Firing the blog up again

Having come home from BOYL 2019 all revved up to do more hobby stuff I instead got fixated on the then newly-released World of Warcraft Classic.

I've been keeping tabs on the hobby via social media and hopefully now I'm slowly dragging myself out of computer gaming to proper gaming again...! Social media has been a bit of a roller coaster over the last several years, there are older posts on this blog which reference discussions on G+, now sadly long gone. I had a decent hobby feed on Twitter / X for a while, and now I'm pretty active on Bluesky since Twitter and its owner became unbearable.

The lesson from all of this seems that your own blog (or whatever) is pretty important as a long term record, and also that it's worth using it to make decent notes of stuff that you liked as the originals may go away at no notice. So I thought I'd fire up this blog, and I was pleased to see that a fair bit of my old blogroll is still active (so there's another bunch of stuff that I'd been missing).

Trying to get my head around this tech again. One of my guys from the long-ago Fallout game

I need to work out my actual gaming and painting plan, but back in October I made a start on some Orks, partly for a longer-term project that I have in mind but also to check I still knew which end of a brush to hold.

 

Two fairly basic 40k Orks. Not proper Oldhammer but I had them to hand

Orc- and goblin-tober

Despite my grumbling about Mordheim in my last post the game did give me the motivation to get an orc painted in time for Orctober, as well as a goblin sidekick.

After my pasting last time I decided to try a fresh orc warband, and since armour is reassuringly expensive in the game I went hunting through my collection to find some unarmoured figures to bulk out the group.

As far as I can tell Citadel have never made an unarmoured orc archer so this chap with a crossbow got drafted in. I love the variety in the heads of the C16 orcs, and also their "everyday" quality, so I've pulled a few more to the front of my painting queue to give me more options for reinforcements or more to the point replacements... in true tradition of newly painted figures he didn't survive the battle, and my poor luck with the serious injuries rolls continued meaning he won't be back next time.

I particularly enjoyed painting the goblin, to me this era had just the right balance of sinister charm. I'm going for a brighter skin tone and more colourful clothing with the goblins compared to my orcs, I maybe could have gone with slightly brighter clothing but have erred on the side of caution. It'd be good to get one and or two more of these done as well, but realistically I don't think I'll get around to more for a while and frankly I find the prospect of painting a whole Fantasy Battle unit distinctly offputting. The fact that this chap was undercoated with the aim of going to BOYL '13 gives an idea of just how offputting...

Small, easily attainable warbands are definitely the key selling point of Mordheim to me!

BOYL Sunday

There probably ought to be something here about how belated this post is, but wait until you see my next one...

On my way to the Sunday of BOYL I took a diversion to Warhammer World to pick up a copy of the reprinted 40K, since my old one has the traditional late 80s binding...

It was kind of interesting to see Games Workshop's headquarters, which really brings home how big a company it is. Anyway, I got my hands on the new, much thicker, edition:

Top: original, practically loose-leaf edition. Bottom: thicker and so far pristine!

And then back to Foundry, where I'd arranged to use my accumulated painted chaos force in a 1,000-point-a-side battle against Paul D's orcs and goblins (and goblins). We'd opted for 2nd edition, which remains my favourite edition for nostalgia reasons, although it was interesting to be reminded just how much of what I consider Warhammer hadn't been included by that point (e.g. no beast handlers or minotaurs yet). And to be reminded of the joys of calculating points values down to quarters rather than merely halves.

I'd expected to be outnumbered, but not quite to this extent!

1,000 points buys a lot of goblins and orcs

I started out sending my chaos hounds out on the flank, with a target of the bolt throwers but stopping off via the nearby unit of orcs. I know this isn't the best way to use the hounds, one day I might even remember that! They hit the orcs hard, but not hard enough.

Meanwhile my main force was heading for the enemy centre, in good chaotic tradition. Not unexpectedly the goblins have fanatics waiting for this sort of thing. It turns out that in 2nd edition fanatics don't have quite the impact I'm used to from 3rd edition, so I let disposing of them tie me up rather than ploughing on through.

