My Orc and Goblin army

My Orc and Goblin army

My Orc army has been produced over my 29 years of on/off playing Warhammer. Basically when I first played Warhammer I played a lot of battles against Dwarfs with Orcs, before developing an interest in chaos thanks to the mighty Realm of Chaos books. When I got back into Warhammer, I wanted some continuity from the early days while using  a mixture of my old models and some of the best of the new models. It comes to 4000 points based around the 8th. edition Orc and goblin list, although it roughly matches this using a list based in third edition Warhammer Armies. But the aim is to play loose games of third edition based Warhammer with it. I am still in the process of adjusting rules to fit some of the new profiles for models such as the Arachnorak and squigs so that I can easily play with my version of 3rd. edition. But a bit of friendly play testing and adjustment should work this out. After all I don't do competitive gaming and it is playing out the narrative and the challenges this throws up that is most important.

So, the background!

In the Grey Mountains, the Dwarfs' of the  seven holds of Eira Gwyn fought a devastating 20year war of attrition against invading groups of Orcs. The battles would range from bloody sieges to personal, small scale skirmishes aimed at keeping mountain passes open. Finally a bloody push managed to drive the majority of the Orcs into the forests that marked the beginning of the Empire and allow the final five years to be based around mopping up the small groups of Orcs and Goblins that remained in the areas around Eira Gwyn and what the Dwarfs considered their territory.

The Orcs in the forest entertained themselves by fighting amongst themselves, beastmen, bullying the local spider worshipping goblin tribes and avoiding two nasty Orc characters. These were Finbad the Unrepentant and Gomidja.

Finbad the Unrepentant was a huge Orc who refused to accept that Orcs were defeated in Eira Gwyn. It was rumoured that he, along with his small band of big 'uns, was planning another big war. This was fine, however, despite their love of violence, Dwarfs did not like getting massacred and embarrassing defeats. The Empire was too strong around the  forests, the beastmen were too strong and the Dwarfs were definitely too strong to take on in a big war. Little fights were the order of the day and more fun. Finbad didn't accept this, but if you told him he would simply show you how good he was at war and completely destroying his opponents. He was very good, or so the Orc corpses would suggest.

Gomidja, on the other hand, was weird and dangerous. He was a powerful Orc shaman and he only appeared when he had a dark purpose, casting magic that caused deveestation, but also made the average Orc warrior feel strange. It was not clear what he believed in, but during the Eira Gwyn war he had turned up to battles and sieges where he then focused on plundering and capturing specific objectives, despite what the Orc chieftans tried to tell him what to do. It was also noted that any Orc who tried to tell him what to do met with a very sticky fate, meaning that he was left alone and any help he gave was gratefully accepted, even if it wasn't that helpful.

The Red Back tribe was the largest tribe of Forest Goblins and they were sick of the Orcs. It was bad enough fearing the Beastmen of the forests, without having to avoid the new influx of Orcs. After a while they decided to get their shaman, White Tail, to do something. The shaman decided to consult their god Araknorak, Red Back.  After a slow start the sky darkened and the drumming and dancing of the ceremony took on a life of it's own. The clouds darkened and spiders swarmed through the trees, White Tail and his assistants danced and let the sacred spiders bite them. Then at it's height, White Tail was struck by green lightening and from the sky and fell to the ground. Red Back emerged from the cave and stood over the prostate goblin before lifting him and cocconing him in silk.

The spider remained guardian for the rest of the night as the other goblins looked on in fear and awe, As dawn approached, a ripping sound could be heard. From the cocoon White Tail emerged. HE looked around at the hundreds of goblins and spoke! He told the Goblins he had ea vision. He would lead the Goblins against the Beastmen at skull rock clearing, freeing up the entrances to the Snarling Moon Night Goblin tribes caves. The Night Goblins would be in their debt and free to collect the forest mushrooms that were prized by their shamans. They would ally with the forest goblins. White Tail then assured the awe struck Goblins that they could then order Finbad to join them and he would, because he would see the Goblins power at defeating the Beastmen. They could then take on the Empire and be free from hiding from bigger foes. Foes would hide from them!

From the darkness of the woods an unseen watcher smiled and lent on his staff, tired from the spell he had just cast. Gomidja's plan was beginning, he would take Finbad to watch the battle at Skull Rock and from here he would build an army!

Pictures

All done with a poor camera which is unfortunately over harsh on the highlights.

A group photograph of the Orcs' and Goblins' ready for war.

Finbad with Harboth's archers in the background

Above is Finbad the Unrepentant with Harboths archers who joined his army in the interest of violence and looting. Harboth's archers were a Christmas present in about 1989. I never painted them until I started collecting Orcs' and Goblins' a few years ago. They are one of a few links in this army to my past gaming.

A Black Orc hero and White Tail, the shaman who thinks he is general

I basically built the platform for White Tail to give the impression of grandeur and the potential for magic power. All of this is borrowed from Gamidja who has his own (non- Orcish) aims and oacts but needs an army that would not follow him alone. Finbad is also Gamidjas puppet but is manipulated differently with Gomidja persuading him that they both have the same aims.

Lunarus, forge world shaman and one of my favourite miniatures.

The army is very strongly shamans. I noticed this as I painted it, but it fits with the narrative I'm developing for my battles with unseen and unknown power struggles between magic users of all races being partly behind all battles. This is above even some generals who never truly understand the wars they fight.

