Nightwatch: Mystery at Heerselt Manor

Posted by Comrade on June 14, 2022
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Earlier this month the crew mustered at the War Room (John’s garage workshop / game area) for a new campaign of Nightwatch.

Nightwatch is a fantastic, rules-lite skirmish game focused on low fantasy monster hunting. Think the Witcher, or Conan. Each player controls a powerful hunter who specializes in some sort of monster-hunting task. The game is intended to be played as a multi-part campaign, where your hunter attracts thugs and hirelings along the way as they battle ever more ferocious monsters, culiminating in what can only be described as a boss battle. The monsters are controlled by a simple yet satisfying AI system, which also supports solo play.

We were excited to try out this campaign, as we love skirmish games with low model counts that are focused like a laser on achieving a singular tabletop vision. Nightwatch (written by P. Todoroff, the same guy who wrote Zona Alfa) fit the bill perfectly.

We set the game in Heerselt, a border hamlet north of the dwarven empire of Miravec in our homebrew fantasy setting. The hunters were summoned to investigate some mysterious goings-on in the village. Heerselt is in the northwest corner of this map of a portion of our setting.

The scenario called for the players to explore four bent, twisted trees located on the four corners of the play area. Scenarios and objectives vary from game to game, but in this case, most of the game focused on the edges & corners of the game, which meant that the center of the board, with its gruesome trophy outside the ruined manor, didn’t see much action.

Seeing as how this was game 1 of our campaign, each player controlled just their own hunter, with no backup or lackeys. They’d have to do all the dirty work themselves…

Vincent’s alchemist and Jim’s swordsman took the left flank, creeping around the perimeter of the village to get to the twisted trees. Unfortunately, the bad guy deployment zones were also located on the perimeter of the battlefield, and each turn two of the four spots were selected at random. Foul vermin and hordes of evil poured forth!

As it happened, the majority of the monsters that arrived in our game randomly spawned near Vincent and Jim’s characters. They quickly found themselves scrambling to the high ground while fighting off an ever-growing horde of desert raiders and beastmen!

Over on the other side of the battlefield, Paul’s elf archer and Daniel’s wizard had a much better go of it. The elf archer loped across the board and secured both trees, though it took a little time – you have to make a successful dice roll to secure the objective, which the elf failed repeatedly to do, leading to many, many jokes about how the elf just can’t figure out these trees, etc.

And Daniel’s wizard almost certainly won the team player award. He crossed the entire battlefield, flinging lightning bolts left and right, and ultimately helped the party secure the final objective and win this particular scenario.

Towards the end of the game, there were some real questions whether or not the players would be able to win the scenario and escape alive. Nightwatch intentionally ratchets up the danger by deploying more dangerous monsters in the later turns. So while the game started as a cakewalk, with the players easily dispatching the vermin that emerged in the early turns, they were scrambling by the final turns and absolutely needed every last trick that each of the four characters could muster to secure the victory.

Here’s a peek at the action as they reached the final tree and closed out this game…

Nightwatch gave us a smashingly fun game for our first outing. Our adventures will take us deeper into the badlands known as the Hattendorf Border Marches. I’m particularly excited to see some hirelings show up … this game starts with a very low model count, but I was jonesing to get more toys on the table! Thankfully, the players were already scheming about how to spend their hard-earned silver pieces.

The Hunt continues … stay tuned for more!

Age of Fantasy Skirmish at C3 Game Con

Posted by Comrade on June 3, 2022
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Back in February I volunteered to run a game at C3 Game Con, a brand new local game convention in Corvallis, Oregon. As it was the first year for this event, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Corvallis is home to Oregon State University, so I knew we had a captive audience of students and young adults who were likely to check out an event like this.

The convention was heavy on anime, cosplay, RPGs, and board games. Age of Fantasy: Skirmish seemed like the perfect way to to give them a little visual spectacle and maybe rope in some new gamers.

I set up a basic four-player scenario centered on Bayard’s Holdfast, the nifty little dwarf fortress I painted up last year. Two players would command the dwarf garrison tasked with defending the holdfast. The other two players were in charge of undead raiding parties tasked with smashing through the defenses and sacking the charred remains of the fort.

As you can see, I had a round tabletop, which actually helped the scenario – I was able to plop Bayard’s Holdfast into the exact center of the table and then arrange the attackers and defenders around the perimeter.

My players were fairly new to miniature wargaming. Only Parker had dabbled in painting & gaming before sitting down at the table. I selected Age of Fantasy: Skirmish because it is a simple, easy to understand ruleset for people who are fairly new to this sort of gaming. I whipped together some unit cards for each player’s warband, and of course they got their own copy of the rules to look over before the game.

The game started with a general advance by the undead players. They had to occupy the courtyard in the fortress and outnumber the defenders by the end of the game to secure a win. They could also gain a minor victory by slaying the dwarf artillery crew, which started the game in an outbuilding far from the tower and had to hustle to safety.

The dwarven defenders quickly understood their role in the scenario, and they mustered a stout defense that saw their elite troops meeting the undead near the crumbling stone walls on the perimeter of the fort’s territory. Fearsome blows were exchanged as the undead forces gradually pushed the dwarves back.

But! The dwarves had an ace in the hole! If they could get their artillery crew back to the fortress in one piece, they could load & fire the mortar mounted on the parapets. Thankfully, they were able to achieve this goal by the closing turns of the game, and they rained thunderous devastation down on the undead that were swarming around the walls of the holdfast.

