A tale of some gamers

inspiration needed: dark elf sorceress on cold one

2012-01-22T19:55:00.000+01:00

This cold one project is one of those side projects running along other "main" projects. I always keep such a model on the side to spend some painting time on when waiting for other paint to dry.
This dark elf sorceress featured in some of my posts but now gets its own attention.

The reason for this being, I'm a bit stuck how to progress. Of course I can continue to fill in the remaining details: eyes, a book, some gems, the base of course. But still it seems to somewhat empty here and there. So I just throw it out here for all to see, and maybe get some great tips or inspiration on how to finish this model.

Building progress

2012-01-18T11:51:00.014+01:00

Tom already posted some messages about our scenery building day, so here's a little follow up about my results.

Lately my paint and modelling works have been a bit delayed by the stream of incoming books of the local library. The current system of online searching the catalogs of several libraries combined and ordering books (for free!) has an increasing impact on my spare time. (Currently I'm reading 'Song of Wrath'). The system however contains a level of unpredictability: Books will arrive, but you never know when. Last weeks several books I ordered months ago all of sudden arrived together, claiming lots of time...

Despite this, I managed to finish two buildings for Mordheim that are showed here below. Other overly ambitious plans concerning Warhammer, Carpathia and above all Flames of War models were delayed...

The first building is a sort of small temple like structure, located on a peninsula. The building has a typical shape that just 'happened to be' when I was playing around with the Hirst Arts blocks.

Perhaps "temple of the A's" is a good name for this piece(?). I hope the construction will prove to be strong enough to withstand all violence that will take place here :-)

The second piece is also on a 'standard' 20 * 20 centimeters square; it's a main road guarded by four small 'towers'. A smaller path crosses the main road in the middle of the board. This path has two doors the sides, that can be opened (or smashed in for that matter).

What I really like is the look of the entrances to the small path from the outside of this building. A nice place for a nice ambush or a daring opportunity for a pick pocket expert...

Enter at your own risk!!

Progress on the werewolves warband

2012-01-01T21:30:00.000+01:00

First of all: Happy new year! May it be a year full of original paintwork, artful scenery and many a slaughterfest!

In this post some small progress on the werewolves war band for Chaos in Carpathia. The base was already finished and here are some more members of the band. First up is the doctor! He is done! This is the human form of one my werewolves. A mean looking, mysterious character it has turned out to be. I'm quite happy with him. He posed many a trouble with painting all the different shades of black.

Two additional women for my wolves are up now. Two victorian ladies with the weaponry to boot! Evil in the making I'd say. They look so lovely and sweet but are really the wolves in sheeps clothing.

As a special treat some progress on the dark elf sorceress on the cold one. She appeared in one of the previous posts here and wanted you to give a peek how she is turning out.

Christmas scenery update

2011-12-29T22:33:00.000+01:00

Almost a post a day at the moment after the modeling session! But we must not overdo this of course! What's to show then? Painted buildings that is!
I painted my building and plaza. Also finished the wharf and dock pieces and painted them. Besides that I had some only black coated buildings lying around and decided to paint them as well. I was busy anyway!
This is the current result. My quirky tower building is almost done. Needs some wood finishing only. The flock has ten done to represent the occasional green plants here and there and needs not much aside from some color. I might go for some posters plastered to the walls. Oh I am busy making a half roof as a first experiment. Might go for a red or blue tiled roof here!

Next up is a half temple-ish building that was made by Ludo (a year ago?). I finished the paint job and added some snow for a change.

A picture of well...a plaza... nothing more nothing less but always handy to have lying around for one scenario or another!

THis small derelict shrine was not made by me, but don't know the origin actually. Also from a hobby session ages ago. Finished the paint job and added the greens. Might need some more color in the form of pots and cases or whatever.

Ah yes...the wharf... out of the box wooden wharf, only needed the stone docks and stairs to connect it with the rest of the scenery. A small ramp I added to get those barrels rolling onto the ships was all it needed actually. Painted 4 water sections to go. THey will need the water treatment, but I have to seal the edges first in order to pour the resin I use for water on it and not spill everywhere!

To finish this photo session off, an overview when these pieces are all connected together. THey look good, but will look better when finished and connected to the rest of the scenery waiting in my gamers deny: the attic!

Scenery building day

2011-12-27T19:44:00.000+01:00

It is Christmas and the last couple of years I planned a day of building scenery mostly for Mordheim, but now more and more for all our games. THe turnout was a bit less then last years: we were with the 2 of us! Some people have these activities called work they want to attend rather then spend a day with us with our favorite past time: the miniature war-game hobby!
Anyhow we were with the 2 of us and started with a visit to the local garden centre where now all Christmas scenery was for half price! We bought a pile of trees and a great looking harbor deck!
The place was swarming with guys wanting to expand their christmas scenery, but we were looking for war-games terrain. This resulted in some interesting discussion you can imagine. How can you use a set of christmas singers in the scenery? Of how to put the whales blowing water in the harbour of the city of Mordheim? :)
After that we went to the local hardware store for MDF sheets that act as a base. We found out that professional sawing the sheets is for free if you have a customer card. So we asked the guy to make us as much 20x30cm pieces (since these are the "house" measurements of our scenery) and we got a pile cut with so much accuracy it was too much to bear. All these time we were sawing ourselves and always have some half centimeter off here and there and now a nice pile of 12 sheets with exact measurements for only 4 euros! What a bargain!
Off we went to start building. We both stockpiled cast plaster stones and pieces to build some real buildings! We also drink the white stuff as you can see!

Arjan built a nice piece for his dungeon and an intricate piece of "arch"work! I made a quirky building with a lot of tower add ons and stairway pieces. Also built me 4 pieces of water with the wooden docks fitting to a stone part with a nice ramp and stairs. Also one plaza was made as well. Still some painting to do now, but the black and grey highlighting always goes quite fast. This should be possible to finish this holiday week.

Progress: Carpathia warband, werewolves

2011-12-26T20:29:00.000+01:00

Christmas updates, this time of year is great for painting progress. I've actually planned days to do painting and in between the loose hours as well. This should be great for showing progress as well, expect some multiple posts between christmas and new year.
For now I was busy with the Chaos in Carpathia war band, my werewolves. The 2 ladies were already up here but now they have bases and the werewolves and henchie wolves are done.

2 victorian ladies are up next. One with a rapier and one with a hand gun. Should fit in nicely with the victorian scify setting!

painting progress

2011-12-11T21:05:00.001+01:00

Once in a while all parallel running painting projects are finished. At that point I start up new projects and maybe a little more then I can chew. On the other hand there is always time needed to dry or get more inspiration and then it is good to have a couple of projects running. For example painting a dark elf sorceress on a cold one next to a regiment of dwarf warriors. SOmetimes ideas from painting one follow up in the other painting scheme or whatnot. In the case of dwarfs and dark elfs it is maybe a bit hard to stomach but still.

Ok what is the status?! 16 dwarfs put together and have their base. THey are awaiting a black spray base coat. Next to that I am painting a dark elf sorceress on a cold one as already mentioned. The cold ones are a bit of a new "collection" so to say. I started painting my second and got the idea of painting only cold ones with dark elves on them. Maybe starting a Mordheim war band with them, maybe painting a couple more dark elfs and waddayaknow?! a dark elf army is born. :)

For some of the other games we bought some rules for at twohourwargames I'm painting a werewolf war band and related henchem. First up painted and done are two ladies that will join my werewolf gang. They are a bit dark gothic and just the style we want for Chaos in carpathia. Sort of a scifi victorian style setting and this will just fit the bill.

The werewolves are already undercoated and a couple of regular wolves were ordered and in. This war band will soon be born since the war band does not contain a lot of members.

They only need a base and they are done. Still looking for the right base. Maybe I'll just go with the bricks my dwarfs are set upon. Fits the scenery nicely for one.

Mordheim still going strong

2011-11-30T15:18:00.000+01:00

We are still playing the game. The blog might tell you otherwise but last weekend we had a good old fashioned game of Mordheim. Three war bands battling it out in the city of Mordheim searching for treasure.

Actually this was a scenario we already played a while ago. Then we had the Luggage (disc world) also attending. This time it was plain and simple searching the treasure and killing each other.
In the field were my trusty dwarfs, some halflings and a new kid on the block: Inquisitors!
The game started with the Dwarfs and the inquisitors squaring of in a narrow alleyway. Massacre commenced and in the meantime the halflings were prying open the treasure chests. That is not that easy when you are as small and a little weak.

The inquisitors were taking the upper hand at the start, but my sturdy dwarfs proved their hard heads worthy and they stood fast battling it out. The pesky Inquisitors were dropping like flies all of a sudden and the first route test took them running of the battlefield!
The halflings (cowards as they are!) were shooting their arrows at the dwarfs. This was no worthy foe to loose more men against in such a way and the dwarfs took of as well. They already had found some treasure and were happy as they are.

The 2 thunderers proved worthy of their guns this battle, shooting at very long range with one shot an inquisitor to death. What a marksmen they are!

Planes! Wings of War here we come

2011-11-17T21:18:00.000+01:00

And now for something completely different. Since we are moving towards a new phase in hobby life I too got hooked on some good old WWII stuff. In this case it's the planes! We were busy looking out for the game Wings of War I got my hands on a 1:144 messerschmitt on ebay. Not knowing what I know now: 1:144 early war WWII planes are not to be found! The scale is just not made anymore! They can be found but very difficult! They have to be out there!
Her for some results on the painting of the first plane!

And the plane belly-up! I painted the plane in the camp scheme with the yellow nose and wingtips. The decals were so old it took a full day to get them from the papers.

When looking for planes in the 1:144 scale (early WWI) I stumbled upon the reveal mini kits. Fun kit that is put together in no time and preprinted. Only it is very basic preprinted and only just the correct scale. Actually I can't find the scale but compared it to the 1:44 messerschmitt and it compares.
For the mini kit I bought a Fokker DRI triplane, not really early WWI but a fun plane. Also found the Hindenburg out there. Scale does totally not compare but again fun as a background. I might paint them to give them a more detailed look as opposed to the plastic shiny look they have now. But for a couple of eures nice to give them a try.
Now where are them 1:144 early WWI planes when you need em!

First game with samurais

2011-11-13T19:20:00.002+01:00

In between Mordheim games and WHFB's we decided to plan an evening playing a new game. After we went to Crisis'11 in Antwerp, new games, war bands and miniatures we were inspired. Now it was time to play Red Sand Blue Sky the Samurai version. After reading some posts on this blog we took up the idea as well. RSBS lends itself perfectly for converting it to a samurai version.

We played this game for the first time and we were with the three of us. All having one samurai in the field to make it less confusing.
The Japanese garden I made was of perfect size. With small stones we denoted the different zones of the RSBS arena. We chose to make a simple samurai based on the two sworded gladiator. Now all samurais were quite similar only difference in weapon being 2 swords or a 2-handed sword. Furthermore the difference was in the dice rolls and division of attribute points of course. This was for us enough for now since we were learning the rules of the game as well.
I think it worked out well actually. It took us 2 hours to play this version the first time including making the samurai rosters. No campaign just a simple fight to the death. Good for the first time.
I think we will be creating our own samurai rosters and the major change in the rules being the fighting styles. We just have to create some fighting styles for samurai and the game is as good as converted. Campaigns can be played just the same not having gladiator schools but samurai families/schools and we're off! Next games will be play testing our own created samurai fighting styles which of course will be posted here.
Good fun this new game and when more familiar with rules can be a quick game to start or finish a gaming evening!

A gobbo worth more than it's weight in stones...

2011-11-04T16:38:00.004+01:00

My former neighbor is a dental technician by trade and offered me to cast (heaps and heaps of) stones using my Hirst molds. As a 'thank you' I built a small watch tower using some of these nerd bricks, manned by this Goblin.

C{z/h}eck this..

2011-11-04T15:34:00.008+01:00

Finally some movement in the Flames of War department: After some disappointing attempts to paint Czechoslovak roundels myself, I started searching for alternatives. Luckily I found Black Lion Decals, a Dutch(!) company that produces decals and let's you order your own as well (at a reasonable fee).

In the meantime some serious reinforcements for my army arrived: Ten T-34 models of the Plastic Soldier company. These models use the same scale as the 'normal' Battlefront models and have the nice option of coming with two turrets each, allowing you to use them as the /76 or the /85 model.
The picture above shows on T-34/85 with a Czech roundel attached. The model needs some finishing, like dirt and battle scars. Hopefully I will find some nice paints and tools for this last job at the Crisis Event tomorrow.

The second picture shows four of my T-34's: The two on the left are Battlefront T-34/76's, the two on the right are two examples of the Plastic Soldier /85 variant. All of them off course with Czechoslovak roundels(!).
With some minor(?) work left, I now have a 'legal' late war Tankovya force. Time to go to battle!!

Red Sand Blue Sky: painting the samurais

2011-11-02T21:34:00.000+01:00

With the three of us we've bought two sets of samurais and we ended up with 4 models each. I started to paint the first one in the color theme: red and black with gold features.

This something completely different than painting fantasy figures. Also very refreshing in painting approach and I found out stuff that I can use for fantasy painting. For example the dragon on the back of the kimono pas simple and easy to do but gives a lot of character to the mode. Painting flesh is something that should look more human skinned and is a challenge. All in all I think the first steps in painting samurai came out nicely.
I decided to put them on a simple round base with simple sandy cover to keep it tight with the japanese garden terrain I made.

The next samurai has already some paint splashed on so I will give you the first work in progress picture as well. Again the same colors but now reversed. The other 2 samurai carry armor and more battle gear so they will be a lot different then these two, but that is for the next post!

New dwarves here

2011-11-02T21:20:00.000+01:00

Yep, I've been busy finishing some projects lately. A couple of dwarves were waiting the final stages of paint and matt varnish for protection. It's been done. They were already on the battle field but not in this finished state. Now they can shine in their own pictures in stead of in the fray on the battlefield.

First up are the hammerers. Command group and a couple of em. They blend in well with the theme of the rest of the army. The beige and red colors come back in all regiments making them fit together easy. A lot of metal and gold details on these boys to make em look good and hammery (if that's a word?)

Next up are there lads that form the command group for my thunderers. Good looking models, nice pose for the standard bearer, calling commands and the champion with his brace of pistols. He will also do good in my Mordheim war band I'm guessing. Purely as a character he fits there nicely (overprices because of the brace of pistols, but fluff is something you can't buy of course)

Red Sand Blue Sky: Samurai version

2011-10-26T18:38:00.000+02:00

Besides gaming, new games are in the pipeline. After finding some cool blog posts on several cool tabletop boardgames that can be played quick and do not involve huge amounts of miniatures we bought the rules for Red Sand Blue Sky(check the site out: Two hour war-games has more cool rulesets, buy your own mini's and go!). Originally this game is for playing with gladiators but after reading this post on the possibility of playing it Samurai style we decided to go for it.

I built me a game board that should resemble a Japanese garden. With the cherry tree and specific placing of stones and nice lined gravel it really resembles what I had in mind. The sand you see, is a mixture of fine sand and watered down wood glue (PVA glue). WOrks like a charm! I thought the sand would still come off and my house would be all over after playing with it once, but it is rock solid! Good stuff.

We've ordered our samurais at Perry miniatures. Painting them just started so only basecaoted miniatures on the battlefield to show you the size.

Of course the game for gladiators we also will be playing, the arena is already made (look at this post on our blog). 4th of november it is Crisis in Antwerp, Belgium were we are heading: gladiator miniatures are on the wish list!

Sigmarites Cleansing Mordheim campaign

2011-10-12T21:07:00.000+02:00

This is the first scenario of a short series of our own Mordheim campaign. A couple of games lead to a big end game. Each of the preliminary games lets you earn benefits for the end game. Choose one side with your war band: good or evil.

First battle: Foresstad Goblins
Sigmar is gathering minions to cleanse Mordheim for once and for all of all the filth occupying the derelict and devastated city of Mordheim. We are speaking the imperial year 2025, more then 25 years after the comet crashed down in the city. It has been long enough according to all followers of Sigmar. The acolytes are gathering enough crowd and forces to rid the city of all evil.
These plans are widely known to all inhabitants in the city and in no time around the city as well. The woodland village Foresstadt is known to be gathering all sorts of greenskins to block the plans of the Sigmarites. A nearby trade village along the river: Kindwater is said to receive all kinds of goods concerning the cleansing of Mordheim. Also in the mountains in Oberstone some evil forces are gathering and said to protecting some holy relic needed for sweeping through Mordheim.
All these cities and villages around Mordheim have something to do with the cleansing plans of the Sigmarites. Good and evil forces are gathering and plotting for the big day: midsummer year at the start of the turning of the sun festival.
First threat is the orcs and goblins gathering at Foresstadt. The city is swarming with the greenskins. The little buildings there are have to be burnt down in order to rid the village of the evil threat. Villagers are seeking refuge in their homes and need to be rescued first of course.

Setup: Put d6+3 buildings as the Foresstad village. Warbands setup at the edges of the village

The village is infested with orcs and goblins to represent this the following rules apply:
1 goblin leader + d6 goblins are roaming through the streets: random movement and cannot move of the board, will charge when in range.

Each turn throw a d6 on a 1 or 2 the equavalent goblin warriors appear and on a 3 an orc appears near the goblin leader. They will move with the leader each turn. Up to a max of 1,5 times the warband members in the biggest warband present.
Each building can be entered to:
-rescue/slay a villager (cost 1 turn no movement)
-set the building on fire (1 turn no movement)
-always roll d6 on a 1 a random encounter happens (see BTB random encounter list)
XP can be earned by:
+1xp for a rescued/slayed villager
+1xp for a building set on fire
+1xp for killing the goblin leader/escort the goblin leader of the board
+1xp for the winning leader
+1xp for surviving

Surviving warband wins (multiple warbands may win if they are of the same allignment and all warbands of other allignment are off the battlefield).

If the forces of Good win: for the final cleansing battle they gain the use of trap doors during that battle
If the forces of Evil win: They get the help of a goblin shaman during the final battle.

The battle report
Three war bands are taking part in this battle (each of the scenario's is devised in a way always multiple war bands can take part): Dwarfs, Goblins and WitchHunters.

The dwarfs take the entry road into the village to see if they can free some villagers and take out a couple of green skins. The WitchHunters enter the city from a hill side and struggle to enter the city quickly. The Goblins on the other hand, found out a rivaling war band is taking over the town. Of course this Gobbo war band wants to have the riches and is out for a good reckoning with Goblin boss in Foresstad.
In no time the Goblins found each other. From all streets reinforcements arrive but the goblin boss is soon in combat.
In the meantime the dwarfs are still strolling along the road to enter the town and the witchHunters let loose a couple of rabid dogs!

The fighting between the Goblin war bands is well along the way when some Dwarf thunderers take aim to shoot at some gobbo's. Some WhitchHunters enter the fight but meanwhile the Goblin boss is already taken and the rivaling war band is running of with him. The Dwarfs and WhitchHunters have a small skirmish. The Dwarf slayers demonstrating their skill against 5 WhitchHunters the battle is already reaching its end.
The Goblin war band won the fight. The Goblin war boss was taken and one way or the other: Goblins won!

WHFB:Dwarfs vs. Warriors of Chaos

2011-10-05T14:58:00.009+02:00

Dwarf rangers reporting a spawn of chaos roaming the vicinity of the karak brought the dwarfs in a discussion on going out to battle the group of chaos warriors accompanying it. The dwarfs in Karak Grzzak were not a big society and only just started mining in this desolate part of the mountains. Hopes of a good vein got a small group of fortune seekers towards the far mountins.

After a lot of grumbling the dwarfs of Karak Grzzak took to war against a deamon host of Chaos warriors. This dwarf army very much represents the starting dwarf society of Karak Grzzak. Small groups of different kind of troop types got together since they are not that big yet in the karak.

A game of WHFB it is then: dwarfs vs. warriors of chaos and 1250 points. I’m still trying out a lot with my dwarfs and painting up different types of troops. These are ideal games to try out stuff with my dwarfs and 8th edition WHFB.

My opponent now put in a magic user, that was a first time in our WHFB games so far. I got around not putting in a runesmith with anti magic runes since it takes a lot of points and in these amounts of points it is not worth the points. SO magic against me en no heavy anti magic back, how would this work out? Is my theory correct? At the end of the battle it was. 2 spells against me, not too bad each turn, 1 I could dispel almost any time and the other while it was in play, I could dispel my next turn. No worries there.

The ragtag dwarf army I field was the following:
16 Dwarf Warriors with GW
10 IronBreakers
8 Hammerers Full command
10 Miners Full command
13 Thunderers Full command
5 dwarf slayers
1 Dwarf Lord
1 Dwarf cannon
1 gyrocopter

The lord went with the hammerers in order to have a big attack block. I pumped up the lord with enough runes to give him extra attacks, no return armours save etc. A real killy unit icw the hammerers.

