Wargods and CC3 - Version 2

Ok, a couple of instruction videos down the line and I think I am beginning to understand a few more things. Here's the next version of the campaign map. Have I made any progress? I think so. CC3 seems simple enough to get the basics quickly but probably has a lot more subtlety to it that I may well manage to learn later. Hmm, Steve's a CAD wallah. Perhaps I should just point it in his direction and see what he makes of it.

Mapping Aegyptus with Campaign Cartographer 3

I have been considering putting together a Wargods of Aegyptus mini-campaign recently. It would be the first episode in a series that ideally would see the harbingers rise from lowly Ka1 wannabes all the way to Ka10 and possibly one of them becoming Pharaoh or restoring Osiris to the throne. The basic campaign idea is a simple one. The Harbingers must find the clues, which are located at significant named spots. Once all the clues have been found there is a climactic big battle. Each clue will add a bonus to the warband that finds it, so finding lots of clues will give an advantage to the warband that does this. So, I wanted it to be a map campaign and had drawn up a simple grid on paper. Then yesterday I weakened and bought Campaign Cartographer 3, primarily for mapping my Labyrinth Lord campaign but I produced an Aegyptus map first. This is the result, my first warts and all CC3 map using the basic package and no add-ons.

I was very surprised at how easy it was to produce this map. A quick whizz through the basic tutorial followed by a quick run through the CC3 Essentials pdf manual. A trip to the forum yielded a couple of clues about approaches and techniques too, as I read a few posts by first-timers getting their own work checked out, followed by looking up the topics in the main manual. So, that was Sunday afternoon filled up. I then spent an hour knocking this map together in the evening. I've tinkered with the settings a bit more today, in between running errands for my wife, but a small investment of time has yielded a perfectly usable map. It's not brilliant but I am quite pleased with it as a first effort. My next task is to try the same map using a different basic map type and see how that works. The range of icons available in the standard Vector style map is not as great as in the standard bitmap fill map, so let's see what I can do with the latter.

Overall I am very pleased with the basic CC3 package and how easy it is to use. I am not a great digital artist and have only sporadically used CAD packages in the past, so I am not an expert there. I use Photoshop Elements a bit, but this is not the same style of package and I am no great digital artist with PSE either, but I reckon that with a little bit more practice and thought I could be churning out competent maps for my games quite happily using CC3. I also suspect that I shall be spending a small fortune on the add-on packages too once I really get going!

The Rock Muppets March On

One of my July projects was completing my Totanem (Rock Muppet) warband for Wargods of Aegyptus. I had a unit of warriors, a hero and a Stone Colossus to paint. Well, I finished them with hours to spare, varnishing them on the morning of 31st July and finishing off the bases in the afternoon. Here they are in all their schisty glory.

Unit of warriors led by a hero:

I had a spare shield, so I added it to the hero, because I already have one of this model in the warband, so I thought it would make him a little different.

Stone Colossus:

The Stone Colossus is a creation that the harbinger of the warband can build when he gains enough Ka (equivalent to levels in an RPG or something like that anyway). It is a slow but tough juggernaut that can level buildings with its bare fists. I suspect that it will also be an arrow magnet in any game we play.

The whole warband:

This is the whole warband. It consists of:

1. The harbinger (front centre)
2. A master of words or magic-user (centre left)
3. An artifex, who crafts items of power for selected characters in the warband (centre right)
4. The Stone Colossus (rear)
5. Two units of warriors, each led by a hero

The figures shown here weigh in at between 850 and 900 points, depending upon how I rate the heroes (they could be bought as champions or heroes). To bring it up to the starting warband default level of 1000 points, I would add a unit of Khemru slingers to give me some missile capability.

You will notice that the newer figures are a different colour from the older ones. This is because I tried a different painting technique on these ones. Instead of doing lots of highlighting, I just washed the figures in a stone colour and allowed the white undercoat and the wash to provide the shading. Then I dipped the figures to increase the contrast a bit. I think it worked quite well and I would not be too embarrassed to field these figures on the table.

Slowly Clearing Things Out

I don't know about you, but I find it hard to throw stuff out, or even to get around to selling it. I am not particularly enamoured of EBay these days either. It is getting more and more expensive to use, is not particularly friendly to the individual that occasionally wants to sell something and you hear more and more stories of fraud too. To my mind, EBay is no longer really an auction house and more like a department store. This is a shame.

