RoSD: Blood Moon Companions and Werewolf

One of the cool things about a skirmish game like Rangers Of Shadow Deep is to build lots of new character models. When I play this kind of skirmish game, if a soldier dies - I always make and paint a new one as well. It's a good way to slowly grow a collection.

For RoSD Bloodmoon there's four auxiliary companions, with some minor descriptions of looks. So I set about building those. 

The four new guys all have a recruitment point cost like regular companions, but they come with some neat skills. They'll be joining the warband if they survive the Bloodmoon scenario.

Covin and Seb
Covin is a military veteran who lost three fingers during his service. The body and head are an old Bretonian men-at-arms, even sword arm and empire milita arm (with three fingers missing). I chose the body, as unlike many other models, it looks sufficiently military.

Seb is described as a hulking brute of a woodcutter with well-worn clothes.  I used a Frostgrave cultist as the cloth have patches and tears, made a few more with my hobby knife. Head and arms are from the frostgrave barbarian kit.

As I try to always to, I added an empty scabbard for Covins sword.

Nicolan and Orla
Nicolan is a son of a noble. This model is from the Dunkeldorf range of miniatures. Normally he has a wine cup, but I added a dagger wielding hand instead. I chose the same colors as the rest of the rangers (red and green), but in a brighter tones.

Orla is an acher with read hair - and I didn't have anymore female minatures around that would fit. So this was the excuse I needed to finally order the Frostgrave soldiers II kits. No conversinos on her, only added a bowstring.

Werewolf

I've already painted up a single werewolf model for Frostgrave, but the bloodmoon scenario might bring two to the table at the same time. So I painted up another reaper bones miniature for that. Quick job. Brown base coat, couple of darker brown drybrushes. Some dark skin tone and washes. 

Terrain: White picket fence

As part of project American suburbia for TNT and Walking Dead there needs to be some white picket fences. It just screams suburbia to me and helps set the mood. I've been looking for an excuse to place an order at Renedra, as they sell them. But in the end I've build my own. 

I've been using coffee stirrers high jacked from a local coffee shop. Best reason to get an expensive coffee is to stuck up on hobby materials. 

Start of by splitting a stirrer in two on long side.

Cut 2cm pieces of stirrer, just make a lot of them. Then use your hobby clippers to cut triangle shapes at the end of them. Then glue them in place on the long pieces using wood glue. 

I placed some glasses on the fences while they were drying.

I cut out some thick 3mm card board for fence bases. Then put the fence on the card and mark the ones touching with a pencil - done by eye sight not all will be in contact with the cardboard base. I used hot glue gun to attach the fence to the base.

Use pva glue and sand the base. Then base coat white. I found a mat white spray and it didn't cover too well on the first spray - perfect for the worn look. When dry add some homemade brown wash to the fences. I mixed cheap acryllic, pva glue, dish wash soap and water. 

It makes a pretty big difference to the look.

I unfortunately ran out of coffee stirrers after buildign four sections of fence. So will have to make some more later.

Dungeon tiles 2 and 3

April saw me caught in isolation like so much of the world. So despite having made a huge paint pledge (check out the Pledge, Paint or Pay community), it was quickly done. I then decided to get back to my 3d dungeon project.

The next mission for Rangers of Shadow Deep is in Tor Varden - so I need it to proceed with that game. 

For my blog on the first modular dungeon tile go here: Tile 1.

Tile 2

For all the corner tiles I'm making a 4" opening at the middle of two sides. The trick is to then fill the rest of the 1' tile with various setups.

The original plan was to make the second dungeon tile a prison/torture chamber one and make some cages in it. So to do that I wanted to make a large room. And some smaller rooms.

I elected to skip the prison cells, because I couldn't figure out a good way to make the doors. And I'm happy that decision. Instead I'll try to make some cages that can be moved around, used in outdoor scenarios as well. And that also leaves the room up for use as anything else I can cook up.

The first tile mostly seems like all corridors, so I made them thinner on this second tile. Not a smart choice. That 2" wide corridor and room is too small and fiddly really. 

Well. Here's a few shots of the two first corner tiles setup in different ways. I think the result is good. 

All floors will be the same, made from roughly 1" square tiles, for better use with games like Hero Quest and Dungeon Saga. 

Tile 3

For the third tile I tried making another distinct and different looking corner. Going for a single corridor and two large rooms on this one. There's a 4" open door way in one room. But as you can see below, I got the idea to make an arch / beam over the 4" opening in the side this time. I adds a bit of extra detail and gives a better feeling of a room. 

