Mordheim Witch Hunter Warband

Mark has been at me to run a game of Morheim with him. Its something he has been wanting to do for quite some time. As I have been going thru boxes getting stuff set aside for an upcoming Bitz Swap, I found the box containing a bunch of my Morheim figures. Although already painted, they had some nicks in the paint & so after touching them up, I used the Strong Army Painter dip to coat them & them Army Painter Matte Spray to complete them.

My plan is to have a Mordheim venue at my 2nd Annual Rememberance Day Afternoon.

Up first is my completed Witch Hunter Warband figures. There are a few more additions I still need to find/paint to complete it. Those whom I have gamed with in the past will remember these badboys.

Led by Hans Velsing, whose hatred of Magic in renowned, they scour the ruins of Mordheim in the search for the blasphemers and twisted creatures of Chaos.

Hans is lucky to have the righteous wrath of Haggis Hammerhand as a member of his band. A survivor of many trials, Haggis serves the power of Sigmar with his mighty...

Pan Demonium, (treated as a mace) which he wields with vigor to smite the unrepentant.

Hans has also drawn 3 lesser known but no less determined Witch Hunters with him. Below we have Pil Grim, and the brothers Hiero Phant and Psycho Phant. These are Confrontation figures which are fanastic in their detail!

 Of course no warband would be complete without the henchmen who support the Heroes. To support them they have Flagellents...

Zealots who provide some ranged ability...

And of course the ferocious Warhounds to tear opponents to shreds.

Should one of the zealots prove his zeal, he has a chance to become a hero himself.

Of course fame can lead to the desire of mercenaries to join your band. Here we have the Ogre Bodyguard Muttonchop 

The Mordheim miniatures produced by GW are beautiful in detail. The Ogre Bodyguard has many excellent details such as the wicker basket on his back which close inspection shows to be containing a Skaven and Halfling

I will be posting images of my other warbands as I find the figures. Needless to say I am getting a tad excited to play some Mordheim again, as its been a couple years since I've done so.

Of HOTT Air Baloons and Strongholds

As I slog along with painting my goblins for HOTT, I've decided it was also time to start on some of the peripheral items needed by the HOTT army. Namely a "Barker Marker" and a Stronghold.

Up first is my Airship. During one of the town-wide garage sales I've attended in the past year, I found someone selling a bunch of Lego, which included some ships. After filing off all the nubs, I used cardstock planks for the deck.

The four centre "guy-lines" are paper wrapped wire from the dollar store. They support the balloon ball. The remainder of the wires is string washed with brown ink. Needless to say there was a lot of glue used to keep it all in place.

Even with using a sponge ball, the model was going to be top-heavy. So I had to use some real stones on the base to counter-balance it. The one issue that is currently bothering me as to its effectiveness in HOTT is that the base is deep - seriously deep at 18cm. One thing I always try to avoid is having bits extend beyond the base, as this has often  caused issues with units being in frontal contact as well as breakage of the extending bits.

I do have some goblin crew selected and they are sitting on the paint bench. The piece I used for the firepot is also I believe a piece of Lego, some sort of helmet. The ballast bags I made from greenstuff.

Next up was another Goblin Spear element. I have 1 more Spear Element to complete before I move onto the Blades. They are currently drying from the Army Painter Dip.

I have also completed my Stronghold for the Goblins. With the cornerstone being the GW plastic Shrine/Altar/Tent, the remainder was made from styrofoam boulders and a fence made from Sprue and Stir sticks.

As units don't occupy Strongholds in HOTT, I have left space for a 6cm x 6cm stand just in case I use this camp for other game systems. Here is a shot of the Spear Element in the camp.

Last for today is my "Barker Marker". I picked up a bag of Chtulhu figures from Fantasy Flight Games. I figured he would make a good topper for the Chaos that is about to befall our next campaign. The remainder of these will end up being used in Pulp / Skirmish games.

Thanks for taking the time to check them out.

Maurice! Where is my lamb

After much anticipation, Bruce brought out his game of Maurice for several of us to try

at the club. His son Ian was up visiting from Calgary so joined us. As most know who have played this game, its a card based system where the player must decide whether to use the card for command range or as the event/ability listed. Mark has more about this evenings game on his blog.

We had a fictional battle with 4 players. Ian (British) and I (Prussians), sallyed forth against Bruce (Austrians) and Mark  '6' Wall (French). The objective was a small herd of Lamb. I guess the General's were due for a Ball or some such. We placed the objective on the enemies extreme right in a woods near Mark.

We decided to mass our mounted forces in the centre, with my foot and artillery holding the flank hinged on a small town. Perfect for one of my two conscripts to hide in. I guess I did sort of forget that we were attacking, but then Bruce started to swing his irregulars thru the woods and towards my waiting cannons.

I think my favorite card of the night was "This wasn't on the map!" where I got to place a marsh or rough area, which I landed right in front of Bruces mounted troops. As it turned out, much of the mounted sat out the entire battle.

Most of the fight was at the far end of the table where Ian and Mark battled it out. I used the majority of my cards to assist my ally, lending him abilities to sustain or maximize his clout.

It was a definate slugfest. We used the white dice to denote disruptions on units.

Meanwhile Bruce continues the advance into the cannonfire.

Eventually he was able to ride some mounted into the lead forces of my foot, catching one of the grenadiers (elites) in a flank, but with the right card at the right time I was able to fend off his attacks.

I finally had a card with the command range needed to swing my troops to avoid the flank attack. By this time I was down to 2 cards in my hand having used most to support my ally. The mechanics for card renewal were interesting and I can see how the players must use the PASS option to rebuild his deck or face potential disaster.

