The Battle of Ten-Pike: A Wreck-Age Battle Report

Last night CSW met at Games Plus with some folks from Hyacinth Games, developers of Wreck-Age, a new post-apocalyptic skirmish game. They ran a special four-player event for us called The Battle of Ten-Pike.

Wreck-Age, as you might have heard, takes place on a future earth that has been abandoned by the rich and powerful, leaving the unwashed masses to fend for themselves. Various apocalypses were visited upon this desolate earth, and the survivors are just beginning to claw their way back from the rubble as the game begins. It's rich with fluff and boasts a well-developed back story (some of which will be published as an upcoming RPG companion).

Ten Pike is a trading settlement located near the ruins of Mt. Prospect, Illinois. Perhaps one of those shacks is a ruined Games Plus!

The town was populated with numerous civilians -- some armed, some not. Many of the civilians minis were Mordheim figures, though the majority of the minis on the board were official Wreck-Age models.

We split into teams. Tim and Mike controlled the Drifters, a ragtag group of bandits and thieves. They were tasked with escaping off the board with pack boars loaded with stolen loot, while causing as much havoc as possible on the way out.

Pat and I controlled the Stitchmen, a faction comprised of hunters who prolong their lives by harvesting organs from other humans. Our job was to assassinate the villagers and cut out their organs, and most of our guys had non-lethal (yet still powerful) weapons to aid this task. The Stitchmen are fairly powerful, so Pat and I only had three minis on the board.

The civilians were controlled by Matt and Nick from Hyacinth Games.

Matt began by explaining the setting and the basics of each turn. Players dice off for initiative and then alternative activating one figure at a time. Models have a number of Activation points that allow them to perform actions on the tabletop, such as moving, running, shooting or harvesting internal organs (in the case of the Stitchmen). Here are some highlights from the game.

One of Pat's Stitchmen started off the fun by stealthily knocking out some of the town guards.

The drifters made an efficient dash toward their board edge after snatching up the pack boars. (Sidenote: Boars serve a variety of purposes in Wreck-Age. In addition to working as pack animals, some factions rig them with explosives and use them as pig bombs!)

On the way out of town, the Drifters cut their way through a swathe of innocent civilians. Here they are, attempting to fight back against the raiders.

My lone Stitchman hid behind some barrels while planning his attack.

He decided the best course of action would be to storm the bridge and slaughter one of the guards. Unfortunately he was swarmed by two townspeople as he harvested the guard's organs. The other guard shot him with a net gun, so he was unable to fight back.

One of Pat's hunters assisted by tranquilizing the other guard from afar, allowing my Stitchman to free himself from the net, whereupon he killed and harvested both civilians. At this point, the short game had come to a close and we tallied up victory points. Overall, the Stitchmen managed to harvest organs from seven townspeople. The Drifters caused more havoc, and also managed to escape the town, so Tim and Mike were declared the winners.

Thanks to Matt and Nick for running this event for us! We are looking forward to playing Wreck-Age again soon.

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Night Herons of the Black Crown, Part 2

I've been hard at work painting more miniatures for our summer fantasy campaign. Last month I showed off the Night Herons, a group of Chaos Warriors and their mutated champion. Now I've added some lightly armed skirmish troops and cavalry. As before, all of these figures came from that bin-o-lead that Pat and I picked up at Little Wars.

This first batch I'm calling Half-Elf Tribesmen. When I pulled them from the bin, I thought they were just Celts. After priming them, I noticed that they have elf ears -- turns out they are Sidhe Faerie warriors, a line of figures for Alternative Armies "Erin" game based on Celtic mythology.

Regardless, it's neat to see Celtic equipment and imagery on elves, when such decoration is much more common on human barbarians and dwarves in fantasy settings. Alternative Armies figures are typically large (30mm or bigger) and well-detailed. Thus even these 90s-era miniatures scale very well with current fantasy offerings. There was a bit more flash than expected, but it cleaned up fine. I think the leader figure is particularly well done.

