Recently I banged out a few Necromunda-style sci-fi terrain pieces after getting inspired by some posts that came across my social media showing nifty examples of aquarium filter panels being used to create terrain tiles.
I’m a sucker for cheap, creative ways of replicating the various pricey terrain sets that have come along in the last few years. In this case, the sci-fi floor tiles from Games Workshop are undoubtedly cool, but the amount of money required to make an entire tabletop of these premium pieces would probably buy a small island in the Seychelles.
So when I saw that someone had created some decent lookalikes using those super cheap plastic aquarium filter panels, I knew I had to give it a shot.
These panels are roughly 6 inches square and came in a pack of 10 for $14.99 shipped to my door. That’s my kind of price!! They come with a pleasing crosshatched pattern, plus a few round circular areas that looked ideal for future detailing.
As you can see in the photo above, they also come mounted on plastic 1-inch pegs that lift them off the ground. Very cool! I ended up snipping off the legs because these panels are made of flexible, somewhat soft plastic, and I knew I’d have to work hard to make them lie flat.
To that end, I mounted the plastic panels atop several layers of heavy corrugated packing cardboard that I had lying around. First I hardened these pieces with several layers of black paint and Mod Podge, then I glued the plastic panels down using a goopy outdoor adhesive. I had to weight them down with books to make sure the panels remained flat – they are soft and somewhat flexible, and the edges threatened to curl up without some weight.
The tiles looked great out of the box, but I decided to take them to the next level by affixing some additional bits – grating, plasticard, corrugated cardboard, just a variety of textures to break up the surface a little bit and create some visual interest. You could skip this step entirely, because the base filter panels look superb as is.
I also added some skull glyph plates that had been languishing in my bits box for years. Because this is 40k after all!
As you can see, the whole thing got sprayed black, then silver using regular old rattle cans from the hardware store. I covered that with a heavy black wash that dulled everything down and set the stage for the grimdark phase, which featured heavy sponge application of browns, oranges, and yellows, plus some decals and propaganda posters to punch up the zaniness.
Oops, looks like the decals weren’t quite dry in these photos. They look great now, though!
The circular details on the filter panels look particularly fantastic. They could be hatches, manhole covers, or drains leading to a fluid reclamation system. Whatever they might be, they look tremendous!
I’m inordinately pleased with how these turned out. I’d say 75% of the painting work was accomplished with rattle cans of spray paint, and I never used a detail brush at all – just sponges for the final highlights.
The best part was that I only used 4 of the 10 tiles in the pack to make these two delightful terrain pieces. More to come for sure, and soon!
Following their tactical defeat in the darkest depths of the sumps in Hive Sacrament, the forces of the Imperium fell back in the face of a frenzied pursuit by a hodgepodge of cultists. Some were sworn to serve the hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum; others bore the sigil of the many-armed Star-Children. Shockingly, among their number strode a few power-armored Astartes of the Dark Angels. Why would the Sons of the Lion make common cause with such vile heretics? Truly, it was a riddle wrapped within an enigmas.
Welcome, dear reader, to the second session of our Grimdark Future campaign, The Cauldron. The first session was an epic 8-player affair, featuring two side-by-side games set in the lower levels of Hive Sacrament. With the forces of the Imperium generally routed (with some exceptions), it seemed appropriate for the heretics to continue their uprising by pushing into unexplored areas of the underhive.
The heretics caught up to their quarry in an abandoned service sector, which showed signs of having been the site of a battle years or even decades ago. Here, amongst the blackened platforms and rusted catwalks, the defenders of the Imperium would make their stand.
Here’s our table setup, featuring some exciting new pieces of terrain.
We’re playing Grimdark Future Firefight for the first portion of this campaign, starting at 250 points and escalating to larger games as the campaign proceeds. For this game, each player brought 350 points of units. The game was structured as a 3-on-3 team game, which was large but not unmanageable (since we are veteran OPR/Grimdark players).
As the game got underway, the cultists boiled forth out of the depths of the underhive, sweeping like a foul tide into defensive positions that were thinly held by elements of the Adeptus Sororitas, Imperial Guard, and Space Wolves.
John’s Guardsmen and Rian’s Sisters of Battle had a fairly advantageous deployment zone, as it featured a lower level where they could maneuver in the backfield in relative safety and out of line of sight. From a tactical standpoint, I couldn’t easily see their units from where I was sitting, and I honestly forgot where some of them were located! Literal stealth!!
