Pull up a chair, dear reader, for a personal story from our local game group.
You may have read about our friend Paul, one of the founding members of our local game club (The Majestic Gamers). I met Paul shortly after moving to town about 7 years ago.
At that time, he was just starting out in 40k, and we got together for some games. Paul shared that he experienced periodic tremors in his hands, ranging from barely noticeable to more debilitating. In spite of this, he persevered with his newfound hobby and painted up three gorgeous 40k armies that have made regular appearances on Comrade’s Wargames over the years, as well as countless skirmish warbands for Warcry, Shadespire, and other games. Truly, it was an inspiring example of someone overcoming a physical impairment to achieve spectacular skill in a creative hobby.
Paul’s magnum opus is probably his Tyranids army, which featured heavily into our 40k narrative campaigns. Here’s a couple photos from our gigantic Apocalypse game back in 2018.
Last year, Paul let us know that his tremors had become more pronounced, and the doctors had diagnosed a more advanced condition. He begrudgingly acknowledged that his painting days were likely over.
Around this time, the new Leviathan boxed set came out, and the rest of us in the Majestic Gamers had a brilliant idea – we would acquire the box set, divvy up the Tyranid models, and paint them up to fit in with Paul’s existing Tyranid army! His army would get a huge boost and we’d all get a chance to splash some paint on those cool new bugs. Daniel handled the purchase and distribution of the Leviathan box – thank you, Daniel!! Splitting up the painting amongst 5 people meant we all got a manageable numbers of models to paint up.
Here, then, are the fruits of our labors, which were delivered to Paul earlier this month. HUGE thanks to Rian, John, Parker, and Lawrence for lending their artistic skill and expertise to this project, and to Daniel for purchasing the box and handling logistics.
(Tip: If you click on the first photo, you’ll launch a fullscreen gallery where you can flip through each photo in sequence.)
Keep in mind, that’s five different people offering their own personal interpretation of Paul’s paint scheme. I think we did pretty good, all things considered! Shout-out to John for printing up those crystal pieces that we all used on the bases – that really pulled everything together in a cohesive manner.
But Wait, There’s More!
The story doesn’t end here! When we presented Paul with his newly painted Tyranid reinforcements in August, he shared with us some wonderful and heartening news: he is planning to have a procedure done that will help control his symptoms and hopefully get back some quality of life.
Yes, we immediately cracked jokes about Paul becoming a literal cyborg. Ah, the miracles of modern medicine. The procedure is planned for next month (September). So don’t throw away those paintbrushes, Paul – this hobby isn’t done with you yet!
Last weekend John and I got together to try out Hobgoblin, the forthcoming miniatures wargame from Mike Hutchinson (creator of Gaslands). Hobgoblin aims to be a mass battle fantasy wargame that combines old school rank & flank maneuvering together with a handful of speedy, modern game concepts. The overall goal is a game that lets you use all of your cool fantasy miniatures, arranged in big blocks of troops reminiscent of classic Warhammer, but streamlined to the point where you can play a game to conclusion in a couple of hours.
It’s a tall order, for sure! “Rank & flank” is not at all synonymous with “fast playing,” in my humble opinion. So I was intrigued to see what Mike had in mind as I cracked open the early access PDF. Hobgoblin had a successful Kickstarter earlier this year to produce a nice hardcover version of the rules, and the early access rules have been distributed and updated for backers (such as me) to play around with until the final release comes along.
John’s House Begovic infantry marches to war!
From the outset, Hobgoblin has a lot of the signposts that appeal strongly to me as a non-commercial, primarily indie wargamer. Among them:
Use any miniatures you want.
No specialized army lists – both players build armies using the same list of common units, plus a couple dozen special keywords for flavor.
Your cool toy soldiers always get to fight back, even when they’re in the process of being wiped out.
Only complete units are removed as casualties, no individual model removal.
Only the overall size of the unit matters – the individual figures don’t matter, so you can go nuts creating unit fillers, mixing & matching figures from your collection, etc. A block of “heavy infantry” could be 10 spearmen in chainmail, or 3 steam golems, or 1 young dragon perched on a rocky outcropping on a scenic base.
