An eclipse, an old man and the Baron's daughter

This afternoon, my son and I had a little wargame, partly as a farewell to the summer holidays and partly to finally inaugurate my stone circles.

The basic premise was as such:
Once again the baron's daughter, the Lady Mygraine, found herself mysteriously locked outside the castle on the evening of a lunar eclipse. As it happened a local Necromancer, August Knochenmaurer, needed a victim for that night, what coincidence... As soon as her abduction was discovered (Which was quickly, as the baron always gets suspicious when the servants start acting relaxed and suddenly stop wearing cheese in their ears.) the baron summoned the nearest heroes. It is known that she will most likely be sacrificed in one of the stone circles in the local forest. Two bands of heroes respond, but who will arrive on time? 

At this point I gave my son the choice which warband to play: My faithful knight Lucien D'Abelard with his squire and a few retainers: 2 spearmen and 3 archers. Or the Paladin Hieronymusch Lightbringer and his comrade Father Gerhardt, two occult-hunting powerhouses. (We used the IHMN rules and both companies were roughly 200 points. That's how much of a pair of brutes Gerhardt and Hieronymusch are!) After carefully considering all the cons and pros, he opted for the duo of godbothering maniacs. (a good choice it turned out). The other heroes would play no part in the game, being locked out by a wall of thorns summoned by the necromancer.

Here is the table I had set up:

He could enter the board from any table edge and had to search for the circle where the Lady Mygraine and the necromancer were at, by getting within 3" of it. I didn't which one it was either, as we randomly rolled each time he approached one. As an eclipse night brings out strange creatures of every kind, each turn I'd randomly roll if and what creatures would show up.
Here's what happened:

This week's activities

I played the game with my son I mentioned last post. I didn't have the time to rework IHMN/ItEN as I had planned. Instead I grabbed the Movie Marines rules (from an old White Dwarf), selected the Sergeant as my son's character and chose a corresponding amout of point's worth of Orks.
I then used whatever of the 40K rules I could remember... ;-P

Here is the set up:

Our brave Space Marine started on the little grey square on the left (right below the red cup).
His mission was to reach the large square with the checkers and Imperial Aquila, where he would be extracted by allied Imperial assets. In his way were two small squads of Orks, each led by a Nob.
They were in dispersed formation as they were searching the area for him...

Pretty soon he ran into the first Nob:

Who proved to be a fairly minor delay (Movie Marines are absolute monsters!)

Shortly after, the Orks had set up a firing line in ambush:

My son did the proper Space Marine thing, and charged right into the nearest Orks.
By charging from one gaggle to the other, he managed to systematically dismember the various greenskins.
He was nearing the extraction point, he only needed to get past the last two Orks and the second Nob. That second Nob however, had a Power Claw. This would be interesting.

The final combat was tense and fairly close fought over two or three turns. The Nob managed to knock a single wound off the Marine, before perishing himself. (Did I mention Movie Marines are very, very tough?)
Injured but undeterred the brave Marine stepped onto the landing pad for extraction.
My son won. But more importantly, we both had a lot of fun!

I've also been painting every moment I could, trying to get the Meganobs out of refurbishment for the game tomorrow. I didn't manage to get paint on the newly built ones, but I did get the three older ones finished:

Sadly I forgot to take pics of them pre-refurbishment for contrast...
But before upgrades they still had old-fashioned Goblin Green with green woodflock basing, they lacked banner poles (or in the case of the rightmost one: a trophy pile), and they were a lot less yellow. In fact, you had to look closely to see they were Bad Moons at all! The only yellow they had was on their shoulders plates, and maybe a stray armour plate elsewhere. They also only had a single shoulderpad each. Plus, during rebasing I've put 1mm plasticard shims under their feet to make them match a bit more, size-wise, to the new plastic Meganobs.
They were clearly the result of the 40K 3rd edition image of Orks, when they were mostly bare-metal scrapheap dwellers in appearance.
Since them I've come to appreciate a more colourful Ork, largely due to my growing appreciation of the old Rogue Trader and second edition Ork background and worldview. I still find the current all-yellow Meganobs, as shown in the most recent Codex, too gaudy though.
It makes them look too toylike, takes out the menace. Plus, it just seems like lazy painting to me ("Oh, Bad Moons? Just paint everything yellow, slap some black flames on.") I believe Ork models deserve a bit more thought and realism (and less uniformity!) than that.
Hence a large part of my Meganobs remains bare, dirty metal and I tried to make sure each had different armour plates picked out in yellow.
Additionally, by not going all yellow, I retain the option to make, say, my Warboss or a MegaMek stand out by using more yellow still.

Oh, and one thing I really miss on GW's recent paintjobs is the use of Orky Glyphs, apart from picking out the random ones that are molded in. I always try to add a few on each model, that express how that particular Ork sees the world or himself. For example, the middle one has the glyphs "Unki" and "Dur" on his shoulder, meaning "strong or big" and (in this context) "armour". Clearly this Ork revels in the size, power and resilience of his armour.
In contrast the rightmost one has his upper arm plate marked with the runes "Rukk" (attack. charge) and "Nar"(command, crew). He clearly values his elite shocktrooper status and elevated position in the chain of command.
Finally the leftmost one has a "Mor"( wild, feral, ancient) glyph as a banner, showing his pride in his veteran status and his viciousness. He has seen the need to paint a "Flash" (flag, banner) glyph on it, to show he is one of the Warlord's bannermen, his inner circle.
Now, who said Orks are thoughtless, uncomplicated creatures? ;-D

Here are a few more views:

So, now to sit down and finish reading the new edition of the rules for tomorrows game...