Daniel’s newly painted Genestealer Cult warband, the Starchosen of Manifest Salvation, played a central role in the heretics’ assault. Quite a few of his hardest-hitting units had the ambush or scout ability, which in Grimdark Future Firefight gives them the ability to either deploy further forward or pop out and ambush unsuspecting units later in the game. He used both abilities to great effect.
In the pic below, Daniel’s crusty mutant races forward to menace a fire team of Imperial Guardsmen. This beastly creature was defeated, but his mere presence disrupted John’s advance and helped isolate his snipers so my long-range cultist riflemen could pick them off.
Speaking of snipers, they proved to be a high risk / high reward unit for John’s warband. They seized the high ground early on and laid down punishing fire on the few heretics who were caught out in the open. After some losses, the heretics adjusted their tactics, sticking to cover and using their relatively few long-range firepower to eventually take down the snipers.
On the flank, Parker formed up his Space Wolves and advanced to meet the cultists. After some hot dice rolls in the opening turns, I was confident about my chances here. Unfortunately, the Space Wolves rallied and pushed back the cultists, ultimately seizing the objective on this flank.
In the end, the heretics had swarmed over most of the board, despite taking horrendous losses. The game came down to a handful of key dice rolls in the final couple of turns.
One such clash came when Parker’s Space Wolf equipped with a jump pack (!) and a flamethrower (!!!) landed behind my long range cultist sniper. In a miraculous display of zealotry, the cultist made all his saving throws and managed to return fire and pin the Space Wolf, effectively neutralizing the threat on the final turn of the game.
And so an uneasy silence settled across the abandoned hive sector. The defenders of the Imperium withdrew to better defensible positions elsewhere in the underhive. The cultists went to work harvesting equipment and weapons from the fallen warriors and carrying out unspeakable rituals in the black depths of the hive.
Truly, a dark tide is rising in the depths of Hive Sacrament. While the pilgrims still go about their holy duties in the upper levels, the fate of the Gamma Euphorion star system is being decided in the grim, gore-splattered underhalls of the resplendent hive city.
And so our second campaign session concludes with the hard-pressed defenders of the Imperium once again seeking to stem the tide of heresy. Stay tuned for more – our next game(s) will see the players bringing 500 point warbands for Grimdark Future Firefight. More to come soon!
In the depths of Sacrament, far below the glittering hive towers and their resplendent terraces, below the incense-filled halls of statuary and throngs of offworld pilgrims, below the vast administratum strata, filled with warrens of offices and functionaries dedicated to the daily operation of the sector’s most popular shrine world, below even the turgid reclamation levels where basic utility functions are carried out by low-wage menials — deep in the depths of the underhive, something stirred. A psychic signal, pulsing and building in strength. An indifferent malevolence seeded decades ago that is just now beginning to pupate.
What will its emergence mean for the hive world of Sacrament, the world of Gamma Euphorion Prime and its attendant moon Drusichtor, and the greater Juventius Sub-Sector? Not much is known, but we can be certain that the outcome will be both grim and dark.
Welcome, gentle reader, to the official kick-off game for our 2023 narrative sci-fi campaign: The Cauldron. We’re starting small, with a series of skirmish games using Grimdark Future: Firefight to build our warbands and probe the edges of the Gamma Euphorion Prime setting.
The campaign name is a reference to the pressure-cooker environment in the beleaguered shrine world planetary system, where a dormant genestealer threat may be awakening, just as techno-cults rise to pursue their own nefarious aims, and plague disciples arrive from offworld bearing gifts for the shrine world’s pilgrims. Can the light of the Emperor pierce such absolute darkness?
The primary setting is the hive city of Sacrament, on the planet Gamma Euphorion Prime. A secondary setting that has already been explored in a recent game is Drusichtor, a moon of Gamma Euphorion Prime that boasts a massive industrial mining operation.
For the kickoff game, we assembled eight total players — possibly a record for John’s game room! We divided up into two smaller games of Grimdark Future: Firefight. Both were structured as 2-on-2 team games. As is typical, I got rather a lot of photos of the game I was involved in, and fewer photos of the other game. Read on for luscious photos and a gameplay report!
We pooled our collective grimdark terrain to create these two battlefields, representing an upper level in the underhive (on the right) and a fetid lower sump (on the upper left), replete with stagnant pools of water and rusty walkways.
The combination of textured terrain tiles, playmats, elevated risers, and scatter terrain really created a satisfying hive environment, with lots of cover and claustrophobic areas. Plus, all of our disparate terrain seems to more or less match!
