Warlords of Erehwon: Troll Hunt

Bodvoc and I played a game of Warlords of Erehwon recently, continuing our 'not campaign' of orcs vs goblins. 

We'd agreed to boost our forces to 1000 points, and Bodvoc mentioned trying out his newly painted goblin chariot. In response I painted my Old School Miniatures orc chariot. If he was trying out the chariot rules, it made sense if I did too.

As host it was up to me to come up with the scenario. I struggled a bit, but since I'd recently painted up some trolls, but couldn't quite squeeze them into my army, I decided to make them an objective instead. 

Note: both Bodvoc and myself are quite rusty with the rules, we may have made mistakes,  but we're getting more confident. 

Also, we're using home made order dice, partly because, having no gunpowder weapons, 'FIRE' is a meaningless term.

I'm not giving a full turn by turn report, but here's some highlights. 

Opening Moves 

The two sides advance, wary of each other, but more interested in the potential trolls. 

The goblins are first to search troll holes, but the first two are empty.

Bagrat the orc shaman, still nursing bruises from their last encounter, creates a magical portal in front of the goblin dervishes, sending them right back, much to their frustration.

The two sides advance towards each other

The orc spears prod a troll out of it's hole, but the vile brute comes out fighting and drives them away and off the battlefield.

The goblin force as they march in

The orcs as they advance

Troll hunting is a risky buisness

The goblins find an occupied troll hole. It's not friendly.

The goblins think they've got the beast, but it's wounds knit back together and it runs off.

Middle Phase 

The goblin dervishes slog towards the action, only for Bagrat to send them back again (absolutely the best way to deal with them, although I have an even more cunning plan for next time, mwah ha ha haaa).

The orc archers move up to the wall, ready to shoot, while the orc swords advance. The guard approach a troll hole, hoping to get there before the goblins, but it's empty.

The goblins in the woods abandon their empty hole and the gobbledogs eye up the guard. A tasty snack?

That's the way to do it!

Hagar Sheol and his ladz uncover and slay a troll. The chariot sights the troll that dealt with the spears and rides it down.

The chariot claims a troll

The dervishes advance and the goblin chariot rides towards the troll that slew so may goblin halberdiers.  Alas, it rides through a strange magic portal and finds itself back at the baseline.

The battlefield mid action

The bulk of the goblin infantry

End Game

The goblin chariot shamelessly copies the orcs and ride down the troll that caused so much damage to the halberdiers.

Goblin chariot vs troll

 

Hagar Sheol and his ladz drag their troll trophy away out of the woods. On the right flank the goblin spears charge round the wall and into the orc guards, peppering them with javelins as they go. The stoic orcs hold, and despite minor losses they wipe out the goblins. 

The orcs then charge the gobbledogs and send them packing too.

The goblin wizard targets the orc swords, causing them to lose heart (aura of timidity), the goblin bows then loose a volley and wipe them out.

Gurk now targets the archers who also lose heart. 

Bagrat then shot his fiery balls at Gurk, incinerating the gobbledog guards. Gurk himself only survived through sheer luck (Tough reroll saved him, but the extra pin).

Despite their magical timidity (order test at -6, rolled a 1), the orc archers shot back but Gurk had had enough and scarpered.

The orc chariot driver cracked his whip and charged the goblin chariot, the two vehicles lock together, but neither gain the upper hand.

Chariot on chariot action

Brave halberdiers watch on

Conclusion 

Well, a great fun game.  I'm not sure if my rather complicated special rules helped or hindered,  but I enjoyed hunting down those trolls.  In hindsight,  it was theoretically easier for the orcs to kill a troll than for the goblins.  That said, I did lose my unit of spears to a troll. 

As for the chariots,  they were great fun to use, and looked great. I'm not sure that our chariot duel was that good an idea, they seemed a bit too equally matched,  struggling and failing to cause any damage to each other. I'm sure we're missing something here. 

It did take us a little while to recall the rules, play speeded up during the day. 

If you're interested, I gave out VPs as 10% of a unit's PV and +35VPs per troll.  Bodvoc won by a few points, a minor victory, but has we fought on I suspect that the orcs would soon have broken.

In the end, the winners were both of us.

Final Thoughts

We are certainly enjoying Warlords of Erehwon.  It's not perfect, (I don't think there is a perfect set of rules), but they give me the old school feel that I'm looking for. I'm sure they are here to stay, and we'll be playing more games in the near future.

