Quake & Mourn Campaign Report: Session 6, the Epic Finale!

After a summer spent playing out our Quake & Mourn campaign -- more than a dozen Song of Blades & Heroes games played out over five sessions -- we geared up for one final, epic finale earlier this month. Our chosen venue was The Gaming Goat in Oak Park, IL, and they graciously provided plenty of table space on a busy Thursday night.

We pulled out all the stops for this game and hauled much of our best terrain to the Gaming Goat. Karl set up a visually gorgeous scenario set in Vildeburg, the main city in our campaign world. A city wall split the table down the middle and provided space for two side-by-side games, with Karl and Ian (a new player who was joining us for his first game) controlled a city militia faction defending the walls. These defenders played a role in both games. Here's the battlefield:

Though a little less experienced than the most battle-hardened campaign warbands, Pat's and Josh's forces nonetheless got down to business as the campaign finale. Both warbands deployed in the mercantile district of Vildeburg, with its towering guild houses and cobbled streets.

Across the battlefield were the objectives: two oak-and-steel doors guarded by the very best militia that money could buy. These stalwart fighters were commanded by Ian, who brought his gorgeously painted Warhammer Empire figures to the table as town guards. They occupied Vildeburg's walls and towers as the game began, but they moved down to the street level as the game progressed.

As Josh and Pat sent their warbands racing through the neighborhoods toward the castle gates, Karl sprang his trap! The grim undead legions that had been creeping north over the course of the campaign had finally breached the city walls of Vildeburg! These vassals were the advance force of Lord Kalessin's host, which had been moving slowly up out of the southern deserts over the course of the campaign. The skeletons now poured into the streets as the warbands fought their way through the city.

Josh and I avoided any big fights until we reached the base of the city walls, where Ian's stout brigade of city militia stood shoulder to shoulder, armor gleaming in the flickering firelight of the ravaged city. A huge fight developed as the three warbands crashed into each other.

Behind us, the undead continued their implacable advance, gobbling up Josh's warband in a tide of rusted steel.

In the end, only Volstag, Horseman of the Wastes, managed to escape through the castle gate...

Across the table, the Tharks and the Dire Men rode on the Citadel of Vildeburg in haste. Fulgid Glim's wild cavalry -- unused to fighting in the closed spaces of the capital city slums and whose horses were easily frighted by the discharge of musketry -- met stiff resistance from the street fighters of the City Watch.

The City Watch was no match, however, for the efficiency of the Thark's advance. The creatures from beyond quickly seized command of the slum's square and stockyard. While their vicious mounts tore the Knights Protectorate to shreds, the warriors dispatched their adversaries with an eerie serenity.

In the end, the Thark's command gained the tower with ease while their comrades turned to face the implacable undead  for the good of the collective. The Tainted Thegn and his remaining captains on the other hand, readied to make a desperate attempt to escape the cursed city, and to leave the land of Qaarra that had claimed so much from them.

As the defenders turned to face the relentless undead horde, a precious few had scaled the heights of the tower parapets and now prepared for a duel to the death high atop the chaos in the streets below. Tim's Tharks clashed with Pat's chaos horseman (allied with Mattias's sneaky wyrdwolders) in a brief, bloody skirmish, before the green-skinned aliens brought down the wrathful chaos warriors.

Tim's Tharks had won the battle, but faced with a tide of skittering undead warriors in the streets below, it seems all but certain that they have lost the war!

And thus ended Quake & Mourn, our third fantasy campaign! For those keeping track at home, here are the final win/loss/tie tallies.

• The Druids of Vitu Daru (Josh) 3-2 
• The Scourge of Longrieve (Pat) 3-4-1 
• The Tainted Thegn and his Dire Men (Mattias) 2-3-1 
• Tharks of the Wyl'st Horde (Tim) 6-4-2 
• Deep Woods Vengers (Karl) 4-5-1 
• The Unnamed Orcs (Terrence) 1-1 
• Nobanga's Ronin (Jon) 2-1

As you can see, Tim was the big winner with the most games played at the most victories. He was one of only two players with an actual winning record (the other being Josh). You can re-read all the session reports (as well as background on the game world) right here.We'll certainly continue to play Song of Blades & Heroes here and there through the long Chicago winter, and you can expect another full-fledged campaign come next spring and summer.

-- Karl, Pat and Mattias, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club members

Wreck-Age Staker Warband

With more post-apocalyptic gaming coming up this week, I put the finishing touches on another Wreck-Age faction: the Stakers. My goal for these guys was to keep them looking like people more comfortable with farming than fighting.

Their leader is a greybeard with tired eyes. Ammo is scarce the wasteland, so he tends to use his weapon more frequently as a pitchfork than a gun.

This outrider has a green mohawk and a personality to match.

This miner has a dirty face from spending time underground.

This outrider has a sneaky glint in his eye. This might be the best face I have ever done.

