The Empire Responds to the invasion of the Uruk Hai

I love big games.

Big games offer ‘that’ feeling. The sense that something momentous is happening, something special. A visual treat for the hobbyist is laid out, a scene to become part of. A narrative that is yet to become clear and will never be the same again. A one off.

It is tremendously social to have several keen players join forces to make these Uber-games possible. It grabs that starry eyed feeling I had when I looked at the White Dwarf articles as a child. Aching to try out the glorious scenes on display, to create my own. To create our own ‘gathering of might’.

The spirit of the Herohammer era is what drives me the most. That aspirational content that made you want to collect hordes of toy soldiers because it was cool and fun to do so. Not chase some victory or other, the next best thing, ‘meta’ or whatever. But create a cool game, and have fun. To join in and bring all others around you! Bring on THE EAVY LEAD! WAAAAGGHHH and suchlike. That’s what has driven me to put on this game. Well, truth be told, this is but one in a series of mega games. I games master a situation that my players have to navigate. I provide the principal contingent of toy soldiers (alas,  for most players it’s still considered abnormal to have 600 fully painted Warhammer models ready to go, perhaps one day this will become the norm!), the rest are supplied in fits and starts by the players themselves. Sometimes they bring a single unit, other times a warband or small army. Small for me is sub 4000 points, this admittance to insanity is not meant to be bragging. Merely an indication of the scale of armies I want to use. The overall game is roughly 12000 points per side. Cue wide eyed, smiling sigh. Perhaps one day I will have the 20,000 a side I truly want. For now this will have to do. Did I mention I may have a problem? No?! Good.

Please Don’t tell the wife that I shall be commandeering some shelves in her side of the cupboard. See if she notices first! Tis always good for any soul when you’re reaching for socks to discover a horde of inch high goblins ready to go looting!

I have never forgotten the special scenario games or the big games that I take part in. They always lodge in the mind and I hope and try to pass on this experience to others. I invite you, yes you! You hadn’t fallen asleep had you? I invite you to join us at the next game, for now though! A taste of what I’m on about.

The scene is this. A wizard has decided he dislikes the human nation on his border, the Humans are far too tetchy about The Wizards interests, such as shouting about him experimenting with creating better orcs and always moaning about the wizard dabbling with necromancy. They even have made brash open threats and border attacks in response to the wizards agents doing corpse harvesting. HONESTLY! you can’t even do a neighbour a favour in these times. Why can’t they just keep to their own business! Well, the Wizard has decided that enough is enough. In a previous game he sent an army of orcs and goblins to ambush the heavily armoured Engineer Guild’s supply column. The idea was to weaken the trust and trade links the humans enjoyed with the Dwarfs in the East, forcing the human province to capitulate to the Wizards ‘supply’ needs. What do the humans want corpses for anyway?! They just burn them or bury them! For pity’s sake, such a waste.

The humans put up a fight involving surprise halfling volley guns mounted in Guild supply wagons and the heroicly stoic defence by Kislev war wagons!! The Wizard , now having been pushed to the point a real annoyance, was forced to use other tactics.

With a bit of cold calculation The Wizard surmised that an assault on the major port at the north west coast would interrupt the food supplies and other shipping, hopefully enough that the humans would be forced to make a deal. The resultant corpses through starvation would also help his cause greatly. A no lose situation!

Plus, agents of his had reported a rare gemstone being at the Port. This stone  stored the captured souls of thousands, it had been found by a rogue human light wizard who resided in this port. He would dearly love to pay this light wizard a visit to ask where the stone came from and………..’borrow’ it.

As Games master I Introduced my stalwart  players Ed and Tim to their respective deployment positions. Ed and Tim chose to take charge of the orc and goblin forces laying siege to the walls of Portishaven. Ed had brought along a lovely force of undead to bolster the ranks of Evil (well, ‘INTERESTING’ people would be a more diplomatic way to describe them than ‘Evil’. #Ed)

The main orc and undead force deployed outside the gates to make the final assault on the town walls. This contingent is controlled by Ed.

Tim controlled the Goblin horde and deployed in the forest as a rearguard support column to the Orc main push. Tim had been warned most of his goblin foragers had not come back from the woods. Hmmmmmmmm, I wonder if this means something🤔.

