Empty your head and go back to the start

So there I was. A lot of old fantasy and medieval characters. Remnants of this and that. Very old stuff, middle-aged stuff, something newer. Individual figures and also larger groups, some painted and many unpainted for ages. Lots of old lead, a bunch of plastics (from the times of Heroquest and Battle Masters), troops of Normans painted poorly or half finished, and finally a horde of SAGA Vikings, that I (a novelty for me) had bought already painted (in a large bag!) on a convention.

For the few role-playing games - actually "dungeon crawls" - that we played now and then over the last years, I had prepared a lot of old minis. So some monsters, heroes and enemies who lay forever in a drawer were finally painted and used. But nothing else had been going on for ages. A SAGA group, started with a lot of wind and the usual babble, did not materialize. So ​​much for the above Normans and Vikings.

Glossy Oldies and Dungeon-Folks

 

The next boiled-up project was a 'Frostgrave' setting but it never materialized. But I knew that beforehand. Then there was was 'Congo. All great games. But the only one doing something was me. Last year my complete african project (a village, 70 Africans and Adventurers and lots of plastic palms etc.) ended up as a complete set on Ebay. Too much is just too much. No Congo Bongo.

For me, fantasy (battle) wargaming ended on December 11th, 1999. After that, our group of that time never played again. The decision to change the ruleset from 'Phalanx' - the brainchild of a local games store owner - to Warhammer was the fatal blow. We played a few battles but the fun was going away.

The reason was obvious. That version of the Warhammer Fantasy Battle rules (4th or 5th edition) had some quirks that were quite unpleasant and it later got the nickname 'Herohammer' for it. It enabled you to have some extreme powerfull characters or units that made every game practically pointless because they were so effective and hard to kill that they could destroy anything and everyone. And one of my favorite enemies was also able to 'fly high' and land everywhere on the battlefield. So much to your carefully planned deployment. That was like fighting with a wooden stick against an F-18 jetfighter. Or the other way around: if you lost your 1 or 2 powerful special characters, your army was practically nothing but cannon fodder. I understood that at the time, others didn't want to or couldn't understand it.

Today it's on Wikipedia:

"The fifth edition in particular became known pejoratively as "Herohammer" because of the imbalance between the very powerful heroes, monsters and wizards in the game and blocks of troops which existed effectively as cannon fodder."

After that game - if I remember it correctly - the group dissolved silently. A shame. We would have had a lot of fun and over such a long time each of us could have built up a large and impressing collection. But some people prefer to stick to the words in books instead if thinking for themselves. A common problem.

The Area in the Wolf Hills

The Battle

The Battle in the Wolf Hills on December 11th, 1999. Three armies meet and fight for the possession of magical artifacts. A 'Capture the Flag' scenario. This is the only battle from which I made a kind of battlereport and I was happy to find it in an old notebook. I couldn't remember it, but the text speaks of destroyed elven and dwarf troops and ends with 'I took the 2 elven rings and one from the dwarfs.' So I still have them I believe. Somewhere. Lucky me.

Time passed. I was constantly involved in the miniatures and wargaming hobby - especially when I ran a brick and mortar games store and an online business - but with very few real gaming. From time to time I made some historical miniatures but fantasy wargaming was never really gone for me.

So a while ago I made a list and I counted more than 600 fantasy and medieval miniatures and creatures that I could use for a new start. And there are still some minis to come because I want to cast some from Prince August molds. And because I will never really stop collecting minis. There are also sorted out pieces from my private collection that may never find the way to Ebay but to the battlefields of Retrosia...