We imagined these games as taking place roughly atop each other, on different levels of the underhive. The sump level, with its drains and waterways, played host to an incursion from well-intentioned warband of space dwarves working alongside the questionably loyal servants of the Imperium. This oddly matched pair of factions went up against the faith-drenched forces of the Adeptus Sororitas and their allies, the Astartes of the Salamanders chapter. Unshakeable loyalty versus … well, slightly more porous loyalty! But loyalty nonetheless!
And, a horse!
The game that I was playing in took place in the upper portion of the underhive, a few levels above the clash in the sumps. My game featured a tenuous alliance between two warbands of tech-obsessed Mechanicus scavengers (are they good guys or bad guys? who can say?), battling against a team-up straight out of Codex Astartes: Space Wolves and Dark Angels!
Did I mention this game had a horse as well?
Two horses in the underhive?! How do they even eat? It doesn’t make any sense…
Anyway, given that we were playing Grimdark Future: Firefight, it should come as no surprise that the games were fast and furious, with lots of careful maneuvering and explosive combat.
The sump level game began with the orange-armored space dwarves advancing alongside the servants of the Imperium, led by the sweatiest cavalry officer on the entire planet of Sacrament.
Creeping through the damp, fungus-ridden corridors in their bid to waylay the interlopers were the Sister of Battle, running a herd of chainsword-wielding repenters ahead of the battle-armored Sororitas.
The grubby agents of the Imperium, perhaps misled into thinking the Salamanders were their true foe, crashed headlong into the Sons of Vulkan and were probably massacred, if this photo gives any indication of their fate.
Over in the upper levels of the underhive, two teams of Mechanicus-minded tech cultists began filtering through the dim hallways, intent on finding and destroying their foe.
The Space Wolves and Dark Angels were few in number, but they were frightfully tough. Jim had just three Astartes models in his warband, and I think Parker had a few more, something like five or six. They looked very imposing as they strutted across the battlefield in their beautiful Astartes power armor.
Thankfully, the cramped terrain setup provided plenty of cover for our scrappy cultists as they fought to close in on the objectives that were scattered around the battlefield. This is definitely the ideal setup for grimdark skirmish gaming: lots of cover and elevation, with several routes for advancement so that nobody was funneled into a bottleneck.
Owing primarily to Daniel’s hot dice, the Mechanicus warbands secured an early advantage when they defeated a couple of the Astartes warriors in the early turns. Because they were so few in number, the Space Marine players really couldn’t afford to lose many models. We were playing a game with five (5) objective markers, and so we needed a lot of warm bodies to cover the objectives.
Having the Astartes on their back feet early in the game provided an opportunity for the Mechanicus cultists to surge forward, putting on a brave face as they charged into combat with a power-armored superhuman. They took casualties, but managed to stun the Space Wolf warrior who was guarding the flank.
Eventually the techno-cultists swarmed over the objectives, overwhelming the Space Marines by sheer weight of numbers. Ain’t that how it always plays out though? A few gallant Astartes, defending the barricades until the very last, until they are dragged down and dismembered by the howling hordes?? Yeah, it played out pretty much like that.
So it was a mixed outcome for our two side-by-side games of Grimdark Future: Firefight. The forces of the Imperium prevailed in the sordid depths of the sump level, but the techno-cultists of the Mechanicum succeeded in driving off the Space Marines and claiming the objectives in the upper portion of the underhive. Who can say what arcane secrets they unlocked for their own nefarious purposes?
Let us end with another glorious photo of the cavalry officer with nerves of steel and ice in his veins, as he urges his reluctant mount forward to seize these, er, run-down corridors in the name of the Emperor!
Once again Grimdark Future: Firefight provided a couple of nice, fast-playing skirmish games. Each player brought 250 points to this game, and our intent is to increase the point value for subsequent games, with a requirement that each game must feature a newly painted model. That’ll light a fire under us! Stay tuned for more grimdark narrative gaming in the depths of The Cauldron!
Last month I hosted two sci-fi skirmish games, and despite using two different game systems, we were able to tease out a bit of a narrative through-line to connect them together. Both games were set on Drusichtor, the third moon of Gamma Euphorion Prime in the Juventius Sub-Sector.
Drusichtor is a heavy industrial moon focused on mining and resource extraction. While Gamma Euphorion Prime grapples with a nascent genestealer cult infestation that is rocking the political underpinnings of the fragile ruling class, miners on Drusichtor made a terrifying discovery that suggested just how long the genestealers had been plotting to undermine the planet…
For the first game, we tried out Rogue Hammer, the new grimdark sci-fi ruleset from Nordic Weasel Games. It was a learning game, so we started small and coached each other through the rules. The game was set in the Pits of Volceradon, a vast and crumbling strip-mining operation that sprawls across the surface of Drusichtor. The warbands were competing to reach a hapless miner who had been infected by … something … that he picked up during his forays deep below the moon’s surface. You can see the miner staggering around near some bubbling pools of green toxic waste. Yum!
