Painter: Dultoriminis

Model(s): Emperors Champion

Paint(s): Spray Chaos Black, Abaddon Black, White Scar, Celestra Grey, Ulthuan Grey, Dark Reaper, Zandri Dust Screaming Skull, Mephiston Red, Rhinox hide, Leadbelcher, Retributor Armour, Liberator Gold, Agrax Earthshade, AK – Streaking Grime

Method(s): Spray Chaos Black, paint whole model Abaddon Black ( this can be done with a thin mix and just “slapped” on quickly), the reason for this is Chaos Black and Abaddon Black have a different finish and if we need to clean up any mistakes you would very clearly notice the difference in blacks. For armour edge highlight with Dark Reaper. For cloth paint Zandri Dust, wash with Agrax Earthshade and highlight with Screaming Skull. Base the puldrons and chest shield in Celestra Grey, layer Ulthuan Grey and highlight with White Scar, you can either freehand the chest shield or use a transfer, for all gold parts, base Retributor Armour and highlight with Liberator Gold, for all silver just base with Leadbelcher.

GRIM DARK: Once the model is finished cover the whole thing in AK – Streaking Grime . Allow to dry for 30 mins. Now with cue tips or a soft cloth wipe off as much as you can. this will leave all the grime in recesses and create a realistic used/worn look.

Paint Time: 6 hours

Blackstone fortress is a now slightly discontinued game by Games Workshop. It was basically half board game, half RPG in which you play a session, save your progress and then take that progress on with your now upgraded characters in the next session.

It had a couple of advantages over a lot of other board games, in that it was cooperative, you CAN play on your own and that it also had a tonne of expansions (See the pictures at the bottom), it also still has an awful lot of community support, both in terms of extra scenarios and extra support for characters, + third party 3d printed stuff etc, etc, etc.

So it was strange that something so popular and so beloved got cancelled.

As I had just got the first boxset this was a bit of a pain as a number of the expansions were more than a little rare and so would never get a reprint, however with the help of a couple of friends, we managed to get everything before the scalpers got us.

Then we settled down to the solid job of painting. Blackstone is famous for the quality and diversity of its models, We got the base box painted and then sat down for our first game. It was a bit steep on the old initial learning curve but we got the hang of it, however we’re mainly painters not gamers. So once we’d had one big session, we put it back in the box and got on with painting miniatures.

Then comes the move away from my office to the far more communal setting of Bad Moon Cafe, and with that comes people coming up to you and saying “Hello, my name is X. Can I join you?” It’s a very open and easy going place like that, that was how our little group started to grow, soon the option of playing actual games came up, not being hard bitten wargamers various less stressful games were mentioned, then Blackstone came up,

“you’ve got Blackstone!!? painted?. Let’s play that, I’ve always wanted to”.

So I bring the initial box, and a new person joins us starting that day, because for some reason its a game people want to play. now Blackstone is very much like 40K Rogue trader, in that while just the players can control it, and you can even play it totally on your own, it benefits from a bit of DM’ing to bring out the best in it.

Initially the guys had the normal battle with the rules, but one offer to do the DM role later and we are having a very, very high speed fun game.

Everyone was very enthusiastic, with multiple people coming up and checking/confirming what the game was, and could they join in future weeks (not a problem its easy for people to drop on and off with out causing issues with the campaign). 

Again why GW cancelled the damn thing I will never know. 

Anyway, here we are, and we’re going to do a long term game and report it here. and if there’s multiple people, or people get out of sync, we’re not gonna get over excited about it. We’re going to run multiple scenarios and report all here.

So a brief overview to those of you who have glared at Blackstone’s rules and wondered what was going on.

Basically is  a number of short scenario games.

They could be a small skirmish battle with a layout, or they could be a card challenge, or they could be just a series of dice rolls.

Each one of these encounters can take between 30 seconds and half an hour.

And you get rewards for completing these “encounters”. These come in 2 forms 1) Upgrades for your character. 2) Clues for a chance to fight the big boss(s).

Fight 4 big bosses and you get a chance to fight the biggest boss.

