10.18.2010

BTB: Discovered Treasure

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:

10.16.2010

Into the dungeons!

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 :-)

10.14.2010

SideProject: The Luggage

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:

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.