Artefacts from my Gaming Past

I've been doing a big clear out of my parents' house recently and I found a box of stuff from my youth.

Apart from some slightly damaged Star Wars kits (they'll come in nicely for the 28mm Star Wars games, probably as wrecks/terrain pieces) I also found these.

They are the tins I used to keep my collection of D&D miniatures in when I went off to uni (1979). Gosh, my collection has grown since then.

Recently I've been watching a few YouTube videos showing GMing travel sets. It does make me wonder how little I could manage with and if I should slim down my collection.  I doubt I'd manage the sort of games I've been running with only this amount of minis though.

10mm LotR Wargs Speedpainted

For Friday's game I wanted some more Wargs. I had the minis unpainted, but my 500pt army only needed one company, so that's all I had finished. 

I also rather liked the grey/black colour scheme I used in the latest batch of Warg Riders, so I decided to go for something like that for future Wargs.

But I only had a few evenings to get them done. I wondered if Speedpaints might be the answer?

I used the Warg Chieftain as a test model, and the results were sufficiently encouraging that I finished all thirteen models.

The Wargs were given an undercoat of Gray Vallejo Surface Primer, then I used Army Painter Speedpaint Gravelord Grey on the belly, legs, flanks etc.

Once this had dried I used APS Grim Black on the back, upper flanks and top of the muzzle.  

This was close to what I want, but I went over with another coat of Grim Black, This time just along the spine and muzzle. 

This gave a bit too dark a result (the Speedpaints do sometimes intensify in shade as they dry) so I gave a very light drybrush of Vallejo Extra Opaque Charcoal over the back, ears and muzzle.

I finished off by dotting in red for the eyes and a touch of white for any teeth that show, but they looked a little 'flat' still.  My son suggested a touch of light grey on the tips of the ears, and that seems to finish them off nicely.

Basing etc. was as normal, but I didn't want to risk suing my normal coat of gloss painted on as I feared it would reactivate the Speedpaints.  A light spray of varnish sealed the paint, allowing me to finish off normally.  In fact, if you look closely at the account of the game, you'll see that I didn't quite finish the basing; this took a couple of short sessions over the following days. 

These may not be my best work, but they are plenty good enough for a quick paint job.  I realise that I have one company of mostly brown wargs, and three of dark grey/black.  Eventually I'll do another three companies of the brown, and one of the dark, but they'll do for now.  Perhaps Isengard uses slightly different colour wargs to Mordor?  Anyway, I think they fit in well with the rest of the army.  

I'm not sure how well Speedpaints would work on most of the other minis in this army: besides, I have my tried and tested method for the orcs and warg riders and I am pleased with the results.  I may just try the Speedpainting some Mordor Trolls though, I have a few more of those I could do with getting on the battlefield to deal with those pesky Def 5+ troops.

Assault on New Candia City

Our second game the other day was a quick 10mm Sci Fi game. I've had a couple of games previously, so I certainly had the advantage. It was Bodvoc's first experience of this game, so we had fairly small forces with a variety of different troop types (previously I have used two identical forces).

Minis-wise we were using mostly my collection of old WizKids Mechwarrior - Age of Darkness minis.  These were sold in the traditional random box and were a variant of Battletech.  I was given a lot of them many years ago - tried the game once, and put them away.  However, they are ideal for this new game, once rebased.

The scenery is very much improvised (Yoghurt Pot City?), but I intend to greeble them up a bit and get some paint on them.  There is one card building from Dropzone I believe, that I was given at a show, and I have some resin cast bits, including the transmission station, that I bought many many years ago.

The scenario was an invasion.  My forces had to drive out the defenders, preferably as quickly as possible.  Apart from holding the city, Bodvoc had a transmission station (the small building in the centre) which he had to keep out of my hands.  We also were trying to destroy each others' HQ.

The attacking force had the better tech; the vehicles were faster than the norm, the infantry was armoured and they had a combat mech.  The defenders had managed to militarise a couple of industrial walkers, but the infantry was unarmoured.  They did have a couple of tanks with 'tank buster' guns though (which I came to dread as they seemed remarkably accurate against my large De Schmidt* tank).

The start of the battle, the defenders are holding back, hoping to drive off the invaders

Defenders

Attackers

The defenders take cover in the city as their opponents advance

At the end there are too few defenders to hold the city.

We had to finish after four turns, but it was clear that the defenders had lost the city, so Bodvoc decided a tactical withdrawal was wise.  I'm sure my familiarity with the rules gave me the edge though, and it was very much a tutorial game.

We both had fun, and Bodvoc left with a good handful of the minis so hopefully we will be trying this again.

* I don't know any of the Battletech background, or what the significance of the names is, but they are convenient labels.  I must come up with some new names though.

Let Rohan Look to it's Horses. 10mm Lord of the Rings Fantastic Battles

I got a couple of games in with good gaming buddy Bodvoc today. The first was another one of our 10mm Lord of the Rings games. As host I came up with the scenario, and I thought of something involving orcs raiding Rohan for horses around the time the Fellowship were heading south (they didn't take part, but it was an excuse to try out some rules for the Witchking as we know he was in the area).

I spent a lot of time thinking of various scenarios involving a chase across the board, rules for controlling wild horses and random movement of the same.  Then I checked Nic's latest document on the Facebook group, and realised the Reive and Retrieve scenario pretty much did what I wanted.  So with a bit of colour text (and an increase in points as Bodvoc had some new Rohirim to show off), to battle.

The two forces face off, herds of wild horses grazing in between them

The Rohan army

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and the hordes of Mordor

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Both sides advance towards the herds.  Rohan captures the first herd

The view of the early battle from the Rohan side

Mid game the Mordor troops are all over the place.  Shooting (and Resolve loss due to a lost company takes it's toll).  In return, the orcs struggle to hit anything.

Again, the view from the Rohan side.  The defenders seem much more organised.

The Rohan cavalry slowly advance, picking off the orcs as they go.  

Nearing the end the orcs have finally started to bring down some of the Rohirim, but have lost all chance of capturing any herds.

I don't have any pictures of the end phase; I was busy enjoying the triumph of Rohan.  It was very tense, in the last turn the Witchking was charged by several companies, including the Rohan general.  Both leaders went down (though the Witchking will, of course, return), causing both sides to break in the same turn.  At the count, Rohan had two herds, with another two running free, so had won.  Sauron will be looking for different mounts for his most trusted captains in future (though the Witchking hardly merited such reward after his performance in this game).

I really enjoyed the game, despite struggling to make any headway against the enemy.  At the end I was surprised to have broken the Rohan army; Def 5+ is really tough, especially since in this scenario all companies were single companies, no multiple company units.  The orcs' main strength, their numbers, was hard to bring to bear, and I failed to hold on to any of the captured herds.  Irregular infantry make poor herders with the -2 to Melee (and +2 to the opponents) when attacked.

My main mistake though was the Witchking.  I included him partly as a nod to the passage in the book placing him near the Anduin (Spoilers - Legolas shoots the flying mount) but mostly to experiment with how I thought he should work.  I tried a character company with a mage lord on a dragon with flying, fearless and terrifying.  Being a character company meant he never got to use curse as he was always moving.  terrifying proved ineffective against Res 6 elite cavalry, though the -2 to melee was nice, it offset their ferocious charge and master of horse somewhat.

Next time it might be a dragon with passenger, though that does risk the Witchking being taken out on that pesky double 6 roll.

I must point out that Bodvoc played a far cleverer game than I did.  His deployment alone helped him capture two herds early on.