Ed and Tim had a secret up their own sleeve’s however! As part of this scenario I incorporated the option for the Orcs to make use of assault craft.

So, without letting the goodie two shoes humans overhear (cue huddling together in a corner and pointing menacingly at the other team), they had to decide what forces they where choosing to peel off from the main assault and place in their wooden craft. They also had to decide if the craft was going to be used on the river in turn one? If so they could only deploy on the river at the bridge position in turn one and move into the port over turns two and three. This could be an interesting way to force the defenders to manoeuvre more troops away from the gate defense and back onto the beaches within the port. If Ed and Tim managed to break the town walls then a minor victory went to the evil side. If they managed to take control of the light wizards tower on the quayside itself that would also be a minor victory. If they did both that would be a major victory and a devestating show of how powerful their evil master was and the humans should just stop moaning and hand over the loot!

But! The craft could be used in one other place, on turn two the craft could be used to appear on the quayside itself having come a more circuitous route via the sea and turns three and four be assaulting inland all

over the quay and the wizards tower. But this was a risky manoeuvre as they had to roll for each boat, if a one was rolled it had been capsized and lost in the bay while navigating those treacherous waters. As GM I informed them this not only potentially delayed their assault times on the gate but had a risk of being seen by others on the open water who may inform the humans! I would roll clandestinely to determine if the Orcs would be seen on the open water. Could they do it quietly and quickly? The choice, and risk, was theirs to take.

Turning to the poor beleaguered defenders (cue violin, hand wringing and old grannies looking up imploringly for the strong young men to defend them.) Mark and Luke took up their positions and prepared to be briefed. I let them know that the bulk of their human forces are on the way. We do not know exactly when they will arrive but we can risk sending carrier pigeons asking and directing them where to go. The relief forces can definitely come thundering across the bridge on turn three. That much at least, is guaranteed. But if they so choose, they could take the gamble of sending pigeons to ask for forces to arrive on the spit island with the wizards tower on the quayside. Or upriver in the narrow pass between the woods and goblin camp. Pigeons could not be sent until after deployment had been decided.

Luke had been lovely enough to bring a magnificent set of Dwarves to help bolster the flaky humans. Some much needed hard stoicism placed just behind the main gates.

Mark had worked tirelessly to bring his superb Wood Elf forces to perform a sneak attack, he could choose to leap from the forest at the Goblin camp or deploy on Elven boats at the top of the river. Elf boats travel much quicker than orc craft and could easily catch orc forces on the water or the beaches down river. Again, I must stress, Mark did not know where the orcs would be with their boats or even if they even had boats! He just knew the dastardly creatures had been chopping down his forests and one way to get back at the greenskins for this sacrilege could be to float downriver and jump out to help the humans.

Mark elected to put all his Elfy eggs in the forest.

Both sides deployed

Then I relayed a new piece of information to the goody two shoes, errr, defenders! A message had come in from a, rather rattled, fisherman that ‘ORcs! fousands of em! On boats in the harbour! Lookout mate!’

I asked Mark and Luke

‘Did you want to send a pigeon to your reinforcements? Who would go where when they arrive? And would it be turn two or turn three? Only fate will decide that last item of business.’

And now for something, completely different.

CONCERNING JEFFS:

Jeff is, well……..crap. Complete Crap at what he does. Oh don’t get me wrong! He’s lovely enough to chat to and drink alongside in the taverns. But, as Wizards go, really quite unpredictable. Legends tell of Jeff doing mighty deeds in distant worlds, across time and space! But, other legends tell of a weirdo who, upon seeing danger, set about ruining another perfectly good pair of underpants. Jeff spends a surprisingly large sum of money on undergarments compared to his ‘contemporaries’. And we won’t even BEGIN to talk about the drycleaning !!

The locals favoured the latter legendary explanation, having considered the man they had allll met in alleyways and gutters after a night out at the quayside. They thought it fit his personality type best.

Jeff however, felt differently. He had his robes! He had his beard! And by all the Gods, he had his HAT!. That made him a mighty Wizard in Jeff’s mind. After all, it wasn’t Jeff’s fault that magic kept betraying him on occasion, even sending him spinning through time and realities, on occasion. Sometimes he did devastatingly brilliant spells. On….occasion. Often at the enemy too.

