Posted on Sunday, February 20, 2022Last update

10mm Celtiberian on the march!

First DBA post for 2021!

I finally achieved my long time goal (and first goal for 2022, cheers) to finish painting my 10mm II/39b Celtiberians for DBA 3.0. They were on my shelf since April 2020, I think: a real shame, especially because I wanted them so hard at the time.

Here they come.

The Celtiberian list has no free choices, so every caped element is 3Bd and it's the core of the army. The other elements are 4 x Ps, Light Horse and the Cv Gen element





I am pretty happy with the outcome. They are a nice sight in the distance, on the battlefield, and I love the crowdy look this miniature scale gives to the single elements.

I also tried them on the field against my dear friend Alexander's Polybian Romans, on this stunning DBA table.



The Roman 4Bd are really menacing in this double line

Celtiberian scutarii (3Bd) chase Roman auxiliary troops (4Ax) near the enemy camp

The two main lines approach, but Roman infantry is heavily obstructed by the difficult hill and the hamlet

Light troops fight on the side. The Celtiberian General is hurrying up to support his forces!

We won in the end. It was a nice game indeed, really tactical and focused on crucial decisions especially affected by the hilly terrain in which my Celtiberians dwell. Take that you filthy Roman invader!

We plan a Hordes of the Things game soon with some fantasy elements added to our armies... a cool idea we had some time ago. I'm currently prepping the figures (always from Pendraken): more updates soon!

Orctober 2021 #3: The long Orctober

So, Orctober did actually end a long time ago. However, my goal of painting my Troll is finally over, even if I meant to finish it during November... I'm as a liar as a sneaky Goblin is.

Eventually, here it goes: Gurzo the Troll!

I always loved a red skin tone on this Troll miniature from the Skull Pass set

I tried an attempt to a classic base with lots of green (GW's Warboss Green) and a yellow drybrush

Blue Dwarven shield as per the original colour scheme from the Skull Pass box

Ready to join my Mordheim warband soon...

More updates to come!

Posted on Sunday, January 9, 2022Last update

Musings on GW's Kill Team

At the beginning of September, my mates and I purchased the latest edition of Games Workshop's Kill Team, the skirmish game set in Warhammer 40K universe. We tried it later in October, and we essentially loved it. Everyone but Frontlineminiaturist, indeed, but more on that later in this post.

The set up of our first ever game. As per the core box, Death Korps of Krieg confront Ork sneaky Kommandos.

Veteran Guardsmen are a real treat for the eyes.

One of our friends already painted his Kommandos: nice!

Grey buildings and green skins match perfectly together.

What did we like? Grimbeorn and I, who particularly talked about this new system in the past months, appreciated the general division of the game in three clear phases, the action system which allows the player to mix and match the actions of his operatives freely on the battlefield, the alternate activation of the miniatures but overall we loved the campaign system.

On our second game, Grimbeorn fielded the Orks and I tried Death Guard (my 40K army). The heretic Marines lack in all the trickiest special rules the opponent has, but they're nice to play too! Disgustingly Resilient is a real pain in the ass (for the enemy eheheh 😈).

The Kill Team Compendium allows you to deploy Kill Teams from every 40K faction, and eventually it woke in us the desire to create every single one of them. Just like the Mordheim fever, we have too much hobby in our hands.

Another Orks vs Death Guard match for Grimbeorn and me. We played a lot to understand the mechanics and complete a game in all the four turning points (aka turns).

We also tried some multiplayer games, without great adaptation from the core manual and first campaign book (the second has already been published but we didn't get it yet). They run smoothly, even if they're sensibly longer than just two players game. Obviously, a more skilled handling of the rules always comes to help!

We mainly played the scenarios from Octarius, the first campaign manual. It's a nice setting, with a cool story and some good side objectives in the scenarios. Also, it provides detailed map with pre generated terrain, making it really simple to set up and start playing.


Experimenting a four players game on two joined regular battlefield: Death Korps (with Grimbeorn's unmistakable square bases), Death Guard, Ork Kommandos and Chaos Space Marines. A very long (too long) game, it was nice but we just accomplished the first turning point in one hour and a half.

Frontlineminiaturist's new entry: Chaos Space Marine! Previously he tried Adeptus Custodes (which are a really tough opponent, as always).

Some criticism came from Michele about the fighting system, which according to him doesn't count properly model's armour. Truly, hand-to-hand combat in Kill Team focuses on the model's ability to fight rather then his defences, so he's kinda right; however, we appreciated the dynamic and think that more armoured models do not suffer from disadvantages in combat.

In 2022 we want to play some Kill Team, alongside our usual hobby commitments, and possibly to expand our collection (I already have plans on an Imperial Fists Kill Team, as you can see here). Grimbeorn built everything in the core box during last December, and we want to do a speed painting session of the various scenics soon. I mostly finished them, so... it's a matter of time.

My built Kill Team scenic elements. Only the oil pump missing! Then I'll prime them black and proceed with Grimbeorn on the speed painting.


Posted on Wednesday, January 5, 2022Last update

Hobby ho! New year's projects spotted 🔭

Happy 2022 from the Lair's crew! Davide, Michele and me look forward to the new year, ending a 2021 with lots of hobby, above all lots of gaming, which remains our main focus as wargamers.

So, fast check of our last deeds from past December.

Focus on Kill Team for Grimbeorn: here are his Death Korps of Krieg from the Octarius box. On square bases? Yeah, you know that he's an old WFB wolf...

Building was the main interest for Grimbeorn during 2021, beside gaming. The Kill Team's models and scenics are just the latest task on his workbench!

2021 was a fruitful year for Frontlineminiaturist! Recently we discovered the SAGA system (more on that later), and he purchased his Viking warband immediately. Here are his berserkers!



