Mighty Empires

Back when the original Mighty Empires came out, I immediately seized upon it.  It had some cool rules, cool miniatures associated with it, and tons of cool possibilities...

I planned a campaign with my two high school friends (the aforementioned GA and JJ).  I would play the Empire, GA would play Dwarves, and JJ wanted to play Wood Elves.  Three players is probably the minimum required to play the game--I just don't see it being all that interesting if you have just two players.  Frankly, the more the better, but like all campaigns, the more players that are in it, the more difficult it is to keep everyone involved.

Like usual when playing things like this, I get deep into it.  I replaced the thin card tiles with a foamboard creation I made and painted myself (long since discarded).  I made a small map that I could study on my own, without having to refer to the main map board I had created (which I still have). 

Anticipating that my Empire would eventually start a war with both the Dwarves and the Wood Elves, I drafted declarations of war, which I would deliver to my opponent at the proper time, all to add to the atmosphere. 

The campaign was off to a great start...we did a few campaign turns, our empires expanded, and our forces approached each others' borders.  War was imminent, and the first actual Warhammer battle would be fought...  And then JJ quit.  I honestly forget why, but all I can think of is that something didn't go his way, and rather than put up with setbacks, he bailed.  Talk about frustration.  Realizing that the campaign was essentially over before it started, GA and I decided to have a massive battle with all the forces at our disposal at that point in the campaign, just for fun.  We made army lists and we ready to go...but it never happened, simply because we never got around to it.  So ends many a campaign, as I'm sure many organizers can attest to.

Still and all, the idea of the campaign was great.  The Mighty Empires rules set has been updated, but the original ones should still work great.  Maybe I'll have to revive them someday.

Starting the Collection

In the early days (i.e. 1987-1989) I had placed all my miniatures orders directly from Games Workshop in the UK, but to be blunt, I didn't know what I was doing.  I had only the vaguest notions of the Warhammer world and the armies that fought in it, so I just bought miniatures that appealed to me, with little thought of army building per se.

So I ended up with a smattering of Chaos Warriors, some High Elves, some Orcs, and a really cool unit of Wood Elves called "Skarloc's Wood Elf Archers."

Games Workshop (or rather, Citadel Miniatures) did not have a very developed line of paints yet, and in any case I didn't have much access to buy those that they had, so I reverted to simply using the model paints that I was used to for making plastic model kits.  These were primarily Testors paints and Testors Model Master paints, which were oil based enamels, which required thinner.  I can't believe I put up with that, and am definitely thankful for the acrylic paints of today.

Here's the unit as they are today--they've already undergone multiple paint jobs, as my skills improved much in the early years with practice (and have long since plateaued). I think they're about due for another overhaul though.

Warhammer Siege

Relatively soon after Warhammer Fantasy Battle 3rd edition came out, a supplement called Warhammer Siege was released.  It detailed some rather complex rules to handle sieges in Warhammer.  (On the other hand, the 3rd edition rules were complex already, so by comparison Warhammer Siege wasn't much different)

In trying it out, while I had read the sample scenario at the back of the book and thought it was interesting, I quickly dismissed it as not epic enough.  We had to try a HUGE EPIC BATTLE (classic mistake).  No minor siege of an insignificant keep would this be, where we could learn the rules a little bit at a time and have a clue about what we were doing.  Rather, it would be the assault upon a High Elf city by a huge Evil Army, consisting of Chaos, Orcs & Goblins, Dark Elves, you name it. 

We used the "Mighty Fortress" that Citadel Miniatures had recently released, a neat styrofoam castle that has stood up to the test of time.

Here's mine, 22 years old, and still in great shape.


So we had the battle.  The evil horde forms up outside the city, while the defenders stand guard on the ramparts, stoically watching their approach.  The evil forces prepared for a long siege of digging sapper's trenches, tunnels to undermine the walls, and battering at the walls with their siege engines.

Turn One.  The evil stone thrower threw its first stone at the city wall, aiming for the main gates.  The stone impacted right on target, and the entire gate house section collapsed, completely breaching the wall.

