I love collecting, painting, converting and scratch building terrain. I even get to play a game once in a while. I'm a big fan of gamification as part of teaching - I'm an elementary school teacher.
This blog covers my hobby work and 'teaching through gaming'.
Taking a break from blogging. Having no motivation for the hobby at all. Despite having 30 blog posts ready as drafts... I don't feel like posting stuff.
Thanks for checking in. New stuff might come at some point. But for now the blog will be off.
"So what's the the making a statement about? Really? It's a bit ... drama?". Not really. It's to hold myself to it, because I've been thinking it for awhile.
After finishing some of my dungeon tiles, I had to get ready for some Rangers of Shadow Deep. For that I needed a torture chamber.
I you want to check out all the dungeon build videos and articles, jump over to the dungeon hub.
Torture Chamber
I went into the garage and dug out all manner of bit from my 'terrain crate' box - also having other kinds of bits. I gave a good amount of different torture chamber bits to use. Let's check them out.
A necromancer and a guard working at a table. Took one of my terrain crate tables and added bits from the bits box. A hand from a zombie kit, a bunch of knives from somewhere. There's a bag with a hand (think it's from FG cultists or Mantic zombies). Also used the doctors bag from Dunkeldorf and added a small candle, don't know where that is from.
A couple of reaper bones bits I got donated. Added a renedra base to the coal basket. The faun is from Admiralty Miniatures.
An old HeroQuest bench, a prisoner from Terrain Crate and a Reaper Bones iron maiden.
A couple more pieces from Reaper Bones. Painted up the bear trap to work in the torture chamber as well. The dwarven prisoner is from Admiralty Miniatures.
For this torture chamber and prison setup, I still need to build some cages. I think I'll be doing one and casting it a couple of times with plaster.
Took my Hardwired agents into the badlands. An old military outpost has been hit by a chemical attack and abandoned. The agents have been hired to get into the area, exfiltrate some sensitive data and avoid getting shot to pieces.
Setup
Used some different pieces form the collection, to build a small military base.
Let's play
Here's a video with the game, roughly an hour. Hardwired is such a nice quick game to play. Perfect for one or two games in an evening, easy to make up scenarios for it.
Slowly I'm trying to build up a bunch of generic, western Europe inspired fantasy terrain. All the stuff I've had so far has been ruined and frozen for Frostgrave. As I don't play RPGs, I haven't had much reason to do these pieces. But after making the small Renedra huts for Rangers of Shadow Deep, I really wanted to expand on that fantasy board.
And with Nightwatch and Rangers there's a chance I'll actually use the pieces.
Sarissa Prescision have a lot of small cheop kits, easy to put together. Before looking and writing about the individual kits. Check out this little video of me flying over the current fantasy terrain collection.
Wind mill
A classic fantasy town needs a wind mill. This is a huge kit, towers about the entire town. And it looks even more impressive standing on a hill.
The painting of this kit was done after assembly - something I rarely do. Mostly done with spray paint. Brown, grey and red. After that the brown areas got a drybrush with another couple of browns - cheap acryllics. Then the entire thing was brown wash.
Square bases look off on terrain, so I rounded the corners on the base. Added sand, grass, moss, stones and a small tree. Give it some life and look more organic than a square base.
Bridge
I needed a stone bridge for a specific RoSD scenario - The Bridge Guards. And it's a nice little piece for other setups, using the Tiny Wargames rivers I have. There're some etched detail in the bridge and thin card detail as part of the kit. I cut out small rectangles from cereal boxes and glued some extra stone work here and there. Painted grey and drybrush. Just a small amount of stones will break up the flat mdf with no work at all.
Painted the boards on the bridge brown as wood. Then added sand at the edge and in the middle. Dropped dirt with grass here and there. Figure wheels and use would keep the bridge cleaner in two tracks.
I think that the bridge and river really add a lot of charm and fairy tale to the fantasy setup - and that's exactly what I'm aiming for. Nothing dark in this setting.
