The Battles on Weathertop

For the first volume of Blaster, I wrote a couple of Rangers of Shadow Deep scenarios heavily inspired by the two skirmishes that take place on Weathertop in The Lord of the Rings. In order to illustrate the article, I broke out a lot of the figures I have painted over the last year, and did a careful photo shoot.

In the end, not all of the photos got used, and some of them appeared in a modified form (including one modified to be a really cool night scene!). Anyway, I am so happy with how well the photos came out, and with my paint work on the figures, I just wanted to show off my favourite photos in their original form. 

 

Frostgrave 2 – Soldiers!

While the system for creating wizards and apprentices has changed very little between editions, the system for recruiting soldiers is probably the single largest change in Frostgrave: Second Edition. As I have played and watched hundreds of games of Frostgrave over the years, I have noted two problems with soldiers. First, if a player got really badly defeated – gained no treasure, and lost several soldiers – it could often be impossible to dig back out of this hole in a campaign, especially if it happened early in a campaign. The other problem is that I allowed so much freedom when buying soldiers, it allowed players to create warbands that were just no fun to play against – the ‘all archer’ or ‘all treasure hunter’ warbands are the most egregious. Now, in truth, very few people actually played this way, so it was never a huge problem, but it bothered me as a game-designer, a lot.

In order to fix these two issues, I started by dividing soldiers into two categories: standard and specialist, in much the same way I did for Ghost Archipelago. Now, when you are creating a warband, you can have 8 soldiers, with a maximum of 4 specialists. Standard soldiers include thieves, thugs, men-at-arms, infantrymen and a few others. So, they aren’t all bad, but they are mostly limited to just fighters. Additionally, thugs and thieves can now be recruited for free. This means, no matter how badly your warband gets mauled, you will always be able to field a full complement of figures for your next game. This eliminates the biggest potential imbalance in the game.

The specialist soldiers include archers, crossbowmen, and all of the higher-level fighters such as treasure hunters, knights, and barbarians. In the appendix, at the back of the new book, there is a list of all of the soldiers found in supplements, stating whether they are standard or specialist soldiers.

While I was initially worried about these restrictions, I actually believe they make constructing a warband more interesting. Now, you really have to think about how you want to approach the game. If you want lots of archers, it means you aren’t going to be as good in hand-to-hand (especially since archers and crossbowmen are no longer as good in hand-to-hand). Not only does this eliminate the issue of ‘unfun’ warbands, but it has a couple of knock-on effects which I like. First, it helps keeps a campaign balanced, preventing a player who has made a big score treasure-wise from going out and spending it all on the best soldiers. Also, it means the rules work better with how most people actually play the game. Most people like to buy their ten miniatures, paint them up, and continue to use these same miniatures throughout a campaign. Maybe just upgrading a figure or two. These rules work better with that idea, as players will end up keeping more of the soldier they have instead of immediately discarding them for better ones. That said, players still have the freedom to switch out soldiers as often as they want.

Some of the soldiers have had their stats changed, and many of the prices for recruitment have changed, but I’ll leave that for players to discover when they get the book. Okay…Treasure Hunters are now only Fight +3, the rest you’ll have to wait to find out.

I’ve accompanied this blog with another rocking piece of the new artwork by aRu-Mor. This is the ‘knight’. I like this piece because it shows that the soldiers are open to a lot of interpretation, a lot of imaginative wiggle-room. A knight can be a classic knight in shining armour, or it can be an evil looking guy in a grotesque demon mask. The rules don’t care, so go with whatever fits for your warband!

Inquisitorial Valkyrie!

It’s been a hard few months, and finding a way to relax and enjoy my hobby has been more important than ever. So, I was looking for a big project that took me far away from my work. I wanted something that was going to take a good bit of work, but didn’t require too much thought. So, I decided it was finally time to paint up that dropship I’ve always wanted! I took a good look around to see what was available, and decided that nothing appealed to me more than the Imperial Guard Valkyrie from Games Workshop.

