Five Leagues From The Borderlands - The Civic Minded Six

 It's beginning to look like 2023 will be the year of games that can be played solo for me.  I am actually currently in the process of playing four (seriously FOUR?!) separate solo fantasy miniature skirmish/RPG games.

The first game up in the que is Five Leagues From The Borderlands.  Five Leagues is probably the most popular and well known solo game I'll be playing.  I am definitely still trying to find the game that appeals to me the most.  So far they all have strengths and weaknesses.  Five Leagues is fairly straight forward and rules lite (which I like) but in my opinion lacks flavour.  The campaign system is engaging but it feels to me like the campaign system should be bolted on to some other game?

For my Five Leagues warband I re-cycled two underused figures from previous D&D and Dungeon Crawl Classic games, and painted four new figures.  Let's meet the Civic Minded Six!

The leader of The Six is Sir Dane Lorcan.  Sir Dane is a WizKids Frameworks miniature with a head swapped in from the plastic Frostgrave Captains.

My favourite new character was Cheech my Feral Outsider.  He's a tremendous miniature and was highly effective in my first game.  In my second game?  R.I.P. Cheech.

Penelope Haberdasher was probably my most effective character snipping away with her crossbow and also filling in the underappreciated role of fashionista that every successful adventuring party needs.

My final hero level character is a reused miniature for Donal from a previous D&D game.  I only got to use Donal once in his D&D game before he was forced to retire for somewhat meta reasons.  I'm excited to use him in a bunch more games!  On an unrelated note; R.I.P. Donal.

In addition to my heroes, each warband starts with two followers, who are effectively lesser characters.  My first follower is The Penitent.  The Penitent is a Fireforge Games miniature that I had effectively as a backup character in a Dungeon Crawl Classics game.

My last character/follower is Mac.  Mac is a Wargames Atlantic celt model.  Mac was a moderately effective support character and I look forward to painting more of these cool models going forward.

It was nice to get some painting done, as well as scratching a bit of an old school RPG itch.

And as always I got all of the assorted miniatures from a variety of different companies through my friendly local game store.

Thanks for checking in!

-Jay

I just got 'funneled' in Stennard

 In case it's not already obvious; I like gaming with miniatures, I mean I REALLY like gaming with miniatures.  One of the odder ways this manifests itself is that even when I'm playing an RPG that doesn't need or require miniatures I paint them anyways.  Case in point, I recently got to play in a Twitch stream run by Nick from Breaker Press Games on Goodman Games official Twitch channel.  Obviously playing remotely and we were not using miniatures but...I've got to be me, so I painted up the three characters I would be playing in our level 0 funnel.

A funnel is the concept in Dungeon Crawl Classics where a player players usually four, but in this case three, 0 level extremely fragile characters some, most, or all of whom won't survive to the conclusion of the adventure and then when it's time to play a traditional level 1 starting character you choose the one you enjoyed the most from the funnel.  These are the three adventurers (not heroes) that I played with through The Precipice Of Corruption with.

I should also point out that every time I play through a funnel I seem to follow two traditions or patterns but I'll get into those in the additional entries below.

First up is Aels Crowgrounder.

Aels is a Forrester and statistically was neither very good at anything, nor exceptionally poor at anything (which for me makes him above average!).  Unbeknownst to the rest of the players Aels was in league with the villains of the adventure and was destined to turn on the group at a key moment.  To this end Aels fulfilled the first of my traditions when playing a funnel; I was playing the scummiest character in the group.

Next we have Ehns Logsplitter.

Ehns was a Woodcutter from the nearby community of Hillwood Camp and was statistically my best character.  She was going to fill a warrior role in the group and had above average physical stats as well as being armed with one of the most damaging weapons 0 level characters had access to.  Ehns fulfilled the second of my traditions in that from start until almost the end she was the character I thought would become my main level 1 character at the conclusion of the adventure.

And finally we come to Vandiss The Blinding Light.

Vandiss is a Legerdemainist who is new to the area and is slightly below average statistically as well as being armed with a mediocre weapon and some starting equipment that really doesn't work well with their stats and bonuses.  Having said that Vandiss turned out to be a great utility character who was excellent at playing a support role.

So how did the funnel go?  Aels betrayed the party at a key moment and not surprisingly met a gruesome (no, seriously GRUESOME) fate that he clearly deserved.  Ehns bucked the spirit of the game by in fact being a heroine!  We played for about 5 hours and through 4 3/4 of those hours Ehns was a tank that absolutely demolished every obstacle in the party's way...but man those last 15 minutes were rough.  Ehns squared off against the adventure's big bad and fell to a single crushing blow.  I have to say it was really impactful, no pun intended, because as soon as she died the entire rest of the group seemed very aware of how much danger they were in.  RIP Ehns, you were too good for this world.  And so we come to Vandiss.  Vandiss spent most of their time on the fringes avoiding direct confrontation and not being particularly brave or cowardly.  In our first of two sessions Vandiss did manage to get off an attack with some flash powder that greatly assisted the melee characters in the group, so overall they had a positive impact on the group as a whole, but they also made the decision in the closing moments of the final battle that there was in fact no place like home and broke for Stennard before the battle's conclusion.

Overall I really enjoyed The Precipice Of Corruption and anyone looking to run a Dungeon Crawl Classic funnel should definitely pick it up at Precipice Of Corruption 

I also really like the figures I painted up to sit on my desk alongside me while we streamed this game and highly recommend this box set from Fireforge Games for anyone looking for 0 level characters for their low level RPGs or specifically Dungeon Crawl Classic funnels.  It's a rare box set that includes both male and female figures as well as a mix of both actual and improvised weapons.

And as always I picked these miniatures up from my Friendly Local Game Store.  Please support both your FLGS and small publishers online!

Thanks for checking in

-Jay