"O Captain, My Captain!" - Our great return to the City of the Damned

Here we are again on Amarok's Lair! Three dry months for the blog, however not at all three dry months for the hobby. Summer's gone, and we just entered the greenest month of all (more on that later). However, between some holidays and various events for our families and ourselves, Grimbeorn and I managed to do something very big... the Biggest Battle We Ever Played. I'll add a link to that post as soon as I complete it.

Just yesterday, however, we started a brand new Mordheim campaign within our small club of friends. Our great return in the City of the Damned for an organized event generated from the idea of replaying from the beginning the first ever Italian national Mordheim Campaign, Necromantic Storm (in Italian Tempesta Necromantica).

WoV #7: Öldenhaller Manor

Seventh battle of the Wolf of Vengeance campaign.

The hints found in Dörthagen lead to Pfungzig, a rich city in the Province of Averland. But before following the tracks of the Adventurers is now time for a direct strike to the enemy: the Oligarchs.

The Sheep Campaign - Game zero for the Empire player

Second battle report for The Sheep Campaign 🐑

I cite from the Orc battle report the same introduction:

In the same afternoon we managed to play both games, since they were quite rapid. For right's sake, I have to admit that the new The Old World rules were not quite followed literally, since we played two semi-skirmish games, or however mostly with reduced units, to simulate how our Characters are just at the beginning of their career. No problem, though: we'll integrate the rules while we reach a normal point cap.

So, here we go with the first game for Grimbeorn.

The Sheep Campaign - Game zero for the Orc player

Here we are for the first battle report for The Sheep Campaign 🐑

In the same afternoon we managed to play both games, since they were quite rapid. For right's sake, I have to admit that the new The Old World rules were not quite followed literally, since we played two semi-skirmish games, or however mostly with reduced units, to simulate how our Characters are just at the beginning of their career. No problem, though: we'll integrate the rules while we reach a normal point cap.

So, here we go with the first game.

The Sheep Campaign - A narrative campaign for The Old World

The main project fot this year's 15th Hobby Celebration for Grimbeorn and me is to reenact the first ever WFB campaign we played, in 2009. Since the first and memorable game was all about me and a few Orc Boyz catching some poor sheep to feed us and to gain more boyz for the cause, the obvious name of the campaign is

The Sheep Campaign

The campaign is a narrative campaign in which we take reciprocally the role of DM, since we're not going to fight one against the other in all games. Like it was 15 years ago, Grimbeorn's gonna play The Empire, and I'm gonna play Orcs and Goblins.

We plan to play 10-12 games in total, and we decided in advance that 4 of them are called milestone games and would be the key battles for the narrative campaign. Between the milestones, we're free to master for the other player a number of games (for example: at the beginning of the campaign we'll play four little free games, and then we'll fight one against the other in the first milestone battle).

The aim of the free games is to gain more power and more troops, following the story of our character. This was the general concept of the original 2009 campaign, in which the story led to finding a long lost arifact called The Crown of Fate. We maintained the element of the quest for a magical artifact, but changed something.

Here's the general background for the campaign.

Campaign background

In the South of the Border Princes, a land always disputed, an immense power is awakening from a mysterious site: at the slopes of the Dragonback Mountains, after entering a dark chasm called the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, there's a desolate plane between the mountains; on the rocky wall, more than a thousand years ago, a temple was built, buried in the heart of the mountain. In this temple lies the Argal.

No one exactly knows what the Argal is: some people say it's a chalice, some other a shield, or a mighty weapon; rumors are that it can mutate its form depending on what the one who finds it really needs.

Apart from what it could be, the Argal has a tremendous power, and lots of Heroes of the history searched for this artifact. But the legends tell that it massively guarded, and just finding the Canyon of the Crescent Moon is nearly impossible: this kept the Argal hidden for centuries.

Now, a dark and unknown power is looking for the artifact. It's said that both the High Elves masters and the Lords of Chaos want the Argal for themselves...

So, the four milestone battles will guide us in the search for the Argal. In the free games there can be different armies and various plots, since only after the first milestone we plan to introduce the Argal story, with a specific NPC which will narrate the legend to our main characters.

In following battle reports I will narrate the campaign. Happy sheep everyone! 🐑

A German Company for Crossfire

And after the Brits, here are the Wehrmacht forces I assembled for Crossfire.

My German forces are specular to the British: three Rifle Platoons of three squads each and a Platoon Commander; two HMGs; a Forward Observer; a Company Commander

A British Company for Crossfire

After bingewatching Band of Brothers I finished painting my British and German forces for Crossfire.

Here they are, the Brits!

This is my British Company: three Rifle Platoons, each composed by three riflemen squads and a Platoon Commander; two HMGs; a FO (Forward Observer, the man entitled to indicate where my off-table mortars will shot) and a Company Commander

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!

The road to The Old World - The Hero

First post for 2024! Oh yeah. And it's written under the twin tailed comet, since the day after tomorrow marks the release of The Old World by GW. Warhammer Fantasy is back under a new skin, and I can't be more excited for it.

This 2024 marks also the 15th Year Hobby Celebration for us, an event between Grimbeorn, Michele and me to celebrate our start with Warhammer hobby back in 2009. Since Michele is in Rome, Grimbeorn and I are gonna carry on the flag by playing a new version of our first ever Warhammer Fantasy Battle campaign.

With The Old World out, I'm gonna take care of my Warhammer armies, define my square bases, fill up my ranks and so on. Only three days stand between me and the new books and rules, so I'm gonna share something related every day.

* * *

The first thing I did was take out my first Orc Hero. In 2009 I started playing with my beloved Greenskins, and the first box I bought obviously was a Orc Boyz box. Their Champion was my first Hero ever, since I played him as my character during out first campaign, named The Crown of Fate (La Corona del Fato in Italian), mastered by the former common friend that introduced us to Warhammer.

His name was, and still is, Alfray Zpakkakrani (in English: Alfray Skullcrusher, probably a more Orcish Skullkrusha or something like that).

This was also one of the first miniatures I painted. This year, since the 15th Year Hobby Celebration is on, is my intention to restore him and renew the paint job.

With Alfray I played my very first two Warhammer Fantasy campaigns during 2009. Just at the end of The Crown of Fate my character fell in the Sea of Claws after losing the final battle between Grimbeorn, Michele and me (Grimbeorn won that campaign), and was rescued by some Norsemen, who took him to see an emissary of Malal, the fifth God of Chaos, the one representing Chaos himself. The deity hired Alfray to become his new champion, a sort of new Kaleb Daark (a former GW character, a powerful Chaos Champion and the only known Malalite hero. You can find something about him here). We started another campaign with our old characters one year after: we loved them! And our armies grew alongside them while we became more and more attracted to the hobby.

I still have all my notes and army lists from that time. A nice memory!

I always use this miniature to represent my heroes: both Gorthul the Red Orc from the Wolf of Vengeance campaign and Okog the Nazty, my Mordheim Orc character, are the same model for now. I really love this Orc, so my future work on the paint job must be something right to bring honour to his story.

So, 2024 is the year of the great return of Alfray Zpakkakrani on the battlefield. The road to The Old World begins with the first green step...

PS: maybe someone noticed that the name Alfray is taken from the series Orcs by Stan Nicholls. Three novels I read in 2009 just when I started playing Warhammer and that I immediately appreciated, as you can see...