Songs of New Games and New Years

New Year, New Games. Okay, the really radical thing that I am planning to do (gaming-wise, at least) is to learn to run, play, and appreciate Fate. That's radical for me, anyway. I'll probably wimp out and end up playing something closer to Fudge, but hey...

If we rule out games of King of Tokyo, Tsuro, Ingenious/Mensa, and Snake Oil with my wife, my mum, my aunties, my brother, my sister, and my cousins, then tonight was the first tabletop gaming of 2015. And I don't think we should rule out those games. So this was the first geeky, fantasy-themed gaming of 2015. A couple of games of Songs of Blades and Heroes with D.

This was the first time that we had played SoBaH, and I am pretty impressed. It is easy to learn, quick to play, and able to accommodate pretty much any figure - and 'character' concept - that you pull from the box. I can see it reinvigorating my miniature gaming - I can't even imagine assembling and painting several whole units at the moment, and mass-battle games swallow up too much time to squeeze them in with any regularity.

Our first game of SoBaH pitted a group of Dwarfs (mostly my old Citadel minis) against a small band of Beastmen raiders. I used the Hyena-man statlines from the rulebook as stand-ins for the Beastmen. We played at about 200 points, and - possibly due to the small scale - the game was convincingly won by the Dwarfs. I gave the Dwarfs a 'Commander' with the 'Leader' ability, and with with reasonable 'Quality' across the board already, the Dwarfs were able to hold their discipline and get a lot of 'Activations' each turn. At a higher points total, and with a more interesting scenario than 'FIGHT!', the Dwarfs might not all have been able to stay within range of the Commander's 'Leader' ability. But as it was they were able to make up for their 'Short Move' by their reliability and ability to take orders. The Dwarfs held their line until the opportunity to charge arose, and once of few Beastmen fell their morale broke and they scattered from the field of battle.   

For the second game we opened up the board and played a slightly expanded Beastmen tribe against a small, shambling warband of Undead - including the Harryhausen-esque Reaper Bones Skeletons. This was a more interesting force to play, as it included the poor 'Quality' but hard-hitting Zombies and a Mummy, as well as the weak but relatively reliable Skeletons. Much rested on the Activation rolls (6+) of the Zombies as they came shambling up the right flank while the Skeletons made a nuisance of themselves in the centre. We drew the game to an end when we realised that the Beastmen, having finally taken down the Mummy and most of the Skeletons, could, if they wanted, keep out of combat with the Zombies all night long. 

Our next game - which will likely be Chaos Warbands done SoBaH style - will definitely involve some more interesting objectives than simply 'Kill 'Em All'. 

Oh, damn you Devlan Mud!

Enjoying painting at 15mm has improved my 25/28mm technique. As I chug my way through the Saxons, I've started reading the Oldhammer blogs a lot more regularly. And I can't escape the whispers of the old lead scattered all over the house, hidden in a box in bubblewrap here, in a storage case there, soaking in Dettol... where? So, beguiled by the faint cries of 'yo ho ho', 'avast!' and 'aaarh!', I cracked open a box and dragged out of shore-party of Long Drong's Pirate Slayers. Not sure what I'll use these for. Singly based minis for Songs of Blades and Heroes? A Warband/Shooter unit for HotTHammer? Anyway, this post isn't about that.

When, a few years ago, I painted my first miniature after a gap of umpteen years, my disposable income gave me access to a far wider range of paints than I ever did back in the day. And I could buy inks, and washes, and all kinds of other stuff. And proper brushes! But the washes were a great help to a [re-]learning painter. A good wash, typically of Devlan Mud, added depth, a bit of 'realistic' grime, and, at times, covered mistakes. But it has got to the point where I think that Devlan Mud, and my other favourite, Ogryn Flesh, are concealing, rather than enhancing my painting. What do you think?  

This is a Pirate Slayer I have nearly finished. I haven't used any washes on this guy.

