Obligatory Year End Post Pt.2 - Achievements in Oldhammer

So, while the painting itself was pretty lackluster, I feel like I accomplished quite a bit on the actual Oldhammering side.

I started by resurrecting the Oldhammer Opponent Finder in April. It still may not really help all that much in actually getting you games, but I think it is reassuring to see others who share your interests and helps to build a sense of community.

Next was the Oldhammer in the New World T-Shirt.

I was very happy with how it turned out and how well it was received. Hopefully I can come up with another good idea for the coming year. If possible I'd like to raise some funds for swag for the next event.

Then it was actually going to, not one, but two Oldhammer Events. Brian's Birthday Bash and Oldhammer Weekend USA 2016. We Oldhammered hardcore and had a lot of fun doing it.

Then of course it was the publishing of the Oldhammer in the New World Zine.

I feel that this was almost as much an accomplishment as the T-Shirt and I'm very proud of it as well. I'm working on the next issue and need more content if you want to submit some. The theme is Rogue Trader.

The final Oldhammer accomplishment was meeting up with Dai from The Lost, The Damned and The Stunted and getting in a game while visiting family in NoCal. I think the world is a better place when we get together and share the things we enjoy. I'll be gaming with him again.

So, now that I look back on it, Oldhammer-wise 2016 was a resounding success.

I'll try to come up with a cogent post and plan for how I'm going to tackle 2017.

Brushes at the ready!

Obligatory Year End Post Pt.1 - Painted in 2016

Well, it seems like that time of year when bloggers look back at the year gone by and ponder what the year ahead holds.

As of writing this I have 72 published posts this year, the lowest full year total since I started blogging.

So let's remind ourselves of what was painted.

Figures Painted

The Merchant of Venus XII

I've broken him again in the interim so my staff repair is still not satisfactory.

The Leman Russ and Anti-Tank Squig Gretchin

As per usual it was overshadowed by much better submissions in the bonus round. I hate the photography on this one, I should probably reshoot it.

20mm Ogres and 28mm Giant Rat

No the best picture, but it gets the idea across in one shot. Still haven't had a chance to use these in anger.

Dahn Alt Rump

No real complaints here, I liked this one. I need to finish the rest of my Imperial Cops. I think I want to change their name to Team Terra, Galactic Police.

Otherworld Warlock

He was fun to paint, although I recall spending a lot of time blending his skin only to have it look like it was color blocked in one color only. He is one of the figures I chipped up transporting.

Abdul Goldberg

Probably the figure I'm the most proud of for 2016 for sure if not all time. I also thought I photographed him particularly well. Unfortunately he suffered some pretty major chips in the Oldhammer transport fiasco.

Chaos Warriors

This reminds me that these guys still need varnish and final basing, as well as a proper photo shoot.

Reaper Cthulhu

Another one that needs varnish and better pictures.

Don's Boar Boyz

They look ok. Still not happy with the pace with which I painted them. He's said something about selling off his armies, not sure if these are part of what he's sold.

I also finished up Gropez the Halfling Barbarian, 4 more Goblin Fanatics, 5 gobbo Wulf Boyz, and 10 space chickens with the Clukkatrix for Oldhammer Weekend. They all need their own pictures and perhaps some touch ups from travelling damage.

So it looks like 49 figures, 1 Vehicle and 1 Elder God.

This post turned out much longer than I intended, so I'll stop here and talk about the other hobby things I did in 2016 in my next post.

Cheers.

I met a strange man on the internet

And a battle report ensued.

Hi All,

Got a chance to meet up with fellow Oldhammerer and top bloke Dai from over at The Lost the damned and the stunted.

We had some wine, talked about all sorts of stuff, looked at his miniatures and then had a quick game of Dragon Rampant before I had to hit the road. It was great.

Please forgive the crap cellphone pictures, I was travelling light. The game was more climactic than the report makes it appear. We both got down to our leader and one unit left on the table, his one unit just happened to be a giant.

Dragon Rampant gave a quick, simple game and we each got to roll satisfying handfuls of dice.

