30 August 2020

The Walking Dead: Days Gone By chapter 3

 Next up in my attempt to play through The Walking Dead all solo is chapter three - Campfire Tales. 

Rick has made it out of Atlanta - but only barely. You can check a video of my playing scenario number two: City Slicker right here. 

But my camera messed up and didn't capture my first attempt at the second scenario. And that was rough. The game started out well with Rick finding Riot Gear and Hand Grenades. But right in the end it ended with Rick getting swarmed. 

So for this third scenario the survivors have no equipment bonus from scenario two and Rick starts the game already wounded. 


Setup

Made a quick little forrest setup. There's step-by-step blogs for the woods here. Used my TT Combat RV and some tents from Renedra. Fits the scenario description fairly well. 

Youtube video

And here's a video of my run of the scenario. I nice game, had great fun with it. 



27 August 2020

Terrain: Fields

So the first scenario in the Rangers of Shadow Deep book is called 'the deserted village'. And as I always want to play on a setting fitting board, I wanted to make some fields. I already have some huts and other stuff. But small fields would add a lot of life.

Materials
- MDF or thick card (I use a strawberry box)
- Terrarium plant mat
- Duct tape
- Glue gun and pva glue
- Sand and flock
- BBQ sticks and thin wood (or ice cream sticks)
- Cheap brown acrylic paint

Step 1
I found two different kinds of 1' square 'mats' with terrarium plants on ebay. I'm not sure I get the actual use, but it's easy to pull off the individual plants and use them for something else. So make a bunch of these.



Step 2
Find something to use as a base. I'm using some strawberry boxes, easy to pull apart and free. The as always give the back a cross of duct tape. The cross will prevent the base from warping when glue is drying on the other side.

Step 3
Use your hot glue gun to attach the individual plants on the base. I made sure to put them in straight rows and with enough room for 25 mm bases to fit in the plant rows. It always looks weird when models have to stand on top of the crops in a field - as if often seen.



Step 4
Time to make some fencing around the fields. Using my hobby clippers I cut of small pieces of BBQ stick. Then use the hot glue gun to put them all around the fields edge.



Step 5
I have some scavenged mahogany pieces, that's only 1 - 2 mm thick. So it's easy to cut out some pieces that will looks as boards, and unlike ice cream sticks, these will not need painting. To keep them in place, I weaved them between the BBQ sticks, and glued in place with pva glue. 


Step 6 - painting and flocking
First add sand to the base with pva glue Then paint it all with cheap brown acrylics. The fence I haven't painted, I've only given it a wash of thinned brown.

When flocking the edge of the field, use a lot. PVA glue on the edge, lots of flock, let it dry and shake off - makes a much better cover.

I have some green sawdust flock, the stuff you saw on old 90's green GW bases. I used this to better mark out the rows of plants in the field.


All done
And that's it. Two different fields for my collection of fantasy terrain.








24 August 2020

TNT: Against the Behemoth

I've been lucky enough to read and play test the behemoth expansion for This Is Not A Test - a nice job to have. The expansion lets you put behemoth creatures on the board. Huge monster that'll be a huge challenge to bring down. It Came From The Wastes is out now from World's End Publishing. 

On of the scenarios in the expansion is a solo scenario. For it you'll need some chits for behemoth activation. I made some fitting tokens with game-tokens, printet then on both sides and laminated them. 
The tokens will show if the behemoth will move, use ranged attack, fight in melee or use a sepecial attack. 



The behemoth for this scenario is the Star Saga Nameless Goliath, a huge chunk of plastic taken up an entire 3" cube in Deadzone. I gave the behemoth a good amount of wound, tentacles for climbing walls with no penalties, the ability to throw cars, regerate and spawn small critters. Seemed fitting for this slimy squid like monster. 
Setup
The setup for this scenario is some classic americana suburbia. White picket fence and all that jazz. Story is astroid hit the area and some crazy above normal spikes of radiation has occured in the area. Now the Common Order Peace Keepers have taking on a job to move into the area and investigate rumors of a weird monster. 



