Terrain: TTC Row Houses

 I've already build a bunch of small WW2 25mm houses from TTCombat. They were quick to build and very cheap. But I have also gotten myself a bunch of bigger row houses, in both two and three storey versions. These houses are a lot bigger and really give off that Baldur's Gate vibes that I'm going for. 

The upgrads of these buildings are the same and I've done with the smaller houses. Stone wall ground floor, timber frame second floors, added plaster and lots of colors. The top of the roof is cobber, and would probably be all green from verdigris in real life, but that color clashed to much with the buildings. So I've only painteda bit of verdigris here and there. 

For a tutorial style step-by-step check out this post here. And see all the collected fantasy city terrain on this page. 

I've also made a YouTube video with these buildings: 

When I bought all my city MDF kits, I also got a pack of TTCombat Streets of Venice balcony upgrades. It was pretty cool and allowed me to add a lot of balconies on these house. Some already came with balconies, but it's a seemless fit, so hard to make out which is which. 

The awnings are originally from grey board, but I've tossed those out and found some striped fabric instead. These give a much more life like look to the entire building. I've also made some signs using an online coat of arms maker, those will be added one day when I get around to it. 

All colors chosen for these buildings have been found with online research on real tudor or timberframed houses. And I've made sure to mix it up, so all buildings have different combinations. 

It's pretty fast to paint these buildings, as most of the job is actually done while base coating with cheap rattle cans, then some drybrushing and was will make it all pop. Flock and posters add the last layer of life to them.

On my other houses I've made sure to add a 1cm flat area on the top of the roof, for miniatures to keep their balance there, but that's not needed on any rowhouses. It'll look great when I get around to painting the last 4 of these. 

Check out the game Guilders: A Life In Shaows. A 28mm skirmish miniatures game, with lots of RPG elemenets. Inspired by my love of Frostgrave, Mordheim and the Warhammer Quest RPG book. All Guilders is collected here. 

Guilders: A Regular Day's Work

 It's been a very long time since we've had a game of Guilders. Life been kind of full with much other stuff. So recently we got a game in. Despite having written the rules, you actually forget certain things. So we started with a simple and cozy Another Day's Work (the simple first Heist in the game). 

My guild had lost their guild roster since their last game - so I couldn't recall their item stash, influence or guilder coins. A perfect excuse to just pension them after the game and paint up a new guild, as I have so many miniatures. But the Rogue Circus will still look good in the cabinet. 

My opponent went through the entire XP, influence, job motion. It'll be interesting to see in our next game, how a fully new guild performs against an experienced one. 

A Regular Day's Work

Super simple scenario just some loot and civillians on the board. Get as muh loot as possible and get off the board. That's it, that's the plan and the heist. We just threw on all the city terrain and (as so often) picked the side we were already on as our starting edges. 

My guild master is a fast acrobat. So my plan for one part of the guild was to rush forward, climb and get the high placed loot II and loot III. The over half of my guild was with the hard hitters, planning to rush the centre of the board, grapping the loot there and not minding a bunch of violence against the opponnent. 

As would become clear through the game, the loot in that empty cart would make os fight. And the building next to it had a guard on top and some good loot. 

For a regular game there's four crowds and six individual civillians on the board, all carrying loot. And there's four guards patrolling the streets. There was a lot of narrow streets in this setup, so we really had to work around or through the crowds to get to the high tier loot. Civillians only carry the worst kind. 

Before each game you roll a complication (if you rember to do so). For this heist there was heated competion between rivalling brewers guilds and all people was a bit tipsy from cheap beer. So the Overall Alertness could start higher, but we rolled on +2. Guards become hostile at 10+, so the game potentially start with hostile guards. 

Our guilds were relatively new, so there's not too many crazy tricks in the bag yet. My guild had a single child Bedridden from a severe beating in the last game. My opponent however had their enforcer and another member in Jail. So they had to field some free scum (a cheap and bad character) for free. Luckily they had some weapons in store for them. 

A regular game start with two ranged guardsmen patrolling the roof tops. There's complications (like gull infestations) that will have even more ranged guards. This are deadly and best avoided. Shooting in Guilders is not too dangerous, if staying in cover or hiding in crowds. But if out in the open, guards will always prioritize an easy hit. 

Some of the tipsy civillian crowds minding their business in the streets. They have to be pickpocketed or beaten to take their stuff. But the market stall has better loot, this can be stolen by anyone with skills.

