Vastarian: The Cults of Vastarian

Vastarian is an open invitational where we are encouraging people to create Imperial Cults that are at war with each other on the cathedral world (Vastarian). While we have shown two cults on the planet (the Church of the Red Athenæum and a faction of Spyreheads), we wanted to do more to give people ideas to create their own Vastarian cults. After some deliberation, we came to the conclusion that some Vastarian artwork would be an ideal way to get peoples’ imaginations flowing. Having worked with Martin McCoy on multiple volumes of 28 magazine, we knew he would excel at creating some concept art for Vastarian. We commissioned him to create a piece of artwork that displayed a host of different cults, to emphasize how eccentric and divergent they can be from one another. Ultimately, Martin created two amazing companion pieces. At the time of writing, you can still get prints of each piece of artwork on his Etsy page!

Season's Greetings 2023

Season's Greetings!

Between the Bolter and Me is about to advance into its 12th year as a blog! It was another fantastic year, continuing our Twitch streaming and podcast, but also participating in NEMO 2023 and Rich Grimmond events! The last quarter of the year was defined by us starting our Vastarian Open Invitational! With the year coming to a close, we want to extend our best wishes to all of our readers this holiday season!

Dragged into Turbolasers 106: Reflecting back on 2023 with members of Hive Scum

2023 is coming to a close!

In this episode we are joined by Steve and Gage from the Hive Scum podcast. We reflect on 2023 as a whole and how we first met Hive Scum at the New England Mordheim Open at the start of 2023. We also touch on the Rich Grimmond Inq28 event and some notable releases throughout the year.

Vastarian: Rules for the Church of the Red Athenæum

The Church of the Red Athenæum.

Since announcing the Vastarian Open Invitational, we have showcased factions (Church of the Red Athenæum and Spyreheads), revealed the logo, recorded an episode of our podcast, and wrote a battle report. Despite all of this, we have not spoken too much about the rule set we have been using to play our games. In the original post, we suggested that we would primarily be using the 2023 Necromunda rules, but encouraged people to use whatever system they enjoyed and are familiar with. Indeed, we have played a handful of games, mostly using the Necromunda rules. Additionally, we have also played games using Forbidden Psalm, like at the Rot of Hondious event. With this post, we want to show some sample warband lists for different rule systems to give readers a sense of the possibilities for playing games in the Vastarian setting!

Blanche: The Rise of Grimdark Review

John Blanche’s biography!

Although John Blanche retired earlier this year, he is still quite busy. Case in point, he released another Voodoo Forest book titled Scions of Voodoo through Hollow Press. He agreed to be the feature artist for volume 6 of the digital magazine 28. On top of all of this, he worked with authors John Wombat and Ruth Moreira to have his biography written! This biography, titled Blanche: the Rise of Grimdark, was published by Wombat Wargames (December 2023). I am happy to say that we were involved in the creation of the book, albeit in a small way. Earlier this year, when exchanging emails with John Blanche, he mentioned that he was working on the biography and asked if we had some photos from the 2016 Pilgrym game and if we could share a few words about it. We excitedly obliged, reaching out to author John Wombat, who suggested that he would quote us in the final book, as well as include some of our photos of the event. Advance a few months forward, and in late November we saw that the book was being released on December 1st! Excited to see the final book, I ordered a copy from Amazon and promptly received it on December 2nd.