Mordheim Game

The start of the Mordheim campaign is rapidly approaching and it still looks as if we will have a good number of players. As I stated before, I don't think we will have enough ruined buildings to play a strictly Mordheim game. So I've changed the theme a bit. I will include the Empire in Flames rules and set the game in the Border Princes. It will be centered around the city-state of Masserschloss. The campaign map is shown below.

Background:

After the Great War against Chaos, Magnus the Pious razed the remaining ruins of Mordheim, and had the name of Mordheim stricken from every history record available. This turned out to be a great disappoint for a number of warbands just recently arrived in the vicinity looking for loot. Most of those warbands returned to whatever nefarious occupation they previously held. But a determined few heard of rumors of a piece of the comet that had broke away and struck in the Border Princes region.

As the various warbands headed south they became aware of additional information and rumors.

The wayward comet piece broke up into an additional 6 pieces.

• The largest of those fell on Konrad's Kote.
• Konrad was a reluctant (but not THE) hero of the Empire. He founded his own community in the Border Princes region after a 'misunderstanding' with some Empire officials.
• Another piece fell in the woods near Pendor Hill.
• A third piece fell near Gryphon's Crag, an area village originally settled by a group from Tilea.
• A forth piece fell in some desert ruins.
• A fifth piece fell near the Empiresque town of Gunther's Foot.
• A final piece fell in a ruined keep south east of Masserschloss.

In additional to Wyrdstone, rumors are heard of other equally valuable treasures and money making opportunities.

• There may still be gold in the abandoned gold mine town of Goldstone.
• A powerful artifact of Nagash is said to reside in the Bone Tower.
• There is a bounty on some bandits residing in Quaterain.
• Some cultists are operating a gem mine at a nearby volcano.
• It is said there is a cache of magical weapons in some Dwarven Ruins.
• There is a reward for the capture of some notorious mercenary captains who are currently attending the infamous Mercenary Court held every 4 years. This time, the court is being held in Dove's Landing.

Campaign Rules:

I plan on using the standard Mordheim rules with the additional rules from Empire in Flames. We will schedule a game once a month. That way people who miss the odd month will still be able to keep their warbands competitive. I will officiate over the games and in case of an odd number of players, play against the odd person out.  Most games will take place at the Wyrdstone locations. Those are the green skulls on the map. When I have to play a game, it will take place at one of the adventure sites, the red skulls on the map. Adventure site battles will be unique and allow players to gain 'treasures' unavailable any other way. Hopefully, every player will have an opportunity to play such a game.

Prepainted (Whole) Buildings for Mordheim

As I work getting ruined buildings put together, I thought, 'if need be, I can have a table with some of my pre-painted Medieval buildings on it.' It doesn't have the affect of a ruined city, and I need more small things to act as barricades and cover, but it doesn't like pretty nice. (For something that isn't a fully terrained board.)

The table area here is a bit more then 4x4. I took pictures from two of the sides. These are buildings I've been collecting for years going 10 years back. It seems like every year I'd go to Little Wars and come back with a building to two. I started with Pegasus buildings, then one year I got the EM4 inn and the next year or so I got the EM4 fortified farm stand. In that time, I had also picked up some MBA buildings here and there.

It ends up being an expensive if purchased all at once. I got a deal on most of these buildings and the purchases were spread out over a good deal of time. So the hit to the wallet was not too bad.

Mage Knight Castle

Here is a picture of the Mage Knight Castle stuff I have. It is a nice set and very versatile.

I just thought I'd toss it out there.

Mordheim Table

Here was a table layout I had intended to use for Mordheim.

The table is 4x8 and ended up being a bit sparse for Mordheim. Still, I'm keeping this table setup for a while so I can get some games of Tomorrow's War in. Also, it is a great table for Grot commandos to spar over.

Looking at it, I have enough terrain for a 4x4 table of Mordheim. Given the number of people interested in playing Mordheim, I'll need a whole lot more. Granted, other players will be bringing their stuff, but I think I'll need to provide a dense 4x8 setup. So, with need for more terrain, I started scratching building some.

This piece is rather long, it is about 30 inches in length, 4+ inches in depth and three stories. The initial cardboard construction was rather fast. Adding in the wood support details and stucco has slowed things down a lot. Like a lot of real med/ren era city blocks, the houses here are built one next to the other. Now instead of building a bunch of different small buildings that could be pushed together, I went for one large on. I'll only be doing this once, (maybe twice) as I like the modular buildings. But my reasoning here was thus, building one large one should get together a bit faster and I can add in special design features that would be more difficult in a modular setup.

