First scenery project for Rangers Of Shadow Deep

 Although there's still a week left in 2022 I'm getting a slightly early start on my planned gaming activity for 2023.  This past year has been a bit of a weird one for me in that while I still really enjoy painting miniatures and playing miniature games it's all gotten a bit stale for me.  I think the main reason for this is that my tastes haven't really changed or evolved much over the past 15ish years so my painting has gotten a bit repetitive.  This combined with challenges around my schedule and personal time have pushed me in what feels like a logical new direction; I'm going to try to play more smaller scale, but more 'complete' games.  By this I mean my current thought is that I'm going to paint far less miniatures in the coming year but build and paint a lot more purpose-built scenery for my games so that things look and feel more complete.  Given the challenges I've had actually getting out and playing games with other opponents my plan is to start off with games that have strong solo play, so my first two sets of projects will be for Rangers Of Shadow Deep (fantasy) and CQB (modern).

My first small project will be for Rangers Of Shadow Deep but will also potentially work for D&D and/or the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game.

Nest Trees.  The second scenario in the Rangers Of Shadow Deep rulebook requires some 'Nest Trees' which are the homes to some malignant giant spiders.  This is a great example of a scenery requirement in Rangers Of Shadow Deep which almost any player can easily add to their table.  If a player isn't interested in doing a spider themed tree they can easily use either regular unmodified trees or even a counter or cardboard cutout.  For me with my new plan, and also the fact that I like haunted forests as a game setting I decided to take some diorama trees and add; eggs, webs, and some partial corpses.

I think I went a bit too heavy on the web but overall I'm pretty happy with how these turned out.  For anyone wondering why I've started with the scenery for the second scenario its simply because I need a slightly larger space to build and photograph my intended scenery for the first scenario but I'm REALLY excited about getting to work on it.

Hopefully this is a new and fresh direction that will generate some fun new projects for me.

Thanks for checking in.

-Jay

Back To Stennard

 I recently got to return to Breaker Press' fantastic grimdark Stennard campaign.  Ironically after a year-ish away I returned playing one of the characters from the original funnel I played in the setting; Rhonda Eynion.

Rhonda is a first (almost second) level Cleric and is the conscience of a party that desperately needs one.

Being the moral center of the party Rhonda tends to jump in to save people and defend those in need.  The result of this is that she has slowly surrounded herself will a small entourage of NPCs that she is accompanying to their homes and relatively safe havens.

First up is Vela Correnwood one of the NPCs you are trying to save in The Precipice Of Corruption published adventure.  After rescuing Vela Rhonda and the party escorted her to her home at Hillwood Camp to recover her axe.  At this point Vela is filling the niche of a henchman/backup-PC.

While playtesting another adventure Nick is working on the group saved a couple of children that an evil witch in the woods was trying to consume.

Both children should actually be girls, but unfortunately I only had one female child miniature so I had to make do with what I had.  As an aside this is the 'Children' 2 pack from WizKids and I have to say it is one of the few packs of their miniatures I have gotten that I was actually disappointed with.  The figures are quite small (befitting of children) which is fine but for some reason this has translated into some incredibly shallow detail.  Both of their faces are virtually non-existent and the texturing on the boy's clothes is barely there.  Generally I really like the WizKids models but this pack is a rare miss for them.

The other great thing about these figures is that in addition to using them for Dungeon Crawl Classics I've decided I'm finally going to play some Rangers Of Shadow Deep (and maybe some Frostgrave) in 2023 and all of these figures will work well for those games.  The motivation to paint the children was actually as objectives for one of the first scenarios in the Rangers Of Shadow Deep book.  I also want to call out that North Star Military Miniatures official Frostgrave miniatures are a great line both for fantasy RPG miniatures in general, as well as specifically having a great assortment of female miniatures that break from the pin-up style of clothing and gear.

Here's the group making their way through the woods to...safety?

For anyone looking for a grimdark campaign setting with a real old-school feel I would highly recommend checking out the content from Breaker Press Games, all their current titles can be found at Breaker Press DTRPG 

And my miniatures, as always, can be purchased from your friendly local game store.  Please check them out and support local businesses!

Thanks for checking in.

-Jay

Some odds and ends

Yesterday was one of those days I picked away at a few small projects and almost finished projects while trying to get some coherent writing done.  Nothing earth shattering here but one more figure I actually needed with a lot of urgency (played using him as my PC last night), and two more sci-fi scatter terrain bits.

First up; Flint.

Flint Stone is my character for Advanced Fighting Fantasy.  He is a member of the Hanna-tribe which of course makes him a Hanna-Barbarian (I'm a dad, I'm allowed to tell dad jokes!).  Anyway Flint is made out of the Northstar Frostgrave Barbarian box set with a Bolt Action backpack thrown on to complete the wandering adventurer look.

