Pro's & Con's of Multi-gaming

Howdy wargamers and hobbyists, and welcome to another gaming article guesting over on the Creative Twilight Community Blog. This time around I have presented a rundown of the benefits and detriments of playing multiple miniature wargames rather than focusing my efforts on just one or two, so please hop on over using the link below, and let me have your thoughts.

The Pro's & Con's of being a Multi-gamer


Thanks for reading.

Eternal Wargamer Hobby Update #1

Howdy Wargamers and Hobbyists.

Today I would like to introduce you to a new format I am going to be using for bringing you a more structured and (more importantly) regular hobby update.

Eternal Wargamer Hobby Update

Please feel free to comment any thoughts or questions about the new format or any of my hobby content.

As always, thanks for reading.

Hero for a Day - 40K 24 hour Marathon

Howdy Wargamers and Hobbyists, and welcome to the gym. This is where I have started going to build up my wargaming stamina so that I can manage to survive this event.

A club mate of mine will be running a 20 man Warhammer 40,000 24 hour gaming event for a children's cancer and leukaemia charity entitled 'Hero for a Day', and it sounds like it will be an amazing day.

This article (guesting over on Creative Twilight) will certainly be worth your attention, and I very much hope that if you aren't too far away, you might be able to make it.


Thanks for reading.

The Eternal Wargamer's New Year Message

Greetings Wargamers and Hobbyists. Here we are at the brink of a whole new year; but what has the old year taught me, as it limps wounded into the night?

 

I think that this year has been one of great change in our hobby, and much of that change at least in my neck of the woods has been a result of the metamorphosis of the Warhammer game into Age of Sigmar, which although it retains much of the branding and model range of Warhammer (The Game of Fantasy Battles), the game rules and the setting are almost unrecognisable. This wasn’t a revamp or new edition of the established game, it was an fundamental re-imagining, like a wriggling Nurgle blessed maggot into a bloated Plague Drone.

 

I won’t say too much about the change over from WFB to AoS, because it has already been said, and at great length, by a great many people. We have talked about the few core rules, the boat loads of Warscrolls, the endless re-basing and the various pros and cons of the new game. What the change did do for me was open the door to new gaming experiences. In the past year I have ventured beyond the once adamant borders of the Games Workshop realms into the wider gaming world beyond.

 

I have taken an interest in Mantic’s Kings of War game, and played it using the free rules, with plans to pick up the rulebook proper, especially now that they have released army lists to support those collections escaping the Old World. I have also backed a Kickstarter for Dropfleet Commander, which is something else that is new to me, but I am a sucker for cool space ship games. Also, there now resides on my shelf a copy of the Frostgrave rulebook, for which I intend to gather a Warband at the start of the new year – once I can lay my smoking paint brush to one side and take a break from painting for some assembly.

More than that, I have spent time reinvigorating older games and models in my collection, which I thought at various points may never see the light of day or the thrill of battle again. I have played Man O’ War (!), I have re-gathered my Warhammer Quest set, now ready to venture into the darkness below with my son, and there are rumours of unrest in the Underhive of Necromunda. Another spaceship game, Battlefleet Gothic, is one I intend to get playing again very soon. As I said in my post only last week, I have organised my models, gathered the accoutrements of gaming and generated ship damage record cards for every vessel in my collection.

 

So what else have I done in the hobby this year? Well I did get back to gaming, after getting in only a couple of games until about October, when my wife’s Thursday night dance class moved to Wednesdays and allowed me to get back to the club and play, which was a joy indeed! I also managed to get a fair bit of painting done.

 

My goal (for those who remember to this time last year and my 2015 Hobby Resolution), was to get 250 miniatures painted to a tabletop standard (and I know this means different things to different people), and if I hadn’t been able to return to club gaming in the latter part of the year, I would have beaten that goal comfortably, however as hobby time began to once more be taken up with list building and rules refreshers, my total at the end of the year stands at 219 completed miniatures, with another 15 only a few hours away from being done. I may have fallen short of my target, but having painted 377% of what I managed in 2014, I think I can live with that. I think next year the target will be a more modest 200.

 

The other thing I have done this year is to blog more, on this site, guesting over on Creative Twilight, and also taking part in a revived Sprue Cutter’s Union, which is going great guns, although we have taken a break for the festive season. Long may it continue.

 

I have done a great many things in the hobby this year, and expanded my gaming horizons, but what did I learn? I think I learned that the hobby is what we make it. Even when presented with what seems like too great a challenge to overcome, and our gaming world is turned upside and inside out, with a little time and effort we can achieve anything, make any game work, make any event fun.

 

There is a whole world of games out there my friends. Go forth and forge your own narrative. May I wish you all a fun, peaceful and prosperous New Year. Let’s make 2016 a good year. #EnjoyAllTheGames

 

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading.

War Among the Stars - A return to Battlefleet Gothic

Howdy fellow wargamers and hobbyists, and welcome to another quick intro to an article guesting over on Creative Twilight about a game that is close to my heart, and one I have always enjoyed: Battlefleet Gothic.

Whether it is the fluff on the Gothic War itself, or Abbadon's 13th Black Crusade, or even the naval encounters around Armageddon during Ghazghkhull's third invasion of that benighted world, the thrill of major space battles in the 40K universe has always grabbed my attention, and it is my wish to get some of the guys at my local club interested in playing this fantastic game, especially now that Games Workshop is in some way going to reinstate and hopefully support their specialist games range again.

May I present, 'War Among the Stars'.


Thanks for reading.


P.S. - as an aid to finding the ship cards I am generating, I will post Dropbox links to them all here - if you check back from time to time you will find I am adding PDFs for more fleets. Let me know if you have any preferences for which fleet you want next.

Also, I will slowly be expanding the documents here, like the Imperial Rulebook cards to eventually include all Imperial Navy ships. No knowing how long this will take at the moment though, because time flows strangely in the warp...

Main Rulebook Imperial
Main Rulebook Chaos
Adeptus Astartes
Main Rulebook Eldar
Dark Eldar
Tyranids
Necrons
Orks

Gaming Renaissance!

Howdy there fellow Wargamers and Hobbyists, and welcome once more to the Eternal Wargamer blog. Today I bring you a further article guesting over on Creative Twilight all about my recent gaming activity which has resulted from the months of upheaval we have all experienced after the loss of Warhammer Fantasy and the arrival of Age of Sigmar...

Follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow brick road...


Thanks for reading.

Into the Maelstrom: First Taste of Maelstrom Missions

Howdy Wargamers and Hobbyists.

Another article for you which is guesting on the Creative Twilight blog, my initial 'hot out of the hot zone' impressions and thoughts about my first game using the Maelstrom Missions and Objective Cards.

I hope it makes for interesting reading. Here is 'Into the Maelstrom'.

Thanks for reading.

What do we want?

Welcome wargamers and hobbyists to another post guesting on Creative Twilight.