The main feature here is that a model can go from one end of the building to the other without leaving the building. But it is not a straight shot, the model has to go up and down and twist around. Models can also enter the back and come out the front. Plus it will have some dead ends and secret rooms. The ability to move 30 inches and never leave cover is a boon for warbands in Mordheim.

Lastly, here is a picture of some odds and ends useful for Morheim.

Barrels, crates, furniture, and assorted medieval stuff helps fill out a Mordhiem board. A lot of work can go into putting the small stuff out. It often goes unnoticed when playing. Though it is worth the effort as one really notices the lack of such things.

Terrain for Mordheim - Building and Priming

This is the first post for the hobby-a-day project. I'll refrain from making reference to that in the future but as this being the 1st I thought it appropriate.

I built the GW Temple of Skulls and repaired the Dreadstone Tower.

Construction of the temple was quite easy. It just involved putting together the pylons and adding three large skulls. For the tower, I had to reglue the top floor. That one doesn't seem to have a good joint to glue too and I may need to add something again to strength it.

I primed both the temple and the tower. I also primed some fence pieces from both the GW graveyard and fence packs. Lastly, I've included a sneak peek of the Tuesday blog entry.

100th Post - A Giant Milestone

Ok, maybe not. But I do have giants - GW Giants. Here is a collection of some of the giants GW has made through the years. I have included a Pit Fighter and Ogre in the front to give some perspective on size. The big one in the middle is a Forgeworld giant and the one to his right is the earliest GW (Citadel) giant I own. 

More info on Citadel giants can be found here.

The Workbench has reached capacity!

Too many different projects and none of them are getting done because of life. Well for the past two months I’ve been cleaning up and organizing my hobby stuff but I haven’t put a lot into actually doing my hobby stuff.  So I’m going to try and change that. Starting Monday, I’ve vowed to work at least a half hour on hobby stuff every day and write about it here. (Edit:  As much fun as describing how I put each and every plank on my ruined building sounds, I think I'll not post everyday.) What I will count towards that half hour will either be gaming or modeling. Since it is easier, and more sensible for this blog, modeling will make up most of my posts. But since I do play Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2^nd edition every Wednesday, I’ll drop a note about that as well. This was all spurred on by my dusty crusty friend at ‘From the dust of the Ancients,’ here: http://chaingunblues.blogspot.com/ He will be doing the same thing and to make things more interesting, we will have a bet going as well. I’ll have more on that in the future.

Now over the past summer my interests have turning from super heroes, to grot commandos, to Call of Cthulhu, to Imperial armored trains, to Warhammer Quest, to GW Giants, to Vampire Counts, to Mordheim, and now to Necrons. Plus if you add in other unfinished projects like the Junk Town and one can see why I never get anything done. So now my goal is to limit myself a bit and work on two broad categories – fantasy and sci-fi. J

Ok, it is not as bad as it seems.  Here is the breakdown:

Fantasy:
·         Army: Vampire Counts
·         Mordheim Band: Vampire Counts
·         Terrain: Empire Ruins (Mordeim Buildings)
·         Rules: Mordheim, Warhammer RPG, and maybe Warhammer Fantasy Battle

Sci-fi:
·         Army: Necrons
·         Rogue Trader: Odds and Ends for a campaign
·         Terrain: Junk Town and Space Port
·         Rules: 40k Apoc., Tomorrow’s War, Rogue Trader RPG

Two things of note: Each category has a strong theme, and for me, a pretty narrow focus. More importantly, there is nothing here that is a new project. And none of the projects are less than 75% done.

Zombie and Black Dragons

Ok, enough of my blabbering. Here are some pictures of the new GW Zombie and Black Dragons. Both very are nice.

You may have noticed I changed the positions of the wings. Though I liked the look of the wings on the giant bat thing, I thought the wing configuration on the dragon was not very menacing. To me, it look like it was holding up some pants. So, I just switched the wings around and angled them up.

I left the rider off the Black Dragon as I want him to be multipurpose. 

DCC RPG part 2

I'm not one that believes in fate or destiny. But I find it unusual that I started reading Jack Vance for the 1^st time about a year ago, I started re-reading the Chronicles of Amber this past month, and I was planning on going to Half-Price to look for Lankhmar - all before I was turned on to the DCC RPG. Of course that doesn’t mean I’ll ever play, but it does mean that the RPG should be a good fit for me if I ever did.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG

http://www.goodman-games.com/5070preview.html

Ok, this looks promising. An RPG based on the pivotal influences of D&D that makes use of modern RPG design. It is about time. One of the things that bugged*1 me about the latest incarnations of fantasy RPGs is the fact they feel to me like they are based only on the prior editions and literature written from those prior RPG editions. Specifically, it feels like the authors of Pathfinder only ever read 3^rd edition D&D, Ebberon and the Dragonlance novels. (To be fair, 4^th edition D&D feels like the authors only read the The Wheel of Time Novels and Paranormal Romance and they played World of Warcraft.)*2 Think of it another way, say you were writing historical fiction based on Xenophon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon). Would it be better to base it on his writings, writings of authors’ contemporary to him and modern archeological finds related to his time period, or would it be better to simply base it on Robin Waterfield’s Xenophon's Retreat: Greece, Persia, and the End of the Golden Age? Well, modern RPGs feel like the second, perhaps the DCC RPG will feel like the 1^st.

