May in Review

May saw a surprising increase in not only the number of games played, but I even picked up a paint brush!

Rules played in May:

1. Sword Weirdos 
2. My own modified version(s) of OHSW for melee heavy fantasy (so many cards to draw)
3. My own Sword Weirdos Lite
4. Portable Wargame-ish Ancients (using fantasy figures)
5. OHW Ancient/Dark Ages/Medieval for fantasy
6. My modified Morschauser Shock Period rules for fantasy
   

That's a lot of fantasy.

And it all owes to the arrival of my old school GW Black Orcs "regiment" (10 seems more like a company to me) which, as they provide an opponent for my lizards, sparked a renewed interest in figure gaming. A 24" square playing area, figures mounted 2 to a 3"x 2" rectangle, borrowing some orcs and goblins from my RPG minis to pad out the Orc army, and I was off to the races playing One Hour Wargames scenarios, using rules 4, 5, and 6 above.

Eventually I settled on number 6 as my preferred option for these "battle" sized games.

And there were many of them, but I took pictures only during a few:

Quite a mix here - SCS Direct, Reaper Bones, Reaper Dark Heaven, Games Workshop, and some random toy manufacturer.

Close up of the Black Orcs - GW metal sculpt. eBay purchase - painted by previous owner. I love them.

Reaper orcs in the foreground, GW orks in the middle.

The standard is so orc, it hurts!

The games themselves have been great fun and full of drama, but also the aesthetics of the games just make me happy. They remind me of Maudlin Jack Tar's games on Projects & Procrastinations and the potter bench games (i think that's what it's called) of Alan of the Duchy of Tradgardland, both of whom put on clean, uncluttered-looking games in small spaces. 

A thought on the Morschauser rules: Although the rules are simple, I find I am able to accommodate a variety of troop types, without adding innumerable special rules. Using One Hour Wargames as my reference, I decided "warband" type troops could be represented by increased movement, a front melee value of 4, with a rear melee of 1 (a combination Morschauser does not account for), for example. 

Admittedly, this can result in some imbalance when a force consisting mostly of archers (front 2/rear 1, long range missiles) and skirmishers (front 3/rear 1, short range missiles) run into a force consisting mostly of heavy infantry (front 4/rear 2), but I'm not worried about that. I play each army to their strengths and it works out in play.

The lizards are fast moving, light troops (a mix of skirmish, archers, and warband), with the possibility of long-range attacks and some tough, dangerous dinos (mostly treated as heavy cavalry with more strength points) in support. The Orc army is primarily slow-moving heavy infantry, supported with some warband and light infantry, and occasionally some dire wolves (with goblin handlers) (front 5, rear 3, but speed in the skirmisher/light infantry range).

I imagine it isn't too dissimilar to Celts vs Romans.

The joy of these games has led to a sudden burst in painting enthusiasm - more goblins to fill out the orc army, but also, additional undead to both bring up my RPG collection and to form a whole new army to field.  

Ever since I was a kid and had a set of D&D monster cards, I've thought goblins should be yellow/gold in color. You can see what I mean here: https://rollforcombat.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/27-DD-Monster-Cards-3.jpg

Homage to Spiderman's enemy, the Green Goblin.

Smurf-lins. I crack myself up.

Oh yeah! 54mm figures! I remember I used to paint a lot of them! These will function as skeletal giants.

Brains!

I think this is the Reaper mascot. I'm using this figure as the 2nd figure on the undead general's stand.

Just a bunch of giant rats. In addition to being super common for fantasy RPG adventures, I'm them as light cavalry for the undead army for now.

Some stuff just for RPGs:

Almost as ubiquitous as giant rats, large/giant/huge spiders.

I think I have a 2nd dwarf figure - if I paint it, I can field a base of Dwarves as allies for humans.

Continuing the superhero motif - his snarl and oversized muscles reminded me of the incredible Hulk.

And back to the wargaming, the human general has some furry friends:

I've had all three figures sitting in the pile of shame for well over 10 years, I think. Better late than never.

So now I have four forces that I can use. With the huge benefit that all figures can serve double-duty for RPGs.

Speaking of ....

We kicked off our Episodic Campaign in May, with the party adventuring to the Halfling House - an abandoned halfling farmstead deep in the woods. 