After reading so much recently from gamers wanting to be provided with some guidance by Games Workshop for structuring their games of Age of Sigmar, I decided to give my thoughts about what I feel is something of s crossroads in our hobby.

I give you: What do we want from our Wargames?

I hope this sparks some creativity and reassessment of where we are going in the hobby. Your thoughts on this topic are welcome.

Thanks for reading.

First Taste of Age of Sigmar

Greetings fellow Wargamers, and welcome to my second guest article for the Creative Twilight blog. I hope to be able to help Thor expand the reader base for the site by branching out from the primarily 40K content on the blog, and this is my first step in that direction.




I've played a couple of games of Age of Sigmar now, and felt it was time to give my initial impressions of the game, and also thought it might be good to write up something nice and early after the release so that in six months time I can re-visit the state of the game and see how things have changed.




So, without further ado, I give you - First Taste of Age of Sigmar.

Tales from the Battlefield... #1

Greetings Wargamers and Hobbyists and welcome to my Hall of Battles. The walls of this grand old room are hung with tapestries and paintings of the greatest victories of my armies. This new painting shows the Ogre Tyrant Grund Giantbreaker defeating the Lizardmen at the Battle of Mad Moor. Don't touch please; the paint is still wet...

A few weeks ago, after suffering yet another defeat at the hands of my arch nemesis, 'Dave', at our local club, I started a series called 'Where did it all go wrong?', which was meant to be about going over the detail of battles I had lost in an effort to better understand why and how, and hopefully avoid the same results in the future. Well, it worked, because I have played two games since, one each of 40K and one of Fantasy, and won them both...

Now we know of course that this fragile state of affairs can't possibly last, but while it does, I'm going to take the opportunity to talk about the high point of my last game in a new series I have dubbed 'Tales from the Battlefield'. Think of it as an arse covering excercise. Now, whether I win or lose a battle, I have a series to cover it.

So then, this first post in the series I will unofficially dub 'The Unstoppable Force vs The Immovable Object', which in this case is about the moment my Ogre Irongut unit (Including full command group, my Bruiser Battle Standard bearer and Grund Giantbreaker my Ogre Tyrant) move forward into a position to be charged by a block of Saurus Warriors.

First, a little scene setting. This game was 3500 points per side, Ogres and Nurgle Damons allied on one side vs Wood Elves and Lizardmen allied on the other. As this was a fairly large battle, we decided to just keep it simple and play it Pitched, particularly as we had a less experienced Fantasy player commanding the Wood Elves. Seeing as my Ironguts were being shot at by multiple units of Woodies, all with poisoned arrows, and the Guts were too far away to make a charge into the Saurus themselves, I moved them forward as far as I could to force the issue, and make the enemy either charge me or be charged themselves next turn.

At the same time as this showdown was being set up on one side of the field, on the other, a horde of Plague Bearers led by Epidimus was squaring off against a block of Temple Guard including a hero and Battle Standard. The chances were that these two combats would decide the outcome of the battle.

The next turn comes around, and units charge in on both sides of the field. Two decisive combats are initiated. My Ironguts may have been charged but they are big boys and can handle themselves I thought to myself. My only concern was causing enough damage to get through the Lizardmen's Steadfast and Cold Blooded. Then around comes the Magic phase. Our opponents roll well on the winds of magic. They cast Wissens Wildform on the Saurus block my Ironguts are facing. Not what I wanted, but we let it through, conserving our small dispel pool for countering Flesh to Stone, which my team mate was confident would destroy his Plague Bearers chances against the Temple Guard if it got through.

"Not the end of the world" says I, "not with my Tyrant in the fight and no enemy characters."

"Yeah," says my team mate, "You'll be fine. I'd be in real trouble if those Temple Guard got +2 toughness..."

Next they decide to cast Flesh to Stone. Not on the Temple Guard, but on the Saurus block my Ironguts were fighting. Our dispel roll was short. Damn.

Now you can imagine my consternation, and the feeling of guilt on the face of my team mate as I found my Tyrant's unit facing a unit of Saurus Warriors four ranks deep with Strength 5 and Toughness 7. With only the Wildform in play, they were wounding my Ironguts on 3's but being wounded on 3's in return, and I had my Tyrant and far more attacks. Now my models were wounding on 5's, even with Great Weapons, and going last to boot!

After some consideration about whether to activate the Dragonhide Banner this turn, or wait until next turn when Wildform would have ended making the Saurus easier to wound next turn (though it was a waste either way because the banner does far more for your unit the turn they charge, not when they receive a charge!), I decided to go for it. My logic was that I needed to do as much damage as possible in this first round just to make sure I was still there for a second! So the Dragonhide Banner kills 2 Saurus Warriors, but just as importantly, makes them strike last (simultaneous with my Ironguts) for the next two rounds of combat.

This is where I decided that I was very pleased with how I had equipped my Tyrant. Extra hand weapon, Greedy Fist magic item, and Giant Breaker Big Name, giving him six attacks at Strength 7. I would be relying on him to do well. As it turned out, with a few wounds caused on each side and all the bonuses, the fight was a draw. Thank heavens for the single wound caused by a Stomp attack!

Breathing a sigh of relief, but realising that both Wissens Wildform and Flesh to Stone would still be in play in the next round of combat, in our turn my Tyrant knocked back his Potion of Strength, boosting his Strength to a mighty 10! In addition, I managed to get a unit of six Bulls led by my Butcher into the flank of the Saurus block. Things were looking much rosier, but with the boosted Toughness of the Saurus still in play, this was certainly not a done deal.

At this point in the game and after something of a lacklustre start, my dice decided to wake up. Combat continued in our turn (after failing to boost the Strength of my Ironguts with a Maw spell), everybody got to make their attacks, starting (after Strength 5 Impact Hits from the Bulls) with my Tyrant, who smashed something like 4 or 5 Saurus with his Strength 10 attacks (I had been saving the Potion of Strength for the Treeman Ancient, but needs must). By the end of the round, with a worse than average showing from the Lizardmen, my two units had killed all but three models, and without Steadfast, not even being Cold Blooded could save the Toughness 7 Saurus from needing 'snake eyes' to stay in the fight.

The Saurus broke and ran, but with my dice having decided that their work was done, the Ironguts failed to catch them, falling short about 2", though they ran the fleeing unit down next turn and picked up the points (including for the Skink Priest that was in the unit), and for a total loss of about three Ironguts from my unit (of eight I started with).

There you have it. For a while it looked like my prize unit would be undone by a supercharged unit of Saurus Warriors, but they ground it out and Grund Giantbreaker got himself some Lizardskin boots. I should say that the Plague Bearer unit also defeated the (decidedly unenhanced) Temple Guard. You're welcome buddy!

That's it for this post, I hope it at least gave you an entertaining couple of minutes out of your day. Let's hope I lose another game soon so I can write something more constructive...

Thanks for reading.

6th Edition 40K - A £40 door stop?

Greetings wargamers and hobbyists, and welcome to my library. Some of these books used to be worth something. Maybe a few still are...