The Chaos army consisted of:
1 lvl 2 Chaos Sorcerer, Mark of Nurgle
15 Warriors of Chaos, Mark of Nurgle
6 Ogres of Chaos, Mark of Nurgle
Chaos Warshrine
Chaos Spawn
Marauder Horseman
In retrospect it would have been so much smarter to use a unmarked Sorcerer, which would have been cheaper and could have used a new 8th edition magic lore. Oh well...

We played a scenario where the break point was calculated with the amount of banners in your army. When this comes below 1 in our case, you lose the battle. This was not known up front so I was lucky to field a lot of banners :)
I fielded the Warriors and Ironbreakers with the cannon on one side of the field and the other side got the rest. The battlefield was riddled with swamps rivers and a forest leaving the mid section occupied with all sorts of evil doing, my dwarfs did not want to entry. The Warriors of Chaos were bold as ever and entered the swamp, direcly losing one of its evil beasts. The forest proved not so lucky for the group of six Ogres. First they took a hit of the cannon killing two. On top of that my 5 slayers entered and killed some right off!

The magic of the Chaos section was not spectacular and each turn a dispell was easy (even without a runesmith or runes of spellbinding). In fact, the wizard killed more followers of Chaos than Dwarfs when a spell casted with total power resulted in a dimensional cascade that caused major damage among the chaos warriors!

The warriors of chaos were quick to move to my hammerers and thunderers. The thunders loosed some voleys bellowing the black clouds of smoke. They even mentioned to kill one or two warriors! Then the Hammerers joined close combat with my Dwarf lord and a massive onslaught followed! At the end of the battle The Hammerers and lord were victorious! The Chaos general and warriors left to a small clumb of warriors easily wiped out. All other chaos virmin was taken care of with the gyro and the cannon (a group of warhounds and a chaos sponge!)

Last hope for Chaos: A desperate all out attack on the left flank! The Ogres already down to two (Slayers and Cannon), the Warriors thinned out mostly by the Gyrocopter and a wounded Spawn. This assault failed definitely after the last remaining warriors were broken....

What a massacre and what an onslaught....for Chaos that is. My group of Dwarf warriors and ironbreakers were only running around the field to get to some hand2hand but not reaching any. The rest of the dwarfs were enough to take care of things. Even the miners after entering in turn 2 did not see any action!. Just luck in all or was it the best of tactics? Only more battles will point out what has won me this battle!

And a few last words from the losing side :-)
The battle started out not that bad: The ogres made a feint move to the right before joining the major attack on the left flank. The marauder horsemen managed to threaten the cannon, only to be blown to pieces by a grapeshot. The downfall started with the cannon hitting the ogres in the flank, killing two and wounding one. Next came the shrine, failing a 'march test' I positioned it into the swamp to stay out of reach of two blocks of dwarfs, only to be taken by the Fimir(!). On top of this all was my miserable general.. He managed to kill a dwarf or two before taking down two ranks of chaos warriors by miscasting.. Like I said before:"Oh well..."

Secude and kill?

2011-08-28T11:44:00.004+02:00

So, my army is coming along quite well. After the victory on Tom and his dwarfs (750 points), it was time to test the daemons on another army. Arjan and I settled for a 1500 point battle on a somewhat rainy wensday, over at arjans place.

Because I can currently only field 750 points worth of daemonettes, it was time to include another fraction. Luckily for me, Arjan has some really well painted nurgle daemons which I could borrow to test on the battlefield. In my mind, the swift but vulnerable slaanesh would match quite well with the slow but o-so-realiable nurgle daemons. Since GW no longer hold srestrictions as to which factions may work together (bye bye fluff?) I can easily mix anything in my armylist up. I will be playing Arjans chaos warriors (of nurgle...), so I decide to go look for swift elements and avoid facing him head-on. Recalling from the last time I challenged Arjan, he always brings along some warriors, some marauders en a couple of annoying chaos hounds. No shooting will be involved from his side, so I should be relativly safe. Casting is probably not out of the question, but should not be on tzeensch like proportions. All in all, I decided to go with the following list:

- 1 Herald of Nurgle with staff of nurgle

- 1 Herald of Slaanesh with the musk and torment blade

- 10 Daemonettes (full command)

- 20 Plaguebearers (full command)

- 7 Chaos Furies

- 5 Seekers

- 3 Nurglings (or nurgling bases)

- 3 Fiends of Slaanesh

The original goal was to get as much of the army behind his lines, so I had at least the advantage of the rear charges. Those charges can win you a combat and since I was not to rely on my attacks, this was to be the best option.

The slaanesh part of my army turned out to be working pretty much exactly like expected. Fast movement all around, severly confusing arjan. The fiends and their stomp rule together with the magnificent 10" movement make up for a pretty tough fight. The are going to appear in all my armies from this day on. The seekers prove to be reliable and fast, but NO match for a nurgle lord, not even in the flank charge (magical attacks AUCH). The nurgle part was somewhat dissapointing. The nurgling bases are hardly a challenge for any unit. Plaguebearers might have a S and T of 4, but 4" movement and 1 on A, I and W means that they still cant hold up a decent fight. Especiallywith the low 3 weaponskill, which makes them not even a match for empire regulars. The herals however IS a promising man. It does cost yousome points, but it is hard to argue with a S, T and WS 5 hero! It does turn out I'd better put the herald in the regiment next time. Apparently they all regenerate when you do so, darn....

Unfortunately, none of us remembered to take pictures OR write a battlereport, so I can only publish my conclusions:

- It was a massacre, with both armies suffering great losses.

- Arjan won by a difference of something like 700 points

- It was really fun to do, and the match was pretty much undecided to the very last turns!

These are my lessons learned:

- Nurgle is NOT a good friend

- Never charge your surviving 3 daemonettes in an already doomed fight, hoping that rear bonus might be a turning of tides.

- Chaos warriors are tough.... really tough

- Lords are scary, even if they are called blob and ride a palaquin

This can only mean one thing though. If it is not nurgle who I must befriend, that leaves me two options:

- Khorne (hard hitting combat machines, made for destruction)

- Tzeensch (magical superiorities, made for long distance violence)

While khorne matches up with the speed of the slaanesh, it is more capable of doing great damage. Adding the magical resistence to that means that will bring more solid combat to the army. I could use that...

On the other hand, including tzeensch in my army means that my slaanesh can focus almost completely on the flank and rear combatting, leaving the magic and shooting to my fellow daemons. No real solid combat machine, but thinning the enemy units until the can be taken down by fiends and/or seekers. Flamers are a must have!

Owww .... decisions, decisions.....

Into the flames

2011-08-18T10:35:00.017+02:00

The first unit of my Flames of War army rolls in. I've chosen the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps as the theme for a late war Tankovy battalion. At the moment this is only visible in the Czech/Czechoslovak flag on one of the tanks. Later on I hope to add the appropiate roundels, numbers and slogans. I'm still looking for pictures of tanks in this particular army and for fitting decals in this scale. Main force will consist of T34's (what else?) in /76 and /85 versions, with support of infantry and some SU-85 tank hunters or even IS-2 (in pink?)

Painting 'historical' instead of 'fantasy' vehicles and figures was something to get used to. Many, many years ago I used to be a 'serious' model-maker and I had to rediscover some of the skills involved. And despite that the Battlefront miniatures are very nice and all five have their own distinct stowage and details, it's quite hard to create a nice paint finish for vehicles that basically were painted in one color.

Anyway, the first batch is finished, 10 more are waiting! Any comments and tips (especially on weathering effect on this scale) are welcome!

Malus Darkblade

2011-08-17T20:09:00.000+02:00

And now for something completely different. I've been painting a lot of dwarfs recently. All the more reason to paint something different in between as a sideproject. Actually I'm still painting dwarfs but when paint dries it is nice to have a different paint object to do some painting on. I took some quick pictures just to get the idea of the finished product. I'm quite content with the cold one!

After reading all stories of Malus Darkblade and a discount at the local hobby shop on metal blisters I had to get Malus as a model. The cold one really makes this model. It comes with two heads. A rather blocky squarish plastic head and a vicious looking multipart metal head. The latter being much cooler for the model but a bit more difficult to paint and assemble. I painted the total model in separate parts for once: two sides of the cold one were glued together but that was it, the jaw, upper part of the head, torso of Malus, the sword arm and the cape were all painted before assembly. It makes for a much easier paint and gives much more detail in those hard to reach parts when painting a pre assembled model. Only the coloring on the joining parts was more difficult to get right.
I stayed with the blues for this model. The cold one being blue, the armour of Malus having a blue sheen on it and Malus' cloak is blue, even the inscriptions on the blade are a bright blue. All in all very inkeeping with the model. Malus' cloak however could have been better with a contrasting color in the end being yellow or red or something.

BTB: Mordheim, The Siege

2011-08-07T21:07:00.008+02:00

After playing the border town burning campaign for a while, it was time for it to come to an end. We wer playing regularly (once per 4-6 weeks), but to reach the 40 campaign points is taking just to long. The campaign was good while it lasted but it was time for the final battle. The three most regular players (in this case, dwarfs, chaos and halflings) got together for this epic battle.

The dwarfs took the defence and the halflings allied with the Nurglings. Fortifying themselves behind thick walls and a big gate, the dwarfs took position. The thunders (5 strong) took ther aim from the top walls along the gate and the rest (2 slayers, one hired slayer, 4 beardlings) stood behind the gate.

Outside a blizzard was blowing strong, visibility reduced to 10 inch the dwarfs couldn't see the Nurglys setting up and the row of halfling bowmen taking position. On the other hand the evil allied forces couldn't make out a dwarf as well so all was even.
The alied forces advanced at the gate. The Nurglys sending the cheep troops up front and letting the expensive hero's do a sneak climb at the far side of the wall. A warlock flew over the wall into one of the buildings in the castle. The dwarfs started to let loose volleys of led. Blackpowder smoke obscuring the gate even more in the blizzard. They did not that much damage in subsequent turns. This could also be said for the halflings. THey were shooting flights of arrows to the wall but failing to damage a single dwarf. Turn after turn the shooting continued and 2 dwarfs went down.

Meanwhile the warlock was trying to set fire to a building with some magic. Probably the flying consumed all his energy, because he fumbled and failed epically! The rest of the Nurgly heroes were scaling the wall and the dwarfs behind the wall were doing some patroling but were too far away. The Nurglys were setting fire to a building with the three of them and clever enough trapping themselves in the fire! They were pinned and taking damage here! Finally the warlock managed to set fire to a building and it burnt down to the bottom in minutes.

The dwarfs managed to kill a thieving halfling that had hidden within the Castle walls; one of the slayers that is. The rest of the dwarfs not shooting at the horde at the gate (that was having much difficulty with the gate since only 1 member of the warband was strong enough to damage the door: the pitfighter), were running to engage combat with the Nurgly heroes. The slayers were really going down on Ticky and ShyShy, in moments only pulp was left in the hallways of the castle. The warlock didn't stand long as well and the Nurglys were thinned down.

Outside the gate the Halflings wer sick of waiting and wasting arrows and started pumping arrows in their allied Nurglys in front of them. A massive onslaught continued. After a couple of turns the halflings and Nurglys were halved. All warbands were now taking route tests each turn and it was inevitable that one warband should leav the game. When some earthquakes started to shudder the castle and surrounding grounds it was too much for the Nurglys. They ran of the battlefield. The Dwarfs were taking this bad as well, the Noble could reroll a failed route test one time (he failed the roll with a double 6) and failed the reroll just as badly (again a double 6), leaving the few halflings that were left with the victory!

What an epic battle it was, this was no doubt the biggest onslaught for all warbands. All the saved fundings were put in to expand the warbands to full capacity, resulting in this epic fight. A worthy ending of the Border town burning campaign. Now only to start searching for the new campaign setting...

dwarf cannon and crew painted

2011-07-31T20:26:00.000+02:00

It featured already in a battle against slaanesh, but now it is ready and fully painted. All details on the canon done and the crew is done to the last detail. I also created two larger stone bases with all the accesories for the dwarf cannon. A large scope for spotting targets in the far distance and a set with a wheelbarrow containing some tools and a spare set of ammo on a small cart.

This is a nice set to put in my army and the two "scenery" pieces can also be good unit fillers for any regiment adding 2 places each. How universal, how great!

It was fun painting this set and it was quite quick actually. Or I'm becoming more skilled at painting the dwarfs. The lasat set of 10 dwarf thunderers took me a while but this cannon and crew was done in a couple of days. The cannon being mostly metal helps, but the crew are detailed little fellows, wrenches, looking classes and whatnot.

All these cool details really make the set and also makes it fun to paint. It really captures the look and feel of getting a canon loaded and shot at a large distance and hitting something. Now for the hitting part and doing damage I need a good game to practice this in!

2 Dwarf WHFBattles

2011-07-31T19:54:00.000+02:00

Not one but two battle reports in one post. Since the battles took place a while ago and there are some notes, it will not be the best battle reports. Let me just tell you what happened to my dwarfs during these two battles. One battle is against warriors of chaos and one battle against deamons of chaos (slaanesh in particular).

First up a small skirmish Battle of Slaanesh deamons against Dwarfs. This is a small 750 point battle that we played the other day: Dwarfs against deamons and fast cavalry deamons that is.

My perception of the battle up front (and for choosing my army) was that some magic would be involved and some big creatures would show up. I invested in a big block of 20 dwarf warriors and a set of 10 thunderers. Backing up the army would be a cannon against the big creatures and a Gyrocopter for harassing the low toughness troops that would march against me. A runesmith leading the army should be there as anti-magic as well.

The following happened when the dwarfs marched to battle. The scenario was a full battlefield with a river of blood, the odd building and fences running along the middle. Also some nice hills obscuring the vision of my canon were present.

I set up as far away from the Slaanesh as possible. Small groups of riders and small groups of warriors were put against me. 2 Slaanesh beasts were put in and a named character: The Mask.

Straight forward the games started with a march move of the riders. Didn’t calculate that! Immediately the game gave me less opportunity to start shooting of the riders. The fact that all troops were small groups and only one or two ranks deep wasn’t helping as well. The canon is not your best friend there.

The fast cavalry was closing in very fast and within two turns my dwarf warriors were in close combat flanked on both sides and my thunderers after shooting once and hitting nothing, ran of the table. Meanwhile the cannon after killing one slaanesh rider, went unemployed after the crew was slain in no time. The gyro was all that was left besides the dwarf warriors. The steamgun was picking some single riders away, but also not the best of throws with the dice here.
The dwarf warriors were engaged in close combat on three sides and this was done quickly, leaving the gyro the only one standing.
That was quick, that was over in a jiffy!

The battle was sponsored with some dwarf ale, but to no avail, the dwarfs lost.

Learning points here: no anti magic needed (costed me a rune of balance, could have more warriors!), canon was useless against single line units (do without, only gyro or maybe organ gun and more points for slayers!), evade being flanked (invest in BSB). Finally: throw better dice! :)

Second battle was against warriors of chaos and was 1000 points. Also a small game and I put in a variety of troops here: 4 slayers, dragon slayer, thane, 16 dwarf warriors, 10 ironbreakers, 10 thunderers, 10 miners, gyro. This was actually my first 8th ed. game and I just wanted to try out all units I have painted the past months en see how they do in the game. Of course I wanted to win!

The chaos warriors fielded a hell cannon! Woah! In one shot I lost half of my unit of dwarf warriors! This was going bad! THe miners didn't turn up to deal with the cannon for 3 turns (and that was with the steamdrill!), but eventually took care of itself by blowing up.
A hefty block of warriors of chaos was moving towards me, Some satelite troops like chaos warhounds and whatnot was also advancing by I could pick them out with the slayers, gyro and thunderers. Good work there. Only to be stuck with the chaos warriors and they were tough! Eventually only my gyro was left to pick at the chaos warriors. This could go a very long time trying to kill a chaos warrior one at the time. Not a good ending for the dwarfs, but closer as with the slaanesh battle.

Learning points here: have to have a cannon to pick on the large units, characters, other artilery. Also bigger unit of dwarf warriors, they were decimated in minutes this small a size. If taking slayers, take more! :)

Expanding the dwarf army

2011-07-17T21:50:00.000+02:00

My last battle really showed the lack of a big cannon. My army list contained only a gyrocopter as a warmachine. This was very effective against low toughness troops and warhounds. Swiftly striking at the soft spots of your enemy. The army list lacked a long rang big damage do-er. The first thing after painting the thunderers was getting a cannon.
The status now is that it is put together and the first layers of metal paint are present. The crew is also in progress as well all the cool accessories.
End of the week new battle with the dwarfs. Small battle it will be, but a good test for the cannon hopefully.

10 thunderers ready for battle

2011-07-17T21:45:00.000+02:00

Yep, a full set of 10 thunderers at the ready. I painted already 2 of them for my Mordheim warband, but now the other 8 have got the same treatment. Together they look good and tie in with the color scheme beige and red for the rest of the army.
I already got me the command group so they will be up for painting soon.
Recently we played a good 8th edition WHFB with Dwarfs vs. Chaos warriors. Only a 1000 points but it was good fun, really starting to get to grips with all the rules now. Battle report is awaiting publication but I wanted to put these guys out here first.

BTB: Horde approaches

2011-06-21T20:41:00.000+02:00

lot of projects going on on this blog, but is there being played anything Mordheimy? The answer to that question is yet. There was a game played a while ago that did not have a battle report over here. Luckily I found my notes that made me able to reconstruct a bit of that big battle. There was a lot at stake here because if the posessed were to win a castle had to be built before playing the next BTB battle. Let's see what happened.

Some normal weather out there in the cathayan borderlands. A group of dwarfs and halflings are banding together to get a messenger to a nearby town to warn the inhabitants of the chaos threat. The chaos horde was bellowing in the distance behind the walling of the derelict town the defenders were in.

The dwarfs and halflings shooters were up in a tower and a bodyguard was maneuvering the messanger to a spot were it could get a clear run towards the neighbouring town. The possessed split up along the wall in order to be able to stop the runner. The division made them weaker but definitely not to be underestimated. It seemed they even hired an ogre to support them in this fight.

A lot of maneuvering is taking place inside the city with the possessed trying to scale the walls. This was not that easy since one of the plaguebearers jumping a gap fell and hurt his kneecap badly suffering a wound from a 2 inch drop! What a wussy!
All of a sudden one of the buildings burst into flames! Just as this setting was to be one of the more boring ones this unexpected event happens! Luckily it was a building well out of the way of the defenders and especially not the tower all the shooters were in.

The halflings were snipering away with their arrows and doing a good job. The elder shoots Frogface out of action with a great quick shot with a dark venom arrow. What a nice shot!
They had to show their skill since of the sniper thunderers killed the Ogre on turn one already. This was after all fire of the other thunderers softened him up a bit.

In the small fights that follow within the city walls the slayer that just followed the dwarfs went down but one of the beardlings killed "The drummer" possessed.
It wasn't for long that the messenger had an almost clear run and went for it. One of the possessed " The butcher" managed to grab a hold but the messenger killed him instantly while jumping the wall and working the spurs un his horse to create a big distance between him and the chaos horde.

What a good fight it was. The result being no castle to be built yet and a lot of experience to be had since the warband ratings were way apart! Dwarfs and Halflings claiming the victory for once!

gyrocopter and ironbreakers + purity seal = bad

2011-06-19T20:39:00.000+02:00

yes it is time for ye olde update. Finished painting the gyro and the 10 ironbreakers. Good looking bunch of lads. Luckily I shot pictures before the coat of purity seal. One way or the other there is now a snowy shine on the back of my ironbreakers and parts of the gyro. Maybe too thick a layer? Maybe because it was a high humitidy outside and it dried wrong, who can tell? It is not that bad, but up close it shwos. Maybe I'll retouch here and there to mask this effect. For here are the good pics.

Battle for the Kitchen

2011-06-14T12:12:00.010+02:00

Last saturday I managed to play a 8th edtion warhammer battle against one of my youngest friends Chris. We played a 2000 points 'normal' battle using a scenario that Chris had written. Key in this scenario was the (rather original) rule that the only way to gain points was making your opponents units run off the table, destroying units did not grant you anything (but satisfaction) (Chris called this a 'mother friendly' scenario). Beside this he came up with a very nasty 'random event' table to be used every turn.

I was playing my a more or less standardized Chaos Warrior army. Chris' Orcs and Goblins had quite a lot of magic users and a very big spider...

The winds of magic did not bring the carnage Chris had hoped and my warriors managed to reach their opponents without much damage. My general accompanied by Dragon Ogres, a block of Chaos Ogres and unit of Nurgle Warriors cut through the green skins. Despite the rather one sided battle, the score remained in balance because of the 'drive not finish them off' rule.

