Hordes of the Things - 10mm Wizard and Hero

I very quickly prepped and primed most of the Coppelstone Castings 10mm Fantasy stuff that arrived the other day and then got painting them. I finished up two of the elements I'm making out of them - a Hero and a Magician...

Hero and Magician! 

I have other Hero and Magician elements that I'm making out of the assorted packs of miniature, and most of those will have more than one (usually at least three or four) miniatures per base! These ones for various reasons ended up on the bases on their own. 

Barbarian Hero

This one struck me as looking a little like Conan the Barbarian. While Conan was known to sometimes adventure with companions, there weren't really any included in the pack, so I decided to just do this guy on his own, which I thought was kind of funny... It does make him look like a bit of a super badass if he's out there all on his own taking on entire units of enemies... 

In the second edition of Hordes of the Things it has a number of army lists for the various kingdoms mentioned in the Conan series. It suggests using a system similar to a postal campaign once run by Tony Bath where there is only ONE Hero element available in the campaign - Conan - and he is diced for each year. 

That got me to thinking and another option for a campaign involving a wandering barbarian that devastates entire armies could take some inspiration from Groo the Wanderer - have him available to be "summoned" by any player much in the way that Gods and Dragons are summoned to the battlefield with the expenditure of 6 PIPs... at which point he arrives at a board edge and can be activated by the summoning player... until the opponents spends 6 PIPs... at which point the thick-headed barbarian gets confused and starts fighting for the other side! 

Magician

This wizard came in the Evil Characters pack and is clearly inspired by Sauruman... There were some Orcs in the pack and a dire wolf and I was tempted to add them to the base. OR I thought I could use him as a necromancer to lead the Undead army and put some skeletons - or one of the spare skeleton command elements on his base. But then I decided I wasn't particularly fond of either of these ideas. I had a better idea for a necromancer and... do Orcs really need an old white human dude to lead them!? Ultimately I decided he should just be a generic wizard dude and could be included in any of the Generic Medieval (Human) armies... though one of the less-than-ethical ones and maybe he's a little bit evil... 

Also with this figure, as with most of the others from the Coppelstone packs (which are mostly miniatures that are clearly inspired by Lord of the Rings characters!) I was initially tempted to paint him in white robes like Sauruman... but then decided I didn't NEED to do that. I'm not planning to play a campaign set in Middle Earth. This guy isn't going to BE Sauruman. So I didn't need to take my inspiration for painting schemes from him! 

Hero versus Magician... Someone's going down! (it's a mutual instant death situation - unless the roll is tied - Hero adds +5, Magician adds +4, if the Hero's total is higher the magician is destroyed, if the Magicians total is higher the Hero is Ensorcelled!) 

I'll probably have more of these characters rolling off the workbench over the next few days/weeks... I am, at this point, COMPLETELY DISTRACTED from the other things I was trying to get done - assorted sci-fi minis for a Five Parsecs from Home: Planetfall campaign and the last few things needed for Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - WHICH WE ARE ACTIVELY PLAYING RIGHT NOW!? 

Ah well... I find that trying to FIGHT where the inspiration is taking me just means NOTHING gets done... so I'm going to work on these and see if I can't get enough done to actually PLAY Hordes of the Things! 

Ooops, I Did it Again - MORE 10mm stuff...

 Well I've been having so much fun planning na painting these ridiculous little 10mm French dudes, I went and placed two more orders to build a few more armies for De Bellis Antiquitatis and/or Hordes of the Things... 

The first of the orders arrived today. 

Order from the Sentry Box in Calgary, Alberta, Canada... 

I could have held off on ordering these until I got a bit more of the French done (I could easily build a couple of generic Medieval armies out of that box alone... or four...). But the Old Glory 10mm figures were DEEPLY discounted - originally $23.05... they'd been discounted to $5 a pack and then further to $3.97 per pack - and I'd have been sad if I went to order them at a later date and found someone else had snapped them up!? And while I was placing an order and paying $20 for shipping... I figured I'd grab a few things from Coppelstone Castings as well. 

What's in here? 

Coppelstone Castings

Halflings and Heroes on foot - The Halflings will be an element of Sneakers that could join any "good" army. The wizard will be a Magician stand and maybe some of the foot heroes will join him as companions on the same base. Maybe the archers will join the Rangers. Others... not sure yet... 

Heroes on Horseback - the Wizard will become another Magician element for another human army (possibly the Steppe Peoples?) The rest...? Some will become a command element for the Steppe peoples, either as a Hero or another element of Cavalry (I'm tempted to make them Heroes as ALL THE OTHER ELEMENTS in the army will be Cavalry - unless I feel like adding some foot archers as Shooters?) 

