Turnip on the Docks

Hello!

It's been a muddy, rusty, horribly twisted time for my wargaming recently. It was all about Death Guard recently, and then last weekend I had some Turnip28 fun! I took my 69th Mordby Mudcrabs to the Turnip on the Docks event, and had a very rooty time.

The event was held as a rather cool venue in Grimsby I'd never heard of before - The Great Escape, actually found on the docks themselves. Apparently it's a bit of a community project with help from all sorts of places, which is cool, and there has been a lot of work going on to make this weird old building look, well, weird and old? It's very cool.

Having played a game against Chris, who was somewhat responsible for this event, I kind of knew what I was doing going in. Luckily it seems there's a lot of people who also have lovingly built armies of horrible little turnipmen and also have not played many actual games of it before. In fact it was a very newbie friendly vibe, with very little emphasis on the tournament aspect of things.

In Turnip28 there are no points costs, you just take a number of units of set sizes based on the number of Snobs (officers) you have - each one brings a unit apart from your 'general', the Toff who brings two. You then get to select a 'cult', which is the equivalent of a faction, giving you bonus rules and sometimes special units.

I took the cult of Stranglin' Harry's Wretched Recruits - which feels kind of like the 'default' faction. They get tougher snobs and a bit of a bonus for doing a series of tactically sound things like shooting units that can't shoot back or taking an objective. I took a unit of Brutes (heavy infantry) a unit of Fodder (pretty much what you'd expect) and a pair of units of Chaff (skirmisher/snipers.) With hindsight I think I could have done with an alternative unit than the second Chaff that had a bit more staying power, but that is all I had built.

The gaming itself was made up of five games, roughly an hour each, with a couple of 'basic' scenarios followed by some extra silly ones. I shan't go through too much detail, but once we'd all got a grips on the rules the games really fly by, I was finished early in all five games having been largely wiped out!

Game one was against the cult of the Leech Lovers - they get to heal from killing in melee, and every turn both sides take a load of damage, presumably from all the leeches. It was a monumental failure for my boys, after the Brutes charged a unit of Bastards (heavy cavalry) in the flank and all died to the return attacks.

Game two was against the Uprising of the Louse - they get a huge 'Tall Man' effigy that influences the game in weird ways and can summon a rabble to fight for them. Fortunately for me this had no effect on our game. Unfortunately for me my Toff lost a Toff Off (duel) and a unit of Bastards cleared their way through most of my lines for another loss.

Game three was against some... worm guys? They were using the rules for The Feast of Charybdis - normally a force of crab riding burrowers but here that was represented by a giant mole. This was a special scenario, the Siege of Piss Castle, which may or may not have been inspired by a local landmark. I was able to knock the enemy Toff off his seat on the 'castle', but the rest of my forces struggled to keep on top of the worms and their mole, leading to a third loss.

Game four was against a pig themed March of the Proboscis - normally they get an elephant, instead they had a giant pig. The scenario featured a giant root monster that wanted to kill both players, was super strong and represented a special victory condition - kill the beast to win! I cunningly allowed it to savage the pigs and managed to charge in at the end to finish it off and win a game! During the game my Toff won a duel - part of the rules for this suggest you should put your Toffs on the highest point of the board for a dramatic fight, so they stood on the monster's back!

The final game was against the Slug's Lament, who focus on their heavy infantry and get an extra unit that turns up late and weary. We were fighting over a giant root-whale that had vomit us up, meaning the forces arrived in stages in the middle of the board, meaning the fighting started instantly. Once again my poor lads were out-muscled, but they did manage to kill off all the enemy geese!

So after all that I had won just one game out of five. However I did pick up some bonus points for rooty things like winning a Toff Off or having a Snob fail a dangerous terrain test. This meant I managed a respectable eighth place out of twelve, and (as with everyone) received a little bag with a selection of Napoleonic and 3D printed bits for the next Turnip project. Hurrah!

Overall it was a really fun day, both in playing a lot of this intentionally silly (but surprisingly deep) game and meeting a load of interesting, creative people. I really hope I can do more of these in future - I understand it was well enough received that a sequel is in the works for February 2024, so hopefully you'll be able to read more about it then.

Thanks for reading and stay safe out there!

Turnips taking root - more Turnip28

 Hello!

I'm back with a little break in the 40k content to bring you more turnips! As a reminder, Turnip28 is a wargame in the making about a root-based apocalypse causing all kinds of problems and resulting in endless war in the mud with a mishmash of pre-1800s technology. I previously bought some Perry Napoleonic and foot knight sprues and bashed together a small batch of soldiers in this gloriously messy, dirty style.

Now a bit of time has passed, I managed to get a few more sprues and put together this force of the 69th Mordby Mudcrabs:

I used the same methods and paints as before, though after some feedback I added a bit more colour and contrast with some selective areas of extra rust with orange and then the venerable chestnut ink, and some shiny silver highlights - mainly helmets and breastplates. Since the rules of the game aren't yet set in stone, I can't say for sure this is a 'finished' army, but it does fit with the current unit sizes that are being talked about in the playtesting. Let's have a look at them...