Red Back

Finally a shot of Red Back, the model that I got form my wife for my birthday three years ago that re-started my Orc and Goblin collection. The photgraph definitely doesn't do it justice and I will eventually get some better daylight ones done. I used an airbrush for the first time while painting this and I learnt quite a bit about painting as I did it. It is not the best thing I've painted, but  it is the largest and it showed me how inspiring some of games Workshops modern models are, despite what some older gamers say. In the bottom left corner are some Nigh Goblin archers. I really didn't want to paint such a big unit in balck. In fact I almost didn't bother with such a big unit but felt it fitted with my idea of how goblins would fight. In the ed I used brown in instead of black since I felt it gave a better, more gritty look and seperates them from the cartooney image of Night Goblins in 4th. and 5th. edition.

I won't list the exact army here, since, as I mentioned, I am still trying to work out how to play games based on third edition rules with some models that did not exsist in that version. There for there is not an exact list or points values. But then who needs point values, this is narrative gaming with each model and unit having it's own story!

More on Orcs', my solution!

I spent slightly more than 24 hours getting round to writing this, basically once again my world sped up and I had to drop things to keep up!

In my last post I basically had a negative rant about Warhammer Orcs' nad found that they were at best simply a copy of human raiders, complete with a few nasty overtones. Why bother with Orcs' when you have the more interesting chaos raiders? Or Beastmen from the forests? Or Skaven from below?

Does the idea that they rape and pillage make them different from many historical armies and the perception of most raiding forces? Why not focus on the nastier and more mysterious Fimir than the neanderthal turned green skin Orcs? At least the Fimir have an air of mystery mixed with real horror and revulsion, a left over factor of their source material from Celtic mythology.

Orcs going into third editon had no real culture and were just a brutish bad guy who the best that could be offered was some comic writing. Yet the solution to this came from Games Workshops development of Orcs, starting with 40K.

Around 1991 games workshop developed the concept of the orc for 40K, basically making it the Ork. I think the same problems pervaded with the orc being a bad guy with a gun but little else. The big developments were the idea that Orc society was something that was inherent in the minds of the orcs, not some constantly changing political society that humans live in. Culture amongst the orcs did not develop, it was programmed into them, they just knew how to develop weapons, technology and so on. Hierarchy was simply the largest at the top and war was simply an instinct, not a means to achieve something (although this instinct did allow them to plan and implement grand ideas such as conquest and enslaving so that they could build for more conquest and enslaving.)

With this the concept of the Ork changed too. Language was not taught, it was known, Orks didn't have family  unit, they grew from fungus and then joined tribes, conveniently getting rid of the long standing sore point of Ork wifes waiting and bringing up little Orks in a family unit based society. The reproduction of Orks was done by spores with the spores being released when Orks were happiest, basically when they were violent and at war.

Now returning to Orcs, the Warhammer equivalent. fourth edition hinted that these things occurred and introduced a more unified idea of Orcs. I can't see why it doesn't serve the Old World that was presented in WFRP better to have this idea of Orcs. Basically do away with the idea that Orcs (and goblins) are like some kind of raiding barbarians with a tribe based on family bringing up their young. Replace it with the simple facts that Orcs occur like fungus and war is their instinct. Tribes are built around this and can occur almost out of no where. While orc settlements can be found, caves can be infested with goblins and so on, there is no such thing as an orc kingdom or goblin kingdom, just large groups who from alliances behind the biggest and strongest leaders.

Orcs' in my Warhammer world are like this and this is the background I will base my games on, giving them a different purpose to other races. So:

Orcs and Goblins

The Myth

Consisting of tribes of brutal raiders from the badlands, intent on pillage and destruction. The abomination of the Half Orc shows their intentions. They will plunder and at times invade for territory. They are followers of dark gods' and pure evil. It is only the fighting amongst themselves that prevents them form completely over running the Old World.

The Reality

Although goblins often have malign intent, the Orcs main aim is simply violence and as much of it as possible. The Orcs are produced from spawns, like fungus, which grows more orcs, goblins, squigs or snotlings where ever it falls. They have similar intelligence levels to humans but rarely study, with most of their skills coming from instinct and the only learning done is learning better ways to be violent. They gather in tribes which are little more than collections of warriors behind the strongest leader who then takes the orcs to war. The stronger leaders tend to unite several tribes although  this rarely lasts long due to infighting. The more violence the Orcs experience, the more spores they release, resulting in the more Orcs. The Darklands to the east are over run by Orcs as a result. hHowever their inherent disorganisation has also meant other factions have been able to enslave and dominate large numbers of Orcs.

One of the horrors of fighting Orcs is the notion of half Orcs. Although rare, they tend to live longer than most Orcs due to possession of a judgement that is not based on simply finding the best way to commit acts of violence. A half Orc occurs when Orc spores infect a dying human or recently deceased corpse If the human was living he soon dies of a raging infection. Basically this corpse nourishes the Orc which as it grows absorbs some of it's DNA. Normal Orcs are asexual, while half Orcs can be make, female or neither. Some can even reproduce and legend has it that some noble families have Orc blood in them. This last factor has been exploited by the Chaos Dwarfs in their experiments with breeding different strains of Orc.

The truth about Orcs. An Orctober post.