A few weeks ago, while playing what has turned out to be my very last game of Warhammer 40,000 using the 6th edition big rulebook, one of my club mates (who I am guessing prefers the functionality of the compact version of the rules rather than the version that is so thick that even Luis Suarez can't bite through it) joked about what I was going to do with my now worthless door stop of a 6th edition rulebook? This is a question I have heard repeated many times over the last few months, as 7th edition approached out of the ever shifting haze of rumours, and after it finally landed.

Over the last couple of weeks it has got me thinking about all those old rulebooks and what happens to them, about the ones that end up propping up coffee tables, the ones that go on eBay for a hundredth of what we paid for them, and of those that simply end up as landfill. Oh, and of course the ones that end up at the backs of shelves and cupboards and in lofts the world over, bemoaning their all too short time in the limelight. What ever will become of those I wonder...?

Well I am on my 4th edition of Warhammer Fantasy and 6th edition of Warhammer 40,000 (why the disparity in the number of editions of each game I wonder?), and I still have most of the rulebooks, Codices and Army Books I have accumulated in that time. Yes, on the face of it, versions of the rules that are a decade or two out of date are not all that useful, but earlier this year I found myself fishing out all the versions of the Warhammer Fantasy rulebooks I could find, because I wanted to gather together as many different scenarios I could to use in campaign games at our club, with suitable tweaks to make them 8th compatible of course.

As I looked through those older publications, I came across more and more things of interest, like a Warhammer 'Tournament Scenario', two or three versions of campaign rules and magic item tables, sections on making your own scenery (which of course we almost never see in Games Workshop publications these days), and even rules for different kinds of in-game weather effects in the old Dark Shadows campaign booklet. That is of course without counting all the maps that came with issues of White Dwarf over the years, and all the great material in publications such as the Storm of Chaos campaign book.

I found it interesting to look at how the the hobby has changed over the years, how different styles of models and paint schemes have come and gone, how incarnations of a well known special character have evolved across the editions, and also which things haven't changed all that much. These days we have maps that depict the length and breadth of the Warhammer World, and the points of origin of the Ogres of the Mountains of Mourn, the Great Wall of Cathay and the domains of the Dragon Emperor, and the locations of all the Temple Cities of Lustria, whereas once we had just maps of the Old World, with just hints of what lay beyond the western oceans and the Worlds Edge Mountains.

Though the rules within any given tome that is no longer the current rules set may have limited worth, that doesn't mean that all those wonderful old rulebooks are entirely devoid of worth. There are some gems to be had if you just take the time to look. How about some easily updated siege rules? Or some skirmish game rules for those dramatic inter-battle encounters? Or even just some inspiration for a one off scenario - it's all there somewhere...

Oh, and an old BRB is pretty good at holding doors open too.

Thanks for reading.

Games Workshop and Organised Play

Greetings wargamers and hobbyists, and welcome to the Hall of Battles. I could spend hours in here reading all the combat honours and action reports...

Today I would like to talk briefly about organised tournament competitive gaming and casual gaming. I have chosen to specify tournament gaming rather than organised play as a whole, because there are other kinds of organised play, like campaigns, which are not competitve in the same manner as tournaments, and tend to work very differently.

One thing I would like to say about it is an indirect response to a comment made by a host on a podcast I listened to recently that covered the same topic. The comment that was made, which I am sure was absolutely true for the speaker and their immediate gaming group, was that most gamers want to play tournaments. I personally have not found this to be the case when speaking to gamers, and in fact I ran a poll not all that long ago on a popular forum site asking gamers the following question:

What kind of games do you play?

1. Club/'garage'/casual gaming only?

2. Organised tournaments/Competitive events only?

3. A mix of both?

The result was about what I expected it to be. Out of over 90 votes cast, slightly more than half did not play any organised competitive or tournament games, about 45% played a mix, and only one voter said they played only organised tournament games. Does this reflect your gaming experiences as well?

So although we might hear an awful lot about tournaments and competitive gaming on podcasts, this taken in isolation might lead us to think that the tournament scene is bigger than it really is, it just happens that most podcasts I listen to are either tournament centric, or at least discuss them on and off. This is all fine and dandy of course, because tournaments are a popular part of the gaming scene, and tournament organisers and gamers both put huge amounts of time and effort into making them successful. Which leads me to my next point of discussion...

First, I will apologise in advance for what may sound like a rant, but listening to the '11th Company' Warhammer 40,000 podcast made me this way.

You wouldn't buy a 1.0 litre engine runaround and then complain that it won't win at Silverstone, no matter how many flame stickers you plaster along its bodywork, so why are a minority of players of Games Workshop games (primarily 40K - so there is a chance this might change as the new edition settles in, but the point stands) complaining that some games don't work in a tournament environment because the game and armies are not balanced?

Fair enough, we can hark back to the old days when Games Workshop did support tournaments in one form or another, but apart from their own local events run at Warhammer World, this is no longer the case. It's clear that the games aren't sufficiently balanced to allow straight forward no-comp tournament play without everyone ending playing one of a very small number of different armies because those armies are currently 'the shiz', yet some people seem to be implying that it's down to Games Workshop to fix this so that people can play what is intended (in its current incarnation) to be a dramatic but ultimately casual form of gaming as some kind of ultra balanced game that ensures that the general wins the battle and not the army. 

It is after all a game with multiple random elements, so the level of control a player has over what occurs in a game will always have its limits.

You cannot make a square peg fit in a round hole, at least not without making some necessary modifications to it first. So who's responsibility is it to make any game suitable for fair and balanced tournament gaming when the game doesn't necessarily play that way 'out of the box'? 

Well the answer to that is simple. Me. You. All of us that play and have a vested interest in getting what we want of a game. If the manufacturer has no interest in making the changes that you want them to make, then you have the freedom (with the proper amount of reasoning and productive debate and analysis) to make those changes yourselves. In fact the 'Big Rule Book' for 40K actually says that you should do this, that the printed rules are a starting point for us to build on in any way we wish to make the game what we want it to be.

I appreciate the amount of risk taken by organisers of large tournaments, of the financial outlay for running a big event and the awful consequences of making a substancial monetary commitment to an event that might fall flat and leave them severely out of pocket if it doesn't work out. 

I am not suggesting for one moment that they should have to just suck it up, but at the end of the day, the guys running an event have control, and have the power to make the changes they feel are necessary to address flaws with a rule, a unit or an army. In fact most tournaments already excersise that power when they think up 'composition' packages and their own considered scenarios for their event, all of which is intended to make the event more balanced, so why would an organiser not go a step further and simply change a rule if the majority of gamers agree that it should be changed?

In an age of instant global communication, where I can converse online with an endless variety of gamers and hobbyists at any time of the day or night, would it really be that difficult to ask the tournament playing community 'hey guys, I'm thinking we should change re-rollable 2+ invulnerable saves to a maximum of 3+ re-rollable, whaddya think?' Go ahead, put your rules pack out there and see what people think of it. If the problems are as pronounced as people seem to think, then surely any form of half decent fix will be welcomed?

