At the worst possible time of year not only is the Diehard Miniatures Kickstarter in its last few days but Bood wants to take our money in exchange for dwarves.
It doesn't look like Diehard will quite make the Son of Slomm stretch goal, and to my mind some of the warriors and wizards are a bit ordinary for the £6 price tag (which to my mind is slightly into premium pricing for figures that size), but I'll be honest and say I'm salivating over some of the others!
I've been looking forward to getting some of Bood's dwarves ever since I first became aware of the project. Real life seems to have impacted his plans somewhat, which while understandable is something of a worry, but seeing that some of the dwarves have already seen the light of day on Blue's blog is a reassuring counter to that.
I wonder if the kids will mind Christmas being postponed for a few months...?
Monday, 30 November 2015
Sunday, 29 November 2015
Starting a Norse force
It's a long story, or perhaps merely a convoluted justification for starting yet another project...
No one at my local club plays Warhammer, except for when I can entice other Oldhammerers along. I'm going to try and rectify that (our games in the past have attracted some interest) but in the meantime I'm likely to be playing SAGA, Dux Brittaniarum, maybe Hobgoblin and hopefully Frostgrave at some point.
So plan A is to have some painted wizards that I don't feel need the Dettol treatment and 6 points worth of SAGA vikings. That gets me set for SAGA and Frostgrave, with some chaps also usable towards some Dux Saxons. It also gives me the excuse I've been looking for for about 25 years to get some of the Citadel Norse (now from Foundry).
Juxtaposing the sorcerors and the vikings gave me another idea. In the good old days the WFB Norse were basically vikings with a side order of werewolves and some colonising of Lustria. In modern-ish Warhammer they seem to have lost a lot of that flavour and become basically chaos followers in fur - I don't want to go all the way down that road (and close the door on the Magnificent Sven) but it seems to me that, with the chaos gates pretty much on their doorstep, at least some would take the path to chaos. I thought at first if mixing some Norse in with my Citadel mercenaries and some Wars of the Roses (i.e. Empire) infantry to create a renegade / outlaw / wanderer chaos warband. But then I decided it'd be much more flavourful - and so much more work - to create separate Empire-themed and Norse-themed warbands.
Of course I can't have my more exotic beastmen (rhinos, slugs, lizards) in a Norscan chaos force - I need to stock up on beastmen more suited to the climate. So hopefully boars, bears and wolves can be added to the standard goat and dog types.
Or maybe I'll be side-tracked again before I get much beyond the viking warband...
Friday, 23 October 2015
So, Tékumel...
On Thursday evening I got to try Tékumel in a Hangouts game brilliantly hosted by Barry Blatt, and I'm still digesting the experience.
Barry's clearly a Tékumel devotee, the players mostly (or perhaps all) novices to the setting. The session took the traditional approach of having the characters be refugees newly arrived in Tsolyánu (the city of Jakálla to be specific) which helps deal with the fact that the players as well as their characters are dazed and bewildered.
Amongst my notes of the session I jotted down "claustrophobic, exotic, bewildering". There are lots of things to love, including the fact that the chief vermin are not your standard rodents but some overgrown bug, and the mishmash of sword and planet meets vaguely ancient Eastern meets advanced (does having lawyers mean advanced?) civilisation.
It's also quite unsettling - in your typical pseudo-medieval (or even grimdark) setting a starting character may be at the bottom of the food chain but they're out to improve their lot - it may be risky but one of these days... And in the meantime they've got a reasonable idea of how the society around them works. Our characters were (literally) fresh off the boat with no contacts other than their fellow refugees in this society where it's not what you know but who you know and what clan you're in that counts. Clearly the whole Foreigners' Quarter saw us as marks whereas the city proper barely acknowledged our existance. And one of the worst things that could happen to you would be for anyone that matters to pay any attention to you. We were very much in the "them" camp, and exceedingly unlikely to ever become "us".
So in a bizarre way the setting's both very offputting and incredibly fascinating, and as a roleplaying experience deeply rewarding as a result.
I'd very much like to play again (I think...). But it does leave the impression of a setting that's extremely hard to GM, which is a shame.
Monday, 3 August 2015
So that was BOYL '15!
Good to see people already planning for next year, I can't wait to see what springs from the hive mind as the focus event for that. Oldhammer Ahoy pipped the Deathrace to the highlight title for this year, at least for me, and the photos over on Shadowking's blog showcasing the quality and quantity nicely illustrate why, although they looked even better "in the flesh".
Captain Crooks travelling from the other side of the world to put on a game rather puts everyone else to shame though!
I was glad to get my caravaners onto the beautifully prepared table for the Fallout game -
The game was a great showcase of how GM'd scenarios outshine straight forward two-player games. There were six of us playing, with only the supermutants and the Children of the Cathedral having the luxury of knowing who was "against" them (everybody) or who they were "against" (everybody).
I spent the game feeling decidedly out-gunned, but my objectives didn't actually set me against anyone and I was extremely fortunate that all the potential obstacles in my path were either dealt with by other players or decided they had other groups they'd rather fight elsewhere.
