The Rise (and fall?) of the Skirmish game

A little while ago I was driving home from another great multiplayer battle of WHFB with some fellow games. Whilst driving home I usually have 10-20 minutes on a bike, in the dark, to ponder the existance of life and other things light on the heart. I started to calculate the average number of WHFB battles that we play as a group over the year. Our vast gaming club (which in itself is a banned word) plays on average once or twice a month. Over the course of the last few years, the games we played most were by no contest WHFB and Mordheim. Two GW product but as far as size is concerned both at the far end of the spectrum. Where WHFB you typically control pretty large armies of 50-100 models or more, Mordheim instead focussing on small warbands, rarely exceeding 10 models a player! Otherwise known as the war-scale versus the skirmish game.

For some odd reason our club always seems to come back to these games. What is that about?

The Fantasy games and the other guys ...
To an outsider the wargaming community might seem like a huge bunch of nerds all addicted to the same plastic smell and paints, but nothing is further from the truth. Once you get into this community, you can see the thin line of seperation between the fantasy gamers and the historical wargamers. The former focussing on the fantasy and sci-fi themed strategic wargames that are almost purely played for sheer entertainment. Also, a lot of competition can be found here, where armybooks and rosters are generally exploited to the maximum in order to make sure victory is yours. Some gamesystems allow this happen, others are somewhat more strict but all in all it has proven to be rather difficult to create a totally balanced game.
On the other end, the wargamers usually try to have fun and stick as much as they can to reality back then. Heck, try to explain to a napoleonic fanatic why you have painted all the uniforms orange and he will probably pull out on of the many historic documents to prove you wrong. Furthermore, the target audience for these games has almost double the age of the regularfantasy wargamers. Although you might come across several age 50+ fantasy gamers, there are only a handfull of age 20- historical wargamers. Or as a friend of mine put it nicely, "I am not yet old enough to succesfully pick a favorite war/era". Said friend only passed 40 by a couple of years, so he is being excused for that.

As our members are mostly young people (average age about 35?), maybe we have not yet come to the age that changes everything. So far, the fantasy games are still winning this battle (no pun intended).

On a side note, Flames of War is slowly but surely getting a firm grip on the community with 2,5 players and rising.

Birth of the Skirmish game
To see the scale of the game in a better perspective, let us first hop back in time, to about the year 2003. At that time, fantasy wargaming was divided into two camps. 90%+ of the gamers played WHFB (6th) edition and 10% was played by other gamers who thought that WHFB was to restricted/to overpowered/to expensive/to cartoony (pick your falvour). Collectively these gamers played a lot of games, of which not a single one was effectively able to combat GW's position on that market. Other miniature companies were mostly not that professional or perhaps did not deliver both miniatures AND rules, something that GW did from the very start. Although a small percent of these miniatures certainly looked the part, since you weren't able to use them in a supplement game meant that they were basically great addons for painters, but not so much for gamers. It didn't help either that at the same time, GW had the tournament restriction of having no more than 20% of your miniatures from other companies than GW.
However, out of the blue people were introduced by USA-based Privateer Press. They introduced a fantasy skirmish variant of WHFB known as Hordes. It's 40K-alike steampunk version was called Warmachine and released almost simultaniously.

Now, by this time people had heard of skirmish games and round bases (Confrontation, necromunda, etc.) were nothing new, for the first time since a long while there was a competative, miniature-and-rules-combined game released by a bunch of people with some experience in the field that not only worked suprisingly well, but also looked the part! I fell for the marketing people straight away and bought myself a "protectorate of menoth" starter box. Back then, 2 or 3 fellow wargamers were also tricked into buying the greatest thing in existence since sliced bread. Fast-forward 6 months and I have found myself playing a single game of warmachine and about 3 of fantasy, including a small tournament.
Was the game dull? No chance!
Did we lack the miniatures? Nope, we all had starter kits at least.
Rules? Present!
Too complicated? Not a chance.

And yet somehow we never got to play beyond that one game. There was something about it that did not feal right, for a lack of better term. It didn't help either that almost no one back then in our community seemed to have an interest in Warmachine/Hordes, even though (which is brilliant in my opinion) the game systems are interchangable! Conclusion: Playing a great is only fun if you actually have an opponent or 2 to play against.

