The Juggernauts of Khorne are basically what happens when you take a rhinoceros, skin it in enchanted brass, and stuff it full of pure, unadulterated rage. These things are forged in the Blood God’s own foundries, making them a terrifying mix of a living creature and a heavy duty siege engine. Their plating isn’t just for show either; it’s thick enough to let them ignore small arms fire and tank shells like they’re just annoying flies while they barrel toward the enemy lines.
When they get moving, the ground actually shakes. You’d think something that bulky would be slow, but they can hit a frightening top speed, sounding like a rhythmic roar of grinding metal as they go. They don’t really do “subtle” tactics; they just use that massive weight and those bladed horns to flatten infantry or literally flip over armored transports. The air around them gets thick with the smell of ozone and burnt blood, mostly because the daemon inside is working at such a high internal temperature.
Looking at one up close though you probably would not want to reveals a mess of oily pistons, churning cogs, and glowing vents. The head is just this heavy block of brass with a mouth full of jagged teeth that constantly leaks a nasty, corrosive fluid. Their eyes look like burning furnace grates, and every time they move, you can hear the plates grinding together. It’s a violent, high pressure machine that seems like it’s constantly on the verge of exploding from its own sheer hatred.
More Khorne still to come……………..The Blood God is famously impatient, but even his most terrifying legions have learned to play the long game. When you have been waiting in a box since the early 2000s to finally hit the tabletop, a few more years is just a drop in the ocean of blood. At this point, those unpainted lead miniatures in the back of the cupboard aren’t just a backlog; they are basically ancient relics of a lost civilisation. At least Khorne doesn’t care if Guru’s hobby desk looks like a graveyard of half finished projects, as long as there is some red and brass paint involved eventually!
In the grand scheme of things, these reinforcements will probably arrive exactly when they are meant to, likely right after I have finally finished painting something else. Until then, the promise of more Khorne daemons serves as a great excuse to keep the shelf space clear and the brass paint ready. Twenty years of anticipation just means that when they finally do charge across the table, they will be extra cranky. It is less of a tactical arrival and more of a very belated, very violent reunion tour.
Not sure where these came from but they are now finished. I think they original came with a Chaos warrior mount but am not sure. If so these ones are just free sprits for the Blood God!
A Juggernaut of Khorne isn’t something that feels alive in any normal way. It’s built for one purpose and one purpose only. Brass plates are bolted over its body, thick and scarred, with runes that seem to pulse faintly beneath the surface. Its horns push forward like a battering ram, stained dark from past charges, and its eyes burn with a steady, unnatural heat. You don’t just see it coming, you feel it through the ground as each step lands with a heavy, crushing weight.
It doesn’t think about where it’s going. It just goes. Chains drag along its sides, skulls knock together, and anything in front of it is simply in the way. There’s no pause, no shift in direction, no sense of fear or caution. When it charges, everything narrows to that moment of impact. Lines don’t hold. Shields don’t last. People are just swept aside or crushed under it as it keeps driving forward.
Up close, it feels like standing next to a forge that’s been burning too long. Heat rolls off the armour, carrying the smell of hot metal and blood. Vents along its sides hiss and spit bursts of air, like something inside it is constantly being fed. Its jaws grind slowly, as if they’re always ready to bite down on something. Even when it stops, it never really feels still, like all that weight and force is just waiting for the next push forward.
My first game of WW1 Men Who Would Be Kings. The game was great and went right down to the wire.
Camel Corps advancing
The Turks staddle the objective,
After several turns and a few causalities the Australian Regiment routs the Turkish machine gun and takes the objective.
The British Yeomanry charge a Turkish infantry unit caught in the open but get a bloody nose and are repulsed and pinned.
The third Australian/New Zealand regiment fails to move at a crucial time.
The massed Turkish fire does little as their poor shot and obsolete rifles make it hard to hit.
While trying to rallhy the Yeomanry a pinned again and forced to retreat.
A Turkish infantry charges the Australian Regiment and regain the hill. In the background the Australian/New Zealand Regiment’s charge just fails to reach.
The B ritish Yeomanry fail to rally and third time and rout off the battlefield.
The Australian Regiment fails to rally and retires with a second pin.
A third failed rally attempt sees them joining their Yeomanry brothers in retiring with “due haste”.
The last British Empire troops fail to charge.
The only reasonably intact Turkish unit gains the heights and wins the game, as the Austrlain regiment fails to charge a second time!
A great game where the British had two mopportunities to sieze a win but the Turks held out.
In 1917, the Imperial Camel Corps (ICC) was organised into a brigade consisting of four battalions (1st–4th), totalling roughly 4,000 men and camels, mainly deployed in Sinai and Palestine. Each battalion comprised four companies (184 men each), with companies acting as independent units that rode camels but dismounted to fight as infantry.
The Imperial Camel Corps was part of the ANZAC Mounted Division, featuring 4 battalions, divided into 18 companies. These included 10 Australian, 6 British, and 2 New Zealand companies.
