Wednesday 19 February 2014

On the table: Erny's round up of the months best Oldhammer gaming.



Fellow Oldhammerers, you ask one simple question about letting a sleeping blog die and the next thing you know you are agreeing to write a weekly roundup of Oldhammer gaming.  Actually I’m really pleased to be in this position, loads of support from very enthusiastic Oldhammerers determined to keep this beast not just going but growing. Not to mention the fact that there is so much Oldhammer goodness out there how does one keep on track with it all? You follow this round up is how. Orlygg has already started the round up ball rolling with his summary of the best modelling and painting put out this week, no mean feat given the range and number of articles. Gaming posts are less common so I’m taking a different tack,  some posts I’ll round up the best gaming of the past several weeks and then for others point you all in the direction of some of my favorite posts ever on a given theme.  One sure fire way to get some publicity on this popular blog is to write a decent gaming article and post it up, challenge set!

On with the round up:

First up we have a pair of 40K 2nd ed battle reports from early last month.

Death World Adventures from Jonas brings us a chaotic drunken battle over a shanty town, if you don’t like cocktail stick cacti look away now. Special rules designed for the scenario add a new twist to a much loved game and the results are a stunning table and fun narrative.  I particularly like the use of incomplete in character reports from the action, nostalgic or what. Jonas also describes the setup and with captions and a brief summary then allows the pictures to do a lot of the talking, even if the pictures are in places a little blurry but who cares.



Next up Suber on his Old School Workshop shows us what happens when you grab the first minis off your shelf, think about a scenario for a few minutes and throw the lot on the table. Loads of Chaos, great terrain and miniatures again and once more special scenario rules, including an adaption to a terrible accident.  Though there is a bit of narrative Suber reports this through the eyes of the gamer, an interesting and fun take. Included are lots of great photos of a really fun game.


In the world of Fantasy Rab brings us a couple of reports on Rabs Geekly Digest detailing the exploits of his Tzeentch war band. Be prepared, there are no shots of the game in progress however we do get a great narrative written from the point of view of the Tzeentchians.  Rab  also details the ups and downs of this reasonably powerful starting warband in a turn by turn summary of the mechanics of the game. It is a format that works really well for these smaller skirmish games and fills your head with images of the brutal combat played out on both the gaming table and the chaos wastes.



 Speaking (or is that writing) about narrative I'm going to include fun, well written prose that adds to the game in these reports. To see what I mean please do check out the writings of one Mouse over at Tales From the Big Board.



I’ve always considered WHFRP as part of the Oldhammer experience, it was always part and parcel of my gaming as a youth anyway. It doesn’t come more iconic than The Enemy Within campaign and I know many people are already following Rob S and his group through this campaign by gaming session podcast. If your not why not? Get yourself over to Six Iron Spikes for the latest installment.



Where would we be without scenarios? Same old same old I guess, line them up, knock them down. Right from the start of the Oldhammer community a running theme on the blogs was the need for scenarios and the blogging of our own ideas.  For my final recommendations  this post we have a couple of scenarios by some of the instigators of our little niche community.

Gaj/Weasil  at Warhammer for Adults has a nice little scenario on his blog, featuring his own mascot character Gromeo, (we all know you are Gromeo Gaj), in a compromising situation it is full of the humour we expect from the twice named one.


Finally Thantsants brings us a scenario that has been in his back pocket for over a year, ever since I started talking about an Oldhammer fanzine but failed to act. Anyway the Hollywood epic is on this very blog so again, what are you waiting for..


If you have any posts from the past month, by yourself or others that you think I've missed or you have an article in the pipe line do let me know.

Erny

14 comments:

  1. Very great reads, all of them. May I add the forum has an ongoing DnD adventure (started this month) which is full of funny and charismatic characters, and that it's written in a way to hide all the technical aspects to leave just the plot and action visible.
    http://forum.oldhammer.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=2045

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    1. I've been considering jumping in with that, love me some DnD and I've played this way on other forums..

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    2. Don't consider anymore and dive in then ;)

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  2. Cool stuff. Its good to see people actually getting the little space men on the table rather that just on Ebay :) In Subers case his enthusiasm actually involved *throwing* his miniatures on the table, resulting in a smashed Forge World Arvus. Even on the second read I find that bit makes me wince :)

    A little self promotion here, I hope that you dont mind: theottovonbismark and I got together for a weekend of "Rogue GorkaMunda" gaming three weeks ago. If you enjoyed reading the reports above as much as I did, then its possible that you will enjoy taking a quick look at the report on that session too.

    http://sho3box.wordpress.com/2014/02/03/rogue-gorkamunda-weekend/

    Thanks for your work on the round-up!

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    Replies
    1. Yes this one should have been included in the first place along with a couple of others I missed by mistake.

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  3. Nice one Erny - I've been enjoying Mouse's work for ages and good to see all these game sbeing played.

    Sounds like it's game on this Saturday for me, Warlord Paul and Nik (the chap with the Lichemaster and large amounts of Undead at the Blog Con weekend. Expect some Undead shenanigans shortly...

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    1. Yep mouse writes a good story.

      Make sure you take lots of photos of you coming game.

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  4. Hey, I feel flattered, thank you very much!
    I agree, it is great seeing the Oldhammer scene growing and growing, wow, some of the links you provide are ace! It is specially nice for me seeing that people are finally daring to play RT/2nd Ed again, the Sci-fi side of Oldhammer was in need of some love!
    What can I say? Let's keep it up!

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    1. Loads of good stuff on your blog so it was a pleasure. I promise more rt and 2nd from myself in the future.

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  5. Ok, I promise - in-game photos from now on!

    Thanks for including me.

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    Replies
    1. It does help but you managed quite well without them.

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    2. I concur, I quite liked your bullet point battle report.

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  6. Google to see this back up and running!
    I hope you again don't mind the shameless self promotion but I have got a couple of recent battle reports up on my blog, they might be of interest as they focus around getting newbies into retro gaming (second edition 40k in this case)
    On the modelling side I've just finished a Rogue Trader Landpeeder which is on the blog, and I'm also doing a 'work in progress' article on a Rogue a Trader Predator and Land Raider which I am salvaging!!
    All this and more at:
    http://classicastartes.blogspot.co.uk

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  7. No, no plug away. Good stuff all round, really like the speeder.

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