Thursday, December 29, 2022

Snobs for Turnip28

I'm thought I'd officially kick-off my Turnip28 project with this post. I imagine this flight of fancy will consume a good portion of my time this season as I wish to get two playable forces completed by spring, if possible.

Turnip28 is a very, very odd dystopian setting; a war-torn world gone mad through the infestation of symbiotic, sentient root vegetables. It's all about turnips, really. Aesthetically, it's a mashup of several historical periods; medieval, Renaissance, Napoleonic, and just a smattering of the Great War to keep it grim and dirty. In Turnip28, opposing forces battle each other over long forgotten grievances, contesting useless objectives, and simply knocking the stuffing out of each other. It's a new player in the GrimDark oeuvre of games.

The rules are pretty hilarious, filled with loads of character, horror and humour.  In terms of figure-overhead, it can be defined as a large skirmish game, probably similar to 'Pikeman's Lament' in scale. In its base form its figure count runs around 30+ models per side. Written by the folks behind 'One Page Rules', Turnip28 is easy to understand, simple to play, while still having enough nuance to keep things interesting..

Over the next few months I'm going to try to complete as many of the game's troop types as I can manage. 

Okay, first up: the commanders! In Turnip28, forces are led by 'Snobs', an overarching term for the game's officer class. Think of the many vacuous, dim-witted, upper-echelon idiots that have controlled European armies over the past millennia and you have a good idea of what we're looking at here.

In the game, 'Snobs' are of two types. First, there are the 'Toffs', the upper-crust half-wits who run the whole show. Players will typically have one Toff as the overall commander of their force. 

I've based my Toffs on hexagonal bases and their Toadies are on square ones for easy identification on the tabletop. I'm thinking I will have one side with red facings (The Rutabaga Brigade), while the other will be yellow (The Fighting Fennel Fusiliers). 

Secondly, we have the 'Toadies'the Toffs' boot-licking underlings, who obsequiously do their better's bidding. The Toadies are the game's subcommanders, tasked with chivying along their reluctant, nervous troops, trying to ensure that they follow the orders given to them and trying to mitigate the disasters that will inevitably come. 

For these Snobs I've relied heavily on 3d models from Knucklebones Miniatures. Such characterful figures and brilliant digital design. I've  embellished them a bit, mostly with head swaps, along with adding some of the ubiquitous flora that infests the world of Turnip28.


Though I really like how other hobbyists have used a desaturated palette and a heavy use of weathering of their Turnip troops, I've decided to keep my figures 'merely' dirty, with a punchy colour palette. Heretical I know, but we'll see how it goes as the project clips along.

Finally, for a cavalry officer, I found a wonderful digital sculpt by 'Romychbrush' in Cults of a Snob on a run-down, wheeled hobby horse. 

I decided it would be fun to have the officer and his brave steed being pulled along by his long-suffering batman. Really, this is the stuff that glory is made of.


A final group shot of the Snobs.

Next up for this project will be the rank and file, but right now I have a hankering to do something for my Great Siege of Malta collection. More on that soon, I hope. 

Thanks for popping in for a look, folks!

- Curt