Pirate Borg Adventure - The Jolly Roger and Friends (part 2)

 The Jolly Roger and Friends - part 2

The scenario breakdown for last weekend's Pirate Borg game can be found here. But I kicked the lads off by having them on their longboat hunting down their long-lost ship, the SS Stinky. Now resplendent in their Blessed Coats (a score from their last gaming session), as they sailed to the main island, they noticed that they were ringed by a series of tentacles that were fast closing in on them.

One tentacle was shot and blown away before reaching their boat, but the other seven soon closed in. With one tentacle on each lad (excluding Cythis) three were able to grab onto the boat and attempt each round to pull the thing under.

To the lad's credit, they were able to make fast work of the tentacles grabbing at them despite one of the lads almost being dragged into the sea. That would have been interesting as, being Skeletons, they wouldn't drown but they couldn't swim either.

Once the individual threats were dealt with, they focused on the tentacles pulling the boat down. With little time left before water poured over the side, they dispatched the remaining tentacles and luckily escaped.

From there they were able to close on the island and finally, with Cythis preternatural guidance, find their lost ship at anchor in a lagoon.

Incredibly they were able to sneak up on the ship and the smaller Jolly Roger next to it without anyone noticing. An amazing feat given that it was broad daylight. Dropping off their Buccaneer sniper on the sand bank, the rest of the team made for the stern of the Stinky where they found boarding ropes already in place.

Another set of excellent rolls saw them board their ship whilst the Buccaneer scurried up a tree to take aim at the unwanted boarders. After a short parley, Captain Hook decided he had had enough and called on Mr Smeg to drop the sack he was carrying. This was a Bag of Bones that contained ten or so Skeleton Pirates. With Hook's vampiric powers in play, the Skeletons quickly took shape and rushed our intrepid lads. Angelica, seeing this, dived for the Captain's Cabin and quickly locked herself safely away. The actual crew of the Stinky (i.e. its alcoholic Skeleton Crew) quickly dived overboard and onto the longboat where Cythis was waiting. This took them all out of the fight and left the lads to face the music.

With a crack, one of the Skeleton Pirates was felled by a shot from the Buccaneer over in the trees. The rat crew (The Bilge Rats), Hook and Smeg realised they were in a difficult position and did their best to hide behind the enormous rotting fish head that was the Stinky's figurehead. As the rats fired off their pistols, shot peppered the trunk of the tree where the Buccaneer was staged but it didn't break the tree trunk. Meanwhile, the Skeleton Pirates attacked the other lads on the aft deck of the ship.

The lads expected to make short work of the Skeleton Pirates, but no sooner was one felled, then after a round it returned, thanks to the vampiric abilities of Hook.

As the pressure was on, the Buccaneer decided to dive down into the sea, get back onto the beach and quickly make for the cliffs where he would have a much better sight of the deck. Thus, he would be able to ply his trade with impunity. But when he dived into the water he came almost face to snout with an enormous crocodilian creature. Fortunately, the Buccaneer was the less shocked of the two and hightailed it out of the water.

As the battle raged on the ship, suddenly the voice of Hook could be heard bellowing out to everyone to stop fighting. Everyone froze. Hook called out, "Do you hear that?" Bewildered everyone just stood there. One of the lads however passed a Wisdom roll and spoke. "Is that a ticking clock I hear?"

Sudden panic ensued as Hook went into meltdown and begged Mr Smeg to save him. The Bilge Rats scrambled overboard for The Jolly Roger. Mr Smeg picked up Hook and dumped him over the side onto the Jolly Roger before jumping down there himself. The Buccaneer bolted for the cliffs and the Skeleton Pirates re-engaged the lads on the aft deck.

With Hook, Smeg and The Bilge Rats hightailing it out of there on The Jolly Roger, the Crocodilian Monster lost interest in the SS Stinky and headed after the submersible. Without Hooks powers reforming the Skeleton Pirates, eventually the lads were able to overcome their foe and regain control of their ship.

With the SS Stinky back under their control, the lads then addressed Miss Fairweather, who refused to come out of the cabin. Eventually, they had to concede taking her on as a temporary passenger and dropping her off where she wished. But she did tell them of some nice treasure that was supposed to be in the caves behind them. Setting a guard, the lads set off to find the treasure and, after some ghostly shenanigans, did manage to score some nice loot.

Now they have their ship, they can go anywhere. I'll be handing the reigns over to one of the other lads to Game Master the next adventure. So, I need to get my own Player Miniature painted up for the next game.

Pirate Borg Adventure - The Jolly Roger and Friends (part 1)

 The Jolly Roger and Friends - part 1

This post is going to take a slight deviation from my 15mm Space Orc Surfer Dudes to showcase our recent Pirate Borg adventure over the weekend. For today's post I'll show off the scenario. In the next post I'll cover what happened.

