"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! 🐑

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.

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!

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... 

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.

Fantasy Crusade - first battle report

When we posted on some hobby groups on Facebook our first post about the Fantasy Crusade campaign system, some good folks were really interested (and that flattered us a lot). They ask for some clarifications, which I still have to provide through a specific rules post, and I first need to translate to English all our notes and campaign sheets: however, Grimbeorn and I already (so to speak) played the first game!

We choose our armies from respectively his Ogre Kingdom Crusade and my Empire Crusade. However we played full strength, so 1000 pts on the battlefield.

We picked the sixth battle from the WHFB core rulebook, The Watchtower.

Ogres win the throw for the tower, so they start with a core unit inside it. Grimbeorn puts on the battlefield a Bruiser with two hand weapons (General), another Bruiser as BSB, 6 Ogres, 6 Ironguts and 5 Leadbelchers. BSB and core Ogres are currently garrisoning the tower.

My Imperial forces attack with a more various army (even compared to Grimbeorn's Empire Crusade I preferred to mix more diverse units: maybe less effective but I love the background effect). I field 5 Knightly Orders, 10 Greatswords, 15 Swordsmen, Helblaster Volley Gun, 15 Halberdiers with a 8 Crossbowmen as Detachment, 5 Pistoliers. My Heroes are a General on warhorse and a BSB.

Ogres move forward, but I try to start aggressively to avoid their charges, so I try to charge first. I succeed with every attempt (woah), but I lose two knights against the dreadful shooting of the Leadbelchers

Even without two men, my charge is devastating: my General unit obliterate the Ogres by successfully scaring off and destroying them in their attempt to flee

On the other side of the tower, my Halberdiers have a bad time against the Ironguts: they're really strong! We kill just one of them but we lose the combat...

... and the only survivor is the BSB, who holds the line for Sigmar and the Empire!

Its a brief heroic moment: the Ironguts literally eat him and turn to charge 😱 my poor Swordsmen. In just a combat phase this entire unit will be totally wiped out

Grimbeorn and his usual reaction to my double sixes

Turn of the events! With a charge, my knights leaded by my General successfully destroy all the remaining Ogres by pursuing them after winning the Combat phase. Second mark for them today

With just the Ogres on the tower remaining, weakened by my constant shooting, now the Empire just need to wait. Sigmar blessed my Helblaster Volley Gun which suffered just one misfire in the entire game!

My Greatswords charge the tower with the last Ogre still maintaining possession

The end of the game!

So, the first game of our campaign ended with a suffered victory for me. I lost both my core units, but Grimbeorn lost his entire army in battle. Our Crusade rules state that a unit destroyed in battle is automatically restored at its full strength before the subsequent game; however, we had to roll on the death chart for our characters.

I totalize 4 Glory Points with this game (1 for playing the game, 3 for winning) and Grimbeorn 2 Glory Points (1 for playing, 1 for losing). Some of our units gained an enemy standard, which will grant some experience and, maybe, some upgrades for our units. 

It was a nice, fun game, and we liked the Crusade-like army composition. With this game we beta-tested the post-battle sequence and we wrote something more accurate in our rules. More on that later. We decided to ignore, just for this game, the Saga system inside our rules, so we could just try the base rules: for the next game we're already writing down some ideas for this key feature of our Crusade Campaign.

I'm looking forward to fight the Ogres with my other armies: it's a fascinating enemy, and I really want to explore their potential and find their weak spots. I have an entire Crusade to do so...

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.

***

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.

***

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!

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...