Magic was capricious after all. Everyone knew that. Some wizards are luckier than others is all!

But his trusty familiar, the snake necked Brian, has many times helped him out. Brian was incredibly knowledgable on the ways of magic. Alas, Brian could not wield it himself. He had to use a human to do the deeds. Brian had promised Jeff that he could help Jeff get back to his original time and reality and  assured Jeff would return a mighty wizard to impress all those girls! All Jeff had to do was help Brian collect a few items using his magic. How could Jeff refuse such a kind companion? Could it be that the arched eyebrowed, mullet sporting, handle bar moustachioed,  Brian ‘the’ Ansell familiar, had an ulterior motive? Probably. But what could Jeff do?

Brian had told him that if he pushes the right buttons on that control lectern, over there in the village square, when the magical fighting was at its height he could use the unleashed energies to hop to other worlds through that ring of stone. And maybe bring reinforcements form the other side of the portal for these nice, fishy smelling, people.

Sigh. Worth a go I suppose.

Now Jeff’s magic has a few complications to it, you must roll on this miscast table fairly commonly for a start:

Insert D20 miscast table *

Otherwise, he is a normal wizard, who operates normally at level two and can try to bring magical reinforcements through the stone gateway.

As GM, I couldn’t possibly comment as to what may come through the gate…….

Spells are drawn at random from the relevant spell decks held within the 4th edition magic set. My favourite! Also drawn are a limited number of magic items for players to use among their heroes.

One level two wizard per player, one hero per player, one general. 2 magic items plus a single magic standard randomly drawn and passed out to the relevant units or characters.

Let the first turn begin!!

Turn one.

From a GM point of view, quite a number of interesting choices had been made. The Orc players sent a massive contingent onto the boats and took the risks of fate out in the open harbour. No one died! So the full ‘Orc-marine’ assault force was ready to disembark in turn two.

An orc and undead  horde descended upon the town walls but had to push through the empire and dwarf defenders. A no doubt ‘squeaky bum’ moment was had by those poor Empire souls.

But! Mark the Wood Elf commander had come to the rescue. The Goblins had deployed in such a way as to make Tim want to turn and face this new Elven threat. No joining up with the main force in the centre to try and link up. No break out manoeuvres for dear Tim, OH NO! He said, ‘let’s have it then you pointy eared fiends, my Gobbos will cut your tonkers off, you vegetarian………

And so on.

Orc artillery had been placed high up on the bridge, presumably having not realised that reinforcements may come this way, and proceeded to miss all targets around the gateway. Well, at least they now had range dialled in.

Turn one magic went decidedly in favour of the defenders, who managed to get off a magnificent spell that sped a Treeman across 15 feet of battlefield and straight into the orc artillery on the lovely high up bridge!

The happy, and somewhat dizzy, Tree thing pushed a ballista off the bridge into the river.

Turn two.

Things are now getting mighty interesting. The orcs continue to push on to the gate, most headway being made by the undead who caused fear enough that the defenders ran away in some number.

The Goblins attack the wood elves, do some serious damage with fanatics, then run away in droves. You see if one goblin panics, they may well all panic. Gobbo’s are rather good at panicking.

Some panic so much, they run away into the river, drowning. But! Tim being the magnificent general he is, manages to convince many of the green lemmings to get a grip and try again. Well done Tim!

The orcs choose to send three boats onto the port walls, the two remaining boats move around the harbour and go upstream towards the spit housing the wizard tower objective.

WHAT!? What is that in a fishing boat? Those sneaky empire players have secreted a great Mortar into a fishing boat. The cheeky devils! Neither the GM or the orc players noticed this deployment and have sailed on past the threat oblivious! The empire open up with the great mortar, nearly tipping the boat over, destroying many orcs before they get to land. What a great manoeuvre from the Empire!

Magic was a bit of a stalemate. Close combat had much death in the gobbo’s camp and in the gateway to the town.

End of turn two and the sound of horns is heard!

Turn 3

The empire reinforcements arrive and the pigeons did their jobs! Cavalry and two field pieces arrive on the wizards tower spit in time to lay down fire and oppose the assault boats.

