Ghosts and Dungeons

 The new year has brought with it a number of changes in my personal and professional life that have eaten a lot of my time and on top of that, I managed to blow out my knee and shoulder while central Massachusetts experiences its snowiest winter in years. The little free time I've had has been spent prone letting my mind wander, coming up with thoughts I would deem worthy of writing about but almost immediately forgetting. Rather than sit idly and hope for something to stick, I am just writing and we'll see what happens.

 I've been working on a few miniatures projects, but I've made the most progress painting some wraiths and ghosts. I painted three classic WHFB Wraiths for Jesse and Brad's Necropolis28 event in January. I made a slight improvement on my event readiness, completing these a solid 24 hours before game time rather than staying up until the early morning, frantically trying to finish my project without it looking too shitty to show other people. The event was a great time. I am looking forward to what they put together next.

The above wraiths were the start of a small expansion of the spectral wing of the Barrow Legion. My wife and I have been playing some narrative Warcry games and I wanted to put together a Nighthaunt warband to use in them. I had been saving these C series models for a long time now and blasphemously snipped off their tags to make a spirit host. I added a few gravestones from the skeleton and zombie regiment to fill out the base and make them look like something you'd see in an old White Dwarf. For the paint, I did exactly what I had done with my spectres but drybrushed a little too much white. Eventually, I'll go back with another coat or glaze of Aethermatic Blue at some point, but they're good enough to play with. I really love these old ghosts, especially the one in the back that looks like a villain from Scooby-Doo. That slight silliness is what always draws me to oldhammer models. 

The little gaming I have done this year has been Warcry. What a great game. Not at all what you would expect from Games Workshop. Every part of it is engaging and it carries very little of the nostalgic rules baggage you see in their other games. It is alternating activation. Positioning matters. Skew lists can be severely punished by a diverse scenario pool. There's a very unique dice mechanic for abilities that feels clever and new. Some of the rules are cursed by GW doing their best to write explicitly and failing, as seen in some parts of Kill Team, but overall it is very good. The core rules are easy enough to grasp in a game and there's enough depth to keep playing and playing and playing. Can't ask for more.

There's also a very sick expansion called Catacombs that is all dungeon combat. The board is built as part of the game with you and your opponent placing doors, collapsed walls, weapons racks, and more after you determine scenario and deployment. It is great fun trying to corral your opponent into specific hallways by placing closed doors in different places and see them think about where to put a hole in a wall to bypass the obstructions you added. Lava pits abound and there are rules for pushing enemies into them! This is how you use rules to pull players into the narrative. Looking forward to teaching more of the New England guys this game as I think its a great base for one day campaigns or narrative events.

I was hoping to go into more detail and write about more (Hive Scum Episode 79 started a conversation about art, the hobby, and social media I have A LOT of thoughts about), but I am out of gas. Another time. In the meantime, I hope all of you keep on engaging with tabletop gaming and miniature painting in the way YOU want to! No worthwhile sense of fulfillment will come from some stranger (or worse... influencer) approving of how you spend your time and of what you find to be interesting.