The first and third Battalions were entirely Australian, the 2nd Battalion was British Yeomanry, and the fourth Battalion was a mixed Australian and New Zealand Battalion.
Each company included four sections, with each section composed of seven groups of four men.Each company was equipped with three Lewis guns (after August 1916) and Lee-Enfield rifles, with one in four men holding the camels while the others fought.The ICC included its own machine gun unit and a battery of light artillery manned by troops from Hong Kong and Singapore.The Brigade operated under the command of Brigadier General Clement Wilson-Taylor.
Turkish Infantry Brigade:
In 1916 a Turkish (Ottoman) infantry brigade in Palestine typically consisted of three regiments, with a standard division (comprising brigades) having 3 regiments, an artillery regiment, and a machine-gun company. Regiments often had three battalions
What if an ancient king could outsmart Rome? Adrienne Mayor dives into the life of Mithradates VI, a figure half-forgotten yet feared in his time. Her book, The Poison King, feels less like history, more like a chase across empires. Far from dusty archives, it pulses with betrayal, war, and cunning escapes. This was no ordinary ruler – he spoke countless languages, studied poisons, fought wars on multiple fronts. From the edges of the known world, he rose. His defiance lasted generation after generation. Not myth, but meticulously traced fact shapes this portrait. Each chapter unfolds how one man stretched Rome’s limits, again and again.
Curious about poisons, the king turned his life into an experiment. Because someone killed his father with venom, he started testing chemicals on himself. Instead of trusting others, he mixed herbs, roots, and strange substances to create something called Mithridatium. Over time, small amounts of poison became part of his daily routine – slow exposure kept him alive when enemies tried to harm him. This habit, later named after him, shows both fear and cleverness. What sticks isn’t just survival, but how far one man would go to stay ahead of death.
Yet Mayor gives depth to someone ancient Roman writers brushed off as a savage Eastern tyrant. Instead, he emerges as a sharp thinker fluent in twenty-two tongues, framing his cause as freedom for the eastern lands. Clashing worlds come alive, the elegant Greek-influenced realms up against Rome’s relentless march, driven by towering names such as Sulla, Lucullus, and Pompey. Seen through her eyes, Mithradates becomes less a foe, more a doomed leader clinging to resistance amid overwhelming force.
Vivid descriptions pull you into scenes of war, sharp and unrelenting. Instead of smoothing over harsh truths, the writing leans into them, especially amid battlefields and rugged terrain near the Black Sea. Through fragments of old ruins paired with long-told stories, myths about Mithradates begin to make sense – not as fantasy, yet shaped by belief and power. Tales of him riding nonstop for days, or standing taller than any warrior, gain weight when set beside real artifacts. Even moments of cold violence are shown plainly, never hidden. Because behind every ruthless act lies a world where survival demanded hardness. Context turns what seems extreme into something almost expected.
Still, The Poison King stands out for those drawn to the Roman Republic or early biology. A life unfolds here – unbent, even when facing the end. Through Adrienne Mayor’s work, a once-sidelined figure gains weight, his story tipped back into view with quiet urgency.
My mates at Axes and Ales have started a Stargrave campaign and I thought I should put something together to “muscle in”. First I needed a storyline so here goes:
The Ashfall Syndicate doesn’t really seem to be chasing treasure in the usual sense.They go into places where other teams have already failed,stations that have been ripped up, vaults that might collapse at any time, and whatever caused the disaster could still be out there and still active. Their work isn’t really about tidy success stories or profits wrapped up in a neat little package. It’s about taking something worth keeping out of the ashes while you still can—before the fire dies down, or before it suddenly starts up again. Out on the edges, their name still seems to carry some weight. If the Syndicate is the one handling this job, it probably means the threat is real.
At the heart of everything is Kade Varr, who some people call the Half-Man. He used to be a corporate retrieval officer, which meant he’d go into facilities that had been compromised and lock down anything valuable before a rival company or the authorities got there. That career ended on Ilyx-9, when a relic vault suddenly burst open, tore through his team, and left him broken on the deck. The company rebuilt him, replacing bones with metal and organs with machines, and then turned around and billed him for it. Kade disappeared before anyone had a chance to collect what he owed. Now he works for himself, and he seems quiet and steady, with a fake eye that looks like it picks up more than you’d think.He doesn’t really trust relics, but he still can’t seem to keep himself away from them. Something he picked up on Ilyx-9 has stuck with him, and it seems to kick in whenever certain artifacts are nearby.
Lira Voss, the Syndicate’s first mate, didn’t come aboard in the usual way. In the end, she found Kade. She says she could hear him even before they ever met, almost like a signal traveling from far away that somehow led her right to him. Lira calls it “resonance” rather than magic, but it still feels like it works the same way. When she’s around, things tend to act up: systems glitch, doors open on their own, and people often lose track of what they were about to do. She keeps her cool, talks clearly and to the point, and somehow comes across as confidently sure about things she really has no business knowing. Kade keeps her close, not because he trusts her, but because whatever changed him also seems to know who she is.
