#wargaming community

[oldschoolfrp]

Around July 3 at least 32 small wargaming businesses lost their websites to a server crash. Their shared service provider evidently left for a cruise the following day, then later declared that there were no surviving backups. Many small businesses lost access to their business email, purchase histories, and longstanding forums. Some have struggled with little or no income for a month now.

Karwansaray Publishers has been tracking the known affected businesses and providing some alternative contact information on their Wargames Soldiers & Strategy site. The list includes the venerable Hinchliffe Models, Kev White's Hasslefree Miniatures, and many others well known to the wargaming and RPG communities.

Some have come back online with new hosts, but some of those are still rebuilding their stores from scratch. TooFatLardies announced this morning that their store is back up, though they no longer can confirm past PDF purchases for unlimited future downloads. I've been meaning to pick up some of their Lard Magazine PDFs for some skirmish gaming inspiration, so I'm filling up my cart now.

[pandaemoniumminiatures]

Achievement unlocked 🙂

I've now painted my whole HeroQuest collection! I've owned these since I was 12 and it's been a 'labour of love' project to restore and repaint them.

For a bit more detail on the project: https://www.pandaemoniumminiatures.com/post/fully-painted-heroquest-collection

[happy-chappy-miniatures]

Lorgar Aurelian, the Urizen

Finished painting my conversion of Lion El'Jonson into Lorgar Aurelian, in stylish post-Calth red.

I wanted to try out something new, so I gave him some underglow on the gorget with light reflections on the bottom of the face to represent his golden psychic aura. Hopefully that's turned out ok!

I also managed to get hold of a second gorget bit, so I've left the heads interchangable if I wanted to run him with a helmet

[wolframtheregulator]

“The nonbelievers will say it’s just pareidolia. There aren’t faces in the sky, the world isn’t glowing with energy, there aren’t fractals in everything. They’re wrong of course, they just haven’t looked close enough yet.”

-Text seen on propaganda fliers recovered from the former Imperial Hive World, now Death World, Moirai IX.

Exalted Champion Sin-Nassir, the Fractals Blade, Scourge of the Barbatos Divide, the Many.

Close ups to follow.

[simonbreeze]

A bit of kit bashing and warhammer painting today with one of my Sisters of Battle minis.

[ultimavela]

My first approach to a super simple terrain for Mordheim (the miniatures are from dungeon bowl, I'm still collecting all the pieces to build my warband of Marienburg mercenaries).

How many more buildings should I build to make the game more fun? (first time plying)

[tiger9o0]

Nurgle infected imperial navy bleachers

I finish painting these they turned out great for the most part I painted the guns one colour so you look at the model and not the guns I didn’t have any plans on what paints to use but I did know what colours I wanted to use

[pantmonger]

Finished hills with some static grass. Of the 5 (then 4) different attempts, number 3, the all foam worked out the best, as I could sit and carve it as per photo ref, rather then having 'kinda' hills.

[anim-ttrpgs]

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000

Super interesting video by Questing Beast about some of the earliest ancestors to what would come to be known as a "tabletop roleplaying game," and the wargaming roots of TTRPGs as a whole.

I, the lead rules writer for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy have been a Warhammer 40,000 player for years, and I love to brag about the way that Eureka as a TTRPG is in touch with its wargaming ancestry, both in ways you would and wouldn’t expect.

Playing Warhammer 40,000 has helped me get a good sense for dice probability, especially with regards to the D6s that Eureka uses, and is one of the things that gave me the idea for how Eureka handles firearms, particularly those with high rates of fire.

In Eureka, one single hit from a bullet is enough to incapacitate a human character, and automatic weapons can fire up to 10 or even 12 bullets in a single action. Each one of these bullets has the potential to be devastating if it hits.

Lots of factors affect the probably of a shot hitting a target, and most of them affect it by making the probability go down. Shooting 1-3 shots in a single turn will be rolled by the standard and highly predictable 2D6 that Eureka normally uses, but beyond that number, D12s are used for each shot, which not only makes the rolling of 4+ shots easier because you can scoop a bunch of D12s up in one hand and throw them all at once without having to keep distinct pairs together, but also makes each individual dice roll swingier, and slightly more likely to be a lower number.

Therefore, just like in real life, automatic weapons increase accuracy by increasing the volume of shots fired, increasing the chance that at least one of them will hit. Because any given 9mm fired is just as deadly as another, whether it’s fired by itself or as part of a large burst.

It was Warhammer 40,000’s mechanics that filter massive numbers of attacks through Accuracy, Wounding, and Armor Saves, when only a few of these attacks need to get through in order to be effective, that helped put me onto this idea.

