Ending 2023 with some hobby musings

Here we are, 2023 is ending. It was a very intense year for me and my wife since we became parents of Beatrice in August, but I'm kinda happy of how my hobby projects are running on, and ready for a new year.

2024 is gonna be a GREAT hobby year, since it will mark the 15th anniversary of our first dip into the hobby world - and for "us" I obviously mean Grimbeorn, Michele and me. Grimbeorn and I are ready for an intense year of hobby celebration, and we're preparing a list of things we want to achieve. We're experts in making lists and then forget about them, like any true wargamer; however, this special occasion must be appropriately celebrated.

Something's up in the Lair...

Given that The Old World is now real, and in 2024 we could finally return in the ancient land of Warhammer Fantasy with a new ruleset from GW, Grimbeorn and I are kinda excited. We almost finished our Wolf of Vengeance WFB campaign: just the epic, giant final battle lies ahead... but next?

Well, today we had an idea... something we can also use when The Old World is out... an idea involving our Mighty Empires set...

It's time to paint some tiles, lads!

My Rangers of Shadow Deep

A couple of months ago I started my journey in the world of Rangers of Shadow Deep by reading the rulebook and starting to prep my A-Team. Various things happened in between, but I finally have my squad ready to play!

Here they are. First, Hagen, my Ranger, ready to face the horrors of the Shadow Deep.

Report on Orctober 2023

 On November 1st, it's now time to check out on my Orctober.

Da Great Prophet judges me... was I worth Gork's favour?

So, my initial propositions stated that I needed to:

Build my 40 Savage Orcs

Build the Orc Warboss I bought on Christmas some years ago (the one with the Skaven)

Magnetise some of my Greenskins

Finish painting two siege weapons I started and never completed

Reorganise my Orc Warband for Mordheim

And in the end I didn't do anything of that 😂

HOWEVER (this time there is a big "however") for the first time in my life, I think, I painted an Orc from the beginning during this month. Hooray! 🥳 This was thanks to our #sporktober challenge, and we're still waiting Grimbeorn's verdict on the winner.

Moreover, I started a Mordheim Warband mustering post series, still at draft level, but the first Warband I'm gonna talk about is my Greenskin Warband. So, in a way I worked on the last point of the list to.

There's a lot to do, but we're one step closer to conquering the land of men!

As always, Waaagh!

#sporktober part III - The making of

It's time! #sporktober is almost over and I completed my entry for our little challenge.

In this painting report I'll show the very simple way in which I painted the Orc my pals chose to be painted during this amazing Orctober. The winner was the classic monopose Orc Warrior Boy from the 6th edition of WFB.

Here he is in all his greyness

#sporktober part II - Vox populi

I'm now ready to get on prepping and painting my models for our #sporktober challenge. However, I've got some models to choose between, and I want my fellows to decide which I will paint. Since Michele is my opponent and Grimbeorn is the jury, it may be biased to ask them to choose my miniature. But this is a friendly challenge, and I'm sure they'll choose the miniature they sincerely like the most to see finished by the end of the month.

After my brief report on the models from the past editions of Warhammer, these are my miniatures I currently possess which could compete in the challenge. Let the people decide!

Getting (Grimbeorn) ready for #sporktober

A few days ago, my pal Michele (Frontlineminiaturist) sent to Grimbeorn and me a YouTube video which launched a challenge for the month, calling that #sporktober. It's a mix between spooktober and orctober which challenges people on social media to paint an Orc or Undead miniature, and the youtuber chooses a 90s style of painting on one of the Skeletons from the Cursed City range. I leave here the link for the video 👉 YOUTUBE 📺

Michele challenged us to do the same. This isn't exactly part of my Orctober goals, but I wanted to join the ride so I said yes (maybe it will be a chance for me to revamp my painting desire). Grimbeorn said he didn't want to participate, but he'll be our judge. However, he asked if we could send him some info about this 90s style of painting. I was thinking about the info to send to him, but the fact is that I'm kinda nerdy when talking about the history of various Warhammer editions (I'm nerdy just about that, as you can imagine), and so I thought that my info for Grimbeorn could became a whole post.

And so, my dear Grimbeorn... this is for you!

Orctober 2023 - A New Hope

Here we are! October 1st, first day of the greener, nastier, “mushroommer” month of the year. Furthermore, this is my first Orctober as a dad of a not-so-green little Snotling 💚

As always, my bench is full of unfinished projects, but I want to concentrate on something Greenskin-related in the next few weeks.

“Hey, an unpainted Orc Warrior! Shoot’em!”

