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!

More slayers and miners in progress

After a couple of weeks having a good flow of painting and posting on the blog weekly, I skipped last week. Of course there was miniaturemonday last monday, but no related post. Was painting a little less as well last week therefore no real progress but now the finished product in detail. It is always good to have more slayers so here are another 2 of the guys.

We have greybrow greenpants to the left and his mate to the right. Been painting with more highlights now, so the texture becomes more explicit. Hairs and skin becomes more crisp, more comic-y.


And the miners are in progress. Been painting these old miniatures and they are fun. They have comic all over them, big nose, big head and big hands! I have 9 of the guys so my 10 miners regiment will be expanded to 19 in a while!

What you see in the middle is my miners unit filler. A great way to expand regiments quickly and give character to your army at the same time.

WIP iso the finished product

Well well well, it's been a week. I've been posting a lot of finished products lately. Just a matter of a flow in painting them mini's. Eventually you end up with a lot of WIP's again because the rest is all finished. This is now the case. And in keeping with the weekly posting on this blog I'm bringing you all up to scratch.

First up is 2 dwarf slayers. Started with the black undercoat and skin. Skin is pretty much done, but I'm not really happy with it. Tried some stuff with my own washes (very thinned down paints). The end result is not really what I had in mind, but I'm continuing anyway with the hair for now. Maybe the finished product will look better. On the other hand it's just painting more slayers in order to get a decent size group on the battle field. Here I don't need prize winning mini's although I strive to of course.



Ahhh, the miners. Old school metal ones that is. They are great. Got me 3 sets of 3 miners to let the set of 10 grow bigger for my dwarf army. These guys have the big comic heads and large noses with the oversize candle on their helmet. These will be cool! Just base coat black and first dry brush of metal.


Hey this is no dwarf! Sneaked right into this post. Just to keep you up to date: dark elf assassin primed and ready for more paint. THinking about a color scheme here. Probably blues as the sorceress or greens in keeping with the magical theme. COme to think of it, I might do red here since it is an assassin!


Unit filler! First real unit filler I'm making. I have lots of small sets of goodies painted on small bases but this one is with mining theme in mind. It can count for 4 miners. Good stuff these miners plastic sprues have truckloads of extra mining goodies. My metal miners will also get an extra lantern, spring charge or whatnot on their base!


COLD ONE! watch it there! :) Can't resist, painting cold ones. THis one is getting a dark elf knight with the small dragon on its shoulder. The model is so cool! I haven't decided what arm to give him yet. If you have any idea's they are welcome!




Finally the last update is about the dwarf warriors. Primed them a while ago when they were put together. These guys are really slow going. 16 guys is a mountain to paint :) They provide the best distraction in between painting all other projects. I got 6 dwarf warriors the first metal highlight (10 more to go). Still when metal and skin is done, all is left is some small strips of cloth and brass and gold details. Should be easy going from there on.

Dark elfs take over: another dark elf sorceress painted

Well isn't that something. Again a dark elf post and not a dwarf post. Painting progresses quickly with the dark elves. Of course this is the case when painting only single miniatures and this is no exception. Still good fun to paint. I'm starting to get the hang of skin tones and magical green stones and wands :) Also painting very small arcane lettering is becoming better and better. And now for the showcase, her she is:


What should be up next. Yesterday I bought a dark elf assassin and 3 sets of old school dwarf miners. Also on the shelf are the 9 old school dwarf rangers that are begging me to paint. What to pick up for the next show case (and #miniaturemonday on twitter!).

Young white dwarf reader

My little boy is a keen reader. He has now a phase he climbs on the couch with a book and wants to read alone. He found my white dwarf laying around and found it very interesting reading material. I even read him a good part of the magazine when he was a bit tired. Apparently very soothing reading stories there :)

Latest dark elf pictures

After painting a lot of dwarfs it was time to do something completely different. Of course the dark elf painting was present here and there, but recently I've been painting 2 dark elves in a row. Dwarfs are awaiting some paint on my paint station.
Painting the dark elves gets the creativity flowing because it requires different paint schemes and techniques. A "start" of a new war band/army lets me experiment more with painting techniques as well. Thinking about colors and what will work. Thinking about bases and settings and scenes really gives you the creative kick you nice in a while need for painting the army you are busy with.
Good news for the dwarfs that is! They will get all the new ideas and paint schemes and whatnot...when I start painting them again that is. 16 dwarf warriors are only base coated and awaiting the paint treatment, they will be picked up sooner or later :)

For now the dark elves. I already painted Malus Darkblade a while ago and now was busy with a dark elf sorceress on a cold one. My background for the dark elves will be cold ones. The more cold ones the better! I was a bit stuck with dark elf sorceress but got further with some tips and tricks here and there and here are the most recent pics!


Started with another sorceress but this time without cold one. Actually I bought the model under the impression it was a fine cast model (my first, a first test it had to be), but it wasn't. Just a detailed plastic model of a dark elf sorceress. Fun to paint. Started to evenings ago and this is the current work in progress. The occult markings on the cloth are there. They will get a bright green edge to them (this is only the outline layer).

The face needs the eye and mouth done and the brass only has its first 2 layers. They will be worked up to gold with mithril silver sparkle edges.Base is going to be stone with ice/snow just as with other dark elf sorceress on the cold one. Ice and snow will be the setting for all future dark elves.

