Personal Development, No Plan

At the start of this year I (re)found work at a foundation in my beautiful home country. And as an employee in the Netherlands there's almost no escape from the compulsory ritual that's called 'persoonlijk ontwikkel plan' (personal development plan) or 'POP'. In such a plan employer and employee agree on targets and intentions for the next working year. Hammered in stone these targets are (depending on company, boss and/or HR department) used to assess the contribution toward the company's and your private goals...

Anyways, in this case the writing of my development plan was a process of filling in a excel sheet with a not entirely transparent structure, in which 'smart'goals were given 'weights' (in percentages) that resulted some work spaces and lots of excel scripts later in a very objective judgment of yours truly. Since I stepped in a few weeks after the deadline for filling in the excel, one of my first tasks was to fill in all categories satisfactory.

So I started out, sending in 'alpha' and 'beta' releases of my plan to my boss, who then returned my versions full of his remarks. This process repeated it self for quite some incarnations of my plan until it turned out all of a sudden to be 'ok'. During this workflow no goal, intention or other fiction was left untouched, except for one item, counting for one (1) percent of my personal development: Painting Waffen SS infantry for Flames of War. Being approved by my manager and HR department, I faced this challenge!

Having painted a Flames of War Czech-Russian tank army, I had become familiar with the practice of painting 15mm scale miniatures. The SS panzergrenadiers were however quite different: Instead of some tanks there were nearly 200 miniature men to be painted...
So actually it was a blessing in disguise that I managed to sneak in a little (bad) joke in my 'POP'. The pressure was on and I finished just in time!!

Let me know what you think of the paint job!

Regards and a happy wargaming filled 2014!

Post battle report

Last friday our second Border Town Burning campaign started off with a four player battle..

Ogres, Witch Hunters, Marienburger mercenaries and my Possessed battled for treasures hidden in chests, spread around the ruins (sorry, forgot the name of the scenario :-). There was a small chance that a chest contained a 'deamonic dog' instead of gold... So, in line with the laws of logic and statistics, every chest that was opened during our battle contained such a creature...

A Ninja Gnoblar with one of the fearless doggies.

Can the Witchhunters crack open one the dog infested crates?

It was though a bit surprising that the only warband with a 'normal' mix of heroes and henchmen managed to snatch the victory. That in spite of the endeavours by well thought-out warbands lead by veteran Mordheim players as for example a one hero all hired swords Marienburg gang, a all hero a bit on the shore side for henchman (just one) bunch of Possessed and a Ogre quartet supplemented by a Halfling. What could go wrong?

Here the fearless Marienberg hirelings!

The Halfling looking for trouble, can he see that withchunter, can he be shot?

Not shot, but bitten by dogs he can!

In the post battle events Scorpio, my unlucky Possessed who met two Ogres and went out of action, had to fight for his freedom in the Rind (Entry 65 on the Border Town Burning injury table). Because of a lack of time I went home without finishing this event. Few days later I used PBE Game Dice Roller to play the fight between Scorpio and a nasty Chaos Warrior:

Roll One
Generating 1 rolls of D2, 1 per line.
Comment: 1: Chaos Warriors gets the charge, 2: ST charges in...

2 ==> Scorpion Tail gets the charge(YEAH!)
CW: Fear check: 2 (he's cool..)
ST: 2 bare handed attacks
ST: To hit (WS 4 vs WS5: 4+): 5, 6 (two hits)
ST: To wound (S4 vs T4: 4+): 5,5 (two wounds)
CW: Armour saves (3+ -> 4+): 3, 1 (two fails!)
ST: OutOfAction: 5, 5 (OUT OF ACTION!!)

Scorpion Tail kills the Chaos Warrior in the first round of combat .....
And by the Border Town Burning rulebook: "He gains the mutation blackblood (!!), +2 Experience, +1 campaign point and evades
detection to rejoin his warband with all his weapons and equipment."

In the end on of the hirelings left was of course the dwarf Trollslayer.

============ For accountants and wargame auditors only =======================

Results sent via email and displayed via web.
Summary: Scorpion Tail gets in the Ring (injury: 65) (genereer 30 dice rolls voor iedere kant, die ik op volgorde van rol zal interpreteren tot uitkomst...)

--------------------------------------------------
Roll One
Generating 1 rolls of D2, 1 per line.
Comment: 1: Chaos Warriors gets the charge, 2: ST charges in...

