WoV #6: Dörthagen

Sixth battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign.

After battling the Undead in the Moot, Rhobar decides to head to Dörthagen: all the hints found in Hugo's house lead there, so it's the natural place to go.

Look out for Xerxes's scouts!

Quick update: I finally completed 4 elements for my DBA 3.0 1/72 army of Early Achaemenid Persians I/60c, the army from the Persian Wars.

It was an odyssey. I don't know why, but I needed an unnecessary long time to finish these miniatures, and they're just 1/3 of the whole army! The God King wouldn't be pleased...

However I'm really glad of the final result. When I'll put my hands on the other elements I'll complete the army and show them all, but I wanted to mark this initial step since it was so hard to achieve.

These are 3 elements of 8Bw, the Immortals in the middle with the standard and other two sparabara infantry elements. The light infantry on the left is 3Ax, representing Armenians fighters

The sparabara were the biggest elements I’ve ever painted for DBA, since I only confronted 8Bw against Michele’s Byzantines. I chose the colour pattern to better distinguish the units, although in reality they would have been more mixed

The base is a really simple work: Citadel Agrellan Earth with this nice cracked finish, brown wash, Bonewhite drybrush and some flock. I think it’s right for the Greek landscape in which they fought

And looking at a pic of the plain of Marathon, I think I can go with it!

A leap year wargaming post!

Didn’t post anything this month, mostly because it’s been a dry month for hobby purposes. I couldn’t resist posting on February 29th, though: what a chance!

These days I finally watched Band of Brothers, the TV series about the U.S. Army E-Company during WWII, produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg a couple of years after filming Saving Private Ryan. It’s a very evocative series, I actually loved it since it’s realistic, entertaining and involving at the same time.

Screenshot from the third episode, Carentan

Badlands start treating us good - my Orcs & Goblins army

The Badlands sang by The Boss (clearly an Orc&roll star, given his strength derivated from his Greenskin heritage) are home of multiple Orcs & Goblins tribes, and mine is no exception. During this fifteen years of hobby, my first army grew costantly and is still growing; we played numerous battles, we lost a very lot of them but always with an Orcish grin on our green face, and the will to take our victory in another, glorious slaughter.

With the release of Warhammer: The Old World (from now on WTOW), I take the chance to make and inventory of my Greenskin miniatures. I think they're the army of which I have more miniatures; however, as you'll see, I didn't paint pretty much anything of it yet. Maybe the future will se my Orcs all painted on the table: it would be an awesome view! Something still need to be build, also: this is one of my goals for the 15th Year Hobby Celebration.

Well, time to go.

Waaagh! Alfray

Da best Waaagh! since Gorbad. Est. 2009

The road to The Old World - So it begins

 The Old World is finally here!

Alfray ready to dominate the new rules!

This afternoon I took my own copy of the new rulebook, a blue tome after a lot of red ones. I’m very excited! I’m still waiting for my copy of Ravening Hordes, the book with the army lists for the evil armies: I play three out of four of the armies inside (Greenskins, Warriors of Chaos and Beastmen; the fourth army is the Tomb Kings of Khemri, which Grimbeorn just purchased with this new edition), so I absolutely needed it.

A screenshot from the detailed unboxing Grimbeorn sent to Michele and me. You can see his proud paw on the prey

During the next days I’m gonna go deep inside the new rules, and Grimbeorn and I are already planning our first game. But the first thing I intend to do is a serious inventory of my Orcs and Goblins. A lot of miniatures still need to be built, and the majority is unpainted, but that’s not a problem: here in the Badlands even the grey armies fight an unrelenting combat against the other forces of the Old World…

All my Greenskins ready to be listed. The cradle on the left is for the Wyvern

Last thing to say, it was announced that Cubicle7, current publishers of WFRP 4th edition, is developing a new ruleset based on the The Old World setting. To cite Michele:

Did we need it? No. 

Will we buy it? Maybe. 

Will we go on playing WFRP 4th ed.? Obviously.

The official annoucement

I look forward to a great year of hobby! The road’s just starting, and the road goes ever on and on for fifteen years now: and whither then? I cannot say.

The road to The Old World - Bad Boys

It’s almost here! My second post while waiting for The Old World is about my Warriors of Chaos.

Do you remember this guy?

