Balance? Ha, ha ha ha (etc.)

You have Warhammer and 40K and Realm of Chaos and Warhammer Siege and some rules from a White Dwarf for a new model that someone just created. You have dwarves and squats and orcs and chaos and 40K chaos and marines and an inquisitor and a gyrocopter and a speeding rhino and level 3 battle magic and a renegade who's practically a deamon.

Balance? Ha! Ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha...

I have no idea what that is but it's big and blue and fast and loud

You'd better have a GM because, however many rulebooks there are, a good chunk of what happens won't be covered, and without a GM you'd not have a scenario and objectives and hidden deployments but just a big mosh in the middle.

Except there is a strange sort of balance because of all the different bits of un-balance, and besides the dice make sure that things never quite work out as you'd expect at first glance.

But I'd not march out in front of it unless I was pretty sure I could do something like that to it

But mostly there's fun and a wierd sense of rightness. And not remembering to take all the photos that you should have.

The Legend of Kremlo

Back in March (life's been hectic!) an Oldhammer session that a number of us had arranged fell through, which left Paul and I looking for an alternative plan at short notice. Having long owned but never played The Legend of Kremlo the Slann from the first Citadel Compendium, and remembering that Paul was about the only person I know who owns any Slann, I suggested we give it a try.

Given the short timeframe, and faced with the hurdle that it's a Warhammer 1st edition scenario (but neither of us own those rules) we had to wing some bits of it (in hindsight not very successfully in places), but a good day's gaming was had which is what counts!

Part one - Skeggi

The scenario is in two parts, the first part concerns a Slann raid on Skeggi, a Norse coastal village somewhere in Lustria, which just happens to have the eponymous Kremlo as its chief.

Skeggi map for the Kremlo scenario. © Citadel Miniatures 1983

Our first challenge was setting up the table to match the scenario map as closely as we could. The map is pretty exact, and the table smaller than probably most Warhammer games at only 3 feet for the longest edge. I think we got it pretty close -

The Slann objective is to kill 12 villagers, and given there are 12 fishwives on the far side of the river from the village itself Paul quite sensibly attacked them. It then became a race to see if the other villagers and their local berserkers could get to the Slann before they could slay the fishwives.

As I mentioned in the intro we were winging the rules somewhat (or at least, playing a first edition scenario via second edition rules) and I'm not sure how much that impacted the outcome. As proper Warhammer geeks will know, in 1st edition strength and toughness are on a 1-6 scale (or more specifically, for toughness, an A - F scale). Recognising that the numbers for strength given in the scenario looked low we bumped these by 1 and used the 2nd edition charts - foolishly in hindsight as the combat resolution charts are given in the back of the Compendium!

This made both battles more lethal than they should have been, but this was offset in the first battle by an oddity of the scenario rules for the fishwives, or at least our application of them. These state that the fishwives become subject to frenzy if any of their number are killed - which in 2nd edition terms would seem a bit odd except in the case of missile fire (since you roll for frenzy when charging into combat, and it seems unlikely that the fishwives would lose one of their number to combat, leave combat and then charge back in). Anyway, we let them roll for frenzy while in combat, and suitably enraged they gave the Slann quite a hard time.

Not quite enough as it turned out to survive until the villagers came to their rescue, and with the fishwives dead the Slann made a tactical withdrawal fled into the jungle.

On to Zapotec

Enraged by this massacre, Kremlo leads the Norse in a revenge attack on Zapotec, his former home -

Zapotec map for the Kremlo scenario. © Citadel Miniatures 1983

Again Paul's scenery did rather good good job of recreating Lustria, but notably with much less river than in the scenario map -

The map and the scenario rules seem to hint heavily at how the Norse should approach this battle - except for one wooded hill the jungle is inpenetrable other than via narrow paths, and detailed rules are given for the speed of the Norse longship in different sections of the river and with varying numbers of crew.

So the obvious approach seems to be to have the berserkers man the oars, have the other clansmen (with throwing axes (or bows - but that doesn't seem very Norse!)) man the gunwales, and the scenario becomes a gauntlet run.

With our strength / toughness blunder the Norse had a difficult time of things, but conversely with a shorter river it probably worked out about right. Nonetheless, by the time they reached Zapotec there were only enough left standing for a doomed charge into their foes, although the Norse victory conditions are for Kremlo to poison the spawning pools which was still a possible outcome.

As the Norse player I wasn't too sad when Kremlo was shot down, and genocide was averted -

Conclusion

I'm glad to have finally played this scenario through. Given my lack of tactical acumen it's completely possible that I approached the battles entirely wrong, but they seemed to me to be much too linear with Skeggi being a race and Zapotec a gauntlet. The scenarios have plenty of narrative flavour but very little depth. There are options for up to six players, for example having different people play Kremlo's ambitious younger brothers, but while this would add tension it doesn't seem to change the tactical possibilities.

Also, much as I'm coming to enjoy the Lustria setting, I can't see myself adding to my handful of Amazons or my single not-Slann in order to visit very frequently.

Stonethrowers always deviate - some further thoughts

A while back I started thinking about why having stone throwers always deviate made them so ineffective. It occurred to me that both the problem and the answer lie in the 2d6 bell curve.

Using my model (with a 20-strong unit arranged in two ranks of 10) the unit was hit only in the shaded part of the curve: always on a 2 (2d6 - 2 remember in the "always deviates" model, so no deviation) and a 3 (1" deviation of a 1" template, not covering the maximum models but still hitting some); and less likely on a 4, 5 or 6 (4 inches of deviation, so a roll of 6, only hit the unit when the deviation is along the axis of the unit, i.e. 2 times out of 12).

By increasing the modifier, and so moving the hits into the taller part of the bell curve, the stone thrower becomes progressively more effective.

And it turns out that at 2d6 - 3, it's similar in effectiveness to the 50-50 "dodge" save:

This gives a median of three casualties and a mean of four, although with the mode at zero. So fairly close to the dodge option, and to a bolt thrower.

The only down-side to this is that the maximum deviation is now 9 inches, so the likelihood of the truly comical mis-fire is reduced.

