Armies on Parade: Dwarf Fortress!

Every year Games Workshop holds their Armies on Parade event across the globe.  It's a great chance to show up with your army and get a little display in.  Most of the time I gawk at all the entries that aren't my own, and this one is no exception...the Dwarf Fortress!

The big difference now is that I am a GW store, and this sucker I got to see in person.  The cool thing about it is that for one, it adheres to the two-foot square rule, and secondly, it was really only about half done.  Since these were taken, more work has commenced on it, and this year it promises to really be something special.

So the Dwarves (dwarfs!) march out the main doors, but what you don't see is that a tower above the entryway holds all of your dice.  Once you pull the lever all the dice tumble down through the tower and roll out the 'mouth' onto the walkway.  Instant dice tower, and if I may venture, one of the nicest dice towers this world has ever seen.  As always stalwart students, enjoy!

Thor's Day Hero: Bruenor Battlehammer

Dwarves were always just that, Dwarves. Another race in the Player's Handbook; they had beards and preferred axes, and got some kind of underground direction sense or something. I was never really intrigued by their entry enough to want to play one. Then I read Salvatore's The Crystal Shard in 1988, and I suddenly loved Dwarves.

One of the main characters, one of the "Heroes of the Hall", was a Dwarf named Bruenor Battlehammer. There wasn't a whole lot of D&D Dwarf fiction out there (other than proto-Tolkien), so Bruenor wasn't anything fresh and innovative, he was pretty much your stereotypical Dwarf. But he was a well-written stereotypical Dwarf, as were his Dwarf peers, and for that I was hooked. Salvatore has gone on to write a lot of books, and his Dwarves don't ever disappoint. I'm getting a wee tired of reading about the goth/emo Dark Elf Drizzt, but Bruenor and his Dwarven cousins are still a lot of fun to read about.

Bruenor's the reason I lean to the Dwarf race nowadays when rolling up new characters and the like. He's a man's Dwarf, tough as the stone he carved an empire out of with a wit as sharp as his axe. He loves beer and is a loyal friend to the end. That's reason enough alone to make him a Thor's Day Hero.

LEGO Thursday: Adversaries

You can't always be fighting dragons or goblins, sometimes you just have to duke it out with oppositely-aligned people of your own race.

A single, tooled-up and skilled bad guy can sometimes be a handful for a whole party if done right. Here on the left is just such a character, an Elf assassin. He's just as deadly with the bow as he is with his saber. He's got all kinds of stealth and can pick a pretty mean pocket if need be.

Don't let the smile fool you, these sellsword mercenaries are relentless in their pursuit and once signed to a contract, cannot be swayed. The human is an exotic weapons master and knows a thing or two about hand-to-hand combat. The Dwarf doesn't speak, but defines his actions by sword and prowess. Both have an obvious eastern vibe going on.

LEGO Thursday: They Call it a Mine...a Mine!

When the Dwarves' Mine hit the scene it was a pretty amazing set. It came with scads of Dwarves, a decent showing of Orcs, and a big ole Troll. Not to mention the set itself was pretty cool and captured the Dwarf feel rather well.


The mine itself is very well thought out. It has multiple levels, different sections dedicated to different facets of the mine itself, and even a cool mine car track.

Weapon and armorsmith working at the anvil

A Dwarf miner by the lode cars

The Dwarf king with golden goblet and giant ruby

A warrior by the hearth, above is the ore tramway

Dwarf catapult (that really fires) for defense

All new figs, helmets, beards, swords, shields, the works...

The Dwarf mine showing you its backside

LEGO Thursday: Mail Order Loot

Not much to this with this week's post. When the castle sets of 2007 came out, I was blown away, I was excited about LEGO again (eh, it comes and goes I guess). The biggest change was that they added actual fantasy elements to their tried and true medieval-based range.

Skeletons were no longer flavor text inanimate objects lying in a dungeon cell, but an undead race with necromancers and skeletal steeds! They might've called the greenskins "trolls" for copyright reasons, but we all know they were LEGO Orcs. And then they made me very happy indeed with the introduction of LEGO Dwarves.

