Blood for the Blood God!

Strange circumstances compel me to put together a Warhammer scenario, of all things, using second-edition rules. As I'm going for a low-level, low-points feel, I need low-end minions of chaos to go along with some beastmen. I thought this Copplestone half-orc and his fellows would make perfect chaos thugs, and here we are.

 

Some more Lund and Copplestone orcs - and thoughts on Warhammer and Chainmail

 

To take advantage of the extra time afforded by home-working, my son and I have been doing a bit of mid-week wargaming. Our goal is to try out various 'square-base' rulesets and work out which we like best. So far, we've played games of Warhammer (3rd edition) and Chainmail. We've got our sights seton Ral Partha's Chaos Wars, Sword and Spell, AD&D Battlesystem and - the newest of the lot - Oathmark. And we'll also revisit Saga and 'MicroHotT' (Hordes of the Things with individually based figures). 

It was for Saga that I initially started building up a square-based orc force. Since then, I've started using 25mm squares as the default for our daily D&D campaign, simply because the bases work nicely with dungeon floorplans and look a bit less obtrusive on the table. The old Chronicle and Grenadier orcs (metals by Nick Lund; plastics by Mark Copplestone in Lund's style) that I was using for Saga have done plenty of time as the Vile Rune tribe in the Caves of Chaos, and I'm sure the PCs will meet more of that tribe should they ever return from Tekumel, where they're currently adventuring.

If they do, the orcs will have considerably more firepower, as I've recently finished a 12-strong unit of archers. Twelve is the requisite unit size for Chaos Wars, though it will give me a couple of smaller units for more flexible games.

I've also added a couple more warriors and a shaman. I don't much like the shaman miniature, but the warriors are exemplars of the Lund style: brawny, brutish and bristling with aggression:

As with their predecessors, I'm deliberately limiting the techniques I use in painting these. Everything gets a base colour and a wash in Agrax Earthshade, except for the skin, which gets washed in Reikland Flesh. Then everything but skin gets a retouching of base colour and a single layer of highlights. Skin gets a second layer of highlights. Then it's just a question of black-lining and painting in the pentacles on the shield (buff, white, black lines). 

It's a very quick process, and the simple pallet gives the miniatures a certain consistency, despite their orcish irregularity. 

And what about the games? Well, we thought Warhammer was quite fun at first, but it became a bit of a slog as the game wore on. My impression is that the finicky differences in the profiles that I learned and loved as a kid are, ultimately, a bit pointless. Too many of them even out, and it also takes an awful lot of time to cause a kill on most units. In our game, we had lizardmen, beastmen, troglodytes, orcs, hobgoblins and chaos warriors, but all of them were pretty similar on the table: tough, durable infantry. 

One thing that Warhammer lacks, I think, is sufficient differentiation between unit roles. Light infantry are just worse heavy infantry, and the movement penalties don't really balance things out. A unit with heavy armour and shield will move at 6" a turn (assuming reserve move) whereas an entirely unarmoured unit will move 8". But that difference is less striking than it seems, because once they've closed with the enemy and lose the reserve move, the distinction is just a single inch. And the 3:4 ratio is less marked than in other games; in Hordes of the Things, for instance, the ratio between 'blades' and 'warband' is significantly more pronounced at 2:3.

So, while Warhammer ostensibly boasts infinitely more variety in its profiles than HotT, it actually has less striking differences between many of them; many gradations rather than the bold strokes that, in my view, make for a better game. It's not just movement: it's also things like how units react to situations and interact with each other. The rock/paper/scissors aspect that's so successful in other games is largely absent here. By the end of the game, I remembered full well why I found HotT so refreshing as a teenager after a surfeit of Warhammer. 

We both liked Chainmail quite a bit more. We played with similar forces, but we found that Chainmail, with its built-in distinctions between unit types, offered quite a bit more flavour. And it was quicker too, with much more emphasis on manoeuvre and much less on turgid, scrum-like melees. But at the same time, I can see why Warhammer was much more appealing to kids. Chainmail and HotT are both games that you have to play to absorb the flavour. The Warhammer rulebook positively drips with flavour; it's just that it's less in evidence once you get to the table. 