Perhaps it would be too difficult and would be too great a risk for an organiser to shoulder, but I think I need to be convinced on that score.

Now although I hear a lot about the tournament scene, in UK, Australia and New Zealand, the US and Canada, I choose not take part in tournaments. They are just not an area of gaming that I am interested in. I play wargames because I love the narrative element, and the progression from one encounter to the next, which is not typically something I would expect to get out of tournament play, and given the stats that came back from the poll I talked about earlier, I am not alone.

Tabletop wargaming is a broad hobby encompassing multiple engaging and equally valid elements, so nevet let anyone tell you what form your enjoyment of the hobby should take. The whole point of this rant is to reinforce the idea that it is our hobby, not the manufacturers. They may take our money, but they'll never take our freedom (!) to make the games we play what we want them to be. For all the time people seem to spend waxing lyrical about how abysmal game designers are at their job, who's to say that we can't just take the advice already given and change what we want to? 

People might say that changing the game is ok within your own gaming group, but not across the entire community. Well why not I say? If enough people agree, it can work, all it takes is communication. We are already a global community aren't we? Why is ok to say a rule doesn't work but not be prepared to go ahead and change it?

Anyhow, that's me done for this post. A game is what we make it, because we are the gaming community. If Games Workshop has decided not to have involvement with with the wider tournament scene, then be bold and make the changes necessary to get what you want out of competitive gaming. There's no point waiting till hell freezes over and Games Workshop to come out with a tournament edition (they're just rumours!) because at least at the moment, it's not their thing.

Thanks for reading.

Where did it all go wrong? #1

Greetings fellow wargamers. Over recent months playing games of Warhammer 40K, Warhammer Fantasy & Blood Bowl at my local club, I have been trying to spend a little time post-game analysing where I have failed in games I have lost, be it army selection, deployment, target priority or whatever. I must admit, a big part of this is about trying to convince myself that I am not as bad a player as I might think in the moments after a defeat, because if I can identify where I made mistakes, I can improve my game. 

At least I won't have to talk about Blood Bowl defeats in this series - so far at least!

So, this is part one of what I hope will be a series of posts that are realtively short and to the point, and I hope that both I and other players can learn something from my misfortune. Welcome to the Debriefing Room.

SETTING THE SCENE

Game: Warhammer Fantasy
Armies: Warriors of Chaos vs Skaven
Points Limit: 2500
Scenario: The Watch Tower

This was my favourite combat of the battle! Double Giant for the win!

HOW DID I LOSE?

I lost when the game ended at the close of turn 5, immediately after the remaining models (13) in my unit of Chaos Warriors was removed by the Curse of the Horned Rat spell, leaving the unoccupied Watch Tower in the hands of the Vermin Lord that had cast the spell.

WHAT SHOULD I HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?

Ok, assuming the game would finish at the close of turn 5 like it did, there are three mistakes I have identified which could have changed the result of the game.

The first might well have shaken things up, and this relates to the demise of my Daemon Prince on turn 3. Quite simply, I moved him into a position where he could cast Cacophonic Choir and hit the greatest possible number of units, including a Doomwheel on 3 wounds which I expected to die when hit by 2d6 hits wounding on 4's with no armour save, and the Skaven Warlord's unit. I threw six dice at the spell, scored exactly 24 (without Miscasting), and my opponent had already used his Dispel Scroll earlier in the game. He threw seven dice to dispel and scored 24. Nuts.

The Doomwheel charged the Daemon Prince, I rolled a 1 for his Charmed Shield, and the Prince was toast. I hadn't planned at all for what the situation would be if the spell didn't go off, because I had max dice to use and there was no dispel scroll. What I should have done was either charge the Doomwheel in my own turn with the Daemon Prince and try and take off its last three wounds, or safer yet, fly to a position where the Doomwheel would be blocked entirely from charging or zapping the Daemon Prince due to intervening Skaven infantry blocks.

Second mistake. If I had remembered that I had a Dispel Scroll when my Chaos Warriors had first been targetted by  Curse of the Horned Rat (they were wiped out by the second casting of this spell), then the unit would have survived and I would have been holding the Watchtower at the end of the game. As it was, the second casting was cast with Irresistible Force, and that was that.

Third mistake. Even with forgetting to use the Dispel Scroll and losing the Warriors, if I had moved either or both the Battle Standard Bearer and Chaos Sorceror out of the Warrior unit and into the Watchtower in my turn 5 movement phase, I would have been in control of the tower when the battle ended.

WHAT DID I LEARN?

From this battle I learned a few things:

When taking an important action like casting a major spell or declaring a critical charge, consider what the consequences of that action not going off might be. What happens if the spell fails, or the charge falls short? If you are lucky, nothing damaging, if you are less fortunate, you could lose a major unit which could start the snowball rolling that dooms your army to defeat.

Always remember the tricks and special rules in your army, like using a Dispel Scroll when you really need to stop that game changing spell (if you can), don't forget your Magic Items effects, and if you have to write yourself a little note or put an elastic band around your wrist to help you remember, do it. Whatever works to stop you forgetting something that later proves signifcant.

Lastly, consider when it might be beneficial to have your characters abandon their bunker units. This might be simply to move them to a position of safety, it could be to threaten an enemy unit that would otherwise be out of your units threat area, or like my game, it could win you the battle by providing more targets than the enemy can eliminate before the last few grains of sand finally run out. Units are often used to provide protection for character models, but sometimes it is safer to have your character leave the unit while the unit provides a suitable diversion.

So, that's it for #1 of "Where did it all go wrong?". I hope it's been an interesting read. I've tried to keep it simple, and avoid getting into a situation where "you had to be there" for it to make any sense, and who knows, the things I have learned might also help you as well the next time you find your battleline in a bit of a fix.

Until next time, thanks for reading.

P.S. For anyone who hasn't seen them, I recently 'finished' my human Blood Bowl team!

The Specialists...Opportunity for Games Workshop?

Greetings fellow Wargamers and Hobbyists, and welcome to the streets, as I mount my much used soap box for another rant about the world of miniature wargaming and the Games Workshop hobby.

It's been a few weeks since my last post, partly due to the break that the Sprue Cutters Union has been on with our weekly topics - which will return soon! - and over the last few weeks the urge to write on a subject that I often wax lyrical on has become overwhelming: Specialist Games...

I for one like variety in my gaming - fair enough, you might argue that I can't really make that statement with any confidence, because I generally only play Games Workshop games, but my response to any sneers would be that I might only play games by one manufacturer, but I don't just play their main big sellers, Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000, I also play a number of their other games.

For the  uninitiated (or coincidentally the younger player), the Specialist Games Range from Games Workshop includes a great variety of different game types, all set in their two worlds (or parallel world in the case of one game) - that of the Warhammer World and the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. They are as follows:

Epic - a game of massed infantry and vehicle battles using small scale miniatures set on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium - the one with the 'proper' Titans!

