S.O.D. a success

This weekend a little meet-up, somewhat ambitiously called Scandinavian Oldhammer Day (S.O.D), took place in Copenhagen at the fittingly named Rogue Trader gaming club. It was a nice day spent among eager Oldhammer enthusiasts and curious onlookers, who came to see what all the fuss is about. There was painting going on, a bring-and-buy table, two painting competitions with awards were held and a number of games played – I am not sure how many. I took note of a game of Mordheim and a game of 4^th ed. Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which was about to start when I left.

I ran a Rogue Trader scenario twice which was brewed up by my gaming pal Thorbjørn, alias Dr. the Viking from the Clovermilk blog, and myself. The scenario was a small scale four-player thing with a two-hour time limit and it worked really well, I think. The players were happy and we had a lot of laughs – zoats seem to have this effect on people!

As I was mostly standing at our gaming table and busy GM’ing I did not managed to take very many or any good photos, but this is roughly, what the game looked like from my table edge. However, I have uploaded the scenario as a PDF with this post and by way of the photos I guess you can reconstruct fairly easily how the whole thing worked. I can upload the four gangs from the play along with their stats at a later stage when I have taken pictures of them.

Thanks to the good people from Rogue Trader for setting the whole thing up and cheers to Thorbjørn for the collaboration. We will strike back next year with more chaotic Oldhammer fun!

Here you find our scenario:

They_fougth_the_law_scenario

 

Bagnol’s Caravan -More Dolgan Raiders

So here’s another instalment in my little Dolgan Raiders-series. This time we are to have a closer look at the hobgoblin Bagnol’s caravan of soldiers, loot and slaves. It is around this caravan that the scenario revolves as it comes under attack at dawn on its return trip from the Mountains of Mourn. The attackers, the Dolgans, we saw last week.

First up is the mighty Bagnol himself. He’s a mean hobgoblin and in my version of the scenario I used the old Asgard half troll to represent him. I haven’t been able to get my hands on the original pre-slotta hobgoblin by Nick Lund which was representing the caravan leader in the scenario pack. Nevertheless I love the Asgard mini and would most likely have been using it as Bagnol anyway.

Then we have Blackeye – a hobgoblin shaman accompanying the caravan. The miniature is one of the same first generation pre-slotta hobgoblins to which the Bagnol mini also belongs. For some reason I ended up painting Blackeye’s skin green. I’m not sure why –he should have been painted with the same colour as my other hobgoblins. It probably happened because I for some reason based him on a smaller base than the rest of the hobgoblins which made me think of him as a goblin – not a hobgoblin. Well, stuff happens.

Then we have Gutrot, the grim goblin warrior on a wolf in the company of nine other wolf riders. Gutrot is the one on the wolf draped in red, holding up his axe over his head. All the wolf riders are late 80’s and early 90’s Marauder goblins. Although I’m no big Marauder fan I’m rather fond of the wolves.

Then we have the hobgoblins. Bagnol has 20 of them in his retinue and these are the ones I specifically finished for the scenario and all of them are top-notch miniatures. I’m turning out to be quite the hobgoblin-fan. First we have three pre-slotta hobgoblins and then troopers and character models from the boxset Throgg’s Despoiling Hobgoblins of the Dark Lands, released as part of the Regiments of Renown-series in ‘85.

Bagnol also has ten hobgoblins armed with bows in his company but as I don’t have any hobgoblin archers I used orc archers instead. Those as well as Bagnol’s 20 goblins were all finished before I started preparing for this scenario and thus not shown in this post. Later, when I give you some snapshot from the game, these minis will show up as well.

However, Bagnol has ten lesser goblins who tend to the lobotomized (sic!) ogres who pull the caravan wagons. These small fellas you can see here. Great if a bit rough minis with a ton of character.

Finally we have the ogres pulling the wagons. I’m only showing one of the three wagons as they are more or less the same. The wagon or wagons come from 4ground miniatures.

That’s all for now. Next up a few pictures and a little battle report from us actually playing The Dolgan Raiders scenario.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Martin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introducing the Dolgans

I wrote in my last post that I have been preparing some minis for the old Dolgan Riaders-scenario from Citadel Journal for this year’s Hoisont Con. The con is now passed but before I show you how it all went down I want to do a few posts about the minis and the scenario first.