Another problem I have is that I dislike selling my unpainted lead. You don't get back what you paid originally. This means that I tend to hoard the lead until the walls are fit to bursting and will rarely sell it off unless I get around to painting it. If I get around to painting it, then I have completed the project, so why would I then sell it? Tough problem!

So, I was looking at my collection and wondering about rationalising it again. I have done this in the past and usually wind up buying the self-same figures all over again at a later date when the enthusiasm resurfaces. This time around I decided to sell some Heru from the Wargods of Aegyptus range. I have two units that are painted and based, so my prospects for selling these figures ought to be reasonably good as long as I pick the right price point. Another consideration was that I only kept the Heru because I wanted the option of fielding them in a game, and I wanted them available as an enemy for my Typhon warband. I have no particular desire to field a Heru warband myself, but it is always good to have a spare warband in case you can entice others to play the game. I have other, unpainted, Heru in my collection and Wargods also allows for human contingents in each warband. These humans count towards the compulsory element of the warband. This means that I can retain a unit of Heru, add some humans and still field the Heru warband if I so choose. I don't need to keep these other figures and can use them as a means of earning a bit of money towards my wargaming budget, assuming they sell.

This leads me on to the next issue. How much do I list them for and how much do I rate my painting at? If I were to send these figures to a professional painter it could cost me £5 per figure plus postage, were I to use a UK based service. I could send them to Sri Lanka and get them painted for around £1 per figure for a basic paint job (more for a better job) but then I have to take the risk on shipping them around the world. Also, these prices do not include the cost of the figure. Surely other people consider these too when deciding to bid on an auction. Well, I hope they do but I suspect that most do not. They come to EBay with expectations of getting a bargain. This has been my experience in the past when selling figures. People do not want to pay the going rate. In the end, I have looked at similar figures on Ebay and worked out what the minimum I would accept is. I listed the figures at that price. It covers the lead cost and the cost of my painting without being as expensive as a professional figure painter in the UK would charge. Let's see if I get any bites.

On a side note, I did see that someone was selling Anubi warriors (basic warrior figure, which retails for around £20 per unit of ten) at £9.99 per painted figure. There were bids on those figures too. I wonder if I should have broken up my units and sold individual figures at that price instead. It would have massively increased my potential profit margin!

The figures I am planning to sell are a unit of Heru Archers (EBay Link):

and a unit of Heru with Polearms (EBay Link):

Searchers of the Lost Uraei - A Wargods Report

We played Wargods again last night. Wargods really is a good game and the command system in it makes every game tense and exciting. Last night's game was a continuation of a mini-campaign that we started many moons ago. It saw my warband heading into the swamps to try to recover information about a tribe of no-good Nekharu that we have to find for some reason that currently escapes me. Steve has written the scenario up on his blog. I am now really looking forward to the final part of the campaign. Then it will be my turn to write a mini-campaign for Steve's warband, the forces of Karn the Flayer. I wrote a Wargods of Valhalla mod some time back that is still downloadable from the Gods of War ezine. This introduces Viking forces into Wargods. As anyone that knows me will be able to tell you, I like Vikings. So, I have tentatively titled this new mini-campaign Snow Trek: The Wrath of Karn. I wonder if there are merchandising rights to sell based on this one?

Wargods - Punishment of the Priest

We played Wargods using our newly painted figures last Thursday. If you can remember that far back, we painted Wargods figures for our May objective. I painted a Khemru (children of Khnum, the goat-headed god) warband, while Steve painted Heru (children of Horus, the falcon-headed god). So, we agreed to play a basic 1000 point game using those figures.

My warband had two units of slingers, one of mace goats and a selection of heroes to captain the units. I also had a beastmaster with three lions, and a master of words as well as my harbinger (a warlord type figure imbued with the power of his god).

Steve had a unit of Heru archers, a unit of halberdiers, some heroes and a unit of Anubi warriors, together with his harbinger.

Wargods comes with a list of 10 scenarios in the rulebook and 20 sub-plots. We rolled a d10 for the scenario and rolled up The Punishment of the Priest. In this scenario the defender has to protect a priest, while the other side is trying to capture him. I was the defender, so I received the priest. Steve was not allowed to kill the priest, so he had to capture him and stop me from getting him back. As a further complication we rolled a d20 to get a sub-plot. We rolled up Sandstorm. I groaned when I saw this, because it would reduce visibility and make my slingers less effective. They were the backbone of my warband so I was relying on them to weaken the enemy before he closed to melee. My problem was that the Heru are brilliant in melee, while my Khemru are rubbish. I could only hope for some good dice on the visibility roll. If they were high enough then the sandstorm would abate. I did have one advantage though. My master of words had a spell that would remove the sandstorm for one turn each time it was cast. Perhaps all was not lost.

