Ever since I was a child I wanted a dedicated wargaming shed or room. I think it goes back to seeing some of the orginal photos of the Perry twins and other OG members of the Games Workshop team with sheds in their backyards.
10 year old me grew up on the farm, and my dreams were to convert a room next to the stables in our old barn that was used for storage into my wargaming room. Sadly my father passed away when I was young (I have a very vivid memory of receiving my mail ordered copy of the 4th edition of Warhammer Magic on the day of his funeral, its strange the things you remember from childhood) and this was never to happen.
Fast forward 30 years or so and I’m now living in the United States. We rent our first place in the manor and I finally have a semi finished basement. This becomes my hobby room with a gaming table, plenty of shelving and a painting/modelling desk. It’s messy – but it does the trick.
Later we end up buying a place in the same neighborhood. Having some gaming space was a key part of the buying decision (as were our neighbors!), and this place was a bit nicer than our rental. My painting area got relegated to the unfinished part of the basement/laundry, while the gaming space was shared with my wife who uses it as a gym, and as a quasi spare room.
Once we could afford to we started doing some renovations. The first thing we built was a shed in the back corner of the yard. At 10×12 foot it isn’t huge, and was limited due to the location of a large tree. I left it unfinished for much of last year and essentally it became a dumping ground/storage for tools and the like.
Later we finished it by adding insulation, flooring and power. I now had a dedicated hobby space and I could move out of the basement, and paint using natural light (or really nice LEDs when it was dark). A portable AC or Oil heater helped with when it was too hot or to cold, and a TV + beer fridge were mounted in the corner.
Now there was enough space for 2 3D printers (one Resin and one FDM), a full length work bench and storage for all the hobby supplies we could dream of.
Later however we decided on a big move. Which meant saying goodbye to Jefferson Manor and a move to Europe, but that’s for anther post.
I’ve always had a weird obsession with Squats. They were one of those armies that I just missed as I got into 40k during the tail end of 2nd edition, and never really saw them growing up in New Zealand. But there they were – sitting in index imperials.
I started a “Squat Gang” using the venator rules with a bunch of converted Khadaron Overlords around 2018. Later on GW/ForgeWorld released a few squat Dramatis Personae: Grendl Grendlsen, Squat Bounty Hunter and Ragnir Gunnstein, Squat Ammo-jack which were some of the first new squat models (outside of White Dwarf special edition models) in close to 25 years. The followed up with a squat miner gang the Ironhead Squat Prospectors, the Claim Jumper and the Vartijan Exo Driller. Don’t get me started on Leagues of Votan, while I have the box set – they don’t really count as squats to me.
I’ve also been slowly collecting a Squat Epic 40k force.. but thats for another blog post.
Last year I started taking an interest in Horus Heresy, and headed down to the Board Room in Arlington where the Victory Gamers crew were playing some narrative games, where one of the armies was a chaos cult force. After a few too many beers, I learnt about the V1 Cults and Milita rules where you had the option to run Abhuman Helots and Survivors of the Dark age rules to respresent a squat force with higher WS, T and lower M & I + RT era Rhinos (I’d picked up 17 of them in a trade recently so neededa project to use them on) and Land Raiders.
I’d quickly bid way more money than I’d ever admit to my wife on a massive ebay listing but it included a tonne of bikes and trikes, some of them still in blister packs. This was followed up by two more ebay purchases of old GW and Iron claw squats that left me with a decent sized squat force.
Next up I wanted to add a land train, so off to Ramshackle Games where I picked up Minimumus Squat’s Bounty Hunter Crew as well as a bunch of bikers and Jetbikes. I’m a big fan of his vehicles, though the bikers do come in a little bit smaller than the old squat bikers and the resin is an absolute PITA to glue together – something that can be solved using super glue accelerant such as that from Bob Smith Industries.
All up I’ve probably sunk over $2500 USD into the army so far, and I can see it growing… but its something you won’t see on any other gaming table – virtually anywhere else in the world. I’d guess that its the largest RT Era squat army in the USA, or at least close to it!
I worked out a rough color scheme I wanted to use for the standard infantry, something that was fast to paint (there were going to be a lot of them) and matched the early art on the boxes. A quick zenithal airbrush followed by a drybrush in white, Iyanden Yellow for Helmets and Gloves, Blood Angels Red and Dark Angels Green for their uniforms and Snakebite Leather for Hats, Webbing and Boots.
