Thork Toadbreath, Gutrippa Boss
Even amongst the Kruleboys, Thork was renowned for the hideous ingenuity of his tactics and the cunning use of his vulcha Eyegouger to spot enemies while remaining unseen. With his boyz, the Back-Breakerz, he had made a name for himself during the conflict in the Bleeding Wilds by constantly surrounding the enemy before finishing them off with deadly pincer movements. During one of these ambushes he was caught in the eddies of the Bleed and dragged into the Ur-River's waters. Somehow Eyegouger managed to follow its master and for days, while Thork held onto the floatsam, the vulcha brought small carcasses for him to feed. Eventually the Gutrippa Boss washed up on the shores of Iscarion, where he quickly looked for shelter from the blinding glare of Hysh, finding it deep in the Lux Umbra. There, he has been enjoying the life of the rover, plundering the tunnels on its own or hiring himself up to unscrupolous adventurers. Yet, he still is fixed only on finding a way back, for he is sure it was one of his boyz that pushed him into the Bleed and he will have bloody revenge.
I bought the Store Anniversary Gutrippa Boss model in October 2022, and as a couple of months later I decided to leave Manchester I rushed to assemble and paint it, least I was tempted to sell it rather than packing it.
As it was a spur of the moment, I didn't convert it and kept the painting farly basic: contrast over a 3-stages zenithal undercoat, followed by drybrushing highlights for the non-metalic parts and a simple Base-Wash-Layer sequence for the metals.
Cadet Baume
Lucas Baume was born from the upper classes of Gallia, and like many privileged youngsters he considered it a great honour to be accepted into the planetary Astra Militarum academy, famed through the Segmentum Pacificum for the utter devotion of his trainees to the Imperial Creed and the dictates of the Adeptus Munitorum. He excelled in his training, showing tactical acumen and total disregard for the safety of the lower ranking trainees he led during gruelling combat simulations. As the perfect candidate for officer duties, he was promoted to Cadet shortly after Lord Regent Guilliman had called the Indomitus Crusade. Gallia sent hundreds of regiments to the mustering grounds and Cadet Baume was seconded to the 9th Light Infantry platoon of the Gallian 1643rd, ready to complete his officer training en route and take command. But their transport was engulfed by a warp storm and spat out of the Malfactus Rift. Harrassed by the orks of Badlanding, the ship managed to reach Finis Sidera and dock there. Cadet Baume offered the few surviving guardsmen to the Rogue Trader cartel running the station, and asked to be deployed in a suicide mission to reclaim the lost sectors of the base. As soon as the soldiers heard his plan, they deserted, joining the crews of Rogue Trader ships. From that day, Cadet Baume has been drinking heavily, ashamed by his failure, and hired himself as bodyguard for the Rogue Traders. Ever since the arrival of Inquisitor Quintus Severus to Finis Sidera, the disgraced soldier has tried to pledge his services to him. The shrewed Inquisitor has not yet accepted the offer, distrustfull of a man unable to fulfil his duties.
This was a model I did to get rid of bits shortly before packing my stuff. It is a simple conversion, the only part requiring some careful work being the cutting of an old Cadian lasgun to be replaced with a boltgun.
The rest of the bits are old Cadian legs, a Tank Officer torso, belt accessories from the Genestealer Cult upgrade pack and a French Infantry head from, I guess, the Brothers Perry's Napoleonic War range. Don't even ask me how that bit found its way into the bitz box!
Obviously, the fact that the torso had braces worked incredibly well with the head, so I replicated the colours of the Light Infantry uniform in the Napoleonic army.
I'm sure everyone is familiar with that nasty feeling that real life is interfering with the hobby.
Well, now think of that feeling and amplify it thousandfold. Then you'll probably get to how I felt for the last month or so.
What's happening, you might wonder. The answer is in these pictures...
Yes, that is my war room. And how different it looks from when I first showed it in this blog.
And yes, I've left my house in Manchester and the UK altogether. Now I'm back in Palermo, my hometown in Sicily, waiting for an international shipment to reunite me with my beloved hobby stuff.
But rather than using this post to whine about the situation, I want to use it to say thanks to all the good friends I made in Manchester through the hobby.
Phil, Dave, Darius, Lee, Robert, David and Saul have all been amazing gaming pals. I remember way back in 2008 when I first stumbled onto Saul and Phil, playing a 40k game with two beautifully converted and painted armies at the Manchester Arndale store. The armies were already enough to call my attention, but what was even better, was their attitude. They were telling a story, not competing!
And many a story we all told over the years, always going the extra mile in building terrains, converting models and painting them. First it was through Mordheim, Necromunda and some crazy homebrewed rules for massive naval battles foughts on the floor. Then in 2015 came Age of Sigmar and the earliest incarnation of Kill Team, exactly when I was setting up my war room.
And that's when Saul and I embarked on the journey that made us best gaming mates. Over these last 8 years, Saul and I completely attuned to each other creatively. While everybody was chipping in and bouncing ideas off each other, the two of us went a step further. Saul regularly came up with new ideas for settings and story lines, I quickly found the most fitting rules and scenarios to bring them to the table and then, without even actually coordinating the writing of our narrative battle reports, we ended up writing the same story from two different but complementary points of view.
Looking back now to the adventures of Inquisitors Lenk and Quintus Severus down in Mancunius Dome, the messing about of the Rotmoons with Kalyustar's dreams of greatness in the Harrowmark's gloom, the clashes between the Purebred and Anomaly Protocol on the scorched wastes of Tor Megiddo, the Shadowflames' rivalry with the Cleavermaws fought across the Realms' Edges, the turf wars between the Void Phoenixes and the Bleaksouls in the shadows of Commorragh, the Ironforged's bullying of the Swordfyshes under the Prowling Forest boughs and the many more smaller campaigns we played, I can see how Saul and I shared the same love for ambiguos characters.
Neither heroes nor villains, they never really won or were actually defeated. They just ground through their lifes in the grim worlds they inhabited. And so all our campaigns always had a narratively bitter ending, with no character fully achieving what they wanted, just like in real life. But in real life we had had the best blast you could imagine!
So, thanks everybody for 15 amazing years of storytelling! And even more love to Saul, for being the greatest companion in the hobby I could have ever dreamed of. See you at Warhammer Fest, you filthy greenskinned pirate!
