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!

A Little Pathfinder

My Elven Cleric

We've been playing quite a bit of Pathfinder over the last year or so.  We started with a Rise of the Runelords adventure path, but it quickly morphed into its own thing.  We were also playing a party of all Elves, which led to a lot of 'hilarity ensuing' moments, including the time we refused to speak to anyone in anything but Elven, even though the village folk all spoke lowly common.  Good stuff, we actually wrapped up that campaign around level ten, then started a new one.  The new one is all a homebrew setting, and so cool I'll save it for it's own post.  Rock on.

Undead slaying action

Reviving the Dead...

A Half-Orc Cleric Raises a Skeletal Soldier on the Field of Battle

It's October, or 'Zombtober' as a lot of hobby blogs like to tout.  That means lots of horror and zombie themed posts and projects are a must.  I'm hoping to have Chris Miller on board with some October themed art posts, but as of this writing I haven't locked that down...yet.  I will leave you with this photo, ironically done by Miller during a Pathfinder game months and months ago.  It doesn't get any more undead than raising a skeleton, so what a perfect kick off to October.  Enjoy!

A Smattering o' Hordes

Up top we've got a four-player double header of Hordes, it's not something that has been as frequent on the table as we'd like, but it's on the table so that's saying something in and of itself.  A lot of the guys in the groups have bought the plastic starter boxes that contain two factions, so we're set with loaner armies and have plenty of choices to pick from.  One of the guys in the group (the only other Trollblood player besides myself) has been around the block a little more than the rest of us, so not only does he have plenty of excellently painted models, he can help with the rules to boot.

Here's a couple of my Trollblood warbeasts getting stuck in with some Circle hoodlums.

A converted Rök crashes into an albino Carnivean

Here's my fledgling warband so far.  I know I haven't posted any progress pics because I'm not painting them!  The Pyre Troll in the middle (which looks awesome) was a gift a while back from rare blog art contributor Miller.  The fig looked so good though I couldn't hope to match it, so I just commissioned him to paint all of my beasts.  I've got a scads of troopers in the works too, but keeping in my no-trollblood-paint embargo, I've commissioned those out to none other than Joe 'Mezz', but more on those later, when I have pics to show of those!  Moral of the post; there's minis stuff happening, slowly sure, but slow is better than not at all!

Forces of Battlesworn: Ninja

Ninjas!  I'd throw this Battlesworn army in on the 'good guy' side, rounding out that bunch with Bandits, Knights, and now Ninjas.  I think the Knights better hide their wallets!  Man, I loved the Lego Ninja sets, and no, NOT Ninjago either!  It's good to put these guys back on the table in action.  

What's a Ninja army without half a dozen rogues?  Here we have the backbone of the army, six rogues.  Rogues, just for posterity as you already know, are harder to hit with shooting and get bonuses to melee when they're 'flanking' with allies.

These are the compulsory fighters of the army, dual-wielding katanas Mirumoto style and wearing heavy armor.  I'm still using the sample lists, but these guys could easily be brute / tanks, bear in mind you only get up to three multi-class models in the army however.

No real personalities in the Ninja army, but here's a pair of ranged attack models.  The model on the right in red with the bow is a shooter, but the veteran on the left with the crossbow is a sniper.  The difference between these two is that the sniper is not limited to shooting the closest model, he may shoot at ANY unengaged model in line of sight.  

And with the Ninja we round out the six forces of Battlesworn.  These six were the 'gimmes' out of the sample lists.  I'm sure I could crank out at least a couple more fantasy armies, but those might take a little more effort.  As I mentioned with one of the Undead armies though, six is a great number to have and opens up some real possibilities to an all-day skirmish-fest or the like.  I'm going to let that idea simmer for a bit.  Stay tuned until next time!

Forces of Battlesworn: Undead of the Night

What's better than a bonus undead tomb kings army for Battlesworn?  A bonus undead 'children of the night' army for Battlesworn!  Yes, here's bonus army number two; Undead of the Knight.  Looking at the photo above, a pretty cool (if a tad pale) looking army.

