Oldhammer: Space Pirates & Adventurers

A dozen of newly painted up space pirates & adventurers. These figures were produced during the eighties by Games Workshop.Especially noteworthy are the halfling cook and the Eldar trader.

They have been painted fairly quickly. My painting style has always been more practical rather than at a mastery level, aiming for gaming quality rather expert quality.

Probably these figures might see some action in one of our future Antares 2401 games.

(Picture taken with my Ipad)

The scenery items in the background are from a German manufacturer, and I bought these a couple of years ago at the annual CRISIS show, but I don't remember exactly who produces them.

SciFi Scenery

Last year at Crisis - almost a year ago - I bought the cityscape scenery from Hawk Wargames. Originally designed for 10mm scifi and their game Dropzone Commander, I tought it would be a good addition to my collection.

I finally found the time to put it all together. The buildings are very easy to assemble with some glue and staples, and the box also contains a number of double-sided tiles. The whole set fitted nicely on my wargaming table, as shown below.

I decided to pull out a few of my Battletech Mechs, all plastics from the basis box published by Catalyst Games. Battletech is one of those old favourites, that is always in "we should play this again one day"-status.

Anyway, I found that the Cityscape as set up was a little bit too sparse - i.e. the density of buildings was not high enough to my taste to provide exciting games. Too many open-firing lines, not enough cover. But in a sense, this boils down to whether one favours a manoeuvre game or a straight-shooting-combat game.

The buildings are originally designed for 10mm, but at this cale, it doesn't matter that much. I can see them being used for either 6mm scifi, or even for our 25mm Antares campaign.

Medieval Cart

Fresh from the painting desk: a medieval cart with some farmers.

Actually, the cart was painted up roughly 20 years ago. It is from Citadel, and is listed here in a 1990 Citadel catalogue. I bought it as part of a blister also containing a highwayman. The villagers are the ones that are fresh off the painting desk, and were bought from Foundry around 2000, from their medieval villager's range at the time. The baggage was put together from the bit's box.

Such little simple vignettes are always nice to bring the gaming table to live. Also, they can be used as part of a scenario, e.g. a convoy of wagons that has to be escorted through enemy territory.

Schild&Vriend Crisis Games 1997-2013

As some of you know, our little gaming group Schild & Vriend runs a demo/participation game every year at the annual Crisis wargame convention, held in Antwerp. We started doing this in 1997, although we had run some games at other conventions before that. That makes 17 wargames total. During four of these years, we have won a trophy for either 'Best game of Show', 'Best participation game' or 'Most innovative game'.

With our 18th game at CRISIS coming up, I felt it was time for a quick overview ...

1997: Wild West Gunfights

We were in our "Wild West" phase during those years. We played the "Shootist" rules, a small leaflet I picked up during one of the Fantasy World conventions held in Antwerp years previously. I even had written a small C-program that generated random gunfighters. These were collected in a big listing with 1000 entries, which we called the "Shootist-O-Matic" (roll a D1000 and a random shootist came out). I still have it lying around somewhere ...

So, no surprise we staged a Shootist game that year during Crisis.

Shootist game using Geohex terrain. All figures from Wargames Foundry. Gathered around the table (left to right: Frank Vleugels, Bart Vetters, Dominique Coene, Maarten Logghe, and unknown.)

Some more pictures of Crisis 97 can be found here.

1998: "For a Few Tusks More"

This was the period in which Foundry released a large number of Darkest Africa figures. Some very nice jungle scenery was constructed (still in our possession), along with special desert terrain tiles.

For a Few Tusks More. Maarten Logghe is at the far left.

More pictures and report of the game can be found here. The scratch-built fort and the jungle scenery were later re-used in our "Attack on Fort Stanley" game in 2008.

1999: "Mons Badonicus"

This game featured an Arthurian battle on custom-made terrain. Sadly, no pictures were recovered, and the terrain itself has also been liquidated.

This game was awarded "Best of Show"  by the show organizers.

2000: ACW game

A large American Civil War game, featuring mostly Foundry 25mm figures. Alas, we have no photographs to back things up, but the figures and most of the scenery are still in our possession.

Update October 2014: recovered pictures!

