Confrontation Goblin Archers

I present 3 Confrontation Goblin Archers by Rackham (long out of production). I have had these lads on and off the painting table for ages. 

These are lovely figures with lots of detail. I hope I have done them justice - not sure if I have over done the skin highlights. I have to varnish these - do I use the gloss varnish like the rest of goblins or do I use the matt varnish? 

So on to something else now!

Morts

Twilight Imperium 2026 - Thunders Edge Expansion

The annual trip to Kernow for the Collective’s Twilight Imperium game took place, with the latest expansion Thunders Edge. This expansion added some new features - a rift/fracture section of the galaxy, alliances and new factions. Allegedly the expansion should make the game quicker, so Snake-eyes had decided to play to 14 points  … I was not so sure.

We did the usual trip to Strawberry Fields for breakfast and and picked factions, off a dice roll. I picked first - but then had the last pick of the alliance and slice of galaxy.

Morts - The Ral Nel Consortium (orange)

Steedo - The Firmament / The Obsidian (yellow)

Sylon - The Titans of Ul (black)

Snake-eyes - The Arborec (green)

DK - The Deepwrought Scholarate (red)

We then picked alliance factions - where if we conquered their home world we picked up the abilities of that faction hero or commander … can’t remember which.

Below the starting point (approximately noon). Everyone is ready to play … nicely. Surprisingly I managed to get the first breakthrough to find Thunders Edge ( this unlocked at faction specific trait that helped build up action cards in my case), unfortunately I wasted a few rounds not quite getting enough bits to actually win the planet - d’oh. I also revealed the fracture and its access points in my first action … didn’t go there until much later in the game.

Turn 2 - we have some controversy - I checked with another player that I could produce some infantry by activating one system, then pick them up with ship passing through. However on trying to carry this out, was this is not correct. There was then some discussion about if I could carry this out, as I had planned for this over a number of rounds - the decision was that for this game, there would be house rule which would allow this. I appreciated Sylon’s intervention here. 

Sylon and DK were working well together - to be fair DK was refreshing commodities for everyone, although not truly altruistically (as he could get tech and in some cases co-existence. Steedo was trying to work out his complicated faction and Snake-eyes made a run on Mecatol Rex!

Turn 3 - I was on Mecatol Rex - I was feeling a bit stretched. Snake-eyes had moved off after all of his infantry had been “weeded” off (the Arborec are a plant based race, which grow infantry) Mecatol. 

However as the turn ended things were looking ok - I might take the 8 card again to see if I could score a few more points. Sylon’s Titans were a growing power - with DK leaching off co-existing off his advances. 

In the Status part of the turn there was an agenda to be voted on which was FOR, (Against nothing happened)if the Speaker (Snake-eyes) rolled high (there was an issue here) everyone would get a tech upgrade or if he roll low everything in Mecatol Rex was wiped off the board, and every hex around Mecatol had to lose 3 ships. 

Now I expected that any reasonable person would see that voting against was the RIGHT thing to do - however the rest of the collective are obviously not reasonable. This coupled with Snake-eyes inability to roll high when he should meant that I lost the ships, mechs, pds, and infantry in the insert. Basically I was shafted! To quote Hudson in Aliens  “Game over man!”.

The start of turn 3 or 4 … doesn’t matter, what was the point of continuing to play … the others had fighters to sacrifice to the hideous and nefarious action they had chosen to enact … DK was on Mecatol. Snake-eyes was fungally growing dreadnoughts and Steedo was doing his usual … “don’t look at me, I’m not a threat”. 

I was not a threat - just trying to rebuild. 

Mid game scoring - DK opening up a bit of a lead. This was after 6 hours of play - 14 seems a long way off. 

Losing track of turns - Sylon and Snake-eyes have clashed over Mecatol and are both weakened for a bit - DK has started building a monument - a victory point after three turns … but could become more, so was protecting than. Steedo’s faction had done its swappy thing and shockingly he was spreading across the board. I was working on recovering from the underhand backstabbing I had been in the receiving end of…

At this point Sylon and myself were out over the running for a win or top 3 placing - DK was 2 points away from victory, so Snake-eyes and Steedo went in full “stop the win” mode. 

Steedo when for removing DK’s planets (the earlier house rule then worked against DK much to his annoyance), while Snake-eyes tried to remove DK’s legendary planet in the fracture which was worth a victory point. Sylon made a run on Mecatol and took it , while I took a planet (and victory point) in the fracture - which was nice. 

DK was just having to bat off the attacks as he had a target on his back. 

