The Karubi Island Dox Dox

Krüger and I have talked a lot about playing an orcs versus wood elves campaign on one of the Karubi islands, using HOTT and Warhammer as rule sets.

Sven plans to come to Berlin a couple of times this year and wants to bring his freshly painted goblins. So it makes sense to kick off the Karubi island campaign with a HOTT mini-campaign, involving 2 tribes of orcs & goblins and my elves.

I drew a map of the island Dox Dox.

1 Kachelaj Oxib Tzuk - the largest forest on the western side of the island. It's where the elves live.

2 Kachelaj Imul - rabbit forest.

3 Suq - a large area of swamp. Giant mosquitos and Labyrinthodonts live there.

4 Kachelaj Jamaril - a very large forest on the eastern side of the island. Jamaril means "peace" in the language of the human population that lived on the island long before elves and orcs arrived. Actually it isn't such a peaceful place any more, if it ever was. Ruins of ancient temples are scattered throughout the jungle. Some of these are still used to summon old gods and demons.

5 A tribe of orcs & goblins under Krüger's command.

6 Juyub Labal - the bad hills, also called "the pumpkin hills" by the elves.

Now here is the problem. The elves who like to live in forests settled in the west where they found 2 small forests. The orcs on the other hand, who prefer mountain caves, settled in the east, but in the east they found a large area of tropical forest and only 3 small hills (Juyub Jamaril). It would be best if the orcs moved to the west and the elves to the east, but instead both parties defend their territory and try to conquer the whole island.

Sven's Old Campaign Map Resurrected

In 2008, around Christmas, my cousin Sven made a map for a HOTT campaign, involving 5 parties: dwarves, pirates, elves, undead and dark age Germans on horses.

We got together with a couple of friends and started to play the campaign but were not able to finish it because we only had one day. It was fun anyway.

I have been thinking about Sven's map lately, because I want to use it as a setting for our ancient "imagi-nations" project, as a landscape where all the different parties meet. (Maybe "imaginary ancient kingdoms and city-states" or "imaginary ancient lands and islands" would be a better name for the project.)

I drew the map again, only changing little things. Forests grew a bit and mountains appeared where there were none before. Caused by the movement of tectonic plates?

Here are some suggestions for names, mostly ideas from the original map. These should be translated to ancient Greek at some point to go with the imaginary ancient things theme. I will try to translate to English for now.

1 Granitinseln - granite islands

2 Eisenzipfel - iron ding dong

3 Augenkralle - eye + claw

4 Grünhuhnland - green chicken land

5 Farnoth - no idea what that means, the name was suggested by the Elven player

6 Wambeler Bucht - Wambel bay

7 Löwenkaff - backwater lion. Home of a thracian tribe under king Rhebulas. I'm going to play these.

8 Schwarzwassermoor - black water moor, land of the dead

9 Krabbwasser - crab river

Hamburg Tactica 2014 / Part Three

Browsing the Internet and Selling Books

I spent a month in Dortmund, going through my father's large collection of books. My father was an obsessive collector who left me about 2000 travel guides, coffee-table books, science books and a collection of Playboy magazines.

He had his themes. Ancient Greece, Egypt, England, Italy, North Rhine-Westphalia. And everything else.

At one time, he smuggled piles of new books into his study through the window from our garden.

There is a very good book about obsessive collecting which my father should have read: "Collecting: An Unruly Passion" by Werrner Muensterberger.

When I got tired of looking at so many old books, I browsed the internet for miniatures and games. I found a couple of interesting sites and added them to my collection of favourite links (Herr Zinnlings Links + My Blog List).

Agema Miniatures

Buck's Blog 

Chaosium

Ironwind Metals

Nortumbrian Tin Soldier

One More Gaming Project

Scott's War-gaming

Then I got interested in pulp sci-fi and old school space battle games because I met Gilbert. Gilbert is a distant relative who likes to come up with names for space heroes and their opponents. Like "Zador, the dominator of space." Or "Gortak, Zorax, Orlok."

Android Arts

Ground Zero Games

Star Ship Combat News

Wargames Supply Dump

If you share my father's interest and collect out of date travel guides, here is where you can get them: mjb78 (Amazon).

In 50 years Lina, Hendrik and Joaquín will go through my things and ask: why did he collect 28mm pirates? Plague marines? Elves? Ancient greeks? Why did he sculpt and paint 24 naked green monsters? What was wrong with him?

Hamburg Tactica 2014 / Part Two

At 3pm our first participation game started, an introduction to Field of Glory Renaissance with 15 mm miniatures. The theme of the game was Mogul India. The gaming table was really beautiful, with pieces of tropical forest, a pirate ship and various buildings. I played Indians, Krüger Persians and Jörg pirates. The fourth player was Burghart, one of Jörg's old friends from Waltrop. They had met by coincidence half an hour earlier. Burghart played British soldiers.

Each player was supposed to fight everybody else, but the double-tongued snake I am, I convinced Krüger to ally with me, while Jörg and his friend from Waltrop were already shooting with cannons at each other.