Warmaster - massed battles in the Warhammer World played with smaller scale miniatures.

Battlefleet Gothic - Space naval warfare in the 41st Millennium.

Necromunda - Gang warfare in the Underhive.

Mordheim - Gang warfare in the Old World.

Blood Bowl - Fantasy Football set in parallel Warhammer World where differences between nations are settled on the pictch rather than on the battlefield.

Inquisitor - Skirmish RPG using larger scale models, set in the darkest corners of the 41st Millennium.

In this number I even include the seminal Man O' War, a game my played an awful lot of in the mid nineties, and completes the puzzle by giving us naval battles on the high seas of the Warhammer World, which Games Workshop tried to re-invent with Dreadfleet.

This list gives you massed warfare using tiny 6mm models, space naval warfare, fantasy football, skirmish/RPG games, everything you could want in the world of miniature wargaming, but for quite a while now, Games Workshop's support for these great games (in most cases) has dwindled.

It could be said that the reason that Games Workshop's support for many of their Specialist Games range has dropped off or ceased altogether is because there isn't the demand for them to anywhere near the same degree as there is for their 'big' games, but the changing miniature wargaming market I think is evidence to the contrary. There are so many new games coming out now which are just these types of games, offering the same styles of gaming as Specialist Games range, whether it's massed battles with tiny soldiers, naval games, skirmish games or mad cap sports, that I think Games Workshop are really missing a trick by not re-invigorating their Specialist range, and leaving a whole swathe of the market open for their competitors to exploit.

Whether it's Flames of War, All Quiet on the Martian Front or Dreadball, all of which I have heard good things about and I would like to try out, it seems crazy to me that Games Workshop would choose not to contest those areas of the market where they already have games out there. There is plainly a demand, and all the new games we are seeing are testament to that.

If I were to give Games Workshop one piece of advice right now, it would be to dust off the Specialist Games, even if only some of them, and get out there to fight for the market segments those games were born to fight for. I'm not talking huge miniature releases off the bat, but why not some articles, perhaps rules updates? Now that they have embraced (some might say excessively so) the digital release medium, surely the outlay for supporting the Specialist range would be minimal? And sections of Warhammer Visions dedicated to the Specialist Games would give it some much needed variety in my opinion.

If a few digtal releases and some photos in Visions sparks enough interest, who knows, maybe we could even see a resurgence with miniature releases and everything that goes into fully supporting a game system. If not, then a few digital rules updates and campaign books would make us veterans very happy indeed.

The time is now Games Workshop...now get out there and fight!

I am sure to return to the subject of Specialist Games soon, as I dig out dusty boxes of neglected models and prepare them for battle once more. Until then thanks for reading.

P.S. Here is the human Blood Bowl team I am working on, and once they are finished, my wife has commited to her first ever game!

Forging the Narrative...#3

Greetings wargamers and hobbyists and welcome again to the War Room. We seem to be spending rather a lot of time in here lately...

Part three of my intermittent 'Forging the Narrative' series on Campaigns and my efforts to muddle through their planning and execution. This time around, I would like to talk about another element that needs to be clarified in order to allow your plans for war to progress. Two things I think you really need to know about are:

• The Factions that will be taking part

• The use of Alliances

Now I believe that these two points are important to get clear early on because they will impact the kind of games that will be played as part of the campaign, and the structure you will need to put in place to support them. Let's go into a little more detail about each of these areas:

Factions

A key point to work out before you can do, well, pretty much anything really as far as I am concerned, is to work out who will be taking part in your campaign, and what armies they intend to use. I find it is easier to formulate a plan and a backstory once this information is known, because otherwise you either have to come up with a very broad and generic plot idea, or you will end up having to shoe-horn armies into the plot in ways that you struggle to be convinced by yourself, let alone the players that have to play out the story.

So, question one - who is playing, and what armies are they using? If players have their own army fluff or character names worked out, this can be worked into the story, and saves you having to come up with this yourself. It also adds greatly to the players sense that their own army is developing organically and coming to life, developing it's own history based on games played rather than pure concoction.

Knowing how many players you have taking part and which armies will be represented also allows you to judge whether the armies can be allowed to operate individually, or whether you will need to group them into appropriate factions to make the narrative development and game planning more manageable.

It also gives you a chance to let the players know if the balance of armies is at all out of kilter, and let them decide if they want to rethink which army they intend to field. Heaven knows a campaign where 80% of the armies are Tau and the rest are Orks might be challenging to say the least.

I think this is one thing that caused me difficulties in the campaign I tried to run last year - for a narrative campaign there were too many individual armies roaming around and doing their own thing, and it got too complicated to organise and keep the plot straight. If it had been a straight forward map based campaign, this wouldn't have mattered so much because the plot matters less after the campaign begins, but there would have to have been a far broader supporting story, because in a map based campaign players pretty much move where they like rather than where the organiser wants them to.

 So, I advise you to try and get clear in advance how many players you have taking part and with which forces.

Alliances

So, you know who is playing, and what armies will be marching to war and causing havoc. So what happens if you have players that have smaller armies than the standard size for games in your group, perhaps because they are in the process of building up an army, or you want to play some bigger games for some scenarios? Well one option is to use 'Alliances' to even things up a bit.

Quite simply, you can allow two or more players to ally for larger games, which gives you options for playing special battles at key points in a campaign, gaming events in themselves which require a little more work to arrange perhaps due to the need for a larger table, more scenery, and of course more time to play the game out, but well worth it for the spectacle and the excitement. The back stories associated with many games systems are littered with tales of alliances, pacts, oath breaking and betrayals, and sometimes you can find inspiration for your own games in those stories.

There is also another practical benefit of using alliances which takes the use of factions a step further. It is always going to be far simpler to plan, drive and complete a campaign with two opposing alliances comprised of multiple armies and factions, than to try and run a campaign involving several autonamous armies, all with their own agendas. 

If you have many players wishing to take part, it may be a good option to consider creating two alliances and save potential headaches later on, like players inadvertantly being ganged up on, or one player running away with the campaign too early on and taking the fun out of it.

If you really want to play a campaign with lots of individual players and armies all going their own way, you might like to go with a structured map based campaign rather than one with a narrative you want to play out to the bitter end...

Next time, think I'll be getting into the part of the campaign planning that can be the most fun, but also give you the most problems to solve...the games!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Here is a photo of the progress I have made on the Hasslefree models I was painting. I expect to have these completed within another hour or two. I think I'll try and black and white check pattern floor for the bases. 

Forging the Narrative...#2

Greetings wargamers and hobbyists, and welcome once more to the War Room for the second part of this sporadic emission, which serves as a vent for my musings on campaigning in the miniature wargaming hobby.

After considering in part one what a campaign needs to be like in order to garner and maintain interest from participating players, for part two I would like to consider some of the first practical decisions that have to be made when planning the campaign itself.

