Guilders: Civilians

 A big part of Guilders - A Life In Shadows is the civilians in the city. It was a key part of the inspiration from the very beginning. In Reality's Edge there's civilians on the board during gameplay - but they are unfortunately very static and didn't add a lot. 

In Guilders I wanted to change that. Quicker rules for moving them around and all carry loot that the thief guilds can steal from them. 

All civillians start with Loot I (the cheapest, least valuable loot). They move in the end of each turn. Roll a d10, move that many inches using the dice as a pointer. Civilians in Guilder's do not 'bump' and get stuck into corners. 

If there's a building in their way, they'll move around it, to proceed in the direction the dice pointed. Should they bump into a board edge, they'll move their full move directly opposite instead. That way keeping the civilians on the board and in the center.

When there's enough Overall Alertness (trouble) in the city, they'll start leaving the board.

Civilians are placed as singles or in crowds (more on that in a later blog). For standard scenarios you will need 4 single civilians and 4 crowds (I have 3 miniatures on mine). 

Remember all Guilders rules can be downloaded here. 

Peasents

These are made from Fireforge Games folk rabble. I think the cat is from Warlord Games. Fit perfectly in the basket, so this is a crazy cat lady. Her head is Female Soldiers I from Frostgrave, as all the folk rabble looked very angry. 

Bases are XPS foam and Greenstuff World rollers. 

The left woman is made entirely from FG female soldiers and folk rabble. The middle is all folk rabble kit. The miner on the right (he has a colleague, not yet painted) is folk rabble with an added Perry Miniatures helmet. Figured as a miner he should wear a helmet. 

Citizens

The woman carrying the water bucket is a 3d printed miniature I was gifted. The other too guys I'm not sure about the bodies. Head are old Warhammer empire militia / soldier heads. The arms are from Oathmark human soldiers, with their weapons cut off. Wanted these two to look like citizens, a bit better off than the peasonts. Seen on their hats, colors and cape. 

Linktree

Please check out all the SoMe on the linktree.

Terrain: Village Maison Belle and Youtube Video

 Slow and steady work continues on my dream fantasy city for mainly Guilders: A Life In Shadows. This is one of the smaller and cheaper kits from TTCombat, 25mm world war 2 buildings. They do upgrade really great to fantasy buildings though. 

There's photos of the completed build and a YouTube video below, but first som WIP shots. 

The Build

Roof and Timberframe

The kit is simple and quickly build. It has some decent burned detail timberframe, but I'll cover that with plaster. 

The first thigns done is simple timberframing with coffee stirrers and popsickle sticks. The roof is made from strips of cardbaord with small cuts. Never do individual roof tiles, it's a stupid amount of work. But these strips are very quick to could and stronger when glue in place. 

The top part of the roof is made with a broad piece of cardbaord, as I want a 1cm flat surface on the top. This was fixed in place with a bit of greenstuff. Great addition, as it'll allow chracters to stand on the roof. 

Stonework, walkways and plaster

I' want ground floors in stone on all my buildings. For this I've used two diffent thickness of cardboard. On the corners of the building I've used the thickest made sure there was 0,5mm space between them, for a better drybrush and wash effect. 

Then added a few stones here and there on the walls.

Added some walk ways on both sides of the building, again for better skirmish game playability. Drilled holes through the house and added some beams from bbq skewers. On this I added some thin mahogany boards, scavanged from the local hardware store. Could have used some coffeee stirrers as well. 

The plaster is pre-mixed wood filler with added wood glue for extra strength. Just add it with an old brush you don't mind dying.

Painted up

A lot of the work is done with spray paint. Grey on the ground floor, red on roof, with on first floor. Everything else is then painted with cheap acryllic paints. For the stones I mix as I go to get different tones on the build. 

The entire build is washed in homemade brown wash - thinned cheap brown and dish soap. On the white parts I paint on wash then soak up most of it with a piece of cloth. The plaster makes it's easy to do a drybrush on the building, getting a better color on the build. 

I've made ivy with some old saw dust flock and added a ton of Army Painter flowers to the different windows. Smoke for the chimney is made with teddy bear stuffing glued down with super glue.

A Youtube Video

Had a small chance of making a few video clips. So I setup some cameras in order to make some material. Did a quick video where I show off the above building and my Peacock Inn. 

Tried some new stuff in the video as well, working a bit with video software. Adding a bit of background music. 

Linktree

I've setup a Linktree, a quick way to collect all the social media links together. Check it out and drop some support on the various places. 

Guilders - Royal Guard and Crossbowmen

 In Guilders: A Life In Shadows the last tier of guards to enter the conflict is the Royal Guards. These guys are extremely deadly for the players. They're wearing heavy armor, shields and have a high fight stat. These guards are better fighters than even many experienced player characters. They are however slow in their armor and cannot climb after guilders. 

