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Well. Second Edition Warhammer was, like the first, released as 3 rule books. These ones entitled ‘Combat’, ‘Battle Magic’ and ‘Battle Bestiary’. These game out in 1984, only a year after the first edition which I can see really annoying some people. That’s a pretty quick turn around really as well as kinda appearing to be a ‘oh damn, we screwed some stuff up or rushed out the rules’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like the first edition, this one credits Richard Halliwell<\/strong>, Bryan Ansell<\/strong>, and Rick Priestley<\/strong> for the rules, with John Blanche on box art. It has cover art by both Tony Ackland<\/strong><\/strong> and John Blanche<\/strong> and.. I’m gonna say all three were drawn by Tony Ackland, and John Blanche coloured them. Internal art has been increased from just Tony Ackland, to also include John Blanche and David Andrews.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, there are two bits I want to bring attention to before going on. The volumes are Dedicated to Phil Barker<\/strong>, Donald Featherstone <\/strong>and Michael Moorcock<\/strong> ‘whose fault it all is’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n well.. right of the bat, I can tell you about Michael Moorcock<\/strong> connection. Pretty much the WHOLE concept of Chaos in Warhammer comes from Michael Moorcock’s work, mostly his Eternal Champion range. The High Elves are also highly taken from his, mostly the Melnibon\u00e9an’s from Elric part of the Eternal Champion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phil Barker<\/strong> is kinda one of the BIG legends of Miniature gaming, or atleast major ones. When he was a kid in the 30s and 40s, he started playing H.G. Wells ‘Little Wars’ which I have talked about before, then he entered the army before coming out and working for British Leyland. He mostly played Modern warfare games at first but then started to move to ancient ones. and in fact, in the 1970s, he took voluntary redundancy from Leyland and became the first known person in the UK to work as a full time Wargames Writer and games designer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we have Donald Featherstone<\/strong>. He also got introduced to war gaming via H.G. Wells and served in WW2, but then after a while, his wife saw a description of a solo wargame being played by Tony Bath in Southampton and the two became friends, starting as editors on a UK version of the “War Games Digest”. It’s a bit odd Tony Bath wasn’t mentioned as he was a big name at this time too but oh well. You can kinda see why all three are stated here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However.. the second thing I want to comment on is… kinda weird.. there is an introduction to wargaming really, and warhammer’s place in it, before going on about the books themselves. There are some real odd bits and some interesting bits. It starts about Fantasy gaming often happens because of the attended to the fantasy gender by authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien<\/strong> (The Middle-Earth saga, which includes The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings being the most famous), Micheal Moorcock <\/strong>(who we have already said about), Robert E. Howard<\/strong> (Solomon Kane and Conan the Cimmerian being the best well known and ones which CLEARLY have a major influence in Warhammer). However, the main thing that.. bothered me is a paragraph which is kinda think… is a mixture of hyperbole and just plain rubbish.. Let me quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Warhammer was originally published in 1983 by Citadel Miniatures. It was the first game to specifically cater for the gamer who wished to enact large battles with tens or hundreds of models rather than just one or two heroes and monsters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n erm.. well.. first, at times, just try to figure out who or what is Games Workshop vs Citadel Miniatures. General rule of Thumb is that the miniatures, sculpting, casting, paints etc, are Citadel Miniatures. The rules, boxes, publishing etc is Games Workshop. However, this isn’t always right. It’s like how at first, “Merry Melodies” and “Looney Tunes” were two different things, but then there came a period where they pretty much just slapped the names on randomly (originally, Merry Melodies were more music focused and were normally one-offs, where Looney Tunes were more focused on recurring characters but this wasn’t a hard and fast rule, and by the 50s, no real difference existed at all). Anyway. the first Warhammer does say it is by Citadel Miniatures on the Cover, but only credits Games Workshop LTD. for the copyright of the rules inside and the back cover states ‘A Games Workshop Product’. Others can go into more detail on this but basically, Games workshop was created to sell and make games. Citadel Miniatures, to make miniatures, which would then be sold, primary via Games Workshop. But.. yeah, I don’t think many of the people working for them really knew who was who for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, “The first game to specifically cater for” “large battles with tens or hundreds of models”.. I really don’t think so.. The original scenario didn’t even feature that many miniatures. While Mass combat was a thing, and it was stated to be Mass combat battles, they weren’t the first. Hell, Little Wars by H.G. wells kind ranges from 30 – 110 men per side