The children of men and elves, Half Elves are born without the near-immortal lifespan of their pureborn kin. Pureblood elves call them "Stillborn," as they are considered to be dead already. Their numbers have increased in the past few generations and they have begun separate themselves from men and elves. They are now mostly found in tribes who prefer to establish seasonal lodging in protected canyons adjacent to the grasslands and forests where they do their hunting. Half Elf tribes are disparate in geography, culture and belief. 

My savage Half-Elf shaman is a Grenadier Barbarian Shaman. The figure is a human, but you can't see his ears under the horse skull, so he makes a fine Half-Elf shaman. Interestingly, he also has a small medallion on his waist that matches one on a couple of my chaos warrior figures.

Half Elf Shamans perform a vital religious and ceremonial roles for their tribe. It falls to them to take from the beliefs and cultures of men and elves and to create a narrative that will shape the folkways and traditions of the tribe. Though outcasts from both cultures, Half Elfs are not as reticent as purebloods to become involved in the affairs of men, and when war comes, it usually falls to the tribe's shaman to discern which side to support.

Now let's take a look at a pair of vintage Ral Partha cavalry figures that I am calling "Beast-blood Knights." The first is "Perfidion, Knight of the Chaos Lords." He's stock except that I glued a skull (cut from a piece of Space Wolf iconography) to his shield to avoid having to display my poor freehand skills.

The second is a "Champion of Chaos." He was originally sold in a pack containing horse, rider and dismounted rider. Unfortunately, I do not have the dismounted version or the correct horse, but I think his replacement horse looks fine.

 
The fierce warriors known as Beastbloods are a mix of humans and beastmen. Usually the progeny of a liaison between woman of partial beast blood and a chaos knight, Beastbloods who show promise as warriors are often reclaimed by their father when they reach a sufficient age to join the Black Crown. Many of the strongest and most successful Beastbloods are the sons of the Night Herons.

With a bit of searching, you can see both on this page. However, as far as I can tell, both of these are long out-of-print and are not amongst the Ral Partha figures currently reissued by Iron Wind Metals. They both appear to share the exact same legs section, and as far as I can tell are the only two Ral Partha figures that do, so it was extremely lucky to find both in the same lead bin.

It's no surprise that these figs all painted up pretty fast with my usual prime/base/dip/matte technique. I feel I can confidently recommend buying of any of them if you're into vintage figures. Look for an upcoming post containing a set of notable characters in the service of the Black Crown.

Appendix: Why so many figures in your warband? 
Astute Song of Blades & Heroes players will note that I have already far surpassed the standard 300-point Song of Blades & Heroes warband size for the Night Herons. We're using 500 points as the starting point for our campaign warbands, but I'm sure to exceed even that amount. So why keep painting? Well, it's not only because I enjoy it (though I do). This year we are also going to dabble in larger engagements occasionally throughout the campaign. We are planning on trying WarEngine a few times and I'm even becoming intrigued by Kings Of War. More on this as the campaign progresses.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Back in the Saddle with Song of Blades & Heroes

A few guys from the club got together in my basement recently for an off-week game night. Our goal was to showcase some newly painted fantasy figures and terrain that we've been slowly accumulating ahead of the summer fantasy campaign. We were all collectively itching to play some more Song of Blades & Heroes, a fantastic ruleset that has served us well since the club's inception in 2010. (Spoiler: for readers who enjoyed last summer's Iron Isle campaign, get ready for a treat. We're going back to that wondrous world with this new campaign! More details to come...)

For this game night, we tried a slightly different table configuration for my small basement game area. It turned out really well -- everyone was basically sitting by everyone else, so we could chat and talk trash and sort of watch all the other games unfold. We played 6 separate 1-on-1 games of Song of Blades & Heroes, switching seats between each game so people could play against different opponents on different boards.

As you can see from the photos, we set up three distinct 3x3-foot skirmish boards: a medieval village, a wooded glade and a grim canyon dominated by a fortified watchtower.

Rather than attempt to reconstruct the chaos and fury of last night's games, I'll just present the photos and try to examine the little vignettes that played out on the tabletop.