The lads will start off in their longboat heading for a large island with Cythis (pronounced Sy'thiss), their strange fishermen compatriot who rescued them from the Abyss. Cythis is convinced he has found his lost love, his "Angel". And where she is, the lads ship must surely be as she found their ship abandoned and commandeered it in order to escape the Abyss.

The lad's ship, the SS Stinky (named due to the overly large rotting fish-head used as the ships figurehead) is located in a small tidal lagoon on the main island in this adventure area. Behind the ship are sea caves and cliffs rising to above deck height.

In that lagoon, next to the SS Stinky, is an oddly half submerged vessel called The Jolly Roger.

As the players approach, they will be able to discern that their ship has a rather large contingent of very little people on board facing down Angelica Fairweather, the lady who "stole" their ship (she insists that she "found it").

The crew of the Jolly Roger comprise the Bilge Rats (actual large rats!) led by non-other than the notorious Vampire, Captain James T Hook. Hook's side-kick thrall is none other than the infamous Mr Smeg. The lads know Hook as he serves the same Pirate King that they do and is a competitor who wishes to grab the gem the lads found in the Abyss for himself. That gem is The Heart of the Sea.

Angelica faces off against this group with no help from the Stinky's crew as they are all drunkards (impressive for Skeletons!). As the lad's approach, they will overhear a parlay occurring where Hook is pressuring Angelica to hand over the Heart of the Sea. She counters that she doesn't have it. Hook doesn't believe here and is getting more and more impatient.

If the lads are sneaky enough, they may be able to come around to the aft of the Stinky and use the ropes hanging from there to climb aboard unhindered.

There are also ropes from the Stinky down to the Jolly Roger, but climbing those will put them right in the thick of things immediately.

Alternatively, they can make use of the sandspit to reach the cliffs and climb to where they can gain a good sniping position or even jump down onto the Stinky's deck.

How they resolve this is up to them. If a fight breaks out, the Stinky's crew will vacate overboard and Angelica will make for the Captain's cabin, locking herself inside.

Sooo how did they do? Stay tuned!

15mm Ork Beach Boyz Canoe

Beach Boyz proxy War Trukk

I was looking at my other 15mm Space Ork army and I thought to myself, my Ork Beach Boyz need some sort of War Trukk. The Surfer Boyz are nearing completion. The first unit of them that is. But the Surfers are proxy Warbikes and I need something to both transport the other fighting lads to the shore and to bring some much-needed dakka.

I wanted to keep with the surfing Beach Boyz theme, and it hit me that across the dutch here there is an exemplarily group of lads whose sea faring warrior history, travelling the South Pacific, makes an ideal inspiration for my Boyz.

Bambu Labs Maker World to the rescue yet again. A quick search found an excellent Polynesian Canoe that would make an ideal War Trukk proxy. This canoe would have to be jet powered and be able to slide on land like a sledge. And it would need dakka. How much dakka would depend on what looked cool.

A quick interwebs search found for me some nice 3D Orky jetpack files that could be resized to fit the bill as jet engines for the canoe and I was off to the printer.

One side of the mainsail.

And the other side.

The lads give it the once over.

The sail is affixed using small rare-earth magnets, so it can easily be removed as required. The turret at the front currently isn't fixed to the canoe. I plan to just Blue-tack it in place for games. But I haven't settled on just what dakka should actually be on the vessel as yet. At least this gives the canoe a heavy machine gun for now.

I've made four of these now, as I just couldn't help myself. This is the first to be completed. I wanted to experiment with colours and various configurations before I painted them all. The other three will be gradually rolled out after I pick up getting some shooty boyz painted up. No sense having transports without some lads to transport.

15mm Beach Boyz Surfer Dudes

 

Previously I mentioned how I was inspired by the excellent 40K Ork's Beach Boyz army that featured in a Gamesnight battle report on YouTube. One unit in particular that, when I saw it, I realised that I must have similar troops of my own for was the Surfer Boyz.

These are basically a bike unit, but on a forcefield held breaking wave. The field permits the rider to surf on land as well as water. The wave itself gets held within that stasis field in a continual surging motion. The wave perpetually cresting and breaking without dissipating until the field is turned off.

Given that my 40K equivalent forces are in 15mm scale, I know I would have to do some kit bashing. And now, after much searching and consideration as to how this will be achieved, I can finally show off the first prototype.

This lad is a 15mm Troublemaker Space Orc from Vanguard Miniatures. The jet engines on the back are from Agents of Gaming and are torpedoes from one of their miniature lines. The surfboard is from eBay and is a replacement surfboard for a Hot Wheels / Matchbox car.