My hope though is that this gives stone throwers a distinct niche without the worry of them being over-powered. They will be highly variable, and very effective when they don't deviate by much (and hence might seem over-powered in individual games) but in the long run not reliably good. So quite good orc-y weapons, and seemingly worth trying in a game or two!

Stonethrowers are this overpowered in 3rd edition WFB

The balance, or lack there of, of stone throwers appears to be a perennial topic amongst Oldhammerers. Or at least Oldhammerers who've just played a game involving one.

I pondered some house rules a while ago specifically to tone down their ridiculously accurate indirect fire option, and to make them less of a character killer, but after my recent game which my stone thrower basically won for me I thought I'd take a more fundamental look.

I based this on the fact that a comparable stone thrower and bolt thrower (e.g. 3-man) have the same points cost, and very similar limitations (i.e. you can't move and fire, turning in place counts as a move, 90 degree firing arc) but very different effectiveness. And looking at the rules it's easy to see why this is -

1. Bolt throwers shoot with a ballistic skill of 3, so hit normal troops at under half range 50% of the time, over half range 33% of the time. Stone throwers will hit 40% of the time (not allowing for deviations which still hit)
2. Bolt throwers can cause a maximum number of kills equal to the depth of the unit it hits. Stone throwers can kill anything their template can cover - probably 8 or more figures
3. Bolt throwers only cause hits up to the point they fail to wound - so if your first target survives, everyone behind him is fine too. And subsequent hits are at -1 strength cumulatively (so -2 for the third target, etc.). Stone throwers attempt to wound all their targets independently, and all at full strength

Point 2 is fairly significant, but point 3 is the real clincher.

Against this stonethrowers have two drawbacks, due to the way in which they fire:

1. They have a minimum range
2. They may deviate, and so may hit your own troops as a result - although realistically they're equally if not more likely to hit another enemy unit rather than your own unit

So on the face of things stone throwers are more fearsome, but how much more? I coded up a couple of simulations to find out. Both used the same basic assumptions:

1. A 20-strong unit of humans (the "standard" WFB creature) equipped with light armour and a shield (purely for the movement factor - it won't help them if they're hit by a war machine!) march towards a war machine 30 inches away
2. The unit is deployed in a wide (10 column) formation, about the most sensible configuration for marching against a war machine
3. The attackers move first

I ran the simulation 1,000 times, and looked at the number of attackers still standing at the point they make contact with the war machine.

When attacking a bolt thrower, things don't look too bad -

The mean and median casualties are both 3, the mode is 2. For marching straight at a war machine you'd have to say they got away fairly lightly.

Not so against a stone thrower -

Here the mean casualties is 8 and the median 7, but the mode is zero. 17% of the time the unit makes contact unscathed, but far more likely is that it takes significant casualties or even is practically wiped out. The simulation doesn't allow for routing - in fact that's not even necessary for the bolt thrower scenario, as it simply can't do enough damage in a single round - but it's a fairly likely outcome against the stone thrower.

My grasp of statistics isn't strong enough to put a figure on how much more effective the stone thrower is than the bolt thrower, but for now let's say that the stone thrower is over twice as effective. So if they need toning down, what might be a good way to do that? I've heard a couple of suggestions -

1. Allow all stone thrower casualties a 50-50 "dodge" save
2. Have stone throwers always deviate (say 2d6 - 2 inches)

Allowing the dodge evens things out a lot -

The mean and median casualties are now 4, and the mode is again zero. 19% of the time the unit survives unscathed, and there's still a lot of variation but it seems to me a lot closer to the level of damage that the bolt thrower does.

Having the stone thrower always deviate seems to rather neuter it -

The mode is still to have zero casualties but the median is now to have one and the mean to have two casualties thanks to the long tail.

This makes me fairly keen on the 50-50 "dodge" save - the variability is still there, but given the comparible points value of stone and bolt throwers then this seems a lot closer to the right outcome. Personally I'd give that dodge just to those in outside ranks, but given the formation in my simulation that makes no difference. To me though if a tightly-packed unit is hit in the centre by a big stone then there's nowhere to dodge to!

In a way the "always deviate" house rule seems to make a lot of sense - the indirect fire of a stone thrower shouldn't really have a place on a skirmish-sized battlefield, it would be more suited to siege warfare or on a BOYL-style table of all the stuff. Stone throwers have a clear anti-personnel role in early versions of Warhammer though, so for me that's another reason not to go down that route.

I'll be looking to try this out in games in future, it'd be good to hear what others think!

Stone thrower wot won it

At BOYL I was introduced to a fellow Oldhammerer called Nick and we got together yesterday for a game of 3rd edition - 1000 points of orcs versus beastmen. Scenarios being important we raided Dragon Rampant for inspiration and opted for the Crystal Gale: 10 crystals placed around the table to add a treasure hunting element to the fighting.

The somewhat blurry photo above shows the initial setup - centaurs, beastmen, more beastmen, a troll with its shaman minder (or is that the other way around?) and a pack of chaos hounds facing (also left to right) some archers, warriors (in mid-move), savage orcs, shaman, elite orcs (also in mid-move), a stone thrower and some boar riders.

As Nick had observed he was fairly outnumbered, but I wasn't feeling too sympathetic at that point as his beastman general had 6 personal attributes - all beneficial ones at that - and I was feeling a bit concerned about facing him. To balance things out his shaman had an attribute of Stupidity, hence his delegation to troll duty.

The game left me with four main impressions: a good evening was had rolling dice, which is certainly the most important thing; those dice are probably more significant to the outcome of the battle than any generalship short of horrendous errors; 1000 points is about right for a short game (somewhat over two hours plus the table setup, attribute generation and so on) and war machines are still overpowered in 3rd ed.

Speaking of dice, Nick's centaurs swept into my archers fairly early on - and after a shocking initial round spent most of the game battling them. By contrast the chaos hounds, with very similar stats, made short work of the boar riders on my right flank and in the picture above are about to kill off my stone thrower crew.

