Narrative Time: Into the Basements of Destiny

 A record of the Journey of Yolig and friends into the basements of the Ruined City, and the wonders they found therein:

The furious dwarf revealed himself as the sole surviving inhabitant of the ruined city. In his fury at the beasts of the mad god who had destroyed his home, he had thought them to be more of the god's servants. After the brave Yolig explained "No, we the good ones," his rage calmed, and after some discussion, he agreed to help our heroes on their quest. It seemed that the dwarf knew of the gates to the heavens that they sought, and that the secret lay in the catacombs from which he had emerged.

 Boldly forth did the adventurers go, into the haunted depths. And haunted they truly were. By ghosts. That being how hauntings usually work.

Their journey quickly became perilous as shrieking phantoms descended from every dark corner of the ruins, bent on havoc. Telek proved that her newfound magical talents would not go to waste, as she cast a spell to make the bodies of the ghosts itch most furiously (which enraged the spirits further, as they did not have bodies, and should not have been able to itch). Yolig and the dwarf made short work of the confused and distracted ghosts.

There were other more powerful spirits in the depths, however. The largest of the rode a bone steed, and the dwarf knew it well, for it was the beast that had slain his companions and stolen the secret. Without waiting for his new companions, he charged,

This proved to be foolish, and while brave Yolig and also mostly brave Telek were bound in battle with other phantoms, the dwarf was felled.

Yolig was not pleased, and with a roar he dispatched his foe, and turned to the ghostly rider. The dwarf had managed to wound the creature before falling, and Yolig brought his well trusted stone over its skeletal frame, and smashed it into the ground. The catacombs grew still.

Telek approached the dwarf, and found that he still breathed, though his wounds were sore indeed. Of the secret, there was nothing to be found. It seemed that the heroes had gained nothing from their adventure, and lost much, but Yolig with his keen eye spotted a grate, leading further down. Carrying the dwarf with them, with the hope of healing him, the pair ventured further into the depths, into the sub basement of destiny.

(Hey, if gw can write in a faux epic style, so can i!)

Silly Narrative: The Quest for Snacks

 
    Yolig had been told by the stones to expect a lot of things from the surface. He'd been told it was a bright, horrible place. He'd been told it was an empty, roofless wasteland, ravaged by the followers of the mad god of blood. And it had all been true. What he hadn't been told was how much fun he would have there.

    Still, it was a wasteland, and sadly short of the delicious fungi and cave mushrooms that he and the other troggoths loved to eat. If they were going to break down the gates to heaven, they would need full bellies. Yolig didn't need the stones to sing that to him. Fortunately, the little one they had saved had somehow found a way to some food. Even more fortunately, the mad god's minions were there too. This would be fun.

They had a couple of the skull giant things with them this time, and Yolig and the boys charged, quickly bashing the thing about with stones and hammers. Olvarn wasn't about to be outdone, and he crushed one of the barbarian in his fist.

The mad barbarians didn't seem too troubled by that. Yolig wasn't surprised, what with them being mad. They instead crowded around Olvarn, and he roared in annoyance as they managed to hack a few wounds into his stony skin. Yolig had a bit more luck, as he smashed the skull monster's... skull in with his trusty boulder.

 

After that, things began to go a bit awry. There were still more of the skull giants between Yolig and the food, and the next one dealt one of his companions a horrific wound, felling the bold Troggoth. Olvarn was having more luck casually slaughtering the barbarians, but it wasn't enough to break them.

Telek was about to have troubles of her own. A band of the blood maddened warriors had managed to somehow sneak around the flank, even though they were screaming about blood the entire time. Telek managed to bash one of them over the head with her staff, but the others closed in... and things might have gone very badly had they not been suddenly doused with buckets of acidic vomit. The few who survived the deluge fled.

 This was now the second time that Telek had been saved by fortuitous vomit, and frankly, she thought, it had better be the last.

