You Need Friends

Another session in Castle Wittgenstein and the pace has well and truly changed. Almost gone are those memories of tactical battle and assault as the Inner Bailey slowly unravels it's bizarre wonders in a series of separate locations. SPOILER ALERT - if you plan to play "The Enemy Within" campaign or the "Death On The Reik" supplement stop reading now - you have been warned!

The writers of are on top form for this section of the adventure. Most locations are tackled (as written) in isolation, but set the players on an unsettling journey through the effects of chaos magic. They don't know what may lie behind each door, and the groans of worry on the request for a willpower roll are a joy to behold as they experience new horrors in sight and sound. The good thing here is that although everyone they meet is mutated and warped by their exposure this does not necessarily change them into a homicidal maniac. Odd and deranged, yes, but not nasty. In fact last night’s theme could almost be called "Friends", albeit in a twisted, dark Warhammer Fantasy way.

This RPG post is a bit more of a session report than normal, as one of the players was missing and so missed all his character's fun, cockroach eating, off wine drinking and female companion flirting with a giant man/roach mutant! That'll teach you to watch that Chinese food, WeeBaldie!

First encounter was with the figurehead of the Family - Ludwig Von Wittgenstein. He has hidden himself away at the top of a tower as the exposure of warpstone had turned him into a six foot cockroach mutant, kept company by his friends - thousands of real cockroaches which scuttled inches deep on the floors, walls and dropped from the ceilings. Ludwig studies the arts, sings, plays the harpsichord and it utterly charming and friendly. So much so that even our notoriously unforgiving party, after crunching through a couple of floors, chatted, had a brandy and left him be (despite the earlier precautions of pouring lamp oil round the floor).



Entering the Main residence to get out of the storm overhead, the old mutated butler greeted them at the door way and offered them food and wine (even if it was months past its best) before wandering off for a snooze (one that the thief Grendel made sure he'll never wake from - "just in case"). Following the stairs to the dungeons brought the party into conflict with the Ogre jailer before finding the deranged and broken figure of the old village physician hanging in a cage and proclaiming his torturer his friend and carer (see more friends). Left for the hopeless wretch he was the party released some villagers and even a tax man from the cells before heading upstairs where they encountered one Ludwigs son's - a mutant who lived in a small room where he also lived with his friends - stuffed animals (birds, boars, bears, birdfolk, mutants, beastmen, servants, etc) all on display to keep him company. He flew into a frenzied mad rage when one of the party touched one of his friends though and was quickly put out of his misery.

Grendel found a replacement glass eye for herself though, so that was nice. Heindrich also finally managed to draw his magic sword. He's spent every session since about April or May trying to pass a willpower roll to do this (much to everyones amusement), so you can appreciate the sense of occassion when this herculian task was accomplished! He's found it to be a non-magical armour negating warpblade. Maybe next time maybe we'll actually meet someone wearing any armour so he can take advantage of it...

Next session should see the climax to this segment as the gang close in on the main heads of the household and the warpstone meteorite they seek...

Warmachine - Cryx Defiler

First completely finished Warmachine model - a Cryx Defiler.

I wanted a dirty look for my Cryx force, and came across this Rust Effect tutorial on Warseer that looked so good I knew I had to give it a bash. I've also "controversially" ditched the Cryx Green and decided my archane colour of choice is purple.

Quite pleased with the results, but I'll have to have a look around and see where rust occurs naturally a bit more to make the effect varied on other models.

Warmachine Prime MkII

I've been threatening to write about this for a while now, so here we are at last. The main catalyst behind the choice of time is that I 've had a couple of games over the last week and they (thankfully for the cash I've "invested") have been a blast - tonnes of fun. Fast action, attacking play, strategic stacking effects, cool models - just great.

For those of you not familiar with the game, its basically a steampunk with magic skirmish size wargame. Each force is centred round a magician ("warcaster") with the rest of the force made up of Giant steam powered robots, small units of soldiers and individual character figures. It is produced by Privateer Press.

Anyway, several folk at Lothian Gamers have decided to start playing and I was sucked in. It's a good crowd of players and one of the nice things is that we are all starting from scatch, so every game everyone is learning something new and cool about their own and each others forces. I (and a couple of others) have picked the faction Cryx, who are the game equivalent to the undead. The main reason for this is look of the mini's. I quite liked the background of a couple of the other factions but the figures weren't as nice.

