Saturday, January 18, 2014

Thorgrim's Eighties Adventure


 Arrrr this took me back, I haven't played Fantasy War Hammer in many decades. It was great to just reach into an old box, grab a handful of figures and roll a few dice. I didn't even spend very long picking Thorgrim, he was just the one with the best paint job in the unpainted hordes. Great fun. Here he is striding into Goblin valley. I was very intrested to see how many goblins he could cut through before he was taken down.
 
 Back in 1984 this is how we used to play, hundreds of unbased, unpainted figures all advancing in mobs. We didn't really care much for units or formations, it was just about having hundreds of figures on the table. For this reason we never actually finished any games right to the end. Although really we didn't need to, after a few rounds it was obvious who had won . We never really got into points either so my poor old Orc army was always shot to bits by thousands of Wood Elf archers before they could get close.

 It was all in a days gaming though and if one orc did well then that was enough for me. By 'well' I mean actually got to kill an Elf. After a few hours pushing the unpainted hordes around we would scrape them all into a box again and rush to watch Robin of Sherwood at six o'clock, ready to do it all again the next week.So setting up a quick table brought the old memories flooding back.

The rules used for this challenge were WH 2nd edition, these are the ones I remember and the closest to hand. Champions, Minor Heroes and Major Heroes all seem to have become a thing of the past in later editions which surprised me. I hadn't realised the rules had changed so much in my many years away from it. From what I can tell the next edition is greatly improved. I couldn't help buying an old tattered copy of eBay and I loved the 'level' system for characters, much better.Anyway I digress, let's get back to poor Thorgrim.

 Thorgrim had already cut through quite a few goblins before this picture, I had taken to removing the casualties and reusing them. I soon realised this didn't look very impressive for a photo Blog and put them back to keep a visual record of the slaughter. A Dwarf major Hero vs waves of Goblins, I knew he would do well but I soon realised it was a massacre!
Part of the reason for the epic death toll was the fact that my poor gobbos had to get a seven or more to hit , this meant rolling a six then rolling again to get a 4,5 or 6. This would count as a seven, after that I would have to roll again to see if the hit was a wound. The very few that did hit never managed to wound. Only the wolf managed to get a lucky bite in that got through the Dwarf's mail. However, like the games of old, this lucky roll was enough to make my night for me and the game turned in to one full of laughter and much noise.Even though my lucky wolf never lasted long enough to get a second taste of Dwarf, he did me proud.

2 comments:

Mr Papafakis said...

Very reminiscent of how my friends & I used to play. We even deluded ourselves that we actually knew the rules too.

Fun times.

Karitas said...

Love it, and love the old lead too, I remember those darker coloured metals...

although i see you havent got the traditional "hill made from books" tsk tsk.