Pest(ilens) control

I’m getting closer (well, about half way there at any rate) to the point where I’ve got all the normal Skaven warriors I need for a game of AHQ, so I figured I’d better get working on some of the more unusual kinds. As one of my plague monks had arrived pre-undercoated, I got started on that one, along with an additional clanrat.

Here’s the result:

The clanrat is o.k. – nothing special. I’m getting closer to the skin color I want for my Skaven, but I’m just not sure I’m entirely there yet. I’ll keep experimenting.

The main star of today’s show is the plague monk. I’m especially pleased with the robe. It’s done by painting it bright yellow over a white undercoat and then applying a, very slightly, thinned layer of P3 brown ink. Immediately afterwards, you “paint” water over the raised areas to create the highlighting effect and you can then add a little extra ink to depressions if they aren’t dark enough. I think it worked out really well.

The main problem with technique is that, because the color from the ink “sets” so quickly, you only get one try. Get something wrong and you have to start all over again. Fortunately, small imperfections don’t show up all that much on an intentionally “grubby” model like a plague monk.

Croaker

Adventures in Questing – Prologue

Last time on Adventures in Questing (odd name, I know – it just stuck with me for some reason) I introduced my AHQ party, along with the first quest I’m going to be running solo. I also mentioned that I’d actually already played through the first expedition (and that everyone survived), which means that this post will function as a sort of prologue to the rest of the play-through.

Also, since it’s now been about three months, I’m slightly fuzzy about the details, so you should take everything with a grain of salt – there’s a fair chance I’ve gotten the exact number of Skaven warriors wrong and maybe even missed an ambush or trap somewhere along the way.

I’ll try to keep the general description fairly narrative and add commentary in red. 

The party entered the dungeon, encountering the usual stretch of hallway with a T-section at the end. 

Carefully, Croaker advanced towards the junction – where the party was attacked by a wandering Skaven patrol lead by a champion. But that wasn’t the main problem; Standing behind his larger brethren was a Skaven sentry who immediately darted towards the door further down the corridor to find reinforcement.

Swarmed as they were, the heroes were unable to stop it from getting away and instead had to concentrate on the problem at hand.

At this point Hans panicked slightly and summoned a fireball to blast the comparatively small group of Skaven.

This was stupid. The party wasn’t in any real danger at this point so using a fireball was actually just a waste of money. It’s one of the things about AHQ you really have to adjust to – casting spells (and shooting arrows) cost money, so you really have to weigh the benefit of doing so against the possible treasure you might get out of it.

It did the job though and the fighters were quickly able to finish the few survivors off before readying themselves to face whatever would be arriving next. They didn’t have to wait long, as the very first room to be revealed by the sentry contained an even larger group of Skaven, including two champions, along with door leading further into the dungeon.

The new group surged towards the heroes only to be met by another fireball. This felled several of the ratmen and wounded one of the champions. The survivors charged the  invaders, only to be met by a wall of steel as Croaker and Allum slew one after another.

In the middle of the battle, a new Skaven patrol suddenly emerged from the corridor behind the party, forcing them into a fighting retreat towards the stairs they’d recently descended from. Things looked grim indeed.

A feature of the solo rules is that each turn (including combat turns) there’s a 1-in-12 chance of reinforcements appearing (it can happen when playing with a GM as well, but there’s a limit to how often) which really forces you to try to end combat quickly.

How to actually place the reinforcements is one of the places where the rules get a bit fuzzy. The solo rules state that the first monster should be placed as close to the heroes as possible, preferably a square from which it can make an attack. On the other hand, the normal rules for placing wandering monsters (including ambushes after the first round of combat) state that they have to be set up as far away as possible while still being within line of sight.

I’m still somewhat torn over the issue but I’m currently using the solo rules as written (even though it means that monsters are essentially “teleporting” into combat with my guys). I might change my stance if it proves to be too unbalancing.

In a stroke of good fortune, the sentry quickly ran into a dead end, and so couldn’t bring even more Skaven to the fight.

Another area where the rules are mighty unclear is sentries – especially what happens to them when they are out of sight of the heroes. The way I read the rules, the sentry will continue to move away from the heroes as long as the heroes are within sight of any monster (doesn’t have to be the sentry itself).

After a grueling melee, the heroes finally emerged victorious, though wounded and low on arrows and spell components. They quickly finished off the lone sentry and looted the lair.

I just realized that there wasn't a chest in that room. Oh well…

Now, what happens should the heroes finish off any monsters in sight while the sentry is somewhere else in the dungeon is a whole other issue. Does the sentry stay where it ended up, keep running off or something else entirely? I’m not sure, but currently I’ve ruled that it stays where it is until the heroes get within LOS, at which point they roll for initiative and resume combat.

Also, since the heroes technically “escaped” (even though they didn’t actually run away), they shouldn’t be allowed to loot any of the bodies. This is another area where you’ll have to use common sense.

