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.

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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...