*1 This has been something the bugged me since 2^nd edition D&D. I should say something in the back of my mind bugged me about the fantasy RPGs that were rooted in D&D since 2^nd edition. I never really had a good handle on it until reading the premise behind the DCC RPG.

*2 To be fair, I have no idea as to how well read the authors’ of Pathfinder or D&D 4^th edition are. My guess is, a lot more so then me. They can write better was well. But they fall short, in my eyes, of Gygax and Arneson. They may be better by the letter of the rule, but not by the spirit.

Trololling Saruman

This is stuck in my brain. It shall now be stuck in yours:

Grot Commandos and the Grot Train Robbery

The Grot Commandos were created for the Grot Train Robbery. We never got to the point where they were unleashed on the table. Here is a shot from just before they were finished. At this point, I just need to pick out the details, add the base texture, and dull coat.

As for the Grot Train Robbery. There are some nice pictures here at From the dust of the Ancients and E-ville Armory.

Grot Commandos

I found some pictures I took awhile back. These have come along nicely since then.

Group Shot

Test Color

These were primed with Krylon Plastic Fusion Black. The prime ends up being glossier then I like. It made putting on the test color slightly more difficult. I ended up dry brushing the entire figure with German Field Grey and worked from there.

Space Cowboys and Aliens

Now that I have a great looking train (pictures soon.) I'm trying to think of other uses for it. I decided to make use of it in another project I had percolating in the back of my head. That was Cowboys and Aliens. At first I was going base that project strictly on the comic Cowboys and Aliens and the movie of the same name. But after seeing the 2 Horse Power Steam Coach project on the Lead Adventure Forum, I decide to expand my vision by including both my train and a similiar style coach in that project. With that, though, I would have a radical departure from the Cowboys and Aliens theme. It becomes a completely different project.

Thus the Space Cowboys and Aliens (see the word space before cowboys makes the project completely dissimilair:) project was born. The background of the game will be a combination of Westworld and the 80's classic Galaxy Rangers, with a little of Cowboys and Aliens tossed in. (I'm not even sure what that means.) Still, it will be pure serious gaming fun.

See, Fun!

And you were wondering why I had a picture of a cow in my previous post. All the things are connected...

Country Living

is great until the cows come home...They live up the road.

Grot Train Robbery - Possible Table Layout 1

I'm struggling with a layout that I like. I've run out of straight sections of track and I'm not quite sure where to get them locally by Saturday. All the track I have is from 25+ years ago. I know it is still available, just where? The lack of track means I need to orientate the boards side to side (long sides touching) instead of end to end. So this makes the layout about 8 x 12. Anyway, here are some pictures of layout 1.

Train Start

Here is a view from the side the train starts. As one can see,  I need texture the boards. I need to use the track cross piece as I ran out of straights. I could do more curves there instead, but I wanted the train to start in the middle. Still, that will change.

Ash Wastes Section

The table is made up of three sections. The first section is the Ash Wastes section. I'll be adding in some rough ash wastes terrain pieces and outcroppings to make this a bit more interesting. 

Junk Town Section

The middle section is the Junk Town section. One can see the Junk Town at the top of the picture. Near Junk Town the Imperial defensive wall has been breached allowing entrance into the ruined city. The bottom half of the board contains old imperial defenses and the gateway into the ruined city the Imperial train uses. There will be tank traps here as indicated by the boxes of...tank traps.

Imperial City Section

This last section is made up of a ruined imperial buildings and the wall fortification. With the board needing texture, as with all of the buildings, it looks pretty shabby right now. Most of the buildings are past the prime and 1st stage of painting. But I need to get lots of rubble. Rubble is key to ruined buildings looking 'right.' As I stated last year in my junk town articles, texture and detail are key to making terrain look good. Rubble handles both of those jobs with ruins.

Train End

Here is the end shot of the imperial city...pretty shoddy. Still lots of work to do on terrain and I have to paint the Train! Ugh. At least all the Grots are painted and 90% of the trukks are done.  And the question remains, do I look to get more straight sections of track. I've got a nifty idea of having part of the route go through a destoryed Imperial Tank factory. (In the past, the train entered the factory empty and left the factory loaded with Leman Russ tanks with the train never stopping. I pictured it with the Leman Russ tanks being built right on the train as it went through the factory. Not practical but fun.) I just love the idea of Grots swinging down on chains trying to board the train.

