Hobby musings about Fantasy Crusade campaign

The Crusade has begun!

We're gathering the armies and the models we need, and we're starting to plan our hobby schedule for the months to come. For me, the Crusade is the opportunity to inventory my collection and decide what to build and paint by setting some affordable goals for the near future. Actually I already have an ongoing inventory file which I update with all my purchases, my thoughts and my plans. In addition, I'm a hoarder, and so I constantly (and with pleasure) buy new minis. However, given the fact that I paint very little, and most of my collection is unpainted (when not unbuilt!), I find myself with loads of miniatures still in boxes or anyhow not painted, and we always play with lots of proxy models or directly dies or empty bases on the battlefield.

Golden Demon, help us!

This isn't really a tragedy for us: we've always been more gamers than painters, and only in recent years we started enjoying more the hobby side of Warhammer. These days we want to bring our hobby a step up, and we already gave it a try by starting a little escalation league between us during 2020 (you can find my last deed about that here). We followed the rules for WHFB 7th Ed. Warbands, wanting to build and paint an entire 500 pts force of Dwarves (for Grimbeorn) and Skaven (for me), plus some scenery each. It went... well, quite bad, actually, or rather we played very little and only him managed to paint everything on the list. I'm still stuck on my damned Warp Lightning Cannon and its crew. Bloody rat-things...

After this experiment, we never tried anything new of the kind until now. We didn't paint almost anything from our Warhammer range (however I painted other things, such as DBA or my beloved Mordheim tokens), and we had in mind this Crusade idea since last Christmas. It's now time to give it a go.

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So, I know I'm not a fast or constant painter. Even so, I want to build a Crusade army (or various Crusade armies) which gives me the will and the motivation of being painted, a little at a time, with no rush and a lot of fun. I decided to concentrate of this three upon my WHFB armies:

• Orcs & Goblins
• The Empire
• Warriors of Chaos

I built a 1000 pts list each, and gather all the models I need in a specific box.

As you can see, most of it is unpainted, and something still needs to be built. There will be a lot of work behind the Crusade, and I'm ready for it. Just some general thoughts about my selections:

• My collection is absolutely not bad (at least for my goals). For The Empire and Orcs & Goblins I have at least up to 3000 pts of stuff each, whilst for Warriors of Chaos I can reach around 1600 pts in total. The Crusade starting list, with its 1000 pts, is just one third of my big armies, and I have a lot of miniatures still in storage. However, when choosing 1000 pts I still find myself with a very little portion painted, when none at all

• Related to this, all these years of hobby I bought loads of minis but I always play using the same old ones. Obviously, if I barely build and paint will be so. I honestly realized that during the arranging of my Crusader armies, and it was the most interesting thought about this project. So the first step of the Crusade will be the hobby phase in which I prepare my minis for battle, at least building it all
• In fact, in general, lots of my miniatures are still on sprue or in box. Even if unpainted, the Crusade is a nice chance to build and reorganize my miniatures for these three armies, create some useful trays and prepare to deploy everything on the battlefield ready when needed
• Anyway, I voluntarily chose for my Crusader armies some miniatures I still haven't got. Just few models each, but so I can buy something new I will use or need to complete my existing units. A leopard can't change its spots...

Just some random thoughts I realized while managing my Crusader armies, but I want them to become the ground rules in this new adventure.

So, for starter, I reorganized the Crusade box:

More about the specific armies in next posts!

Fantasy Crusade campaign - The beginning

The last edition of Warhammer 40.000 introduced the Crusade campaign system. Grimbeorn and I absolutely love it, even if we're not really big gamers in WH 40K... (but only because we have so much Fantasy to do).

We love it because it allows you to both expand an army a little at a time, thing that we adore especially since our firsts Warhammer campaigns when we were teenagers, and to pursue an affordable hobby goal. We are passionate hobbyists but not very fast ones, primarily in painting, and set little goals is the key to success.

Would be. I tried a lot but I lack in constancy. Sigh. However, here's what we created based on the WH 40K Crusade.

Grimbeorn and Amarok's

Fantasy Crusade Campaign System

Est. 2022

We both start with a 1000 pts pool from which we create an army following the rules from 8th Ed. of WHFB. We have some rules for Characters mainly given from the Warbands rules (oh we love that and you know it). Each battle grants use Glory Points which may be converted in regulars pts to buy new troops or new equipment (1 Glory Point = 25 pts). With Glory Points we may also unblock siege equipment (from the supplement Blood in the Badlands) for siege battles around the specific Fortress of our Crusade.

Main goal of the Crusade is to gain Glory Points towards battles and a great narrative objective called the Crusade Saga. Every Saga is composed of various Deeds, in-game objectives (such as Kill the enemy General and so on) which grant the player Glory Points if accomplished. An entire Saga may consist in a series of Deeds through a given number of battles: in the end, and in that momento only, the player can spend Glory Points to buy magical artifacts.

