Bryan Ansell

Through various wargaming forums, I heard that Bryan Ansell passed away yesterday.

Although I never met or talked to him, he had a large influence on me when I was starting out in wargaming during the 80s. As a Games Workshop afficionado during those days, his name was very familiar to me, most notably because he was mentioned as first author on my very first miniature ruleset I ever bought, Warhammer 1st edition.

He also was featured with his chaos army in Warhammer Armies for the 3rd edition, in a very iconic photograph.

Thank you for everything you did for the wargaming hobby!

Age of Sigmar start-up scenery box

One of my teenage nephews took part in a "Warhammer camp" during the Easter break, run by a (for him) local gameshop. Apparently, the camp lasted a few days (no sleeping overs), in which they learned how to assemble figures, paint them, and play games. As part of the event, they all got an Age of Sigmar starter box. 

Although I was a GW fanboy during the 80s and 90s, I for long don't consider myself as part of their target audience anymore, but I do recognize their potential and power for attracting new wargamers. And I do realize the focus teenage boys can have on using the "official" figures and rules. I was there, once. So I am not going to lure my nephew away from Warhammer and bombard him with sermons about why rulesystem X or figure range Y is more superior. I'm letting him and his friends grow into the hobby, at their own pace. The last thing they need is an uncle who tells them what to do or what to enjoy.

Nevertheless, when I saw my family during our Easter family get-together yesterday, I brought a box with "scenery items" for him. I have huge amounts of scenery, so a few items less is not going to make a practical difference. I put together generic scenery items I knew are going to usable in their games.

So, what did I give away?

• a large green scenery mat;
• A couple of Kallistra hills;
  
• a home-made fort, which I called an "Orruk Fort", to give it credibility to those Warhammer youngsters;
• A bunch of river sections, walls, hedges, trees, ... ;
• An "official" GW rules I had still lying around ;-)

 The response was enthusiastic ;-) 

Mighty Empires

Reading up on Tony Bath's Hyboria campaign (I should start a separate page and collect all sorts of resources there), I started wondering what game might come close to recreate such a campaign.

Then I remembered Mighty Empires.

Back in the late 80s,early 90s I was a hardcore Games Workshop fanboy. To be honest, I wasn't even aware other miniature wargames did exist outside of Games Workshop, that realization only came later. So naturally I also bought Mighty Empires when it was first published. I do not recall we ever played it completely or used it as a campaign engine for our regular Warhammer Fantasy 3rd edition battles, but I do recall I owned some of the metal miniatures as well, and most likely some of the White Dwarf stuff (I was a subscriber).

Then somewhere during the early 2000s I had a major clean-out of my games collection, and Mighty Empires was sold. Last year, an old gaming buddy donated some of his old gaming stuff to me, and suddenly, I had a box of Mighty Empires again. Everything was still there, except the rulebook (but that can be found online).

So, I couldn't resist and generated 2 maps according to the rules in the rulebook, the result of which you see below.

I also browsed through the rulebook again, and there are some good ideas in there. I am almost sure the designers were heavily influenced by Bath's Hyboria, some of the similarities are too strong. But there's probably a reason we never finished a game 30 years ago. The game is not so much game, but indeed, a campaign engine. Lots of rolling on random tables etc. Fun as a way to generate an imaginary world, but perhaps not so fun to use on a game.

Skaven Cavalry

Back when I was just starting in miniature wargaming - mid eighties - we invented all sorts of troop types irrespective of what the "official" army lists said. WFB 3rd edition had formulas for computing how many points troops were worth, so there was no reason to let your creativity run wild. This all changed in later editions of Warhammer, of course.

My skaven army had skaven mounted on wolves. Very uncharacteristic troop types, but I always felt skaven should have cavalry. For some reason, I always imagined skaven riding wolves.

Below some old converted figures dating back more than 25 years, but which never got painted, so I quickly gave them a basic paint coat. The wolves and bodies are goblin cavalry form the old Battlemasters game. The goblin heads were removed an replaced by skaven heads from the old Warhammer Regiments box. The weapons also got replaced by skaven blades from the boxed set. One goblin spear was left as is, to attach a banner.

I painted something!

It has been a while since I painted some figures, but painting a building is always an easy way to get the painting juices flowing again.

This plastic tower has been on my unpainted pile for too long ... 26 years. It's the plastic tower from the iconic game Battle Masters, which I did buy when it was published in 1992.

It's not a very sophisticated model (nor a very sophisticated paint job :-)), but it is a nice "generic" model that can be used in many medieval/fantasy games - if not as an objective in the game - simply as a quick scenery backdrop to embellish the table. The tower was simply spray-painted black, then grey drybrush was applied, and subsequently some details painted in. The 2 decals finish the job. Total painting time (excluding drying time after the initial black basecoat - probably less than 20 minutes).

The two knights are plastic Bretonnian figures, Warhammer 5th edition.

An Early Warhammer Review (2)

As I was entering issue 8 (January 1984) of Miniature Wargames into the database, I came upon a reader's letter by Rick Priestley, responding to the review of Warhammer published in issue 6.

Interesting to read!

An Early Warhammer Review

I was adding issue #6 from Miniature Wargaming (published November 1983) to the Wargaming Magazine Index (now counting over 4000 entries), and suddenly came upon this review of the first edition of Warhammer. Since Warhammer was first published in 1983, this must be one of the earliest reviews of Warhammer available.

Game for Crisis 2017: Oldhammer WFB1 scenario, Ziggurat of Doom (6)

The summary cards for the Dwarves in the Ziggurat of Doom scenario ...