As you probably know the scenario describes the attack on a hobgoblin caravan by the tribe of Dolgans. And what you see here is basically the Dolgan tribe constituted more or less by fierce nomad warriors as well as the centaur Maramseth.

The Dolgans are led by Ivan. The scenario model is rather fun – a barbarian with the hair somewhere between Joey Ramone and Buzz Osborne clad in a short breastplate stopping just above his navel and G-string underwear.  Note also the quite elaborate scabbard.

The second in command among the Dolgans is Terek. I used my Pan Tang Tiger Handler as Terek which seems fitting as Terek leads five war hounds into battle. For the Horisont game I used my Hobhounds as the dogs to add a little flavor and exoticism to the game.  I have the old scenario model but did not have the time to pant him in time as I had to finish the two units of bloody tribesmen you can see below.

Two champions also accompany the Dolgans on their raid. Firstly there is Stephan. A spectacular miniature with patriarchal looks. The mini is quite large and I really grew fond of it while painting the ol’ chap. He’s clearly one of my favorites from this whole scenario. The thing about Stephan is that he is a Were Bison or Were Bull, as I interpreted it for the sake of convenience. In order to represent his bull-form I used an old Prince August Minotaur. The mini is small compared to what you normally see when it comes to a Minotaur and it has been left unpainted in my lead mountain for quite some years now. But I think he fits the bill perfectly as the beast form of Stephan. In order to tie the two models together I gave the Minotaur a sword.

The second Dolgan champion is Yuri – another splendid miniature that frankly reeks of the old comic book version of Conan.

 

Then we arrive at The Storyteller – the shaman and spell caster of the tribe. I have been trying to get hold of the scenario model for some time now without any luck. He’ll probably show up some day but until then this cleric, quaintly called Mao Living-Mo in the Citadel universe of named models, is my Storyteller. A fun little fella which grew on me while painting it; as he lacks a name in the scenario I have called him Kepek.

To this we then can add Maramseth the Centuar – the close friend of the Dolgans. I’m not sure what miniature came with the scenario pack. At least I don’t remember seeing any centaur looking like the cut-out token which comes along with the scenario in Citadel Journal. Perhaps some of the Citadel scholars could elucidate on this? I used the Talisman Centaur as Maramseth. A classic sculpt. It was important to me that he should not look like a chaos centaur.

 

Finally we have the two units of Dolgan troops. One unit armed with hand weapons – in this case spears – and the other unit armed with short bows. The Dolgan tribe and indeed the whole concept of nomadic tribes roaming the Northern Wastes clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the Mongols which we already see in the drawing accompanying the text about these tribes in the Bestiary from Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2ed.

To represent the Dolgans I chose to use Mongol warriors from Old Glory Miniatures. They are crude, came with huge amounts of flash and mold lines and are a bit on the small side when compared to their Citadel kinsmen. However, I like their look and once painted it all came together nicely.

And speaking of painting – these two units were speed painted at frantic pace during the last week before the con. I absolutely hate to speed paint miniatures and I hate to paint more the five models of the same kind in a row. It was in other words a rather tiresome and frustrating experience to finish these 40 Dolgans, but once done I could sort of look at them with a sense of achievement.

Almost all together

I my next post I’ll introduce the hobgoblins and their caravan.

Cheers

Martin   

 

         

      

 

The Dolgans soon to raid again

In two weeks the annual Horisont convention is held in Odense, which undoubtedly is the best and most interesting Danish war games convention. Like the two previous years I will be hosting a game of Oldhammer with my ol’ buddy Claus and this year we decided to run the famous “Dolgan Raiders” scenario from the Second Citadel Journal published in 1985. We will be using the 2ed WFB rules and more or less stick to the scenario as presented with a few small tweaks. More about both the miniatures and the scenario later when I’m done basing the minis we will be using.

The Second Citadel Journal published in 1985

In this post you can see the table on which we will be playing the scenario. We just finished the whole thing this weekend. Basically the action of the scenario takes place on flat grasslands which of course makes the terrain fairly simple if not even boring, so we decided to spice things up a bit by letting the confrontation take place on a slightly slopping hill and included some small features which breaks the monotony – a burial mound, an ancient stature and the remains of some gigantic thing which once wandered these plains. For those of you who know the scenario, which undoubtedly is most, you will remember the three wagons pulled by lobotomized ogres (sic!) which of course also are going to be a very dominant feature on the battlefield.