During last week I made an inventory of my Warhammer Chaos miniatures. It’s an army I love, but in which never really dipped; so, I don’t have lots of miniatures. However, they are one of the first armies I ever saw, because in the Crown of Fate campaign they were Michele’s army (I played Orcs and Goblins and Grimbeorn played The Empire: those two are our main armies ever since). I soon learned to fear Chaos Knights even when they were just five models; I’ve seen Michele’s character ascend to Demon Prince during a crucial battle by gaining the favor of the Chaos Gods; the silent and statuary units of Warriors scourged the battlefield in a way my Boyz and Grimbeorn’s State Troops could only imagine to reach.

Not a long time after, I bought a box of Chaos Warriors. I remember building them while on vacation with my parents somewhere in Tuscany, I was in high school at that time so a long time ago. Well, among them there was (and there still is) a particular miniature I love. I never bought any true Hero miniature for this army, so I needed a Hero to use on the battlefield, because at the time we were planning a new campaign and I wanted to play Warriors of Chaos.

His name was Thorgar.

Here he is! As you can see I chose a grey paint scheme for him... after all this years...

He's a "simple" Champion from the Warriors of Chaos old sprue, but at the time I sawed some horns from his friends' helmets and added some tentacles and mutations to him. I always loved this early idea of mine, and I'm really affectionate to this miniature even if it's just the product of the imagination of a proud young wargamer... or maybe because of that!

Well, Thorgar guided my Chaos troops in various battles. I remember at least two brief campaigns we started (and, I think, never completed): in one of them we had to conquer some territories on a map, and the second was something like a Mordheim campaign (we first tried Mordheim just some years after we were into Warhammer hobby). I have all my notes as well from that time.

Have you seen the first pic in this post? This is not random: the name Thorgar is obviously borrowed from Warhammer: Mark of Chaos, the fantastic videogame I literally consumed. Thorgar the Blooded One was his original name (in Italian it was Thorgar il Purosangue). I loved the game and the plot, and I chose the same name for my Hero. Just look at the epic trailer here: the best description of the Warhammer world.

Even if I never painted him, I often chose a Mark of Chaos (obviously) for him in battle. In my first times gaming, my favourite was the Mark of Nurgle, because at the time (and I think even in more recent editions) it gave -1 to hit and to wound to enemies in close combat: a treat! This granted him a title, because every Champion of Chaos needs a title. But my Thorgar was only on the way of becoming a real Champion, so he wanted to call himself Thorgar the Unclean... but I was called Thorgar the Almost Unclean (Thorgar il Quasi Immondo, in Italian). Not really noble, but me and the guys always called him that and he still has this name today. Poor Thorgar, I really need to paint him.

During the last few year, Grimbeorn and I started lots of little campaigns just for the sake of gaming. I'm often the master, but in one of them I'm just an humble player and Thorgar is my character: the Thorgar Campaign started at least in 2016, I think, and it's still on today. Sometimes we play a game to narrate the violent deeds of Thorgar in Norsca, where he wants to become the new Champion of the Gods and defeat an Imperial army settled near the Sea of Claws. In this story, even if I always loved Nurgle (I possess a Death Guard army for Warhammer 40k, too), Thorgar is a servant of my favourite Chaos God: Tzeentch. Tzeentch is always the main evil force in all my WFRP campaigns, he's the bad guy in Wolf of Vengeance: is the true power of Chaos, in my opinion and taste.

So, in The Old World Thorgar is ready to return to the battlefield with is little but capable army. I don't have lots of miniatures, as I already said, but fortunately the new rules allow Allied and Mercenary contingents, so I can deploy my Beastmen alongside my Warriors of Chaos. This week I took few pics of what I've done.

My Warriors, magnetised in their box. Here you can see my Chaos Sorcerer (I want to paint the base before glueing him), some Warhounds, the Gorebeast from the Chaos Chariot that I use as a filler. I also have the Chariot, obviously, a Demon Prince, the other 5 Warhounds still in sprue and some Marauders I'm building these days. I never painted anything from this army, a part from a pair of Warriors you can se in the last rank, who were just a color try

First ever Marauders I built. I've always loved this miniatures, and I'm just finishing the others. However I want to leave on the sprue 4 or 5 of them, because I'm planning a Norsca Warband for Mordheim in the near future and I want to keep some minis for it

Thanks to Andrea, one of the friends from our club, I possess this magnificent old Chaos Ogres Command. I love old metal miniatures, and they're just a step toward the only old miniatures I really, really, really want to collect... old Chaos Dragon Ogres. I look forward to a time when I will deploy them on the battlefield!

Tomorrow, the Chaos war drums will sound in The Old World!