The crew by that point had more than earned their keep. Their three shots of the evening (when they weren't busy animositying) had hit the shaman and troll (killing both, although the troll regenerated) and the general's unit twice - sending him routing off the table with a couple of his surviving beastmen. I was fortunate that due to the long minimum range of the stone thrower their failed animosity rolls couldn't inflict similar damage on my own units!

Definitely the dice were on my side, so I'm no doubt due the opposite result one evening soon. I was however left with the feeling that I should do a version of my 1000 point force with no war machines.

My final blurry picture of the evening shows the dispositions when time ran out. Nick was 4-3 ahead on the crystal collection front but depleted in terms of forces.

Which brings my to my final impression of 3rd ed - you can quite quickly get to the point where the result seems clear, but actually getting from there to a definitive end can take a long time. So it's quite handy sometimes to be stopped by the clock.

(Why) I still prefer Warhammer Fantasy Battle

I spent last Sunday playing the good guys for a change, in a scenario organised by Paul of "more orcs than Sauron" fame, and on the drive home was pondering not just that I prefer WFB to the more modern games that I'm generally playing at the moment, but why I prefer it. Aside from the familiarity and no doubt nostalgia value it boils down to -

• The excessive detail (in troop characteristics, weapon bonuses, etc.) make it both easier and more prone to having a role playing game feeling
• It still handles a breadth of scale from handful of miniatures to small hundreds

To explain what I mean a few details of the scenario are relevant. I was leading a small band of samurai whose goal was to rescue some kidnapped damsels - facing me were around 100 barbarians and half-orcs, and some people on a war mammoth (very cool model - not room for one in my paint queue at the moment though!). A good number of the samurai characters had magic weapons, which naively I thought was to balance things out a bit...

One of the weapons was a Frenzied Blade.

In Dragon Rampant, to take a counter example, things are very much abstracted. You can build a narrative using the fantastical abilities, the various troop types and the Reduced Model rule. But actually the number of levers which are available to twiddle are fairly limited. This has a lot of good things going for it - the game can be more balanced and less open to abuse - but at the end of the day units end up somewhat alike and it's harder to really feel you know a character as an individual.

Back to the scenario: the Frenzied Blade wielder saved my bacon at a crucial interval (frenzy being a bit of a monster when it comes off) and looking back he becomes one of the key narratives that emerged from the game. There were also several other narratives, actual and potential - an interesting wizard duel, and the barbarian horde being held off by some seriously unlikely dice rolling. But those two factors - the detail and the breadth of scale - are what made the scenario truly memorable.

It can so easily degenerate into Herohammer or a "win in the army design" mess, but with a good GM and scenario Warhammer Fantasy Battle still seems, in my admittedly limited experience, hard to beat.

Chaos warbands and the pathetic aesthetic

A few weeks back I took some time to get to grips properly with the warbands rules in Slaves to Darkness, in preparation for our mini campaign. In the process one thing that stood out to me was the disconnect between the Realm of Chaos material and Warhammer Armies in terms of tone.

From second edition onwards the rules and army lists have seemed (to me at least) to emphasise the power of chaos warbands and armies, and de-emphasise the consequences. Yes, the warriors have made some perhaps unwise pacts with the chaos powers, but Look At Those Stats. Ravening Hordes and onwards toned this down somewhat with the introduction of chaos thugs and marauders but the theme remained - small, elite, hard-hitting forces.

In Slaves to Darkness the tone is, dare I say it, grimmer and darker, but done well, and before the slide into cliché. The artwork is a big part of this, but also the rules themselves. The champion has a chance of ascending to deamonhood - but will probably end up dead, incapacitated, or a chaos spawn. The warband will primarily be made up of beastmen and standard humans, with a chaos thug - never mind a marauder or warrior - being the rare elite.

With this in mind my slow progress towards a force of chaos raiders has taken a turn towards the pathetic. Or, to put it another way, I want my chaotics to encompass the mad, the bad and the sad.

The bad are clearly the proper chaos thugs - on the path to worldly power and damn the consequences. But before they get there they'll start out like the chap in the middle there - angry, violent, but not especially accomplished fighters.

The sad would rather not be in the ranks of chaos at all. But the taint of chaos has given them the choice: exile or death. Perhaps they took the job of guarding that wierd-looking crate - probably not strictly legit, but they had a family to feed! Or maybe they just woke up one morning with an extra ear. Either way, the path has been chosen for them.

And the mad - probably started off as the bad, or the sad. But now the attention of the chaos powers has overwhelmed them, and in a fight they're lucky if they remember which end of the club to hold.

In model terms, I was always thinking of mixing in various proxies along with my recognisable thugs. But I think I should also field some human "levy" types - probably eager to fight, unlike their counterparts in other armies, but inadequately armed and carelessly led. And chaos spawn, which I never really saw the attraction of before - I'm definitely going to need some of them, and some spawn handlers.

Stone thrower alternative house rules for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition

I got two good games of WFB in over the BOYL weekend, on Saturday participating in the staggeringly impressive siege game, and on Sunday a "smaller" 3000 point orcs and chaos versus undead battle.

As I start once more to get a feel for the game a few rules begin to stand out as off or a bit broken, one of these being the power of stone throwers - particularly in comparison to bolt throwers - to the point we partially house-ruled them during the siege game. Another aspect then reared its head during our Sunday game, and further thoughts since make me want to take this further.

I'm clearly not the first to notice the power of war machines in 3rd edition, it's quite a common theme over on the Oldhammer forum and in fact Dreamfish and Gaj have already introduced some house rules which attempt to tone them down somewhat.

I think those rules take the toning down a bit too far - while you don't want stone throwers to be the focus of a battle, having them being devastating but unpredictable is part of their charm! That said I've always stuck to 3- or 4-man throwers, the large template from a 6-man thrower adds another dimension.

With this in mind these rules attempt to make a couple of things less broken -

• The accuracy of speculative fire in the rules as written
• The attractiveness of stone throwers as a way of killing opposing characters

Speculative fire

Speculative fire as written seems far too powerful, since it's meant to represent the crew chucking rocks at a target which they don't actually know the location of - speculatively. They might have seen a unit move behind a wood or hill but they've no real idea of where it is, and certainly not the exact location of the unit leader (unlike their controlling general).

