Saturday 22 December 2018

The Auxiliary Companions




The recently released Rangers of Shadow Deep: Blood Moon includes 4 auxiliary soldiers who serve a multifaceted purpose in the adventure. They are the catalyst for getting the ranger involved in the mission, and they provide support during the fighting. They also, however, form the list of suspects in the hunt for a werewolf.

I thought it would be fun to see if I could make these four companions from some sprues I had lying around, and actually it has worked out rather well.

Orla, the red-headed huntress is made from the new Frostgrave Soldiers II sprue. Okay, she’s got a cap on so we can see her hair, but as the only woman in the group, she won’t be hard to identify.

Nicolan is the guy with the sword and dagger. He is the defacto leader of the group, due to his social standing instead of any military rank. I wanted him to be bit better dressed. His body and arms come from the Oathmark Human Infantry sprue. His left hand comes from the Ghost Archipelago Crew. His head, and the heads of all three of men come from this sprue from Anvil Industries, which I had lying around (£3 well spent, there). The heads are maybe a fraction large, but I don’t think I'll notice once they are painted up and on the table. They are fantastic sculpts though, amazing character in the faces. The join with the neck isn’t quite right, so I had to cut away a little bit, and it is resin, so super glue was required. Still, I think it was worth the effort. He definitely looks the young aristocratic fighter.

On the right is old Covin, with his maimed left-hand. I actually cut a few fingers off – which is why the plastic is scared. We’ll see how it paints up. Another great head though, perfect for an old and tired warrior. The body and arms come from the Oathmark Human Infantry sprue. (I realize now that I should have put 'Missing Fingers' in his notes in his stat-line, but its a very minor omission.)

Last up, on the left is Seb, the lumberjack turned soldier. All his parts, apart from the head, come from the Frostgrave Barbarian sprue. I had a lot of difficulty getting his two-handed axe positioned how I wanted it. In the end, I gave him a two-handed hammer, then cut off the head and glued on the axe head. Probably more trouble than it was worth, but it’s done now.

It's a nice looking cast of characters. Shame one of them is going to turn into a murderous monster…

13 comments:

  1. Joe,

    when might we see a map of your frostgrave and shadow deep worlds? I am digging the artwork in shadow deep and would love to see maps rendered in the same style!

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  2. I'm pretty sure we'll never see a map of Frostgrave - at least not by me. The Shadow Deep... maybe.

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    1. Joe, I actually like there's no defined geopgraphy for the Shadow Deep world. I know it's always a temptation for the author to do some detailed worldbuilding, but it's always a turn off for me: I rather keep the fantasy world as generic as possible, within reason. That way I can fill the backstory myself, invent towns, kingdoms and their regents, etc. For example, with the also cool Advanced Song of Blades & Heroes by Ganesha, I tend to ignore all the written backstory and made up names, which don't interest me.

      By the way, Rangers of Shadow Deep is such a cool game! I just bough the Blood Moon expansion. I intend to play this with my young nephews, so I might have to take the difficulty level down a notch. This game is great to play with kids, because instead of being adversarial, we are all "on the same side" :)

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    2. Andran, don't worry. I'm with you. I like to keep my maps (both literal and figurative 'fuzzy around the edges', so that players have plenty of room to fill in their own details. Glad you are enjoying the game. It's great to hear people are playing it with their family.

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  3. Excellent work as always. You may have answered this before but where did you get your trees? There’s something about your terrain that makes your mockups look ‘right’ to me.

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    1. Unfortunately, I bought those trees so long ago, I can't remember. I'm pretty sure I got them from a model railroad shop.

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  4. I hope that Nicolan turns into the werewolf. His haircut is such a mullet from the 1980's! That alone makes it necessary for him to meet his maker.

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  5. Just bought Bloodmoon, and instantly my Werewolf fanatic friend wanted to be a werewolf good guy, so now I have houseruled him two heroic abilities to buy.
    First one is Lycantrophy, which allows him to do a will test with TN15, and if he fails he turns, he gains the werewolf profile, stays a good guy, but has to use same activation mechanic as the enemies.
    Second ability Master Shapeshifter lets him try a will roll against TN 13 to turn back, or lets him try to gain controll of his beast form at the start of every activation with a will test against TN 15 for the rest of the scenario.

    Does that sound completely out of balance?

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    1. The big question is can he use his heroic abilities in werewolf form? If no, then he is going to find that pretty soon, being a werwolf isn't nearly as good as being a higher level ranger. If he can, he'll probably be a bit too powerful at the beginning, but it'll even out pretty quickly.

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    2. Thats´s a great point, Thanks for the reply, and Merry christmas =)

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  6. Nice couple of miniatures.
    Orla reminded me a bit of Merida from the Disney 'Brave' movie, so I'm most likely going to search for a miniature that resembles her.

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