On top of that, the 'random event' table summoned one very very nasty 'Random Daemon' which killed off my general... Luckily after that it went after a lone (and stupid) Troll on a left part of the battle field and did no farther intervene with the battle. After this I managed to drive two more units of Gobbo's of the table, resulting in a 3-1 win!

(Picture by Bart)

WIP: dwarf gyrocopter

2011-05-25T16:41:00.002+02:00

After going through hell to get all the parts glued, the dwarf gyrocopter was sprayed black. I let the gyro rest for a couple of days to see if nothing came off. Everything was glued with huge amounts of superglue, but still it could come off.
This did not seem the case and I've started to paint the gyro and the rotor separately. For the progress pics i put the two together, but they are not yet glued in place.

Color scheme wise, I went for the beige and red I also used on my dwarf warriors. Whit the base coat on the gyro, the color scheme is starting to work out very well. I randomly selected patches that became red, and the tips of the rotor were to be red. The metal is painted boltgun, washed badab black and then highlighted boltgun and chain mail. I also painted the exhausts brass and some tubing and runes as well. The steamgun is also a big brass pipe in my scheme.

Project: Lewis chessmen as statues and a chess set.

2011-05-19T08:56:00.000+02:00

For a long time I’m a fan of the Lewis chessmen. I’m not a chess fan but since seeing the figures the first time in Edinburgh they somehow got to me. Also seen the large collection in London and went back to Edinburgh to see them again there. So whenever in the neighborhood I took the opportunity to view them.

Since then I also bought some memorabilia in the museum shops like a key chain. The Lewis chessmen are always around somewhere. What particularly got to me is the funny expression the faces have and the cool poses that exist (especially the figure biting his shield!).

I won’t go into detail on their origin since books are written around the subject. Suffice to say they are chess pieces from the 12th/13th century carved from (whale)bone and have Scandinavian roots.

Now and then I was looking at a replica chess set of the Lewis chessmen, but somehow they are just overpriced and not that cool looking. This until … I found there are moulds for the Lewis chessmen! Cast your own, paint your own and go crazy! How cool is that! It fits nicely in the range of casting Hirst Arts bricks and build your own scenery.

Received the moulds and started casting away. It’s a bit different from casting bricks but not that different. The “miniatures” look great! They are a nice size and have good texture and detail.

The first set of casts are test pieces for me to see how to paint them. Originally the pieces are carved from bone or have an ivory look. Painting bone on a small scale is no prob, so on this scale it should pose no problems. Only difficulty here is the fact that you want a “black” and “white” set. The white is taken care of with the ivory/bone look. It seems that originally one side was painted with some red dye in the 12th century. I might do a test with first painting a piece ivory and then go over it with red. What also may be cool is to have a full white and red set with gloss varnish on them.

Final ideas are of course painting the pieces looking like grey stone. Should be not too difficult with the experience painting all the buildings :).

Aside from making a great chess set the pieces are awesome for statues in our scenery! The streets need some livening up with cool statues in stone, brass and other materials. They can act as cool gatekeepers for a temple like building and they are awesome as carved statues in a rock formation. Ideas enough for these new moulds!

My stash of plaster is depleting rapidly with casting these larger moulds so order a new 23 kg bag of the stuff. I should be good for a while. I got some interest in the chess pieces as well, so who knows, I might even build a small webshop for selling the buggers.

Freaky diceroll

2011-05-18T08:21:00.000+02:00

Last weekend we were playing a round of Mordheim (battle report yet to come!). During our game a lot of dice rolls were made. One of the dice rolls deserve special attention. It was made with the famous skull dice from games workshop and it landed exactly on one of the edges! Maybe the scenery helped a little bit, but only very little mind! We had to take a picture of it and the die remained lying on its edge quite solid.

WIP: dwarf ironbreakers, thunderers

2011-05-15T19:54:00.000+02:00

In between Mordheim battles there is progress to made on the dwarf painting front. I just recently finished the first set of dwarf warriors. Pictures will be here soon of course, but I went on painting more dwarfs and started on 10 ironbreakers. They are maybe not the best unit to choose for WHFB but they are fluffy and the models are cool. Nice little sturdy tanks.
The paint scheme is simple here. Metal (boltgun, black wash, highlight chainmail, highlight mithril silver) is the base and then gold and copper detailing, oh and painting some beard ends sticking out of some helmets at odd angles.
I already painted one full fledge as a trial run (and as a figure for my Mordheim warband) and the shields will be blue with gold axe and metal edge.
Of course they will get the stone bases as the entire army will get. They start to look good in their metal base colors here. Already painted to with the full set of copper details. They are a pain to paint. The models are stuffed with bolts (that are copper/gold in my scheme). So three down seven to go.

Since the ironbreakers are progressing rapidly and needed to dry in between drybrush sessions, I started to clean up the thunderers and give them their chaos black spray treatment. Here they are lined up as they will be in battle. Here two of the thunderers are already painted since they were needed in the Mordheim warband. Only 8 to go here, but they have a lot of detail and equipment to paint individually. The total paintscheme will be a lot of leather clothing and the equipment carried by the thunderers that is mostly tools for loading their handguns, metal and copper. The shells they are carrying will be bright red and the handguns metal with gold ornaments.

.. and in between are doors...

2011-05-12T09:21:00.001+02:00

Last battle we introduced rules for securing, blocking and above all smashing through doors. In our case they worked out quite fine and resulted in some hectic (and hilarious) situations!

These door rules can be found here. If you do use them, please let us know how they worked out!

BTB: Sewer Fighting

2011-05-10T12:04:00.005+02:00

After a long drought the ground in the city of Mordheim was cracking and crumbling. Weeks of blazing sun did not much good for the dirt caked street. The river Stir was just a meager treacle through the city en the sewers were running dry. Because the ground was becoming more and more brittle some cave-ins happened in the centre part of the city. Just along one of the derelict watchtowers the grounds were split open to give entrance to the sewer system of Mordheim.
The sewers were rumored to have many a treasure but also to house hideous and dangerous creatures who eschew the light. This time of the year, the sewer system should contain many a wyrd-egg. The cave-in and the presence of the eggs was an ideal scenario for some warbands to get down there and start up a fight.
In this case four warbands flocked to sewers and got stuck in.
- A band of Halflings was making their debut in Mordheim. Roaming the countryside they were pulled towards Mordheim for fame and riches.
- A group of undead was slithering through the filthy sewers as well. Common place for these night dwellers and therefore no surprise they were present.
- Possessed are always present if a slimy egg or two can be found. If running through some sewers is what it takes, they don’t mind.
- Last but not least the dwarf treasurehunters found their way to a sewer entrance. Cave fighting and underground navigation being one of their specialties, this was going to be an easy job.

Before entering the sewers all warbands were equipping themselves with lanterns or trusting on night vision and familiarity with dark tunnels. Some of the Halflings were stumbling about a bit. The one with the lantern was having a lot of difficulty with the dark surroundings. He was blinding himself with his own lantern. The other Halflings were faring not a lot better. Shooting range was not something to trust on this battle.
The dwarfs however were running along the sewers as if it were the long underground passageways they are used to. Detecting some slimy possessed in the distance they moved stealthily in their direction. The cunning possessed however were just luring the dwarfs in their direction only to run around a corner through a massive oak door and slamming it shut.

Now it was a game of push and shove. The massive slayers readying their shoulders for smashing through the door, got little resistance of the tiny possessed. The door smashed in a and the onslaught began: shyshy and two plague bearers got the full taste of dwarf axes. The dwarfs already familiar with the possessed were wondering where flyface son of flyface was. Was he still suffering from the bellywound he took last battle?

While all this rummaging around was going on one side of the sewers, the other side was getting crowded with Halflings and undead. The Halflings found their way through one sewer only to encounter the beasts of the dark. Some zombies were blocking the way. Shooting is the thing of Halflings and in this case it was shooting at very close range at the mass of rotting flesh before them. A couple of ghouls went down eventually, the Halflings were holding their ground greatly against the undead.

The fighting between the dwarfs and the possessed was taking a gruesome turn when the dwarf engineer went down and the dwarf noble with 2 slayers had the greatest difficulty of getting shyshy out of the way. What luck that flyface son of flyface was not present due to his bellywound.
After fighting in the sewers the dwarfs went above ground in the watchtower to search for treasure. The cunning possessed that were not luring the dwarfs to closed doors were already above ground to search through the ruins. They employed an ogre for some brute force, not counting on the fearless slayers! Loki was hacking away at the ogre and after some heavy blows he split the ogre in two! What a massacre!

The rest of the possessed were weighing heavy on the bloodied dwarfs. It was time for the dwarfs to take their treasure and make for the tunnels again to shake of the pesky possessed.
It was a good evening for a good fight. If only flyface son of flyface could have been present, but he was suffering from a bellywound…

Did I mention that flyface son of flyface had bellywound and did not take part in this battle…?

Battle at the market square

2011-03-31T16:24:00.002+02:00

A blizzard had just reached the town when the possessed warband moved out, heading the old market square. Sight was limited and every now and then a hailstorm as big as a dragons eye hit the ruins through which they stalked. As the warriors reached the outskirts of the deserted plaza, moving figures could be seen in the distance.

"We're not alone, my lord" rattled Frogface pointing at a small couch that was entering the square. "over there, a dwarven baggage train". "I'm not surprised" hissed the leader riding his ragged chaos steed "papa Nurgle has lead us not only to some treasure, but has given us a way to show our gratitude as well. You two, come with me, we've got to forestall these dwarf heading for the tower!" Nurgly the possessed leader drove his steed towards the tower, both (true) possessed, Ticky and ShyShy, joining him. The other, slower part of the warband headed to the other corner of the square, keen to find treasures and trouble.

The blizzard worsened and one of the Plaguebearers got hit, knocking him down the floor. Cries in the distance indicated that other creatures were hit as well, not only dwarfs were contesting this market square, some Orcs were there as well... All of a sudden the fallen behind treasure seeking henchmen (the who?) spotted a dark shape closing in on them. A wandering champion of Tchar was approaching them. Flyface and Frogface did not hesitate and charged in, together with a group of Plaguebearers and henchmen.

Nurgly and his two bodyguard had followed a small group of dwarfs to the remains of a small tower. The dwarfs took some shots at them, but could not prevent that they reached the stairs. Nurgly dismounted and sent his steed towards the group fighting the chaos champion.

To make matters even worse for the thunderers, a diseased wolf disturbed by the sound of their guns, attacked them from the rear. As they were fighting this animal, Ticky, ShyShy and Nurgly charged into the fight. Though both dwarfs and wolf put up some strong resistance, they were eventually taken down by the worshippers of Nurgle.

However, when Nurgly looked up from the remains of his mutilated opponents, the view he got from the tower made him furious. The champion of Tchar was still standing, fighting off the group henchmen now led by Frogface, as Flyface was already taken out of action by the follower of a false god. In the middle the treasure rich market square was taken over by a large group of dwarfs. The orc warband was nowhere to be seen, but cut off goblin and orc heads carried by the slayers gave a hint to what had happened to that warband. The dwarfs were now heading for a small group of Darksouls scouting carrying chests found in the ruins. They would not be able to outrun the dwarfs!

Nurgly wasted no time and ran off the stairs towards his threatened minions. He rushed Ticky to join the struggle between the Darksouls and the Slayers. Nevertheless they were outnumbered and the number of casualties was rising fast. All hope was not lost though, as a Plaguebearer finally managed to finish off the champion of Tchar. The survivors of that skirmish could reinforce the warriors fighting the dwarfs. If only they would make it in time...

While the central clash on the market square raged on, the dwarf leader and a minion were using a wagon to carry off their finds to safety. The wagon was rolling along the former carriage road right below the tower on top of which ShyShy was still lurking. The possessed dived down, charging the wagon only to scratch the side. The dwarfish driver looked back, bewildered, but the wagon could not be stopped and managed to get through.

As the possessed was still looking at the leaving wagon, it was charged by the leader of the dwarven warband himself. A brutal fight broke out, and both warriors were soon down to their last wound. However, this time it was the dwarf who got the best of it and the possessed was struck down by his hammer.

The battle at the square on the other hand was not going that well for the dwarfs. The tide had turned now more and more chaos worshipers were joining the skirmish and Nurgly and Ticky were still holding on. Slayers and rank and file were knocked down and taken out and the square was swept free of the persistent warriors.

After the last dwarf had fallen, Nurgly glanced around, noticing only a small core of his warriors was standing around him. The toll for this victory was high! Suddenly he heard a strange hymn and he turned his head towards it. The dwarven leader stood on the edge of the square, chanting a spontaneous dwarven song of loss, blood, honor and above all, curses and the oath to revenge. He finished this song by spitting on the street and withdrawing into the darkness.

A fire war burning in the centre of the square. Unnatural green fumes were rising from it and devilish figures could be seen dancing around or hovering above. Nurgly sat at the center of the festival; his warband sitting around the fire, feasting off a dwarfish and orcish dish. He smiled as a he watched a group of nurglings fought for the head of a former slayer. "That battle was too close for comfort" he thought by himself. "But victory tastes so good...".

Painting dwarfs WIP

2011-03-16T20:30:00.002+01:00

Painting the dwarf warriors is taking me forever. I'm doing too much detail apparantly and too much side projects I think. Now I got distracted by painting a dwarf thunderer for my dwarf warband for Mordheim. I hired a new gunman and this has to be represented by a painted fellow of course. Well here is the marksman almost ready. When my dwarf warriors finish I'll do a good photo report with proper lighting and whatnot.

So painting dwarf warriors eh...yep...well...it's progressing...slowly. I took some pics on various stages during the process. Maybe it's taking a lot of time because I'm painting all 16 at once. Usually I paint up to 5 figures at the same time.

The advantage for painting the dwarf warriors is that they are very coherent. When I paint flesh, it's the same for all since I don't have to remember what color combo's I used for the previous 5 for example.

The entire colorscheme is done for all dwarf warriors and you get to see directly how colors work on the group. On the offside, painting 16 faces, 4 or five highlights after each other is getting a bit tedious after a while.

What is the plan for the dwarfs? I chose to paint 3 different beard styles: yellow, brown/orange and black grey. For the coats I took beige and red. 8 guys have the red coats and 8 the beige ones. Metal is metal and will be done with brass and gold accents and the leather pouches and boots will be done the same for all.
I'll leave you with the final pic of my WIP and hopefully can make you guys happy with a final photo session very soon.

Ready for the EuroGT campaign '11

2011-02-27T13:27:00.008+01:00

Despite having an irritating flu (must be a special gift of Nurgle) I managed to finish an unit of Chaos Warriors well on time for the coming EuroGT tournament.

First idea was to play Mordheim at the EuroGT, but at first it looked like there wouldn't be enough players in that department. So I (re)started my Nurgle army and painted a much needed warrior unit.

Today I found out that the Mordheim tournament will run this year, so much for being ahead of schedule for the first time in my life :-)

Overall, I'm quite happy with the result. It was quite a while since I had painted a complete unit. Work started as a speed paint job, but I could not restrain myself and went full out in detailing and even some conversions. The command group got the most of it: The champion started his life as a SoC BSB and the BSB of the unit, an old marauder, got a new banner.

However, I have not played a decent game of Warhammer after the local gaming club went into hibernation (And for all of you in the Dordrecht area: Let me know if your out there when you're available for a game :-)

That's why some research was done to fit my collection of models into a new army list. The result can be found below, comments more than welcome!

2000 Pts - Warriors of Chaos Roster - Nurglo GT '11

Total Roster Cost: 1999

Item (0 pts)
0 Eye of the Gods, 0 pts

Chaos Lord (1#, 325 pts)
1 Chaos Lord of Nurgle, 240 pts = (base cost 210 + Shield 10) + Mark of Nurgle 20
1 Filth Mace, 35 pts
1 Armour of Morrslieb, 35 pts
1 Necrotic Phylactery, 10 pts
1 Favour of the Gods, 5 pts

Sorcerer (2#, 240 pts)
1 Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle, 140 pts = (base cost 85 + Level 2 Upgrade 35) + Mark of Nurgle 20
1 Palanquin, 50 pts
1 The Bronze Armour of Zhrakk, 15 pts
1 Infernal Puppet, 35 pts

Sorcerer (1#, 135 pts)
1 Chaos Sorcerer, 85 pts
1 Power Familiar, 25 pts
1 Ironcurse Icon, 5 pts
1 Stream of Corruption, 20 pts

Chaos Marauders (25#, 175 pts)
24 Chaos Marauders of Nurgle, 162 pts = 24 * 5 (base cost 4 + Great Weapon 1) + Mark of Nurgle 30 + Musician Mus 4 + Standard Bearer Std 8
1 Chieftan of Nurgle, 13 pts = (base cost 12 + Great Weapon 1)

Chaos Warriors (15#, 325 pts)
14 Chaos Warriors of Nurgle, 272 pts = 14 * 16 (base cost 15 + Shield 1) + Mark of Nurgle 30 + Musician Mus 6 + Standard Bearer Std 12
1 Champion of Nurgle, 28 pts = (base cost 27 + Shield 1)
1 War Banner, 25 pts

Chaos Hounds (5#, 30 pts)
5 Chaos Warhounds, 30 pts = 5 * 6

Chaos Warshrine (1#, 130 pts)
1 Chaos Warshrine, 130 pts

Forsaken (5#, 90 pts)
5 Forsaken, 90 pts = 5 * 18

Chaos Ogres (6#, 330 pts)
6 Ogres, 330 pts = 6 * 50 (base cost 35 + Great Weapon 10 + Chaos Armor 5) + Musician Mus 10 + Standard Bearer Std 20

Dragon Ogres (3#, 219 pts)
3 Dragon Ogres, 219 pts = 3 * 73 (base cost 65 + Extra Hand Weapon 8)

Validation Report:
Army Subtype: Chaos Army; Edition: 8th Edition; Game Type: Normal Game
Roster satisfies all enforced validation rules

Composition Report:
Points of Lords: 325 (0 - 500)
Points of Heroes: 375 (0 - 500)
Points of Core: 500 (500 - Unlimited)
Points of Special: 639 (0 - 1000)
Points of Rare: 130 (0 - 500)

Created with Army Builder®

BTB: Chaos Dragon Hunt

2011-02-19T11:34:00.000+01:00

Our BTB campaign is now approaching a point where the special scenarios can be played and that we can actually survive them. This night it was time to play the Chaos Dragon Hunt scenario. Three warbands on the move to get their hands on a huge treasure. But first there was the Beast to kill.
The scenario plays in the Northern wastes and we made a setup with a lot of open space in the middle of derelict border town. A long abandoned arena added to the dusty atmosphere and was used as the 'zoomed in' setting for fighting the dragon in its lair.

Three warbands: Dwarfs, Orcs&Gobbo's and the Posessed found out about the location of this hideous dragon. Actually it was the Possessed who found out and the dwarfs following close since they got a nose for wealth and riches to be had. Staying close to the possessed might lead them to some treasure and this was now definitely the case. The orcs and goblins were in the neighbourhood since there was fighting to be done, meat to be had and some scraps and spoils to be found after a massacre. All good reasons to enter the fray.

It was biting cold in this derelict town and the snow covered grounds made movement near impossible. Luckily no additional weather conditions were present, otherwise no searching for dragons would be done. The beast was said to be in the centre tower of this part of the small town. From three directions the warbands were approaching. The dwarfs actually purchased a wagon with some draft horses. 6 dwarfs were in the coach for a quick ride to the beasts lair. The rest were to take up position and give cover. The snow was proving difficulty even driving along the road and applying the leash gave little effect.

While driving towards the tower some arrows were sent loose at the coach from some sneaky goblins. The thunderers and beardlings providing the cover where still taking up position and could not provide the necessary cover they needed. The coach was attacked by some squigs bouncing from the side alleys. One splattering against the wagon rocking it on its wheels but doing no damage. The second clung to the wagon only to be swatted aside by the thunderer riding shotgun. The third squig was also quickly over with, since the beardlings got their first piece of combat in the real world.

In the meantime the possessed where ... moving actually and ... moving, moving still. The snow gave them much trouble heading towards the tower. Even the Ogre could not make wake in the snow, giving the rest some quicker movement. The possessed warband was now so big, they were spread out widely and approaching slowly.

The coach skidded to a halt and out poured some slayers and the noble and engineer. Blasting away with their guns the dwarfs let loose a lot of lead and smoke, hitting ... well ... nothing really.

