"Zippin' Up Ma Boots!" A Dalliance With Nostalgia

From back in the day; my WH40K Drop Troop themed army, the
Solar Lions tangle with Richie's Night Lords in one of the best, if
not the best, campaigns we have ever played. Unfortunately I
have lost all the details to my old Photobucket account so I had to
resort to photographing the picture onscreen...

    Following on from my previous update I bring you this glorious, multi game system, technicolour, nostalgia soaked follow up. 

     Firstly I have managed to get two of my Zona Alfa crews painted...just about. These lovely Copplestone Castings are...erm...lovely. I decided, as they were contemporary/near future I would go for modern urban camouflage for the first set and a Desert Storm/Gulf War camouflage for the second crew. I have still to play the game and to work out the crew statistics etc but I'm not going to let a trifling detail like that hold me back.

Painted Assault Troopers 

Copplestone Castings Civilian Militia painted up as American mercs

     As well as the figures I have bought some more terrain, again from TT Combat, for Zona Alfa, Judge Dredd and this little beaut, In The Emperor's Name, a skirmish game set in the 40K universe, inspired by  or written in response to GWs Inquisitor game, which I really liked. In the Emperor's Name (ItEN) was written by the chaps at the Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare and is now in it's third edition; it's available to download online for free, has it's own dedicated website with an online force list builder and it's own Facebook page...woo hoo!!

     This is yet another skirmish game I haven't played but being based on the same game engine as In Her Majesty's Name I am confident that it will be great fun. Aaaand it has given me the incentive to dig out the last GW 40K figures that I still own to make up opposing sides. Like a lot of you out there my gaming roots are firmly rooted in WH40K and I had bought, painted and sold on loads of figures; Space Marines, Orks, Chaos Space Marines, Saim Hahn Eldar (the latter three for my son, Stuart, back in the day) and Imperial Guard Drop Troops. Now I am down to a handful of stripped metal Blood Angels and other bits and bobs that I just haven't gotten around to selling on eBay and these are now going to form the core of my ItEN forces. 

     Straight off the bat I already have two forces to use from my INQ28 (the 28mm based version of Inquisitor which is, oddly enough, based on 54mm figures...but I digress) days. I have posted these on the blog before as I was using them for In Her Majesty's Name before buying more dedicated Victorian sci fi miniatures so that's a good start. However, having lots of metal 40K I have deicded to make up small warbands of Scouts, Space Marines as well as Chaos Space Marines, Chaos Cultists, Orks and Genestealer Cultists as well as a third Inquisitor force. Here's a selection below..

My original inquisitor, Inquisitor Hannus Pellen, a Monodominant
inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos

My second Inquisitorial warband that still needs it's backstory
fleshing out but they are less puritanical than Pellen

My third Inquisitor, this one clad in terminator armour based
on the old Space Marine captain figure. I have only just finished
painting him and as a homage to the old 40K wargaming days I
have given him a goblin green base that was so popular back in
the day

A bit of a mix, two Adeptus Arbites figures, two Inquisitorial
henchmen who will form the third inquistor's retinue and a
human psyker, originally a Sanctioned Imperial Guard psyker,
I think. Anyway, I have a plan to use him as part of a genestealer
cult

Gene stealers from the game that introduced me to wargaming, Space
Hulk. These aren't from my original game but ones I bought on eBay.
These will be part of my Genestealer cult...speaking of which,..

Not my minis but found this picture on the interweb; something

to aspire to methinks. I reckon a 1/43rd scale car would be a good

base for one of these cult cars

    Another thing that has fed into this GW 40K fest was an episode of the Cast Dice podcast from last June in which the host, Brad Williams, a die hard wargamer who formerly worked for GW in the US of A and one of his chums spent an entire episode talking about classic wargaming miniatures, predominantly Citadel/GW ones. This got me feeling all nostalgic and I have basically been immersing myself in GW fluff podcasts, Youtube channels, old White Dwarf magazines, old codices and rulebooks. My attraction to the aforementioned printed stuff has been the photos, I really, really like that lovely 'Eavy Metal style of painting that dominated back then. So for a few days I had a strong urge to paint something colourful too and I plumped for a squad of Blood Angel Scouts. They nearly broke my heart but I felt compelled to finish them. 

Not my first Blood Angels scout squad but definitely my
best painted. Painting them was educational and there's
still room for improvement.

The only two plastic Blood Angels Space Marines left from my original
force that I had when my son, Stuart, and I played 40K "back in the day"
I am actually torn as to what to do with these guys; I can't decide whether
to touch up their paint jobs or leave them as they are.....

    

I also have the Space Marine Terminator Librarian from back
in the 90's.This is another figure that I love. The detail on it is
great.

    That's the painted, or at least primed stuff, here's a selection of the other stuff I plan to paint and game with; though I think they will mostly grace the shelf of my new display cabinet when we move into the noo hoose. I am fibrillating with anticipation and excitement at having my own, dedicated hobby room, let me tell you.

     Anyway, other Blood Angels and 40K stuff I plan to paint at sometime are the following...

Metal Assault Squad from the 90's. I have the matching
metal jump packs too

Blood Angels chaplain and a variety of metal Blood Angels
with lots of lovely sculpted, Blood Angels trinkets and knick
knacks adorning their armour

    

It's a long time since I painted 40K Orks. I'll only be painting a
squad of them rather than hoards which is as much as I need...
for the moment

Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Cultists. 

     The Orks and Chaos Cultists will feature in games of ItEN along with the Genestealers. I am wondering, though, if the Gates Of Antares rules from Warlord Games might do for some bigger games with 40K stuff.....

      That's it for the moment. As I write the McCubbyhole, my painting den, is in a state of disassemble; it now being out of commission, most of my figures are at my in-laws as I do not intend to trust their carriage to the removal men; no slight intended but I wouldn't feel the least bit comfy knowing other hands were responsible for their safety. I have at least two, maybe three weeks before I will be set up for painting again which will drag but hey, that's life, eh? 

"End of a bleedin' era, so it is" though of course it's also
part of my figure painting journey or sumfink like that..

Pip pip the noo!

GJB

ps. Finished the Adeptus Arbites figures that featured in one of the previous photos.

 

Deffo Pip pip for now....apart from that enigmatic post title which is the first kine from the disco hit  Going Back To My Roots by Odyssey released in 1981 but you knew that already, didn't you