Then, after totaling their gains so far, a look of worry passed between them. At this point they’d barely be able to cover living expenses and used arrows and spell components – and after exploring no more than two rooms in the dungeon, they were in bad shape. To make the expedition worthwhile they had to venture further, but Hans was out of Fire Dust for casting Flames of Death (his fireball) and Ellandiel was down to his last two arrows. To make matters worse, the party had been unable to afford a sword for Ellandiel, which meant that the elf would have to fight unarmed once they were gone. Gritting their teeth, the heroes returned to the first T-junction and continued down the only unexplored corridor.

The first room turned out to be empty, but after a couple of turns (there may have been a short combat against a patrol somewhere along the way – I’m not sure), they found themselves in front of another door. Sounds from the other side revealed a large group of Skaven.

Croaker kicked the door open and sure enough; a veritable horde of ratmen awaited them, along with a set of stairs leading down – this was the quest room.

 I won’t lie; at this point I seriously considered slamming the door and making a run for it. But, as previously mentioned, I really needed to find more treasure, so I thought “what the hell” and attacked.

At the back of the pack was a particularly evil looking ratman – a Night Runner.

 The following melee was long and grueling. Hans used his last spell component to cast Dragon Armor (+1 toughness) on Allum, to keep the dwarf in the fight as long as possible, but the sheer number of Skaven seemed totally overwhelming none the less.

Those numbers were further bolstered as another patrol (no doubt alerted by sounds of fighting) came charging from an unexplored passage.

The heroes adopted a strategy of slowly retreating while slaying any Skaven that came within reach. This proved to be very effective, but never the less the heroes were quickly bleeding from multiple cuts were a Skaven had landed a lucky blow.

This may be “gaming the system”, but by making sure that none of my heroes were in contact with an enemy at the end of their turn, I could keep them alive a lot longer. The trick is, since you roll a die to see if the monsters move-attack or attack-move when using the solo rules, there’d be about a 50/50 chance of them not being able to attack. I also staggered my fighters (see the pictures), so both Skaven in contact would attack Croaker (because he has a lower WS than Allum) if they did move-attack.

This tactic only really made sense because Ellandiel didn’t contribute to the fight until the very end, so it’s not a silver bullet.

Finally the throng of ratmen had been whittled down to a few individuals. The Night Runner made a last desperate attack, but was wounded by one of Ellandiel’s remaining arrows and then unceremoniously cut down by the warriors.

  The victorious, but gravely wounded heroes quickly looted the bodies and treasure chest, and legged it for the stairs out as quickly as their legs could carry them as they couldn’t risk meeting another group of Skaven.

They'd made some mistakes, but at least the heroes had found the stairs down and made a bit of money – and next time they’d be better prepared.

The finished map of the level looked like this:

Croaker

Redshirts

In anticipation of a time when my adventuring party will achieve their lofty goals (i.e. I actually get around to do some gaming – a vain hope indeed) and return to town loaded with more money than they know what to do with, I’ve been working on a couple of henchmen for them to hire.

The models are quite simple so I thought I’d be able finish them in a couple of days, but life intervened and I didn’t find time to do the last touch-ups until today.

I kept the paint scheme simple, with a lot of leather, as I wanted to practice my technique in that area. Otherwise I kept to the blue, green and red scheme of the heroes.

Croaker

What a trooper

After three whole weeks of not having any new painted miniatures to show off, I finally finished my first three Dragon Company troopers. Yay!

This lengthy process is not so much due to my extremely slow speed of painting (though it didn’t help), but more because of a very busy social schedule. As usual, I’ve also been messing about with colors and techniques (in this case learning to use my wet palette), which slowed everything down.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the troopers:

I must say, I really love these sculpts. In my opinion, they are the perfect embodiment of dwarfishness without being totally over the top, and you have to appreciate the small details like the dragon-emblem on their belt-buckles.

I’m also fairly proud of the paint-job, though I’ll probably go for a slightly brighter shade of red for the tunics in the future (not because there’s anything wrong with them as it is, but I’d like to try to lighten things up a bit in general).

I also accidentally dropped one of them into my wet palette (first rule of the wet palette: DON’T hold your miniatures directly above the palette when painting) which slightly smushed his beard in a way that I couldn’t fully repair without stripping the model and starting over – something I’m very much not in the mood for. It’s not all that noticeable, so I’ll live with it.

Now I just need to pant another 17 of these guys – hopefully at a rate of slightly more than one per week.

Croaker

Wet dreams

Here’s a picture of my painting station:

You’ll notice the three WIP Dragon Company troopers (coming along nicely), but that’s not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is the thing that’s taking up the rightmost third of the paint space – my brand new Wet Palette.

If you’ll excuse the crudeness; Holy F*cking Christ this thing is amazing.