Evil Characters - There is another Wizard that will become a Magician element... I'm not entirely sure which army...? Probably a human one...? There are two sets of three Orc Command - one on foot, one on wolf/warg - that may or may not be used as command figures in the Orc army I'm building - depending on how they scale next to the Wargames Atlantic figures that will make up the bulk of the army. There is a cloaked figure on a horse that will probably be the Magician General for the Undead army and another cloaked figure on a winged flying beast that could be an Aerial Hero element for... some "evil" army...? Maybe the Undead or Orcs... or one of the human ones?! There's also a Dire Wolf... it may become a companion to one of the wizards.

Rangers - I'm kind of torn about these... could be Shooters... could be Lurkers! I think I got extras of these. I'm pretty sure the pack was to include nine strips of two to make eighteen... but I got twelve strips, which gave me twenty-four of them! I guess I could make Shooter elements AND a couple of Lurkers! 

Dire Wolves - I ordered the pack from the 15mm line because it contained sixteen of them and the 10mm pack contained only twelve and Im certain they are the exact same models!? On Copplestones website the 15mm actually cost LESS than the 10mm ones!? At Sentry Box he 15mm pack was $1 more for 33% more miniatures... so... Anyway, they'll mostly be used as elements of Beasts - though a few may end up on bases with evil wizards (on foot and/or mounted) I'm not sure which armies they'll end up in... probably the undead one, as it seems to have the least diversity of elements! 

Magog the Hill Giant - also from the 15mm line... I figured that would just make him a MORE imposing Behemoth element. Turns out he's actually SMALLER than a couple of the other elements I already had that I'm going to use as Behemoth/Giant elements. 

Old Glory 10mm

Mongol Heavy Cavalry and Mongol Light Cavalry - these two packs will make an entire IV/35 Mongol Conquest army for De Bellis Antiquitatis! 

Steppe Peoples Horse Archers - from their Dark Ages line... I'm not sure who exactly where are supposed to be... The inheritors of the Scythians and Sarmations...? Generic Steppe Peoples...? They'll make up a generic Steppe Peoples army for Hordes of the Things. There are 30 in the bag - at 3/base that'll make 10 elements of Riders and I'll use some of the mounted Heroes from Coppelstone Castings to add either a Hero General or a Rider General and a Magician...? 

Goth Archers - I don't know... I figured at 10mm I could pass them off as generic unarmoured archer for just about any army...? It was $4 for FIFTY of them!? How could I pass that up!? 

• 5x Evil Characters on foot
• 13x Foot Heroes
• 50x Goth Archers
• 16x Dire Wolves
• 18x Rangers

+102 10mm Foot

• 8x Mounter Heroes
• 30x Mongol Light Cavalry
• 30x Mongol Heavy Cavalry
• 30x Steppe People Horse Archers
• 5x Mounted Evil Characters

+103 10mm Mounted

1x Magog the Hill Giant

+1 10mm Big 'Un

I did a few quick comparison shots of the Copplestone Castings versus the Old Glory 10mm..

Coppelstone Castings Rangers on the left, Old Glory Goth Archers on the right

Coppelstone Castings Heroes on the left, Old Glory Mongol Light Cavalry on the right

They all seem pretty close...? The Old Glory archers might be a bit slighter than the Coppelstone rangers.

As I'm typing this I'm realizing I should have done a few with the Wargames Atlantic Plastics... but I'm feeling a little lazy and not wanting to get up and go find them and pull a few off the frame for that. Maybe I'll do that next week when the second package arrives... which is mostly MORE Wargames Atlantic - English and Orcs and Dwarves and Skeletons, and a 2'x2' game mat to play on (or maybe two...? at one point I looked on the status of the order and it said "partially fulfilled"... suggesting that one of the mats and the skeletons were actually out of stock... but then they charged me for the full amount... and it says it ALL shipped... so... we'll see when they arrive, I guess!?) 

Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - Nemesis 02 - Secure Journey

Another Tuesday, another game of Warhammer Quest: Cursed City! 

In the Nemesis campaign a Calamity Level is tracked which abstractly determines the state of the city as it slowly crumbles at the precipice of the Shyish Nadir! It starts at 1 and at the end of most Journeys goes up by two, unless one has just completed a Secure Journey, in which case it goes down by ONE!? 

Secure Journeys entail running around the map and filling in a series of sinkholes that have appeared in the neighbourhood, all the while the sinkholes are disgorging enemy intent on destroying the Heroes or otherwise preventing them from completing their task.

Much like the interviewing of vampires, this is a Major Action which requires expending activation dice totalling 13+ followed by rolling the Quest Die (d12) and scoring 4+ at which point the sink hole is considered filled or plugged or whatever, whether by physical of magical means! 

Strangely, like the interviewing of vampires, there is nothing that states this cannot be done while in contact with enemy!? 

