Of 37 Gods, 45 Legends and 53 Mortals...

Finally! A bit of buzz about OGAM on TMP.

The Amazon blurb is somewhat out of date (and damned if I can get them to change it!). Of Gods and Mortals (OGAM) is based on the Song of Blades and Heroes system, but introduces new mechanics and rules to make it stand apart from that predecessor.

Warbands are smallish affairs, with a God leading the force, a few Legends, and a couple of units of 4–8 Mortals being the norm – e.g. Thor, Fenrir, a Dvergar Weaponsmith, two Valkyries, a unit of 8 berserkers and a unit of 4 skirmishers.

Changes since the Amazon blurb include the reworking of the faith system as mentioned above – there's no tracking of levels or faith points, but the interplay between Gods, Legends and Mortals remains, and each must rely on the other to work effectively.

The rulebook contains Celt, Greek, Norse and Egyptian lists (totalling 37 Gods, 45 Legends and 53 Mortal units). The 'missing four' (Chinese, Japanese, Aztec and Pre-Islamic Arab) haven't really been forgotten (I know for a fact at least two are fully developed, so keep an eye out closer to the October release date). As suggested above, this reduction was due to space constraints, but we did make sure that the book includes a full unit builder that allows you to stat up your own pantheons, adjust existing units you think should be represented differently, and create whatever new units you like.

Fomorians and Dvergar ARE already included in the book, so those two cracking armies shown above should be really easy to field.

There's some more detailed discussion, including an example of unit creation, and some photos of more sample warbands and the forthcoming North Star OGAM figures here: link

Cheers!

Phil Smith
Commissioning Editor
Osprey Wargames

That's splendid news to me.

Macedonian War Test Game 4

We were able to get another game of our Dux Bellorum-Impetus mash-up rules today.

As usual we had a two Roman legions up against all the Macedonians we can muster, along with my Pergamenes as Greek allies and wahj's Gauls as Galatians.

Martin and I took the Macedonians and played to use our cavalry superiority to defeat the Roman cavalry on the wings and then take the legions in the flanks.

wahj and fg deployed with their legions offset from the centre.

An off-focus shot, but it shows the initial deployment of the two armies.

While we were able to successfully destroy the Roman cavalry, the Romans were able to redeploy their legions to face the flanks and see off our cavalry.

In the centre, the phalanx failed to move into contact on schedule.

The Gauls make their first appearance on our table, but attacking uphill, their impetus bonus was not sufficient for them to carry the position.

Eventually, the Romans managed to rout the thureophoroi guarding the flanks of the phalanxes, which sealed their fates.

The phalanxes surrounded.

More Victorian terrain bits

Finally managed to get my horse and cart painted and posed with the Celtic Cross monument I made earlier.

And to accompany the picture, a factoid about Victorian England from here:

One odd point was that men in charge of a horse drawn vehicle were prohibited from leaving it unattended, in case the horse bolted. They still needed to pee however so a law was passed to the effect that 'the driver of a vehicle requiring to relieve himself can do so against the front off-side wheel of the vehicle providing he shouts 'in pain' loudly three times before commencing'. This may sound pretty unhygienic but remember the horses were depositing their urine and manure all the time.

More Victorian Terrain Boards

Well, I managed to make the second canal section for our Victorian terrain set-up.

It wasn't easy.

When we got to the store, fg and I found that they ran out of the 1/4" plastic tube I used for the first section, so I settled on 1/4" wooden dowels. Then while getting the dowels out of the car, I snapped them against the roof.

But I managed.

We also bought some stuff to make additional 4" wide grey board sections, which I glued some wooden knobs painted black to look like iron bollards. Placed between the basic ground sections and the canal sections, it hints at a dock. I've ordered a goods crane to add to the appearance, and some crates will also help, I think

To squeeze even more mileage out of our work, we decided to use the canal sections as bases for our train tracks too. With some thin cork sheets reinforced with duct tape and some train tracks I bought years ago, we've got our railway platform too.

That's no canal - it's a track!

fg will build a station building, and we are now wondering if it's worth the investment to buy a train...