in it’s samples with an average force side being 80 Infantry, 50 Cavalry, 3-4 navel guns an a field gun per side. So because they allows smaller, it’s not specifically to cater for larger? which is also wrong cause TONS of rule sets allow for both large and small (most war games more focus on large forces). Maybe it would be right to say the first UK game to specifically cater to large battles with tens or hundreds of fantasy models but even then, one could debate on the rule sets created by the people who went on to create Warhammer.. . yeah.. I’m just not really convinced this intro is very ‘legit’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last thing I’ll say is that they also point out that the first edition was created a year before and it was followed by ‘Forces of Fantasy’ which has kinda been merged to make this new version, and there is a companion piece to Warhammer Fantasy Battle called ‘Warhammer Fantasy Role-play’ as well as 2 more on the way, ‘Rogue Trader’ which will focus on futuristic warfare, and ‘Lustria – A whole continent of adventure’. This is slightly odd to me as I never really felt of the whole Lustria stuff as being a separate supplement in the same way as WFRP and RT were. But I does kinda make sense. IT was kinda more ‘darkest Africa’ Victorian era pulp stuff, in the same was the WFRP was a bit more modern then Fantasy Battle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway.. this far and I haven’t really gotten to the subject matter eh? well.. ‘Book 1 – Combat’ contains no scenarios. ‘Book 2 – Battle Magic’, as might be expected, also doesn’t (Kinda). ‘Book 3 – Battle Bestiary’ also doesn’t. It does, however, give a time line of the world which goes up to 0 as the current date. This is interesting as if you go by third edition, they use 4 date types. ‘Time before Present’, which 2nd appears to use, ‘Elf Reckoning’ the oldest recorded timeline, ‘Dwarf Reckoning’, which is the next oldest and starts when the dwarfs first created a big fort, and the Imperial Calendar. the current dated via Imperial Calendar appears to be 2,500 and.. damn it, I guess I’ve gotta do a timeline dive a bit later. Might be fun to see what stays the same and what changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, the second Edition has no sample battle, which is weird to me. However, it does gives credit details for ‘Magnificent Sven Scenario’ by Richard Halliwell. Well. The Magnificent Sven was the first Scenario Pack and was in fact, included with the full 2nd edition set as a pull-out in the Battle Magic book.. for.. some reason. and it’s.. kinda weird for an introductory battle, which it does state it is. It ‘s a pretty damn large scenario which leans way more into the roleplay side. The Map it shows is VERY large, specially compared to the first edition, and shows the village of Vastervik, the step Pyramid Cholulec, ruins of an old village, some cliffs and a large river and jetty.<\/p>\n\n\n The Narrative is pretty long too and mostly for the GM, while it says can be (or atleast parts of it) said to the player who is playing as Sven and his band. Basically.. despite being really new, our story starts in the famous ‘Packet Inn’ (yeah, I see what you did there) in Iquitos, a Norse village in Lustria. Lustria is meant to have only been recently discovered by the world as a whole so how the norse have gotten here, made a town and got a famous pub I don’t know.. or why it was given a local name.. anyway, It was a main trading port for stuff going up river and out of Lustria. The bar was empty apart from the drunken dwarfs Sven Haslefresian<\/strong> and Juggo Jorikson<\/strong>, along with an insomniac barman. the dwarfs are arguing bout how feasible it would be to ship ice cubes to Lustia from the old world. Ice cubes in their beer? these Dwarfs must be drunk. As the dawn breaks, they both discover something very shocking. They are both broke and the Barman isn’t happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An old man and boy come into the inn, looking for Sven. After asking and getting a bit of a run-around and Sven fears he might own the guy money, the old man states he is Haarld Havangatt<\/strong> from the village of Vastervik<\/strong> on the Ljunger River. The village is only a few dozen years old but a large band of Slann Renegades moved to the hills locally and stared to cause all kinds of trouble and became bigger and bigger and 3 months ago, lead a full-on assault of the village, killing or capturing all fighting men and women. As Sven owns the only ship in Iquitos, the Voltsvagn<\/strong> (The people’s carriage? if you might German with Swedish), he wishes to hire him and his men to help against the Slann attacks, with a new one due in seven days and he offers One hundred and thirty crowns (and seven Shillings). Sven takes him up on this deal, and claims Juggo will be his first mate. Sven then has the rest of the day to try to get some men to help. He ends up with twelve hungover Norse berserkers<\/strong>, then asks two human friends Aygar Mistletaine<\/strong> and Karl Ustracutter<\/strong>. While waiting for them, he bumps into the sea Elf Riolta Snow<\/strong> and persuades her to join in for the adventure. They all go to the boat, where the guard, Karra Lakota<\/strong> isn’t too happy to be woken from her sleep and told she is going on this mission. There is then a stowaway, Raidocks Timmowit<\/strong>, a halfling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There then gives information and