Octopod Command Squad

These 15mm octopods from 15mm.co.uk's HOF line were supposed to be three adventurer types, but after painting them up, I couldn't resist buying another pack of ten to make a full team.  Those are still in the mail, but will make for some nice grunts to round out this force.

Not sure the purple skin tone provides enough contrast with the (classically styled) orange jumpsuits. On the table the colors don't pop nearly as well as they do in the photos.  Those gold colors are getting better, though.  I've been trying some tricks observed at the Lead Adventure Forums, and it's paying off.

In the back of my mind, I'm think that my collection has enough character figures for now - what it really needs is security forces for those heroic characters to fight.  The same thing happened with the Prang.  Three are ready for paint, but will wait until the other seven arrive from the UK.  In the meantime, there are still another 20 figures in the immediate queue that need some color...

Tyranny of Dragons, Session 13 - The City of Splendours

Again, this is a summary of a session in which your humble blogger did not participate.  For those following the story, these notes are cribbed from those of the DM.

The chapter begins deep within the heart of the great northern city of Waterdeep. The party was residing at Carlon Amofel's warehouse , HQ of the "Great Northern Equipment and Portage Co."  Earlier in the day they had tracked and tailed the Dragon Cultists and the treasure stolen from the village of Greenest to a similar warehouse across town owned by the treacherous (and now very dead) Aravan Foxtraveller.  They learned that Foxtraveller had recently acquired a building contract with the Lords of Waterdeep to re-build the Great Northern Highway between Waterdeep and Neverwinter. This highway has been abandoned after years of disuse and neglect.  In the last few years it had been swallowed up massive coastal swamp lands, collectively known as "The Mere of Dead Men."  As its name suggests, a area with the reputation for being haunted by dead men and other ghastly things, and that's not mention the ancient Black Dragon known as EbonDeath who calls the place home.

Spreading inquiries around town, and lubricating tongues with gold, the party learned that the Cultists were once again disguising their stolen treasure and hiding in plain site...only this time as road laborers hiding the loot inside crates marked "ACME Road Building Supplies".

Before anyone could make any major decisions, the party was paid a visit by a mysterious and gruff dwarf claiming to represent none other than Lord Arthagast Uhrilbinther, a migh mucky-muck within the city political scene. As it turns out, he is the very man Grim rescued from the slave pens of the Dragon Cult outside Greenest. Arthagast had long been a member of the Lord's Alliance, a secret political group run by wealthy merchants all across Faerun, whose goals and agendas are probably for the good and protection of all society.  This group is backed by large, powerful and sometimes ruthless private militias that "help and assist" in carrying out the Lord's Alliances decrees.  Also present at this gathering was Arthagast's wife, the Lady Remila Haventree, head of the Waterdeep cell of Harpers, her second lieutenant, Lady Elia and the party's old friend Leosin the Monk. Also present were a few other familiar faces...including the Paladin Ontharr Frume, representing The Order of The Gauntlet and The Ranger Stannis Longstepper representing the Emerald Enclave.

Long story short:  Arthagast proposed an alliance among the groups, "The Council Quiet", dedicated to stomping out the Cult of the Dragon.  Said proposal was readily accepted by all present.  And so as the first meeting of The Council Quiet got underway, it's first order of business was to induct everyone present - even the party - with full voting rights! The second order of business was whether or not to include Jamna Gleamsilver, a member of the Zhentarim, in the Council.

To secure the vote in her favor of inclusion within the council, Jamna told the Council of two of the identities of high ranking members of the Cult of the Dragon.  This council, collectively known as "Wrymspeakers", consists of five members (each representing the five colors of the evil chromatic dragons) who run the day-today operations of the vile Cult of the Dragon.

Achievement unlocked!  The party now uncovered the three out of five identities behind the leadership of the Cult of the Dragon.

Your first mission as field members of the Council Quiet was to continue following the Cultists and the stolen treasure to the Cult's final hoarding lair, and if given the opportunity, determine the identities of the final two members of the Cult's leadership, AND...if at all possible eliminate any of the Wrymspeakers as opportunities avail.

In order to carry out this mission, the party donned guises as hired guards "protecting" the road laborers transporting their construction and road building supplies north. And so once again the group found themselves on the road...only this time travelling through a known haunted swamp land hundreds of leagues round.