Along those same lines, the overall sizes of the units are flexible enough to accommodate most bases and movement trays. A typical infantry unit, for example, can be 100mm – 200mm for its frontage, and anywhere from 40mm to 160mm deep. Anything that fits within that spectrum works.
Although there’s not a lot of lore present in the early access rules, it’s clear that there is a ton of lore lurking in the shadows, waiting to be foisted upon us whenever the complete rulebook is published. The tidbits that are present – a vast, subterranean world of endless caverns, bizarre ecosystems filling the sightless depths, bone-grinding magic that feels utterly alien – are absolutely delicious, and definitely leave you wanting more.
For our game, we decided to try a small game at 3,000 points per player. At that threshold, we were both able to bring 8 units. I pulled out my vintage all-metal Skaven army that I built a few years ago. (Well, almost all metal…I acknowledge that the plastic kits for the Doomwheel and Warp Lightning Cannon are fantastic and much easier to work with.)
John brought his ever-growing troop of sad sack humans led by a despised field commander and a cowardly wizard. (Yes, cowardly and despised are both keywords that you can select for your units. These are both negative keywords, so they actually give you more points back for your army when you select them!)
Rank upon rank of beautifully painted miniatures … tabletop wargaming at its finest!
We rolled randomly to determine our scenario and overall terrain setup using the fun battle generator available online. We ended up with some ruins, a couple hills, and two large impassable towers in the center of the table. These two towers would serve to channel our forces into the central killing field. This definitely accelerated the carnage but also prompted some mind-numbing unit movement as we edged our gigantic rectangles of troops around these impassable obstructions.
An early clash led to some mismatched expectations: the heavy cavalry successfully charged the Doomwheel, but the Doomwheel hit back and wiped out the horsemen!
Hobgoblin uses a modified IGOUGO turn sequence, where players alternate casting spells, shooting, and then moving their units. In general, both players are active and engaged throughout the turn; you’re never more than a few minutes away from having a decision to make for one of your units.
Magic spells cost mercury, which is a resource that gets replenished at the start of each turn. You can hoard it between turns to save up for big spells, and you can also use a mercury token to re-roll a single combat dice. Spells always happen – there’s no rolling to see if it’s successfully cast. If you can pay the cost in mercury, your spell is going to kick off. It’s a fun, old-school effect that has the effect of keeping a sense of inevitability about magic for much of the game. Spells happen. Deal with it.
Fortune cards provide each player with a small number of one-off effects and save-your-ass resources that come in handy throughout the game. A typical fortune card might heal a unit, or grant a bonus in your next combat, or let you reposition a unit prior to fighting. You start with 4 Fortune cards and receive 1 additional each turn.
Ratmen shooters wielding clunky, hand-cranked weapons of doom!
Shooting is intentionally de-emphasized in Hobgoblin. Part of it is due to the lore – this game takes place in a sprawling underground grotto lit only by torches, watchfires, glowing runes, luminescent fungi, and other eldritch sources of illumination. In an environment like that, a unit of archers just isn’t going to make a big impact. From a mechanical standpoint, shooting can only ever inflict 50% casualties (measured in doom tokens) on a given unit. Shooting is very much designed to be a harassing mechanic that is employed from the flanks as the armies march toward each other for the massive, inevitable clash in the center.
And clash we did! There’s no innate benefit for charging into combat, so if you want to fight an opposing unit, it’s not essential that you be the first one to initiate the engagement.
My horde-sized block of light infantry attracted a lot of attention during the game. The large size made it difficult for me to maneuver additional units for support!
My horde-sized unit of light infantry was the single largest unit on the battlefield from a footprint standpoint, so it attracted a lot of attention as the game developed. As my Skaven horde began to get enveloped by enemy units, we encountered perhaps the most divisive aspect of Hobgoblin – the fussy wheeling and shuffling and repositioning that forms the heart of the rank & flank movement system.
Another look at the horde of light infantry. They’re being engaged by two of John’s units: a squad of heavy infantry (with the banner) and a squad of light infantry.
If you like rank & flank movement and lament its absence from many modern wargames, then you will appreciate when Hobgoblin is trying to recreate. For my part, I learned that I don’t miss rank & flank movement. LOL! I never played classic Warhammer and so I don’t have an innate affection for large squares of troops wheeling around the battlefield.
