Saturday, July 18, 2026

Standalone Quests for Warriors of Athena

I've enjoyed several of Joe McCullough's previous games, most notably Ghost Archipelago and Stargrave, so when I heard he was coming out with a new game, Warriors of Athena, based on Greek myth and legend, I ended up picking up the rulebooks. I haven't gotten any figures painted up yet, but I've done a bit of inspirational reading to get in the mood, including some of Stephen Fry's Mythos cycle. While reading through these, it struck me that there are a few recurring encounter types that show up in a number of myths and legends which might make good scenarios for Warriors of Athena. Likewise, while reading through the Quests book for WoA, I found myself wishing for some simple scenarios that were a little more terrain- and miniatures-agnostic than the ones included. Put those together, and here we are:


Friday, May 29, 2026

DBA/Hordes of the Things: Dwarves

It's been a slow year so far for painting and gaming, but last month I capped off another set of DBA armies in fantasy guise - this time, dwarves. My dwarves have shown up here once or twice before, I finally decided to expand them into a full-sized army. I started by looking through the DBA army lists to see if there was a historical army that:

  1. Could incorporate the figures I had available (heavy infantry and a cannon) AND
  2. Didn't rely on any cavalry, since I didn't anticipate finding or building any compatible with my 20mm dwarves.
Oddly enough, I found an ideal candidate in list IV/83b, the Rebel Army of Henry Tudor. It would require some archers, crossbows, and handgunners, which led me to tracking down the out-of-production Caesar Dwarves in addition to Alliance set 1 and set 2.



Of course, this left me with quite a few surplus dwarves, and it seemed a shame to waste them all, so I decided to branch out with options for a couple of other historical armies. The III/40b Vikings seemed an obvious candidate, just requiring a couple more solid blades and a warband. And once I had gone that far, why not add one or two more blades to permit me to field III/59 Toltec? (DBA 3.0 allows them a monotype army of twelve solid blades.)


All in all, I ended up with (as pictured from left to right):
2x Psiloi
1x Artillery
12x Solid Blades (including a general option)
1x Command Post (in DBA) or Hero (in HotT)
2x Fast Warband or Fast Auxilia
2x Solid Bow

They've even managed to get out for a game or two (both times getting drubbed by the Orcs, alas...)