The line was a little too short-lived for my tastes, but my wallet is thankful for it at least. This all came out about a year before I started Mik's Minis, but I was still photographing this stuff. I knew I wanted to review it, or whatever, but unsure of the format. In a sense you are looking at photos of what is a proto-Mik's Minis.


Yup, Battle Packs were another cool idea, I have no idea why they've been abandoned now. Here's one good guy and one bad guy battle pack of reinforcement troops. Also is a very cool jousting duel set between a human and an undead.

Thirteen Times the Blood...Bowl

Needless to say, just the two hour sample of Blood Bowl we played the other day has really sparked my interest again in one of the best tabletop games around. So I went rummaging through my stuff today and drug out all of the fantasy football figs I could muster and did a legitimate inventory. Some of this stuff dates back to second edition, so there were some changes to be made, and certainly some swaps to go around.

The one thing I need to honest about here is that I simply don't need thirteen teams. But letting go of minis is so hard to do. There are obvious choices for the auction block, like my Orcs, I have three Orc teams. Three, really? I think one will do just fine. There's other choices too, like my Undead, I just never got my head around their style of play and frankly I like being more of a scoring team, not a inure-the-other-guy team. Aggressively speaking I could get rid of about half the teams I own, and maybe even use some of the money I make to pick up a sweet looking third party team and paint them up right.


The Deadrock Goyles here are pretty much a hall of fame team. Not the Orc roster, but these actual models. They were the scourge of a league we played in way back when and seeing them here makes me wince. They are definitely my 'alpha' Orcs, so they'll be sticking around. I may pull figs off the other teams to fill their ranks.


This is a bit of an expanded team of Orcs. It has the basics plus a bunch of extras like a converted Troll big guy and a couple of Goblins. It has a metal Orc here and there to boot in the form of Blitzers and regular Linemen. After I pick out whatever I need for the Goyles, this one will be fodder for sure and on their way out.


This is a stock team, straight from the boxed set. It's a very nicely painted team and although it doesn't have any extras in it, the crisp paintjob makes up for it. This is a case where although I like the team, it's my third Orc team, it's days are numbered.


Here's a great looking Human team, mostly from the boxed set and mostly awesomely painted! In addition to the plastic figs, there's four metal second edition players in there, as well as a metal star player. A large Ogre has defected from the Orc team he used to be a part of to this new Human team. The men on the team however are too afraid to ask him to change his uniform. I'll be hanging on to these guys for sure.


It's almost embarrassing looking at my first Human team. They're pretty much straight from the boxed set as well, with some fun extras too, like two metal star players (one of which will probably get snagged for the other Human team) and a fourth Blitzer figure. As you just saw though, this is one Human team too many, and these chaps are headed out the door. They'll probably be a good bargain for somebody.


They're small, they're fast, and they have armor made from cardboard. Still, you gotta love the Skaven, they have lots of options and variety, and if coached right can be solid. As you can see these guys are a bit of a work in progress as I still have some unpainted mutant figs to do, and I need to rebase the Rat Ogre big guy in the back. I'll be keeping these guys around, and probably add some basic linemen at one point in the future.


The High Elves are another team I want to hang on to. They're more survivable than their Dark and Wood Elf cousins, and are the same speed of the Humans, which I'm used to coaching. If I buckled down, I feel I could coach these guys fairly well.


The Undead here are pretty flexible under the rules we've been looking at (LRB5). I pulled a second edition Werewolf from the Human team (since they can't have him anymore) and put him on the roster. Also on the roster, in addition to the regular team, is a second edition Flesh Golem (looks just like Frankenstein's monster), a Vampire star player, and a converted Ghoul. I like the idea of the Undead, but their days are numbered.


The only thing keeping these Chaos Dwarves from the chopping block is their theme. As you can see the Dwarves (including Centaur big guy) all have converted cowboy hats. In addition to the regular team is the aforementioned big guy, a converted bluderbussier, and a second edition cyborg Orc which I'm only guessing is still legal. I'm still up in the air on this one, I never play them, so someone else might get more out of them.


