These models were originally released a number of years ago, primarily for the Japanese market, and they were only recently released earlier this year in the USA. They’re packaged and sold as individual blind boxes that contain 1 random miniature from the 8 models in the series.
I bought a couple of these guys and then traded for a few of the others. I ended up with a duplicate of the standard bearer guy, which gave me an opportunity to convert up the surplus model. He’s the guy on the left in the photo below.
But here’s the interesting (and slightly silly) backstory: I’ve actually owned these models before, back in 2020. When they were released for the Japanese market, they were commonly sold as a sealed case containing one of each of the models in the line, including the Malignant Plaguecaster that appeared less frequently and was sort of a chase rare. I bought my sealed case in December 2020 and then promptly lost interest in my Death Guard army for a while.
Over the next two years, the Death Guard Heroes set went out of print and started to command a premium price on the secondary market. I did a sober analysis of my still-sealed box – did I really need more Plague Marines? Would I truly get around to building and painting these guys? I wisely decided to “sell into the hype” and made a tidy little profit on my box.
I figured that was the end of the story, yet here we are – I’ve re-purchased those same models (for a much more reasonable, non-premium price, I must admit). BUT! I’ve also finished painting them, so I win in the end.
Anyway, it’s a silly little story that just goes to show how much I enjoy regular, run-of-the-mill Plague Marines as the backbone for my Death Guard army.
As a bonus, here’s one more Plague Marine that I painted up around the same time. He’s converted from one of the Chaos Space Marine Chosen from the Dark Vengeance boxed set, with some extra bits from my Putrid Blightkings leftovers.
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!
Hark, gentle reader! Do you hear that? The grinding of massive gears hints at some foundational updates to Comrade’s Wargames. Specifically, I have created a new section on ye olde blog to collect the various narrative campaigns that I have taken part in recently. These campaign chapters have heretofore been sprinkled throughout my blog as individual posts, spanning months if not years. The new page attempts to list them all in rough chronological order for ease of reading.
The page itself is creatively named “Narrative Campaigns” and it is linked in the menu bar on the front page of this blog.
The page, in turn, displays links to three additional pages showcasing the backstory and a listing of battle reports from three recent narrative campaigns. They are:
In keeping with tradition here at Comrade’s Wargames, these narrative campaigns feature beautifully painted miniatures from me and my buddies, alongside visually stunning terrain and a compelling tabletop narrative. I’ll continue to update these pages as we play additional games for them. Grab a cup of your favorite beverage and dig in!
Last month I hosted two sci-fi skirmish games, and despite using two different game systems, we were able to tease out a bit of a narrative through-line to connect them together. Both games were set on Drusichtor, the third moon of Gamma Euphorion Prime in the Juventius Sub-Sector.
Drusichtor is a heavy industrial moon focused on mining and resource extraction. While Gamma Euphorion Prime grapples with a nascent genestealer cult infestation that is rocking the political underpinnings of the fragile ruling class, miners on Drusichtor made a terrifying discovery that suggested just how long the genestealers had been plotting to undermine the planet…
For the first game, we tried out Rogue Hammer, the new grimdark sci-fi ruleset from Nordic Weasel Games. It was a learning game, so we started small and coached each other through the rules. The game was set in the Pits of Volceradon, a vast and crumbling strip-mining operation that sprawls across the surface of Drusichtor. The warbands were competing to reach a hapless miner who had been infected by … something … that he picked up during his forays deep below the moon’s surface. You can see the miner staggering around near some bubbling pools of green toxic waste. Yum!
The game featured an Inquisitorial kill team, alongside a platoon of Ultramarines, racing to secure the miner before the pox-ridden warriors of the Death Guard could spirit him away and conduct a vivisection to figure out what happened to him.
Rogue Hammer was fun, but it definitely felt like a game that needs some additional material before it’s a truly playable Rogue Trader heartbreaker clone. For example: Many of the unit and character upgrades were specifically focused on fighting vehicles, yet you won’t really be using vehicles unless you’re playing a large game of Rogue Hammer. So for the skirmish sized games that we typically play, most of the anti-vehicle upgrades are useless and a waste of points. Meanwhile, factions like Chaos Space Marines – which have arguably been part of the lore since Rogue Trader – were conspicuously absent from the barebones army lists provided in the rulebook. I had to run my Death Guard using the Eldar (excuse me, Space Pirates) list.