At the center of town a lot of supplies have been scattered after the behemoth has been smashing up a caravan. The peace keepers are setup on three different sides of the board, the behemoth is on the last side. Plan is to get in, take out the behemoth and secure as many supplies as possible. 

I've split up my peace keepers on three flanks, roughly equal strength on all sides. The outrider used his scouting ability to take up cover on top of a house, long distance from the behemoth. 


The behemoth looking into town, ready to head back in and smash up more stuff. The smell of fresh meat in the air. 


I've gone for very big beasts for my behemoth models. This dude wouldn't even fit into the garage of the suburban house if he tried.


The outrider secure in his sniper position on the roof of a house. In the far distance the behemoth is visible through the scope on his rifle. 


The plan was pretty simple. The three sacrificial lambs in the warband would run in, tie the behemoth up in melee combat. Every other member of the warband would be shooting everything they had at the Goliath monster. Should the prisoners be knocked down - no problem! Pull the trigger and explode the collars and hope to wound the goliath.


Making sure to keep distance between warband members. The Goliath should not be able to hit more than one guy with an area effect attack. Stay in cover and spread out - ready to hammer it with bullets from all sides. 


The line breaker is able to take a severe beating, he's heavily armored and strong. He would be getting some supplies, nevermind him being close to the monster. He was supposed to get the pay day. The leader of the warband is right behind him, armed with a fully charged laser carbine.


Another small team moving into position. A prisonal armed with a two handed chainsaw and an officer with assault riffle. 


Right from the start of the game, the goliath moves forward and I pull a special action from the bag. From somewhere on the slimy alien a small spawn squid crawls forward. A gross little thing, needing to be taken out. 


The small squid creature crawls towards an officer armed with a shotgun and he wastes no time emptying a couple of shells into the monster.


With one of its strong tentacles the monster picks up a car and throws it at the highest valued enemy - my leader. Crash! Luckily no bad damage is done to him, but there's suddenly a car blocking the way for my line breaker, time for him to crawl. 


Despite being close to his target and armed with a shotgun, the officer was unable to blast the alien offspring apart and it creeps closer.


Perhaps it's just bad luck, beacuse there's less special tokens than the others. But the goliath monster spawns more offspring and it squirms right at a sacrificial lamb and brings him down. Purple squid like monsters left and right, I fear this will be a tough battle. 


A top down view of the battle field. The plan was to draw the monster close to the center, kill it with overwhelming firepower... That plan goes down the drain when there a stream of new little buggers to kill. 


The little new born aliens are terribly dangerous and my officer with a shotgun is brought down as well. Time to pull the first bomb collar trigger! Unfortunately the blast only takes out one of the little monsters, the second one survives. 


The generation ability of the monster turns out deadly. When the behemoth class monsters loose wounds, they also loose their action points. But despite blasting loads of high caliber rounds into the beast, I can't break effectively through the armor and only take away around a wound pr turn - so that's just regenerated. ...


Suppplies would have to wait, pick them up if time was for it. Every single melee combat soldiers was jumping into the fight in order to help bringing the beast down. Meanwhile it kept throwing cars at my leader, regenerating wounds and spawning little beasts.


Slowly the monster starts picking off and wounding all the lawmen. All the Sacrificial Lambs are down, the leader is taken out by the constant barrage of thrown cars. Nothing seems to strong enough to wound the behemoth. It's time to get out, the remaining troopers fall back. 


By the end only the Line Breaker is still fighting, the remaining troopers have turn tail and run. I've managed to kill off lots of goliath spawn - but this beast is still roaming in this part of the wasteland. Nothing to do about that - this time at least. ... Mark it off. This is a bad place. 


Aftermath
Well... that was freaking brutal. But it was also a play test game. Had the Goliath not had the regeneration ability, the game would have been close. Even with a bit more luck, a plasma gun or a rocket launcher - things might have been different. And the spawn ability was very nasty. ... those two combined added a lot of extra wounds to the enemy side. 

Luckily for the team - the only real damage was a couple of Banged Up characters. I still made some good experience during the mission, though no real loot or barter script was secured. No deaths and some new experience - that's a success.  

