Heroquest - 25th Anniversary Edition

Gamezone have opened a 25th Anniversary Edition of Heroquest on Kickstarter. Check it out here. This hits the nostalgia button right on the nose for me, and obviously a lot of others too. I still have my original which makes me go misty-eyed every time I open it. From what I can see so far, its looks really good, but there's been little in the way of communication from Gamezone despite already busted their funding goal wide open. At the time of writing they are over $272,000 pledged for a $58,000 goal. Granted the kickstarter has just started, and Gamezone might have been surprised by the flood of pledges.

If they can get a handle on things though, and release a steady stream of updates and stretch goals, this is going to be a BIG one folks.

Cityhammer - Post Mortem

marlwyrms on the charge.

Last weekend saw the first Cityhammer, a small event in Limerick for a few folks to get together and play some friendly warhammer at 2,500 points set up by Jay McKeown, the wargaming honcho for BroCon. Well, I say friendly, but what I mean is non-competitive. Actually, more not a strict tournament than non-competitive. Just as well as I was more forgetful than usual with the old rules.You know what it's like when the dice start rolling.

The photos here are from his Craigness, you can see some more here. You can often catch Craig weeping softly on the Blog of Grudges.

I took my fimir (warrior of chaos). I took a lvl 4 Nurgle Daemon Prince on lore of death with all the toys, a defensive Nurgle  BSB with the Crown of Command, a lvl 1 sorcerer with Dispel Scroll, and Throgg. 17 Nurgle Chaos Warriors with halberd, full command and the Standard of Discipline, 3 crushers with ensorcelled weapons and the gleaming pennant, 17 Forsaken of Khorne, 5 Chaos Warhounds, Hellcannon and 5 Chaos Trolls.

Game 1: Bruce Sutton - Orcs & Goblins
I've known Bruce for a good while now, but we've never managed to play each other. We decided to finally consummate the relationship. Bruce was playing with a large block or black orcs, boyz, arrer boyz, a stone thrower, 2 orc chariots, doom diver, a unit of six trolls and a large mob of gobbos with 2 heroes with great weapons, shaman and fanatics. An bsb and fighty lord completed the army.

Things went awry for Bruce early as he failed all three required animosity rolls and had to charge with all three units, the arrer boyz, wolf riders and gobbos. None connected bar the wolf riders, who saw off my warhounds.

The fimir mean to teach them orcs some manners.

We juggled about a bit before the battle lines met. My warped (forsaken) took a charge from two orc chariots and a unit of black orcs and were wiped out to a man. Well, fimir. Rolling double six for the chariots impact hits was painful. In return the black orcs were murdered by the fimm (chaos warriors) and meargh (daemon prince). The goblin unit turned out to be a real pain, after unloading their fanatics with great weapon wielding goblin heroes actually managing to take down a few warriors. The eventually failed their steadfast roll and fled only to be run down. On the flanks a unit of trolls and wyrm riders (skullcrushers) danced about each other for most of the game. My hellcannon performed poorly, hitting bugger all before running off an orc chariot. My unit of fianna fimm with dirach, (Trolls with Throgg) which I'd never taken before surprised me with their ungodly kill power. Throgg is a murderer.

The MVP on my side was certainly the meargh. She was toting lore of death this game, and purple sunned her way through a high tally of orcs, gobbos and various heroes. We called it at the end of turn three, slow play (we were taking it pretty easy) dictating we call it. I came out about 400 victory points on top. A great game with a high blood content.

Throgg. What a pr*ck.

Game 2: Kevin Rynne - Bretonnians
Kevin is a great player to face as he is both gracious and merciless. He knows the game extremely well which is gold for someone like me who plays less than I might like to. He played Bretonnians (Game of Thrones themed), a tough army to win consistently with. Kevin fielded four units of knights of various flavours, two trebuchets, a big unit of men at arms, some archers and three peg knights as well as a couple of paladins, a heroic killing blow lord and some damsels.