The remaining reinforcements are attempting to come in via the bridge. There is a problem here however. A bloody great Tree, that moves far more aggressively than it should, is in the way. It seems to be crushing its ballista opponent. The steam tank commander is not pleased though. Much like general patton shooting that poor donkey holding up the allied advance across the bridge, the tank commander decides he’s going through the tree, friends be damned!

He builds his steam points for this mighty charge through the tree and down into the enemies flanks. Sure the wood elves might see him kill a spirit of the forest and that can’t be good for relations,  but he’s gonna be praised a hero when he flies headlong into the enemies at the gates.

He pushes down on the forward lever with full throttle. He then explodes gloriously, taking the Treeman with it! He pushes his steam points too hard!

On the upside, the GM explains had the Tank Captain been observed killing the Treeman so callously by Elves then the Wood Elves would not no allowed to continue supporting the Empire after such callous, treacherous bad form. The elves would turn their backs on these awful allies. That unfortunate explosion was the best luck the empire ever had in preserving diplomatic relations!

The secomd steam tank thundered through the wreckage of his old tank captain pal and the charcoaled monster to smash into the flanks of two orcs units assaulting the gates and routing them all! Huzzah!

The Empire reinforcements on the spit fought valiantly. They fought and died, valiantly.

Don’t worry though! Jeff will

Bring extra reinforcements through the Stargate. Jeff types in the co ordinates that Brian familiar gave him.

Some metal snake headed people come out and declare they will only fight undead. They only fight undead because their masters don’t like them as they can’t make homes from undead hosts.

Jeff didn’t know what they where on about, or much cared, so let them through with their strange magic stick weapons.

Turn 4.

The Orcs flounder in the centre. Giants fall and crush their own!

The undead mop up the defenders on the far side of the wall.

The Goblins flee. And flee some more. But Tim manages to rally a good chunk of the flighty gits! Well done Tim! Goblin master!

The orcs make excellent headway onto the spit but continue to take losses from that sneaky mortar on the water. (That’d make a good song title wouldn’t it!?)

The empire continue to love up reinforcements over the bridge following that catastrophe of a steam tank manoeuvre that saved them from having to explain to the wood elves why they were gonna kill a sacred tree man! This time they move in the larger steam tank named ‘Cromwell’. It passes its steam points test and hissing foots of super heated steam thunders down the bridge and utterly destroys two units of orcs on the road and smashes into a third! The sound of crushing beetles and sticky slurping is aweful to hear. The defenders cheer mightily!

Jeff tries the magic ring one more time. Brian gives him some new co-ordinates to try. Jeff casts the spell on the dial up machine! Something goes wrong, he miscasts. An enemy wizard on a bloody great Wyvern storms through the gate, heading straight for the tower where that light wizard is hiding. Jeff will now have to roll on the Jeff table.

The undead have also moved up and their flying dead thing has has died at the hands of the magic snake men! But wait! Ed plays an escape magic card! The undead thing escapes through the realm of chaos to reappear and threaten the tower!

It may well be over for the empire with protecting the tower.the centre looks to be holding and the goblins are neutralised. But the enemy will gain control of that special orb of souls.

Jeff rolls on the Jeff table following his miscast. He is accidentally magically transported to the objective of highest value on the table!!!! Brian quickly follows and seeing Jeff look dumbfounded and gormless at the mighty Orb he shouts for Jeff to ‘Grab it! you stupid Goit!!’ Jeff fumbles and grapples with the light wizard, trying to steal the orb. They crash to the floor, the orb flying out of their hands. It rolls across the stone towards Brian. Brian; sighing heavily and rolling his eyes kicks the orb into Jeff’s hands. The GM declares Jeff has now disappeared into the realm of chaos and time jumped to his next mission.

The Game ends with a minor win for the empire, having fended off the orcs from taking the town wholesale. but Jeff having taken the orb, denies both side that particular prize. But the orcs managed to find some papers in the tower during their raid, it shows a map of an island……..indicating a store of magic weapons and arcana……

The empire, much later, ‘interview’ the light wizards surviving acolytes. The Empire now  know of the island too……and much more.

After report:

I have thoroughly enjoyed GM’ing this game. I felt the table ended up looking really good in the finish, despite it being a minimalistic aesthetic for the terrain. Nothing took long to produce on that board. The definition of quick and dirty terrain.