I managed to achieve my objectives without firing a shot, and with only one or two unsuccessful shots aimed at me. I had the occasional feeling that it'd be fun to take a more active role than was strictly necessary but was conscious that to do so would probably go badly for me, never mind the fact that ammo you use is ammo you can't sell later!
Fantasy remains where my heart is, but on this showing I would happily paint more stuff with guns.
Captain Crooks travelling from the other side of the world to put on a game rather puts everyone else to shame though!
I was glad to get my caravaners onto the beautifully prepared table for the Fallout game -
The Nuka-Cola bottle caps are re-roll tokens, which we each had 3 of, and hint at the shear level of effort that LegioCustodes had put into preparing for the game.
The game was a great showcase of how GM'd scenarios outshine straight forward two-player games. There were six of us playing, with only the supermutants and the Children of the Cathedral having the luxury of knowing who was "against" them (everybody) or who they were "against" (everybody).
I spent the game feeling decidedly out-gunned, but my objectives didn't actually set me against anyone and I was extremely fortunate that all the potential obstacles in my path were either dealt with by other players or decided they had other groups they'd rather fight elsewhere.
I managed to achieve my objectives without firing a shot, and with only one or two unsuccessful shots aimed at me. I had the occasional feeling that it'd be fun to take a more active role than was strictly necessary but was conscious that to do so would probably go badly for me, never mind the fact that ammo you use is ammo you can't sell later!
Fantasy remains where my heart is, but on this showing I would happily paint more stuff with guns.
Saturday, 25 July 2015
A post apocalyptic diversion
When LegioCustodes of Oldhammer 40k suggested a game of Rogue Trader set in the Fallout universe for this year's BOYL I thought that'd be a great opportunity to wallow in two different forms of nostalgia, plus I'd only have to paint a handful of figures so that'd be no problem...!
I must learn that I'm (a) slightly obsessive, and (b) a very slow painter. But with lots of forbearance from the family, plus abandoning the plan to include cargo with my brahmin conversion, I'm finally done, and with nearly a week to spare.
As an added bonus I've finally painted a couple of Imperial Guard figures I bought when they were new (one of them even has base colours from then), and got some practice with painting flesh tones other than green. Still a lot of work to do on that (especially my attempt at "weather-beaten Caucasian"), but while there's bits I'm not happy with they're a lot better than they would have been if I'd painted them 20-some years ago.
I must learn that I'm (a) slightly obsessive, and (b) a very slow painter. But with lots of forbearance from the family, plus abandoning the plan to include cargo with my brahmin conversion, I'm finally done, and with nearly a week to spare.
Thursday, 16 July 2015
So I played Age of Sigmar, and...
... in the words of Warlord Paul's social experiment I'm mostly A (a good time was had), with a pinch of B (not quite my cup of tea).
Anatol Rathbauer's comments on WP's blog bring home some key points. There are a couple of things I'd add -
To go into some detail on that last point, I spent a good part of the game trying to get my head around what the attacks of my orcs counted as. The orc warscrolls (available from the GW site) describe them as being "armed either with Choppas or Pigstikka Spears... Some units of Orcs are instead armed with a pair of Choppas.", and then there's a profile for the Choppa attack, and a special rule for it also (there are lots of special rules, which add a fair bit of flavour and interest, but also mean a lot of flicking through print-outs). You're constantly tempted to apply the Choppas rule, but then on reading it's clear it only applies to the dual-wielding option. This would easily be fixed by re-labelling the rule as "Pair of Choppas", and eventually you'd naturally get the hang of it, but in a first game even with only 5 units it broke the flow of things somewhat.
In the same vein, but more significantly, is the issue of fielding something for which there's no warscroll. One of our club members had brought along his SAGA force, which in the good old days would easily have stood in for a Norse army. But currently there's none such, and while creating new warscrolls on the surface of things doesn't seem to difficult on looking further it's not trivial either. For a start there are an awful lot of the "special" units and relatively few standard units to use as a baseline, and even then the patterns don't seem to emerge. For example -
Orcs (warriors and archers): Save on 5+
Peasant bowmen: 6+
Men at arms: 6+
Crossbowmen: 6+
Greatswords: 4+
Knights: 4+
Nowadays shields seem to give a re-roll rather than a bonus, so presumably 6+ is your unarmoured baseline (otherwise a re-roll's not much use!), however I've seen at least one warscroll with no armour save...
Equally mounted troops seem to get an extra wound rather than higher save, which is kind of refreshing - no more bashing away until they finally roll a 1.
But it seems odd that orc archers seem armoured by default, whereas crossbowmen aren't, and greatswords are as heavily armoured as knights. By this measure I'm guessing that my Norse example would be 5+ as well, probably with a shield (and a Choppa with a more dignified name), but who knows? Anyway, it's not unsurmountable, but a lot more opaque than I'd like.