2

--------------------------------------------------
Roll Two
Generating 30 rolls of 1D6, 1 per line.
Comment: Attacks of Chaos Warrior (2a with Sword)

2
3
1
6
2
4
1
4
2
5
5
6
6
2
6
1
5
2
3
6
5
6
6
5
2
3
1
6
6
6

--------------------------------------------------
Roll Three
Generating 30 rolls of 1D6, 1 per line.
Comment: Attack of Scorpion Tail (2 barehanded, 1 tail)

5
6
5
5
5
5
5
2
6
5
6
3
4
1
5
5
1
4
5
3
4
4
3
3
2
3
5
2
2
6

Tactical is not for the Ogres

After a well earned vacation it was time to bring out the miniatures again. Too long without any wargaming/painting and whatnot :) I had enough to read with me, but it is not the same :)

My Nurgle friend and player Arjan came round and it was quickly decided to do a small game: 500 points skirmish WHFB. Of course this meant pitting some Nurgles against my Ogre Kingdom.

The fun with 500 points is, that it is quick but also you never can guess what your opponent will bring. Since 500 points means always "kill your darlings" in your army list, it is the opportunity to take something wacky or something extremely fluffy. It is therefore more often then not a "use your experimental list" type of game. One thing guaranteed: fun!

The Nurgles were with
- some Marauder horsemen
- 6 forsaken with
- 1 Nurgle leader
- 1 spawn of Nurgle
- 1 chariot

I pitted the following Ogres:
- 3 Ironfists with
- 1 butcher
- 2 mournfang cavelry
- 2 sabretusks

Of course here and there they were kitted out but not much, since 500 points is easily spent!

The table had some obstructions in the middle: buildings, fences and a mysterious forest) THe battlefield was well divided in the middle. Starting of with the Nurgles some manouvering around the obstacles was done. My Ogres were playing a waiting game in order to get charges in this turn. After 3 turns running around the horsemen killed of 2 sabretusks but I got no charges in.
Eventually I manouvered in such a way, that the horsemen were in the wrong direction for charges but my Ironguts had a clear line for the forsaken and the mournfang could flatten the spawn. The chariot was still well away, since fences and forests proved to big a barrier. OK, charges are go and ....I roled a 1 and a 3, needing more then 4 inches for the charge.... So I moved 1 inch with the ironguts with a butcher mad as hell! The mournfang flattened the spawn as was expected, but left the rest in the open.

Of course the forsaken charged next and rolled 4 on d3+1 for their attacks and wiped out the ironguts! What happened here! Tactical masterpiece on my side but totally disrupted by throws of the dice! As my opponent nicely pointed out that in 7th edition WHFB I probably would have won but in 8th it is't so :)
This is then the charme of the game, forsaken being the winners of the game and acting as a superb bodyguard for their leader. A fluffy way to play the game against a small, hard as nails, scaving group of Ogres wandering through the woods.

All in all, as expected with 500points skirmish: FUN!

Book Review: In Her Majesty's name

This is a book review for a set of steampunk skirmish rules. We've not yet played the ruleset, a new review will be posted as soon as we do.

The ruleset caught my eye in the Wargames Illustrated. Greet mini's and great setting. We are playing Chaos in Carpathia but that is more Victorian horror. This is more the steampunk variation in my opinion. The book is accompanied by a blog with latest findings, errata, additional material and reference cards.

The book is good: Nice size book, softcover, good pics and not a ruleset with 500 pages. Read the book within the hour and flipped through the warbands. I love the setting and quick paced skirmish rules (as they read, how they play has to be experienced yet!).
I am enthusiastic on forming a warband and the fact that you can come up with your own themed warband is great. A solid ruleset for creating warband members including the formula's to calculate the points for your warband members is ace. Playing these kind of games leads to coming up with ideas of your own. It is then difficult to create such a thing. You need a lot of playing hours with existing warbands to get a feeling for points value. When eventually you come up with your own it needs loads of play testing and tweaking (and discussing with fellow gamers) until you have a balanced set (if you didn't quit in the process).
This set of rules bodes well for creating your own warbands in the steampunk setting. Love to get to grips with the game!

Some random ogre's appear!

A short while ago we decided to start a new campaign in Mordheim. I decided to go with Ogre's this time. This post is the first update on the progress of creating the models for my warband.

I really had some fun creating these guys! Not included is the Halfling btw.

Mind you, this is also my very first attempt with milliput ever!

