Review - WizKids D&D/Pathfinder Miniatures

Last night while chatting with my friend Stan online he asked me if I had painted any of the new WizKids line of miniatures for D&D and Pathfinder.  It's funny because I bought some about 2 months ago but hadn't actually painted one yet, so I decided to bust one out late last night and see how they painted up and held detail.

The first thing to call out about these figures is that they are similar in price and material quality to the Reaper Bones line.  For some people this is a huge plus (the price), while for others the softer material can be a big downside.  I will say that the same issue as Bones exists where longer narrower features (primarily weapons) can come out of the package with a bend.  Having said that the detail is much crisper on the WizKids figure I worked on than any of the Bones figures I've done to date.  I'm not sure if the cuts are marginally broader or deeper but even after 2-3 layers of paint and 1-2 washes I hadn't lost any perceptible detail.  The other big positive I can call out is that these figures do in fact come pre-primed.  I painted mine directly over the existing coat of primer and had no issues what-so-ever.
Here's the cleric I painted in about 45 minutes.

Overall I don't think there's much mystery in who these figures are for.  If you're price conscious and need some classic D&D characters and monsters I think this line is really good value for money.  If hyper-detailed figures for painting contests are your thing these are still slightly (but only slightly) behind hard plastic, resin or metal.  I would recommend this line for gamers on a budget or those who don't want to put tons of time into each individual model that they paint.  I bought about a half-dozen packs and can personally easily see myself buying more.

-Jay

The Adventures Of Konnor - Chapter 2: The Ghost Of Lion Castle

Last night I played through Konnor's next solo adventure 'The Ghost Of Lion Castle'.  It was a roller-coaster of successes and failures but more on that in a bit.

The adventure is set in a small town that has a school of magic and is therefore heavily populated by apprentice wizards.  Konnor is one of the apprentices in  town and after a night of carousing at the local pub Konnor draws the lucky straw and gets to be the next adventurer to explore the (probably) abandoned and (supposedly) haunted Lion Castle.

The adventure is extremely well structured both for solo play and for replay-ability.  There are very few truly fixed encounter locations with most of the action and combat being driven by an innovative use of the wandering monster table.  The player starts with a partial map of the castle which helps with basic navigation but there are some areas that randomly teleport the character to new areas.  I found it to be a nice change from the traditional simple 'choose-your-own-adventure' format of solo play RPGs.  But how did Konnor do?

Konnor approached the castle from the southern side and unfortunately due to some poor spell choices had to circle around and enter through the trapped gate-house.  In spite of Konnor's Dexterity being one of his best attributes he triggered EVERY trap on his entry to the main building and had to camp out and heal up before even really getting started.  Once inside Konnor was able to freely explore the castle and started piling up quite the haul through defeating the creatures populating some of the castle's rooms and hallway.  Shortly before finding his way to the final chambers of Sargon (the castle's former master) Konnor made one poor choice (which I will omit to avoid spoiling it for anyone who plays the adventure) which resulted in him losing ALL the treasure he had acquired up to that point!  What had Konnor found and lost?  Here's the list:
-321 Gold
-5 gems totalling 1660 Gold value
-3 spell scrolls
-an Elven Cloak
For a third level character that is an unreal amount of treasure to have....and lose.
The final encounter with the ghost of Sargon replenished some of the monetary treasure but the Elven Cloak was gone forever.

So overall mechanically how was this play through?
It went a lot more smoothly than my previous attempt as every creature I encountered had a counterpart in the current Monster Manual so I didn't have to guess at any stats.  On the downside, some of the monsters were far less powerful than they had been in D&D Basic (I got the Elven Cloak and 135 Gold from a monster I defeated in a single round), while other monsters were almost invincible for a single level 3 character (I fought an Ogre that I had to use most of my special abilities to defeat and still ended up with 1 Hit Point when the fight was over).  Overall though it was easy and fun to play and translate.  The only downside I see is that if someone was going to use a character that played through this adventure in an ongoing campaign you could easily end up with an absurd amount of treasure and powerful items for a low level character.  I enjoyed it and if played as intended its a fun RPG diversion for a few hours.

So what does Konnor look like now?  Levelled up and ready for his next adventure:

One thing that worked really well is that the adventure (if fully successful) ends with the character automatically levelling up and then adding their earned XP on top of that so Konnor is now level 4 but has a head-start on his way to level 5.

