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'.
A couple of weeks ago I sat down and started testing the solo capabilities of Guilders - A Life In Shadows. All scenarios will need a couple of solo playtests from myself. Both to check who the campaign works and if the scenarios are fun.
Playing the three games did bring up a few point that I need to tweak, but nothing major.
The first solo Let's Play is now up on YouTube. And this video will cover the entire section of a game.
I've added timestamp / chapters to the video for easier watching. The video is fairly long but it will cover:
My Guild: All the characters, quick description
Setup: How the board, objectives and civilians
Full Game: A full 6 turn long game, with descriptions of what goes on in the different phases.
End Game Sequnece: All the RPG elements going on in a game. XP, Loot, Injuries, Roam the City.
This video will give a fairly good overview of the game and definately make it easier for people to read and understand the rules.
I have a bunch of How To Play and two more Let's Play videos filmed. Just need editing and will be posted in the future.
I would love feedback on both my video - editing stuff if really new to me and I learn stuff each time.
The rules. Read them, check them, play if you want. All manner of feedback is appreciated. You can find the rules and the various SoMe on the Linktree.
Wargames Tournaments is a company making various MDF kits. Sometimes they have some insane 'kits under 10£' deals. So way before Brexit I stacked up on a ton of wonderful and cheap kits. Between those kits was a love midieval church kit for cheap.
I used thick card to make foundation stones all around the base of the church. And on the tower I mixed different thickness of cardboard.
The roof got shingles mde some long strips of thin card, with small triangles cut into them. It's a lot quicker to cut than one might expect. The top rof is the most tricky. I cut both sides and leave a 1cm wide flat space on the top. This allows miniatures to stand on the roof, perfect for skirmish games. I also did this for the small roof on the entrance.
The nave (main house on church) I gave the premixed polyfilla with some added woodglue. Giving nice various textures on the build.
Base painting was done with four different rattle cans (just the cheap ones). Black on the roof, white on the nave, dark grey on flat tower surfaces, light grey on the corners (a kind of pre highlight).
The tower had a wooden floor added. I cut a small square piece of XPS and rolled it with a Green Stuff roller. Painted it with modpodge and then drybrushed light brown.
The rest of the build is painted with different cheap acryllics. Gave the roof a dark drey drybrush on the black. Picked out individual stone with various greys here and there.
I also painted individual stones on the flat parts of the tower, further giving the illusion of stone work.
The base around the church is made with a mix of sand in some places, cardboard tiles in others.
I went with a bright red for the windows around the church, making it match on the priests and monks I've painted up.
I continue to dabble a bit in video editing, I think it's an important media for any game. Since I don't have a fan base or something like that in the back - I need to make videos myself to get Guilders out there.
So I'm working with a limited setup and no real editing experience in getting better with it. I just finished a small 'What's Guilders' video. You can check it out below.
I have plans for a complete 'how to play' series and to stream / edit all my solo game playtesting of the game as well. Will probably get around to filming the first solo games soon.
Support
I you want to support this project, please help with providing some reach. You can do that by dropping some likes on the SoMe platforms. All collected in LinkTree.
In this version there multible grammar fixes. There's added a lot of RPG content to the campaign part. The Roam the City entries are growing. There should be enoug for multible games without getting the same results.
Roam the City is part of the original ideas / motivations when coming up with Guilders.
Part of the 'after game action' should be exploring the city, so not all the story is told through the scenarios. It's coming along nicely - and it's rather massive. But I like it. So far 20 enties (of 90) written, with multible choices and dice rolling in most of them.
What's left to do? Lots of solo testing - but that is haltered by some very real life challanges with room for testing. I would really like to film it will going, to make some videos at the same time.
Grind Writing - getting the rest of the Roam the City entires written.
Then it's time to learn editing, setting up a book and getting some artwork for the book.
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).
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.
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.
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.