There is also the fact that, despite primarily being a neo-noir Investigation game, Eureka’s rules also allow for players easily controlling multiple characters at a time and the potential for more militaristic scenarios, with each individual PC being super fragile with simple HP that is super easy to keep track of even across multiple character sheets.

Then, there are quite a few things about Eureka that one might not expect to have come from a wargame.

For one, we get a lot of praise for how each section of the Eureka rulebook is ended with a series of bulletpoints that summarize all the key rules and ideas in the paragraphs above. Well, I got the idea to do that from Warhammer 40,000 rulebooks.

There is also a mechanic in the past few editions of Warhammer 40,000 called “Command Points.” Command Points are a limited resource that can be spent to gain small advantages in the game, such as rerolling a single die, or activating the special abilities of certain units. There is a set of universal Command Point abilities that all factions share, as well as every faction having their own set of Command Point abilities unique only to them.

It is no coincidence that Eureka sports a very similar mechanic. You can find more information about this by reading "Investigation and the Eureka! System" in the Eureka prerelease rulebook, which you can download for free right here, but the short version is that as investigators investigate, they gain Eureka! Points. It can take an awful lot of investigating to gain a single Eureka! Point, which makes them a very scarce resource, but they can be spent on valuable bonuses, such as retroactively un-failing a previously failed Investigation check and getting the clue that would have been obtained from it (We call that a “Eureka! Moment!), or adding an extra D6 to an important roll, increasing the probability of success. Those are just the universal ones, however, that every PC has. Like Command Point abilities in Warhammer 40,000, there’s a set of universal ones, but most of them are exclusive.

Certain Traits unlock other Eureka! Point abilities exclusive to PCs who have those Traits, one of my favorite of which being the Eureka! Point ability that the Final Girl Trait unlocks, which allows spending a Eureka! Point to decrease the probably of success for an aggressive monster’s roll, helping simulate the trope of the “final girl” being able to just barely slip out from the jaws of death due to a sudden stroke of luck.

Another one of my favorites is a set of Eureka! Point abilities unlocked by the monster-exclusive Unkillable Trait. These abilities allow monsters, PC or NPC, to suddenly and unexpectedly return to the narrative after seemingly having been killed by losing all their HP. The more Eureka! Points spent, the sooner more immediately the monster can return.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, you can back our Kickstarter before it ends on May 10th and get a copy on release! We are also doing physical copies now!

Oh, and just one more thing..

Eureka Mention!

If you want to try before you buy, you can download a free demo of the prerelease version from our website or our itch.io page!

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

You can also support us on Ko-fi, or by checking out our merchandise!

Join our TTRPG Book Club At the time of writng this, Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is the current game being played in the book club, and anyone who wants to participate in discussion, but can’t afford to make a contribution, will be given the most updated prerelease version for free! Plus it’s just a great place to discuss and play new TTRPGs you might not be able to otherwise!

We hope to see you there, and that you will help our dreams come true and launch our careers as indie TTRPG developers with a bang by getting us to our base goal and blowing those stretch goals out of the water, and fight back against WotC's monopoly on the entire hobby. Wish us luck.

[tri-bi-blast]

World of Warships kept crashing and then penalizing me for it, so I made these in PixiEditor insted. The 1st is random pixel art, the 2nd is the flag of a self-made faction for a game, and the 3rd is me being a prideful little sinner.

[anobjectshowguy]

I sadly haven’t see any recent posts about Joshua / WOPR in the AI community or robot community :(

So I decided to make one :]

I personally think that this little war computer that came out in 1983 deserves WAY more attention :]

Especially his voice and design (its adorable)

[pandaemoniumminiatures]

A Blood Angels commission set wrapped up over the last couple of weeks - the army is ever growing, with more to come later this month!

[happy-chappy-miniatures]

WIP of a conversion for Lorgar I've been working on, based on the 40k Lion El'Jonson figure after a long time shaving off Dark Angels iconography and carving little glyphs into him!

[wolframtheregulator]

Regulators “Butcher” Badulf

Transferred to the Mors Dictares Joint Task Force in response to the recent development of a mutation that has made him “unpopular” with his fellow battle brothers.

vvv more pics below vvv

[simonbreeze]

The next bunch of rogues for my Inquisitor Kill Team.

Had some fun with these 3 agents, I'm not a fan of making the minis, but I do love a kit-bash. The Inquisitors definitely have lots of opportunity to make some fun kit-bashed characters for your team.

[blightlotus777]

When your Gods need more RAM