I hope to work on the Botanical Gardens next, which will mean a trip back to the art supplies store and the local florist...

A Clash of Pantheons, and Three Warbands for the price of One plus some

As promised, here are my two OGAM warbands.

Balor leads the Fomorians against Thor and the dwarves.

It looks like quite a lot of figures for a set of rules that has not even been released, but really I have only added the two god figures to arrive at this.

The dwarves I have had for the longest time, and only Thor needed to be added for them to be a full OGAM warband.

The Fomorians are mainly my beastmen force. Configured for Strandhogg they look like this:

One beastlord with two warbands, each with a Wargor leader, 3 Ungor skirmishers, and 5 Gor warriors.

By adding a Hordes Skorne Cyclops Shaman as Balor, a Hasselfree Ceril as Bres, a beastman female shaman as some sort of priestess, I have an OGAM warband.

Balor, Bres, a priestess, a couple of beastmen heroes, a melee unit, and a missile unit.

Finally, with the addition of a minotaur and a barbarian figure, I get a legal Hordes Circle Orboros themed warband:

Kromac in his human form with his beastman form behind, minotaur as Ghetorix proxy, Gamezone troll as a Gorax, two Tharn Ravager units of 4 figure each, one with a Chieftain and one with a Shaman, two beastmen heroes as Tharn Whitemanes, and the Ungors as a Tharn Blood Pack.

So there they are. Three warbands for two sets of rules I haven't even tried before.

Time to take a break from figure-painting and do some terrain work next.

Reaper Tharn Helmsunder, or a Dwarven Thor

I managed to get the Reaper Tharn Helmsunder figure painted today, completing my second warband for OGAM.

I don't think I did a good job on this figure; I had a lot of difficulty with the eyes in particular.

He is, as I mentioned in the previous post, painted after the colour scheme of Marvel's Thor, but that doesn't really come across because the red on the back of the fur-lined cape isn't visible when you look at him from the front.

Maybe I'll do some touch-up in daylight later this week. I also hope to get him posed together with the rest of the Dwarven warband for a group shot, and I'll do the Fomorians too when I do that.

Coming up...

Carried by the momentum, fg and I are planning to work on more VSF terrain stuff over the coming weeks.

While we have the basic boards and a canal and bridge more or less settled, we do need quite a bit of stuff to litter about the table to break line-of-sight and block movement. I've ordered another bridge kit by Wills along with other bits (one crossing point makes for a boring game), and we will be making some bollards.

One piece that I managed to make from stuff on hand is this monument:

Professor Fliners Petrie enthuses over the find; Abdul is not impressed.

It was a simple build: a Celtic cross on plinth from the Renedra gravestone set, glued to a Renedra 20mm square base, glued to a 25mm square base with a recessed top, glued to a Renedra 40mm square base, glued to a Renedra 60mm x 50mm base. I added a thin square of plasticard to the plinth as a bronze plaque. It's much smaller than a real monument should be, but it should add to the overall look of the table.

Also, my small order of Reaper figures arrived yesterday, which gives me my Thor figure for my Norse Dwarf warband for OGAM. This is the original figure:

Even though he is only man-sized, his proportions fit those of a LOTR dwarf. To make him more Thor-like, I simplified the hammer's head and shortened the shaft. I snipped him off his integral base, added some putty to repair the lost bulk from his shoes, and drilled the pin holes to fit him on a Fantascape resin base with runes on it.

Suddenly, it occurred to Dili that maybe this guy wasn't a god-sized dwarf, but a normal-sized human...

I am very tempted to paint him in the scheme of the Marvel Comic Thor: red cape, black top with white metal rivets, yellow metal on the belt, black skirt, blue pants, and yellow-brown legging and boots. The bracers will probably just be yellow metal instead of red though.

Mjolnir will be all white metal though, and I will make him a redhead as Thor was is.

Thor will be the priority project now, and once he is done it's a wrap for my OGAM warbands (which reminds me, I still owe you readers a group shot of the Fomorians...) and I will hopefully devote the long weekend next week to completing the VSF terrain.