This is the Slayer I finished the day before. While I like his polka dot bandana, the Ogryn Flesh wask on the skin, the red wash on the beard, and the Devlan Mud on the guns and scabbards and the rest have really flattened the miniature. Where, in the past, slapping a wash on was my final stage, looking at this guy I feel I have to set the brush to him again.

Or, of course, the problem could be that after staring at little Dwarf Pirates for a few hours you lose your sense of perspective... Which do you prefer, snazzy headscarf notwithstanding?

Oldhammer 40K: One More Ork

Painting in 15mm has revitalised my interest in miniature painting. But I have to paint 40 Saxon spearmen before I have finished that contingent of the army - plus 14 irregulars for the two 'horde' elements, two skimishers, and the four housecarls that that make up the general's element. I'm 20 spearmen in, and need a break. So what is in the lead-pile? 

A Rogue Trader-era Ork...

He is meant to be part of this gang of old metal space-greenies... which I last put to the brush TWO YEARS AGO!

(I have found a great new place to photograph my minis - on top of the microwave directly underneath an LED downlighter. This usually has the mundane but essential task of illuminating the kitchen worktop to help my late-night sandwich making, but it serves quite well here.)

After painting 15mm tall realistically proportioned little men, this guy was a breeze.

As you can see, he's a bit lighter than his buddies, but then he is prone to walking about topless, and who knows what the effects on light from a red giant does to an Ork's complexion. Maybe he just needs a green wash... and possibly a touch of metallic paints - the earlier models were painted when I used metallic paints more heavily.

I'll be back at the Saxons the next time the paints come out. That's THE hobby project (not just for this month, but for the summer), and I know 'the game' that I will be playing with my Saxons and Vikings. By contrast, I'm not sure what I'll actually use these guys for. I don't think that I have the stomach for current 40K, and I while I have Rogue Trader - and leaf through the book regularly - I'd expect that I'd find it too fiddly these days. I am taken with adapting (or stealing an existing adaptation of) one of the Songs of Blades and Heroes variants for some real quick-play skimishing, but not sure if I'll have the players.

But he was fun to paint... Orks, and Orcs, are easy!  

A month of DBA #6 - the first elements

Okay, so I'm not making quite the progress in my 'Month of DBA' as I had hoped. It was, after all, an absurdly ambitious rate of miniatures per day. And, but damn, the Essex miniatures are absurdly detailed sculpts for 15mm. I own models from a few other manufacturers, and none have the detail, especially on the faces, that the Essex minis have. And there is also the variety. Essex's Middle Anglo-Saxon army pack includes a bunch of DSG5 and DSG6 spearmen (as below, the 6s are the ones with the helmets), and - if I have counted right - there are 11 different miniatures.  this means that I've devoted more time per mini than I had envisaged at the start of the project. Nevertheless, I think that extra effort has meant that I've done a pretty decent job: 

(Apologies for the picture, as usual. I need something better than an absurdly unwieldy iPad camera - taken while holding a table lamp in the other hand!)

Question One: Do I slosh Devlan Mud all over them?

I'm particularly pleased with a couple of the shields, particularly the red dragon on yellow and the, erm, eh... yellow 'swastika' on blue. With the latter, I was sitting there, eyes crossed, tongue sticking out the corner of my mouth as I doodled the design. Then I held the finished little man are arm's length, blinked, focused, and said, 'oh, bugger!' 

I am very much enjoying painting these 15mm miniatures. I have to confess, it has led me to scour the net, identifying 15mm fantasy and sci-fi figures for future projects. But there will be no other 'hobby' projects until there are fully painted, terrain-rich Dark Ages battles being fought on a 2ftx2ft landscape.  

But thinking ahead to future 15mm gaming... 

Question Two: What do people base their individual 15mm miniatures on? 

and

Question Three: Does anyone play Warhammer Fantasy Battle in 15mm? 

Is it too much hassle dealing with individually based miniatures at this scale. I suspect so - it is quite a bit of hassle dealing with individually based miniatures in the big WFB units, especially casualty removal. You end up with the units being 'collectively based' on movement trays, which, after a few casualties have been caused, end up ugly and exposed, and which also inhibit changes in formation (psychologically at least, "oh, my, what a fuss!"). I guess I'm talking myself out of both individual bases and playing WFB at 15mm... So:

Question Four: What other games can be played with DBA-based 'elements'? 

