Warbands: OITNW 2014 - Creating your Warband and Learning from the Past

I've been getting these rules ready for everyone, and I have a load of pdfs made for those who need them or want quick access to the tables. But I also think that we would be fools if we did not pay attention to how this was done at the original Oldhammer day by our good friend Orlygg!

So with his kind permission, I'm going to link to his blog on the articles that he wrote about starting a warband. We are going to follow several of his steps, just to make this consistent and fair for everyone. You can of course roll everything up, as normal, and we can all understand this is done on trust. However, I like James's method of picking a positive and negative trait (rolling, but not keeping any excess traits). Also, our warband game does include both books, and the scenario will include all of the gods, so you can bring anything!



To give you an insight into the event that we want to duplicate here are the links to Orlygg's Warband info:

Realm of Chaos 80s - Warband Creation Advice

Realm of Chaos 80s - Mass Warband Explained

Realms of Chaos 80s - Rituals Of Combat

Realm of Chaos 80s - Guide to the Battleground


We are going to have a slightly different scenario, I'll be posting that up soon. But it will be similar, on a 5x10 board, with an "edge" for each group of gods. Rusty is making something cool, so I want to reveal a little bit more later! But hopefully we get some pictures! We are going to have the basic VP chart to see the side who wins and the winning champion. The scenario will have a few additional things, but I'll post that up with the scenario. (Its hard writing those fiction entries~!)

If you have your copy of Realms of Chaos - Slaves to Darkness or Realms of Chaos - The Lost and The Damned, you'll have just about everything to get ready. Follow the rules, though I suggest rolling for the starting profile instead of taking a base profile, as it just is not "hero" enough. Get your starting equipment, by rolling and choosing. (this is when you can start adding a back story to your character.....was he a fallen knight? take a warhorse! A soldier of the empire? A Halberd! Dark Elf noble? Repeating Crossbow!)  I then pick one attribute (roll and take one positive or one cosmetic) and then normally you'll have one for your Mark, with whatever else comes with it. We will roll for any special weapons on the day (just like Orlygg suggests), so we can all witness your righteous fury. Also we will not be accepting any rolls with technology - keep the laser cannons at home this time. Then you roll for your retinue, and start building up your models for your warband. Now just paint them and show up on the day! Understand that this is all about chaos and randomness, so please do roll for your stuff (though you can choose the starting race for your Champion (though I did not)).

And here are links to the important tables from ROC LOTD:

Making a Champion and Starting Equipment

Starting Profile and Marks of Chaos

Attributes Summary Chart

Gifts of Chaos Gods and Gifts Summary

Retinue Table - please note this is the newer one from LOTD. It is my preferred one because it adds the minis that Citadel had released up till then (like the Centaurs). You can use either this one or the one in ROC Slaves to Darkness (There Rob, that should sort you out! ;) )

Chaos Champion Record Sheet

Chaos Warband Record Sheet

Well here goes for me:

I decided to roll for everything, and my first roll was an 18 - So my champion is a chaos dwarf!
Then I rolled a 58, so my character is a level 15 hero. For starting Equipment my total was a 7, So I took Heavy Armor, Shield, Double Hand Axe and a Sword.

I rolled my first attribute, and amazingly got Cloud of Flies. Since I had wanted to do a Nurgle hero, this was more than perfect and my "positive"  attribute. With Mark of Nurgle, I am already +1 Toughness and my second random attribute that I rolled was Bestial Face (+1 Fear Point) which covered my cosmetic attribute.

I then used Orlygg's chart:
If your character is level 5 roll 4 times
If your character is level 10 roll 3 times 
If your character is level 15 roll twice
If your character is level 20+ roll once

My first roll was a 24, or 2d6 Beastmen of Nurgle. (4+6)
I then rolled a 68, so I got a 2d4 Mercenary Band and Captain. (2+4)

For the Captain I rolled a 03, so he was a level 5 hero.

So I am all set with my Chaos Dwarf Champion of Nurgle, his retinue of a mercenary captain, 6 soldiers and 10 Beastman of Nurgle. so I now have 17 miniatures to get ready for the Warbands Challange. I'll be putting up some background info on these guys, as well as my pics of them as I get them ready.....Hope to hear from you guys on what yours are. Or send some pics or post them on Facebook! Let em know if you have any other questions!

OITNW - 2014 - Come and give your warband a tryout!

Hobby Update - The Horror of it all!

Hey gang, quick hobby update before I get the Warband Rules all written up (scanning or getting the charts for everyone....)

I found these guys in a drawer (with one pink horror to follow). So I tried to get them painted up the other night. I know the pics are not great, but they look less drybrushed in person. None of the highlights were drybrushed, but they sure look like it here on the camera. Bit disappointed in that, and I have to come up with some cool bases for em....maybe I can come up with something cool.

