Tuesday, 23 January 2024

My World of Greyhawk Fantasy Wargames Campaign

I'm using the Maps of Flanaess that come in the World of Greyhawk boxed set for my campaign map. 

Since I've been buying miniatures rather haphazardly for a few years, I've got a small collection of very different miniatures in a few different scales. 

Essex Miniatures (15mm)

        A horde of Biblical Ancients: Assyrians, Arabs, Babylonians, Chaldeans, etc. Some of these are in sufficient quantities to put together 24 or 16 figure units, some far less. 

Eureka Miniatures (15mm)

        Sumerians, Hawaiians, Mound Builders, and Amazonian Indians. The Sumerians have enough figures to make a couple of units, with some random independent elements. The rest are merely samples of each figure in the range.

Eureka Miniatures (18mm)

        I bought a pack of each figure type in all the Fantasy Ranges. So I have enough to make about one four figure element of each troop type.

Kitney & Company: Battle Honours (18mm?) 

        I picked these up at a bring & sell stand they look to be mostly Carthaginians, with a few Romans. I could make a couple of Carthaginian units and maybe an element or two of Romans.

Irregular Miniatures (15mm)

        I have a sample of their Warrior Women who are closer to 18mm I think and may be taller in a few cases. 

        And I think I have some seven years war American Indians.

AB Figures (I think) (18mm)

        Greek hoplites, again I picked these up at a bring and sell stand. 

        I may also have a single Sassanid spearman. That showed up in an order as a bonus.

Grumpy Miniatures (15mm)

        A sample of the Tupi range.

Old Glory (I think) (15mm)

        A horde of pikemen, sans pike, renaissance period (I think)

Khurasan Miniatures (15mm)

        One each of the Fantasy Adventurers, these guys are really tiny and slim of build compared to my other 15mm figures. I think the tallest, a paladin tops out at 15mm to the top of the head.

Alternative Armies (15mm)

        A mix of Asgard and Tabletop fantasy figures, with the Asgard figures being closer to 18mm than 15mm.

There are others but I can't think of them off the top of my head and I'm a little too lazy to go searching through my lead pile. Anyway, I have an eclectic range of all different sizes. Eureka 18mm fantasy Wood Elves are huge, many are closer to 20mm at the eye, making them veritable giants next to a Eureka Sumerian or Essex Assyrian. The Eureka Dwarves are massive at 13-14mm to the eye and almost as wide as two regular 15mm. Compared to the Asgard or Tabletop dwarves they are quite large, and the Khurasan adventuring Dwarf and Gnome are rather small compared to both. 

 My figure collection has quite a range of height and size differences. If I want to use all my figures and not have some languishing in boxes because they don't fit in with the rest, I need some sort of consistent explanation. Ethnic differences is one way, but I think the differences are a little too pronounced in some cases for this to wash. So I have a germ of an idea, that needs some more detail, but the gist is that aeons ago Oerth was a land of giants for a very long time, then gradually these giants started to diminish in size with each generation. Why or how isn't known, but each succeeding generation was just a little smaller than its predecessor. The process wasn't uniform and different cultural and ethnic groups lived longer or shorter lives, matured earlier or later, and bred slower or faster. The groups with shorter lives and faster breeding tended to diminish quicker as they produced more generations over the centuries than the longer lived slower reproducing groups. Thereby accounting for the wide variation found in the peoples of today's Oerth.

The other thing is the difference in technologies. Sumerians, and some other ranges are either Stone Age or early Bronze Age tech, wearing little but a loincloth and carrying a spear and maybe a hide covered shield, while other figures in my collection are wearing full plate and armed with intricate pole-arms, two handed swords, crossbows, and everything in-between.

Note: I make reference to locations on the Greyhawk map in the following text, so here are some links to help you keep up. This page has a digitised version of the map in the boxed set. Apparently it's quite a large file and doesn't play well with browsers, so you might want to download it, the page also suggests two other maps that might prove useful. For those unfamiliar with it, Greyhawk is a city state, located in the Flanaess, which is the north-eastern tip of the continent Oerik, on the world of Oerth.

I plan to assign each Greyhawk nation, city state, region, etc. with its own range of figures. To reflect the different ethnicities (due to size of figure) and technologies, I need to carefully think about climate, and proximity to resources and trade. Figuring that near naked figures must come from a relatively warm, if not hot and maybe humid climate. And those that appear to wear a lot of clothing and/or armour are likely to be located in a cooler climate, gives me some rough climactic zones to use as guide. Since technology and ethnicity tends to bleed across borders and blend together with other technologies and ethnicities I'll need to consider such things as the Eureka Centaurs using basically Greek equipment, so they should likely be located somewhere close to wherever I put my AB Greek Hoplites, and should I buy some 15mm Hoplites, (hopefully mixed with a few taller ranges, somewhere in-between 15 and 18mm), they'll have to be located somewhere nearby also, to reflect a mixing of technology and ethnicity. So for example if I placed my AB Hoplites in Perrenland, then my Eureka Centaurs should be located in the Vesve Forest, as the closest woodland. I choose woodlands for centaurs and not plains, as mythology has them mostly in woodlands, and I can't imagine them foraging on the plains. I mean how easy can it be to pick something up off the ground when you're a human torso grafted onto a horses body? Centaurs need to forage from trees and forests have lots of them. The shorter Hoplite figures (should I buy any) would then be placed either at Highfolk or in Ket.

 Obviously my Oerth will be very different from the official World of Greyhawk.

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My World of Greyhawk Fantasy Wargames Campaign

I'm using the Maps of Flanaess that come in the World of Greyhawk boxed set for my campaign map.  Since I've been buying miniatures ...