In which we explore Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, get a shield delivery, and betray some Dwarfs.
With Heroes Like These, Does the Empire Even Need Enemies
My regular gaming group and I have recently picked up our long running Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WHFRP) campaign after a bit of a hiatus (we like trying new games and coming back to old favourites), and we’ve resumed our long journey through the classic Enemy Within campaign for the game. The campaign was first published between 1986 and 1989 and has been a staple of the game’s lineup since then, being reprinted for multiple editions of the game. The version we’re playing is the version published for the 4th edition of the game which is touted as the Director’s Cut of the adventure. The campaign is long, taking up 5 books (each with a companion book with extra materials for those extra keen) and it has taken us quite a while to get to book 3: Power Behind the Throne. This means we’re approaching the halfway point which is both exciting and daunting; there’s a lot more to go.
The game and the campaign are both tremendous fun, there’s a lot of that early Warhammer comedy in the books which mixed with the game’s lethality makes for a really good balance of tension and comic relief. The stakes are high, and the “heroes” (i.e. the player’s characters) somehow keep achieving great things while looking like they’re one step away from disaster the entire time. I won’t mention any details for fear of spoiling the campaign for others (and please if you’ve played it, stay away from spoilers in the comments, a few of the players do read the blog!).
I’m a big fan of what Cubicle 7 have done with this 4th edition of the game. It has some really neat mechanics such as the Advantage rule, which effectively rewards doing well in fights and gives cumulative bonuses to dice rolls as long as you keep doing well. This might sound a bit unbalanced on paper and it absolutely is, but this is a good thing. It has this great habit of making fights finish fast once a side has the upper hand which is an excellent feature. No toe to toe slog until someone runs out of hit points à la D&D here, just quick brutal battles that keep the story moving.
I can’t compare it too much to the older editions (1st and 2nd) of the game as the only other edition I’ve played was the Fantasy Flight 3rd edition, which was a complete departure from the early system. Instead of the percentile system that 4th went back to, 3rd showered you in cards and components and had you play a sort of board game to keep track of your character. I came across a video of Quinns Quest that describes it as a tabletop World of Warcraft which I suppose is pretty close. It sort of made sense at the time as I picked up new releases and slowly grew the game, but I have to say now looking at that box full of cards and tokens I have no idea where I would even start to try to pick it up again, it is absolutely overwhelming.
The good news is that sea of tokens has since been put to good use in other games; you’ve seen them on the blog used as markers for games of Silver Bayonet and Midgard.
I’ve recently managed to find a sensibly priced copy of the 1st edition of WHFRP, so I look forward to sitting down with that and reading through to see how it all started.
Shields! Shields! Shields!
As I mentioned last post I was waiting for some shields to arrive so I could finish my Dwarf Hammerer unit. These arrived about a day after I put up said post, so I can only conclude that if I want online orders to arrive sooner all I need to do is post more often.
These shields are a nice mix of the models that were around when I started the game which is early 2000s, and they’re just right for these Hammerer models. The delivery unblocked me and I quickly resumed painting the unit.
I did find myself with a dilemma though, how best to hold all these loose shields while painting them? The answer: super glue them to some sprue! This actually worked pretty well as a holder, and I managed to paint both sides of the shields easily enough this way. The shields have a small recessed circle at the back which matches up with prongs on the models. These recesses are where I tacked the shields to the sprue, so any offending gaps in the paint were nicely covered by the glue join once on the model.
So here’s the painted unit! The more eagled eyed amongst you will realise that I have nine models pictured here but only had eight shields on the piece of sprue above. If that’s you, well done you spotted that much faster than I did, as I only realised this when I was glueing the shields to the models and suddenly found myself one short…
In the end I decided the champion could have a fancy new shield instead, so I gave him one of the modern shields with the moulded decorations which I could easily just paint with the gold colour.
A discovery I made while painting these models is that paperclips make excellent lid holders for recalcitrant Citadel lids (i.e. ones that keep closing on you). I’ve seen people use those plastic cylinders you get on new brushes to prop pots open, but I always lose mine so it’s not very helpful. What I do always have on hand is paper clips, which I regularly use to unblock dropper bottles (you can see the paint on this one in the photo) and super glue tubes, and as a source of stiff wire for holding components when painting and pinning models.
On the Painting Building Table
Presumably this means I can now move on to the rest of my Dwarf units. Well there is a spanner in the works; my lovely wife bought me some models for Father’s day (last Sunday in Australia), and now I have fresh new kits staring at me from across the room and that is a hard lure to resist…
So yes I’m building some very cool new chaos models instead of painting my Dwarfs. The revolving door of shifting interests keeps on turning!