I also thought this would be a good chance to support some business that has likely suffered during the pandemic. I checked all of my usual ordering places, but everyone was sold out. Then, just when I was about to give up, Games Workshop announced the reopening of their online store. I had hoped to support them and a retailer at the same time, but such was not to be the case. Anyway, I don't mind supporting GW. 

My original plan had been to paint it green in kind of a neutral ‘military’ look, but once I got it out of the box, I felt the strong desire to paint it up for my Demon Hunters army, the only 40K army I’ve ever completed. I haven’t actually added a new unit to this army in over a decade, and elements of it last appeared on the blog quite a while ago (Fighting against the Daleks here, here, and here). This actually forced me to order some paint as the red I used for the entire army isn’t a part of regular rotation these days, but I’ll probably work it back in now.

Assembling the vehicle proved pretty easy - although messy, so many plastic shavings in my office! That is, until, I got to the cockpit canopy. I just couldn’t get that to fit right no matter what I did. In the end, I just used a bunch of glue and pushed real hard. The upper canopy is a bit wonky, but it’s not too noticeable. Also, I think I put the wing landing gear on the wrong wings. It’s minor, but means it wobbles for a second when I put it down.

Actually, before I assembled the canopy, I painted the flight crew. I’m not sure it was worth it, but it is kind of fun to look through the glue-fogged windows and see them in there! I decided not to install the door gunners, as I figured I often wouldn’t want them there. Also, I got tired of the side doors and back ramp flopping open so I glued all but one side door shut. It’s not like I wanted to paint the inside anyway.

I also found some old brass-etched Inquisitorial symbols from back when I painted the rest of the army, so I glued them on as well.

Then I got down to painting. I don’t paint many vehicles or big things, and have never really been interested in getting an airbrush, so it was all buy hand, mostly using a size 1 brush. I slowly worked my way over from one wing to the other. It took four coats of thinned red to get the colour finish I wanted.  Amazingly, I only used four different colour paints on the whole thing: red, black, gold, and white. That’s it. Shows how much you can do with a very limited pallet. I used a bit of black smudging in places as my one nod towards weathering, but figure the Inquisition keeps their vehicles well painted.

In all, it took about two weeks to paint it and I’m very pleased with the outcome. At some point soon I’ll have to break all of the Demon Hunters out for a new ‘Army Shot’!

Introducing – Blaster!

So this is a little project I’ve been keeping under my hat...introducing Blaster!

Basically, I got together with four other wargame designers – Ash Barker (Last Days & Guerrilla Miniature Games), Mike Hutchinson (Gaslands), Joey McGuire (This is Not a Test & Reality’s Edge) and Sean Sutter (Relicblade) to create our own wargames anthology, and Volume I is now available in either PDF or Print-on-Demand from DriveThruRPG!

The plan is for this to be an ongoing series, with new volumes coming out on a semi-regular basis. In every issue, all five of us will be providing new content for one or more of our games, so if you are fan of our work, these books are probably going to be of interest!

It’s an anthology by a bunch of independent game designers produced for those who like independently-created wargames!

For Volume I, I have gone back to one of my biggest influences, The Lord of the Rings, and created a pair of linked scenarios that can be played using the Rangers of Shadow Deep rules. In the first scenario, you play a wizard, searching for his friends in the ruins of an ancient watchtower, when he’s attacked by a group of wraiths. In the second, a ranger and four halflings are searching the same ruined tower for signs of the wizard, when they too are attacked by the wraiths!

Of course, for these scenarios, I’ve had to provide Rangers stats for the wizard, ranger, and halflings…

They are difficult scenarios to win. Think you are up toit?

Rifleman!

