Light and heavy support

Finally some reinforcements arrive for my russian/czechoslovak tank army. Three hard hitting SU-85's and five (slightly less useful) T-70's.
With these vehicles ready, I'll start painting their adversaries, german Waffen SS troops. (Unless I happen to find a 1:144 Lavotchkin La-5 for some air support...)

The business side of the SU-85's..

.. the T-70's holding a picknick (in the town center of Zwolle?)

Chaos in Carpathia, our first attempt

About a year ago we purchased the rules for chaps in Carpathia. Also a year ago we purchased the mini's that we were going to play for this game. Our warbands were collecting dust ever since :) But now was the time to dust of the old rules and get the game started. Something different then the ever present Mordheim, WHFB and whatnot. Since it was our first game, we chose a simple scenario within the city just to get to know the rules a bit. 3 warbands were present: Vampires, Witchhunters and my own warband: werewolves. I actually had some time this year to paint them, so fully coloured my warband members took to the battle field. My assylum inmates were some victorian ladies that banded with the wolves. The leader of the pack is the "dottore" in human form, but with the wolf features to distinguish him from a regular human. This post will from the werewolves point of view obviously. First thing I noticed with the werewolves was there movement. Specifically the enormous movement available to them (maybe I'm a bit biassed by playing with dwarves). Anyway, the werewolves were running around on buildings and parapets en suddenly getting shot at by vampires (or there henchmen). The order of play is refreshing. Every time a character or group moves, shoots, fights etc. until the next warband character or group can make its actions. This gives a good sence of everything happening at once. The werewolves were running and hiding while the witchhunters and vampires quickly got to grips with each other. It was a matter of who got control of the mob of our scenario. Nice to see influence working and a mob swirling back and forth. Eventually the withhunters got control of the mob after they lost a victim to it. My werewolves were getting in combat with the vampires and slayed some bloodsuckers. The combat mechanics gave us at first the idea, that all warband stats and members were very evenly matched. It took a while before a casualty fell in hand to hand combat. My wolf pack suffered a big loss at the beginning leaving only 2 wolves but they held out in the next rounds of combat. I found that odd, since their vitality (life) is measured by the amount of wolves left. Apparantly their stats were enough to survive and getting no wounds. The vampires had a bad time against the wolves, the fact that the withchunters were harassing them, wasn't helping either. All in all a fun game and our first contact with the game mechanics of Chaos in Carpathia. Defintely a game we will pick up and start a campaign with. For me, new wolves have been painted and the warband grows! :)

My first Ogre

It's been a while since I last posted about painting. I got a good deal on an Ogre army that a friend had lying catching dust. Parts sparsely painted and all undercoated, it was a great painting project.
Ogre painting has started! The first I got to the painting table was this tyrant. Much trial and error on painting loads of skin. My first oxidation on copper painted, in short a lot of firsts and a lot of new techniques to be learnt. I have now something of a paint scheme: Tibetan style ogres on ice they are my working title. The ice\snow bases are somewhat under test still, but they will get there.
Be prepared to see more Ogre posts on the blog. More important, be prepared for my first Ogre battle! I have 3500 points of Ogre goodness and the first painted Ogre skirmish army should be finished soon.

My opponents be warned, one of these days I field my Ogreeeeees!

Mordheim: the writing on the wall

posting on the blog has started again. I have been very busy painting the last few months. I didn't post to this blog however. Also have been playing some warhammer battles but again no posts. The medium twitter I have used for posting paint stages and quick progress during battles. However, from now on new posts since the blog can handle way more text and thoughts and pictures than a single twitter post can. This weekend started with an evening of playing one of our favorite games: Mordheim. We are trying to come up with a quick version of Mordheim so it will be easier to attend a game. No more lengthy pre and post Mordheim sessions. Just show op and start playing.The scenario was quickly chosen: the writing on the wall (already played this one a while ago, but it seemed a good one considering the 3 warbands).The warbands attending this night were the Inquisitors, the orcs&goblins and my new war band the Marienburg Mercenaries.

The writing on the wall was dead centre of our city gameing board. Each band started in its own corner and it was a run towards the writing!The big mansion in the centre had a massive square in front. The one squig from the greenskins bounced first on the square and one of the Ogres (both mercenaries and inquisitors had one!) managed to immediately flatten the bouncing ball of teeth (baseball style).

The ogres moving forward with the gobbo arrerz taking position, gave the inquisitors opportunity to let loose the dogs. Ferocious as the dogs are they tear apart 2 orcs! A shaman gets into contact with the mercenary ogre, this was short lived...for the shaman.

The gobbo arrerz are shooting away and manage to pincussion the inquisitor Ogre. Arrows hitting home some flesh and wounding the Ogre, but also one by chance entering the eye, lodging in the tiny brain and flattening the ogre outright! What a shooting there!The greenskins are losing members each turn now and eventually they route the battlefield. Almost one of the orks read the writing on the wall (or its equivalent of reading that is!)

In the meantime the mercenaries had 2 marksman on a walkway shooting away. One with a hunting rifle realy taking out some orks here and there. The inquisitors saw this threat as well and sent out 3 'commandos' to get up there and silence the marksmen. This proved difficult since climbing up the building was no easy feat. The witch casting a curse was also not helping in getting some stuff done. The marksmen keep shooting away!