We had some more controversy, where DK didn’t hear when Steedo ask for the secondary action to get a secret agenda - DK couldn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to pick one from the deck. The reasoning was that we had picked in order. If DK had picked first (which he should have) it would have changed the agendas for the rest of us (the one I had would have gone to Snake-eyes and it suited his faction). 

Back to the game and Snake-eyes managed to roll high and managed to wrestle the planet off DK - who was 1 point short of victory (22:40 to 00:50 off the photo time stamps) … would we play another round?

Then in the status phase the monument received another commodity, which increased it to 2 victory points and DK won! 

So after all of Steedo and Snake-eyes efforts DK’s victory had been inevitable from 2240 …

It was over after 13 hours (much to Sylon’s and my relief as we had been out of the running for about 3 or 4 hours).

End of game score board.

Congratulations to DK on a hard fought win!

A quality but long day - I definitely think that we need to stick with 10 points - a big thanks to Snake-eyes for hosting and a lovely curry and DK for driving Steedo, Sylon and Myself down to Kernow. 

Morts

Drakon Rider - Painted

This Mantic games Drakon rider - with some additions - GW Elf head and lance shaft - press moulded chain mail skirt from a Ral Partha elf. The additions were made so he fits in more with the rest of the elf army. 

Overall happy with this - I have 2 more Drakons and they’re riders to paint. And the Drakon Lord … and everything else!

Anyway I have finished something so perhaps the painting mojo is coming back!

I have had some more mischief just arrive, so will show that later. 

Morts

Happy New Year and all that

As the title says happy new year for 2026, apologies for the late start to this year’s blog … still suffering with motivation - I did think I had sorted that after our new year travels. 

So since the last blog we have been to visit my brother’s family in Denmark (no claims of sovereignty there). A jolly splendid time we had there too!

We had a wander around Roskilde and found Kelsor game shop (where my brother and nephew picked up some paint and Raven guard) and the cathedral.

The following day we had a walk along the beach and …

… found a Danish fort from WW1 - Mosule - which they they weren’t involved in, although they did give the name to the largest naval battle of the war. It was closed, but looks if they do some educational stuff in the summer. I do like a good fort!

While in Denmark we played a few games - Skip Bo - a fun card game, mainly luck based but good fun. We also played a couple of Deckscape “escape room” card game. We played the fate of London and curse of the sphinx - while the games were good fun, although some of the clues were too complicated, cryptic and just silly which did take the edge off of the experience. We might try the Kosmos Exit games to see if they are better. 

The sunset on New Year’s Day. New Year’s Eve was a demonstration of how much money the Danes are willing to spend on fireworks - a good 40 minute display at midnight from private households in a small town … sorry no pictures was too busy going Oooo and Arrr trying to stay warm. 

My nephew has got into 40k and was keenly painting his Christmas presents of Shark Daddy and carcharodons space marines from Majorminis. A very neat painter he is too. When I got back I did make a little progress on a Drakon and the Confrontation Goblins. So I picked up a little inspiration. 

Steedo and my good self also managed a game of Raiders of the North Sea with BUTR (boy up the road) and his good lady … a tight win for Steedo and a close game overall. 

Out on the moor this weekend and the annual Twilight Imperium game the next … all go here now we are back to work. 

Morts

Happy Christmas one and all - Sub Terra played

 So Christmas 2025 has happened and the New Year is coming. Not much to report on the making and painting side of things (I have started some Confrontation Goblins and nearly finished a Drakon rider … but haven’t). 

The collective managed to get together last week for a game at Board in Isca, and good fun was had by all. Sylon picked the game, was pretty much ideal for a couple of hours in a board game cafe. 

Sub Terra is a tile placement game set in a cave system, created as you go by picking tiles (strangely enough). You take the roles of various cavers trying to get out before the event cards do. You have to avoid “cave ins”, floods, gas, ledgers, slides and horrors. We played on easy mode and ignored some advice given by the cafe manager as he explained the rules. Which was being followed in the top picture here early game.

The game played fairly quickly with minimal errors (but obviously some) on our part. You had 2 action points to play in a turn which could be spent in various ways - scouting, moving, exploring (which was a combination of the previous two but you had to go into the new tile), healing or a character ability. We managed to tidy up a real flood when DK knocked out Steedo’s beer … Steedo took the spillage remarkably well. The turns go character actions, horrors actions (I think we might have been doing something wrong because there weren’t any…), flip hazard card - could trigger flooding, “cave ins” or horrors etc. The bottom picture shows the end game as Tiger-King, Snake-eyes and Sylon won the race to find the exit tile with DK, Steedo and myself on the other side of the system … should have left DK’s Leader (who no one had followed) by himself … flashbacks to the 2018 UK Games Expo where Dk “wandered” off … Although 3 cavers out was a win for the party. 