With this in mind in the siege game we doubled the "miss" chance, so that as well as deviating twice as far the missile also deviated on rolls in the range 1-16, rather than only 1-12. How to handle the direction of the additional deviations is up for debate, you could roll an extra d12 for these but I like the neatness of having everything resolved with a single dice roll, like this -

You could also ban the targeting of characters with speculative fire - or, in the words of Erny, just remind your opponent not to be an ass!

Survival of the fittest

In later additions of Warhammer there's apparently a rule called "Look out sir" where a character, if targeted by a war machine, is only hit 1 time in 6, with a normal trooper being the true target the rest of the time.

To be honest I mainly object to this rule on account of its name - it doesn't seem to belong in a Bretonnian or Empire army, never mind orcs and goblins! It also seems to give characters a bit too much immunity compared to the rules as written, so I'd suggest something like this instead -

Heroes are quicker, more ruthless and luckier than is typical of their kind. As a result, when associated with or leading a unit, not only do they not get hit by ordinary missile fire, they're rather less vulnerable to war machines as well. If a hero is a target in this situation then roll 1d6:

5-6: the hero spots the incoming projectile, or perhaps reacts quicker to a warning shout, and manages to move out of the way. They take no damage
3-4: the hero is slow to react and only manages to avoid harm by shoving past their fellows, inadvertently pushing one of the troopers into harm's way. If there is a "spare" trooper (i.e. one not originally within the target area) they take damage in place of the "hero", if not no additional damage is caused
1-2: the hero is hit as normal

Aside from the above two suggestions I'm also not sure about the points values of stone throwers, particularly in relation to bolt throwers. I've noticed that Warhammer Armies doubles the cost of both of them compared to the 3rd edition rules, but stone throwers still seem rather cheap for a couple of reasons -

1. For a target you can see the hit chance is always 40% with a stone thrower (13-20 on d20). By contrast for orcs or humans (BS of 3) the hit chance with a bolt thrower is 50% under optimal conditions but given any modifiers (long range, soft cover) this swiftly drops away
2. For stone throwers any target under the template is automatically hit and you then just need to cause a wound for each individual model. For bolt throwers second and subsequent casualties are subject to diminishing returns - not only do you have to wound the previous target in order to have a chance of wounding further targets, but also the strength of the missile is progressively reduced. Therefore bolt throwers just aren't the mass killers that stone throwers can be.

Countering this is that bolt throwers don't present a threat to their own side in the event of a miss, and also have no minimum range, but taken overall still seem much worse value than stone throwers. I feel then that stone throwers should cost twice the points of the equivalent bolt thrower (as in fact was the case in 2nd edition).

Comments? Thoughts?

Random parenting insight into my hobbies

Inspired by Snicket's vaguely related post about younger relatives and gaming I've finally dusted this off my draft pile... Posts on consecutive days? Whatever next?!

Being somewhat older now than I was when I started playing RPGs, and Warhammer Fantasy Battle a few years after that, I now have children who are themselves (independently) showing an interest in these hobbies. And it's enlightening to consider my own reaction to their interests.

A few years ago (before I'd discovered the Oldhammer movement, perhaps before it even recognisably existed) our eldest boy got into Warhammer 40k. I vaguely mentioned I'd played myself in my youth, and my wife and I saw it as a convenience in terms of buying Christmas presents, but otherwise I didn't express much interest. In hindsight I should have at least involved myself in the painting side of things but was held back by a couple of factors, partly not wanting to encroach on the hobby he shared with his friends but also coloured by my own rejection of the Games Workshop of 20+ years ago. Anyway, after a year or so his interest waned and that was that.

Then several weeks ago our number 3 son (counting in age order only, I hasten to add!) very hesitantly explained that he wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons with his friends, and seemed a bit nonplussed at our casual acceptance of this.

The point (I'm getting to it, honest!) is that, if he'd wanted to play Warhammer rather than D&D, my reaction would be more complex and probably in many ways less supportive. My reason - I'm betting the current edition doesn't contain anything along the lines of "Of course, there is nothing to stop you developing your own world background, or of adapting the background from any book you have read to form the basis for your games" (WFB 3rd edition, Introduction, p9).

Warhammer has always been a sales tool for a miniatures manufacturer, but from what I've seen (although this could be me confirming my own prejudices) modern Warhammer is proscriptive rather than creative, whereas a role playing game can't help but be about creation and imagination.

In the hypothetical scenario where he did want to play Warhammer I could of course espouse the virtues of Oldhammer, but it'd be my eccentricities versus what his peers are playing and the marketing budget of the 800lb gorilla. And (again, from what I've seen) modern Warhammer doesn't even give you the tools to make it up for yourself - for example number 1 son's version of the 40K rulebook is only a third of a rulebook by 2nd edition standards (Combat only, no Battle Magic or Battle Bestiary, and with the points values section of Combat removed).

Hopefully I'd be able to create a small bubble of enlightenment amongst him and his friends, but I'm guessing that (for example) giving gifts of non-GW figures would lead to the same expression of contained disappointment as when, in years gone by, a relative bought him the big console game of the season - but for the wrong console.

Signs you're not painting quickly enough, and some '87 trivia

I finally finished the first 4 troopers of my Boyz regiment for my orc / chaos / hobgoblin / moving-goalposts army (finished in the special sense of no bases or shields yet) and moved on to the next batch. These were undercoated at the same time as the first 4, and now need dusting before they can be painted! I may need to up my pace a bit, as I'm hoping to get these ready for BOYL '14 in August...

Apropos of this, while searching through a pile of semi-discarded RPG stuff I came across a promo flyer for the release of Ravening Hordes in 1987. The offer is for 5 different 2500pt armies: Orcs and goblins, Dwarves, Dark elves, Elves and Norse. The total models involved are -

• Orcs and goblins: 274
• Dwarves: 141
• Dark elves: 123
• Elves: 139
• Norse: 147

I may have chosen poorly!