In the first game, Karl's chaos knights (the Night Herons of the Black Crown) faced off against Jon's orc raiders. The two sides came to blows quickly, and both factions were kitted out for close combat. Karl's knights started the game by lurking near the crumbling walls of the fortified watchtower.

Here are a couple typical brawls from that game.

And here is Jon's orc warchief, mere moments before he was slain in a cascade of bad rolls that ultimately spelled defeat for Jon and victory for Karl.

Across the way, I sent my undead skeletons creeping into a sparse forest in search of Tyler's dwarven adventurers. The dwarves, for their part, advanced in a stout, bearded line of armor and axes, backed up by the considerable threat provided by a large bear named Rolf (pictured below).

Alas, I overextended with my cool, newly painted skeletal dragon and was punished for it. The dragon was cut down by the stunty dwarves as he smashed into their armored line. In game terms, I forgot that the dwarves had the fearless special ability, which rendered my dragon's terror ability irrelevant!

This would prove to be a theme for the night: send my dragon in to attack, and watch it die horribly. Oh well.

Across the table on the village board, Tim's monster-demon-dudes squared off against Josh's newly painted warband of adventurers. Here's Josh's team -- in true old-school fashion, he has a little bit of everything in here: dog, mouse warrior, elf archer, etc.

Here are Tim's guys in action. The scenario (Tim was defending a pumping station and Josh's guys were crippled by thirst) meant that Josh was on his back almost from the start. Their game was definitely among the first to end.

It didn't help that Josh's adventurers had to face off against THIS THING while scurrying through the streets of the village. (Tim often brings cthuloid monstrosities to the table as part of his SBH warbands, and this evening was no exception.)

After those games concluded, we chatted a bit and swapped seats for a new set of games. Of course, my notes got even sketchier at this point in the evening, so bear with me (Rolf pun).

In the medieval village, Tyler mustered his dwarves to assault Karl's chaos knights. That game ended up lasting for the rest of the evening, and they were still playing it out as we were packing up our models at the end of the night.

Here's a closeup of the fight that was developing in the center of town. It took the dwarves a while to get their (because they move a little slower than their human counterparts) but they arrived in force, and only bear-ly won (another Rolf pun)!

(I didn't get a single photo of Jon and Tim's game in the wooded glade. I think it was over rather soon.)

On the fortress table, Josh and I set up a scenario whereby my undead had captured a border outpost owned by his adventurers, so he was tasked with taking it back by force. I began the game by assembling my skeletons in a shieldwall near the gates of the fort's main yard.

Another team of skeletons ventured out into the burnt-out ruins to try and flank Josh's team. His archers did a good job of keeping them at bay, though, and that darn dog proved to be a capable combatant.

Here's the scene as some more skeletons hasten to join the battle that has been joined just outside the supply depot. Despite my overwhelming numbers (skeletons are cheap, but ineffective in combat) Josh managed to get Roland, his mouse warrior, into contact with one of the creates.

I was ready for this move, though, and my wraith swooped in with his gigantic sickle and lopped off poor Roland's head, thus snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

We were all very pleased to get back to our roots with some Song of Blades & Heroes. This was also a great chance to take stock of our fantasty terrain and tabletop accessories and see if we need to fill any holes before the campaign starts. I think we discussed making some Mordheim-esque ladders and walkways for our village table so we can add some more tactical options to our games. I've also got some Lemax Christmas Village accessories (walls, fences, etc.) that need to be repainted.

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Painting up an old-school Chaos fantasy warband

Sometimes a batch of miniatures falls into your lap that really captures your imagination. This occurred at Little Wars, when Patrick and I bought a huge bin of assorted fantasy and historical figures from a vendor. Inside we discovered quite a lot of Grenadier Fantasy Warriors figures, including seven Chaos Knights.

I was immediately taken with these early-90s figures, which portray quite a bit of menace and ill intent without relying on mounds of skulls or obvious evil ornamentation. They arrived at the perfect time. I had been planning a "bad guy" warband for our upcoming Song of Blades and Heroes summer fantasy campaign, but the Reaper Bones Kickstarter containing the figures still hasn't arrived. So for now at least, I've built the warband almost completely using figures taken from the aforementioned bin of lead. Look for more posts as this force comes together.

