Achtung! Imperator Dominatus!!

Hombres!  We're back to gunslinging, .M41 style!  This sunday marks the launch of two new campaigns and the close of the two current games, so we're extra busy this time around.  Well, we're always busy so I'm gonna stop reminding you guys.

Imperial Crackdown, our Necromunda campaign for 2012, has it's campaign page live on the site here.  More updates and the campaign leaderboard will be added after the first skirmishes.  The majority of our players this time are fighting for the Imperium!  Maybe the side of order will stand a chance, but who can tell?  

This campaign takes place on Lucruzu Primus, in the Vae Salubrious sector and the setting for our Dark Heresy campaign Under A Vast Grey Sky.  This continues the story presented here as the Imperium commits soldiers to peacekeeping on the planets' surface follow the events detailed in the RPG game.  For more information on Vae Salubrious or House Semetov, check out these links.

Link to Vae Salubrious Index Mardannon.

Link to House Semetov Pilgrims.

The new "Battle Magnitude" system fixes a problem we've had for quite some time, and that is equalizing games between folks who can't play as often.  It also allows us to fight more battles with less preparation, as we don't need to seek out specific opponents at specific times any more.  We might have event games that do the standard round robin, but from now on Battle Magnitude will be helping us create a curve to discourage 'turtling' at 100% influence.

Also, a slight switch to the campaign schedule has been made.  It now appears as follows.

• 1st Half (January through June) - Warhammer 40,000
• 2nd Half (July through December) - Warhammer Fantasy Battle

1. Season 1 (Jan, Feb, Mar) - Warmachine
2. Season 2 (Apr, May, Jun) - Mordheim
3. Season 3 (Jul, Aug, Sep) - Necromunda
4. Season 4 (Oct, Nov, Dec) - Flames of War

• 1st Event (May) - Lord of the Rings
• 2nd Event (Nov) - Clan Strife

Now, our Warhammer games last all year!  Some of the less popular games have been relegated to Event Games, which will run inside the campaign seasons alongside another game. This dispersal reflects the current investiture of time and models here at the Wargate.  I for one am quite jazzed about the new schedule!

Some of you might be interested to know I was the first one in our town to get my hands on the Warhammer 40,000 6th Edition them when the Cave let 'em go at midnight, after the Ada Gaming Club's Farewell to 5th tournament.  I didn't fight in the tourney, but I did manage to get close enough to abscond with our goods in record time.  Also, Psychic Power Cards.

A Round of Applause, please...

...for those who literally laid the foundations for our wargaming!

Over a decade ago, back when we first came to Ada, we got our first dedicated game table.  Of course, it was destroyed via drunken debauchery.  That table was replaced like the next day - we've always had a table, even when we had no venue.  we faced a conundrum.  We didn't have a large venue, or storage for terrain, so we were forced to make concessions as far as our gaming went.  Some of you might remember that we had to do these things for ourselves, because at the time the local gaming store had 10ft for a table and was only open for 2 hrs a day except on Saturday and closed on Sundays.

So we did what we always did:  we gamed with each other, and slowly built our club.  You can really set the begin date for our current collection of gamers at...1995?  Yeah, but six years later we'd actually start to set up something we thought was cool.

From 2001-2003 we traveled to our venues.  I had a Kia Sportage that could carry the tables and terrain, and we'd meet where ever we could stand it.  Sometimes we met at Crazy Bill's downtown, sometimes we'd hit Fellow Potter in the trailer park...and sometimes we'd even hit Bignutt's A-Frame at 8AM, because that's when and where we could game.  Looking back, that was fun - but I'm really glad that's over.

In summer of '03, we attended the Eye of Terror tournament in Oklahoma City.  Of course, the majority of us won as Destruction.  We stayed in a tiny cabin while we hit two venues there on two different days, that was fun.  While we were there, we got our first and longest lasting battle mat - a 6'x4' piece of thin carpet from some carpet store, maybe it was Lowe's, I don't remember.  It was Bignutt's idea we use carpet after I described what we needed (battle mats were still a comparative rarity).  Yet we've used that piece of green material for 9 years and counting.