Here's a good example of a rock solid team that has the basics plus a little extra. Chaos is a great team with plenty of hitting power and good versatility in their line-Beastmen. I've also got a Minotaur big guy in there converted from a Reaper fig. I like these guys, but I can't keep them all just because I like them, they're days are numbered.


If the large (and painted) Chaos team's days are numbered then these guys aren't long for the world in my neck of the woods! There's barely enough here to even take to the field, but add in a big guy and maybe a fourth Chaos Warrior and you should be good to go.


I don't mind my team having an armor value of a lowly seven if they have the speed (Skaven) or the agility (Wood/Dark Elves) to back it up, but what the heck are the Norse packing under those spiked helms? Umm, not enough to keep them sticking around! I did manage to poke around and find another official second edition Werewolf to put in there too.


Not only am I keeping these Dwarves around, they may be the first ones on the painting and refurbishment assembly line. I love Dwarves, so I see no reason why I'd get rid of these, although I need at least four more Linemen to fill out their ranks.

Entrance to Khelduran

This is a fantastic build by the very talented Tom Snellan, I first saw it on Brothers Brick. I'm a sucker for all things Dwarven, and this is one of the coolest builds I've seen in a long time. You can peruse a bunch of pics of the above diorama in his gallery here.

Dwarf Ranger

Huzzah, an actual mini for Mik's Minis in 2010! I had said I had a fig on my work desk that just needed basing, and well here he is. I had picked up some of Gale Force 9's snow flock a couple of weeks ago to use for my Viking project, so I thought I'd try it out. I know you can use detergent or whatever, but it was kind of an impulse buy.

Since we actually have had some snow, a rare thing around here, I thought I'd combine the two. Indoors, when I applied the GF9 to the fig's base I wasn't too thrilled, it looked like he was standing in salt, but looking at these pics, it's identical to real snow.


The fig itself is from the defunct Rackham metal line and was one of the Tir-Na-Bor Dwarves. This fig, like the others, is nothing short of amazing. The detail and style put into these is great and I hope my meager paint job can convey this and do the fig justice. Simply put, it was a fun figure to paint, and kind of hard to screw up when you're done because it already looks so good!


It was tricky to paint much so green but in different shades...

The title says 'Dwarf Ranger' and thanks to the massive slab of a sword, made from a precious green stone, I went with the name 'Jade'. There's a backstory about Dwarves named Jade carrying around large, 'final fantasy' style swords in my book that goes way back, but I'll spare you the details. Anyway, I whipped this character up as part of a Savage Worlds game we played, set in the world of Warhammer Fantasy.

It's really two great tastes that go great together. The richly detailed world of Warhammer Fantasy gives players and GMs a lot of room to kick around in, then add a great system like Savage Worlds and you've got a pretty sweet setup. We only played the one game, but I'm hoping for more, especially since I painted up a fig for it! Also, since it's the Warhammer world, there's a hint of a plot twist that the sword might actually contain a vein or two of Warpstone...

Fracas at Finn Elva

A River Runs Through It...

The settlement of Finn Elva lies where the Livwald River meets the mountain range. It is a place of idyllic beauty and although the weather ranges from cool summers and much colder winters, it maintains a healthy population. A Vargr expedition into a series of ruins in the mountains turned up many forgotten treasures, most of which made their way back to other settlements. Some of the items were hidden away in caches throughout the Livwald. One such item, a pair of magical gloves, the Amazing Technicolor Dreamgloves, was sealed in a chest and placed in a sacred Tuskgaarde shrine on the outskirts. Tragically, the Dawnrunner patrol that had stashed the item away was intercepted by a vile Duergar band. Although their resolve was strong, they eventually broke under the wicked blades of their torturous captors. The Duergar learned of the magic gloves and gathered their brothers to make for the shrine. A Vargr Dawnrunner had escaped the Duergar camp, mortally wounded, she made for the mountains. As luck would have it, she stumbled into a Dwarf camp. They made her comfortable, but could not fully heal her. She told them of her fallen friends and of the Duergar en route to the shrine to recover the gloves. Dwarven relations had been a budding prospect with those of Hjorvard's lineage. That, coupled with the racial hatred the Dwarves have for their former kin, prompted the proud warriors to beat the Duergar to the shrine and retrieve the gloves for the Vargr. His presence unknown to anyone, the Lich Kaphiri gazed into his reflecting pool as all of these events unfolded. Knowing the recovery of these gloves would bring great favor to him from his god, Nesut Ammon, he began scheming. He would raise his own undead minions to accompany him through a Djedetian portal to recover this artifact.


