Busy times!

There's so much to do in December it makes my face hurt! This month's massive workload has been juggled and fobbed off to fit in as much gaming as possible...

At the club I played a campaign game vs Robert. He invaded lands I'd taken from the Dwarves, daring to show up with the sad remnants of Van Morrlich's army. A Warpriest Lord, Level 4 and level 2 mages, a BSB captain, a witch hunter hero, hellblaster volleygun, 5 outriders and 15 swordsmen. To give him a chance, Paul sent him a regiment of 20 handgunners. This sad crew was the 'army' daring to invade Chlodulf's realm!

Chlodulf: pissed.

I had to give up the siege of the Dwarven capital to face him down, which was troublesome, but my Vampire Count army was almost twice that of the Empire. I had Chludolf, the Strigoi King with skabscrath, Hrodgar the Black, my level 2 necromancer, 16 grave guard, a terrorgheist, 2 bases of batswarm, a spirit host, units of 25 and 50 zombies, 3 fell bats, a corpsecart and 51 skeletons.

Robert's plan was to sting me as badly as possible, taking out the big ticket units before retreating off the field. He also sprung a surprise as John's dwarven longbeards appeared in my deployment zone in turn 2! Skullduggery! To avoid getting Chlodulf's fingers burnt, I advanced behind a wall of zombies and skellies, using them as a meatshield for the army. Once the dwarves appeared, I sent the terrorgheist to dance around them and scream them to death whilst they milled helplessly about. Nay danger!

Corpsecart: fatality!

In the end Robert I more or less drew. I managed to get a Vanhels off to get Chlodulf's skellies in the Empire deployment zone. Surrounded by the imperial characters - who would no doubt scarper out of charge arcs in their own turn, I got in range of scabscrath and used it to slay his level 4 mage. His hellblaster misfired twice in one turn and blew itself up :-) The priest general and the witchhunter legged it off the table, whilst he voluntarily retreated the rest of his army away. All in my casualties were the corpsecart, the spirit host, the bat swarm and 4 skeletons. John lost 5 dwarves for being a rude tit. Next turn - the autumn turn in the campaign, I began another siege against John. His lands will be mine one day...

I googled 'dead dwarf' and this came up. Seems good!

Otherwise at the club, I've been GM-ing some more Necromunda games and playing lots and lots of Spartacus! Harky has shown himself to machiavelli's own bastard offspring, and I continue my trend of not being able to win anything (at all) when playing against Tam. Damn his beady eyes and his mountainous piles of gold! The club has a pretty different feel to it now, which is good. There was a definite 'hangover' lull after the league ended. I think most of us needed a break from warhammer for a bit! I've only played a couple of big one offs since then - a vamps vs vamps big rammy against Mark and the six player storms of magic game. Until Robert invaded I've had one game out of Paul's campaign, but other than that I've lain off it a bit. I, and most of the lads have been trying out some other systems, dabbling in a bit of this and a bit of that, but nothing much had been going on for a few weeks. But, it gave us a chance to try some new things and now there are some new projects gaining their momentum. Spartacus has proven itself popular, Kev's x-wing game looks pretty nice, the flames of war league is in full swing thanks to Geoff's efforts for which my Wehrmacht Infantrie Kompany is nearly ready to fight. On top of this, Martin's 40k blitz seems to have kicked off at last, and the Necromunda campaign is romping on.

Not long until my sexy Stuka squadron be blowing bitches up!

Outside of club nights - at Robert's house to be precise - Martin's taken on the mantle of GM from Kev. He's running a Ravenloft module called 'Death Unchained'. Pollock ran this one years ago, which I played in, but I remember nothing other than being ambushed in a field somewhere. Needless to say, all fields were treated with suspicion.... Good fun so far, lots of eery suspense and mystery. Impaled corpses galore and heavy handed guards to beat us up. Good times! Another session of this one and then its Angus for GM, then back to me for the journey into Scardano's lair - if anyone's still alive by then...

Will anyone survive?

Last week D&D was called off late, so we ended up playing Kev's Cthulhu boardgame, the 'Elder Sign'. Players have to go into a museum archive and clear it out before a critter can come though a dimensional gate. Play is card based and the pieces all look very, very nice. Got to say its the most complicated number I've played in quite some time though! Going to take some getting used to on this one... In the end we couldn't prevent it breaking through, so we had to fight it. Kev, John, Angus and I all died and had our brains sucked out, but Martin's character put the critter down and stumbled blinking out into the daylight clutching his final shred of sanity.

Many fiddly little components, but they all look really nice...

I'm off on holiday now (yaaaas!) - time to chill out a bit and get some new projects on the go. I'm going to set up an idea for the club's Necromunda campaign to align the players into two rough factions under 'Blake' the pseudo-governor, and his nemesis, the gangster boss Papa Tango. This should provide a good hook for a long running campaign plot thread and setup some good big multiplayer battles. There was also a lot of talk of the Warhammer Vet's league at the club night out last night (hangover is immense). Think it be time to post it up on the forums and keep the talk going!