I bought myself another cold one with a dark elf knight the other day. The local hobby shop had 3 blisters for the price of 2. Couldn't resist buying some old school dwarf rangers and tipped in the cold one knight as the "free" blister! Coolness!

To Prague

At the start of the year I made one (of many) resolutions: To paint a Flames of War army in time for the late war tournament in Huissen. However, due to some calendar issues (carnival) the tournamens was moved a week. Because of this I won't be able to compete, since the tournament now coincides with our holliday trip to Prague.

However I'm very happy and proud that my paint resolution was completed in time and with good result. Four IS-2 ("Stalin") tanks are now ready for action and with the new Red Bear rulebook just two or three would (pointwise) fit in my army.





On the internet I found a very nice picture of the same type of tank of the Czechoslovak tank army driving into Prague. I hope mine miniatures will do as good as this ones!

One of the sites I was hoping to visit in Prague was the Lešany museum, to look at the real thing. However it turns out that the museum is closed during the winter.... (Which gives another good reason to visit Prague during summer again :-)
So Í'm probably not going to see a lot of tanks in Prague, since even the famous pink one is also located in the museum nowadays..

Mass Mordheim scenario: Treachery

The regular war-games group that you find on this blog, each have contacts to other players. We decided it was time to get everyone Mordheim-enthusiast together for a big game! The turn out was very good with 6 players. Even when not intended to play you were forced a war band an join in.
The scenario was Treachery and suited a large battle the best. All warbands start with some members in reserve so the battle field is not completely crowded from the start and reinforcements are dosed through the next turns.

This post will not be a direct battle report but just an impression on the night of gaming. It was a good point all our new scenery was finished and ready for playing since we needed a large battle field. My game table seems to becoming too small for these kind of games!


All six war bands started out very carefully hiding behind all buildings. Sneaking about a bit here and there some shots were fired but nothing big happened. The first hits exchanged were from some witch hunters. On the far ends some orcs and goblins were lurking and also the feathery chaps Averlanders were starting to show up here and there. The sturdy dwarfs were walking into the battlefield with no real fear. Confidence is everything.

Eventually more shots from crossbows, longbows and the black powder weapons were fired all over the battlefield, causing enough wounded to halve the war band members present. Clashes here and there eventually lead to the routing of 2 war bands after each other. THe remaining war bands exchanged some blows and all of a sudden only 2 war bands were left: the dwarfs and the orcs and goblins. Since the treachery scenery is one with alliances based on a deck of cards: the remaining war bands turned out to have an alliance (how unlikely this may seem).


It was a cool battle with lots of fun scenes everywhere on the battlefield. A good evening with all war-game fanatics. The future holds a lot of promising new opponents for Mordheim, Warhammer, maybe even 40K, necromunda and all other games we all play! The first game of the year gave us a good setting for the rest of this year. It will be good (maybe we even have to start a club?!).

inspiration needed: dark elf sorceress on cold one

This cold one project is one of those side projects running along other "main" projects. I always keep such a model on the side to spend some painting time on when waiting for other paint to dry.
This dark elf sorceress featured in some of my posts but now gets its own attention.

The reason for this being, I'm a bit stuck how to progress. Of course I can continue to fill in the remaining details: eyes, a book, some gems, the base of course. But still it seems to somewhat empty here and there. So I just throw it out here for all to see, and maybe get some great tips or inspiration on how to finish this model.

Building progress

Tom already posted some messages about our scenery building day, so here's a little follow up about my results.

Lately my paint and modelling works have been a bit delayed by the stream of incoming books of the local library. The current system of online searching the catalogs of several libraries combined and ordering books (for free!) has an increasing impact on my spare time. (Currently I'm reading 'Song of Wrath'). The system however contains a level of unpredictability: Books will arrive, but you never know when. Last weeks several books I ordered months ago all of sudden arrived together, claiming lots of time...

Despite this, I managed to finish two buildings for Mordheim that are showed here below. Other overly ambitious plans concerning Warhammer, Carpathia and above all Flames of War models were delayed...


The first building is a sort of small temple like structure, located on a peninsula. The building has a typical shape that just 'happened to be' when I was playing around with the Hirst Arts blocks.

Perhaps "temple of the A's" is a good name for this piece(?). I hope the construction will prove to be strong enough to withstand all violence that will take place here :-)

The second piece is also on a 'standard' 20 * 20 centimeters square; it's a main road guarded by four small 'towers'. A smaller path crosses the main road in the middle of the board. This path has two doors the sides, that can be opened (or smashed in for that matter).

What I really like is the look of the entrances to the small path from the outside of this building. A nice place for a nice ambush or a daring opportunity for a pick pocket expert...

Enter at your own risk!!

Progress on the werewolves warband

First of all: Happy new year! May it be a year full of original paintwork, artful scenery and many a slaughterfest!

In this post some small progress on the werewolves war band for Chaos in Carpathia. The base was already finished and here are some more members of the band. First up is the doctor! He is done! This is the human form of one my werewolves. A mean looking, mysterious character it has turned out to be. I'm quite happy with him. He posed many a trouble with painting all the different shades of black.


Two additional women for my wolves are up now. Two victorian ladies with the weaponry to boot! Evil in the making I'd say. They look so lovely and sweet but are really the wolves in sheeps clothing.


As a special treat some progress on the dark elf sorceress on the cold one. She appeared in one of the previous posts here and wanted you to give a peek how she is turning out.