The game featured an Inquisitorial kill team, alongside a platoon of Ultramarines, racing to secure the miner before the pox-ridden warriors of the Death Guard could spirit him away and conduct a vivisection to figure out what happened to him.
Rogue Hammer was fun, but it definitely felt like a game that needs some additional material before it’s a truly playable Rogue Trader heartbreaker clone. For example: Many of the unit and character upgrades were specifically focused on fighting vehicles, yet you won’t really be using vehicles unless you’re playing a large game of Rogue Hammer. So for the skirmish sized games that we typically play, most of the anti-vehicle upgrades are useless and a waste of points. Meanwhile, factions like Chaos Space Marines – which have arguably been part of the lore since Rogue Trader – were conspicuously absent from the barebones army lists provided in the rulebook. I had to run my Death Guard using the Eldar (excuse me, Space Pirates) list.
In fairness to Nordic Weasel, I believe his intent is to manage Rogue Hammer like a “living rulebook,” with fairly frequent releases and rules tweaks to deliver exactly the sort of content I was missing.
Anyway, our Rogue Hammer game wrapped up with a shocking conclusion, when the poor miner underwent a sudden and violent transformation – the “final form” of his mysterious infection?
The blood-spattered xenomorph creature lurched toward the nearest target, claws akimbo. It was a deadly dance, but Danie’s Primaris Captain was up to the task!
The grisly outcome led directly to game two, which took place a few weeks later. In this game, the action moved to the nearby mining settlement of Ghorston’s Spur, where another specimen had been captured and stashed in one of the hovels. This game featured two teams of factions fighting to locate and secure the specimen – Dark Mechanicus and Chaos Cultists vs. Sisters of Battle and Orks (temporarily pacified, perhaps, to serve as useful cannon fodder for the Adeptus Sororitas? That was what we convinced ourselves, anyway).
For this game, we used Grimdark Future Firefight, an old favorite around here that we return to time and time again.
I had prepped a little scenario with rules for exploring the little ramshackle outbuildings. You weren’t sure exactly what you’d find when you went a-knocking on those doors!
Shooting is fairly potent in Grimdark Future Firefight, and we lamented the unfortunate lack of cover for Lawrence’s Chaos Cultists. They got chewed to pieces by deadly accurate fire from Rian’s newly painted Sister of Battle. Oops!
I didn’t have it much better … my Dark Mechanicus warband, The Seekers of the Fractal Schematic, were uncomfortably close to the menacing Orks at the start of the game.
Jim’s Orks were on top of me by the second turn, which made it pretty hard to explore the outbuildings to find the specimen.
Eventually (through trial and error) we determined which of the squalid dwellings held the specimen, and all of the factions promptly made a beeline for it. Covering fire was laid down by the Sisters of Battle as the Orks rampaged unchecked through the industrial settlement. Rho-Terak, the Enslaver of Logic (leader of my Dark Mechanicus warband) sustained superficial damage to his mostly-metal body during this chaotic scramble.
In game terms, he went out of action, but of course he didn’t die. He’s just … recuperating, back at base. Shouldn’t have been standing there, guy!
The final clash came when Vethidian the Supernumerary, second-in-command of my Dark Mechanicus warband, met the Sisters of Battle Canoness at the front door of the target hut. His sad little withered body was no match for the Canoness’s power sword!
So the Sister of Battle made off with the alien specimen! Doubtless the Imperium’s best xenobiologists will gather important intel from its carcass. The Dark Mechanicum will lick their wounds and regroup for another assault!
Grimdark Future gave a quick and decisive game, as always. There are a number of mechanics in this game that serve to hasten the inevitable conclusion of a skirmish clash. It’s never fun to see your cool models go down, but it’s important to remember that the game’s gotta end at some point.
It was pleasant to write up these two short game reports and stitch them together into a coherent narrative flow. I’m really enjoying the development of Drusichtor as a theater of operations in the larger Gamma Euphorion narrative campaign. There’s plenty here to fight over, and we haven’t even delved into the soot-encrusted Volceradon Furnace Tunnels…stay tuned for more!
Miniatures purists, take note – this post will give you fits. You have been warned!
