One Man Warband

Tales from Dunwall Preview 2 I don't intend this to be a very long post, but I wanted to share another couple of sections of Tales from Dunwall for those who are curious about the mechanical changes I mentioned last time around. I've posted two excerpts, assembled in one PDF on Dropbox , detailing changes to the basic rules, as well as a list of weapons and armour available in the setting. Like last time , I'll dig a bit into these changes to discuss my rationale behind them, but broadly they're done with the same ideas in mind that I mentioned in the previous post. Rules Changes This section of the document is a working list, which I intend to add to over time. As I mentioned previously, one of the challenges I face with this project is taking the Mordheim rules and tweaking them to match the flavour of Dishonored. With this in mind, let me briefly describe a few of these changes. First, I've made a few alterations to combat so far: two-weapon fighting d...

Tales from Dunwall I recently shared a post on Instagram about one of my recent pet projects, a skirmish wargame based on Mordheim and set in the world of the Dishonored franchise titled Tales from Dunwall . It created a bit more of a stir than I expected, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people engaged with the idea of a Dishonored wargame. Though it's still in development, I want to share snippets on the blog over the next little while, in the hopes of presenting a playable draft by the end of the year, if not earlier. Most of the concept work is done (i.e. blocking out warbands, characters, stats), but the deeper I delve into writing it, the more I realize I need to consider. It's an interesting exercise, to say the least. In this post, I wanted to share a bit of my rationale for creating Tales from Dunwall, my design philosophy, and a tidbit of the rules modifications so far. It's a labour of love for me, but it also seems to interest a fair amount ...

Today's installment of Mordheim Musings, a spur-of-the-moment heading which has become a semi-regular column on here, deals with a question that's been on my mind for quite a while, but that I haven't collected my thoughts on until now: should Beastmen Raiders have the option of equipping ungors with shortbows? If you've read my other articles (or, let's be honest, any article of this type), I'm sure you know where this is headed, but humour me. This turned out to be a bit deeper than I had first assumed. But First, Some Context The Beastmen Raiders warband saw its debut in Town Cryer #7 , way back in 1999. I know this, not because I was in any way involved in Mordheim or Warhammer then, but because I obsessively pored through and indexed the issues of Town Cryer over my summer holiday. That's not strictly necessary information, but it is relatively interesting to note that the warband then was not quite in its final form. It would be revised many issue...

The school year is back in full swing, and seeing as my day job is teaching, that leaves me with very little time or mental capacity for the physical aspects of my hobbies. Not to say that I don't engage in any hobby-related stuff anymore, but the projects I do take on tend to be more portable, and ones I can pick up and put down at a moment's notice. It's difficult to find the time of day to sculpt or paint, as those require sitting down with materials that have a fixed point where they become unusable and blocking out a chunk of time to work with them (though I have had some painting inspiration lately and plan to pick up some more primer and dive in as soon as my school routine settles). Writing, on the other hand, is easy to find time for. I can do a bit here and there between classes, on breaks, and in the afternoon and evening, and while ideas might get fuzzy if I wait too long without getting them down, writing projects themselves aren't at risk of drying out...

The Problem with Shields Shields are a perennially unpopular choice in Mordheim, which seems strange considering what they do. For the low price of 5 gold crowns, a warrior can improve their armour save by 1, which admittedly doesn’t sound like much. Consider, however, what one would normally pay for this benefit. Toughened leathers offer a 6+ save for 5 gold crowns, but inexplicably prevent the use of a shield to improve this save. Following those, the next cheapest option for an armour save of any kind is light armour, which comes in at 20 gold crowns, four times the price of a shield. If you want to improve your save from there, you’ll need to fork over an extra 30 gold crowns for heavy armour (with a total cost of 50 gc), and from there it’s another 100 gc to get to a 4+ save with gromril. Compared to these increments, a shield seems downright economical. So what’s the catch? It takes one hand to use. To someone unfamiliar with Mordheim, that may not sound like a huge ...

A couple of years back, I backed a game on Kickstarter called The World of SMOG: Rise of Moloch. It wasn't a smash hit in the same way that many other projects by the same company (Cool Mini or Not) have been, and continue to be, but the theme and setting hold a special place in my heart, which I have to travel about ten years back in time to explain. Promo image from the original line of miniatures. Rewind to me, a teenager, just getting into the hobby of miniatures painting and gaming, and devouring all the related content I could find. I came across a line of miniatures called SMOG 1888 (interestingly enough, on CMON's website), and was immediately intrigued. As I recall, they were 54mm resins without a set of rules behind them, geared towards collectors. (A ruleset for a game called SMOG, The Thirteenth Hour would come out later, but the high price point and nonstandard size of the miniatures was a huge entry barrier, from what I read.) I was already interested in the...