Flint did mostly pretty well in his first game until a short run of bad luck (literally, I couldn't make a single 'luck' roll) and I'm looking forward to playing more Fighting Fantasy in the near future.  I also appear to have begun collecting a small tribe of barbarians since last year. 

There's definitely one more Barbarian in my near future and then it will definitely be time to move on.

The other thing I realized late yesterday afternoon while prepping some more Broken Contract figures is that I had the two bases of oil drums I'd gotten with my two female Gen-Mods just sitting around and I could get them done quickly.

I actually tried something slightly different this time and I think it worked out pretty well, but it may have been just a bit too subtle to show up in my pictures.  For the oil drums I started off by dry-brushing them metallic (Lead Belcher in this case), then painted them with a watered-down yellow (Averland Sunset), and then I hit them with a super light dry-brush of the same metallic again.  This gives the effect of painted drums where the paint is wearing off but no necessarily super-rough or dirty.

So that's it.  I have a few more lingering almost finished figures I'd like to wrap up this weekend and then it's back to the wasteland.

-Jay

Liam The Sorcerer Druid

Today's addition is a new character model for an upcoming Ravenloft game I'm hoping to play in.

One of the things I really like about 5th edition D&D is how subtly flexible the system really is.  It doesn't (at the time of this writing) have  the seemingly limitless specialised character options previous versions of the game had but it's surprising how many truly unique character types you can create either by use of the feat system or through creative multi-classing.

Years ago I ran a Ravenloft (2nd edition) game that centred around one of my favourite adventure/campaign/box-sets of all time; Castles Forlorn.  Castles Forlorn has tons of stuff in it that really appealed to me; ghosts, vampires (sort of), a Scottish highland theme, and time travel!  I haven't touched the material in years but when a friend suggested a 5e Ravenloft game with characters native to Ravenloft I pulled out my Castles Forlorn book (a reprint of the original content from DMs Guild) for inspiration.  I decided on a red-headed Druid.  In Forfar (the land of "Forlorn") red-heads have a traditional innate magic ability.  I decided to replicate this in 5e by having my character have started life out as a wild magic sorcerer before becoming a true Druid.  This will be my first experience both playing a multi-class character as well as trying the multi-class spellcaster rules (until my Saltmarsh character Garkas levels up again....).

For my miniature I stared with another Games Workshop Mordheim human and once this time added a head and arms from the Frostgrave Sailor sprue.  I also added a backpack because at this point adventurer miniatures without backpacks just look wrong to me.

So that's Liam ready for action.  He won't be nearly as powerful as other members of the party right off the bat but I'm hoping he's interesting to play and should be different than anything I've played before.

-Jay

Generic Brit Fantasy Warrior Miniature

(least inspiring post title ever)

Usually when I paint a single miniature it's either because it's something I need for a game or its some sort of cool critter that I don't have but wish I did.  Today's addition is neither of those things.

I might be trying out the Advanced Fighting Fantasy rules (or I might not)...

I might need a replacement character for my current Warhammer Fantasy Role Play game (or I might not)...

I might need an additional sword armed warrior for Frostgrave and/or Rangers Of Shadow Deep (or I might not)...

But in any event if I need figures for any of the things listed above, they're all basically one figure.  A friend recently hooked me up with 2 sprues of the old Empire Militia/Mordheim Human figures so I had a good base to work up from for something slightly different from a traditional D&D 'sword and board' style fighter.

In addition to the Mordheim sprues I used a head from the Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago sailor sprue and added a backpack from some Napoleonic-era soldiers I had kicking around.

I really like this figure because he looks and feels a bit more like an adventurer collecting his gear as he goes and bit less like an optimised RPG character.

I can't wait to figure out what game I actually painted him for :)

-Jay

Catching up on fantasy RPG figures

Today was a bit of an assortment of figures for three different fantasy RPGs in currently playing-in/running but I've also got an eye to their utility for Frostgrave and Rangers Of Shadow Deep.  Its always nice to get a few different things done as even if its only three figures it feels like three entire projects.

First up I'm playing my second game of the new/current Warhammer Fantasy Role Play tonight and I muddled through without a miniature for my character last week.  Meet Jurgen the Grave Robber.