list of all the team (well, the Berserkers are just listed as 12 Berserkers). There are also 150 Villagers left alive, though only 40 are able to fight with 30 having a sword and shield, and 10 having a sword and bow, with the others being too old or sick to fight but will defend themselves with sticks, stones and whatever improvised weapons. If you don’t have enough figures, you can use card models ^_^;<\/p>\n\n\n There is then the Voltsvagn itself. Not only is this a major part of the game as the only place to escape and Sven not wanting to lose it (or see it damaged) but it’s got it’s own floor plans and stuff too as you can get the villages into different parts to save as many as you can, and each part has damage information and stuff as if they are each a single building section. Also, if Sven stations one or two villages in the stoking room, it’ll be ready to move off right away. Else? it takes 30 turns to build up the steam. Also you can only leave if Sven, Juggo or Karra are onboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So Sven’s forces are 7 named characters + 12 Berserkers (total of 19 figures)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Villagers are 150 in number. Apart from them villagers, I’m not quite seeing the ‘Mass combat’ bit here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now we have the Slann Renegades force lead by Gurggl Greenwake<\/strong>. the Slann player shouldn’t know about Sven and his group, but will know he is meant to be entering into a conflict. They are a bunch who have seen the fall of the Slann Empire and them being violented killed and hunted by the foreign invaders and they are determined to survive and to get revenge on these people for whatever reasons. Gurggl himself and his village looted and raised when he was child, where he was abandoned, believed dead. He was found by Krikk Green-Sea-Slick<\/strong> who adopted him and raised him as a son. Two years before now, he was killed by Norse adventurers and Gurggl became the chief of the gang. He also has 6 Lieutenants, and a gang of 70 Slann warriors. 30 have a Slann Scythe (which is a spear), with armour and shield, 20 have axes, and 20 with Blowpipes. All also have swords. There are also 4 Slann Warhounds with a handler for each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whew.. Now we have to game rules itself. and it’s kinda cut into two parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pre-battle parts start with Sven arriving three days before the gang is meant to attack. As Sven is a skilled Engineer he can take work on extra defenced. He works out he has 1000 men hours of work he can do and these can be spend from the following list:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It also notes that 2 meters translate to 1 inch on the table. Sven and his troops can be deployed anywhere they like as he knows where the Slann usually approach from (marked on the Map) and he should have a copy of the map where he can mark any hidden troops so the Slann player can’t see where they are. IF troops are stationed in the jungle, there is a 5% chance per turn that they make a sound which will alert all the Slann within 8″ of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Gang, however, start at the marked area and are meant to be self-confident and not expecting any real problem so until they are attacked or forewarned of an attack (see new fortifications, war engines, armed villagers of any of Sven’s Fighters) they should march along the shown trial in single file with Gurggl deciding on the sequence of each regiment, but they must be within 6″ of the one in front of them. Then they get to 12″ of the village, one of Gurgll’s Lieutenants will go forward and demand 23 hostages (which is a sacred Slann Number for these events). If they aren’t handed over, Gurggl must send atleast one regiment into the village to fetch them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If he is able to, Gurgll can retreat off-table in order to regroup and attempted another attack. the Village is completely surrounded by jungle which they can move through without penalty (the other player has half movement) and Gurgll is free to send troops to any point on the edge of the jungle. As Slann don’t own watches, when the gang if split into groups, they must be given orders to attack at a certain time or pre-arranged signal and must roll 2 D6 to see if they over or under-estimate the time. One die is over, and the other is under. The total is the number of turns misjudged. So if you roll 5 turns over estimate, and 1 turn under estimate, you do the basic math of 5-1 to say they are 4 turns too late. For the signals, it takes 5 turns to make an adequate fire for a smoke signal and Gurgll himself must supervise this. they are visible to anyone within 300″ and 3 different signals can be sent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this sounds all very fun.. it also sounds very complex for an introductory game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are then some tactics for each player, some extra rules for falling off the cliff, the Jungle, The river stream, how to swim and what the Spiked pits are like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Victory conditions then follow. if you are playing a 2 player game (Sven vis Gurggl) the goal is to try to save the village but he is still a bit drunk. The victory points are awarded as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n where as the Slann have a simpler