For me, a good campaign needs a strong theme or narrative (after all, 'Forging the Narrative' is the name of the game these days), and this means that there needs to be an engaging story running through the whole thing, like letters running through a stick of rock. The question is, do you want the campaign to follow a set plot path through from beginning to end, or do you create a back story that leads the participants to the threshold, and then let the story develop naturally as the armies battle it out and attempt to achieve whatever objectives they have been set?

Each of the possible routes is perfectly valid, but the decision you have to make is whether you want the story to play out as you envisaged, ensuring the climactic final confrontation you originally planned, or whether you are happy to let the participants play out the rest of the story naturally, come what may as far as the story is concerned.

The ways that each of these options could work out are numerous. For example, when letting the players dictate the outcome, in a map based campaign the story that develops will be driven by the actions of the armies on the map, and where they choose to move, expand their empires, and engage their enemies. You might be playing a campaign that, instead of a map, allows players to choose the scenario to play next, and who against, which gives them a good degree of control over match ups and how the plot develops.

If you want to take more of a hand in pushing the story in the direction you want, you might have a map campaign or a narrative campaign with a pre-determined route that the armies battle down on order to reach the destination at which they will face their final battle. An example of this might be the Storm of Chaos Campaign (ooo, my favourite!), that Games Workshop ran what seems like an age ago now, which was played in stages, each one bringing Archaon and his horde closer to their prize - Middenheim, the City of the White Wolf.

So, I guess that's the simple question: do you as the organiser want the players to play out the story you have decided on, ensuring that you can plan a suitable finale? Or do you allow the players to take a greater role in determining the direction that the story takes, and risk losing the strong theme among all the strategic moves, avoidance tactics and power play that can ensue?

The answer to this question comes with the answer to another question: What do your players want? Do they want to be told what is happening around them, where they are going and who they have to fight, or do they prefer more autonomy, and a greater feeling that their actions are having a wider impact on the campaign?

In our own Club Campaign - ably run by Nick, with just a little input from myself - the Warhammer 40,000 Campaign that we are playing through has a simple structure, with some embellishments to allow the players a sense of involvement, but ultimately is dictated by the choice of scenarios and supporting story that we have put in place, and I think that we have found a good balance. Above all, it is still relatively simple to play out, once all the planning is done and ready to rip. 

The campaign has been laid out in three stages and at each stage, each of the players (eight players divided into two teams) play a battle against an unknown opponent (players are allocated their scenarios by their ‘Supreme Commander’), with the final stage being a grand finale. In the final showdown, tactical bonuses are awarded to each side depending on which battles they won earlier in the campaign, making their lives easier or more difficult depending on how they got on.

The clarity of knowing that the campaign will be completed in just three gaming sessions is a great way to ensure participation, maintain interest, and assures players that there will be a satisfying conclusion without it dragging on for months. Petering out into nothingness is probably the biggest threat to any campaign, so I think that starting simply and clearly is best. Let more involved and complicated campaigns come with time and experience, as players and organisers get a more developed idea of what they want, what works and what doesn’t in their gaming group.

This is probably a nice place to stop, as the next thing I want to talk about is 'factions and alliances', which raises more questions about simplicity VS drama and plot.

Until next time, thanks for reading...

P.S. Still no real progress, but got the three mini's undercoated. Soon.

We're being tracked...

Greetings wargamers and hobbyists, and welcome to the jungle...ssshh! We're being tracked...

Having been in this hobby for a fair while, but even more so since the advent of the internet, Blog-iverse, Facebook and Twittersphere, if there is one thing that I think gamers, miniature modellers and hobbyists have in common is that we seem to like to track things.

Now I'm not talking about furry quadrupeds in idyllic woodland, I mean projects, gaming, modelling, painting etc. I'm not entirely sure why we do it, but I expect we have an in-built need to organise, catalogue, record and analyse information, it's hard wired into the kind of people we (or most of us) are, and when it's something that plays a significant part in our lives, like our hobby, then it can become something verging on the obsessive.

It seems that not only do we have this need to track hobby related data, we also seem to want to share that information with the world, which can sometimes be a double edged sword. Some people post regularly in a Works in Progress forum thread, others post simple lists of stats in our forum signatures, others still dedicate entire blog posts to it, and a tiny minority talk about it on their podcasts.

So, what kind of hobby related information do we track?

Look to the lists...

I guess the obvious one, but one that people probably don't even realise is a form of tracking, is when gamers keep a roster of their assembled army, and this of course tracks the size of their army as they add models to it (which we  need to know in order to be able to agree a size of game to play), and it makes choosing army far easier, because we can take units from our 'standard roster' to form our army to the agreed points total. I keep complete rosters for each of my armies, gangs, fleets, teams etc, so I know both what I have, and the size of game this will allow me to play. Some people like to list each of the armies they collect and their size in points in their forum signatures.

Recruiting and Deployment...

Next, Recruiting and Deployment, which you good people may know better as 'models bought' and 'models painted'. These two things show us and everyone else for that matter, how many models we have added to our collections during the given time period (typically 'this year'), and how many models we have painted. These painted models aren't necessarily the same models as the ones we have bought, but a comparison of the two figures gives us an idea of how well or poorly we are doing in the personal war we fight against bare plastic.

I started recording my own 'bought and painted' stats in my forum signature over on Astronomican at the start of 2012, but that's also the time I decided to trade away and sell all of my old Epic models - a considerable quantity of stuff - which I then used to fund the purchase of a sizeable Ogre Kingdoms army. Quite simply, I traded and sold a lot of models I wasn't using and had little prospect of coming back to finance a load of models that I would use.

Unfortunately, this totally skewed my 'bought vs painted' record, as 'bought' seemed to spiral and painted stayed stagnated, because I was spending my time doing modelling work, assembly work and generally organising the trades and sales and all the incoming miniatures. Well worth it though. I've started again this year. Let's see how I get on...

Role of Honour...

...in other words, 'Games Played'. Some people like to keep a record of the games they have played. Sometimes it's as simple as that he figure, how many games they have played this year, but it can go much further than that. A common record shows how many Wins, Defeats and Draws a player has earned, which can be a fun little stat or a stick to beat ourselves with, depending on how well we are doing and how seriously we take our gaming results.

For my own record, I found it interesting to keep a record which goes back to the point where I joined the MAD Wargames club that I attend regularly. It shows what games system was played, what size of game, what the victory conditions were, who the game was against, the result, and a couple of sentences about the game itself, which typically I use to remind myself where I went wrong. Gamers often say we learn more from our defeats than our victories, and this is where I try to record those nuggets of wisdom. The stats are also interesting because I can break them down by opponent, game system, army and victories vs defeats to see who I play well against, and who I get flattened by, and whether there are some armies I do better or worse with or against.

The thing about game result tracking, is that sometimes our results are being tracked by others as well. In a 40K campaign, or Blood Bowl League for example, it's important to track results in order to asses who is winning and by how much. In fact, games that include 'character development', like Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Mordheim, Warhammer Quest and innumerable other games and RPG's require a detailed level of tracking to be maintained just to enable us to play.