It's also mildly interesting to me that chaos, which is so closely identified with WFB these days, doesn't merit a mention. Or perhaps they just didn't need promotions to sell chaos figures.

Old world / real world empires

My official excuse for buying dwarves on eBay is to put together the entire forces of the Blood on the Snow scenario from White Dwarf 91. It occured to me that, given reasonably priced old school dwarves are hard to come by (but plenty of manufacturers make compatible humans), my non-orc force could be the human elements from that scenario plus (initially) a few of the dwarves.

I thought I'd look a bit into which period of European history most closely relates to the Warhammer 3rd edition Empire, so as to be able to interpret historical figure manufacturers' catalogues. It's commonly known that Brettonian armies are early medieval and Empire armies are late medieval / renaissance, but what does this mean in terms of dates (or, more importantly, historical wars and hence figure ranges)?
There is clearly some hand-waving involved, however taking Warhammer Armies* as a reference point my guidelines were -

• The dominant infantry weapons are the halberd and crossbow
• Pikes and spears are also in use
• Arquebuses are used but unreliable

According to Wikipedia -

Arquebuses were first used in any significant numbers by the Black Army of Hungary (1458–1494) but this was unusual for the time. They started to come to the fore when pike and shot formations were developed by the Spanish following their defeat at the Battle of Seminara (1495), with the first notable success of this tactic being the Battle of Cerignola (1503). By the Italian War of 1521 these formations were starting to dominate the battlefield. Battles such as the Battle of Ceresole (1544) still have a Warhammer 3rd ed level of technology, but it seems to be that the Empire is earlier than this.

Halberds were a primary infantry weapon during the Burgundian Wars (1474–1477) and Wars of the Roses (1455–1485) - though the English used bills. Pike regiments at the time also incorporated halberds or zweihanders when fighting other infantry but when the role of pikes became primarily protection for gunners the role of halberds declined. The English retained the bill (in conjunction with the longbow) for some time after the pike and arquebus were adopted on the continent, with the Battle of Flodden (1513) being notable amongst other things for being a contest between the two systems.

So where does this leave me? It seems somewhere between about 1470-ish and 1521; perhaps if I had to go for a specific date then 1493, the start of the reign of Maximilian I as Holy Roman Emperor.

I could have reached a very similar conclusion by noting that Wargames Foundry sell their ex-Citadel Empire figures as Wars of the Roses, and that the Perrys have similar ranges both for WotR and European Armies, 1450-1500. However I wouldn't have learned so much in the process, for example why historical Burgandian armies are also a good reference, or why Foundry's gendarmes seem as appropriate as their Renaissance knights as Empire substitutes.

As an interesting aside I came across a useful Brief History of WFRP Time in my search which states that Sigmar's real world equivalent (except without the godhood, obviously) is from around 714-814, which might be an interesting campaign one day.

* For extra old school appeal I could have used Ravening Hordes and the results would have basically been the same. WA is handy though because of the additional illustrations

On His Excellency's Service - Conclusion

Nearly a month on I look back on the game with very mixed feelings, which probably says more about my self-critical nature than the scenario itself. So I'll try to give a balanced view of my own, and also pick the brains of the players themselves over on the Oldhammer forum.

I was aiming for a scenario in the style of The Magnificent Sven or those from old Citadel Journals, where players can win without necessarily dominating the battlefield, and I think this was mostly achieved. As with many things in life, the things I agonised over before the game generally worked out OK, while the things I didn't agonise about came back to bite me. Although human nature being what it is there are almost certainly things not agonised about which didn't bite anyone, and I'm totally unaware of as a result...

The good

Not to be forgotten - a game of Oldhammer was played in good spirits. Figures were deployed, dice were thrown, and both players set out to achieve their objectives in an even-handed fashion.

There was good "fog of war" due to the involvement of a GM. Neither player was an omniscient general overseeing the battlefield - the high elves didn't know quite what they were up against, whereas Wezma didn't quite know what his own forces were up to (and the players seemed reasonably happy with this). There are a couple of caveats to this though, which I'll mention below.

The scenario seemed reasonably balanced (again, with a major caveat). The high elves' limited objectives seemed to counterbalance their inferior numbers, although in fact in hindsight Wezma's objectives are quite hard to achieve before his reinforcements arrive.

I'm also quite happy with the way the scenario development went. I set out to let the players field whatever forces they wanted, and in fact was expecting the defenders to be orcs/goblins led by either Paul or Gaj. The main issue with the game would have been avoided if I'd picked all of the forces, but at the cost of less ownership for the players I feel.

The bad

The elephants in the room for the scenario were the demons. When Paul first shared his draft army list with me the thing that concerned me most was their ability to fly, especially as it was unclear at this stage whether we would be playing 2nd or 3rd edition - and flyers are very tough in 2nd ed. Their profiles aren't especially powerful, and they seemed to me to be slightly inferior, fear-causing and flavourful chaos marauder replacements. I think I had in the back of my mind to ensure Gaj had counters to their immunity to normal weapons, but failed to follow through on this. There were various options - to rule that these were somehow mundane (and hence vulnerable to normal weapons), to provide the elves with one or more magical weapons, or to select Wanda's spells for her. Any one of these would have worked, and while it would have slightly changed the nature of the scenario to say that here is a unit that is a counter to that unit (a whiff of newhammer, perhaps?) it would have been better than the outcome that we did end up with which was to have one side have a unit with no counter. I think that part of my procrastination was the thought that, even in this situation, the high elves' objective was still achievable, but this fails to take into account just how much the demon's presence colours the scenario.

In character / out of character briefing - I wanted to have the player briefings be in character, however in hindsight I should have been more open with Gaj about what the scenario was aiming to achieve, i.e. to state explicitly that his forces were outnumbered, but the intention was that his objectives balance this out. It's OK for the general to not know what he's up against, but in only our second Warhammer game together and my third meeting with Gaj the mutual understanding is not yet there to spring quite the surprises on him that this scenario entailed. Also, when playing Oldhammer it's fair to trust the players to keep in and out of character knowledge and motivations separate.

