[Catacombs] Into the dark

At first it sounded like the petty request of a petty noble with a whiff of undead threat tacked on to get the attention of knight's errant like Sirs Pellas and Owain with their experienced retainers - "I've lost my gemstone and I think the nasty skeletons have taken it!" - but when they realised that the "gemstone" was imbued with scrying power, they knew it had to be retrieved from the crumbling passageways and sprawling ossory beneath the long abandoned summer residence in the Gaddifer hills on Sir Hubert's vast estates.

Initial exploration gave them a good idea of the layout of the passageways:

[Catacombs] First expedition

A few more pictures of this little project while I tidy up the rules before sharing them.

The first expedition laid out, with our brave little retinue ready to confront and banish the undead horde raised and controlled by the wicked necromancer:

[Catacombs] First glimpe

Just one more archer to finish painting before the first squad retinue is complete and ready for photographed action, but this should give you a glimpse into the way the game will look:

From front to rear we have: retainer with longbow, knight with shield and enchanted blade, retainer with lamp and sword (lighting is important in the catacombs), and retainer with crossbow. They're just waiting for another retainer with longbow to catch them up before they open that door.

What menace will they have to face? Well, it's boney...

The pieces and doors are by the excellent Will Meddis of Billiam Babble/Inked Adventures fame. Delightfully oldschool, hand drawn and digitally coloured, I tweaked them in photoshop to match the board piece shapes of a certain famous space-based conflict in narrow corridors, before printing them onto A4 stickers and mounting them on 3mm baseboard (thick card). I'm very pleased with them.

You can get your own Inked Adventures dungeon pieces here - go support him, he's Good People.

More as it comes,
Rab

[Catacombs] Retinues WIP 2

Progress continues apace, by my standards anyway, for the figures needed to play Catacombs, my fan-fantasy-reskin of Space Hulk. I've already got the monsters sorted thanks to last Deadcember's output because hordes of skeletons will take the place of the 'stealers.

Here are the heroes so far:

Catacombs teaser

Whatwhatwhat?! This looks dangerously like a new project...

Sprues from Fireforge and Conquest Games (bought from 2nd City Games at a very reasonable price per sprue):

While the wife's away...

...the geeks will play!

The incomparably wonderful Mrs Rab is away this week, leaving me in sole charge of the two little'uns - we worked out it's the longest she's been away from them since they were born which caused her all sorts of angst! To take their minds off her absence, what else was there but to cook up a decent chilli, crack out the PS2 from the loft for a bit of LEGO Star Wars and Burnout - Takedown, and then get on with some good old pre-digital gaming? Nice!

Yesterday saw this:

SBH - Sir Gaherunt's retinue shows its might

As I mentioned in the last post, I had a very successful evening playing Song of Blades and Heroes last week. [btw, the rules are 25% off at Wargames Vault for the next day only, I think]

I decided to take a knightly retinue warband, so put together a retinue for Sir Gaherunt to take out into the wilderness and bring civilisation at the point of a very sharp sword. Here is the list I decided upon:

Sir Gaherunt     Q3+     C4     Leader, Knight, Chivalry, Heavy Armour     78pts

Sir Bartrum       Q3+     C4     Knight, Chivalry     42pts
Sir Launce         Q3+     C4     Knight, Chivalry     42pts
Sir Agloval        Q3+     C4     Knight, Chivalry      42pts

Robert              Q4+     C2     Shooter:Long           26pts
John                  Q4+     C2     Shooter:Long           26pts

Simon                Q4+     C3     None                        23pts
Paul                   Q4+     C3     None                        23pts

Total: 302pts

I hoped this would give me a good mix between close combat and ranged attacks, as well as giving me an opportunity to use my painted knights (the spearmen and crossbowmen were still WIP, shamefully).

We rolled for the Quest for a Magic Item scenario, which seemed appropriate with knights and set up as follows. The three possible locations for the magic item were marked with unused slotta-bases.