Jurgen is a Reaper miniature.  Surprisingly it's very difficult to quickly find miniatures for a lot of the character options in Warhammer Fantasy Role Play.  I suspect I need to build up a pool of WFRP figures as well as Dungeon Crawl Classic funnel miniatures, basically rough around the edges lower class fantasy civilians.  Aside from the figure I have to say the current version of WFRP is (in my opinion) the best version of the game to date.  I always liked the idea of the original but the system, especially character advancement, was so crunchy it always felt like more work than it was worth.  The current version maintains a lot of that old-school Games Workshop feel including some of the core ideas behind character advancement but simplifies it to a far more manageable level.  Hopefully Jurgen has a long future of murder-hoboing ahead of him.  Jurgen will also work really well as a PC or NPC for my Ravenloft games.

Next up is my (temporary) updated Garkas miniature.  Garkas has hit third level and I chose Pact Of The Blade, so now he is armed with an ethereal magical battleaxe.  I also added some hair in preparation to transition to another miniature after my next session or two.  I've already approved kind of a weird idea with my DM that will require replacing the entire figure when I hit level four.

This is really just a bit of fresh paint on my existing figure.  I redid his axe and added some hair.  I still really like this miniature but I'm excited about the next step in Garkas' evolution. 

Lastly is a figure I'm not ready to be very specific about yet.  She's an NPC for an upcoming adventure.  More on this shortly.  In the interim she will probably also be joining my warband for Rangers Of Shadow Deep.

The only downside with this miniature is it's the latest victim of me trying to paint eyes while I've got a minor hand strain.  The figure is one of the new Frostgrave plastic Soldiers.  I absolutely love these miniatures for a multitude of reasons:
1.  They're plastic
2.  Multi-part with most D&D weapon options
3.  Female figures that don't fall into "chainmail bikini" territory
4.  They fit really well with winter themed adventures

That's it for now.

-Jay

Zoe's World - Skeleton

After another brief sabbatical from the hobby Zoe asked me about painting some more figures from out of the blue last week.  At the conclusion of her last batch of painting I had her pick out another group of models so I could prep them ahead of time and this worked out great!  It meant as soon as she felt like painting I already had 5 models based and primed and ready for her her to go.

Zoe's painting options were; Human Female War Cleric, Griff-hound, Medusa, Orc or Skeleton.  She chose to start with the Skeleton but she did manage to make a bit of progress on the Medusa as well.

The skeleton is a Reaper Bones model and I have to say for a small very inexpensive figure it was really good.  All the depth of detail was fully realised and in spite of multiple small-narrow points on the model there was virtually no bending out of the package.

Although the Skeleton is a far simpler more basic model than a lot of what Zoe has painted in the past painting it actually show a tremendous amount of growth and learning on her part.  She drybrushed the Skeleton proper and for her first time did not go overly heavy on the paint during a drybrush.  She also chose a light pink colour for the shield which required multiple (four or five, I can't remember) thin layers of paint to get a consistent colour.  Compared to her previous pastel coloured Unicorn you can really see improvement in her technique which yielded a smoother crisper result.

She's going to have quite the eclectic model collection if she ever decides to jump in and start playing miniature games.

-Jay
 

Spiders! Big Spiders!

One of the things I've been looking at lately when I need models for fantasy games is some figures that not only would work across multiple games but for multiple player audiences.

For Rangers Of Shadow Deep I needed some giant spiders but I'm also looking for some fun (but not quite chibi) looking models to use in my D&D games with my daughter.  So basically I wanted something with cartoonier proportions that looked a bit more unique.  I also decided I really wanted to get away from the classic spider colour-schemes of dark greys, browns or blacks.

I ended up getting a bunch of packs of Battleclaw monsters from Toys R Us (yes we still have those in Canada) on clearance.  These were great packs, and you'll see more of them in the next week or two, as they came with 2 monsters in each pack for less than a dollar.  The Battleclaw monsters have a vaguely Pokemon aesthetic which works for what I was going for and should be suitable baddies for my daughter to fight in D&D.

Colour-wise I wanted bright but not too bright and basically landed on Spider-Man's costume colours.

They were cheap, easy to paint, turned out well (I think) and still have more than enough size and mass to feel like a threat in a 28mm miniature game.

-Jay

Ranger of many systems!

I had actually prepped this miniature months ago with the thought of using it for a D&D game but in the end opted out and went with the figure that became Rolf Rolfsson.  He's been sitting primed without a purpose on my desk since then and the upcoming release of Rangers Of Shadow Deep made me decide to finally slap some paint on him thinking he might end up being the titular Ranger leading my warband.

I've lost track but this is either the third or fourth different miniature I've painted that is based off the 'Valeros Iconic Fighter' from Pathfinder.  Its the current WizKids Pathfinder model and like all of its predecessors works really well for a lot of adventurers due to his piecemeal armour and full assortment of weapons.

Hopefully this guy will work out and I'll eventually settle on a name.

-Jay