2001: "Raid on Zeebrugge"

We decided to stage a Belgian battle, and after some rummaging through one of the books written by military historian Luc De Vos ("Veldslagen in de Lage Landen"), we ended up with the Raid on Zeebrugge. This raid was set during WW1, and involved British troops storming the mole at Zeebrugge harbour. We made the gaming boards in the garage of Bart Dils' parental house during several weekends.

The Raid on Zeebrugge setup.

I recall we spent quite a lot of cash on this game. All model houses, railways, etc. were all bought from toy stores. This was also the time at which the standard of wargames at CRISIS was not yet terribly high, and thus a game like this was a real showstopper. This resulted in a 2nd place for 'Best Game of Show', nicknamed 'Best Scenery' - which was quite a disappointment for us at the time. We got a gift voucher for roughly 30 euros, if I recall correctly, to be used at one of the trade stands.

More pictures of the game can be seen here. The scenery of this game was re-used for our Crisis 2004 game "Operation Shield Friendly", and also made an appearance at one of the Red Barons shows.

2002: Wild West meets Indians meets ACW

For this game, we re-used a lot of material from the ACW and Wild West games we ran a few years earlier. We also used the Shootist rules again, playing out some small inter-linked scenarios on a huge gaming table.

Sadly, I cannot find any photographs of this game.

2003: "Legionnaires in the Desert"

This was a very special game, made completely out of wood - and that includes the figures! When I was living in the US, I became a big fan of the Woodens range of flat wargaming figures. The idea for this game revolved around creating a wooden landscape out of MDF-wood. It produced a nice visual look, and got a lot of attention during the convention.

All figures are Woodens, scenery elements in resin.

Some more information about this game and the figures can be found on the Woodens page

2004: "Operation Shield Friendly"

2004 was another year in which we apparently did not have much inspiration, since we re-used the Zeebrugge gaming table from a years before, but now we staged a WW2 landing operation. Again, no pictures of this game, we still do have the flyer.

2005: "Arnhem"

In 2005 we organized a Kriegspiel-like setup. Based on the 1944 operations around Arnhem, we staged a 6mm game that allowed participants to contribute a micro-move to the game.

This was one of the first convention game we designed around getting as much participants involved as possible. The idea was that the umpire would act as narrator, and provide decisions to onlookers. Every decision to be made revolved around some particular unit, and involved at least some dice rolling. Here's a blogpost describing the game in more detail.

This game also resulted in an article (our first!) we wrote for Wargames Illustrated.

This game was also appreciated by the organizers, since we were awarded with the "Best Participation Game" trophy.

2006: "Dogfights over Flanders"

After the efforts we had put in the Arnhem game, we decided to stage something lighter in 2006. We ran a hexified version of the WW1 dogfight rules "Wings of War". This provided some short, 15 minute games. IIRC, this was also the start of our love for Kallistra hex-tiles.

Some planes are visible in the background in this WW1 dogfighting game.

2007: "The Blue Lotus"

This was a game based on the famous TinTin story "The Blue Lotus". My original idea was to run a pulp-game set in 1930's China, more or less based on the adventures in the comic book. The modeling of the town was done pretty well, if I can say so myself, but the big drawback was we actually did not have a game to run ;-) All time had crept into painting and modeling - literally up to a few hours before everything had to be packed in the car. I still have all the scenery and figures, so at some time, we should run an actual game using this setup.

1930s Shanghai modeled after a Tintin comic.

2008: "Attack on Fort Stanley"

This game was again an effort in getting as much participants involved as possible. The game was set in Darkest Africa, and recycled scenery and figures from our 1998 convention game. Fort Stanley was positioned in the middle of the jungle, and was attacked from all sides by natives.

The game design itself revolved around large action cards, which were made available for everyone to see. Any bystander could pick one of the action cards, and execute the order listed on the card. This mechanism consolidated some of my thinking w.r.t. mass participation games, something that would prove useful a few years later.

Fort Stanley, still in our possession. Also notice the wildlife.

2009: "AquaZone"

In 2009 we staged a game that I had been thinking about for quite a few years. I always wanted to do a scuba-diving game of underwater combat, and so over the years I collected plastic fish, plastic scuba divers, etc. The game itself featured our time-tested system of each figure having a number of action points, and combat resolution was resolved using opposite dice.

