Last night I joined Matt and Tom for a go at Xenos Rampant, the latest of the 'Rampant' series from Dan Mersey and co.
I haven't yet got the book, it's on my Chrimble list.. and apart from some recently acquired crews for Five Parsecs, I don't really have any scifi stuff. (I once had a 40k starter box.. painted it all and sold it all when the son wasn't actually interested)
However, I enjoyed the nostalgia that Tom and Matt shared and can see me scouting fleabay for space marines!
It's fair to say that we're fans of the Rampant rulesets, and we had a great couple of games with Orks and space marines having a go at each other on Tom's jungly table.. There were some subtle differences to the Dragon Rampant game I'm most familiar with, with free activations in particular giving a little more nuance to troop types, but it was mostly quite intuitive and honest dice rolling fun.. which was matters really!
Ork stompy thing and Space marines bashing each other to a standstill
On Sunday, Tom and I decided to have a game of Dragon Rampant. We haven't played for a while, but knew that it would be easy on the brainicles! Tom joked that I had posted a 'tutorial' video on Dragon Rampant, so should know the rules..I hadn't thought of it like that, but watching it again, I see what he meant!
In our pre-game texts, we agreed to take 30 points and to go 'old school'. Tom has GW history and still plays WFB regularly.. I've never really done more than dip my toe, but recently was gifted a rather lovely collection of vintage Wood Elves, which I've been in the process of 'refurbishing'. So, Wood Elves vs Night Goblins it was! *The experts will no doubt spot that the mounted Elves are not GW, but still of a respectable vintage :-)
Tom has written up a nice Goblin-centric account of the game on his blog, so just some pics ..
Love these Troll figures!
Then, on Monday evening, enthused by our Dragon Rampant game, and my recent purchase of the new edition ofLion Rampant, I set out a little solo game on my dining table using some Wars of the Roses figures - I used the standard armies from the book*, and played the second scenario 'Gladiators' - where a pre-battle duel gave each side some extra dice. I played Bourchier, who was 'Rash' with Wild Charge, against Stanley, 'Blessed', which allowed him to reroll a set of dice (he picked the wrong ones as it happens!). This was by no means a historical match up, just what I had available.
It was a very quick game and ended by the untimely demise of Thomas Stanley, one of the commanders, but gave me a taste for more Rampant games!
(*One Elite Foot, One Veteran Heavy Infantry and Two Veteran Archers)
In the last Blog post, my newly painted undead forces took to the field.
I thought I'd have a go at taking some slightly better pictures and a note on how I painted the Oathmark skeletons which make up the bulk of this host..
The 'heroes' are a mix of Reaper Bones and a mounted D&D figure, and the giant Wurms are 3D prints, figure sourced on Thingiverse.
The Oathmark skeletons are really nice figures, and I was quite keen to get the 'ancient bronze' look right. I ended up using a bit of a mix of ideas from various blogs and videos and really like the result.
They were primed with Army Painter 'Skeleton Bone' , then given a wash of the GW contrast 'Skeleton Horde'.. Some of the skeletons also had an additional dark wash and drybrush with Iraqi Sand. The spear shafts were done with Vallejo German Camo green with a light deck tan drybrush, and the bows Vallejo Deck Tan. The few straps and rags of clothing were all Vallejo 'English Uniform'.
The crucial antique bronze effect was a done by applying GW Warploque bronze, a wash of GW 'Mechanical Nihalac Oxide' and some green ink splotches. The whole lot was washed in AP Strong Tone, along with the leather and cloth bits.
The background in these pictures is a poor print of a really nice free picture from Jon Hodgson
Everything is based up on rounds, the skeletons are all on pennies, which allow me to use them to play Dragon Rampant, Midgard, or any other game really (except perhaps Oathmark!) and although I'm telling myself that the army is 'done' at 24 archers and 50 warriors.. I suspect their numbers will swell!
I'm at that age now when any event marking the passage of time prompts me to declare "Blimey!" .. for example, apparently it's 25 years since Alanis Morissette released Jagged Little Pill ?!
Conversation in recent months about wargaming blogs made me realise that it's almost five years since I last posted here!
Blimey!
So, I've been sitting on my typing hands for a fair bit of 2021, wondering whether I ought to start this blog up again, and where to start etc, as the realisation dawned upon me that this really is a 'first world problem' and considering that nobody is likely to read the thing anyway.. why not just pick it up again as a way of recording and encouraging myself to keep up hobby momentum!
I won't try to recap the last five years.. games have been played, new shiny projects have come and gone.. but in fairness, playing with trains definitely took precedence up until around 2019.. and Youtubing became very much my route to 'share' hobby stuff, rather than using a blog. (See my channel here by the way, I've even posted a couple of solo Dragon Rampant games, which hasn't pleased the model railroad followers!)
I got talking to Tom and James at one of the shows, rolled some dice.. and we started organising games..Tom's covered much of it on his excellent blog.
Lockdown happened which has obviously had an impact on all of that, although like many people, we managed to get some virtual games done too.. including a fun Muskets and Tomahawks campaign set in the French Indian wars played out on Zoom.
Tom and I are planning a Chain of Command 1940 campaign (we've even built terrain pieces and painted armies!), so looking forward to that.. as well as trying out some cold war gone hot with Scrivs, newly returned from the colonies..
So.. I'm going to try to post regularly again.. even if it's brief and rubbish.. I think it might be a good exercise.
A super-brief highlight reel of some stuff that's passed over my table in 2021 so far (excluding Zoom games):
Painting up Perry Wars of the Roses army.. 3D printing stakes for archers.. starting a 'Bag the Hun' collection for the Flying Tigers.. building, painting and rigging 'Black Seas' ships.. building and expanding fantasy Dragon Rampant armies for my own 'Nordmark' setting.. getting some HeHe based and realising how many more I need to start playing 'Death in a Dark Continent'.. building up a British BAOR force in 1/144 using Northag plastish models and 3D prints (and 3D printing Soviets) to play 'Seven Days to the River Rhine' with Scrivs any time soon! .. rebasing some ancient 15mm 18th century stuff for some ImagiNation solo games...
Playing some solo 1866 games using 6mm armies and Neil Thomas 19th Century rules.. starting a big project to rebase and re-arm my Arthurian armies back to WAB.. 3D printing tanks from 1/300 to 1/48.. more Dragon Rampant.. scratch building and kit building real estate for 1940 games.. and painting up gorgeous Aventine EIR romans for Infamy Infamy (which I will probably never play)
(the buildings are all actually the right way up in real life, that is to say, with roof skyward.. but I thought I'd get you to tilt your head to one side, just for fun!)
