Lone Wolf : Flight from the Dark (2nd attempt)

A belated Happy New Year everyone!

As I was away on holiday over the New Year, I aimed to get in some well-earned rest and recuperation. I took plenty of reading material along with me on my Kindle, as well as a last minute addition of the first Lone Wolf adventure book - I was hoping to re-run the adventure with a better outcome than last time.

I read the rules again to refamiliarise myself with the game and rolled up a fresh character as the previous one died - I won't do this in future; I will just start the adventure again from the beginning and reset the character to its starting stats for the beginning of that particular adventure book.

I didn't take a snap shot of the character sheet at the start of the adventure as I just wrote it in a notebook, but I updated a new copy of the sheet with the stats at the end of the adventure when I got home...

I won't go into too many details here in case others wish to run through the adventure and don't want any spoilers. That said, I played it stealthily sometimes and bravely at others; I rescued a few people, got hoodwinked upon my travels, hid a few times, picked up a couple of useful items, lost my backpack and all its contents, and fought a number of adversaries along the way. It took me a good couple of hours to complete the book (including the rules re-read and character creation), helped by me actually having some time to myself for once, with no interruptions: I felt it was time well spent.

The first run through when I first got the books a year or so back was a bit of a let down as I felt I was a little railroaded towards the end, but this time I had choices and was able to capitalise on them. Flipping through the book whilst playing, I felt I missed out on a lot of other choices and paths, so I think there would be at least a couple more unique play-throughs available.

Holiday Haul

Christmas, once again, brought me some lovely gifts from the family. Again, I am so appreciative of what they do for me so I can indulge in my hobby. I know output both gaming- and painting-wise has been very slow recently but that will hopefully begin to improve next year. The support I receive does spur me on to achieve more but my enemy is always time.

This year I received a large number of gaming-related items as well as some peripheral items to inspire and spark my currently somewhat limited creative flair - DVDs of The Princess Bride, The Dark Crystal and the second series of House of the Dragon.

I should hopefully be getting a game of 5e D&D in towards the end of January, so Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is a welcomed supplement to get my D&D head on.

I also tend to receive the latest Frostgrave supplement, if one has been released, each birthday or Christmas - these are a great source of inspiration and ideas for future gaming activities. I don't know why, but I am especially attracted to colder climes and wintery settings for my gaming worlds.

The latest(?) Osprey game book When Nightmares Come was also a pleasant surprise - I am also drawn to Cthulhu-style worlds. I like the idea of mankind being almost powerless to defend against the darkness that prevails in the universe but I am still looking for ways in which to portray that in a game. Each rules book or supplement I read adds to my knowledge but my view is that if something gets game stats that players can access it becomes defeatable. Anyway, I digress - this could be an idea for a blog post at a later date.

My figures haul also went up again this year. I got a couple of packs of Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings Hobbit miniatures. I have a small, but steadily growing Hobbit militia that I would like to pit against some goblins/orcs/trolls at some point. If anybody out there could suggest alternative hobbit/halfling miniatures from other manufacturers that scale well with the GW offerings I would be very appreciative. I don't need many (so big boxes of plastic miniatures are out unless the sprues are sold anywhere individually) but for skirmish level games (up to 20-30 a side) I prefer to have each warrior represented by a unique figure (even if that is just a different paint scheme or weapon swap).

Hopefully, I will have more time and be more talkative next year, so I can keep the blog ticking over. I may change the format a little to also include more gaming thoughts and ideas.

My scribblings have been published again

I don't think that I have mentioned on here previously that I am occasionally asked to write an article for one of the major wargames magazines - Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy published by Karwansaray Publishers.

My most recent missive was published in the latest copy of the magazine (issue 132) and is a stand-alone game involving two teams of hunters running down their dinner for the night.

As this is my fifth or sixth foray into being published, I thought I would start a list in this post and maybe a new page on the blog if things go any further (I have been asked if I would like to write another article for an issue of WS&S in about 6-12 months' time).

Here is a list of those that I still have a hard copy for. I think there were one or two other mini-articles (usually just one page) but I cannot remember where they were published, or even what they were about now!

White Dwarf

#26 (Aug-Sep 1981) - Potion of silent spell casting - a paragraph in Treasure Chest for AD&D

Crisis Gazette

7 Nov 2015 - Medieval Archers - a one page article on Medieval Archers

WS&S Magazine

#84 (Jun-Jul 2016) - Dynasty: Norman Style - a two page article introducing the Normans' rise to power

#84 (Jun-Jul 2016) - The Norman Godfather - a five page mini-campaign set in Sicily

#97 (Aug-Sep 2018) - Escape from Oxford - a two page bite-sized battle set during the Anarchy

#132 (Oct-Nov 2024) - We are all going on a Boar Hunt - a three page generic beer and pretzels game

My first foray into writing for gaming magazines was a short paragraph featured in White Dwarf when I was young and into AD&D in a big way. I submitted further items and monsters for consideration but none of them were published. I was very proud of my achievement back then and it still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I think back on how I felt at the time.