My five-year-old daughter wanted to do some colouring yesterday. This is one of the easiest ways for me to spend quality time with her as she loves to just sit and colour, and idly chat about this, that, and the other. She coloured a birthday cake. I went with an RFL-3N Rifleman - one of the oldest and coolest of the Battlemechs. I got this guy from the Battletech Activity Book, which I picked up for just such an occasion. The PDF is currently free on DriveThruRPG.

When the fad for adult colouring books first hit the market years ago, I was somewhat disdainful, but really that was just snobbery on my part. I mean, is there really a huge difference between colouring this sheet and painting the miniature? True, I'll potentially use the miniature for something, but really, I'm doing both activities because they are relaxing, allowing me to be creative, but without any great effort.

Anyway, I'm not sure I'd be so bold as to go with this colour scheme on a miniature, but I had fun!

Kromlech Official Frostgrave Terrain

These guys are making Frostgrave look so cool! And even some hints at a new scenario or two...

Frostgrave 2 – Wizards and Apprentices

June has come, which means we are just that little bit closer to the August release date of Frostgrave: Second Edition! (It’s also my birthday month – normally I would say to send all gifts care of the Osprey offices, but as those offices are closed at the moment, just send best-wishes!)

As with the first edition, the second leaps right in with creating a wizard, and, in truth, not a whole lot has changed. The system for creating wizards always seemed to be one of the strongest and most enjoyable parts of the game for a lot of people, so I didn’t want to mess with it much. You still choose from the same ten schools of magic, all of which have the same connections to the other schools. You still select 8 spells, following the same rules as in first edition. Now, some of those spells have changed, but we will get into that later.

In fact, the only changes I made to creating wizards are very minor, and all have to do with items. First, wizards no longer pay for their starting items. Charging a wizard 5gc for a sword, when the game is usually dealing with magic items worth hundreds of gold crowns just seemed fiddly, and tended to cause confusion in other parts of the system.

A few people might be horrified to learn that I have dropped the +1 Fight for wielding two weapons. The biggest problem with this is that it was just too good. Rules-wise, there was just no good reason not to do it (the hallmark of a bad rule). This in turn led to all these wizards running around like duelists with their swords and daggers, which didn’t feel right. Anyway, the rule is gone. On the other hand, the first dagger carried by a wizard (or apprentice) no longer takes up an item slot, so everyone gets a free back-up knife!

Following a similar thought process, two-handed weapons now take up two items slots, and wizards wanting to carry a bow will also have to carry a quiver. These rules are designed to offset the advantages conferred by these weapons, and make it less likely that wizards, especially higher level-ones who tend to have lots of magical gear, will carry them.

And that’s it for wizards; they are otherwise the same as in first edition.

Apprentices, on-the-other-hand, have gotten slightly better! (Do I hear applause? I did say slightly).  Basically, I made a couple of changes to their Stats. First, their starting Shoot score is now equal to the wizard's (+0). This is actually irrelevant to most people, but it eliminates the awkward -2 Shoot that all apprentices had. Much more importantly, Apprentices starting Health is now only 2 less than the wizard, meaning they start with Health 12 (instead of 10). While this isn’t a huge gain, it means that apprentices can take a little more damage, and, perhaps even more importantly, have a little more Health available to empower spells. As an interesting side-effect of these two changes, starting apprentices are only 6 levels below their wizard, so if your wizard dies, you only lose 6 levels when promoting your apprentice. This will hopefully lessen the psychic blow to players when their wizard dies, and help keep campaigns feeling more balanced.

Finally, Apprentices now only cost 100gc. This is part of a general restructuring of money, and has little effect on assembling your warband in the beginning, but does mean that it isn’t quite so costly to replace an apprentice down the line.

I'm sure everyone got an eye-full of that new piece of aRu-Mor artwork. I told you she should could paint, didn't I! Some may recognize the piece as illustrating the very first scenario in the original rulebook - well the Mausoleum is back for a new edition!

Okay, that’s all I’ve got say about the spellcasters at the moment. I’ll be back soon with a look at the soldiers, and how they have changed for the Second Edition…