One reason that Chainmail played faster was that kills came much more quickly. I worked out that if two evenly matched forces of human soldiers with light armour and shield fight a round of melee in Warhammer (assuming the previous round has ended in a draw and frontages of four), they're more likely not to cause or suffer casualties than otherwise. My maths could well be faulty, but our experience of play bore it out. In Chaimail, by contrast, your hits aren't going to be nullified by unsuccessful wound rolls or cancelled out by armour saves. 

Warhammer's long statline must take much of the blame here. There are no fewer than three separate ways in which an infantryman can be 'tough' - through Toughness, Wounds or Armour Save - and you also have the prospect of fighters being skilled at hitting but not great at wounding (Weapon Skill versus Strength). All this detail creates a 'wood for the trees' effect, so that stats are cancelling each other out.

The lengthy statline must also take the blame for one of the most boring aspects of our game: the performance of the troglodytes - who are subject to Stupidity and have Intelligence 4. This meant that they were most unlikely to ever act as requested during the game, and indeed they never did anything of consequence other than wander aimlessly around their deployment zone. The problem here is that Warhammer has all those psychological stats demanding to be used. Were those to be replaced with a single Leadership stat, so that the trogs were testing on their higher Ld rather than their lowly Int, the Stupidity rule would add flavour and predictability rather than just rendering a unit useless. I think this may have happened in later editions, but I've never played those.

Where Warhammer did have an edge over Chainmail was in the clarity of its morale rules. Chainmail's calculation takes a bit of getting used to; I can see that it takes plenty of factors into account, and I can imagine that it becomes easy to do after a few games, but it's quite a slog at first. 

Warhammer's personalities worked quite well, I thought, because we avoided the most powerful types. We used no heroes or magicians higher than Level 10, and that kept everything suitably balanced.

We'll certainly give both games at least one more run, but it'll be Chaos Wars or Oathmark next. And for those, more orcs are required ... 

But wait ... there's more!

More insufferably nerdishness and influence-spotting, that is! The miniatures above are from Citadel's Goblin Raiding Party, a terrific boxed set from the early 80s, complete with such euphonious names as Norgus the Flatulent and Gigblad Childsplatter.

Gigblad Childspatter

It's struck me before that the armament of these goblins was a bit out of synch with the usual Warhammer (and Tolkien) goblins: military picks and slings rather than scimitars and bows.

But after the last two entries on this blog, there are no prizes for guessing why. Here's the Monster Manual on goblin armament:

And sure enough, among the war party, we get a military pick, a short sword and sling, a short sword and spear, a morning star (here a flail rather than a spiked mace, but described on the box as a morning star). 

There's one with a warhammer too - but it's the historical sort of warhammer that has a pick head. And while the chieftain, Ubar Earbiter, has a falchion or scimitar, his lieutenant, D'Glish Sharpcut, has a short sword and a military pick on his back (leaders having the best weapons and two each, of course).

So I think it's pretty clear that these goblins are based on the Monster Manual entry. But there's something even more glaringly obvious. Just look at the illustration!

I can't believe that I'd never noticed this before, but the Goblin Raiding Party have exactly the same helmets - and in once case, exactly the same weapon - as David Trampier's illustration. Check out Torg Dwarfsmasher, bottom right:

Again, none of this is exactly earth-shattering. But it is interesting (to me at least!) to trace the origins of this rather distinctive bunch of Citadel goblins. 

More gaming archaeology - hobgoblins in D&D and Warhammer

After exploring the influence that the Monster Manual had on Citadel's Fantasy Tribe orcs and dwarfs, I though I'd have a poke around and see if the hobgoblin entry shed any light on Citadel's early range.

And it did. Some armament influences are detectable: "sword & whip" - possibly the origin of the "discipline master" figure that recurred throughout Citadel's early hobgoblin ranges. And the mace that the fellow above is holding could be loosely interpreted as a morning star.

But look at the paragraph below the weapon list:

That business with the standard must surely be the source of the hobgoblin propensity to Frenzy in the Warhammer rules. It's there in the first and second editions. But in the third edition, it's restricted to Mourngul hobgoblins in the presence of their tribal standard (pulled on a hobhound-drawn cart if I remember correctly). 

A case of Warhammer hobgoblins returning to their roots? 

Citadel's Fantasy Tribe orcs and D&D

All Gygaxed up: orc chieftain with sword and flail (centre)

This is a post that may well interest no one. And its conclusions are a little, "Well, duh!". But here goes.