Late last year, as our group began grumbling and muttering about some sort of grimdark Inq28-style skirmish campaign in 2023, I started putting the wheels on my latest warband. As a longtime Chaos player, I’ve always wanted to build a small collection of miniatures representing an insane, techno-heretical cult of the Machine God. In 40k, these guys would be called Dark Mechanicus.
But I didn’t want to just say “Adeptus Mechanicus, but bad guys.” I also wanted to blend religious zeal and biomechanical horror and see what comes out of that stew. I wanted to aim for a collection of miniatures that looked like the frantic pencil sketches that filled the margins of the old Rogue Trader rulebook.
The results were The Seekers of the Fractal Schematic. I wanted to give them an evocative and mysterious name that hints at some of the narrative territory I’d like to explore in our upcoming game. What is the Fractal Schematic, and why are they seeking it? Let’s find out together, etc. I’d say about half of these models already existed in my collection, and the other half I’ve painted up to match their brethren over the last few weeks.
In true Comrade’s Wargames fashion, there are at least 5 different manufacturers represented in this photo. Shall we name them? Obviously we have the Asphyxious figure from Warmachine’s Cryx faction. He’s a standout grimdark model that perfectly represents my image of what a fallen Mechanicus heretek might look like – swollen with power, bereft of humanity, just a few tattered scraps of flesh held together by a fearsome mechanical frame, eyes burning with vengeance. Of course, he’s got a new name. Now this figure is known as Rho-Terak, the Enslaver of Logic, leader of the Seekers of the Fractal Schematic.
There are two other Cryx models in the mix up there… a biomechanical serpent coiled atop a heap of scrap, and a stooped, withered chap hefting a ramshackle banner made of clinking vials or censers. In my headcanon, he’s the second-in-command, the executive officer, so to speak.
From there, we have two GW models – an old metal Chaos cultist and a metal Necromunda Redemptionist hefting an autorifle over his head. In the foreground we have a hunchbacked mutant from Mega Minis (which is a great source of Rogue Trader-inspired models). The little Roomba from hell is a terrifying monstrosity known as The Flesh Engine, and he’s a kitbash using pieces from Star Frontiers (!) and a head from Pig Iron Productions. The blood-spattered cyborg on the far right is from ThunderChild Miniatures (painted by sculptor Jaycee and gifted to me after I won a contest, what!).
I speedpainted up a few more generic cultist models to bolster the ranks a little bit. Every cult needs some fearless cannon fodder to sell their souls in a blaze of glory, right? Contrast paints did a lot of work here.
In the image below, the guy on the left with the pistol and axe is converted from a Frostgrave soldier model. (Oops, forgot to paint his base rim.) The guy on the right with the flamethrower is a monopose model from Ramshackle Games.
You can never have too many cultists! In the photo below, the guy on the far left with the axe and cluster of dynamite is another conversion from the Frostgrave soldier sprue. That kit is very flexible! All it takes is a couple sci-fi bits to drag a medieval-inspired model into the grim darkness of the 41st millenium.
The other two guys with assault rifles are from Pig Iron Productions, from their excellent Kolony Ferals range. I’ve got dozens of Kolony Ferals in my collection and they are some of my very favorite scrappy scavenger/cultist type models. Lots of gas masks, rebreathers, and creepy machinery poking out of necrotic flesh.
The two bruisers with clubs and shields in the photo below are from the Dark Age miniatures game. This is a super niche skirmish game based on Brom’s creepy fantasy/sci-fi art. Imagine that, a minis game inspired entirely by the work of one artist?! But here we are, and the models themselves a quite nice. These guys are from the Skarrd faction, and they’ve got a scrappy wastelands vibe with lots of twisted metal and weird cybernetics, not to mention assless chaps and exposed buttcheeks, and it all fits really well with my warband.
I absolutely love the challenge of combining miniature from many different manufacturers and sculptors to create a cohesive warband with a shared aesthetic. Nothing tickles me more than picking a figure like ol’ Asphyxious from Warmachine, giving him a new name and dropping him into a warband alongside a half dozen or more other distinct models from different makers. My goal as a painter and hobbyist is to create either a visual look or a narrative hook that ties all these models together and helps tell the stories that are swirling around in my head.
I’ll continue to build on the Seekers of the Fractal Schematic. My goal is to make each model fairly unique, so this won’t be a warband that I can use in games that require multiple squads of dudes, like Warhammer 40k. It will be, however, a great choice for skirmish games focused on individual models and small units. Stay tuned for more!
Comrade's Wargames 