Oh-oh, fanatics

Part one of Paul's cunning plan was that one of his heroes had a weapon with the Sleep Attack ability. It knocked out the hounds' handler, and deprived of his leadership they routed at their first check. Meanwhile my mortar was killing the odd orc here and there, but overall having very limited impact.

Part two of Paul's cunning plan was a shaman with Zone of Steadfastness. A minor bonus of the zone is that these goblins became immune to psychological effects, but the real point is that it tripled their number of attacks. Even with their low weapon skill that's a lot of fightiness, and they held off the charge of my minotaur and beastmen -

And quite quickly killed the minotaur. Paul was particularly keen that I captured this moment of the battle!

The minotaur falls to the unexpectedly mighty goblins

The goblins versus beastmen battle became the main focal point. The beastmen were slowly whittling them down, but couldn't afford the casualties they took in return. And meanwhile my chaos warriors, having taken a diversion to avoid the fanatics, were very slow in arriving.

By the time they did get to the battle, it was looking like a bit of a lost cause, although in points terms I had the majority of my warband still in action. But this fight was all happening within the Zone.

My beastmen had been very resiliant, passing several rout tests, but eventually the shear numbers of orcs and goblins chewed them up.

I generally find this sort of simple game as a good, relaxing way to spend BOYL Sunday, as everyone tends to be a bit frazzled after a full Saturday. What to start painting for next year and, especially after a lost battle like this, how to play things differently, then tend to occupy the brain on the drive home.

In hindsight I was annoyed with myself for my approach to the second half of the battle (and a bit about the hound deployment). I sometimes wonder if wargaming isn't really the hobby for me!

I try not to meta-game either in army selection or during the battle itself, but to both me and my battlefield alter ego it was fairly apparent that even that number of orcs and goblins shouldn't be all that worrying to a combat-centric chaos force such as this. The shaman was clearly the main threat on the field. Once the trap of the Zone was sprung I should have thrown everything at trying to kill him, certainly my mage's powers and perhaps my un-engaged warriors. But equally I should, contrary to the normal approach for a chaos force, have tried to widen out the battle and not have everything fighting in the Zone.

Still, well done to Paul: his minions' plan was a good one, whereas I didn't really have much of a plan!

Orctober 59th

Blimey he's late.

After a long hiatus from painting I nearly managed to get my brushes unpacked when Orctober rolled around, and then I at least started him with a view to getting him ready for a rather fun Realm of Chaos warbands game last week.

It's OK - the giant's been graviton gunned. Got to love RoC

But that didn't happen, so one of my old armoured orcs stepped up to lead my warband instead.

I'm quite pleased with how he turned out - I've emphasised his orc-iness as his day job will be as part of my elite unit in my orc army, which meant among other things the green shield. He's maybe a bit too muted as a result, although I think the belly plate stands out nicely because of that.

Hopefully I'm now back into painting, there seems to be a bit of an Oldhammer community here in the Exeter area so that should be a bit of a motivator. If the rest of the year stops being quite so hectic.

Edit: I should have mentioned that the figure is Gorkus the Exhile from the Pantheon of Chaos Kickstarter (Knightmare Games).

One cold day for the Empire

Enough celestial bodies had aligned to get three other Oldhammerers to my local club - Nick, Gaj and Paul "More orcs than Sauron" D. Although the first rule of Oldhammer is you have a GM we wanted to try and get all four of us playing, so the plan was to set up a scenario of sorts using some 40K objectives cards that Gaj had to hand.

The games that Nick and I have been playing at 1000 points a side seemed to be doing OK for time, so expanding slightly we decided to go for two sides of 600 points apiece, each player having their own objective plus a shared objective per side.

Digging through the club's scenery collection we found a nice selection of buildings and the all-important road, giving us a small settlement around a crossroads tavern. A bit too close to the mountains perhaps to be a nice place to live... A band of orcs (me) and a dark elf contingent (Paul D) have turned up to case the place, the imperial defenders (Gaj) have managed to call on some dwarves (Nick) for some much-needed assistance. Potential objectives are marked with the blue glass beads - one in the centre and two near each deployment zone (more than we need, to prevent any unravelling of the fog of war).