I particularly dislike the uber-awkward model placement that results from shuffling giant movement trays full of models in half-inch increments. I’m talking about trays of models perched on terrain with giant gaps underneath, or unit trays hanging off the edge of a sheer cliff because that’s how far you were able to move this turn, dammit! I very much subscribe to the “moving diorama” philosophy of wargaming, so aesthetics are important to me throughout a game. Hobgoblin lets this pendulum swing a bit too far in the direction of “gameplay over aesthetics” for my tastes. That’s really my one gripe about Hobgoblin.
Another example of engagement. The red-clad heavy infantry unit of ratmen is touching the opposing light infantry unit with just one corner, but that counts as engaged. No squaring up in Hobgoblin!
The combat resolution is extraordinarily satisfying – most units roll 10 dice and consult a chart to see their target number. Hits result in doom tokens, which accumulate throughout the turn but are only resolved at the end of the turn, after all units have had a chance to move and fight. Units that receive too much doom are defeated and remove from the battlefield – and their demise results in *more* doom for friendly units that witnessed the gruesome spectacle! Cascading doom situations really help push the game toward its inevitable, and gnarly, conclusion.
Fortune cards and mercury tokens provide a small measure of unpredictability – in our game, my giant Skaven horde had accumulated a whopping 26 doom tokens, more than enough to destroy it in the Doom Phase, but I had a Fortune card that allowed me to ignore the doom tokens for one crucial turn. As it turned out, this was enough to let the Skaven hold down the bulk of John’s units long enough to win the game.
John and I definitely miscalculated some of the rules interactions as we embarked on our inaugural game. And we learned a lot about the intended function of various units in the army lists. At the conclusion of our game, we both discussed ways we could have adjusted or fine-tuned our army lists to better reflect the sort of army that we wanted to bring to the battle.
All in all, Hobgoblin is a super solid addition to the pantheon of mass battle fantasy games. I’m not crazy about the rank & flank movement, for reasons that I’ve articulated a few paragraphs earlier. Frankly I’d love to see a skirmish sized game using the Hobgoblin game engine – limited list of units, doom tokens, fortune cards, all of it – and just eliminate the rank & flank stuff.
We’ll be playing this one again soon, so stay tuned for more!
Earlier this month we played out the latest installment in The Cauldron, our 40k narrative campaign. This session took place on Ardent Maxima, a hive city located on the other side of planet Gamma Euphorion Prime.
By contrast, Ardent Maxima is the epicenter of a vast textile operation. Stadium-sized looms spin gargantuan bolts of fabric for use in Imperial Guard uniforms or embroidered draperies or even sailcloth for maritime vessels. Seam-serfs, with help from stitcher-servitors, churn out untold millions of finished products each year. Most of the inhabitants of Ardent Maxima work to support these textile operations in one way or another, overseen by the benevolent enforcers of the Adeptus Sororitas.
Rebel activity from heretical cults recently hit a fever pitch in Ardent Maxima when the monument to St. Veridegora Deneia was blown up by insurrectionists. Even before the dust settled, the enemies of the Imperium were already making their moves to further despoil the site of the once-proud statuary. The Sisters of Battle summoned urgent assistance from a nearby expeditionary regiment of Imperial Guard, newly arrived from the Glouroth Sub-Sector.
This game pitted Daniel’s Genestealer Cult and Jim’s Orks against Rian’s Sisters of Battle alongside a combined Imperial Guard detachment commanded by me and John. It was a classic xeno-vs-Imperium matchup, amid the ruins of the blown up monument!
The forces of the Imperium mustered their soldiers and armor at the perimeter of the plaza where the statue to St. Deneia and stood until recently. Two walkers and a main battle tank anchored their line, along with the rarefied warriors of the Sisters of Battle.
You can see the blasted sandstone chunks of what had once been the statue to St. Veridegora Deneia in the background. Who would dare desecrate such a holy bastion?
Oh. These guys would.
And probably these guys, too.
With a guttural howl, the combined forces of the Orks and Genestealer Cults surged forward, eager to reach the Imperial lines and deliver vengeance upon the miserable curs of the Corpse-Emperor.