In fairness to Nordic Weasel, I believe his intent is to manage Rogue Hammer like a “living rulebook,” with fairly frequent releases and rules tweaks to deliver exactly the sort of content I was missing.
Anyway, our Rogue Hammer game wrapped up with a shocking conclusion, when the poor miner underwent a sudden and violent transformation – the “final form” of his mysterious infection?
The blood-spattered xenomorph creature lurched toward the nearest target, claws akimbo. It was a deadly dance, but Danie’s Primaris Captain was up to the task!
The grisly outcome led directly to game two, which took place a few weeks later. In this game, the action moved to the nearby mining settlement of Ghorston’s Spur, where another specimen had been captured and stashed in one of the hovels. This game featured two teams of factions fighting to locate and secure the specimen – Dark Mechanicus and Chaos Cultists vs. Sisters of Battle and Orks (temporarily pacified, perhaps, to serve as useful cannon fodder for the Adeptus Sororitas? That was what we convinced ourselves, anyway).
For this game, we used Grimdark Future Firefight, an old favorite around here that we return to time and time again.
I had prepped a little scenario with rules for exploring the little ramshackle outbuildings. You weren’t sure exactly what you’d find when you went a-knocking on those doors!
Shooting is fairly potent in Grimdark Future Firefight, and we lamented the unfortunate lack of cover for Lawrence’s Chaos Cultists. They got chewed to pieces by deadly accurate fire from Rian’s newly painted Sister of Battle. Oops!
I didn’t have it much better … my Dark Mechanicus warband, The Seekers of the Fractal Schematic, were uncomfortably close to the menacing Orks at the start of the game.
Jim’s Orks were on top of me by the second turn, which made it pretty hard to explore the outbuildings to find the specimen.
Eventually (through trial and error) we determined which of the squalid dwellings held the specimen, and all of the factions promptly made a beeline for it. Covering fire was laid down by the Sisters of Battle as the Orks rampaged unchecked through the industrial settlement. Rho-Terak, the Enslaver of Logic (leader of my Dark Mechanicus warband) sustained superficial damage to his mostly-metal body during this chaotic scramble.
In game terms, he went out of action, but of course he didn’t die. He’s just … recuperating, back at base. Shouldn’t have been standing there, guy!
The final clash came when Vethidian the Supernumerary, second-in-command of my Dark Mechanicus warband, met the Sisters of Battle Canoness at the front door of the target hut. His sad little withered body was no match for the Canoness’s power sword!
So the Sister of Battle made off with the alien specimen! Doubtless the Imperium’s best xenobiologists will gather important intel from its carcass. The Dark Mechanicum will lick their wounds and regroup for another assault!
Grimdark Future gave a quick and decisive game, as always. There are a number of mechanics in this game that serve to hasten the inevitable conclusion of a skirmish clash. It’s never fun to see your cool models go down, but it’s important to remember that the game’s gotta end at some point.
It was pleasant to write up these two short game reports and stitch them together into a coherent narrative flow. I’m really enjoying the development of Drusichtor as a theater of operations in the larger Gamma Euphorion narrative campaign. There’s plenty here to fight over, and we haven’t even delved into the soot-encrusted Volceradon Furnace Tunnels…stay tuned for more!
Miniatures purists, take note – this post will give you fits. You have been warned!
Late last year, as our group began grumbling and muttering about some sort of grimdark Inq28-style skirmish campaign in 2023, I started putting the wheels on my latest warband. As a longtime Chaos player, I’ve always wanted to build a small collection of miniatures representing an insane, techno-heretical cult of the Machine God. In 40k, these guys would be called Dark Mechanicus.