CRISIS
Fast forward to a couple of years ago, about 2011 or 2012 I'd say. Arjan attended some of us on the fair known as Crsis, which is held in november in Antwerp on a yearly basis. A rather large area filled with miniature companies of all ends of the spectrum, ranging from wild west 35 MM skirmish games to 6 MM scale epic battles with huge armies. The first time we arrived there it was all quite impressive, but it only took off the year after. Now most area's we're from have a shop that sells GW material within a 30 minute or less drive. This is almost never the case for the games we started to try out. What if ... we can play this samurai game rulesystem we found online for only 5$ using actual samurai miniatures? What if ... we can find victorian steampunk scientists for Chaos in Carpathia? What if ... we want more tanks for our Flames of War army without paying the huge shipment costs? Crisis provided an answer to all of these questions. People started making lists and whatnot to before going to crisis hoping to actually find what they required from a broad selection of salesmen and gamesystems. Even sole miniature companies saw their profit double once we passed by the stands.
This remarkable event almost single handendly made us try out a wild variaty of games. Though most games were really fresh and fun (In her manjesty's name AND Chaos in Carpathia come to mind), we kept falling back to the one thing we

played over and over; mordheim.

By the way, this is a small list of games that have passed the voting desk at some or other point, but did not quite make it with the majority of the gamers, in no particular order:

• Wild West Exodus
• Infinity
• Malifaux
• Necromunda
• Bushido
• Kings of War
• Godslayer
• X-wing
• Warmachine/Hordes
• Dystopian (Wars/Legions)
• Wolsung

Maybe it's because the majority of our community has a strong interest in WHFB/Mordheim or perhaps a general dislike in one or more of the other games that up until this present day, we still mainly see WHFB and Mordheim appear on game nights.

Ah well, can't say we didn't try :)

9TH edition and future
Currently we are on the verge of a change in the warhammer universe like no other. The new edition is beckoning and rumors are spreading effectively faster that the black plague back in the day. No one will know what the future will bring, but most of the community agrees on one thing; marketing is lacking from GW side. Rumors on round bases, skirmish style fighting and simplefying the army variant by a lot have made us all the more curious on that GW will bring out. A succesfull edition or failure? Epic battles or small scale skirmishing? Good rules or very open to interpretation?

We'll probably only be able to tell once the ruleset comes out, but you can rest assured that our community is going to play it at least once and (if we don't like it) very much fall back to a very well known game..... WHFB previous edition. :)

Finishing off this monologue I would like to invite the other community members to give their suggestions on the games to play in the near future. Something most of us, if not all, can agree on. Which by the way is a near impossible task.

Tactical is not for the Ogres

After a well earned vacation it was time to bring out the miniatures again. Too long without any wargaming/painting and whatnot :) I had enough to read with me, but it is not the same :)

My Nurgle friend and player Arjan came round and it was quickly decided to do a small game: 500 points skirmish WHFB. Of course this meant pitting some Nurgles against my Ogre Kingdom.

The fun with 500 points is, that it is quick but also you never can guess what your opponent will bring. Since 500 points means always "kill your darlings" in your army list, it is the opportunity to take something wacky or something extremely fluffy. It is therefore more often then not a "use your experimental list" type of game. One thing guaranteed: fun!

The Nurgles were with
- some Marauder horsemen
- 6 forsaken with
- 1 Nurgle leader
- 1 spawn of Nurgle
- 1 chariot

I pitted the following Ogres:
- 3 Ironfists with
- 1 butcher
- 2 mournfang cavelry
- 2 sabretusks

Of course here and there they were kitted out but not much, since 500 points is easily spent!

The table had some obstructions in the middle: buildings, fences and a mysterious forest) THe battlefield was well divided in the middle. Starting of with the Nurgles some manouvering around the obstacles was done. My Ogres were playing a waiting game in order to get charges in this turn. After 3 turns running around the horsemen killed of 2 sabretusks but I got no charges in.
Eventually I manouvered in such a way, that the horsemen were in the wrong direction for charges but my Ironguts had a clear line for the forsaken and the mournfang could flatten the spawn. The chariot was still well away, since fences and forests proved to big a barrier. OK, charges are go and ....I roled a 1 and a 3, needing more then 4 inches for the charge.... So I moved 1 inch with the ironguts with a butcher mad as hell! The mournfang flattened the spawn as was expected, but left the rest in the open.

Of course the forsaken charged next and rolled 4 on d3+1 for their attacks and wiped out the ironguts! What happened here! Tactical masterpiece on my side but totally disrupted by throws of the dice! As my opponent nicely pointed out that in 7th edition WHFB I probably would have won but in 8th it is't so :)
This is then the charme of the game, forsaken being the winners of the game and acting as a superb bodyguard for their leader. A fluffy way to play the game against a small, hard as nails, scaving group of Ogres wandering through the woods.

All in all, as expected with 500points skirmish: FUN!