This is the second battle report from the other night of gaming with the Song of Blades and Heroes (SBH) rules. Not just the rules, but we're also using the collaborative world we put together using the excellent (and free!) Dawn of Worlds system.

I gotta hand it to the SBH rules yet again, they're very easy, but not dumbed down, they just facilitate quick play. You focus less on the rules being used and more on the narrative taking place, and since your turns aren't guaranteed to go according to plan from one phase to the next, there's enough of a unknown element to keep things interesting. As with the last SBH batrep, I took a lot of pics, so I'll make this mostly a visual report with some narrative. We went all out with the terrain this time around, and it really shows!


A Druidic Circle of Power made of ancient black, basalt stone...


A hearty mushroom grove on the banks of the Livwald River...


The Dwarf captain, veteran Gromhammer was the first to reach a treasure chest, buried in the silt beneath the cold waters. He pried it open, but found it empty! There were two other chests in the area, but Duergar forces were already on the march.


The Duergar leader stands in awe at the threshold of the Tuskgaarde shrine. A place of power such as this impresses even his evil nature. Within, at the foot of the statue, lies another of the chests. He smashed the chest to splinters, and howled in frustration as he found it empty as well, everyone within earshot knew then that the third remaining chest must contain the magic gloves. All eyes turned to the horizon just then as Lich Kaphiri and his undead minions emerged from the edge of the woods, advaning on the last chest.


Two Duergar Painseekers cross the stone bridge...


All pretense of recovering the last chance were lost when both Dwarf (good and evil) locked eyes across from one another. As fate would deem it, their titanic clash would take forth in the center of the Circle of Power. Challenges were bellowed from both sides, and their loyal troops rushed to watch. The undead sought to use this distraction to make for the last chest. A cunning plan, but would it hold? The two Dwarves charged in...


Hammer and axe collided with a thunderous roar that shook the earth itself. Centuries of anger and hatred poured out of each of the stout warriors and they rang blow after blow against one another. As many swings hit as did not, and the ground was covered in their blood. Defeat was not an option for either, only one would walk away.


Gromhammer struck the mortal blow, felling the Duergar leader. As he looked up, he saw the shriveled husk of Lich Kaphiri bearing down on him with a skeletal guard. There would be no respite for the Dwarf captain, and he engaged the undead.


You know it's funny, I had no idea this picture was taken of me until I uploaded the photos to my computer. I've got to hand it to Andy, he was quick on the draw here. Anyway, what you're witnessing is my utter lament (and subsequent laughter) of miserably failing a very important roll. We have a houserule regarding die rolls, and that's if any die falls off the table while rolling, it's an automatic miss/failure/fumble/etc. This had happened a couple of times during the night, thus my little dice rolling basket you can see on the corner. As my captain was rolling for a crucial attack I missed the basket entirely!


The errant die roll, curses!


Seeing Gromhammer, umm, flounder, the Duergar Painseekers charged in to finish him off, avenging their own. Gromhammer wasn't without his own troops, who counter-charged their twisted cousins. This allowed the Dwarf captain to regain his composure and focus on the Lich Kaphiri, who was no match for the martial prowess of Gromhammer.


Dwarven troops lay waste to the animated skeletons...


In the end the honor duel between the Dwarves and Duergar in the Circle of Power proved to be the very distraction the undead needed. Although their Lich Kaphiri fell in battle, his phylactery located back in Djedet was not destroyed, he would one day rise again. The third chest contained the magic gloves the Vargr sought to hide away, and the last skeleton took flight with it. Gromhammer made an unprecedented pursuit, but it wasn't enough in the end, and he watched helplessly as the skeleton fled the field.