Rules knowledge and application - I'm far less familiar with the rules than I was 20 years ago, and even then (I now know) I was applying some rules wrongly. I didn't worry about this too much ahead of the game, as I knew that any different interpretations or misunderstandings could be resolved in a grown up manner. This proved to be the case, so while there were probably half a dozen instances of rules being wrongly applied or missed altogether I don't feel these significantly impacted the outcome of the game. However I want to be running games as per the rules, mainly so that we can then fairly judge how the rules stand up.


Time - it would have been good if the game had come to a decisive conclusion in the 3 or so hours the club is open on a Friday. It would have helped if I'd arrived on time, but even so with an extra 20 minutes I feel the battle would have been even more pregnant rather than concluded. I'm not sure if this is simply a matter of fighting across rather than along the table, however that layout seemed to suit the scenario the best.

Afterword

By a strange coincidence both players had the spell Cause Animosity available to them and both considered its use on the demons (in Paul's case to influence the uncontrolled demons in going after his foe - which would again have shown the benefit of having a GM in order to adjudicate this sort of creative generalship). If the demons had been made to attack Wezma's forces in this manner it would have highlighted the situation that neither side had a counter to them, other than their wizards.

I'm not sure what to conclude from this, except I'm wondering if we might develop a local meta to always have a wizard or magical weapon on each side, except where the game has no mages, scrolls, etc. It also brings into question the balance of demonologists (although many would argue that balance and 3rd ed are mutually exclusive) - albeit at the (generally low) risk of failure to control, the ability to summon uncounterable allies seems rather powerful! My main thought though is that scenario design requires much more "what if" than I put into my first attempt, with a greater review of (and perhaps control over) which tools are available to each side.

I also one day want to run a scenario where one side has an unkillable unit (inspired by the discussion on the Oldhammer forum about magically armoured characters [registration required], and ideally avoiding demons altogether!), but it would need to be clear from the outset that this was the point of the scenario, rather than being an unintended consequence of the army selections.

***

Battle navigation

Prologue

Forces

Turn 1
Turns 2 and 3
Turns 4 and 5
Turns 6 and 7 

Turn 8

Conclusion

On His Excellency's Service - Turn 8

The clock was clearly against us at this point, as the club was packing up around us. And with the dark elves arriving Gaj seemed to see this turn as the last throw of the dice...

High elf turn 8

The silver helms moved out from behind the covering cultist rout, into a position to charge Wezma in a future turn - but with equally exposing themselves to whatever he could do to them. Wanda moved forward, curiously close to the chaos warriors, but at the same time giving her line of sight on Wezma. Bhonnd also left his unit, again giving him line of sight on Wezma.

Bhonnd fired on Wezma, but failed to wound, and Wanda's cast fireball proved to be slightly out of range and so fizzed.

Chaos turn 8

Paul chose to draw proceedings to a halt, and so draw the curtain on a very enjoyable no-score draw. But we'll never get to know what the demons would have done next...

***

Battle navigation

Prologue

Forces

Turn 1
Turns 2 and 3
Turns 4 and 5
Turns 6 and 7

Turn 8

Conclusion

On His Excellency's Service - Turns 6 and 7

I have to confess I'm a bit hazy on exactly how the fight between the halbardiers and cultists went. As far as I can tell from the photos and my memories of the overall battle, it was like this...

High elf turn 6

The silver helms failed their strength test to move towards Wezma, meanwhile the merchant company wheeled to face the oncoming warriors. They also tried a shooting them, but with no greater accuracy than before.

The combat between the cultists and halbardiers continued, with Drumman killing the cult leader but the cultists counterbalancing this with their hits on the unit. With their follow up bonus from the previous round they pushed back the cultists once more. The rebel demons clung on for one final round.

Chaos turn 6

A further setback for Bhonnd - Wezma's dark elf allies finally appeared on the table edge and moved towards the battle! The chaos warriors also continued forward, wheeling slightly towards their target.

The combat phase had two decisive results*. With Drumman able to attack the rank and file, and with the halbardiers strength of numbers, the cultists were finally stopped in their tracks and pushed back. And with the cult leader dead they failed their rout test and fled. Further damage was done in the free hack, but with Drumman's heavy armour the unit was too slow to catch the fleeing cultists and the halbardiers stopped, unformed. In the other key combat the rebel demons finally gave way to instability and were lost to the void.

 * As I said before, I'm pretty sure this is what happened, but I distinctly remember being surprised just how poor the additional hand weapon of the cult leader proved in practice. Hence I thought his combat with Drumman lasted longer. More notes next time! I think that part of the problem was that by this time we were too absorbed in the game to be taking enough photos which is probably the preferable way around.

High elf turn 7

Despite the looming threat of the demons the guard unit elected to charge the routing cultists. This had the effect of them fleeing towards the swamp, directly into the path of Wezma's wind blast spell (I'm assuming this was a cunning plan). Wanda took the opportunity to move away from the chaos warriors.

More arrows were wasted in the direction of the chaos warriors, but otherwise this was a turn full of potential rather than actual outcomes.

Chaos turn 7

Wezma's newly arrived allies... sat back to watch. I thought this was a great example of roleplaying over tactical need from Paul - his background for his elven allies was that they'd happily join in any fighting and looting that was to be done, as long as it was to their advantage. In this instance where things were looking less certain from their point of view they preferred to sit on their hands. Maybe they'd get involved once their hated cousins moved into shooting range...

The chaos warriors and demons squared up to the mechant company and halberdiers respectively. The cultists and guards meanwhile were deemed to have their rout move the previous turn (when running away) and so didn't even attempt to move under the wind blast spell. I think they probably should have been free-hacked this turn, but that got lost somewhere amongst the discussion as to just what the wind blast was doing.

***

Battle navigation

Prologue

Forces

Turn 1

Turns 2 and 3

Turns 4 and 5

Turns 6 and 7

Turn 8

Conclusion

On His Excellency's Service - Turns 4 and 5

High elf turn 4

The silver helms charged gloriously at the jabberwocky with their comrades shuffling forward in support. All except for Wanda who wanted to get a few friendly units between her and the hostilities and decided the left flank was more to her taste. Meanwhile the merchant company started to earn their reputation for the game - that of elves who couldn't hit a sizable enemy unit at moderately close range.