At the start of the game the guards just move around randomly. If there's no alarm on the board, generally love overall alertness or violent guilders, they guards are not a problem. But they will react to guilders who's been seen doing a crime. And if the guilder has Infamy (from previous games) the guards might react to them, because they are wanted. 

A guard patrolling a house roof. This guy can pretty mich cover the entire centre of the board, so it's important to avoid being in this guys line of sight. 

A little dwarf butcher selling some sausages near the gallow. Meat for the masses while watching a show, though there's no one getting hanged today. 

A thief from my opponnents guild, having stolen a bit of loot from the church. This character has the lockpick skill (all houses starting with loot and is locked). 

My guild master and my charlatan have run the the tavern. The plan is for my guild master to climbing /hw's an acrobat) and steal some high value look next to the ranged guard. My charlatan has magic to both control crowds and pull loot to him. So he's to make crowd stand in the way of guards and try to steal some loot from a distance.

As has so often been the case for me, it's pretty hard for me to steal anything and the damn crowds are in the way. But my enforcer does manage to steal a Loot II and is ready for some combat, with the opponents coming down the same alley to also grab that loot. 

Loot II and Loot III is much better and valueable than Loot I (which there's plenty off). A Loot I will cover the upkeep of a guilder, the other types will make you a profit or good items. 

The hard hitters from the opoonent gang (here's the witch hunter guild master) is making their way to a Loot II in a cart. The story behind this guild, is they're badly funded. But they have feel a right to take something from the masses, to fund their fight against evil. It's just unvoluntary contributions to their effort. 

Street Urchin are very cheap characters, they can't carry much loot, but they are generally ignored by the guards. They are also bad thiefs and will have less than a 50:50 chance to steal from civilians when the game begins. And in this game our street urchin (in both guilds) failed constantly, getting thrown out of crowds and generating alarm - which in turn raised the overall alertness. 

One of the thiefs of my opponent, rushing to get first to some high value loot, trying to avoid my enforcer who's also closing in. 

As we've not really had a lot of alarm around the board, the guards have done a lot of random movement. It's not known to the players when the guards take their turn. But as the game turn progresses the change of the guards taking their is raised. And suddently I found a guard amongst my ranks (with guilders carrying loot) and overall alertness nearing 10. Which we don't want - as killing guards will put a bounty on your head. 

We've learned from bad experience, that making too much alarm is a bad thing. And as soon as overall alertness reached 10, and the guards become hostile - we started making our way off the board. A guilder who makes it off the board gains extra XP and takes off loot. There's coming more and more guards each round - so take the win. 

So we only had a small amount of guild on guild fight this game. My enforcer was shot down by the opposing guild, but not before smashing down a thief with her halbard. The most of the alarm came from us failing smashing doors and getting noticed by civilians while stealing. 

I of cause didn't roll any end game stuff for my guild, having already decided to retire them. But my opponent went through the end game sequence. A single guilder had been hurt and got a niggling injury. The two one time scum where simple let go and not hired - they didn't really gain enough XP for that.

I won the game by 1 victory point. I got 4 Loot I and 3 Loot II (10 victory points). My opponent got 6 Loot I and one Loot III (9 victory points). 

All non-hurt guilders can do various jobs. A guilder went to the fence and sold some contraband, getting a good price for it. Another guilder went to the market and sold some fine gear (items with a higher value). A couple of guilder went to make some protection money. 

Another guilder went to the bailiff and paid bail on the two guilders in jail, so that they would come out and could join the guild for their next heist. 

There was one guilder left to Roam the City, rolling on the 100 entries of random encounters. It was a new guy, a scum no less, who ended up gambling and losing money - jerk. 

In the end it was a good dy for the opponnents guild. They made some XP, put aside a few coins and don't have anyone in jail. 

If you're interested in Guilders, join the Facebook group og the Discord community. The games free beta can be found online and will at some point be availble for purchase as a physical book. 

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Terrain: Peacock Inn - interior

 For the game Guilders: A Life In Shadows there's a few scenarios, that require play inside buildings. I've covered the build of this huge tavern, based on a TTCombat Carnevale set before in this blog. And covering some of the bits and bobs painted for the interior in this blog. 

Now the entire thing is completed. Take a small trip through the build in this little video and read on for some words on how it's done. Most of the miniatures in there are from Dunkeldorf.

I 3d printed some flat doors found on thingiverse. Some of the prints failed, but since I don't like throwing suff out, it was easily fixed with some coffee stirrers. 

I've printed out some floor details, found online somewhere. I printed them on a3 paper, so they fit an entire floor with having to make some funky line-ups. 

