Mordheim Campaign 2016

So the moment of truth has come and gone!

Four months of prep and the big weekend goes by all too quickly, unfortunately...

This weekend we had our annual Mordheim campaign/tournament. I've been doing this for quite a while now, probably about 10 years.

When it first started, I was still doing most of my gaming in a local game store, so me and some of the other customers from the shop would organize a campaign once a year. This was after the game had already gone out of print, so it wasn't too popular at the store - with either the customers, OR the owner! Fortunately he was a nice enough guy and didn't have a problem with us playing there... after all, people could always buy Warhammer miniatures to play Mordheim (when there was still a Warhammer Fantasy Battles).

As my local gaming buddies got older we all started buying houses - which meant we could play at home! At that point we started taking turns going to each others' houses and trying to get games in about once a month. We are lucky enough that a few of us in our group have dedicated game rooms.

There were two problems with this - first, some of my best friends are not local. And second, even the ones that are local have a hard time committing to playing a game once a month! Kids, work, houses, etc.

A few years ago we started doing it as a marathon gaming weekend once a year. Mordheim works best as a campaign game, so you always want to get several games in rather than play it as a one-off. So we pick a long weekend and hole up for a couple of days of non-stop gaming!

This year I tried to run a map-based campaign set in Lustria. It worked OK, but I think we had too many map locations for the number of players in the campaign. This was compounded by a couple of last minute dropouts, and meant that there were more turns than I would have liked where certain warbands had to "sit out" because they did not encounter any enemies on the map.

As usual, I managed to finish the warbands and terrain I'd been working on at the eleventh hour. Here is the spawning pool I used for the "Mirror Pool of Tepok" scenario:





It looks much better (and more like a Mirror Pool) with a coat of gloss varnish on the water! I think it was literally still drying when the first player arrived.

Here are the last few Norse I painted for my warband. They were older painted models that I just had to touch up and add shields to. I painted them about 15 years ago - I am glad the style still fit in with the ones I painted last month, but a little disappointed too actually! I guess I have not improved too much over 15 years, haha...





And the two new warbands for this year, in all their glory.

Norse:



Nurgle:



I really liked the way the Nurgle heroes came out, and their warband leader became the thorn in everyone's side during the campaign!

We ended up with a nice mix of warbands: Amazons, Lizardmen, Norse, Carnival of Chaos (Nurgle), Skaven, 2 different Orc warbands, and Dark Elves.

I used the table and temple buildings I had scratchbuilt (modeled after Tulum in Mexico) that you can see here:







Along with a whole bunch of new Mats and prepainted aquarium terrain for the Temple Cities and various monuments on the map.

Without further ado, here are some pics from the weekend!

Last weekend of prep for Mordheim Campaign 2016!

Of course I had to get called in for a work emergency on Saturday, right?

...and have family over all day on Sunday?

Once again, real life getting in the way of playing with my toys!

But all is well: I managed to finish the Brutes I was working on for the Nurgle warband, and a "Plague Cart" (Frog Demon) to boot!

Also finished off a wolf pack for my Norse. They were a super quickie paint job because I wasn't too happy with the models... here they all are:














Also realized I didn't actually include any pics of the "impassable" jungle terrain pieces I had been working on, even though I mentioned them last time. Here are a few shots, with the new Brutes for scale. I packed them really dense so there's no doubt as to what they represent!







You can also see a little sneak preview of one of my new Frontline mats in those shots - it's a Swamp mat. Once the campaign is over I'll do a Mat comparison, since I've ordered from so many different companies now!

It's really getting down to the wire... just 4 days to go! I have to finish painting up some shields and redo the edges of some old Norse models I had painted ages ago to match the rest of the warband.

What's really going to take the most time is finishing up the campaign rules! I had starting working on a set of rules for the campaign weeks ago, but never finished it. Gotta wrap that up and do some last minute housekeeping things like making sure I've got blank roster sheets etc.

In the mean time I also finished getting the game pieces ready for the campaign map board. They are 3/4" magnets with printed labels for each warband. I needed two Dark Elf symbols so I cheated and used a High Elf symbol for one warband... hehe.





Can't wait for the big day!

October update

Another month down, another goal missed!

Got a couple more models done by the end of the month, but still didn't make it to 10. With only two months left in the year, it's looking like I might be in some serious trouble of getting 120 models done!

