Oldhammer

I'm going to talk about two recent events in my 3rd ed Warhammer Fantasy Battle gaming.

First, a group of Oldhammer bloggers have gotten together and created the Oldhammer blog-zine, to which I will be contributing on occasion. One of the first events they will be running is the Golden Goblin painting award for an Old School GW miniature. A statue of smaller (goblin-proportioned) goblin figure is the prize, in the spirit of the (proportionally much, much larger) Golden Demon painting competition run by GW on a yearly basis.

Secondly, my friend Ali, one of my role-playing buddies, brought a long a gift last night: an entire army of 3rd and 4th edition Chaos miniatures. The timing was all the more poignant because he also brought along some Chronopia miniatures. Why poignant? My good friend Spencer Warner died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Spencer knew just about everyone who was anyone in the UK gaming scene in the 80's, 90's and early 00's. He worked for worked for a number of gaming companies, most notably WOTC UK, but including Fantasy Forge; a precursor of Target Games, who produced Chronopia and Leviathan. I actually remember attending DrakCon in Aberdeen many years ago and playing a demo game of Leviathan  with Spence while in my late teens. It was probably the first game we played together. We also ended up playing each other in a game of Battle Cows at the same con a year or two later, I think.

Ali hadn't received the message that our game had been cancelled because of Spencer's death. I didn't find out about this generous gift until I got home from an impromptu wake held by a (very large) group of Spencer's friends. By which point Ali had already caught a bus back to Edinburgh.

So, thanks Ali. Your generosity made a difficult day a little more bearable. Spence loved classic GW mini's too. He'd have been well chuffed to see so many classic mini's going to someone who'll put them to good use.

Warhammer 3rd ed: The Artesia Project

In the previous post, I talked about the versatility of 3rd edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle. It was my first love. The first war game rules I ever owned (though if I remember correctly, I'd played Blood Bowl, Space Marine and 40K long before I actually played my first WFB game). It's an extremely versatile system, and though the last thing I need right now is ANOTHER project, I've decided to resurrect the old Artesia project I've left in hibernation for years.

Essentially, I intend to create two armies representing the major factions of the Artesia universe as created by Mark Smythe. Well, that's what I'm telling myself to make the project seem less intimidating. What I'm actually talking about here is six, smaller (relatively speaking) armies that can be combined into two massive armies. On one side: Artesia and her Daradjans, the Middle Kingdoms and the Mercenary Forces allied to the Middle Kingdoms. On the other side: the Sultan's Army, The Dumeghal and The Islikid King Cyrus with his host of Demonic and Undead servants.

Modelling the Armies:

This will be a massive undertaking, which I expect will take many years to complete. Fortunately, I already own a great many of the miniatures I need for this project, which will bring together many of the diverse miniatures currently languishing in my great lead mountain.

Defenders of the Middle Kingdoms:

So far, my plan is to use the Perry Miniatures' War of the Roses  plastics  to form the bulk of the Daradjan, Mercenary and Middle Kingdoms armies. I already have these in my collection, so the initial outlay won't be too expensive. The plan is for the initial batch of Billmen, Crossbowman and Hackbutters to go into the Middle Kingdom's army (gunpowder exists in the Artesia universe, but doesn't feature much. However, as siege guns exist I can extrapolate that Hackbutts do too) while the Pikemen and Archers go into the Daradjan contingent. The plastic horsemen (not that I own any yet) will go into both factions. Note that the Mercenaries employed by Daradja will be included in the Daradjan faction, not the Mercenary faction.

The Middle Kingdom's contingent will be mostly later Hundred Year's War figures, most likely featuring another huge wad of Perry Miniatures. I'll only be doing very, very limited work on them for the time being, because they will be (beyond any shadow of a doubt) the  second most expensive sub-faction of the lot.

The Armies of the Phoenix Court:

The Sultan's Host, mostly late crusade/early Ottoman miniatures, has the dubious honour of being the most expensive as it will have twice as many points as either of it's two allied factions. In other words, it will be the biggest army in the project.

The Dumaghal will be interesting. They're knights in the service of evil. They're armour occupies a sort of mid-way point between classic full-plate and chaos-warrior baroqueness (but without the spikiness). I'll have to think long and hard about how to handle them.

Finally, the Islikids. My undead/demonic host. The Islikid himself I'll probably run as a WFB 3rd Lyche. His cannibal-undead (don't ask me to spell the setting's name for them) are described as ghouls, but given that they're intelligent, wield armour and weapons and are immune to non-magical weapons, I'll probably run them as Wights, give them a few levels of Shock Elite to make them decent fighters, and remove the instability rule. These guys will form the core of this small, but expensive army, accompanied by various mindless, ethereal or demonic nasties.

Multi-Faction Games:

So, in large games with all six factions present, the army organisation will look this:

Daradja and the Middle Kingdoms:

Middle Kingdoms (1,500 points), Daradjan Allies (1,500 points), Mercenary (1,000 points). The Daradjans will use the ally special  rules, the mercenaries will use mercenary special rules.

The Pheonix Court:

Sultan's Host (2,000 points), Islikids (1,000 points), Dumaghal (1,000 points). The Islikids and Dumaghal will use the allies special rules but will count as a single allied contingent rather than two separate ones.

Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd ed: A Primer

I love third ed Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Still do to this very day. It's great strengths, to me, have always been the magic system (before they brought out all that colour of magic rubbish) and the ability to create any darn army you like, armed how you like, allied to the hell you like.. How is this possible? Because, while recent additions of the game provide an Army list where the points for each figure is already worked out for you (to which you can add options), in WFB 3rd, you are given the mechanism's needed to create each unit itself. You know how much the model costs with just a hand weapon, you know much extra equipment costs to buy and you know how much it costs to improve his profile in a certain way. You want to field the Army of an evil human wizard complete with Orc, Goblin, Undead and Demonic servants all in the one Army? With WFB 3rd ed you can do it. You want pikemen in your Empire army. Go for it. The rules are all there.

[Added Later:
For an example about versatility: My current WFB 3rd ed Army uses War of the Roses figures from Perry Miniatures. It's designed to represent the combined forces of Daradja and the Middle Kingdoms from the Artesia comic books, with the addition of a smaller mercenary contingent based on the Lion Azure company from Mary Gentle's Ash.

The army general is Artesia herself, a level 25 wizard who wears heavy armour and is accompanied into battle by four bound ghosts and three good-aligned lesser demons. She carries a magical sword and wears Dragonscale armour. She's also one of the good guys, yet that combination of races (yet alone alignments) would be completely illegal and impossible to recreate/ in a later edition of Warhammer.]

It says a lot that, even now, twenty years on, there are gamers out there younger than the rules themselves who still prefer to play third ed. And not just for games in the Warhammer Old World either. I've seen these rules for Glen Cook's Black Company, Lord of the Rings, Sword of Shannara and just about every other fantasy series you can think of.

But don't take my word for it. Here's my (adopted) WFB 3rd ed Manifesto -as written by Zhu Bajiee if the most excellent blog, The Realm of  Bajiee . Go check out his blog to read up on the Oldhammer Contract, essentially a WFB 3rd ed Primer in the vein of the Old School Primer, and lots more incredible stuff.