From bottom right we have Morglum leading his warriors, Broglodd's boar riders, dark elves on cold ones(!), Ratrak's Arrers and the elf commander (a level 10 wizard, also on a cold one).

The imperials have mustered some locals with longbows as skirmishers (top left and next to the tavern) and two units of the Emporer's finest (near top left and astride the road), the dwarves fortunately had an organ gun to hand (tucked in next to the barn), and have also brought a unit of crossbows (astride the road) and a chunky unit of dwarves led by their general on their right flank.

The imperials move first, with the skirmishers heading for the tavern ("for cover"), while the dwarves move their warriors forward and work out where best to aim their organ gun.

The orcs move enthusiastically towards the dwarf warriors, the archers rather less so towards the dwarf crossbows, while the cold ones take care to keep a building between them and the organ gun as they advance. Their general is too busy goading his mount into action to do anything (stupidity).

The dwarf warriors decide they're a bit too far out on the flank and move closer (to the tavern), while the skirmishers pepper the boar riders with arrows - the boyz are too tough and well armoured to be affected though. The cold one riders aren't so lucky, and lose one of their number to a crossbow bolt.

The orc warriors again surge forward while the elves lurk behind a house. Their commander has got his cold one under control though and moves forward, flattening the organ gun crew with a Wind Blast.

Photographs were forgotten for a while, the game being too much of a distraction. So there's no pictures of the dwarf warriors' fancy manoeuvers as they move away from the orcs. The imperials move their halberdiers staunchly towards the dark elves, while the skirmishers score a hit on the boar riders.

The cold ones have declared their charge (for the following turn) while Ratrak's boys score a kill and the boar riders move rather too close to Morglum's lads for comfort.

The dwarf warriors charge, and their crossbows move relentlessly forward. The imperials prepare as best they can for the cold one charge, helped by the organ gun which finally has line of sight and a functional crew and fires, reducing the cold ones to nearly half strength.

The dwarves roll poorly in combat though (at the risk of sounding like Rimmer, they rolled three 1s), and Morglum's lads are able to halt them.

The boar boys complete their flanking manoeuver (or are they going for the objective behind the dwarven line?). Meanwhile Morglum enters single combat with the White Dwarf (slaying him thanks to his trusty Banebladeclub) and the cold ones chew through the halberdiers and put them to flight. The organ gun crew fail the resulting panic test but the rest of the line holds.

Another lapse in photography while the events on the elven flank got interesting (and bloody). The halberdiers line up against the nicely warmed-up cold ones, passing their fear test but unable to charge home through a new Wind Blast. Their general has left his unit and is in a Lustrian stand-off with the elven commander.

By this point the game had got far too interesting so I'm afraid this is the last picture. The dwarf crossbows had got across to the orcish lines - with Ratrak's Arrers carefully remembering that they were shooters, not fighters. After much line dressing the boar riders eventually charged the dwarves in the flank, with the stunties resolutely fighting down to the last few dwarves. The cold ones again made short work of the (other) Emperor's finest, and as the curtain came down on the battle the imperial general was locked in combat with the elven commander.

When the dust settled we got around to toting up objectives. It turned out the elves had a "reduce all units" objective, which they failed due to the skirmishers still safely in the tavern, while the imperials had an objective of killing the elf general (also not going so well). The dwarf objective was to scout into the enemy deployment zone (hence the march of the crossbows), while mine was to hold the objective in the centre of the board (failed due to... err... lack of focus?). The "bad guys" shared objective was to hold an objective in the enemy's deployment zone, which fortunately the cold ones overran towards the end of the game - there was also one available on the dwarf flank but charging the stunties proved just too tempting... I forget what the "good guys" shared objective was, but something tricky.