Finally, the most obvious and most talked about form of game result tracking is that which relates to tournaments and competitive events, whether points awarded for painting, or results from games, you can't have a tournament winner - in fact a tournament probably can't progress beyond the opening stages - without tracking the results of the games the participants have played, as the results can determine who a participant plays next, and ultimately who the winner of the event is. These results can then go even further to determine who is eligible to take part in other events, like Masters tournaments and international events, and even who the  current top player in a country is, or even just the most successful player in your own garage.

So, if you partake in any of these tracking activities, and someone asks you, 'do you have an analytical mind', you can answer 'yeah, in a manner of speaking...'

If you track gaming related info, why not drop in a comment about it, especially if it's something I haven't mentioned.

Thanks for reading...

P.S. their is no P.S. pic today, because I've been on a bit of a posting spree this weekend, and haven't had a chance to do any hobby, but I have made progress on DIY in the kitchen...watch this space.

Cackling Clara...

Welcome sports fans, to a special article detailing a new ball about to make things interesting on Blood Bowl pitches across the Old World.

This ball was orginally designed as an entry to a competition run by the illustrious Both Down podcast, an act of whim, of fun, but the ball has since been acquired by the Hundsheimer Hexen Pharmaceutical Company, "Your number one choice for hexes, potions and poultices", and now they're sponsoring it's use at stadia all around the Blood Bowl circuit.

Clackling Clara, the Hexen Ball

Cackling Clara, the once feared Witch of Langwald was, unbeknownst to some, an avid Blood Bowl fan. She was also known to have once been enamoured with the owner of Egdenberg Undertakers Undead Blood Bowl team, Count Erik Schwarznacht. Unfortunately, though she was a skilled practitioner of magic and useful to Count Schwarznacht, her mad cackling drove him to distraction, and finally he tore off her head rather than listen to her insane howling a moment longer.

Rather than have her body burned, as is always sensible with Witches, Schwarznacht had her skin and bladder cured and made into a ball. Little did anyone realise until the first match with the new ball was played that Cackling Clara wasn't quite gone. She would have the last laugh after all.

If Cackling Clara is used in a match, Clara's love for the excitement of a good Blood Bowl match draws her damned spirit back into the ball that was made from her skin, and she delights in casting spells on the ball carrier with amusing effects.

Each time a new player becomes the ball carrier, roll a D8 and consult the table below to see what effects Clara's insane spellcraft has on the unfortunate player. The effects of each spell last only until Clara casts a spell on a new ball carrier. If the player already has all of the skills or mutations that form the spell, then apply the result which is one higher than the roll, or one lower if the first roll was an 8.

1. Ribbit. The ball carrier is turned into a frog, as per the rules for the 'Zap!' card, and left hopping around on the field, dropping the ball as for a failed pick up attempt. The spell wears off as soon as the next spell is cast. This will cause a Turnover if a player from the same team cannot grab the ball as normal before it comes to rest.

2. Look! No Hands! Clara thinks it's positively hilarious to cast a spell turning the player's hands inside out just as he picks up the ball. The player gains the No Hands mutation and drops the ball as if he/she had failed a pick up. This will cause a Turnover if a player from the same team cannot grab the ball as normal before it comes to rest.

3. Moo-tation! The players head transforms into that of a bovine beast, and sprouts great bulls horns from his head, gaining the Horns mutation while this spell is in play. Unfortunately cattle aren't known for their tactical acumen, so the player also gains Really Stupid while carring the ball.

4. Shrinking! The ball carrier shrinks to the proportions of a Snotling, enabling them to dart between players legs with the ball. The player gains 'Titchy' while the spell is in effect. However with significantly shorter legs, their MA is reduced by 1 as well.

5. Clara says 'hi'! In a moment of creaking, cracking and splitting, the head of Cackling Clara sprouts from the players shoulder, granting them the Two Heads mutation, as Clara spots incoming tackles for the player, however unnerving this may be, but as Clara is something of a distraction, the player also gains Loner while the spell is in effect, as he struggles to coordinate with his team mates above the mad cackling.

6. Curse of boils and buboes. The player gains the Foul Appearance mutation for the duration of this spell, as foul boils and pustles errupt all over their skin. Star players renowned for their good looks receive double the number of boils and buboes as other players, though this has no additional in game effects, it's just Clara dishing out payback for the wrongs done to her by past lovers.

7. Third Leg! The player sprouts an additional leg from their hip, allowing them to sprint all the quicker. Increase the player's MA by one, and they gain the Sprint skill. However, being unused to sporting an odd number of lower appendages, the player suffers -1 to all dodge rolls they make. They do have an extra leg for opposing players to trip after all.

8. Frogs legs! Clara's spell turns the player's legs into those of a giant amphibian! The player gains the Leap skill while the spell is in effect enabling the player to leap like a frog towards the endzone and over other players. Unfortunately the player is also easily distracted by tasty buzzing flies attracted to the carnage of the Blood Bowl field, and so also gains Bone-head to represent this.

Thus far, the Hexen Ball has proven nigh on indestructible, suggesting that the magic that infuses the ball is still strong, and tournament organisers continue to use the ball during events as the often humourous effects of Clara's spell casting are real crowd pleaser. Plus, the spells haven't killed anyone...yet.

Please feel free to try these rules out in your own games of Blood Bowl. I recommend trying them out in a 'friendly' or exhibition game first, rather than a league or tournament straight away. They are designed to makes things fun and unpredictable, but without causing outright injury or damage to a team, and most spell effects have both positive and negative results. Clara likes to see a good match played after all, like any other Blood Bowl fan.

Let me know how you get on with Clara.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Here is a photo of how the Hassle free minis I was working on turned out.

MAD Blood Bowl: Egdenberg Undertakers Special Report #4

Welcome Blood Bowl fans, to another special report. I am Bertwold Humpernickle, and this report continues my spotlight on the progress of Egdenberg Undertakers in this current MAD Blood Bowl League season.

After a bout of gut rot delayed the Undertakers planned match against the Lions of the Three Rings High Elf team a month ago, the game was finally re-scheduled and took place last week. Seventeen thousand Egdenberg home fans 'welcomed' nine thousand Lions fans to the Wychwood stadium on a fine evening - perfect weather for Blood Bowl!

Match 4

The Egdenberg fans were in fine 'spirits' as the away team kicked off. A brutal first segment saw the Undertakers struggling to pin the High Elves down, their customary agility really showing against the predominantly slow moving Undead players, though the Egdenberg 'Rapid Reaction Team' - their three Ghouls and two Wights, led by Captain Kratorus the Black - managed to wrestle the ball from the Lions to score in the later stages of the first half. This touchdown did cost the Undertakers however, as their star scoring Ghoul Vishur, was stretchered off.

Enraged after seeing their favourite player injured by the visiting High Elves, it is suspected that an Undertakers fan decided to dispense some rough justice, as a rather chunky rock knocked out Amron, the unconscious Elf also having to be carted off the pitch to recover. The remainder of the first half saw attempts by both teams to move the ball around the pitch scuppered by an unlikely number of trips and falls by the ball carriers. It has been suggested that the match ball - provided by the Lions sponsors I suspect - was in fact cursed, and foiled the Undertakers attempts to extend their lead.