Guard Tower
The small villages need a tower. Not a castle or anything. Just a small tower for a small garrison of guards. I've bought a Roman fort, it's a nice little kit. I was surprised at the size, it's smaller than I thought.
The tower is a small pieces, comes apart and has a single interior floor. As with the bridge I've added some stone work with cardboard on each side, breaking up the flat surfaces. Grey spray paint, dry brushing in other greys and a layer of brown wash.
As with the windmill I've rounded the corners, as much as the small base allowed. Added moss as growing plants on the watch tower.
A beacon fire using the Mantic Games terrain crate kit.
And the entire fantasy terrain collection setup as a 6'x2,5' board. Need a bit more pieces to proper fill out a 4'x6', but I lots of plans.
Besides the things below I have Renedra fences and four huts, a church and plans for some more fields (door mat).
CP Models have a ton of stuff, the webstore is huge and the price on most models is excellent. Recently I found myself needing some Vapor Snakes for Frostgrave and decided to get some from CP models. And while doing that ordering myself a bunch of other models.
It's time for another game of This Is Not A Test. In this game my mutant cannibals are taking on a group of caravanners. This guy is played with Mr. Malcontent from the Miniatorium painters twitch. Torben is a super good guy, that I've gotten to know through the Discord community. Go check out his stuff, it's awesome.
This game was the first time meeting in real life after Covid closed down Denmark. And we wanted to play a quick TNT mini campaign. In this first scenario the groups are hunting for clues to a lair of a huge behemoth class monster - a Dungerdon!
On one side is a group of mutant cannibals, on a hunting mission to get some fresh meat for the winter. The other side is Mama Stirling and her band of caravanners - they're just in it for the money.
We setup a board to look like a small dusty town at the edge of a desert. Lots of rusty scrap around, brown, dead colors. It's a nice looking board. The objective is to collect clue tokens that will both give some extra caps and clues to where the big Dungerdon is located.
My small family of mutant cannibals setup in a couple of groups. On one side the first born and he mongrel dogs would run ahead and eat the enemy from one flank. At the center MawMaw would protect the psycho Tiny and two degenerates, full on attack. On the right flank the youngins with ranged weapons would take up position.
On the board from the start was three smaller Dungers, offspring from the big one we were hunting. These monsters wasted no time charging ahead and trying to stomp the caravanners.
It's part of the mechanics, that they charge the nearest enemies. And the caravan crew got the first go and went full steam ahead, so dungers incoming for them.
The enemy, being rich from all the trade, is armed with a lot of shooters - no pure melee fighters on that team. So all my melee oriented troopers tried to stay in cover, sneak ahead, until it was time to attack. ... unfortunately a lot of them are raged filled psychos that might just storm ahead of the group and attack random things.
A crossbow armed youngin taking cover near a building, in a nice position to shoot a both Mama Stirling the enemy leader and their sniper taking position on a roof opposite the road.
This caravan sniper spend the first couple of turns getting into the perfect shooting position on top of a building, in cover behiv a giant billboard.
Having been distracted by the straight on dunger charge, my plan to attack the flank works and a mongrel makes it across the board and into melee combat. Quickly forcing a young rank and file caravanner to the ground.
The big dude, a mutant from a local clan, has moved in and done quick work of a small dunger - smashing it to pulp and gore.
This little youngin doesn't want to leave cover, but he's the only family member close to some of the loot and clues, so he takes a trip into the open. ... a dangerous one.
Tiny showing respect for all the enemy guns is moving ahead slowly, staying out of sight or at least in cover. There's a lot of open ground to cover.
The crazy degenerates are not as safe playing, and they have to stay in the open, in hopes of getting anywhere really. Otherwise they were never gonna make it into combat with the enemy.
Mama Stirling herself, armed with a deadly plasma pistol, staying in cover but getting out to delivery some deadly heated death.
A generate little brother has made it across the board, hoping to bring down the caravan leader, in cover from the sniper on the roof. ... he doesn't make it and is cooked by the deadly plasma. The black die if the clue marker we are trying to get.