Now the rest of the inquisitors get into the alley direct in front of the marksmen. The one with the hunting rifle even singled out the grand master in killed him with a master shot. This proved a turning point in the battle. The dogs try to disturb the concentration of the mercenary captain while reading, but his Ogre bodyguard proved a real bodyguard and the dogs were no match. The bodyguard was a very good investment since he really got all harassment for the captain out of the way. The mercenaries were kitted out with marksmen and a lot of (dueling) pistols, so very shooty. Some muscle (ogre) and magic (the witch) proved the perfect combination for the warband because they won the game and not losing a single member!

Suddenly nothing happened

.. and all was quiet on the blog..

So, in the hope of getting refinding the habit of blogging, here's a little update on my wargaming activities..

Our Mordheiming activities became lower with more people getting interested.. Arjen, Tom and I played one last game several weeks ago. We tried out some ideas of having a 'paperless campaign'. Our Mordheim campaigns normally have a small core of players showing up most of the time and a bigger group of people occasionally dropping by. After some rounds of gaming the experience based improvements of the frequently playing warbands makes those almost unbeatable for warbands with less experience.

Our new approach of just letting the warband captain (or even a hero chosen by the player?) will hopefully solve this problem. Additionally it will also drastically decrease the time and administration needed for all the post battle aftermath. Off course the back side will be that a lot of the fun of upgrading and rearranging of the warbands will be lost. And there will be some problems when combining this (lack of) system with campaigns like the wonderful Bordertown Burning. We'll just have to figure out all these things...

Another flip side we hope to explore is the 'cross system' use of the warband lead characters. Since our system will focus on them, the role-playing aspect will hopefully increase. With some small tweaks on the stats it should be possible to use them in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or Dungeon/Warhammer Quest! (There will be some serious searching in the attic...) They could even turn up in a game of Warhammer (a game of what was that again?).

So there, my thoughts on the Mordheim plans.. (now back to painting those damn T-70's for FoW....)

Pink is my new obsession

When I started painting my Battlefront IS-2 tanks, a plan to do one as the (in)famous Pink Tank from Prague got stuck in my head. Years ago, around 1991, I visited Prague and I remember seeing the tank, that was in those days still on it's original location. Nowadays it is displayed in the military museum of Lesany (which I still have to visit :-P )

After painting four IS-2 tanks in a 'normal' Russian green scheme it was both nice and a bit tricky to do this one pink, without transforming it into a Slaaneshi type of equipment. The idea is to use it in Flames of War as an objective (and as fifth IS-2 tank in case of emergencies). So it had to be a sort of 'realistic pink'. Well the results are down below, feel free to let me know what you think...

Victorious dwarfs!

It has been a while since we have been playing...well...any game really. It is a bit quiet at the gaming front so we decided to play a quick game of WHFB!
We are still learning the 8th ed. rules as we go along. We still play too little!
I investigated what I have painted in dwarf numbers and came up on around 1800 points. We decided to do a game of 1815 points as it is the year of the battle of battles: Waterloo.
With 1815 points I actually could start choosing what troops and what equipment and of course what runes! I went for the variety of troops with a big block of 30 dwarf warriors and small blocks of hammerers, iron breakers, thunderers, miners and even some slayers. A canon, a grudge thrower and a gyrocopter to top it off with some war machines.

My opponent had the warriors of chaos. He had a big block of chaos warriors and a large amount of flagellants to make up the core of the army in points. This time he went for a wizardy army with a level 4 warlock and level 1 wizard. Supported with two groups of 3 ogres and a group of dragon ogres this was a maneuverable army. Usually I got a hell cannon to take care of but not this time.
The battle field was the battle for the pass and a river split up the terrain in two. Some tower, buildings and stones made up the rest of the battle field. In the beginning the dwarfs laid back and started shooting. Only the warriors of chaos were within sight and with one canon shot a couple of the warriors were shot. Luckily the look out sir saved the chaos sorcerer this time! The dragon ogres crossed the river as the first troops and directly lost one! The rest sprinted towards the forest and a grudge thrower shot killed another one.

More movement of the warriors of chaos over the river was quite the disaster. The block of warriors was decimated with 5 of them dead. The ogres crossing the river, killed 2 and got a lot of wounds. The cannon and grudge thrower proved worthy killing more warriors. Two ogres charged but not quite made it. The thunderers let loose a volley of shots killing one outright. The remaining ogre was eventually finished by the hammerers.

In between these physical battles magic flowed freely. My rune smith with a rune of balance and rune of spell breaking dispelled nicely. No real damage from all the spells chaos fired at me. And all that remained in play I could dispel in my own turn. No rune lord needed yet!
The dragon ogres were eventually in charge range of the slayers. The orange beards charged and battle commenced. THey didn't fare as well as I hoped. My dragon slayer was not that good or not that lucky this time. But they died a heroic death. The gyro was also harassing the ogres and mad quite the wounds but was finished of quite swiftly in the beginning of the battle.
My block of dwarfs, iron breakers and hammerers were still very inactive and threatening but no action seen. The chaos warriors were only with 2 left and the sorcerer was killed in action. No ogres left and only some marauders this was the end of the battle.
Solid victory for the dwarfs! Lots of ale commenced!

My learning points were to be ready for the magic. This time I was "lucky" I think. But with around 2000 points a rune smith with anti magic runes is definitely needed.
My grudge thrower had no runes and should have had a rune of accuracy and penetration to do a lot more damage. Now a lot of shots went wide and did no damage. More of that and maybe lose the iron breakers for now. They'd seen no action. The dwarf warriors also had no action with BSB in them but maybe because they were so imposing on the battle field!