Help me name my Guardsman Marbo!

Now that my version of Guardsman Marbo is completed, I need a name for him. I've come up with a list of names--if they seem a little weird, that's because there's a reason for them. Extra points for figuring out what the reason is. Vote for your favorite in the poll at right.

• Don "Gus" Hrothgar
  
• "Dragon" Rushgoth
  
• Gus "Dragon" Horth
  
• Gus H. "Dragon" Thor
  
• Ash "Gundog" Thorr
  
• H.G. "Tornado" Grush
  
• "Roughshod" Grant

Other name suggestions are welcome, but they have to fit my criteria (which you have to figure out for yourself)

Guardsman Marbo

Along with the Regimental Officers, I like the idea of Guardsman Marbo, but rather than get the model I decided to convert my own. I didn't want my version of Guardsman Marbo to look like John Rambo, but rather like a more traditional Delta Force Operator or Navy SEAL.

I started with a basic cadian legs and torso, trimming it to have the torso lean forward and filling the gap with green stuff. I used a heavy weapons sprue backpack, swapping out the knife for a Space Marine's knife, which is larger. The arms are Cadian arms, with the shoulder pads trimmed off. The gun is a Space Marine bolter with scope, a sight from the IG heavy weapons sprue, and a piece of plastic rod to give it a suppressor. Various pouches and the head are forgeworld bits, and the boonie hat is green stuff.

After priming him black, I basedcoated him. Calthan Brown on the cloth, armor, and accoutrements, Chaos Black for the knife and gun, and Orkhide shade for the gloves and face (he's wearing camo facepaint--no, he's not an ork).
From here it's much like painting any of my woodland MARPAT guardsmen. Snakebite Leather on the cloth, Desert Yellow on the armor, boots, backpack and pouches. Catachan Green on the smoke grenades the backpack, and a heavy drybrush of Catachan Green on the face and the gloves.
A coat of Devlan Mud over the armor, cloth, face, and gloves.
First stage of the camouflage, with my darkened Gunship Green on all the cloth.
Remainder of the camouflage, with Chaos Black and Khemri Brown.
Almost done: I highlighted the armor, boots and accoutrements with Desert Yellow. Painted the scopes on the gun, and drybrushed the gun with Adeptus Battlegrey. Also painted the knife boltgun metal, gave it a quick wash of Badab Black, and then highlighted the edge of the knife with Chainmail and Mithril Silver with little tick marks to make it look like the knife has seen some action. Put a very light drybrush of Catachan Green mixed with a little Knarloc Green for the face, gloves, and grenades.
I had considered him done, but after looking at him for a bit I decided that his gun looked too...black. The gun was big and seemed like a big black blob, so I decided to paint up the casing. I painted it Khemri Brown with a highlight of Khemri Brown mixed with Kommando Khaki (I think--either that or a tiny amount of Skull White). I think the result looks better than the pure black gun.

I think he came out pretty good, but in retrospect, I think the facepaint didn't come out quite right. Perhaps a few stripes of a brown color would help make it look more like facepaint and less like his skin color... I'm also questioning the use of Khemri Brown for the gun casing. I think that perhaps painting it similar to his armor (Desert Yellow, washed with Devlan Mud, then highlighted with Desert Yellow) would fit the "look" of the model better. Oh well. If I get annoyed enough with it, I can always repaint the bits I don't like...

Painting ACUPAT Tutorial

As with the woodland MARPAT and the desert MARPAT, I made a swatch and compared it to a sample of the real thing in an attempt to match the colors. In this case, the colors match pretty well. The colors are Codex Grey, Fortress Grey, and Dheneb Stone.


Before I jump right into the model itself, I thought I'd go over trying to figure out how to paint a digital pattern. The simple fact is, at the scale of these models, there's no way you'll be able to match the real pattern--the pattern itself is too small and complex. The best you can do is approximate it, with the knowledge that your brush is just too big and clumsy to get the real thing down pat.

