A Narrative Campaign in 10mm: Session 0 and 0.5

I'm back from my summer hiatus! I started this blog at the beginning of the summer, and quickly got sidetracked. A majority of my time was taken up with traveling for work, and then starting a new job and getting acclimated to my new responsibilities. 

One project I was excited to start at the beginning of the summer was my Warmaster Dwarf army. I was able to get my hands on a large lot of original, 10mm, metal dwarves and the Union Gang, my local crew of wargaming buddies, were eagerly planning a narrative campaign.

I made it a goal to get to at least 750pts of dwarves ready for our kick off. I decided that the foundation of my dwarf army would be:

• A General
• 1x Hero - Armed with a Sword of Fate
• 2x Clan Warriors - Super tough brick of frontline troops. Great at absorbing hits, dishing out wounds, and bogging down enemies
• 1x Troll Slayers - Crazed naked dwarves that pack a punch. I would attached the hero to them in the first game to buff up their attacks. They have a thematic rule that if they survive a battle, your opponent gains points. So its important to kill them off!
• 1x Rangers - Great ranged skirmish unit that can pursue foes.
• 1x Thunderers - Ranged unit with some armor penetration

At first 10mm seemed intimidating, but the new challenge was really enjoyable. It took me a little longer than I liked to finish 750 pts. I wanted to mix in different colors for each unit, and make sure their beards varied, but in the end I was really happy with how they turned out.

In late September I headed to my buddy Tory's clubhouse with my freshly painted dwarves to kick off our narrative campaign. 

We decided to use the Mighty Empires ruleset to assemble our campaign map. To do this, we had a pile of terrain tiles and took turns placing down tiles starting with a center mountain. Each of us placed a new tile adjacent to two or more place tiles. One of the edges of the newly placed tile had to match the terrain type of one of the tiles it is aligned with. This led to a really fun, collaborative, world building session. As a group we built rivers, mountain ranges, coastlines and even placed down points of interest like an abandoned necropolis, bridges, and a wizard's tower which added flavor to the world and provide our factions with bonuses for seizing them.

The before and after assembling our campaign map

Once completed, we laid down our capitol cities which would control the immediate 6 hexes surrounding it. 

Glückspilz - Empire (Tim)

Tittypit - Chaos (Jerz)

The Iron Dwells - Dwarves (Mike)

Axegrind Pass - Dwarves (Beard)

Baltimorath - Dark Elves (Tory)

The Pit of Buboes - Chaos (Erik)

We also included 2 capital cities, Britannica and Vermouth's Rest, that would be reduced to single tile City-States for any players who wanted to jump in for a casual game.

A Baptism of Blood

Once our map was built, we decided to play a 2v2 game. An expeditionary force of Dwarves from the Iron Dwells had met with the forces Glückspilz at Emory Outpost to entertain the idea of a trade pact. It was at that point did a raiding host of Dark Elves and Chaos descended on the backwater settlement to raze it to the ground.

The forces of dwarves and men form on a rocky hill as the attacker approach.

The Chaos warband gathers on the edge of Emory Outpost, eager to lay waste in the name of foul Gods.

The bloodthirsty dark elves of Baltimorath arrive in support, ready to slaughter and enslave.

The two forces clash in the streets of Emory Outpost. Buildings burn in the twilight while blades clash and shields splinter.

The defender's left flank was held valiantly by the dwarf Troll Slayers and Rangers.

Though they ultimately perished, the Troll Slayers cut down a unit of mounted dark elves and spearmen.

The battle ended in a stalemate. The attackers razed 3 buildings and the defenders managed to cut them down until they retreated. 

The process of building our campaign map and kicking it off with a little 2 vs 2 battle was a lot of fun. The battle allowed for a lot of emergent narratives. Do I bring the fight to the forces of Chaos? Do I write the name of Glückspilz in my book of grudges for using my dwarven warriors as a meat shield? And the Troll Slayers and their last stand against the elves; do I seek vengeance? 

 I'm definitely looking forward to the next games in this campaign!

Many Projects, Little Time: Managing Burnout and Choice Paralysis

I suffer from choice paralysis. It's probably why I prefer shopping at Trader Joe's, where options are limited (unless I'm looking for something specific like De Cecco pasta). When I go to a diner, 9 times out of 10 I skip the tome they call a menu and order a bacon cheeseburger with fries. This extends to my miniature hobby, often leading to what many call hobby burnout.

Golden Reef Diner, my go-to diner on Long Island.

The thought for this post came to me while on a hobby hangout call with my buddy from Australia, Jackson (Hollowbodies_13). Jackson mentioned he'd been lacking motivation for his hobby lately. I could relate—I often find myself procrastinating until the last couple of weeks (or even the night) before a big event like Under the Dice Fest or Adepticon, pushing hard to finish projects. While this can be satisfying, it also leaves me feeling drained and sometimes reluctant to return to my hobby desk.  

The '28' community has some of the most creative and passionate hobbyists that I've met. Community events frequently pop up with prompts that encourage hobbyists to kitbash, paint, and submit their creations by a deadline. In my experience, the community is relatively tight-knit, and it doesn't take long before your feed is filled with work-in-progress shots and completed projects. This is one of my favorite aspects of the community. I get to see amazing pieces of art and everyone's unique take on the prompt. The enthusiasm is contagious, and soon, I have a pile of bits in front of me, ready to bash up my own take.

