Totenkinder Heavy Machine Gun Troops: Dust Refit & 15mm Use

Here is a shot of some of the first mundane troops for Frau Totenkinder's forces.  Being an extremely elite force, the militant force of the Ahnenerbe, the human troops are going to be very well equipped.  So rather than have 3 man squads for heavy machine guns, I've opted to use the Heavy Ranger Attack Squad from Dust Tactics, and say the armor gives them 3 wounds: so the same amount of shots & damage sustainable as a HMG squad.  These models are supposed to be for the allies in Dust, but that's ok by me.  They're great looking minis and painted up fast... which with the limited hobby time I have, suited me just fine.

I won't be using any rocket booster effects as we don't have such rules, but they looked good with them on, so I didn't remove them.. who knows what use they'll have in the future for other armies & game systems.

Speaking of, I am thinking they'd make nice 15mm walkers!  I got the 'Lunar Nazi' bug awhile back, and think these might be just right for that project.  Here's how they scale with a 15mm mini:

That's all for now, but stay tuned for more!

Conversions for Dwarf Rangers for Lord of the Rings

Last week I had the chance to play Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle for the first time in... well many years.  When you have to stop and do calculations, it's been a long time. I really enjoyed that game, and still think it's GW's best 28mm wargame. Plus I'm a Tolkien junky, so its hard to go wrong.

Digging out my dwarf rangers I decided they needed a captain and a banner to be a viable little theme force.

A lot of the Lord of the Rings plastics are of questionable quality, but in general I like the rangers, a good deal more than the plastic dwarf warriors, and I always liked the idea of a dwarf patrol.

First up, a Captain. Just adding a shield should suffice, since it'd good gear for a Captain and none of the rangers have shields, so he'd stand out as unique just from that.

I used a shield from a Chaos Marauder, trimming and rounding the spike to make it look more like a Saxon or Viking shield. The fact that it has torn leather makes him look even more 'rangery' and like he's been in some recent scraps in the wilds.

The banner would be more challenging.  First, I didn't like the idea of an actual banner.  This isn't a warhost, it's a patrolling force, to scout ahead or defend the borders.  They aren't likely to be waving a flag around.  

So a hunting horn would serve the same purpose and seem much more appropriate I think. 

1. Take one of the rangers with 2 axes and saw his left arm off.   

2. Trim the axe handle down and smooth it to be the horn mouthpiece

3. Cut the axe head off and cut the axe handle down to a bit smaller than you want the horn length to be, before it starts to curve up.

4. Cut the arm at the elbow at a 45 degree angle. 

5. Drill into the body and sink a paperclip into it to be the basis of the upper arm. 

6. Glue the arm to the paper clip and horn to the mouth

7. Use Green Stuff to sculpt a simple horn

8. Use Green Stuff to sculpt the upper arm: it's very easy.

Still to do: smooth the horn and widen the hole and paint them up!

Weird World War II Battle: Final Test Play

On Friday we ran a large game of our Weird World War II setting, to test out the final adjustments and see if it balances out. We had two 300 pt armies of Germans on one side, being Hydra and the Werewolf force against 300 pts of the BLA and 225 pts of Polish.  This would be a more urban battle.

The Polish, at left, had a great deal of captured gear: a KV-85 & T34 tank, three Panzer 38-T's and a couple German transports.  The Belgians brought their newest device: an allied British Firefly outfitted to be a walker. And of course, plenty of monkeys and apes!

 The wolf troops set up in the graveyard, probably hoping to dig for bones before the conflict erupted...
That jagdpanzer was going to be trouble.  And further back in the field the forces of Hydra were arrayed.

The jagdpanzer & panzer IV make short work of the thinnly armored 38-T's.  But not before a Hydra transport was destroyed.

The Polish advance and take up position in cover of a ruined building and a wall. 

The Panzer IV is destroyed from a long shot by the KV. meanwhile the wolves advance. 

The Firefly rounds the corner and gets one shot on the Jagdpanzer: fails to penetrate it's armor, and will be destroyed for waking the sleeping cat next turn.

The Alpha werewolf leaps from the ruined building onto the T-34 and rips it apart. 

He's a dangerous fellow, so don't tease him about his lederhosen.

His mommy dresses him this way.  Says he's a good boy.  

Who's a good boy? You are! Oh yes you are!

This was before Europe had leash laws. 