Notice the whale in the middle of the gaming table. From left to right: Eddy Sterckx, Bart Vetters, Phil Dutré.

2010: "Poltava"

Bart's obsession with the Great Northern War produced this excellent game featuring the battle of Poltava. Again, we wanted a game that targeted audience participation. A card-driven system drove the battle forwards, with each card offering some choices for the players.

2011: "Papierslag"

In our quest for providing some original game settings, I stumbled upon the paper armies from Billy Bones' Workshop. We spent quite a few evenings cutting and glueing together these excellent 2D figures and scenery, and built an entire ECW battlefield.

The new look-and-feel charmed many players, including the organizers, who awarded us with the "Most Original Game" trophy.

2012: "An Der Schönen Blauen Donau"

The Danube was featured prominently in our 2012 game. Instead of moving troops, players would control the currents in the Danube to make sure various flotsam and jetsam was bumped into French pontoon bridges, such that the battle of Asspern-Essling would be won by the Austrians. A fun and original game, and we also published in article about this game in Miniature Wargames with Battle Games.

2013: "Red vs Blue"

My lingering ideas of running a mass-participation wargame finally came all together in our Red vs Blue game. We printed several thousand participation cards, handed these out in the convention hall, and inviting players to come to our table to participate for a few minutes. The game ran continuously in real-time. At the end of the day, we clocked over 250 participants. This game gave us the "Most Original Game" award. An article about this game is currently in the pipeline ...

2014: ??? 

Our drive for setting up games during CRISIS is still burning strong, so watch for our game this year!

Napoleonic 6mm

Two quick pictures from our game last night. We played a Napoleonic 6mm game, using the Oh My God, Anything But a 6 rules by Otto Schmidt.

The pictures were quickly taken at the start of the game, and apparantly, are not terribly in focus.

David and Bart (pictured) took the side of the British, while Graham and myself (not pictured) took the side of the attacking French.

Oldhammer: Treeman

This is a very special miniature in my collection. It is a Treeman, but you will not find it in any of the Citadel catalogues. It is completely scratch-built from real twigs, all cut-to-size and made-to-fit, glued together, embellished with plasticene for the eyes, mouth and nose, painted and drybrushed, and mounted on a proper 40x40mm base.

Scratch-built Treeman

 The backstory is as follows:

During the late eighties, early nineties, our gaming group was heavily involved in Warhammer 3^rd edition. We mostly played standard 3000pts battles, on the ping-pong table in the verandah of my parent’s house. As befitted a group of young gamers, we each had our own army. Mine was Skaven, but High Elves, Dwarfs, Orcs, Undead and Wood Elves were also part of the mix.

The standing agreement was that you could field anything, as long as you had miniatures that more or less resembled whatever it was you wanted to include in your army. And although we were quite liberal in our thinking, we were not that liberal that a goblin could stand in for a dragon. At least for the bigger and special monsters, some faithful depiction was expected.

Now, getting Citadel miniatures in Belgium during that period was not that easy. They were only sold in a few selected shops, and quite expensive. Infrequent shopping trips to London supplied us with the occasional Regiment of Renown, and direct mail order was considered a somewhat risky business transaction (students on a budget and all that …). As a result, each of us had a pretty good idea what sort of “special troops” we all could field, and this was taken into account when designing our army prior to battle.

So it came that one summer afternoon, we had agreed to fight a battle between my Skaven and the Wood Elves of my long-time gaming buddies Dirk and David. Since I know that they didn’t have too many Wood Elf miniatures between them, I was pretty confident I could predict what sort of army they would field. Sure, the Wood Elf army lists in Warhammer Armies allowed Treeman in the army, but this was a hypothetical choice, since no-one in our group had a proper Treeman figure, let alone we had ever seen one in a store. The closest we came to a Treeman was a picture in White Dwarf or in one of the Citadel flyers.

The Treeman entry in the Wood Elves army list in Warhammer Armies

It was therefore a huge shock to me that, when the armies were deployed, a couple of Treemen were suddenly put on the table. Not less than four Treemen were pulled out of a box, 3 as part of the army, and one spare to be used as part of an illusion spell to create mirror images of units under your command. I gazed in awe at these figures. Did David buy them? I had never seen them in any of the Citadel catalogues or in White Dwarf? Were they from some other brand, Ral Partha maybe … ?