 

The styrofoam boards put in place and ready to be attacked

Cutting the slopping hillside

First stage done. A lone dark elf mini is used to test if the slope is not too steep

Statue and burial mound added

We initially were toying with the idea of having a road crossing the battlefield but this idea we soon discarded

Them the whole thing was covered with white glue mixed with brown paint and sand

And a giant skeleton as well as some smaller bones was put into the wet sand and glue mix

The statue is a some cheap religious kitsch with just the right flavour

The giant skeleton is the last remains of a rabbit a found a while ago which I had soaking in bleach for a while

More rabbit bones strewn across the battlefield

Once dry we gave the whole thing a new layer of dark brown

Once the brown layer was dry we took the whole thing outside and highlighted the boards with brownish yellow and khaki spray paints

Back inside the last details – such as the statue was painted and patches of reeds and large bushes was added.

And done. Ready for the Dolgans and their hated Hobgoblin enemies

 

 

Roadblock Bloodshed

It is time to show some signs of life again on this blog. Things have been a bit busy here in Copenhagen lately but I recently had a chance to play a game of Rogue Trader with my goods friends Claus and Anders. The back-story was the following. Dr. Leo Powder (a genestealer hybrid magus) and his cult were discovered by the authorities of Hunger City and a military unit was sent in to clear out the cult-scum and all their off-spring. However they failed to capture Dr. Powder and his closest hybrid allies who by the help of their brood succeeded in fleeing from Hunger City. Cult members jumped into cars and six of the sacred pure strain genestealers were packed into the back of a truck and off they went. The army was in hot pursuit of the cultists who decided to take a detour into the desert in order to improve their chances of escape. This they should never have done because Dr. Powder and his brood headed straight into the territory of the ork ganger Jerzman da Nazdy who not only was unwilling to let the vehicles pass, he was also very interested in capturing the cars and particularly the truck – although he did not know what it was carrying.

In the battle we played, Dr. Powder and his cult had just arrived in front of the ork territory. They objective of the cult was to get passed the orks with as many vehicles, hybrids and genestealers alive as possible. Jezman and the orks on the other hand had to prevent this.

The game was a blast. Cars and bikes raced around on the table, boltguns cracked and genestealers crawled through the bushes ambushing orks. In the end the orks succeeded in stopping the cult but it was a close call and almost all of the orks had been killed when the last of the brood was finished.

Well, here you see some random snapshots from the game taken by Claus (the victorious ork player). I will try to upload som epictures of the minis and cars from the game soon.

Cheers

Martin

 

 

By the way – the cotton is ectoplasmic mist created with great effect by Dr. Leo Powder

 

Severed Hand Personalities

https://wordpress.com/It’s been a while since I posted anything on the blog. It’s not that I haven’t been painting rather the opportunities for taking pictures (I haven’t advanced beyond using natural lighting yet) and finding time to actually write the posts have been limited lately. Life you know… Well, what I have been doing is painting stuff for and from the legendary Orc’s Drift campaign from 1985 for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 2ed – the first large campaign-box Games workshop produced – which you of course all know.

What you see here is the orc characters for the second scenario “Ashak Rise”. First we have my take on Hagar Sheol – the leader of The Severed Hand Tribe. I was debating myself for some time what to do with this character as it gradually dawned on me that I probably would not be able to lay my hands on the original scenario model anytime soon.

The Hagar Sheol scenario model. A rare and expensive Little chap

Thus I started looking for a replacement. However, once I accepted that I would not be able to use the original I thought why not try to make my own Hagar. So that’s what I did. I rummaged through my pile of unpainted orcs and found a suitable model to convert and set out to make the model resemble Gary Chalk’s fine, fine portrait of Hagar on the cover of the Orc’s Drift scenario booklet. I must say that it was an extremely fun project, but the collector-part of my brain is still nagging me and I’ll probably never be complete at ease before I tracked the original Hagar down. Nevertheless I must admit that I’m very fond of my version.