Skaven warlord

Another figure I recently finished.

Since Skaven were my original WFB3rd army, back in the 80s, I still have a fond sport for the ratmen. This particular commander was a figure once sold by GW as part of a Lustria campaign setting, and marketed as "Skaven Plaguelord Nurglitch"

Oldhammer: Ziggurat of Doom

Ever since I read Warhammer Fantasy Battle 1st edition as a teenager - and which was my first exploration in the world of miniature wargaming - the scenario "The Ziggurat of Doom" included in the 1st booklet captured my imagination. The scenario features a heroic last stand of 6 dwarves against an horde of goblins.

I still remember thinking I would never be able to stage such a scenario, but I tried nevertheless. The Ziggurat itself was modeled using wooden toy blocks, but figures were a problem (plastic 1/72 Atlantic Romans served as Dwarves and Orcs), and I only had a handful of trees to model the surrounding forest.

30 years later, things have changed. I now have enough trees to fill my gaming table twice, several 1000s of miniatures for all sorts of periods, and I even have a nice model for the Ziggurat. The model was built on commission during the 90s by a talented guy who also frequented the local gaming shop. When he announeced he would take commissions for buildings and scenery, I knew exactly what I wanted! The Ziggurat of Doom!

Here some photos I took yesterday:

I have used the Ziggurat for several games over the years, most notably our pulp King Kong game, but also for some generic fantasy games.

King Kong game, 2007

Te Wapen game, probably 1995

Oldhammer - Ruined Temple from White Dwarf 135

 White Dwarf 135 contained an article on how to build your own ruined temple. Using some styrofoam, the ruins were quickly assembled, and featured in quite a lot of battled on my old ping-pong table during the early nineties.

The ruined temple was also shown in some subsequent White Dwarf, including 137, which showed the famous Skaven army by Andy Chambers. Pictures of thata rmy, along with some photographs picturing the original temple, can be seen here.

The photographs below show my efforts from over 20 years ago, along with some proper Oldhammer miniatures. Note the miniature used on the coffin, and some old Townscape cardboard buildings in the background.If you look carefully, you can also see a crow sitting on one of the ledges, and which was borrowed from a zombie figure that had a crow picking his brain (the Zombie-Vulture figure in the 1991 catalogue).

Oldhammer - Psammon's Tower from Redwake River Valley

One of the first buildings I used for my fantasy wargaming games - using Warhammer 1st edition - was a scratch-built wizard's tower, modeled after an illustration in one of the booklets on the boxed set.

The tower was the home of the wizard Psammon, who was terrorizing the Redwake River Valley using his small army of Orcs. The idea of the adventure was that the adventurers had to travel to the tower and take out Psammon.

Anyway, as a starting wargamer on a shoestring budget, the only real option for having some scenery was scrach-building it yourself. So I made the tower, using a cardboard tube, paint, and cardboard. I tried to mimic the illustration as close as possible.  For some reason, I never threw it away, and it still belongs to my collection.

Page 29, Vol3 of Warhammer 1st edition shows an illustration of Psammon's tower. My scratch-built version made from a cardboard tube.

Two old orc figures, and an old wizard figure from the late eighties. The wizard figure is listed in the 1991 Citadel Catalogue as Hutk-Nke Plague Priest.

Even more Oldhammer monsters ...

And we continue with some more pictures of nice Oldhammer miniatures ... all originally bought during the late eighties and early nineties.

Giant Scorpion - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Giant Spider - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Coatl - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Chimera - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20300monsters-02.htm

Manticore - http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20300monsters-02.htm

More Oldhammer Monsters

Some more Oldhammer monsters and strange creatures ...

Demon - originally Winged Fire Demon: http://www.solegends.com/citcat1985comp3/citcomp3032-02.htm

Hippogriff http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20300monsters-02.htm

Troll http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20294trolls-02.htm

Fimir - these I bought painted at a convention only a few years ago.
http://www.solegends.com/citcat1988/0901monsters-02.htm

Zoats. Note the size difference between the newer models on the left and the older model on the right.

Oldhammer Monsters

The past few years, there has been an increasing interest in Oldhammer - playing Warhammer but with the rules of 3rd, 2nd or even 1st edition. Not only the rules though, also the miniatures should preferably be the ranges that were produced in the eighties. Now, this is not really necessary - the true aim of Oldhammer is to play according to the free spirit that Warhammer embraced during that period. There are quite a number of blogs devoted to Oldhammer, but two that I think are worth following are Oldhammer, Eldritch Epistles, and Realm of Chaos 80s. There are more, of course, but listing them all would be too much work.

Anyway, since I started my miniature wargaming career with Warhammer 1st edition, and was really obsessed with Warhammer 3rd, I acquired quite a lot of miniatures during the late eighties and early nineties. For some reason, I never sold any of my fantasy miniatures, so I still have a huge number of old Citadel miniatures from the golden age in my collection.

Below are just a few examples. All were painted by me, more than 20 years ago. I did include links to the relevant catalog pages on the Stuff of Legends website.

Balgorg -- http://www.solegends.com/citcat1983comp1/citcomp1034-02.htm

Slann wizard on his palanquin & Human Slaves

Jabberwock -- http://www.solegends.com/citcat19912/c20301monsters-02.htm

Giant Eagle -- http://www.solegends.com/citcat1986jour86spr/cj86ap30me-02.htm

Culchan - http://www.solegends.com/citcat1985comp3/citcomp3032-02.htm