I'm aware of Hordes of the Things (and can see a use - one day, one day - for all my 25mm Lord of the Rings minis - too few to make an army for the GW game, but more than enough to make a 24AP HOTT army).

Question Five: Who wants a tonne of 25/28mm stuff? Only joking, but...

A month of DBA #5 - if you go down to the woods today...

While waiting for my armies to arrive - the first element is nearly done - I made myself a wood. Or a forest, depending on what we're taking an element of 15mm little men to represent. So, a vast tract of trees for DBA, and a copse for a skirmish game. A useful thing to have on the scenery shelf. Incidentally, I have owned a Citadel Wood for some time, and haven't got past painting up the base... yet this, starting from a base point of some basic modelling materials rather than finely sculpted plastic, was table-ready in an couple of evenings. Go figure.  

The trees are N scale 'sycamores' from JTT Scenery Products (8 for £10.95 from Antics). JTT appear to make some fantastically realistic railway scale trees, though these seem to be from their 'budget' range (even with the packaging to hand I'm having trouble finding this exact pack of trees online). Nevertheless, they're really nice trees, better, in my opinion, than many of the more expensive scale model trees I have seen.

The bases are made from plasticard - the 'footprint' base from a relatively thick piece (relatively?! - like a fool I didn't keep track of the sizes which would allow me to replicate this process, or use the information to avoid replicating inadequate results) coated with a fine gravel/PVA/cheap acrylic paint mix to match the board. I've gone for a bit darker a shade of green/brown for the 'footprint'. 

The stands of trees use much thinner plasticard (too thin, in my opinion, as it has curled up a bit at the edges - also a problem for my road which passes through the foreground) 'roughed up' with Humbrol Model Filler. A few quick passes with Vermin Brown, Bestial Brown, Bubonic Brown, and Camo Green, and you've got a reasonable approximation of a forest floor - stick some loose green and orange 'sponge' on the base and we're done.

Coming soon: a very short shieldwall.

A month of DBA #4 - a small pile of lead

So, a little over a week after I decided on my DBA project, the armies arrive...

As a 28mm man (Hey! I'm short, but not that short!), what sort of unit fits in a parcel this size?

Hang on. When I open that parcel there is a smaller, well padded envelope inside. I enjoy pass the parcel as much as the next overgrown child, but where are my armies!

I'm actually really impressed with the quality of the sculpts, but I can't get a good picture of bare metal on my iPad. But that's the pile. And having made the smallest of dents in it, I can say that these little men take paint really well. But the task is do more than dent the pile. Two armies. Twenty four elements...

A month of DBA #1 - the book arrives

So, thanks to everyone for helping me make up my mind. De Bellis Antiquitatis it is. The book arrived yesterday, just in time to begin a month of DBA - throughout this month my gaming attention and energy will be devoted almost entirely to my doable DBA project.

The project is to 'build' *a* game; two armies, board and scenery, in order to be able to run a number of 'historical' scenarios on the spot, without the other player needing to bring anything. As I'm on a bit of a Bernard Cornwell trip at the moment, the choice was simple; Sub-Roman British (II/81) vs Early Anglo-Saxon (II/73) - i.e. The Winter King, etc. - or Middle Anglo-Saxon (III/24) vs Norse Viking (III/40) - i.e. the Uhtred books. God knows why I didn't go for the Sub-Roman Arthur option, but the latter won, and I ordered the appropriate DBA armies from Essex Miniatures. C, meanwhile, has ordered Crusaders vs Saracens...

So, 29 days to paint and base 24 elements, knock together a 2ftx2ft 'Arable' game board and accumulate the appropriate bits and bobs of scenery. I'm unlikely to succeed, but by the end of the month the finishing line should be in sight.