More Ogres!

After painting loads and loads of dwarfs and them being so tiny, I started with some Ogres. Just to be on the other side of the spectrum. Not only painting wise but also gaming wise they are a complete different army. Not less fun to paint however. The set of Ogres I got needed some painting to do, I can field approximately 4000 points of Ogre menace not including magical items but the amount of models involved equals by nearly 2000 points of dwarfs! Should the painting go that much faster was the first thing I asked myself and first impressions this was the case. Of course painting something new induces a new drive to paint and thus taking more time to paint, hence more output in painting! Still good, the ogre army expands rapidly and I got a couple of games already to play with them. I still have to develop a feel for how to play, but each game gave me some valuable learning points and rules I forgot about to play. Also this is an army with magic opposed to the dwarfs, also something new to consider and hell of a lot of fun. The ogres are fast, hard-hitting but can still be outmaneuvered. Magic is good, leadership is rubbish. Stuff to keep in mind :) On to the painting then, I started of with a tyrant just to get a feel for ogre models and to have something nice to paint. A set of leadbelchers followed and the Tibet style color scheme proved good and clean on the ogres (clean and ogres in one sentence?). Also in the set of Ogres I bought was the best model ever: the old scrap launcher. A big contraption pulled by a large beast. Loads of gnoblars everywhere on the model to give it the lively feel of chaos and mayhem. That was the next to paint. The wood was quickly done, however I kept touching up on the wood. It had to be more grainy, more red, more yellow, but in the end it got good enough. The wood was fairly quickly done and I got the idea that only painting some gnoblars was not that much of a work. It is when each individual needed to be picked out with its own set of colors and devices. There was also the amount of metal on the model. I wanted it to be a seemingly random mix of iron and copper with its corresponding corrosion. In the end not en easy task and took a while, but worth it. The cloth where the scrap launcher rests had to be some captured flag or something so I painted the imperial eagle on it that was also on one of the shields that is being loaded as scrap to be shot at the enemy, all in-keeping with the model. I myself am happy how it turned out, however I keep on seeing stuff that can be improved. I put it aside for now and I'm moving on to next models and ways to paint, since I got me a nice airbrush set and just started painting the skin of a...GIANT!

Hell cannon insurance

Rattling noises reflected against the cliffs of the small pass as the demonic cannon was pulled by panting Dragon Ogres. Three small creatures were running around the troublesome carriage commanding and cursing in an old strange language.
'These terrible high hats better make sure the cannon will be safely transported to the fortress. We payed a high enough price for this machine.' Nurgly mumbled by himself. The chaos wizard and his warrior revenue had made the long travel into the Dark Lands to obtain the Hell Cannon. Negotiating with the Dawi'zharr was hard, but gold, wyrdstone and above all a group of captured dwarfs was a price the Chaos Dwarfs could not resist. 'The imposing war machine would be an important resource in his masters army' Nurgly observed, 'but this one looks even more menacing and tempestuous.'

The chosen path took the small detachment through a cramped mountain pass. Nurgly sent a group of scouts ahead. They took off on their horses towards the left flank and some time later their horns could be heard in the distance, raising the alarm. After a small curse Nurgly organised the battle line. He could feel the presence of magic forces nearby, even of a kind of magister he had not encountered before. Stretching out in the palanquin, he scanned the pass. There were some arcane ruins halfway, but the forces he felt were stronger... With a small kick he commanded the Nurgling mounts forward. The warriors followed, leaving the Dragon Ogres to guard the precious cannon and it's crew.

On both flanks forests hid the enemy, but in the centre a group of Ogres was spotted, carrying what seems to be barrels on their shoulders. 'Curses, those dumb brutes.. I would have been happy to recruit them' went through the mind of the wizard 'let's hope they're few in numbers...' Behind him the chaos cannon roared and fired, spitting a foul projectile towards the ogres. The shot missed and the demon inside the machine screamed and grumbled. 'Hopefully those high hats will keep it under control!' Nurgly crackled.

The Ogre unit marched nearer and from the woods on the left flank two giant tiger like creatures emerged, threatening the marauder scouts. 'Move a little closer to those' came from the mouth of the wizard before he descended in deep concentration. Dark energies were folded up into a powerful spell, hitting one of the sabre tusk, killing it instantly. Moments later the scouts hurled a volley of axes towards the second beast, with the same effect. The Hell cannon added to this by hitting the lead belcher's. The ogres only took one wound, but the impact of the shot made them panic.

