Guilders: A Tavern Brawl

 This game of Guilders was played a long time ago, back in Februart 2023 (blogpost written in start June). So I really can't remember the details of the game, should have written a battle report right after the game. But that's how it goes. Enjoy some pictures instead.

This was also the last game we played with some 10+ game guilds. We felt it was about time to paint some new guilders and start from scratch, as we've tweaked many rules since their inception. 

The goal of this scenario is to infiltrate a tavern. The rooms are magically sealed and the keys must be stolen from nobles wandering the streets. 

This was also an excuse to upgrade my TTCombat tavern with some interior. 

Our guilds at this point were very experienced, and that led to us often taking a very direct route and chosing violence over stealth. Resulting in a lot of generated alarm around the board.

Guilders: A Life in Shadows is a 28mm skirmish campaign game, it's miniatures agnostic - so use whatever you find cool. There's large TTRPG elements to the campaign part of the game. You play as thief guilds trying to make it in a big city. There's rules for civillians and guards, that the game controls based on player actions. 

You can find the beta rules (and a Lite version), starting warbands and similar stuff right here: Google Drive.

And please check out my LinkTree: I use all the SoMe different, post dfferent stuff and such. Drop a few follows and come join the awesome Discord community.

Fantasy - Ghosts, Slimes and Chrono Hounds

I think transluscent miniatures is a big win and a great time saver for a lot of miniatures. For a specific Frostgrave scenario I needed some Chrono Hounds (teleporting ghost hound things), so I bought some cheap Nolzur minis in clear plastic. 

Game them a quick spray matt varnish (otherwise the wash won't stick) and a purple wash. Quick and gone. Ready for some Frostgrave, Nightwatch og other games. 

They are pretty hard to photograh, but it worked out alright. 

From the Fantasy Series 1 kickstarter by Blacklist Miniatures we got a couple of blue ghosts. I gave these a quick thinned down blue wash, to better bring out the deep areas. The fit nicely next to the Games Workshop ghost, I've painted earlier (used as illusionary soldiers with a necromancer). 

Slimes are also from the Blacklist Fantasy Series 1. There's some slimes in both some of the Frostgrave beastiaries (the one with the gnolls and dungeons ) and they can work for all manner of post apoc stuff. Like these might end up in Zona Alfa. 

Please support the blog by following my SoMe, it'll greatly help in sharing the knowledge of my game Guilders: A Life In Shadows. 

Guilders: 1.6 - the final public beta

Today I've uploded the final public beta for Guilders: A Life In Shadows to the public google drive. 

1.6 changes quite a bit from the previous one. 

- Skills: Many changes, especially to hight level skills. 

- Stealth: Have seen some changes to make it work much better in the game. You can move more and guard AI has been changed. 

- Injuries: The injury system has been tweaked to be more interesting in campaign play. 

- 50 Roam The City entries - giving you lots of options for a long campaign, without getting the same all the time. (Final book will have 100). 

- Crafting has been changed. Doctor, Alchemy and Tinkering are more streamlined and fun now. 

- Solo/ccop options for all the different Heists. 

- An English Writing author have read through the entire (98%) thing, fixing uncounted errors.

Download the rules right here and please share it around: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1QgOD7G3eYUppV07vF_K5aypvIg9NyuQu?usp=sharing

Feedback is still very much appreciated!

Siren Head

 My son is seeing all manner of weird stuff on youtube and playing games with the friends. Super heroes and monsters all over.

So there's this creepy pasta, internet monster thing called Siren Head. It's a scary tall humanoid with a couple of sirens where his head should be. 

Anyway he wanted one for all the other miniatures to fight with (my son is allowed to play with all my models). 

We took a few different boardgame models (from all the cheap auction, resell, break even) buys I've been doing. He picked a miniature from The Others (by CMON). The conversion was rather simple. 

Cut off the head, breasts and some heads on the stomach. Then drilled a hole in the next and added a bit of cut off sprue. The sirens are made from some part of a scavenged model war ship, green stuff cones and some wire. Super duper simple. The cut areas was simple to fix with some green stuff, since the monster was already a wrinkly gross thing.

We base coated the model in a brownish red, then added red was and two layers of red highlight. 
Some Siren Head pictures is like beef jerky / muscle tones, other more grey mummified. My son chose red. The siren is metal with some layers of rust colors. 

He looks really nasty for a bit of quick work. And I might make more monsters like it. He'll fit perfectly into Zona Alfa. 

If you like weird miniatures, aliens and mutants check out Patrick Todoroffs games. They're all miniature agnostic and play quick and well. I'm a big fan of pretty much all his systems. You can find them all here. 

Zona Alfa: Instute Mech

This big clunky mech was painted for a competition over on the Stalker7 facebook community, it's an absolutely amazing group containing all P. Todoroffs different systems. He's great at running competitions and always offers nice prizes as well. 

In order to contribute to that community, I always try and find something to paint for it. This huge robot is from the Reichbusters kickstarter (I won an auction for it really cheaply). Most of it I've sold on (and broke even, so the rest is free for me). 

I added a claw (from Warhammer 40k) but otherwise it's not converted. For The Institute (a faction I made up for zona alfa / Insurgent Earth) the yellow color / blue triangle is used on all of it. 

A quick and easy paint job, tried throuwing on a lot of weathering with washes and drybrushing. 