I've long thought that Citadel's marvellous Fantasy Tribe orcs from the early 80s were designed specifically for Dungeons and Dragons rather than for any other purpose. They're certainly not Tolkien's orcs: they're too tall, for one thing, and they've often got long, protruding faces or upturned snouts, as well as a bizarre array of dentistry: tusks like those of a boar or a walrus.

Note the dentistry to either side of the bodyguard with battleaxe.

Now, on the one hand, this is obvious. The Fantasy Tribe range predates Warhammer, and the genesis of that game has been well documented as a means to get people to buy more Citadel miniatures than they'd need for a dungeon crawl.

Later in the 80s, when Citadel acquired the licence for Middle Earth miniatures, its orcs changed in appearance, with some becoming noticeably shorter and more bow-legged, and a larger number of bows

But I think there's a fair bit of evidence that the Perry twins - or someone else at Citadel - was paying a fair bit of attention to to the descriptions of D&D orcs as set out in the 1979 Monster Manual. Look at how the Monster Manual describes orc armament:

And look at the weaponry of the Fantasy Tribe range here or below:

(From here)

It's not an exact match: the Fantasy Tribe range includes an orc with a mace and one with a sword. But it's pretty close. All the Monster Manual variations are covered (barring the absence of an axe as a sidearm for the crossbow and polearm guys), including such combinations as "sword & flail", "axe & spear,  "sword & spear" and "axe & bow" (the archer has an axe tucked into his belt).

Note, too, that the rarest combinations ("sword & flail" and "sword & battleaxe") are assigned to Citadel's (sword & flail) and bodyguard (sword and battleaxe - always a two-handed weapon in D&D). And of course the Monster Manual tells us that orc chiefs have 5-30 bodyguards, so I think we can spot the provenance of those titles too.

And what of the other Fantasy Tribe ranges? Well, the dwarfs show the influence of the Monster Manual even more clearly:

(From here)

The first seven before the standard bearer match up to their Monster Manual equivalents perfectly - and the "chieftain in plate mail w. sword" nods to the note about "dwarfs above normal level".

But all of this only deepens the mystery of the Fantasy Tribe gnolls. By the time of Warhammer's first edition, the "gnolls" had been rebranded "great goblins". They might have passed muster as the original D&D's gnolls, who were possibly a "cross between gnomes and trolls". But they were nothing like the hulking hyena-men of the Monster Manual. Nor were they armed accordingly. So, given the Monster Manual's clear imprint on the orc and dwarf ranges, it's a bit of a puzzle that the gnolls were so defiantly free from its influence.

The qhal and the Slann. Or: did CJ Cherryh invent the Old World?

The qual?

The other day, I was in an second-hand bookshop and picked up Gate of Ivrel, a novel by CJ Cherryh, published in 1977. I've read nothing by her, but have heard a fair bit of praise of her work. So I bought it. It appears to be a sort of science-fantasy: a medieval setting with an sf backstory.

On opening it, I was struck by familiar elements in the prologue:

The gates were the ruin of the qhal. They were everywhere, on every world, had been a fact of life for millennia, and had linked the whole net of qhal civilisation - an empire of both Space and Time, for the Gates led into elsewhen as well as elsewhere ... except at the end.

It continues, later on the same page:

So the qhal migrated through future time, gathering in greater and greater numbers in the most distant ages. They migrated in space too, and thrust themselves insolently into the affairs of other beings, ripping loose a segment of their time also. ... They simply used the lesser races as they were useful, and seeded the worlds they colonized with the gatherings of whatever compatible worlds they pleased. ... The qhal in the end had little need left, and little ambition but for luxury and novelty and the consuming lust for other, ever-farther Gates.

Until someone, somewhen, backtimed and tampered - perhaps ever so minutely. 

The whole of reality warped and shredded. 

Ring any bells?  Here's second-edition Warhammer on the Slann:

The Slann are a unique race in the Known World. Their origins are uncertain, but they appear to be descended from the ancient race of Old Slann. The Old Slann possessed a civilisation far beyond anything we have even today. Science and philosophy were as one to them, they were the lords of time and space. There was nowhere they could not go and nothing they could not do, it is said that the High Age of the Slann was a golden era for all sentient creatures. It is probably that the Old Slann came from the stars, as Slann legend recalls. The Slann of today are a race fallen from power, they have turned their backs on the past and have grown to hate and fear the old technology. What brought about the decline of the Slann is not known. However, Slann legend connects the fall of the Old Slann with galactic catastrophy and the creation of theIncursions of Chaos. 