All I made tonight.

A random base with tiles.

The full group thus far, front view.

Full group thus far, rear view.

Mountian Guard and Boss, I guess.

Again, but front view this time.

painting Mournfang

As mentioned in the previous battle report my mournfang are finished painting. It took me a while but they are done. I tend to like to start up multiple paint projects with models I like, ending up with 4 projects progressing very slowly. Plan to paint is good thing here and I put away 3 other projects in a shoebox (literaly so you can't see them near the paintstation) and focussed on the mournfang. This proved good tactics since they were done in 2 weeks (just painting half hours here and there).

The base of the mournfang was done by airbrush. Great stuff to paint the hide and add cool highlights. Finished of with a wash and a final highlight with the airbrush. This was done in say 2 hours. I also undercoated the riders and the saddles separately. In total 6 parts to paint separately (2 riders, 2 saddles and 2 mournfang). The mournfang itself finished quickly after the airbrush session. The saddles as well since only leather painting needed to be done. I did the tusks and bones on the saddles with a colorflow from brown to red to yellow to white. They are more magical creatures and this gives them that look I had in mind.

With the mournfang ready I started work on the bases as well. I wanted these simple and snowy to focus attention to the model. Simple layers of snow were added with watered down pva glue. I also added clumps of snow and put drops of watered down pva glow on them so it could soak through. It gave nice patches of thick and thin snow. With some added rocks covered in snow, for now it's done.

Meanwhile the ogre riders were started. Mainly your basic ogre although I wanted to give a nice print to the pants. It became a cloud pattern that works well. The troop is now called the cloudriders and the entire ogre force named: skytitans of null. Always nice to see this naming following from the models and paintschemes themselves, works more organically that way.

A lot of work went into weathering the armour and waponry. The first order to make it less 'clean' and further more to give more color to the model that has a lot of reds and browns. Green-blue oxidation on brass is great here.

Fianlly assembly of each model with the 3 parts finished and then all comes together. A quick layer of matt varnash and the models are done. Good to see how focussing the work leads to quick and good results here. Next up is the stonehorn but maybe I'll do 1 leadbelcher in between to do something different then furry brown beasts.

The watchtower

A game of my Ogres vs the Nurgle warriors of chaos. For the first time my army list contained the mournfang cavalry! Yesterday I actually finished painting them but they were good to go on Friday. The rest of my army was a set of 7 Ogres, 5 ironfists a bruiser (BSB) and a butcher (lvl2). I added a scraplauncher, 3 maneaters with pistols (and swiftstride and poison attacks) and 3 leadbelchers for some shootyness and 2 sabretusks to harass where needed.
What was I up against: a hellcanon (of course), some low level spawn, a block of warriors of chaos (not to mess with), a chariot, a wizard, a hero with palanquin and it was topped off with some 3 dragon ogres.

The scenario I rolled was the watchtower and Chaos was assigned to guard it. Of course the warriors were put in the tower (maybe the single most difficult unit to defeat without any charge bonuses). The game for me started of with my first mistake: not charging the tower directly with the strongest unit I had. For some reason I sought out the my chaos opponents first to ensure a safe battle for the watch tower. This is somewhat odd since I had more troops than the chaos ones. An immediate charge and fight for the tower would have been a better plan. Start the conquest of the tower as soon as possible is a lesson learnt here.

My Chaos opponent did will by putting his warriors inside the tower. They are a tough nut to crack. I charged with my ironfists eventually but even with my big block of attacks it was not enough. The one time I won combat, the warriors stayed inside the tower and I had to start all over again. Subsequent attacks proved some losses on my side as well and in the end I couldn’t swing it before the game was ended.

While this should have been the centrepoint of the battle, I put my focus first on the dragon ogres and the chariot for I thought they would mess with my plans. Of course my chaos opponent manoeuvred in such a way charges in turn 3 were only succesfull. I had to charge the spawns in the end with my mournfang (completely wiping them out, mournfang are gooodd!!) before I could get to grips with more interesting units. The maneaters got to grips with dragon ogres (which should have been my mournfang with their impact hits) and got stuck the rest of the game. Luckily the hellcanon played no major part in the game as well as the magic users. I would have gotten stuck in sooner with some charges but it was not to be.

The watchtower scenario with Warriors of chaos inside was too tough a nut to crack with the mistakes I made. Fun game, good mournfangs, better luck next time!