Now What? (Skirmish Edition)

So Far

What have I completed?

1. I decided to make counters to use for arena battles.
2. I designed and printed counters for 13 different factions.
3. I stuck the labels onto bases, giving me completed counters for 2 factions - dwarves and goblins.
4. These two factions met in my first arena battle.

Now What? A Skirmish Campaign?

t would make sense to complete the counters for the other 11 factions. But I find myself getting distracted by other possibilities, specifically the idea of a dwarf-goblin war campaign. I would follow the exploits of a band of dwarves as they fight to clear a goblin infestation from their mine.

Considerations

First, what rules should I use for the campaign itself?

• I'd like something that will generate diverse missions and will allow my dwarf warband to improve over time.
• I don't want something that requires me to track a lot of resources. That was the issue I had with Five Clicks, a post-apocalyptic game by Nordic Weasel.
• I will probably write my own campaign rules. In the meantime, I'm perusing various wargames for scenario and campaign ideas.

What additional resources do I need?

• I feel like I need more grunts for both sides. Also, I envision running into some monsters, like trolls. Now I need monster counters.
• Terrain? I could just use the terrain from my MicroBattles Big Battles set. But I'd like to put something together that is more skirmish-y

Sky Skirmish

I played this scenario a little while ago. I am just getting around to posting it.

At the time I played this, I did not have figures for a land skirmish. However, I could do an aerial skirmish.

Set Up

A squadron of the good guys (green) encounter 2 squadrons of the enemy.

The planes with rounded wing tips (such as the bottom green plane) are older, less effective fighters.

The Dogfight

Amongst the swirling dogfight, an older fighter damages his enemy counterpart (bottom)

Green team in trouble as the enemy gets on their tails! One plane is damaged.

The damaged green fighter gets double-teamed and shot down.

The older green fighter damages another enemy. But his comrade (middle) takes damage.

Another green plane goes down.

Despite his success on the day, the older green fighter realizes he is no match for the remaining enemy. Time to flee!

Notes

I was just killing some time before the day's LARP event. I decided to do a quick scenario. I chose an aerial skirmish because it is much easier and quicker to set up.

Dwarves vs. Goblins in the Arena of Heroes

I completed my skirmish counter designs and started adhering labels to bases.

When I started Arena of Heroes as a miniatures project, I posted a poll on Lead Adventure Forum about which factions to start with. The result was dwarves and goblins. So without further ado, I present the first fight in my Arena of Heroes project!

Set Up

Dwarves are on top and goblins on bottom.

Each side has a leader, bannerman, caster, archer, and two grunts.

They're fighting in a cardboard arena. I rolled randomly and got 1 item of terrain. I'm using a wooden disk to represent a column.

The Rules

This will be a 6 turn fight. A team wins by inflicting the most damage on its opponent.

I am using a skirmish variant of my MicroBattle rules. 

Note to self: I need to post the most recent version.

The Fight

A swirling melee erupts around the column. The dwarf captain drives away a goblin grunt.

And the goblin bannerman. The goblin chief and henchman kill the dwarven bannerman and wound a soldier.

Another note to self: I need to get some kill markers.

The dwarf captain presses forward but the dwarves lose another soldier.

The dwarf captain kills another goblin while the goblin chief charges the archer,

Throughout all this, the archers and casters traded ineffectual attacks.

The horn sounds game end. Here is the butcher's bill - 2 KO'd goblins vs. 3 KO'd dwarves.

But the goblins have 2 wounded men still up while the dwarves have 1.

OK, coming up with a quick scoring methodology.

Dwarves: Kill 1 grunt (3 pts) and 1 specialist (4 pts) + wound a grunt (1 pt) and a specialist (2 pts) = 10

Goblins: Kill 2 grunts (6 pts) and 1 specialist (4 pts) + wound a specialist (2 pts) = 12 pts.

Victory for the goblins!

The Final Batch

Here are the last of the Arena of Heroes counters.

African-like warriors, orcs, and naked barbarian types.

• That's supposed to be a lion with the African-like shaman.
• I made quirky orcs. I hate the green orc vibe so mine are orange with a pig snout.
• The naked barbarians have a flayed human-skin flag. Brutal.

I then went back and fixed the archers. Here is a sample.

Finally, I added one more team to the mix. This is an homage to my original Arena of Heroes team.

This team was notoriously incompetent so I gave them names to reflect their ineptitude.

• The middle 4 are (L to R) Nocan the Barbarian, Gimlet the dwarf, Armoless the elf, and Blandalf the wizard.
• I added two more figures to the team - Sir Lancealittle (L end) and Bruce Banner (R end)
• I have dubbed this team The Stupors.

More Arena of Heroes Counters

I'm really enjoying making these counters. Here are some more.

Knights (top) and dwarves.

The dwarves were fun. I wanted them in gray to represent armor but I wanted to distinguish them from the knights. I decided to forego helmets and then gave them red hair. I also wanted to give them beards. While looking for a shape to use as a beard I stumbled across a handlebar moustache icon. I decided to give the dwarves a crazy moustache (I assume that the beard is hidden below the moustache).

Gnolls, elves, skeletons, and goblins.

• The gnolls came from an aborted project set in my LARP's fantasy world.
• I like the elves' blonde ponytails.
• I decided to make the skeletons look, well skeletal, by keeping the head the same size and making the body thinner front to back. There is also a death knight and a necromancer.
• I tried something different for the goblins - the head is multiple colors. This represents their faces showing from under a hood. I also added a long, pointy nose.

Arena of Heroes Counters

Since I got the idea for resurrecting the Arena of Heroes skirmishes with counters, I've been playing around with different designs.

I've given each faction 6 different figures - a commander, two foot soldiers, an archer, a magic user, and a bannerman. I think the bannerman will get a bonus in melee. I need to work on the archer. The pictured archer figures are just placeholders.

So far, I've created 3 human factions (above). They are (from top to bottom) the paladins in their gold armor, the Imperials, and the desert nomads.

I really like the magic users. I show each using a different type of magic. In game, however, they will likely have access to more spells than pictured.

Another Skirmish Idea

I recently played an aerial dogfight game (battle report coming soon). I realized that aerial dogfights are great for quick games when I am pressed for time.

This got me thinking about quick land skirmishes, and a crazy idea popped into my head.

Arena of Heroes

Arena of Heroes is one of my failed miniature projects from a few years ago.

It began when I discovered a free set of rules on Lead Adventure Forum called Age of Heroes. I liked them a lot (so much that they became the basis for MicroBattle, but that is a story for another day). 

I decided to use them for arena battles so I ordered a number of 10mm figures to form teams. I planned to have 6 matching pairs:

• Imperials vs Barbarians (i.e. Romans vs Gauls)
• Knights vs Desert Raiders (i.e. Crusaders vs Turks)
• Paladins (using the Crusaders) vs Skeletons
• Elves vs Orcs
• Dwarves vs Goblins
• Halflings vs Lizardmen

I never got around to painting the figures. I eventually gave them away.

Arena Redux

I am now thinking of reviving this project, but using counters instead. 

I have some top-down figure designs from an aborted fantasy campaign that I can repurpose for this project. Here are some examples:

An Imperial commander, gnoll shaman, desert warrior, cleric, and a monster

I don't think it will be hard to create imaginative and distinct figures for the factions listed above (although I will likely drop the halflings and lizardmen).