In addition to playing as many practice games as I can with my Rats to prepare for the Wildcat Tournament, I have also been finishing my Bretonmark army. All it needed was a unit of foot knights, and a unit of Ogre Palace Guard.
The Foot Knights are Perry Miniatures Agincourt historical figures. The kit is wonderful. The miniatures are really detailed. There are lots of weapon options. The box is a great deal, and you get a ton of miniatures for your money. I only have one complaint about it. The visors for the helms are all separate from the helms. This wouldn't be an issue if the plastic wasn't so thin, but they are very tricky to remove from the sprue without damaging them. I have a very nice pair of snips, but it was not up to the task. I had to use a brand new exacto knife blade and really take my time removing those tiny visors. Besides that, the kit went together great, and was fun to paint. The horde of knights on foot looks awesome, and provides a much needed grind to an army that otherwise was all thump.
I limited my color palette to the same colors I used on my mounted knights, and I matched the colors for the basing as best as I could. The new foot knights look great, and in the two games that they have so far participated, they were awesome.
The Ogre Landsknechts from Atlantic Wargames were unfortunately out of stock at the time I was building the Foot Knights. I was going to put my project on hold, but then I found the most bizarre inspiration in the clearance cave of the game store, in a ziploc bag, priced one dollar...
I don't know what they are. They're kinda derpy looking. Possibly game tokens from a forgotten board game, or plastic toys from an old mail order playset? Whatever they were, I saw them and decided to challenge myself to make a unit of Ogre Palace Guard out of them.
They turned out great. Once they were modeled, I finally knew what they were, and what their story was. I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget.
Ahmirah Chante's Giant Kobolds
Ahmirah Chante is a talented sorceress from a faraway land. On one of her many misadventures, she found herself imprisoned for refusing a marriage proposal. During her escape from captivity, she made a brief detour to free a small band of kobolds imprisoned in the same dungeons. The fugitives nearly made it to the exit, when they were cornered by the jailer and his henchmen. The little kobolds got between Ahmirah Chante and the guards, and told her to run. As the tiny kobolds snarled and growled and tried to make themselves seem bigger, Ahmirah Chante cast a giant growth spell on them to actually make them bigger! The giant kobolds made short work of the guards, and the whole party was able to safely escape the dungeons.
Once the spell wore off, the kobolds begged the sorceress to make them "real dragons" again. They followed her wherever she went. They did her laundry. They fetched her food and drink. They performed petty larceny to give her gifts of jewelry and silk. At first she resisted, but eventually she gave in and accepted that this was her family, now.
And that's how the mercenary band known as Ahmirah Chante's Giant Kobolds came to be. They travel light, but fight big, and their services aren't cheap.
This unit counts as Ogre Palace Guard if used in my Bretonmark army. I could use them in pretty much any list, though, if I substituted whatever large infantry stats that particular army has available. My undead for example, could use them as trolls, or my wife's Herd could use them as Guardian Brutes. After all, they're mercenaries! In the future, I still want to get those Ogre Landsknechts, but that said, I am really happy with this very unique unit, and they were fun to make.
As I touched up, repaired, and repainted parts of my first wargaming army, which I originally collected and painted over 25 years ago, I heard a lot of buzz and rumor about Games Workshop re-releasing the old Warhammer game that I grew up on.
In fact, just the other day, two Games Workshop employees showed up at my front door in button up shirts with 8th edition rulebooks under their arms.
"A lot of wargamers are nostalgic for the golden days of Camelot, when GW was pure and perfect. A time unsullied by corruption or greed. It is rumored that a day will come when the once and future king will return to us, and all will be made right again. Do you have a moment to talk about 25mm square bases?"
My initial reaction was to slam the door in their faces, but then one of them dazzled me with a really pretty miniature of a sorceress on a unicorn. They might have gotten me right then and there, but thankfully, my pet rats staged a timely intervention of their own.
As the two GW staffers fled screaming down the street, I couldn't help but wonder if they might take this event into consideration whenever they get around to creating stats for a rat swarm in the next edition.
I thanked the rats by getting them a stuffed crust pizza. They really don't deserve such a treacherous reputation, you know. They are quite loyal if you are worth being loyal to.
That aside, nostalgia is real. I think, however, it is important that we not forget the root of the concept. Nostalgia was originally considered a mental illness. It was a depressive state of hopelessness in which nothing can ever get better, because everything peaked in the past, and it's all downhill from here. Today's modern vernacular has a more generous definition for the word, and it is simply used in reference to fond memories.
We all think that we remember Camelot, but somehow, we also all seem to remember it a little differently, and now the historians aren't sure if it was ever real.
I had some fun times with Warhammer Fantasy back in the day. I made a lot of friends through Warhammer Fantasy. I liked collecting the miniatures, and I liked reading the books and the articles in White Dwarf.
But just because I have fond memories of my first crush, and we had some fun times together, that doesn't mean our relationship was healthy or sustainable. I'm glad I didn't marry her or have kids with her or anything.
I'm happier and wiser, now, than I was back then. It would be foolish for me to go back.
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"The False Grail" is such a great way to refer to The Old World. In place of a rant, I'll just say that despite starting with WHFB 28 years ago and playing up until Ye Olde World was nuked, I have no interest in going back to whatever Dub's RNF game will look like next year. I did that dance for a long time and had some good times - in retrospect, more mediocre, frustrating times than great but I didn't know better.
Now with Kings I can say that I do, and I'm very happy here. My main hope for TOW is that it doesn't pull too many people away from KOW, tho I doubt there are many people actively playing Kings today that would abandon the game for more than a quick hit of nostalgia.