Look, it's the undead Beatles!  I know what you're thinking, four troops so these must be the compulsory four fighter choices.  Nope, after five armies made we're still unlocking new troop types.  These four zombies are the rabble troop type; rabble fight just as hard as fighters, but their weakness is they die after taking only one wound.  On the other hand, rabble only take up half a slot, so you can take twice as many, now I see why they're labeled as zombies in the sample list.

And here's our four compulsory fighters; skeleton warriors, always a classic.  There's really not a whole lot to say about these guys, they're tireless, they're relentless, they're sword-wielding skeletons.

What's cooler than skeleton warriors?  Skeleton archers!  Fighters are one thing, but shooters?  Archery requires all kinds of things you'd not expect from a skeleton; dexterity, long ranged eyesight, finesse, and more.  In a lot of ways skeleton archers are creepy.  Here's four of them.

No undead horde is worth their weight in salt without a suitably good leader to command them.  The force list uses another combo class with the ancient vampire here; the tank / sorcerer.  He's going to be tough to take down, and gets to wield a whopping five spells while he's at it.  Plus, though all I added was a sword and shield, he looks pretty awesome at the head of the army.  

Only one more of the bonus armies to go, and the next one comes across quite sneaky, and quite pointy.  Until then, enjoy! 

Forces of Battlesworn: Undead of the Desert

I knew had at least one more Battlesworn force left in the pile of Legos, truth be told I was able to crank out three more.  This puts the army count up to six, which opens up the tantalizing possibility of an all-day, round robin Battlesworn skirmish "tourney".  On to today's army, we've got undead of the 'crunchy' variety, tomb-kings of the desert.

I'm continuing to use the sample force lists from the rulebook, and since there's about three pages worth of those we've got plenty of source material to work with.  The five troops above were listed as 'brutes', which hit hard in melee, but they were also listed as ghouls.  Brutes, I've got, no problem.  These brutes are the heavy weapon sorts and are the charred bones of past kings interred within the tombs, arisen and ready to smash their foes.  I tried to go with a different shield for each king to represent different kingdoms they initially hail from.    

Every list needs four compulsory fighters, minimum, and here they are; minor mummies.  I'm no slouch when it comes to my Lego collection, but I'm ashamed to not be able to field four matching Egyptian headdresses.  Here you go, minor mummy fighters, moving on.

On to the personalities, the dark figure in the background with the serpent staff is technically our only living model in the army, and he's a sorcerer, a powerful model who gets five spells for the game.  And the scarab shield hefting figure up front is the head of the army, the master mummy whose stats are those of a hybrid tank / rogue.  

This is an interesting class combo too as it means he'll be brutal in melee as long as he has his minions along for the ride, and he'll be harder to hit with shooting, and if you happen to hit him with shooting or melee, he'll just shrug off the first wound.  There you have it, tomb kings, enjoy!

Forces of Battlesworn: The Bandits

Our last Battlesworn army is upon us, and this merry band of Bandits is almost a completely vintage collection of old Forestmen to boot.  These Bandits harangue the King's Highway at every opportunity, to the point where I believe some Knights may need to be dispatched.  Of course, this band would also complement the very same Knights force in an extra large game acting as Royal Rangers.  I do like this particular sample army, lots of troops, a good variety of slot types, and plenty of effectiveness.

Practice makes perfect; here the veteran archer looks on while the newer recruits shoot their bows.  Having four shooters in a warband is quite the boon too, especially figuring in all of the opportunity fire reactions and sheer ranged attack goodness they bring.

The Bandits' four compulsory fighters; the three fighters look on impassively while their all-too-charismatic squad leader laughs at another one of his own jokes.

What do they fight for?  Is it coin, is it their own code of honor?  Is it just the chance to best someone in a duel?  Who knows, but one thing's for sure, the Bandits are glad to have these four 'rogues' on their side!  Rogues are a new troop type we're seeing from Battlesworn in these lists and their strength is that they are harder to hit with ranged attacks and in melee they get bonuses to hit depending on how many other [edit: friendly models] are joining them in that combat.  

So I'm thinking I've got at least one more list up my sleeve, I haven't made them yet but I'm pretty sure I have the makings for them so we may see a bonus Battlesworn list before too long.  Plus, if I can get Biscuit Miller's cool demon army he used the other night, that'd make for even more bonus armies.  Until then (and oh yeah, I've got maybe a batrep or two for you as well) enjoy!

