Shadows of Brimstone - some monsters

 

I've still got a bunch of miniatures to paint for Shadows of Brimstone... I'd let them fall by the wayside a bit in favour of more interesting models. The detail on these really is not great. But I'm determined to get them all finished.

Rangers of Shadow Deep - "The Missing" scenario 1:"The Deserted Village"

My son and I had a go at the first mission from the Rangers of Shadowdeep rulebook. This particular scenario has a simple setup on a 3x3 map - so we used my Frostgrave matt, plus some trees and papercraft buildings.. It was good fun and due to some lucky dice rolls we came out of it pretty unscathed... two of my team were knocked out, but they both survived to come back in the next scenario. We got enough XP for both our Rangers to go up to level 1. My son easily understood the game mechanics, and he really enjoyed it. I've just got to finish off a few scenery bits, and then we will be ready for scenario 2... bring on the giant spiders!!

Hammerhead - 2019

This year's Hammerhead was a great event - at the Lincolnshire Showground again, two large rooms of participation Wargames.

 

This year I decided to enter the Wargames Illustrated painting competition. I entered two categories: "Fantasy Group" with my Warhammer Nightvault Briar Queen warband and "Kallistra Unit" with a unit of 10mm Skeletons from my Warmaster Tombkings army. The standard of painting was totally in a league above what I am capable of, some absolutely fantastic paint jobs - so I didn't stand much of a chance... I did however come 2nd in the "Kallistra" category (as there were only 3 entries!) - apparently all the top 1-3 in every category will appear in a feature in the May 2019 edition of Wargames Illustrated... so that's pretty cool!

 

I only had a go at one of the participation games this year - the guys from COGS had three tables of the Kings of War Vanguard skirmish game... it is a more complicated Frostgrave type of game.. was good fun, and there were some interesting miniatures - I particularily liked the "Northern Alliance" set with the giant bear rider. Personally I'm going to stick to Frostgrave and Rangers of Shadowdeep though - I like the more accessible system. 

 

Kings of War - Vanguard (Mantic Games):

 

Random pics from Hammerhead 2019

RANGERS OF SHADOWDEEP - Getting things ready...

 Rangers of Shadow Deep is a new game written by Joseph A. McCullough, the writer of FROSTGRAVE. This time he has decided to self-publish his game through the "Drive Through RPG" website. It is available either as a digital download, or as a print on demand physical book that can be ordered from the site. The game is based on the Frostgrave rules engine, but is designed specifically for solo or co-operative play and is more story focused, and magic plays a lesser role.

 

I told my son about the game, and he seemed interested. He's been wanting to have a go at Frostgrave for a while now, and I thought that this might be a better way to get him into this style of gaming -  I think a game of this length will hold his interest more if it is co-operative.

 

So we have decided to try a two player campaign. This means we get a Ranger and a mini warband each. I designed two Rangers with assistants and let my son have first choice.

 

My Son's Team.

My Team

 

Here are our starting characters:

 

Arthur - Ranger

 

Malvolio - Conjuror

 

Hattie - Recruit

 

Fern - Guardswoman

Jennifer - Ranger

Geoffrey - Warhound

Archibald - Archer

Roderick - Man-At-Arms

As our campaign progresses, we may want/need to swap out some of our characters for others, so I have painted enough models for every type we may require:

Conjuror

Swordsman



Archer

Barbarian

Tracker

Recruit

Man-At-Arms

Knight

Villager

Villager

Villager

Villager

Savage

Templar

Rogue

Arcanist



Guardsman

 

 

And I've made a start on a few creatures:



Giant Flies and Giant Fly Demon



FROSTGRAVE - "The Stars are Wrong"

Last night we played the first of three Frostgrave scenarios that originally appeared in the mini"Sellsword" document, which introduced the concept of Captains in Frostgrave. This now appears in the "Frostgrave Folio" book from Osprey Games.

 

These scenarios are designed to make magic more difficult to use, and be a bit more fighty - giving a bit of focus on Captains, and letting them have a chance to use some of their special abilities.

 

 

In "The Stars are Wrong", there are magical pillars around the edge of the board that activate in the initiative phase if a 1-4 is rolled - zapping anyone standing near or in between certain pairs of pillars. In addition to this - both players secretly chose a school of magic, and no spells from that school are allowed to be used for the whole game.

In our game I chose Elemental spells, and Lizzy chose Witch spells.

We also used Ulterior motive cards... I had one called "Emerald Eyes" which meant If I could get to a statue on Lizzy's side of the board I could use actions to extract the magical jewelled eyes from it to either cash in for gold coins, or keep to use as magical grenades in a future game... Lizzy had one that was something about opening an ancient sarcophagus - but she chose to ignore hers in the end...

 

There was a bit of limited spell use - mainly using Leap and Telekinesis to move treasure and people holding treasure around the board...

 

After a few skirmishes, and good shooting from both sides, we ended up with a big scrap in the middle of the board, between Lizzy's Wizard, Captain and Barbarian VS my Apprentice, Captain and Barbarian...

Lots of people were wounded, one of Lizzy's treasure hunters was knocked out... I lost my Captain, a Rogue and my Bear...

 

Two wandering Snakemen turned up in the last round, but I ended the game by getting the last treasure off the board before they could get to anyone.

 

It was a fun game, and I enjoyed the extra fightyness of it. We ended up with 3 treasures each, the magic pillars activated 4 times throughout the game, but no-one ended up getting zapped by them. I managed to extract both eyes from the magic statue. All the characters that got knocked out recovered to come back for the next game.