Full disclosure: It's late, I'm tired, this will be a wall of text
Have you ever found yourself consumed by a new project? The lure of a new era, the "shiny goblin syndrome" pull of new figures. Discovering all the new ins and outs of a new system. If you're a long time (or frankly short term) follower of this blog you know I tend to get drawn in to the "new" much more often than I'm putting the finishing touches on a project. What's grabbed me this time?
Well, it's none other than new kids on the block; Sludge and Turnip.
Inserted through this ramble are the photos I found of both systems, that I used to con a long time gaming buddy down this path with me.
When they first released Sludge, I thought it was a neat concept but had no desire to go out and buy the dozen or so kits required for an army to kit bash it all together. I thought, "man, what a cool idea but I have enough on my plate" I found the project just a hair to esoteric for my usual "well I can always use the figures for multiple systems" line of thought. When Turnip first got some attention I didnt really make the connection between the two and just sort of thought it wasn't for me.
Like most projects, it stuck in the back of my mind and lingered there like a disease until eventually I came across Knucklebones Miniatures. This is another one of those patreons for STLs I keep coming back to. In his catalog, he has a pile of stuff suitable for the whole Sludge/Turnip craze and of course I started printing.
For some inexplicable reason, this aesthetic has captured me and progress continues. One of my long time gaming partners has also taken the plunge and I've found out there's actually a somewhat local scene for the game so at this point its just a matter of finishing a few more units and then trying the two systems out.
So what is it?
I'll be honest, being relatively new to this scene I'll probably butcher some of this but Turnip28 seems to be one of those weird "movements" more than anything. Years and years before my time, GW released a game called Inquisitor. This was a bit of an odd duck in that the game was a little bit more rpg and character driven from the others and the figures in a much larger (54mm) scale. Each character was named and unique and totally customizable. Being long out of production but still having a fan following, all the neatest bits seem to have been distilled down to "aesthetic"
As I mentioned, (and will probably mention again) this is all before my time and to be frank, information given to me 2nd or 3rd hand. Somewhere along the line, the community, trying to keep the spirit of the art and the aesthetic alive, kept it all going in 28mm. My introduction to this story is here with the amazing fanzine, 28mag
This is far from only about inquisitor or any one specific thing but is an absolutely amazing magazine that anyone who likes converting, gaming, gw, or neat dark miniatures should check out now.
Sometime during the pandemic, a guy named Max Fitzgerald dreamt up the tangential world of Turnip28. I'm linking the goonhammer interview here because if you've read this far you'll probably read anything and its a good read to break down this odd duck.
As I understand it though, the story is basically, "what if the Napoleonic wars turned to shit, got all weird wwi with it, and then they all started worshiping root vegetables?"
In the meantime a gentleman named Sean Sutter (creator of Relicblade) has been working on his own fanzine with several other indie game designers (called BLASTER) Introduced in Blaster vol. 3 is Sludge. I don't know that one game inspired the other in anyway but for me, this finally meant "I could use figures for both games" Sludge has more of a Renaissance feel to Turnips Napoleonic but they are close enough (Infantry, cav, artillery) to me to merit the dive. I'm glossing through the specifics here for a couple reasons but fully expect more content for both games and a podcast or two comparing them.
So where does that leave us?
Well, in the time its taken me to actually finish this post, I actually painted an entire Turnip force and more or less enough stuff to play sludge minus a couple characters. Over the next few posts (hopefully coming very soon) I'll showcase some of the stuff I've finished and hopefully I'll be demoing both games with Paul very soon.