After that, things got a bit wild. The blood worshipers weren't about to give up the food (whatever it might be) without a fight, and Yolig wasn't going to let them get away with hurting his buddy. Olvarn had finally managed to fight free of the band he'd been stuck dealing with, and with a roar, he lumbered into the fray, knocking down a wall as he went. Still bellowing, he called out to Telek. "We need help, little wizard! Call the beast!"

g

Telek had no idea what he meant. She'd been able to do... something during the last battle, but what did summon the beast even mean? Summon the beast... within? No, that was nonsense. Olvarn had his damned prophecy and this was probably part of it. With nothing else coming to mind, Telek closed her eyes and concentrated

None of them really expected what happened next. The grate in the middle of the ruins had gone ignored, after all, there was a whole lot of food next to it. The first thing Telek heard was a horrifying war cry. The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was a dwarf, leaping out of the now open grate with his axe swinging. There were a few bloody moments, and then the skull giant fell, dead. The surviving barbarians fled.

Olvarn looked over the carnage, and the crates of liberated food, and smiled broadly once again. "Well done! A tiny beast like you! That is good too."

The dwarf still looked... quite furious. Good might not be the right word.

(to be continued)

Starter Sets And Such Part 3

Well, here it is then, another battle report from the starter set! There's not too much to say in introduction, so here we go!

This is the scenario that's meant to teach about battleshock (aka gw's way of handling morale) and you can bet that it... basically didn't come up during the whole fight.

The scenario begins with some storm guys on top of a box, waiting for the approach of chain ghosts! They approach the crypt and/or temple and the crossbow knights fire mightily! And miss every shot. Again. *sigh*

The chainghosts do their thing (float) and reach the top of the temple and/or crypt, but they cannot charge! The other group does manage to charge in, yelling, and they take down one of the storm fellows, losing one of their own in return.

The fight grows fierce (as fights often do, and the other ghosts jump on into the fray. Meanwhile, another ghost is unghosted.

It's not enough though, and the ghosts keep on hitting with their hitting stick, taking down yet another of our heroes/villains (depending on your perspective)

They can't hold out against the relentless onslaught of spirit fists, and they too... give up the ghost.

Another victory for the nighthaunt (not to be confused with nightstalkers) and another staggering defeat for the crossbows! They have missed every time in these scenarios, i think. That's fun.

Next: The next one in the book!

Starter Set Gaming Part Two

Let's keep this going! On to scenario two of the Tempest of Souls starter set, one that is meant to teach how ranged combat works.

Time to see how I can mess that up.


Our scenario begins with one castigator (which is a silly name, so let's call her Hattie) facing off against four GRIMGHAST REAPERS (which is also a silly name, but they're ghosts and don't get names, I guess.) On the first turn they casually drift up towards Hattie, who fires a single shot and removes one ghost from the board!

The ghosts are clearly perturbed by this, at least as perturbed as any ghost can be, and they show that by... failing to charge and just drifting around a bit more. This allows Hattie to triumphantly get off another shot that kills another ghost!

 At this point I kind of got bored of all the aimless drifting and decided to have Hattie charge the ghosts, confident that her skills with a crossbow would see her through!

They did not.

 And so, alas, the mighty Hattie fell, though she may return some day. The ghosts returned to their unlives of wandering about the place. And the record stands at Stormcast 1, Nighthaunt 1.

Next: The Next Scenario, which may involve more than one person on the stormcast side!

For Love of Starter Sets

So as you can probably guess from the title, I've always been really fond of starter sets in miniature games. They're just... exciting, you know? Especially the ones that actually come with full rule books. That's another i'm fond of collecting, to be honest. Rule books of all kinds.

With the pandemic and everything (what a phrase that is!) i'm quite obviously not doing any shopping, and that's not much of a much in the situation. But I have had a starter set sitting around that i wanted to get started on, and now i have! It's the Tempest of Souls set from age of sigmar, ghostly fellows vs wizardly knights, and it comes with an... ok rule book. It's gw so it's far more concerned with selling you things, but it does have one of my favorite other things: a set of intro games to play.