While keeping with the notion of giving my ideas of background based on the Warhammer world I thought I would write something about Orcs. Firstly my one completed. army is an Orc and Goblin one. Secondly I have, at one stage or another, played Orcs in all Fantasy games I've played. Finally it is Orctober so I should do a post about Orcs!

A bit of background and the problem with Orcs.
The history of Orcs in fantasy has been well documented by a lot more knowledgeable  writers than me. I don't want to get into debates about their historic meanings or if Orc really means foreigner and reflected a subtext of racism in Tolkien's work, as interesting as such debates can be. Having said that I do find it a bit strange that a man who was a Roman Catholic and believed in the Latin Mass, would of had that much of a distrust of anything foreign.

For me, though, the idea of Orcs as the big, ultimate bad guys stemmed from their use as basically foot soldiers in Lord of the Rings. My interest in green skins generally, came from the Goblins in The Hobbit. Malign Goblins living on the out skirts of society, riding wolves and attacking strangers fired my imagination when I read The Hobbit.  In particular the description of Wolf Riders gave a sense of evil at the side of society.

Warhammer originally showed goblins as similar to this with their harder bigger cousins the Orcs being a separate entity (they even had a paint called Orc Brown. In my D&D games and AD&D games I tried reflecting the Goblins in this Tolkienesque vision with Orcs, if used at all, bein g the hired muscle for evil. Even as I started appreciating the subtlety of using a group of Orcs to provide a good kicking, they tended to be the hired henchmen of evil, not a force in themselves.

By the end of WFB 2nd edition Orcs and Goblins were part of one big hooligan family called the Green skins. This was reinforced with WFRP and the decision in Warhammer armies to stop you taking an all Orc or all Goblin army with a compulsory choice of 20 Orc archers and 20 orc boyz coupled with a compulsory 20 goblin stickas and goblin spearmen. The reasoning behind this basically turned the Goblins into a subservient race. It was no longer the Goblins who brought down the dwarfs but Green Skins in general.

This helped make the Green skins more of a faction in themselves and the notion of dangerous wilderness was taken over by chaos in the form of beastmen, the chaos wastelands and an enemy within (and under if you count the skaven). They made an excellent replacement and the only time I used Goblinoids in WFRP when I was Games Master was with the encounter with Elf Wardancers originally printed in White Dwarf (an encounter that is all the more interesting if someone is playing a miserable and angry Giant Slayer who has little time for Elves at his best but also has little hope of fighting the troupe and surviving, But I digress).

This left the Goblinoids, now dominated by a hierarchy starting with the Orcs, at a bit of a loose end narrative wise. On the one hand you had a competent army that was portrayed as a kind of fantasy group of football hooligans, ready to take on all comers, living only for the fight wandering and marauding. This was fine for the tabletop battles and provided me with a lot of amusement. I happily let chaos take the sinister threat role and started collecting Orcs, or proxying them with card due to not being able to afford a full army, as did nearly everyone my age back then.

On the other hand Orcs were meant to be organised in some way.. They had tribes and they lived in the unexplored darklands.  While they could be used as mercenaries because of their love of a fight, it is also suggestive that they had some kind of family life with reproduction being between male and female orcs. It was also possible between Orc and human with half Orcs being mentioned in WFRP and WFB 3rd edition, suggesting rape is one of the things the marauding bands of Orcs get up to. Jack Yeovil, in the over-rated Drachenfels, mentions Drachenfels Orcs abusing young boys stating

"A raiding party of Orcs from the fortress had made sportof his two little sons, and killed them afterwards." Drachenfels 1989 p.13

In the short story Red Thirst Jack Yeovil again uses this metaphor, writing "Always he allowed the goblins to pick out a woman or two , or perhaps a comely youth, and watched them at their sport." Red Thirst 1990 p.15

This is distasteful. But it is also a fine picture fo Orcs and Goblins. The problem is they are not really Orcs or Goblins with these descriptions. The two aspects above could very easily describe any human group of warriors and the things the Orcs do have been done throughout history. From Viking Raiders and Genghis Khan through to modern wars in Africa. From Operation Barbarossa through to modern neo-Nazi thugs, there is nothing particularly Orcish about Orcs other then their look. Their stats are similar to humans, their organisation is similar to some human armies and their background is no different from thuggish humans. You begin to wonder, why have Orcs at all when you could have humans and followers of chaos fulfilling their role while fitting the Warhammer world just as well. They are not ultra thugs when compared to some historical raiders and the fact that writers feel  the need to get them to take part in child rape to make them scary, something plenty of humans have done during war, means to me, that these writers are struggling to make Orcs and Goblins different from humans and to develop a fantasy race that has a purpose ands is realistic.

The rape stuff and half Orcs comes across as desperate and is covered in a more scary way with the Fimir. By drawing Celtic myth, a race was created that is different, repugnant and playing on genuine fears, while, through the use of Daemons and the tribes matriarch,  is not doing something that could just as easily be done with a human tribe. The same with Beastmen. While making a good table top force, Orcs became something that was redundant in the Warhammer background.

I will try and look at solutions to this in my next post tomorrow.

After months of nothing, some Miniatures.

This blog was always going to be a bit irregular, basically being a random collection of my thoughts on gaming. Sadly I haven't had much time for the blog lately with the very little time I have for my hobby being spent on, well, my hobby. However I did have a burst of energy last night which might be the beginning of doing more.

I managed to finish three models last night. As with all of my painting, none of them are particularly well done, but do show my rough style which keeps me happy and reflects my rough personality and what I want to get out of my hobby. Namely relaxed, a bit loose but with personality.