It turned out that a few weeks before the battle, David had started to scratch-built these four Treemen. It was meant as a surprise, and what a surprise it was! He had collected various branches and twigs from his garden, spent a few nights cutting and fitting them together, and painted them up. A spectacular sight!

The Treeman next to two old Citadel miniatures, one fighter, and one old wizard carrying too much adventuring gear.

If I remember correctly, the Treemen only participated in that single battle. David gave them away to gaming friends, including me. I don’t know what happened to the other three, but mine is still in my collection, and is one of the most original figures I own.

Is this Treeman a proper Citadel miniature? No, of course not. However, for me, it reminds me strongly of the spirit in which we played Warhammer 3^rd edition during the late eighties- early nineties. And in that sense, it embodies the Oldhammer spirit very well …

Addendum 1 (May 2017)

When cleaning up some archive boxes, I found old pictures from the particular game involving the treeman. The pictures below show 2 different treeman, one of them is the copy now in my collection.

Addendum 2 (January 2018) 

Another scratch-built treeman joined the ranks -- see this blogpost.

Antares 2401: Action in the Zingara system

... some more (unedited) pictures from our latest game in the Antares 2401 campaign (see label below for previous post and campaign philosophy).

4 squads took part, with a new squad (Eta squad) being recruited into the ranks of SpecOps.

A scifi special operations campaign is the ideal vehicle for putting lots of different figures and scenery items (WW1 barbed wire, WW2 bunkers, dinosaurs) on the table. Much recommended :-)

Antares 2401: Aboard spaceship Odessa

Some pictures from a recent Antares 2401 campaign game (see label below to track previous posts and read up about the campaign philosophy).

This time, the game was played on the floorplans on a large spaceship. I used the excellent Modular Rocketship plans from Dramascape - available through Wargamevault.com.

Oldhammer: Eternal Champion

I still remember the time when I first starting buying wargaming miniatures. This was during the late 80s, when Warhammer 3rd edition was published. For me, this was my main vehicle for acquiring new wargaming stuff, and naturally, I was drawn heavily into the Citadel range of figures. I sort of knew other figure ranges were available, but I only moved into historicals around 1997. For me, Games Workshop was my entry point into miniature wargaming, due to its availability, but also because the tone and nature of the games that came out of Nottingham during that period struck a certain chord with a geek still at university. (For the record, I started with wargaming much sooner than that, but during high school, was mostly involved with board wargames such as those from Avalon Hill, SPI or International Team).

Anyway, I never gave away or threw out any of my Citadel miniatures. After 25 years, they not only hold a nostalgic spot in my gaming experiences and they much defined my early miniature gaming, but I still use them! Our Scifi Antares campaign features Mark6 Space Marines (beakies!), and I still have dozens of unpainted Citadel miniatures lying around. These days, they are becoming fashionable again -- cfr. Oldhammer.

Browsing through old catalogues, I sometimes regret that I didn't buy more of those classic Citadel miniatures from the 80s. That's why now and then, one gets lucky. Looking on a 2nd-handsite, I suddenly discovered someone who was selling the boxed set "Eternal Champion". Not only were the figures unpainted, but still in the original (opened) box. A real treasure - also because Moorcock's Elric stories inspired much of the Realm of Chaos backstory back in the day.

I even drove to the seller's house, to make sure I picked up the figures myself and they wouldn't get lost in the post.

I know that the Elric range of Citadel figures was much more extensive than just this box (see this page on the Collecting Citadel Miniatures wiki), but it is a start. When collecting old figures, I have learned that one must be patient!

My new wargaming room (part 3)

A few people let me know that it was difficult for them to judge the size of my wargaming room, based on the previous pictures (here and here).

Therefore, I tried to take some more pictures with my rather limited camera, now from outside the window. I hope this gives a better impression :-)

The game on the table is an ACW 28mm game.

 The last photograph is a close-up of one of the cabinets, displaying a collection of 100-year old flat figures, alongside my copies of Little Wars and FLoor Games by HG Wells.