The best thing is to avoid causing so much Alarm that these start to enter (Overall Alertness hitting 30). We've only experienced it a few crazy games where we were very violent. Almost all characters are able to outrun the Royal Guards, so the trick is to not get cornered by them. 

You will very rarely need a lot of Royal Guards. I've painted up my Basilean leader types from Kings of War: Vanguard to use as these. They look might imposing. At some point I'll revisit the banner and add a few lion stencils or a golden free hand lion. 

Almost all scenarios in Guilders start with a few ranged combat guards on the board. These are often placed on roof tops and can provide a lot of trouple for the guilders. Shooting attacks can be very deadly, especially if a character is all in the open with no cover. In that case the modifiers will quickly boost the ranged guard a lot. 

I made my guys with some Perry Miniatures European Mercenaries. The crossbow bits are from different GW sets I think. All the helmets are old Brettonian men-at-arms helmts. I wanted to make the shooters stand out a bit, that's why I picked different helmet types for these guys. 

Fantasy: Butcher Dwarf and market stall

 Here's a nice little piece I put together. It's a butcher from Dunkeldorf and his resin meat rack. Decided to put the Mantic Games terrain crate market stall as well. I really wish there was a pack with only these, but I don't think the Market Place kit is that well packed. So I might end up building more myself, should be easy enough. 

There's also some coming with the Dungeons and Lasers KS I'm waiting on. 

I had suprisingly many different meat bits in the bit box, from various warhammer kits I suppose. Beastmen and ogres mostly, but I'm unsure. Added those and some knives to the market stall, it already had sausages hanging in it. 

I would love to have a full market at some point. Lots of stalls with different themes in them. Different colors on them all as well. Would be perfect for Guilders. 

Terrain - Patrons of the inn

 My main shop for any kind of supplies is King Games and I always back their Dunkeldorf Kickstarters. Absolutely amazing miniatures. When I got these Peakock Inn miniatures I had no plans for them at all, but with Guilders they have a use. I use them mostly as terrain in the city or as patron in the Tavern Brawl scenario. 

The different scatter pieces and furniture are from all over the place: King Games, Mantic, resin pieces unknown board game stuff. 

When I painted these guys, I really tried to make as many different colors as possible. To make the miniatures look even more different from eachother. 

Guilders - A Life In Shadows 1.43 beta

 The new version of Guilders - A Life In Shadows is now up for download. 

In the 1.43 version there's several changes as a result of extensive playtesting. 

The rules for jumping has been tweaked - you could jump unrealisticly long before. The new rules are better and still reward high agility and acrobatic stats. 

Most of the changes are in the campaign system though. 

Injuries: These have been tweaked a bit. And you now need to buy medicine on the market to help bedridden guilders. Guilders who suffered a serious injury can't do jobs.

Jail and Bail: Now it needs to be paid at the Bailiff. 

Both these require guilders to do it as a 'job' in the after game play. We found after playtesting that too many guilders could do jobs, leaving a lot of them to take the 'roam the city' job. That would burn through the encounters too fast. 

Now it's much more balanced. If your guilders had a bad heist, they can also choose to go begging for coin. 

Overall the game is finished now. There's 10 very different scenarios included and a long campaign. I still need to add more Roam The City entries (I want 100) and a bunch of Loot II is still missing. 

Then it's on to playtesting a long pure solo campaign. The game should work playing solo. But it will probably need tweaking to be really interesting. 

Guilders - City Guard

In Guilders: A Life In Shadows the guards will get better and more dangerous as the criminal guilds cause Alarm during the game. First is the Town Watch, simple local militia armed with batons and staffs. 

When the Overall Alertness (the stacked Alarm from during the game) reaches 10, better guards will start to spawn onto the playing area. These are City Guard, actual trained soldiers from the barracks. These are armed with real weapons and good armor. 

With stats as good as most Guilders and better armor, they are a bad thing to fight. And if a guilder is taken out of action, from a City Guard they roll on the injury table after the game. That adds a risk of stat decreases, long times bedridden or even death. 

Fighting Town Watch will only leave them in jail and fined. 

The miniatures

While waiting on the excellent city guard from Dungeons and Lasers, I've kit bashed my own. Making them distinct from town watch I've used bodies with metal armor. Perry Miniatures and some old Warhammer bits.

For their bracers I've gone with metal instead of leather colors. And for helmets I've been using Perry and Bretonnian bits, for a cooler look (compared to the simply skull caps of the townwatch). 

Half the city guard have been armed with swords and Oathmark shields. The other half I've armed with halberds, for that classic guard look. 

The plan is (in time) to add even more guards, enough for actual Oathmark regiments.