New Year's Day Lunch and Game

L-R: Conscripts Indo, Dallas, Kevin, Dave V., Frederick, Mike F., Keegan. Greg had to duck out early :-(

This year we continued the tradition of a New Year's Day lunch and game hosted at my place. We had an excellent turnout of Conscripts and a fun game.

My wife Pam had prepared an amazing lunch as usual: pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, BBQ roasted carrots, dainties and pie. Best of all, Leanne and Robyn (wife and daughter of Mike) and Jen (wife of Dave) were able to make it for lunch as well. The tummies of all were filled with delicious food.

The table, with Mike F., Greg and Dave in contemplation

After lunch we repaired to the basement of Conscript HQ for a game of Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish. I'd prepared seven factions for the game was turned out to be perfect as there were seven other Conscripts in attendance.

As usual, we used the superb Games Workshop dungeon tiles and markers laser-cut by Conscript Byron. In the photo above we see Greg's murder-wizard roasting Mike F.'s vampires with a Pillar of Fire spell. Outstanding!

 

The treasure room at the centre of the dungeon held a nice surprise - an Eye Tyrant (Beholder!) that popped up to menace Dave V.'s pig-faced Orc warband. Although it was duly dispatched, I am told that its appearance did cause some consternation, which was what I was going for.

Players scored victory points for killing other players' minions (1 VP each) and characters (2VP) as well as for collecting treasure items.We counted up VPs at the end of the game and the winner (despite having to leave early) was GREG B. with 10VPs. Indo came a close second with 8VPs, while Mike, Dave and Keegan tied on 4VPs. Frederick scored 3 and Kevin scored... zero. Must've been the warband I reckon ;-)

Anyway, thanks as always to Pam for the wonderful food and to the guys for coming out to ring in the New Year!

Moar! Murder-Hoboes and Eye Tyrant

In preparation for the traditional New Year's Day game (this year - Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish) I put brush to model and cranked out a half-dozen new miniatures for us to play with.

The wonderful people at Otherworld contributed several, including this excellent Paladin. Unfortunately, I didn't care overly much for the head, so I swapped it for one from a Bretonnian Knight of the Realm, and I think it worked out quite well.

This evil mage and familiar also come from Otherworld, and I really like the wizard's nasty facial expression and gnarled hands. The familiar is just cute!

These two come from Rebel Miniatures. Definitely a tier down from Otherworld but they share the old-school flavour all right.

I added some equipment to the cleric to give him more of a dungeon-crawling vibe.

This model is a quasi-resin piece from Reaper. I'm always in need of more clerics to fill out the murder-hobo bands and this model has more of a "heavily-armed nun" feel which is cool.

Lastly... how about this guy to strike some terror in the hearts of adventurers!! It's the "Eye Tyrant" from Otherworld. I'd put off painting him for some time, basically through fear of assembling him. The "body" comes in two halves, but each eyestalk is a separate casting and there is no real guide as to where to put them on the body. I really should have pinned them (the join is just bare metal-to-metal) but I'm lazy so I didn't bother. Looks pretty cool painted up though eh?

Stay tuned for the report on today's seven-faction mega dungeon battle!

More Hasslefree Dwarves

First off, I have to say "thanks" to my fellow Conscripts Dave, Greg and Byron for keeping up the blog this summer. I can't actually remember my last post here off the top of my head but I know it's been a long time (since I've even picked up a paintbrush)... but anyway, "Winter is Coming" and it's time to get back to painting.

I've gotten back into it with a cracking bunch of figures from Hasslefree to round off the Dwarven warband I've been building for Otherworld fantasy skirmish.

I painted this female dwarf to be the interim leader of the warband, although I do have another Hasslefree character on the paint bench who might fill that role later. Anyway, "Adalheid" (for it is she) is a fantastic model and was "a joy to paint" as they say. Just enough detail to be interesting without overwhelming, and the face and anatomy are spot on.

The rest of the group are from the good old "Dwarf Multi-Pack" of four dwarves with hand weapons. I converted this one to be the standard-bearer for the warband. I'm not thrilled with the banner though, as I'd used a transfer for the Griffon device and painted it over, but some of the edges didn't adhere so well. Easy enough to rip off and redo later. The finial is from a Mordheim sprue I think.

Here are the three other lads in rather aggressive posture.

And here's the entire warband so far. We'll get at some skirmish gaming with these soon, I reckon. Anyway, here's hoping that this is the start of a fruitful winter painting season :-)

Otherworld Miniatures Pig-Faced Orcs

Back in 2009, I picked up a blister pack of the superb Otherworld Pig-Faced Orcs sculpted by Kev Adams. I enjoyed them so much that I subsequently bought a bunch more when they went on sale from a US vendor. The recent Otherworld game I staged at PrairieCon gave me some impetus to finish off painting the group.