Nice and charming Viking standard bearer.


Just to let me and Grimbeorn begrudge him, Frontlineminiaturist painted and completed his two Mordheim warbands. The Averlander are his proud (and our purge on the battlefield. Damned may be their bows!)

Last but not least, his Frank army for DBA 15mm is almost ready and magnetized. Lots of hobby during this last month!

What about Amarok (aka me)? My last deed was this Imperial Fist I painted to join a little local painting contest. I'm very proud of him, even if I could always do better. I wanted to try a dirty look on this mini, and I'll start building and painting a Space Marine Kill Team soon!

I finally manage to prep this set of walls and fences I love from my WFB first times. Ready for speed painting!

So, I am a teacher, and on our last day in school I taught my students how to play a little DBA game fielding Caesar's legions and the Gauls, our last topic from our Classics program. It was really fun for both boys and girls!

We closed 2021 with some gratification, but what about the future?

On Christmas 2020 me and Grimbeorn listed some good resolutions for 2021. Honestly, I wasn't really good in fulfilling them, so I'll lower the shot for 2022, hoping to complete the tasks I have in mind.

Here they are, Amarok's top 5 hobby good intentions for 2022:

Edit: I'm updating this post with new links when and as I fulfill my goals.

  1. Paint at least one DBA 10mm army;
  2. Finish painting my 500 pts Skaven Warband for WFB (I started them in 2020, contesting with Grimbeorn and his Dwarves);
  3. Build and organize my Orcs & Goblin collection (I purchased some new minis I still need to clean up and stock;
  4. Play more Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay;
  5. Manage our blog, which turns 1 on January 13th for the English version and 2 in March for the Italian version and general concept.

See you in the next few days for updates!

Again, happy new hobby year from us 🎲

Grimbeorn, Frontlineminiaturist, Amarok

Posted on Monday, December 6, 2021Last update

The Mordheim fever took us forward ⚔️

Saturday me and my mates played a Mordheim game using the scenario on Town Cryer #13, The Sword of the Herald. Nice scenario: a glooming green sword in the centre, surrounded by lots of Wyrdstone markers and nice Zombies everywhere.

In the centre the sword and some coins mark the objective. Larger coins means larger shards!

My Orcs are in the down left corner, oppose to Michele's Possessed near the cimitery. On the right, Davide's Dwarves started in the little wood. The coins near the warbands mark the centre of the deployment zone area of 6".

The scenario was randomly chosen by Michele, and we rapidly tried to put it on the board. The result was we misread some rules... we discovered it too late, but the game wasn't really hacked that bad. On the contrary: we liked it. A lot. More on this forward in the post.

The game itself ran smoothly and we had lots of fun. We decided that the Zombies which resurrected near the centre of the table would activate and charge on a radius determined by a die each turn: on turn two they activated on 5" and there were Zombies everywhere!

The Zombie is about to trying a diving charge on the (invisible) Squig under him. Will he succeed?

Answer: no.

The Orcs advance towards the gate

The Possessed start from the graveyard and charge the first Zombies ahead

The Dwarves scatter alongside the walls

In the centre there is a green light fog which prevents model from seeing anything more than 3" from then. The fog covers a radius of 5" from the centre, but there is an additional circle of 3" in which the model can still be sawn from out the fog. The Henchmen can enter and move only if the Leader passes a LD test: scary things live near the rich prizes...

Orcs and Possessed are dangerously on the same route to the centre...

The Dwarven path is full of not-so-dead bodies!

Another Zombie trying to fly


Some activity in the centre: in the fog, the Troll and some Orchish folks kill Zombies everywhere and claim the prizes from the angry Possessed


The Orcs flee with the sword! Orc Boss took the item and run away, followed by the Shaman with a big shard. The Trollslayer do the same and retreat towards his party, while the Possessed are still fighting the greenskins

"Aaaaaaargh!" Finally a Zombie succeeds in a diving charge on the Dwarf Thane! This will not end well, but will surely end cool 

Last turns: lots of Zombies attack the Possessed Magister! Me and Michele decided for a truce: I'm not intended on killing his powerful warrior Sbraaah (the thing with the tentacles), so I let him free from the Squig dental routine

Orc Heroes are running away with the sword: Gork watched upon us! Or was it Mork?

Traitor! The Possessed Magister confuses one of the Greenskins with his dreadful magic and he attacks the Shaman!

In the end, me and Davide left the field to Michele and his Possessed, which were the only warband without any casualty. We divided the booty: one big shard each (worth 3 Wyrdstone pieces), one little shard to me and one to Michele, and the sword obviously to the Orcs

The followers of Dr. Von Pfalz (Michele's Magister) perched on a building facing the centre of the battlefield and threw arrows every minute of the game to everyone in sight

Group pic in the centre of the table

The Dwarves suffered from their slow Movement and close the game with 3 pieces of Wyrdstone, +1 because of their Treasure Hunters' abilities. Same result as the Possessed, in the end.

Once we ended the game, we read that the sword... could cause the daemonic possession of the bearer! My Boss would have to pass a LD test every turn to not attack the first model in sight screaming he was the herald of the Shadowlord. Sigh. However, we left the sword to the Greenskins (I renounced to my additional exploration die to make amend), which sold it for 100 GC (💰). Michele wanted the sword for himself, because Possessed can equip it being a Chaos weapon.

The story could have ended there, but we like the story of sword too much to left it unplayed. So we thought of a narrative campaign built around the search for the sold Sword of the Herald: everyone wants the Sword, first of all the Possessed, for which it will be the key to the Shadowlord himself...

The Sword of the Herald token is ready-made for the campaign!