These two are the Plague Bearers for the Nurgle warband in next month's Mordheim campaign.







With these 2 done that makes 7 models total this month. I've got less than two weeks left until the campaign... still have to finish the Brutes for Nurgle, and paint up something to use as a Plague Cart.

I'm planning to use my Reaper Bones Frog Demon... since it's already primed, it's on a large base, and it's been sitting on my desk primed for months anyway! It does look a bit "Nurglish." I wish I had time to paint up an actual cart but it ain't gonna happen. I don't even have a really suitable cart model.

I wanted to paint up a few more troops for my Norse as well, and I was hoping to paint up some wolves for the wolf pack. In a pinch, I'll use my GW Dire Wolves and some old Norse models I had painted up years ago to bulk up the ranks.

I bought these from North Star to use and they came a few days ago:



Only problem is... they're tiny! Here they are next to a GW Dire Wolf, and next to my Norse Wulfen:





Maybe you could argue that the GW one is too big... but that little wolf pup is quite puny!

This is the Reaper Bones wolf that came in the pack of Familiars... I think he's a happy medium:



Unfortunately I only had one of him and he's already based to match my Frostgrave stuff. So the Wulfen will either get some large undead wolves, or a pack of tiny wolf pups.

I also have some old Foundry Vikings that I painted years ago. Never got around to doing their shields, and I was using them as characters in an RPG at the time so they had different colored bases. If I can't paint up more troops by the time the campaign starts, maybe I can just paint these guys' bases over to match the rest of the warband and have them join in:




Also got a whole bunch of terrain done this month in addition to the models I worked on. I probably didn't "need" any more jungle, after all I was able to cover an 8x4 table the last time we had a Lustria campaign!

Here is a pic from 2014:



Lots of plastic plants there! But I might have as many as 4 tables going at once during this year's campaign, based on the number of people playing, And I do like densely packed terrain for Mordheim. So I made some more.

I tried to add some color in some of the new pieces:



I also worked on a bunch of large pieces of "impassable" terrain that will represent the densest areas of jungle. Last time I had all of the jungle pieces based singly and put them on large area bases to represent bigger jungle sections. It's practical, but didn't look very dense. There will be no mistaking that these new pieces are impenetrable jungle!

We used these holly plants to represent man-eating plants (I figured we'd remember which ones were the man-eating plants, because of the spiky bits!).



This time I made a bunch more, but spiced them up a bit by putting flowering plants in the center.






I also worked on this nice terrain piece from Stronghold Terrain. It's a skink spawning pool with cool engraved glyphs on the sides. I have a couple of scratchbuilt spawning pools to use for the campaign as well, but they are not as nice as this one!

Painting is done, but I think I will add a coat of clear gloss on the water now that I've sealed it.






Also did up a bunch of palm trees too. They are a mix of nice ones from Pegasus Hobbies and cheaper ones from Chinese eBay sellers. There is definitely a quality difference, but the Chinese ones aren't bad for the price! They are also less work. The Pegasus ones have to be built frond by frond....

Painting update

Got a few models done a little early this month... I need to keep this pace up if I want to be ready for the Mordheim campaign! I keep getting distracted and working on terrain though.

I finished a few more Wargames Foundry Vikings for my Norse warband. I am really liking painting these guys. It makes me want to finish off the collection! They've been in my lead pile for many years.

It would coincide nicely if I paint up the rest of my Vikings at some point soon, because the guys in my local gaming group are interested in the Dark Ages these days!

All in good time. Anyway, here are the new recruits.






























Also finished a couple of henchmen for my buddies Nurgle warband. These are the old WHFB Chaos Warriors that had no necks and looked like their heads were protruding straight out of their chests! Well, they ARE chaos dudes after all.

Painted them up really quick, basecoat, drybrush, wash. And I think I used fewer colors on these than almost any models yet! Added to that, they were preassembled so I didn't have to spend any time building them. I usually only buy new models on eBay, I don't like taking gambles on other people's assembly or painting jobs. But at some point a while back I bid on a box of these, and the seller threw in a few of his own models that were already built. Dug them out of the lead pile and Bam! Two more henchmen for Nurgle.







You can also see some of the new jungle terrain I'm working on in the background! I'll save that for another post though.