However, often, as I'm midway through a project, another community event comes up, then another. Meanwhile, I still have that bag of Battlefleet Gothic ships I wanted to start on, and that Troll from my Mordheim warband has been sitting half-painted for a month now. Before I know it, I'm second-guessing what I should be working on and feeling overwhelmed. At that point I feel like trashing it all.

The reality is, this is all voluntary. No one is forcing me to grab my bits and bash them together. But with so many great ideas floating around, I can't help but feel an unseen hobby pressure—let's call it FOMO—pulling me to get involved. During my discussion with Jackson about hobby burnout, I had shared with him how I navigated out of my slump and motivate myself. I thought it would be helpful to write down some of those reflections to better collect my thoughts and maybe help others who might feel the same way. 

Unveiling the Obelisk: A Journey into Blogging

Hobby Origin Story

TL;DR 12 year old finds hobby. Loves Orks. Grows Up. Hobby pause. ~12 years later hobby resumed. Mainstream Warhammer not fun. Discovers 28 community. Finds happy (grimdark) place.

Have you ever stumbled upon something that completely captivated you? For me, it was the hobby of miniature wargaming. My journey began at the age of 12 when a local game store called Scorpio Ink opened up in my suburb of New York City. Joe, the store's owner, was an Old Hammer veteran—a former punk rock musician who had toured around the UK in the 80s and 90s and amassed a sizable collection of Chaos Marines and Eldar. I remember riding my bike after school to the store on its opening day, seeing a board of GW ruins terrain in the front window. I thought, "Yeah, I'll never get into that. I'm good with MtG." A week later, my best friend and I were pooling our allowance money for the Battle for Macragge box set and picking out paint schemes. It wasn’t long before I left the Space Marines behind and bought into my "first love" army: Orks. Their brutality, bizarre weapons, randomness, and most of all, the kitbashing pulled me in. I was hooked.

I didn’t know the official rules that well. What I did learn was how Joe played. Games with multiple players, an arbitrator officiating a story, rolling dice to see if things succeeded or failed, random encounters and events that shifted the flow of gameplay—these might not have been "official," but they were a ton of fun and imprinted memories that I still cherish today.

Fast forward 12 years. High school, girls, parties, and then leaving for the military. All those years, my greenskins sat in a shoebox under my bed. Like many, it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that I pulled that shoebox out and began to paint miniatures again. Any friends that I had in the hobby had long since stopped playing. So there I was, seeking an escape from the monotony of being locked in an apartment, picking up a paintbrush, and applying two thin coats. It was cathartic, almost a form of meditation for me. Once restrictions were lifted, I began looking into playing with my newly painted army. The DC area has a lot of wargamers, many playing 40k and Sigmar. I started to attend meet-ups, tried to keep up with the new rules and the never-ending stream of FAQs. I built lists. I’d get tabled. Rinse and repeat. Truthfully, it sucked. I thought, "Well, this is Warhammer, I guess," and tried to convince myself that I needed more practice. But what I really longed for was the gaming experience I had as a kid.

In early 2022 I stumbled across 28 magazine. I was amazed by the narrative-centric articles, the emphasis on kitbashing and creativity, the grim and gritty aesthetic that was a callback to the art that captivated me when I entered the hobby in the early 2000s. Soon, I was watching videos on "dead games", listening to Dragged into Turbo Lasers, and my Instagram feed became a collection of posts affiliated with #GrimDark, and #Inquisimunda. Eventually I found my way into the In Rust We Trust discord server run by the Hive Scum crew. Finally, I found a community of like minded hobbyists and enthusiasts who were from around the globe. In a cliché way, I found my (hobby) home.

So, why this blog?

I have always enjoyed writing. Growing up, I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, then attempted to craft my own stories with characters of my own imagination or those from the stories I read. The Hobbit, Inkheart, Harry Potter, Spiderwick, Warcraft novels, and Conan the Barbarian series are just a few that stick out. As I got older, I delved into the more "advanced" works of Tolkien (I really cut my teeth reading The Silmarillion), read my way through A Song of Ice and Fire, started exploring novels from GW's Black Library, started the Expanse series, and dabbled with nonfiction history and biographies to help fuel my imagination.

For better or for worse, I have used Instagram as a source of inspiration and motivation to paint and post my projects. Though Instagram is a great platform to showcase your projects, most things quickly get lost in the feed, never to be seen again. Double tap, scroll, double tap, scroll. Captions are kept brief and rarely read in full. Comment sections, in my opinion, are not a good place to hold discussions. Within the In Rust Discord, this topic has come up multiple times, and the idea of leveraging blogs once more has been raised as an alternative. The blogs of some of my hobby pals (Portcullis, Garderobe, Hobby Dungeon, Itswhatevan, Between the Bolter and Me, Under the Dice and The VVizard's Tower to name a few) have truly inspired me. Call me a bandwagoner, but I've decided to give blogging a shot as well. The chaotic flow of life has made it harder for me to make time to write (and read). I have told myself again and again that I want to write more, but never do. Well I am hoping to change that.

"In the Obelisk's Shadow" is where I yell  write into the void. I'll be providing updates on my projects (I have plenty), writing about events I attend, sharing my tabletop experiences, and more. 

If you made it this far in my diatribe, thank you! Hopefully it wasn't too painful. I look forward to updating you and reading any comments left behind.

Stay tuned for more!

What was your first experience with miniature wargaming or the hobby? How has your hobby journey evolved over the years?