We haven't quite worked out how winning works but arguably it was the dwarves (for achieving their sole objective) or everyone but the imperials (for achieving an objective). But with a game this good surely the conclusion is that everyone wins...? And we had a good chat in the bar afterwards.

So chaps - next time?

Orctober 2 of 4... and on to my next project

I finally finished my second Orctober orc -

He's been partially undercoated for the last 20 years so it's good to have him painted!

The other two orcs that were originally in my queue for last month are going to have to wait though, as it's time I turned my attention to Snickit's challenge. I've been vacillating between dwarves and chaos but, at least at the moment, I've come down on the side of the latter - and not just because my prospective chaos force contains about 50% less figures than the dwarves...

Between Macrocosm's Kickstarter and Bood's production of some fantastic figures it seems the style of dwarves I prefer is finally available without resorting to eBay, but I can't quite bring myself to embark on a completely new army, especially with my SAGA vikings needing finishing. Instead a chaos force seems to offer more possibilities when matched up with what I have painted already, and if allied to my orcs means that I'll be able to field a reasonably large force at a point in the forseeable future.

My initial thought was to go with a variation of my Gulgan's Raiders plan, but a couple of things are holding me back from that. Having looked around a fair bit I'm still not sold on a source of currently available thugs, especially not archers. More to the point though I'm still hooked on my first sight of chaos warriors in the 2nd Edition bestiary all those years ago and, despite now appreciating rather more their tactical limitations, I want to create a force centred around them.

First up though are the beastmen, specifically this old broo that needs a lot of attention -

The sword was missing when I first acquired him from my mate Greg an awfully long time ago, but I must admit the butchery to the base (and most of a hoof) is due to my own teenage efforts. Hopefully I'll get at least him finished before BOYL '17...

Orctober...

Early October, it all seems so easy. I actually have orcs in my paint queue for Orctober, and one of them is based already. I can finish one a week which will not only complete my elite warrior unit but will also get me in sight of my goal for the first half of the year!

A manic month of real life later and, well, at least one painted orc is something...

Two weeks' productive painting

BOYL was good for enthusiasm but it was the deadline imposed by last Friday's game that got me actually painting. Figuring I needed six more orcs for my 1000 point force I eventually scaled my ambition back to these four chaps, and made do with a few more that really are due for the stripping jar.

It's hard to know what different people rate as productive output, but this is about my limit for two weeks, and with the motivation of a proper deadline and a bank holiday weekend in there as well. As a result some of the spinning plates of my life are left looking distinctly wobbly, so in conclusion a figure a week is probably my best-case steady output. It's a useful corrective to bear in mind when contemplating Snickit's recent painting challenge.

That said what I'd really like to do is some dwarves for that (about 50 figures) plus finish off my orcs (2 or 3) plus 1000 points of chaos (about another 20 figures) and still make progress on my SAGA vikings. Maybe not going to happen...

Still, at least in the meantime I now have a more respectably sized unit of savage orcs than I had previously. Need work on the bases and tattoos yet though.

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.

Very belated BOYL report

I only managed a single day of BOYL this year, but it was as inspirational as always.

I spent the day playing Norse and Harry's and Siege of Dumezil Hold scenario from the First Edition Redwake River Valley campaign (although actually a lot of the day was spent wandering around chatting and admiring other people's models).

Harry has created a lovely set of dungeon tiles to go with his Frostgrave winter terrain, which allowed for the exterior and interior of the siege / assault.

My lads were leaving the messy fighting around the gate to some other fools (who did have the help of a couple of giants!) while we attacked a couple of sally ports. Our objective was to kill the dwarf king and destroy an artefact of theirs, leaving them too demoralised to help in the war against Psammon.

An interesting aspect of First Edition is that a character's attributes are rolled and adjusted for their species. I ended up having my hero Gublub (formerly Grack the Wise) with a very low intelligence and subject to stupidity, while my shaman Gruk the Loon was subject to frenzy. The latter came in handy as he also rolled up a mostly useless selection of spells.