Having bashed down that dunger, the big mutant envoy and a generate reach one of the clues at the same time. It turns out to be a fairly uneven math-up and the tiny degenerate is crushed into the ground.
The first mongrel is killed of by the caravanners and it's even without taking out the girl it attacked. The next mongrel, staying in cover is also trying to get across, but he's hit pretty badly from all the opposing firepower.
Meanwhile the firstborn is trying to get across, he's a beast in melee combat - but not worth much if blown apart on the way to his objective.
The sniper on the roof and MawMaw is in a shootout, taking turns firing at each other. MawMaw despite having a bad rifle and not being a very good shot, gives a few good hits - but doesn't cause any damage.
Now Tiny has made it across the road and into combat with the big mutant. This is a much more even fight and filled with rage from losing his little brother, Tiny is able to bring down the mutant with his heavy poisoned clever.
And then it happens that the first borns loses his temper, he's crazed and rampages across the board. So close and having stayed in cover most of the time. A bad roll, he rushes forward and is in the open - so close to making it into melee combat. Now he's target practice.
Good Xp for the caravanners, blasting the poor first born child of MawMaw to pieces.
And that's it for the game... lots of shooting. The mutant cannibal family is blown apart, MawMaw is hiding, staying safe. Looking at all her children wounded on the battlefield. The caravanners take up the clues to the Dungerdon lair and moves away. MawMaw can then go and check the wounds of her children.
Aftermath
The caravanners roll good on the few injury rolls they have to make, nothing bad happens to them. They make off with a good amount of caps and even find some new plasma weapon relics for the warband. A very strong start for Mama Stirling and here crew.
My mutant cannibals roll terribly. I never really got around to figuring out this team. ... and I roll so many dead characters, left and right. The family is decimated, there's no way to come back from all the dead guys on the team. MawMaw returns to the wasted. But the family will again become a thread to anybody in state.
This is the permanent end of the Wastebog Family. Even after playing four games with the team, they never once had enough money to expand their crew. Always only able to cover their losses - no more. With Tiny the Psycho, the Firstborn and even some youngins dead - there's no way back.
Oathbreakers is out, the second expansion for Osprey Games fantasy battle game Oathmark. After reading the expansion a couple of times, here's my initial thoughts on it - it's a review.
This expansion has a lots of goods in it, real heavy matter. We get
Undead Armies
Ledendary Heroes
Military Expeditions - campaigns
Setup and artwork
The book is setup as we know it from the core book and the first expansion, so we're not gonna spend time on that. One of the things I was missing in the first expansion was new photos of all the units North Star has been bringing out - and more original artwork.
We've probably all seen the amazing North Star skeletons and metal miniatures released. These models are not in the book. But as we've learned from talking to multible Osprey authors, there's almost a 2 year release time on these book. So as the series go we'll see more and more different miniatures in them.
So no skeletons in the book, but light elves, heavy dwarf and goblin wolf riders. All in all that makes for a much more interesting book.
And then there's the art! Woop! A ton of new pieces of original artwork - many centered around the undead theme. I think the art is amazing. It shows a kind of undead fitting for the dark ages fantasy, not too evil or doomy. It sends a good old school fantasy vibe. Take your time and really look at the art,
there's lots of stories told in those pieces.
Undead Armies
This is a major expansion to the Oathmark game bringing in a full new faction. A pretty detailed faction as well. The army is primarily made up from two things: skeletons and revenants.
The skeletons is your classic fantasy minions, cheap, not too good a fighting. Then there's the revenants - making me thinks of Skyrims Daugr. Soldiers laid to rest, kind of mummified, raised to fight again. Skeleton are obviously raised by death magic and necromancers. Revenants are raised in part from still clinging to the oaths they've sworn in life. And that angle fits really well with the story of The Marches.
Revenants are good soldiers, hard hitting. A revenant cavalry miniatures is 70 points and a chariot is 150 points. So they're elite units.