We set up and set to. I hid the priest behind my slingers, who were on a sand dune. Meanwhile my mace-goats and my beastmaster set up on the right flank. Steve set up opposite with his troops focused on the area where the priest was.



It did not take long for the troops to clash, although Steve was a trifle upset to lose half of a unit to a Spiky Ground spell. That did help me though! You can see the Spiky Ground template just in front of the temple. Between it and the temple, you can see the proxy shining chariot with the Heru harbinger in it and my harbinger attacking from its flank.



With the troops closing on each other, I chose to run the priest off into the temple, to try to keep him out of harm's way. At this time we both envisaged a bit of a Benny Hill finish with his troops running around after the priest.



I could not foresee my Khemru holding out or even beating off the Heru, but, as the final shot shows, they did. Although two of my units routed, they recovered immediately and returned to the fray. Meanwhile, my harbinger had dispatched his harbinger, which really finished the game. At this point, Steve had a hero left and a small number of troops. We agreed to call it a day.



Conclusions
Wargods is an annoyingly good game. We both had an excellent time playing and the game was tense. The way to win at Wargods, is to second-guess your opponent. You could try to design a broken tournament army if you want, but the warband design system is such that this is not really possible. This means that most games of Wargods are all about sussing out your opponent and doing the unexpected. Sometimes we do this by forgetting which is our left and which is our right when putting out turn orders. More often it is about trying to decide what you opponent is planning to do and then spoiling it for him. This makes it a great game.

So, why is Wargods annoyingly good? Well, that has to do with the support it receives from Crocodile Games. They are a small company, so they cannot afford to produce new figures all the time because they rely on sales of the newest release to fund the next release. But, worse than that is the lack of focus. Some years back Crocodile Games released some figures for the Wendigo, hairy snow beasts. There were enough figures to form a warband, but not to do all the options available in the rules they released for it. Of course, these rules are playtest rules and have never been released in a final format. Similarly, they released the Olympus playtest rules and finally the Spartans. However, at the time, there were not starter sets for each of the races in Aegyptus. Some races had starter sets but not all of them. There are more figures available for Aegyptus now, but you still cannot buy a starter set for every race. This is quite a psychological barrier when trying to get other people to play. I cannot help but think that more focus on the Aegyptian races and less on expansions would have benefitted the game and made it more popular. If you could get a starter set for every race, people might be more willing to invest in it. You can still form warbands for every race. That is not a problem now, and new figures are in the pipeline to expand these races, but people see the game as incomplete because of the starter sets.

So, it is annoyingly good because the game play is brilliant but people see the lack of starter sets and don't want to start playing it. Still, we enjoy it.

End of May Update

Well, it has taken me longer than I expected to get around to photographing the last of my Khemru. Here we see a unit of mace-goats, which was my final unit to paint in May. Victory! Remember to click on the pictures if you would like to see larger versions of them.



The mace goats are the main melee arm of the Khemru. Armed with sturdy bronze maces, good armour and a stout shield, they are able to wade into battle and get slaughtered by their enemies, while the slingers evade like mad and try to stay away from the enemy's archers, who outrange them.

The next picture is of an approximately 1000 point warband for Wargods of Aegyptus. As you can see, it comprises two units of slingers, one unit of mace goats, the harbinger, a beastmaster, a hero, a master of words and a priestess. I have put together this warband as a pure Khemru force to play in our game next week.



Although I have designed this force using solely Khemru figures, Wargods does not insist on uni-racial warbands. In fact, you can mix and match to suit your preferences for the main part. Some races will not permit others into their warbands, such as the Typhon (followers of Set), who hate the Heru (followers of Horus) with a vengeance. Because Set slew Horus, neither will work with the others. This mix-and-match mentality is brilliant because it allows you to use all the cool figures in your warband. I should point out that Wargods warbands are mostly governed by the need to have figures that look cool in them. Often these figures are not particularly effective, but that is beside the point. Some munchkins and beardy wonders do try to min-max but they are the exception rather than the rule and we do not share our Jaffa Cakes with them. Jaffa Cakes are the food of the gods!