Frontcover of the Orc’s Drift booklet with a drawing by Gary Chalk

The other orc is a ‘scenario model’ who goes under the name of Grashak Kra. A fierce, cool orc champion of the sort I love; punky, wild and wicked. He also appears outside the Orc’s Drift universe as an ordinary orc champion and is very easy to find and thus not expensive in any way.

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more Orc’s Drift stuff coming up soon.

 

Cheers

Martin

Welcome to the Jungle…

In November I participated in the splendid Horison Convention in Odense where Claus and I had brought along a little Oldhammer-scenario entitled Koka Lustria. The name more or less sets the stage.

Here’s the blurp which gives you an idea of the set-up.

This game takes us to the lush jungles of Lustria. Scaly lizardmen have captured the amazon novice Maka who was soon to be initiated as a priestess of the most sacred goddess Rigg. The vile humanoids are planning to use young Maka in one of their hideous fertility rites. Such blasphemy must be prevented at any cost and the fanatic servants of Rigg thus launch a rescue mission to free their sister before she suffers defilement from the cold hands of the walking lizards. A small warband of koka-crazed amazons, led by the most illustrious priestess Tototic, is thus sent off into the jungle to bring back their sister with the support from their pygmy allies. Will they succeed?

So the setup for the scenario is fairly straight forward. An alliance of amazons and pygmies have to fight the lizardmen in order to free young Maka before a huge snake rapes her during the weird fertility rite of the lizardmen. Yep, pulpy stuff, I know. The rules we used were more or less Warhammer 3rd ed. by the way.

This is more or less what the scenario look like. We played the game twice with four gamers each time and two GMs and the pictures come from both games. Sorry for crappy quality of many of the pictures! Thanks to those wo participated. We had a blast.

I’ll upload the rosters and technicalities of the scenario for further inspiration during the weekend.

Cheers

The game table with the ancient lizard temple in the middle

Lizardmen led by the by their snakeman leader

Koka-crazed amazons

Pygmies rushing to the aid of the amazons

Things get into motion

Young Maka captured in her cage while the snake waits for the rites to begin

Troglodytes and dragon newt crawl slowly towards their attacking enemies

 

The dragon newt

Pygmies ready themselves to throw their grappling hooks and scale the temple walls.

The piece of cotton is poison gas released by the dragon newt

More gas

The lizardmen

Giant snake

The pygmies have arrived

The pygmy warlord Mu-Mu his fierce gorilla steed

Amazons and troglodytes clash

More clashing

 

 

Lizard warriors gang up on the pygmy shaman Tiki-Tu

A brave attempt to rescue Maka is finally foiled as the lizards Cath up with Mu-Mu and his gorilla

Temple of the Blood Jewel

 

 

During the last week of April we played a small game of Oldhammer. A fierce struggle between a band of badass dark elves and the sinister inhabitants of an ancient, ruined temple deep in the Black Mountains where the fabled Blood Jewel lies buried. The backstory was quite simple. The warlock Amren was ordered by his mistress to find and bring her the Blood Jewel. The elves searched long for the gem and finally learned that it was hidden in a secluded temple of Law high up in the Black Mountains. The gem was hidden centuries ago during an attack by the servants of her Demonic Highness Manaar. The priests of Law were all slaughtered and the secret of the hidden gem forgotten except by the spirits of the dead who now have whispered the place of hiding to the dark elves during their necromantic rites.

Amren selected a small group of warriors to help him sneak into the ruins of the once great temple. But the servants of Manaar still dwell in the place and praise their demonic goddess with feast of blood each new moon. Amren’s elves therefore captured and bribed the goblin Bik, who served as guard in the ruins, to escort the warband through the secret, unwatched passages leading into the core of the ruins where the gem lies buried. The warlock Amren also chose to hire the muscles of Melvyn, a huge ogre mercenary willing to embark on the adventure for ample payment in gold and carry the equipment needed for climb through the steep mountains.

Thus armed and ready the dark elves entered the heart of the temple, ready to storm in, grab the jewel from its hiding place beneath an old statue and get out of the temple as fast as possible. This however proved more difficult than anticipated. The ever watchful demon Manaar alerted her servants to the presence of intruders and soon the dwellers from underneath the ruins were milling forth to kill the elves.

