Boring Mordheim Meetup 2008 - Chapter Three

Tom & Tortiou proudly present

Live from Vienna, Austria, a TBMB&TBMF exclusive

1st MORDHEIM MEETUP Battle report!
*trumpets sounding in the distance*

Chapter Three - Street Fighters

The second game we played was a pure, simple and brutal street brawl. Again, we decided to form alliances and thus two teams were opposed. Each team (comprising three warbands) had to start from one end of the street and the scenario objective was to advance as far as possible towards the other end of the street. We roughly defined an "Area of Victory": after 6 turns, for every model standing in this Area of Victory, a team received 1 Victory Point. For every model beyond this Area of Victory, the team received 2 VP (but as you will see, the battle was so fierce that no warrior made it past the 1VP area...)

I made a little scheme to explain the objective.

Here you can see the limits of the street (red lines) and the Area of Victory (red area)

Same as before, but from the opposite point of view:

For fun, we also added some Wyrdstone counters. Just like the previous game, we rolled to determine the teams. The results were:

Team 1
AdminTom (Witch Hunters)
Lanyssa Ryssyll (Dwarves)
Tortiou (Reiklanders)

Team 2
Matt (Possessed)
Boehm (Dwarves)
Erkwin (Reiklanders)

The table is set... the teams are ready... let the show begin!

Two leagues, both alike in dignity,
In fair Mordheim, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean!

Boiling with anger, the combined force of Witch Hunters - Dwarves - Reiklanders (Team 1) started on the south side of the street. As you will probably notice on the pictures below, Tortiou decided to hire the services of a Freelancer Knight to assist his Reiklanders...

Here you can see, from top to bottom: Tortiou's Reiklanders, Tom's Witch Hunters, and Lanyssa's Dwarves:

To the north, moving silently but consumed with rage, were the mighty Dwarf - Reiklander - Possessed alliance (Team 2).

Matt's Possessed are pushing forward to secure the middle of the street, followed by Erkwin's and Boehm's warriors:

Near the fountain, you can spot Matt's mighty
Possessed, among them Gnobo (to the left) and Krackatoaaar (to the
right) who continued their serendipituous killing spree:

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!"

A lonely Beastman securing the first wyrdstone counter. Behind him, Boehm's halfling cook takes a firing position:

The first two close combats of the game, between a
separated Freelancer (from Tortiou's warband) and Matt's unstoppable
Krackatoar; and between Tom's dog and Matt's terrifying Gnobo:

To tell the story of Matt's incredible close combat fights during this game would take too long (and he'll probably be glad to write about it himself) (*hint! hint!*) Let's just say that Lady
Luck was on Matt's side... and thus, both the Freelancer knight and Tom's dog were killed in this action.

After a few turns, the middle of the street is being approached by many warriors: Team 1 is rushing on the footbridges, whereas Team 2 takes cover behind a city wall (Team 2 is hidden in this picture):

At the end of the 6th turn, after a big brawl in the middle of the street, Team 2 had the highest number of warriors standing in the Victory Area. Team 1 had been too slow or had had too many warriors killed in the battle. Thus, Team 2 (Matt, Boehm and Erkwin) was declared the winning team!

Admin Tom and his boyz, after the fight:

This was the end of the first day of our Big Meetup (11th of July). The next day, another fascinating scenario was played, with an unexpected twist... but this will be told in Chapter 4 - The Last Chapter!

Be sure to also check out the extra feature available on TBMF soon! An excerpt of the private journal of a very famous Hired Sword...

Boring Mordheim Meetup 2008 - Chapter Two

Tom & Tortiou proudly present

Live from Vienna, Austria, a TBMB&TBMF exclusive

1st MORDHEIM MEETUP Battle report!

