Battle of the Tears of Fate

Greetings!

Here comes the second battle fought in our new Firestorm II campaign, this time pitting my Hammerhalian aelves against their more sinister kin from Anvilgard!

See Battle of the Chains for the previous battle in the campaign, or check out the Faction Focus if you want to read some backstories on the participant factions.

The Battleplan we generated from the Open War cards was a tricky one: an ambush deployment with two objectives and both armies arriving in 2-3 parts? Ouch.

It all became even more ouch when my opponent won the roll-off to choose which part he wanted to play, which put me onto the middle of the board as Player A. Other than that, it was a simple scenario; grab both of the objectives and control them at the end of any of your opponent's turns.

Onto the battle!
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After his swift victory at The Chains, Lord Morduviel Dawnspur took his army south-east, crossing the mountain range dividing the Flamescar Plateau and pressing on to the plains beyond. Day by day his legions drew closer to the Coast of the Searing Sea, the rumoured landing site of the Anvilgard intruders. The forces of Hammerhal were snaking their way through the ancient ruins at the Tears of Fate, navigating the labyrinth that was the husk of a dead city, when Seawarden Sarvaniel suddenly called the column into a halt.

Lowering the hand with which he had signalled the order, Sarvaniel looked around them. Hot winds blew from the east, pulling at their banners and making them flap lazily above the ranks. There was an overwhelming smell of sulphur and ash in the air, and no matter how many swigs one took from a waterskin there was always a dull tang at the back of one's throat. Whispered conversations started rising from the halted soldiery as their officer scanned their surroundings.
"Ithulwin, where's our rearguard? Lord Dawnspur was supposed to bring up the rear with a squadron of Reavers," Sarvaniel inquired, frowning at the dull-grey ash clouds that limited their vision alarmingly.
The adjutant shrugged, the same alarm in his almond-shaped eyes that had overtaken the Seawarden.
"I can't say, my lord. They were right behind us only moments ago."
"What about our forward scouts?"
"Not a word from them either, my lord."

Something was amiss here. Suddenly, a warhorn blew somewhere nearby, startling the aelven column. That was not a Hammerhalian battle-call, that was something else. In a matter of heartbeats the enemy came into view, a giant War Hydra backed by ranks of Drakespawn cavalry rushing at them from amidst the clouds of ash and smoke.
"Ambush! It's the cursed Anvilgardians, FORM ON ME!" Sarvaniel cried out, drawing his sword.

Puffington Post #19

Firestorm Faction Focus

Greetings!

With the newest Firestorm campaign now underway, I thought it might be polite for the three participating warlords to introduce their forces and their respective hobby blogs. Once more troops get painted and the armies are arranged for some family portraits, I'll be adding some character/unit introductions here along with some pretty pictures.


Blueraven's Seraphon

Worldship entered realspace after receiving distress call from Flamescar Plateu’s beacon. Primitive races had invaded Seraphons ancient territory and managed somehow trigger beacons warning signal.

During the travel around Mortal Realms, most of the ships denizens had stayed in suspended animation. Much had changed when they finally landed near Realm of Fire. Necroquake had disturbed the balance of realm magic and new races had emerged from hiding.

With technology that seemed like magic to the lesser races, worldship teleported scouting party to the Plateu to investigate the disturbance.

Led by Saurus Oldblood roughly translated Kraq-nar Jaws of Death, the scouting party advanced deep in to the enemy territory.

Be sure to check out his impressive myriad of content at Blueraven's Blog.

VainVader's Anvilgard

Wild Beast Hunting Cohort Three of the First Safeguard Army of City of Anvilgard, in command of Dreadlord Rinos Wildbringer, riding Qidir the Loud, a Black Dragon

While Rinos and his cohort were usually patrolling and hunting in the nearby jungle areas of Anvilgard, it was not unheard of them to sail ships and campaign elsewhere as well. This time their destination was Flamescar Plateau and they were not hunting primarily wild beasts, but knowledge and secrets long forgotten. However, the beasts would not be forgotten, since a large number of different beasts travelled the seas with the army, as mounts to the valiant knights.

Their black ships with red sails arrived at Searing Sea and disembarked army looked anxiously to move forward to inland, area very much different to their home jungle.

Head over to his cozy blog and have a look at all the stuff he's painting at Vain Vader.

ExtraBushyBeards' Hammerhal

Lord Morduviel Dawnspur assessed his troops as they marched by. Mounted Reavers from Hammerhal's outer rim far-ranging patrols, Citizen Archers from the Highborn Quarter garrison, Levy Spearmen drafted from the lowlier aelven population in the southern Craftsmen's Disctrict, a Repeater Bolt Thrower funded from Morduviel's personal coffers and an Archmage of the Eldritch Council with an entourage of Swordmaster bodyguards. A hint of a smile passed across the aelven lord's features, but only momentarily.