9 years.  Next summer, that green carpet will have served a full decade in our club.  I'm not sure how much this cost, it was negligible.  We've definitely gotten our money's worth from it.

So last year, Skim and I were talking about building new terrain.  I do it every so often, but mainly run maintenance on the hordes of stuff we already have.  We spoke about the types of "worlds" we would mainly be doing battle on, and we spoke of the ways people in our club base their models.  We concluded that we should focus on three terrain collections for three different "worlds".  One of these is our fabulous Green World, and we have a lot of terrain for that particular table.  So, we were free to focus on other projects:  game specific terrain and terrain for the upcoming "Brown World" and "Grey World".

We discussed what could be represented on those three fields, and of course everything but naval battles could be played on Green, Brown or Grey land.  I had some ideas, and I've actually already collected all the materials we need to begin on a lot of these new projects.  Yet, we still just had the Green World mat.

So imagine my surprise when Skim told me he had purchased Sabol Designs Combat Mat: Sands for the club.  It doesn't seem these mats are readily available now, but that was almost a year ago and I've been meaning to thank him for it publicly here online for quite some time.  Behold:  The Wargate's Brown World!

Special Thanks to Skim for our new Brown World!

We've gotten some pieces ready for this particular table already, and you'll be seeing some of it here soon.  Also, it goes right with Skim's Tomb Kings army he'll be playing next season for Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  Coincidence?  Maybe, but it also goes with my Goff Orks, Cygnar and one of my Mordheimwarbands!

Well, in the last few months we've moved to make our plans complete.  Bignutt up and got a Zuzzy Terraflex a few weeks ago, and it's ready to be painted and move into service!  However, I might point out that several members of the club have asked us not to paint it at this point.  I feel it might get a little inking and highlighting, but will remain grey so we can battle in the Grey Mountains and on the rocky deathworlds of the Imperium.

Big thanks to Bignutt and to Skim for helping us build up our collection of terrain with these top quality mats. These are truly the foundation of our collection, fellas - it wouldn't jive right without it.  You guys are the best contributors a club could hope to get, and all the rest of us truly appreciate your help!

Special Thanks to Bignutt for our new Grey World!

More terrain will be arriving soon for all three of these "worlds"!  Club members who are interested can always help, just yak at me next time you feel froggy enough and you'll find yourself with a nifty project to help build our terrain up even further than it is!

Shaun's Moria Adventure, Part the Second: Puttin' On the Table

Our buddy Shaun is a newcomer to the world of miniature wargaming, and this is the short story of how his first army comes together.  

Continued from Part 1.

Shaunny’s been hard at work on his goblins of Moria list, and the project continues at a solid pace.  I’m impressed with his ability to work with new mediums and techniques in a short period of time.  He’s at the stage where the army he sees in his mind is going to become painted actuality.  We’re going to examine the next step in that process.

After building the list, he had to actually obtain those models.  For a while, it was quite daunting to try to build an adequate Lord of the Rings force.  There was a lot of confusion, but the new sourcebooks make it much easier.   Also, Games Workshop reworked a lot of the plastics lines to include 12 warriors each.  So a lot has changed over the years.  For Shaunny, as a member of the club, he had it really easy.

Our friend Captain Video had a Mines of Moria boxed set, and was wanting to divest himself of the goblins and troll.  A short barter later (goodbye, metal Legolas) and the core force of goblins and the cave troll was in Shaunny’s possession, brooding and wanting a chance to be evil.  Of course, they still needed the treatment.

Wash, rinse, paint.

Let the troll-bathing commence.

Shaunny already made his decisions about the list, so all we had to do was fill it out with the command models he needed.  These were readily available from the GW website, so a short time after figuring out we wanted Durburz, some Blackshields and the Blackshields command we had it on the way.  Good ol’ GEE-DUB.

Once they got arrived, Shaunny cut his teeth on preparing models for painting the proper way.  He painstakingly got all the mold lines, flash and vents cleaned up from his shiny new models and glued them up.  He even used some Liquid Green Stuff on his plastic troll, which worked fantastic.  Once they were ranked up and he saw his army taking shape, there was no going back for our intrepid gamer.  The new goblin king has arrived!