The first one is two reaper models. One designed by Tim Prow and sold as a dark cleric, the other one a variation on the traditional overloaded adventurer also sold by Reaper.

I painted the model as an Amethyst wizard for Warhammer, if I bother using colour magic rules.  Personally I find it hard to imagine the 'dark cleric' being used for anything else and I get the feeling Tim Prow always had Warhammer in mind when he did the original sculpt. I added the overladen adventurer behind as faithful retainer, possible apprentice. This means that the mode would be wrongly based for the playing strictly by the rules and could not be used in competitive games.

But as I don't care for that kind of thing and narrative is more important, I think it adds a lot to the model, including difficulty to paint due to the retainers detail. Basically in Warhammer, unless your using it for a small skirmish, a model represents between ten and twenty five actual people in my mind. Characters have their retinue with them. Wizards in particular are the most powerful of their type, way above the majority of wizards you would ever meet or play in the roleplaying version. I imagine they have a big group of staff, apprentices, juniors and bodyguards with them when they go into battle. I can also imagine really powerful dark wizards needing none of this who can easily take on twenty five heavily armed Orcs with enhancement spells that you don't need to show in the rules, in which case one model is one model. The important thing is remembering a model is simply showing the presence of  something, not literally representing the person (skirmish gaming, such as how 40K was intended,  of course, is slightly different as is some smaller scale gaming).

This is aimed at visually alluding to this. It doesn't take too much work with a friendly opponent to work out a couple of house rules to allow you to work round different base sizes. WFB second edition even had suggestions for this different basing and it adds to the narrative by giving the characters presence in my opinion.

The next models I painted are from Foundry's swashbuckling range. These were aimed at either small skirmish games or adding character to my empire army, perhaps to represent particular objectives on the table or to become part of an Empire baggage train. I painted them very quickly and both look heroic without adopting the over the top look of that scale. They also reflect my approach to gaming, trying not to just represent heroes but believable narrative and fit in with the Warhammer world of WFRP first edition rather than that of later editions that lead to Age of Sigmar.

The earlier Warhammer World of WFRP First Edition and the pre-seventh edition was something that was more akin to a setting where youn played out your narratives and something that I aim to get back to. As such, I will show in future posts how I see this world and plan to develop my armies in it in the future games I play. After all, thirty years on the slow creep of doom presented in The Enemy Within carries more possibility and excitement than any sudden apocalypse caused by an over sized, over priced model called Nagash. I hope to devote the next few posts to show how I am developing that world and narrative with my gaming.

What I game with (part three: the army lists)

Army lists are a strange thing. On the one hand they provide a bit of order so the an army is both balanced and represents the background a game is set in. (As I have mentioned, this is not 'fluff' unless you think that background is light and no real substance to a game. An approach I avoid like the plague!) On the other hand it encourages the belief that all armies must look a certain way and must conform to this and the game is about maximizing forces to beat an opponent, not participating in the playing out of an event!

When reviewing Ravening Hordes, Warhammer second editions army lists and expansion, Rick Priestly stated that the book was not a scenario (like the previous 2nd edition releases) "but a scenario construction kit." (White Dwarf 90 June 1997 p.2 I knew there was some reason for keeping a magazine for 29 years!)

Some army lists yesterday.

'Warhammer Armies' the third edition army lists states that

"The purist approach is to use army lists as they stand, with no alteration , and to use the rules for scenery deployment and the like as given in Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Alternatively, the players may decide to allow a certain amount of leeway ('if you let me use an extra Level 25 Hero, I'll let you use your homemade Orc Ornithopter'). Scenery could be organized by discussion rather than random generation, with players using special buildings or terrain models."
Nigel Stillman and Friends 'Warhammer Armies' 1988 p.4

I would also like to point to the statement on p.5 of this book which states "Players shouldn't feel over restricted in their choice of models...these guidelines have been formulated to make games easier to play- not to restrict players or make them use specific models."

Over the years many army lists have been released by Games Workshop and other companies. Some have continued in the tradition of facilitating the playing of games. Others seem to be more geared towards getting people to buy models. A particular pastime has arisen in the past 10 years on the internet involving gamers moaning about army lists making armies overpowered/ underpowered. Those of you that have read my last two posts won't be surprised to think that I feel they are missing the point and if the army list is that much of a problem, they shouldn't use it and agree another way of forming a force with their opponent! As suggested, lists should just be a tool to get a representative force for a scenario or campaign, not to enslave choices. If you are going to use an army list (sometimes I do, sometimes I don't) ask three simple questions.

1) Does it represent what you want it to represent?
By looking at the background of an army it is possible to give you an idea of the force you want to represent. A narrative should already be forming in your mind about what you are building and why. For a scenario you should already have a strong narrative, likewise a campaign should give you an idea of the starting point for your army with it's history up to that point.

Historical gaming enables you to actually read up about the forces that you are going to use and then search for a force that represents this. Likewise, fiction can be an inspiration. My current interest in Warhammer started with being given an Araknorak as a present and building an army around this. The list I used was the Warhammer eigth edition 'Orc and Goblin' army book. But this list was used as a guide to builfd the force I wanted, not the definitive list. I considered using other list published but stuck with this guide, adapting it for the version of the rules I play with (see my last post). What I didn't allow was for the list to dictate what I was my force would look like.