Forces of Battlesworn: The Orcs

Last time we saw the Knights of Battlesworn, today we see an army that could easily be their nemesis; the Orcs.  Again, I'm using the sample forces from the rulebook as is, so on to the Orcs!

Every good Orc warband needs a leader, and who better to lead than the fairly recent Cyclops fig from the Lego collectible series.  In the case here, our one-eyed Orc is a warlord which combines both the 'leader' and the 'brute' classes together, appropriate for him.  The cloaked figure on the right is the warlord's advisor and shaman to the tribe (using the 'warmage' slot).  Warmages in Battlesworn are as capable as fighters, but also get the use of a single spell for the game.

This warband features a pair of archers for good measure, also known as 'shooters' in the rulebook.  Here the veteran archer coaches the newer archer on form and aiming.  They fight as good as fighters but have the obvious benefit of calling on a ranged attack to boot.  

These three Orcs are 'brute' slots.  The sample army defined these particular brutes as 'heavy weapons' but I decided to make them more like dual-wielding beserkers.  Brutes hit more often, therefore deal more damage be it from large, two-handed weapons or the option I went with here.  I like the mix here too, the fig on the left could be one of their northern mountain cousins, and the fig on the right could be from the feral southern jungles.  Of course the Orc in the middle is just an angry beserker Orc.

As I mentioned last time with the Knights, every force in Battlesworn has four compulsory 'fighter' slots, and here's that very backbone of the Orc warband.  This Orc veteran runs his troops through an equipment inspection the evening before the battle.  Again, sergeants and veterans are all just flavor text I like to do to give the army a little extra dash of neatness.  

We're almost done with the initial three armies I whipped up in my rules-reading frenzy.  Only one force to go, and up next will be the Bandits list.  Of course, "bandits" could be anything really so you'll have to stay tuned to see the Mik's Minis interpretation, mwahaha.  Until then!

Forces of Battlesworn: The Knights

Welcome to the first of three initial installments that feature, as canny readers may have already discerned, the forces of Battlesworn.  Read the review here, of if you don't just know that one of my favorite things about the rules is army creation.  Using generic 'slots' you kit out your army as you see fit with whatever forces you've got on hand.  Me being me, I went the Lego route.

Above you see the twelve slot force (standard sized game) of Knights.  In the rulebook there are two pages worth of sample armies, and all three of the initial armies here come directly from those sample pages.  What I should do is take the excellent fantasy setting we cranked out with Sarterra and apply it to these new armies and where their battles take place.

The core of every Battlesworn army are the fighters, your basic troops that every force requires to have a minimum of four of.  Here two of the Knights' fighters practice sparring while the other two look on.

There are a lot of troop type options to go around, and these two heavily armored Knights are of the 'tank' variety.  They don't hit any harder than the fighters, but they do shrug off damage better than  most, thus lending them their role's name.  

The Battlesworn rules also allow some customization by combining two different classes together and taking the best of both classes.  In the case of the two mounted figs here, they are 'cavalry/tanks'; heavily armored knights on horseback.  I modeled them here to be the king and his champion, of course on the tabletop there's no difference in stats, but it's the little details that give just that much more character.  That's it for the Knights, next up will be the greenskins.  Until then, enjoy!

More Battlesworn Incoming

Ganesha Games' Battlesworn fever has struck Mik's Minis for sure.  Read the last review for more details on the game itself, but suffice it to say that I've been on an army building kick.  When you're building said armies with Legos it's even better.  Not that I need any excuses to play with Legos mind you!

In the rulebook itself, in addition to all of the sample troop types and suggested alternate genres, there are a ton (at least two pages worth) of completed sample armies.  I've cranked out three so far, and have my eyes on a couple more at least.  I went with your basic Orcs, a Bandits list (which I themed heavily towards a Robin Hood style band), and the Human Knights list.  

Over the next few days I'll be posting individual warbands with details of what troop types are in each, as well as closeups of the the figs themselves.  This is all in Lego mind you, but a dozen figures or so from any collection you've got should work.  Until then, enjoy.

Battlesworn Rules Review

Ganesha Games has good standing here at Mik's Minis, every one of their games has been thoroughly enjoyable, easy to get into, and provides what we're all looking for; getting minis on the table.