I do have one complaint though, the counterintuitive nomenclature.  I'm sure they are good reasons for this, but it adds a layer of confusion for new players (and, perhaps, makes it harder to introduce them).

I'm looking forward to Bodvoc's next scenario, will we benefit from the troll trophies?

Warlords of Erehwon; Attack on Jomstead

I had another great game of WoE recently when I visited Bodvoc.  The purpose was to get a better grip on the rules, which we certain did, sometimes though making mistakes.

The Mission 

As is traditional, the host came up with the scenario, n this case a raid for loot which was available both from two static sources (the farm buildings at Jomstead) and two mobile ones (Jom and Osbert).

The Armies 

We played with just short of 900 points; both of us expanding the armies we used in the previous game. I'm using mostly my Severed Hands orcs, but gave Grashak Kra four Hobhounds (using the Gobbledog profile from the goblin army list) and I tried a Shaman again. Otherwise it was largely a case of increasing the size of the units. 

Bodvoc took a Shaman too, his main addition was a unit of Goblin Dervishes.

The goblins of Kruk the Destroyer

The Severed Hand orcs

Opening Moves

Both armies gradually advance. There is some ineffective shooting. 

Both the Hobhounds and the Gobbledogs approach each other 

The Gobbledogs seize the initiative and charge the Hobhounds.  Some savage biting ensues and the orcish pack is wiped out. 

In response,  the orc spears charge the remaining Gobbledogs who fall beneath a hail of thrown and thrust spears.

Mid Battle 

The Dervishes swing round the farm and smash into the orc spears quickly destroying the unit. The orc Shaman looses his Fiery Balls at them, slaying some of them. The smouldering remainder just grin and clutch their weapons.

Gurk, the Goblin Shaman, steps forward and with a gesture the orcs facing him tremble with dread.*

End Game 

The Dervishes contact the Orc Shaman,  wiping out him and his bodyguard,  but lose some of their number. They spin on into Hagar Sheol, killing his bodyguard as they finally exhaust themselves.  Hagar Sheol decides enough is enough and flees, er, makes a tactical withdrawal. 

Elsewhere, the remaining orc warriors charge the cowardly goblin archers in the woods. Amazingly,  the goblins survive, and are able to turn the tables and drive the orcs away **.

The remaining orc archers try to down the goblin Shaman, but fail to hit.

At half the number of units, the orcs were broken, and the dice dictated that the game was done.

So another glorious defeat for Hagar Sheol. At least he survived, merely making a tactical withdrawal (in my mind anyway). Partly this is due to my almost deliberate avoidance of any loot, I had hoped to take some from the cold dead hands of the goblins, and perhaps focus on the farmers in the last couple of turns, but Bodvoc's clever tactics kept me on the back foot most of the game. 

The Devishes are scary.  They managed to whirl their way through three of my units, including my underused Shaman. 

I was a little unlucky with my dice in the second half, but I did pretty well to begin with with my spear armed orcs. I seemed to be good at getting the goblin units down to one or two remaining minis, but failing to finish them off.  Kruk and Gurk being notable examples.

Conclusions

I do need to look at my army and find a credible response to things like Dervishes as I'm sure that I'll be seeing them quite often.  I also need to work out the best response to annoying missile troops hiding in cover (and remember that they don't benefit from that cover when charged).

I think that something faster would be useful, we were both surprised that Gobbledogs (or Hobhounds) aren't Fast. 

Unfortunately, orc boar riders are expensive.  I have thought about doing some conversions using the Old School Miniatures boars that I got a while back, I just need to find the right orcs to go on them. 

Orcs aren't great at shooting.  I think splitting my ten archers into two units was a mistake.  I've got some nice war machines to paint up, but they still rely on an Accuracy of 4, so would be of limited value. 

Against poorly armoured opponents such as goblins, I think more spears will be good.  The pre contact volley of spears was suitably impressive.

And I must learn to be more careful with measuring.  Several times I roughly measured distances, mostly to make sure that the Dervishes were just out of reach, only to find that I was out, and they were just in reach.  This cost me the orc spears, and possibly more.

Mistakes Were Made

This was a learning exercise, Bodvoc and I don't get to play often enough and we are still very much learning the game.  

* We made this spell far more effective than it should be, it crippled my centre.  At the time I didn't really understand how to use the Rally order, which would have helped.