Based on the input from this scenario a few tweaks were added to It Came From The Wastes - and it's always good to help out! 

I now have two other behemoths to fight. A big mutated mammuth beast and a huge stompy robot with freeze ray and laser! Kill them another time. 

Thanks for reading! 

And as always. If you like stuff like this, why not follow some social media? I use all the platforms differently, to avoid spamming.

Facebook.com/BloodbeardsGarage/
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Twitter: @Blodskaeg
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/bloodbeardsgarage

Join the Discord. It's an excellent community with lots of hobby stuff (not just mine): https://discord.gg/xwcRSs7

Map
Here's my updated TNT map, with this battle added to it. 




21 August 2020

Review: Frostgrave 2nd edition!

Frostgrave 2nd edition is out today from Osprey Games. And I've been lucky enough to read through it a couple of times already (Osprey Games send me a review copy). I've also gotten in my first game, playing some solo Perilous Dark with a new warband. You can check the video out on YouTube or Twitch. Second Edition in action. 

I'm a huge fan of Frostgrave and I've been playing the first edition a lot - as shown by my collection. So how we gonna do this review? I've been asking people in the community and one thing popped up 'don't just review changes - write to people who don't know Frostgrave'. So experienced FG players might want to skip ahead to part 2 and part 3.

So that's what we're going to do. First part of the review is of Frostgrave as a game - what is it? What are the mechanics and so on. 

Second part will focus on the quality of the book, the look, the artwork, the fluff and so. 

Third part will focus on the changes between the two editions and the new stuff.



Part 1 - What's Frostgrave (2nd edition). 


The short pitch
Frostgrave is a tabletop skirmish miniature game for 28mm miniatures. Players control a wizard, an apprentice and up to eight soldiers. The goal of the game is to enter the ruins of a once fantastic magical city in search for artifacts, spell tomes and gold. Players go head to head in trying to secure treasures and complete objectives. The game also feature wandering monsters that players need to deal with. 

You can play one-off games, but the system is really written for campaign play. Lots of focus on leveling, experience and growing the power of your wizard. 

Creating a wizard - assembling a warband

Wizard
The hero in Frostgrave is your wizard. This guy is the star of the show and players start off by building him. All wizards start with the same statline (more on that later) so not much to do here and there's limited gear to choose from. 

But Frostgrave is a game all about wizards - and there's 10 different magic schools to choose from with 8 different spells in each school. Each wizard will pick some spells from their primary school and spells from the others as well. And depending on spell and school they'll have various difficulties for casting. 

This part of the Frostgrave system is the most daunting and hard. With so many combinations of spells it can be intimidating to a new player. So what's my suggestion? Pick a cool model or concept and find a school fitting for that. Make sure you have at least one damage spell with range, one spell to summon a companion (there's undead, constructs, animals and so on) and at least one out of game spell (potions, scrolls, summoning). Other than that, just pick what you think looks fun. 

Frostgrave is really not meant to be played competitively and you'll break trying to unlock the most destruction / effective list of spells. 

The apprentice system is easy. All stats and spells follow the wizard, just a bit worse. They level up together as well, so it's real easy. 

Soldiers
A wizard will have 300 gold coins in the bank at the start for soldiers. There's lots of different types. You can bring some free soldiers (thief and thug), so even if you have a lot of bad luck  you'll always be able to field a full warband. 

So what does this gold buy? There's some standard cheap soldiers, better armed and armored than the thug and thief. There's also specialists (you can only bring four) that has either ranged weapons or heavy armor / good fight value. More on the fight  system later. 

But a thing about Frostgrave soldiers - experts are expensive, they cost a lot of gold. And you're paying for fairly minor buffs. This is great for balance in the game. 

My new starting warband had one standard infantryman (50gc) and three specialists: archer (75gc), crossbowman (75gc) and captain (100gc). The rest was free thugs. Lots of room to sink gold into better soldiers. 



The rules
Frostgrave use the d20 dice - and you only ever roll one dice at a time. Some rolls will be modified depending on stats. Fairly simple. Some people hate the d20 for having such a huge range of results - some people like it. Personally I like the randomness of it. 

