Into the (Not Silver Tower) Depths, Narratively

(Note: Yolig is here represented by a slightly smaller miniature. It can be assumed that he is ducking, on account of the low ceiling in the tunnels that they are exploring. The tunnels that i must assure you are not Silver Tower)

 

To be honest, Yolig wasn't sure why they were helping the dwarf. But he did know what the song of the stones told him and the stones were telling him that this was the right way to go. They liked it better when he was deep under the ground anyhow. His tiny wizard friend seemed less happy, especially after he broke down a loose brick wall and found what lay beyond.

 

 

 

Strangley carved and brightly lit metallic corridors confronted them. Some strange creatures also confronted them, a bit more directly than the walls did. The walls didn't have swords, after all. The bird man let out a hideous shriek on seeing the companions, and charged. He didn't account for Yolig's fist. Telek, not wanting to leave Yolig fighting alone, chanted a few words, and the humans began to scratch themselves furiously. It was... not quite what she intended to do, but it seemed to help.

 

The oddly garbed humans babbled something about "the golden orb" before Yolig smashed them into paste. Telek filed it under "probably important, and probably bad". Yolig filed it under "gold is shiny." They ventured on.

They next found a much more cozy cave, at least in Yolig's opinion. The stones sang well here, and they seemed to be telling him that a cure for the dwarf was not far away. Sadly, the spiderlike grots who lived there couldn't seem to hear the song, and they poked tiny sticks at Yolig in no uncertain terms.

They regretted doing this, briefly.

There was another large door leading out of the cavern, back into the strange, sharp edged tunnels. Three of the vicious birdmen waited here, along with more of the spidery warriors. The birdmen were stirring a cauldron, and filling bottles with the glowing liquid, but they quickly raised their weapons and squawked out something about the sacred sun, before moving to attack.

The fight that followed was one of the most savage that Yolig had been in. The birdmen were fast and clever, and one of them swooped under his arm as he brought up his trusty rock, and slashed him badly. It might have gone badly for him if Telek hadn't managed to pull off the itching spell again, causing her to stare at her own hands and shake her head. Yolig wasn't sure why, the spell seemed to be a blessing from the stones.

 In the end, they triumphed. Telek stepped over the prone bodies and picked up one of the full bottles, holding it as far from her body as she could. This seemed to be what the stones were telling him would cure the dwarf, but there was only one way to tell. Yolig picked up another bottle, and before Telek could stop him, he smashed it over the unconscious dwarf's head.

(To be Continued)

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!)

The Silly Narrative Continues

 Heck yeah, I'm going to keep this going. Games are still happening! Plus it's keeping mew writing. It might not be great writing, it might not even be good or make sense, but writing it is. Onward!

....................................

From the Journals of Telik, Last of the Sepa tribe

I was sure I was dead. Everyone else had been killed after all, so why not me? I'm still asking myself that, really.

My tribe had managed to hide for a long time in that cave, even as the followers of the mad blood god had slaughtered... just about everyone else, it seemed. But nothing good (or for that matter, just not horrible) lasts forever, and they found us. And they did what they do best. Really, I don't want to go into the details here, the point is that everyone I knew died. I got away for about an hour, and then they found me, and then... things got strange.

I'm still not sure why they saved me. The one who I've learned is called Yolig tried to explain in his own way, talking about singing stones and breaking the bright walls. It's all very mystical and all very confusing. 

But here I am, alive, and in the company of giant creatures from the deep caverns. I'm sure they'll eat me eventually, but until then, we've got to "find the swamp friends" whatever that means.

..................................

What it meant, it turned out, was sneaking into some ancient ruins, where the "swamp friends" were said to live. Yolig tried to explain to Telik (in his own way) that she'd have to prove to them that she was worthy of "the gifts of the swamp"

She followed after one of the other troggoths, feeling very uncertain.

Of course the ruins were haunted. The real challenge would have been finding ruins that weren't. The risen spirits in these particular ruins were not happy at being disturbed. Risen spirits never are.

One particular spirit holding a bell drifted through the crumbling wall until it met the troggoth guarding Telik, and with its strange bell, it dealt him a fearsome wound.

Yolig found himself fighting strange ghosts that seemed part man, part horse. They stalked through the ruins, holding long glaives, so Yolig started thinking of them as "spiky horse ghosts".

Luckily for all of them, the ghosts of various kinds still responded to being beaten up with clubs and boulders in the same way that most non ghosts did.

That is, until the leader of the spirits arrived. Drifting on a wave of cold horror, and bearing an executioner's axe, it felled the troggoth guarding Telik with a single sweeping blow.

Telik did the wisest thing and ran, once again proving her worth to Yolig

"Tiny one! Say the good words! Make the swamp friends come!" Yolig bellowed, which was pretty much the only way he talked. With that, he charged the axe-ghost, he favorite boulder held high.