Getting Real and Scaling Down

Our gaming group has lately become a victim of geography, and the pressure of PhDs and other work. With our face-to-face fantasy roleplay gaming having dwindled for a spell, I need a new project (no, I don’t, but anyway…). C, one of the players in our group, and I have been talking about getting real and scaling down our miniature gaming.

As in playing a bit of 15mm historical. 

The attractions of 15mm historical are; economy - a small army can be bought in a job lot for a reasonable price. The restrictions placed on the quality of painting by the scale – non-one expects ham-fisted painters (i.e. me) from achieving anything spectacular at 15mm, so a workmanlike, gaming orientated paint job will be perfectly acceptable. The fact that there is more space on a table – which produces greater possibilities for the exercise of ‘generalship’. And I might actually learn something from historical gaming.

But I need this to be a gaming project. Too many of my miniature projects run out of steam because there is no definite ‘game’ at the end. They become about painting, modelling, and collecting, and those are all secondary to the fact that you actually play games with the little men. 

At the moment I’m thinking about Dark Ages gaming, primarily because I have been reading Bernard Cornwell’s Arthur and Uhtred books, but also because, on a practical level, historically realistic battles can run from everything from a skirmish to a clash of shieldwalls, and I’ll be able to use the miniatures in fantasy gaming too. But feel free to suggest other eras/conflicts/battles too.

So, I am here to pick your brains. 

Someone reading this must have experience of historical miniature gaming in 15mm. I would like to know:

1) Which rulesets would people recommend? I’d like something that plays fast and is fairly straightforward to learn, while still being ‘representational’, rather than an abstracted strategy game with historical/military flavour. 

2) Which miniatures (and suppliers) would people recommend? I’d prefer hard plastic, as, after all, I am after economy and gaming first here, but happy for metal recommendations (and to mix and match).

3) Which (sources of) scenarios would people recommend? What particular game/s should I buy and paint towards?

And, for each of those, what should I avoid if I were you?

Blood Bowl Holiday Project

A modest holiday - just over a week at my parents - gives me the best opportunity of the year to do some sustained painting. Baby sitting, innit. So my project is to paint up at least one Blood Bowl team. I thought  would start with the plastics that came in the 3rd edition box, and opted to begin with the Orcs. Deciding that I'd use classic Blood Bowl colour schemes (which in my mind has morphed into a much longer term project of painting up all the classic Blood Bowl teams!) and it was a coin toss between the Orcland Raiders and the Gouged Eye. The Gouged Eye won, so here we go...

Step one, undercoat in green...

Base coats and few skin highlighting...

Not bad for a test model. Hopefully I will speed up as I paint up his teammates. I was quite pleased with the 'gouged eye' symbol and the half-arsed non-metallic metal on his helmet and shoulder pad.

And now for some sad news: there are very few Blood Bowl miniatures left on the Games Workshop website. To be reborn in Finecast? I dunno - but there are other manufacturers, and there is always eBay.

Harryhausen Tribute

So, Ray Harryhausen has died, a man who helped shaped the visual imagination of the fantastic for several generations. Not just what the fantastic should look like, but also how it should move - if I ask you to picture an animated skeleton, chances are the image in your mind will be moving as if it were animated by Harryhausen.

Now, countless better obituaries (see the BBC or the Guardian (which carried a couple of other pieces too [one, two] and a 'life in pictures' feature) than any that I would write - 'he lived a long life, his creations were extremely influential, and he was respected by most and revered by fans', - have been published - and plenty of bloggers (Warlord Paul and Telecanter, for example) have posted their own tributes to the influence that Ray Harryhausen  has had over their gaming imagination. 

So, having painted up some Harryhausen-esque skeletons, I decided let a bit more of Harryhausen's influence work its way into my gaming. I dug through my big box of bendy plastic fun, aka my Reaper Bones Vampire package, looking to find something else with echoes of the work of the great man. And I found this:

A GORGON! Armed with a bow, too. The details don't show up too well when the white plastic is bare, so...

A quick undercoat (despite what Reaper say, the Bones still benefit from some kind of priming) using Privateer Press' Menoth White Base, and then... 