Well, just a simple list of the first tasks that come to my mind:

• Build my 40 Savage Orcs
• Build the Orc Warboss I bought on Christmas some years ago (the one with the Skaven)
• Magnetise some of my Greenskins
• Finish painting two siege weapons I started and never completed
• Reorganise my Orc Warband for Mordheim

Just one or two of these would be enough. Let’s roll and I’ll keep track of my progresses on the blog… hopefully!

Musings on solo wargaming

During the last year my pal Alexander dragged me in the world of solo wargaming. Talking about that, my best fantasy solo experience in gaming, a part from videogaming, were my beloved game books such as the Lone Wolf series by Joe Dever. Absolutely the best in town.

Lone Wolf in the original majestic illustration by Gary Chalk

Thanks to Alexander I experienced the fantastic solo wargaming books by Mike Lambo, a series of rules written for playing in various settings, all solo. They’re really well conceived and finely written, and we nearly finished one of the books, Ghost in the Jungle. More on that in a subsequent post.

So, since I bought HeroQuest I started to imagine a way to play HeroQuest solo. The official app would be a perfect way to do so — but Grimbeorn and I started the campaign together with the quests from the core box, and I don’t want to spoil our journey by playing that in advance in solo mode. On the internet there are several suggestions and mods I could look for, but they’re often complicated, need to print cards and stuff and assume you have one or two expansions in your collection, which I have not (for now).

On the way of building my setting for Solo HeroQuest, I needed to keep things easy. I needed some inspiration. And it came once again from Alexander, who is a game designer himself (even though he’d laugh reading this) and told me about a miniature game, new to me, born to be played both solo or co-op, with a nice and simple system to manage the bad guys: Rangers of Shadow Deep.

I read the rulebook and I honestly really liked the system and the setting. It kinda has a Lone Wolf vibe, too: all these Rangers and the dreadful and mysterious Shadow Deep phagocytizing the land… woah. I pitched Grimbeorn on trying that too, as always — I used a comparison between RoSD and Knights of the Old Republic, the epic roleplaying videogame set in the Star Wars universe in which you explore and fight with an interchangeable party of companions.

Knights of the Old Republic is one of Grimbeorn favourites ever. I really like it even though I never finished the game — Grimbeorn hates me

In the purpose of both try out RoSD and find ideas in developing Solo HeroQuest, I started my journey in solo miniature wargaming by prepping my first RoSD game.

WoV #5 - The Moot

Fifth battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign.

Here we start the Path of the Winds. This is a cryptic name, compared with the others. There's a reason for that: everything will became clear...

WoV #4 - Orchaeology

 Fourth battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign.

After slowing down the Orcs in Gisoreux, Rhobar enters the Forest of Arden to unveil the mysterious reason of the Greenskin reckoning... 

Musings on tabletop dungeon crawlers - Warhammer Quest vs HeroQuest

I've always been keen on dungeon crawlers, since the first Diablo came on my PC. Even if during our rolegame sessions we never really played lots of dungeon-type situation, in our WFB campaigns there were often typical dungeons in which the Hero must survive to achieve some narrative objectives. Years ago, thanks to a former friend, we used the tiles from Advanced HeroQuest to create this dungeons. Then I printed something similar (in monochrome to economize; I still have and use those), and we even tried the original HeroQuest, which I really liked even if we played just few games.

Random Diablo pic just for pure love

WoV #3 - The knights of death

Third battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign.

This game is set immediately after defeating Max Tarn in our first game. 

WoV #2 - Helping friends

Second battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign.

As I wrote in the previous report, probably this game set in Bretonnia would not be Rhobar's first choice of proceeding after defeating Max Tarn. However, I chose to follow a chronological principle in narrating our games, so to discover the different aspects of the story together with the Hero (and obviously Grimbeorn). From now on, little info about the previous game would be quoted in the briefing if needed.

WoV #1 - The convoy

First battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign. After Game Zero, this is the first official battle report of the whole series.

Originally we wanted to report the various games in the chronological order we played them. Thinking about in-game logic, this would not always be the effective order the main characters would manage their movements. However, years passed and our project remained a draft: so, this series of pic showcases and battle reports serve more as a diary of our campaign than a precise narration of the events, and Rhobar's story will be narrated in the briefing before and after every game, in the same order Grimbeorn discovered gradually the plot and the puzzling texture of the world he lives in.

WoV - Campaign setting, rules & Game Zero

In this post I will explain the setting of our campaign in the Warhammer World, the first game we played for Wolf of Vengeance WFB campaign and the rules we created to run this series of battles.