One of the thunderers found a great position on a nearby tower. The ideal sniper position and he was blasting away with his masterly crafted handgun. Meanwhile some more orcs were pouring out the dark side alleys and a lot of small fights broke out. The beardlings having a go at some orcs, where the battle was in balance. The slayers were a sort of whirling ball of axes slicing through the orc ranks with not much difficulty. The dwarven engineer however was a bit too confident and in a moments notice two lowlife orcs chopped him down, taking him out of action. Another orc was swinging his weapons at one of the horses bring it down shrieking and thrashing. It was only moments that the slayers were upon him, killing the orc an a few fast strokes of a massive blade.

The beardlings were having difficulty with the orcs but after some more volleys of the thunderer on the tower it was enough for the orcs. This was too much damage and they were going down fast now. The best tactical moment for a smart retrace of their steps.
The dwarfs now a bit bewildered and still a bit in the rush of fighting the orcs and goblins now found an empty street in front of them ... or was it?

The possessed made their way with some difficulty to the entrance of the tower and taking up a deamonic steed in their ranks (the deamonic steeds are aplenty in our fights, for some weird reason it always gets rolled as a random event). The dwarfs were a bit battered and were now reforming taking a good look at the possessed pouring around the tower. This was no small group of filthy mutations, it was a somewhat organized very big crew of evil pouring into the monsters lair. Maybe it was best for the dwarfs to see how they fare against the chaos dragon and maybe afterwards see some of that treasure.

The big fighters of the possessed went into the tower to fight the monster and outside the rest stood guard. The dwarfs taking up position just out of charge range but just within shooting range. The dwarfs shooting at the possessed guard gave not much casualties. The cold was getting at the dwarfs apparantly. Chattering teeth gave no steady shots here.

The possessed where in a massacre with the chaos dragon. The dragon snapping two heads at them and slashing with claws like swords was giving the possessed much trouble. The leader of the possessed went down in moments leaving the ogre and some big mutations to do the dirty work. The ogre doing some heavy damage also took a lot of damage. Swaying on his feet the ogre went down! At this moment the dragon also suffered a lot of damage and with their last strength the possessed took out the dragon. That was no easy kill!
In the meantime also some lavatunnels undermining this part of the city were caving in and one of the dwarfs only narrowly escaped a flow of lava, nimble on their feet as they are!

Only now outside some possessed were down due to the shooting of the dwarfs and a line of big slayers were waiting for the rest to come out. The Possessed-slayer-standoff was putting both warbands in a negotiating position. Although hating each other they came to solution where the possessed took of with their much sought after artifact: the dragon scale armor and some of the hoard. But leaving the dwarfs enough riches to look the other way for a few seconds.

BTB: Earthquake

2011-02-12T12:50:00.005+01:00

Catching up with the battle reports this is a more recent one.
The earthquake scenario provides with a much needed set treasure to be found. Especially the dwarfs were in much need of treasure (being treasurehunters they are always in need!) and a blizzard enriched this scenario with the BTB sauce needed for the scenario.
As counters for the treasure chests to be found we used M7M's as you can see in the pics and again a deamonic steed (as with the writing on the wall scenario) makes an appearance agains (was it the same, is it hunting the Border towns?).
Finally the Campaing point counter on our blog is updated and a lot has changed since the last setting. Especially the dwarfs advancing a lot because of them purchasing a wagon train. A good dice roll gained them an extra 6 CP's!
First a the story from the orcs and goblin perspective and afterwards a dwarf view on the battle fought.

The Orcs&Goblins
A cold night, a sudden wind and 14 eager greenskins ready for battle. All the ingredients for a massacre in the streets of Dordtheim were once more available. Wortnak and his crew were roaming the streets once more. Rumours had spread of some treasure laying around in certain areas of the city. There were bound to be more evil people searching for treasure here, for treasure is scarce in Dordtheim.

Upon arriving in the designated parts of that city, immediately the dwards could be smelled again. There was no battle thus far those small beardy bastards were not present. Damn, time for a massacre. From the other corner of the street it smelled like rotting meat. It smelled like an open sewer, nurgle must be near. And for certain it was.

Wortnak decided to split the group into two sides, for maximum treasure handling. Wortnak and his loyal henchman decided to go left, while the smallskins and furrballs guided by Gretfall went right for the stench. Wutwuzdat went to a higher region to get overview over the street. Unfortunately the weather was once again against the greens. Not much shooting, no sight at all.

After a short while, the greens opened the treasure, only to find wasps, rats and dust. Pah! Not what they had came for, but there was blood to spill nonetheless. A fierce battle went on in the small streets at the nurgle side, with many casualties on both sides. Wutwuzdat had some suprising moves and killed of the weird nurgle creature without a hussle.

On the other side wortnak and Greatfoot battled some rats, a slayer and some beards that joined in after a short while. Greatfoot, made a great debute by bouncing off some bullets and saving the boss. Rewards will surely be awarded for that action! Sneak’n Git the goblin rushed to the tower to get that last treasure.

All in all, after a lot of battle and furry casualties, Wortnak decided to call it quits. No more bloodspilling. Resting was now what needed to be done. More dwarfs to be slain next time. Waaaaaaagh!!!

The Dwarfs
The Blizzard was giving the dwarfs directly a hard time finding targets to shoot at. The engineer and thunderers had been practicing a lot and were ready to let loose some lead at anyone approaching treasure chests in the distance. Due to a recent earthquake the dwarfs were very keen on looking around for uprooted treasure. Being experts on earth movement straight away they found some good stuff with weirdstone shards that would provide for a good sell. They were in need of some hard coins were they able to buy that much needed wagon train.

Almost instantly after entering the small ruined town of Ba'Zaaar a deamonic steed appears in front of the dwarfs. It was only just within range with this blizzard going on and they started shooting at it. The blizzard was too much of a distraction and after a lot of black smoke cleared the steed was still advancing towards the dwarfs. Perfect for the slayers having a go at it. In short moments the steed was done for.

In the distance some orcs and gobbo's were fighting giant rats. Hah! you had to know were to look for the treasure, the stupid greenskins were only finding some vermin at that part of the Ba'Zaaar where the earth fissures were not good looking. You had to be a dwarf to see that immediately!

After quickly finding some treasure the some possessed were encountered and the stupid ogre was still with them. Directly locking the possessed in combat in an alley, one dwarf didn't have the full courage to enter the fray. This beardling didn't close the gap leaving the possessed the opportunity to strike back with considerable effort.
This small mistake costed the dwarfs the overhand and with a hail storm coming on they left the battlefield. They still had enough treasure to go for that good looking wagon train they saw in Aboo Zor. A good moment to go there and haggle for the wagon train and horse. Accumulating riches has a point where you have to store the stuff and transport it.

BTB: The writing on the wall

2011-02-12T12:31:00.000+01:00

It is time to catch up with some battle reports for games played for our Mordheim Border Town Burning campaign. This scenario fitted in nicely with BTB since a small border town can be taken for having some writings on the wall. Some particular occult and foreign writing that is! Here's how the game went.

The Orcs&Goblins, Possessed and Dwarfs all heard of some writing on the wall in this specific border town: Tawn Hut. In Tawn Hut strange dwellers were acting even stranger and there was of coarse treasure to be had. A strong gale was blowing and the suffocating heat was making it feel like walking in a dwarf smithy with the bellows on full blow.

Van A tale of some gamers

The streets of Tawn Hut were empty at this time of the night. The grey head clan was scavaging the streets but the goblins were squabling a lot. The heat was getting to them and on of the gobbo's refused to set any fut for turns on end. Getting at this writing on the wall was difficult especially with a deamonic steed appearing on the plaza. Some serious fighting started here.

At the other side of the plaza the blackbloods were looking for the strange writings and half of the warband engaged combat with the orcs and gobbo's. Magic was flying everywhere. Some rogue streaks of magic killing a big one. The possessed hired an ogre to do some dirty work for them and by blocking the passage of the dwarfs to an interesting alley, he did well.

The dwarfs were battling it with the ogre at one end of the alley while at the other end some grey heads entered very sneaky. The were meddling at a part of the wall there while the possessed and dwarfs were too preoccupied with themselves.

The writing provided very interesting indeed. THe writing being discovered by the sneaky greenskins the city of Tawn Hut provided no more interesting reasons to stay. The warbands breaking of the fighting returned to their respective safeholds after doing some exploratation in the fringes of Tawn Hut. The possessed actually found a map giving them the information to go chaos dragon hunting. The Dwarfs were enriched a lot and found some portions of madcap mushrooms. The grey heads found much needed experience in this battle and were more ready then ever to engage in a next fight!

Squig hopper racing rules

2011-01-16T19:08:00.004+01:00

I've been busy with the arena for a while. This to do some chariot racing but also squig hopper racing! I've been busy with some rules as well and now is the time to publish the first version of this all. The rules are in Dutch and English. The rules speak of action cards. The cards are already there but you will have to wait for them. I am making them as nice as the rules are now. A quick preview of the arena I built is here. Pics are taken with my iPhone so no high res images as with the rest of the posts, but you get the general idea.

Squig hopper racing English
Squig hopper racing Dutch

Another productive day

2011-01-03T13:48:00.001+01:00

It's that time of year again, days off, holidays and whatnot. In no time these days fly by and what did you do? We decided to fill at least one of those days with again some scenery building. More Hirst Arts bricks were cast and the table was set for a day enjoying the hobby!

Arjan and Mr. Flibble turned up for this hobby day and we dove in. Lots of creativity was flying around and the concentration and dedication to work was of a high level straigh away!

Lot's of designs were tried and tested before glueing the stuff together. Here a wizards tower is taking shape bfore our eyes. I believe the current status is that it is painted and all ready to go on the battleground. Good stuff!

My own goal was getting the field plates for my arena painted and painting some roads for our city. Buildings we have but some more roads will add to the playability of the scenery.

I also started with building a sort of balcony tower like structure for the arena and built a small shrine. Also started on a long street as well in the days after this one. These are all the works in progress and will see their finished pictures here very soon!

A productive day

2010-12-16T20:02:00.000+01:00

It was the day in december. The air was cold outside. A perfect day for...painting and scenery building! The last week I was casting a lot of bricks with our hirst arts molds. Starting the day it was sorting out the pile of bricks.

The table was set up for scenery building, bricks and everything were flying around and creative was flowing freely. The result is some 2 buildings and the arena tiles have now 4 more parts. Only an other half of the arena needs building and it is done. Even painting the stuff we were able to do before the end of the day. Here some snapshots on the setting of the day. The buildings and more details will follow when all painting has been done.

Dwarf miners regiment

2010-12-04T19:55:00.001+01:00

Yes, it has been done. 10 Dwarf miners are painted and ready to fight. Slowly but surely my WHFB Dwarf army takes shape. Inexorably slowly that is, but it is happening. Well what is there to say about this lot.

It's a bunch of miners, they are looking nice and grubby with their candles. Painting was some work because of all the fine bolts and details that had to be painted gold.

I'm very curious how they will play in a game. The steam drill and maybe some tnt sticks will make them a force to be reckoned with. Maybe they will help us to digg us out of the huge amounts of snow that is falling the last couple of days :) Good weather to stay inside and some painting and other modelling jobs.

2010-12-03T14:12:00.002+01:00

Sorry, I really liked this one and had to share it...

BTB: Living treasure form the Orcs&Goblins point of view

2010-12-02T11:40:00.001+01:00

We already played a new scenario: "The writing on the wall" but this warstory was somehow lost in the void by some rogue streaks of Waaaagh! Eventually the orc shaman beamed me his view on the Living treasure battle to be put on the blog. So for all you fellow readers, here it is! Thanks Ludo for coming up with the story!

Potential danger;check. Bad weather; check. Treasure; check. A lot of skull to crush; Ow hell yeah check!
Somehow this evening made perfectly sense to Captain Wortnak. 'Load 'em up boys, we've be going to town. Treasurehunting'. No response. 'Enjoying the bad weather?' Still no response. 'Bashing some sku....' and before Captain Wortnak could finish, his entire Grey Head Clan mob was packed and ready to ride out.
It was already pouring with rain and eyesight was pretty limited. Didn't matter to the grey heads at all. Hell, storms are their favourite weather, makes tornado-attacks (copyright WutWuzDat the Shaman) possible, which meant modifying more skulls in one attack. Arriving at the sceneof the supposed treasure Furrrrr the squig immidiately smelled some dwarfs. He was trained to recognize the stench and somehow make that clear. Hopping like the little furrball it is, Furrrr went straight for some slayers.
'This might not end that well' WutWuzDat said while he and the crew carefully positioned themselves near the hall-entrance of the long abandoned chambers. And for sure, upon impact and sinking it teeth in one of the dwarfs' feet, he met four axes. Not much was left of furrrr at that moment. 'Good thing they breed around here' Captain Wortnak replied.
Then, the hailstorm had set in. All of a sudden huge blocks of ice fell from the skies. WutWuzDat looked up and said 'hey gork, did wez piss you o.....', but never got to finish his sentence. Due to the limmited eyesight, WutWuzDat never saw the giant block of ice coming down on his head and he lost conciousness. Some others orcs and goblins were also hit, but they recovered quite quickly. Moveeee (the squig that held the goblins company was struck by a block of ice, bigger then Moveeee itself. Therefor, this was the end of Moveeee.
By the sound of a goblin hitting the ground, Captain Wortnak turned his head. Those pantsy slayers were trying to sneak attack us from behind! 'Good thing they smell so bad', Captain Wortnak said while he pushed some of his boys to the front. 'There you go, kill them and you might make it into being corporal, wutever that means'. What emerged was a real tiresome battle where the boss and his big 'un companions joined in to meet the massacre.
After the loss of one big 'un and the boys not being able to even see the dwarfs through all the rain, Captain Wortnak decided to call it quits. Enough bashing had been done and this dreaded weather made it no easier spotting the little walking critters of doom. Meanwhile snagging the goblin made reports of beastmen in the area. Another fine reason not to stay with these losses.
Waaaaaagh!

Arena part 2

2010-11-28T20:45:00.000+01:00

A quick update on the arena front. One arena half has been built and now it's been painted as well. Details need to be added as some moss and dirt and such, but the basics are done. This part can already be used in a game of Mordheim. Of course for squig hopper racing this arena needs to be built further and details need to be added. Barrels are being painted, maybe add a discarded food cart for selling rats on a stick? Who knows what will be added. For now the second stage of the arena:

WIP: Arena, squig hopper racing

2010-11-22T22:09:00.000+01:00

I'v been busy with the arena concept for some time. It's been done in multiple settings, where the chariot racing arena is the most famous piece of terrain. Mine will of course be a lot different! :) The arena must be modular for transportation and storage and serve multiple functions:
- it must be an arena, circular for use in Mordheim
- it must be an arena for chariot racing (3 chariots abreast should be able to race the length of the arena)
- it must be an arena for squig hopper racing! New rules coming up for this game, and this is the terrain for it.

First stage is done. One half of the arena is now built. following are 4 more tiles that act as the straight part and 2 more tiles with the other half of the arena. That half will be more ruined. The flooring will be part tiles, part sand with tracks in them.
The arena seeting will be filled with all kinds of rubbish left behind, empty cascs of beer, that kind of stuff.

This is my stack of bricks ready for building the rest of the arena tiles. it will be something. Painting is straight forward, black undercoat, with dark gray heavy drybrush and then a light grey drybrush as the other buildings I've done also have. Then add details in with the barrels and the sandy flock grounds.

BTB: Living Treasure

2010-11-13T17:31:00.000+01:00

We're still playing the Border town burning campaign but with some other scenario's then the original rules describe. It is fun to use the BTB surroundings and play all kinds of scenario's in them. This time we've played the living treasure scenario. Some slight alterations to the scenario. We've put in the treasure counters and when a treasure attacks you, there is a chance you encounter The luggage!. We've used the rules for the luggage as described in the blogpost. In our case we've played the scenario multiplayer with 4 warbands, orcs&gobbos, beastmen, possessed and dwarfs.

The following is a first part of the battle report from the dwarf treasurehunters point of view. Other warbands have their stories to tell and if available they will be added just the same!

"Truckloads 'o treasure, truckloads" the drunk farmer was blabbering in the Crooked Tooth tavern. Bjorgir was listening intently to the drunken man's talk. He was gathering quite a crowd in this small border town. Not much happens in these surroundings and a chance of some action or good stories the villagers weren't letting slip away.
The farmer (or so he looked) stumbled in this evening in the tavern, where the dwarf treasurehunters found themselves on a particularly harsh evening. The season was turning to winter and these surroundings were already cold in summer let alone in winter. The story of the drunken man was worth pursuing before the warband travels more down south were the weather is less harsh.
The weather already sent a lot of warbands away and the sturdy dwarfs remained quite long in these surroundings.
The farmer mumbeled something about ...Gorgon's way... "Hmmm," Bjorgir was thinking, "that is something I found on the weird map I found a while ago."
"OK lads, we're heading up north once more" Bjorgir was telling his warband. The beardlings were grumbling under their breath on the harsh conditions already, but followed their leader regardless.

In a corner of the inn a very drunk slayer was quaffing his ale. The 2 slayers already within the warband cought up with him and were getting very drunk themselves. Eventually for a couple of gold coins the other slayer was willing to follow them as well.
With 3 slayers, an engineer, 3 beardlings and a thunderer Bjorgir was prizing himself lucky to have such a warband. They were starting to get some name in these borderlands and gathering some fortune as well.

The warband take up their packs and leave in the cold weather. "Hopefully an easy find, this treasure" the engineer was thinking while they were traveling with the old map to guide them. Eventually after some days travel they found a derilict set of houses and part of some tunnel uncovered. The tunnel was supposed to be named Gordon's way. The dwarfs set to uncouvering the treasure when the weather turned for the worse. Hail was falling from the sky and the hail stones were getting bigger and bigger. The dwarfs gritted their teeth and went on. Upon entering one part of the tunnel they first came upon a shrine or grave for one famous slayer. Loki was well renowned for his deeds and this honorary grave did him justice. The slayers Durri, Grk and Hari were paying tribute to their battle mate. "A good death he found." said Durri. The other (still hung over) slayers mummbeled their respect and were silent for a moment.
2 slayers went outside to inspect their surroundings while the others went in. In running around a part of the hallway all of a sudden they encounter a squig! The hired slayer went directly berserk and split open the squig with one blow of his mighty axe. With squigs around there are gobbo's around and with gobbo's around there was bound to be some orcs as well. Straining their ears nothing was heard by the dwarfs over the hails stones that were falling down, already the size of hens eggs. These stones were doing some serious damage, but not enough to get the dwarfs down.
Under the hail of hail stones some screams were heard nearby of other beings suffering greatly from the onslaught of the weather. According to Grach the engineer it were the possessed that were getting clobbered by the weather.

The two slayers outside all of sudden found themselves faced with a couple of orcs that came running out of the curtain of hail. In no time carnage was happening and the slayers were really hacking into the greenskins. They were no match to big axes the slayers were wielding.

The hail subsided only for a fraction and in no time the hail stones were big as...stones! The dwarfs were getting hit badly. The dwarfs proved to be very sturdy since only 1 beardling fell unconscious when a hail stone the size of an oathstone hit him square on the helmet. The ringing in his ears was to be heard for a while!

To the sounds in the battlefield the orcs were suffering more casualties to the big hail stones and the possessed as well. Some gutteral noises were heard during the monster hail. Apparantly some beastmen were also present and suffering from nature's ice rains.

In the curtain of ice some icy light was to be seen as well when some beastman shaman was using his ice crystal. "How appropriate in these conditions" Grach was thinking squaring his hammer up to run into the room where some misformed bodies were already moving along chests. "The treasure" he thought and with the rest of the warband they went in. A massacre was already going on here between the beastmen and the possessed.

Apparantly the orcs and gobbo's were also taken part, but no livin greenskin was to be seen here. From the sounds of the slayers outside the greenskins were already legging it from the battle field.
In no time the dwarfs were searching the chests for treasure while the possessed and beastmen were fighting each other. This was not long since the beastmen also ran away. After suffering heavy losses from the hail stones the fighting with the possessed proved too much.
All of a sudden the dwarfs were facing some very angry possessed.

Bjorgir and Grach squared up in a doorway fending of the inpoor of possessed in the room. The possessed were pushing hard and the rest of dwarfs took some treasure. The angry mob of possessed proved a bit too much for the already very cold dwarfs. Bjorgir was calling the retreat and the dwarfs ran off (with treasure!).

While traveling to warmer areas Grach and Bjorgir discussed how close they were to the treasure. Living treasure it was told to house, Gorgon's way. They were musing over some pints of ale in a quit border town. In the corner an apparant poor farmer was listening intently...

Youngest player

2010-11-07T19:28:00.002+01:00

The 23rd of august my son Jonas was born. Of course he is being fed with the warhammer hobby and the white dwarf is one of his first reading material. Here's a picture of Jonas with the white dwarf wearing his viking shirt (thanx Hans!). It won't be long before he is playing along and building his own scenery.