Finally it's worth a mention of the miniatures - the proper Age of Sigmar ones really aren't my cup of tea at all, and the infantry seem about 9' tall (in scale). But it did occur to me how much my much younger self would really love the properly big demons and dragons that kids these days seem to get.
I do like the way that the turn structure / initiative work, both on the wider scale and for combat, and the dicing for charges. It brings in a nice element of the uncertainty that I enjoyed in my Dux Britanniarum experience.
Anatol Rathbauer's comments on WP's blog bring home some key points. There are a couple of things I'd add -
- I really like the size of the game - I'd turned up with a shade under 40 orcs, which felt about right. This is a major advantage in terms of making the game accessible (and, probably not coincidentally, is about the size of a SAGA or Dux Britanniarum starter force, or so I understand it). In 3rd edition terms I still feel I'm 20-odd orcs, plus a boatload of goblins or some sort of allies, short of having a reasonably sized but still small-ish army. Realistically that's a year's worth of painting, without me being distracted onto countless other projects.
- Wizards are good to have, but more of a supporting element than a game winner.
- I don't like having to translate out of GW-speak.
To go into some detail on that last point, I spent a good part of the game trying to get my head around what the attacks of my orcs counted as. The orc warscrolls (available from the GW site) describe them as being "armed either with Choppas or Pigstikka Spears... Some units of Orcs are instead armed with a pair of Choppas.", and then there's a profile for the Choppa attack, and a special rule for it also (there are lots of special rules, which add a fair bit of flavour and interest, but also mean a lot of flicking through print-outs). You're constantly tempted to apply the Choppas rule, but then on reading it's clear it only applies to the dual-wielding option. This would easily be fixed by re-labelling the rule as "Pair of Choppas", and eventually you'd naturally get the hang of it, but in a first game even with only 5 units it broke the flow of things somewhat.
In the same vein, but more significantly, is the issue of fielding something for which there's no warscroll. One of our club members had brought along his SAGA force, which in the good old days would easily have stood in for a Norse army. But currently there's none such, and while creating new warscrolls on the surface of things doesn't seem to difficult on looking further it's not trivial either. For a start there are an awful lot of the "special" units and relatively few standard units to use as a baseline, and even then the patterns don't seem to emerge. For example -
Orcs (warriors and archers): Save on 5+
Peasant bowmen: 6+
Men at arms: 6+
Crossbowmen: 6+
Greatswords: 4+
Knights: 4+
Nowadays shields seem to give a re-roll rather than a bonus, so presumably 6+ is your unarmoured baseline (otherwise a re-roll's not much use!), however I've seen at least one warscroll with no armour save...
Equally mounted troops seem to get an extra wound rather than higher save, which is kind of refreshing - no more bashing away until they finally roll a 1.
But it seems odd that orc archers seem armoured by default, whereas crossbowmen aren't, and greatswords are as heavily armoured as knights. By this measure I'm guessing that my Norse example would be 5+ as well, probably with a shield (and a Choppa with a more dignified name), but who knows? Anyway, it's not unsurmountable, but a lot more opaque than I'd like.
Finally it's worth a mention of the miniatures - the proper Age of Sigmar ones really aren't my cup of tea at all, and the infantry seem about 9' tall (in scale). But it did occur to me how much my much younger self would really love the properly big demons and dragons that kids these days seem to get.
Some pictures
 |
| My lads line up against some halberdiers, a steam tank(!), and some chaps in gold |
 |
| Angelic space marine types - you really didn't want to stop just there...! |
 |
| My high tide point for the game - boar riders are having fun, and the infantry are still hopeful |
 |
| Beating on the steam tank didn't go as hoped. The boar boys are doing OK, but it's not looking like a win... |
Saturday, 27 June 2015
Middle Earth gaming and power levels
An amusing and informative post ranking the most metal deaths in Middle Earth has been doing the rounds on G+. It's given me somewhat more sympathy for the writers of MERP, to add to my appreciation for the critical hits tables - although they still have a fair way to go to make up for the mundanity of the magic system.
It is a good reminder though that Middle Earth as a setting seems almost impossible to systemise. Even setting aside the (perhaps legendary?) exploits of various Noldor in the First Age, it's clear that the Dúnedain, not to mention various elves of different heritages still around in the Third Age, are capable of extraordinary feats.
Personally I'm comfortable with playing in Middle Earth as a fairly low-powered game, but in doing so I'm quietly ignoring arguably a major aspect of the setting. So am I being fair on game designers where that option may not be available, else they would risk short-changing some portion of their audience?
It is a good reminder though that Middle Earth as a setting seems almost impossible to systemise. Even setting aside the (perhaps legendary?) exploits of various Noldor in the First Age, it's clear that the Dúnedain, not to mention various elves of different heritages still around in the Third Age, are capable of extraordinary feats.
Personally I'm comfortable with playing in Middle Earth as a fairly low-powered game, but in doing so I'm quietly ignoring arguably a major aspect of the setting. So am I being fair on game designers where that option may not be available, else they would risk short-changing some portion of their audience?
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