The rest of the crew are specialists who came together because circumstances pushed them into it, not because they have any real loyalty to one another. Jesgrik, no one knows his family name, is a burner guy, who mainly uses flamer weapons. He now carries a heavy, flamethrower weapon, and he uses it not only to take down enemies but also to shape and control the space around him. Rook is a gunner who holds his heavy bolter like an old friend, and he looks most at ease when the hallways are raining with gunfire. Silas Kreel, the sniper, comes across as distant, almost like a ghost. He got on board after he took out a rival captain from a long distance away, and then he simply asked if he could be hired. He usually hangs back, keeps quiet, and works from a spot where he can watch everything, and most of the time the crew doesn’t even notice he’s done something until the danger is already taken care of.
Kamsin Vale, a safecracker, works with a different kind of precision. He was trained in the same corporate setup Kade used to be part of, but after he used it to her advantage, they forced him out. He looks at locks, vaults, and relic interfaces as puzzles he’s supposed to solve, not just obstacles blocking his path. Whether it’s a physical lock, an encrypted system, or even something totally unfamiliar, it rarely stays locked for long once he starts working on it. He’s really into old relic technology, and sometimes it comes off as a little obsessive, especially when those devices respond in ways that make them seem like they might not be totally dormant
Under them are the runners, a rotating crew of replaceable hands who carry the gear, help secure targets, and are usually the first to get hit when things turn dangerous. They tend to move quickly, keep things light, and usually don’t stay in one place for very long. Kade usually doesn’t bother to learn their actual names until they’ve been on more than a few missions. “Most of them don’t.” The people who make it start to understand how the Syndicate really operates: move fast, take only what you truly need, and get out before whatever’s hiding beneath the surface fully comes to life.
The Greywake, their ship, seems to mirror the crew who sail her. It’s a salvage cutter that’s been kept going with mismatched panels and whatever practical repairs do the job, not something that’s supposed to look polished. It’s not particularly fast, but it runs quietly, and out in the dead zones between systems, that kind of quiet often makes the difference between making it through and disappearing. The Syndicate has a reputation that follows them around: they’re known as the crew that takes the jobs everyone else avoids, they’ve made it out of encounters with active relic phenomena, and they usually leave a place with one particular item gone rather than wiping the whole site out.
People have been quietly saying that Kade’s former employers are still trying to track him down, not just for the money he owes them, but also for whatever it is he’s carrying. Some people say Lira can somehow picture what the inside of a vault looks like before anyone even opens it, almost like she’s been there already. With the Ashfall Syndicate, the truth is usually slippery and hard to nail down, and this time is no different. What seems pretty is that whenever they turn up, something already feels a little wrong, and by the time they leave, something you’d want to hold on to is missing.
Next some figures. I have enough figures ( I can’t believe I just wrote that) that will fit in without painting any more. Here is a first cut just picked quickly from the shelves.
Kade Varr – cyborg and captain
Lira Voss – First “mate” and
Rook, the gunner
Rook, at times, doubles up as the team heavy.
Silas Kreel, the sniper
Kamsin Vale, the picker!
Four runners
The old battered Greywake.
As you can see they are a mixture of “old school” metal Necromunda Orlocks Imperial guards etc.
The look might chnage as I spend some time playing and get a feel for the characters or just plain find figures I like more.
Another period that I am extremely interested in is “The Great War in Africa”. There is a huge opportunity for some great scenario specific games but also for more standard Men Who Would Be Kings games.
After reading Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck’s My Reminiscences of East Africa and watching Hepburn and Boghart in African Queen I was hooked on the period.
Other campaigns that provide some interesting, almost pulp style gaming are the Persian Expedition with the British river boats, Dunsterforce, Arkangel and its Invasion of Russia, and the war in the Far East Colonies.
Here are some men Who Would Be Kings lists fort the East Africa Campaign.
With me now working on my WW1 28mm figures I thought MWWBK’s would be a great set of rules for the period and also meant I didn’t need to paint as many figures!
Some of these are not quite historically accurate but are designed to create different flavour for each army.
The Camel Corps and Australian Light Horse are basically the same in game terms but the fierce v elite characteristics provided a point of difference and one could argue did reflect how they fought.
Faisal’s and Lawrence’s armies were very similar but the revolt did get more British equipment support hence the machine gun.
You could argue for adding Ottoman irregulars to represent the Arab troops they used.
The French did not have any significant forces in Palestine, but the Armee D’Afrique was added just for variety as could have been the Legion D’Armenia.
The British list could be used for the Indian army which had significant numbers on the Persian front.
I am also toying with the idea of using Xenos Rampant categories and introducing some tanks and armoured cars!