I followed the recommendations of others and started off by buying the Cryx Battlebox, which provides a starter force (One warcaster, 3 small robots (jacks) and One large jack). The starter version of the rules are included in the box so I left the rules off but also bought the faction guidebook. In hindsight I should have just bought the stat card pack for Cryx, as the cards hold all the important information anyway and the book, lovely as it is, mostly only adds fluff and a variety of set force lists which you wouldn't be using early doors anyway. Additionally you require the stat cards to play the game (keeping track of hits, spells, etc), and as the new edition, MkII, was only released this year there is a chance that any Ebay bargains will have the old cards and therefore be unplayable.

So that's all for now. No battle reports yet as we are all still in learning. Lessons learnt by me so far are pretty ubiquitous to wargames in general. Don't split your forces; get to know your forces strengths, abilities, spells and how they combine; don't run your heavy jack up to the enemy as you can't use your attack and it will be crushed before your next turn; and ignore your opponents jeers as you organise your force behind the scenery as they won't be laughing when you flank them.
Painting updates as they happen...

Over the Wall

The mid week WFRPers were round again this week, hoping to finally break into the Inner Bailey of Wittgenstein Castle. Yes, I know it seems this has been going on for ages, but we hadn't met since the start of June so it's not as long in session time as it feels. The final gatehouse and wall were breached as the party came up with a diversion (burning mattresses against the main gate door to also provide smoke cover) whilst splitting the party either side of gate to scale the walls away from the gate. It's been good to see characters with the "scale sheer surface" skill get to use it to great effect as it's one of those skills that seems handy but never really gets used that much. With two characters skilled in this way it was easy (especially with a few poor rolls for the guards) to get to the ramparts and lower ropes for the others. In fact thinking back on the events of the session the RPG gods must have been looking to move the scene on as I don't think I can remember the characters being so deadly in battle and the opposition (lets be honest - me) rolling so poorly. I suppose dice luck comes and goes. The random poor dice gremlin must have sitting on my shoulder this night, but the stigma is pretty firmly stuck on one or two of the players. Also half my rolls are done in secret behing the GM screen so no-ones knows - Shhhhh!

Six Month review

Six months into the year it's time to see how I'm doing on my start of year pledges.

• Finish the Dog Soldiers project. Done. Not played it yet though. Funny how that happens. It's still in my plans though so watch this blog. 
• Song of Blades and Heroes warbands. This project is pretty open ended, but for the sake of accounting - Done! Swamp Themed and Skaven warbands have been done, with enough figures added to make a diverse goblinoid group. A rake around the shelves has a beastman themed group in the waiting and I've a nice collection mini's for a forester themed warband. 
• Modern Civilian Warbands -Nope! 
• Zombies. For #3. - Like #3 again Nope! 
• Doctor Who. With the new series there seems to have been a renewed excitement. Some new "not"-figures have been bought and I really should at least put some paint on some of them. 
• Card Stock Buildings. This has expanded to my Lunchtime Project section. So far Lunchtimes have produced several card stock buildings and ruins, half a Sci-fi tunnel system and the beginnings of a cheap (and supposedly quick) palisade. More on these in later posts.

 AOB: Stuff thats emerged or to be levered into the next 6 months

• The 20mm World War II bandwagon has started to roll. Not a priority really this
•  year, as the instigator of this whole sorry affair (Halo_star*) has no doubt done less that me. But it's there now all the same. 

• Warmachine. Not blogged about this yet, as it's sitting precariously on the edge of the todo shelf, promising to re-create the sticky bun scene in Young Ones episode "Bambi". Members from my RPG group (plus others from Lothian Gamers) have decided to take up Warmachine, and I've been swept along in the novelty of playing a game where I'll already have opponents! When that battle box finally hits the workbench I'll expand on it. 
• HeroQuest figures. With the start of a HeroQuest campaign with Arabiansquire I'd like to get a few more figures coloured. We've plenty of orcs, goblins, skeletons and Chaos warriors but nothing else done. Once sat down this should be quite quick (famous last words) as I ink them instead of using paint. This is nice and fast leaving a childrens story book style of watercolour style colouring which I like. Once the actual HQ figures are done it qould be nice to expand this to other dungeon creatures, but it'll come down to whether I want to have them coloured in this style.
• Gladiators. Having now made an arena and bolstered my combatant numbers it would be grand to get a game of Red Sand Blue Sky in soon.

A busy time ahead then. I don't know how I'll fit it all in.

We who are about to die...

Four quick gladiators to battle in my new arena. From left to right Thracian, Hoplomachus, Dimachaerus and Dwarf Retarius. All Wargames Foundry except the 2nd figure which I can't remember the manufacturer.

Gallery Page

As you may have noticed there is a new tab/link above. I've put in a gallery page. In reality it's just a painting log more for myself than anyone else, but it's there all the same for all to peruse.