Thankfully, the Emperor protects and reloads.
The Imperial battle line let loose with a cracking volley of fire, ripping apart several of the xeno transport vehicles and spilling their inhabitants. Undeterred, the bad guys cinched up their belts and began the long slog to the three objectives scattered around the table.
In the photo above, you can see the first completed tile from Daniel’s Realm of Battle board. He acquired a full set (enough for a 6×4 table) from Mindtaker Miniatures earlier this summer. He brought his one completed tile to this game, and it fit in beautifully alongside the rest of our hive city terrain!
The big ol’ tank in that photo is from Pig Iron Productions. It is a gigantic chunk of solid resin that has been in my collection for many years. This tank featured heavily into some my early games with the Chicago Skirmish Wargames club, such as this one: Operation Scrub Down! Nice to get it back onto the table 12 years later.
But anyway, back to the game. Big things were happening. A xeno transport truck motored up the flank and deposited a squad of greenskins right on top of one of the objectives.
As you can imagine, this transgression would not stand, man, and the Sisters of Battle were in a position to do something about it. Rian’s newly painted Penitent Engine stomped right into the fray and began hewing swathes of orks in twain with its massive buzz saws.
The stained glass windows on this MDF terrain looks absolutely fantastic! It was a fitting backdrop for this utter devastation that was visited upon the orks.
With the destruction of the ork mob on the flank, the xenos’ advance was seriously threatened. All eyes turned to the rubble-strewn plaza where a Genestealer leader had brazenly planted a flag amid the ruins of St. Deneia’s monument. What a shocking, ghastly display of debauchery!
At the time, it seemed like the appropriate response was for John to drive an APC up and open fire on the squirrely cultist with its autocannon. I think St. Deneia would agree, don’t you?
While the plaza was getting chewed to pieces by high caliber rounds, a different sort of confrontation was taking place near the Technobridge in the center of the table. A small kill team led by Inquisitor Ash was closing in on an elite ork warband led by Jim’s mighty warboss! If they could dislodge the warboss and defeat the quad-wheeler camped out on the objective, they could secure a vital area of the battlefield.
At this point, the tide of the battle turned. Warp lighting arced across the battlefield as the forces of Chaos arrived, no doubt drawn by the carnage and slaughter of the ongoing battle!
In game terms, the xeno team had a third player (Lawrence) who had brought two mighty demons to the game, and both arrived via the ambush special rule (similar to Deep Strike in 40k). So the initial cakewalk that the Imperial Guard experience was just an illusion! The bloodthirsty demons swooped in and began carving up the rear lines. Check out these photos of their arrival.
Doom had come to the plaza of St. Deneia!
The arrival of the two gigantic (and beautifully painted) demons caused a cold sweat to break out on the collective brows of the defenders of the Imperium. How could they carry on in the face of such abject evil? Trusting in their faith in the Emperor, the heroes mustered their courage and stuck to the game plan.
The plaza had become a killing field, as Orks and cultists swarmed in for the final clash. On the perimeter, heavy weapon teams and the remaining walkers poured fire into the advancing mobs of bad guys – even as the demons rampaged in the backfield. Would it be enough?
Eventually the orks consolidated their hold on the central objective. It seemed clear that the game would be decided here. Based on the photo below, it sure looks like the Orks have this one in the bag.
However, zoom out a bit and you can see what was awaiting them as we entered the final turn of the game. Legions of steely-eyed Guardsmen, backed up by tanks and walkers, ready to pour on the fire and do their duty to the Emperor!
The two demons, for all their might, didn’t have enough offensive power to thwart the Imperial Guard’s game plan. The defenders of the Imperium succeeded in purging the filth from the plaza of St. Deneia, notching one important victory in the battle for Ardent Maxima.
This was a large and tremendously satisfying game of Grimdark Future. We had 3,000 points per side, divided up amongst the players on the two teams. This game marked the first outing for several newly painted miniatures, as well as a triumphant return for some, ah, legacy models from my collection.
Today’s Grimdark Future battle report (the next installment in The Cauldron, our ongoing grimdark/Inq28 themed narrative campaign) took place far from the glittering spires of Hive Sacrament on Gamma Euphorion Prime. While the miserable defenders of the Imperium struggled to stem the dark tide surging up from the depths of the underhive, our factions were making a move on the nearby industrial moon Drusichtor.