Imperial Train - The Rest

Here are some more pictures of the work Katz did.

Defender Car.

Caboose.

All Together!

That is it for the work Katz did on that portion of the train. There are some interesting buildings he did some work on. I also have got some unexciting cargo cars to carry Imperial loot yet to finish. I'll get them up soon, but the good stuff is all up.

Imperial Train - Engine

The Imperial Train will soon be hitting my workbench. Originally I had planned to convert the train myself, but my friend Katz insisted he be allowed to do them. He hadn't worked on a hobby project in awhile and he felt very inspired by this one. I was hesitent, as I enjoy the conversion end of things more then the painting. Still, I went ahead and that was good for two reasons. I'm running out of time getting ready for the Grot Train Robbery, and, more importantly, Katz did a spectactular job.

Here are some pictures of the Engine as a work in progress:

Before.

Half way there!

Almost Done.

Finished!

The Grot Train Robbery

I've been gaming a good deal lately (for me) with a mostly Grot force in 40k. A month or so ago, I came across this: http://ironhands.com/train.htm. I thought, that is pretty cool, I should do that. And, as it happens, I've got an old, broken down O scale train. But what would I do it with? Well, it could make an appearance in a 40k Apocalypse game. Or I could do an Old West style train robbery! And with Grots on the brain, I thought, what would be more entertaining then having Grots rob the train.

So I started working on a scenario. I wanted this to be a large scenario and I wanted a lot of players. At first I was going to have some players be Imperials and some players be Grots. I would be the judge. After working through some permutations I just couldn't come up with good force divisions. And having players working directly against each other in such a way would naturally push things towards the more serious scale of gaming. For this game, I want hijinks! So, after much deliberation, I decide to make all the players be Grots and I would run the train.

Background: The battle takes place on Armageddon after the main engagements of The Third War for Armageddon. After Ghazghkull Thraka left Armageddon for the second time and the Ork lines where pushed back, a good number of Grots were left behind Imperial lines. Those Grots, disenchanted with inept Ork leadership, formed up their own warband. This happened much in the same way as it did on Angelis. But unlike on Angelis, there is no single strong Grot to unite them.

It was decided that a contest would be held to determine which Grot should lead. Had these been Orks, they would have started beating on each other then and there. The last one standing would have been made the Warboss. Being weak, Grots prize cunning and back stabbing over strength. A different method was needed. Instead, they came up with the idea of robbing an Imperial ammunition train. As one was just rumbling by, this was rather convenient.

Picture a bunch of Grots sitting around arguing about how to choose a leader when an Imperial Train comes rumbling by. A grot named Snotnose proclaims, "The one that steals the most from that winz."

Snotnose jumps up, gathers his lackies, gets in his trukk, and drives off after the train. Quickly follow by the rest.

Objective: Steal ammunition from Imperial Train.

Forces: Each player starts with a trukk filled with band of 10 Grots. After that band of Grots dies, the player will get a new band of slightly more clever grots. A player may be a Grot at heart and be in need of a third band Grots. If all players are on their second set, they will get an even more clever band of grots. If not, something along the lines of some snotlings tied to the front of a rocket might be available.

Game End: When the Imperial Train leaves the board.

Victory Condition: The Grot with the most ammunition from the train wins.

Rules: Basic 40k rules with the following exceptions: The turn sequence has been modified to have the following phases: move, shoot, action. All players are active each phase and actions in a phase are simultaneous. In the action phase a grot can do a charge/board plus one of the following: inspect crate, toss crate, catch crate, and close combat. A ballistic skill roll is required to both throw and catch a crate. A failed throw roll means the crate is lost. Additional grots may attempt to catch a crate missed by other grots with -1 on the catch roll for each extra try. If all catch attempts fail, the crate is lost. Boarding is from any one vehicle to any other vehicle.

Each grot trukk can hold up to 10 models. A model is either a Grot or an imperial crate.

The contents of imperial crates are random. And since Grots can not read, they do not know if the crate has ammunition or something else. Roll on the following table to check:

1. Ammunition Explodes - Dead Grot. Roll D6 for all adjacent crates in contact. On a 1-3 that crate explodes. Grots in base contact with additional crates make S5 toughness save or die.
2. Imperial Rations
3. Space Marine Armor Lubricant
4. Hive Fashions Monthly
5. Ammuniton (1 pt.)
6. Ammunition (2 pts.)

Crates can either be checked in game, during the action phase. Or left unchecked until the game is over.

Other actions, not listed may performed by making a leadership check with an appropriate modifier.