Morduviel was very pleased by the enthusiasm and open-mindedness the aelven aristocracy of Hammerhal had shown towards his family's ambitions in sending an armed force to safeguard the peace and tranquility of the Flamescar Plateau. House Dawnspur had received valuable intelligence on the movements of an Anvilgardian fleet making it's way to the plateau through the Bay of the Searing Sea, and they had resolved to stop the usurpers in their tracks. Flamescar Plateau and all its natural resources and ancient treasures were the rightful possessions of the Free City of Hammerhal, after all.

As his legions marched on in lockstep, emerging from their fortified encampment and disappearing into the hazy dawn along the strands of the Coast of Ill Omen, Lord Morduviel cast a gaze at the ranks of Spireguard bringing up the rear of the column. Oh yes, he mused to himself. Just this morn a squadron of sleek, white-flanked Hawkships had sailed in along the murky waters of the coast, landing several cohorts of spear-and-bow Spireguard Marines to reinforce his already considerable army. A courtesy of his family's friends high up in the Swifthawk Agency, no doubt.

I see no reason in placing a link here.

Battle of the Chains

Greetings!

Here comes the very first battlereport of the Firestorm II Campaign I announced not too long ago, featuring my Hammerhalian Aelves facing off against the Seraphon under the command of Oldblood Kraq-Nar.

This battle took place at The Chains, a region littered with ancient duardin chainforts that can be manipulated to lash out against any interlopers: army generals within 1" of a Chainfort terrain feature may inflict D3 mortal wounds on any enemy within 12" of the terrain feature. A nasty special rule!

Otherwise the aim of the game was simple, there were three objectives on the board and the player controlling the majority of them at the end of the game would be the victor. However, should either player control all three objectives at any point in the game, at the end of their own turn, the victory would go to him. Overall a very nice and simple scenario, spiced up by the random Twist we rolled for our game: every unit gained +2" Movement as well as +1 to Run and Charge rolls, making everyone painfully fast in a game of take-and-hold!

On with the story!

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Lord Morduviel Dawnspur assessed his troops as they marched by. Mounted Reavers from Hammerhal's outer rim far-ranging patrols, Citizen Archers from the Highborn Quarter garrison, Levy Spearmen drafted from the lowlier aelven population in the southern Craftsmen's Disctrict, a Repeater Bolt Thrower funded from Morduviel's personal coffers and an Archmage of the Eldritch Council with an entourage of Swordmaster bodyguards. A hint of a smile passed across the aelven lord's features, but only momentarily.

Morduviel was very pleased by the enthusiasm and open-mindedness the aelven aristocracy of Hammerhal had shown towards his family's ambitions in sending an armed force to safeguard the peace and tranquility of the Flamescar Plateau. House Dawnspur had received valuable intelligence on the movements of an Anvilgardian fleet making it's way to the plateau through the Bay of the Searing Sea, and they had resolved to stop the usurpers in their tracks. Flamescar Plateau and all its natural resources and ancient treasures were the rightful possessions of the Free City of Hammerhal, after all.

As his legions marched on in lockstep, emerging from their fortified encampment and disappearing into the hazy dawn along the strands of the Coast of Ill Omen, Lord Morduviel cast a gaze at the ranks of Spireguard bringing up the rear of the column. Oh yes, he mused to himself. Just this morn a squadron of sleek, white-flanked Hawkships had sailed in along the murky waters of the coast, landing several cohorts of spear-and-bow Spireguard Marines to reinforce his already considerable army. A courtesy of his family's friends high up in the Swifthawk Agency, no doubt.

Firestorm II Campaign

Greetings!

I promised this summer would bring new campaigns and lots of batreps and painting, and this is the post that starts things off by announcing....

Firestorm II

Second War for the Flamescar Plateau

This post will serve as a landing page for this campaign's overall progress, and as such will be constantly updated as the war rages on. Last time there were four warlords competing for the possession of the Flamescar Plateau, one from each Grand Alliance, but this time there are three armies... all of which hail from the same Grand Alliance.

The Free City Hammerhal sends forth a contingent of aelves drawn from the city's massive population, while the shadowy city-port of Anvilgard provisions a competing force to race its sister city of Hammerhal for the control of the Flamescar region. Above the armsrace of the two Cities of Order, a more mysterious power gathers... The Seraphon are bound for the plateau as well, led by the ancent Oldblood Kraq-Nar in search of a disturbance their worldship detected on its voyage through the void in between the Realms.

