Osgiliath: Week One

Last week we kicked off our Battle Companies Osgiliath Campaign. As I think I have said before this is mainly to familiarise ourselves with the rules and also to give us time to build up the armies and terrain we need for the full strategy game. The rules are similar enough to Legends of the Old West and this has caused a little bit of confusion. Still our first two games played out well and we didn't feel like we made too many mistakes. I've since gone through the rules fairly in depth and picked up a few nuances that we missed in the excitement. The purpose of the map for Battle Companies is simply to record who is doing the best in the campaign and records total victories and also territory controlled. Once the total victories of one side reaches the edge of the page the campaign is over and a winner declared. While there are empty territories on the map the players can chose one empty one to occupy for each victory. Once they are all filled they can then only take a territory that is adjacent to one they already occupy or directly across the river from one already occupied. This shouldn't result in the exact same tally as the total victories as territory can end up getting swapped back and forth a few times before an overall victory is declared. You might have a slight advantage in territory but lose the campaign and this could be considered this more of a waste or too high expenditure of resources on behalf of the loser.

The first game featured the men of Gondor trying to hold the Ford of Ranbarad against a marauding band of Orcs. The Gondorians couldn't prevent the Orcs from making the crossing they were just too numerous to hold back for long. The ford itself was bombarded with arrows forcing the defenders to duck for cover while the Orcs crossed in numbers to the North and South. Two forays were sent against them with the Orcs to the North being stopped with a bloody slaughter while those to the south rampaged past the beleaguered defenders to make it to the ruins of Osgiliath and the relative safety of their foul brethern's company.

The second game was a closer affair. The brave men of Rohan were ambushed by marauding Goblins along the Anduin and took to higher ground while awaiting reinforcements. Thinking that their rear was protected by a small river they were quickly surrounded by an unseen force of goblins rapidly crossing the river and charging uphill to take them in the rear. It was a bloody affair but the Goblins scattered the Rohirrim and claimed victory.

Osgiliath Campaign: Introduction

On Thursday we will kick off our lord of the Rings Battle Companies campaign in our local game store in Hamburg. We haven't really planned much with regards to it but to help track how the progress is going I found a map online and made it into something we could use for the purposes. Each victory allows the victor to colour one of the territories shown on the left. Once the map is filled we will use it as a basis for a campaign using larger forces. I have a lot of other things to paint before I get more involved with the lord of the Rings Battle Game and so having a slow grow campaign like this is just perfect. The forces arrayed against each other is slightly nebulous at the moment but we have confirmed that Mordor, Moria, Gondor and Rohan will make an appearance. I intend to keep the map updated with progress reports here every few weeks so that the players can check it out too and see who is winning.

40k Campaign - Malleus

My map making for 40K continues apace. I love the background provided in the Forgeworld supplements, especially the cut aways to various planetary descriptions and such. They provide a lot of flavour and atmosphere without it being too dense. I decided that I would make out some similar descriptions for planets that we would fight over. As we have been discussing and actually writing background for the campaign it turns out that we are fighting elsewhere but this description of Malleus isn't wasted. Eventually the war might arrive here and if not at least there is some nice bacground to other planets in the Viator System.

40k Campaign - The Thorn Sub-sector

We are starting a few Warhammer 40K campaigns in my local area and online very soon. One has actually kicked off on VASSAL already. I'll be playing in them all and as such I wanted to have a map that we could use to track where the action is taking place. Its always nice to have a setting for the battles we fight on the tabletop. The overall campaigns won't really be linked but they can at least all take place in the same area and from that we can start filling in some details on that area. This might mean it comes to life and gets us more enthusiastic about playing or well it can just be an interesting read for the players if they want to come back and check out what we did. Anyway this location will be the Thorn Sub-Sector. I placed this on the fringes of the Imperium where anything we do won't really be effected by anything else that happens in the fluff. As we will have a heavy Ultramarine participation it would be best close enough to Ultramar, at least the marines won't have to travel far to fight. I shall be playing an Inquisitorial force that mainly consists of a homebrew Space Marine Chapter: the Sanctifiers. At the start of the year I painted some Ultramarines but as a friend already has them I instead modified them to have white arms and shoulders. A sufficent change to make them distinct but identifiable.