One of the things that I have noticed is that I have not had tons of Hobby stuff up here yet, and unlike some other lucky guys I can't pop over to Bryan's or Tim's house to take photos (This is more jealousy than anger for sure Steve!) :)

But gaming, collecting, painting, are all parts of Oldhammer to me. Cool old Lead figures (mostly Citadel, but there are so many other worthy choices - I've just been collecting Citadel for so long ;) ), piles and piles of old lead are not doing me any good. I want to paint them, play with them, and in general spend some time with a bunch of people who have/and do the same! However, I do also want to take some time and paint a figure to the best of my ability for the Golden Gobbos in Baltimore. I doubt I'll ever paint like Rusty, Blue, Nico or any of the other various luminaries (Like the painting gods of yore - Andy Craig, Tim Prow, and the rest). I just want a figure done to the best of my ability, that I am f$%^ing proud of. Even if it gets just a "cool" from some one. I tend to paint to play, or in the case of others in a rush for one thing or another (an event - or my kids hanging off daddy as he paints). But I have some time - just over 5 months before OITNW 2014. So I'm going to come up with something that I think is cool, and attempt to make it shine. I hope you do the same - and we get a lot of guys entering. It is not about winning (really!) its more about sharing a passion for something cool.

Andrew Dyer put up some basic rules for the event - so check them out on the forums (or facebook) and get back with him or me. Do we want to go bigger? Include monsters as a category? This is more a celebration of all of us....the whole weekend! So lets make it for all of us - speak up....we have a little time!

Preliminary Rules on the forums

Also, I am typing up and scanning stuff for the warband rules (scanning as I type) and I should have them all set up. As part of this, like Orlygg, I rolled up my Warband for the event. So hopefully as I go over it, you can also get an idea of some things to do.....but we gotta see it if we can! So if you are in the states, get your pics up on the facebook group - or better yet, start a blog on your warband so we can all see your process. This will get as big as we can make it - I've heard of everything from Skaven form Canada, 10k worth of walking undead, too many points of Khorne for me to think about, My orcs, and a whole bunch of other stuff.......and I hope to see even more! So let us know what you might bring. Bring and Battles, the Siege, Warbands, Scenarios, Rogue Trader - possible two scenarios. We are going to have a blast and a host of things on offer.

I'm going to leave you with a picture of some of Rusty's Khorne army he is getting done for Oct. Rusty's running the Warband game with me, and also making some INCREDIBLE terrain for it....I know the plans, and if you know Rusty, he can sure make some gorgeous terrain. So I don't think anyone will want to miss this one......one thing I'll let you know before I go - We are using both books of ROC - so you can bring Warbands from all four gods or even undivided. Anyway, enjoy Rusty's Khorne WIP:

Hobby Update - Adepticon Metal Dark Elves (and a bit on Oldhammer) and an old school Dragon

Ok, finally some hobby stuff! But first, a quick Oldhammer In The New World 2014 - Baltimore (OITNW 2014) update:

First, I now have the warband rules, and just have to write them up and pdf them for everyone, which I will hopefully get done tonight and post as soon as I can. Also, we now have some Rogue Trader games set up for the day - more info to come later! And we should have the Golden Gobbo rules hopefully by the end of this week. Dave Taylor (former GW employee and Wargames Illustrated Editor), multiple Golden Demon winner and incredible hobbyist has agreed to be one of our judges for the Golden Gobbo at DropZone Games. You'll have to work hard to impress him, but that is kinda the point, right? He also - unlike me- can take incredible photos, and will probably put some up on his blog, promoting Oldhammer to even more people! We already have a lot of people planning on being there, and hopefully we'll add more. One thing suggested on the forums was maybe planning ahead and trying to get into a hotel and possibly get a group rate. Please go to the forum to discuss that plan, or if you have any suggestions. I did link to three nearby hotels, and there are also some restaurants near the store, but not right there (the store is basically in a business park, so you do have a small drive just about anywhere) unless something has changed since I worked there! Also, remember that I'm making the trip from Michigan, so have about 16 hours to get there with my family. Luckily I have some great help closer to the event, but the concept is to make it your day - so if you have something cool you want to try, get in touch and I'll get your table reserved!

