It is the feaste day of St. Gary of Gygax. A particularly cold Winter day. A young girl walking the Castleton Road observed that there was smoke coming from the ancient ruins known as the Helmouth. This frightened her for she grew up hearing the stories from her grandparents about the last time smoke blew from the Helmouth. Demons had came. They came in great number to kill and burn. This time would be no different.
When word spread of the smoke sighting the local Grey Knight Lord Voss began to organize a militia to try and stop whatever might come from below. The local Bishop of the Lord of Light, Fr. Zunedorf rallied his guard and friars to aid the Grey Knight.
Alongside the Bishop, and a local baron, Lord Tolstig, the Grey Knight and his hastily summoned army of peasants and men-at-arms marched down the Castleton Road to the Helmouth.
As they approached there was a great fire already burning in front of the Helmouth. It was cast to screen the demon army as it crawled from the abyss.
Battle soon commenced. Many peasants stood froze on the battleground from the fear of what they witnessed spreading out in front of them. Winged demons, three times the height of a man with great swords and pitchforks. There were others there too, that though they appeared as men, were clearly dark and vile.
Though all fought valiantly most were slain and their flesh consumed by the monsters from below. Bishop Zunedorf fought with a heroic resistance. Slaying a greater demon while fending off two others. The Grey Knight, Lord Voss lead a valiant charge in the center. He and his men fought ferociously but were soon cut down. Not long after even Bishop Zunedorf would fall. With 2/3 of their force dead or dying, Baron Tolstig ordered his men to retreat they must warn the King of Aramon. The nearby company of peasants that saw this turned and ran too.
I planned a 5 battle mini-campaign. I didn't expect the first battle to go too good for the realm of men. However they gave a better account of themselves then I expected.
The rules used are what I'm calling Grid Wars. My own fantasy adoption from Peter of Grid Based Wargaming 40K grid rules.
My paint plan is to paint one unit from the victorious side of each battle. This time it will be the demon army, most likely the helspawn men that were designed by Arian Croft of Ill Gotten Games. However the bishop fought so well I'm going to paint him too.
Now had the men won, then the campaign would have ended there. Instead the next battle will be to capture a local shrine. If the forces of men win there then another battle fought at the Helmouth. If the demons win they advance to the third scenario which will be to destroy a town.
I also plan to paint the terrain for the next scenario before I fight it. I wanted to get stuck in quick so I just went with the terrain I had already printed this time. This was a fun and rewarding battle.
I like the idea of painting one units from the victorious side to help the painting motivation.
ReplyDeleteThank you Peter. I'm glad I came across your rules.
ReplyDeleteBravo! As an old fan of Peter's sci-fi grid wargame, I would love to hear more about any changes or tweaks you made to shift over to fantasy combat (and how those tweaks worked out). Or, did you mainly run the rules as-is? I was just thinking about my own medieval/fantasy 'hack' of this approach and then found your site.
ReplyDeleteHey Gundobad thanks for the read and comment!
ReplyDeleteI made some changes, mostly to combat. I added "Rend" from AoS and worked out that a weapon with rend will reduce the opponents armor rating by 1.
For magic users they can use between 1 to 4 dice. Any die scores of 1 count as a hit on the magic user unit. Bows, slings, javelins, hand crossbow, hand gun units may move & shoot. Crossbows & muskets may not. Bows roll 1d6 and have a range of up to 4 grids. Crossbows have a range of 3 grids and roll 3, 2 or 1 d6 respectively depending upon range of target. Muskets have a range of 3 grids and always roll 2d6.
I added +1D6 to close combat for a flank or rear attack and -1d6 for an unopposed enemy in an adjacent grid.
That's all I can recall for now. For whatever reason I failed to write the magic rules down on paper. Now that you have asked I'll have this comment to refer to when I add it to my journal. Cheers!