[Emphasis mine]

Then, in the third edition, we get this (p. 231, under Slann):

The Slann are an ancient race whose past and origin stretches beyond the horizons of this world. Once they roamed the stuff of Chaos, moving between planets in their marvellous silver spaceships, seeding the universe with their genetic experiments.

 Earlier (p.189), there's this:

One of their greatest achievements was the creation of spacial gateways between worlds, facilitating rapid travel over vast distances of space. Spatial gateways, or warp-gates, were constructed near habitable planets, looking very much like huge black holes over the firmament. ... On many worlds the Slann discovered living creatures. Some of these creatures became the subjects of genetic experiments. Newly created worlds became home to the offspring of these engineered creatures. Other worlds were found to have evolved life-forms which were dangerous and displeasing, creatures which were subsequently destroyed or altered to make them more useful. By this means the Slann created many of the galaxy's habitable worlds and seeded the galaxy with the ancestors of men and other humanoid creatures. 

But as with the qhal, it all goes wrong:

The mechanism controlling the warp-gates failed, the polar gates collapsed and the world was cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

All of this (and there's lots more of it) reads very much like an expansion of Cherryh's concept of the qhal and their gates. Note that in second-edition Warhammer, the Slann were more qhal-like in that they were lords of time and space. By the third edition, however, their domain was spatial rather than temporal.

Now, there's nothing in the slightest bit wrong with this homage. Genius steals and all that. But I was surprised to find that I can't get a single Google result for "qhal" and "Slann". I can't be the first person to have noticed this, can I?

It's odd because the Warhammer creators have been very open about their influences: Moorcock, Tolkien, Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Frazetta, Pape, etc. I'm speculating, but could the Cherryh influence have come via Richard Halliwell, who has apparently been in poor health and hasn't been interviewed about Warhammer's origins in the way that Bryan Ansell and Rick Priestly have? According to Zhu Bajiee (sic: not Zhu Baijie, or Pigsy, as many of us remember him from Monkey), Halliwell was the creator of the Slann. So maybe that's it.

Or could this be a case of parallel evolution? I don't think so, given the similarity of the concepts (lords of time and space, gates, interference with other species, catastrophe when the gates fail).

I reckon the Slann are one of the best of the Warhammer creations, but they've been sadly underserved by Games Workshop since their second-edition heyday. So I'm pleased to have discovered this indication of their origins. It gives me a little more impetus to accelerate my Slann-painting efforts into the end of the year!

Skaven and Lizardmen

Heirs of the lizardmen?

I was reading Joseph Manola's absorbing posts on the history of Warhammer when a thought struck me about that the Skaven. They weren't the first species to scuttle under the surface of the Old World. No - that was the lizardmen. Here's what the Battle Bestiary for the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle has to say about them:

Lizardmen are curious in that they appear all over the world, wherever there are mountain ranges with deep caverns. Perhaps these are all linked up far below the earth.

By the third edition, lizardmen were still associated with deep caverns and still attacked the underground dwellings of orcs and dwarves from below. But the notion of the global linkage of their lairs had gone. That had now been transferred to the Skaven (introduced to second-edition Warhammer in the Citadel Journal of spring 1986). The third-edition rulebook has this to say:

Skaven are widespread throughout the entire world, but their presence is rarely felt. A web of tunnels crosses from continent to continent, leading to burrowings far below the cities of men, and eventually into the sewers and drains of the cities themselves. 

In the 1986 Citadel Journal, the Skaven's origins are linked to the Slann: they are the descendants of giant rats that gnawed on warpstone in the ruins of Slann civilisation. Their global presence is there from the start, but the idea that their tunnels connect the continents isn't explicitly stated. As far as I know, none of the early material posits the idea that Skaven and lizardmen tunnels might intersect. I suspect one had to be repositioned in the background to make room for the other.

From the third-edition Warhammer Armies book onwards, the lizardmen were reduced from independent subterranean raiders to slaves of the Slann (in those army lists, they appeared only as auxiliaries of the Slann armies). In later editions, they became the Slann armies as the latter went from amphibian warriors to bloated, solitary magicians. And their globe-spanning tunnel network was no more - or was left to the rats.

The original subterranean globe-trotter?