These guys are the Chaff - lighter skirmishing units who will be tasked with harassment and distraction. As the name suggests they will probably be pretty expendable. At the moment they come in units of three, so I put together two units of them. They are based on the Perry European infantry mercenaries.

Next are the Brutes, these are supposed to be heavy hitting elite units, that may or may not have been more heavily mutated into root monsters or whatever. I chose to have mine as relatively 'standard', made from Perry Agincourt English foot knights - the Mudcrabs are a fairly practical bunch of scavengers that don't go all in on this 'holy root' worship.

Then we have the Fodder - the regular soldiers, currently coming in groups of 12. I added 8 more to the original 4 to get a full unit, making sure half were firing/poking/reloading and half were shouldering their weapons so I could present the unit as marching forward into position as seen here. These are a fair bit more armoured than the 'standard' Turnip28 Fodder - usually Napoleonic bodies and/or legs with knight helmets, so they might end up becoming Brutes, depending on how the rules end up working, or it might just be for the aesthetics. The armour is so rusty it probably doesn't give much protection anyway!

These three characters are Toadies - the assorted hangers-on with the army that will provide some kind of buffs to your units, or generate more turnips or something. I chose to theme them with each of my unit types, so I've got a big armoured guy with an axe, a moustache and a roughly turnip shaped helmet, a lighter scout type in some kind of medieval camouflage cloak,  and a standard bearer, showing the symbol of the Mudcrabs. I'm particularly pleased with how that came out, I initially mocked up a turnip crab with my very poor digital artistry skills, and Mr Turnip himself Max FitzGerald took the idea for a coat of arms to feature as dressing in an upcoming article, and made an awesome little picture of it, with a skull-faced back to boot. I then copied that for my banner, and I think it turned out pretty well.

The final figure is the leader of the force, the Toff. I figured he would have some delusions of grandeur, wearing a tattered green cloak and a crown of roots. He also fancies himself as a swordsman, though depending on how the rules work, this might not be reflected in his actual ability to fight off hungry root-mutants with muskets!

And there we have it, the (for now) completed force. Aside from adding to any units that get their sizes changed during playtesting, I might eventually add in some cavalry units or artillery, as the rules get expanded upon. I am quite interested in some rusty cannon that's been dragged out of the mud being added to the force, some artillery piece that is just as likely to decimate the opposition as it is to explode and kill it's crew. Anyway, I'll leave you with some more pictures of the assorted minis, including another attempt at copying the marching artwork from the Pateron page. Hope you enjoy, and stay safe!

First steps into Turnip28

Hello!

This one is a bit... weird. Some of you may have seen some miniatures and artwork for 'Turnip28' popping up around the internet, and may have wondered what it is. The simple answer is "It's about turnips", but the slightly longer answer is that it is a wargame/setting being developed by Max FitzGerald, in which a root-based apocalypse has ruined everything and now humanity is forced to rely on sinister vegetables and rusty pre-1800s equipment to wage war on each other in endless muddy battlefields. I think.

Anyway, I was immediately struck with the grim, dark, muddiness of all this. Those that know me might know that I love painting rust and dirt and generally being messy with my minis, and I also love Mordheim, the old Warhammer skirmish game that had such a great atmosphere and is probably to this day my favourite book GW have released. As it turns out, Max was one of the artists involved in Mordheim, hence the similarity in style, and that was good enough for me to jump up. So I got a few sprues (Perry Miniatures' Foot Knights and French Napoleonic Infantry) off ebay and stuck some bits together and got these:

I'm fairly happy that I've captured the essence of the setting and artwork in my style and with some fairly basic conversion work. Here's a quick rundown of how I got this, partially for my own benefit when I get some more and wonder how I did it the first time. Firstly, here's the paint I used and some of the extra 'bits':

The minis were first assembled using the legs/bodies and heads of the knights plus the arms and backpacks of the Napoleonics, with greenstuff haphazardly covered with the filler for mud on the bases and over the back/shoulders. Then tufts were chopped up and added liberally. These guys have a lot of roots with them!

Next stage was to spray them all brown. I thought this would be a good starting point for all the mud and rust. It also had the effect of catching in the tufts to create a more dishevelled, rooty look.

Then of course, painting! Started by slapping on some Ryza Rust over the armour sections, then Typhus Corrosion over the mud and anything anywhere close to mud (so pretty much the whole model). After that dried, the metal sections got a drybrush, followed by a tidy up with a darker brown for stock of the gun, backpack, belts etc, and painting the green for their 'uniforms'. I used the heavy flesh for a nice grubby skin tone, also drybrushing the root/mud, and following up with another heavy drubrush of Earth. Washes over skin and mud with sepia and the metal with black led to the final touches of black around the edge of the base and in some gaps in the armour (noticeably the giant hole in one of the chest plates) and a quick highlight layer on the skin. And that's pretty much that:

Again, I'm happy with how they came out. I decided to go for a more heavily armoured look than some, reasoning that my regiment would be savvy scavengers, picking up armour and equipment from fallen foes as well as dredging it out of the fertile mud of their coastal home town. With this in mind I named them the 69th Mordby Mudcrabs. Now I just need to make more of them...

Hope you enjoyed this little look into madness, stay safe out there!