I played around with Photoshop to analyze the pattern. On the left is a photo of an ACU, and to the right is the same photo, but blurred. The blurring simplifies the image into more managable shapes.
Next I used the brush tool to paint over the dark grey areas. Due to the sheer coarseness of the brush, you lose a lot of detail, but I'm only worried about getting the basic regions of color here.
Next I used the lighter shade of grey, and painted over the areas where that color seemed to be most prominent.
Looking closely at the picture, it's clear that I missed a few spots, so I went back and touched it up a little, filling in some more areas with the two greys.
Finally, I replaced the background of the painted image with the sand color. This solidifies the image and you can see its constituent shapes.
The end result is clear: The pattern does not consist of stripes of different colors, but it's not just irregular blobs either. There are sections of the dark grey and the sand that have the appearance of stripes, but they are definitely irregular in thickness, and they are broken up by the light gray, which is very randomly distributed.

So how does one paint this? I would suggest starting off by painting irregular stripes, and specifically avoiding keeping them of uniform thickness. In fact you should actively attempt to keep the thickness random. Then paint on random dabs of the light grey color. Once this is done, hold the model at a distance and examine it--if it looks like there's too much sand, or too much dark grey, you can touch it up by randomly applying dabs of the deficient color. Do that enough times and the digital pattern will start to emerge.

Stage 1: Ok, so here I go painting my actual model. Step one was to basecoat the model. I gave the skin a coat of Tallarn Flesh, the cloth Dheneb Stone, the armor and boots Khemri Brown, the gun Chaos Black, and the gloves and accoutrements Orkhide Shade. I know what you're thinking, "Why Dheneb Stone for the basecoat?" The ACUs are mainly grey, not beige... Well, in the real ACU the sand color really does make up a significant amount of the pattern. Practically speaking, the Dheneb Stone is a foundation paint, and therefore covers the black basecoast very well--better even than Codex Grey. If I did Codex Grey, I'd probably have to do two coats to cover it the black uniformly.
Stage 2: I painted the armor and boots etc., with Desert Yellow. I agonized about what color to use for a long time. When the ACU was first fielded in the real world, the body armor of troops varied widely in colors because of what was available at the time. This included old woodland pattern, olive drab, coyote tan, to foliage green (the darker grey in the ACU pattern itself). Nowadays, body armor in the ACU pattern itself seems to be the most common. This might look cool, but the entire model would end up looking like the pattern, blending in with himself and obscuring the detail, which would detract from the appearance of the model. This picture is an example:

Seeing as I'm painting up many of my troops in the woodland MARPAT camouflage, and they are issued Coyote Tan body armor, I decided that this guy would have been issued the same thing. At this stage I also picked out a few spots in Chaos Black, and painted the scope and laser designator with Regal Blue and Mechrite Red respectively. I also did a very heavy drybrush of Catachan Green over the Orkhide Shade areas.
Stage 3: Next up was starting on the camouflage pattern itself. I painted Codex Grey over the cloth in an irregular stripe pattern, dabbing it on in places to make the stripes irregular in shape and thickness. I deliberately gave the Codex Grey a lot of coverage, so as to tone down the dominance of the Dheneb Stone.
Stage 4: This next stage was very simple--I painted in the eyes, then gave the face and all the Desert Tan areas a wash of Devlan Mud to shade them. The wash on the armor also darkens the shade a bit to make it match the color of Coyote Tan a bit better. I also gave the face another wash, this time of Ogryn Flesh.
Stage 5: Now I dabbed in Fortress Grey into the camouflage pattern, randomly and comparatively sparingly. Anyplace on the model that looked like the Codex Grey was over-dominating the Dheneb Stone or vice versa got a dab of Fortress Grey. Once that was done, I did a once over and touched up any places I thought I missed with Codex Grey and Fortress Grey. At this stage I higlighted the face with Tallarn Flesh, the armor and boots with Desert Tan, and the green areas with a 50/50 mix of Catachan Green and Knarloc Green.
Stage 6:Seeing as this guy is a sniper, I did some web-surfing to look at some sniper rifles to look for other paintjobs than simple black, and found some cool pictures of the M110.While I didn't model my sniper rifle on this design, I decided to paint it similarly. I painted the casing with Khemri Brown and highlighted it with a 50/50 mix of Khemri Brown and Kommando Khaki. I painted the imperial insignia on the gun with Desert Yellow and gave it a wash of Devlan Mud. I painted the scope Charadon Granite, and hightlighted various black bits on the gun with Charadon Granite as well. At this stage I also finished up painting the scope and laser designator, and highlighted the various black bits of the model with Adeptus Battlegrey.
Finally, for fun I also decided to give this guy some Nomex Aviator Gloves, just like the guy in this picture.Nomex Aviator Gloves are in pretty common use, based on various photos I've seen of troops in the field. They are basically green on the back of fingers/hand, with grey on the palm, inside of the fingers, and a stripe that runs between the fingers and thumb down to the wrist.

