Weather Appropriate Gaming

One of my goals for 2018 was to get in a tabletop game each month.  I managed to squeeze in a game of Frostgrave last night, despite the 'Beast from the East', keeping me on track so far.

We played a three sided game (one player was hit by the Plague and was unavailable) and as it was the first game of Frostgrave for the other two (and it's been a couple of years since I played) I prepared four warbands each with a different wizard to lead it. The warbands were all very similar, being variants on five thugs, two archers and a knight.  I even pre selected spells, avoiding out of game spells, to speed things along.  If we liked it, we could revisit it and select our own warbands.
I borrowed a trick from Ghost Archipelago and placed a central treasure worth double (I suppose it should have been triple?) and we each placed two normal treasures.  We also played to an end time rather than until only one side was left.  We used my two painted warbands (see here and here), plus a selection of D&D prepaints, and just about every bit of ruined building I possess.

I'll not give a blow-by-blow account, but here are a few highlights.

As the warbands arrive all seems quiet.  The Necromancer can be seen marshalling his forces in the top right, my Chronomancer was at the bottom of the table and the Elementalist set up behind the building just visible on the left hand side of the picture.

In the early stages of the game the Chronomancer advances his warband towards two temptingly close treasures.  Poor dice rolling meant no Fleet Feet to speed the thugs along, and some damage to both the wizard and his apprentice.  The Necromancer cautiously advanced through the ruins, hugging the table edge, whilst the Elementalist moved his troops boldly towards the centre.  His missile troops climbed up a ruin to give a good field of fire, and he successfully used Telekinesis to move treasures (including the central one) closer to his side.

As the looting begins, the Chronomancer realises his hiding place at the back is not safe as a Wraith (looking like a vampire) appears.

Although he can't damage the wraith, he can force it back, allowing him to run to safety.  (I then realised that none of my spells could damage the wraith).  In the end the templar charged in and gave his life to protect the 'cautious' Chronomancer (dratted double damage).

One of the Necromancer's archers is in the tower, taking pot shots, mostly at the Chronomancer's troops, while his knight moves to deal with a wandering wolf.  The Elementalist's thief moves towards a treasure, hopping to defeat a nearby thug, after his master had failed to telekinesis (is that a verb?) it away.

As the battle draws to a close and the event known in Felstadt as 'Last Bus' approaches, the Elementalist has cleared up most of the treasures near him.  The Necromancer's thug took out the thief, claiming the treasure, whilst the Chronomancer's apprentice risked death (pushing a spell and ending up on 1 HP) to Leap a  treasure bearing thug to safety.

All-in-all a great fun game.  I'm sure we made some mistakes, and I was unlucky with my spell casting, not only failing many rolls, but failing sufficiently to take damage almost every time I did so.

There was little combat, which perhaps matches the beginning of a campaign, where the wizards, new to Frostgrave, haven't yet built up the rivalries and enemies that develop in a campaign.  The Necromancer lost a thug to one of my archers, and one of my thugs fell to his bowfire.  The Elementalist only lost his thief.  Telekinesis proved very useful, as did Leap.  There was little else in the way of successful spell casting, Bone Dart was cast successfully several times, but it almost always missed.  I suspect if we get more into this we will be a bit cleverer in spell selection.

At the end the elementalist won quite convincingly, with two ordinary treasures and the central one.  We ruled that any treasures still unclaimed on the board were lost, but that any being carried at the end would be claimed.  I'll tighten this up in future, so that the treasure value is gained, but not the experience, unless the treasure is actually carried off the board.

Hopefully we can get another game in next month; I'd like to get a campaign going where we play once a month to give time for preparing the warbands with any new recruits etc, and also to build any required scenery.  Time will tell, now what's the casting number for the 'Create Extra Hobby Time' spell?

Above and Beyond

I don't usually get particularly commercial on here, but I have recently experienced particularly good customer service from the nice nannyogg999 on eBay (also part of Caliver Books I believe).
since T'Interweb is generally used to complain, I thought it would be nice to praise, and if you are after something, give them a try.