While waiting for more battlereports and tidings of war, be sure to check out this campaign's Firestorm Faction Focus!

This campaign is still in progress and will receive fairly regular updates.

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Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapters 1 to 4

Greetings!

Some while ago I managed to achieve an immensely rewarding and astonishing personal feat. The Mortenhoff Chronicles finally caught up with the events of my WHFRP campaign! Yes, that's right, I have now written each and every session of my group's roleplaying campaign into novel format, no more, no less!

This means that the pace at which the Chronicles will get updates here in the blog will slow down quite a lot; I need to wait for my group to play more sessions of WHFRP, I need to write those sessions into novel narration and I need to collect enough of these sessions to band them together to form a new chapter! So, those of you who have been following these Mortenhoff Chronicles updates, you will be needing a bit more patience from now on regarding these write-ups of mine.

I know you can manage, the duardin are famous for their cautious, painstaking pace at which all things in life are commenced.

In this chapter, Dracoh, Toga, Kalós, Nywon and Mellion find themselves in the Garden of Morr near the small hamlet of Bebbanburg, where their recent adventure has taken them to the source of the local undead menace. How will the group solve the necromantic dilemma? What can they do about the alleged charlatan doctor in the village? Can Mellion the Elf survive an encounter with the dwarves?

Here are the files for you, first Chapter 4 itself, and then the entire collection so far if you like reading your stories in their proper context (the collection includes many fixed typos all across the first three chapters):

Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapter Four

Mortenhoff Chroncles: Chapters One to Four

Enjoy!

Hammer Time

Greetings!

Just a quick update on my Tales of Instahammer 2019 project, the Ulgumgi army. This month was themed "The Hammer", with the intention of participants adding something of beautiful creation or terrible destruction to their armies. Well, my take on "The Hammer" was this:

Battle of Arden Forest

Greetings!

It is time to splash out the very first Warhammer Fantasy Battles 3rd Edition battlereport! This is the first game of 3rd Edition I've ever played but it went rather well, considering I had only just finished reading the rules and creating two 1000p army lists to pit against each other.

The battle was a simple lineup between the forces of Bretonnia and the Dwarves, as I thought a Pitched Battle would be the easiest way to test out the ruleset. In later games I hope to include a bit more narrative objectives and story-driven victory conditions!

In this particular game I also left out magic spells and magic items, just to leave me with the basic rules used together with advanced formations and weapon stats. Without further ado, let's have a look at the army lists!

Old Skål Cometh

Greetings.

As a reader of my blog you might be a little confused at the sight of this post and that peculiar banner atop it. What is this "Old Skål" nonsense? Let me elaborate.

Before the year 2018 went out, I made a promise here at ExtraBushyBeards. I swore to bring existing campaigns to a closure, to start a bunch of new ones and to generally uphold all the things going on in the blog: shareable campaign systems, stories, narrative battle reports and pics of painted models. However, I also made a solemn promise on a wholly different matter... to start working on a project that would breathe the dark, grimy air of The World That Was. To start posting material on one of the old editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, a pedecessor of Age of Sigmar.

What this promise means is that I'm going to start collecting armies and rules for one of the older editions and to keep those models on square bases for that specific purpose. It also means you will be able to see WHFB-stuff on this page alongside all things Age of Sigmar.

No-one ever said these two game systems couldn't co-exist in a hobbyist's life.

Battle of Mork's Tooth

Greetings!

Here comes another game I played at the local store a couple of weeks ago, the merciless Battleplan: Three Places of Power pitting my Sunsplitterz against a force of Seraphon in a race to capture battlefield objectives using only Heroes. I have played this Battleplan before, and I like its concept, but I feel it too often favours factions with a wide selection of strong heroes, as opposed to horde armies or largely neglected ones like Freeguild, Dispossessed or Aelves.

We had an extra rule to spice up the scenario: a wandering Troglodon skulking the battlefield, which both forces could try to take control of by casting a scenario-specific spell on it!

I picked two casters to lead my orruks into the fray, with a healthy unit of 20 Morboyz acting as the heart of my army. Let's see how my orange maniacs fare against celestial daemons!

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Prophet Wozoc Squinteye squinted his eyes beneath his warmask. In the distance a sharp stony spike reached out towards the skies from the desolate landscape, towering high above the treetops. The rock was known as "Mork's Tooth", a holy place of ancient power to the greenskins of the region, and the Sunsplitterz had decided to visit it on their way from one defeat to another in the Realm of Ghur.

Wozoc squinted again. Was that a trick of light he was seeing? It was as if the air around the Tooth was twisting in upon itself and glittering in the rays of the evening sun. Suddenly there was a loud crack as the fold in reality flashed, producing a full force of Seraphon, the repitilian guardians of the firmament. Wozoc did not know what the Saurus and Skinks were about here on holy greenskin lands, but by Gorkamorka's guts he and his boyz would teach them a lesson for trespassing!

