A few more goblins

Here is the last batch of goblins I finished before we played the Blood in the Mud scenario. They are all of a very nice vintage, however, I must admit that the star among them is the standard-bearer. He is, of course, sculpted by the always enigmatic Bob Olley. I love this mini and the two-faced banner, which Goblin Lee rightly has pointed out, is very reminiscent of something Ian miller could have created.

As with the other orcs and gobbos I finished over the last months, I changed the skin tone slightly to make them more diverse. There is really no plan to the colours I choose, which is a bit of a gamble, but in the end, I mostly like the result and I really appreciate the diversity this adds to the gobbos.

Now it is time to work on new painting projects, which I am fairly excited about, as greenskins have started to bore me rather much.

 

Blood on the Snow… or the mud

A few weeks ago we had the chance to play the 2^nd ed. WFB scenario called “Blood on the Snow” by Matt Connell, published in White Dwarf 91 (1987). It is a four player story which, at least on the surface, pitches dwarfs and humans against a band of respectively orcs and goblins. It is a rather fun scenario with lots of potential as each player has objectives, which very likely will run contrary to otherwise obvious alliances.

The backstory is basically that a keep, built to guard a cave connected with the cult of Sigmar, has fallen into the hands of vile greenskins. The keep was manned by dwarfs, when it was overrun, and now two small armies of men and dwarfs trying to reclaim the place from the invaders.

My battered copy of White Dwarf 91 (1987)

The scenario takes place during the early winter and it thus suggests the use of snow terrain, which is cool, but I did not have any and we therefore renamed the scenario “Blood in the Mud” and placed the story during the early spring instead, when the valley was filled with mud, not snow.

Beyond this change I also added a few components to the individual armies in order to create a bit more diversity and invest the game with further dynamics. A few simple things, such as giving the orcs an owlbear for instance. Otherwise we ran the thing more or less as written. With some banter, beer drinking and smoke breaks it took us roughly seven hours to play, which was longer than expected, but perfectly doable for a Saturday where we began around noon.

The table lay-out as depicted in White Dwarf

It was a close shave, but in the end the dwarfs and humans conquered the keep and kicked the orcs and goblins out of the valley. This was by no means a given and the game thus had a lot of great tension. The overall winner was the human fraction, who succeed in gaining most of their objectives, and the bigtime loser was the orcs who undoubtedly have the toughest task in the scenario, as they pretty much are left to defend the keep while the goblins are allowed to roam the battlefield as they please.

If interested, you can find the individual rosters here:

Blood in the mud_dwarf roster

Blood in the mud_human roster

Blood in the mud_orc roster

Blood in the mud_goblin roster

And here you can see the checklists for the individual objectives:

Blood in the Mud_Victory Points

For the whole backstory you will have to dig out the old issue of WD.

This is what the game looked like. I am sorry for the slightly dark pictures. We played in a somewhat murky room, which did not allow for good photos.

The battlefield as it looked in our interpretation

The armies are advanciong

 

Singing pilgrims on their way to free the captured Cave of Sigmar

Dwarfs marching into the valley

 

The goblins rushing out from their Winter camp in Sigmar’s sacred cave which probably would need a reconsecration after having housed the little gobbos for an entire winter

Wolf riders were the first to leave the cave. Note the stone thrower in the background. This machine really proved lethal during the game

Wolf riders again

Humans moving into the valley

Orc archers leaving the keep to take up a position outside the walls

Humans advancing through the small farm established by the dwarfs in the valley

Orcs with spear ready to defend the bridge

Wolf riders fleeing in panic through the farm after having been hit with a stone from their own stone thrower…

Goblins fleeing towards the advancing dwarfs after having seen their wolf ridring friends on the run

The owlbear slowly moves across the bridge

The dwarfs have to make up their mind – should they face the owlbear or go straight for the bridge?

The troll, a part of the goblin army, was more or less stupid the whole game, but it still managed to hassle the human troops quite a lot.

The dwarfs ready to cross the bridge

Humans and goblins clashing

Human Archers and men-at-arms fighting the stupid troll who kept regenerating wounds

Enemies facing each other while arrow flew both ways

Goblins approaching the dwarfs

The dwarf crossbows succeeded in killing enough orcs to make them flee back into the keep, which inflicted more panic and thus dissolving the orc force, leaving the keep wide open.

The final combat ends. The pious monks ran the last goblin unit off the table and thereby the cave and the keep was recaptured from greenskins

 

Brunhilde Oldhammer-style

One of the many lighthearted minis produced by Citadel back in the day is definitely this so-called barbarian, sculpted by one of the Perry brothers, I believe, and released in ‘87. The model is funny and delightfully absurd it its use of the Viking tropes culled from Nineteenth-Century historicism. The template for the pompous lady is of course the character of Brunhilde from Wagner’s “Ring”, specifically as Brunhilde was portrayed by Amalie Materna (1844-1918). Or at least how Materna later came to be received in popular culture as the archetypical ‘fat opera singer’ as in ‘it ain’t over till the fat lady sings…’ etc. Sadly the mini was not sculpted with the iconic wings on Brunhilde’s helmet, but it is still close enough to be a clear homage.

The glorious Amalie Materna (1844-1918) as Brunhilde.

As to the mini itself I did a fairly simple paintjob, going for a reuse of the same colours on her shield and at the bottom of her robe. A slight unevenness in the sculpting of the face, combined with her round cheeks, makes her face rather hard to finish in a satisfying way. Somehow she looks a bit cross-eyed no matter how you do the eyes, but I guess this is part of her charm. I enjoyed painting her anyway, and I am glad to have her in my collection.

Some time ago Foundry rereleased her along with other classic barbarians from Citadel. Mine is a Citadel original, but it certainly is nice to have her available again at, if not little money (this is Foundry we are talking about), then at least a cheaper price than what we often see on Ebay.