Walls

To add some detailing to the build, I've made sure to make many different brick designs on the walls of the dungeon. All outer walls have one design. All walls in corridors or room that's connected to other tiles have a second design. Any room that's closed off and on its own have a unique design as well.

When painting I plan to use different colors and nuances to make the designs stand out further. And I'll paint patterns on the floor tiles as well. Like the old Hero Quest board. 

It does however take up a bit of brain activity when making the walls before assembly. 

Various designs

I'll pick out the stones around a door, top and bottom rows of stones etc in different colors. It'll give a bit of life to the various rooms. I fear otherwise it'll all be grey in grey. 

RoSD - The Missing - The Infected Trees

Having investigated The Deserted Village our rangers found out the villagers had been taking by lethal spiders, with a venom turning infected villagers into zombies. Bottond the Black (ranger of 6yo son) and Haelga wasted no time rushing towards the woods. Trying to save as many villagers as possible.

Bottond the Black
Made this ranger and companions for my son. He picked out the bits and chose the models

Setup
We used my entire collection of trees and woods for the table. Then we added a bunch of moss and sprinkle to make a good dense forrest. For the infected nesting trees, we used dead trees - to make them stand out.

We then covered a large portion of the board in teddy stuffing - for easy spiderweb. I quickly made some spider cocoons for the scenario. I stick from the garden, covered in pva glue, then rolled some string around it. A layer of thinned pva on top afterwards.

The game
The rangers split into three groups, to cover a bigger area of the forrest. Bottond and an arher, my sons other two warriors made two small groups. My ranger Haelga and her three companions stayed together.

I really like the skills in RoSD, and with some good tracking the groups made good time to the forrest. So we removed the closest spider from the table after setup.

Wurt the recruit, Bertha the men-at-arms, Sveinur the guardsman and Haelga the ranger.

The cocoons with the villagers - hopefully we would find plenty alive in the forrest.

The spiders having no trouble crossing and climbing through the trees was in melee range really quick. But Bottond (armed with a crossbow), his archer and Haelga managed to do some damage to spiders from the start. Then it was straight into melee with the monsters!

In our first game we found a single survivor in the town - and send him straight into combat as an auxiliary trooper. That cost us some experience points, so for this game we really wanted to keep any survivors alive.

Bertha and Wurt rushed towards the nearest cocoon.

Two companions of Bottond skulking through the forrest on their own. A recruit and a men-at-arms.

Bottond the Black and an archer companion making it through the woods. The killed the spider closest to them with arrows and moved towards Haelga and her companions.

Nasty critters in the woods - I really don't like spiders. These guys were originally made for my Ghost Archipelago bestiary, fits right in here as well.

The spider crawled through the forrest with ease and attacked Sveinur in close combat. Bottond wasted no time jumping into the fight to help, wanting to cleave the spider with his giant axe!

It quickly felt like we were getting swarmed by spiders. Luckily for us this was the spiders starting on the table, and the first couple of event phases didn't bring more enemies to the table.

The first web is cut open and a mother and her children are freed. The make a hast retreat towards the village and away from any spiders on the table.

Wurt was equally lucky when opening up the web close to him, another rescued villager. This time a farmer from the town. He wasted no time following the female villager.

The first spider attack was a victory. And a good one as well. A few wounds here and there, but non of the heroes were infected with the spider venom. With a good close group, if seemed like any single spiders would be easy pickings.

Bottond and Haelga, two rangers working together killing the last visible spider in the forrest.

A ranger companion making his way to another pile of web. And another villager saved. This time it's a little girl. 

Quick towards home and the village.

The mission into the woods really turned out to be in our favor. It seemed that every event phase saw us doing okay, never more than a single spider attacking at a time. And with the six cocoons on the board, only one contained a zombie. The remaining five all held live villagers - excellent luck on out part.

At almost the same time the rangers and their companions made it to all the nesting trees. The smoke must have been visible for a long distance, because all trees went up in flames at the same time. And we had good time to spare as well.

So for a couple of turns our warband walked towards to entry board edge - just to get the remaining difficult events. ut in the end (due to my sons great luck with dice) this mission wasn't much of a challenge.

Aftermath
Despite not being very hard, we had an absolute blast playing through this scenario. I build some cool models for my son. Our entire team is still alive, both rangers have gotten their first level and a couple of companions is getting experience under their belt.

One of the best things with RoSD is preparing the scenarios. I take my time doing it right. Making the correct companions, enemies, terrain and objectives. It'll take me a few year getting through all the material. But such a joy playing this!