It was also designed for flat pack mass storage and transport. My entire collection of terrain and miniatures fits in my under stairs cupboard of an overage sized mid terrace house in the uk. But I can put on games on a 20’x6’ board. In fact if we spread the water out a bit more we can do 28’x6’ games………..just need more players!

The game itself played very nicely for 5 turns but we could have given 2 free moves to the goblin horde to spread things out a bit and make it more interesting for the goblin player, sorry Tim.

Highlights for me include Jeff the back handed marvel, I still struggle to believe that this kind of result can happen. Snatching the key objective at the key moment!? What’s good idea to have that as an option on his D20 table, well done Ed.

But the crème de la creme for me me is the steam tank riot on the bridge. I couldn’t stop cackling at the players decisions to risk allied relations. Fate deciding the relations must stand and the utter devastation caused by an exploding steam tank, burning Treeman and another steam tank! Glorious day of miniature gaming goodness.

Finally I want to reflect a bit on the miniatures. I’m very satisfied with how my collection looks en masse. Individually there is nothing special about my paint jobs, but together, it feels so satisfying to have all the toy soldiers set out. And even more so to have other peoples collections, gloriously painted bolstering the ranks. It is such a visual treat and feels worth alll the effort of creating it. I know warhammer is a big ask for most people, a massive commitment of time if not resource!

But I believe in the fruits of hard work and I believe in including as many people in the hobby as possible. So on that not I want to talk about proxies, you may have noticed that they are by no means all her hammer era. In fact most of them are new. So many proxy companies have appeared that we gamers and collectors are utterly spoilt for choice. They are often of the finest quality and provided in magnificent numbers for little money. The empire for instance, is constituted mostly from Perry miniatures and warlord games. These two companies are staffed by the luminaries of the hero hammer era. The actual people who created  that superb era have now left GW and started their own companies. Now as Warhammer is on record as having been conceived as a jack of all, portmanteau style game for players to use whatever they wish. I feel justified in using any miniatures I fancy, or that my players imaginations wish to bring to life. The spirit of the era and style of game matter most to me and allowing proxies will bring more people to the table. Especially considering the unfortunate nature of the second hand market for our beloved hero hammer era models, well anything GW actually! It’s so cost prohibitive that an army of 2000 points is often beyond most people’s pocket books. Certainly beyond new comers or children’s pocket books! But these companies offer whole landsknecht (empire) armies boxes with 150 toy soldiers for less than £80 uk pounds. The Perry’s do similar deals, as do wargames Atlantic and if we talk Mantic! Well, you won’t be able to move for toy soldiers.

These and other companies provide many metal and resin specials too so you can get that old style feel of heavy metal miniatures and some proper flavour to your armies as the array of miniature options is wider than ever it was, your imagination is the limit not your wallet necesarily. It allows more people to feel like they can take part, gives us more options as hobbyists and supports our hobby heroes in their next commercial endeavour. If you allow 3D printing into the mix, there is no limit.

Now if your sharpening shovels and pitchforks at this point, getting ready to smite and dismember the heretic just consider one thing, I implore you!! 3D printing offers you the chance to get some of those impossible to get miniatures from Herohammer, like the artworks that never made it to miniature. Clever boffins have digitally converted some of our favourite artworks and white dwarf terrain! I myself am lucky enough to possess a set of DR Spork’s famous warhammer 40k printed terrain pieces and they look exactly like the white dwarf originals by chambers and McVey!!! Nostalgia heaven!

There is everything right with sticking to your nostalgia and only going for originals of the time. I wish I could justify joining you. In some cases, I have joined you! Check out my Hellblasters!

Proxies offer something extra that I feel is important to say, we accept you. You players out there that want to join in but want to do so with non era or other company miniatures, you are welcome to join us. It is a joy to see what you have created and to be able to follow in the spirit of Robin dews when he writes and speaks of the importance of that inspiration led hobby, that aspirational aspect to our hobby desires and to include as many people as humanly possible. This mega game, would have been impossible without proxies.

So do please come along and join us for the next game! Bring your favourite fantasy models, whatever you want! Let’s play Hero hammer!!