What we learned: Regeneration was too good and too inexpensive.  It would effectively make immortal super heroes for any who took it.  That is all fixed now.  Still might be a bargain, but since there are ways around it, it might be just about right now. We made the cost dependent on the mitigation of the character, rather than a straight value.  Reasonable since a character with 1 hit point won't benefit from regeneration as much as a character with 5 hit points.  

This is a problem in a lot of wargames that try to have modular or build them yourself characters. 

A classic example of this problem is Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  For as long as I can remember there has been the Frostblade magic sword: 100 points for a sword that is completely normal except for the attribute that a single unsaved wound will kill anything.  '100 points' is a fixed value, but the sword isn't the same value in the hands of all characters.  Give it to a goblin hero and you'll still have a poor chance of killing a dwarf hero. But give that same sword to a chaos lord and you can reasonably expect to be killing dragons. So why does it cost the same points? A 3+ ward save is worth a lot less on a skaven hero than a vampire lord, etc.  

One of the reasons such games are hopelessly unbalanced. 

I'm glad we've been trying to aim for a real balance. It isn't easy, but the results are worth it. 

Gunfight at the Passing Fair Corral

So it was time for the final round up of Legends of the Old West.
The final battle was a team match: of the four competing in the last battle, the lowest & highest rated of the four would fight against the middle two. The lower of the pair was the employer who had hired a more fearsome posse to help it take over the town.
This meant it was a brace of brothers, a Comanche chief hired the Pinkertons against my El Rojo who hired the Tequila Syndicate. The employed posses could run off and it wouldn't end the fight, but if either employer posse ran, that'd be the end and the other side would win.

Dawn came to the sleepy town:

A newer gringo community was expanding on the eastern side of Dry Creek.  In the upper right you can see the protestant church.  We reasoned that this church had recently converted the Comanche chief and encouraged him to stir up trouble in the western half of town, with intention of burning down the Catholic church.  The self-proclaimed Cardinal appealed to his more devote members (ie. bribe-able) and two Bandido gangs went out to meet the Indians... but the Chief was no fool,he had an Ace up his sleave too: he'd hired the notorious Pinkertons.

A Brigade of Bandidos

An Infiltration of Interlopers

The "Cardinal" looks pleased.

The bandidos get the jump and lunge forward, two vaqueros provide passenger service for two riflemen.. well, one riflewoman: Rosarita, sharp shooter for El Rojo... the rifles head for the central building's balcony.

The Indians sneak through the alleys, heading to take positions.

The Mexicans surge forward to meet the threat.

These are well equipped Indians! Several rifles and a shotgun. No running across the field to fight here: they take cover behind a wall and in a building. Some of the hired guns take position on a hill for better view.   

The Tequila boys tangle with the Pinkertons on the south end of town.

The balcony draws far more fire than they expected.  Rosarita gets gunned down early, but Jorge has 2 wounds and high grit, and will draw at least 20 shots before being taken out. 

Indicative of a lot of our luck: The hired explosive expert throws his dynamite at the Indians behind their wall:

1.

Ouch.  The Peon running cover will die... a goat for his family is on its way, but the dynamite man was fine!

But.. so were the Indians. 

With Rosarita and Jorge out of action, the balcony is reinforced by a tough, a pistolero and Madre Ortega herself!  It must be said these suns of snakes took great pleasure in shooting at the poor old woman! 

Meanwhile, the Pinkertons over run the south end of town and begin to sweep to the center, as the remaining bandits there also head in to try to route the Indians.

But the Indians are secure.  They dispatched the Vaqueros, and when they finally shot Madre Ortega, it was too much for El Rojo: a tear came to his eye seeing his dear tough old Abuela fall, remembering fondly her strength from her repeated beatings. He called retreat. No Cardinal was worth the life of his Grandmother.

It was a fun season of Legends of the Old West!  Thanks to my partner in banditry and congrats to the Comanche & Pinkertons on their win!

Can't catch me! Gingerbread Man: Minion of Frau Totenkinder

"You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!" 

We've finally hammered out the rules for or 'weird, super & monster' characters for our Weird World War II campaign. It was a lot of work, but they seem pretty good and solid now. 

