I love collecting, painting, converting and scratch building terrain. I even get to play a game once in a while. I'm a big fan of gamification as part of teaching - I'm an elementary school teacher.
This blog covers my hobby work and 'teaching through gaming'.
Earlier I've written a blog post of how I made some homemade trees for terrain. It's all written here. That gave me a good bunch of trees, but not enough for a full forrest board.
I always keep my eyes out for good auction and big lots. Won a bunch of trees really cheap, not really knowing their size and anything like that. This is what I turned that bag of cheap trees into.
Bases are cut from thick 3mm cardboard and as always there's a X on the back made with duct tape - this prevents the bases from warping.
I sorted out the trees to have roughly the same amount of big trees for each base and then sorted the smaller ones after that. Fixed the trees in place with a lot of cheap superglue. Made sure the bases have room in the middle, to move around models better. But the 'circle' of trees around it will creat nice line of sight blocking / rough ground.
Lots of pva glue and sand on the bases. Made sure there's plenty of glue around the base of the trees to secure them better in place.
Used cheap spray paints to do the bases. Different browns and greens on the sand. Nevermind some of it hitting the trees.
Add some garden debris to the bases with super glue. I added some sticks and stones. It's simple but adds a lot to the model.
Last add some flock, I just went with three different kinds on the base.
Five larger forrest bases to go with all the single trees I already have.
And here's a full 3'x3' board with nothing but trees and moss. Adding a campsite, some path ways, a river and there's plenty of detail for a forrest board.
My good friend is a big fan of the Metro PC games and when joining my 'I'll build an paint your warband, just come and play' campaign - we build a group like that for TNT.
After his first game he got super lucky on the wasteland exploration and found a plasma rifle, a minigun, three wasteland puppies and enough barter script for a new elite soldier.
So I build a couple of new models for the warband for our latest game.
Both have bodies taken from an Anvil Industries lucky bits bag. Actually these guys are mostly Anvil Industry bits. It's only added a GW 40k tau plasma gun to the leader and a Mantic Games GCPS pointing arm. There's also a few pouches here and there from Warlord Games.
Since building the original warband, I've also started playing Zona Alfa. So the original gang will be reused for that as well now.
Finally got around to finishing my first four dungeon tiles. All four corner tiles are now painted completely and weathered. I've made a youtube video covering the last work paint work.
Video content:
Painting wall details, archways, doors, individual stone
Talking texture rolling pins and XPS foam
Washing and weathering - homemade cheap brown wash.
Show off - finished dungeon
The plan is to expand the dungeon to a complete 3'x3' board. First making two more tiles connecting between corners, bringing the board to a 2'x3'. But that comes later. Right know it's playable and the correct size for the next two games of Rangers of Shadow Deep.
Most of the pieces shown below is blogged other places here. Check out the Frostgrave collection
Torture chamber made with a mix of reaper bones, terrain crate and hero quest terrain.
Wizard study with terrain crate, dungeon sage and mdf pieces
Storage room with terrain crate, renedra and dunkeldorf bits.
Armory with terrain crate and hero quest bits.
Mausoleum with hero quest, dungeon saga and loka pieces.
Hardwired: Cyberpunk Skirmish game need three different tiers of enemies. Those can be both humans and robots. The tier 3 enemies are the last you'll encounter, they're deadly and super hard to kill.
I've already made myself some Stage 1 and Stage 2 troops, looking like security guards and something near swat level in gear.
For my Stage 3 guys, I've moved away from the blue and into black and grey colors. These are military, black ops, last resort kind of troops.
Robots
I love these tripod bots from Warlord Games - especially since they were £1 pr model during a sale. The one bot is done without any conversion work, it's straight out the box. Huge claw and big gun. I figure this is an entry bot. This thing will blast and wreck its way into armored vehicles or buildings.
The other bot has a 40k assault cannon added and a smaller claw. This is for pure crowd 'control' - take out a riot with a single robot.
Sedition Wars infantry
Bought sedition wars in an auction years ago. Sold off most of the stuff, but kept some of the models. So to try and paint some of them up, I picked one of each. A grenade launcher, light machine gun and a regular rifle trooper.
Neat little models, easy to paint, a bit smaller than many of the 32mm-ish scifi models out there.
Human Interface - walker gun drones
These cannons are just cool. Auto cannons with legs, from Human Interfacce. I figure these tier 3 enemies release all manner of evil when inserting into an area. Robot and drones blasting everything apart with excessive use of force - to not risk the highly trained humans.
Family photo
Here's the totalt tier 3 black ops insertion team, complete with wheels and flier. All painted in the same style as my Deadzone GCPS troopers. Not a lage as the tier 1 and 2 force - but much deadlier.
With the grey, dark grey, black and red - these guys look that evil corporate clean up crew.
I've been gearing up for this RoSD game for a good amount of time. Been waiting for some terrain from Tiny Wargames and needed to have Tor Varden build. So after finishing the first part of the dungeon board, it was time.
First mission is to get to the old watch tower, crossing a river guarded by gnolls. I've put together a group of rangers including the survivors from the Blood Moon scenario. I will be playing the mission 'hard', so no changing out companions during the missions three scenarios.
A written account with pictures is detailed below along with words on the end game and terrain.
Filmed a game
This is also the first time actually streaming and filming a game that I've done. It's uploaded to youtube, so if your modern in that regard have a look at it. And please consider dropping a follow on the Twitch and YouTube channels - trying to expand this video part of the bloggerverse.