New layout

2010-11-05T08:12:00.000+01:00

When you are reading this post, you'll probably have noticed the new layout. Blogger has a new design module (for a while) that I wanted testing out. I'm still toying around a bit with the layout but for now this is it. Comments are welcome of course so we'll improve even further with this blog.

Teaser for upcoming posts:
- tonight we're playing for the BTB campaign, so expect a full fledged battle report here soon. It will have the new terrain pieces Arjan is working on in them (dungeons).
- I'm working on a modular arena to be put in our city of Mordheim, but it will also be used for chariot racing (how about, a snotling pumpwagon a goblin wolf chariot and a pony wagon in a race!) or squig hopper racing!!!

Hey! Isn't that Loki?

2010-10-31T14:13:00.008+01:00

.. or what's his name, the other dead slayer?? :-)

Just added another piece to the 'Dungeon series' that features a 'tomb for yet another dead slayer'. Could not resist to build this one after reading Hans'suggestion. The tomb is in memory for poor Loki who fell at the hand of the Possessed.

Miners and a runesmith sneak peak

2010-10-21T21:58:00.000+02:00

A quick update on the painting front. For WHFB 8th I'm painting a 750 point dwarf army. It's going slow, but it's going. I managed to finish 5 miners and yesterday painted a runesmith. The miners are completely done but the runesmith needs basing though. Still I took a couple of quick snapshots to keep you guys happy. Here they are!

BTB: Discovered Treasure

2010-10-18T19:34:00.000+02:00

It has been a while since the last battle report. We decided to search for a scenario that could be played with 5 warbands and not take all night!
We came across the Discover Treasure scenario that could be really well played. Fun with the partial setup groups, so no advantage of carefully composed warbands but small groups entering the battle field. This could be food for a lot of skirmishes on the field!

Ok, the warbands present here were, possessed, marauders, orcs&goblins, dwarfs and beastmen. We rolled a snowstorm for the weather, so there go all the shooters. Small groups of 2 or 3 warband members enter the field very carefully. They were quite well dispersed when rolling for where to enter. The treasure was hidden in all of the buildings but you had to roll 4+ to find the actual treasure.

The first round for all warbands was basically finding treasure. The second round not much warbands had reinforcements. The little reinformcements that arrived came up in the same corner! It was getting busy over there!

The next round involved the Marauders founding a treasure, or was it? Sabretooth tigers entering the fray was making the board nice and busy. The tigers were wreaking quite some havoc.

Meanwhile some more treasure was being discovered. The gobbo's were getting it quite well when more reinforcments arrived in the same corner as before and also the possessed were getting at that spot some more numbers. The ideal combination for a good fight in the tower over some treasure.

The Marauders wer scouring the realm for more goodies and still battling the sabretooth tigers. Meanwhile the gobbo's unleashed some squigs to add to the mayhem of fuzzy teeth balls!
With the beastmen it was going well but not spectacular. Some treasure was unearthed but no big fights yet.

The dwarfs and possessed were not getting the reinforcements needed to keep up in this ever busier city. They already had some treasure in the pocket and routed voluntarily. Of course the dwarfs lost a slayer as usual and the possessed were licking some wounds. The beastmen were sniffing out some treasure but didn't make it very long on the battlefield.

The orcs&goblins and the marauders were left, making each others life very difficult in the snow. It wasn't long after the sneaky greenskins tactically maneuvered elsewhere and the win was for the marauders!

This wraps up the battle and it safe to say that it was playable for 5 warbands. No one had to wait very long. With the reinforcement rules a 4+ was difficult to get much of your warband in the field. A better rule to use would be the optional starting with 5+ and then each round a +1 to the dice roll. Noteworthy was an incredible dice roll of only 6's:

Into the dungeons!

2010-10-16T13:47:00.010+02:00

After some "Horrors of the Underground" scenario battles and a hilarious Gauntlet slaughterfest I started thinking about building some proper scenery pieces for this type of scenarios.

The pieces should be useful both as 'Dungeon tiles' and as 'normal' Mordheim scenery. That means that the size should be compatible with the Border Town Burning and Dungeon Quest tiles and with our own 'decimal basing' system.

The final inspirational 'straw' which I needed was seeing the beautiful 10mm dungeon made by (fellow EuroGT gamer) Nik Harwood.

So with the help of my former neighbour Gert who provided me with a huge stock of freshly cast tiles (@Gert: THANKS!!! :-)
I started out. So far I made three tiles as shown above. There's a center piece with four entrances and two gangways. One of the gangways has an external staircase, not very useful (or even to be used) in a dungeon setting, but allowing some tactical manoeuvring in Mordheim :-)

The second gangway has a 'wooden' bridge of the type that dungeon masters seem to prefer...

Ideas, tips and suggestions for this or the next set of dungeon pieces are more than welcome! (And also tips on the 'safe storage of scenery pieces' are very welcome :-)

SideProject: The Luggage

2010-10-14T12:10:00.001+02:00

Of course our full focus is on the Mordheim border town burning campain, but painting nice miniatures is always nice :).
I came across this mini of the Luggage (for all you Pratchett fans a know figure, otherwise just a nice box with feet :) ).
This is the result of painting the little bugger:

BTB: Wyrdstone pool

2010-09-21T21:13:00.006+02:00

A battlereport seen from the different warbands. The possessed, dwarfs and orcs and gobbo's took part in this battle. We've played "The Pool" scenario from the chaos on the streets rules.

Starting of with the dwarfs and how they percieved the battle:
“It’s a fine morning for checking out that green pool in the east side of this shabby town” Bjorgir said. The air was clear for once and the AleQuaffers were quite fresh for once. Since the return of Grach, their engineer, spirits have risen among the dwarfs. Even the loss of Loki the slayer (he finally found his doom in a heroic stand against huge numbers of possessed) seemingly forgotten, the dwarfs move forward. They’ve taken their losses and now it is time to collect.
Collecting wyrdstone was a good start to refresh their depleted reserves of gold and start building on a wagon train for once. Bjorgir had high hopes of this pool in getting a good lot of the green stones and selling them quickly.

Striding through the derelict houses at the far side of the pool Grom Blacksmoke the thunderer spotted some movement with his keen eyes. Where these wretched possessed also looking for wyrdstone in this neighborhood? Without thinking he dropped to his knee, took aim and blasted lead toward the foul creatures. Screams indicated something was hit, but not killed yet.
The shot probably scared the possessed because now they were nowhere to be seen. They may have learned from this shot to be more careful but they also could be cowardly running away from the dwarfs of course!
The dwarfs carefully moved further toward the pool where now splashing noises could be heard. Were the possessed already filtering the pool? Outraged the dwarfs pushed on and saw a struggle at the edge of the pool where possessed seemed to be in combat with what looked like some greenskins. Nothing to dive into heads over heels.

The dwarfs edged carefully to the pool and started to look for wyrdstone. A measly stone was found when the possessed found out there were more competitors at the pool.

The gibbering greenskins were cackling with delight. After a brief skirmish with the possessed they seemed to have vanished from the pool. “Probably took all the wyrdstone and ran of, them cowards” Bjorgir was muttering. Now it is time to focus on the possessed, they were piling through a narrow gap between a building and the pool toward the dwarfs. The narrow passage was of some luck to the dwarfs, because now they could face the possessed one by one for a brief moment.

The slayers were off and charged into some plaguebearers and the rest of the dwarfs followed. It wasn’t for long when more possessed pushed through the narrow gap and the battle started to swing towards the possessed, where the dwarfs looked good to begin with. The dwarfs were pushed back and the slayer carrying the wyrdstone went down as well! This was turning out very nasty for the AleQuaffers. The beardlings were holding up quite well and the warband did deal out some damage, but the possessed have some experience under their belt and were quite battle hardened. They could suffer multiple wounds and still fight on!

This was the moment for the dwarfs to tactically retreat. There will be more moments to fight and set a better scene for the AleQuaffers. For now they just have to be careful since the previous encounter with the possessed proved to be very damaging indeed. Bjorgir found it wise to spare his powers (and his dwarfs) for now. Carefully build up some strength now and take it slow. The quest for riches did not have to be over in days. It may take years to gather wealth and fortune, but that is always quicker then to remain in underground in the dwarven holds, laboring for tens of years on the same arch or hall.
Bjorgir was already making plans to recruit and increase his warband in order to beat those pesky possessed once and for all!

Now let's take a look at how the orcs and gobbo's experienced this fight.
Fresh in mordheim, a sight to behold. No flowers, no happiness, no friendly faces. Ideal environment for a couple of deranged greenskins and their smaller cousins. Captain Wortnak took his rookie crew for an adventure. According to some rumors (friendly beaten out of some random passing halfling) somewhere deep in the forsaken city there was this fountain. Not just any fountain, but a rather deep one, filled with riches few would believe. The halfling had been there himself but was driven away by the foul stench of chaos the fountain inhabited.
There's 2 things a fullgrown orc likes to do in his spare time. One is beating up some innocent people and the other is collecting riches before someone else finds out about them and gets away with it. For that exact thing Wortnak rushed his man to the forsaken fountain.
When the greens made it to the fountain, they caught a glimpse of 2 other warbands also trying to catch some of the wyrdstone that was so carefully hidden from the world. Stupid round dwarfs and some really long-ago expired food. That, or it might have been nurgle, but wortnak guessed the food.

"No time to waste, lets go diving!" Wortnak screamed at the top of his lungs as he charged to the fountain. Arriving steadily first at the fountain Wortnak ordered his bravest men to take a leap and dive right in. Only "smudgebrain" can up without a stone. All others managed to dive up a shard. Wortnak kindly requested smudgebrain to take another dive, by punching him in the nose while pointing at the fountain. A minute later smudgebrain came up with a shard. Meanwhile the others of the band heavily defended the fountain from the emerging Nurgle. Damn these guys go fast! And they also pack a lot of heat! Within seconds the fountain was overwelmed by stench and fur. A couple of the greenskins went down like a brick while wooly took bites at, well to be honoust, anything he saw.
When smudgebrain emerged from the fountain, the warband decided to make a "tactical manouvre exaclty opposing the enemy". They had what they came for! A fortune on their first day in mordheim! What more could they want? Mission accomplished.

Last but not least (somewhat unusual, history tends to be written by the winners...) the event as seen by the Possessed. After the last successful battle the warband was strengthened by another Plaguebearer (In Mordheim rules terms a Beastmen, my warband has a Nurgle theme so I use Plaguebearer models instead).

Rumor had spread that in a pond wyrdstone shard were to be found, now the fountain after years of dryness had magically regained a water source of some sort. Nurgly spurred his followers to race to there...
However, when arriving at the scene, the first shard were already taken by Greenskins. At sight of the approaching Chaos worshipers, they made a run for safety. Shy Shy, together with some henchmen, charged into a small bow armed detachment, that payed the price for covering the retreat...

The rest of the warband headed for the pond, only to find a group of dwarfs standing around the water basin. An awkward stand off came into existance, like the sharing of drinking pools by predators and prey on the dark continent. And when the pond stopped providing shards the antagonists attacked each other...
At first the battle went well for the Dwarfs; the small passage between the ruins and the pond favored them as a high number of possessed could not join the frail. However in the long run quantity proved itself to be a quality and the Dwarfs were overwhelmed by possessed numbers and spattering black blood... It was only by the sacrifice of a slayer that most of the Dwarfs managed to escape with some shards.

Despite some heavy losses, Papa Nurgle had once again blessed his followers! The status of Nurgly and his followers was growing amongst the children of Chaos resulting in an unholy Dark Soul to join the warband.

Beware of pickpockets ....

2010-09-09T20:31:00.005+02:00

Every now and then I try to convince my gaming group that I actually do something on my warband. Yesterday I was working on some pieces of my ork warband when I stumbled upon an old and lost memory.

About 10 years ago I visited an event called "Spellenspektakel". Back in those days it was no display of commercial stores under one roof, but still an event with lots of small suppliers of miniatures and cardgames. It was then that I purchased a pack of 10 of these small men:

I believe this an old imperial halfling sniper of some sort, but I'm not really sure.

And then, all of a sudden it hit me (no, not the halfling), I could use this as an halfling in mordheim. All it needed was greenstuff and patience. Unfortunately, the gun is not easily converted to a bow or sword, so ordinary halfling's were out of the question. It IS however a nice model to try and GS a crossbow. And since the halfling thief is able to carry a crossbow pistol, I cut of the front half.

The rest of the model is pretty usable for a thief in fantasy, except for that hat and oversized headset. Good thing I was already greenstuffing, so I made the little fellow a cape. This way, he's the ultimate thief, hiding from everyone and "borrowing" stuff from everywhere! He already carries 2 big pockets , so that should work out all fine.

That being said, I took out the GS and started working. This is the result:

I'm pleased with the way the cape worked out. I'm not really happy with the crossbow yet, as it looks more like a big sausage roll horizontally placed on a piece of wood. This does fit the halfling way of doing things, but I might change it.

Anyway, greenstuff rocks!

Three in a row

2010-09-07T13:55:00.000+02:00

Quick post for only a nice pic I took of three dwarfs that you might have seen come by separately. The three belong together and with this groupshot you can see they are different but have the same look and feel one way or the other.

Pony wagon projects

2010-09-07T13:50:00.000+02:00

It's been a while, posting on the blog but it has a reason! I just became a father of the coolest baby boy named Jonas! The painting projects are a bit on low priority the last couple of weeks. This week there was actually some time to paint some stuff!
I was already busy with a pony wagon for my dwarf treasure hunter warband and now finished it.

Yesterday I got a pair of ponywagons as a birthday present from one of our blog contributers Arjan. This got me a good idea on creating a pony wagon train with a pair of ponys. Since my dwarfs will be collecting gold and goodies to amounts they can't carry alone, wagons are in need! I assembled and converted the ponywagons to create the following:

Some conversions were needed. The two ponys need to be next to each other. Easy enough a dummy piece was placed where usually the single pony is.

From above the pony wagon set will look as follows:

The other conversion is the link from the second wagon to the first. The cutaway pieces of plastic frame provided nice pieces of plastic to to fit as a T-piece that will be the couple piece to the first wagon.

BTB: Rat Race

2010-08-15T15:03:00.000+02:00

It was in the dew of the morning that the slayers woke up hearing the skitter of little paws. Was it little paws ... or just paws running around they wondered. Bjorgir was a bit on edge because there was little to eat the last couple of days. In the blasted region of the city they were in now, nothing but derelict houses and a faint drizzle all day. You could get quite glum about this, especially with an empty belly. The skittering noises made him think of rats...rat-on-a-stick! A smile grew on the face of Bjorgir and poking his fellow warband members awake a plan formed in his head.

The Magister looked at the runes and smiled. Some days ago he had successfully summoned a lesser demon out of the warp to extend his warband. In exchange for this blessing of the Plaguefather a shibboleth had to be executed. And now the target was near...

The two slayers were very eager to get some rats and were out in no time. But they were not the only ones out there! Just around the corner some Possessed were slithering around with their mutated bodies also looking for food. Also hoof noises could be heard now so some beasties were about also. The beardlings were muttering amongst themselves that the undead wouldn't be far away either. Sarr said: "A perfect morning for a massive fight around some scrawny little rats". Dru and Crumble agreed and were getting ready to face a heavy day.

Locating the dwarf had not been very hard; obviously they were hunting for rats and not very secretive about their whereabouts. However, those pesky rats were hard to ignore, two of them were even attacking. On top of that a loose chaos hound had appeared and attacked Frogface, who (off course) was not up to the task of fighting a meager hound.

But now father Nurgle was really smiling at them! Their price was approching fast (for at dwarf that is)! The aberration, the false blackblood, the requested sacrifice was actually charging them!!

Then everything happened very fast. A rat darted by and the two slayers were loose! Charging into the rat and hacking it to pieces. The rest of the warband were huddling around the corner to check for more. There were more rats running around, a lot more rats you could say. They were so fast it was difficult to tell how big they really were. In the meantime, the rats as the beastmen, undead and possessed were running around and chasing rats.

One particular big rat was boring down on the necromancer of the undead pack! This was a rat of abominable size. The beastmen were charging into the graveyard for some rats with their rabid dogs leading the pack. One of the dogs strayed a bit and ran around one of the pillars of a ruined temple to find a big hammer of the possessed warband leader in its way. With a big squelching sound the dog found its end right there: Not only the rats were meeting their fate.

Nurgly the Magister had by now killed a rat and finished off the stunned chaos hound. Flyface was literally sniffing out the carcass of the abominable rat. He found a wyrdstone shard, yet another sign that the true Chaos God was smiling at them.

But not all was going well. The false blackblood dwarf was a formidable fighter and had more and more dwarfs were joining the fray. And it were the followers of Chaos that were suffering. Several henchies were taken out of action or laying knocked down and both the Possessed were down to their last wound.

Half of the rat pack were now getting nervous with so much mayhem around them and were sprinting of the table. Another two rats were caught in a fight, but the rest escaped. The necromancer was having some big trouble with the big rat facing him.
Meanwhile Loki the bigger slayer flattened the rat with one mighty sweep of his axe. Looking around in a battle craze he saw some movement around the corner and blindly charged into it. The possessed over there were caught by surprise and were getting slaughtered. This was one mean slayer! Everywhere the possessed hit the slayer the blood spraying around was even inflicting wounds. Some of the possessed had that same skill and in moments 5 possessed were surrounding the slayer and damage was dealt very hard. Luckily the rest of the dwarf warband was around to try to help out Loki. It could be questioned if this was, what a slayer would really want, especially since Loki was truly in his element. Some disgruntled shouts from Loki to Bjorgir were also getting the concentration away and the battle swung towards the possessed. Loki was paying too much attention to his fellow warband members not to take out HIS enemies, letting him die his much wanted heroic death, that the possessed landed some blows. Still the tough slayer did not go down, and it was becoming very close. Some of the possessed were chopped away only to be replaced by new foul plaguebearers and whatnot. Loki was doing his best but his mind was not completely to it. The possessed were actually looking to flee of the field or this entire battle to end. Their wishes were not being granted by a necromancer, who was still fighting that giant rat.

The Magister resisted the urge to flee; this task had to be completed or else... He felt chaos powers pour away as a Plabuebearer was sent back to the Chaos courts by the black blooded Slayer. The Magister grawled and rushed in himself, with him the rest of his minions too attacked the dwarfs.

Then it was too much for the big orange crested fellow, too much blows at once, not able to parry them all, Loki went down. The rest of warband wanting revenge, swung in this melee but the possessed although wrung through a grinder, were getting new vigor by slaying the slayer and were really bearing down on the dwarfs. It was soon that the dwarfs saw they were no match and ran of the battlefield with only one rat to share.

A green light lit up the ruins around the small square were some hours ago the dwarfs and possessed had met. Now the mutilated corpse of a slayer was surrounded by the strange shapes of his opponents. A dark liquid, much much darker than normal dwarven blood, was leaking on the ground. Floating above the body was a strange shining bulb, that grew into a crack, a passage toward the courts of chaos. For a moment a bellowing laughter could be heard accompanying a Plaguebearer striding through.

"Father Nurgle is very pleased with your deeds, master magister" Hissed the Plaguebearer. "He sends you this" The minor demon continued and handed over a putrefied, rusted axe. The Magister looked at the warped piece of metal and smiled, recognizing the axe as the one the slayer had barried in the killed Plaguebearer.

We player the Rat Race scenario found on the Wargame Weaver site. A very nice multi player scenario which really fits the Border Town Burning settings and is good fun to play (Thanx Jim!). Minor nitpicks/recommendations: Use random movement (or the Border Town Burning monster rules) instead of the 12" movement for the rats.

new slayer here

2010-07-31T09:51:00.003+02:00

A small update on the painting front. I've been mostly busy with digging in the garden the last couple of weeks. I'm also growing a small beard and not that big so I get more and more comments of me becoming closer to dwarfmanship! In so far I'm not digging with a pick axe so I think I'm far from it, but denial is one of the first stages maybe?
Anyway, in the sparse time in between there have been moments I could pick up my paint brush and there was this slayer mini from avatars of war that screamed for being painted.
There is also a great tutorial on bugmans on how to paint a dwarf slayer with this model as an example. I studied the howto and got to work.

A good slayer with agressive looking eyes but he still ahd to maintain a sort of comic look about him what I like in mini's they shouldn/t become to serious in my opinion. I think that is why gobbo's as well as dwarfs appeal to me opposed to the empire or elves.

Aside I'm also working on a good looking thunderer for my dwarf treasurehunter warband. He's getting a leather armour apron garment thingie and coming along nicely:

And you always have to look out for loose laying TNT packages while painting:

Small overview of a part of the painting area with some other works in progress.