Telik wanted to shout back that she had no idea what he was talking about, that she didn't know any words, good or otherwise, but that didn't seem like a path to survival right now. Nothing did.

But she had to do something. For some reason, her mind went back to an old rhyme, a nursery rhyme really, that her father once told her, something involving mice and cats. She said it. Nothing happened, and she could hear Yolig yelling in pain. 

With nothing left to lose, and more spirits closing, she shut her eyes, and shouted it as loud as she could.

What followed was not what she expected. There was an overpowering smell of rotting fish, for one. That was unexpected. And there were the swamp friends, popping out of the strange plant that she hadn't even really noticed.,.

Yolig was barely hanging on, his stony hide bleeding from several deep wounds, but he grinned hugely and said "Yes, good! Olvarn will be pleased!"

The swamp troggoths lumbered into battle, and to Yolig's rescue. At least, that's what they seemed to be doing at first. Telik was also caught off guard by what happened next. The troggoths opened their mouths as if for a mighty roar, and then instead.... they vomited. Profusely. All over the ghost.

It worked. Whether the spirit was truly slain, or just so profoundly humiliated that it fled the world of the living, Telik would never be sure. But it was gone, either way. They had won.

Telik could only wonder at what might come next.

A Fourth Starter Set Post!

So here we are, on the fourth scenario. I finished this one a bit ago, and to be honest, by this point I was getting pretty tired of these games! Which is unfortunate, but each one just seemed to work out... not well! Each time the facet of the game the scenario was meant to be highlighting just wouldn't happen! and that carries on in this game, where the focus is meant to be on command abilities and spells. None of which had much effect on the game.

All of this is a way of saying that I'm just going to give a quick summary of the game with a couple of pictures, and then move on!

So this was a battle over a temple and or crypt once more, with the ghosts having a leader! They faced off against three stormcast wizardly types.

Everyone just kind of ran at each other, trying and failing to cast spells.

The lord executioner and the... stormcast main wizard (who i gave a pet pig) ended up dueling! And missing each other repeatedly. They were just... so terrible at everything. Including, once again, spells.

The evocators did their thing, and beat up some chain ghosts.

The executioner did his thing too, and finally triumphed against the villainous/heroic wizard! The pig escaped, of course.

Meanwhile these guys beat up more ghosts, and actually cast a spell that beat up some more! And the rest ran, or floated off, freeing them to avenge themselves on the gallows ghost. A Win for the stormcast! 2-2 now.

And that was that. I'm taking a break from this, as it's probably clear from the tone of this post that I'm tired of these scenarios. But I will finish the last one, at some point.

Next? Things!

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!

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!

Age of Sigmar and Small and Silly Games

I recently has the chance to play an interesting little game with my nephew, and it got me thinking about what I like about games, and what my preferred approach to gaming is.

My nephew is pretty young, and not very interested in rules or competition. He does like story telling, though, and we have a lot of fun when he comes to visit just running around and making up adventures for ourselves. He's also fascinated by the miniatures I own, and we've had a great time just making up little stories around them.

This visit, I decided to try a little something different, something a bit more structured. I let him pick the miniatures and the tell me who they were, while I provided the rules, and interpreted them... loosely. This is what we ended up with:

A group of friendly ogres were wandering around the ruins of an old castle, looking for a good meal, as ogres often do. It seemed for the longest time that there was nothing to be found, only dusty empty barrels and lots of cobwebs, and the ogres were ready to move on. That was when they saw it. A turtle!

 Now it is a little known fact that ogres love turtles as friends, and while they were happy, they did not want to eat the turtles, rather they wanted to take them home. But that was when the evil and sinister ghosts of the castle appeared, who wanted to keep the turtles trapped there for all of eternity!

And that it how the game begins. It might not be high art but it was fun to make the story up with him.

The game was simple enough. Each ogre moved seperately, and had to reach a turtle. When they did, you rolled a dice. 2-5 meant a rescued turtle! 1 meant the ogre lost control and tragically devoured the turtle. And a 6 meant the turtle turned out to be a rare Turtle of Power, and both the ogre and the turtle ascended to a higher plane of existence, and were removed from the field.

The ghosts, meanwhile, were trying to steal the turtles away. They could grab a nearby one for free, but it slowed their movement down to 5" instead of 8, giving the ogres a chance to catch up. Combat was done with age of sigmar rules, but could only take place if one of the combatants had a turtle nearby.

It worked pretty well, and the ogres ended up winning, rescuing six turtles, eating two, and one ascending. The ghosts only managed to steal two. Since I was the ghosts and my nephew was the ogres, this was the ideal result.

It was fun, and I think this is the kind of game I like to play the most. The one where it's more about working together to tell a story, than anything else. I leave you with that, and this one picture

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.