Decisions, decisions...

So, where am I at, hobbywise?

Before my vacation, I was cheerfully focused on my Orks. During my vacation I had fun painting a character for the Iron Kingdoms RPG. A nice little palate-cleanser before returning to work on my Orks, right?  .... Wrong.
I've been back for over a week now, and my interests are so over the place, I'm getting nothing done...
The fire to work on my Orks has died down to embers. I'm looking at my stash of IKRPG-suitable figures, because I had so much fun on the one, I'd like to do more of them. And because they share a setting, I've been looking at my Khador stuff as well.
I got Space Marine last week on a Steam Sale (I've been eyeing that game since it was released but it was never for sale at a price I found acceptable. Until now.) My son saw a bit of me playing it, and thought it was very cool. But he can't play the game yet. So I am contemplating if I can throw together a tabletop skirmish game of Space Marine with him before the end of his summer holidays (So, effectively, sometime the coming week.)
Which means I'm looking at my notes for a IHMN/ItEN mash-up again. And, because of the game's graphics and character design, I've done some more on my True-scale Space Marine test model. Which is part of my Inq28/=I=Munda project. But for the marine, I need parts from my box of marines for my 40K/Space Hulk Howling Griffons. So those have been dragged out as well.
And to top it off, next weekend I've committed to a game of 40K. For which I need several miniatures I pulled apart for refurbishing before my vacation. So I really should be finishing those. Oh, and read the latest edition of the rules, as it will be my first game of 40K in over 4 years...
Aaargh!

The sane, sensible thing to do, would be to ignore the distractions and knuckle down on those refurbishment mini's and start reading the rules.
But with all the ideas and various enthusiasms floating through my brain, I can't find the focus.
Such a fun, relaxing pastime, this hobby of ours... ;-P

See you soon, hopefully with some progress to report.

Rules-mashing continues!

I could have responded in the comments, but I'd rather put this in a new post, seeing as it sheds some light on my reasoning and what I want to achieve with this IHMN/ItEN mashup.

Seems I've attracted someones attention...  ;)



Hi Craig!
Thank you for making such a wonderful set of rules! Twice!

I know the 40K you wanted to replicate! I just missed it (having only found 40K in 2nd edition), but veteran friends showed me the "good old stuff"...
I loved the wildness and madness of it. Still do, and I miss it in the current iterations of the game.
The way I see it, ItEN and IHMN do have that sense of excitement and freedom I seek.

Thank you for the encouragement!

I'm not too worried about balancing, I firmly believe one shouldn't let balance get in the way of a good game, or story. :D
Come to think of it, I think that IHMN being set in (and optimised for) an alternate 1890s, is actually a bonus. With the Victorian era being a transitional period from (often centuries old) traditional methods to modern industrial means (even moreso with VSF "weird tech" and Mysticism), means that it should be able to stretch the rules in both directions towards future  and past. In addition to VSF I could use them for Feudal/Questing games, moderns, as well as Sci-Fi/40k.
Heck, if I get things right, I might even be able to pull all three off in the same, single game! ;D
That's why my goal isn't to replace the gear and stats from IHMN with 40K content, but instead add them to it, and allow the possibility for interaction between them.
I'm not making it easy on myself, am I?

In the Majestic Emperor's Name!

Or something like that...

Anyway, what I'm getting at is mashing up two similar rulesets, so I can use the setting of one, but with the rules of the other...

In previous post, I mentioned In the Emperor's Name, a 40K skirmish ruleset, and In Her Majesty's Name, a VSF branch of the same rule-tree.
IHMN is, in my eyes, the more polished and flexible ruleset, so I'd prefer using that, as I can also use it for a lot of my other gaming interests. So porting the 40K style of ItEN to IMHN should be effortless, no? Well, ItEN is d6 based, and IHMN d10 based, so a lot of values are skewed by this.

The last couple of days I've been comparing stats (weapons and figures mainly), trying to find parallels and extrapolating the rest.

Below is what I've got so far. There are still a lot of blanks, especially in the troops segment, as I need to compare and guesstimate them one by one... To be honest, I'm currently prioritizing the troops that I have a personal interest in, and those that are easiest to translate. The rest will follow later.
I'm not certain at all if all my stats are accurate because of two simple reasons: They aren't yet tested, this is just a first draft. And, I'm not precisely fluent in IHMN (or ItEN) yet, I've yet to get some games in. I should start looking for victi..., no, oppon..., no....,erm, fellow gamers, so I can finally give it a go.
So, if you have any comments, feedback or suggestions, please let me know!

Anyway, here's the crunch:
(Update: Added the points cost where I had enough data to calculate them.)