The silver helms elves did OK with their charge but the real stars of the combat were the warhorses with their hits finishing off the jabberwocky. Unfortunately for the silver helms by this point we'd worked out that not only was the monster subject to stupidity but that it could also regenerate, which it promptly did for all but the fireball wound inflicted the previous turn. This didn't stop it being pushed back however.

The rebel demons lost their combat, and were all but wiped out by the resulting instabity roll.

Gaj was by this point rather concerned about what the chaos warriors were so interested in on his left flank, presumably concious that other bad stuff had appeared from out of sight earlier in the game. As a result, in what was perhaps my favourite move of the game, Wanda was sent off on a scouting mission to see what was over the hill!

I was rather surprised by this, especially as I could guess that mainly Issbig was being kept as far away from Wezma as possible, thanks to the not-so-subtle hint in Wezma's briefing. But it did serve to illustrate that Gaj at least was operating under the fog of war, and as a GM that I felt was part of my role fulfilled.

Chaos turn 4

Most of the chaos warband seemed content to sit and watch the jabberwocky fight... all except the warriors who, with victory conditions of killing the enemy's leaders, pressed eagerly forward.

With the impetus of their initial charge lost the silver helms were less successful, and the jabberwocky killed two of their number with its retaliatory blows. They managed to push the monster back but once again it regenerated all of the wounds scored.

The rebel demons lost one of their number to combat, and another to instability. It began to look as though the elves would have to deal with these all-but-invulnerable opponents sooner rather than later!

High elf turn 5

Both the halbardiers and the guard regiment began to square up to the cultists, while the merchant company were left facing the demons. Wanda continued her quest towards the ridge of hills.

The merchant company killed a single cultist in their shooting phase, while the jabberwocky combat broke from its usual pattern with the monster not dying, but killing no silver helms in turn. Once again the monster was pushed back, and regenerated all hits lost.

Chaos turn 5

The cultists had enough of being bystanders, and charged into the halberdiers. The chaos warrior's advance continued, and you got the feeling that Wanda probably was feeling she'd wandered too far.

Drumman Bace challenged the cult leader to single combat, with each opponent scoring a hit. The cultists and the halberdiers each killed a single trooper, and the halberdiers were pushed back.

The jabberwocky however finally failed to regenerate the hits caused that round, which were sufficient to kill it. Wezma was left looking rather exposed...

Fortunately for him he had the presence of mind to cast Wind Blast, and to not fail his Intelligence test (now being down to 11 magic points). The cavalry was held off, for now...

***

Battle navigation

Prologue

Forces

Turn 1

Turns 2 and 3

Turns 4 and 5
Turns 6 and 7

Turn 8

Conclusion

On His Excellency's Service - Turns 2 and 3

High Elf turn 2

More lovely manoeveuring from the elves. Starting like this -

 And finishing like this -

Wanda tried another cast at the cultists, but failed her Intelligence test again.

Chaos turn 2

The original demons (still under GM control) failed their Leadership test again, and headed in the general direction of the cultists.

The cultists, jabberwocky and Wezma did a combination of advancing and avoiding the demons, as did the newly visible chaos warriors and marauders on the right flank.

Having had his previous demonic servants betray him so badly, Wezma did the only sensible thing and summoned more demons! This time the control test was passed and the elves were starting to look rather outnumbered. Personally I was wondering just how many summonings Wezma had the nerve for...

High elf turn 3

Despite the seeming eagerness to grasp the nettle tape implied in the photo above Gaj had a good long think before his next move. But move he did, lining up nicely to attack.

The cultist ranks were thinned out slightly by the arrows of the merchant company, and Wanda finally passed her intelligence and hurled a fireball at the jabberwocky causing a single wound. She also sensibly departed from the halbardier unit, given the likelihood of close combat at any moment.

Chaos turn 3

Undeterred by the fireball (and everyone not realising he was subject to stupidity) the jabberwocky advanced.

The rebel demons passed a Leadership test and headed for the table edge, only to be charged by the newly summoned demons under Wezma's control.

The warriors and marauders merged into a single unit and continued to advance, giving the demonic combat as wide a berth as they could.
 
The rebel demons lost the combat and were pushed back, taking a single casualty and earning a penalty to their hit rolls for the remainder of the fight thanks to instability.

The jabberwocky reserve moved closer to Gaj's well dressed line, and Wezma shuffled closer to the cultists for protection.

***

Battle navigation

Prologue

Forces

Turn 1

Turns 2 and 3
Turns 4 and 5
Turns 6 and 7 

Turn 8

Conclusion

Some orcs painted after a looong hiatus

20+ years since I last painted an orc I've now painted a whole unit of them. Meet Ratrak's Arrers:

OK, they're not quite finished, I still have the bases to do.

With some lessons learned from the Oldhammer forum I've tried to give them a bit of a coherent look, while keeping them individual, so there's a fair smattering of dark reds in the clothing and buckskin for the leathers. The concept with the shields is that they take them from their fallen enemies, daub them with the crossed arrows sign, and off they go. With just the underlying colours on it was all looking like the shields would go horribly wrong, but actually the arrows ties them together quite well and gives a good impression of an irregular unit.

I'm aiming to get together a reasonable sized orcs plus chaos warband fairly quickly (well, quickly by my standards, alongside a full time job and a full time family) before I allow myself to get side-tracked into dwarves and other distractions...

The shaman did it...

... and other orcish motivations.

This post has been sitting in my draft pile for a while, fortunately Erny's Orctober has finally got me to knock it into a finished state, and so improve my pathetically slow posting rate.

Warhammer orcs aren't complex / confused like World of Warcraft orcs - they're evil, violent and none to bright. They're also a popular army choice, which means coming up with scenarios for them. And to me that means giving them a range of motivations that fit with their character, which I like to feel is a bit more three dimensional than that portrayed in the rulebook.

