April Games

 Here is what we got up to in April... 

(Usually with any miniature games I provide a link to the game report... but I'm about a month behind on most battle reports... so.. maybe in May I'll get the April game reports done...?)

Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Back to Warhammer Quest! We took a week off while Finnegan finished up some school work for the end of term, but now he is done and we are free to continue our weekly game unabated! 

This week was a simple hunt, but saw the first appearance of Torgilius the Chamberlain... who isn't TOO much of a treat, if dealt with quickly! 

Wednesday, 9 April 2025

Another game of Warhammer Quest. This one was a Deliverance Journey. Same characters as the previous week. The Journey was a success and now half of them are at Level Three. 

Thursday, 10 April 2025

Thursday Orion stopped by and we played some more Bolt Action! 

Tuesday, 15 April 2025

Since the Soulbound game kind of fizzled, I started a NEW sort-of-role-playing campaign on Tuesday evenings! I'm using Advance Song of Blades and Heroes for the action and maybe a mix of campaign elements from Advance Song of Blades and Heroes (ASOBH), Song of Deeds and Glory, and Five Leagues from the Borderland... 

Amanda is playing an assassin named Megan, Finnegan is playing an apprentice wizard named Ralores, and Orion is playing a knight named Lady Ismira! With them were a few other attendants and warriors in their retinue! 

We made up the warband and played a quick encounter to learn the combat rules this evening. You can read a brief game report here:

Journey to the Vale of Ravensflight

You can find the Campaign Page here (to see the most up-to-date status of the adventuring party and find links to all their adventures...):

Campaign for Ravensflight

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

This week's Warhammer Quest game saw Radukar the Wolf show up for the first time... 

It... did not go well... 

Eventually I will write up a game report and you can read all about it.. 

Tuesday, 22 April 2025

We played the second adventure in our new fantasy sort-of-role-playing campaign this week. It was mostly role-playing, actually!? Which kind of set things up for a battle the following week! 

Tuesday, 29 April 2025

We played a third session of the Song of Blades and Heroes campaign. The Heroes defended the small hamlet of Gromlet against a horde of Ratlings bend on revenge after the heroes had slain a number of their kin along the road to Gromlet in the first session! 

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Back to Warhammer Quest... 

And that was it... 

Campaign for Ravensflight - Journey to the Vale of Ravensflight

I've been kind of wanting to run a different sort of role-playing game since the Soulbound campaign kind of fizzled... and was thinking of using Five Leagues from the Borderlands for generating the events of the campaign, but maybe using A Song of Blades and Heroes for combat resolution (and maybe elements of Tales of Blades and Heroes for non-combat task resolution...?) 

It has been almost a decade since I last played A Song of Blades and Heroes - the last catalogued play on Board Game Geek was in November of 2015. The following year I picked up ADVANCED Song of Blades and Heroes (ASOBH) when it was released... but then never really got around to playing it until NOW!? 

Tuesday evening Amanda, Finnegan, Orion and I got together to make up a warband/adventuring party and played out a quick encounter to learn the rules for ASOBH!

The basic background I had set out for the campaign was there has been a protracted period of instability caused by a war (and/or civil war) followed by a plague. Their retinue was journeying to a remote region of The Realm that has fallen into chaos. The knight or baron that used to oversee the region had marched off to war a few decades earlier and never returned. Whether appointed to do so by a higher authority (the king or queen him/herself, or maybe a Duke...?) to bring the region back under control and help protect the common people or even permanently take control of the region themselves... or they were just going there on their own thinking there could be money to be made and opportunity to begin carving out a kingdom by their own sword... 

It was up to them how their party was formed... They could be a knight and their retinue... They could be a wizard with apprentices and guards... They could be a anarcho-syndicalist commune that each take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week but all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting...?

They chose the former option. Orion decided to play a Knight of the Realm - Largely as an excuse to finally paint her Emelda Braskov miniature from Warhammer Quest: cursed City! She is Lady Ismira - the daughter of the Knights that had left on campaign over two decades earlier, before their daughter was even born, and had never returned. Lady Ismira is leading a retinue to reclaim her ancestral lands! 

I said each could play about 100 points worth of stuff - which would make the warband/retinue about 300 points - the suggested size for an average game. Orion's Knight was just over 100 points. 

Amanda took an Assassin and a Veteran Archer. The Assassin, Megan, was trying to escape her life before it was ended prematurely by rivals or friends of victims bent of vengeance. Along the road she met up with Lady Ismira's retinue and offered up her services as a "scout". Amelia - the Veteran Archer - is the older sister of one of Finnegan's characters, who went off to serve in the army after her younger sister was conscripted - to protect her! 

