Lord Balefire's Journal: Late September, 1985

It's been only a short while since we joined the USDEBA, and we've had our first combat action as a team.  

We had been tasked by the Agency to investigate attacks by mutants in the San Francisco Bay area, right near the old Alcatraz prison.  Creepy enough place, but intelligence said several vicious gang attacks had been carried out upon hapless citizens who wandered too close to the Fisherman's Wharf. 

                                                                    

In a derelict building on Pier 35, we've run across a den of vermin.  I don't mind rats, unless they are more than 6 foot tall and armed with guns and machetes.  That's exactly what we found, once we got it out of the smaller and weaker ratmen who had crowded into the building.  Evidently, there were two castes of ratmen, and one set had a slight amount of organization.

The ratmen had guns and blades, and one of them wore a uniform.  They were belligerent and did not attempt to parley.  It was soon after we saw them that combat was joined...

So I prepared some more BALEFIRE.

Deeper down, we a group of the larger ratmen and discovered a sort of underground complex.  There was a distinct electrical vibe in the air, and the ground began to shake as if from an earthquake.  It is then we decided to bring our new ally, Old Ben the Ratman, back to the compound for questioning.  

We are rearming ourselves for an adjusted operation beneath the pier.  I must convince these Americans to help fund my research...they love weapons just as much as I do.  My Balefire weapon designs will give us the edge we need - my breakthroughs have thus far led me to a position of importance...but I am far from nailing down what I am missing to accomplish my more promising enchantment designs.

In the meantime, my balefire spells will be put to good use in the Rat Hole.  I will gain a lot of practical experience...perhaps soon my Balelock Pistols, Balefire Rounds, Soulseeker Rounds, Balefire Grenades and Balefire Flares can become a reality.

Dirty Greg's Despoilers of the Blight!

Howdy!   The Wargate's revvin' up plenty of gaming goodness this week, folks - but today we're going to be talking about the warband who won our Death in the Delve campaign a few months ago.  It's Dirty Greg and his Despoilers of the Blight!

Greg painted these back for the Mordheim campaign, but we just got some pics yesterday when Jerry stopped by and snapped these up for the blog.  This is a Mordheim Possessed Warband, and Greg used Quickshade Strong Tone on these.  They are based with slate from a Warhammer 40,000 basing kit.

Here we have the Magister and his closest toadies.  From left to right, it's a Darksoul, Possessed, Magister and Mutant.  It's no coincidence the Mutant looks a lot like Krampus...

Here are the Despoiler Brethren.  These guys are tough, and pack a wallop with those axes.  There were so many axes in the campaign, almost no one got an armor save.  Ever.  Note the model with the bow - during our campaign, another Possessed player complained about not having missile weapons, or models available that depicted bows.  I was about to tell him about Chaos Archers in Battle Masters, Empire Militia or Huntsmen, Bretonnian Bowmen and all sorts of other ideas where to find conversion pieces - but all I ended up saying was "Greg built one."

Beastman Gors!  These guys are strong in Mordheim, and we all quickly learned how fast we need to deal with Strength 4 creatures with axes.  Over time, his warband grew, and Greg added more implements of destruction to their armaments.  The full-on-dead-bodies warband was actually quite a sight to behold, and quite intimidating on the other side of the (very small!) board.

We started hiring mercenaries pretty early on in the campaign, and Dirty Greg simply would not allow himself to be out-dirtied.  These models represent his Hired Swords, namely a Pit Fighter, Ogre Bodyguard and Warlock!  These were done around Christmas, and I took to derisively calling the Pit Fighter "Krys Kryngal" every chance I got.

Greg did well for himself during this last campaign, and his victory has directed the ongoing saga of the Khazid Grimaz and southwestern Wissenland that we are conducting here at the Wargate.  Chaos has a firm grip on the underground city now that the greenskins have been pushed out.

Dirty Greg must have felt bad that the Khazid was now in even more dire straits thanks to his big win.  In the new campaign, Welkommen Zu Wissenland, he's now playing High Elves!  Can't wait to see what those turn out like!

Stay tuned folks!  We'll have more Army Briefings and Project Logs to show you as we get closer to summertime!

Mirrodin Besieged Tournament!!

Howdy folks!  Sorry for the delay in posting, we've been knee-deep in sprues the last week or so getting ready for the upper end of our Warhammer campaign!  Enough with all the apologetics, though.  Today we're going to talk about our draft tourney we had this past Sunday!

Everyone in town knows we've been trying to draft Mirrodin Besieged since before it came out.  We missed the prerelease tournament, and our FLGS has been unable to secure 8 players for a draft, even though they tried for 2 or 3 weeks.  It has to be said, we're not really down with how they had structured their tournament anyway - it wasn't really sponsored by the FLGS (which shall remain nameless) and basically had absolutely no support.  The guy who was trying to run it didn't even seem that enthused.

Well, we put off our draft tourney a few weeks to make room for them, but the FLGS never really got up to speed.  We don't hang out a lot down there anyways - too few hours and not enough sanctioned or supported events, even with all their hard work.  The Wargate beats down the door with events - so many we had to struggle to find a place in the schedule for this draft!

This set had a lot of changes from the last few, and Infect is still a big issue on the table.  Now that there are spells that can deal with that sort of thing, I feel a lot better.  However, an Infect deck took the top tier again as Josh brought a new drafted Infect deck and was able to take all three of his matches!  Several others had gotten into the prize pool also, gaining new booster packs for every win!

It was a blast to game in Mirrodin Besieged, and we're going to start rolling out more Magic: The Gathering features.  While we wait for the last part of the new block, we've gotten a booster box for Coldsnap!  That's right, we're going to do vintage drafts!  That's not all however, there's more good news on the Magic front - we'll be starting Standard Constructed tournaments soon!  More info on that as we put the plan together, but basically you'll be able to use some of those draft cards you won in a Standard environment here at the Wargate!

Until then, to everyone who participated and has made the Wargate their gaming home:  thanks for all your support, and with your continued interest the 'gate will continue to grow, expand and make available all the events you could want from a gaming club (and probably more)!