Outside gaming

2010-07-20T12:10:00.002+02:00

Our last game of Mordheim with the six of us we've played outside. The temperature didn't drop below 25 at night zo ideal situation to put the tables out and play. No problems with cramped gaming tables and whatnot and enjoying the weather as well! Some around neighbours were indeed checking out, what was going on with the bunch of guys debating around tables with scenery, measuring and moving miniatures and debating loudly over it, calling for the rulebook more often then not!

Our BTB campaign was played outside this time. For the "Horrors of the Underground" the table wasn't big enough so they played on the ground. I believ the Possessed went in the underground with every intention of finding some chaos stuff. Behind them a starting marauders warband stepped in the dungeon, found an egg and ran out again. Al done in mere minutes! It took more time to set up everything then to play the scenario here.

The lost caravan scenario's is already heavily discussed on this blog and a game of a starting Dwarf (another!) warband agains some undead was played. Quite gruesome ending for the undead I believe (although they were dead to begin with!).

BTB: The lost caravans

2010-07-14T12:18:00.009+02:00

The late evening sun shines red on the few buildings in fore town of the borderland city Mohawa. The occasional grunt and murmur sound was heard from one of the buildings. Inside a group of dwarves known as the Alequaffers was tending their wounds.
Bjorgir was discussing with Grach that it was for the best that Grach would go to the mountains to report the latest findings and doings of the warband. Not speaking of the fact it would better to get better from the horrible wound he just suffered.
Meanwhile Durri and Loki were the no happy dwarves and quaffing some stale ale. They survived a battle where they faced enormous odds. Loki even got stuck in battle with 6 beastmen before he went down. He dealt some terrible carnage and was becoming a massive dwarf all together.
“It is a terrible loss” Grom muttered. “The beardlings go for fame and adventure, not for cold nights, little food and death.” One of the beardlings wasn’t with them anymore. That last fight was too much for him. One of the Ogre villains thumped him quite badly and the beastmen trampling over him afterwards were too much.

What happened with the warband today? In this small fore town, on the middle of the road they found a wagon being trashed by ogres. 5 Ogres in total were bashing into 5 guards the Merchant had hired.

The Merchant’s wagon was already smashed to bits, the horses run away and the crew was barely standing. In the middle of this fight the dwarfs saw a fellow merchant in trouble and dashed towards the fighting spree to help. At the same time at the other end of the road a massive group of beastmen saw the riches of the Merchant’s caravan and was not planning to leave that to the ogres.

Dwarves and Beastmen charged the Ogres who proved to be very sturdy indeed. Loki and Durri were hacking and slashing into one Ogre while one the 3 beardlings were watching from a distance. They were too afraid to come even near the battle.
From a distance Grach and two thunderers were shooting away with their handguns. Clouds of smoke were billowing everywhere with every volley they shot. Grach being the expert he made a big difference in how fast he could reload and shoot. “Keep practicing lads” he shouted with a mad grin as he shot another round of lead towards the ogres.

The clouds of smoke probably obscured their vision somewhat, because after rounds of lead no ogre suffered any wounds from the handgunners! Their aim was a bit off this fight.

Eventually the beastmen managed to get 3 ogres down and the slayers also hacked one to the ground. The remaining guards took care of the last ogre and now the dwarfs were standing opposing the beastmen. With some hesitation the beastmen charged the dwarfs. Now the real fighting was commencing. First rounds the dwarfs took heavy casualties.

When Durri went down, Loki was infuriated and started chomping away. He felled 4 beastmen himself. The beardlings were going down very fast and now the thunderers were being attacked. They were no match in hand to hand fighting. Grach was swinging his hammer for all he was worth but it was to no avail. All dwarfs went down in this massacre.

Hours after the battle Bjorgir was gathering his warband, he feared the worst. “How many would have survived the onslaught?” he thought. His head still ringing from the blows he received, the noble found out there quite some survivors. Actually he brightened up seeing his entire warband there…no wait…one of the beardlings was not present. This still was a dark day for the Alequaffers. Some new grudges would be written down and remembered the next fights they entered.

All along the watchtower

2010-07-08T08:59:00.010+02:00

Finally (and just in time for todays battle) the watchtower is completed!

Built in 'nerd bricks'it is assembled out of blocks cast out of Hirst Arts molds. Most blocks are from molds 50 and 61, with the floors coming out of mold 281. Additional add ons are stair parts of mold 60 (Thanks Tom!) and several items of mold 282.

The watchtower consists of three separte parts, to accommodate entering and moving inside the tower (at ground level) and transport.

More pictures (courtesy of Anke Bot fotografie ;-) can be found here.

Showcasing some new finished dwarfs

2010-07-08T08:51:00.004+02:00

Just a quick update on some finished dwarfs. I've been quite busy painting different dwarfs that will serve as backup for the ever expanding Dwarf treasurehunter warband I'm playing for our Border Town Burning campaign. The further idea is to keep on painting the dwarfs in order to build up a small army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Especially now the 8th edition is coming out. In the meantime I'm reading and learning the new rules I am painting them dwarfs and hopefully I can field a nice Dwarf army in due time.
First up here a dwarf ironbreaker. I got this box quite cheap and this is the first one painted. They paint pretty quick since it is a lot of metal they carry! :)

Next up dwarf slayer you have already seen on this blog but I got this nice skeleton sign that is really Mordheimy and I had to paint it. It has a little base of his own so can be put anywhere in our city of Mordheim.

I don't know if I put the finished engineer with the brace of pistols already here, but it's a nice picture of him so he may join this blog post for now.

Finally a new beardling I painted. As on of the other beardlings he has the "Bugmans" shield and the green clothing. In total there are three of them and I think they fit in together quite nicely now. These old mini's also have some sort of comic look I like, big noce, nice stature and it's a dwarf with a sword you don't see often.

BTB: Traces to Emprise

2010-07-08T08:33:00.004+02:00

“Get up, you lazy bastards!”. Bjorgir Borgurson was shouting at two slayers and prodding at two slayers in the corner of a derelict building. This was the place where they ended their feasting of the night before. Especially the slayers were doing honor to the warbands name: AleQuaffers.
With a lot of grunting and a splitting headache Durri IronBounder and his fellow slayer Loki Borsson got up. Dwarf axes still in hand but wobbling a bit unsteady after that barrel of Bugmans they found here and emptied completely, the slayers were sort of ready to go. In the corner of the building Sarr Veinsmasher and Crumble Dobnose were staring in awe at the two battle-hardened slayers. The two beardlings just joined the warband for fame and fortune (or rather … loads of gold!!!!). They were staring with big eyes to the large orange crests that were now a bit ruffled after a night’s boozing.

Bjorgir was getting his warband out and about and was having difficulty with it. That barrel of Bugman’s really hit home in the warband, but was a welcome reward after days of rummaging around these blighted borderlands. They found this sort of derelict outpost of a city and finally had some stone buildings around them for the night. These nights in the open sky were not good for a dwarf was Bjorgir’s opinion. Of noble born Bjorgir was used to the big halls and rooms in Karak Bardag, the hold of Dwarf king Dordom. As a lad Bjorgir was always curious to what was outside the hold. Books telling of fame and fortune (and the gold of his ancestors) led him to gather a warband around him to start looking for this fame and fortune.
He started heading out of the hold with his longtime friend Grach SplitRock an upcoming engineer in Karak Bardag. But as an engineer who wants to go looking for ancient artifacts long lost to the hold, the warband was an excellent way to do this before returning to the hold and really settle there with his skills.
The rest of the warband consists of a thunderer, Grom Blacksmoke, they picked up along the way and a beardling, Harri Longbeard, who is quickly becoming battle hardened after experiencing some encounters and skilled for driving a cart.
The goal for Bjorgir is to gather as much wealth as possible and driving home a cart full of riches. The borderlands and Cathay in particular should be the country where not much dwarfs ventured but it is famed for riches and fortune.
Last night they arrived here in this bordertown and it seems some information on a cash of Cathayan silks was to be found here. “OK, Durri and Loki, only questions to these poor villagers, no breaking stuff and specifically no DRINKING!” Bjorgir was instructing, “We don’t want to scare these poor people here.”

A house to house search started and the first houses some questions came with handy answers. In one house Durri got a bit too excited and menacingly came close to one of the villagers. With two big dwarf axes only inches from your nose, you’d be very willingly telling of anything you know, especially when there’s a big bulky dwarf with a very angry looking bright orange crest behind these axes.
While going from house to house Grach was getting up the stairs alongside one of the buildings to the second floor and saw some activity at the other side of this cluster of houses. Some odd forms were flowing between the buildings. Also some screams and shouts were audible. “Was that a guy with tentacles?” Grach was thinking, “Am I seeing this correctly?”

Discarding the strange viewing and subjecting it to last night’s drinking he went further with his investigations. Still some strange noises and screams seem to be emerging from the other houses. Upon leaving a house after questioning the inhabitants, at the far end of the street a group of weird deformed looking men were eying the dwarfs. In moments some unwieldy forms flowed towards the dwarfs and a fight broke out. One of the slayers was occupying 4 Possessed life forms and wielding his axes like a madman.
Meanwhile Bjorgir was getting around the back of the other houses to get the last pieces of information and soothing the people living here. At the front lots of battle noises filtered through and the Noble couldn’t wait to get outside and join his fellow dwarfs.
Outside the engineer was shooting away at the Possessed and the slayer might have found his doom if it wasn’t for the wallop he got from the lowlife Posessed leaving him without his axes. There’s no honor in these Possessed.
Eventually due to some chaotic bookkeeping on the Possessed side and quick thinking of the dwarfs on getting around the back to get information, the dwarfs found all pieces of the puzzle and the battle was over.
A lot of casualties on the dwarf side and none to be seen on the Possessed side, so who really won the battle? Luckily all but one dwarf recovered from their injuries.
At least some new entries into the book of Grudges for the dwarfs and there was gold to be had for all this new found information. Grom Blacksmoke and Crumble Dubnose were already discussing where to get a ponywagon for transporting all their new found ritches. This until Bjorgir came between and firmly laid out new plans to first equip the warband better and look for new warband members before really starting out to accumulate all these treasures to be found in the borderlands. With more warband members they could not only get to the treasure but also defend the treasure already in their possession.
In the end they looked for and bought new axes for Loki and found a replacement for poor Harri Longbeard as well as a thunderer who wanted to join the Alequaffers.

The fight at the monastery (a battle report without pictures)

2010-06-18T14:06:00.002+02:00

The chaos wizard sat down behind the desk in the room. On the other side some of his minions were sitting quietly making sure not to attract attention to them. Since the last encounter with a group of dwarfs, their leader was not in a good mood (and that was an understatement). "I should have never left the path of pestilence" He muttered to himself. "Ever since I lost the mark, things are going downhill. Look at us now, seeking shelter in a forsaken monastery of which deity I don't even know".
"We had to pretend to be humble humans and our weapons and equipment were taken away. Our most blessed members had to be smuggled inside to prevent the monks to notice their chaotic gifts. Well, serves them right, they weren't even capable of finishing off some meager humans and were humiliated by dwarfs. Nevertheless, right now I need all the followers I can get. One of my bodyguards mutants and a henchman were still missing".
There was a knock on the door. The wizard indicated to one of the henchmen to open it. One of his colleagues came in: "Master, Shyshy is conscious again. However, he has a nasty wound on the chest. And there's more, apparently we're not the only guest in this place." The wizard looked up surprised and gestured that the henchman should continue. "In the other wing and probably also downstairs, there's another group. Ticky said they smelled like beasts and went out to investigate." "Father Nurgle" The wizard mutterd, then he recovered. "You, get back to Shyshy and get him over here!. The rest, come with me."

The henchman ran through the passage towards the room were the wounded possessed was looked after by one of his fellows. When he walked in, he found them both standing, ready to strike at anyone who would come in. "Come on, it's me, the master needs us". Suddenly there was the noise of fighting below them and the sound of people speeding nearby. "Come, hurry up!" The henchmen repeated.
When the three cultists stepped into the corridor, they bumped into three monks, looking in a way similar to the ones that had welcomed them earlier that day. But at the same time, they looked very different: Menacing and ready to fight.

Downstairs Ticky, the second possessed, had been sneaking around until he found what he was looking for: a fight. Monks were fighting beastmen at the bottom of the stairs! (His nose had been right). He charged in and an even more chaotic (..) fight evolved. The involved monks were taken out of action quite fast, but then Ticky was amazed to find himself stepping out of the fight. A beastmen shaman stepped forward, smiling as his hand seems to control Ticky's movements. The shaman gestured upwards the stairs and without having a say in this (but not to his complete dissatisfaction) Ticky stormed up the stairs, attacking the monks that were trying to quietly leave the room.

On the first floor the fight between the monks and the three members of the possessed warband was joined by a small group of beastmen. The beastmen had stolen the spoils of war by taking the stunned and knocked down monks out of action. This led to a fierce fight between both the groups of the children of chaos, with the monks being crushed in the middle. When the wizard and his retinue (finally) joined this brawl, the monks decided to leave their monastery to the barbarians (for now).

On the ground floor the monks fighting Ticky followed their leaders example and fled. Ticky took a deep breath and with a heavy roar managed to break the spell of the beastmen shaman. The shaman considered his options: On the top floor his minions were outnumbered and it would take too much time to reach them in time. Especially, since a raging possessed was standing on the stairs between them and the main group of the Beastmen. On top of that this wonna-be-spawn looked like it was going to charge and make this fight all to personal. It was time to leave this foul human place and head back to the forest, the shaman decided.

Once more the wizard sat behind the desk. He felt a lot better now, his men had finally shown some fighting spirit and on top of that good treasures were found in the monastery. Even a lone monk was found during the pillaging of the building. The man lay down on the floor, inside the heptagon that was drawn on the floor. The wizard sighed and stood up and dropped the blooded knife on the table."You've suffered long enough and will join the feasts now" The bound monk shivered when they glance each other and tried to break free. "No use, no use" smiled the wizard and opened a small, battered book. His slow murmurs started to fill the room. The outer bounds of the heptagon started to glow in a strange green light.

The warband left the monastery in better shape as when they had arrived. In contract, the state of the building was (argue-ably) worsened. It seemed that overnight it had aged and rotted as if centuries had passed. More over, small demon like creatures swarmed over the roofs and even fouler shapes could be seen through the moldered shutters. The wizard smiled when he looked around, next to him stood a minor demon of Nurgle, a blessing of the true chaos god. "Come children, we're no carnival yet, but we must feast anyway"

Dwarf Treasurehunters WIP

2010-06-14T09:21:00.002+02:00

My Dwarven warband is already up and running in our Border Town Burning campaign. It is always nice though to have some backup mini's for new recruits, change of gear and the like. Besides I love painting, therefore new dwarfs are in progress. This is a small update of the projects going on now.
First up is a dwarf ironbreaker. I managed to get a good deal on an old box of ironbreakers. Ideal material for my Mordheim dwarf warband in my opinion. This is the one that is now under the brush. The metal was easy of course (and there is a lot of it). But this sturdy fellow is riveted all around and I came up with the great idea of making all the details bronze. Took me a while to paint all these rivets and details altogether. The finsished pics will show this in more detail. For now this is its status:

Click to enlarge of course!

Next up is the noble, there was of course a noble leading my warband, BUT... not a real goodlooking noble-y fellow representing this. This dwarf leader is the ideal mini for leading my warband here. Lot of gold thread to paint but it is getting there.

A new thunderer in progress. i only managed to paint the leather armour he is wearing though. Awesome model though. Again a good deal on an old box of thunderers and this one with the dragon barrel is really shaping up to take part in our Mordheim battles. I also want to start with a small conversion of one of the thunderers to put a big sight on one of the guns with an enlarged eye painted on. Ideas enough, now find some time to execute.

A beardling is also being painted (only undercoat and first layer of skin). Almost not worth mentioning, but since I was posting on what projects are going on her he is:

New slayer in town. no this is not a BA Baracus Slayer personification: it is a first layered skin dwarf slayer. Took a while to pin this fellow together and greenstuff all the gaps, but he will be cool and mean looking.

A Marker or signpost is a small side project to the mini's. No big buildings this time but small details to upgrade the existing buildings we have. Also an orb, some books and chests have been painted (no pics though).

Finally, I made a statue for our scenery. For comparison my noble is standing beside it. The statue is made with air curing clay (not my favorite stuff to work with, but still reasonably result). It will be incorporated in a small marker or building/ruins/rubble or some other.

BTB: Blockade

2010-06-03T16:04:00.003+02:00

Note: Pictures to be added.

The evening was still young and playing scenario's parallel is quite a good feat. Very effective playing compared to the massive time consuming multi player battles we usually play. There is still time to set up a new scenario and start playing. Winner against winner for me this time. Since the Posessed won the other battle and getting a slimy egg, I got to go against them for a change. Already my opponent was dreading my dwarves and of course my dicerolls. That started right out good since I got to choose being a defender or the attacker. My dwarfs are typical defender material so that was not a hard choice to make. The groaning of my opponent made it more clear how good a choice this was for me.

The watchtower in the middle and some forest to one side, the 2 handgunners I have took their high position and the slayers were ready to charge out when the enemy comes near. For some reason the Possessed thought it a good idea to split up and attack the watchtower from 2 sides. The game started easy enough with the posessed approaching and the dwarfs trying to shoot them. For some reason in turn 2 already the supplies wagon entered the table with 5 guards. From experience after the battle these guards are good fighters! The wagon moved on to the field and towards half of the posessed from the back. In no time they were fighting!

From the other side the Posessed tried to make it through the woods. Sinces these are the borderlands and these are howling woods, the Possessed where so scared it took them literaly 4 turns to get through a bit and then still one Possessed was to scared and stayed behind. All the while they get shot every other turn and this diminished the Possessed significantly. Almost my expert Dwarf engineer managed to shoot the Possessed leader in 1 shot at the first turn of the game (as with the necromancer in the previous battle) but it was not meant to be this time.
The half the possessed getting slaughtered by the guardsmen (who also were having trouble of course), and upon seeing this carnage the slayers leaped out the watchtower and charged into the melee, making a definite mess of the left Posessed. The other half was now in hiding under the shadow of the watchtower. Some shooting there in in no time the Possessed were routed of the table, making the dwarfs victors again. Having the cart in the watchtower earned them some campaign points and again the dwarfs found considerable weirdstone and treasure ready to equip them better for scenario's to come. There might even be enough money to buy a pony cart for starters. This to carry all the wealth they have and are about to accumulate.

BTB: Avalanche

2010-06-03T15:47:00.002+02:00

Note: pictures to be added!

The first real scenario's are going to be played for our Border Town Durning Scenario. The beastmen and the the Blackbloods are entering the dungeons with the Horrors of the Underground. Myself put my Dwarf Treasurehunters against Ludo's new Undead warband in the Avalanche scenario.

The avalanche scenario is a quite scary one for the dwarfs. you don't know from what table edge the giant avalanche will come. Dwarfs are fable for their adventure skills but running away from an avalanche is not their cup of Bugmans (or stein for that matter)!

The scenario we put out had some sparse terrain items like rotten trees, a graveyard a small road and one abandoned inn. Not much room to hide against gale force winds, blizzard conditions and the bitter cold. Sturdy dwarfs as they are, the treasurehunters pushed through the snow towards the abandoned building with the rumble of an avalanche from one side! They directly started moving away from the deafening roar of the avalanche. The engineer all of a sudden spotted a foul undead necromancer approaching fast from out of the graveyard. He takes his perfectly engineered handgun and from a large distance with the first shot kills the necromancer instantly.

The echoe of the shot is reverberating through the valley and after some seconds a new rumble can be heard over the already present avalanche noise....a new avalanche is triggered. Now it comes from the other side closing in the warbands in a very narrow funnel.
The giant avalanche is suddenly approaching rapidly towards the building in the center of the field encapsulating the Undead Vampire. The last thing he heard and saw was a dark rumble and lot of white. The dwarves start hacking away at the remaining undead who are now in a very tight spot. The next turn the undead route with their vampire and necromancer of the field. The dwarfs narrowly escape the avalanches of snow and actually take home a lot of weirdstone. These mountains are a good trove for dwarfs "mining" for weirdstone.

Border Town Burning: The campain starts

2010-05-21T19:22:00.002+02:00

After playing lot's of multi player Mordheim games, that were a lot of fun, it is time to start something even more organised. What more logic then to start a campagn! And what more logic then to start with a campagn that is already thought out: Border Town Burning. Something different then the scrirmishes we did in the town of Mordheim but something new that requires some new tactics, new choices, new models. All new elements to spice up our Mordheim evenings to come.
The start of the campagn is al about the new warbands. What choices did everyone make and will it work in the campaign. lot's of opportunity to start with an experimental warband or just start with existing ones that are well thought out, so focus can be more on tactica? Choices, choices, what to choose?