Finnegan ended up with THREE characters! First was Ralores, an apprentice spellcaster, who'd spent almost all of his life living in the Capital serving the Grand Wizard of the Realm. At some point the Grand Wizard of the Realm decided Ralores was a little too "sheltered" and needed some "practical" experience of magic - and the world around them. So when a request for a wizard to accompany a Knight of the Realm on a quest to retake their ancestral homeland came up, Ralores was volunteered for the job! 

The others were Luciana, the younger of Amelia the Archer, a peasant who was conscripted to serve in the Realm's Army near the end of the long wars. She was trained with the Crossbow and fought in many battles alongside her sister under the command of Lady Ismira! And finally there was Yodrick, who had joined the Lady Isimira's Retinue after parting ways with a mercenary company he'd served with for many years during The Wars. 

They also decided they needed a pack animal and found on of my Dungeons and Doggies miniatures that fit the bill... and then a wee child they figured could be the "dog handler". 

I had determined that the Kingdom would be predominantly human. The society/technology level is very much early mediaeval-feudal. Dwarves and Halflings are common enough. Though halflings generally keep to their own in their own rural communities. Dwarves are often free tradesmen or miners. 

Elves are a bit less common. They very definitely prefer to keep to themselves in their own kingdoms deep in the forest or islands off in the sea. 

the adventure began with the group marching along a route they hoped would take them to Lady Ismira's ancestral homelands - a place she had never before visited! 

One afternoon they found their way blocked by a small group of shabby little ratlings, intent on robbing them! 

Lady Ismira's retinue held their ground! 

(I know... using unpainted miniatures... Finnegan insisted on wanting to use his own miniatures... which he has zero interest in painting... ever... and I didn't want to wait a week to play... so I allowed it just this ONCE)

(and now I have to paint his miniatures for him!?) 

Wow! Gregarious Ratlings with a leader can really move! in a turn or two they were upon them, swarming Lady Ismira and Megan the Assassin... er... SCOUT! 

Yodrick stepped in to aid Megan and knocked away one of the Ratlings, then moved to attack one that was swarming Lady Ismira, only to be stabbed in the side with one of their cruelly sharp rusty blades and topped over, blood pouring out of him... 

A ratling armed with a sling loosed a stone and hit Megan square in the forehead and she pitched down, quite unconscious! 

things were not looking great... the player were wondering if I was going to TPK the lot of them on THE FIRST GAME!? 

Eventually they got control of the situation, thanks in large part to Ralores, the Apprentice Spellcaster, who EVERYONE had expected very little from... but ended up being EXTREMELY helpful, being able to put hostile ratlings to sleep with his magiks! It didn't kill them or take them entirely out of the action... but it effectively removed them, if only temporarily, from the action and made them very easy to despatch! 

After the ratlings had been killed or driven off, they checked on Yodrick only to discover he'd bled out and died. Megan was in a very bad way as well - she'd been concussed very badly and in a coma-like-state. They draped her body over Hamlet the dog and hurried on their way hoping to come across a village that might have a healer! 

(she will miss the next encounter and the one after that will be at reduce Quality!) 

And thats where our story ended for the first session. Hopefully we'll be playing again next week and this will go a little better than the Soulbound campaign! 

I still have game reports from last week to do... but this was too much fun and I just would not have been able to concentrate on those until I got this out of my head!!

A Wizard and a Halfling Assassin Walk Into a Tavern...

 I... don't have an end to that joke... 

But I did finish painting a few miniatures this weekend... 

Wizard and a Halfling Assassin

The Wizard is from Hasslefree miniautres... and now as I'm preparing to post this, I see some things that I missed... ugh... 

The Halfling (that I am calling an assassin). I'm pretty sure this one is a reeeeeeeally old Ral Partha miniature! 

It is tiny, compared to most other halflings... (as are most of the Ral Partha Halflings I have... I was thinking I'd use most as halfling children or teens!?) 

but they are not compared to their nemesis, other halfling assassin I have (I have no idea WHERE this one came from... I thought maybe it was Heresy minaitures, but when I went to check and confirm, could not find?!) 

Despite their diminutive nature, they are the two most deadly assassins in the realm! 

While working on the Wizard and Halfling, I ended up rebasing and touching up (and partially re-painting) a number of other mediaeval fantasy types for a little plan I have cooking in my brain... 