Also a question for anyone with more experience with the current system of D&D than I have; I assumed that when a multi-classed character has a combined character level of 4 they get their first stat increase, is that correct?

Next up is Lathan's Gold by the same author as Ghost Of Lion Castle to I'm looking forward to that.  After that the well is dry unless anyone reading this can suggest any other solo adventures?

-Jay

The start of my kill-team for Shadow War Armageddon

I'm still a bit behind on my goal of getting a squad done today (got 3 of 7 models finished) but atleast I'm making progress.

Today I started my Kill-Team for Shadow War Armageddon.  I'll be playing Adeptus Arbites and using some Necromunda Enforcer models from the old Necromunda range.

Today I got my team leader and two specialists done, there are still four shotgun armed troopers sitting on my desk looking for paint.

The plan is to use the Imperial Guard rules and give everybody carapace armour.  If that doesn't work out I might try swapping my specialists and switching over to the Space Marine Scout rules but I want to give this a go first.  The other great thing about this is that it gives me an opportunity to experiment with how I'm going to base my Arbites army going forward as I'm still trying to get at least four more squads done for them.

-Jay

"I am Dungeon Master, your guide to the world of Dungeons & Dragons!"

If like me your first foray into Dungeons & Dragons was the red box basic set with the Easley art (awesome by the way!) on the cover you probably also watched the short lived Dungeons & Dragons animated show.  The show was about a group of kids plucked from the real world and dropped into the world of the game.  One of the narrative devices on the show was that there was an actual character called Dungeon Master who would send the kids on quests, fill in some backstory, and occasionally interact with the show's main villain Venger (more on him in an upcoming post).

Antediluvian Miniatures which produces an amazing line of pulp models also has some D&D animated show inspired models available.  They've got the main cast re-imagined as adult characters, pig-faced orcs, Venger and Dungeon Master.

I decided to start with Dungeon Master as he is a single small figure I could get done quickly and I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed with some larger painting projects lately so this seemed like a good way to get something done.

I've seen the figure used in games as a gnome illusionist and a wizard but honestly I think he's just a cool model that's going to sit on my shelf for now.

Awhile back the animated series was released on DVD with a D&D 3.5 edition sourcebook included so I may also dig that out and see if the current D&D would be a way to run that content.

Hopefully this means I'm back to painting over the next couple of weeks as I need to get a few units done for some games fairly quickly...oh and Venger.

-Jay

Let the uprising begin!

Last night I finished up another Broken Contract model for the Breaker faction.  This time it's Micha Donelly.

One of the great things about the breaker figures for Broken Contract is that they really do convey a worker uprising rather than looking like a bunch of generic futuristic thugs.  Micha is armed with a shovel, that although I'm sure it can be used to great effect is definitely not your 'traditional' armament for a skirmish wargame.

I've decided to go with safety (or prison, depending on your point of view) orange for my Breaker's work clothes.  On this note I'll probably go back tonight or tomorrow and re-do Trest's pants in orange.

I'm really enjoying working my way through these figures and I hope to get a couple more done before my hobby A.D.D. kicks in.

-Jay

Breakin' The Law!

After a longish absence the shipping of the Broken Contract Kickstarter has me circling back to my unpainted figures for some more Ferrum Sky action.

A while back I painted up the forces of Black Squadron Security (the "good guys") for Broken Contract with the intention that they would also blend into This Is Not A Test as some awesome Peace Keeper figures.  Although there is one new BSS figure on the way to supplement my forces I decided to start painting the filthy peasants who are revolting in the mines.

Normally when painting a force I start off with the stock-trooper type models and do the characters and big guys at the end.  This time I decided to deviate from that that and start off with the Breaker Gen-Mod.  For anyone who didn't read my earlier posts about Broken Contract; Gen-Mods are 'genetically-modified' humans who have been enhanced for manual labour.  So far the two figures from Breaker Press for Gen-Mods are what most gamers would conventionally think of as ogre-sized.  It's hard to tell in a single shot but this model is standing on a 40mm base.