... a liberal application of Vellejo Black Green Game Ink, and we can actually see what we're working with.

Umpteen different shades of green later (plus some Elf Flesh and Ogryn Flesh wash to give the upper body and face a bit of 'life') and we have a near finished miniature.

And here she is, based up and with the backing of a boy band's worth of Harryhausen-esque skeletons.

[Incidentally, for those of us Old School/Oldhammer bloggers with younger children (and a subscription to Lovefilm), the 'Claymation Story Book Classics' is actually a collection of very early Ray Harryhausen work - my daughter loves them, though I find them more than a bit sinister. But then I know what else moves in that manner, don't I?]

Hurry Up Harryhausen

The Reaper Bones arrived last week. A box full of bendy plastic miniatures. I decided to set to work straight away - at my own slow pace - and painted up some of the undead. Why undead? Well, they're easy to paint, using only a pretty limited pallette and there is no requirement that you attempt to bring the faces 'to life'!

I think they look pretty decent - the SKELETONS have a very 'Harryhausen' look about them - and it is certainly difficult to tell that they are made of bendy white plastic when painted up. Not so much though when you hold them, or waggle the end of the skeleton's spear - which waggles free and easy. Some of the models arrived quite bent, but this can be fixed with a dunk into very hot water, straightening the bent piece out by hand and dunking the straightened bit into cold water. I didn't even try to remove the mould lines, for three reasons. 1) Apparently, the material from which Reaper Bones doesn't file easily - and given how flexible it is, I'm happy to take the word of others there. 2) The point of miniatures this cheap is that they are gaming pieces. Nice looking gaming pieces, worth spending some time painting, but not worth investing in hours of effort to ensure that a ZOMBIE has a shoulder smooth as a baby's bum. And 3)  I've got bloody hundreds of these things to paint.

So what's in the big box?

A whole mess of miniatures. I'm starting painting the smallest stuff - the level 1 stuff, so to speak. The undead, then some GOBLINS (the classic kind, not the Pathfinder grinning munchkins), then some 'vermin' (swarms of RATS, SPIDERS and so on), and a small pack of KOBOLDS. But as you can see there are some more impressive monsters in there too - including a GIANT, though I'm not too impressed by his female counterpart, who appears to have that back problem that fantasy females tend to suffer from. You know, the lower back problem that leaves them sticking their arse out all the time! There are also townsfolk, some sci-fi miniatures (including a squad of what will work nicely as a Planetary Defence Force / Adeptus Arbites for 40K-ish games), a few bits and bobs of dungeon 'furniture', and endless varieties of Fighters, Elves, Magic Users etc - some overblown, some more modest in their 'awesomeness'. Not a bad haul.

So far, I'm pleased. If your tastes run to Forgeworld resin, then there isn't much for you in Reaper Bones - though I will say that the material handles bigger monsters better than it does things like a skeleton's spear. However, what I am getting from Bones is the urge to churn out painted monsters for my players to face (and I have some damn fool idea of painting up enough miniatures to handle the monster distributions on my random encounter tables), and psychologically, the cheapness and the 'obviously-not-collectors-items-or-for-winning-Golden-Demon' nature of these miniatures has me painting quickly.

Would I pick up more? Almost certainly, though it won't stop me buying lead, old and new.

Captain, My Captain? (Oldhammer 40K Marine squad, part two)

Well, I haven't made much progress on those Oldhammer 40K Marines. And boy, are they are bastard to put together; the way the arms fit into the shoulders means... no, sorry, the arms don't fit into the shoulders even in the single pose that is 'possible'. It does make you realise how well engineered most of the current plastic kits are, whatever their other faults. After putting together my 'test' marine I decided I needed to use a blob of greenstuff inside each shoulder pad. And using some conservative Saudi-style converting - cutting the hands off a few Marines (and sticking them back on again, of course) - I managed to create a modest variety of poses. Which leaves me with eight Marines as so:

Upright with the aid of blu-tack - I've taken to painting their legs separate from the rest of the body.  