Some lists are specifically built for campaigns (for example the lists in Forge Worlds Imperial Armour books or Flames of Wars briefings). These tend to need little work done to them since they are based on the background. Conversely, other lists are simply aimed at all games with in a rules set. These generic lists can be used to represent a narrative army with some work. But they also seem to suffer from the Max-Min competitive gaming mind set. basically the ideas that you must take this and never take that in order to win your games. Basically ignore that, use what you want and move on to the second question to gain balance.

An example of some excellent campaign themed army lists which can be used to add to narrative, rather than simply restricting your force.

Finally, it is also worth mentioning that some lists expect you to buy and assemble massive units of rank and file just so you can play the special models you want to play. Ask yourself is this really necessary? Will adjusting this aspect of the list really matter? If it does perhaps you should use another army list and if there is no other try a different rules set. After all these are tools to allow you to play, not restrictions to prevent you from playing!

2) Will it allow balance with in the game I am playing?

So you carefully select the list that will provide the guide for your themed force and then you realise something, it is looking a bit different from the other army. In fact it has bigger, harder units and they are all elite. Now it can be interesting to play out famous massacres and walk overs, with the challenge being  allowing some of your army to survive through heroic actions, if you want the narrative to continue beyond one game, every game being a walk over (or massive defeat) soon becomes boring. Likewise, having your army composed of if it's unit variety your after)lite units might be interesting for a one off game but will soon become boring and will not produce narrative gaming.

3) How can I adjust it to do these things?
The best way of adjusting is too have a narrative in mind when assembling your army. The list is a guide and should be used to work with the narrative and adjusted with it. Always have a theme for your army, giving an idea of why they are at war who they are fighting and let this then be reflected wit the list you choose. From here adjust the list as you want and talk to your opponent about adjustments used.

These adjustments can take the  form of altering the profiles if your list is form a different edition of the game (but gives a better variety of troops or is more reflective of the background your after. Other changes can be adding or taking away troops, ignoring minimums or maximums and so on. The main thing is to get the army you want  to collect and play with represented on the table and not to be slave to someone else's idea of what that army should look like.

As a rough guide I find that for every adjustment made to a list that gives it an advantage,  you should also make an adjustment that reduces its abilities elsewhere. However it is entirely up to you. The only real rule is to stick to a narrative since your developing an army and a story aimed at making your collection more than game pieces and also discussion with your opponent of both the narrative and how you see it playing. You then have a starting point for your scenarios.

With this and the previous two posts in mind, I am now going to stop the lecturing posts and continue this blog writing about what I am doing for my hobby and why. This will probably take the form of sporadic posts about what I've been painting and  the background I'm using, with a few comments on how I play the games. I also aim to put up my recently completed Orc and Goblin army to show how the vague principles I write about actually work.

What I Game With (part two: the games)

I have already outlined my approach to gaming with the introduction to this blog. With this post I want to show how I use rules system. It is a post that could potentially go on for ever as I go through every rules system that I like and want to try. So instead of doing this I will focus on one games system, the bi one that was the first wargame I played and one that has a rich enough background and rules to support roleplay. This post will focus on Warhammer!

Before I get distracted with writing about the different editions and intricacies of the rules I want to share this interview with Rick Priestly. In the interview Rick Priestly is talking about the inspiration for the design of his game 'Black Powder'. I have not had the pleasure of trying this game but the interview does give some insights into the design process and also how the Games Workshop designers approached gaming. Rick Priestly describes playing games (not necessarily Games Workshop games) with the Perry twins, Jervis Johnson, Ali Morrison, Dave Andrews and Tim Adcock. All of them were big names in the history of Games Workshop and have made a significant contribution to either the look or the design of the games. I believe only Jervis Johnsons still works full time for Games Workshop, but I could be wrong about some of the others.

The most telling bit is how Rick Priestly describes their gaming. He does not start by saying "We decided to try out the new Codex and suddenly realised they had 'nerfed' half my units so put the models away with disgust." Nor does he say "We play to try out as many unbeatable combinations as an army list allows. We don't really care for the background, it's the winning we love." He certainly doesn't say "We realised that Games Workshop had stopped supporting our preferred rules set a month or so earlier, so Alan Perry twins took all his models outside and burnt them!" Yet what he does say is very telling.

Rick Priestly starts by talking about how the palying of games were a social event ("we’d turn up of an evening, gobble a curry, start a game and the two sides would just begin to engage around about midnight by which time my pumpkin was ready outside"). He then goes on to menton how the rules he developed with Jervis Johnson for Black Powder were based upon allowing a game to be played in these circumstances and to enable quick movement of large numbers of figures that were in their collections. The rules were there for providing solutions to problems with the way they wanted to play, not for dictating the way they played.

Returning to Warhammer, it is possible to see the strengths and the weaknesses of the various editions coming from this style of play and games design. The first edition of Warhammer was meant as something to do with your roleplaying figures. It also meant that players were more likely to buy more figures for the parent company. An immediate clash of styles can be seen. Roleplaying can have lots of rules or very few rules, but it always relies on some form of initiative from the games players to make a session successful.  Wargaming can have very complex rules or very few rules. But it always needs some kind of firm basis to cover basics to enable tactical competition. In other words it needs agreed rules on movement and combat, followed by an agreement on what the game is actually representing (Company level combat? skirmish? overall command sweep or individual unit commanders having the initiative? and so on).