As with the system of traits in Dragon Rampant I do think these random attributes really add to the game. Although sometimes you're going to end up with something a bit duff it does make you think of the leaders more in terms of personality than just as a generic champion, and also embrace the possibility that they're not actually very heroic.

I'm not sure whether it was Gublub's stupidity or my own tactical ineptitude that enabled the dwarf king and the dwarves' sacred artefact to escape, but in my defense dwarves are no easier to dislodge from tunnels in first edition than they are in later versions. We did decide though that the surviving orcs wouldn't be too unhappy - with the dwarves having fled and their commander felled by the devestatingly effective elven bows they were now in possession of a rather comfortable dwarven hold. Given his size Gublub seems favourite to become the new leader but I'm not so sure - Gruk is just as good in a fight and being subject to frenzy might tip the balance! If nothing else if should make for some interesting leadership debates...

The Rise of Morcar

There were several other impressive games on the day but for sheer weight of models on the table a mention has to be given to the Rise of Morcar game.

This scale of battle isn't really my cup of tea, but it's good to see someone doing it, and not only to see some of the models that had been produced for the occasion. Though having said that, somewhere in amongst that lot for example are some of the most interesting chaos spawn (or other gribblies in that vein) that I've seen. But equally when you focus in on what looks like a "normal" unit, and it turns out that actually it's a unit of trolls, then that's not my Warhammer.

But if this is your cup of tea then Snickit's write up contains lots of pictures, if you've not seen them already.

More Dragon Rampant - still learning

I got my second game of Dragon Rampant this week, and I think it's fair to say I still have much to learn. Not so much the game itself, as I think it could fairly claim the old "simple to learn" feature, but more fundamentally wargame tactics. Which in a way is more worrying!

This week we tried the Sacred Mole of Ukkert scenario (attacker has to get the McGuffin diagonally across the table, the defender (me) starts from one of the other corners and has to stop them / return it to its start point). We also used leader traits for the first time, and it turned out that my warlord was Wise while my co-conspirator's was the rather useful Commanding.

Interestingly after the experience of the previous game we'd both decided to forgo magic. Given the problems I encountered in the game this may have been a mistake, but on the other hand magic is very expensive and the points seemed better spent on my newly painted warlord and some goblin wolfriders (light riders with Fearful).

Grack the Wise and his bodyguards

Apropos of which I've decided that my approach to goblins is to treat them as normal troop types with Fearful, rather than as Ravenous Horde (for infantry) or Scouts (for missiles). My reasoning being that they're decently equipped, and quite happy to get stuck in when the enemy is under the cosh, but not at all keen on a fair fight.

Early disposition. The pesky elves are trying to get the Mole to the bottom right corner

Shooting in Dragon Rampant is reasonably effective against lightly armoured troops, rather less so as armour improves. I've not yet worked out how to close with a missile-heavy force, although in hindsight lack of aggression, bad positioning of my warlord and not thinking sufficiently about the troop types were all factors.

Key (and fairly obvious) lesson for next time is to keep my warlord in a central position (so enabling him to stiffen the courage of his followers), but equally obviously that slow moving infantry are not good for flank attacks. There are plenty of other things I could have done differently, but those are all fairly specific to the scenario and table set-up, so of little use for next time.

Another part of the answer is probably to bring more goblins (probably Fearful light missiles or light foot), but that has serious implications for the paint queue!

Dragon Rampant - second impressions

I realise that conventionally I should write about my first impressions first. But I was far too busy painting a couple of extra orcs for this game, so I'll have to get to that post later.

Having now played a game I have to say I'm really impressed. It's very quick to pick up and get the hang of, but under that simplicity there are enough subtleties that troop types seem to work as they should (although it's impossible to really tell from just one game), and tactical choices count. The dice do have a big impact, maybe slightly too much but again it's too early to really say.

Ahead of the game I'd read through the rules a couple of times, and drawn up a couple of warband options. All my co-conspirator (I won't call him an opponent, as it wasn't that sort of game!) had to go on was a brief flick through the book at the club the previous week and a few emails.