The warbands that the now four of us start with are:
Beastmen
Posessed
Dwarf Treasurehunters
Dark Elves

The first battle to get a bit used to this campaining is a bar room brawl. No weapons or armour, just a freindly night in the pub ... until someone spilled the beer of one the dwarfs, and all hell broke loose! In all floors of the inn fights break out and it was not long until only one was left standing. The dwarfs and dark elves get stuck in right away during which the possessed take care of some darke elves too. The beastmen are apparantly more resilliant and around the fountain at the front of the inn they remain standing until the end of the game. Apparantly these strange hoofs are good for one thing: enough grip to stay upright.

All warbands but the dark elves have no real casualties to speak of. The dark elves were not made to hang about a rowdy inn and get stuck in this brawling. They are already too weakened to really start this campaining. I always thought these fragile elves were no use for real adventuring. This proves 'em right :)
Next time the first 1 on 1 games will be played and the warbands will be working for their campaing points.

A small note: this was the first game in the Mordheim Attick, which was just converted. A great playing area if I may say so.

And so it comes to be alive....

2010-05-15T20:57:00.004+02:00

After the last massacre with the dark elves I decide to go back to the roots once more. Skipping the pirates, adventurers and other sort of elves, I went straight for the dead. No tomb kings/guardians for me. No lich lords and creepy scorpions, but plain old dead. A vampire, necromancer, zombies, ghouls and dregs!

As I gave my last mordheim-vampire away to Arjan,Ihad to find an alternative. Somehow I stumbled upon a charging banshee, and so an idea was born.

I took out my green stuff and started cutting and modelling away. This banshee was flat-handed, so could not hold any weapons at all. Time to model some thumbs! That wasn't easy at all, but somehow I do like the end-result. I also gave her a nose and filled some holes in the skin (that sounds dirtier than it actually was ...). Result:

More pictures will of course follow soon.

Add some water, place a skeleton on top...

2010-04-28T15:21:00.007+02:00

Here are some pix of the fountain which I finished last weekend (big thanks to Anke) :

New Slayers

2010-04-25T21:54:00.003+02:00

After some time on my worktop these two slayers only needed their final finishing touches. Of course this takes as much time as painting the first steps, but in the end they are done now! Based and ready to fight.

Actually they already starred many a fight in their almost finished state, but now it is al for real. I even took time to take proper pictures to show of these bulging biceps and very orange mohawks. I think a good adition to my Mordheim slayer warband for now!

Of course, more slayers can join, so more will be painted (or else they will be part of the new to form Warhammer Fantasy batlle army of dwarves that is about to form (in the next coming months that is).

West Gate House: Mordheim and chopping trees

2010-04-22T10:40:00.004+02:00

Silence lay down in the city of Mordheim. During the day all creatures of the night are out of sight. At the west gate house a lumbering Oak tree is swaying in the wind. Or is it swaying to hit passersby to keep it from coming any closer. It is rumoured to hide a big treasure of some sort. how this tree became the protector and how a tree became a protector is all subject to the 2-tail comet striking down. This evening the slayers venture out to investigate this Oak tree and it's treasure. After a night quaffing ale this is just the activity to get out and about. While approaching the west gate house and the aquaduct, the tree is already visibible. It looks menacingly gnarly in this twilight (link to scenario)

.

In the disctance hoof sounds and some loud adventurers group can be heard. More are about this night to venture around this tree....

The slayers group up and make their way across the city slowly and carefully. You never want to miss out on a good fight somewhere to seek your doom (or find good treasure for that matter!). In the meantime the adventurers in the distance found some trouble to the sounds of it. The scraping and lurching noises of some foul undead have been encountered apparantly! A vampire is just the thing for the slayers! They have a record of getting rid of these suckers! It is too far of for now to start running towards the melee (maybe only some zombies, no glory in dying at a loose zombie bite there is).

It appears the tree is moving about lightly, but it could also be looks decieving. Was it moving towards the well to get some of that yellow foul smelling water? Upon approaching the big Oak, it is not alone over here! Some small saplings are in the way. Just the thing for some dwarf slayers with big axes! In no time they start chopping away at these no good in-the-way branches.
At the other side of the aquaduct beastmen arrive to also find some sapplings. In stead of lifting a hoof or nibbling these branches the beastmen find themselves attacked by these woods ad a fight starts here as well.

The adventurers and undead are more busy with each other then with trees and the slayers find a free way to the big Oak tree which is now swaying violantly with it's big branches. One hit from these will nock you right out of your Mohawk!
5 Slayers charge the big fellow and start chopping. Since this is a big old gnalry tree it can take some hits. The slayers get 2 big cuts in right away. The tree starts fighting back! This is nog little defensless tree mind! This is heavy stuff. From the other side beastmen pour in for a claim to chop down this piece of wood! The slayers are carved of better wood then these beasties since the beastmen get swatted away quite easily by the tree. The slayers dodge and parry with all axes and might they have. After a while they get some more chunks carved out of the tree and it starts to topple, but not just yet! It is still harrassing the dwarfs with big branches that can flatten a man! This is a glorious battle and all slayers want a piece of this, this could be a glorious death (although from a tree....).

After more rounds of hacking away one of the slayers with a monstrous double handed Gromril axe hits THE spot with all his might, this is the final blow and the Oak tree goes down. What a fight what a tension, but they did it.
In the background some noises of fights between adventurers and undead die down and the beasties also find this a good moment to look for trouble somewhere else in the city of Mordheim.
The night now really comes in and it is a good moment to end all this and find a good ale somewhere. The slayers are till somewhat in batlle frenzie but one of the clansman is clear of mind to remember this was all about some treasure.....what about this and some digging and rummaging begins....

New graveyard in town

2010-04-13T21:57:00.004+02:00

Aside from some heavy duty work in home, changing rooms into gamerooms and making a baby room I found some time to start working on a new large graveyard tile for our Mordheim scenery. It is still work in progress but all the stone is painted already.

Only the mudd and some grass needs to be put on for it to be a good playable part of our scenery. Since the game is this friday I hope I can find some time to finish and it can come along to the gaming table between all other parts of new scenery. I think those undead will be very happy when they will be fielded this friday!

WIP: Wall of Morr

2010-04-11T20:27:00.006+02:00

A small update on my progress of this weekend. I worked most of the time on the square where both the fountain and the wall of Morr will be placed. The wall is also built by the same friend that I talked about. In this case I had to finish it by creating a top cover (using Hirst Moulds tiles). Further more I did some little upgrades and paint work.
Most effort went into the basing of the floor plan. I hope the three components, wall, fountain and floor; will be finished for our next game friday.

And now for the images that will say so much more (I hope):

WiP: Fountain of Morr

2010-04-09T17:08:00.011+02:00

Years ago a friend of mine made some Mordheim scenery himself, which we used intensively (despite its looks ;-)
The only remaining piece that was still in my possession was a fountain like structure. Recently this guy gave me another home grown Mordheim building (and he does not even play anymore!). This piece is a lot better and I promised to use it in my scenery. This weekend I hope to find the time to finally finish a new Mordheim square to incorporates both the new piece and the old fountain.

The fountain is upgraded and pimped by me using Hirst Moulds pieces and a very peculiar miniature (also given to me, this time by my Czech brother- and sister-in-law ;-)

Some work in progress pictures of the fountain are presented here (and that's it for today):

Van Pix

A hoof's tale

2010-03-27T23:30:00.000+01:00

It was a rainy fridaynight. Mordheim was at it's best, gloomy and dark. A bit cloudy, but mostly just a sad sight for the eyes. Along one of the many streets the Noble Quest, lead mainly by Alysa the runaway princess, was looking for trails that could lead to her abducted and beloved father. It had been over a month now since the old man was taken before her eyes. Chaos at work, no doubt.

"I thinkz we lost", uttered Grom the Barbarian. "You're always lost, or hopeless" Selena the Wizard responded. "Hush ... be silent", Mortifax the Dwarf said with a low, almost hesitating voice. "We might not be all alone after all....". The group stood still for a moment, agreeing that it all of a sudden had become awfully quiet,even for a city as empty as mordheim. "I'll take lead from here", selena said. "It would be wise to split into 2 groups, this way be can easily look for tracks of your father Alysa". Grom, Mortifax and Alysa took Victor and Olaf, the newly acquired "cannon fodder" to the right wing, while selena and Gabriella the Elf decided to bring along their "cannon fodder" by the names of Eric and Lars to the left wing. In the center a huge ancient ruin was found. Obviously the remains of some incredible tower, in a long lost past.

All of a sudden Gabriella overheard something. Her sharp and well trained ears heard a lot of noise, coming from 2 directions. It was the sound of hoofs! Very strange, as horses are rarely seen in the desolated city of Mordheim. In the dense fog, at the other end of the streets, a pack of beastmen appeared! How unlucky, the Noble quest was tired and hardly prepared for these evil and vile creatures of chaos! "What do we do now?" Selena replied, somewhat frigthened by the monstrous appearance of the half horse/ half goat-men Centigor, accompanied by the half goat creatures with their red eyes and big weapons. "Fly up to the tower and see how many there are", Gabriella replied. "Quickly"!

The beastmen, who had spotted the adventurers as well, decided to split into 2 groups too, ready to take down these wandering spirits and make sure they serve as a nice meal for the chaos gods. Poofhoof the Shaman took a couple of hounds and sturdy warriors and headed off to seek and destroy Grom and fighters, while the general and centigor, accompanied by 2 hounds as well, decided to go for the elf and wizard. While Selena had cast her flying spell to gain high ground up in the tower, Gabriella started here volley of arrows on the hounds and hoofed creatures. Somehow though, none of the arrows made it through the scaly skin of these beastlike creatures! If even elven arrows could not pierce them, what on earth might kill them? Very quickly the elf found herself and her 2 companions charged by the very speedy dogs of chaos and their furious alcohol-fueled centigor. While eric fought of the hound, Lars was soon on the ground, having one of the hounds biting away on his mace and dagger. Meanwhile the centigor took a mighty swing, but his mace got stuck in the ground. Gabriella hesitated not a moment and struck the centigor on the legs, rendering it disabled for a long time. With a mighty roar the centigor went down. Angry by this foul move, the beast general made a mighty leap towards the elf, hitting her with his mace, knocking her back a few feet straight into the wall. Gabriella was instantly knock unconcious and removed from battle. Selena attempted to kill some of the beasts from up in the tower, but was disturbed when one of the beasts crashed in the door and headed upstairs! Knowing she would never win a close combat against such a skilled warrior she quickly casted the flight of zimmerman. With only seconds left to live, she managed to fly away to safer ground, only to hear an angry roar behind here.

Meanwhile, at the other flank of the streets, grom and fighter horde ran into poofhoof and his retinue. The warriors did not hesitate for a moment and decided to charge the hounds. One of the hounds had a strange amount of muscle-power, unlike any other hound Grom had ever seen. It was clearly under a spell of some sort. Grom took a huge swing with his double-handed sword but missed! Somehow the hound was not only very muscular but also swift as shadow. With big leap and bite, it took down grom in one attempt. At the same time Alysa got into battle with the other hound, while Olaf and victor were shooting the other hoofedbeasts from a distance. Seconds later, poofhoof was storming towards alysa, furiously swinging his staff at her. Poofhoof managed to hit Alysa directly on her left arm, knocking her several feet away, breaking her arm no doubt. It was at this time, while grom was crumbling back at his feet, that the Noble quest decided to flee the battle. These foul creatures were no doubt much too strong for them, so it was best to just run. Luckily, the beasts had found what they wanted and decided to let the adventurers leave. This way, the could kill them on the next encounter.

Results:

- Victory: Beastmen

- Casualties:

- Adventurers: Alysa misses next game, Gabriella and Alysa down, as well as 2 cannon fodder.

- Beastmen : Centigor misses next game, only the centigor went down.

Pictures will follow!

This is not a battle report...

2010-03-10T15:25:00.004+01:00

Disclaimer: This is a story based on our last battle, as experienced by the brilliant victor (that would be me). Any relation to the real battle events, miniatures or players involved is purely accidental.

The vampire looked around as he pushed a zombie into the right direction. His warband was moving forward at low speed; towering high above them an enemy wizard could be seen, forcing the undead to move from cover to cover (at zombie speed). Looking around the vampire checked the location of the necromancer and the so ambitious ghoul, making sure no stakes were heading for his non beating heart. In the few battles they had fought since arriving in Mordheim, the vampire had become very close to his second death, only to be saved by his warband or sheer luck. Since then his leadership had not been discussed, but he could sense the doubts and thoughts of those with more or their minds as 'where to get the next portion of hopefully fresh flesh and blood'. He had to be careful.. And he had to have his revenge on those pesky dwarfs...
They had found the dwarven warband again. It had not been difficult; the dwarves were not the stealthiest types. Obviously they had found something very worthwhile, for they had been sticking at one location for several days now. And they had been digging, digging deep. The vampire could remember these noises from a former life, long ago, before his transition, in a time when he was just a mere mortal man. So not only was it time for revenge, it would probably be worthwhile in other ways too...
But not only had they found the dwarves. The dwarves were becoming careless, probably in their minds they were already enjoying the spoils of this adventure, and even in this remote area of Mordheim this resulted in attracting the curiosity of others, even as exotic as beastmen. The vampire could hear them, almost as loud as the dwarves, also heading for this tempting prey. And there were humans.. The smell of his favorite blood supply filled his nose (too bad there were only men, but men nonetheless).

Despite their joyful mood the dwarves were veterans of Mordheim, most of them being Slayers. They were aware that they would have to fight their way out; after all, this was Mordheim. With little problem they found the only safe route was heading north, apparently no opponents were waiting for them there.
The beastmen were fresh in Mordheim. Traveling around through the woods of the Empire, their shaman had felt magical powerful artifacts being exposed and received dark directions from the Chaos gods. Heading through the woods they had found the great dark plane were the ruins of Mordheim lay, in the darkness of night they had made it into the remains of this city. And now the hunt was on!
The Centigor, who had found a supply of old wine bottles in the ruins, could not be restrained by the warbands leader and charged at the first sight of a dwarf, followed by the group of chaos hounds. The rest of the beastmen charged after them, letting the bloodlust prevail above tactical considerations. The dwarves stood their ground, slayers grinning at the sight of the charging enemies. To them this was even better than the treasures found...

From the opposing west side (just having met a girl named Maria) a group of adventurers stealthy entered the scene. They split up: A group of inexperience henchmen lead by an elven hero took positions to fire at the fighting dwarfs and beastmen. Covered by their fire, the barbarian and the dwarf approached the battle, looking for the carriers of the treasures. The wizard used his spell of flight to find a safe spot to fire at the combatants, delaying the undead in their approach.
The battle between the dwarfs and the beastmen continued; almost unhindered by the shooting of the adventurers warband. Despite heavy losses on both sides, they kept on fighting, even when the leaders of both warband were taken out of action. Wyrdstones fell to the ground, were picked up fast by greedy hands and fell again when the next keeper was knocked down. Not even the charge of the adventurers, pitting dwarf against dwarf, made the beastmen or dwarfs reconsider and flee. The temptation of these treasures was too big to leave the battle without!

This was his moment, the vampire thought by himself, commanding two ghouls to climb towards the lone wizard on top of the ruin. Then he pushed a zombie and a ghoul forward, together charging a single slayer who just had beheaded a beastman. More zombies and ghouls followed, while the other half of the warband led by the dregs made their way through the rubbles towards the adventurers. The first dwarf and beastmen were overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but then things went horribly wrong...
The two ghouls managed to climb the ruin, threatening the adventurers’ wizard. This wizard however, turned to be a Gandalf-in-disguise/training! The first ghoul was taken out of action by a precise sling shot, the second ghoul was promptly taken out of action after charging in.

To make things even worse (from the undead perspective, that is) the vampire charged a slayer hero, only to be slammed to the ground himself...
The slayer hero then took up his axe to finish off the vampire, ignoring all undead ready to charge in, and failed horribly (Tom's dice roll resulted in a triple 1). Ghouls charged in and the slayer went down, allowing the vampire to recover and rejoin the fight.

By now, the fight was turning to the undead side. The last beastman had been taken out, just a few dwarfs remaining and the adventurers were under attack of the dregs and ghouls. The last dwarf, an engineer, was trying to make a run with six shards of wyrdstone, but was caught by a group of ghouls and zombies. On the other side of the battle field the dregs had made short work of dwarven adventurer and the noble. The vampire had regained his wits and fighting skills (finally!), charging and taking out of action the group of henchmen in collaboration with some ghouls.

After finishing the engineer, this small club of undead left the battle scene, securing the treasures. Seeing nothing was to be won, the adventurers retreated towards their home base. The undead let them go, having won the treasures and a battlefield filled with victims to feast on...

Night Goblin warband showcase

2010-02-24T16:38:00.002+01:00

All the while busy painting and playing with the slayer warband that I almost forget there is a night goblin warband. After a while letting them keep to themselves in their cave I really had to sort them lot out! Eventually got them in line for posing in front of the camera (at least some of them). So here they are in their great splendor.

My Goblin boss riding the big squig. That's a proper steed fit for a gobbo boss and if the rest of the lot does not recognize him, they will be fed to the big squig. That's how it's done in goblin society!

Can't have too little squigs in my opinion! Here is the max lot of 5 squigs, cheap, fast, fun and full of teeth!

Van Night goblins, squigs portraits for Mordheim

Of course you gotta keep them squigs under control. What better tool then tha big fork! Night Gobo's love 'em and them squigs now to stay away from them!

What is a warband with bosses to be bossed around by the big boss and who themselves can boss around the rest of the night gobbo's:

Some of the more regular night goblins in this warband:

No warband is complete without fanatics of course. I only have mini's with ball and chain but for Mordheim a big double handed weapon is more usefull. This is fun though but I'll do a conversion soon for a fanatic with something like a big doublehanded axe or something other maniacal:

Night goblins squable a lot and there's always one who forgot what they were doing and needs to ask:

WIP Dwarf Slayers

2010-02-08T09:37:00.000+01:00

Slow progress in the slayer department but there is some progress. Last post showed already a beardling that was almost finished. Now it's shield is also done. I started out with a sturdy hammer shield but messed it up with pruple twirly lines.

No dwarf material! This dwarf is funny and needs a matching shield. I created one with arrows in and a nice Bugmans logo. Fitting for a beardling of his stature.

Further progress is on the backback of one of the other dwarfs. It is coming along nicely but needs some extra layerers of shading.

Also busy with my Demonslayer that will lead this bunch of orange crested maniacs, but only the flesh parts are in progress here. These are the colors that make up the shading for him:

New dwarfs have arrived from Maelstrom games. Now a test with some other manufacturers than Games Workshop. This bulky fellow for example. I just undercoated, but he will be a very battlehardened Slayer.

WIP dwarfs

2010-01-20T21:21:00.000+01:00

While we're at posting work in progress, also some new dwarfs for the slayer warband get a painting. These two dwarfs are the followers of the slayers. They tag along the heroic slayers in search for glory and gold, gold..... and gold of course!

These dwarfs are actually quite far and since they have a lot of metal plating, the painting was relatively easy. Although the big runelord dwarf that I use for this warband has tons of runes on his armour, that is a pain to paint. With my new set of foundation paints a lot of extra colours are available which saves me a lot of mixing! This works actually a lot quicker then before. A big huray for the foundation paint set!

This second dwarf is actually a very old marauder model, but I think gives a lot of character to the slayer warband. This model definitely looks as a beardling tagging along for fame and glory but actually a bit too young for this kind of work!

WIP Graveyard

2010-01-20T21:15:00.000+01:00

Finally some new posts, it's been a while. Busy painting that is! So much painting that posting was bit on the slow side. What is going on: a graveyard is born :) First work in progress pic of the graveyard is here:

This is actually a test graveyard, before the BIG graveyard will be made. The nice citadel scenery tree is giving that extra gnarly look to the graveyard and the hirst arts walls are precisely the stone walls you see at the edge of a graveyard, at least that is how I see it. Some more painting on the earth and adding some green moss and grass, and this piece is done!

Prison Tower

2010-01-19T21:40:00.002+01:00

And finally the prison tower got a slab of paint. Painting the stone is easy and gives it directly a great and finished look. A plann to give the buildings a more weathered and run down look, but for now this tower is good for playing.
Look at them dwarfs posing around the tower, true dwarven craftmanship of course! :)

Christmas Modelling day

2010-01-15T21:24:00.000+01:00

Then there was christmas, a time where some of us were actually free and not working! The ultimate chance for a modelling day and maybe a game to conclude! A good turnout where the 4 of us were actively building and painting during the day.

