9.21.2010

BTB: Wyrdstone pool

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.

9.09.2010

Beware of pickpockets ....

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!

9.07.2010

Three in a row

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

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.

8.15.2010

BTB: Rat Race

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.

7.31.2010

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.

7.20.2010

Outside gaming

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!).