Watch Tower Complete

I've completed the last of the card models from the Bloodbath at Orc's Drift set.  You can see the rest of them here, here, here, and here.

The watchtower is used in the Linden Way game and the tents are the camp of the dwarven engineers at Orc's Drift.

The tower was the usual card clad in thinner card for the planking effect.  I really like the way this turns out, though the process of gluing on individual planks is fiddly and time consuming.  Next time I build wooden clad buildings I'll experiment with single pieces of card scribed with the gaps as well as the grain.  I went for a much paler grey wood colour than the original model, this is closer to the colour that cut timber goes when left out in all weathers.

I will at some point add a base.  I have already done this for the other buildings, but I'll wait until they are all done before texturing them.  It adds a bit of height and compensates for the thickness of the mini bases.  I might even give the watchtower a small mound or hill to raise it still further.

The tents are more complicated than they look; a thin card prism shape was glued to a base.  Pieces of cocktail sticks were glued on for the tent poles.  The whole lot was sealed with craft glue to protect it from the water of the next stage.  When everything was dry, tissue paper was draped over (cutting a slit at each end to allow for the poles.  Water was then carefully applied with a brush; at this stage the back of the tent was folded down and the front was folded to one side to represent the opening.  Then watered down PVA glue was added to stiffen the paper up.  When dry the whole lot was undercoated black, followed by overbrushing with khaki and bone white, details of the poles were picked out in a golden brown.  I went back and painted a little black ink into the fronts where the flaps were open.  i might add a couple of squares of a different colour to represent patches.

Apart from giving me buildings for the Orc's Drift series of games (and I do want to do those sometime), I can use these for my League of Rhordia army.  I like to have a few terrain pieces that go with an army and I think these look good for the League.

I think the next buildings will be some of the ones from Terror of the Lichemaster.  If I plan to adapt old WFB series for Dragon Rampant this is the more likely one for my group to start as one of the gamers is 'quite fond' of the Undead.  They will of course come in useful for other games, the mine buildings in the first game in particular will work well with any dwarven force (and I have a few of those ready for Dragon Rampant).  Unlike the Orc's Drift set where I was very much copying the originals to try things out, I intend to be freer with the original designs and adapt them as I see fit.  In particular, I think the dwarven sheds would look better reduced in height and given more dwarven sized and positioned doors and windows.  By changing little details like the type of roofing material I can make buildings look like they come from a different area, though I will still make some more of the timber framed 'Elizabethan' style buildings as well to expand the League terrain collection.

I've also been basing up some trees ready for 15mm gaming.  They are part of a pack of cheap plastic trees off eBay.  they will need some attention before they are ready as the foliage is falling of the armatures and it looks a little garish.  A coat of some sort of tinted adhesive (Mod Podge?) should do the job.

And didn't I do well to resist 'All Along the Watchtower' puns? 

Or given the readership of the blog, this.

League Showoff

Not me boasting about my position in a tournament, I've still to get a second game in this year; rather me showing off my League of Rhordia army as it is so far.

Of course, an army is never finished.  There's always that one more unit to add or that special character to paint, but I'm pretty happy that I should get some good games around 1000 to 1500 points of Kings of War out of this lot.  I can't legally field all this at one time, but it does give me some options.

Whole army shot; 6 regiments, 4 troops, 7 heroes and 2 warmachines.

Spot the finished hedges on the left.

The human heroes, some of whom are still awaiting rebasing.

I am pleased with these, especially next to the terrain I built for them.  The mat is something I picked up a while ago, I think it's meant to go on a greenhouse floor?  I'll add some lighter colour to it to match my bases a bit better (and make it less garish) though annoyingly its a few inches short of a scale 6 foot long.

I would also like to bulk out some of the troops to regiments and regiments to hordes.  In Kings of War the number of regiments you have affects the number of heroes or warmachines (or monsters) you can field.  Hordes unlock even more choices.