Actions points, models in FG have two actions points. One point must be used on movement (or reloading a crossbow). That leaves one action for special stuff, spells or melee combat. 

Frostgrave have phases and these are important. A wizard will activate (and up to three soldiers close) - then your opponent does the same. Next is the apprentice (and up to three soldiers) - then your opponent. Last all remaining soldiers. For group activations soldiers need to be close to the spell caster. It's really powerful to be able to swarm opponents, but that will also bring your wizard closer to the enemies. Pros and cons for both.

Spell casting
This is important. This is what the game is all about. And it's really straight forward. Each spell has a target number depending on spells strength and affected by your Wizards school of magic. Roll a d20, see if you equal or beat the number. 

Wizards have the cool ability to burn health for a +1 on the dice for on a 1 for 1 basis. Giving them the chance to succeed critical spell rolls at the cost of their health. 

Combat and other stats
All characters have the same stats. There's Move, Fight, Shoot, Armor, Will, Health. Fight, Shoot and Will is written as a +0 to +4 for most, a bonus added to your d20 dice roll. So a free thug will get a +1 to his dice, and a knight that's expensive will have +4. 

Combat in Frostgrave is damn brutal. You're simple doing opposed rolls and add your Fight. Highest number wins (no attacking or defending) - draw might hurt both. You then take your roll (plus fight modifier) and subtract targets armor to get the damage. As most soldiers have between 10-12 armor and 10-12 health - a high roll will take them out really fast. So combat gets brutal fast. 

Will is used for defensive rolls against some spells. Fight is also used for rolling defence against a shooting attack (roll like in melee and add shoot stat). 

How to win?
Frostgrave has a standard head-to-head scenario. Five treasures are placed on the board. Warbands go against each other, game ends when all treasure is off the board or one warband is all killed. Simple. 

But the strength of Frostgrave is in the campaign! The rulebook comes with a whopping 20 different scenarios. Despite the normal hunt for treasures, there's specific goals in the scenario as well. And this is where Frostgrave shines - because suddenly you're not directly against the other warband. There's other stuff on the line.

The game is more about 'doing good for my own wizard', get treasure for yourself, gain xp and power for yourself. And XP is not gained in any way by hunting the other warband, but for securing treasure, objectives and killing NPC monsters. So the other warband is more a nuisance in this way, more than the actual target - perfect for a campaign game. 

The campaign
With 20 different scenarios in the core book, there's plenty of material for a long campaign. As you gain experience and explore, you will get better soldiers, your base will be upgraded, your wizard gets better at casting spells and know more. It's a joy to see a wizard grow. 

A word on balance: I haven't played 2nd edition that much, and the goal of it is to add balance - especially to a lot of the spells. I my previous 1st edition campaign we played 12 scenarios. Warbands had very different soldier types and approaches to spell casting. And even at the end the warbands weren't unbalanced and the games were still fair. 



Part 2 - The Art


The artwork from the first rulebook and all the expansions are amazing - full of character. For second edition the Artist aRU-MOR have taken up the brush. And the art work doesn't disappoint. There's a ton of full page, full color pieces of art, all telling a story from Felstad. Soldiers, monsters, spells, magicians - it's all oozing story. 

There's not a lot of written fluff in the Frostgrave book. It pretty much boils down to 'once was the biggest, brightest city, full of mages - the grandest place in the world. Magic messed up, covered it all in snow and now we loot the treasure a 1000 years later'. 

But throughout the book there's small snips of text, bits of tales from adventurers. There's lots of scenarios (not even counting expansion books and novels). All boils down to 'Felstad was a giant place, huge, larger than you can imagine'. And the artwork really adds to this effect, showing very different looking characters and places. 

Since the launch of first edition, Frostgrave have gotten a full line of miniatures as well. And the second edition book has a ton of photos of beautiful Kev Dallimore painting miniatures. Showcasing all the cool models in the line. 

All in all the boils down to a beautifully edited book, lots of color, lots of art and nicely setup. 