As the night was drawing to a close, here is the last view of the battle of the lambs on the far left of our forces. Ian's troops were pretty much finished off, though we still had a mass of mounted (which never moved), his guns and some foot in reserve.

It was a nice intro to an era of gaming which I generally do not play, & I expect Bruce will be bringing this system to the club in the future as the rules system is fairly easy and fast. All the elements that a club game needs.

More Goblin Spear for HOTT / Impetus

I have finally put the finishing touches on two more Goblin Spear elements for the HOTT and Impetus army. As well my first Troll Behemoth figure is completed. You had a sneak peek at this fellow during the HOTT game at EWG in my last post.

All the figures on the first Spear stand are a mix of newer GW plastic goblins and older plastic / metal ones.

The second stand is also mostly GW plastics with one metal.

The Troll is an older GW metal River Troll. I am quite happy with how he turned out.

Lastly here is a rear shot of the Troll.

I have two more stands of Goblin Spear elements to complete, then will be doing 6 stands of Goblin Blades.

I likely won't get any of that done until after the weekend as I will be spending my Saturday at the Bon Accord Town Wide Garage Sale, hopefullytransferring items from my garage to new homes and making a bit of money to boot.

HOTT Night at EWG

Last night we gathered for our 2nd club night of the Month & had a pretty good turn out!

Several of us gathered to play some HOTT, just to bring some new players into the system & refresh the memories of those who have played in the past.

This also gave me a chance to bring out my Goblin Army for a test run. At this point I don't have anything completed beyond some Spear, Shooters and 1 Behemoth, so my force was somewhat lacking in clout.

We got in two games. My first game was against Chris. He was playing a force with lots of Riders (4 stands), some Spear (3 stands), a Hero and a Magician.

Below is a sneakpeak at my Behemoth Troll, he will get a better image taken of him once I am done. He was glued together to allow me to cobble together 24AP's to play.

Chris smashed into my Shooters with his Riders and managed a quick-kill. This would become routine for his Riders. The Behemoth eventually knocked out the Hero with the assistance of a flanking Spear.

Meanwhile on the other flank, my force tried to hold the high ground, but was eventually whittled down. All the while the Magician kept harrassing my Spear General with bolts of arcane propaganda. The battle was won by the Humans.

My second game was against Andy, another neophyte to HOTT. His force consisted of lots of Blade, Riders (2 elements) and Flyers (3 elements). Not sure how my troops would fare against the flyers, I proceeded to swarm my Shooters into the woods.

Andy maneuvered his Blades and Riders to assault my Shooters hoping his sheer numbers would overwhelm them.

Shooters in woods gained a lot of protection from both his Blades and Riders, nullifying much of their damage mod's and putting them more on even footing. My Behemoth Troll did manage to smash into the flank of Andy's force, turning an element of blade which would eventually cause the death of a recoiling General and a win for the Goblins.

The Flyers did not see any action in this other than to keep my Spear off to the side. Flyers will be something we will all need to work through as they do have some rather interesting dynamics.

All in all a good night and I am sure we will be seeing much more HOTT  in the months to come. Bob who hosted the HOTT venue has more of this eve's adventures on his blog.

EDBAG Camapign 12 June 2012

Tonight we gathered for our monthly DBA evening. The Campaign is quickly coming to a close as most of the territory on the map is now controlled.

This evening was a good night for the Classical Indians. Its good to finally be able to maneuver my elephants, who so often in the past were left out of the battles.

First up was a battle against Chen's II/37 Parthians. I was lucky to have 3 turns of multiple command pips, so was able to move my line up quickly using the rough & woods to protect the flanks from Chen's rapid moving Light Horse.

I had 2 elements of bow in the Woods at the top of the image who although holding valiantly, were finally defeated by the combined Auxilia & Light Horse. This removal of my flank allowed Chen to make a run for the camp with his Light Horse. Luckily the camp repelled them. Meanwhile the Parthian Knights kept withdrawing and ended up bogged down in rough terrain.

The last turn was a massive success for the Indians, as several knights were knocked out giving a victory to the Indians of 6-2.

The second battle was against II/49 Marian Romans. Comprised mostly of blade, it forced my bowmen into the woods. The battle was pretty much a march forward crunch for both sides. The image below shows the lines crashing together.

The Romans had good success on my left flank, destroying one of my 2 bow elements. He also managed to bag one of my Cavalry elements. The initial engagement left both lines broken, which would require some good command pips to make sense of it all.

I had some good dice on the last turn of battle and was able to defeat the Romans 5-2.

As usual with DBA the dice gods had a lot to do with determining the victor. As this campaign is drawing to a close...we figure maybe 1 or 2 more nights, we are all preparing 28mm HOTT armies and are hoping to land a few more players.

28mm Goblin Spearman for HOTT/Impetus

As I've finished off with the Goblin Shooter/Archer elements, I've now moved onto the Spear. So here I have the first 2 of 6 Spear elements for my HOTT Army.

The first stand is with the banner, so that if I want this to be my general, he will be easily denoted. All of the figures on the stand are GW, with 3 being plastic & the last metal.

The second stand is a mix of GW plastic/metal and a RAFM goblin purchased many years ago, whose sword broke. I thus drilled a hole thru his hand and added a spear.

The Impetus Army list I have for the Orc/Goblins has up to 12 elements of Goblin FP (Light Foot). To add some variety to my army I've decided to make 6 spear only & the others swords/blades. This will allow me to field either blade or spear in my HOTT Army.

Our DBA group is planning on the next campaign being a 28mm HOTT. With the sheer number of goblin elements I will likely be able to field a purely Goblin Army.