I was a bit nervous because our next game was supposed to start at 4pm, but in the end Berhard Hennen, the Perry twins and Aly Morrison took much longer to finish their game than they had originally planned. I kept pointing at Aly Morrison, telling Krüger: "Look, that's the guy who sculpted the Talisman wizard that I used as a level 2 wizard in our last game of Warhammer. And he also sculpted the chainsaw wizard that I use as a chaos lord in 40K, the one with the daemon waepon."

Thanks to the game masters from the club "Kurpfalz Feldherren" our game of Field of Glory was lots of fun. They were very friendly and patiently answered all our questions about FoG. In the end we were even offered a glass of whisky. I won the game because of my unfair diplomatic trick and because my knights and elephants turned out to be very effective against the British soldiers.

Jörg took pictures of the game.

Although Jörg drinks whiskey regularly, he ended up with a heavy headache and wasn't able to join the second participation game. He had to leave early. One of his colleagues who was in Hamburg for a soccer match gave him a lift to Berlin.

That night he twittered: #Hamburg #Tactica: Nasspalette gekauft, #FoG verloren. #Whisky. #Kopfschmerzen. Was ist da los?

Krüger and I went to the other table to try "1812 White Death". We were joined by a third player. I remember that he has four children and lives in Bremen, but I don't remember his name.

Bernhard Hennen briefly explained the rules to us which he wrote himself and gave us an exciting introduction to the background story. "1812 White Death" is a scenario-driven skirmish game with role playing elements. We played a group of French and German soldiers under Napoleon's command, lost in Russia. Bernhard Hennen, the game master, played the Russians, wolves, the unfriendly weather, etc. We had to get into a village, take along as many wounded French soldiers as we could carry, activate a cannon and occupy the buildings. A bunch of markers appeared in our rear, getting closer each turn. When close enough, they would eventually be turned over. The markers, the idea that you had to take stragglers with you and not knowing what was inside the buildings made the game quite exciting.

I think Bernhard Hennen is looking for a publisher at the moment. I hope he finds one. I can highly recommend "1812 White Death".

Our last tin soldier made it into a Russian hut around 7:30pm. The convention closed at 8pm and Krüger and I had to rush to the train station to catch the last train to Berlin. I was quite exhausted. In a food court in the Hamburg main station we ate more junk food and I arrived at my house around midnight, where I told Marjorie, my wife, in great detail about my day.

Hamburg Tactica 2014 / Part One

On the 22nd of February, Krüger, Jörg and I went on a road trip to Hamburg to visit the Wargames Convention "Tactica".

I have already been to the Tactica once, in 2008. I remember a couple of cool participation games with beautiful miniatures and terrain. Back then it was a medium-sized convention with a friendly atmosphere.

This year it was much bigger. It was crowded and there were lots of things to see. At first I felt uncomfortable. I asked myself: "What am I doing here?" I felt out of place among all those people with whom I share a strange, childish passion for playing with miniatures.

I had pre-ordered a pack of Thracian Command from Wargames Foundry, so I went to  their stand to pick it up. I met Marcus Ansell, the manager, who sold the miniatures to me. I also received the current giveaway model, a dismounted knight, sculpted by Michael Perry. Marcus Ansell is the son of Bryan Ansell, who is the co-author of Warhammer Fantasy (first edition) and was the manager of Games Workshop back in the 80s. I said: "I really like what is happening at Foundry at the moment. That you bring back all the old ranges, offer special giveaway models, etc." I think I really got on his nerves.

I wandered off, still feeling uncomfortable and discovered a table covered with miniature trees and artificial snow. Bernhard Hennen was there, introducing the Perry twins and Aly Morrison to a participation game called "1812 White Death".

Now I got really excited and ran off to find Krüger. Bernhard Hennen is a German Fantasy author and member of the wargaming club "Team for historical Simulations". Krüger has talked several times to me about his series "Gezeitenwelt" and how disappointed he is that the series was discontinued. I found Krüger and dragged him to the table. We talked to Bernhard Hennen and got an appointment for a participation game at 4pm. I was in a good mood now.

We took a look at other gaming tables, tried to join a dark ages skirmish game and a samurai vs ninjas skirmish game, using the Saga rules, but both games were booked out. We did manage to get into a Field of Glory Renaissance participation game at 3pm though, organized by a wargames club called "Kurpfalz Feldherren".

This left us a couple of hours, so I walked around, taking pictures of various gaming tables with the old 35 mm camera I inherited from my dad. Besides collecting books and visiting archeological sites, taking pictures was one of my dad's obsessions. I wonder if he sometimes felt lost, walking around in ancient Roman ruins, and asked himself: "What am I doing here?"

I briefly talked to the designer Tobsen77 whose miniature vehicles I like a lot and stopped at the stand of Magister Militum. They have a range of cool 10mm dinosaurs. Looking at the dinosaurs I started to think about old school miniatures, about old school ancient Greek miniatures by a company called Miniature Figurines, you know, those that are true 25mm in scale, come in one pose only and were used by the guys who invented the hobby before I was even born. Maybe I should start to collect Minifigs.

Around 1pm Krüger, Jörg and I went to McDonald's to have lunch. Krüger convinced me to try a a burger with rösti (hash browns). His arguments were that it is the best burger McDonald's produces and that it's only available once a year. My original plan was to go to the Portuguese restaurant Vasco da Gama with Krüger and Jörg in the late afternoon.

...

Baron Samedi