I built the prison tower and Arjan was busy with his two towers project, painting that is! One is already looking great and is finished, this one is also getting a nice piece of paint and the next game I expect two nicely painted towers are there (with all these other towers it is becoming a real San Giminiano). Hans was really busy with his ruined tower, that is now a great and big piece for our games of Mordheim. The ruined tower right away got some play time the same evening with skaven running around through it!

Van A tale of some gamers

Arjen also joined the building and played around with the hirts arts building blocks. He is hooked right away and the new molds that came in will give him the opportunity to start building as well! We're looking forward to new elven structures and the like!
Look at this gaming table! A lot of buildings present and still more to come:

A gaming report still has to follow but look at everyone pondering their strategy during the game! A very good end to the Christmas modelling and gaming Mordheim day!

First 3 slayers finished

2009-12-14T21:45:00.000+01:00

It's been done. The first 3 slayers are finished painting. The final basing was quite quick and I added a pile of gold to one of the slayer bases. That's what it's all about for them orange haired axewielding maniacs!
With no further ado, here are the pictures:

The Ruined Tower - W.I.P.

2009-12-13T21:43:00.017+01:00

To prove Tom isn't the only one at work with the Hirst Arts molds, I'll post some WIP of my own little project: The Ruined Tower (mold #65). It is more or less build, just needs some paint (still have to buy black paint as I have run out...).

Let's start with some overview pictures:

In the background you can see the grinded shells that you put in bird cages which I used on the parts of the base that have no 'stone' on them. It's really cheap stuff (about 90c for 2 kilo!) and has some nice pieces of shell in them to make things more interesting.

In the mean while, Nora the cat is wondering what all the fuzz is about, she doesn't look very impressed...

These parts will be added later, 'cause it's easier to paint them unassembled:

And finally a shot from above:

I'll post more pics once further progress is being made.

Mordheim Slayer warband painting (3)

2009-12-13T18:01:00.000+01:00

And again I spent time painting 3 slayers for my Slayer warband. They were already quite far but it is all in the details. After painting the skin and the trousers it is time for painting the axes. Wood colored axes is nice but you want some wood grain, painting the axe heads first layers was with boltgun metal after which chainmail accents were put on. Badab black wash to enhance shadows and nothches on the blade.

I painted the gold items first with boltgun metal, then dwarf bronze, then shining gold an some very small accents with chainmail. This is finished with devlan mud to blend all the colors in. It gives a nice gold feel, that is worn, gives good details to all signs and runes and is overall shiny as the slayers like it!

Furthermore the leather glove and pouches was done with black, snakebite leather, graveyard earth and a blend of graveyard earth and bleached bone. Again a finish with devlan mudd. Since I got the devlan mud, everything is done with this stuf, the new washes are great! For christmas the foundation paint set is on my wishlist and I got some info that indeed it will be under the christmas tree. I can't wait how the new foundation paints handle and how they give the miniatures a start of color.

Just a few more touch ups and I will give you really nice pictures up and close of these 3 slayers in order to admire all those nice little details! :)
How much time did I spend painting these 3 dwarfs? Hmmmm just totalling up all my small paint sessions I think 6-8 hours per dwarf. That includes all tests of the blends and combination of colors.

The Haunted Orphanage

2009-12-11T20:43:00.000+01:00

A new day in Mordheim and the slayers are completely recovered from their previous battles and are hungry for their doom. If some gold was found in the process that would also be nice of course.

It was said that the there is an orphanage in Mordheim where all inhabitants were killed when the comet hit Mordheim. One of the ghosts haunting the orphanage is the wife of one of the inhabitants of Mordheim: herr von Donnersmarck. He wants his wife to find rest. Retrieving her weddingring to Von Donnersmarck would mean very much to the rich merchant. That is precisely the scenario the slayers are interested in.

They've also heard some hatefull greenskins are hunting for the ring as well as some foul undead. All those ghosts and other scum of the earth is a tempting melee to get stuck in as a slayer!

Indeed when entering the area where the orphanage is found other warbands are present and heading for the orphanage. From four sides the greenskins, some pirates, the slayers and the undead approach cautiously the battlefield. The slayers hurry towards the orphanage when on the far side one of the orcs is going ballistic and charges towards the orphanage...all alone...how brave...

The pirates take it slow and carefull while the undead again sneak onto the area of the orphanage. The slayers loud bragging and shouting are bounding towards the orphanage and quickly enter the orphanage terrain. The ghosts appear all together and crowd the somewhat startled dwarfs. Between all those dwarfs one of the sturdy clansman discovers the wife of von DOnnersmarck and quickly gets the ring. Could it be so easy and quickly be over?
Nothing is what it seems, while all the other warbands still strugle to get to orphanage the slayers start fighting the evil headmaster and other ghosts. Meanwhile the undead very swiftly and cunningly sweep towards the dwarfs to stop them from leaving the area. Two slayers intercept them with their axes. Incredible odds of 4 to one for dwarfs but it's the best thinkable situation for the slayers. THey are in thei element and start swinging their axes through undead zombies, ghouls and dregs.

Meanwhile from the other side gunshots were heard and large gunpowder clouds can be seen. The pirates are having a go at the greenskins. The greenskins do not advance that fast because they keep squabling amongst each other. When encountering some ghosts the orcs are terrified and run away in the opposite direction screaming and jibbering. Only after a very long run dare they look back to see that no ghost is chasing them. The pirates are not only gunning at the greenskins but also start for the dwarfs and on this side also a slayer runs towards these foes. Easily taking on 3 pirates single handedly the slayers keeps his ground. How many hits this dwarf parries and how many slices he gets in are uncountable (the dice were favoured by Grugni). This is truly a frenzied slayer in his element.

What is going on with the 2 slayers and all those undead? They are hacking away and getting their hits in. The vampire from the last battle again sweeps in to finish off them pesky dwarfs. No such luck, these are truly gritty dwarf slayers not to be messed with. They parry every blow and since one dwarf is now fully occupied with undead, the giant slayer leader takes on the vampire by himself. It is an incredible exchange of blows and this time the giant slayer gets his kill. Although he was seeking his doom, a vampire less in the world is a good thing.
There is the dwarf clansman who is heading for safety with the ring who is keeping out of the line of sight of the gunning pirates who are now very close. Will he be clear in a few steps or will he be shot at and stopped in the end? The slayers finnish of some more undead and pirates in the process while indeed the clansman heads for safety and delivers the ring to Von Donnersmarck.

What was going on with the greenskins this battle. They were on the field, they were crowding some pirates who got some heavy losses but further than that they weren't realy seen today. The slayers were keen to get some axes in but no such luck today.

The dwarfs leave the batllefield and go sharpen their axe blades for the next encounter, oh and they go counting their gold of course...gold, gold, gold, ..., gold, gold gold

Mordheim Slayer warband painting (2)

2009-11-25T19:34:00.000+01:00

Besides being busy with making Mordheim scenery, I'm also busy with painting a new Mordheim warband. The Troll slayers already played some games, so they have to have some color on them before the next game. I've been busy with the skin mostly and there is a lot of it with them slayers. The skin is coming along nice and muscelly (is that a word?).

The second part I'm now busy with is the beards. Also a nice piece of paintwork with lots of layers. This to ensure a good depth in beards and mohawks, it is what makes them slayers!

Finally worth mentioning is Ironfist that I've been working on. Mostly getting the posture right. I wanted the axes to be a bit further to the sides and to lean back some more. Some filing an drilling, pinning and adding some greenstuff later, this is the final result:

Mordheim tower and magice shoppe

2009-11-25T19:26:00.000+01:00

It is time to put the pictures online. A week ago 2 new buildings were made for Mordheim. From the Hirst arts round tower mold I've created a nice open tower. The closed tower as described with the mold is less playable for Mordheim, so now it is a tower that suffered from the impact of the meteor.
The second building is "The Magice Shoppe". It is the building of some strange Magister that once had his shop in the once thriving city of Mordheim. Some strange markings remain on the wall and some remaining magic items can be found in this abandoned building.
The first stage was the building of these two pieces of scenery. After some puzzling the following buildings were erected. Notice that from this side the buildings look whole. The other side is open and can be played in. In this way it looks good (it should look from both sides of course) and it is practical.

The following stage is painting and highlighting. As you can see in the following picture also a new piece of street has been made with the cracked floor mold. I put the tower on it but in the game it should be piece of street and the pavement has other texture. The tower has to have a base but that requires more casting of molds! I keep running out of the blocks, this building is addictive!

The buildings need finishing: floors, accessoires, especially the magic shop need some detailing. For now it is playable scenery and I can focus on painting some dwarf slayers.

The Gargoyle

2009-11-18T19:52:00.003+01:00

A quiet afternoon in Mordheim and the Slayers were stomping around through some backalley. They were near the plaza with the former church with the big Gargoyle on the roof. Of course more gargoyles can be found in the city of Mordheim, but this one was particular mean looking and grimy as can be. The slayers were not complete though, just a group of 5 dwarfs. The last battle at the great library had some pretty hefty casualties. Two slayers were still recovering from grievous wounds.
The group of five rummaging through the streets contained now only two slayers and 3 dwarf followers. This provides a better chance for the slayer's doom now two slayers are recovering. They were very anxious to encounter some worthy enemies. On the other side of the plaza they suddenly heard some squabling orcs. A nice warm up for the slayers! The glow of some weirdstone shards was casting a green shine on the gloomy plaza.

The slayers stopped to hear what was up nearby and better yet, how much orcs were in the neighbourhoud. When stopping they could hear not only some babbling orcs but also some pirates heading towards the ugly gargole. When they listened very carefully they heard another group approaching with some sloppy and lurching noises. Them filthy undead were approaching as well! Nice, the slayers were in their element. The 3 followers were determined but with 3 foes entering the same area, and only the five of them there...they weren't looking for their doom!
Something was going on with the Gargoyle, that much was clear. All groups were heading that way so it must interesting. The dwarfs ran through the alley towards the plaza. In the open on the far left some orcs were rummaging through some old barrels. On the opposite side of the square the pirates were entering the battlefield and to the right some feint forms of some undead were seen moving behind some windows.

One of the pirates was swinging herself 2 stories up in one tower. What was going on there? The undead seem to be weary of open areas and were cowering and hiding!
With one zombie in the open one of the slayers saw a nice fight and wanted to be there first! Since he was tattooed with a special rune enabling him to close in with his enemy very quick he got to the zombie first! The dwarf went berserk on the zombie and with some decapitated limbs, went down directly. Since a zombie losing limbs was not that uncommon, the zombie was not out yet! The other trollslayer followed behind but was not that quick as his companion.
The 3 remaining dwarfs were taking it slowly and approached the orcs on a safe distance, they might shoot them first to soften them up.
Meanwhile the orcs reached the gargoyle and started bickering in front of the statue, what were they up to?

The pirates were keeping their distance, but the cracking of a whip revealed their presence. Still the slayers could not see the other pirates but there was some small fighting going on behind a building near the plaza.
Out of nowhere some ghouls charge the slayer who is hacking at the zombie. In no time the slayer is surrounded by 4 or 5 enemies. Also the second slayer is getting surrounded by foul undead. But for the slayers it is their pint of beer, screaming their challenges they enter the fight.
The 3 other dwarfs shoot some volleys with their guns into the orcs, filling the plaza with clouds of smoke. Meanwhile the two slayers kill some undead (zombie and ghoul go down).
The orcs seem to have awakened the gargoyle with one of the pieces of weirdstone. Not only that, the lowlife orcs sent the gargoyle towards the 3 shooting dwarfs! This was a bit too much and the hammerer went down instantly. The other 2 dwarfs started resculpting the gargoyle since they have a nack with stone, but the gargoyle keeps it up (it is hard as stone :) ).
The dishounourous orcs now charge the 2 remaining dwarfs who are in combat with the gargoyle. 3 Orcs on one dwarf was a bit too much, expecially after the gargoyle attacks and he went down.
In the background the dwarfs heard a lot of gunfire from the pirates, a lot of running around and it seemed they were heading towards the orcs but still keeping a safe distance.
The slayers were occupied with undead and even more poured from the surrounding buildings. How many could be hiding there! To complete the undead fray a vampire dived from a wall onto the slayers as well. The slayers held and one even managed to get the vampire severlely wounded! 3 ghouls with swords and daggers were attacking the slayers like madmen, but the sturdy dwarf axes seemed to parry each lethal blow! Now it is the Slayers turn to return the blows to the undead and a dreg gets split in two and the vampire goes down as one of the ghouls. This is carnage, the 2 slayers are in their element and wishing the other slayers would never return to this group. More enemies for them, it does not get any better then this!

The dwarfs with the gargoyle are faring worse. The gargoyle is too quick and critically hits one dwarf. The other dwarf meets the orc boss and does not survive.
The pirates are running on the walkways. After their shooting, the orcs now take up their slings and have a go at the pirates but miss everything. Is it the orcs aim, or the pirate swiftness? One of the pirates does a diving charge into the orcs but misses completely. A big thudding noise can be heard behind a wall. A few seconds later the pirate emerges apparently unscathed and dusting himself, trying to look cool (still swaying slightly).
The orcs try to advance over the plaza but get horribly shot at before they reach the slayers. One of the orcs gets knocked down by one of the whip-carrying girl pirates.
The slayer-undead fight gets up close and personal and the vampire wakes up just in time and takes out one of the slayers. With so much foes for the one slayer that is left, it is finally too much. Still it takes a couple of dregs to let the last slayer meet his doom.
The undead are now heavily bruised and the orcs easily kill the vampire (after the slayers did all the work).

Eventually the undead route and leave the table. The only ones left are the orcs and pirates. The pirates get some casualties but are ice cold and keep their ground for some time. After some more fighting the pirates decide it is too much for them and leave on their own account.
The lowly orcs have their victory and the other warbands have heavy casualties. For the slayers it was carnage, but it is what they were looking for. The slayer warband gets only more battlehardened and have even more lust for seeking their doom in Mordheim. The slayers will be ready for the next fight!

The inside of the Towers

2009-11-15T18:49:00.012+01:00

Due to a lot of circumstances work on the two towers has not progressed that much further. However, since I got a request at Tom's Boring Mordheim forum to show the inside work, I will certainly do so ;-)
The first two pictures show the 'tower with the stairs'. This one has a (custom made, since I accidentally used the parts elsewhere) stairs that leads to the entrance. The first floor is therefor not located at ground level. I'm still not sure whether to seal off the space underneath this floor or to make some sort of dungeon or cellar underneath.

The second tower is featured on the other two pictures. This tower has the first floor on ground level, which means that even a large creature like an Ogre can enter this level. Although it wouldn't be able to use the Heroquest door ;-)

The second floor was allocated a little lower than the one in the other tower, in both cases 'normal' sized miniatures are able to stand inside the tower on the second floor(s).
The floors were made out of balsa wood, the inside walls got some 'plastering' to hide the sterile clean plastic original (lack of) plaster. The outsides of the buildings are out of the box very nicely decorated.
One of the towers was battlemented (if that's the correct word), the other got the little 'observatorium' at the roof. Both are in desperate need for a paint job (If I only had time), but have been used in Mordheim battles already. They make very useful (and nice) scenery.

Mordheim Slayer warband painting (1)

2009-11-10T22:09:00.002+01:00

The Dwarf Slayer warband is being painted! The Mordheim scenery is taking up a lot of time, fun though, but the dwarfs don't get painted in this way! The first part I started with is the dwarf skin. It has to look muscular so it will take some layers of paint to get a the muscle toning just right. The first layer was bronzed flesh after I applied flesh wash. The next is again a layer of bronzed flesh where you leave the very heavy shaded areas as they are.
Taking pictures from the dwarfs is quit difficult with a digital SLR camera and flash. The following picture you can see the shade of the lens after the flash in the picture. Still a good picture though (handy tip anyway when making macro pictures in the evening: don't use your flash so close!)

This week friday a new batlle is on the program and with the gold my slayers aquired last battle, I hired a new dwarf clansman with a brace of pistols. This results in the following great miniature:

Also worth mentioning is my new desktop LED lamp I now use for painting. It is great! The best light every, it does not turn hot has hallogen does and it only uses 4Watts of energie! How cool is that!

Modular Mordheim Buildings

2009-11-10T21:57:00.002+01:00

Quick overview in the Mordheim Building department. We're building like dwarfs overhere! With the first hirst arts molds I got a lot of 'simple' building blocks. This builds some nice and clean buildings but nothing fancy so far (al though this already looks good in my opinion). I defined some basic bases for building ruined buildings, streets and large items. This results in the following measurements of bases for our modular Mordheim building blocks:

regular building: 100 x 215 mm
street: 100 x 300 mm
large base: 300 x 300 mm

In the following picture you can find the buildings I made until now. Also the new large city centre is visible. With the fountain water has to be added and it is finished as well.

Mordheim Slayer warband basing

2009-11-02T17:41:00.002+01:00

A quick note on my bases for my new Mordheim warband: the slayers. I took some of the tiles from my hirst arts molds and painted them separately. Made some slots in them so my slayers will fit in nicely. I was a bit worried about damage to the tiles when playing because they are made from simple plaster. The paint will prevent some but I added some mat varnish and I think it looks good as bases for my Slayer warband.
Can you spot the bases that don't have varnish on them? :)

And this is how the dwarfs will look like on the bases. This is (of course) not a slayer but one of my dwarf henchmen:

modelling day results

2009-11-02T17:33:00.003+01:00

Our modelling session from a week ago was productive as you might have seen. Since then the scenery has been painted and is now ready. More new buildings added for our city of Mordheim! The first one here is the housing Ludo was making. Some nice wooden accents around the house and a very playable piece I might say.

The second building for showing you is the second warehouse I was making. It is number 2 of a set of three. As said in can be used alone or in conjuction with the other warehouses as a block of buildings.

The building Hans is working on (his church like structure) is already painted, but I'm without pics here so that one will show in some of the next posts. For now I will leave you with a small overview of the present Mordheim Scenery. This will look good on the batllefield when we are going to play on friday the 13th.

Last in a quick snapshot of the 3rd warehouse I'm making. The first floor is done and glued together. Now for the second layer and then slap some paint on and the set of 3 is complete!

Modelling day

2009-10-25T19:11:00.003+01:00

Autumn is making the days grow shorter, colder and wetter outside. This means we have to entertain ourselves inside with a day of modelling. I've been casting me new Hirst arts moulds to create a big pile of building blocks after the inn project. With this in place Hans and Ludo had time to come over for a day of building buildings. They wanted to get a go at these new building blocks and when it results in more buildings for our Mordheim games, that is a good thing!

I set up the table with all bulding blocks sorted in small boxes, put out the glue, paint, sawed some MDF bases and we were good to go. We started before noon playing around with all the blocks before glueing them into a building

Hans started maybe 3 concept buildings and destroyed them all before really deciding on building a church like ruined building. Ludo was very creative with a mosaic flooring and a nice wooden lid outside that could be an entrance to a basement of some sort.

Myself I started a project for 3 storage houses that can be put next to each other as a block of houses but also apart be separate buildings. The idea is that the centre building has 3 walls and that the left and right wall act as a wall for the other storage houses if put together. The left and right storeage house will have then only 2 major walls and act as real ruins once put by themselves on the battlefield. The 3 buildings will have a small pavement at the front and very small allyway like road at the back. Today it was the centre building I'd be working on.

I made some sketches first so building is easier. Building out of the blue is somewhat difficult because you have to build the entire concept or idea without glue first to check if it will work. And building 'dry' is very unstable :) and will get you started anew some times :).
We were using a goblin shaman as a test miniature to check the buildings sizes, windows position, etc. He will be posing in some of the pictures in this post (a real celebrity you might say :) ).

Hans decided on building a church like structure with some open walls for good playability.

No wooden flooring was needed here, but some wooden benches for this curch were made with the latches from one of the moulds. Ludo also used this concept for putting up some benches against the wall in his building. Cool concept looking good in both buildings I'd say.

My building was coming together nicely and with 3 stories high not a small building. Here you can see the concept with twoo wooden floors and both Hans and Ludo concentrated at work.

Ludo decided it would be a good idea to have nails in the flooring and started hammering away on his paint mixing tile.

The sounds were like he was hitting through the tile but nothing broke and the result is a very nice looking building here.

Some details on the curch benches here. Simple concept but coming together nicely in the church building. Keep in mind when creating these kind of small features for your building not to glue them in place before painting.

It will look like the following picature when finished but you can see here that painting this when everyting is glued together will be a nightmare if not impossible.

We did not get to painting yet after a day playing around with the plaster building blocks but the final result looks good! The concept of modular buildings that fit together (base size wise) is proving to work as you can see in this final picture. This will conclude this post of the modelling day that was relaxing, fun, productive, creative and something we will definitely repeat.
Of course the finished products will be shown here on your Mordheim building scenery blog! :)