Despite the urging of Sir Gaherunt, the members of his retinue were reluctant to advance with any haste, lacking enthusiasm to close with the shambling abominations ahead; how do you kill what's already dead? The vampiric fallen knight who led the undead showed no such hesitation and dashed forward to claim the magical sword upon the bridge over the river.

Meanwhile, Sir Agloval had left his lily-livered squires behind, forded the river and charged forward to mercilessly dispatch the ghoul who was still feasting upon his last victim.

Rallying his troops with appeals to their honour, Sir Gaherunt led the charge across the bridge.

The vampire clutched his new-found blade and smote the brave knight, exuding a terrifying aura of darkness and cold. Blanching but remaining steadfast, Gaherunt parried the enchanted weapon (which promptly shattered) and pushed back its unholy wielder. Summoning his might, he then struck down the skeleton before him with such power that not only did it crumble into dust, but the other revenants also were returned to what should have been their eternal rest. Cursing in a tongue unspoken by the living, the black-armoured fiend vanished in a swirl of evil smoke leaving Gaherunt and his retinue the undisputed masters of the field.

Poor Barnaby, the curse of the brittle undead warband struck hard! Like I said in my previous post, this has now been addressed within a rules update; apparently the bulk of the initial playtesting had looked at mixed warbands rather than the 'pure' forces that seem to be favoured in Northern Europe and the Americas. Anyway, I picked up a slew of victory points and chose 'Combat Masters' as my advance.

Next up I played against Oscar, giving him an introduction to the game (he was our new recruit). He'd watched a couple of games previously, plays plenty of pc strategy games, and had a pretty vicious and resilient dwarf list drawn up for him by one of the other lads - the one who destroyed my halflings last time round (don't worry, loyal readers, I get him back later mwahaha!).

Our game boiled down to a pretty chaotic melee around the ford (we used the same table layout as before) with a run of about six turns where either the first activation caused a turnover, or a gruesome death caused panic. In the end I nudged it, but from a position of strength (thanks to knowing the rule better) I came this close > < to being broken. I had to use my crossbowmen to slip in and knife his chaps on the floor; there was precious little chivalry shown, sad to say.

  

After finally putting the last of the dwarfs to flight or to the sword,  Sir Gaherunt leant exhausted upon his sword and cast an eye over his comrades. It was not good; Bartrum and Launce would be in no fit state to don armour or grasp a sword for weeks to come, although it looked likely they would eventually make a full recovery, praise be. Agloval was limping but refusing aid. At least the peasants seemed well and had made a good showing in the skirmish. He decided that he better had take on Simon's cousin to bolster the ranks, at least while his knights recovered from their wounds.

In game terms, Bartrum and Launce would miss next game and then come back with -1 to all Q rolls. Algoval was less badly injured but would be at -1 to Q rolls in the next game. With the victory points gained I recruited another spearman, Adam.

Pizza arrived during the game and then most of the lads went off to play Space Hulk:

Now, I think that the picture above is where the game was paused when we had to pack up because they were locking the school, so there you go lads that should help you set up to resume where you left off.

While that was going on I had a revenge match of SBH against Niall (the dwarf chap who slaughtered my halflings). This time I was ready for him, having actually read the rules before the game. Practically cheating, I know! Once again, it all swung on a scrap by the ford. I actually caused a casualty using my archers (*)! Careful use of minions to run in, their Q boosted by Leader, and then make powerful attacks with my two knights (the others were resting in an infirmary bed somewhere, remember) chopped his rats into kebab-sized chunks. Mmmm, revenge!

Another victory to round off the evening was pleasant indeed. Apart from the undead collapse, the games were close and tense right to the end. The only thing that felt wrong was the ineffectiveness of missile attacks, which is what the (*) was about. I'm sure I read somewhere that someone had trialled having a split C score, one for hand to hand and one for ranged. Any other suggestions welcome.