With that, this guy is good to go...

Game or Simulation?

Over the past decade, within my gaming group, we've had many pick up games, the forces and scenario being determined by a rule of "Who hasn't played each other in a while? What scenario haven't we tried in a while?" Those have been lots of fun. But with time I've been increasingly drawn to narrative scenarios/campaigns rather than unstructured "pick up games." I find that thinking about these story based scenarios is more fun than thinking about isolated games that have no larger context.

My biggest and arguably best Battle Report, The Assault on Morkandy Beach is the classic example. And yet, the victor of that battle was entirely predetermined. In designing the scenario, we decided from the beginning that the Imperial Guard were going to win the battle--the "drama", as it were, would be just how long and how many casualties it took for them to finally succeed. In many ways it was one of the most fun battles I participated in, and when I posted it, it got the most feedback of any Battle Report I ever posted (originally I had posted it on various message boards).

40k is clearly a "game" and most players view it as such, but in generating the Morkandy Beach scenario, I turned it into a "simulation." The primary difference between a war "game" and a "simulation" is that simulations frequently ignore any attempt at balance between the forces involved and/or their objectives. They address "what if" scenarios.

As I am a big history fan, this is the kind of game that interests me the most. In the real world, armies are never evenly matched, and generals have to make do with what they have. Increasingly, I find myself thinking less about trying to fit armies into specific points value (i.e., what can I make with 2000pts?) and thinking more about giving myself deliberate limitations on my army choice to fit the scenario. The game becomes less about winning, and more about what can I manage to pull off with the forces at my disposal.

Also, in the real world, opposing armies often have wildly varying objectives--beyond just "kill the other guy." 40k tries to deal with this aspect by assigning physical "objectives" to players, such that they have to take and hold specific points on the battlefield. This is a good start, but in making the game a "simulation", I like to go farther than that. Many of the more scenario based games in 40k and its supplements address than the 3 types in the main rulebook. But in general, even these scenarios are created with a view to maintain game balance--for each disadvantage one side has, it is given an advantage in another aspect to keep it fair. This is fine for the intended purpose, but think it can also be interesting to let the balance fall out the window completely if it makes sense for the scenario.

I know some players might view this perspective as madness--why on earth would you deliberately handicap yourself (or your opponent), either in terms of army selection or scenario? Isn't this the very definition of cheese (or stupidity, depending who has the advantage)? Well, for me it's not about winning, and it's not about handicapping myself with the goal of improving my skills as a player so I can kick butt in a regular, balanced game. It's about putting myself in the shoes of a "real world" commander, in order to get an understanding of the problems that one would face when dealing with a "real world" battlefield that isn't always fair.

But then, 40k is science-fiction. There ARE no "real world" commanders, dealing with "real world" problems on a "real world" 40k battlefield. But so what? I think many players would agree that games (of all kinds) are more fun if they have greater immersion. For me, I find it more fun playing a more "simulation" version of the game where I think more about achieving my objectives as an Imperial Commander (or Ork, Eldar, Tau, whatever), rather than defeating my human opponent in an abstract dice-rolling "game."

One of the beauties of 40k is that you can play it any way you want and have fun.

Regimental Advisors

The new Regimental Advisors are undoubtedly cool, but rather than buy the new miniatures, I decided that I would make my own. That is, use another miniature in one case, and do a minor conversion in another.

Lt. Varras from the Battle for Macragge boxed set would fit just fine for an Officer of Fleet.

For the Master of Ordnance (or as I call him, my Fire Support Officer), I took a standard guardsman, using some bits from the vehicle upgrade sprue and heavy weapons sprues, and whipped up this guy.