I need to come up with some heraldry for the League.  All the minis above were either painted years ago to be a Warhammer Fantasy Battle Empire force or have been recently added with matching paint schemes.  The flags etc are all scaled down versions of the Empire heraldry, and I want to move away from that.  I'll keep that heraldry for my 28mm Kingdoms of Men, but I want these to look different.  My thoughts revolve around the brief bit of information given in Uncharted Empires.  It mentions that there were originally five city states, though two were destroyed by orcs.  Following the foundation of the league, the halfings joined, and the capital is given as Eowolf (a rather Saxon sounding name).  I'm thinking that each city has two associated colours which it's soldiers will wear, and each city will have slightly different styles (explaining my sourcing across quite a bit of Medieval and early Renaissance history).  The overall symbol will be based on a five sided shape, possibly with two sections blacked out, though I need something to fancy this up.  The halflings will have to make do with the traditional symbols of chickens, pies, wine bottles etc.  If you've got any ideas, please comment, I'm happy to copy share best practice.

I've also got plans for a couple of cavalry units as well, to increase the flexibility of the army.  Oh, and maybe a Battleshrine, and more halflings, and, and, and ......

But League aside, I think it's time to move on to another force.  As I have said before, I like to have two opposing forces.  It makes it much easier to show potential players how the game works, and means I can set up a game myself without worrying about opponents having to bring their own army.

The difficult bit is what?  I have enough Ratmen to build a Ratkin force of about 1000 points, including some nice potential for conversions for some of the weirder Ratkin stuff.  

I also like the Varangur.  These were created to give Warriors of Chaos players something to do in Kings of War, though I suspect that if and when Mantic get round to producing their own minis, they will look a bit different.  They are described as a loose coalition of tribes, so I like the idea of sourcing a lot of different types of minis from different manufacturers and historical periods.  I've got some Skythians that would make interesting cavalry (and provide me with the beginnings of a force for Kings of War Historical/Hail Caesar), and a few repurposed 28mm monsters for the more fantastic troops.  I've also got some Goths somewhere which might make infantry with a quick paint job.  Ral Partha/Demonworld do some very nice barbarian types as well for adding to the army.  If you've any suggestions, please comment.

Apart from taking photos, I've been busy with more D&D terrain, finishing off 15mm scenery (only one building to go to finish the Orc's Drift set) and sorting out some 28mm Lord of the Rings orcs.

February is already a busy month hobby wise.

Who'd have Thought It?

Well, after years of avoiding GW products I've gone and bought a book.
For various reasons I gave up playing both Warhammer and Warhammer 40K quite a while ago and focused my efforts on other systems.  I thought that would be it for me and GW.

But I've always had a large soft spot for The Lord Of The Rings; books, films and the Strategy Battle Game that GW brought out.

It was inevitable that I would try the game, and I liked it.  I've played many a game with friends, family and even ran a campaign at a school club once, which went down very well.  Of course it wasn't perfect.  Some of the minis seemed to be a bit too powerful to me, and I had issues with some of the extrapolated material, [warning - mini rant ahead] and you should never, ever name the Nazgul individually.  Even Tolkien only named one and gave a title to another.  Still, it provided a fun game and it was marvelous to play games clearly set in Middle Earth.
The game seemed to die after the first trilogy had been out a while, only to resuge with the Hobbit.  A new version of the game, and a load more minis.  I was less impressed with some of these, such as the special rules for different weapon types, but they could be supplemental rules, so I ignored them.  As the support for the game seemed to dwindle with the Hobbit films (look at the releases; a boxed game and hardback book for the first film, a thin booklet for the second, and a PDF for the third) I sort of gave up, though I did have a period of working out (with Merlin) the Kings of War stats for our LotR minis.  Other games systems came along, and it became harder to get the minis.

Now it seems that GW are once more looking at the game.  The recently published a hardback version of their skirmish campaign system, Battle Companies.  This focused on a small group of fighters that fought battles and gradually improved, rather like the earlier 'Mordheim' game, and a system would be replicated in Legends of the Old West (Cowboys) and Legends of the High Seas (Pirates). Similar systems are now common in games such as Deadzone.
The Battle Company rules were originally published in White Dwarf, and later in the (rather excellent) Strategy Battle Games in Middle Earth part work.  This new book updates the companies to include many of the new releases such as Iron Hills dwarves, Goblin Town goblins and Thranduil's Court.  There has also been a tidying up of the rules and some small adjustments, some more scenarios and a narrative campaign.
I notice that the logo on the back is not 'Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game', nor 'The Hobbit Strategy Battle Game' but 'Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game'.  So perhaps we will see more releases in the near future?