Over the 10-day trek through the swamp, this new caravan was constantly bombarded by the ever-present threats of the haunted mere. They were nearly overrun by an ancient army of the undead, stopped to parley with a group of lizardfolk slavers only to be ambushed by a massive force of vile bullywugs and their man-swallowing giant frogs...all the while ensuring the safety of the stolen treasure AND protecting the very cultists the party had sworn an oath to destroy! Oh, the irony of it all!

Where o' where can this crazy caravan of stolen treasure be headed?  Stay tuned...

More 15mm Sci-Fi Goodness on the Way

Now with actual photos!



My game time is limited to those rare weekend afternoons when the "To Do List" is somewhat shorter than my disproportionately long forearms.  Painting, however, that can happen any night of the week.  Not only that, but my primary opponent is travelling the American wilderness for the next week.  Which means that you lucky readers are probably going to be seeing more painted figures before you see more battle write-ups.

 Not only that, but some new shiny goodness is headed for my inbox in the form of Osprey's Black Ops later this month, so my table is in need of a few more adventurer types to engage in some operations of the black variety.  From the sounds of things, you don't need a lot of figures, but it might be nice to have a few small security forces to take on the dashing crew of a tramp freighter - a Trader who has gone Rogue, you might say.

As a tease, have a gander at some shots of black primed and dry brushed white lumps of 15mm sci-fi goodness.  The manufacturers are even more eclectic than usual with representatives from Bombshell miniatures, 15mm.co.uk's HOF range, a squad of their Star Vikings for use as heavy armored Space Orcs, and I think a Khurasan figure or two as well.  That should tide me over long enough to get some more scatter terrain purchased and painted up - there are a lot of really nice vehicles out there on the market these days, and my roads are looking pretty empty...

Tyranny of Dragons, Session 12 - Chaotic Absent

Full disclosure:  Gaming and posting has taken a back seat over the last few months due to boring work issues.  The following recap is based off of the incomplete notes and recollections of the rest of the party, but mostly from a recap provided by our long-suffering and under-appreciated DM.  We will return to more in-depth reporting in Session 15.

When last we left our plucky heroes they had just defeated the obviously insane death wizard, Lucius Malvern, deep in the crypts below his stately but spider-infested manor.  Grim, the party archer, had located an ancient Summoning Stone and attempted to take it up for closer examination, but sentient artifact rejected his advances and instead sang a sweet siren song to the dark half-demon wizard Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh, long interested in arts he insisted are more gray than black, needed no siren song, and quickly snatched up the stone which promptly the poor wizard's willpower.  Mordred, half-orc holy warrior, leaped to pull the stone from Gilgamesh's grasp in a vain attempt to disrupt the stone's sway over Gilgamesh.  Instead, the stone lashed out in a powerful arcane blast that knocked out not only Gilgamesh, but the elven fighter Yolo as well.

(Perhaps not coincidentally, the two characters knocked out by the stone were the two characters controlled by players not in attendance.)

The human cleric Aramis and paladin Mordred rushed to dump the stone into the extra-planar space of a Bag of Holding also found in the crypt.  The group then gathered up their dying comrades and fled the vile crypt dedicated to the worship of the demon Bhaal.  They fled to the sanctuary of Torm's Holy Chapel where the group was able to rest heal their critical wounds.

Now that they had accomplished their major goals of acquiring the Summoning Stone, claiming the Tome of Bhaal, discovering the fate of the two Malvern brothers/wizards and the fate of the Dragonspear Militia scouts, and dealing with the sudden but inevitable betrayal of the dragon cult's Capt. Alphonse and his men...the group decided to hot foot it back to their current employer, Captain Von Derffle, back in Dragonspear Castle.

They didn't make it far.  Just outside the entrance to the crypt, they found yet another of Cult of the Dragon emissaries besieging Malvern Mansion.  This group was led by the Drow Blademaster, Aravan Foxtraveller.  Aravan and his cultist emissaries tried to relieve the party of the ancient Summoning Stone artifact, through threats at first, but not for long.  Moments into the bargaining process, a shadowy Priestess travelling with Aravan revealed herself to be none other than...Frulam Mondath!

Remember her?  The party had captured her way back in Greenest.