Amren and his brave company succeeded in grabbing the gem and almost succeed in taking it out of the ruins. In the end however the forces of Manaar cornered the last elves and one by one the last ones fell heroically until the last survivor was Melvyn, who sneaked out while no one was watching.

What a great game we had with good character developments during the game and lots of in-character interactions and empathy. This is really what all Oldhammer is all about for me.

Here’s a few random shots from the game. Sorry for the blurriness!

 

Technicalities

The setup of the scenario is quite simple. A statue is to be placed in the middle of the battle field. Underneath this statue the blood Jewel is hidden. The statue has 6 wounds and T5. Melvyn is strong enough to move the statue by force. This takes two turns of undisturbed labour.

The elves enter the battlefield from one of the four corners chosen randomly. As long as the goblin scout Bik is alive they may leave the battlefield through any corner they wish (due to his knowledge of the ruins); if he is dead they have to leave by the way they entered.

We did not use any unit formations during the game. All miniatures counted as single models and acted as such. We also ignored all rules of panic, but used the rules for push backs and fear.

 

The servants of Manaar

The dark elves are hugely outnumbered but the enemies keep entering the battlefield in random numbers and from random sides of the table. Here is the list of the inhabitants of the temple:

 

1  Giant rats [10]

2  Guard dogs [10]

3  Goblins [24]

4  Goblins with bows [6]

5  Orcs [24]

6  Orcs with bows [6]

7  Skavens [6]

8  Cultists [12]

9  Hobgoblin overseers [3]

10  High-priests of her Demonic Highness Manaar [3]

11  Ronk the Troll*

12  Lucia – The Chosen of her Demonic Highness Manaar* 

The ones marked with an * are single characters.

 

Each turn the player defending the temple rolls a D12 to see which type of creature arrives and a D6 to see their numbers. Then a D4 is rolled to see from which side of the table they enter. The creatures always arrive outside their charge range from potential enemies. The number marked [] is the total amount of each creature in the temple. Once all have arrived on the table they are discounted from the list and the player rolls again to find a new result.

 

That is more or less it. We applied some special rules to the game. Rules for the use of rope and some other small stuff taking inspiration from the terrain and scenery used. Do the same. Look at the battlefield and make it interact with the game.

 

Dramatis personae

First we the elves and then the creatures. We printed the pictures of the elves and used them as cards during the game.

 

The Dwellers in the Temple

1. Giant Rats

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
6	2	0	3	3	1	3	1	4	4	5	5

Poison bite +1 to S

 

2. Guard Dogs

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
6	3	0	3	3	4	4	1	6	4	6	6

 

3. Goblins

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
3,5	2	3	3	3	1	2	1	5	5	5	5

Light armour, shield, hand weapon

 

4. Goblins with bows

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
3,5	2	3	3	3	1	2	1	5	5	5	5

Light armour, shield, short bow (16”/S3)

 

5. Orcs

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
3,5	3	3	3	4	1	2	1	7	5	7	7

Light armour, shield, sword

 

6. Orcs with bows

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
4	3	3	3	4	1	2	1	7	5	7	7

Light armour, Sword, Bow (24”/S3)

 

7. Skavens

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
5	3	3	3	3	1	4	1	6	6	5	7

Sword, light armour, shield, sling (S3 / range 18” / can fire 1 or 2 shots)

 

8. Cultists

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
3,5	3	3	3	3	1	3	1	7	7	7	7

Light armour, shield, sword

 

9. Hobgoblin overseers

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
3,5	5	3	4	5	2	4	3	8+1	6	6	6

Light armour, two-handed sword

 

10.  High-priests of her Demonic Highness Manaar

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
3,5	5	5	3	3	2	5	2	8	8	8	8

Light armour, sword

 

11. Ronk the Troll

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
6	4	1	5	4	5	2	4	4	5	6	6

Club/Vomit/Thump 

 

12.  Lucia – The Chosen of her Demonic Highness Manaar 

M	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	LD	INT	CL	WP
4	5	4	4	4	2	4	3	8+1	9	7	7

Heavy armour, hand weapon, shield, Roll D3 Chaos attributes

 

 

 

Cheers

Martin