Finally, the wave and the base were 3D printed using the 0.4mm nozzle on my Bambu Lab A1 FDM printer. The wave and the base were different STL files from Bambu Lab Maker World. I stretched the wave STL out for about 30mm x 50mm in order to make it more in the shape of a breaking wave tube. The base is a 60mm x 35mm Oval base.

After gluing the two parts of the base together. I lightly dry brushed the wave with white paint in order to bring out the wave features and make it appear that foam was forming on the wave crest. The surfboard itself was then super glued to the top of the wave.

These dudes come in a unit of eight. So, the first is done and now I know it works, the rest of the unit will follow.

Beach Boyz Killa Kan in 15mm - One Page Rules

 Beach Boyz Killa Kan

In the last post, I showed of a 15mm scale Killa Kan for my Space Orks army that I will be using One Page Rules with. That was a melee Kan and I needed some more as ranged attack type Kan's. But I was watching Gamesnight on YouTube and saw a fantastic battle report where an amazing surfer Space Ork army face off against a Pirate Ork army in a 40K battle report.

I love how these Beach Boyz Orks were made and I got to thinking, "You know, Orks fight amongst themselves as much as other factions. Why not make a 15mm Beach Boyz Ork army of my own?" I readily agreed with myself on this endeavour and suddenly fell down the rabbit hole.

The first of these creations is almost completed. More on that in future. But next up was making another melee Kan for my Beach Boyz. Here's where the Bambu A1 printer came into its own. I printed off another Kan and set about kit bashing with more stuff from my Gaslands Refuelled Implements of Carnage.

This saw me put two wrenching balls on this Kan instead of just one. A suitable pose was needed showing the thing viciously smashing the ground in front of it. I then thought, "how can I make this dude look distinct?"

It occurred to me that if I had a face mask of appropriate beachiness, this would be ideal for the Kan. Bambu Labs Maker World to the rescue! An appropriate mask downloaded, a quick resizing to the height of the body of the Kan and a quick printing later and "hey presto!" a unique, beach/islander look for my Kan.

But it needed more. I decided that it should have roof racks on top of it and surfboards added. I used a fender grill from the Gaslands stuff as it would be ideal for such racks. But when I tested it, it just didn't look right. So, I decided that the rack should go on the back of the Kan rather than its head and in this way, it would carry around the Boyz surfboards for them on its back. It also highlighted the unique faction that the Kan belong too.

The surfboards are from eBay and are plastic spare surfboards for Matchbox cars. The scale is perfect for the 15mm Ork army.

Some gaudy paintwork later and its done. I'm not going to ink the sand as I want it to look at home on a beach rather than look like it has soil and rocks on its base.

So, there you go. Another Kan added to the Space Ork arsenal.

A Killa Kan in 15mm for One Page Rules

 

I've been wondering around the interwebs for a while looking for a good STL file that would make a nice Orky Killa Kan. I've found a few files I liked the look of and decided to give one a go on my Bambu Lab A1 FDM printer with the 0.04mm. This is the result.

I kit bashed it a bit with items from the Gaslands Refuelled Implements of Carnage. This Killa Kan is a melee stompa that comes equipped with both a harpoon gun and a wrecking ball. The original STL however has a rotary saw and HMG arm options. So, it was gratifying to see that the Gaslands stuff worked well with my 15mm rescaling of the original STL.

The poor Imperial Guard proxy who is about to meet the business end of the wrecking ball is from Vanguard Miniatures and is produced by Troublemaker Games in their 15mm scale. Time to kit bash some more of these blighters.

Might call this one Miley for now whilst I think of a more suitable Orky name.

Roky terrain for Space Orks

 

Inspired by playing the remastered original Space Marine video game I wanted some Roks for my 15mm Space Orks to drop in uninvited with. Looking around the interwebs, I wasn't able to find a suitable 3d file for an ork Rok. Sooooo, I decided to make my own.

I took a small round ball and glued the twist tops from several yogurt snacks to said ball. I then cut up my favourite cardboard coffee cup holders to make corrugated iron sheets of various shapes and sizes. I fixed these to the ball with PVA glue. Needless to say, this took some time to do.

So, for the smaller Rok's, I decided to find some asteroid STL files and print them out on my Bambu A1 FDM printer. I also found a suitable hatch that would work as the egress point from these smaller Roks and affixed them to the models with hot glue. The thrusters are the rear of the Rok are various thicknesses of straws.

I've given the larger Rok a spray or two. But the smaller Rok's are yet to be painted.

My thinking here is that the larger Rok can house several units of troops and a Stompa, but the smaller Roks can only house one unit of Orks each, or maybe two units of Gretchin.

So that's the Rok's done. All I need now is some Stompa's. And something for the Orks to fight.