Here's the report, right click to embiggen.

Score +1 for fun and Oldhammer West of the Mississippi. Since I'm out his way a couple of times a year to visit family we'll probably get together and game again. Next time I'll be more organized. I promise. ;)

Back to the drawing board - Mighty Empires Campaign Map

Hi All,

Sorry for not posting regularly. Life and stuff. As is usual for me this time of year, I realize how lazy I've been the past year and get grouchy about all the projects I've let slip through my fingers. Both hobby and real life.

But anyway, this post is to tell you about the action I'm going to take to fix that.

Mighty Empires

That's right, I said it. Again. I've always had a thing for sweeping campaigns.Of course I've also had very scattered and grandiose ideas about them that ended up falling apart because I couldn't stay focused long enough to work it all out.

Linlandia

So you may recall the campaign I started with my gaming buddy from High School. I still hate the name, but he won the battle that got to pick it, so there it is. We set it up as a way to stay in touch after I went off to college and it ended up fizzling after a year or so. But I have two binders full of stuff for it and you may recall that I found a lot of the letters and paperwork from that campaign.

Maps

I have several maps of the campaign lets see where it all started.

This one was reconstructed from my hand sketched map of our tile placement. I then scanned in my tiles and placed them into a hex grid in GIMP. It was a royal pain in the ass.

Here is the sketch version. I made many copies of this so we could show changes in territory easily.

Lastly, here's the "fancy" hand drawn version I made as a present for my friend and to rekindle interest in the campaign. It didn't really work. But it was fun to make.

Next Steps

I hear you saying "I see what you've done in the past, what are you going to do to actually get this project moving?"

Welsh Piper

Welsh Piper is one of those sites I've found and forgotten about multiple times. It has great resources for hex mapping and a great program for calculating Fantasy populations. So I'm going to be printing out his hex templates and figuring how to scale my map into  his templates.

Scaling

The main problem is what scale are the Mighty Empires tiles. In the original game the time scale is supposed to be one season, and banners move one hex. Years ago I read "The Logistics of Alexander's Army" (I think that was the title) and 10 miles a day march for an army seems stuck in my brain. I think I fudged about a months worth of travelling in one season, so roughly 280 miles. I then dropped that to 250 to make it easier to divide by five, because that's how the Welsh Piper templates are set up. Of course the Welsh Piper mega hexes are 125 miles, so I will figure out if I want to just make my map scale 125 or translate my one hex into two in Welsh Piper.

Hexographer or Hand

The ultimate goal is to create this map in Hexographer, but I've found it difficult to get started or manage the aforementioned scaling issues so I'm going to do it by hand with colored pencils. Oldchool style.

The Plan

I'm going to print out templates and copies of the maps and start hand drawing the new maps over the Christmas break. As I get going I'll fill you in on how it's progressing and ultimately how you can get involved if you want to participate in the ultimate battle of good versus evil.

Thanks to Airborne Grove of Give Em Lead for re-re-kindling the idea for this and Bulldog Lopez of  He of Three Names for reminding me that I can use headings in a post.

A Random Encounter - A Knight's Quest Tale

Hi All,

Hope your December is going ok thus far. As usual for me this time of year, I'm stressing about all the things I haven't done. Such is life.

Here's a report of a game of Knight's Quest I lead my Brother and Son through over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Rather than prepare an adventure, I brought an assortment of figures and dungeon tiles and worked out a random system on the fly for generating the encounters.

I also wanted to try and get know how Serif PagePlus X9 works, so i used that program to make the report. I intend to use it for the Oldhammer in the New World Zine moving forward.

So here it is.

So there you have it. It was a brutal slugfest and the party was totally decimated by the first encounter. I need to figure out how to balance things a little better if we continue to use this. The general consensus was it was too brutal and hard for the PC's. Anyhow it was fun getting in a game and throwing some dice, even if we didn't make it to the Orcs, Bugbears and Ogres.

I'll probably be painting up my Analogue Hobbies VI entry fee and side duel figures (from last year) and then trying to sort my minis and get to work on all the half finished stuff.

Later.