But I didn’t want to just say “Adeptus Mechanicus, but bad guys.” I also wanted to blend religious zeal and biomechanical horror and see what comes out of that stew. I wanted to aim for a collection of miniatures that looked like the frantic pencil sketches that filled the margins of the old Rogue Trader rulebook.
The results were The Seekers of the Fractal Schematic. I wanted to give them an evocative and mysterious name that hints at some of the narrative territory I’d like to explore in our upcoming game. What is the Fractal Schematic, and why are they seeking it? Let’s find out together, etc. I’d say about half of these models already existed in my collection, and the other half I’ve painted up to match their brethren over the last few weeks.
In true Comrade’s Wargames fashion, there are at least 5 different manufacturers represented in this photo. Shall we name them? Obviously we have the Asphyxious figure from Warmachine’s Cryx faction. He’s a standout grimdark model that perfectly represents my image of what a fallen Mechanicus heretek might look like – swollen with power, bereft of humanity, just a few tattered scraps of flesh held together by a fearsome mechanical frame, eyes burning with vengeance. Of course, he’s got a new name. Now this figure is known as Rho-Terak, the Enslaver of Logic, leader of the Seekers of the Fractal Schematic.
There are two other Cryx models in the mix up there… a biomechanical serpent coiled atop a heap of scrap, and a stooped, withered chap hefting a ramshackle banner made of clinking vials or censers. In my headcanon, he’s the second-in-command, the executive officer, so to speak.
From there, we have two GW models – an old metal Chaos cultist and a metal Necromunda Redemptionist hefting an autorifle over his head. In the foreground we have a hunchbacked mutant from Mega Minis (which is a great source of Rogue Trader-inspired models). The little Roomba from hell is a terrifying monstrosity known as The Flesh Engine, and he’s a kitbash using pieces from Star Frontiers (!) and a head from Pig Iron Productions. The blood-spattered cyborg on the far right is from ThunderChild Miniatures (painted by sculptor Jaycee and gifted to me after I won a contest, what!).
I speedpainted up a few more generic cultist models to bolster the ranks a little bit. Every cult needs some fearless cannon fodder to sell their souls in a blaze of glory, right? Contrast paints did a lot of work here.
In the image below, the guy on the left with the pistol and axe is converted from a Frostgrave soldier model. (Oops, forgot to paint his base rim.) The guy on the right with the flamethrower is a monopose model from Ramshackle Games.
You can never have too many cultists! In the photo below, the guy on the far left with the axe and cluster of dynamite is another conversion from the Frostgrave soldier sprue. That kit is very flexible! All it takes is a couple sci-fi bits to drag a medieval-inspired model into the grim darkness of the 41st millenium.
The other two guys with assault rifles are from Pig Iron Productions, from their excellent Kolony Ferals range. I’ve got dozens of Kolony Ferals in my collection and they are some of my very favorite scrappy scavenger/cultist type models. Lots of gas masks, rebreathers, and creepy machinery poking out of necrotic flesh.
The two bruisers with clubs and shields in the photo below are from the Dark Age miniatures game. This is a super niche skirmish game based on Brom’s creepy fantasy/sci-fi art. Imagine that, a minis game inspired entirely by the work of one artist?! But here we are, and the models themselves a quite nice. These guys are from the Skarrd faction, and they’ve got a scrappy wastelands vibe with lots of twisted metal and weird cybernetics, not to mention assless chaps and exposed buttcheeks, and it all fits really well with my warband.
I absolutely love the challenge of combining miniature from many different manufacturers and sculptors to create a cohesive warband with a shared aesthetic. Nothing tickles me more than picking a figure like ol’ Asphyxious from Warmachine, giving him a new name and dropping him into a warband alongside a half dozen or more other distinct models from different makers. My goal as a painter and hobbyist is to create either a visual look or a narrative hook that ties all these models together and helps tell the stories that are swirling around in my head.
I’ll continue to build on the Seekers of the Fractal Schematic. My goal is to make each model fairly unique, so this won’t be a warband that I can use in games that require multiple squads of dudes, like Warhammer 40k. It will be, however, a great choice for skirmish games focused on individual models and small units. Stay tuned for more!
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