Before getting into writing full-on articles, I also wrote a small number of items for a couple of trade shows, but as those magazines are often lost to time (mine certainly are) I can only mention them in passing. I wrote a couple of one page articles for Crisis in Antwerp (I do have one copy left - see above) and maybe another but I cannot recall which show.

Most of my articles are historically based as my main area of study at Uni was history and archaeology with a focus on the ancient and medieval periods. I am looking to expand into fantasy gaming articles, but just need the right ideas. I have a lot of "history" with my fantasy gaming worlds, so maybe they could be consolidated and utilised somewhere? I also used to play a lot of sci-fi RPGs back in the day, so perhaps some of my old universe could even be written up for a campaign setting?

This blog kind of helps fulfil a bit of my writing passion, but I would like to write more often; full time work and very little time for myself leads to very little page time. I am hoping quite soon that the smallest bedroom at home will become free so I can move all my gaming paraphernalia in there. I miss the man-cave from my previous house, where I had stacks of room to store my games and miniatures and still have room for a decent sized table. I won't have the luxury of a gaming-sized room, but it could become a little haven where I can go write stuff.

Midgard

I am a sucker for new rules sets that I am most likely never to play. Over the last year or so I have been reading the splendid Mogsymakes blog where he has reported on the progress of a new set of rules he has written for mass battles called Midgard : Heroic Battles. There are several after action reports written for games he has played in a variety of ages and settings on the blog, and they look very exciting indeed.

 Midgard rules cover - used without permission from the Mogsymakes website

Anyway, on a whim, I decided to order up the rulebook on the pre-order system from Reisswitz Press to see what it was like. I was not disappointed.

I have had a quick step through the rulebook and I am deeply impressed with the production values; it is a beautiful soft-cover, full-sized rulebook with 132 pages in full colour. There are lots of inspiring full-page images of warriors and monsters in battle to whet the appetite for a game or two (if only I had the figures to do so), and numerous pictures of nicely painted miniatures to supplement the rules images. The book is well laid out, with an Index (very rare in gaming rulebooks) and a QRS (quick reference sheet) to aid the gamer so that fewer rules look-ups are required through play. From the limited reading of them I have done, I am thoroughly looking forward to the weekend when I can really indulge myself.

The main reason I was drawn to this rules set was the grandiose sweep of the pictures on the Mogsymakes blog of Tolkien's 1st Age Middle Earth. Being drawn to anything Middle Earth related I was easily swayed to part with my hard-earned. Upon reading further and finding it is age agnostic (well, until black powder is fully involved, which suits me just fine) I was more intrigued. Then, upon my skip through the rulebook earlier I noticed within the first few pages that one of the dedications is to Pat Mills (he of Slaine from 2000AD notoriety) I was completely sold (well I had the book by then but you know what I mean). 

After my initial glance through the book, I was drawn to those half-painted orcs I have sitting on the paint station. My imagination ran over with all the things I could do with them in a mass battle game. I will most likely be all excited about these rules for the next few weeks now, so I must use the impetus to get painting some more.

Orctober : the ending

I had wrought my plans and made a list of tasks for painting my band of orcs but, unfortunately, the fickle hand of Fate was raised against me. The painting for Orctober started well, I managed to get a few colours onto the orcs in a number of block-painting sessions only to succumb to the dreaded Covid which kept me out of the loop for several days. Along with my holiday taking up another week, I only managed around four actual sessions of painting during Orctober month, which equates to about four and a half hours of actual brush time.

Here is a picture of where I managed to get to...

I think they actually look pretty good for the small amount of hours put into them, but I will be hoping that November will be kinder to me and I will be able to finish them completely.

They only have basic colours put onto them so far; a combination of browns, what I thought was a dull metal that turned out to be a lot brighter than I wanted, and flesh in a light, sickly green colour. I didn't want to go for the usual bright green skin many people use for orcs, and tossed up whether to use "normal" skin tones and a variety of greys. None of them appeared to work for these figures except the green so I stuck with that.

To finish them, they need some of the wooden items painted (shields and spear hafts for example), all areas where I have "gone over the lines" need to be neatened up a little, and then they need to be shaded, varnished and based. Hopefully November will give me enough time for accomplishing that.