I decided to go for an orange colour scheme because... I forget. I didn't want to paint the squad as part of any of the 'major' chapters, so I skimmed through the more obscure marine colour schemes in Rogue Trader and the Compendium. I thought about using one of the crazy 'alien terrain camouflage' schemes... And then painted them orange, go figure. Actually, the 'test' marine was a bit of a disaster. The glue didn't hold, I put a black ink wash (why?) on before the 'magnolia' undercoat had dried, leaving the model a mess of dirt grey. A catalogue of school boy errors would be a generous description. I gave the model a quick clean and undercoated using 'Macharius Solar Orange', a Citadel 'foundation' paint, and then used 'Blood Red', 'Blazing Orange' and 'Golden Yellow', with the metallic equipment painted with 'Greatcoat Grey' (a Privateer Press paint), 'Codex Grey' and 'Pig Iron' (another Privateer Press paint). Nothing fancy, and the results aren't too fancy, either!

I've achieved a much cleaner look on the second Marine. He didn't have a dirty, aborted base-coat, of course. They both still need a few more details - I'm thinking of adding some wings either side of the bull's head - not quite Blood Angles, but the Flying Buffalo Chapter?

But now for my Space Marine Captain. I was going to pick up a classic metal model, but instead I have these:

Finecast! Well, this will be my first experience painting Finecast. And of cleaning the 'flash' from Finecast! What I did find amusing that my first Finecast miniatures have the dates 1990 and 1991 stamped on the slotta tabs. In other words these sculpts are from the same era as my Oldhammer 40K Space Marines, even if they are made from new-fangled whatchamaresin. At £20.50 for five miniatures, they're not quite the bargain the e-Bay Marines were, but at just over £4 per miniature these are pretty competitively priced. Especially when compared to the cost of a single Finecast 'character' miniature (£10+ apiece). In fact, nearly all my Games Workshop purchases in the past couple of years have been from their 'Collectors' and 'Specialist Games' ranges. As much as we might moan about GW, hidden away on their website are some classic miniatures and, while 'forgotten' games such as BloodBowl, Necromunda, and Mordheim might not get much support in the way of new stuff, the range of miniatures still available for these 'abandoned' lines is impressive. Snap them up before the moulds break!

Anyway, 'Captain, My Captain!' Which of these should be the Space Marine Captain for my Oldhammer 40K tactical squad? Here's my thinking. The Marine in MKI armour (the one with the open face and plume) should probably be a Rogue Trader in antique armour. According the article by Rick Priestley in the Warhammer 40K Compilation (p19-25) - to which these miniatures are the partner pieces - the legs of the MKI suit are unpowered! What does that leave Marines wearing this with, Move 1? The Marine in the MKII armour - the one on the same sprue as the MKI - I'm thinking of using as a Chaplain, with the faceplate painted up as a stylised skull. The MKIII - the one with the Chainsword and Plasma Pistol - now that, I think is my Captain. The MKIV and the MKV - the other two on that sprue, from right to left - will probably end up as Captains of other, future Oldhammer 40K squads, though I might need to find some new arms and weapons as these guys are all armed with Bolters.

Now all I need is an Oldhammer 40K Marine with a Rocket Launcher.    

What have I done?!

Well, what I did is go in at 'Vampire' level on the Reaper Bones Kickstarter. It feels like an age ago, and I had forgotten just how many miniatures were included in the Vampire rewards. Today I got an e-mail informing me that my miniatures had shipped. I thought that I'd best remind myself what will be making a trans-Atlantic trip, and I stumbled across this video:

I can't promise such a cool accent when I unbox mine, just my Yorkshire glottal. But, crikey, what have I done? What will I do?

40K Space Fascists?

These are the boyz that will stop your little game.

Orks. The only hope for *life* in the universe against encroaching Chaos, ravenous Tyranids, and death-cult humans.

