I'm playing in a couple of semi-regular D&D games but this particular group has basically been getting together to play holiday themed one-offs. We started coming out of Christmas playing Winter's Splendor (also by Ashley Warren) and after thoroughly enjoying it and looking for a Valentine's themed adventure we were all super-happy to find a suitable Valentine adventure written by the same author.
If I can get slightly review-y for a minute I'd just like to start off by saying that Labyrinth Of Thorns is an excellent adventure. It's contained to a specific fixed area which keeps players from going too far afield from their central goal, has a fantastic villain with cleared defined motives, and has really vivid flavour text and descriptions that make it easy and rewarding for both DMs and players to immerse themselves in the story.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Labyrinth Of Thorns to anyone looking for a terrific and rewarding adventure that mixes puzzles and problem solving with some challenging combat encounters. It's available on DMs Guild.
Now on to the figures (because I'm me and that's my thing). Obviously I can't show figures without potentially spoiling some of the encounters so.....spoilers ahead.
First up we have our intrepid band of adventurers.
I didn't paint most of these models, and unfortunately Kim's Gnome Sorcerer got a bit washed out by my flash but as you can pretty much figure out this was a pretty motley collection of "heroes".
As an aside the funniest moment for me when the characters introduced themselves was that I was suddenly struck by the fact that my friend Jay's half-orc Ranger was pretty much Dan Harmon's character from HarmonQuest, which was only made more funny when Jay told us he didn't watch HarmonQuest and really wasn't familiar with the characters on it.
One of the first encounters was with a group of Vine Blights.
I'm super excited about WizKids doing Blight models as I have needed them forever for Curse Of Strahd and forgot how prominently they featured in The Sunless Citadel as well. I basically painted the models brown, then green washed them, then gave them a drybrush of their original brown colour. Simple but effective and really quick to get done.
One of the next encounters was with a Harpy.
I really struggled with this one as I generally paint miniatures with an eye to using them in games with my daughter so prefer more of a PG look and vibe to my figures but the Harpy choices available on short notice were this Reaper miniature or basically nothing. I'm happy with how she turned out but if I was going to run this adventure again I would probably invest some time into replacing this miniature.
One of my favourite encounters and some of my favourite models to paint for this adventure were the 3 Spectres.
For the Spectres I used some of my Age Of Sigmar miniatures along with the technical paints Games Workshop produced specifically for painting ethereal miniatures. Not only do I really like the look and feel of these miniatures, it was a great reminder that I should go back and paint some more ghost-pants for my Age Of Sigmar games.
Not every encounter in the adventure is meant to be hostile and the players were able to enlist the help of a sympathetic ghost named Ophira.
Ophira showed up with the intention of warning the group off from their encounter with the Spectres but one of them jumped the gun and they started mixing it up right away. She was however able to help the group in their final battle before unceremoniously meeting her end.
And finally the adventure's big-bad(s); Rafael The Paladin and his pet Chimera.
These were also really fun and rewarding miniatures to paint and are from Reaper's Bones line. Rafael is a really cool sword-and-board style warrior and instead of the colour choices listed in the text of the adventure I chose to paint him to match my cleric and paladin of Trithereon with the thought that I could possibly use them as the core of a warband in another game down the road.
The Chimera was another 'classic' D&D monster I didn't have in my collection so it felt great to finally get one done. This figure was a bit of a surprise for me because when I looked at it in the pack the detail looked a little soft but as soon as I started to get paint on it I realised it actually had a lot of deep texture on it. I'm really glad to add the Chimera to my repertoire of D&D monsters.
And there you have it. A well written adventure, populated by some pretty cool miniatures enjoyed by a great group of players. That just simply felt like D&D done right!
Now I guess this means I need to start looking for an Easter themed adventure?
-Jay
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