** Giving the goblins cover for being in the woods is fine against missiles, but we granted it in melee too.  Oops, no wonder nine rampaging orc warriors failed against ten puny goblin archers.

But anyway, a great fun game, and I even got another mini from Bodvoc's Old School Haul for my orc's Drift project, so win-win (or lose-win in Hagar Sheol's case).

You can read Bodvoc's account over on The War Crow

Trying Warlords of Erehwon. - Again

If you read my earlier post about my first ever game of Warlords or Erehwon, you may have gained the impression that I didn't like the rules.

Well, I was prepared to give them a second go, so Bodvoc drove down with some of his lovely Old School goblins to tackle a portion of my Severed Hand orcs.

Last game I felt overwhelmed with the options and all the different things going on, so I deliberately went for a small 500 point battle with straightforward goals and, on my side at least, no magic.

The background, briefly, was that the goblin leader, Kruk the Destroyer, urged on by his wizard, Gurk, decided to take advantage of the orcs' drubbing at the hands of the dwarves last time. Hopefully they would be weaker and easily beaten.

The field of battle (yes, lots of Middle Earth terrain, it's what I had to hand)

The Opening Stages

The battle began with both sides running forward to gain ground. The orc spears were so enthusiastic that they exhausted themselves.

The advance then slowed slightly, and the orc archers took up position (nicely exposed in the open, despite the ruins close by).

Goblins filled one of the woods and picked their way through.

The orc spears rested, but under the stern eye of Hagar Sheol they got ready for the coming action.

The orcs amass behind their hideous totem 

What's that coming over the hill, is it a monstrous goblin horde?

The two sides advance

Orc archers train their bows on a wood full of goblins 

The Middle Phase

As the goblin bows prepared to shoot, the orc archers snatched the advantage and loosed first. The goblins were better shots though, and killed two orcs for the loss of only one goblin.

On the other flank, a unit of goblins charged into the orc spears. One fell to a well thrown spear, which tipped the balance in the subsequent melee. As the remaining goblins staggered back, the orcs wiped them out.

The Goblin Guard then tried to finish off the depleted orc spears, but the larger unit of orc warriors were waiting for just such an opportunity, and smashed into them part way. Despite the Guard being elite, they were still only goblins, and the orc warriors killed all but their leader. Having taken some casualties, they decided not to press the fight, a decision they would later regret.

In response, Gurk gestured wildly, waved his arms and pointed at the warriors - to no effect.

(At this point I tried to use Hagar to Rally and remove the pins on the remaining orc spears, however, on close reading of the rules, it appears that this only works if the allied unit is actually Routing).

The orc spears then tried to rally, but despite being under the watchful eye of Hagar Sheol, they ended up Down again.

The End

The goblin bows continued to shoot at the remaining orc archers, killing two more, the remaining orc fled the scene.

The orc warriors charged into the goblin wizard, killing his ferocious pet Gobble-dogs. But they pulled down two of the orcs, and, with their earlier casualties, the orcs broke.

Hagar managed to stop their rout, but that stopped him participating in a fight.

Gurk's magic was more effective this time, and Grashak Kra was struck with doubt and fear. Kruk tried to take advantage of this, but Grashak retreated, and Kruk stayed his charge, snorting in disgust.

The orc spears remain hunkered down.

Kruk then charged the orc warriors, but they gave better than they got, and the goblins withdrew. 

The goblin bows turned their attention on poor Grashak Kra, felling him.

Hagar decided it was time he took a hand, charging Kruk and his depleted bodyguard. The frenzied orcs chopped their way through the bodyguard and gave Kruk pause. The two warchiefs snarled and prepared to continue their duel, but each, perhaps, saw something in the others' eyes. They lowered their weapons and nodded at each other with new-found respect. Why waste greenskin blood when they had mutual enemies?

The remains of the orc archers 

Wizard bashing, though surprisingly less effective than I thought it was going to be

After Battle Musings

Well, what a difference. I deliberately set out to try and learn the game and try and get some understanding of what tactics to use.

I'd say I succeeded, and had a great fun game too. Sadly, time ran out before we could run the follow on fight between the Warchiefs, so we called a draw (of course, both privately feeling that we'd have won if we'd played another turn).  The fact that the game was so close, and had moments when it swung one way or another, show, I think, that the rules are sound and that we will have a lot of fun with this going forward.