Setup
I've tried to get as close to the scenario description as possible. The bridge and the ford are their. Lots of rock and bushes to block line of sight. I've even painted up a small cauldron / cooking pot for the fire in the camp - as it's described in the book.
Lots of homemade stuff with step-by-step blogs in the terrain page.
The game
My ranger Haelga and her trusted companions were sneaking through the rocky landscape on their way to Tor Varden. The gnoll guards near the river and on the bridge had no idea there were enemies on the way.
As part of the scenario, my rangers would have a better chance at killing the gnolls until the alarm was sounded. And this was the plan, with three archers, it should be possible to take down some enemy gnoll archers - and gang up on the close combat enemies.
Recruit Wurt is checking out the area, with archer Pine near his side.
Ranger Haelga with veteran soldier Covin and the woodcutter Seb. Taking up the center of the board.
Enemy gnolls guarding the bridge, two fighters lead by a sergeant. A gnoll archer can been seen near the river.
Hopefully my rangers would be able to cross the bridge and get into the camp. There are both treasure to be reclaimed for Alladore and some clues as to what might be happening af Tor Varden.
Another archer near the river. There were four deadly archers patrolling the river bank.
From the start it seemed like the plan would be good. The first couple of rounds were spend sneaking closer to the enemies, keeping hidden in the shadows of the cliffs. Waiting for the perfect shot to take down the archers.
Unfortunately the random movement of the gnolls, soon brought the models into guarding teams, making it impossible to take out the enemies without raising the alarm.
In the end my ranger tried taking the shot, she hit but failed to take down the enemy and the alarm was raised.
During the different events, more and more gnolls kept sweeping into the area. My band of rangers were forced to split up, to take out the archers that were delivering a nasty amount of damage to the good guys.
But after some hard fights, my very wounded heroes did manage to take control of the battle field.
Fairly early in the game, a blood vulture came swooping down from the cliffs. A magically bound agent of the Shadow Deep, this bird would bring message to Tor Varden - leaving the prepared for my incoming assault. It was important for my troops to bring down the beast! And that tied up two of my archers for helping in the fight against the gnolls.
Time was running out and the main force was still tied up fighting enemy gnolls among the cliffs. Haelga commanded two of her companions to enter the gnoll camp to search for clues and treasure - figuring the help would be needed later in the mission.
The recruit secures some treasure, stolen from Lorenthia or Alladore - there was no way the gnolls had earned this in a lawful manner.
In the end the ranger band succeeded, the last of the gnoll fighters were brought down. Unfortunately both Bertha the woman-at-arms and Seb the Woodcutter had been wounded during the fight. And it was real close tipping in favor of the enemy.
The blood vulture was brought down by arrows, before it managed to escape the battle field. The gang of rangers of Alladore would be able to travel towards Tor Varden - without the enemies being alerted to the incoming attack.
Wurt the recruit guarding the bridge, keeping look out for further enemies. Meanwhile Haelga was attending the wounds of here companions.
End game
That game was way closer than what was comfortable. The ranger and here companions were all wounded by the end of the game. Some were really close to being taken out of action.
Seb the Woodcutter turned out to only have small wound, a knock to the head had brought him down. Nothing he wasn't able to shake off with a bit of time.
Bertha the Woman-at-Arms got here arm crushed, she would no longer be as good a companion in the fight. Bandaged up, she would still have to fight, no time for rest. But should she survive the mission, she might have to return to guard duty in a sleepy village.
After breaking the lock on the chest, the group found a pair of magical gauntlets. The gauntlets would be able to give the wearer great strength for a few important situations. The strong bear of a man Seb, was handed the gloves. He mighty axe would now be even more deadly.
This was the fourth mission for my ranger Haelga and it brought her to level 2. The stat increase went to shooting, bringing her to a +3 in Shoot.
After my Ghost Archipelago crew had been on two adventures into the jungles, they sailed back to the mainland. Mostly because I had found some awesome new miniatures ideas I wanted to use and they had the money to do so. No need in waiting for crew to die I figured.
After two games they were able to hire a total of five new crew members.
Bosun and top man
These two characters take up places for regular crew members and not the spots for specialists. So I figured that was a cool addition to the crew.
Pirates have hats and I didn't want to use duplicate heads on the models. This is a Ghost Archipelago crew member with an old empire militia head. Also used some old empire arms for him, as he's only armed with a dagger.
For the good topman climbing expert look, I've added a rob with hooks and tied some extra rope around his torso and waist.
Bosun
This is an experienced sailor and he's armed with a two handed weapon when sailing in a small boat (used in some scenarios).
I used an official crew man body, but added an old bearded empire head, to give him the right look. Then I took a spear bit and cut off the tip, made it into an oar with a small piece of plastic card.
Hunters
After the first couple of games my crew turned out to have trouble with all the fauna of the Ghost Archipelago. Both wandering animals and the ones summoned and control by the enemy warden. So I decided to exchange the bowmen with a pair of hunters - getting bonus when fighting monsters.
Sword Master
A bodyguard for my Heritor. Model is a good kit bash. Body and legs are from a dark elf miniature. The head is from Warlord Games female zombie survivors with an added empire militia hat. The arms are both old empire soldier arms. The cloak is from an old high elf.
I really like the pose the model ended up with. Decided to paint her in the same colors as my Heritor and his infantry crew member, adding a bit of uniform to the look.