By the end of the game, the undead legions had reached the walls (in fact, the ghoul king shown here was actually able to breach the defenses and begin rampaging through the courtyard). However, the stout dwarven defenders had succeeded in waylaying or defeating the bulk of the undead warbands, which meant that the defenders had secured the victory. The surviving undead warriors retreated in good order back to their nefarious swamp hideout.

Age of Fantasy: Skirmish is a great game to try out with new players in a convention setting. It requires some prep work – I don’t think the game would have been nearly as successful if I hadn’t put in some hours making the unit cards and handouts. But the ruleset is solid and it definitely ticks the boxes in terms of what a new player will expect from a wargame experience.

And I’m pleased to report that C3 Game Con was a wild success! We had more than 500 attendees over two days, which was way above our expectations and suggested there’s a big demand for this sort of event in Corvallis. I’ll be signing up to run some games next year for sure!

Age of Fantasy: Daemonic Onslaught

Posted by Comrade on May 25, 2022
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Here’s a quick write-up of a game that Lawrence and I played a few months back back in January, actually, which I forgot to log on the blog.

I recently spotted the photos on my phone and noticed that they featured some of Lawrence’s fantastic Nurgle daemons as well as my (at that time) newly painted dwarf lord mounted on a bear. Plus my newly painted medieval buildings from Tabletop World!

We played an small, introductory game of Age of Fantasy since it was Lawrence’s first outing with this particular ruleset. I set up a compact battlefield to showcase my snazzy new buildings, and then we commenced our battle.

I don’t recall the ebb and flow of the game, but it featured plenty of brutal fights between my stout dwarf infantry and Lawrence’s ghastly daemons.

That gnarly chaos spawn ended up rampaging up my flank before eventually falling in single combat versus my bear-mounted dwarf lord. Twas a melee for the history books!

Elsewhere the daemonic hordes continued their assault to seize the settlement and drive back the dwarven defenders. My iron warriors proved to be a particularly effective speed bump as they held the gap against a Great Unclean One.

In the rear, my artillery piece peppered the smaller daemons with lead shot, reducing their ranks even as they closed with the dwarves.

The details of the game’s conclusion are a bit dim, but I recall that I pulled off the victory. All in all, it was a small yet visually stunning spectacle – a perfect weeknight game!

Warhammer Skirmish & Mordheim Scenarios Converted to Song of Blades & Heroes

Posted by Comrade on May 23, 2022
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I’m doing a bit of public service here by re-publishing the beloved fan supplement entitled (you guessed it) Scenarios from Warhammer Skirmish & Mordheim Converted to Song of Blades & Heroes.

The original PDF supplement (all 172 pages of it) was created by James Diemer and hosted on his now-defunct Hour11 Wargaming blog. The supplement has been gone from the Internet for at least a few years, maybe more. All that’s left is a wasteland of broken links on gaming blogs around the world that had been inspired and energized by the crackling creativity in this massive tome of scenarios.

Of course, I had already downloaded a copy to keep handy on my computer. Little did I know it would become a rare artifact! I reached out to James via the email address in the scenario document and asked for permission to re-post this supplement on my blog. He never responded, but judging by the generous notes from the author on page 2 of the document, I don’t think he will mind.

So there you have it – a legendary lost resource has been rediscovered! This supplement takes Song of Blades & Heroes – one of my all-time favorite skirmish games as well as the game that single-handedly kickstarted my resurgence in this hobby – and adds in all of the glorious Warhammer and Mordheim scenarios you remember from your younger years. Share it, adapt it, enjoy it … above all, have fun with it!

Myphitic Blight Hauler Speedpaint

Posted by Comrade on May 16, 2022
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I recently completed painting my first “complete” 40k unit in quite some time – years, probably. These three Myphitic Blight Haulers will be reinforcements for my large Death Guard army, the Maggot Magnates.

They’re cute and fearsome models that epitomize the current Death Guard model lineup. I’ve always admired them, and so when I found a good price on a trio of these models (they can be fielded in a group of three, known as a “tri-lobe”) I knew the time for reinforcements had arrived.

I decided to try out a speedpainting technique on these models – specifically, this nifty tutorial that uses a simple sponge painting technique to quickly knock out the main armor colors.

The technique starts with a black basecoat, followed by a rough sponging on of a basic brown color – I used a couple shades for some variety. The sponging continued with rusty orange, followed by olive drab green and various metallics to create a rough, textured armor appearance that is perfect for these Nurgle-blessed murder tricycles.

This was a speedpaint, so I tackled the swollen, oozing fleshy bits with a mixture of washes and drybrushing. I’d probably spend more time if these were display quality pieces, but faster technique gave decent results in relatively short order. A key mantra for Comrade’s Wargames is “more toys on the table” and I tried to keep that in mind when working on these models.

The final highlights were kept to a minimum … just the most high-impact details were picked out, the stuff that would catch your eye from 3 feet away on the tabletop.

All in all, I was impressed at the overall effect that this quick sponge painting tutorial provided. It was certainly fast! Once I got the armor done, I probably spent the equivalent of a few evenings adding in the final details and highlights. I also hauled them to work with me and painted a bit on my lunch breaks over the course of a week or two. Much of the time was spent waiting for the various washes to dry!

Definitely give this technique a try if you’ve got some small vehicle-sized models that could benefit from a rusty, dirty painting technique. Don’t be like me, though, and forget to paint the rims on your bases! I know what I’m doing tonight after dinner!