This means that in between my other projects I will be assembling a couple of Battle Companies, probably Mordor and something elven.  I could simply dig out some of my already painted stuff, but that would make no impact on the lead mountain, so I'll start from scratch.  The good news is that the starter companies are only a handful of minis.  In the spirit of multiple usage I'll be looking at using them in Dragon Rampant as well.  In fact I already have enough Rohan troops to make a Dragon Rampant force.

As Aragon (almost ) said; "Lets paint some orc".

P.S. I should say that after checking on the GW website (and how long is it since I looked on there?) I see that they do a hardback volume to cover the second and third Hobbit films.  Not quite as nice to my eyes as the three 'Journey' books for the Lord of the Rings which included scenery building and miniature painting projects as well, but still.

January Review

So Ick has passed, or January in our world.  How have I done hobby wise?
You will have noticed that I have no longer posted a list of painted, traded, bought etc. This is party because my continual switching between 28mm, 15mm and terrain and modelling projects makes it hard to give a value to any individual work.  The card buildings in particular don't reduce the lead pile at all, so unless I add my recycling bin to the tally, it creates problems.

Instead I'll just sum up what I have got, got rid off and created at the end of each month, along with a summary of odds and ends.

Possibly most importantly, I got a tabletop game in.  The latest in the long running Nexus Psi campaign for Deadzone against T'Otherone.  it was fun, and I'd like to get more in, but now I'm back on two RPG nights a week, it's harder to schedule.

At the beginning of the month I received my kickstarter edition of Dreadball 2.  I loved the original when it came out, but I can see why it warranted a new edition to rebalance the many teams.  This brought with it four new teams plus various extras like the ref and, of course, another Blaine.  One bonus about the new edition is that everything comes as one piece pre coloured plastics, so in theory I can play it right out of the box.

I gave away/traded many 15mm figures to those of my friends who were collecting the relevant armies.  This justifies my getting a few Essex minis (mostly halflings) for my League of Rhordia army.  I also received in a trade some of the old Pendrakken ratmen to go towards my Ratkin army.
I have painted some 15mm Rhordians (human and halfling) to get the army to a useable size with some flexibility.  Now its time to move on to another project.

I have also been building some 15mm terrain.  this has been themed around the old WFB campaign pack, Bloodbath at Orc's Drift. I've been thinking of running this for Dragon Rampant, though I haven't actually put brush to lead yet.  My existing Orcs will do nicely, but they need some reinforcements, especially if they do well in the preliminary battles and loads turn up at Orc's Drift.  The terrain project has inevitably expanded to creating a full set of 15mm terrain.  I no longer have any from back when I used to play WFB in that scale.  I've got some hedges on the go, and am awaiting some plastic trees from China.  I'll cut out some hills soon and I suppose some river sections will be needed.  Previously I used felt sections with extra texture and paint.  Should I do the same or look at the popular 3D banks system that many people make/use?

I've also experimented with a new system of dungeon floor plans.  Whilst this is still in an experimental stage, it does have promise.  I must make a few more walls, including ones that aren't anchored under the tiles for smaller rooms, and some more extras like doors.

I've also got a lot more blog posts done in January.  Some of these have been pretty popular, particularly when I've flagged them on Facebook.  It's always nice to receive recognition from fellow gamers and crafters.  (More comments and followers would be great too).

In summary, I've still a lot to do, but I'm generally positive about the progress I'm making.  I'm still getting involved in too many projects at once, I'm not sure how to fix that, as forcing myself to work on something means I tend to resent it.  This is supposed to be a hobby after all.  On the other hand, there is a lot of satisfaction is looking at a completed project and knowing its finished and doesn't need anything else doing to it (well, maybe one more unit.....)