The two character models in the foreground are from Command Set #2. The Orc holding the banner has been converted extensively - he started out holding a halberd and shield. His right arm was cut off and replaced by a hand and banner from the GW Chaos Marauders sprue. In his left he holds a sword liberated from a plastic Skaven plague monk.
 

Crossbow-orcs come three to a pack and I bought one pack of those for some long-range firepower.

Two more crossbow-orcs here along with some energetic weapon-wavers.

Their boss - "El Porco". I love the pig-faced helm and heavy armour on this chap.

These guys with the two-handed weapons are great, if seeming somewhat awkward. Maybe it's just me, as I would swing a two-handed weapon "left-handed" and these guys are all righties.

Converted banner-bearer.

Shaman of the tribe. Another great model, and I'm cool with how the "characters" are actually noticeably physically larger than the grunt-orcs. Shows how they ended up being bosses I guess.

Anyway, that's the Pig-Faced Orcs. I really enjoyed painting them and I think they look great on the table. There's no school like the old school!

Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish at PrairieCon!

Two weeks back, Conscript Greg and I ran some games at PrairieCon, Manitoba's premiere gaming convention. This was the 37th iteration of the venerable event, and my old pal Kelly reminded me that we'd been attending together since PrairieCon III, lo those many years ago. Thanks Kel! ;-)

Anyway, we always try to bring something different out to the Con. Some years it's been Star Wars skirmish or space battles, other years a different sci-fi game; WWII or who knows what. But this year, since PrairieCon started as (and remains at heart) a D&D tournament, I thought I should bring out the modern miniatures equivalent of OSR: Otherworld Fantasy Skirmish, in a dungeon.
 

So I gathered six factions: two groups of dungeon adventurers, the Orcs of the Severed Hand and some Pig-Faced Orcs, some Skaven, and a couple vampires and their minions. Conscript Byron made some awesome laser-cut tokens for me to use, and I laid out the dungeon using Games Workshop's excellent and long out-of-print Dungeon Floor Plans.

The basic premise was simple: the dungeon beneath Castle Drax had long been home to monsters of various descriptions, in thrall to the mysterious Wizard who lived there. But the Wizard hasn't been seen for some time, and rumours abound of monsters fleeing the dungeon in the middle of the night... sounds like the perfect opportunity for plunder and pillage in an abandoned dungeon, no?

Of course, every faction had this same idea and therein lies the opportunity for a game. As mentioned, Byron made up some superb tokens for me based on Chris Abbey's excellent six-player Otherworld game. Cheers Chris! The Adventure tokens Byron created replaced the cardboard ones produced by Otherworld - I needed about 25 for this game and only 8 come in the set.

If you haven't played Otherworld yet, it's a hoot. For me one of the joys of the game is the Adventure deck. When your model comes across an Adventure token you pick the top card off the deck to determine the result - a treasure item, a trap, another special game effect, or a Wandering Monster!
In our game, each faction had a couple models in its Wandering Monster pool and these came onto the table when the WM card was drawn, a very cool mechanic.

Too much happened in the game to go into blow by blow, but if you were wondering what happened to the Wizard and why all the monsters left the dungeon...

It was because a Purple Worm happened to surface in his bedroom, and ate him! (Shown here about to gobble a hapless Elven Ranger)

The game was great fun and we tabulated victory according to treasure taken and XPs notionally gained for killing characters from other factions. The winner was Oliver, with 13 VPs (his adventurer group shown above, finishing off Byron's Orcs of the Porcine Visage).

Conscript Dave's band of murder hoboes was arguably the most dangerous group in the dungeon, here shown finishing off the Purple Worm...

...and right after that, Craig's Wandering Ettin, Phil.

I had great fun running the game, and I want to thank Oliver, Byron, Craig, Dave, Brett and Andy for playing and Greg for hanging in with the Purple Worm.

I took a few pics of the models we used today as I finally put them away. Here they are:

Otherworld hireling-types

The Over-the-Ponders: Livingstone the Mage, Blume the Elven Ranger, Sir Jackson, Ansell the Thief. Blume is a Grenadier figure from the AD&D set of the early '80s; Ansell is also Grenadier c. 1979  

I really like this model! Figures back then were a bit smaller so I just call him an elf.

Purple Worm! Reaper Minis

Orcs of the Severed Hand - Grenadier box set from the early '80s, with Citadel Ettin

Disciples of the Horned Rat, with Ral Partha bugbears

Elsa and Vlad, vampires. Both Citadel, with Citadel villagers and Dire Wolves

Otherworld adventurers - Gygax the Mage, Sir Perren, Zeb the Rogue, Brother Arneson