Right, it's past my bedtime.

Happy geeking,

Rab

Cracking the W.I.P. (2)

In the grim darkness of the far future, there are only super-gothic rehashes of sci-fi novels, medieval tropes and ancient myth...

Another glimpse into the WIP list that I'm daubing paint on. This lot would have been my Round 1 entry ('Old Lead', figures from before 1992) for this year's Lead Painters' League if I'd got myself organised (and my Mother in Law hadn't broken her ankle and needed lots of looking after... Anyone want a slightly damaged Mother in Law? Cheap? Free? I'll pay for removal?). This lot are going to be for Space Hulk using the new box set which I deliberately got sans miniatures because I prefer this older style.

Plenty still to do, but you get the idea: red, splash of yellow, shooty and/or stabby for dealing with H R Geiger's Aliens Genestealers. If I can make it look better than rubbish, I'm going to try and use some bery fine blue squiggles on the claws and the hammer to make it look like arcing electricity. I've based them on the nice Sulaco resin bases from Fenris Games and have several more undercoated and based similarly to have the full set required to play the missions in the game.

Priority for completion: low

"Begin the litanies, brothers"

While the whole "I am more gothic than you" way the 40k universe has gone just makes me want to snort with derision (has it got worse, or have I just grown up?), I do like the idea of orders of warrior monks - templars, hospitallers, and, erm, adaptes astartes. Yeah, I've always kinda liked the idea of space marines, if nothing else.

So, as I explained in previous posts, I'm putting together a retro Hulk; the new board and pieces (except with a replacement timer that actually works - £1.49 from a cheapo store, btw, right next door to the local GW who couldn't offer me a replacement 'that day'), but with 1st edition genestealers and '89/'94 terminators. I'm basing them on really nice resin bases from Fenris Games.

This morning I got to sit down and do an hour's geeking for the first time in ages, and here are a couple of 'in progress' shots:

The Battle Brothers

The Xenos threat

Obviously I had to clip the slotta-tabs off the figures, then file, pin and glue them onto the resin bases (I may have mentioned how much I like them - they were great to do business with, as well, sorting out my messed up order in minutes over email). I may glue some washers to the bottom of the bases for extra 'heft', but, although light, they don't need it for balance.

Anyway, if the wind drops a bit, I'll get them undercoated later today.

TTFN

A painting plan

Right, still no painting, but I've found another blog (here) which has a nice and straightforward regime for getting the 'stealers done very satisfyingly. Maybe this weekend...

Into the Hulk

Yup, I gave in. I bought a set off ebay that was without the miniatures, which was fine as it was a [i]lot[/i] cheaper that way and it means I can use the luvverly Rogue Trader terminators I snagged as a bargain recently. I also got some 1st ed genestealers so the Emperor's finest have someone to righteously smite. Cool :)

What is less cool is that I still haven't picked up a brush - total painting block :(

Oooh, shiny

I went over to Chris' tonight as his pre-order of Space Hulk had arrived. It took us quite a while to punch out all the board sections, counters etc and to get the figures off the sprues. What a lovely box of toys it is! We played one of the early missions (Cleanse and Burn, I think) both ways - he played the terminators first, while I commanded the genestealers, then we swapped over. Chris won both games, testimony to his greater experience of the game (he didn't miss this game first time round) and some astonishing dice rolling. In particular, the sergeant armed with thunder hammer and storm shield was (for Chris, not me) absolutely monstrous - a one-man swathe of destruction, utterly invulnerable and quite deadly. The game plays so well, I love it!

I got home fully decided to buy my own copy (and then flog the included figures on ebay as I prefer the 'old skool' figures I recently acquired), all my plans from the previous post discarded, but they've sold out from the online store!!!! I may be able to snag one from our local GW store, but as I won't be able to get there for opening on Saturday I may have to ask a favour of the manager who I know a bit...

What a strange position to be in - I now want to give GW money (!), but they don't seem to want it!