I started painting up a Rogue Trader-era Ork force a while back, courtesy of some donated old metal from Davey. I think the idea was that we'd play some kind of heretical mash-up of RT/40K2e/Necromunda. I only got five models into the project before other gaming projects (and real life*) intervened. Now that I hear that the new edition of Warhammer 40K is quite good, in ways that I might well appreciate, what am I to do? Well, maybe finish another five boyz before I inevitably pick up the big box of plastic that will shortly be unleashed...

*Scratch that. Gaming is a part of my 'real life'. Non-gaming aspects of my life intervened.

Lead Poisoning

No posts in a while… I’m not dead, but I am suffering from an acute case of lead poisoning. All I have done for the past few weeks is paint miniatures and play Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

My Dwarf army – the Dwarfs of the Kingless Halls, of Karak Angaz, the Industrious Hold, haven’t been performing that well in the field. In fact, the ineffectiveness of the Engineers’ Guild, with cannon balls falling short or bouncing long for the few rounds it takes for the Goblin Wolf Chariots to reach them, might well prompt a re-ordering of the power structure of the Hold. From syndicalist utopianism to military rule, perhaps?

This lead poisoning hasn’t just been eating my time, but also my imagination and my money. Right now I’m scouring eBay for the bits of an Empire mortar I need to build a Dwarf bombard (to be played ‘counts as’ a Grudgethrower). That’ll scatter those hordes of Greenskins!

Warhammer World Sportsnight

Blood Bowl is set in a Warhammer World. Not the grim world of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play (WFRP), nor even the markedly lighter world of Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WFB). The world of Blood Bowl is violently silly. I do wonder what a game of WFRP set in this version of the Warhammer World would play like. There is enough background material in the various rulebooks, companion books, magazines, annuals, and even novels, to layer a Warhammer World devoted to the Cult of Nuffle over the grimdark world we already know. I would love to hear from anyone who has done this, whether for a one-off game or for a Blood Bowl-themed campaign.

When they said that their home ground was a fortress...

A few days ago, D retrieved his 3rd edition Blood Bowl (and Dungeonbowl) and we played a human v dwarf game. His human team sported their 15-20 year old paint jobs, while the dwarfs rumbled across the field flashing their bare lead. The first half was played without the four-minute per turn rule; it is a little difficult to play to that rule when you are consulting the rulebook on a more or less continuous basis. By half-time it was 1-0 to the humans, gifted a touchdown when their catchers broke the iron-wall of dwarven defence and we misinterpreted the mechanics of passing and catching. The second half was played with the four-minute per turn rule in effect, which made for a much more urgent, exciting, even tense playing experience. The game flowed - at least, the board game that D and I were playing flowed, the game of Blood Bowl that was being represented on the board was a static battle as the dwarf team ground its way upfield, eventually scoring a touchdown against the four remaining human players able to stand upright. Final score, 1-1, with the humans counting 2 dead, 2 seriously injured, and 4 knocked-out.

Blood Bowl Live? No, Calcio in Costume. "The modern version allows tactics such as head-butting, punching, elbowing, and choking, but forbids sucker punching and kicks to the head."

Miniatures, miniatures, miniatures. I have never used them when playing RPGs. I am not a great painter, never had the money to collect many, and given that the strength of using miniatures is in creating a vivid visual representation of the scenarios being described, I could not see the point in using a miniature to 'stand in' for some other monster or character. That the game takes place in the imagination is surely the very point of RPGs. Isn't it?

But miniatures, miniatures, miniatures. Before this game of Blood Bowl I had rescued by 1st edition Space Hulk from storage, and had made a start painting up a few genestealers in the classic blue/purple colour scheme. And while I am still not a great painter, I am a hell of a lot wealthier than I was when I was a teenager. So where does that take me? Straight past a fully-painted Blood Bowl team, a star player or two, and towards Warhammer Fantasy Battle, building a dwarf army, and some kind of Chinese hell in which tiny little plastic and lead men beg me to paint them to a standard that I can never achieve, and yet my disappointment only sharpens my appetite for more. And more.

A hell of a lot wealthier than when I was a teenager? Not for much longer.