Part 3 - Second Edition vs First Edition

There's multiple reasons for the second edition, that's lined up by author Joseph McCollough right at the start of the book:
  • He's learnt a lot about game design. And both Maze of Melcor (expansion), Frostgrave: Ghost Archipelago (stand alone game) and Rangers of Shadow Deep (similar base mechanics) add to Frostgraves rules. Some small but important tweaks are good. 
  • There's a ton of data after years of playing Frostgrave - especially in regards to spell balance.
Frostgrave 2nd is a clean-up of the original system. And besides the spellcard pack, non of the expansions packs are left obsolete. 

Changes to base rules
Soldiers
The soldier system have gotten a great update, inspired by Ghost Archipelago. First up the thug and thief have been made free, meaning you'll always be able to fill a full warband - even if you're down on cash after having your soldiers killed. 

I would have liked the war dog to fall into the free category as the thief and the thug. The dog has extra speed, and that's really good. But it cannot pick up treasure and it has less health. So I don't think we'll see many dogs these days (perhaps from the base upgrade though). 

Soldiers are grouped in normal and specialist. You are only allowed four specialists in your warband. This brings more balance between old and new warbands. Most ranged attacking soldiers are specialists. And some of the never used models like apothecary and javelineer are now standard soldiers - so this might actaully see some in warbands. 

The treasure hunter has gotten less fight (and he did have too much before with move 7 and fight +4). And some of the heavier soldiers have become more expensive. 

Setup and campaigning
The standard treasure setup has been changed (based on the Ulterior Motives or GA book). Now there's only five treasures (not six) and they're more close to the center of the board. 

The XP system was changed with Maze of Melcor and is now an integrated part of the rules. And the changes here really makes a difference for the game. First is a 300 XP pr game cap (which is still a lot, but sometimes the XP could run rampant). There's XP for failing a spell (that causes self damage) and extra XP for securing the central treasure (putting more gaming pressure on that). Also added XP for taking out wandering monsters.

Biggest and most important change is that there's no XP for taking out the enemy spellcaster - in first edition, this would bring you the most XP - so that was a goal. It's no longer a direct goal of the game. And this change bring the game better in line with the authors intention.

There's a few changes to the wizards bases. The best one in first edition was the inn, as you could bring one extra soldier with you for free, a real game changer (this upgrade would costs you 1000gc in Ghost Archipelago). Now it offers room for a reserve soldier number 11 (that's a backup if someone else miss a game due to damage). 

Spells
The spells have received a huge overhaul, a few spells are completely out. A lot of spells have been tweaked. The goal being 'every spell should be useful'. Truth about first edition is there were some 'must have' spells, because they were very good. 

The changes are too comprehensive to go over here. But overall it seems that LOS spells have been tweaked to be more balanced. Elemental bolt have gotten range for example. And poison dart can now give damage. So more schools have good LOS spells. 

Some were never really used like illusion soldier (that doesn't work good on the table) or fools gold. Now the first is a great way to get a melee bonus in combat and the second can make an enemy drop a treasure (and having to go back for it). 

Last to mention is leap - that was damn powerful in the first edition. Now it has a range limit, limited even more when carrying a treasure. 

Getting a real feel for the spells will take lots of games. But after a couple of reads the adjustments seems good. 

New scenarios and scenario setup
The way scenarios are described in the book have gotten a neat little twist - all scenarios have a 'requirements' line at the start. Pretty smart. Lines up specific monsters and terrain pieces. Brilliant, this was hidden in the wall of text in the old book. The overview here is quick to get. 



Part 4 - is it worth it?

The real question is: Does Frostgrave deserve another edition? Editions can either be concentrated on balance issues (adding tweaks) or completely rewamp a system (like it's often seen in GW eiditions).

Frostgrave 2nd is a mighty tome, lots thicker than the old one. Tweaks that's been tested through expansions are now implemented in the rules. Making for a better core game. And the spell tweaks makes for more interesting wizards. 

A game being five years old, keeping all expansions useable (with very few tweaks mentioned in the 2nd edition rules) - deserves a new edition. And this is a good one.

