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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!