Some of you veteran painters may be sniggering to yourself now. Why am I surprised? It’s not like the concept of a Wet Palette is some well-kept secret, accessible only to the inner circle of a secret painter’s society. But you must remember that I only recently returned to miniatures painting after a decade long break – and back before I stopped, the Wet Palette really was a relatively unknown phenomenon.

Since returning to the hobby I’d been reading and watching some painting guides and one of the tips that kept popping up was to use a Wet Palette. I didn’t immediately jump on the bandwagon because I never used one before and I believed that I was doing ok. “Sure, I’ll try it our eventually” I said to myself, “but how much of a difference can it really make if everyone isn’t using it?”

Well, I finally got around to making one and after using it for only about an hour, I’m here to tell you; it really is that great. I can’t properly explain it, but everything is just so easy. The paint flows better and doesn’t dry up, which is great in itself, but mixing colors is also much easier and I don’t waste nearly as much paint, as I can mix small amounts as I go along.

I don’t know if I can fully explain it, but it just works. Get one! If you don’t how to make one yourself, I can recommend Atom Smasher’s guide at the Tabletop Minions Youtube channel.

Croaker

Adventures in Questing – Introduction

The wife and I are visiting her family this week, which means I won’t be doing any painting. I’m slightly bummed out but this turn of events – not because my in-laws are especially disagreeable people, but simply because I’m quite eager to get started on the Dragon Company troopers.

There is a silver lining through, as I now have the time, and lack of excuses, to get started on a project I’ve been putting off for a while; my first (but hopefully not last) Advanced Heroquest report.  That naturally requires playing a game of AHQ, which I actually did back in December. I just never got around to do a write-up of the first session (I told you I’d been putting this off) and as I still need to take a few pictures as illustration, I won’t be able to do it until I get back home.  What I can do, however, is introduce you to the party.

I used the traditional warrior/wizard/elf/dwarf quartet and decided to generate their stats randomly. I’m happy to report that they all survived their first expedition (though they haven’t finished the quest yet), and this is the way they  are before returning to town, which is why they are low on ammunition but, relatively, wealthy.

Remember that stats (for from wounds and fate) range from 1-12, but usually lie between 4 and 10 for starting characters.

First the warrior – Croaker (I’m allowed a single author avatar):

He’s got excellent Strength (S) and Toughness (T) (seven being the maximum for a starting human) and a very good Weapon Skill (WS) and Wound score (W). This combines to make him an excellent tank – the WS being especially useful as it means that most normal enemies have to roll 10 to even hit him.

I gave him the traditional sword, shield and chainmail, making him even more resilient but lowering his, already average, speed (SP) to a not-at-all-excellent four. As long as he doesn’t encounter some sort of trap he’ll be fine I guess.

His only real weakness is a pitiful Bravery (B), which will make things very interesting if I ever encounter a fearsome creature.

Next we have the dwarf – Allum Stonehammer:

He’s a bit more of a mixed bag with an excellent WS of 11 and T of eight (both max for a starting dwarf), a decent S of six and decidedly unimpressive speed of four and bravery five. Yes, that does indeed mean that both my front line warriors are quite likely to curl up on the floor at the first sight of a troll!

Allum’s real weakness lies in his catastrophically (for a warrior) low W of two! (the lowest possible result). This makes it very dangerous for him to be in front, even though his high WS and T gives him some protection. Also, because monsters always attack the target with the lowest WS (using the solo rules), as long as he’s standing besides Croaker, the human will absorb most of the hits.

I figured that I might as well go all in, so I equipped him with a two-handed axe and leather armor. This makes him rather fragile, but he almost always hits, and he does decent damage. Just as long as no one hits him...

Third on the roster is the elf – Ellandiel

He’s… well, frankly he’s not all that great. Low WS, SP and W and average BS, S, T and B. His only really good stat, Intelligence (INT), isn’t even all that useful in a warrior.

I gave him a bow and leather armor and hoped that he’d make himself useful somehow.

Rounding things out is the wizard – Hans Müller:

In a rare stroke of fortune, he’s got near perfect stats for a wizard. Low BS and S (but who cares) but good WS and B – and the maximum possible T, SP and INT! His only real weakness is a W of two (in fact, I got the lowest possible W for three out of the four character). All this combines to make him a very reliable, and surprisingly resilient, magic user.

I gave him a dagger (the only weapon he can use), some spell ingredients (all used up now) and some rope and iron spikes (useful for crossing chasms).

After rolling up the characters, I had to come up with a quest for them. I kept things very basic and decided on the following:

• Three levels – all rolled up randomly.
• Enemies are Skaven – rolled from the charts included in the main rules.
• All randomly rolled staircases lead up – the first Quest Room on each level will include a staircase leading down.
• The Quest Room on the first and second level will include a Night Runner in addition to whatever I roll up for it.
• Third level Quest Room will include a Skaven Warlord.