The first couple of turns elapsed with Kevin lining up the optimum charges and myself trying to best line up to receive them. I did manage to get a purple sun through two units of knights, and the lord did fail his look out sir, but then managed to escape purpley death. Darn.

Two lances of knights including the choppy lord barrelled into the warriors, who took it well and would most likely have held if the bsb hadn't been cut down by the Bret lord. They broke and fled, and were cut down.

The trolls spent a few turns trying to avoid the flaming knight unit, but it was not to be. They were cauterised in short order, but by the end of the game the lord was down to a single paladin companion. Not before he employed his heroic killing blow on my hellcannon though. I did forget it's ward too. Sigh. The daemon prince got stuck into a unit of men-at-arms with a 5+ ward, and only ran them down in the last turn, ensuring her escape.

Once again the forsaken proved their worth (to me, anyway) and ran off a lance of knights a couple of times, but were never able to catch them, and the knights held them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive. The crushers were able to hold out long enough to down a couple pegasus knights, but in the end I was taken down piecemeal. Kevin has the movement phase pretty well down and it was good to see some great examples of how to get the most out of the phase.

A cracking game, Kevin seeing me off back to the swamps. He had a little glow about him after the game.

A spooky mortis engine.

After a break for some grub we got into the evening's entertainment, board games and a four player game of Triumph & Treachery, Games Workshop's new expansion for warhammer. Two dwarf and two chaos players duked it out. The dwarf players had a bad time of it, being run over by Jay and his unstoppable monsters. I for one have to apologise for faffing about in deployment, sorry Bruce! I played much too cautiously, only barely resisting the temptation to charge a unit of dwarf warriors in the rear after convincing them I was friendly. Why did I do that?! Jay ran away with it, easily amassing a fortune in tokens. The cards didn't affect the game as much as I'd hoped, but again I think we need to give it another shake.

Not the best first outing I think, but I believe the game works well, and I'd certainly be willing to give it another go, I feel it's a good expansion.

Angry dinosaurs.

The High Elf dragon known as 'Craig's Bane'

Asur vs Lizardemen

Good fun all in all, though I was totally wrecked by the end of it, but still managed to drive back to Galway through ice and freezing fog.

I'd do it again though.

(An oldhammer mate of mine brought me a very welcome package on the day too, some new fimi... ah, I means 'marsh daemon' sculpts just out from Oakbound Games. Check them out at here the Oldhammer forum. A review of these fellows soon.)

Basing - Hellcannon Swamp 2

Today basing fun is still much in evidence. I've finished sculpting on the swampy detail to Crom's hellcannon base, and it's turning out pretty well. The card provided a great guide for the recesses and the bog pools. I've left some areas quite bare, and these will be where I'll be adding swamp grasses, moss and other foliage once the base is painted.

In other news, I managed to bag myself a model I've been after for some time. Every so often a real bargain crops up on ebay, the chaos dreadnought below going for the most reasonable sum of £4.99. Har de har! GET in that Dettol!

Genestealer Cult - Digital Codex?

"What's that? A real codex you say?!"

For those of you out there who are fellow devotees of the Cult, you've probably fantasized about Games Workshop releasing an official list. It seems the digital codex might not be a pipe dream after all. I'm sure there are many gamers out there on their knees praying that this rumour is true, myself amongst them. The mere thought of an  official genestealer cult codex is enough to send me into rapture. I haven't played 40k in an aeon, but if this were to come to pass I'd be reading the latest 40k rules the next day.

I hear on the gaming grapevine that this is indeed the case, and it comes from pretty close to the source. Now, as with all rumour, this is just that. But it's very, very promising.

I guess the cost of hybrids on ebay will soar to even higher levels. I doubt GW would bring out any new kits, but can you imagine a hybrid kit? Oh lordy.

Basing - Hellcannon Swamp

It's all basing at the Mumblings right now. My continuing army house keeping has me making a hellcannon size base for Crom to sit in. Initially I wondered how to get a nice clean edge on the recesses for the bases to sit in, but after some ruminating and rummaging I settled on using 5mm thick card to cut the depressions into. This will also serve to give me the outline of the bog pools. After cutting it to size I bevelled the edges so the greenstuff can slope down to the edge of the base more naturally. I gave it a thick coat of PVA to stop it soaking in any moisture, the last thing I need is for it to warp when it's being painted. You can see Crom's three little attendants at the back there too. I guess I could have modelled them into the base, but I thought it was better to have them removable in case Crom eats them.

