2022 Hobby Log

Been a bit quite on the old posting front, though still chipping away at hobby.

I’ve not had the energy for the internet if I’m completely honest. Between some scary health shenanigans, working in a field that is on it’s knees trying to prop up services for very vulnerable people in the bloody backward island called home, dealing with online conversations are just more than I can manage at the end of my day. I don’t feel part of any community any more; I have enough misery and negativity through my work to engage with the “moan about everything” discourse that surrounds most online discourse. It’s obviously not limited to our hobby.

Thankfully, the people in my local gaming community are a generally encouraging group and so long as you stick to chatting historicals with the historicals bunch and sci fi/fantasy with the other bunch, there is a very positive vibe to most of it. We’re ramping up for a winter of campaigns and new games. Getting things painted and trying to take the edge off the dark Scottish winter ahead.

I’ve a couple of projects I’m working on but they are mostly big armies so I want to get further on them before starting projects here for them so let’s focus on what got finished recently.

Back in late July someone pitched doing a short campaign using the fan-maintained Mordheim rules. I missed the Mordheim train when it first came out so was keen to see what all the fuss is about.

Knowing nothing, clearly the best plan of attack was to look through the miniatures I had and build a warband from those. Thanks to Frostgrave I have a fair amount of undead so I picked that.

Then I looked at the rulebook and realised that I need a vampire lord and the only vampire model I have, I hate (I got it from Reaper Bones and it is a horrible little plastic thing). So I bought a new one, sadly it came in a pack with three others but one of them had a nicer sword so that kitbash was (in no way) worth the price of the box.

This is where the problems began. Next I decided to order some wolves because I like the idea of dire wolves.

Then I ordered some Frostgrave Cultists to be my human dregs. Not an ideal match but I was struggling to find models I loved that weren’t going to cost me more than was worth for just a six week campaign. A single sprue of cultists was the economical choice.

I’m good at economical choices.

Before I get to the ghouls, let’s talk back story

Originally the warband was going to be headed up by Boris Von Pickett and be called the Crypt-kickers. I love the Monster Mash, it slaps as the kids say.

Then, as all the best ideas do, a thought came to me in the shower one morning.

If you’ve spent any time in Glasgow, you probably know the story of the Gorbals Vampire. For those poor, unfortunate souls who haven’t been so blessed in life, here is the brief notes:

Back in 1954 a bunch of kids in the Gorbals area of Glasgow heard that a man with iron teeth had killed a couple of wee lads. The kids, being the legends in the way only kids from a rough part of town can be, turned up in the local graveyard to hunt the killer down armed with sticks and knives. Somewhere along the way, the man with iron teeth became a vampire. The police tried moving the kids on but they all patrolled the graveyard for hours until the rain started. They went back for the next couple of nights before the shine wore off the story and the hysteria died down. If you go down to the Gorbals today there is a big graffiti mural to the vampire. Having been in that graveyard I can well believe there are unnatural things in there.

Here’s a video interviewing some of the “kids”.

Clearly, my vampire had to be Boris Von Gorbals and the crypt-kicker ghouls should be the kids who stayed in the graveyard so long to hunt him down that they feasted on whatever they could find and turned all ghoulish. Thankfully TT Combat does some wonderful ghoul children halflings.

So here we are. A warband built and painted in about three weeks. Let’s not talk about how much it ended up costing me.

The campaign was meant to start last week but I ended up in the hospital so I missed the first game. I’m going to try and play catch up but I’ve not idea if my health will let me. If nothing else, I had a lot of fun painting this lot up. And I have another 20 ghoul kids…