AN INTERVIEW WITH HIVE SCUM

At the beginning of the year, I got the privilege of jumping on a discord call with the guys from the Hive Scum podcast. Gage (@noclearcoat), Steve (@sovthofheaven), and Terry (@stone.jaw) bring a raw no-fucks-given attitude to gaming which oozes from their amazing podcast and the many events they host in New England. As ambassadors to everything grim and dark, their podcast covers the grittier side to DIY gaming, shunning the pristine for filthier and more accessible aspects of the hobby. These dudes are talented creatives who genuinely have a passion for gaming, how it can bring us together with our friends, and fighting the dogma that can be traditionally associated with it.

I really wanted to know how one gets to this twisted freak side of the miniature hobby so we took a trip down memory lane and talked about how each of the dudes got started in gaming and what has lead them to start the podcast and host some of the sickest events ever to happen in wargaming.

CJ: So, going back to the beginning, are you guys all from New England? And how did you each get into the hobby?

Steve: We can go down the line.

Gage: Terry first.

Terry: Yes. Always a New England guy. Always a Connecticut guy. I got in the hobby by hanging out with this guy all the way at the end, Steve, and also Phil (@bloodtrancefusion) who's floating around back behind us somewhere. We would go to this guy's garage and play, and he was like a freak and would build all these crazy boards and stuff. He was a real crazy big boots and small denim shorts freak. He owned like a weird lot of land with a bunch of junked out cars on there, but he was a sick dude. He got me really into it and then I started buying orks and they sat under my bed for years and I didn't do anything with them and only recently did I pick 'em back up in the last three years or so.

CJ: How long ago was that?

Terry: Wild Bills was...

Steve: 2016...

Terry: 2016 makes sense....Maybe....

Steve: Yeah.

Terry: Yeah, something like that.

CJ: Sick... Gage. Where does it begin with you?

Gage: The town I grew up in, Manchester, has, like, the East Coast's largest train display. Every third Sunday they would do a showing and you could bring your train and all the train dads would wear the little conductor hats and talk train shit or whatever. The Catachan Imperial Guard box was like just coming out and there was a little poster of the Catachan guys and me being a little 12 year old boy, I was like, "Yeah, I'm macho, just like these guys that look like Rambo. I'm absolutely like those. Mom, I need those." She was very supportive. She was like, "Ok, yeah. Creative output. Sure." I painted them with, like, automotive primer black. Immediately went to the first game night on a Friday and immediately got bullied so much that I'm just gonna go cry at home. I'm just gonna leave. Then I bumped into a friend of a friend who was like, "Oh, we're playing this game called Dungeons and Dragons. Do you wanna try it out?" and I was like, "Ok." So I learned about both sides of the hobby very quickly. And then, yeah, I didn't really touch them again until Terry's bachelor party where I met Steve.

CJ: So the bachelor party is like the catalyst for all this stuff to go down?

Gage: Yeah. We lovingly call it "Terry Fest". It was everyone kind of just being, like, "Oh, what are you into? Oh, what are you into?" And Steve and I meeting, we're kind of just going down the checklist and being like, "Oh, you're into RPGs? Oh, you're into video games? PC shooters? Hardcore music? Oh, we have friends?" It was like, ok, do we fuck or fight at this point?

CJ: A little bit of both.

Gage: Yeah, yeah.

CJ: Tight. So it sounds like for both of you, Steve, you're kind of the dude that got these guys going, right?

Gage: Absolutely.

Steve: I don't know, I got into all this stuff very young. My older brothers played Necromunda, like, every weekend, and I wanted to do that but I wasn't allowed to because I was, you know... I was seven years younger than them. So they would do it and my mom got me my own box of old Necromunda metal Cawdor models and, like, helped me paint them and I would just watch and play on the stuff when they weren't home. I thought it was cool and then it just kept progressing. I remember when Lord of the Rings came out, my brother really fostered that desire to do this stuff where, he wanted the Lord of the Rings box set but he had a job so he would have to buy it but he knew I would get it for like Christmas or something like that. We ended up getting all of the Lord of the Rings starter boxes over the course of the years that the movies came out and we built Helm's Deep in my bedroom when I was in like 6th or 7th grade. We built it as well as a 6th or 7th grader could do at the time with the tools that I had. You know, it was real simple, like, roll a dice, on a 4+ you hit, on a 4+ you don't die. It just like continued from there. I got bullied for having that in my room in 8th grade by the kids I would skateboard with so I didn't play, then it came back years later when I decided I wanted to do it again.

CJ: It's funny you're getting bullied by the skate kids but you're probably both listening to hardcore. The Venn diagram doesn't overlap in some spots but then massively does in others. So run me through how all of these different avenues for output and community building start, like Under the Dice and the In Rust We Trust discord server?

Gage: That starts with you (Steve).

Steve: I started Under the Dice in 2016...

Terry: nods

Steve: Yeah, I was still living in my apartment. Probably 2016, 2017. I started doing a podcast that was like a one on one podcast with friends who were all into the hobby. It was never what I wanted out of it. I wanted what Hive Scum is, and it wasn't that. It was so bad that I deleted all the episodes. Then after a year of doing that, I started doing a zine cause it was a lot easier to do that format of going over all the cool stuff that I like and getting friends involved.

CJ: holds up a copy of Under the Dice fanzine

Steve: There it is.

Gage: That's it.

Steve: It was a lot easier cause it's just, "Oh, you wanna be involved in this? Do you wanna write an article? Do you wanna do some art?" like, whatever. It just went from there, I guess, to where... like, the game day.

Gage: Yeah.

Steve: Where I did that charity event for...

Terry: And it was small at first. That first game day was like mostly all friends.

Steve: It was almost like all friends.

Gage: We had sixteen people and we had one random person. This kid Nico...

Terry: Who rocks.

Gage: Who, for the record, has come to everything we've ever done.

Steve: I think it was more than that.

Gage: Well, yeah. It was... all of our Magic friends plus all the people I pulled from my WoW guild to come out.

Steve: It was essentially Under the Dice Fest in a one day six hour period.

Terry: Yeah.

Gage: Steve did a little kitbash thing. We just had music playing. It was at our friend's venue. We had music playing and just, Commander. That was really all it was.

Steve: And then Adepticon.

Gage: Yeah, and then we went to Adepticon and that was like... really blew our mind when we saw Jonny (@witchhammerstudio). He was the real gateway into Inq28 and like the whole...

Steve: Like, "Oh, this exists still." Like it's not just a thing in an old White Dwarf.

Gage: And also Matt (@totally_not_panicking) was the one that was kinda like...

Steve: "Go check this out."

Gage: Yeah, we took his kitbashing class and it was more kind of like, we just want to see how he does it. He turned out to just be, like, a friend. It was just like, "Oh, let's hang out. Oh let's go check out Jonny's stuff together."

Terry: Yeah, it was Jonny, Matt, and then honestly our friend Evan (@itswhatevan). We just met him and he was just some random guy and I was like, "Oh, ok cool man." And then...

Gage: pointing to Steve He knew Dungeon Punks (@dungeonpunks).

Steve: Yeah, we were all internet friends. Me and Evan and the guys from the Dungeon Punks podcast were like all internet friends. I mean, I'm friends with them now because I've gone over there a couple times and now we know Evan, but Evan was just at Adepticon and we were like, "We should meet up." And then we met up and we never stopped hanging out.

Terry: Nope.

Gage. Never. Never.

Terry: He's a huge inspiration for a lot of like, you know, what we do. Painting styles, and like painting fast...

Steve: Building models.

Terry: Really loose, and like, yeah.

Steve: I guess the discord came from that first Adepticon where we were like, "We've gotta keep everyone together."

Gage: Yeah, I didn't want to lose touch with Evan. Then Matt was doing Smash Bash and he was like, "Well why don't I just invite people to this discord for that?" and it was like, "Yeah, sure. Ok." Kind of collectively, like, linking brands even though it was never a planned thing.

Steve: It was just a community space at that point. Just keeping friends linked together.

Gage: ...And then it exploded.

CJ: Did it take off or was it a slow burn at the beginning?

Terry: It took off pretty quick.

Gage: The second Adepticon it exploded because we had a merch table then.

Terry: An accidental merch table.

Gage: Yeah, definitely an accidental merch table.

Steve: Yeah, that worked out really well. Finding a broken table on the floor and setting up a merch booth.

CJ: So you just found a spot and were like, "Let's just post up?"

Steve: Yeah, we talked to Shelly, the person, and were like, "Is this cool?" and she was like, "Yeah, whatever."

CJ: "Fuck it, we're here."

Gage: Yeah, pretty much.

Terry: So we had just set up whatever we had.

Steve: The zines, the shirts. The Basilisk tapes.

Terry: Yeah, but people loved it. People walking by would see the zines and, you know, there was really nothing else at Adepticon that was like that. All our prices were written on a piece of, like, cardboard that we had just cut out. It was like you were going to a show. So people would walk by and they get so used to seeing all of these big roll up signs, everybody looking very professional, I mean people were wearing suits working behind some of these booths and then we're just like three dudes hanging out. People really were like, "I haven't seen a zine since the 80s, let me get everything you got." and they were just buying buying buying.

Gage: Steve also did a thing where he made an Adepticon special free Under the Dice zine. Kind of a primer of like, this is what the vibe is. I remember Terry and I walking around like one of the last days and we were only going to people with band shirts, and I was like, "You have a Hatebreed shirt on? You take this." I was like, "We're instantly boys."

CJ: Isn't the Under the Dice logo a Hatebreed rip already anyways? So you were like, "We're definitely gonna connect on this one."

Gage: If they didn't then they were a poser and we didn't want them anyway.

Steve: That also came up.

CJ: So then the first NEMO is when?

Gage: Around the same time. It was actually right before that one, because that was why you had the tapes.

CJ: Right, because Basilisk made the tapes for NEMO.

Gage: Yeah.

Steve: So what year was the first Adepticon? '21?

Gage: Points to Phil in the back - Phil says '22.

Terry: Phil's the smart one.

Steve: Yeah, so 2022.

CJ: So NEMO, New England Mordheim Open. This is at the first Under the Dice Fest?

Steve: It's technically before it.

Gage: Yes, because we did Charity Chillers where we just like play Commander.

Steve: And money from that is getting donated to a local charity.

Gage: It was for an animal shelter and then in between the two Charity Chillers that we did Terry brought up that he knew Paul (@wyrdstoned). Paul was getting back into Mordheim and famously the story goes, Terry and I go and play Mordheim and we're like, "This game is the fucking best." I was like, "Steve you've gotta check this shit out." and Steve is like, "The rulebook is fucking two inches thick. We're not playing this shit." I was like, "You gotta come over. Paul is the dude, he's gotta cool board."

Terry: He had a sick board. Just like a 4' x 4' board just packed full of terrain and it was the coolest thing to see. Especially early on when we were like kinda getting our sea legs with everything and seeing that board was like, oh this is really cool that a local dude has this on hand.

Gage: Then we con Steve into playing. We do it. The Texas Mordheim event happens. Bill Ford (@the_ruin.501) runs one. And we were kind of, I don't want to say we were upset...

Steve: I was salty. Why wouldn't I get invited to that?

Gage: Yeah, we weren't going to get invited to that. It was an invite only thing, and we were like, that is kind of a weird vibe. Why don't we just do our own thing?

Steve: Paul was actually invited.

Gage: I didn't know that! The fuck...

Terry: Wowwwww.

Steve: He was invited to that, but he couldn't go because he's a family man.

Gage: Respect.

Steve: So me and Paul were talking and we were like, "Lets just do our own fucking event! Fuck the invitation. Anyone can come." And then that's kind of where it came from. That's why it's NEMO. It's open to anyone to come.

Gage: Right. So then we were like, "We gotta make this like a con." Cause I had been going to like 14 cons a year across the country and I was like, " Steve, I know the ins and outs of this shit. We've gotta just fuckin do it." Also, Under the Dice has a way longer running than anything that we're doing, it's Under the Dice Fest.

Steve: And then just running all the events that happened prior to that... It is overwhelming but, I like to say it's pretty easy. It's not that crazy. It's just a lot of leg work and you've gotta be on top of it.

Gage: It's a ton of little things to keep track of.

CJ: So the first NEMO is right before the first Under the Dice Fest. How many people showed up to that first one?

Terry: 50 I think.

CJ: So it was a proper showing compared to just the sixteen people who came out to the first event.

Gage: Yeah.

Terry: And it was snowing before the first NEMO, so I think there were like 60-something people who signed up.

Steve: It was 80-something. It was a lot. I remember freaking out being like, "We don't have enough tables for this."

CJ: And you think that was all from the discord and just word of mouth from the homies?

Gage: Hive Scum was on like episode 5.

Steve: It was early.

Gage: Yeah, it was just starting to reach people.

Steve: I don't think the podcast had a big impact on it.

Gage: No, I think the Facebook groups that Paul was linking, because Paul's also the guy who started the Mordheim proper discord.

Steve: But then Tory, who is the guy who does Broheim, gave us the thumbs up and was like, " Yeah. Fuck yeah. This is it. This is what you've gotta be doing." I think having the approval of a big name in the scene definitely aided that.

CJ: So what's next after that first Under the Dice Fest? Is it the Brothers of Promethium event or?

Steve: Adepticon was March... Right?

Gage: Yup. So we did the first NEMO, then second Adepticon.

Terry: Second Adepticon is where we took over this random little hallway, right?

CJ: This is Grimdark Alley?

Gage: Yeah.

Terry: Well it didn't start off as Grimdark Alley, really. We needed a space, and they were like, "We have these three connected rooms. Sort of in the back of the con."

Steve: So Jonny, first year we went, had a room. A singular room to display his models and play games in that was off the main floor so it was more private...

Gage: Like a ten person room max. Shoulder to shoulder.

Steve: Yeah, then I talked to Jonny a bit and it was like, "Hey, are you doing that again this year? Have you talked to anyone yet?" and it kept being a, "I haven't heard anything yet. We're trying to figure it out. But no I haven't heard anything yet." So I reached out to Adepticon to just see what was going on. They were like, "Yeah, we have these rooms off to the side if you want to like rent them or whatever. It's X amount of money but we'll give you a discount if you run events in the rooms." It was just these two random rooms... Well we rented one room and then kind of took the other one over. It just worked out. Then the year after that it just kept going more and more. It's grown bigger and bigger every year.

Gage: We didn't do anything after that Adepticon.

Terry: Rot of Hondius might've been that year though.

Gage: Hondius was later in that year. It was in the summer. We rented an RV and drove down. All of Hive Scum plus Paul plus our friend Brad drove down to Richmond to play in Martin McCoy and Bill Ford's Rot of Hondius event. It was like, they rented out a library and it was a crazy narrative event. That really was like, this is Inq28 proper. We're in it now. After that, I don't think shit happens until next year. Then it becomes Under the Dice Fest proper.

Steve: That was in January. Because I got surgery the day after the fest.

CJ: Oh shit!

Steve: A lot of stuff was happening.

Gage: Yeah. We made it two days for the event.

Steve: We added bands. We made it a second entire day of hanging out cause one day wasn't enough.

Terry: There was a lot going on during that one. People were tattooing...

Gage: Yeah, two people were tattooing, our friend was selling ice cream. We had artists selling merch. We had fucking everything.

Terry: And that was last year.

Steve: That was this past year, 2024.

Gage: Then we flew out to Adepticon. Well, I flew out to Adepticon.

Terry: I didn't go.

Gage Terry didn't go because he had a kid.

Steve: Me, Tyler (@tylerisalrightatpainting), and Phil drove in a van with all of our shit to Adepticon, which is 14 hours away. Then we did it all over again, we rented that whole hallway. That space was officially ours and it turned into chaos. Everyone just coming in and being like, "Oh, cool. This is where we're hanging out." Dropping their stuff and everyone was just, that was the spot.

Gage: We're like trying to run events and shit. I'm like running a full roleplay session on the Sunday, Paul's running like a roleplay cowboy game on the Friday.

Steve: Having to shut the door in people's faces so they can't get into the room.

Gage: Yeah, thousands of people going in and out. But to your point, after that...

Steve: Then it really blew up.

Gage: Then the podcast explodes.

Steve: Yeah, because we had that merch table right outside the hallway so it was like, "Hey, you think this is cool?"

Gage: "Go check out our freak shit." The momentum really starts exploding then. That's when Terry is like really crafting the narrative for Brothers of Promethium. And then we ran that event in August.

Terry: For my birthday!

Gage: We wanted to do a barbecue for the patrons or something. It would be cool. Terry made the narrative. It's also his birthday weekend. Back to school. Let's go all out. It was triple the amount of people we expected. Everyone's inviting a friend of a friend and we don't even really know who's coming at this point. It was the hottest day of the fucking year. We had all our friends in a basement.

Steve: We had four air conditioners plugged in trying to cool it down.

CJ: That was at your old shop?

Gage: Yeah, that was at the old studio. That was the last event we ran. Steve and I went to the Vastarian event in Texas two months ago. But that's all the events we've done so far.

Steve: We've done like small game days with friends. Like inner circle people. We have the New England War Council which is all our homies in New England that come out to do stuff. You (Gage) did the Last War campaign which was sick. That was like 15 people playing that.

Terry: In my opinion, those are the most fun days cause it's chill.

Gage: It's so low pressure.

CJ: You guys can probably breathe a little bit and actually play.

Gage: Absolutely.

Steve: That's what I was hoping for Brothers of Promethium.

Terry: Yeah, it was pretty hectic.

Steve: Building a board in a month.

Terry: A huge 4' x 8' board that was probably two or three feet vertical, as well.

CJ: Flames of Orion. Steve, that's you, right? Tell me a bit about that.

Steve: When is this coming out?

CJ: Probably in a few months.

Steve: Ok, I'll say the game is out. You can buy it. But yeah, I don't know. It really spurred from... Paul was trying to play Battletech and I was like, "I'm not fucking playing Battletech."

Gage: Once again.

Steve: Once again. The game is like, so many rules. It's very crunch heavy which in some stuff I like a lot but I just didn't want to learn another game that is a fucking textbook. I thought the lore is kind of wack, I thought the art style for a lot of it was not that great. I wanted to make a game that was simple to pick up, you could play it with some friends in like a half hour and never think about it again if you didn't want to. I think Mech Warrior is sick. Gundam is fucking sick. Heavy industrial machines smashing each other, that's cool. And that's kind of where it all came from.

CJ: The vibes are sick, the number crunching is not sick.

Steve: Yeah. Battletech is cool, I just didn't want to play it.

CJ: So how did the Gardens of Hecate / Flames of Orion minis come about?

Steve: So Evan wanted Ana (@gardensofhecate) to make him some models. He commissions her to make some mechs for Battletech because he wanted them in her style. At that point she had never done anything like that. He did it just to have four models made from her and then he started thinking, "Oh, I kind of want to have them cast. That would be cool." And then I approached him and was like, "Hey, I'll fund it and release them and I'll split it with you." So that's how that came about. It was never meant to be Flames of Orion models. That was never the intention of it. Then I started doing the Flames of Orion rules and started putting that out and getting it out there. Evan approached me and was like, "I think these should be for that. That's cool." And I didn't really feel comfortable doing that. He pushed for it a little bit and now it's just like, you can buy and use these for Flames but I never really considered them for Flames because I didn't feel good doing that. It was Evan's thing. But there are other models that have since been commissioned for Flames by our buddy Tommy (@bigbossredskullz) who is another Inquisitor legend. He's been in the scene for so long and he 3D sculpted a bunch of really cool models for me which hopefully will also be out by the time that people see this. But yeah, that's where those came from.

CJ: I think I stumbled upon those at Ramshackle before I'd even heard of Flames of Orion.

Steve: Yeah. Me and Evan had talked about Curtis (@ramshackle_games) doing it cause Curtis was very excited about doing it. He made very sick sprue gates. They're destroyed versions of the models and they're very cool.

CJ: Under the Dice Fest 2025 is coming up. Is there anything new that's happening this time around that hasn't happened in the past?

Gage: Rusted Demon.

Steve: Our version of... Another popular competition that exists...

Gage: Yeah, it's a competition in the spirit of the hobby. Not just painting. We're really pushing for people to kitbash. Do weird shit with your own toys. We wanna make sure people are having fun with these things. So it's not just going to be a painting competition. We don't care about a beautiful paint job. There's gotta be originality in these submissions. We bought a bunch of display cases for this studio and we're going to bring them to the event so we can have everyone's stuff on display. We'll see if it sticks. If it sucks then we'll never do it again.

Terry: It's gonna be sick. It'll be awesome.

Steve: This years gonna be cool. Two days of music. All of those armored HEMA guys are gonna come out and fight.

CJ: So sick. So are you guys doing much creative stuff outside of the hobby? Any bands or anything like that?

Steve: Not anymore.

Terry: I do some stuff. I like making art and whatever too...

Gage: Terry is being extraordinarily humble right now. Terry is a very accomplished noise musician.

Terry: Well yeah I like noise music. I like twistin knobs.

Gage: I am currently learning in the school of Terry.

Terry: He's surpassed me.

Gage: Shut the fuck up. I was in a bunch of failed deathcore bands in middle school and high school and they never went anywhere. Steve was in a couple bands.

Steve: Jessica Alba; Guilt Ritual, which was one of the only good bands I was in. I played bass in another friend's project that was his baby called Colourful Hill. It was alt rock shit. It rocked.

Terry: I think all of us are just doing weird shit all of the time.

CJ: You can't escape the freak shit. So who would you say inspires you guys to keep pushing the shit that you do?

Gage: I think the real big takeaway for us is that anyone can do this. We are just by proximity and by friendship, it's a lot easier for us to do it. The District of the Damned is a group of dudes down in DC that kind of like openly took our shit and made it their own. They're doing their own events. Dudes in Australia just did their CANTCON.

CJ: Oh yeah, I just saw that shit on the discord.

Gage: So Matt (@thetestofreason) I met when his band played in Hartford last year or something. He messaged me and was like, "Hey, man. I'm like coming out to Connecticut. Can I see the studio?" And I was like, "Absolutely." Then I was like, "Wait a minute. I like your band a lot." So we connected at the show and he was like, "How can I run a narrative event?" And I was like, "Here's literally everything we've ever done. Do it yourself. Rip it off 100%." We always joke about it here when we're like shit talking the things we don't like. Nobody's getting rich off this shit. You have to 100% chase what you want out of this.

Steve: Don't just do it because it worked for someone else. Put your own spin on shit.

Terry: It's easy enough to do. It's just like, put your own personality into it.

Steve: That's why I like the Dungeon Punks stuff so much because as far as I knew, nobody in 2016 was doing RPG events in hardcore venues. It was so cool that I flew to another country where I didn't know anyone to play in their RPG charity event.

CJ: I can't stop thinking about that RV trip you mentioned. Any crazy stories from that? How long was the drive?

Steve: It was like eight hours.

Terry: Dude, the best part was it parked outside of a residential neighborhood. Generator turned fully on. Everything is so quiet and then the generator is just fully cranked.

Gage: We parked at 4:00AM, left the generator on. I was like, "Martin, can I please sleep inside?" and Martin is the nicest guy you will ever meet. He was like, "Ok, sure." I sleep like three hours a night anyway and then I wake up and the fucking thing is still going. I'm like, "Somebody is going to shoot us out here."

Steve: Not only that. It was like ice in that RV.

Gage: It was like maybe 50 degrees in the RV for like the three people that were sleeping in there.

Terry: I remember some guy in the morning just like trying to have a conversation across the street, just yelling on his phone. That was fun. The whole trip was great.

Steve: Waffle House.

Terry: Paul drove the whole way back through New York City traffic with the big ass RV.

Gage: I drove down. I got Paul maybe $300 in fines that he still hasn't paid.

CJ: They've probably tripled by now.

Gage: He's a wanted felon, probably.

Terry: We ate a lot of chicken nuggets too.

Gage: You guys stopped at every fucking Costco. You stopped at three Costcos and Costco has nothing vegan and I was just fucked the whole time.

Steve: We didn't stop for the food, we stopped for the gas.

Terry: We stopped for the entertainment.