The Month of the Goat

This month's target was to paint my Khemru for Wargods of Aegyptus. The Khemru are the children of Khanum, an Aegyptian god of life. It was Khanum that created people, spinning them out of clay on his potter's wheel and then holding them up for Ra to cast his life-giving rays onto them, before Khanum placed them in the womb to be born. The Khemru are cast in the image of Khanum, being goat-headed, and revere life. They abhor spilling blood and will only use blunt weapons as a result.

So far this month I have painted one unit of Khemru slingers, two harbingers of Khanum, one priestess of Khanum, one Khemru hero, one Khemru Master of Words (wizard), one Khemru beast-master, one lion and one undead Khemru Crypt Lord. This amounts to the twenty figures I needed for the monthly target of 2 Victory Points. I have a unit of Khemru warriors on my painting desk at the moment and I hope to complete them this month to earn a bonus victory point.

When painting these figures, I used a simple technique of washing the mid colour over a white undercoat. This gives natural highlighting as the pigment settles in the folds and the white undercoat naturally highlights the raised areas. To further enhance the effect, I then used a magic wash coloured with Windsor and Newton Peat Brown ink. While it will not win any painting competitions, this technique is quick and effective. It leads to wargames standard figures that I shall not be embarrassed to place on the games table.

In addition to getting the figures painted, I decided to tart up their movement trays. Someone had commented that they did not like the black movement trays that I used at a demo game at Salute last year. Personally, I do like them. With slottabased figures, I always go back over the edges of the base with black to make the figure stand out from the table a bit. I also paint my movement trays black, so that they are like a display plinth for my figures. It is simple, quick and defines the unit. One thing that I had always intended to do, though, was texture the spacers in my skirmish units, so I have done that. I have also painted the base of the movement tray sand coloured so that it does not jar as much when casualties are removed. However, I have still retained the black sides of the tray. It may not be to everyone's taste, but it suits mine.

Click on the pictures below for a larger picture.

Movement tray

Khemru slingers on movement tray.

Khemru harbinger

Asar harbinger of Khanum

Khemru priestess

Khemru master of words

Khemru hero

Khemru beastmaster with lioness (I have two more lions ready and painted but they were not part of this month's project. The beastmaster is allowed up to four lions, so I already have one more lion on the shopping list)

Khemru crypt lord (I was pleased with the way his cloak came out so I have included front and back shots of this chap)

The good thing about the Khemru is that they actually have a multiplicity of uses. They can be Broo in Runequest, Beastmen in Warrior Heroes: Armies and Adventures, or Beastmen in any other system that uses Beastmen. These particular figures will feature in our Wargods games, and will almost certainly make an appearance in our pulp games too. I can envisage using them in Larger than Life, possibly featuring as the villains on my Larger than Life blog at some point, or as a lost tribe in .45 Adventures, or even in Broadsword Adventures. Perhaps I need to give some of them ray-guns so that they can feature in a Fantastic Worlds game too. Now there's a thought ...

Aieee Shub-Niggurath

Sorry, not a Cthulhu project, but May is the month of the goat.


We have agreed to spend May painting Wargods of Aegyptus figures. This does not really fit with our stated aim of painting armies and then playing games that we have not previously played, because we have played rather a lot of Wargods before. I am, after all, the current pan-European champion! Still, that does mean that we have loads of unpainted figures for Wargods, which we can use them for other projects too.


I am planning to start with a couple of units of Khemru (goat-headed critters) and some characters to go with them. These will double as beastmen for Warrior Heroes Armies and Adventures, and I suspect that I can use them as monsters in Broadsword Adventures too. I probably have other games that will suit them too and just need to think about it a bit. For variety, I have added a couple of undead Khemru to the mix. One is the limited edition Undead Beastmaster found in the Eater of the Dead starter set. The other is a Khemru Crypt Lord.


So, on with the challenge. In May I shall not be aiming to award myself 2VPs for completing the challenge. Instead I shall award myself 1VP for each unit of 10 figures or equivalent that I complete. Hopefully I shall manage at least 2VPs worth of figures, but I hope that I can manage more than that. After all, I have the Khemru warband to paint as well as half a Totanem warband, an Eater of the Dead force, a Tethru starter set, some Heru, a dozen or so Basti camp-followers, a unit of Sebeki and the rest of my Olympus warband. So, with all that ahead of me, I had better get myself ready for the challenge!