I'll do another post talking about the rules, but briefly, I did enjoy them this time around.  There are areas that we are still vague about (we occasionally forgot to take Order Tests for units with pins for example), and there are aspects of them that are odd or annoying, such as some of the naming conventions, but there is a depth of tactics that we are just starting to learn, and I look forward to more games, and, who knows? Maybe Warlords of Orc's Drift?

Oldhammer Goblin Wolf Riders

I posted recently showing three wolves, now here are the riders.

MM32/2(b), MM34/2 (b) and MM32/1 (a)

A Change of Plan 

After preparing these three Marauder goblins I decided to keep these for the matching Marauder wolves. I have some of the Kev Adams Citadel goblins, so I chose my favourite to go on the Citadel wolf, 0706/14 Gaglob 2.

Painting the Goblins 

I gave each goblin a slightly different skin colour. There was no attempt at uniform colours for clothing and equipment. 

I used my standard orc method of base coat, extreme highlights and wash, but given that I'm only painting a few of these I gave them extra highlights after the wash and tried to give them better detailing.

The three Marauder goblins, with Gaglob 2 on the right*

The Shields

All the goblins have a stud to hold a plastic shield. Unlike most of Citadel's plastic shields, where the stud fits through a hole and acts as the shield boss, the Marauder shields have a recess rather than a hole and the stud is a lot shallower. The Marauder shields all have moulded detail. I still have some of these, so it seems appropriate to use them. I was tempted to use the crescent shields with a wolf on them, but in the end I chose a small round shield with wicker texture and a small 'Evil Sun' boss.

Blurry shields*

So there they are, three lovely old school goblin wolf riders. You may notice that I've painted the wolves' eyes in yellow since their last post.

I'm pleased with how they've come out, and I'll get the remaining wolves (two Marauder ones) painted soon.  I have one painted rider already, and a couple more unpainted, one of which is missing a hand, so may become a standard bearer.

I'm also pretty pleased with the photography.  Again just using my phone, but this time experimenting with the Portrait setting and the Food filter, both of which seem to accentuate the warmer tones.

This goblin appears to have picked his shield up upside down!

At this point I would usually remark that in fact, this is more than I ever actually managed to properly complete back when I originally collected them, but not this time. I had a unit of ten Goblin Wolf Riders back then, although they were Citadel rather than Marauder. I remember being very pleased with them, though they never did very well on the battlefield. They did suffer from varnish misting; repeated applications of newer varnish never quite corrected it. 

Apart from Warhammer, they also saw action in a 3E D&D adventure where the characters had to defend a hamlet from marauding goblinoids and an Oni. Leave a comment if you remember High Verge.

* Yes, blurry pictures.  Despite the attempts at better photography, these are just WiP snapshots, and I actually can't tell how out of focus they are until I see them on my PC screen, by which time i've moved on in the painting process.

Oldhammer Wolves

Evil Cavalry 

As I continue to clear through the piles of old minis, I'm putting to one side anything that I think will fit my Oldhammer project.

I recently found these three wolves, along with a handful of goblin wolf riders, so I decided that a unit of three (to be later expanded to six) would be a great addition to Team Evil.

The models are two Marauder Miniatures wolves, MM32 (W1) and MM34 (W1) and one Citadel wolf 4787/9 wolf 1

What Colour is a Wolf?

I've done some googling, and miniature painters seem to choose either greys or browns for wolves. A bit more research into real wolves showed me far more variation than I thought possible. 

Still, the choice is largely greys or browns, with further choice in lighter or darker colours (bellies tend to be light, and the top side, especially the spine is dark). 

In the end, I decided not to try to copy any particular wolf, but make up my own wolfy colours.

Now I have painted wolves before, you can see my 10mm wargs here and here. I also painted some of the Marauder wolves years ago to use in roleplaying (I can't remember how long ago, but it was third edition D&D). I still have one of these for reference.

Painted MM32 (W2) looking a bit the worse for wear

In the end I decided to go for greys. I think this will contrast well with the green skin of the goblins and the browns and tans of much of the equipment. Besides, if I ever do any orc boar riders, they will be browns.

There was one small problem, one of the wolves has lost it's slotta tab, but careful drilling and pinning allowed me to have a wire to attach it to a base (I'm using slotta bases as a temporary measure).

Tab-less MM 34 (W1)

Three Painted Wolves 

The wolves were primed with Vallejo Surface Primer, then a base coat of Vallejo Game Color Wolf Gray on the underbelly, legs and flanks. 