Whoops.

Apparently we underestimated the power of the stone thrower--we didn't want a wussy one in this "epic" battle, so we took a huge one.  And it practically vaporized the castle.

With the gatehouse breached (read: blown away), the Chaos Warrior Cavalry charged forwards, the rest of the evil army swarming to follow.  Out of the breach the High Elf Cavalry charged to meet them.  Very quickly, however, we determined that the forces of good had little chance to survive, as they were outnumbered by a huge margin and effectively had no defensive advantage anymore.  After a few turns of horrendous carnage we called it a day.

We barely scratched the surface of the siege rules during the game, but we had fun nonetheless.  The next time I did a siege I would have to be a little more reserved concerning the army size...

The Early Days

After receiving the catalog from Games Workshop, showing their Chaos Warriors, I remember seeing ad for two publications, the gaming magazine White Dwarf and the wargame, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, of which the 3rd edition had just gone on sale.

There weren't all the many hobby stores in my area--the nearest one, Al's Hobbies, was within walking distance of my house, but was almost entirely devoted to model railroading.  The second one was a Hobbytown, half an hour away.  They mostly dealt with plastic model kits and RC.  Neither one had any miniatures--rather, the Hobbytown did, but it was a pathetically small selection of Ral Partha miniatures for D&D. 

Now with an eye to look for Warhammer-related stuff, I went to the hobby stores.   The Hobbytown had some White Dwarf Magazines, so I bought all the ones I could get my hands on (issues #101-103).  They had ads for the various games that were in productions, such as Bloodbowl, Dark Future, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Adeptus Titanicus, etc.  Awesome looking stuff.  Unfortunately the White Dwarfs were all that Hobbytown had.

I headed over to Al's Hobbies just to see--the store was very small, and I knew they didn't carry any miniatures...but lo and behold, they had the Warhammer 3rd edition rulebook.  I duly paid the whopping $34.95 for it and brought it home...

In Ages Past...

With the release of Warhammer 8th edition today, I thought I would use it for the inaugural date of my new fantasy-dedicated blog, Abandon All Hope (of ever finishing painting all my miniatures).  For this first post I thought I would start with a little history of how I got into the miniatures hobby in the first place...

A.D. 1987
Long ago, before many of the present generation of gamers was born, I was a big fan of the Lone Wolf series of role-playing adventure game books by Joe Dever.  I still am, and if you haven't read them, I highly recommend them.  Back then, the series was only a dozen or so books, and when I saw a companion book to the series, I immediately picked it up.

The book, although relatively short at 96 pages, contained a wealth of background material on the series, along with sundry other things that piqued my interest.  One section in particular caught my eye.

I had always been into model building, but up to this point it was limited to model aircraft and ships.  I had always been interested in fantasy, primarily the works of Tolkien, but as far as I knew, there was little outlet for this sort of thing.  Well, I had seen Ral Partha miniatures for D&D, but I wasn't too impressed.  I wasn't much into D&D, rather, my interest was in MERP & Rolemaster, so I had little use for D&D miniatures.  But here was a neat diorama of miniatures representing a giak army assaulting a fortress, coupled with instructions on how to model the castle itself.

Very interested, I focused on the little note at bottom.

I dashed off a note of inquiry to this strange company I'd never heard of, asking about their products. Within a few weeks (the mail had to go across the pond and back) I got a response which included a couple of printed sheets containing pictures of the latest releases, mainly some dudes called "Chaos Warriors."  Who just looked totally badass. They even had names, such as:

Strok'nor Macekiller

Balspew Flamesword

Slambo

This guy in particular took several attempts to order him, as he was constantly sold out--no surprise, the guy rocks.  But I finally got him.  He's currently stripped of paint because I had painted him over and over again so much that the layers became so thick that most of the detail was obscured.

As I began to learn more about Citadel Miniatures and their various products, I also heard about this game called Warhammer Fantasy Battle.  Soon I would have to check that out...