A scratch-built armoured train chugs its way into the Battle of Cold Steel Ridge.
Nathan Bishop |
hen I began thinking about what should be include in an article about scratch building models and creating your own datasheets, the first thing I did was get really excited about the prospect and started converting up a vehicle for my own Apocalypse army (You can see the results on the last page of this article). I then did the smart thing and e-mailed Games Dev Designer Phil Kelly who in turn directed me to Jervis Johnson , who then offered me his "notes" on designing data sheets. The "notes" actually turned out to be what I had thought should go into this article to begin with. So instead of re-writing what Jervis has already written, the following pages are the words straight from the the man himself. INTRODUCTION
Jervis Johnson:One of the really great things Apocalypse allows you to do is to design your own datasheets. This isn't a new idea; in fact it's been around since the start of the hobby. Back when Rogue Trader was released (Rogue Trader being the title of the original version of the Warhammer 40,000 rules) there were very few vehicle models in the Citadel Miniatures range, and so players were pretty much forced to use scratch-builds and conversions in order to be able to field any vehicles at all. Rick Priestly, the author of Rogue Trader, even went so far as to write an article explaining how you could make a tank from an old deodorant bottle!
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Rick Priestly scratch built this model for the first edition of Warhammer 40,000. |
Nowadays, of course, every army has a range of specially designed plastic vehicle kits to draw upon, making such extreme measures unnecessary. None the less, converting and scratch-building models is great fun, and with the advent of Apocalypse it's very easy to include such models in the Warhammer 40,000 battles that you fight. This article provides some tips on how best to go about this. What the article doesn't attempt to do is to provide hard and fast rules for designing datasheets – you'll find no long lists of arcane upgrades, or any complicated formula that work out a points value for your latest creation. Instead you'll find advice that is based on the way that the designers in the Studio actually developed the datasheets included in the Apocalypse rulebook.
I've avoided trying to create a set of 'vehicle design rules' because bitter experience earned over the years has taught me they simply don't work very well. No matter how long the lists of upgrades you can take, or how complicated you make the formula for working out the points, somehow or another the upgrades never quite cover that really cool idea you've had for a new model, and the points values never seem to work out quite right.
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Big Mek's Stompa lifta-droppa |
Let's use the lifta-droppa that Phil Kelly came up with for the Big Mek's Stompa as an example (you can find it on page 131 of the Apocalypse book). The lifta-droppa, as its name implies, is designed to lift a target vehicle off the ground and then drop it back down again from a great height, and hopefully right on top of another enemy vehicle or group of infantry. I can just imagine the Ork Mekaniak guffawing away like mad as he uses it! However, there is no way that a wonderful and unique weapon like this could be created from a generic set of design rules – creativity doesn't come from a list of options, it comes from your imagination. This means that the rules needed for such a weapon must be designed 'bespoke', and then the points value worked out based on gut instinct and a lot of playtesting. Well, in my opinion, anyway.
This article explores how to create such 'bespoke' rules, and gives advice on how to work out the points values for the models you create. I think you'll find that the suggestions, if used intelligently (ie, not just to try and win games), will offer you all kinds of opportunities to increase the scope, colour and character of your Warhammer 40,000 games. It will also, I hope, herald a return to those heady days when most players would cheerfully scratch-build and convert new models for their army, and had a vehicle or two that had started life as a transforming robot, or a World War Two tank, or even a deodorant bottle.
Next: Models First and Conversions
