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! 🐑

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 - 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...

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!

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 #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.