However the Ogres did not give in that easily. The lead belchers rallied and with a agile move occupied the center position again, bringing Nurgly and his group within shooting range. Even worse, from the forest on the right flank a massive group of Ogres broke out, being led by a huge Ogre. In this unit Nurgly spotted his adverary, a Butcher. 'Fire at them' Nurgly had jumped up and screamed in the direction of the Hell cannon crew. The chaos dwarf tried to turn the warmachine toward the Ogre unit. But then the demon bound inside the cannon jumped at the change. The spirited machine broke loose and devoured the three chaos dwarfs!

Things went downhill for the Nurgle worshippers. Nurgly and his revenue took two salvo's of cannon fire from the ogre cannon carriers. And how hard the chaos wizard tried, his magic powers could not overwhelm thite raw forces of the ogre magic. The winds of magic caused more victims amongst his bodyguard (despite that the Butcher was one time lucky to escape with just a wound left). Manoeuvring hard to keep his revenue out of charge range of the big block of Ogres, Nurgly saw the Hell cannon stampeding towards them! The ogres took their change/bait and charged the broken free demonic warmachine. A terrible clash broke out. The hell cannon was damaged by impact hits and the attacks of the butcher and his ogres. But somehow it survived, the demon was still bound to the carcass of the machine, howling and twisting. With a final move it puked out the remains of its venomous ordnance, killing the butcher!

The stubborn and murderous fight of the hell cannon turned out to be the pivoting point of the battle. Not only did the Ogres lose their general, their main unit was stuck too long in battle with the war machine and was outmanoeuvred by the unit of dragon ogres. These creatures charged into the rear of the big block of ogres and despite losing a dragon ogre in the fight, wounded enough ogres to break them. Simultaneously Nurgly and the remains of his unit chaos warriors charged like they were blessed by Khorne (rolling 11 on their distance roll where a 9 or 10 was needed). The lead belchers were overwhelmed and broken. In one and half turn the battle had turned completely, even the late arrival of a Gorger could not change the outcome...

Nurgly sighed as he walked around the remains of the hell cannon. A bubbling puddle of reeking mud indicated the place where the Ogre general had been submerged by the spit of the demon. Some nurglings were paddling in it and swarming over the twisted and bruised metal barrel and parts that once formed a mighty cannon. With a sudden kick Nurgly send one flying into the mouth of the barrel and a swallowing noise could be heard, followed by a hiss of steam. 'Let those prisoners take the barrel and as many parts as they can carry' the wizard ordered. The warriors and dragon ogres forced the group of captured ogres to comply. The small caravan took off, back towards the Dark Lands. 'Hopefully those pesky high hats will be able to repair the cannon' Nurgly thought 'perhaps I could claim that this should be within insurance regulations?'

Battle for the Kitchen

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)

Dwarf miners regiment

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.

new slayer here

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.

Showcasing some new finished dwarfs

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.

New Slayers

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).

Review: Felix and Gotrek first omnibus

A blog about Mordheim gaming is linked to stories of fabled heroes wandering the realms. Therefore I found it appropriate to add a small review of the latest book I'm reading.


The stories of Felix and Gotrek exist for some time and they are now available in a handy paperback omnibus (there are 2 actually, the second omnibus I also have, but first this one has to be read of course). As said an omnibus containing 3 books, giving you approximately 800 pages of reading material. I'm now half way the first book and I have to say it reads quickly (more info on the book on amazon).
For those of you who don't know who Felix and Gotrek are: Gotrek is a Trollslayer and Felix a human with some noble (educated) background. The story is that Gotrek saved the life of Felix (he was almost trampeled) and they got drunk and took a blood oath. Since then Felix is sworn to follow Gotrek to note down his heroic adventures and write down the story of Gotrek and how he eventually dies in some epic fight. The Trollslayer has undergone some crime in which he lost his honor and now he is sworn to roam the lands to meet his death in some fight against a truly big enemy.
Felix and Gotrek take up all kinds of adventures in this first book. It mostly are small quests where they start in a city, adventure out in the lands and mountains, find some gang of beastmen, chaos warrios, troll, slay them and head back to a city. In that sence it is a bit tedious that the same concept returns. But reading the fights they get in is high tension reading and a lot of fun.
I was already thinking of starting a dwarf Mordheim warband and when reading Felix and Gotrek this becomes more and more appealing. The dwarf society (and specifically the trollslayer) is definitely a good idea to start a warband with. Also reading this book gives some background on how dwarfs also venture to cities and are not alone to be found in the mountains burrowing deeper and deeper! I think the new dwarf warband will have a Gotrek theme around it.
When I'm a bit further in the book a new update will follow. Tips for other books are welcome of coarse!