This hobby update is for an army I built for 8th edition, but includes a lot of old metal - no not terribly ancient Dark Elves (though I'll get some pics of my shades which do include some old guys) but at least honest to goodness metal! For Adepticon, and the recent Great Lakes Warhammer League season, I played Dark Elves. I have played them before, but played Lizardmen for Becalming Cogitation. They took that away, so I went back to Dark Elves for a bit. I painted this army in quite the rush (most of my hobby nowadays unfortunately), and they are absolutely not even finished as an army, but they are done enough to play with. I did have to include two new things (darn plastic toys) to make this work for 8th edition, so ignore them if you are just looking for old stuff....the Kharbidysis was actually painted the day before I went to Adepticon, and I got him to this stage in just over an hour. (I had to pack ;) ). As I said, rushed. And I'll be the first to admit that I will probably never win too many awards for painting, I'm always drooling over Blue's minis or James awesome Bestiary models, not to mention Nico's amazing stuff! But for me, I get a very small amount of time to game at all, and painting gets taken out of my gaming allotment ;( Funny thing, I do enjoy painting, I just enjoy gaming more - mainly because you do it with a friend. The whole reason I do the 8th stuff still is because of my oldest buddy from high school (so he knows where a lot of the bones are buried!) was seduced into Warhammer by me, and he loves tournaments. So I've been still playing some 8th because of him. Big part of gaming of course is social, one of the big reasons I am so looking forward to OITNW in October!

Anyway, here are the pictures for my army, please be gentle on the comments, understanding all of the above. I'm not entering these into Golden Gobbo, they were just figures I could get painted up in time. 

The whole thing.

Bolt throwers - I have older ones, but these are red and black.

Bolt Thrower crew.

Black Guard

Black Guard close up.

Bonehead Hydra.

Morathi

Dark Riders

Some characters.

The 1 hour Kharbidysis

The master.

Dark Riders 2

The Cauldron and Deathhag.

The big unit of Witch Elves.

Poisonous, Hate-filled, Frenzied Witches.....they want to see if you can be there friend!

Some of the Command

The Warlocks

Again, sorry for the pics (old Sony hand held, so not great) and the paint, but at least it is some hobby! I'm working on all of the rules and stuff for OITNW 2014, and a few extra individual models. But let us know if you are bringing anything special, and when we start getting going on the Warbands, post some of yours up, Rusty and I are going to post our warbands here as we get them done. So watch this space. I also have to get all the orc stuff and eventually some siege towers on here......until then - Happy Gaming!

Oh, one more thing - in older metal, I have this old Dragon (think I painted him in the 80s.....) and I was wondering if anyone else has him or knows which company made him....I can not remember for the life of me, even though I KNOW I should know....if you understand? So let me know if you recognize him!

Finally We Have our Day In The New World! Oct 25-26th @ Dropzone Games in Baltimore!

Oldhammer In The New World Day! Bring Your Lead To Baltimore! Oldhammer Across The Pond!

When?: October 25^th-26

Where?: Dropzone Games in Glen Burnie Md.

What?: North American Golden Gobbos, painting competition, Warband battles, Scenario battles, and whatever you can set up yourself! Contact me at bshrode13@hotmail.com or on facebook to make sure I can reserve a table at Dropzone if you need one!

I’ve been biting my tongue a bit to get some things in place and make sure that we will have some really cool events, and some important people. But we can now make it official, we now have an Oldhammer Day In The New World! And we have a great venue for it – Dropzone Games in Glen Burnie, MD at the same site as the old Games Workshop Factory! Dropzone is a great store, I believe the largest on the East Coast, and they are preparing a lot of cool space and tables for us. They are open from 10am till 10pm Sat and 12-6 on Sunday. We have a spot reserved right now for a few games that Rusty Gouldman and I have planned, and we have lots of room to add in games!

We are going to have several games staged including a Scenario from one of the old box sets, a Warband Challenge just like Oldhammer Day in the UK (thanks Orlygg!), and hopefully a very cool Siege game! Andrew Dyer has agreed to help me set up a Golden Gobbo painting competition, and we are hoping to have some really cool stuff going on (We are also hopefully going to see some of the Stuff of Legends and Blue in VT’s collection in person!)

I’m also pleased to announce that two Old School personalities are hoping to attend and talk about the good old and bad old days of GW and helping to create the Warhammer Universe way back when. (They are our own North American Celebrities and you’ll probably want to bring along some WFRP books if you got them!)

Basically since my health scare recently I have become even more certain that I have to get this going, and I am hoping that 6 months is enough time to get everyone there, and time to get some more painting done! I’ll admit I and so excited I wish it was next week, but then I remember all the work we have to do to get this together! So in 6 months, I’m hoping you will be there!

I’m duplicating this on the Forums, and will try to watch them. This is also going to give me tons of posts on my blog over the next 6 months, so I hope you’ll pay attention and maybe send me cool images of things you might be working on. And I’m hoping some of our Canadian friends can make it down as well (so if you run a blog on Skaven and go by 24_cigarettes, I hope to see tons of painting done by then!)

Tons of details to get done and get to you all, from everything to some possible cool special templates, to hopefully having foundry citadel codes onsite, and lots of things in the works! For now, just let me know if you can make it or want to make it!

Also, this was recently posted on the facebook page for Oldhammer - anyone else jealous? I have almost all of the figs, but I am missing several of the boxes from when I was a kid.....my mom was at least smart enough not to throw away miniatures, but she did throw out those "empty boxes". I'd cry, but I have OITNW Day - Baltimore to look forward to!