NEWS FROM HELL BEFORE BREAKFAST

"A Day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal is a banquet. Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE THE CORPS!"

Imagine if I updated regularly. Just imagine that mum.

Let's have a Blood on the Snow interlude - and talk Oldhammer.

Now...what is.....?

No...I can't do it, I won't ask it.

Look, all you need to answer that question is to look around the table you are playing at.

Do the people behave like these ugly bastards?

If you say: "YES!" - then that's Oldhammer.

So what's going on here? Apart from Harry on the phone (don't worry, he had to pay a forfeit).

We are roleplaying "Another Glorious Day in the Corps" - an Alien universe boardgame which is like a Role-Played Space Hulk with resource management.

So is it any good? Yes it is.

It's not hugely expensive, you can buy the base box for £40 to £45 online which comes with 6 heroes of Hadley's Hope (Marines and Ripley) and around 20 Alien minis.

The core box - contains scenarios based on the movie Aliens, the idea is that you play them in a campaign style - while managing your resources, carrying what you have left from one scenario to the next - remembering all the time that when your resource deck expires - so does your team, and the game.

So you progress from finding and rescuing Newt, Escaping from Sub-Level 3 to the APC, Survival in the Med-Bay and control room and escape to the dropship. The scenario book also includes "Bug Hunt" Scenarios where your "Fire Team" starts with rudimentary weapons and must achieve a goal. The scenarios allow you to open containers and interact with terminals to achieve your goal(s).

The player mechanic is good. Like Space Hulk, your character has a number of action points (APs) with which to perform actions. Each of 1-6 players takes a character board, and (because you really need six characters) if you have any gaps without a human player, the character boards can be flipped to "grunt mode" - where the character isn't as good, but can be ordered to do stuff. And due to a simple AI movement system for blips and aliens - the game can be played solo if you so desire, although one player and five grunts would be a challenge.

Core Figures:

Lieutennant Scott Gorman.

Let's not discuss the British inability to pronounce it properly and need to say "leff". There is a reason behind it - and it's too boring for me to go into.

Private Jenette Vasquez - She only needs to know one thing...where they are.

Here we see what the "Hero Side" of a board looks like:

There is room for a weapon card and a backup weapon, and two equipment cards (body armour, welder, motion tracker etc).

Rank - shows how may orders she can give to grunts.

Speed - is her movement value if she takes a movement action

Aim - is the value her aim dial starts on when she is activated. To hit a target with a ranged weapon she needs to roll under it on a D10. But it drops one every shot in a single phase she takes.

Tech - skill in interacting with terminals and door welding, radios etc

Defence and Melee - her skill if closed in on by an alien and also the chance in close combat that she might be able to strike back with a combat knife or a pistol.

Rebecca Jordan ("Newt")

Former Flight Officer Ellen Ripley

Private William Hudson:

"You want summa this? £uck you!"

Corporal Dwayne Hicks:

Private Riccardo Frost:

You can of course buy expansion packs. And I'm not saying I have.

But I definitely, definitely may have done.

"Absolute Badasses" Expansion.

This provides new miniatures and character boards for six more dudes.

Sergeant Apone, Company man Carter J Burke (boo...hiss...), Private Drake, Private Crowe, Private Wierzbowki and Med-Tech Corporal Dietrich.

And of course...I had to have the "Get Away from her You Bitch!" expansion.

This adds in two new scenarios to your campaign - retreiving Newt from the Alien Nest as well as the final battle on the loading deck of the Sullaco.

This set provides another 4 double sided game boards which can make the original scenarios larger (and require/or fit in up to another 6 players in each scenario - making it an 8 to 12 player game.

In addition, the expansion provides an Alien Queen model; "Enraged Ripley" (carrying Newt); Bishop; Ripley in Powerloader and "Donald Ducked" Bishop.

It comes with a card APC with which between the scenarios "Escape" and "Survival" you can play the APC chase through Hadley's Hope.

If any of this kind of thing appeals to you, I'd suugest searching for the game on youtube for a run-through. I mean - it's roleplaying Space-Hulk with resource management. It even has cards for secret individual charachter missions.

Miniature painting credit goes mainly to Iain "Darkblade" Aitken.

And comic art is by the late, great Denis Beauvais...I mean he isn't dead - but he did go full Trumpian - which is kind of the same thing.

Try it - you might like it.

The game that is.

Not screaming in space.

Blood on the Snow - The Story so Far...

It's time to go back, back, back...

It's July 1987, June 1987 was my first White Dwarf (#90).

July 1987 (#91) - with its beatiful Chris Achilleos used on the cover of Blood royale may well have been the first one I obessed over.

My dad bought it for me from the much missed Harrow Model Shop.

Hidden away on page 70 was a 2nd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle Scenario, "Blood on the Snow" - written by Matt Connell, and illustrated by Nick Williams.

For me - I owned this slightly before I owned Orc's Drift and The Lichemaster - and as such is a battle I've always wanted to play.

With the best Oldhammerers on the Chaos Gods' good Earth.

Of course - being me, my bizarre mix of ADHD and OCD - I don't want miniatures with grassy, meadow bases prancing around on my snowy battlefield.

This may mean (with a little/lot of help from the best friends in the world) - completely painting all 4 detachments.

That's Dwarfs, Humans, Orcs and Goblins. I've posted a handful of Norse dwarfs already. So here are a few hoomies.

I'm working on goblins and more dwarfs and humans as we speak - in between art commissions.

You can stay tuned for how the game will work, as well as updates about the Oldhammer style scenario book which will be professionally printed and given to anyone foolish enought to join me in this game at BOYL 2024.

Let's look at toy soldiers...

First 5 of 12 Plate Armoured Knights

These are "unforgiving close-ups" but all are ex-Citadel miniatures now available from Wargames Foundry. The metallics are from the Scalcolour SC75 "Metal and Alchemy" range. Definitely recommended. And the matt black will (as Darkblade once told me) - "Change your life".