It’s always a good idea to wash every box set you get to remove the release agent, especially on plastics.  Once all the models were washed, Shaunny set about painting them right away.  Like I said, I was quite impressed with his speed, and he was very eager to learn all the techniques such as drybrushing, overbrushing, layering, inking, glazing and highlighting.  We’ll see the finished army here quite soon!

Now, these goblins are waging war in our Dragon Sword campaign, and not doing such a bad job!  They look great on the table, and it seems Shaunny’s just a natural at a lot of the angles in the hobby.  Yet the fighting is frenetic here at the Wargate.  We’ll see how the endless waves of war take their toll! 

Our Season 2 campaigns are wrapping up soon!  More news on Game Day!  See you then!

The Doomforge: The Aftermath

The cataclysmic eruption could be seen for miles in the dark.

The Doomforge

We had a truly bloody RPG campaign this time.  As war closed in on the Khazid Grimaz from all sides, the campaign was a race against time to find a new source of power for the clans and defend the hold from it's most imminent foe - the Bloo Moonz tribe, currently rampaging on the eastern side of the Grey Mountains in Bretonnia.

This time, rocks fell.  Everyone died.

Why did this happen exactly?  Well, in practical terms, our allotted time limit was well past.  The Doomforge ran for 18 weeks, which is a large chunk of time for a single game at the Wargate, and if you add to that all the other sessions played in the last two years, well...it adds up to a lot of time.  Which brings us to the next point...

We had advanced the player party a little fast for the long haul we gave them.  Fluctuating experience levels, encounter strength, and a large pool of rotating players and the game was simply "out of balance", to use a nonsensical term.  In the end, it was time for something new, and we needed to move past this.  After a few weeks of the players sitting in the dungeon without a full group to tackle the final perils, we could wait no more.

Of course our narrative continues on, though now without the assistance of the Deeping Well...but what happened to them is still very important.  Everyone was aware of what was on the table with what could happen to the Khazid - after all, this RPG game influences our tabletop battles in many ways.

There is now an active volcano in the Grey Mountains, where Khazid Grimaz used to stand.  The dwarfs there are tough and resilient, though their numbers depleted and their families torn.  The strongest thane and the wisest runelord are both gone.  Parts of the upper hold still stand, and the towers above the craggy peaks seem more stable than the land itself, but can the dwarfs continue to live here?  The coming war for Greystone Pass will be quite different now.

Yet, what exactly happened to cause all this?

The Seal at the Core of the Mountain

So long ago that the dwafs have no recollection of it, the servants of the Old Slann brought forth a set of mystical artifacts they would use to control the seismic upheaval of the upper hemisphere of the Warhammer World.  Reptilian warriors fanned out over the world, seeking the areas of the world most fraught with primordial upheaval.  Within the deepest volcanic vaults, beneath the mightiest glaciers, within the nexus of the deadliest fault lines, the servants of the Slann used their golden discs to quiet the elements and promote life in that region.

Wherever these shining discs were raised, they quieted the forces of the earth itself.  These discs were great elemental seals, made of purest gold and consecrated to the power of the Slann.  The artifacts were sealed away magically, and connected to the elemental threads that run deep into the heart of the world.  From their temples across the world, the Slann could connect to those threads and manipulate them.  In this way, the natural order we now know began to take shape.

As the Slann began to decline and lose their influence, many of the temples across the world were destroyed.  In the Old World especially, very little remains to tell of the ancient glory of the Slann.  After centuries of decline and neglect, the mystical connection of the temples to the elements began to erode.  As the world marched on, daemons and other creatures of chaos were drawn to the secret hiding places of the Slann's mystical seals, and all connection to the elemental threads were lost.  The world became a place of upheaval and dread, and the elements ravaged it through and through.

The Lady of Woe

In the year 2522 I.C., the connection to the Elemental Seal in the deepest parts of the earth under the Khazid Grimaz was severed.  A Dark Elf Sorceress known only as the Lady of Woe had been searching the world for them for quite some time, and her arcane power waxed so great she could nearly wrench the Seal from its extradimensional cradle.

