Last War in Ljubljana

Last weekend I visited Ljubljana, Slovenia. I spent my Saturday at the Slovenian Open Scale Modelling Championship organised by Slovenian Association of Scale Modellers. Marko and Kruno, my clubmates from UMS “Agram” were going there to compete at the event with their figures and dioramas. Not my niche of the hobby, but I tagged along in order to meet up with my hobby friends Luka and Vane, who had participated at Turm2023 back in July. The two would be holding wargaming demos as a side show at the Championship, which was an opportunity for a bit of gaming.

I brought a warband for Last War, which is a Great War flavoured spin-off of Forbidden Psalm. This warband was originally a small collection of minis painted without any particular gaming purpose. However, they fit this setting rather nicely, so I simply added one new figure to bring their number up to the required warband size of five and I was all set. The minis come from from Myriad Miniatures (metal) and Knucklebones Miniatures (resin 3D print). I pulled the colour scheme from The City, a graphic novel illustrated by Ian Miller, since a few of these sculpts were directly based on characters found in there.

I don’t own the Last War rulebook yet, so I generated the stats for my five soldiers on the spot. Turns out firearms are expensive in this game, so my warband was not exactly WYSIWYG with the starting warband budget, but this is not an issue in this type of game. In a campaign I could eventually have gathered enough funds to kit them with appropriate arms and accessories.

I played a game against Vane and his warband of naked French berserkers. The scenario he picked was Mission 3: Nuts and Bolts, which sends the warbands to a place called Hill 33. In the middle of our battlefield there was a tank wreck our warbands came to loot for parts. It was guarded by four Barbed Wire Beasts. I lost most of my warband by turn 5, when my remaining two characters escaped the board with a bit of loot and a single tank part. Barbed Wire Beasts don’t fall easily. The French fared much better, with zero casualties and enough time left to strip the tank bare after I was gone. This was my first time playing Last War, but the rules are essentially the same as Forbidden Psalm - so I didn’t need to learn a whole new system.

I had a chance to flip through the hardback rulebook the guys had brought. Very much up my alley, both system and setting-wise. I’m really attracted to this game, but having to build a dedicated trench board has kept me from getting into it. So it was great that I found someone who has one! The mud-filled board we played on was built and painted by Luka, with addition of Vane’s tanks and some monsters. I love that crashed air plane. You can find Luka on Instagram: @turbine_mill

Vane and Luka mentioned they would be setting up a small Turnip28 display, so I brought my 13th Royal Horseradishes to shoot a few pics. Here they are with Luka’s regiment the Observance of OLM and the Turnip28 scenery he made for them:

Good times were had, many thanks to our hosts for showing us around the city on Sunday morning. I’d absolutely love to visit again for a longer stay! But now it's back to work on commissions and other behind-the-scenes work. I'm having a busy November with not a single weekend without an event to attend, so there's much less time for blog posts. However, I'm planning to release a new painting tutorial by the end of the month, and it will be one I get asked about quite a lot!

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