Next the whole thing needs some sculpting done to turn it from a bit of card into swampy bog. More on that soon.

Basing - Multiple Roles for a Single Model

Lately I've been creating a lot of bases. I like basing in general, and the basing scheme for my fimir includes a lot of opportunity to go nuts with sexy basing. I especially enjoy adding the tinted water effects to a base to see how the objects half-submerged are affected by the water.

While making up a new base for my meargh when I want her to sport a 50x50 base, I decided to use a 25x25 piece of adhesive steel to fix her in place. She's on a 40x40 in case she needs to pull duty as a monstrous character of if I want to use her as part of a 3rd ed force, but I'm using a 25x25 piece of steel in case I want an infantry sized fimir character to use the same plinth as a disk or daemonic mount.

Johnny Hastings' Bull Ogre chariot

This got me thinking about how common it is to give models multiple roles using base add-ons and such. I've seen beastman chariots (see above) where the tuskgors slot out and can be replaced with razorgors, and terrorgheists where a space is left on the base to add a ghoul king, but generally it seems uncommon to jiggle basing about like this, though would seem to make sense in terms of options available, and for a 'counts as' army like mine means I get more out of the models I have finished.

Take my gorebeast chariot/hell cannon for example. I use the gooey gent above as both. Right now I'm working on the large hellcannon size base, with magnetised slots for the smaller 100x50 base he's on to fit into. There are also 20x20 slots for the three maggot 'crew' to sit into. 'What if you want a gorebeast chariot AND a hellcannon matey?' I hear you wail. Well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I'll probably do the same with the marlbeast mount (daemonic mount) I'm planning. He's on a 50x50, but if I want him to work as a marlwyrm (juggernaut) mount, I'll add a 50x25 spacer to the back of the move tray he's in, or cut a steel sheet to 50x75 that he and the spacer can sit on if he's off on his own.

I'd love to see more examples of this kind of tomfoolery, so if anyone has seen more, lay it on me.

Fimir - Floating Stone Plinth

Right at the moment I'm modelling up some bits and pieces to round off the two thousand point fimir army. Some, like three move trays are killing me, but one is done now, thank the powers. Some more hounds, another marlwyrm, a large base for Crom and so on.

I took a break from painting moss on move trays to do something a little more interesting. I've been meaning to build a 50x50 base for the meargh for a while now, both to increase her stature when she masquerades as a daemon prince and to give me an option to mount a hero on a disk. I've gone for a stone slab, pulled up from the swamp and powered by a wyrd stone. It's almost modelled here, I need to add more trailing mossy stuff to the underside and work the tilting marker stone into the base. I'll be putting a 25x25 piece of adhesive steel sheet on the top so I can attach either the meargh or another character as need and whim dictate.

Mars Attacks - Last Few Days

The Mars Attacks Kickstarter is entering it's last few days, and today's update adds another dollop of cool to an already overloaded wodge of amazeballs. Mantic have announced the long awaited giant mutant bug and handler will be unlocked at $500,000. The rather nice thing here is that they are adding it free the 'Invaders Arrive' pledge of $150 and 3 of them to the 'Alien Abduction' and 'Bloodshed on the Battlefield' pledges of $300, which is pretty great. Behold it's chittery glory below.

Mutant Ant

Science Division Bug Handler

This is in addition to the Martian supreme regent added free to the $100 pledge yesterday, and the Martian standard bearer added free to pledges of $300 up. From $500,000 through $550,000 they will add a heavy weapon option to the Novas Vira and more free figures to bulk out the units. After this Mantic have alluded to variations on the bug and the giant robot.

The first of the Novas Vira renders have also surfaced. Pretty sweet.

This broken pillar is so cool the way it moves when I do.