This young lady has a dirty face except around her eyes where her goggles sat.

The fieldhand has a scythe attached to his shotgun, and he is determined to defend his homestead.

This capybara herder (cabybara coming soon) had some mold issues. Her face and arm had some weird slippage, so I decided to paint her with battle damage. I tried to make the arm holding her gun look scarred from a fire.

From the other side, you can see the gory hole where her eye used to be.

This manly woman keeps the settlement's meager electronics and communications gear in repair.

I tried something a little bit different for the bases. I wanted it to appear as if the figures were standing in muddy fields after a heavy rain. I added a bit of trampled grass, and you can see that the hot sun has begun to dry all but the deepest mud holes.

This effect was done by mixing plaster, pigment powder, and clear resin. There was a dark brown layer, followed by drops of clear resin to represent the wettest mud. 2 more layers of lighter mud with some very fine sand mixed in was added to show it drying and cracking in the sun.

Check back next week for photos of these guys in action!

-- Josh, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Terrain: Cathedral de la Pegasus

Here's the most recent project that's been keeping me from finishing my Necromunda Van Saar: a church made from Pegasus Gothic Building parts, equally at home on medieval fantasy or far future battlefields.

I acquired a big pile of mismatched Pegasus kits some time ago, and and they've been boxed up in my workshop ever since. I don't know the exact makeup, but it appears that I have the entirety of #4592 Gothic City Buildings Small Set #1, one wall section from the #4390 Gothic City Ruins and additional wall sections, probably from the #4923 Gothic City Buildings Large Set.

You can see the entire line of kits here, though they are available for less elsewhere. In this article I will discuss how I assembled this church from several different Pegasus kits.

If you're not familiar with Pegasus, these are really sturdy, well-made kits, suitably Gothic enough to be used anytime from the 11th century AD, all the way into the grim darkness of the 400th century, while not being overburdened with the skulls and iconography of the later years.

They could just as easily be liturgical buildings, government offices or institutional edifices. The assembly is easy, but you'll need a good pair of clippers and a file.

However, except for the ruins set, these are not complete kits. They do not have roofs, parapet walls or floors. All three of these omissions are fairly important when building a structure for wargaming terrain. All three are present in my model,  and I'll get into how I addressed these later. For now, on to the building. 

The entryway pieces are nice enough: a pair of doors with a nice block pattern on them. The walls come in single and double sections with a pillar at one end. The regular windowed walls have a different pattern on the inside and outside, such that a given floor will always have the same pattern on the outward side. There are also solid walls without windows with similar differing patterns.

I made the parapet walls by cutting away the upper part of the walls and the pillar from each wall section. For the parapet above the bell tower, I left part of the pillars in place. For this I used my Dremel and my trust #543 cutting/shaping bit. It took quite a bit of time, but it would literally take hours of cutting and sanding if done by hand. For this project, I ended up cutting 9 parapet walls for the right and left side of the cruciform-shaped building.

The floors are just sand sprinkled over gesso primer, with a second layer of gesso on top. I was trying for the gravel and tar roof look that is so common here in the city, but I probably should have added more sand. 

The roof support pieces are 2 walls wide. I didn't have the pieces to make the building any wider, so I cut the pillar out of the middle of the roof support halves and ended up with an overhanging roof. The roof structure is 2 pieces of fairly thick plasticard, and the cladding is vinyl cabinet lining material upside down, which has a nice double-ridge pattern. Vinyl doesn't take paint well, so I used Krylon Fusion spray paint to prime it. After painting, I gave it a couple of heavy coats of varnish. 

Every pillar section has two sets of holes on each face. These are for attaching to the wall sections, but can also be filled with blank blocks, gargoyles and lights that are supplied with the kit. The incomplete kit that I had, while lacking floors, did contain floor supports that also attach to these holes. 

The gargoyles are a nice mix of dogs, lions and bats. I used the lamps, but not the torches. I used various hobby tools to add the various chips in the pillars and walls.

The roof is removable, revealing an interior. I left the interior empty for easy access, but did put in a plasticard floor with tiling made from patterned paper from the craft shop.

The interior isn't visible close up anyway, so I just cut the paper to approximately the right size and then used permanent marker to blacken the edges where the white plasticard would show. I glued the paper down and then gave it a light brown wash. The paper buckled up during the wash, but then dried flat.

The top of the belltower is also removable (maybe I'll add a bell someday) revealing an interior floor made from balsa scored in a plank pattern, given a brown wash and glued to a piece of plasticard. 

You may notice that the bell tower is about one-third shorter than the other wall sections. It's made from the sections of wall that I cut away to make my parapet walls. I also cut away the inner window subdivisions and details to make the large open windows.

I started the paintjob with Krylon Camo dark brown spray paint, followed by a heavy drybrush of Delta Ceramcoat Terra Cotta, then a light drybrush of Spice Tan. I didn't use any washes on this particular piece of terrain.