Song of Blades and Heroes is no stranger to us, and there's tons of posts on it here.  Love it, great friggin' game.  There's even been some Flying Lead around these parts, just ignore that broken image link.  Now there's a new addition to their rules stable, and unlike the first two mentioned that share many of the same mechanics, Battlesworn; Bid for Victory is completely different in scope and incredibly fresh to boot.

It says 'fantasy' right on the cover, but you can just as easily use it for any genre you want.  Really, you can.  In the rulebook it gives suggestions for zombie survival, alien bug hunters, wild west, historicals, and more.

The best part of the game is that troop types are defined by fourteen archetypes and the rules are inherent within each type (ala another of my faves, Hordes of the Things).

If you have a "shooter" on the table that could be anything you define as a shooter; an elf with a bow, an orc with a spear,  a Colonial Marine with an M41A pulse rifle, a gangster with a tommy gun, you think of it, it's a shooter.  The troop types also include brutes (hit more often), tanks (hard to kill), rogues (hard to hit), and so forth.  There are some spell-casters in there too, but a fireball thrown by a wizard has about the same effect as a Vietnam War-era trooper tossing a frag grenade.  It's all how you interpret your army during creation.

What makes it different though?  It says so on the cover; bidding.  When you start a turn both

sides bid a number from one to six for initiative.  The lowest bid goes with a number of actions equal to their bid.  The initiative loser gets a number of reactions based on the difference between the two rolls.  I bid a 2, and you bid a 4; I get two actions and you get two reactions during my turn.  You won't get any actions this turn, just reactions to what I do.  It's a quick turn, then we bid for initiative again, rinse and repeat.

Combat is in the same fashion, it's all about the bidding.  Say I'm going to hit you with a melee attack.  I bid a number between one and six again, you bid the same.  The lower bid strikes first, and if the higher bid is still standing they get to strike back.  So why not just bid "1" all the time then and always go first.  Because you roll a number of attack dice equal to your bid, and you need 5's and 6's to hit.  If you bid one die, chances are you won't hit.  If you bid six dice to attack with, chances are you'll get some hits, but you'll also roll some 1's in there, and 1's cancel out hits.  Ranged attacks are handle in a similar fashion, with the targeted player bidding for a dodge.

It sounds pretty different so far, right?  It gets better.  No measurements, no ranges.  None.  Now I've played some games with "Line of Sight" movement before, horizon to horizon, but Battlesworn takes it further.  Ranged attacks are not measured in increments, but shots are at "the closest model" be the closest target two inches or two feet away.  Same with spells and pretty much everything else.  Being that ranges are relative and not measured, and movement is done in straight lines until you hit a new terrain type, you can play on any size table you want, with any scale figs you've got.

The first time we played we hadn't even read the rules yet, but within twenty minutes we were knee-deep in the battle and didn't think twice about the rules, end of story.  It is a pretty non-traditional minis game, but you get the hang of it quick enough, and when that light bulb dings, you really get it.

The rules are solid, versatile, and easy to grasp right off the bat.  The best part, the PDF of the rulebook is a mere eight bucks.  Eight bucks!  I could've save you reading this entire post and just written this last paragraph.  Here's the one line review: Battlesworn is great fun and innovative enough to deserve room on the bookshelf regardless of your preferred genre.  Plus, did I mention it's just eight bucks?

Thor's Day Hero: Rankin Bass Bilbo Baggins

I had to be specific in my title, today's Thor's Day Hero isn't just any ole Bilbo Baggins. No, today's inductee is the one you see above, the Rankin Bass 1977 Bilbo. Sure, I saw Star Wars in '77 but it wasn't until a few years later I was into it thanks to the toys. My first geek introduction though, pretty much ever in my life, goes to my Lord of the Rings storybook record sets. Yes, records, played on my Fisher-Price turntable. Of those Bilbo and the tale of the Hobbit took center stage, we even named a litter of puppies at the time after Hobbit characters. Good, moving memories. Welcome aboard Bilbo!

Some More Art Leftovers: Eastern Flavors

Well obviously it's not Tuesday, so these art leftovers will have to share a spot with today's Thor's Day Hero, lest I intrude upon Rucht's Friday slot!  Since he's still hitting the gamer books hardcore, I'll leave him to his own.

