100th post! The Chronicle of Oddgob

Hard to believe it, but this is my 100th post on this blog!

And to make it special, I decided to go all kinds of nostalgic with this one and reminisce about my goblin wizard, Oddgob.



A sketch from my game notes.

This model was painted some years ago, around 2005-2006 I think. At the time I absolutely had no intention or designs to build an Orc & Goblin army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Indeed, I was putting together an Empire army at the time, but I was actually painting D&D models when I could spare the time. Those were very busy times for me back then and much of my hobby time was immersed in writing and creating adventures for my D&D 3.5 campaign.


Nazgit Oddgob was not for one of my games however, as this was my player character in Warfrog's campaign. I decided I wanted to do something totally off-the-wall and different and play a goblin wizard! What made this even more exciting was that Warfrog had taken the time and effort to convert the classic D&D (i.e. "Basic") Known World and adapt the City of Glantri over to D&D 3.5. He has to have the largest collection of 1st edition D&D materials of anyone I know and is definitely an authority on the Known World (later Mystara). Glantri was quite impressive and worked very well in this new edition. It was a city state controlled and ran by wizards. Which, much to the other player's surprise, Oddgob the escaped slave goblin, found himself to be quite well-positioned for success in this place. And notoriety as well I suppose.

 




Pre-game history of Oddgob.

I made an exciting background for Oddgob to explain how he even became a 1st level wizard in the 1st place. Which is well and good as at the start of our first game all of us players found ourselves tossed into a gladiatorial arena for the amusement of the wizard nobles. It was more amusing for them (and shocking!) to see this lowly gobo magic missile his foe to death! He and his fellow winners were all purchased by a wizard lord named Lorin who immediately set about securing a license for practicing magic for Oddgob and enrolling formally into a  school of magic. Our group was sent all over the region performing missions for Lorin and gaining levels and gold.

As he gained levels, he also gained cockiness, and was particularly apt to show off and try to out perform (and wit) any of the elves in the city. Particularly the party's elf Viruiem. In fact, Oddgob only called Viruiem "Elf", refusing to acknowledge any other title. We fondly recall Oddgob shooting an adversary that was giving Viruiem a difficult time, with his hand crossbow and yelling out for all to hear in the Beavis voice I used for him "You owe me a life-debt Elf!" much to the annoyance of The Elf. At some point The Elf died and Oddgob was very distraught over having lost his favorite foil. There is more story here regarding that event however and I shall save it for another post...

 

Sketch from game notes. Why use a crossbow when you can magic-missile stuff to death?

 



Ready to lead on!

Eventually, after being trapped in a pocket dimension (The Enclave) and finally figuring out what it would take to escape it, we made our way back to Galantri. Oddgob was now powerful enough to take the final trial, which was his rite of passage to become a 10th level wizard. He passed the test, and that turned out to be the last game of this unique campaign.
 

In his display box.

We all were burned out on D&D 3.5 just as WotC released 4th ed, which we were all pissed about considering the amount of dough we dropped over the years for books that would become irrevocably obsolete! And we never returned to Galantri or these characters again. 

 

So flash-forward to now, and here I am building an Orc army for WHFB. And just last week I found the 7th Edition starter set in a local game store and at the original price! So, now I have accumulated a good sized Night Goblin force with the added bonus of already having a painted model to lead it!

 



When I painted this model, again, there was no thought of ever putting together a Warhammer army of goblins: he was strictly for D&D and the typical D&D goblin miniatures sort of sucked, let a lone finding one that was a wizard. And I have always loved this classic Brian Nelson sculpt. I added a Reaper Miniatures skull on the base to added a bit more of a dangerous element.

The bottom of the base is magnetized as well as the bottom of the display case which I made, quite simply, from a clear dice box. He doesn't move inside this case and I was able to transport him to and from Warfrog's house without getting a single scratch or chip on him. I did this for most of my D&D models actually as they were very individual and the typical transport methods that I use for my armies seemed like overkill at the time.

 

So Oddgob prepares for his next big adventure. While in that pocket dimension I mentioned earlier, he freed a group of goblins and convinced them to work in a mine that our party secured. I imagine that Oddgob would go back to that place and raise an army out of that collection of gobos and descend on another realm to take over. Because, well, why not?