The weird characters come in tiers of 1 main character, side-kicks or teams of secondary characters and then henchmen that at best are only a bit above an average human.  The main two stats are Avoidance & Mitigation.  Both function as saves on a d6 against attacks, but have additional characteristics, such as avoidance increases movement & moving through rough ground, leaping obstacles, etc with more benefit the higher it goes, and Mitigation increases hit points as well as allows other benefits dependent on other optional skills.  Stats go up to 5, but only a main character can have 5, secondary characters are limited to 4. In addition main characters can't have a combined score of more than 8, side-kicks a score of 6 and team members a score of 5. Henchmen are maxed at a lowly 2. And of course there are a host of other skills to tailor the characters to create what you have in mind. 

So for the Totenkinder force Gingerbread Man is a side-kick class character. He's the first to be introduced since he was very much a simple speed paint! 

Gingerbread Man is a golem.  But not of wood, stone or flesh...he is a confection of super-hardened baked goods, forged in Frau Totenkinder's magic oven in the shaderealm. 

He has an Avoidance of 4, giving him a move of 9" (compared to normal move of 5") and he can run through woods without problem and leap over 4" high obstacles with ease.  His Mitigation is 2.  He has an additional three attacks and once per battle he can do a whirlwind attack for 4 further attacks.  He can also blast a wave of heat out of his mouth, "Oven Breath" which is an 8" cone attack doing 3 dice attack on anyone hit by the blast. 

For scale, here is the Gingerbread Man with an Ahnenerbe Flashentrooper.

The trooper will have a blue-glow for his weapon, like the magic icing runes for the Gingerbread Man.

Jaw-dropping Sculpture of Kris Kuksi

Artist Kris Kuksi, who also works in painting and drawing, has created some of the most impressive and thought provoking sculptures I have ever seen.  Not exactly miniatures, but it seems most of his sculptures do fit within one to three cubic feet, so these aren't man-sized or park statues.  There are many with tanks, zeppelins, Napoleon and the like which will be immediately appealing to gamers, but take a good long look and ponder at all of them: there is a lot to appreciate and think about here.

Fans of the 40k gothic aesthetic will weep.

 

    

Check them out at:

http://kuksi.com/artworks/sculpture/

Frau Totenkinder: a force to be reckoned with in (weird) WWII

Awhile back, in an irresistible call to have an opposing faction, I mentioned that I had succumbed to the call and would be building a second faction, one to oppose the Belgian Liberation Army, for our Weird World War II gaming.  And I said I'd reveal it soon, so here now is a bit about the plans for the force.

The central figure, much like the BLA has Professor Poireau, is Frau Totenkinder.

She is far more than the frail elderly woman she appears to be.  Much more.  Her exact nature is unknown, but some truths can be guessed about her.  If she ever was human, she has not been for a very long time.  Her exact age is unknown, but undoubtedly she is older than a thousand years, and perhaps in some form or other has always existed.  She has skipped across history and human awareness like a stone across a pond.  Now is only the most recent manifestation.  This secret is known by only a few. Others would be more familiar with her as various 'wicked witch' characters from fairy tales.  But she is no fairy tale.

Frau Totenkinder is very real.  There are truths in the stories she appears in, but the shape of them is always malformed by human telling, perhaps by her design.  Her stories have central elements which betray her presence: she lures the young to feed on their youth and energy and tempts them with visions of safety in a dangerous world. Sometimes her actions are direct, sometimes she is an unseen force behind these stories.  Curiously, while in the stories she is always defeated, this is most certainly not the reality.  

Totenkinder seems to be tied to the lands and culture of Germany and has appeared many times in stories revealed by the Brothers Grimm.  She has surfaced again, and takes a more active role in events than any record indicates.  She is now the highest ranking female officer in the Nazi regime of Germany, and is commander of the new militant arm of the Ahnenebre: a small but elite force made up of soldiers with the latest technologies, but rumors of Erbschaftheld, men and women of amazing abilities, and stranger creatures besides, surround this organization.  

Allied scholars with more imagination than fear of mocking by their peers believe these stories, and propose that Frau Totenkinder could be a more serious threat than the regime she appears to be a part of.  

___
Inspiration for this gaming character comes from Frau Totenkinder from the comic Fables by Bill Willingham.  It is a great series with very interesting spins on characters familiar to all.  In that vein I've taken the character of Frau Totenkinder and put her in a new setting and set her lose with her own agenda, a spider in her web, controlling other characters who will make themselves known soon.