The party consisted of:

• Macho Man Randy Savage  (1st lvl. Barbarian with Monk quasi class)
• Morticia (1st lvl. Necromancer)
• The Chaplin (1st lvl, Paladin - playing as an anti-paladin - with Confessor quasi class)
• Clarence (gnome, 1st lvl Scout with Barbarian quasi class)
• Mustard (1st lvl Necromancer with Monk quasi class)

Quasi-classes are a Basic Fantasy RPG optional thing. They are sort of like templates that can be applied to certain other classes (I wave all limits like that though and let them apply whatever they want to whatever they want) to create particular kinds of characters - Archer" is a quasi-class for example. So you could take Thief as your base class, and apply Archer, and voila! Robin Hood.

Unlike multi-class, they just add XP required to advance to the character's base class, rather than splitting XP between two classes.

The entire party survived their first outing, although a TPK was a real possibility when they were attacked by a bunch of stirges and three of the five went down with 0 HP. We're playing with the "death save" option a la 5e, so that helped them out quite a bit in that fight.

They cleared the whole place of monsters and looted all the treasure, but they want to come back with a cart for the furniture, which is worth a few hundred gold, before proceeding to The Purple Worm Graveyard. Of course, if they're returning to a site, there's a greater than zero percent chance that something will have opportunistically moved in during their absence and/or they will be attacked on the way in or out.

Macho Man is now being followed by a giggling ghost child (it's not part of the adventure, it was just a thing i added to an empty room and he befriended it by returning its doll, found in a tree house. The doll is also something I added just to add some mystery to the tree house.) This is the kind of thing I love as a GM, and why I don't prep stories or plots. I like it to emerge at the table.

The party was curious about the intended recipient of some letters they found (an actual part of the adventure but with no intended significance that I'm aware of) and though he letters are decades old if not older, I'm going to turn the recipient into a recurring thread that I'll plant in the other adventures they go on, to help bring the game world to life. 

If the players express interest in something, I try to reward them for it.

So, while I'm not writing up adventures or building dungeons for this campaign, it's already taking on a life of its own beyond the pre-written adventures.

Finally, I have been jonesing to get my 40K figures on the table for some One Hour Skirmish Wargames, Space Weirdos, Planet 28, etc. but I really wanted suitable terrain that isn't just me digging through my son's old toys (actually, strike that...i love his old toys, but I want to repaint them to be more suitable for my vision. When he goes off to college in a few years maybe :D )

Enter "poorhammer" as it's called by some - most of us know it as DIY scenery and terrain. 

Cardboard, cereal boxes, card stock, sprue cuttings, canvas knitting mesh etc. I decided on a ruined/abandoned industrial-type site, rather than Grim Dark Gothic ruins, as the latter has a very specific look that I do not feel I could do justice with my "measure 30x-cut myself" crafting ability. 

Also, an industrial site seems to me to be more "universal" - good for battling troops but also for ragtag bands of scavengers and smugglers. Possibly even a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

 Here's where it stands as of now:

This was the first piece, and I sort of fumbled along with trial and error. It was supposed to be a proof of concept, and I ended up really liking it.

 

Occupied!

"Sheet metal" from the lining inside a can of Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies. This might be my favorite - works as an objective to capture, but also provides cover, and adds to the atmosphere. 

Clearly a piece of sprue, but it reminded me of an old antenna.

I love how corroded and rusted this looks. The texture of the corroded area was a happy accident of repeated hot glue mishaps.

The other side. I pictured this as having been a converted shipping container or makeshift foreperson's office

Oops! Missed aging the copper pipes!

This is the entire lining inside a can of Pirouette cookies. I was really sloppy gluing the dop disc to the cylinder, but I like how it made the rim look ragged and corroded once the paint was added. Another happy accident!

The aftermath (or as I like to say, "Genius at work!":

I did make a purchase on eBay of some scatter terrain to supplement my hand-made efforts. 

I picked up Mantic's Terrain Crate: Industrial Scatter Terrain to be precise. The pieces look great, and will add visual variety, act as objective markers, and provide substantial amounts of light cover. 

Finally, because one of my 2025 goals is to do more social gaming - well more social things generally even:

I joined the One Page Rules Discord server and once there was pointed to a group in North GA that meets for games regularly. They play at a game store a bit far away for their regular weeknight gaming - 30-90 minutes depending on traffic (Atlanta traffic is like that). Never mind that it's a night I can almost never make because I typically have a guitar student that night, but a bunch are open to weekend gaming with advance notice. 

So, I'm trying to arrange a meetup for mid-June. Wish me luck!

Ok, finally (this time for real), on May 4th a distortion pedal that I wanted way back in 2017, and which was discontinued, returned for a single day, and one now resides on my pedal board:

It's a good basic distortion - nothing fancy. I could have purchased cheaper used Boss DS-1 or something, but R5-D4! 

Until next month!