Chapter Two - Wyrdstone hunters

The first game we played was a wyrdstone hunt: wyrdstone counters were placed on the board by the players successively, rather far away from the table edge and not too close to each other. To spice up the scenario a little bit, we also decided to place Victory Point-counters (I suppose WarbossKurgan didn't know he was the one who put that idea into Tom's head), each counter being worth 1, 2 or 3 VP. These counters were meant to be carried by warriors just like a wyrdstone counter. The speciality of these counters however lies with the fact, that the number of VPs they are worth was written underneath them and revealed only after the game!
We decided to also award 1 VP per kill, to balance the game for slower warbands.

Boehm and Erkwin placing the counters:

two teams of three warbands each were rolled for:

Team 1
Admin Tom (Witch Hunters)
Lanyssa Ryssyll (Dwarves)

Erkwin (Reiklanders)

Team 2
Boehm (Dwarves)
Matt (Possessed)
Tortiou (Reiklanders)

We started on randomly determined table edges, so the teams were actually quite scattered all over the city, some being sandwiched between the enemy! Matt and Boehm started close to each other, and so did Admin Tom and Lanyssa Ryssyll. But Erkwin and Tortiou were cut off from their allies and dangerously close to ennemy models.

Erkwin's Reiklanders are deploying...

Everybody's getting ready for the big battle:

Tortiou's Reiks are warming up:

Admin Tom is showing off (as usual :P)

Tom's Witch Hunters are lighting the torches and sending the dogs to the front line

An isolated Reiklander archer (Erkwin) covers his teammates

Lanyssa Ryssyll (his back to us) moving his dwarves towards a wyrdstone counter, while Matt and Boehm discuss a joint operations strategy, closely watched by Erkwin (the actual positions of the player reflect the location of their respective warbands on the board):

The first close combat between Matt's Possessed and Lanyssa Ryssyll's Dwarves... and the amazing debut of Krackatoaaar's killing spree.

No one - except for Matt, one would assume - was ever sure how to spell Krackatoaaaar's name correctly (Kraktor? Gragtoooh?), but it was a lot of fun to burst into that "sound" every time Matt's warrior went into a rampage... In fact there was yelling of "Kraktooooooor!" in almost every close combat phase :)

The tension mounts as both teams are now in possession of approximately the same number of wyrdstone counters and VP counters.

Lanyssa Ryssyll meticulously analysing the situation:

The jubilant jumping Erkwin exulting after his Champion gives the coup de grace to Boehm's reckless dwarf Beardling:

Undeterred, Boehm's enterprising dwarves continue to advance towards the fighting:

On the other side of the table, Tortiou's Reiks are desperately trying to counter Lanyssa Ryssyll's dwarves and Tom's witch hunters by firing volley after volley of arrows...
without no luck:

Erkwin's packed Reiks are slowly progressing:

"Do you think he can see my warrior?" -"Yes he can!" -"Mmmh, maybe yes, maybe no..." -"Let's ask the referee..."

The whole game balance changes as Tom's Witch Hunters and Lanyssa Ryssyll's dwarves finally reach the little plaza at the centre of the board and grab the remaining pieces of wyrdstone.

This is the last pint of Lanyssa Ryssyll's dwarf called Vue-Troublée (Blurred-Sight) before being shot by one of Tortiou's archers. Soon after this, Lanyssa Ryssyll routs, but manages to keep one WS counter while fleeing.

Erkwin's Reiks overwhelming one of Boehm's dwarves:

Last action heroes: Tortiou's Reiks heroically charge Tom's witch hunters behind a corner... resulting in two Reiklander going OOA
(one being Captain Tortiou himself, bitten to death by a dog):

Tom's Warhounds proved to be one of the surprisingly effective units in this campaign. Twice they were charged by Reiklanders (and well armed ones on top of that) and both times the warhounds were the ones taking their agressors out.

The game ends with Erkwin's Youngblood picking up another WS counter at the last second. What we did at the end is count the points for each team, giving 1 VP per wyrdstone counter, 1VP per kill and 1, 2 or 3 VP per VP counter picked up. Now was the time to reveal how much VPs each counter was worth. Actually, both teams had taken possession of roughly the same number of VP counters, but luck favoured Erkwin-Tom-Lanyssa's team: when we flipped the VP counters over to see how much each counter was worth, Erkwin and his teammates got more points than the other team!