The shaman did it - as illustrated by Warlord Paul and Thantsants, the shaman, as the intellectual of the tribe, can help out when a scenario is more quest-like than war-like. And given their tendency to the spiritual or downright possessed, it can be as deranged a quest as you'd like! I see the relationship between an orc warlord and their shaman (or a shaman and their pupil for that matter) as something like that portrayed by David Gemmell with the Nadir, except an orc shaman is far more tribal and has no interest in uniting the fractured orc tribes.

The goblin / half-orc did it - half orcs are noticably brighter, and goblins are considered more cunning, than your average orc, so these provide extra possibilities when a scenario requires brains as well as brawn. However unlike with the shaman your thinkers here are down-trodden and despised, which gives the scenario a bit of a twist.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, or, the warlord did it - your orcish warlord probably got to his position by killing and eating the previous incumbent, and will probably pass on the crown in the same way. He also won't be the first despot to realise that uniting against a common foe is a good way to keep the tribe in line (as long as the battles go well, that is), and might also have the advantage of cutting short the careers of potential contenders. I like to see these sort of campaigns as petty raids and feuds rather than the grand battles that seem to be depicted in modern Warhammer, but each to their own.

The freebooter did it - personally I think Orks are a bad fit to the 40K background, but the freebooter mindset does seem a good fit to orcs of any era. Orcs love to fight and loot, and there's clearly some sort of commerce between orcs and other races by some means or other. So I like to feel that Hector Barbossa wouldn't change a great deal if given green skin and tusks.

I'd rather be in the Dark Lands - orcish society is in a state of continual fighting and flux, so it's entirely likely that your orc invasion isn't really an invasion at all, it's just that the invading tribe is being driven out of their stamping grounds by an even bigger, tougher tribe. They just want to be left to live in peace, honest!

The dwarves / humans did it - for some reason the orc side of the table is generally portrayed as the aggressor in your typical scenario, which is clearly indicative of some sort of bias... Perhaps those nasty, aggressive dwarves / humans are mounting a punitive expedition against a peaceable orc tribe, for reasons no right-thinking orc can understand, or perhaps they're after something that's in orcish territory. Time to work out what orc buildings look like, to go along with your Warhammer Townscape.

Why I Oldhammer

Setting aside for now the question my wife occasionally raises of why I wargame at all, I thought I should note down what the Oldhammer movement means to me.

Zhu's Oldhammer Contract is a great starting point which I'm pretty sure everyone signs up to, but as with all groups of 2 or more people everyone has their own particular emphasis or preferences. There's a definite strand of archeogaming, which (while I love the old figures) seems to me to be a bit too much of the public face of Oldhammer. There are also hints of preferred rule versions, which while it's good for me as I've no idea what happens in versions later than 3rd, is kind of missing the point - there's no reason you can't play Oldhammer with the current edition (8th, apparently, thank you Google).

As seems quite common amongst Oldhammer gamers I was introduced to and played the game in my early teens, played for a while (in my case until my early 20s), became disenfranchised with Games Workshop in general and WFB in particular, and eventually left the hobby. At the time I put my loss of interest down as a reaction to GW's increasingly obvious business plan behind the game, with built-in obsolecence of the armies as new models and rules were released seeming like a bit of a kick in the teeth given the cost of collecting the army in the first place.

In hindsight though a bigger issue was losing contact with my old group of gaming friends on leaving home to go to university, and hence pretty much only playing "line them up, knock them down" battles against other players who (like me at the time) were only focussed on winning.

Prior to that, while I'm sure my friends Ed, Greg and I were just as guilty of the sort of gamesmanship and bad behaviour that the Oldhammer movement is the antithesis of (we were teenagers, after all), we did play a good mix of scenarios in amongst our more standard battles, which definitely help place the emphasis more on playing a game than playing to win. We were also strangely reasonable in our selection of armies, with none of the abuses of fine-tuning and over-powerful combinations that seem to mark how the other half lives even today. It's good that Thantsants researches this stuff so that the rest of us don't have to!

So, to summarise, while it's a bit of a bonus that I can be sure my rule set or army won't become obsolete, Oldhammer to me is a fortunate collection of like-minded gamers that I'm sure did exist 20 years ago, but were just too hard to find before the internet happened! In a way the really odd thing about last week's Bring Out Your Lead! is that there was (it seemed to me) an undercurrent of surprise about how much fun it was. Which shouldn't have been a surprise given that it was a weekend of playing games, drinking and chatting, but it's kind of damning of the wider hobby that this was the case.

Anti-heroes for wargames, part 2

25-ish years after the event I'm not sure how or why I chose to collect orcs and goblins as my preferred Warhammer army, but I do kmow that when Ravening Hordes was released they were the only army that really interested me. I'm guessing that even as a fairly conformist teenager the "good guys" were a bit humdrum and, while chaos at that stage had a firm place in the Warhammer setting it didn't have the level of prominence it does now, orcs were probably the default bad guy.

Even today while I appreciate the undead army on an asthetic level the only other army amongst the "bad guys" that appeals would be skaven. No longer being a teenager though I could see myself fielding dwarf, norse or Empire armies quite happily these days.

Other than the aesthetics there are probably two criteria for selecting any wargaming army - perceived power (or convesely lack of balance) and monetary cost. As a cash-strapped teenager the latter did start to weigh on my mind after a few years of wargaming, and I wondered whether wood elf or chaos armies would be nicely effective and much cheaper to field. By that point though I had invested financially and emotionally in the orcs and goblins so that it was a bit of a moot point.

I'm in a similar position today, in that I still have most of an orcs and goblins army (albeit that most of my old goblins I gave away, and a good chunk of the orcs are new eBay aquisitions), but would quite like to field a dwarven army instead (or as well). The financial investment in either completing the orcs and goblins, or building a dwarf army, isn't trivial, but much more significant these days as someone with a family and a job is the time investment in painting and preparing them for the table.

I'm still mostly happy with the choice I made all those years ago, but I do hope as well to be able to field a smallish dwarf army, plus the skaven side from Vengence of the Lichemaster, one day. If what I've seen of the hobby recently though is anything to go by I will then find excuses to build up yet another army...