mission. Either take the 23 hostages or inflict some kind of retribution for this. Ideally, they would just love to humiliate the villagers to force them to hand over the hostages. There victory points are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now.. if you want, you can have more then 2 players and GM. Each additional player can play as one of Sven’s Heroes or Gurgll’s Lieutants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now it gets really messy and.. I’m sorry, I’m not gonna type up ALL this bit. each of Sven’s Heroes has their own goals so their points are different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also a sheet of cardboard miniatures for the characters, some are full-coloured and some are not. Why are some not? well, you can photocopy them, and colour them differently to be the generic troops like the Berserkers and Slann.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was also one of the first of Citadel’s Miniature bundles where, while you could use your own minis, and it gave you proxies, you could buy the metal miniatures for this game. 16 different miniatures were on offer.<\/p>\n\n\n The advert for this set was quite nice really, though basic. Each miniature was 60p each (apart from the warhound which was 75p) and there were three bundle offers. Offer A – you could get Sven and his heroes + 12 Norse Bersekers and 40 random Villagers, making 59 miniatures for \u00a325. Offer B was for the Slann forces which were 81 miniatures including Gurggl, his Lieutenants, Warhounds and random Slann, for \u00a337, OR BOTH together for \u00a358. 140 Metal miniatures for \u00a358… Yes please! (bank of England’s basic inflation calculator puts that to \u00a3195 at the end of 2025 but really, I doubt you will find any place that can sell you that many, even in plastic, for that price… apart from maybe em-4 miniatures..<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before this, there were a couple of Miniature sets for scenarios (Citadel Compendium 1 and 2 has WFB1 Scenarios) but I’m not sure these were ever sold as a bundle like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well.. what do I think of this? well.. For an introductory battle, it’s too big. I think it kinda gives something to aspire to and looks like fun (also, like alot of these easy to convert to other systems). It’s not a simple setup by any means but I think it’s pretty obtainable. Though with all the talk of hundreds of figures in mass combat.. well.. max number is probably 200 or so.. so that’s plural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And of course, if you couldn’t tell this scenario is heavily based on either “Seven Samurai” (1954) by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, or “The Magnificent Seven” (1960) which was a remake of Seven Samurai (using the name the film had been released in the USA under) by William Roberts (but with Walter Bernstein and Walter Newman), with the plot of a small village being attacked by bandits and seven warriors hired to help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Being an early Amazon in the warhammer world, Karra has a bolt pistol which would seam out of place in the later game, but as the Slann original came from space, them and Amazons who were also from Lustria, could sometimes be allowed such weaponry. Chaos forces were also allowed some of these due to the nature of the chaos realm (said to be another world, in another universe, which 40K would tie into ‘the warp’) being timeless. While these weapons were rare, they are more notable in 2ed and 3ed Warhammer Fantasy then any other versions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I just noticed I forgot something.. Lets look at name Origins! this might be short..<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sven<\/strong> Haslefresian<\/strong> – Generic name picked because it sounds like (and almost spelt the same as) ‘Seven’. His surname seams to be a play on looney tunes ‘Yosemite Sam’ “Rassin’ Frassin’ which, the story goes, it was basically Fritz Freling left a space blank in the script and Mel Blanc tried to ad-lib some swearing which he believed could pass the censors. And, of course, it did. Though spelling of the term is pretty… up in the air at times. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After looking as Thistlewood, and then the Warhammer 1ed sample scenario, I though I would look at other introduction\/sample scenarios which were done for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Well. Second Edition Warhammer was, like the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[198,164,213,49,103],"class_list":["post-740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-outofthebox","tag-2nd","tag-citadel","tag-sven","tag-warhammer","tag-wfb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740\/revisions\/879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tesp.co.uk\/OHam\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Juggo Jorikson<\/strong> – Juggo is… tricky. it COULD be from the old name ‘Jugo’, or the name ‘Juggoo’ or a variation of Yugo, or some use it as short for Juggalo or Juggler, or from the Mediterranean wind ‘Jugo’… it’s.. tricky. Jorikson basically means Son of Jorik. Jorik is a modern version of Yorick (as in the dead jester in Hamlet.. mm.. cause J is a fairly modern English letter, Y was the older version. If we take the whole ‘Son of Yorick’ but, Juggo is probably from Juggler as that is a key feature of many jesters.