Oathbreakers doesn't bring rules for using chariots in other armies. That is yet to come - perhaps in Bane of Kings. The undead faction is described as bronze age (vs Oathmark iron age) - so that also explains the lack of war chariots (from a historical perspective at least).
Leaders
An undead force will be lead either by a Revenant King (his army serving him in death through oaths sworn) or a high level Necromancer. A powerful necromancer will never follow a king, he'll raise and lead an army of his own. So there's two different leader types, and it's interesting to see a spell casting leader.
The necromancers know all the right tricks, classic death magic, leading my thoughts to old editions of Warhammer. He'll steal health and raise more troops for his units.
Mixing races and units is a key part of the Oathmark army system and anybody will be able to use undead units (if you build the new undead territories in your kingdom). Nothing stopping you there, but living races have penalties. It's not inspiring for morale to work under an undead king and along side dead things - so no morale or activation bonus.
Special rules
There's a bunch of special rules in place to make the undead unique. Undead and uncaring will make undead harder to kill with shooting attacks and prevent them from breaking due to morale. But they will take damage when failing morale. Classic undead.
For skeletons it further goes that they are harder to activate (rolling only one dice, unless close to a commander) and the only work with a spellcaster in the army. No friendly spellcaster on the table and all skeltons are removed as casualties.
Legendary Heroes
Battlesworn gave us simple rules for elite units. That's already been covered in a previous review and the rules were fairly simple. Keep the game running smooth. Oathbreakers make similar rules for heroes (commanders and champions), but with some more depth.
Any army can include 1 legendary hero at a time (unless you agree on more with the opponent). You create a legendary hero by paying regular point cost + 30 points. The hero get to choose 1 heroic ability (there's 24 to choose from). I really like this mechanic, as you can add some really good tricks to your army. Making deadlier warriors, better commanders, more effective spellcasters. For 30 points, some tricks can be pretty good. Like in Rangers of Shadow Deep all the heroic abilities can only be used once pr game - so choose and use them wisely.
Experience
This system is new, and I quite like it. A legendary hero will gain experience from each game they participate in and depending on how well they do. The XP needed to level up and gain a new heroic ability is the point cost of the model. So a king being really expensive (with 30 points already added) will need many XP to gain a second heroic trait. After that his point cost goes up by 30 again, and he needs to reach the limit again (starting from scratch in XP). So champions with multible abilities will be rare and super expensive.
Injury and death
Should a legendary hero die in battle or flee, you roll on an injury table. This can see the hero having to skip next battle (or battles) from wounds, die completely or be captured. The captured result is really funny, as the ransom will be adding extra points to the opponent next game.
The hero system adds a lot to Oathmark, without breaking anything. It's much more detailed and fleshed out than the battle honors system. And since heroes will only have one or two - one-use tricks, it's not gonna drag things down.
Military Expeditions
A great way to make an expansion worth it is by adding these mini campaign. Special connected scenarios, with a story and consequences for winning and losing battles. The book contains three missions, with three scenarios each. All centered around part of The Marches with lots of undead activity.
Even without the the campaign element, nine new scenarios is a good amount of game time to get through.
There's 13 new territories (not adding units, but having other effects on the Kingdom), some are unique and can only be acquired through playing the military expeditions.
Final thoughts
I really like Oathbreakers, it's a great expansion and it adds good solid chunks to the Oathmark game. I hope this is the level of material we'll see in the future expansion. Not only a few units here and there, but huge gameplay expansions.
It'll be really good to see which kits North Star brings out - especially how they plan to do revenant kits. And with even more kits, we'll see even better photos in the future books. Overall the artwork and miniature shots is much higher in quality and diversity now, than be the release of the core book.
If you need to get only one expansion for Oathmark, you should go with this one over Battlesworn. Oathbreakers is really good.
I'm still hoping to see some siege rules for the game. Let that be an expansion after Bane of Kings. And some fleshing out the campaign for multiplayer is needed, as it's worded towards a war between two kinggoms now (with occupying territories etc).