But besides tweaks the game comes with 10 extra scenarios! 20 scenarios in a base book is amazing. ... And for me it'll be a long time before I'm even trying them out - because first is a solo campaign in Perilous Dark and a PVP campaign with Forgotten Packs. 

Thank you for reading the review. I'm stocked for playing Frostgrave again and have a lot of FG in my pipeline. 

Want to discuss some hobby, share your work or get a mini blog? Try heading over to Discord, it's a great platform come have a look at Bloodbeard's Garage Discord.

I've already had my first game of Frostgrave. I stream my solo games on Twitch and upload the stuff to YouTube later. Check it out. 

17 August 2020

Frostgrave: Perilous Dark - Writhing Fumes

 And so it came to be! Frostgrave 2nd edition arrived. I've been looking forward to it for a long time. And keeping in with my 2020 Year of the Solo Game plan, I'm getting straight into the Perilous Dark campaign. A video of the first scenario Writhing Fumes are down the page. But first the warband introduction. 

Warband

For this campaign I've made a new warband. A dwarf enchanter and some trust companions. 

In the middle raising his tankard is Orlaf Tungsten - dwarf enchanter. And next to him is Bjornulf the Fair (his apprentice) and Captain Grimeye smoking a pipe. 

His spells are: Animate Construct (failed before first game), Enchant Weapon and Strength. For beefing up the team. Then he's bringing Summon Animal (failed), Write Scroll (made an elemental bolt), Heal, Elemental Bolt and Leap. 

The rest of the starting warband from the left is: Siguard (thug prospector), Arn (thug from the old days), Haralf Oaken (crossbowman), Birch (bowman), apprentice, wizard, captain, Ulrich Darkiron (infantryman), Birger (thugh) and Soot (thief). 

Setup

I've setup the board according to the perilous dark description. A blocked archway in one corner (the entry to a weapon factory) is the goal. Five spawn points for Vapour Snakes (the discs) and two Ballista II golems. The rest of the board is covered in ruins and scatter. 

Check all my Frostgrave terrain here

The Game

Check out the entire game here. Since this is the first video with Frostgrave, there a tiny bit of rules talking at the beginning and of cause there's campaign rolls at the end. 

Please drop a follow on the youtube channel if you enjoy my stuff (it's new and needs to grow). 



14 August 2020

Terrain: TTCombat Suburbia

At this point I've pretty much nailed the look I'm going for with TNT, hitting that Fallout vibe in the game. But I've been wanting a suburban area for some time as well. White picket fences, play grounds and all that. So when TTCombat had a nice black friday sale I jumped in and got what I needed.

These buildings will also be perfect when I get around to doing some games in Woodbury for The Walking Dead.

As always when doing MDF terrain, I base coated all the different parts before assembling them. Two different greys for interior, white for the outside, grey for details.

The suburban houses went together really well and super easy. Happy to see how big they actually are on the tabletop (this seems to be the case with pretty much all TTC kits).

I took some mahogany chips that I have, they are waste from a saw mill. The pieces are 1-2mm thick, so perfect for terrain. To add a bit more war torn apocalypse feel to it all, I've decided to board up the windows and doors. This is all for the looks, and it's on purpose that models can still draw line of sight from the windows.


On the two storey building I only boarded up the window next to the garage as it was the only window one could easily get to.


The roofs got a heavy layer of Army Painter quick shade. The stuff is really sticky. So while it was wet I sprinkled some garden scatter on the roofs. I just took some old leaves and ran them through the blender.

Fixed even more in place with matt varnish after it has dried.


The rest of the buildings, in- and exterior have had a layer of homemade brown wash. I use this for terrain as it's much cheaper than buying stuff. It's used acryllic paint, pva, water, dish wash soap and steel balls for mixing it.


The brown filter adds a lot to the pieces. Usign a thick brush I've added it everywhere in a thin layer and then with whipping the brush adding further spots here and there.


With a total of four house, I have enough to make a good 3'x3' setup.





A quick 3'x3' setup without any further pieces. With the loads of scatter terrain I have around here, I should be no problem to fill it properly.


And a few photos from a game of The Walking Dead. 


And from a suburban setup for hunting a big monster in TNT: