things right, I might even be able to pull all three off in the same, single game! ;D
That's why my goal isn't to replace the gear and stats from IHMN with 40K content, but instead add them to it, and allow the possibility for interaction between them.
I'm not making it easy on myself, am I?

In the Majestic Emperor's Name!

Or something like that...

Anyway, what I'm getting at is mashing up two similar rulesets, so I can use the setting of one, but with the rules of the other...

In previous post, I mentioned In the Emperor's Name, a 40K skirmish ruleset, and In Her Majesty's Name, a VSF branch of the same rule-tree.
IHMN is, in my eyes, the more polished and flexible ruleset, so I'd prefer using that, as I can also use it for a lot of my other gaming interests. So porting the 40K style of ItEN to IMHN should be effortless, no? Well, ItEN is d6 based, and IHMN d10 based, so a lot of values are skewed by this.

The last couple of days I've been comparing stats (weapons and figures mainly), trying to find parallels and extrapolating the rest.

Below is what I've got so far. There are still a lot of blanks, especially in the troops segment, as I need to compare and guesstimate them one by one... To be honest, I'm currently prioritizing the troops that I have a personal interest in, and those that are easiest to translate. The rest will follow later.
I'm not certain at all if all my stats are accurate because of two simple reasons: They aren't yet tested, this is just a first draft. And, I'm not precisely fluent in IHMN (or ItEN) yet, I've yet to get some games in. I should start looking for victi..., no, oppon..., no....,erm, fellow gamers, so I can finally give it a go.
So, if you have any comments, feedback or suggestions, please let me know!

Anyway, here's the crunch:
(Update: Added the points cost where I had enough data to calculate them.)

A change of pace.

It seems I have scratched the fantasy itch enough for the moment.
I  had a quick game with my son last week, field testing both my knight and a ruleset (In the Emperor's name. I fudged it a bit to accomodate a fantasy game. I've since ordered In Her Majesty's Name, an updated, improved VSF version of ItEN.)

Sadly the noble knight, after making good headway through a monster-infested forest, was defeated by a troll before he could retrieve the maiden he vowed to rescue...
Here are a few pics from the game:

 

But in the end, he rides to his doom:

Once that was done, I felt the need to do some Sci-Fi stuff. I packed the fantasy away again and dug out my big Space Hulk Project box.
I still had the second half of a Tactical squad to finish, to the past week, I've been painting those.
They're nearly finished:

I just need to paint the banner on the sergeant and assemble them.
They will form squad "Gladius"  led by Sgt. <name pending, thinking of Hektor>.
Unusually this squad isn't named after their sergeant, as is conventional. During the Namur Campaign this squad was part of the assault drop on the secessionist capitol. During this assault they decisively breached the enemy lines and eliminated the enemy command post. This disorganised the rebel defence and shortened the war considerably. As they acted as the sword that beheaded the Emperor's enemies, the squad was bestowed the honorific name "Gladius".
They are squad 6 of the Howling Griffon's 5th company.

From the Space Hulk Project box, I also took some work in progress Genestealer Hybrids, and the second Terminator (armed with Cyclone launcher). Those are currently on the modelling table.
I'll show some pics once I make some more progress on them.

Update: The squad is done!

 I painted some detail on the rear of the squad banner as well, but it refuses to photograph at the moment....
I'll try again some other time.

What the flock?

They're done! (Almost)

I flocked them with a custom (read: random) mix of medium green and light green medium turf, earth shade fine turf and static grass. I simply painted on PVA where I expected grass to grow and shook the flock mix over that. After allowing it to dry a bit, I shook off the excess. Rinse, repeat for the next hills.
Every few hills I backtracked to hill that had been drying for a bit, to add tufts of grass and flowering grass to the flock here and there.

I had a hell of a time to get the clump foliage to stick to the trees... PVA didn't work, much to watery, stuff kept falling off as soon as I stuck it on (sometimes sooner)!
In the end, I resorted to taking "Bison Kit", a more agressive, tackier glue. That seemed to do the trick.

Now I just need to find a way to make it all stay on. Even as I was moving the hills around while working on them, and taking these pics, they were shedding already... Does anyone have any advice? Please let me know.

And to close things off, a couple of model's eye views:

I particularly like this shot, with the hedge as background: