Saturday 23 December 2017

Return to Orc's Drift?

I have enjoyed building the old GW card buildings. So much so, in fact, that I have been thinking about replaying the games.
I wouldn't use the old second edition Warhammer (for which the scenarios were written), nor the latest GW fantasy game, Age of Sigmar. I'd much rather recapture as much of the feel of the original using a system I play now.
I have some excellent memories of Orc's Drift. I bought it pretty much when it came out and it, and the early Citadel Journals informed much of my Warhammer.


I first played it through using the card tokens included. I remember the orcs did so badly in the first couple of games that we put in an extra battle to give them more of a chance.  All great fun, and as we went through the campaign we added miniatures to the card tokens, including some home cast Prince August ones. We never had a full army of minis though.

Fast forward some years. A good friend was moving from North Yorkshire to Scotland, so as a send off I got together with his gaming club to play through the campaign again.  This time we had full armies and I updated the stats to the current edition (it was the late 90s).  As we could only fit in two sessions we played the opening three games simultaneously on the first night, and the final Bloodbath at Orc's Drift on the following week.  Playing like this was even more fun as players tried to find out how the battle was going elsewhere.  Incidentally, apart from myself, one other player was present for both run throughs. Although he doesn't play anymore, much of my early gaming involved him and other school friends.

So how shall I replay Orc's Drift now?  My first thought was to use Kings of War. However, looking at the troops involved the battles wouldn't be very interesting. In most cases boiling down to two or three Troops of elves or dwarves against a horde or a couple of regiments of orcs.
Since the buildings are in 15mm, what do I have in that scale already? I have a Dragon Rampant force of orcs. I think this might be the way to go. The dwarves and elves can be in reduced model units to emphasise how they are superior troops but outnumbered. Heroes can be single model units, though this does make them pretty powerful.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. I'll post some more concrete ideas once I have them straight in my head,just in case anyone else wants to try this themselves.

Now where can I find enough players,terrain and figures to run it through in two sessions again?

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