Jaakko and Rugluk - Wild card month

Act 5

The fort still stood.

Days passed by. The dwarfs behind the walls hadn’t so much as flinched. Arrows bounced off stone, rocks bounced off heads, and the snotling pump wagon seemed to bounce off everything, and mostly off orcs.

Rugluk was pacing again. Not marching. Not stomping. Pacing. His armour was smeared with ash and stew, and he’d taken to talking to himself.

“Dey’re all lookin’ at me wrong,” he muttered. “Dey think I can’t see it. But I sees everyfink.”

Outside, around the firepits and tents, the whispering had grown into full-on muttering. One night, under a blood-red moon, a small crowd gathered near the boar pens. Snagrat, Ruknob, and a few others who’d had enough.

“Da plan’s simple,” Snagrat hissed. “We bash ‘is head in, pick a new boss, an’ stop chuckin’ snotlings at walls fer fun.” “Yeah,” said Ruknob. “Dat ain’t even that funny no more.”

They crept toward Rugluk’s tent with clubs and cleavers. But Rugluk was already waiting. The flap flew open, and he burst out screaming, eyes wild and teeth bared.

“You lot think you can take me?! I AM da one wot was promised! I’m da Wyrm’s git, da real boss!”

A swing, a clash, a lot of tripping over goblins-and then a squelch.

When the dust settled, Rugluk stood hunched and bleeding, but grinning. Half the mutineers were groaning, the rest running.

Then he looked down. A knife. In his guts.

Behind him, a little goblin blinked. “Er… sorry boss. Got caught up in da moment.”

Rugluk, swaying on his feet, yanked the blade out, blood running down his leg. He looked at it and grinned. “Nice try,” he growled. “But da real boss don’t die eezy.”

He limped out of the tent, raising the bloodied knife high.

“WHO ELSE WANTS A TURN?!”

No one answered.

Welcome back! I've had a good hobby month and was fortunate to spend some time on two parts of the project I’ve been wanting to tackle for quite a while. While most of my focus went into the Siege section, let’s start with an update on the regular army project.

I managed to paint a baggage train. We usually play 3,000-point games, which means I would typically need three carts and 15 baggage guards. However, there’s an extra wagon here-I got the wolf-drawn prison cart in the middle from a local hobbyist and couldn’t resist adding it to the mix. He had already started painting it, so I won’t include it in the model count. I’ll fix up and paint two more wagons from his collection (along with more baggage guards) later on. The extra wagons will open up possibilities for larger games, potential narrative scenarios involving O&G supply lines, and so on.

 This month in points:

 

 

 

The OWAC adjusted model count was used in the same way as with chariots and war machines.

 

SIEGE

Let's move on to the Siege section.

I painted two Citadel Warhammer Siege Towers and scratch-built a third. As you can see in the pictures, the other Citadel tower was incomplete, so I made a few modifications to make it work. I’m happy with how it turned out-and I might even prefer it to the standard version.

The battle pictures featuring imposing scratch-built siege towers in Warhammer Siege were what got me into this project. So I knew from the start that I wanted to build one myself.

The scratch-built tower, as shown in the photos above, is made from wooden sticks and coffee stirrers. I added some load bearing structures to the insides of the walls. The build feels surprisingly sturdy and I have problem in trusting it with my heavy metal miniatures. Instead of painting it with regular acrylics, I chose to stain it and then gave it a drybrush with Morghast Bone, aiming to preserve some of the original, faint wood grain pattern. I wanted each tower to have a slightly different look, but I think I should have used a darker stain on the scratch-built one to better distinguish it from unpainted wood. Still, it's okay (for now, at least).

Siege towers are moved across the table using the same rules described last month for the Sow. Once the tower reaches a wall, you can lower the drawbridge at the beginning of your next movement phase. The drawbridge serves as a direct entry point to the rampart. Each level can hold up to four models from each side, and models can move between levels in the same way as within the castle. The points cost of a siege tower depends on the number of levels, whether it includes a drawbridge, and its crew capacity. These three towers cost between 30 and 40 points each, depending on how many crew they can carry.

 

And that's it. Only the Leader month remains, so I guess I'll start painting Ruglug next.