Then I overbrushed VGC Fortress Gray moving up the flanks, leaving plenty of the Wolf Grey showing.

Then a smaller area of the flanks and the top side was painted in VGC Cold Gray.

Finally the very top, from the forehead down to the tip of the tail was painted in Vallejo Extra Opaque Charcoal Gray. 

The detailing was pretty simple; claws and fangs were VGC Khaki, highlighted in Bonewhite, then Off White. The edges of the ears were painted in Wolf Gray. Gums were Charcoal Gray with a bit of black mixed in, the snout was the same darkened Charcoal Gray. Pads on the paws were VGC Dwarf Flesh. I finished by running a bit of black wash along the spine.

I'm delighted with how these wolves have turned out. I've already stripped the paint off the previously painted model, and found another unpainted Marauder wolf to add to the pack.

The Riders 

The goblins were pretty straightforward, but I'll give them their own post, including the completed wolf riders.

Vallejo Xpress Paints Three Goblin Trial (77445)

Long time readers may know that I've tried Citadel's Contrast paints and Army Painter's Speed Paints with varying results. I struggled to get the Contrast paints to really behave as I wanted, but the Speed paints were much better.  There was the issue of reactivation, but I used this property to help blend colours.

When I heard Vallejo were doing their own equivalent I had to try them.

Since I used Speedpaints to try and reduce my unpainted Reaper Bones mountain, it seems a fair test to try Xpress paints on more Bones.

For this test I'm painting some of the more recent Bones goblins, and I'm trying three slightly different methods with a limited number of paints.  All the goblins had the metalwork painted first with Vallejo Game Color Chainmail Silver and then washed with thinned  Vallejo Xpress Color Black Lotus.

Goblin 1

The first goblin is painted using mostly colours straight from the bottle straight onto the white Bonesium.  The flesh is VXS Imperial Yellow, the loincloth is VXS Plasma Red and the various leather bits are VXS Wasteland Brown.  The shield was a roughly 50:50 mix of the black and VXS Templar White.

I also dabbed a bit of the thinned brown on the face to see if it helped define the features.

Goblin 2

For the second goblin, I mixed colours a bit more, especially for the skin tone.  This was a mix of three parts yellow and one part brown.  to take the brightness out of the red for the cap I added a bit of the skin mix to the red.  On the photos the cap and the loincloth on goblin 1 look very similar, but the cap is darker in real life.  The skirt is VXS Dwarf Flesh, which gives a surprisingly good faded buff colour.

the bracer and fletchings are black and the leatherwork is the brown.  I went over the rope with a thinned black to give it more definition.

Goblin 3

The final goblin has an all over base coat or wash of Wasteland Brown thinned in a 1:5 mix with Xpress Color Medium. My hope here is that this helps accentuate the shadows, rather like Reaper's own brown liner. 

I then used pretty much the same colours as I used on the first goblin. 

Results

I'm a huge fan of Vallejo paints, but I feel the results are mixed.  I'll admit to sometimes not shaking the paint well enough (Army Painter put mixing pellets in the bottles to help, I'll have to add something to these).  Also, the goblins are lovely minis, but the detail is fairly shallow.  I like the last goblin best; the initial wash helps define the shadows, and darkens the colours slightly.  If I could get a thinner wash that collected more in the shadows it would be better.  A final drybrush of Vallejo Model Color Ivory would also emphasis detail, and of course I haven't done anything for the eyes or teeth, both things that would improve them.

Based properly (this is just one coat of VXS Orc Skin) and they would do for hordes of goblins in a roleplaying game, and they are certainly better than unpainted minis.  

Final Thoughts

Some of these paints are really nice, Wasteland Brown is a favourite at the moment.  All go on Bonesium very well, with no difficult patches.  I want these to give a reasonable result for as little effort as possible, so I'm prepared to sacrifice quality to a degree.  I'm not sure the above test minis quite work yet, but I'll give them a drybrush, paint in the facial detail and base them to match the rest of my D&D mini collection.  They were very fast to paint though, so they certainly meet that requirement.  

I suppose I should try another goblin with Speedpaints for a fair comparison as well.

What do you think?  Are they disappointing or acceptable for what I'm looking for (i.e. a fast way to get the Mini mountain reduced?  Please leave a comment, especially if you've tried them.