Ulgumgi Shaman

Greetings!

This month is labelled Magic in the Tales of Instahammer 2019 project; anything or anyone with any connection to magic should be brought up to join the army at this point. I picked up a Necromancer kit, cracked open my bitz box and set to work...

...and ended up with an Ulgumgi Shaman!

Shaman Ronga is an old and disrespected spellcaster in the Ulgumgi society. He summons aethyric energies to aid the hirds in battle, but all he gets in return are wary gazes and muttered insults. Only selected few know of his origins, which are said to be wreathed in darkness and misery: his back is hunched, his eyes have been covered with bands of rusty iron and he carries an ancient grimoire on his belt that he's unable to read anymore.

Myrkrvollr Holdfast

 Greetings!

Remember this amazing piece of art drawn by Baron Klatz during the Twilight Prince campaign? It depicts strange tower constructions found by a Puffington scout in the shadowy forests of Ulgu, the Realm in which an entire regiment of imperial soldiers was lost during the campaign.

A ramshackle tower pieced together from all available resources, including old wargear and banners of the lost regiment. The scout didn't live long enough to tell the tale of these towers himself, but one of his colleagues found him dead on the forest floor with a crumpled piece of parchment in one cold hand. It turned out to be a rough sketch of these constructions, ready to be taken back to the Puffington Empire for closer inspection.

Well guess what, I took such a liking to Klatz's sketch of the Ulgumgi Towers that I decided to give it some additional dimensions...

Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapters 1 to 3

Greetings!

Time has come, once again, to reveal a new chapter to the constantly developing novel-like narration of my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay group's adventures! This time around the players begin the chapter with a two-day downtime, during which each of them saw to their own businesses alone or in temporary pairs.

As I cannot reveal any player character's full doings during those two days (my players are reading this), I decided to describe the player downtime through the eyes of three NPCs from the local populace; three regular villagers from Mortenhoff. I say this as a forewarning as you'd most likely have been rather confused suddenly seeing non-player names as chapter sub-headings!

Anyway, this chapter sees the players take on a new challenge: one of the local elder farmers has gone missing after releasing his farmhands once the harvest was done. The players set off to investigate, accompanied by their new acquaintance...

Be sure to check out Chapters One and Two for the group's previous adventures, especially if this is the first you hear of the Mortenhoff Chronicles. There's a reason I'm numbering the chapters and releasing them in portions, and it's that you really need the chronology to understand what's going on!




Here's the link to Chapter 3. It's the lengthiest chapter so far, so I will be releasing it as its own file. See the other link below this one if you want the entire collection so far, complete with various little fixes to typos and such.

---> Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapter Three <---

-> Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapters One to Three <-

Enjoy!

Battle of Hangman's Bastion

Greetings!

It is time for another one of those narrative battlereports of mine. This one pitted my Sunsplitterz against a force of Stormcast Eternals, a foe I haven't faced in a while (and one that my orruks have never before fought against!). This battle is part of a Grand Alliance -based map campaign run at our local game store, and my orruks are now attempting to push into a region called the Everkeep. Sounds ominous, right?

We played the Siege Battleplan: The Great Wall from the Age of Sigmar Core Book. I strongly recommend it: it features two objectives beyond a line of defensive positions, with the attacker having to take them both or die trying! The defender starts with half his army on the field, with the rest marching in on aroll of 5 or 6 from the 2nd battleround onwards. What's more, the reinforcement roll doesn't get any better from that initial treshold of 5-6... They might not arrive at all if the dice don't favour you.

How did sticks and stones fare against heaven-forged sigmarite armour, then? Read on to find out!

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The day dawned bleak as Warboss Grom led his warband towards the overgrown walls looming in the distance. The region they were pushing into was heavily fortified by the forces of Order, but Grom had chosen this place to be the target of their attack for a reason: with the majority of their tribe still mustering its numbers for a full-scale invasion, the Warboss and his warband had been sent to scout out the enemy region and to claim a foothold there. What better to test their mettle against than an overgrown bastion manned by roughly a score of humies?

Map Campaign Lite

Greetings!

Too busy for campaigns but you'd really like to try out one of those map ones someday? You know, those that take forever to arrange and a century to play but you still keep dreaming? Now is your chance, and it won't even take that long!

I present you with Map Campaign Lite: a campaign system for those AoS players who would love some continuity in their games but would like to retain their freedom and make use of their limited hobby time. It is a conversion of an old campaign system found in the old Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th Edition Rulebook. Enjoy!