The moon hangs like an overripe plum in the leaden skies of Gamma Euphorion Prime, swollen with mineral resources and riven with scars from centuries of careless extraction activity. In my head, Drusichtor is kind of like LV-426 crossed with the Australian outback. Lots of crumbling industrial facilities, isolated mineheads, abandoned strip mines, weather-worn hab blocks, windswept cliff faces, etc. Ripe for narrative gaming in our homebrew setting. In this game, the factions were converging on the Xenarite Interchange, one of several heavily fortified industrial mining facilities that dot the tortured, windswept landscape of Drusichtor.
For this game, a splinter warband of Death Guard commandos from the Maggot Magnates faction was pushing to seize the security station. Opposing them was a ragtag band of miners who, by pure happenstance, were swooning under the influence of a nefarious genestealer cult. A band of ork raiders lurking in the hills flipped a coin and decided to ally with the genestealer cultists during this raid.
Three security stations located within the perimeter of the Xenarite Interchange offered access to the base’s robotic sentinels. The faction that could seize and activate the security stations would be able to direct the robotic sentinels to swarm and destroy the opposing faction. Gulp!
Our game got underway with a general advance by the Plague Marines of the Death Guard. They had two sizable hordes of shambling Poxwalkers, and these they prodded toward the objectives in the center of the board.
The genestealer cultists responded by directing the fearsome flame weapons on their vehicles to mow down the poxwalkers as they advanced. Yikes, I was not expecting so many flamethrowers!
On the opposite flank, a Chaos Rhino delivered a squad of Plague Marines to another objective, located in a toxic spill zone. Before the game, we had designated this area as “dangerous terrain” per the Grimdark Future rules, which caused units to risk casualties if they moved into or through the terrain. Thus, this objective was objectively more hazardous to secure!
You can see in the photo above that Jim had a squad of Ork boyz waiting just behind the disabled vehicle, ready to pounce on my Plague Marines once they waded into the toxic soup near the objective.
Daniel had also prepared an ambush – his mutant cultists popped out of a tunnel and charged my Plague Marines as they closed in on the objective, resulting in a brutal close combat.
And of course, eagle-eyed readers probably noticed the three Killa Kans stomping around in this general area. They were armed to the teeth, but thankfully they weren’t too tough, and we were able to pop them one after another (while simultaneously dealing with the genestealer cultists and marauding orks).
The MVP for popping Killa Kans turned out to be the Chaos Rhino! I had equipped it with the spiked ram upgrade, which gave it Impact (9), and this turned out to be devastating. In Grimdark Future, vehicles have no way to fight back in close combat, so they have an ability called Impact (X) that acts as a sort of tank shock, dealing X automatic hits when they rumble into a squad. After that, they’re often sitting ducks, but Impact can really even the odds when employed correctly.
Dealing 9 auto-hits proved to be just the tonic I needed to carve up the Killa Kans and grease the Orks.
Back on the left flank, the poxwalkers staggered forward even as they were coated with flaming promethium. A few made it into combat with the big cultist truck, but they were too diminished to do much damage.
We had better luck with a lone Chaos Terminator who arrived via deep strike (aka Ambush, in the parlance of Grimdark Future) and charged into combat with the cultists who had just spilled out of the transport truck. The Terminator carved them up with frightening ferocity!
The final clash of the game took place on the right flank, where a mob of advancing poxwalkers inadvertently uncovered the source of the xeno cult – actual genestealers!!
They were punished terribly for discovering this forbidden truth. The survivors continued the advance, supplemented by a grisly Myphitic Blight Hauler, aka murder tricycle.
By this point, Jim’s fearsome Ork Warboss was entering the fray. He hewed and cleaved with his mighty choppa, but ultimately he succumbed to the Death Guard onslaught, which paved the way for the Plague Marines to seize the objective and wrap up the game.
The outcome of our narrative scenario meant that the Death Guard were able to activate the base’s remote sentry robots, which bounded forth on four legs and proceeded to lay waste to the surviving cultists and orks. This was a great excuse for John to bust out some newly painted robo-puppers that served to close out this game with style.
