It's been a very long time since I last had the chance to do any real dice-chuckin', what with Papa Nurgle spreading his influence around the world. But finally, this last week has seen Scoob and I get down to some proper playtesting of the new Epic rules that I've been cooking up for what seems like an eternity now.

We played a series of games, between 3000 and 7000 points, with Scoob as the Orks and myself controlling the minions of Chaos.

At their core, the rules are dirt-simple, but each game still saw us tweaking and adding, and throwing up different ideas to use in the future.

I'm definitely liking the direction the rules are taking, and though they are not finished I had more fun playing these games than I did playing pretty much any game of 5th or 8th 40K. Shame that we're the ones having to do all the work in order to get a game system up and running that we actually like. Would be much easier to throw a bit of money at a game company, but if they're not supplying what we want, then we don't have any choice.

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Our new Epic rules are not the only new rules we have been testing recently. In amongst all our Epic playtesting, we tried a couple of games of One Page Rules Grimdark Future. This is a free and simple ruleset that lets you play games with 28mm sci-fi models, and very inspired by Warhammer 40K.

Though we only tried two games, we came to the conclusion that One Page Rules definitely does not rule. In both games, my Eldar shuriken weapons tore Scoob's Orks apart in short order, and we couldn't really see any way to change that outcome without making our own modifications to the rules. It just seemed very hard for combat armies to do much.

More testing, and maybe some tinkering, could definitely happen in the future, but right now, we're more focused on our own rules.

The big terrain build I started a while back is continuing, though very slowly. It's been such a slow slog because I've not had a great deal of time for wargaming so far this year, as I've been trying to make it more about computer games.

Yet a few of my planned terrain pieces are now complete.

I had the clever idea at first to try and create some buildings from scratch from some offcuts of wood. I originally wanted them to look like factories, but I think they've come out more looking like hab-units. But oh well.
These took forever, especially the adding of the detail which I did by just cutting out bits of card, so I ended up veering away from these to work on other things, coming back to them every now and then.

I had far more luck and progress with the more natural additions to my terrain collection. These are some new hilly-rock things with steps, as the old steps I made looked a little big for 6mm sized models. These still look huge, but at least it's not as ridiculous to think the little dudes could climb up there.
I used filler for the first time in years on the rock faces of these pieces, and it has come out looking a lot better than how I was doing them before. This has made me decide that all my other hilly-rock-things need a big update. Great, more work.
Also, like with the 40K ruins I did a while back, I had trouble with patches of the green undercoat showing through the grass, which multiple coats didn't seem to fix. So I bought a big bag of flock to glue down first when I next added grass.

As luck would have it, the other buildings I had been working on were some 6mm MDF ruins I found online. I had gotten on so well with the filler on the rocks that I thinned some down and painted it onto the wood to give it more of a concrete texture, which worked surprisingly well. I know how I'm going to do MDF terrain in the future, that's for sure. I only wish I had used it on the other wooden buildings as well, but at this point they were a bit too far along for me to be bothered going back and tinkering.
I also tried my new idea, and flocked the bases of these ruins before adding the grass, and the result, while not perfect, is a marked improvement.

With the rocks and ruins done, it was back to the wooden buildings to finish the painting on those. I think I spoiled them a little, as I used quite a heavy splash of a wash I mixed up myself. I didn't really intend this to be a shade wash, but more of a grime wash. Well, they are certainly grimy looking. A bit too grimy. Still, they are done and usable, so I'm not going to complain too much.
They've ended up quite simple, so maybe I should have added more detail before painting them, but I'd had enough of all that fiddly crap.

All that's left now is to wait for a nice day to varnish/seal them. Meanwhile, I've still got lots of other materials and ideas I am starting to move forward with...

My Epic Eldar army is now complete after I finally found an Avatar that didn't cost an arm and a leg. I had forgotten how much smaller the model was compared to the Chaos Greater Daemons, so I raised it up a little on its base using some card. To smooth the weird stepped look, I used some of the milliput I bought a couple of years ago. I didn't know this stuff had a shelf life, and the one stick had gone brown with all bits in it. Luckily, there was still usable stuff inside when I broke it open.
I guess I'll have to find some use for the rest of it before it's all completely useless. As luck would have it...

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My new Epic rules ideas are continuing to form, and seem like they will allow us to play some really fun and simple games. Well, that's the way is feels to me, at least.

But in order to play some new games of Epic, I think I really need to get my 6mm terrain in order. I have long known this day would come, so have been stashing things in boxes in the loft for years. And the time has come to prepare some new battlefields for the little guys and gribblies.

There's so much stuff here, and so many ideas in my brain, that most of them will probably never get done. Not only will it be hard to find the time to build all this, but I also lack the space needed to store it all.

But I will definitely have a good go at making some new Epic terrain, as the vast majority of my terrain is geared for 28mm. And that doesn't seem fair to me.

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In amongst all my bits boxes, I recently found the Warhound Titan my bro started to scratch build 12 years ago. He passed it on to me back then and the idea was that I would finish it. Maybe it's about time I got around to this enormous task...

On the wargaming front, my efforts have died down a little since Christmas, and I need to get back into it pronto. I was supposed to be painting my epic Evil Sunz, but after making my own clan I just had to start painting them instead. I've done them all except the Grots which are mostly basecoated, with the Boarboyz to do after that. If only I could finish something before moving on to something else...