Sergeant Potato

Today I finished off the fifth unit for my Gentleman's Gentlemen regiment for Turnip 28 - the lump, Sergeant Potato. He featured in the previous post as a piece of terrain, but here he is all complete, with the base done and his medals and sergeant's stripes.

In Turnip 28 a lump is a murderous monster akin to a behemoth in 'Hordes of the Things'. Quite hard to kill early on, their ability to resist damage degrades as the game progresses. They are purely close-combat fighters, as you might expect. And they are a single-figure unit.

Sergeant Potato started out as a random monster of some kind I 3D-printed a few years ago, for use in giant monster gaming. I never really liked how it turned out, so never gave it a proper paint. Last week I dragged it out of my Pile of Shame, and went to work on it. I added lots of tendrils, naturally. I also used milliput to make him extra lumpy, and to completely remodel the head. The smaller spots are the tops of the Martian heads I cut off in order to add the top hats to the other figures in the regiment; if you look closely you can see the brain texture. The top hat and medals are scratchbuilt.

Here's a closeup.

I undercoated him brown with the intent of painting him with a turnip colour-scheme (off-white and purple), but when I showed the undercoated model to my wife she said that it looked like a potato, and I could immediately see what she meant. So I went with that instead.

My regiment is designed to be four units strong, so one of them would be swapped for Sergeant Potato. His hat can be removed as well, so the Sergeant could find himself in other regiments (maybe with different hats if I can be bothered making them).

The Long March

I started assembling and painting a force for Turnip 28 back in September. Last night my completed regiment took to the field in its entirety for the first time. So it has been a long march getting here. And that was also the name of the scenario June and I played. Two forces meet head to head on a board with lots of dangerous terrain. There are objectives scattered about. We try to grab them. It's pretty basic.

My Gentleman's Gentlemen are on the left, whilst June's pirates are on the right. In the enclosure bottom-right you can see the latest addition to my collection, a Lump called Sergeant Potato. He gives me a fifth unit I can swap into my force for variety, but for the purposes of this game he, and his enclosure, were dangerous terrain.

The Gentleman's Gentlemen arrayed for battle. Or, at least, an aggressive foraging action.

My brutes take an objective.

Whelps move up in support. June had moved her brutes up to assault the ruins.

My chaff started badly, with one of the figures killing and eating the other three. But he then advanced and starting sniping at the enemy.

June's brutes were hurled out of the ruins, so I charged them with my whelps. It went badly for the cavalry. But I know it's been a while since you saw me launch a futile cavalry charge, so I really did this for you. Sergeant Potato watched with interest.

My surviving whelp ducked into the Sergeant's enclosure and grabbed the objective there. Something horrible happened to him not long after, but I forget what it was.

June's brutes had been reduced to a single figure. My brutes went after it, but fell short on their charge.

June's cannon blew up. These things happen in Turnip 28.

With little to do The Milliner attacked one of June's snobs. He's not really a fighter, though, and quickly died.

June went after The Captain, and killed him, leaving me with a single snob - The Gentleman himself. Who managed to not feature in any photos I took.

In a continuing farce my brutes tried shooting June's lone survivor, and missed.

My lone chaff, stuffed with the tasty bits of his companions, took an objective. June attacked him with her snob who was promptly eaten by the terrain.

It was left to an underling to kill my skirmisher and retake the objective for the pirates.

June watches as my brutes finally manage to bring down June's single brute. It still took them two rounds of melee.

Somehow the game came to an end. I held three objectives and June held two. Most of the units and commanders were dead. It was another fabulous evening in the world of Turnip 28.

Once again my terrible tactics were offset by June's appalling run of luck. Her brutes and fodder failed morale tests that they shouldn't have, retreated long distances into bad terrain and the edge of the table and generally had a terrible time of it. A couple of key moves were thwarted by blunders or simply by the terrain killing things. But it was wild and silly and we had a good time.

Next stop - Shirecon, and my first Turnip 28 tournament.