Next up is one of two squads of Thunderers. In this case 10 heavy weapons teams armed with Lascannons. I’m currently in the process of painting an identical squad of 10 armed with heavy bolters as well as miscellaneous armed with other weapons such as missile launchers, conversion beamers and grenade launchers from Citadel/GW as well as 3 bases of mortars from Macroscosm and a RT Era Mole Mortar.
This unit in Resin will most likely be used as a command squad or similar depending on what rules I’m using and came from a kickstarter called Röknaut Space Dwarfs by Ontos Games that are loosely based on the unreleased 2nd edition Squats that never quite made it into retail. I’d have preferred them if they were slightly smaller and in lead – but they are a good “in between” for newer GW squats and more old school ones aesthetic wise.
These guys are mostly GW/Citadel/Ironclaw squats by Bob Olley and were part of one of the ebay purchases I got last year. I’m quite happy with how they were originally painted, so I kept the paint job, added a wash and rebased them all so they were consistent with the rest of the army. The only downside was the seller packaged them very poorly, and a number of multipart ones arrived broken or chipped and I have no idea what the matching paint colors are to touch them up.
More from the same purchase, such as living ancestors, hearthguard, a squat mechanicus, and guildmaster engineers. Again I’ve stuck with the original paint scheme on these.
More GW/Citadel/Ironclaw/Olley squats – painted up in more modern contrast paints to get them ready for the NOVA open in a rougly similar scheme to the older ones. I’ll need to do a darker wash over the blue and purple at some stage to tone them down, but I’m quite happy with how they turned out. I use them as Militia Grenadiers, Medics and Characters.
Some characters I purchsed from Macrocosm, but are a mix of Macrocosm and CP Models Runts. I’m currently using them a Commissars/Discipline Masters or other Characters. I’ll most likely buy a bunch more from CP Models as I’m a real fan of these sculpts.
Squat beastmen from Macrocosm. I’ll likely buy some more of these and am also painting up a heavy weapons team. These will do double duty when I start building out my militia beastmen army next.
Trikes with a quick and dirty/unfinished paint job to get them table ready for NOVA Open. Still need a lot of work done on them, but am currently running them as proxy “sentinels” for my 30k militia list.
Bikers which also need a bit more work to finish them, but good enough to play at NOVA. I’m currently using them as militia cavalry/rough riders for 30k. I’ve got a bunch more in resin from Ramshackle games if I want to have even more bikers for additional mobility.
And heres how I ran them at NOVA Open, with Grenadiers (anything painted blue and purple) in the Rhinos, using the Ramshackle land train as a Malcador tank with Battle Cannon, Demolisher Cannon and heavy flamers and an Armorcast baneblade in support + some more abhumans in the ogryns and ratlings.
Theres a lot more to come and I’ll probably update this post as more gets painted and I add to the army. Let’s see your squat forces in the comments.
We had a brief stopover on the way to Malta in the UK, and for my birthday I got to tick off something from my bucket list – a trip to Warhammer World in Nottingham, UK. I was a little disappointed as I was hoping it would feature more old school GW goodness – but I guess that will require a trip to Wargames Foundry instead for Bring Out Your Lead which I hope to do next year.
Still, super impressive and well worth the trip, and great to get some of the exclusive stuff, as well as the 30k transfers and templates I need for my titans.
A word of warning, it can be a little bit confusing to find it from Nottingham train station if you are walking and using Google Maps. Though you can simply take the light rail/tram and it drops you off virtually outside. I can’t begin to explain the excitement that 10 year old me would have felt coming over the hill and seeing that building for the first time though, and even my wife was impressed with what was on display – and the cake at Bugmans brewery.
It was great to see some of the old models from my childhood flicking through White Dwarf in the flesh as well. Thanks to my wife for putting up with me and humoring me on my birthday when I told her “we were going to a museum”.
Welcome to the brand new Manor Gaming website. We are a bunch of miniature wargamers based in Jeffeson Manor in Alexandria, Virginia. For some reason, this little neighborhood has one of the highest concentration of wargamers on the planet.
We play a mixture of games, but this will primarily focus on Warhammer 30,000, Warhammer Fantasy (and all its editions and offshoots) and Warhammer 40,000 with a good bit of specialist games like Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Epic, and Mordheim too. There might even be a bit of historical content when we find the time.
