Magic & muscles 🔮💪🏻

Yesterday Grimbeorn and I played a little 1000 pts WFB game, High Elves vs Ogre Kingdoms. This was the first game ever for Grimbeorn's Ogres, newly purchased and built. Nice battle indeed, even if my poor Elves perished against the smashing hits of their colossal foes...

A simple deployment with some terrain elements: a couple of forests, a swamp, a haunted mansion, some obstacles and a sinister statue. The field is almost too big for just 1000 pts

Both armies are made of elite warriors, so few models. The big Ogres dominate the battlefield with their tonnage. The empty base on the Elves' side near the swamp is a Lion Chariot

Nice magic phase for the Elves: a triple one in the first spell of the first turn...

My Elves move forward but the Silver Helms stay away from the Mournfang Cavalry and their devastating charge

The Ogres move forward too, but they didn't charge. In the second turn, The Phoenix Guard and the Lion Chariot charge the vanilla Ogre unit with the Firebelly

A nice Grimbeorn shows what finger must be used when you save two sixes with two sixes

Third turn! Bad things here: the Ogres are wiped out, but the Ironguts and Leadbelchers surround the Elves, and the Mournfang Cavalry finally charges the Silver Helms

"My sire, they're big..."

"My sire, they're too big!"

With a nice tactical move, the Leadbelchers destroy the Chariot, make an overrun move and impact on the other flank of the Phoenix Guard. The Elves look like an hamburger between two Ogre buns!

It's a slaughter, and it could have been worst but the Phoenixes have an exceptional ward save thanks to High Magic 

There can be only one BSB on this field! The Ogre is now devouring the Elf banner. This shall not be forgotten

The survived Elves flee, but their enemy catch them: it's the end for the champions of Asuryan

Triple one to wound for the Silver Helms: the Fate has turned against us once again!

I can still hear Grimbeorn's laughter in seeing his mounted Ogres run over the Elven cavalry

The outcome: an absolute massacre. The Ogres showed their strength and power!

It was a nice game, we had fun and we could try the Ogre Kingdom Army Book for the first time. Grimbeorn was really happy of the outcome, and I cannot wait to take my revenge!

Catching up with our WFB narrative campaign

The Wolf of Vengeance page on the blog has a tricky story. The campaign started in the summer of 2020 and we kept taking pics and post some updates in the Italian version of our blog. There, the last update for the campaign goes back to January 2021: a long time ago. However, we never posted anything about it here, and it remained only an idea on our to-do list... until now.

For comparison, of the 23 games in total we plan to play to end our campaign, at that time we were at this point:

At the end of November 2021 we were here:

So, we kinda doubled the number of games we played, we discovered a whole new path and we played other two battles between December and today.

Lots of things happened: Grimbeorn's character Rhobar, the hero of our story, who started as a simple officer in the army of Middenland, became a more skilled warlord, gained an entire army and some powerful allies among the races of the Old World, and discovered some dark secrets behind the terrible civil war that crushed the Empire right after the Storm of Chaos led by Archaon. He revealed a whole new path beyond the first three, with new games and challenges (and a lot of pointy Elves).

Grimbeorn's Rhobar model in all his magnificence

When we get started in 2020, the goal was to keep up here on the Lair everything we would have done by posting a little battle report, with some briefing and pics. Unfortunately we didn't do that, and we learned that this kind of things must be done immediately after the games, or otherwise within a little time. Now we find ourselves without the best memories of what happened and a lot of posts to write to narrate our epic journey.

However, this was and still is the most legendary and fabled campaign we ever played, full of plot twists, references to our old WFRP campaign (from Wolf of Vengeance have originated): so, in the next weeks we're going to catch up here on the blog by posting briefs battle report for the many games we played. We've got some nice pics to share (sadly not enough, as we forgot to take any photo in a couple of games... sigh), and some nicer stories to tell and post here as a diary of our adventures in a grim and perilous world.

Only three games separate us from the epic final battle: we plan to reach the decisive clash between now and the spring. Hopefully we will catch up with all the story before its extraordinary conclusion...

Warhammer Chapel finally sighted!

I owned the Warhammer Chapel barely since I started playing and collecting in 2009: you've seen it as a central piece of terrain in many of our battles (we simply love its sight on the field).

When we started our first little escalation league in 2020 (here's the link to the Italian version of the blog in which we covered it), during the first lockdown, Grimbeorn and I wanted to paint 500 pts of respectively Dwarves and Skaven, plus a big piece of terrain. He chose his superb portal from the Age of Sigmar range (we have one each, but mine is still covered in grey paint), and I decided to finally finish the Chapel.

Well, two years later - make it thirteen years - here we are.

I'm really proud, it's going to be an even nicer piece on the battlefield. Next terrain element on the shelf are the walls and fences from the same old Warhammer range: hope to get to them sooner!

This is one step forward on the escalation league I'm still finishing. I'm just some rats away from the end... 🐁🐀

10mm Celtiberian on the march!

First DBA post for 2021!

I finally achieved my long time goal (and first goal for 2022, cheers) to finish painting my 10mm II/39b Celtiberians for DBA 3.0. They were on my shelf since April 2020, I think: a real shame, especially because I wanted them so hard at the time.

Here they come.

The Celtiberian list has no free choices, so every caped element is 3Bd and it's the core of the army. The other elements are 4 x Ps, Light Horse and the Cv Gen element

I am pretty happy with the outcome. They are a nice sight in the distance, on the battlefield, and I love the crowdy look this miniature scale gives to the single elements.

I also tried them on the field against my dear friend Alexander's Polybian Romans, on this stunning DBA table.

The Roman 4Bd are really menacing in this double line

Celtiberian scutarii (3Bd) chase Roman auxiliary troops (4Ax) near the enemy camp

The two main lines approach, but Roman infantry is heavily obstructed by the difficult hill and the hamlet

Light troops fight on the side. The Celtiberian General is hurrying up to support his forces!

We won in the end. It was a nice game indeed, really tactical and focused on crucial decisions especially affected by the hilly terrain in which my Celtiberians dwell. Take that you filthy Roman invader!

We plan a Hordes of the Things game soon with some fantasy elements added to our armies... a cool idea we had some time ago. I'm currently prepping the figures (always from Pendraken): more updates soon!

Orctober 2021 #3: The long Orctober

So, Orctober did actually end a long time ago. However, my goal of painting my Troll is finally over, even if I meant to finish it during November... I'm as a liar as a sneaky Goblin is.

Eventually, here it goes: Gurzo the Troll!

I always loved a red skin tone on this Troll miniature from the Skull Pass set

I tried an attempt to a classic base with lots of green (GW's Warboss Green) and a yellow drybrush

Blue Dwarven shield as per the original colour scheme from the Skull Pass box

Ready to join my Mordheim warband soon...

More updates to come!