Naturally, the Sorceress has many enemies.  High Elves of the dragonship The Venger and even the servants of the Old Ones themselves attempted to halt the Lady of Woe and her plans, which involve using the elemental powers of the seals to unleash massive destruction against her enemies in her own homeland.  Prince Spiridane and the Skink shaman sent to ward the seal were able to join forces, and pressed towards finding The Tower of Iron Woe, the Black Ark that is the Sorceress’ base of operations.

The Lady of Woe is a master of dark magic, and specializes in teleportation and extradimensional manipulation.  The Black Ark can manifest it’s spires all over the Old World from the safety of the deep sea, and the Sorceress can further her plans whenever and wherever she needs.

So, deep beneath Khazid Grimaz, the Sorceress and her enemies met in mortal combat.  The resulting power destabilized the elemental seal, causing its vast power to well up in an uncontrollable surge.  This surge set the volcano alight, and the earth trembled. 

Raw elemental energy, kept bottled up for countless centuries, lashed out and destroyed much of the mountain where the Khazid stood.  Earthquakes caused the upper city to split, and molten magma choked the Alderhalls.  Where the Delve once stood, now a great split crag seeps lava as the cracked and blackened towers of the Khazid keep silent watch.

The volcanic power continues to rip through the Grey Mountains, causing upheaval and tremors miles away. Nearby Karak Norn and Nuln are abuzz with the tales of horror spread by the regugees pouring in, even as the Storm of Chaos abates.  Enterprising individuals are already investigating the tales of the mountain of fire 

Ruins of Khazid Grimaz

The ancient dwarven hold sundered and burned, and now the throng of the Khazid seek refuge in Karak Norn or in refugee camps at the edge of Wissenland.  The military might of this bastion of good is finally broken, and at much cost to the lawful races of the Old World.  With no more army of the Khazid to help defend the borders, it will be a short time before Wissenland is threatened and the Empire must react.

The now ruined Khazid is far from deserted, however.  The warpstone beneath the Khazid is active once more, and all the Chaos worshippers from beneath the Delve have migrated to the surface following the quakes.  Cultists and beastmen flourish in some of the abandoned halls and towers all over the area that the Khazid once kept.

Yet there are those who still carry on the fight.  Even in this dark time, the thanes of the throng of the Khazid Grimaz rally their people to persevere and stick together.  Dwarven heroes still battle inside the ruinous Khazid to reclaim some of their ancient honor, yet none have returned from this perilous place in months.

Perhaps sometime soon, the throng of the Khazid will muster again.  To reclaim their ancient hold from the dark forces that hold sway there will be an undertaking that will likely claim countless dwarven lives and last for generations of men.

Fantastic Game, Grim Ending

I want to thank everyone for taking part in our long term campaign.  We're going to try to keep the length of time between campaign segments much shorter from now on, so we can stay more focused and keep the same thematics going with each RPG campaign.  We got to see how far we could push the advancement system, and all in all it was quite enjoyable.

Thanks for the grim ending!  Destruction is winning more and more campaigns these days, and if we have a total party kill on many more of these RPG scenarios there might not be much for our armies of Order to fight for.  Now we have a centerpiece for our perilous adventure - the ruined, fiery crag of Khazid Grimaz!

We'll return to the Warhammer World next season for the Greystone Pass War!  That will be the first chance to help reclaim the lost Khazid, or make sure it stays firmly in the hands of evil.  

The Adventure Path! with Bignutt

He's back!

That good ol' boy, Bignutt, has been running around here for the last few weeks talking about how his game is going to rock out.  Well, I'm here to tell you we had a blast in the first session (even though we nearly had a Total Party Kill).

This campaign will continue the story presented in the Pathfinder Adventure Path modules.  Our players will note we began this last year, and you can check out our log for that adventure here.  The current campaign has a new page on this site, which you can view from States of Play on the right or you can just click right here.




This time, we're going to have a whole new set of characters to meet, and we're going to explore some party configuration options.  It will be interesting to see players with the same classes develop abilities and carve out thier own niches in the party dynamic.  With seven to eight players on average, some of the encounters can get rather grandiose.

Bignutt's got some neat toys for us to play with too.  More on this in good time, but let's just say we're accessorized for the season!

We'll see you on Game Day!  Oh, and one more thing...

The Knights of Ozem are coming to Darkmoon Vale...