I can't speak highly enough about Delta Ceramcoat paints. The pigmentation is better than any other craft paint brand, and the value is quite unmatched. I even use them on my miniatures.

The verdgris details start with the same brown base, but I dropped in a heavy drybrush of Reaper Turf Green before the final tan drybrush. 

I hope this inspires you to get the most out of any incomplete or partial kits you might have sitting around in your workshop. I'm looking forward to getting this on the table soon. This piece is ideal since it has enough space for squad-based games, plus enough interesting nooks for skirmishes. And perhaps most importantly for me, it's tall enough to conceal a 28mm battle mech!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Quake & Mourn Campaign Report: Session 5 Report

We continued our summer fantasy campaign with a game night at Josh's house last month. As we are capping the number of sessions at 6, this was our penultimate engagement!

On the east side of the table, Josh, Matt and I played out the "Tug of War" scenario near a haunted graveyard in the foothills of the Hollowbone Mountains. Matt, an occasional player who wasn't running a campaign warband, took the field with Josh's fearsome team from last year, Prince Roland's Company. Josh played his Druids of Vitu Daru and I played my Deep Woods Vengers.

The Tug of War scenario divides the table into as many sections as there are players. Players get points for how many of their characters are in opponents' sections of the board.

As the game opened, the druids were slow to advance, but the elves of the Deep Woods.

This proved to be a bad strategy, as their queen was quickly mowed down by the massed firepower of Prince Roland's Company.

After a bit of retreating, however, they charged back and began their own barrage of shooting.

This resulted in a scrum between the two groups that would last the rest of the game.

You may wonder where the Druids were through all of this. Odd that we haven't seen more of them, especially since Josh was taking the pictures. Well, after a few delays, they crept around the opposite side of the table and deposited almost all of themselves in my table sector, a turn before the game was to end.

Darn those sneaky Druids! By this time, casualties had reduced my force to a mere shadow of its former power, so I was no threat, and Matt didn't have enough of his warband to be able to put more troops than Josh in an enemy section. We ceded the field to Josh's superior strategy: play the scenario!

My warband was the only advancing warband, and things went bad after the battle. The Lord of the Upper Forest was dead, and though the Lady of the Upper Forest recovered, she was scarred by the battle and gained the hatred of humans ability. Very fitting for a ruthless elf queen, don't you think?
Victory: Josh
Loss: Matt and Karl

On the west side of the table, Mattias and Tim were playing out a slave raid on a small village in near Port Windspiel. This was a great chance to show off the new Miniature Building Authority buildings that Josh had acquired recently. Their Spanish stucco style was very refreshing, given the traditional Medieval European nature of most fantasy villages.

Tim's Tharks were the defenders, safeguarding a town of human allies.

Mattias' Followers of Tainted Thegn were the attackers, looking for slaves, information, food, breeding stock, sacrifice, or some combination thereof.

The slavers captured enough townspeople to get a draw, but retreated into the night when the their leader was bested in combat with the Thark commander.

After the battle, the grateful townsfolk granted the Tharks unlimited use of the town smithy.
Result: Tie

Here are the standings after tallying the victories and defeats in our five campaign sessions so far.

• The Druids of Vitu Daru (Josh) 3-1 
• The Scourge of Longrieve (Pat) 2-3-1 
• The Tainted Thegn and his Dire Men (Mattias) 2-2-1 
• Tharks of the Wyl'st Horde (Tim) 4-4-2 
• Deep Woods Vengers (Karl) 4-5-1 
• The Unnamed Orcs (Terrence) 1-1 
• Nobanga's Ronin (Jon) 2-1

Check back soon for an apocalyptic battle report from our six and final campaign session!

-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member

Khurasan's Caiman APC Ready for Battle

Last weekend I embarked on an ambitious project -- paint up one of the two huge 28mm Caiman APCs that I had acquired second-hand from fellow club member Jon. These gigantic resin vehicles from Khurasan Miniatures are a glorious love letter to the classic APC from "Aliens"  -- which is why they're rarely in stock from Khurasan's web store these days. The vehicle is more than 7 inches long from nose to tail light, and solid resin through and through.

I wanted them to paint up to match my Pig Iron Productions Heavy Infantry figures (pictured here), which are among my most favorite "hard" sci-fi figures ever. They have a chunky, gritty aesthetic which will look perfect alongside the lean, predatory lines of the Caiman APC.

For this project, I decided to try my hand at painting some digital camouflage. I only did one camo color because 1) it was exhausting doing all that geometric brushwork freehand and 2) I was terrified I'd mess up if I started in on a second color. Thankfully, I think the single-color camo approach looks decent. Don't look too closely or you'll see my blobby squares and rounded rectangles!

I've been reading about the new near-future ruleset called No End in Sight, and I think with a few tweaks it could work well for our sci-fi skirmish games. Maybe this hulking behemoth will take to the field one day soon?

-- Patrick, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member