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!