Trest (that's his name), to me is one of the iconic images of the Broken Contract game.  He's huge and clearly not something that actually exists in the real world but his clothing (especially the mining helmet) and over-sized rock-saw ground him in a near-future sort of way.  My biggest challenge in painting him is that I wanted a bright yellow for the saw but I also wanted it a but chipped and scuffed up.  For some reason none of my 3 attempts to get the chipping right worked out so I went for a fresh from Home Depot look instead.

I'm really looking forward to getting more of my Breakers done over the next couple of weeks and I'm hoping as Kickstarters ship I'll see more of these awesome figures painted by other backers as well.
If any of you reading this paint and post pics of your painted Broken Contract figures please link in the comments below, I'd love to see them.

-Jay

The Adventures Of Konnor - Chapter 1: Rogue Mage

Today I managed to play through my first old solo adventure testing out the flexibility of the current D&D rules and I have to say I think it went fairly smoothly.

As I mentioned before my new 1st level Fighter; Konnor played through Rogue Mage an old solo adventure from Warlock Magazine.  During the course of the adventure I substituted Monster Manual stats for the common creatures (Goblins & Giant Snake) I encountered and made up some of the other creatures stats on the fly.  Where I needed to I generally substituted their Hit Dice as a bonus to be applied to every "to hit" roll save and stat test and that seemed to work reasonably well for the most part.  In addition I realised I would have to make up DCs for saves that I was required to make during the adventure so rather than making them variable I just decided at the outset that every save would have a DC of 15.  Again that seemed to work fairly well and I only failed the important saves during my play-through.

My gauge for saying it worked well is that I didn't have to figure out or change very much on the fly and when I did the current rules provided some pretty easy answers that didn't require me to break the flow of the game.  In hindsight my only challenge was that I shouldn't have chosen a non-TSR adventure first as it meant that I was dealing with a lot (eight) of creatures that weren't in the Monster Manual.  The thing I did like about using what was essentially a short Fighting Fantasy novel written for Basic D&D is that the treasure haul was fairly meagre and doesn't feel like it makes the character unusable or overpowered for my next adventure.

So without any further ado, how did Konnor do?

Rogue Mage starts out with Konnor having been tried and convicted for thievery after falling on hard times.  Before his sentence can be handed down the Guild Of Magicians takes Konnor into custody and offer him a pardon if he can track down a rogue mage from their order and recover an artifact stolen from the Guild.  It's that or the noose so Konnor is off to find the mage!
Outside of town the mage's lair is cut into the mountainside and guarded by goblins, after defeating the guards Konnor journeys into a maze stocked with dangerous monsters (acid spitting Ant-Men, Octopus/Man hybrids, Slime Monsters and a giant snake that can camouflage itself as a pile of treasure).  Once through the maze a chase begins with Konnor catching up to the evil wizard and after scorching him with a scroll that shoots fire, Konnor 'bravely' stabbed him in the back.
During the short adventure Konnor managed to acquire a +1 Short Sword and roughly 200 GP worth of treasure.  He also found 3 potions of healing scattered around but used all of them, plus the one he started with just to make it through to the end.
Mission accomplished, and Konnor walked out with 950 XP (enough for 3rd level) and 6 of his Hit Points left.  As an aside a 1st level Fighter with no CON bonus has 10 Hit Points and I burned through about 29 during this adventure so if Konnor had failed to find any of those healing potions he wouldn't have made it.

So let's see what Konnor looks like now, and why:

I levelled up twice and decided that I would increase Konnor's Fighter level because it seemed like those were the skills he had used, but I also multi-classed into Wizard because (meta-reason) my next adventure requires a level 1-3 Elf or Magic-User by the old Basic rules, and this seemed the best way to maintain continuity with one character.  I did fairly well on my Hit Point rolls thankfully (no CON bonus) but may become a bit squishier next adventure anyway.  I'm assuming that if Konnor is ready to spellcast at a moment's notice that he cannot carry his shield so his Armour Class will be moving in the wrong direction.

Konnor's next adventure will be "Ghost Of Lion Castle" another old school D&D solo adventure written by Top Secret game designer Merle Rasmussen.  I've got one more adventure planned (Lathan's Gold)  for after that and then my well will have run dry for D&D solo adventures.  If anyone can recommend any additional adventures (that I can actually get my hands on) please let me know.  

I'm also considering formally stat'ing up some of the Fighting Fantasy monsters I encountered if that's of any interest to anyone, let me know.

-Jay