All set up and ready to go... 

Torgilius the Chamberlain, Octren's Wizard Academy nemesis, is back and appeared with a bunch of undead critters which just kept coming back again and again as long as he was around... 

Qulathis was the first out of the entry plaza and started shooting up Ulfenwatch...

Filling the Fuzz full of arrows! 

When the dust settled... there weren't too many of them left. 

Glaurio and Octren joined Qulathis and the first of the sink holes was filled... on the second attempt... because on the first they rolled a one... 

Through the cloud of bats Brutogg had been fighting sprang a Vyrkos Blood-Born vampire! 

And then another one!? 

More cops showed up and some police brutality occurred, injuring both Octren and Glaurio! 

All retreated to the starting passage to heal a bit and not get swarmed... 

But then the broke out of there and murdered all the ulfenwatch... 

Moving along towards the next sinkhole, a pack of Dire Wolves emerged from it!?

While the others were dealing with all the hostiles emerging from the sinkhole, Qulathis decided to sneak off and start filling in some of the other sink holes... 

aaaaaand Amanda rolled another one after blowing all her activation dice to try and fill in a second sink hole... it would not be the last time... 

Glaurio surrounded by giant bats! 

Qulathis had to fight off a few swarms of Corpse Rats while out on her errand. 

Dire Wolves mostly dealt with, Brutogg takes a moment to fill in the sink hole they'd been coming out from... 

Only for Lady Annika and an Kosargi Nightguard to emerge from another one nearby and charge in! 

Glaurio finally made it into the same alley as the others, and with the Ogor to his back started blowing holes in the giant bats with his brace of pistols! 

Then turned to help deal with the undead Ogor and vampire in their midst! 

Things were momentarily quiet as Hostile groups were annihilated all on the same turn and it took a moment for the new encounter cards to come into play... 

Brutogg shoulder-barged past the vampire... 

and into the next passage to fill in the sink-hole within! 

Glaurio Von Alten III, Vampire Hunter, blew apart and cut down Lady Annika... AGAIN.... 

Qulathis filled in another hole... 

Before Brutogg could fill in the sinkhole in the passage, Torgilius emerged, once more, and as always was accompanied by swarms of rats and bats! 

Qulathis filled in another hole... 

The encounter with the vampire lord and undead ogor had definitely left a few marks... Octren was in a bad way... 

and Glaurio was looking a little worn... both desperately needed to heal... 

But the monsters kept coming! 

A Wight King and some Ggrave Guard were the next to emerge. 

Qulathis filled in ANOTHER hole... 

But then her luck ran out as Radukar the Beast crawled out of the next one she was approaching... 

Brutogg heard her screams and turned to come to her aid... 

Qulathis filled the gigantic beast full of arrows... dealing NINETEEN DAMAGE in one turn... and then missed with the final shot!? (Radukar the Beast has twenty wounds... and normally automatically reduces all damage received by two... but Qulathis carried a weapon that deals damage that CANNOT be reduced!!) 

He did charge and deal Qulathis some serious damage (but didn't manage to heal any of his own!).. Then following turn, Qulathis was able to dodge out the doorway and put one more arrow into the monstrosity and take it out of action! 

A pair of Kosargi Guard crawled out of a sink hole and Brutogg stove ones head in before I could even take a picture of the pair!? 

the other one ran off to deal MORE DAMAGE to others he could attack at the same time... so Brutogg stepped back to finally fill in the sinkhole. 

But AGAIN... before he could... Gorslav the Gravekeeper crawled out of it along with a horde of Zombies!? 

and then some Ulfenwatch... and a massive swarm of Corpse Rats!? 

Brutogg bashed down Gorslav and then just waded through his minions!? (and took a moment to fill the sink hole... probably with all the bodies that were piling up around him...) 

He moved forward into the next plaza and filled in a sink hole while there were Fell Bats flying over it!? 

He finally broke through the crowd of hostiles and met up with Glaruio who, still injured, was slowly making his way to the exit location. 

Then some Fell Bats carried Brutogg away and he had to fight his way clear of them and storm off towards the exit again... 

He finally made it there, but they had to fight all the way...

While they stood in the exit square awaiting the Adamant to arrive and lower it's ladders, they were continually attacked by all manner of hostiles! 

They DID make it out, however and the Journey WAS a success! Calamity level reduced to TWO!! 

It is fun to be back playing this again!

This journey was a bit of a slog and went way longer than we expected... failing FIVE of the thirteen attempts to fill sinkholes (when there is only a 25% chance of doing so!) didn't help... luckily we all had the day off on Wednesday (Remembrance Day!) 

I STILL have some miniatures to paint up for this... but having a hard time motivating myself to do so when there are newer, funner, shinier things to paint!!