A productive day

It was the day in december. The air was cold outside. A perfect day for...painting and scenery building! The last week I was casting a lot of bricks with our hirst arts molds. Starting the day it was sorting out the pile of bricks.

The table was set up for scenery building, bricks and everything were flying around and creative was flowing freely. The result is some 2 buildings and the arena tiles have now 4 more parts. Only an other half of the arena needs building and it is done. Even painting the stuff we were able to do before the end of the day. Here some snapshots on the setting of the day. The buildings and more details will follow when all painting has been done.

Dwarf miners regiment

Yes, it has been done. 10 Dwarf miners are painted and ready to fight. Slowly but surely my WHFB Dwarf army takes shape. Inexorably slowly that is, but it is happening. Well what is there to say about this lot.

It's a bunch of miners, they are looking nice and grubby with their candles. Painting was some work because of all the fine bolts and details that had to be painted gold.

I'm very curious how they will play in a game. The steam drill and maybe some tnt sticks will make them a force to be reckoned with. Maybe they will help us to digg us out of the huge amounts of snow that is falling the last couple of days :) Good weather to stay inside and some painting and other modelling jobs.

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!!!

Hey! Isn't that Loki?

.. or what's his name, the other dead slayer?? :-)

Just added another piece to the 'Dungeon series' that features a 'tomb for yet another dead slayer'. Could not resist to build this one after reading Hans'suggestion. The tomb is in memory for poor Loki who fell at the hand of the Possessed.

Miners and a runesmith sneak peak

A quick update on the painting front. For WHFB 8th I'm painting a 750 point dwarf army. It's going slow, but it's going. I managed to finish 5 miners and yesterday painted a runesmith. The miners are completely done but the runesmith needs basing though. Still I took a couple of quick snapshots to keep you guys happy. Here they are!

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:

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 :-)

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:

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.

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!