I also found a bunch of pictures of carpets online, printed them out and glued them in place here and there. 

For the stairs, I printed some I also found online, and to save space on the top floor I simply added a wooden trapdoor in the floor, that saved me from cutting actual holes in the terrain - that would serve no practical purpose anyway. 

The walls are painted an off white that I mixed with cheap acryllics. It's painted on with a sponge, it adds a bit of a textured detail with the MDF shining through here and there. 

I added rooms to the floors using thick cardboard. The doors don't open, but that's not really a problem during gameplay. The wooden beans are used coffee stirrers glued in place, but they really break up that MDF look nicely.

Normally I've been opposed to gluing terrain in place inside buildings, not wanting to 'waste' painted interior. But these days, I glue terrain inside. It's just easier and with 3d printing and a ton of terrain crate - I'll never run out anyways. 

The top floor is a large suite, added some nicer looking interior details up here. Some a Dunkeldorf bits, some are from Mantic games. 

Full topdown look on the 1st floor, with two small common room and one room that's a bit more exclusive. 

This is the top floor suite, with one large room and a seperate sleeping chamber. 

If you like my stuff, please consider following some of the SoMe pages, it'll all help once Guilders is released and goign into sale. You can also pop into the Discord, it's a very good little community of supportive hobby people. It's all found through my LinkTree. 

Guilders: A couple of civilians

 When putting together my new guild for Guilders 1.6, I also put together two other miniatures (before settling on which to use). These are from Dungeons and Lasers III: Woodhaven. Excellent miniatures once again, I'm very impressed with the sculpting. The connection points / mold lines) are so well hidden through design - it's really good. 

I've painted these with speed paint. Base coat brown from below, white from the top. A bit of wash here and there, then speed paint. 

A beggar missing a leg, for use as a potential scum, prisoner for The Hanged Man's Friend or just a civilian.

This civilian woman is really nice, I should have some chickens somewhere - so I might add some to her base at one point. I think this model has a nice pose and dynamic. It's a great civillian to add to the board. 

Guilders: A Life in Shadows is a 28mm skirmish campaign game. 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.

Guilders: The Carriage

With the release of Guilders 1.6 Beta, we decided to start completely new guilds. We've been playtesting the game with the same guilds over a very long time. Since the game has seen so many tweaks (especially to injury) it was time to try out with some rookies. 

Heist
We rolled for a scenario and ended up with The Carriage heist. In this game the guilds must ambush a Carriage with loot. Loot will drop from the objective, but it will also cause Alarm. 

Since the last play of theis Heist, the rules have change. There's now rules for the carriage being able to run over characters in it's path. It's harder to block this way.

You can check out my new guild right here: The Rogue Circus. 

Complication

If that wasn't enough we rolled The Towncrier as a complication - an NPC that start every turn with automatically generating Alarm. 

This can be both a good and a bad thing. If the town crier moves away from the objective, he'll cause Alarm and draw the guards to him .. i he moves randomly towards the objective - that's bad. 

Setup

We made a city with a straight street through the middle, this is where the carriage will move through. We made sure the line the buildings with lots of ledges towards the main street, for some good action in the height. 

Here's a small film flying over the city, also filmed the miniatures after one round of movement. 

The start

The carriage with the high value loot enters the game in turn one, so the first turn is mostly the guidlers trying to move into advantage positions. Since these are all rookie guilds, they don't have many skills and such to help them yet. 

For both guilds we spread out thiefs and streets urchins. Moving toward doors and crowds for lockpicking and pickpocketing some Loot I, to pay the bills. 

I've also included a bunch of quarterstaffs, clubs and bolas in my gang - hoping for some easy violence. If someone is Knocked Out quickly they don't generate Alarm (draw in guards) and the character doesn't get Infamy (must pay the bailiff to not be wanted). 

Here's the Town Crier (an aigitator from King Games Dunkeldorf line), in the middle of the board.

The carriage entered the board and starts its trip through the main street.

A thief with lockpick moving towards a door that's locked TN/8. It's a 50:50 change for a rookie thief to unlock a normal door.

A street urchin entered a crowd. The character will just move along with the crowds random movement. For this game we raised civillian Savvy by 1, making it 50:50 for thiefs to steal from them. But street urchin have a bit lower chance of success as rookies. My kid got thrown from the crowd multible times, because he got caught. 

This civillian monk was walking around with some cheap Loot I. I decided to gang up on him with my scum and apothecary, both armed with Knockout weapons. They also support each other, so my bonus for wacking him is higher - and it dind't work. So the monk starts yelling and generating a bunch of Alarm. 