By the second edition, Warhammer had moved from it's roleplaying roots and had an agreed set of combat rules that could be used in most scenarios. Work on the game was required from all players, with a Games Master being helpful and a scenario being very useful (even if it was simply the Dwarfs had to defend a bridge from Goblins attempting to raid their territory. This was fine between friends and players familiar with roelplay scenarios or fantasy stories. But two unfamiliar players would be lost. Gamers who had a win at all costs mentality (rather than just enjoying the tactical challenges of  a specific scenario) were liable to take advantage. the attempts to set up Warhammer competiitons (or tournaments) had to deal with these problems. Cue third edition.

Third edition (building on Ravening Hordes supplement released earlier in 1997)  tried to sove these problems by keeping the possibility for narrative play but also by having rules fro nearly every possibility that could arise playing the game. It was suggested that a certain degree intelligence was needed while usingthe rules and that the majority of the rules were optional suggestions. With friendly play it worked fine. The Realm of Chaos warband skirmish system perfectly complemented the rules and everyone had fun. Or almost everyone. If you wanted to use all the rules, apart from having a  massive task of learning lots of rules for situations that might never arise, the flow of the game ground to a halt. This was fatal for competitive play, but then so what. It also turned players away who were a lot happier playing one of Games Workshops (or another companies) more streamlined games that had just as much tactical challenge. If you doubt me, compare third editon Warhammer to Space Marine/epic. Or Space Hulk. Or Blood Bowl. Or Dark Future or whatever you want. The problem was Warhammer was still fun to play and was good at putting an interesting background into action on the table top, allowing the players to develop depth and charaters to their armies. But Games Workshop needed a big selling game to keep selling it's models around. It tales a lot of investment ot build a Warhammer army and Games Workshop were very keen for people to invest!

So fourth focused on getting games played, removing ambiguity and the need for agreement over rues (or a games master) by having exact rules. And the problem developed, because to get more games played, you had to develop a system of rules that enabled to strangers to play each other, rather than one focused on people with common interests developing a narrative. Although the narrative role of gaming remained in place, this approach to rules gradually evolved into the mess that was eight edition; rules were like laws, the games were not representations of events but competitions between two equal armies and variation were discouraged with constant changing army books driven by the latest model releases being necessary to prevent even tournament gamers becoming bored.

"Don't you think were all focusing a bit too much on me, rather than maximizing our army list and using the tightness of the rules to defeat them? After all, I'll provide an unbalanced game and possession of the Necronomicon encourages fluff based play, distracting from the seriousness of fantasy wargaming tournaments."

Fourth and fifth edition are labeled 'Herohammer' because the game allowed interesting heroes but competition games abused this and built unstoppable heroes. The fact that this is only a problem with people who don't see the game as a development of a narrative, but as a competition to crush all opponents, was lost on many people. I see the real problem hitting home just before seventh edition. Lord of the Rings was a big seller, the remaining narrative based games had been pushed into a tiny part of the company called 'Specialist Games'. The rest had to be a big seller focused on getting models sold on mass, not the actual fun of playing.

So returning to the original point of this post, my approach to the rules. Rules are just a guideline, otherwise your missing the whole point of miniature wargaming. That is to play out a narrative with your collection of models. Third edition provides a great loose basis for fantasy games that only becomes rules heavy and hard to play if the rules are taken literally. Once you learn the basics for maneuvering and combat the rest is optional and can be added to are then away from. If something doesn't seem right, don't let it spoil your game, improvise anther rule. Warhammer third is just an example, the  same applies to every game I play and to be honest I'm happier for it even if it means that finding opponents becomes an almost impossible task (at times some tools for randomized decision making can be used for some solo play!)

So I'm saying, remember that wargaming is about fun and the rules are to facilitate fun, not provide constraints. If you are representing the events of a war, real or fantasy, the rulebook must be a guide and also allow almost any possibility to happen. For this to happen the rules don't need to be complex,  just flexible enough to allow the numerous possibilitys that the background offers to be played out.

What I Game With (part one; the models!)

I aim to have a loose approach to gaming, with the interaction of characters and the narrative being the basis for playing out of tactical challenges. I play a small number of games but seem to have ambitions to prepare for and play out a wide variety of games. I am happy to play some of these, such as Flames Of War, with home made card characters, with the background being more important and lack of time and funds preventing the purchase and painting of miniatures. Others, the collecting and use of models plays an important part, with the painting of a well sculpted model which represents an interesting character providing a large part of the inspiration to continue playing and develop this characters story. My painting skills are not  that great and due to dysgraphia, related to dyslexia, they will never improve. So a miniature inspiring me and firing my imagination is a vital part of enjoying it since I will never aim to display the finished product as a work of art.

There is now a large amount of companies providing decent miniatures and the ability to order using the internet means that any player is spoilt for choice.  But at the moment there are several companies I either keep returning to or have used a great deal in the past. Here is my summary of what I see they have to offer.

A modern Citadel/ Games Workshop Nurgle Champion (Left) next to a classic (1989-1990) Citadel Nurgle Sorcerer. Both from my slowly building/decaying Nurgle army. Both fulfilling my desire for character and individuality in models! Apologies for the poor photo, but it is not meant to illustrate my painting skills.