And so the cultists and their erstwhile allies (the Orks) were driven back, and the Death Guard consolidated their position at the Xenarite Interchange and prepared to probe deeper into Drusichtor’s desolate industrial facilities. Who can say what strange discoveries await?
I should note that this game was just one of two games that were running concurrently in John’s garage game room. The other game is documented with aplomb over at Orcs Illustrated, the blog headquarters of fellow club member John. Here’s a sneak peek at the action in the Pilgrimage District.
We had a total of 10 players squeezed into the garage – a record, I believe, for our little game club. This game was also a bit of an “east meets west” event, as it featured a visit from Karl, my friend and co-founder of Chicago Skirmish Wargames (my old game club). So it was a real treat to set up a couple games with Karl and give him a chance to meet the guys in my group.
All in all, it was a glorious sight to behold. Fully painted miniatures, gorgeously crafted terrain and scenery, and an engrossing narrative campaign. Truly, this represents the zenith of what anyone seeks out when they gaze at the cover art of any ol’ box of miniatures.
It’s been a while since we checked in on our Nightwatch campaign. I’ve actually had these photos on my phone for a couple months, just haven’t gotten around to doing the writeup.
Anyway, we gathered a few months back to play the fifth (5th) session of our Nightwatch campaign. A proper, by-the-book Nightwatch campaign is a carefully scripted affair, with seven sessions that slowly increase the intensity and danger, culminating with an epic “boss battle” in the final session.
So by that metric, you can see we’re quite advanced by this point in our campaign. Our characters are proficient and deadly, and they’re outfitted with all manner of deadly weapons, artifacts, and gear.
We’ve played a variety of objective-based scenarios up to this point in our campaign. For our fifth session, we decided to try a seemingly simple game mode – survive for seven turns. That’s it! Nothing more complicated than that.
It seemed easy, but the players barely escaped from this game with their hides intact. The danger started early and often, as terrifying beastmen began emerging from the depths of the Embermoon Forest on turn 1.
From there, the danger just increased expontentially. The slower characters, like Jim’s knight Sir Joshua, got bogged down in grinding melee combat just a few inches beyond the heroes’ deployment zone.
This meant that the more mobile characters, like Vincent’s alchemist, had to stay somewhat nearby to protect their slower comrades, and couldn’t race ahead to engage the beastmen reinforcements that were arriving every. single. turn.
This game featured repeated appearances of Terrors – those horrid, panic-inducing monstrosities that represented the near-pinnacle of the Nightwatch bestiary.
Terrors were nearly as powerful as the players’ characters, capable of dealing out fearsome amous of damage, and they arrived with frightening regularity as the game wore on.
It was, as evidenced by these photos, an absolute bloodbath in the Embermoon Forest. The beautiful autumnal foliage was splashed with ichor and gore, the branches blackened by explosive grenades and errant mage bolts. The entire valley was hazy with smoke as the battle wore on. Who would emerge victorious?
Heroes fell in the chaos, then gained their feet, only to fall again. A well-placed magical wall of vapor managed to block a rampaging mob of beastmen reinforcements, gaining precious time for the heroes to organize their defense and gain the upper hand over the savage interlopers.
The beastmen attacked with exceptional savagery, and their onslaught prevented the heroes from moving … anywhere, really. Let’s take a moment and be thankful that this wasn’t a scenario where the heroes had to race around the battlefield and visit different locations. If that had been the case, they would have been doomed!
The heroes spent the final turns in a desperate huddle, hacking at the hordes and using every tactic in their playbook to stay alive until the conclusion of the seventh turn.
These two photos offer a glimpse at the utterly relentless attack that they withstood in the final turns of the game.
And then, as quickly as they had come, the beastmen withdrew into the night, sounding horns and loosing arrows to cover their escape. Who can say what signal caused them to retreat? Perhaps they were called back to their villainous master to serve some darker purpose? Whatever the reason, they fell back in haste, leaving their dead and wounded to moulder in the wilderness of the Embermoon Forest.
And thus concluded our most frenetic, brutal game of Nightwatch yet! We have one more “regular” session ahead of us, followed by an encounter with the savage chieftain of the beastmen … stay tuned for more!
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