Averaigne campaign - session 34

[The story so far]

Session 34 - Stone spears and eggs
The bats swirled around their heads, diving and biting at them. Tybalt was face down in the sewage and not moving but, despite his shield held above him, Dumnorix was struggling to force his way through the flock to get to his aid. It looked bleak as the party struggled to find an effective response.

Averaigne campaign - session 33

[The story so far]

Sessions 33 - Friends of the Green Rose
So, in an underground store-room accessed from the sewers, with a teenage gang-member called JB who'd shot at them as their prisoner, and an unexpected noise getting closer. Perfect!

Talisman

Like several of you, I expect, I spent more hours than I care to count playing Talisman as a child. Rainy Bank Holiday Mondays (of which there seemed to be a never-ending supply in the Peak District) would be greeted with a chorus of "Talisman!" by yours truly and his slew of younger siblings, followed quickly by "Bagsy the [insert favourite character here]". After the inevitable tussle, parental involvement, and grudging apology, we'd get the game out and the next several hours (interrupted only for food) would be passed to the soundtrack of Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell and maybe a smidge of Iron Maiden if we were feeling edgy. All copied from cassettes borrowed from the library, of course.

One of the unexpected things about Dad's funeral was reminiscing about this with the mother of two kids who'd joined us on some of these adventurous indoor-play-days, so it felt right to raid the loft and set my two Rablings on their first quest for the Crown of Command.

"What's in the box, Daddy?"

It's been a little quiet...

...around here for a while. Aside from some fairly significant developments at work (good, bad, and just time-consuming), the main reason is that I just haven't felt like doing much geeking in what spare time I've had. Why? Well, as a couple of you were kind enough to enquire, this is why.

My Dad
31/10/1952 - 06/02/2017

Averaigne campaign - session 32

[The story so far]

Sessions 32 - Into the sewers
[Aaaaaand we're back! It's been over two months since I was in the GM's chair and both I an the players were itching to get on with our campaign; a good sign!]

Having been back in Corcelle for just one day, trouble seemed to have found the party as surely as pigs can rootle out truffles. Aurelius had managed to get access to the Library of the Learned and was hoping to sneakily copy out a few spells from their vast collection, but the rest were standing on the docks as night drew fully in with the threat of rain in the air, and the combined mystery of a murdered child and some posh lady's stolen jewellery to investigate

Double-header

As it's six nations season, a request for "monster rugby" from the Rablings was cheerfully accepted and, as they couldn't decide who would play first we played two games side-by-side while waiting for the England-Italy match to start.

On the left we have a vanilla Chaos versus Chaos Pact showdown (I was Pact), while on the right the lure of the snow troll from Impact miniatures was enough to ensure that my WIP Orc team would face a bunch of Norse. I ended up kicking to both and, with a little gentle support and reminders about TZs and assists, it wasn't long before...

...the younger boy had GFI twice to dive over in the corner. This was repeated in the chaos showdown, with older boy having an intuitive understanding that, when your ball carrier is in reach of the endzone but well out of reach of any opposition, it's the perfect time to gang-up on, and then gang-foul the big guys. That's my boy!

I tried to play a mix of overly risky to allow for failures to get them used to turnovers, and explaining the basics (TZs, assists, cages, screening the ball carrier, the order of moves) to get them thinking. It's still a little long for the younger one to concentrate so hard (I might try sevens with him), but the older boy carefully noted down the score, turn and dugouts so we can finish our game another day - it's currently one all and his turn to receive on the final turn of the first half to do some bashing to soften me up for the second half.

Funnily enough I showed him about "refusing a cage" and stepping back so I couldn't hit him, immediately before the game in which Italy did exactly that to England over the ruck. Life imitating gaming!

Toodles,
Rab

Nostalgia! Huh! What is it good for?

Aah, the Beatles, the Fab Four themselves, settling down for another backstage session of their long-running Labyrinth Lord campaign as DM'ed by their arranger George Martin.

First knight nerves

As the amount of time I have to actually sit down and get into the painting groove is so limited, I often am put off starting miniatures in case I make a balls-up of it. The thought of having to start again is so unappealing that I'd then be stuck with a figure that looks a bit poo. Or, more accurately, with a half-painted figure gathering dust that looks a bit poo.

However, if I'm going to complete my self-imposed challenge of completing this army this year, there's no time for (more) dithering. This is the result:

Random results without tables

Now, I love a random table as much as the next nerd. Whether it is a simple d6 affair to select a scenario when you want a quick pick-up game that isn't just "line up and fight", or pre-battle weather effects, or the warped and contradictory glory that is the interlinked set of tables of GW's 1988/90 Realm of Chaos warband generator:

Chaos kniggits

Keen eyes may notice that the header for this, and future, Chaos Army 2017 project posts is a quick cut'n'shunt job on the way that Dale Hurst's eye-catching warband was presented in White Dwarf 135.

Readers of previous posts, particularly from when I chopped about some bits to make a demon, will know how inspirational that article was for me, so it seemed only right to keep a touch of that as I expand the warband into a whole 3,000 point army over the course of this year.

So far I have units/individual characters painted to a total of 907 points. There are also several figures painted for other units, but I'll only count them when the whole unit is done, including bases, shields, and banners. I'm going to be strict!

The next unit up for sharing (although you'll soon see that they are bare metal/plastic/putty) are the most expensive, points-wise, and therefore I wanted to do something special with them - the knights. I have them as "chaos warriors" mounted on "chaos steeds" so my bitzbox was brought into play. In the end I left the riders as they came, but I didn't want a full unit mounted on normal horses, it didn't seem fitting.