Old Citadel Miniatures
Not a separate company.  Although give Games Workshop time and they might develop a separate Forge World type company selling classic sculpts. They might of dropped the ball and lost what made them the leader of the market, but seem to be learning from their mistakes. However these old models form the corner stone of the Oldhammer movement and are the models that I originally got into gaming with.

I will not get into a debate about what is an old citadel miniature and what is a modern one or what counts as Citadel's golden era. However, I agree with the arguments that citadel started to change their design in 1992. This year marked the attempt of Games Workshop to grow (and pay debts) by deliberately aiming at a a younger audience. It also marked the beginning of the red era of painting. Models became a lot chunkier and cartoon like and generally moved away from what was a believable and heroic look.

Prior to this their are a number of classic models, with each sculpt being individual. They were produced in huge numbers with the variety dwarfing that offered by the modern collectibles' based company and meaning that no army was ever quite the same. I think part of the reason this happened was that the models were produced to compliment the games, rather than the games being a promotional tool for the miniatures. Games Workshop was happy to produce a large number of games and the sculptor's appeared to have more freedom to produce around their understanding of these games as opposed to having a strict brief focused on the large unit sizes needed for just two games.

I collect from all pre-1992 ranges, with a developing interest in the pre-slotta range. It is particularly interesting  discovering the variety of poses that plastic sculpts can't give you despite the variety of pieces these plastic sculpts come in.

It should be noted that not everything was gold from this era. I feel their are a large number of average sculpts and some that are plain bad. Introductions of things such as plastic arms for metal models and attempting to provide for regiments by having static variation on one model design did not help. But when they are good, old citadel models are great and more than pull their weight against the modern products from the same company.

They are widely available on the Ebay, with the average (and what should be the maximum) price being £8. It can get very costly if you want to build whole armies out of them. Their are also a large number of people who have noted the popularity of these models amongst collectors and aim to make as much money as possible from them. Generally you will see models that are over priced and it is worth weighting and continuing searching before paying an inflated price. It is also quite funny seeing some of the prices charged. Believe me, they are collectible but they really aren't as valueable as some people would have you believe.

New Citadel Miniatures
Actually I'm not sure if they are even called Citadel Miniatures anymore. But in my mind they'll always carry that name. The stereotypical image of the modern models' amongst who have fallen out of love with the modern Games Workshop output is of computer generated, over the top models lacking character and laden down with skulls. But like the older models the truth is slightly more complex. Basically they are a mixed bunch with some good and some bad and a lot of average.

Coinciding with Games Workshop winning the Lord of the Rings franchise, they improved the rest of their range, ditching the over the top cartoon images and while maintaining the heroic look, allowing the models to at least look vaguely realistic. Or as realistic as a fantasy range can look.

The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit range, like the films' and books' they are based on, are hard to fault. The only thing I can say about them is that I wish I own more of them. Hopefully I will be able to over the course of time. The Warhammer and Warhammer 40K models are also generally good, suffering from three main faults. The lack of variety that having a range mainly based on plastic kits provides, the tendency towards over the top exaggeration and the increasing move away from models useable in wargaming to huge models that are only really useable as collectors pieces.

The first problem would only really a problem if there wasn't a large amount of alternatives both from Games Workshops past and other miniature companies, to provide some variety for your army. Your third rank of spearmen doesn't need to look that interesting, they are basically casualty markers. Games Workshop tried designing their games so that you have to use more and more models. The best way round this is to ignore the 'need' for units of 50 elf spearmen or an army of 200 imperial guardsmen and not to even try such a boring painting exercise. Either play smaller games or use older rules sets which relied on less models. Don't assemble 50 versions of the same figure then torture yourself by turning your hobby into a repetitive painting task that goes on and on and on. Obvious? You'd think so, but there seems to be a large number of teenagers who are set on doing this and seem to enjoy doing it.

The second problem, the exaggeration, is an on going issue with Games Workshop. A human becomes a steroid crazed superman, a model can be seen to be evil because it is covered in skulls. This used to be unnecessary and the quality of the sculpts were used to build character rather than lots of muscles, skulls and weapons that are so big you would need a crane to lift the thing. This is one of the reasons why people stick to earlier citadel miniatures'. Personally I think some models are better than others. I would not touch the latest sigmarines produced for Age of Sigmar because of this. But I don't think it is a universal problem effecting everything they produce. Unless you believe Games Worksop when they say you can only use their models for their games it is simply a question of being choosey with what you buy. More specialist ranges tend not suffer from these problems. Forge World, for example, appears to be set on correcting problems with the range produced by their parent company and at one point Games Workshop started doing runs of mail order only miniatures. I guess they have worked out that over the top sells to their core audience and so have to keep at it for a large proportion of their range, toning down what they expect to sell to people who are not in their early teens and new to the hobby.

The move to huge models is part of Games Workshops attempt to make more profit from what is a shrinking market share. This is covered by the claim that they aren't a games company but a seller of collectibles. If this is true, then they sell some very nice collectible kits that are great for a modeller and useless for a game player. With 40K, a game I feel never really works with tanks because of the model size, huge tanks and war machines' are now sold, with the rules adjusted to encourage people to buy these. Never mind the fact that, as Rick Priestly once said,  this causes the scale to break down and so the game mechanics breakdown (if you fire a pistol at one end of a tank and the model standing at the rear of the tank  is almost our of range the principle f scale in the game is busted).  Pictures of 40K games that looked like traffic jams were printed in the late White Dwarf. All aimed at getting people to buy oversized models. Fantast  went the same way with increasingly big kits to represent Daemons, Heroes, monsters and so on. Nagash is the classic example. This model dwarfed regiments that were meant to represent 100 men (if 1 model represented 10-20 people) and appeared to be an excuse to get people to buy a £70 model conveniently boosting the turnover of a company that had been struggling over the previous year.