That’s basically the core idea. Each expansion added on to this makes it more and more involved and more and more complex, and can take the same characters all the way along, in the meantime they’re adding extra characters, extra diversity etc etc

A good fun game once you got the hang of it and perfect for a setting such as Bad Moon.

I would actually like to apologise to Bad Moon Cafe at this point. I booked our normal painting table with an option for playing Blackstone on it. Then didn’t do any painting, blocked line of sight with a huge painting box. Barely ordered any food and drink, occupied three tables, forgot to pay the gaming charge. Basically got in the way, then finished everything in a flurry and left exhausted.

Sorry, it’ll be cleaner next week If you let us back, however the pizza was great.

Campaign 1: Current progress 

• Explorers: Janus Draik, Pious Vorne, Amallyn Shadowguide, UR-025
• Upgrades: None (they have not been back to Precipice yet) 
• ArcheoTech: 12 Points
• Clues: 4 
• Discovery Cards played: 5

A slight background for Blackstone 

As you can see above, there is a huge mixture of bolt-ons, add-ons and bits and bobs for Blackstone. There are several major expansions that introduce game changing rule differences. There are a myriad of smaller expansions which add extra characters and a few specialist challenges. Then there are tonnes of rule expansions + campaigns and such like, that came out in white dwarf, that were compiled into annuals, and then finally, there were all of the naughty little GW ways of getting you to spend more money, which is to bring out a rule in white dwarf that requires you to buy a box-set to get one miniature, we managed to get them all and then in addition there is one  company that did all of the 3d scenery, which fit Blackstone. This alone occupies about two large boxes. we have not painted all of these but we will get round to it. But as you can see, they will really add to the game.

The final big part of sorting out a mobile painting solution is the case, this turns out to be the trickiest part of them all, I have seen a number of different solutions and none of them seemed to meet all of the requirements I had, straight from the shop, after a lot of deliberation I went for The Paint Chest by Frontier War Gaming

I wanted to be able to carry absolutely everything I need for a single paint trip in a single box, which when I laid everything out meant I could not go for the smaller but awesome looking “The Paint Case”, I know some people can do minimalist painting solution but I want this to be my main painting box, also I tend to carry group equipment.

Looks good sitting on a desk

The case itself is built nice and strongly. There is a bit of wobble in how it is put together on the doors, but after having a look it the quality hinges I realised it’s impossible to do anything about that, given distance from fulcrum and that kind of thing.

The wood is a good solid one that doesn’t show any weakness.

The hinges are solid metal, metal clasps, good solid construction all round.

The box itself feels like it is laser cut. The drawer fittings when you first start using them feel a little bit rough. But that is only the nature of its construction, once you get the hang of them, they all fit perfectly and don’t rattle.

There are notable slight differences in height between the different spaces for draws, with the top draw on each vertical column actually having a bit more space, I save those four areas for when I need a little bit more height (say for contrast paints).

The wet palette itself is a strange mix. The actual palette itself is excellent. One of the few with an airtight seal. couldn’t recommend it more, so it was a bit strange that they went a bit low quality after that, the foam feels low density and cheap. In fact, I went and swapped out the foam with an existing piece I had from another brand. The same is true for the actual paper. As you can see from the pictures. It’s a good deal more transparent. It’s totally serviceable though, I am at the stage of painting where I am not the best painter in the world. So it doesn’t make that much of a difference to me. But on hot days, it wants to curl up far faster than the competition.

There is additional varieties of drawers that you can buy including a good solid metal plate version. That’s pretty useful for miniatures and stuff with magnets. I swapped out a couple of drawers for those and also altered my handles to have magnets in them to make use of this

The actual box versions of the draws do come with dividers but I’ve ended up not using those. The boxes themselves aren’t really so big that you need to do dividers but it’s nice that they are supplied.

When I take the box to Bad Moon Café of all of the items that I take, the case itself is the one that is asked about the most, so it seems there are not many good competitors out there, There are a lot of home brew versions and everyone’s got their opinion but this does seem to be the very best case out in the market.