The crowds move randomly at the end of the turn and for this game all the civillians seemed to move towards the center of the board, this is good for out guilds as it will slow down the carriage. 

Here's an example of how characters can move with crowds. My street urchin entered a crowd in turn one and is now standing in the middle of the board in front of the carriage. The kids is not strong though, so he won't have much of a chance to knock high value loot of the carriage. 

Here you can see the townwatch having been brought to the center of the board as the town crier was making noise there last turn. The town crier then moved toward the carriage (randomly) - and generates alarm there. This is bad for our guilds, as the townwatch will now move directly towards our objective. 

The carriage is a stretch goal from the Dungeons and Lasers encounters kickstarter, it was a nice kit to paint. 

The drunken monk really shouldn't get away, so my scum and apothecary try once more to beat him down - and once again he dodges their attacks. Knockout doesn't generate Alarm if succesfull, but the monk starts yelling if he can. So already by turn 2 we have a bunch of Alarm - which goes to Overall Alertness at the end of turn. 

And at Overall Alertness 10+ the guards turn hostile towards the guilders. So you really want to avoid this until you have enough Loot secured.

The street urchin is failing his pickpocket attemt and is thrown out  from the crowd and also generates alarm. Guards will never beat a kid unless they are carrying stolen goods though. 

A thing we've been working on and tweaking a lot of the rules for hiding. There's some skills that let's a character do much more damage if hidden, better to steal and lockpick. Before this game the guards were tweaked, so it's a bit harder to spot someone hidden.

Here Bolin from my opponents team, hiding in a crowd (even harder to spot) hoping the crowd will randomly move here towards a target of opportunity. 

... The plan about knocking out that monk for some cheap loot has backfired spectacularly and I've only generated a bunch of Alarm, raising the Overall Alertness to turn the guards hostile. And being completely rookie guilds, they really don't have much of a chance against all those guards.

Loot will bring you money and items, but they also offer XP for the character who ends up securing them. So having thiefs and street urchin steal loot and then handing it off to others is a good way to spread out XP. Wanting my guild master to gain some, the urchin is handing him here treasure. 

Finally after a ton of rounds I managed to knock down the monk, now more on principle than to get the loot, I simply couldn't let him get away. Loot I is the worst loot and will often only pay for the upkeep of 1 or 2 cheap characters.

All the violence and noise is bringing the guards closer. And when Overall Alertness hits 10+ the guards turn hostile - and we still ahave absolutely nothing to show for it. 

The cutthroat Bolin was hiding inside a crowd, but with hostile guards they start looking for hidden characters - if there's no other obvious targets. The guard manages to spot bolin and then attack her. Crowds and civilians are always on the side of the guards and will help stomp any guilder near them. So down goes Bolin. 

The character being beaten by only a town watch (easiests guards) will not roll for injkury after the game, but only captured (risking jail time). 

The town watch with alarm have just beaten my courtesan. She tried dodging but got knocked to the ground hard.

Neither guild have really been close to getting any good loot of the actual target, but have generated so much trouble trying to knock out civilians. It really became clear how terrible these rookies were compared to our 10+ games experienced guilds. 

The annoying town crier have been moving close to the carriage, and because of it have drawn a ton of guards towards it, making it even riskier to go and try knocking loot from it. 

In the end my thiefs have managed to gain a bit of Loot I from pickpocketing and lockpicking and running towards the board edge with guards on their heels. 

The towncrier surronded by townwatchmen from all his screaming. 

In the end this was a very nice first game. Both guilds managed to just pay their upkeeps from Loot I, while we weren't succesful getting any from the carriage. We both agreed, we should have taken a stealthier approac and keeping our eyes on the target. 

Loot II and Loot III is so much better than Loot I. So next time we'll focus on that juicy target. Since we didn't get much loot, no characters managed to gain any levels after our first game. 

Rule changes

After this game we tweaked the rules for smashing (breaking doors, knocking loot of the carriage). The rules went from '1 Alarm on unsuccesful and 2 alarm on succesful attempts' to 'smashing cause 1 alarm', This also cleaned up two heists (For Whom The Bell Tolls and The Carriage), for cleaner heist descriptions and easier targets, as you can know use crowbar items in the heist. 

Play the game

Wanna check out Guilders? Go get the rules on my LinkTree also join and follow some SoMe, help my reach grow. The game is nearly finished and should be released in 2023. 

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