Of course the cost of the models also should be mentioned. The quality is good, but not that good. The prices regularly rise above the cost of inflation and you increasingly get less for more. While there are always people willing to pay the costs, the rises partly reflect the poor management of Games Workshop, a company that has increasingly rested on it's laurels and enjoyed no real competition has saturated the market with Space Marines and sold to teenagers who quickly give up the hobby due to no real support other than an increasingly hard sell and catalogues mascarading as a magazine. as the pointless updates to rules increase, with the occasional new unit demanding a full re-organisation of players collection in order to stay competitive, people sell their collections on Ebay at knock down prices meaning a bargain for people like me and increasingly desperate price rises to sell that recycled model design and give the image of a profitable company that has cornered the market through leading, not following the needs of their customers.

Reaper

Three adventurers, Rene, Margarat and Emily, outside an Inn on route to Bogenhafen from Nuln. An Imperial Merchant can be seen on the far right.

The above picture features three Reaper Miniatures used to represent WFRP characters used in the unique way my partner and I play that game (maybe more in a future post). The noble/ merchant is a Victoria miniature and the Coaching Inn was assembled by my super skilled partner who will not paint miniatures or play wargames but was very keen to try the modelling workshop articles and house building I showed her in my classic White Dwarfs'.

These three quite neatly illustrate what you get from Reaper. They are characterful models which are primarily designed for use with roleplay, although can easily be used for wargaming. There is a very wide variety of models and they easily out do the limited number of heroes currently offered by citadel. People who are primarily painters might complain about reduced detail on the sculpts, particularly on the 'Bones' polymer range, however being mainly a gamer and collector I'm happy with this.

The models are in slightly different scale to citadel, having a slightly more realistic look, next to citadels heroic sculpts. Yet they work very well with pre-1992 citadel mini's and most other ranges that don't adopt the massively over sized modern citadel heroic scale.

Finally, the best bit is the price, providing cheap well sculpted alternative for all games :-)

Perry Miniatures
Price was the first thing I noticed about Perry Miniatures. The ex-citadel sculpters historical range sells characterfully sculpted, historically accurate models for historical wargaming at giving more than twice the number of models in their box sets that Games Workshop mange in theirs. Even making allowances for differences in the amount of plastic used due to size difference, this shows how you are not getting value for money with modern Games Workshop box sets.

Now the average reader of this blog is probably wondering why I'm including what is an historical miniatures company amongst the list of companies I use. While I have an interest for historical wargaming, other than Flames of War, I do not participate (although I am very tempted to try a campaign based in the War of the Roses).  Perry Miniatures, at first glance, do not stand up well against the range of Fantasy models available. Although the sculpting can not be faulted, the models are made in true scale rather than the varying degrees of heroic scale used in fantasy.

But then you realise peple come in all shapes and sizes (go on, have a look). A large over sized model can stand next to a smaller Perry one and look OK providing their is some consistency. Thus, Perry Miniatures have provided me with a large number of perfectly sculpted rank and file models to populate the old world (or at least my imagined version of the old world). This in turn enhances the fantasy elements by, in my opinion, giving the games a clear relation to the real world.

Grenadier Miniatures/ Mirliton
Grenadier miniatures was a rival to Citadel in the '80s. I understand they were a US run company that was mainly aimed at the Dungeons and Dragons market. The modles they produced had a similar flavour to Citadels, although seem to lack some fo the humour that is apparent with early Citadel. They tend to have a distinct style but also mix well with Citadel models from the same era.

Currently, a sizeable proportion of their range is being re-cast by Italian company Mirliton. I recommend looking at it, particularly if you want a more old school style of model that is not reliant upon the cold precisions of computer design. In particular I recommend looking at the monsters, wood elves and barbarians. But just generally browse, since the whole point of this post is to show there is more than just Citadels current range and back catalogue.

 Victoria Miniatures

An unexpected final choice for this list? Well not really. Victoria Miniatures is  a small Australian company that I have bought from a couple of times. I chose them to represent the large number of small manufacturers who produce interesting, well sculpted but slightly different models that can bring games to life. All that it takes is a little hunting using the internet. The Spanish Inquisition above are an example of their work and a I find it hard to think of a 28mm game they would not brighten up (unless you area tournament gamer and take your games very seriously). The point of the hobby is to have fun and help to survive the alienation and stresses that everyday life can bring. As such, it is important to have fun with every aspect of it including collecting and to let the models you have in your collection represent exactly what you want not what a games manufacturer wants. The days of relatively huge companies dominating wargaming have gone and it is worth embracing the variety and using this as a way of actualising what you imagined and want to imagine on the table top.

By using the large variety of manufacturers, my gaming is probably looked down upon by purists playing both modern games and Oldhammer. The argument is that the collecting and building armies using a limited pool gives the satisfaction. I see that, but that is not what I aim to get from my gaming. I am not simply collecting, I am trying to play out narratives and the use if miniatures enables this but does not take precedence over the importance of having fun attempting to play  out and represent a narrative using the theatre of wargaming.