Patrick Todoroff is doing amazing skirmish games and you should consider getting some of them. They can all be found on Wargames Vault. 

Here's the robot with a team of scientists and their two bodyguards.

If you enjoy all manner of miniature blogging, follow some of the social media. I try to use all of them differently. You can find them on linktree. Also considere giving a look on Guilders: A Life In Shadows, a skirmish campaign game I'm working on. 

Viking Mega Game

I work at a public elementary school and I'm primarily teaching 4th-6th graders. I'm a huge fan of gamification and using play as part of teaching. We've previously done some big games like Roman RISK and Space Mission: Immigration. 

Now we're going to go for Vikings. 

The Structure

This year we have 6 classes attending 4th-6th graders. The game will be for a full school week. Five days from 0800-1400. The 6 classes are mixed into 6 teams instead, and will follow their team the entire week. It's great for the social structures to mix students like this. 

The theme for the entire week is The Viking Age (Dark Ages, ~800-1066 A.D.). Each day a team will spend the entire day at a single workshop run by a teacher. 

Workshops

This workshop could be anything and we'll have among others:

*  'Music and Skjalds' - students will listing to old songs, music inspired by old times, make their own, read poems etc.

* Tin casting and amulets - Students will be using 3d printed mjolnir amulets to make molds and cast in tin. They'll also make amulets from soapstone.

* Leather work - Making pouches, bracelets and shoes from leather. 

* Ancient games - playing different fighting games known from the viking age. Wrestling and such. 

And other classes, depending on what a teacher runs to run. 

The Game

Center to it all will be a massive board game, that I'll by running. It's a ressource management, trading and war game. 

The game is played flowingly without turns, some kids can come to the table do some actions and return to their workshop. So teams will have to talk about plans and decicions for when kids go to the baord. 

Mechanics

These are not entirely in place yet (the game is in 14 days). But when doing well on workshops, teachers will hand out random ressources as rewards. And teams will also earn ressources from the board, if they control areas. 

Ressources are spend on: 

Making other ressources. Wheat to Beer. Amber to Jewelry. Iron ore to iron ingot to weapons. 

Making units. Getting soldiers will require weapons and food items. Ships will require wood and wool (for sails). 

Ships are faster than going over land. The teams can sail to distant shores to pillage and plunder. There will be cut out ressources on the board for taking. 

At certain trade places there will be stuff for sale (spices that can be aquired otherwise) and stuff needed (gain lots of silver for certain items). These will change during the day (controlled by me, manipulating the game). 

Teams will be able to build upgrades on areas controlled, fortifications, religious areas, farms. And gain points based on that. 

Points

It's always a good motivator with multiple win conditions. When a team controls an area say all Fyn/Funen they are Jarls. When the control a larger area ex. all Jylland / Jutland they are Kings. The goal of the game is to control enough areas to be the mightiest king. But there's also points for having the Gods favor. So teams can sacrifice live stock and valueables for religious points. 

The finer details will be explored in a later blogpost. 

Miniatures

I love 28mm miniatures. And while this game could work with whatever colored pieces, painted minaitures look cooler. So I've painted 36 (that roughly 200) miniatures for each team. The idea is the pieces will show where teams have control and what quality of army it is. 

First the all only have unarmored Bondi (there's a ressource called Simple Weapons), later to be upgraded to Hirdmen (ressource Advanced Weapons). 

A lot of ideas will probably not develop before we're actually playing. And my mind is full on Game Design until kickoff. It'll be awesome, also for the kids. There doesn't need to be super advanced rules for something like this to work. It's more abnout visually driving a story and giving motivation for kids to work well together - and seeing that having an effect on the game. 

200 vikings in 6 different colors. 

Two examples of the 36 miniatures painted for a team. They have an equal amount of the different types. Each team has (without any effect in the rules yet). 12 Bondi (spear, axes and bows), 11 Hirdmen (spear, sword/axes, bows), 3 command (jarl, banner, skjald), 4 Huscarls (dane axes) and 2 Berserkers (pelts and two axes). 

Viking Bondi - unarmored vikings. Many assembled without helmets and non are having swords. 

And here are their armoured better quality version. These are all with chain mail, all have helmets and half of them have swords. 

Maps

Here's some examples of maps. On Monday only Scandinavia will be visible to the kids. The Maps have different sizes. Tuesday we'll add the Baltics and coast of France / Normandy and the British Isles. Wednesday we'll add Iceland and Thursday Wineland (North America and Greeenland). 

They are made with Civilization VI screenshots and graphics work in xnview and GIMP. 

The maps will be laminated. So I can add further ressources, cities, fortifications etc with gluestick and easily remove them later with ethanol. 

Island will be introduced after a few days play. 

The runes say Sachsen, Venden and Østerled (Eastarea).

I've added a few known places to the map, like Hedeby (famous trade town) and Jomsborg (legendary viking settlement for Raiders). 

And all the planned maps. Will take up a bunch tables when the game is going. It'll be pretty cool with the expanding areas. 

I'll be writing more about the project later, both hobby wise, gaming rules and didactic thoughts.

Last words

If you wanna hang out, nerd out on stuff like this or have questions, come join the Discord Server. All the SoMe has been on the backburner for long, so please consider dropping some follows across my platforms. They're all on LinkTree.