Arriving, selecting his warband, rolling for a scenario and dropping in some scenery took about an hour (bear in mind, this is from a standing start for him) and we were good to go. The first good point to mention here is how central the personality of the warband and the scenarios are for the game. Skirmish games (SAGA, Dux Britanniarum, and hopefully Dragon Rampant!) are popular at the club and all seem have the expectation of a scenario, so hopefully "line them up and knock them down" is on the wane... Anyway, the scenario was Death Chase - my orcs had been ambushed by some pesky elves.

From left to right I had some boar riders (heavy riders), orc warriors (light foot with Short Range Missiles), a shaman (heavy foot with Spellcaster), more orc warriors (heavy foot) and some archers (light missiles). Ambushing me were (top of picture) some mounted elves (light riders), elf archers (light missiles with Sharpshooter), an elf prince with his hangers-on, including a wizard (elite foot with Spellcaster) and some dryads (heavy foot).

We were a bit low on scenery, having skim-read the relevant section - the recommendation is for at least one piece per quarter of the table. One thing I would say about the rules is that they're a strange mixture of chatty and dense. On a first go through it's quite easy to miss fairly important points but it does set a much better tone than a more rules-centric approach might.

In the interests of simplicity we'd not used either Leader Traits or quests (boasts that you make prior to the game and which if met give extra glory points when deciding the winner). I'm looking forward to adding these in another time, as it seems they would really add to the personality of the warband as well as enhancing the game in terms of replayability.

About here is the point where I lost the game - my first turn -

For reasons I'm struggling to explain I decided to escape this ambush by getting the rough terrain (which doesn't block line of sight) between me and the archers while attacking the strong infantry elements head-on. As you'll see that didn't quite work out, but it is good to see that bad tactics are suitably punished.

A key mechanism in Dragon Rampant is the activation test - the player attempts to activate each of their units in turn, and when an activation fails that's the end of their go. Unit types have different activation scores for different actions - attacking, moving or shooting - which are often a measure of their quality or temperament. For example it's easier to activate Light Riders (mounted skirmishers) to move than it is for them to shoot, and more difficult again for them to attack.

This gives a slightly strange air to the game - the elves first turn stopped immediately when needing to roll 6+ on 2d6 the archers' activation failed, and it was then my turn. In fact, despite having a 70%+ chance of passing this roll it would be turn 4 or so before they fired (although by this stage they were always being activated last!). This seemed to slightly promote a devil-may-care attitude, as you know that any moment your plans may stop dead in their tracks, but it impacts both sides and turns come around quickly so it wasn't frustrating. I do enjoy games where command and control has an element of chance to it, I'm wondering though if it's dialled up slightly too high in Dragon Rampant.

This activation score is used quite broadly, for example heavy missiles (crossbows or muskets) have a high activation score for shooting to represent that they may still be reloading, and wizards a reasonably high activation score for spells. So where for example in Warhammer (at least in the editions I've played) magicians start out fairly likely to cast successfully but towards the end run out of juice, in Dragon Rampant they're a bit of a 50:50 bet all the way through. The sensible thing to do of course is to activate them last, but sometimes tactically you want them to go first (e.g. buff a unit and then have it attack, or blast an enemy unit then charge the battered remnants), but this doesn't always work out -

Snake eyes - my attempted Power Bolt! at the dryads fizzles

The good thing though is that it means there are very few mechanics in the game, which makes it very easy to pick up. After a first turn and a couple of combats we were relying on the A4 rules reference sheet almost exclusively, and the game ticked along nicely.

The other key mechanic is the Battered status and the Courage test. Here my boar riders had become Battered after a bruising charge into the buffed dryads -

Once a unit is Battered it must always take a rally test before anything else happens, and even if it passes can then take no further activation that turn. I was lucky here - the riders passed their test, and my wizard was able to heal them back up to full strength before the dryads were able to attack. My one success of the night was to severely wound that unit (with my riders reduced to 1/3 strength in the process), the dryads then repeatedly failed their own rally test and fell further and further back for the remainder of the game. The courage / rally test becomes progressively harder as a unit is damaged, and failed tests result in a further loss of a strength point as demoralised troops slip away from the battle. At some point the test is failed entirely and the unit routs from the table (as happened to my own archers early on in the game, and my heavy foot after taking sustained missile fire for most of the battle).

