Wednesday 27 June 2018

Ratatoskr

Ratatosk, or Ratatoskr, was the mischievous squirrel that lived on Yggdrasil (the World-Tree) and spent his time running up and  down its trunk between the eagle at the top, and Nidhug the dragon at its base, to tell them each the latest insult that each had uttered against the other.


I took a notion. I am apparently now going to put together a Norse force for Of Gods and Mortals. I thought the following might reflect how he would play as a legend:

Ratatosk
Q3, C2
Forester, Illusions, Long Move, Stealth


Here he is with a sample of my existing Norse force to give a sense of scale: troll from Copplestone Castings, dvergar dwarf from Macrocosm Miniatures.

For the most part, this wee chap is one of the sabre-toothed squirrel rats produced for the (now defunct?) Flytrap Factory kickstarter. The head was my attempt to sculpt something out of green-stuff that vaguely resembled a red squirrel. It may have worked, I'm still not sure. The shield is a spare from a Macrocosm set of viking dwarves. Hmmm, speaking of which, Im going to need some more of them...

The club of Herakles

I finally got around to converting my old Glorantha not-Herakles to give him a club rather than a spear. It's not exactly elegant, but neither is a club. I'm happy enough with that result.

Tuesday 19 June 2018

Ohhhh, what's this?


It would appear my birthday present from my brother has just arrived. That's a little exciting...


Monday 18 June 2018

Fireside Tales is/are(?) here

Delighted with what the postman brought me today. Hardcopy Fireside Tales, fresh from Lulu, but also available from Amazon.

Saturday 16 June 2018

Lord and Lands - A 10mm near run thing

Sneaking in one last game before a travel induced break, we agreed to get our French and Indian Wars chaps out on the table for a spot of Sharp Practice 2.  Unfortunately, due to it being one of those weeks, the above photo was as far as we got with that game as the French and their allies were left at home and failed to arrive at the table. I'm going to count that as a British win...


Instead, we decided to have another game of Lord and Lands - The Hearthshire halfling militia taking on the night elf - skeletal alliance known as the League of Super Evil. Initial deployment shown above: night elves at the top, halflings at the bottom. Both armies were 1,200 points, each had a commander, a captain and a magic user. The halfling army was larger, but included six skirmishing units which meant it's breakpoint was 6. The smaller evil army had a breakpoint of 7.


The opening rounds saw the elves conducting wide sweeping maneuvers to left and right, while the halflings threw forward their skirmish screen, and sent the mounted yeomanry and their chicken-dragon to take on the elven dark riders.

We then discovered that night elf crossbowmen are murdering bastards as they obliterated the skirmishing goose-riders in front of them.  We actually played this wrong as we forgot to reduce the effect of the shooting over half range. Never mind, we'll call it a learning point.


Having lost their screen, the halfling militia were soon faced with a wall bronze-clad, of blue-skinned weirdos.

Over on the halfling right flank, the yeoman cavalry managed to pin the elven knights, while the cockatrice flew in and took them in the flank.  


On the far side, the halfling goose riders failed to evade a charge of giant spiders and were quickly gobbled up. In the centre, the militia and the night elf infantry 'clashed' with a distinctly stabby sound.


Having routed the knights, the cockatrice is stung in the bum by a giant scorpion. Some tree folk rush to the aid of the chicken-dragon, but while they crush the well armoured arachnid, they are too slow to stop the cockatrice being killed.

By this stage, the halfling archers and rangers had advanced into range of the skeletal horde, some of which surprises the archers with a rushed charge. Target practice suddenly became a desperate melee.

Back in the centre, the halfling militia - and their commander - are smitten. And not in a good way.


What happened to those beautiful clean battle lines? The halfling centre crumbles, but they have more luck against the friable skeletons.

The night elves advance... :(

Halfling's pop, and skeletons crumble as the game hangs in the balance. By this stage, each army was a single unit away from breaking.

Recklessly, the night elf warriors charged the catapults which fired one last closing volley. Can they do that? I'm not sure, but we said yes. And that was how the game ended. The warriors broke and ran, and their army's moral broke around them.

It was such a near run battle. The shot above shows the halfling casualties. We may have won, but at what cost? One more battle like that and Hearthshire would be completely depopulated!

Saturday 9 June 2018

An update of sorts - everything is stalled thanks to 4AT :)

To paraphrase Helmuth von Moltke, "No plan survives contact with the enemy Andrea Sfiligoi." I had some splendid plans for my hobby time over the last few months, in a whole smatter of different scales. All have been stalled as I work away on a really nice little project for Ganesha Games. As a result, I have been posting much less than usual, as I've had much less to show off.


There are the 15mm Prussians for my c.1806 force for Sharp Practice 2. I have yet another group of jäger lined up, and a group of engineers led by an officer. Then there are my lovely, lovely, new ships; a handful of 1/600 ancient vessels which will be used for Galleys & Galleons, but for which I have been messing around with a few other ideas to do a much more detailed set of ancient naval rules. The concept is to run one galley per player and have a sort of galley-ballet. More of that anon.

There are also 6mm horse archers lined up that I need to be able to field Kushan, Kommagenean and Ituraean forces from my existing collections for L'Art de la Guerre and Hail Caesar. I also have a unit of 28mm Thracians lined up, and new god - Hermes - for my Of Gods and Mortals forces. All of these will be completed one day. But today is not that day.

Andrea at Ganesha and I were spoken a few times about doing a Greek themes version of his much acclaimed solo-dungeon-delving-pen-paper-and-dice game, Four Against Darkness, or 4AD. Well, it has come to pass, that it is coming to pass. I am currently working on 4AT - Four Against the Titans.

Olympos has fallen. War rages between the gods and the titans.
 The gods are on the back foot and Zeus himself, king of gods 
and men, has been defeated and imprisoned by the giant Typhon. 
It is up to the children of the gods – the result of so many 
promiscuous encounters with mortals – to take up the fight and 
forestall the destruction of Greece.


While 4AT leans heavily on Andrea’s original, it takes the players far from the subterranean depths and places them firmly in an open world of Greek mythology. The game can still be played with minimum space and equipment. You’ll need a pencil and eraser, three six-sided dice, this book and a sheet of paper. You control a party of four heroes who travel around Greece, aiding mankind against monsters, completing quests and, ultimately, attempting to free Zeus from captivity. Each step of the way, the heroes’ encounters are generated by dice rolls. 


You can play it solo or co-operatively, sharing the characters with friends. You could even play with two players, each controlling their own party, taking turns to resolve encounters, and racing each other to save Greece from destruction. The current schedule has us releasing the game in August, so if you have an interest, keep an eye out on the Ganesha pages - and here of course. 😏