More on that later, though... 

Maybe... 

It may all come to naught... 

Just another excercise in my brain of creating a narrative that nothing ever comes of... 

Game Plan 2024 - Q1

It's a whole new year.... Whole new First Quarter.... 

This maybe isn't so much of a PLAN as a "Review of Things I'd LIKE to DO"... maybe some general guidelines...? While plans have worked in the past, when I've managed to stay FOCUSED... more often than not, they just make hobby-fun-time feel like work when I lose focus and interest in the thing I'd declared I would do... I really like the idea of challenges (10x10 Annual, or 5x5 Quarterly) because it encourages one to really DIG INTO a game and LEARN it... but trying to guess what those games I might be interested in over the next three months (let alone YEAR) is almost impossible for me to foretell anymore...

I have a Game Room again... so I should probably PLA Y SOME GAMES!!!

GAMES

ROLE-PLAYING GAMES

I would really, REALLY like to get back to playing and/or running some role-playing games. I'm not quite sure what that might look like. 

I picked up a few new RPGs this year...

Blade Runner... 

and the new version of Twilight: 2000!

Both are from Free League - and I REALLY LIKE the look of the systems. 

I'm also still really interested in giving Wrath & Glory another go... I picked up Litanies of the Lost for this - a book of four adventures that can be run as one shots or strung together into a campaign of sorts. 

and maybe Hellboy, if I could ever finish reading through the rules.. 

And I really like the idea of FATE and would like to explore that some more! 

If I got playing Warcry and/or Warhammer Underworlds and/or Warhammer Quest: Cursed City again, I could also see myself wanting to try Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound again! 

Maybe in the new year I could run a series of one-shot adventures to try out all the systems and try out some new potential players and figure out something to run as a campaign later in the year...? 

SOLO (or CO-OP?) GAMES

Last year I tried out some solo games - starting the year with a LOT of solo games of One Hour Wargames, and ending the year trying out Five Parsecs From Home and Five Leagues From The Borderlands. It went pretty okay. I had a lot of fun playing the games and even more fun tracking the campaigns of the armies (One Hour Wargames/Back of Beyond) or Crews (Five Parsecs From Home). It seems likely I will continue to do so this year. 

It might be nice to try playing them as CO-OP games, though! I'm hoping maybe I might get Amanda to join me for some of those adventures!? 

We also still have a lot of Warhammer Quest games to play through. 

Amanda and I had a lot of fun playing through Blackstone Fortress in the early part of the pandemic. We finished the first campaign in the box, but never finished playing through all the OTHER campaigns... 

ALL THE OTHER CAMPAIGNS!?

(Maybe we defeated the Ambul Hulk...?)

I never even finished painting the Cursed City stuff - let alone started PLAYING it...

 Or either of the two Finnegan has (Silver City and Shadows Over Hammerhal - though he's played through the games - with UNPAINTED MINIATURES!?) I'd like to get back to that at some point! Will that be THIS year...? Not sure... 

Also, Hellboy the Boardgame!!! 

BOARD GAMES

So many board games I really want to play... once the Game Room is sorted, we'll have to start inviting people over on a more regular basis... maybe get a regular weekly (or... bi-weekly?) Game Night (or Afternoon?!) going...? 

I mean, they're starting to get organized onto shelves in the basement... 

The other shelves... These are both in the hall outside the Game Room. 

There are a few IN the Game Room. 

There are still a LOT of games spread about the house on assorted other shelving units. There just isn't enough space in the basement for all of them!?

SO MANY GAMES TO PLAY!!! 

MINIATURE GAMES

I still love the idea of miniature games... I'd like to play more regularly... There are SO MANY though and I feel like it would help a LOT if I could just focus on ONE for a bit, get some stuff painted (miniatures AND terrain), and then play it for a bit (while painting up stuff for the NEXT project...?). 

I am still really interested in Kill Team... (which is good, because I have an awful LOT of stuff for it!? It's a little ridiculous, really... I am DONE buying these boxes, though... I'll buy the books as they are released, if I have one of the teams... but I do NOT need more Kill Teams or terrain!!) 

 and Warcry... 

and Warhammer Underworlds...

ALL of the fast-playing, skirmish-level GW games... I have LOTS of stuff for each of the games that are painted and ready to go, that I could play with at ANY TIME - and SO MUCH MORE that I could play with if I finished painting them! 

There are lots of other skirmish games I'd like to play again (or new ones to try out) - All the Ganesha Games (Song of...., etc) and others... 