She had escaped the dungeons beneath Greenest Keep and returned to plague the party, as all good villains do.  Another epic battle ensued, one in which the impressive Karren went toe-to-toe with the Drow Blademaster and skewering him with the blade of his spear "Fury".  Once Frulam and the new cultist emissaries were dispatched, the party made its way safely back to Dragonspear castle.

Note that the way to Dragonspear Castle was safe, but the castle itself?  Not so much.  Cultist reinforcements had arrived during the group's little side trek, meaning that the death of Captain Alphonse didn't buy the party as much security as they had hoped.  The new leader of the cult on this little journey north proved to be a Red Wizard of Thay, known as Azbarra Jos and he had a new Dragon Cultist commandeer at his side, Malak Rasheed.

With tensions still running high, the party, the cultists and the caravan left Dragonspear Castle and set out on the final leg of the journey to Waterdeep.  But of course there were still a few surprises on this last leg...First, the party was introduced to Jamna Gleamsilver, a gnome informant for the Zhentarim, who in turn apprised the party of a suspected poisoning attempt in the groups' morning oatmeal, and then murdered a cultist guard in cold blood during an "information gathering" trip into the covered cultist's wagons...this of course led to the party being accused of murder...luckily cooler heads prevailed and it was determined that the guard "fell" onto his own sword after a night of heavy drinking...seriously it could happen.

And with all that the group finally arrived in Waterdeep! The members of the party said their goodbyes to the caravaners at large, and...Grim and Jamna set off across the city to continue following the cultist's treasure wagons.  Mordred and Karren set off to the Holy Church of Torm, while Yolo, Gilgamesh and Aramis went...shopping.  All with the promise of returning to meet Carlon Amofel back at his warehouse later that evening...

The Necromancer War, Chapter 1

Neil Thomas' book, One Hour Wargames, is worth buying for the scenarios if nothing else. It includes 30 different scenarios of all sorts - symmetric, asymmetric, full terrain, open field, delaying actions, you name it.  While they are written specifically for the rest of the rules in the book, they are presented in a format simple enough to use with any mass battle ruleset.  For this campaign, in the manner of our people, we simply rolled a d30 to choose an initial skirmish.

The dice indicated that the first battle fought in the Necromancer War was an assault by the Necromancer King's forces to secure two strongpoints just inside the Targar Kingdom (Scenario 21 - Twin Objectives).  The first objective consisted of a high hill in the center of the plains and an adjacent fortified farmstead.

The First Necromancer War, a 6mm Wargame Campaign

The completion of the latest big box presents a first chance at playing Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames the right way - fully based and painted figures, full color terrain, and every option in the book available to both players.  To kick things off, and help us stay motivated to play more battles, the boy and I decided to play a five fight narrative campaign using a random assortment of scenarios from the rulebook.

To remind those of you following along at home, we have to matched forces built to spec.  In the left corner,wearing the green and purple, and flying banners bearing a flaming eyed goat's head, are the forces of  the vile and demonic Necromancer King.

In the other corner, wearing red and gold and flying banners bearing theme and variation on the dragon head motif, are the knights, nobles, and freemen of the peace loving Targar Kingdom.

Guess which force your humble narrator controls.  Yeah, this is not going to be a terribly fair and biased history of the as-yet-unfolded Necromancer War.

First we diced off to decide who would be the aggressor and who the defender.  He won the toss and elected to invade the Kingdom of the Targars.  So there you have it - pick your forces, roll off for attacker, and you're ready for a campaign.  Easy peasey.

Next Time:  The Necromancer King Attacks!

One Hour Wargame Big Box - Complete!

Three and a half months early, the One Hour Wargame Big Box is complete.  Sort of*.

The Rules as Written call for a maximum of three feet of road way.  One piece of bass wood from the local craft store gives you enough material to make a much more flexible amount of roadway.  I went ahead and built up a fork, crossroad, tight curve, and a couple more random lengths.  You never know - this box might work well with my 10mm fantasy figures for skirmishing as well.

Here's a shot of the road where it meets the river and bridge with the medieval farmhouse for as well.

 

One more close-up.

 

* If you're a wargamer, you know these things are never really done.  At some point I'd like to make some scatter terrain like a circle of standing stones or a wizards tower.  Maybe a few isolated trees and rock outcrops.  And this terrain would work well with a matched pair of dark ages armies, too.  The possibilities are limited, but the hours are not.  So for now...it's time to actually use this stuff.