Orcs Illustrated: A tabletop wargaming blog
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Mustering for Fantastic Battles
I intend to play small-scale mass battles again soon, thanks to the miracles of 3d printing and digital print-on-demand publishing. This started when I first saw Forest Dragon’s beautiful 10mm digital sculpts. After snatching up files for a pair of opposing armies, I hunted around the web for suitable rulesets. There are several good options…
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Grimdark Future: The Infected City
Comrade Patrick shares a battle report of last weekend’s game of Grimdark Future Firefight! We had four players forming two teams with 600 pts per side – quite a Sunday afternoon brawl! We’ve been dipping a toe into the wonderful, rules-lite world of One Page Rules lately, and I finally had an opportunity to take…
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Majesticon Day 1: Nightwatch and Open Combat
Circumstances permitted me to host a two-day skirmish wargaming extravaganza! Comrade Patrick reports. Hullo dear reader! I’m back after an uncharacteristic pause on this here blog. It’s been a busy summer without a lot of time for gaming, I’m afraid. But now that the days are getting shorter and the autumn winds are picking up,…
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Oathmark: Begovic spears
Months ago I laid out my plan for expanding my SAGA warband into an Oathmark army. Deciding how grow my multiples-of-four units up to multiples of five, I settled on the obvious answer: buy more Oathmark Human Infantry! I remembered how much I enjoyed assembling and painting the first box and wanted to do it…
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Speed painting Imperial Guard: Qirkirin AAT
I came around to printing a Qirkirin Armored Assault Transport to shuttle my brave lads around the tabletop. It turned out well, so here’s how I did it. (Astute readers will notice I use this blog as the paint scheme journal I don’t keep otherwise.) Basic idea With this paint job I wanted to chase…
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Speed painting Imperial Guard test models with oil paints
Inspiration Marco Frisoni mini painting tutorials get me excited to sit down and try things. When he tossed out a “this is already quite interesting” remark halfway through this week’s video on oil painting, I couldn’t help but think “you’re right Marco, I should speed paint an Imperial Guard army like this!” I’ve been orbiting…
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Stargrave Dead or Alive: pursuit of Tamix Phage
In my first ever game of Stargrave, the crew of the Errant Wanderer chased down a bounty named Tamix Phage in a solo scenario from the free Dead or Alive mini-expansion. Dead or Alive gives rules for randomly generating various bounty hunting jobs your crew can embark on, with special rules for using decision trees…
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Open Combat: Ambush at the Greenfire Portal
Comrade Patrick offers another battle report, this time from our recent game of Open Combat. John and I got together earlier this month for a quick midweek game of Open Combat. It was to be John’s first game; I had played Open Combat a few times over the last few years and found it to…
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Stargrave Crew: The Reclaimers
I just finished painting my Stargrave Crew! Let me show you. Stargrave In a galaxy torn apart by the Last War, vast pirate fleets roam from system to system, robbing, extorting, and enslaving. Amidst this chaos, thousands of independent operators – smugglers, relic hunters, freedom fighters, and mercenaries – roam the dead stars in small…
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Frostgrave: The Silent Tower
My friend Patrick published a battle report from our recent game of Frostgrave. Go check it out! (That marauding bear mauled two of my warband to death, but Elder Futhark the Sigilist didn’t mind. They’re called expendable thugs for a reason…) The next scenario in our Frostgrave campaign was straight out of the second edition…
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Modular Frostgrave utility pieces
I built several versatile terrain pieces to supplement the standard board tiles in our collaborative modular Frostgrave terrain board. These “utility pieces” are helpful for breaking up boring flat areas, blocking line of site, providing traversal, and approximating urban features. Let me give you a tour. Dungeon tiles and stackers I first learned about dungeon…
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Our modular Frostgrave
About a year ago my gaming group decided to collaborate on a terrain board to prepare for the release of Frostgrave 2nd Edition. After some back-and-forth in our Slack team, we agreed to build modular tiles using shared standards for certain key geometries and base coat colors. We could consult each other remotely, build in…