The first half of the match ended without further incident, the score standing at 1-0 to the Undertakers.

The second half commenced with a rush from the Lions, their star Catcher managing to slip through the Undertakers defence and avoid being sacked by intercepting Ghouls to score early on, levelling the board at 1-1. This magnificent play had an unfortunate side effect however, sending Wailing Winifred - the head of the Undertakers unofficial fan club - into a rage, which in turn saw fans from both sides crash through the 'safety barriers' and onto the pitch to escape her piercing screams. The resulting Pitch Invasion saw one Egdenberg Zombie and four High Elves smashed into the bloodied turf before stadium security managed to clear the field with a 'knobbly truncheon' charge. Numbers of fans seriously injured in the riot are unconfirmed but rumoured to be in the dozens.

With play finally able to re-start, the Undertakers took advantage of the holes left in the Lions line by the Pitch Invasion to 'coffin march' the ball up-field, High Elves skirting the procession and darting in to try and break through to the ball carrier, Captain Kratorus the Black, and stalling the Undertakers at every step.

Despite numerous valiant but futile attempts to break open the Undertakers cage, it was the 'cursed ball' that put paid to the Undertakers drive for a second touchdown late in the second half, as Kratorus the Black attempted to break from the cage just one short dash from the Lions End Zone, and fell on his face. The Lions didn't waste the opportunity, and scooped up the ball from under the noses of the Undertakers players, caught flat footed in their processional march formation, and the ball was passed skilfully downfield to Lions players waiting for just such a chance.

The final seconds of the match were a blur of scrambling High Elves, grasping Ghouls and blitzing Wights, as Vermis Kraal eventually managed to bring down the Elven ball carrier just yards from the Undertakers End Zone, but then failed to retrieve the ball for a last mad dash for a winning touchdown. The final whistle blew on a match with copious quantities of ball movement, few casualties on either side, but tremendous amounts of highly suspicious and comical player slippage.

Final Score: Egdenberg Undertakers 1 - 1 Lions of the Three Rings

In a surprisingly gentle match (by MAD Blood Bowl standards), the game saw only one High Elf player Badly Hurt during the match, leading to speculation that the Undertakers Mummy Blockers had somehow been drugged, or that the Lions players had smeared their armour with some kind of slippery substance before the match to make them harder to grab hold of. The speculation is fuelled by the discovery of several empty barrels of squig-based lubricant in the Lions dressing room following the match. The Undertakers star scorer, Vishur the Ghoul, suffered a leg fracture and will miss their next game, rumoured to be against an up and coming Skaven team. This has left Vishur enraged, as the League Top Scorer title slips further out of reach. He will surely be gunning for glory as soon as he is fit to return to the pitch.

And there we have another exciting spotlight report on Egdenberg Undertakers and their progress. I'll be back in a couple of weeks with a report from their match against the Skaven. Until then, this is Bertwold Humpernickle, signing off.

Forging The Narrative...#1

Greetings wargamers and hobbyists. To borrow a segment title from HeelanHammer, 'Zis is ze war room'...

Forging the narrative is a phrase we are hearing quite a bit these days, printed in magazines, frolicking online, and uttered by show hosts on various podcasts. Though this is a phrase which first saw the light of day in the Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition Rulebook, I think that the phrase has merit across any war game system. 

At the end of the day, wargames are not just a game with rules to be played and either won or lost, they are a story, and the playing of the game tells the story. By our decisions as commanders, be they sound or otherwise, we allow the story to unfold on the tabletop. Simple wins and losses become stupendous victories and crushing defeats. The game takes on a character and an aura that surpasses anything we might experience playing more light hearted games.

Recently I have been thinking more about campaigns, what they are, what they should be, what they could be, and how they can be successful. A fantastic campaign might be the holy grail of wargaming for many people, but it can also be a difficult thing to achieve. The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if you will. For myself, I think that the single most important consideration is how you can keep all the participants engaged and enthused, and if you can achieve this, it's probably because you've got enough of the other things on the money. The interest in the campaign is the measuring stick you use to determine how well you are running the campaign. That's not to say that what you're doing isn't good, just that it's not pushing the buttons of enough of the players. What one player might think is amazing, others might not.

The purpose of all this pondering and postulation is to analyse my own ability to run a successful campaign, and what ideas I can come up with to support it and make it interesting, because my favourite kind of campaign is one with a strong story to back it up (rather than one that just pushes pieces around a map and adds up area control points), a campaign that epitomises ‘Forging the Narrative’.  

Any of you who have been able to put up with me for a while may remember a couple of posts about the Eye of Morrslieb narrative campaign I started a few months ago at my local group. It's fair to say that this was not the great success I envisaged, though at the same time few events at our club remain flavour of the month for more than, well, about a month, without significant effort. I think the idea and the story were sound, I just couldn't make them work in practice, especially not with eight players.

'Bitten off more than you can chew' might be an apt phrase. I am wondering whether any future events should be based around a small but dedicated core of players, with in-built capacity to allow additional players to join and leave for one off games as they please...

This is the first of what will undoubtedly become a reoccurring topic on the Eternal Wargamer, and for now I just want to talk a little about what I have noted as potentially the most important aspects of creating and running a campaign. This is as much a journey of discovery for me as it is any kind of advice for others wishing to tread the path. Learn from my mistakes I guess. It won't just be a description of a practical system for running the campaign, because there are plenty of those out there that don't need explanation from me. I will however be referring to the foundation that I intend to use, which is one of the systems found in The General's Compendium. What I will try to talk about, the shadows I want to pin to the floor, are the additional elements that not only allow you to run a campaign, but to keep things flowing and keep people interested.

So, this post will just be my initial thoughts on what I think at this stage are the most important things to consider (to save it turning into a multi-page wall o' text):

The Focus:

To provide a setting and premise for a campaign that players actually want to be part of, because it is engaging, exciting and is challenging for all the participants.

Potential Pit Falls:

• Players getting bored and losing interest.

• A minority of players being too successful and making the campaign one sided and as a result, taking the fun out of taking part for other players and sapping their desire to continue.

• The campaign becoming too rigid or too random, so that the players feel that the impact their battles have is too small.

• The campaign becoming too complicated and difficult to track, making communicating what is happening to the participants.

• Losing the main plot driver for the campaign amongst trying to placate all participants and trying to please everybody. A strong story should engage the players without the need to keep changing the plan to accommodate their suggestions if this dilutes the focus too much.

Like I said, these are the things I will be thinking about over the next week or so, before laying the basic structure of a campaign and checking that the foundation is sound by bouncing it off a couple of the players at the club (and you guys of course - any feedback is welcome).

Let me know what your thoughts are. Are there any other key things you think I (or anyone else) should look out for when planning a campaign?

Until next time, thanks for reading...