And all the LARGER skirmish games by Dan Mercy - Lion Rampant, Dragon Rampant, Pikeman's Lament, Men Who Would Be Kings, Rebels and Patriots... I HAVE forces ready to go for any of the first four - and so much MORE I could add to those forces... again... painting... There's also Xenos Rampant.. but I wasn't as wowwed by that one... maybe I just need to give it another try - maybe with some of the other genres (modern, weird warss, etc...) 

I only just picked up new edition of Warhammer 40K (the mini version without all the fluff) and started playing it! I love the setting, but I'm not sure I have the time or patience for this to be a VERY regular thing like it maybe once was... I think I'd rather play the role-playing game (Wrath & Glory) and maybe bust out the armies when there is a narative driven scenario to play out! Maybe when and Imperial Guard or Aeldari codex comes out, I'll get more excited about it again... If there was an Emperor's Children Codex... I'd definitely have to pick that up!! 

[ONE HOUR WARGAMES]

Playing One Hour Wargames was fun last year. Wouldn't mind doing MORE of that! 

GAME WEEKEND

It has been a long time since I hosted a game weekend. I'd really LOVE to get back to doing that. 

I'm not sure WHEN exactly that might be or format that weekend might take (minicon, cooperative campaign, competitive campaign or tournament) or what game(s) might be played. 

There are many, MANY ideas I have for these that I'd like to play SOMEDAY... but the current MAIN ideas are:

The Under-Carngard Championships - this would be a Warcry Campaign/Tournament where all participants would be playing with Skaven warbands provided my ME. The weekend would start with drafting warbands from the collection of Skaven I have. This is one of the main sticking points for this one - I would NEED to FINISH PAINTING ALL THE SKAVEN!!! Which isn't a LOT... But I haven't been painting a lot the last few years... so... 

The other options would be an RPG-lite tabletop miniature adventure... Each participant would have ONE CHARACTER that is a member of an adventuring party and over the weekend we would play through a series of linked scenarios leading to an ultimate battle with a big bad main protagonist. 

I'm not 100% on what system or setting... could potentially make use of Five Parsecs From Home/Five Leagues From The Borderands - or possibly a return to Song of Blades and Heroes (or one of the other systems using the Ganesha Games Engine) or maybe even Savage Worlds - which has more options for non-combat skill use... 

It could even be Wrath & Glory or Soulbound (with some larger tabletop battles making use of all the Warhammer Age of Sigmar or 40K miniatures!) 

This would be for a very small group of 3-4 players... (maybe five or six if ALL of the DREAM TEAM of players were ALL able to travel to Saskatoon for the game!!) 

CONVENTIONS

I feel like I'm done with public conventions. 

Maybe MORE smaller invitational Game Weekends. Why just do ONE a year?!

TOURNAMENTS(!?) 

Honestly, this wasn't even a consideration until a week or two ago when my friend Orion announced she was looking for a new partner for an upcoming 40K team tournament in February - Strange Bedfellows. I'm not sure there are any restrictions on who can pair up, but since she was planing on taking her Space Wolves I offered the option of bringing Imperial Guard or a mess of Agents of the Imperium and Grey Knights... OR maybe the Harlequins...? She suggested it would be fun to team up with the Tallarn, so... Tallarn it is! My Desert Raiders are going to see some action again! 

Will I sign up for others...? My gut reaction is to say; "I doubt it!"... but then again, I would have said "I doubt it!" to the idea of signing up for ANY tournaments a few weeks ago, and yet, here I am... Battleforce Recon was fun the last two times I went! 

MINIATURES

I'd really like to just try and NOT BUY ANY miniatures. I know it's ridiculous to make any such proclamations like: "I ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT BUY ANY MINIATURES THIS YEAR!" But I will say it is my INTENTION to minimize miniature purchases. I can't see any great NEED to buy anything at this point. Most of what I'm interested in playing I already HAVE everything I NEED... Honestly, I probalby have WAY MORE than I need for all the things... I just need to PAINT THINGS!?

I'd like to do some stock taking - now that the basement renovations are "finished" (are you EVER REALLY "finished" renovating your home...?) and we're sorting things out. Also some realistic planning of what I might EVER be able to finish painting... and maybe start clearing out some projects that will just NEVER see the light of day... Maybe...  

WHAT will I be painting!? 

Well that all depends where my ADHD brain decides to take me. I imagine with the upcoming tournament, I'll probably get some Tallarn painted up!! 

