Five months of peace!

Or at least it would seem like that for anyone who has bothered looking at my blog. Since I last updated, not a great deal has happened with my hobby, with the pressures of the real world keeping me busy. I have not been completely free of gaming though. I have managed to begin what will be my long term project. This is the narrative campaign based on the story line for Weisburg, incorporating development of the characters and further nations. With this, when I say long term, I really mean long term and is to be something burning in the background for the next ten years. It should shape how I develop the fantasy side of my hobby and will be very slow moving providing me with satisfaction of developing a narrative and characters but not much for the spectators. All the fantasy painting I plan will have some role with this, even if they ultimately end up being used with other projects.

So, here is a quick summary of the little progress I made with this over the last 5 months.

Painting
I have done little painting, but the painting I have done is mainly aimed at adding to my citadel free Empire army. As I mentioned, I am aiming to build my own world through a long narrative campaign and these miniature are related to it.

This is a Bright wizard (named Feuer Gehen) and is attached to Prince Otto's banner. Basically I used this model as an excuse to practice painting motion and red, aiming to vary the red giving the impression of both movement and flames, without actually painting the flames. It was the first miniature I had painted for a while and because of this I'm quite happy with the result. The miniature is a modern production of classic Ral Partha Storm Shaman.

This model was an experiment with painting armour and is a grenadier miniature. He represents a champion of law and I plan to expand on the background given for the Gods of law in the WFRP rule book.

Finally, here is a Midlam Miniatures bard in front of a cottage I modelled using the old White Dwarf Modelling workshop articles. Like most of the stuff I paint, he is not done to a particularly high standard, but I included him as an excuse to mention how great Midlam Miniatures were. They basically produce good quality cheap miniatures suitable for roleplay and filling out the ranks of armies that are not based on over scaled, cartoonish models. I have more of these to paint and will include them here when I have done them.

I am now painting at a rate of about one model every 3 weeks, with each model painted in one sitting in an evening. I want to paint more but have no time and so my painting skills are suffering a bit. but I still find it enjoyable to try and bring some life to models so it will remain the core of my attempts at escaping from the pressures of the real world.

Actual Gaming

Having no real time has meant a limited amount of gaming. But I have manged to start my narrative campaign, writing suitable background for Orc and Goblin and Empire armies. I have produced a Might Empires style map and begun movement of banners and a narrative to justify the movement.

Recently I did manage a battle between Empire troops and Goblins, resulting in the capture of White Tale and defeat of Goblins despite embarrassing defeats for some Empire regiments.

Facing down advancing Goblins and a rampaging Snotling Pump Wagon.

The main problems of my last game of WFB 3rd. Edition remained. In particular, the pointlessness of rolling to hit, rolling to injure then rolling to save stuck out and almost painfully slowed the game down. It also stuck out as unrealistic. If some one hits you with a sharp sword and you have no armour, then you will be injured, it won't bounce off a bone because you are a bit tougher than the  person hitting you with a sharp sword. I think in the future the roll to injure table will be ignored, with perhaps a modifier to the armour save for particularly strong creatures or tough monsters.

White Tail struggling to command some Snotlings and a Troll. He currently lives in a cage in an Imperial Baggage train facing daily interrogation by Imperial Wizards and execution when they have gained any enough information from him.

The second problem was the lack of command rules. Basically it makes no difference who is the general and what he is doing, the forces can move as the player wants them to and according to plan. I propose to try and experiment with my next game and use the Warmaster activation rules. Basically this allows no moves without orders other than initiative based moves when the enemy are virtually on top of you. Hopefully this will add amore tense tactical angle that will bring the characters of the commanders to life instead of the current situation where they are basically just better soldiers and everyone knows what they are doing, despite the fog of war.

I will feed back on how these changes work and if the game of Warhammer remains the same. They are in the spirit of Oldhammer and making the game more interesting and narrative based, rather than bogged down in rules, although a quick look at some of the people in the Oldhammer community suggests that I risk being burned as a heretic for trying such things.

Until I get to write about these experiences, all the best to all the fellow middle aged gamers out there.