I've dubbed them the Night Herons of The Black Crown. They hail from the far north, where they live well, raise families, fight for their leige lords and lead apparently honorable -- perhaps somewhat indulgent -- lives as knights. However, from time to time they are called away to don the red armor and fight for the Dark Gods to whom they owe their worldly success and standing.

As I mentioned above, these knights are clearly not "good guys," but I appreciate that it's achieved without covering them in skulls and iconography (though a few do have a small human or bird skull pendant). In fact, with a different paint scheme, they might even blend in as regular old armored knights. Though I was able to find seven of these figures in the bin of lead, Grenadier only produced five different sculpts, which is a real shame as I'd love to have more.

This first knight is my favorite of the batch. Maybe it's my affection for vintage "beaky" Space Marines.

The halberdier is nice also. A whole rank of these would look quite imposing.

The morningstar-wielder proved a bit more difficult to photograph.

Here are the Swordsmen. If not for the Games Workshop figure pictured further down, the fellow with the chain around his arm would probably be the leader.

In the depths of my own collection I found a 1989 Games Workshop Chaos Champion to lead them. He has a new plastic shield from my bits box on his left arm, where his earlier weapon was cut away long before I received him. I imagine this fellow is much older than the other knights, and his age and condition is the result of being particularly depraved and dedicated to the Dark Gods. Though not as filigreed as current GW sculpts, it definitely has that Games Workshop feel, with more exaggerated dimensions, some ornamentation on the armor, a massively mutated arm...

...and a nice cancerous tumor on the back.

The painting process was my usual fast tabletop method.

• Black gesso 
• Base colors 
• Drybrush the wolf pelt sections and base 
• Brush-dip with Minwax Polyshades Tudor dip
• Drybrush base again 
• Brush on Golden matte varnish to take away the shine 

For the bases, I tried something new. The integral bases were blended into the plastic bases with premixed fireplace mortar and cement, and then small pieces of pine bark were pressed into the mixture before it dried. (Thanks to "Frankthedm" over at the Reaper forum for the gift of the bark.) I'll be using this setup for all the figures in this faction. I'm pleased with the cement, as it has a nice rough texture to it. I think it will see alot of use in basing and terrain in the future. It's also cheap, and available in small quantities at most home improvement stores. This is a relief, since the premixed concrete patch product I used for a lot of terrain projects seems to have disappeared from stores.

As you can tell, I'm very happy with these miniatures. I've got enough fantasy figures to keep me busy for a while, but it's very likely that I'll acquire some more Grenadier Fantasy Warriors miniatures in the near future. My only regret is that this is the extent of the Chaos Knights line and there are no equivalent sculpts on horseback.

Appendix - Sourcing Grenadier Fantasy Warriors Miniatures
Though the Games Workshop Champion is long out of print, the Grenadier figures are still available from several sources. By far the cheapest is Forlorn Hope Games. They have them grouped in with the "Men" section.

The current state of the entire Grenadier Fantasy Warriors line is a bit more complicated. The rights are currently held by EM-4 Miniatures in England and Mirliton Miniatures in Italy. Though the price and shipping are considerably higher, Mirliton has released the entire line of miniatures, including classic Grenadier Historical lines, which are also compatible.

K-Studio in the USA does quarterly orders from Mirliton to save on shipping, and offers a 10% discount. EM-4, on the other hand, has much lower prices, but a more reduced selection. Forlorn Hope offers the miniatures at a very reasonable price that includes shipping, and if you're buying a fair number of figures, it's probably roughly equivalent to EM-4 prices. According to EM-4 owner Doug, Forlorn Hope Games is able to maintain lower levels of stock and stock a wider variety of Fantasy Warriors miniatures (though not the entire line) than EM-4 itself, which requires a greater stock on hand to meet demand. EM-4 does eventually intend to get the entire line back into production.

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member