So that's what my next few posts will be. I'm going to play through this... not too complex intro games and paint and just have fun with them. I actually already started a bit ago, so without further ado, here we go!

The battle begins as our hero (or villain, depending on which side you're one) is charged by some ghostly horse fellows. Using their stabbing sticks, they stab him up good, dealing out a whole 1 wound! Our hero (his name is... Wilberforce. It's Wilberforce now) is in a spot of trouble.

But Wilberforce isn't about to give up, that's not the Wilberforce way! And with a mighty swing or two, he lays the ghost horsemen low.

The tide has truly begun to turn, and the turns have too, and Wilberforce the Decent (that's his name now. His full name.) Wilberforce the Decent charges his enemies and knocks them out  too! He's survived the day, and can now continue on with whatever it is he was doing. Going for a walk, I think.

 So, that's the first scenario! It's a pretty simple one obviously, meant to teach the basics of combat, but I'm having fun with this project so far, silly as it may be. Next, shooting!

A Battle Report of Sorts!

I say a battle report of sorts, because it was a battle against myself, played on a smaller than normal space. But that's how we do things, and it's better to have a bit of fun in these times than to sit around doing nothing at all. I ain't going to be in any tournaments anyhow, quarantine or no.

 So, in this epic matchup of me against me, the Nightstalkers fought the Kingdoms of Men! Many mistakes were made by both sides.

The men had two bold regiments of fanatics bolstered by bowmen and two generals, which at this level may have been a... bad choice. The nightstalkers were led by a horror and fielded butchers, scarecrows, and spectres, all as regiments.

Battle was soon joined, as battles often are. The butchers did their thing with mixed results, and the scarecrows managed only a bit of fighting before being wiped out. But eventually the damage done to the crazed fanatics began to tell, and in one single turn...

They were all wiped out. Only the generals survived to return home and say "Dang, we really messed that up."

So that was that. Fanatics hit pretty hard as always, but they're fragile too. Probably not the best for fights that drag on too long, but I can see them being more useful if I actually position them right!

Will there be more actual posts soon? Only time will tell.

Hello and Night!

Well now it's been a bit hasn't it? And now here we all are, cooped up and sad and confused. That's where I am at least! I've been busy with so many things, mainly pacing,  dancing around aimlessly, and cooking. But i've had some room for some hobby related stuff to so here it is. I've been working on a force of nightstalkers for kings of war:

They're still very much a work in progress of course It's never going to be a pretty looking army, but that's not my intention. I want to get them done! And i think with the colors, they'll still look nicely creepy. Hopefully I will actually have more soon!

Another Sort of Battle Report!

I promised another and here it is! So, this time my regular oppenent (for a very broad definition of regular) and I decided to see what a very small 500 point battle would look like. Was that too small? Find out!

(Yes it was)

It was Ratkin vs Kingdoms of Men round two.

(Here the soldiers of the armies of men line up, with guns and swords and.... that was about it. But they felt ready for anything!)

The Ratkin were ready for them. Kind of. There followed a turn of both armies advancing cautiously and exchanging potshots, the Ratkin doing a bit better. Finally, the shield walls charged!

Sharp eyed readers can probably see the mistake they made. Most readers actually.

The Ratkin were never the sort to let good flank go unflanked and thus, flanked the men were. That is a terrible sentence. The results were predictable, with the brave men realizing they weren't so brave and routing, along with one of the units of arquebusiers who got tired of being shot by the weapon team.

This was the last picture I got, but the results played out about how you might expect. The KoM line was rolled up and wiped out, with only the General surviving. None of the Rats were lost.

So a victory for me, but not exactly a fair or... well played battle, I think. Hopefully we will learn more by the next one, and there will be a next one!

A Semi Battle Report!