Here you can see Erkwin's VP counters flipped over:

The results:
Team 2 (Tortiou - Matt - Boehm) only totaled 11 points, whereas Team 1 (Tom - Lanyssa Ryssyll - Erkwin) totaled 18 points.

Team 1 was declared the winning team!

All players at the end of the game, during the post-battle sequence:

After that, we went out to have some food, but quickly returned for the second game... more to come in Chapter 3!

Boring Mordheim Meetup 2008 - Chapter One

Coming up next, live from Vienna, Austria, a TBMB&TBMF exclusive:

The incrrrredible, the amaaazing, the flabberrrrgasting
1st MORDHEIM MEETUP Battle report!

Chapter One - Preparing the game, meeting the guys

The days before the Big Meetup, many tasks lay on Admin Tom's shoulders: preparing the scenery, buying truckloads of snacks & drinks, transporting important stuff from his place to the gaming venue, adjusting lighting, cleaning, fetching eager gamers from airports and trainstations... that's why he ordered respectfully asked me, his fellow slave good friend, to help him complete these adventurous quests.

This is Admin Tom (hallowed be thy name) placing the buildings on the gaming board:

That's me, Tortiou (yours truly), doing the same as Master Tom to put up a good front::

The city (of the damned) taking shape:

Finishing the last building... just in time:

On the day of the Big Meetup, finally, the guests arrived! From left to right: Lanyssa Ryssyll, Boehm, Erkwin, Admin Tom, Tortiou, and Matt!


The guests are here, the board is ready... the Battle can begin!

End of chapter One - To be continued...soon!

Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald - Part 2

I am waiting with painting the Treeman, because I want to finish all the modelling before I proceed to picking up my brushes. That's just how I like to do it.

So I thought I'd show you WIP pics of another wood elfy thing I have been doing in order to complete my (hopefully one day) 2000pts Wood Elves WHFB army.

Although this is again a Warhammer post, I think it can't be wrong to post it, as it is of interest to everyone who likes modelling and converting! :)

Today's Menu: Wild Riders of Kournos. A special unit choice for wood elf players. The rules state that these guys are Forest Spirits with all that this implies (special save, cause fear, immune to psychology etc...)

You know what I am about to say "I don't like the GW model so I built my own..." But you're not quite right this time unfortunately. I think the GW models look okay... for a regular cavalry unit. But they most certainly do not suffice to represent the wrath of fear causing forest spirits, stampeeding out of a dark enchanted forest to the sound of horns blowing to the Wild Hunt, ready to tear apart the invading foe.

So here it goes. My own interpretation of "cavalry-like" forest spirits... that are scary. Mommy! :)

Enjoy!

Hard to see on this pic, but the standard (the tree trunk) has little greenstuff glyphs on it. This will be more evident once painted.

PS: A big thank you to DeafNala on the Forum who so generously donated ALL the parts that I used for these conversions!

Expansion Pack

As Nico has announced a looong time ago, he has realised the painstaking but heroic task of expanding our gaming table. Yay!

"This city is too small" he declared, and got to work with his knife and pen.
A bigger table also offers more possibilities for a larger number of players, and I must say that I felt our experienced warbands were in dire need of more space lately :)

Nico draws lines on the table with a marker to determine where the larger lines of cobblestone will run. Many hours of sudorific "stone-carving" (with a pencil) ensued...

A week later: Nico with the finished (unpainted) new gaming board in the middle of the table. Is this the same t-shirt Nico, or just one that looks REALLY similar?!

Now that Nico did all the carving (each single cobblestone was carved by hand) it is my job to paint this baby. Thank you Nico!

Today I painted the board. Perfectly in time for our International Mordheim Meeting on July 11th - 12th.