This should be a relatively simple quest, or so I hope…

Planning the expedition

Croaker

Let’s read – The very first Citadel Compendium, part 2

Welcome back to this “Let’s Read”. We pick up from Last time, roughly half way through the First Citadel Compendium, as we get to the miniatures.

The compendium immediately diverts from the previously stated policy of using line-drawings by giving us a photograph of the, magnificent, Citadel Giant (though they do use drawings to illustrate alternative heads and hands). I guess this decision can be explained by the sheer size of the figure, which probably made it a lot easier to take photos of.

I’d love to get my hands on this big fella, though, from what I hear, that would require selling the TV to raise the necessary cash. It’s also, strictly speaking, too big to really be practical in a game setting, but it’s quite awesome all the same.

After the giant we get to the aforementioned line drawings; in this case of the early C-series miniatures. The selection is firmly grounded in the RPG scene, with the minis being divided into the standard fighter/wizard/cleric/thief categories (dwarfs getting their own listing), in addition to goblins, armored orcs and so on.

To be perfectly honest, these pages leave me a little cold. It may just be because I’m quite uninterested in most of Citadel’s pre-slotta output, or that the actual figures rarely live up to the sketch, but I’m finding it difficult to visualize how the mini would look like in real life.

There are a couple of exceptions though, the first one being this page:

For all their virtues, Citadel produced preciously few good, and appropriately clothed, female miniatures during the 80’s, but the two in the top row might fit the bill (though I must confess that I haven’t seen the actual figures).

The second page I like is this:

Maybe I’m biased towards the larger figures, but these just look awesome. You can see the actual minis here.

Rounding out the line-drawing section, we have the figures for the Kremlo scenario.

These are quite evocative as well and in general the illustrations in the compendium seem to be better with the more outlandish characters, such as the Slann.

We then encounter another instance of Citadel breaking their own rule with three pages of photos. These perfectly illustrate the reasoning behind the rule – being nigh-indecipherable. I mean, I can see the general outline of the figures, but in many cases I’m left guessing at the details. 

It doesn’t help that many of the figures of this period are quite compact (probably necessitated by the casting process), which further blurs detail in the low-resolution prints. I like the stone thrower though.

Moving on, we return to our drinking game in a major way with two half-page ads for Realm of Chaos and Rogue Trader (and a half page for Forces of Fantasy, but that actually came out relatively soon afterwards). Time to *Drink! (or perhaps *drikn? at this point).

After this, we get something that would become something of a staple of the journals – a painting article. It’s worth dwelling a bit on the faux-articles above the headline for the chuckle it should elicit:

It’s all very basic (as it’s supposed to be), but the advice is good all the same – in fact, it’s exactly the kind of article I wish I’d had access to when I started out myself and didn’t have the faintest idea about how to do the shading on my figures.

We return to game-related stuff with an article about using Sci-Fi in games of Warhammer.

It’s interesting stuff, and the introduction gives a good insight into the original philosophy behind Warhammer. It reads: “The rules are designed to be used – if you wish to change rules […] anything should be possible”. This is surely a sentiment that would give modern tournament players fits, but it very nicely aligns with core Oldhammer values.

The main part of the article is a set of rules for various more-or-less futuristic weapons and types of equipment. Worthy of note is that bolters (for once) are actually as dangerous as rifles firing small self-propelled rockets should be (this includes possibly blowing up in their owners hands):

Remember to add one to the strength to get a contemporary value.

Also included are the, perhaps,  first use of the 2”-apart loose formation that would become standard in Rogue Trader/40k, as well as an outline of a campaign that uses the Sci-Fi rules. I'm actually very impressed by this article - you could likely get some very satisfying Sci-Fi games going just using this and a copy of the main rules (even the 2nd edition would work, I think).

The last article of the compendium is, I believe, another first; rules for generating chaotic attributes, along with an article on how to convert figures (quite useful if you intend to randomly generate your mutants).

Even though many of the exact rules are different from later iterations of the list, I can recognize a lot of the mutations, and there’s even mention of the concept of followers of Chaos gradually gaining attributes and maybe becoming chaos spawn if they gain too many.

Final thoughts

If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from this read-through, it’s just how many of the ideas we (or at least I) usually identify with much later publications are present at this early point in time. It’s pretty easy to see a clear line from this compendium to WFB 2^nd and 3^rd edition, WFRP, Realm of Chaos and Rogue Trader. I’d even go as far as saying that it should be essential reading for any fan of 1^st edition as well as anyone who’s interested in the development of the hobby.

I’m also generally amazed at the sheer amount of stuff they manage to cram in to less than 50 pages. It’s truly a treasure-trove of inspiration.

Next time we continue our exploration into 1^st edition territory with The Second Citadel Compendium.

Croaker