Eastern flavors abound this issue, coincidentally I might add.  Way back in the day...we were playing a lot of Legends of the Five Rings.  Man, what a great game; excellent system, amazing genre, great history, all kinds of good stuff.  Black magic was prevalent, and something you did not want to mess with.  The above pic is of two of us meddling PCs, obviously messing with the very thing they shoudn't.  To quote Primus, "...and in doing so, each gave just a little bit of their souls away."

The next one, as the joke goes, was inspired by my lovely wife.  Yes, this limbless, grotesque, demon-hag of an Oni was all because of the woman I married and chose to spend the rest of my life with.  See, she had a weird dream once, and woke up and hastily drew a very weird image of the "thing" from her dream.  This was the best translation I could come up with.  How'd you think she inspired me?

Next up is a pair of seafood flavored nun-chuks.  To those that are offended by those who can't spell these martial art beat sticks, I apologize.  Anyway, they belonged to a monk from a Forgotten Realms campaign, he worshiped one of the sea gods, whose name completely escapes me. 

And finally we have a Naga from Five Rings, or just about any eastern fantasy setting.  I wanted my Naga a little less snake-man and a little more man-snake.  Hence this guy.  All said and done I was really happy with the way his short sword / dagger turned out.

All right, that's your art fix for the week.  Sorry it's a few days late, but better late than never!  How have you been?  Things are good here.  We got a Pathfinder game under our belts, so I'll be showing off some new Lego figs of that.  We've also got a Dark Heresy campaign about to kick off this Saturday that I'm really looking forward to, so until then, enjoy!

Tuesday Art Leftovers: 'Bots and Scots

My opening piece for today's art leftovers is a fave of mine, not because so much of what it is but where it was.  Back before Christian's Destination Unknown, really before blogging in general, and way before his Loviatar 'zine he wrote Scrollworks Press.  Well this robot graced one of the covers of that indie gaming magazine a long, long time ago.  It was really cool to get it in the mail, see my art on the cover, and know that a lot of other people were seeing my art as well.  There's another Scrollworks piece floating around in the archives, I just don't know when it'll pop up.

I think I plug those ill-fated and little known LEGO wargaming rules of mine a little too much to be honest, but this next piece was a test from that.  We didn't know if we were going to use stat cards or what, but the idea here was to have a closeup, profile shot of the character on the card.  This was a "warpainted" Islander head atop some scale-mail. 


There's not much to say on this one.  It's supposed to be a Scottish Terrier.  Get it?  Scottish.  Terrier.  Ahem, moving on...

Last but not least is basically a doodle taken directly from a note page.  Also it's apparent that I can't seem to divide four into nine hundred without writing it down.  So basically you've got a fantasy version of Star Wars mixed even more so with the wild west.  The Texas Rangers/Jedi of the setting were monastic knights who had these "magic" swords made of a rare crystal.  Maybe it's a crystalline entity.  I don't know, the idea never got past the "crystal sworded knights" idea.  Looking at the pic I may have been thinking "ruby" not crystal.  I really don't know, you know how it is; you think of an idea, you jot it down, file it away. 

Until next time!

Monday Night Miller 015 ~ SDE Mini Bosses Colored

Hey Everybody! Monday Night Miller time! Tonight I'm bringing back the Hydra!  All colored up and looking' proper.

Continue!

~ 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.

Thor's Day Hero: Conan the Cimmerian

For being eighty years old, the literary character, Conan the Cimmerian, holds his own incredibly well. I must admit my first introduction to Conan was through the 1982 Arnold movie, and let's be honest, that was a pretty awesome movie. It wasn't until much, much later that I got into the Robert E. Howard stories, comics, and more.

Conan is an excellent iron-age hero steeped in the low magic, sword and sorcery world of Hyboria, and excellently detailed and historical rich mythos created by Howard. Reading the books you get a better sense of the character, his humorous side and the like, but I've been pretty happy with most of his appearances across all the various mediums. Brains and brawn, well, mostly brawn and the strength of arm to fight cultists, critters, and slavers all head on, Conan is an easy shoe-in to the Thor's Day Heroes.