We still need a narrative frame for our battles, maybe the Badlands or the Border Princes where various armies gather to fight. The idea is to play WHFB battles like we play Mordheim games: we freely the army we want to play that day to gain more experience and power, we decide a point limit based on the time we have, build a list from the units we already have in our Crusade and just play. In the subsequent battle we may vary our army as well as maintain the same, as we like. A more powerful army would have play more games, so we would want to spread the games around our different Crusades.

We manufactured a Crusade campaign sheet. I post it in Italian, in the original version.

As you can see, we stole from Mordheim the advance scheme for Troops. In the first page there are different boxes for everything useful for playing.

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Well, from now on we only have to play! We're still beta testing the system, however we got pretty excited and we already have three Crusades each ready to rumble... I'll present mine in subsequent posts.

Crusade system is perfect for hobby purposes, and I really realized that I want to concentrate more on some aspects of hobby thanks to this new gaming idea we developed. More on that later. It's time to build and paint!

Waaagh!

A little hobby update #1

This is the first post entirely written and posted from my smartphone. Not exactly an exciting news, but definitely an update for me 😂

However, just a little update from the Lair’s workbench! In this days I finally picked up my brushes from lethargy and prepared from new stuff for various project. I’m planning on concentrate on something new very soon… maybe some Warbands for Warhammer Fantasy to smash Grimbeorn on the battlefield. In the meantime, here it goes.

I made some tokens for the national Mordheim campaign we’re attending. With these we can mark the dead models which return on the battlefield as Undead… we hope to use them the least possibile!

A couple models I built for my Empire Army and obviously for Mordheim purposes too. These are Luthor, a special miniature designed by Tuomas Pirinen, the author of Mordheim game, representing a lone mercenary from the ruins of the City of the Damned, and a Mage from the Lore of the Beasts, or alternatively a Priest of Taal, made from the bits of the Imperial Griffon kit.

My newest project is building my first ever 3D printed miniatures! I purchased an STL file from the manufacturer Reptilian Overlords, Priests and Penitents, and with the first batch printed I will have two Warriors Priests of Sigmar on foot and ten Flagellants. Perfect miniatures for my Empire Army (and for an upcoming Witch Hunters Mordheim Warband too…)

“I smell some hereeeeeetiiiiics!” 😈

Technical update: Blogger is not exactly optimised for smartphone, at least not for my iPhone. I’m currently using Google Chrome as browser (I though that with Safari would have been even worst, but I still have to try that out). Writing and pic posting went well, but all format options are hard to pick due to bad viewing on screen… not the best. I couldn’t modify the font of the captions under the photos. However, it worked and I can now post even without my computer.

A couple of dry months for the Lair

It's been almost four months since my last post. Italy is sadly suffering for a drought, so it's the Lair. We hope that both could be watered soon.

However, it didn't mean we had four months of absolute hobby stop. We played some games with our little club (mostly Mordheim), we tried some new games (more on that soon) and we're ready to dive deep into pur beloved world of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay in the next few months. Only painting and modelling have been cast aside for me since Easter, due to some time issues, work and life related. I'm currently moving to a new apartment with my fiancée, so maybe I'll take on my brushes a little less during this Summer. Waiting for Autumn to retake my hobby job more seriously.

With this post, I just want to put my hands back on the blog and set some good habits for the future. 

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So, speaking about Mordheim, we finally started Necromantic Storm, Tempesta Necromantica, the first national Italian campaign powered by the active Italian community. With more than 100 players, we're happy to contribute in this great adventure throughout our country! Every club is free in playing the six different scenarios that the national referees will send us from June to December. We count eight players in our group:

1. Paolo - Witch Hunters
2. Andrea - Undead
3. Alessandro - Skaven
4. Davide (Grimbeorn) - Middenheimers
5. Michele (Frontlineminiaturist) - Averlanders
6. Carlo - Horned Hunters
7. Mirco - Dark Elves Corsairs
8. Pietro (Amarok, me) - Ostlanders

Four of us already played the first scenario (The Cabin in the Woods), where some Zombies guard an isolated hut in the woods outside the Eastern Mordheim Gate. In the dark night of the Old World, the Undead rise from the graves, and even the brave heroes of Mordheim can descend into the dread of Necromancers...

The main rule of the national campaign is called "Dead shall not rest": when a Hero or a Troop member of a warband falls in the fight, he immediately test on the Injury Chart as per the post-game sequence. If he results in definitely dead, he immediately returns in the game as a Zombie! He's no more part of his warband, but he will charge any alive member of any warband who comes near.

Very cool rule!

We look forward in playing all the first scenario and the subsequent one (we already received the files for the July scenario).

In the meantime, I'm getting ready with some new stuff for our games...

My Warhammer Chapel has a Watchtower to match with eventually!

Some 3D printed Hidden markers based on the original design from the rulebook