So I managed to play a game of kings of war! It was not a fancy game and this will not be a fancy or complete report, but there will be a few pictures at the very least.

I played the game against my dad, because that's just how it is. I used the ratkin and he used the mess of kingdoms of men that I have, and we managed to put together two lists that ran to about 1000 points each. A nice little game to start with, and we went with the first scenario, kill. Such a dramatic name.

A lot of the game is in the deployment and neither of us are any good at that yet!

Here we go

(The Ratkin line up and get ready to charge gloriously forward or stumble over each other, one of the two)

(An army of blurry humans face them down. They are all berserkers except the leaders and bowmen, no doubt their sheer excitement causing them to blur)

My initial plan was for the warrior regiments to move up and hold off the berserkers while the hordes moved behind them to charge in after the they'd been worn down. In practice... things got muddled.

(The two forces meet in the middle of the Snowy Quilt fields, near the Hills of Paper Plate)

The thing is, berserkers hit hard and generals on winged beasts also hit hard, but in this case they only hit hard enough to waver everyone... which made for a bit of a road block for my army.

(The brave and noble rats hold the vile and evil humans at bay... just barely.)

So it became a confused melee in the center!

(The warlord of the rats boldly commands his horde to fight on, though he has forgotten the fact that he has no arms.)

Unfortunately I stopped taking pictures here because I was tired of trying to get even semi decent ones in the bad light. The berserkers broke through in the center, and while two of them were routed, the hordes broke too. We called it for time, and while i'm not sure it was a clear victory by the rules, I declared my dad the victor.

So that was that! It was a lot of fun to be honest, and I want to try to do a more... better written one of these some time, but just getting to play a game was a blast.

Rats!

Is that rats as in I forgot to post for too dang long, or rats as in, here are some rats?

Answer: Yes

I picked up most of these guys for quite cheap, which makes sense as they are rather battered. But I guess I have a ratkin force now!

Next: More actual detail on this, and perhaps a short report!

Dang

Dang, but i forget to put things here. Well, here is a thing.

A dang old dragon!

That's all.

Lower Abyssals!

Welp. mostly done.

Fancy? No. But i like em'. I actually made the base with a kind of fade from black to grey to reddish orange with a few small piles of what i hoped would look like vents, but  i could'nt get a good picture. Nevertheless! I'm happy, and they were a lot of fun to paint.

Next: Back to humanity!

Something new...

Well, the problem with hobby stuff is sometimes it's hard to concentrate on one thing. I know that I have this problem, and I have not helped it lately by buying this:

It is neat though! i love box sets like this, all with little campaign books. And i do already have some naiads so it's not completely a disctraction! Only like, 75% a distraction, tops.

That said i've spent the past hour or so working on the lower abyssals, who i am going to give to my nephew. They will have a simple red and copper scheme, and might be what i put up here next, because he wants them as soon as i can get them painted.

Next: What I just said, maybe?

Actual Progress

A few months back i was working on turning my mess of falxmen into falxmen that are actually painted and on a base... and a mess. And I did it! Here they are.

Fancy? No. Ready for a game? Heck yes.

Altogether, I've got about 1000 points for kingdoms of men based, less than that for Thracians. Work work work.

Multibasing!

So, I'm still working on the thracian/kingdoms of men army. But i got some naiads recently! Naiads are another nice one on account of working for two armies in kings of war, I am all about that right now with limited time and space. But I mainly am putting this up because it's my first attempt at multibasing in a scenic way!

Still need to paint, obviously, but i wanted it to look like they're coming ashore on a rocky beach, and I think it worked ok.

Next: Thrace?

Challenges!

Part of the challenge of assembling an army from scraps and bits and leftovers is... well, the fact that it's being assembled from scraps and bits and leftovers. Here's my current project in the story of Fantasy Thracians

I've still got a bit of work to do, but eventually they will be Falxmen/Berserkers!

On that note, the one thing i am already in love with in Kings of War? Multibasing.

Next: Actual progress?