Old catalogues

Going through my old gaming stuff I came across two old mail order catalogues by finnish game retail stores. I scanned a couple of pages from both to show you what was available to finnish hammerers at that time. The older one is from 1988 by GameWorld.

The header is simply: GameWorld List of games. In the small box it says: List on roleplaying games, adventure packages, strategy games, miniatures, gaming magazines and gaming accessories. And then some copyright stuff.

Here you can see the Games Workshop games sold by GameWorld at that time. The young me has underlined both Blood Bowl and Death Zone. Didn´t get those but I bought the 2nd ed when it was published. The prices are in Finnish marks (6mk = 1€).

Not too much Citadel here. No blisters, just boxed sets. Never got myself to buy that skeleton horde I have marked out.


GameWorld went out of business sometime during the early nineties. Or they switched to selling console and computer games. Not really sure what happened to them. The other catalogue is by Fantasiapelit (Fantasy Games) that is still going strong. This is how their catalogue front page looked like in the spring of 1990.

It says there that this catalogue is in effect from spring 1990 to winter 1991.

From the very last page I found something that I did not remember to exist. A finnish translation of Laserburn! I wonder if there are many copies left of that? The short description for Laserburn tells that it is compatible with Traveller 2300 game. Is that true?

The list of GW games is a lot longer than in the GameWorld -88 catalogue. I´m familiar with most of them at least at some level but of the last two don´t have any recollection.

Last but not least two pages of Citadel miniatures. There are some old markings of mine visible. Of those I did buy Harboth´s orc archers, Skarlock´s wood elf archers, Ruglud´s armored orcs and Prince Ulther´s dragon company. The orcs I sold to a friend of mine in the 90´s. Ulther´s dwarves were traded for some wardancers this year and they can be seen in the high elf vs. dwarf battle report from february. Skarloc´s archers are still in their original box waiting to be painted. Perharps they´ll serve as high elf scouts one day.


I still have BME1 Fellowship of the ring minis. Boromir from that set is one of the first minis I ever painted. He is pretty terrible. Of fantasy regiment I have some not so well painted elves left. I did buy the skeleton army too but I just can´t remember what happened to them.


From the second page I never bought the minotaurs, fighters or goblinoids. I had about 10 pieces of elf cavalry but only one of them is still left. I remember painting some of them but not being happy with the result. I´ve propably thrown them into garbage bin some time during late nineties... Some of the wardancers I bought at this time are still being used.


Let´s see if I can dig out some more treasures from the times past.

New projects

I´ve started collecting and painting new units for my high elf army. I´m trying to put together a unit of shore riders and a ship company. The former will propably have just five minis in the beginning and the other one will be ten strong. Here are my first attempts on an elf horse and a marine:

 The marine is an ME-32 Noldor deep elf variant and the horse is from the Elf6 line. I have six marines at the moment and looking for the missing four. Regarding the mounted archers I have five horses but only four riders. So if anyone has either marines or mounted archers to spare please contact me.

This is what WH: Armies book says about shore riders and ships companies:

 My shore riders will have bows and light armor in addition to normal equipment.

They will be worth 30 points each.

Ship company´s elves are going get shields and will be 14 points each.
I´ll propable have a LVL5 champion to lead them.

Janarion´s Lament: Lessons learned

It´s been two weeks since the game and now I think it´s time to sum it up a bit. My army list was not on the actual battle report but I thought to publish it now.


General Janarion, LVL15 High elf hero
Light armor, shield, spear, longbow, hail arrow


Janarion´s merchant company
7 spearmen with light armor and shield
7 archers with light armor, shield and long bow
Standard bearer


Darcassan, LVL10 High elf hero
Heavy armor, two handed sword of strenght


Darcassan´s warriors
15 High elf warriors with heavy armor and two handed swords
Standard bearer
Musician


Wardancer troupe
5 Sea elf wardancers with two handed weapons


Marine bolt battery
Three man bolt thrower, crew with light armor


Thabioh the giant


The elven MVP goes perhaps to Darcassan and his warriors. They managed to beat the hammerers and slay dwarf general. They would have killed the remaining dwarf warriors too but we decided to end the game before that happened. On the other hand they failed to rescued Janarion when they became unformed of defeating the hammeres and trying to close on to the warriors.


Janarion´s merchant company performed as expected. They shot down some dwarves and prevented the dwarf warriors from helping their general. I think they did pretty well in close combat but as Darcassan failed to come to their aid they were eventually destroyed.

So close but so far. Janarion is cut down just before Darcassan can come to help.

I have mixed feeling for the wardancers. On the other hand they did wondeful job of threatening the dwarf warriors´ flank thus preventing them from helping their general. But being beaten by the quarrelers was not something that I expected. Fleeing off the table was just shameful.

Marine bolt battery killed three or four dwarves missing most of it´s shots. The rule book says that bolt throwers have a natural BS3. We discussed if the elves were allowed to use crewmen´s BS4 but agreed on following the rules as written in the book. Perhaps this is something we need a home rule on. How are other players dealing with this? BS3 or crew´s BS?

Thabioh came to field sober which was a good start to the battle. He advanced towards the hammerers and gave Darcassan time to do his flanking manouver. I could have maximized his potential by just swinging with his club. Instead I decided to use some of his more special attacks which led to him falling down and being of no use for one turn. Had he lasted just a round longer Darcassan would have been able to charge the hammerers in flank and Thabioh might have survived. But I think it was more fun this way.

Lessons learned:

- Close combat with high discipline troops is grinding. They just refuse to break. Next time we will be using the ´combat result affect break test´ -rule indroduced in 4th edition

- Flame cannon and flame throwers can be deadly but are very unreliable. Bring on more pyrotechnics.

- Even LD10 checks will be failed when you really need them to pass.

- WFB 3. edition battles are time consuming. Just 1200 points on side and no magic phase it took 3 hours to play.

The elves now have the dwarven war banner and we can be certain that the stunties want it back. The stage is set for a new and perhaps a bit larger battle...

p.s. Thanks to Gaj for coming up with the name for my battle report





Some baddies

Found some old baddies today from a bits box at local gaming store. Here´s the lot:

That´s 20 plastic orcs and 20 plastic gobins from fantasy regiment box. A few metal orcs and goblins. And on the background chaos champions/warriors.

Perhaps I will have to start a goblinoid army someday. The chaos champions/warriors I might trade for elf cavalry minis (looking for horse archers of Elf6 line). or Jes Goodwin elf spearmen.