After that...? stuff for whatever game I'm interested in at the moment... Likely some Sci-fi stuff for Five Parsecs from Home or Fantasy stuff for Five Leagues from the Borderlands...? But maybe also some Warhammer Underworlds warbands - as I've had a hankering to play that again. Or SKAVEN - in case that game weekend idea goes ahead (also, they could be useful for Five Leagues from the Borderlands).  

I guess if I had to pick twelve things I could do, weekly, over the first quarter, right now, and had the power to STICK TO IT, it might look like:

1. Manticore (40K - Self-Propelled Storm Eagle Rocket Launcher) 
2. Manticore (40K - Self-Propelled Storm Eagle Rocket Launcher) 
3. Basilisk (40K - Self-Propelled Artillery) 
4. Basilisk (40K - Self-Propelled Artillery) 
5. Scout Sentinel (40K) 
6. Scout Sentinel (40K) 
7. Ephilim’s Pandaemonium (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)
8. Thricefold Discord  (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)
9. Cyreni’s Razors  (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)
10. Blackpowder's Buccaneers (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)
11. Hexbane’s Hunters  (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)
12. Elathain's Soulraid (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)
13. Shadeborn (Warhammer Underworlds Warband)

I'll get those first six done, for sure (because I need them for the upcoming tournament!) after that, though...? 

I'm also currently interested in getting some Skaven finished to try out the current version of Warcry (and possibly use them as hostiles in Five Leagues From The Borderlands) 

I feel like I'm about half done them... ALMOST half done them... (I think there are a few in another box somewhere - like a couple more Rat Ogors, a Ratling Gun crew and a Master Moulder).

...and there are only about 24 Highland Dwarves I need to finish up to be COMPLETELY FINISHED that entire force for Dragon Rampant. (The two units in the top right of the picture!) 

I'd also like to work on the boxes and boxes of sci-fi terrain that's come with all the Kill Team sets I've bought over the years! Not sure when I'll work that into the mix...?

What are YOU looking forward to playing or doing in 2024!? Got any BIG PLANS!? Or maybe just some modest, attainable plans...!?  

November Games

I've started scheduling these posts, so they go up just before midnight on the last day of the Month. That way you can find the November Games post as the last post in November in the Blog Archive (over on the left if you're looking at this on a desktop computer... I have no idea where it is if you're looking at this on your phone...!?).

I can edit it throughout the month, adding games as I play them... 

If this post shows up with NOTHING in it other than this description... it's because I didn't end of playing ANY games this month. And I'm probably very, very sad. 

(or I've gotten so out of practice at doing this... BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T BEEN PLAYING GAMES AS MUCH ANYMORE.... that I just FORGOT to add to the post) 

The former seems more likely though...

I might do the same with the LOOKING BACK AT 2023 post and the GAME PLAN 2024 post...? Or not... 

Anyway, here's what I got up to, if I got up to anything at all:

Saturday, 25 November 2023

I DID get in ONE GAME this month!!!

Chris and Christian and I got together on Discord and played a game of Five Parsecs from Home. 

It was a short and bloody affair... or... BURNY affair - as most of the wounds were caused by laser guns...?

You can read the full game report here:

Five Parsecs From Home - Online Campaign - Round Two - Regular Delivery Bots

A lot of work has been done on the house... The basement is looking more or less DONE... we just have to move stuff back in and organize everything... Amanda assures me the proverbial dust shall have settled by the Holidaze and we'll have plenty of time to play games then. She even said she'd be willing to give either Five Parsecs from Home or Five Leagues from the Borderlands a try. 

I am hoping I'll get back to my Five Parsecs from Home solo campaign in the near future... and maybe I'll start up a Five Leagues from the Borderlands co-operative campaign with Amanda... we shall see... 

Oh, I guess that's another thing that happened this month... 

My FLGS - Dragon's Den Games in Saskatoon - got in a physical copy of Five Leagues from the Borderlands... and I went and bought it. Looking forward to giving it a try soon. Hopefully it won't COMPLETELY DISTRACT ME from the Five Parsecs from Home campaign!? 

Also, I picked up a few of the expansions for both games on Cyber Monday. I'd hoped they'd all be 50% off (as Five Parsecs from Home was Last Year). In the end, NONE of the pdfs were on sale on Modiphius' website... but a few of them were on Drive-Thru RPG (thought not at 50% off!) I did pick up two of the expansions for Five Parsecs from Home and the one for Five Leagues from the Borderlands.