A few last points that seem worth a mention -

Units are sized in the game by strength points - cavalry having 6 and most infantry having 12. A key facet of this is the concept of the reduced or single model unit - my wizard being one such, the idea being that his magic gives him enough strength and protection in combat that he fights like 12 men. As well as powerful characters this can also be used to field trolls and so on, where you might have a unit of 3 each representing 4 of those strength points. However strength is a bit of a misnomer (at least to me) - whether having 6 or 12 strength points units roll 12 dice when shooting or attacking if over half strength, and 6 if at half strength or fewer. Strength points more accurately are hit points - cavalry and the low strength infantry units hit hard, but are rather more fragile than the standard infantry units.

Armour makes a big difference in the amount of damage a unit takes when being shot or attacked. My heavy infantry lasted a fair while when taking punishment from two missile units - but was eventually whittled down (good Courage also helping with this).

With both players having been "brought up" on Warhammer it seemed slightly odd (though not necessarily bad) that the orcs and elves essentially fought as equals. If you want to model say elf light infantry being better in a fight than orc light infantry there are plenty of ways to do so. What there's not however is a way of saying that some species are better disciplined and more likely to be well led. You can see how this might be done - for example elite riders have a special rule of "Wild Charge" (if they can attack a unit they probably will), with an option available (Level Headed) to negate this rule and also make them easier to activate for a move. You could add in a house rule of "Well Led" for a blanket improvement in activation scores, but it's hard to know what to cost this at for a given improvement. Also, given the low costs of units (e.g. heavy infantry are 4 points) any upgrade will by definition be a big percentage of that cost and so need to be significant to justify it.

In summary my first game of Dragon Rampant was thoroughly enjoyable, seemed to do a good and simple job of running a fantasy skirmish, and (once we got started) played through in about 1½ hours. I prefer the paperback but the PDF is less than £10. Highly recommended!

Do you have a flag?

My main orc warriors unit does, finally.

I must admit to a fair amount of procrastination for this one - adding the replacement arm was a bit daunting, not to mention the banner itself.

The banner is arguably slightly over the top size-wise, but I blame my younger self for that. We never really paid much attention to standards when we were playing 2nd edition, but when 3rd came out they seemed to be given much more prominence, and army standards were introduced as well, so obviously enormous banners were called for. I found the template for my original at my parents' house a few months back, so felt compelled to reproduce it. I must say it came out rather better second time around, not least thanks to Nico's excellent tutorial.

The banner is newspaper soaked in watered down PVA and allowed to dry before painting - although it still sags alarmingly while being painted it eventually mostly flattens out - if anything I feel it could do with being a bit more wavy.

The one part of the process which really didn't work for me was trying to make the standard pole - hence the use of actual twigs, which have the additional advantage of coming pre-painted! The twig is slightly on the chunky side, but I do like the idea that he's carrying around most of a tree with a battered flag attached...

Figures painted for year to date: 6

A smidgen of savages

My hobby time rather plunged off a cliff in the last four months of the year, with the result that of my target of 50 or so miniatures to paint since early September I've managed only a handful of savage orcs and a shaman.

A handful of savage orcs

I tried to keep their colour scheme to pale clothing (where worn at all) and light wood colours. Along with the blue war paint I'm hoping that they'll stand out from the drabber normal orcs on the table, without themselves being garish.



I'd ideally add some more war paint at some point (I rather like what Thantsants did with his), and devices for their shields, and also give them a matt varnish to knock back the gloss finish that their skin has ended up with. For now though I need to consider them table-ready and move on to other things.

I also want to considerably add to their numbers - while a small group has some tactical value as a slayer-type unit, really I'd like to be fielding a tribal contingent of probably 40+ of them. Not any time soon though!

Mostly still not painted