Realms of Chaos, some thoughts...

After our first game of Realms of Chaos in a good many years what are the main things that I have either remembered or thanks to the experience of age been able to see about the game.

1. The system is unfair. By its very nature random tables are unfair, it only take two pieces of luck to really place leagues between two champions. Being a level 20 wizard averaged out with a level 5 vampire really does place my champion in a different league to my brothers level 15 hero. This perhaps is obvious, we certainly knew it in our youth but perhaps here with only two warbands the difference is more marked, on a big table with many warbands things will average out a bit more.
2. Slaaneshi warbands will find it harder to grow than Khornate ones, particularly if the champion is not capable of throwing offensive spells around. A Khorne champion picks up reward points just for killing in hand to hand, a Slaanesh champion needs to use magic.
3. Variety is the spice of life. Now it was a fun game, I hope even for my brother who did find himself in a position to cause damage but unable to win but the same two warbands fighting each other are going to need something more than just a pitched battle to retain the fun.
4. Missile fire is not decisive, perhaps because of the board size and the way we both got stuck in quickly missile fire played a minor roll in the battle. It could also be that beastmen are just great troops to face missile fire with. 
5. It would be good to have a little more flexibility to arm the troops with basic weapons within reason. The addition of just a double handed weapon to the champion would have improved my brothers lot. Though the option to give Beastmen double handed weapons is always there, something to consider. 

Thoughts and lessons specifically for my warband:

1. Being half-vampire rocks. Normally the stats for a giant wolf are a little worse than a level 5 vampire in most ways except for movement. However they are as good or better than a half level 5 vampire so turning into a wolf is a no brainer.
2. The need to summon the numbers that make up my warband and to transform into a wolf does give an opponent at least a turns grace to exploit.
3. Skeletons are very fragile.
4. Level 15 Skeleton champions are not very fragile and do kick butt.

How to improve:

1. Mix things up with some secondary warbands to be played (within the confines of the game)  to be as mean as possible to the other player rather than to build and grow and play on the day.
2. Scenarios with different win conditions and even given scenarios specific rewards to win. This would have to be judged fairly to ensure you weren’t just going for the good stuff. 
3. Consider using some of the improvements to the campaign system, in L&D.

Realms of Chaos Warbands, first blood.

So over the weekend my brother and I played through our first couple of warband games. I've just put together a little battle report and though I have some musings on how the game went, its late and I'll post them another day.

For now here is the report hope you enjoy:

The Realm of Chaos (well my bit).

My brother is over tomorrow for one of our now and then games and we have decided to test out our Realms of Chaos warbands to hopefully gain some much needed experience and who knows an advancement or two.

Now I usually ply on at least a 6' by 4' table but we have decided to go smaller, 4' by 3'. I have such a board painted a good grass green, not so good for the chaos wastes, what I really wanted was barren terrain and quick. With not enough time for sand and glue and paint I chose what has become my go to cheat solution for the busy Oldhammer Dad (Dadhammer?).

Textured PDF files can when used in the right places look great and last night I made what I hope is a rather fetching board for our game tomorrow With the off cuts of the textured sticky paper there was enough to cover some depron for some simple scatter terrain. Anyhow here is the board:

The field, er, board of battle.

The other end, not bad for an evenings work and less than a fiver for pdfs.

A close up.

A Champions eye view looking out across the Valley of K'chin.

Oldhammer weekend and Oldhammer blog resurrected.

I figure anyone coming here already knows about the Oldhammer weekend we (I say we but I mainly mean Gaj) have been arranging. However on the off chance of catching interested people I figured it was worth posting up here as well.

So  the dates to remember are 31/8/13 to 1/9/13, the place to go is the spiritual home of citadel and the actual home of Foundry at the er.. Foundry, Nottingham, England.  Our hosts are the Ansells who need no introduction. The guests, Oldhammerers one and all.

There is lots planned but the main thing is to get involved and plan something yourself. Join the forum and get talking.

On a similar note with so much going on I’ve decided to re-launch the Oldhammerblog with what I hope is a cleaner cooler look. It was just a tool to get us all talking back last summer before Treps stepped up and hosted us a forum. There was a lot of great discussion but with the forum really taking off the poor little thing fell by the wayside.

However there is so much going on now a non personal news site that bangs the drum only for Oldhammer is perhaps a good idea, we have some great contributors already signed up form last summer. Now  I may be able to prod them into giving news worthy updates but even in their absence I’ll try to make myself useful updating with links to all significant happenings in the Oldhammersphere.

Fight for the pleasure.

Every self respecting 80’s Realms of Chaos Champion loves themselves a bit of Heavy Metal and when it comes to Oldhammer metal, well I’m afraid you can keep your Bolt thrower there is only one band that really reigns over the chaos wastes for me, Iron Maiden. To that end I’ve decided that my champion needs an anthem. From now on every appearance he  makes the following music will play just like with the entrance of a modern fighting champion. It may only be in my head but it will be playing.

Now I challenge the other champions out there, particularly those of the blood god to out awesome me with their anthem.

ADnD n DnD again!

Bit late in the day (like a month) as I've had my head in Warhammer and my DnDing has gone by the wayside but...

Wizards have re-released the pdfs of early DnD/ADnD modules and books. 


                                            

 

Great news, these haven't been available online from a legal source for some time,  ebay prices can vary and well I'm missing a few gems from the collection. I'll still happily be using LL to play, the rules are so much easier to use but nice to have these back in print.

Temple of elemental evil, you will be mine. You can't see it but I'm doing a happy dance now.

Goblins are green...

Ok here we have some nice 80's citadel sculpts, armed with spears, shields and javelins just as Warhammer armies would have us do. And why not with a BS 1 better than WS it doesn't hust to be able to chuck some javelins as you charge. Anyway I digress, these guys have arcane armorials fore their shield design which I copied over to their banner. Needing something to put in the centre where the boss goes on the shield I opted for the easy substitution of an eye. So here I present my new gobbo unit, THE EVIL EYE BOYZ!

I haven't got the champion done yet and another rank so it will be five complete ranks of six when finished. They will also sub for the pig stikkas in Forenrond's last stand. I have another unit of thirty citadel spears and thirty marauder goblins to add. Only now I've been distracted by RoC...