Haarld Havangatt <\/strong>– Haarld is basically a variant of the name which became Harold. Basically a mixture of Gray and wald (or section of woodland). Havangatt is is well, Gatt is the old English word for Gate. Havan is basically from H\u00e6fen (via Haven) meaning a safe place. So Gate to a safe place.
Vastervik<\/strong> … is just a place in Sweden. It’s near the sea. Or maybe a small village in Finland… It basically means a Western bay. Alice Babs was from the Sweden one. A good singer who did alot with Duke Ellington. Mm.. but the village on the map… is on the east.. not the west… tsk tsk.
Ljunger River<\/strong> – erm.. from the German Junger? so it would be the younger river?
Voltsvagn<\/strong> – I said about this one.. “the People’s Cartridge”.
Aygar Mistletaine<\/strong> – Aygar is a middle-eastern name. I believe it means Fear and often connected to positions of power. Mistletaine is just variant of the Norse word Mystletainn, which is Mistletoe. So for a druid, it make sense.
Karl Ustracutter<\/strong> – Karl is an old German name which is very common, mostly with the ‘Carl’ spelling. Means something like Man or husband. Ustracutter would be from the Slavic ‘Ustra’ meaning .. well, they debate on ‘to be born’ or ‘to arise’. Often used to refer to when someone is born or when they go from say a normal person, to a rank of power or status. Cutter would most likely mean basically to cut. So.. someone who cuts down people as they grow in power? maybe
Riolta Snow<\/strong> – this is fairly easy.. Riolta is a variant of what is also spelt as ‘Rialta’ which is Italian for ‘Deep Brook’. Snow is.. water when it has frozen and started to defrost. Do I need to explain snow?
Karra Lakota<\/strong> – Karra is odd It’s a Irish\/Italian name meaning Beloved. Lakota makes more sense for an amazon in south American area as it’s the name of a ‘native’ American tribe, who are one of the three main tribes in the Sioux group. the Name then became ‘Dakota’ as that was their lands at one point. Sitting Bull was a major chief in that tribe and well known. As was Crazy Horse.
Raidocks Timmowit<\/strong> – I’m not sure for Raidocks and I’m just stuck with ‘Radox’ soap Which was an English brand taking its name from ‘Radiates Oxygen’ which was used as its first tagline. Goes with the normal commentary on Warhammer Halflings.. Timmowit is.. also a bit tricky.. I think Timmo as in Timothy, and wit as .. kinda aptitude for humour.
Gurggl Greenwake<\/strong> – Gurggl is probably from Gurgle, to make bubbling sounds, and Greenwake would be the colour green and being awake. Makes sense for froggy lizard men.
Krikk Green-Sea-Slick<\/strong> – Krikk might be from Crick as in a painful stiffness , often in something like your neck or back. The ‘green-sea-slick’ but is.. again, pretty simple for surnames. The Slann surnames appear to be inspired by ‘native’ American translations of names.<\/p>\n\n\n\n