So a pretty tight game which I think non-gamers would play and enjoy. Also time limited. Issues - the contrast on the tiles between the path and walls is difficult to see and the game can spread a bit on the table. However Sub Terra 2 is out and has dealt with these issues (although the setting is different ish). 

Anyway a good little game - enjoyed it. 

We then managed a couple of games of Coup - nice to play again. 

A good evening and nice to catch up with the collective before Christmas. 

Christmas has been and Santa has brought me the 5th Edition of Talisman and a £20 GW voucher to spend …

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and best wishes for the new year!

Morts 

Back to the Blackstone Fortress

The better half was off for a day, so I tried to organise the collective for a game … unfortunately many were unable to make the day. However Steedo and Sylon could make it. After much dithering Blackstone Fortress was decided up on - hopefully with a game of Imperium Classics to finish. 

We decided to have a “recap” expedition into the Fortress and pick the heroes to take in. Steedo took the Amallyn Shadowguide (Eldar), Sylon Pious Vorne (the fanatic with a flamer thrower) and I took the Janus Drak -rogue trader. The 4th hero were the ratling twins Rein and Raus. We had a couple of challenges, then an ambush!

Above is the field of play - Spindle drones and Ur-guls were are opponents. We charged about with some good shooting to take out the enemies and had a good recap of the rules. We followed up with a couple more challenges, where we pushed are luck … which was a mistake because a couple of characters lost enough health so we weren’t able to visit another challenge in the fortress. 

We now decided that we would go on a stronghold mission - this meant taking characters with clues (4 are needed to go to stronghold). The chosen this time were Espern Locarno the Navigator, Thaddeus the Purifier, Dahyak Grekh (Kroot tracker) and Pious Vorne (for a second run of the evening). 

We read (scan) the rules and decided that to try and run 4 exploration cards before hit the stronghold would be suicide and would take too long. We were up against Obsidius Mallex and all of his minions (2 chaos warriors, 4 beastmen, 4 Negavolt cultists, 14 traitor guardsmen and 2 rogue psykers. However the guard and Obsidius (marines and psykers) could move until we moved into a chamber … the guard would shoot if we stayed in particular hexes at the end of an action. 

The game started well - we cleared out the beastmen and cultist pretty easily. Steedo came up with a plan to move Obsidius towards us using Espern’s power … we think we played this right… so we could blast him to pieces at range. This worked … however we were taking damage from the guard … we moved quickly from a position of looking like the whole team would get out …to would any of us get out! Espern in a moment of madness or over confidence by Steedo, who thought his psychic shield would save him was blasted to bits by a Chaos Space Marine … Thaddeus was overwhelmed by reinforcements of traitor guard. 

After spending a turn trapped in the grinding room Dahyak and Pious made a sprint to the escape portal!

Then we had to deal with the aftermath … Thaddeus survived his roll on the death table … unfortunately Espern Locarno was less lucky and now has a mortis card meaning he is dead and out of Blackstone Fortress …

The check through also picked up that the traitor guard could have been more active if the explorers were more visible to them … that could have made it a bit tougher, as would actually looking at the legacy cards in the little wallet … but set up was a bit rushed for some reason - I just wasn’t on it. Anyway good fun was had I am planning another visit to the Fortress soon - we need more clue tokens to get back to a stronghold … I will to much better prep next time. 

I also found some rules for Kill Team 2019 for Blackstone Fortress characters and for using the tiles … I think that will be developed (by me … GW are 2 editions on by now). 

As it was we didn’t manage a game of Imperium Classics - another time. 

Morts

Games in and out ….

So Osprey games send out a Black Friday offer, which a bargain in it! Imperium Classics for about £15 including postage. I had looked at this in the Orcs Nest a week or so ago, so it was snapped up.

What it’s arrived has caused an issue with space on the shelf … so I am looking at Kill Team here …

So I have to decide to see if I can sell the 1st edition (two books on the left) or 2nd edition …

GW has produced a new edition of Kill Team in the last 12 months, which I haven’t picked up. As I understood it the new edition has limited teams which you have to buy. 

2nd edition was based on fire teams which were a little bit of a pain to be honest - the 1st edition was very flexible, with the ability to pick what was in core book - the single expansion I have does have rules for most of the primaris space marine models.  The rules are more like Warhammer 40k from 2019 (I don’t know what edition of 40k that was). So currently i’m leaning towards keeping 1st edition (old expansions would also probably be cheaper on eBay). 

Will discuss with the collective moving forward on this plan. 

Morts