Building towards the future

Having painted a playable collection of miniatures last year, I was finally able to play some full-sized games. My sparse collection of scenery, however, meant that it was a challenge to make the games varied enough to feel like separate encounters.

When I finally completed the TTCombat dungeon tiles the dynamic of the games played on them was completely different to the 'open air' terrain. Even more than just the more limited line of sight was the atmosphere - it really felt like there was a ceiling to the dungeon, and that altered the 'atmosphere' just enough to change the mood of the game as the turns progressed. It was more claustrophobic, regardless of the game direction.

So this year I'm aiming to ramp up my efforts on terrain-building to make the games a bit more interesting.

A few months ago, inspired by MalcyBogaten's blog, I played around with a glue gun and some mini jenga bricks to produce some rudimentary ruined walls which, after a quick black base coat and white dry brush, could be arranged to represent a two to three room building. The first order of the day was to add to this selection:

What I have been lacking in particular so far has been multiple-leveled gameplay, so I dug around the hoarded collection of boxes and containers to find some small boxes. Several strips of masking tape and a similar paint job to the ruins provided some old platforms. Now I just have to locate more boxes to go alongside them.

I also grabbed a box of kids' building blocks and spent a happy evening on the living room floor in front of Netflix playing around with them. My wife looked on in bemusement.

The first completed construction, a mixture of the building blocks and some full-sized jenga bricks, should allow either for a centrepiece plot point or encourage multi-leveled movement on the gaming field.

Mindful of one of the Tomb of the Serpent campaign scenarios, I bought a couple of bags of cotton reels to act as pillars. I've just painted up the first batch to act as freestanding columns; I'll probably try adding platforms on top with future ones, as well as adding some masking tap to give them a bit of extra texture. At least these ones can double up as plinths.

And finally, having been pointed towards Surpreme Littleness on the Lead Adventure Forum, I splashed out and spent just shy of £20 on some mdf scatter terrain. There are lots of little bits to do, some I'm working through it slowly. These are the first few bits and bobs done, and there is a load more to come!

The Cult of the Beetle

After a bit of a break, here are some orc members of the Cult of the Beetle.

These guys took me a little while to get done, but the most sluggish point was the beginning as I tried to work out the best way to represent the participants in the Pulp Alley campaign. Having decided to try and avoid buying new miniatures for a few months, I set about trawling through my backlog of sprues and partially assembled / unpainted models to put a force together.

Now, I was determined not to get bogged down too long on any one model, so they needed to be easy to convert and easy to paint. I had discovered a skin tone I liked by using Vallejo Sepia Wash over a basecoat of Vallejo Tan Earth, so aimed to do most of the fodder troops using nothing but basecoats and washes.

First up we have Fierce Cultists and Militant Cultists, the most basic of Orkwyrd's minions which ironically required the most work. They're Wargames Factory orc heads on Warlord Games celt bodies, both elements needing chopping and filing down so as to join neatly together. Painting-wise they were all done using three different browns for basecoats, one silver, one bronze, one off-white and one black, which were all finished with either a plain brown wash or a strongtone shader.

The Faceless Ones, the specialised warriors, were by far the easiest. Plain LotR Berserkers with the same paint scheme as the cultist minions.

The Beetle Priest, one of the living cult leaders, was a Gripping Beast Arab archer body and arms with a Warlord Games orc head filed down to suit. A minimal amount of highlighting involved on this one.

And finally the Risen Priest, a LotR Ringwraith with hands painted as bone rather than armour. Very quick and basic highlighting again.

Altogether, these models should be enough for me to play the first chapter of the Tomb of the Beetle (Serpent), though I need to source a decent miniature from my collection to represent Orkwyrd's physical avatar. I shall keep searching.

And a belated Happy New Year to you, the internet and hobbyists around the world!

I feel the need to do a bit more with my fantasy bits and bobs, particularly since I've finally gotten round to finishing off my TTCombat deluxe dungeon. I have had great fun with solo gaming Pulp Alley, and what with it being a very flexible rules set I've been keen to adapt one of its campaigns to a fantasy setting.

Addendum (a response on the Pulp Alley forum):

I used the standard Servants of Apophis profiles from Tomb of the Serpent for the various orcs. I think by the end they were left with a Risen Priest (lvl 4), a Beetle (/Serpent) Priest (lvl 4), a Faceless One (lvl 3) and a militant cultist (lvl 1). Considering I only had sidekicks (two of which were injured by the end), it would have probably gone quite badly if there had been any more turns.

It was a great non-standard scenario to play. The fact that it wasn't two balanced leagues dancing around each other meant that I could actually feel like it was my group against 'the system', where in the past solo playing has been great but hampered by the need to think for two sides. Just having 'bad guy' fodder charge the nearest visible adventurer made a change.

It is a tough scenario to win if chance frowns upon you - there's little room for dilly-dallying. To have had a reasonable chance of success I needed to have found the major plot point by turn four or five, what with it providing three different challenges to pass. The fact that I got every other plot point meant I needed to go through the whole board by the end of the game which, combined with the narrow corridors, meant that the Servants of Orkwyrd just needed to hold up some of my characters for a turn or two to render it impossible for the adventurers to succeed. Once it turned out the fourth plot point they acquired was the ghost rather than the relic, the game was up.

But it certainly does work well for dungeon crawls - Pulp Alley does work well for fantasy. I was umm-ing and arr-ing between Tomb of the Serpent and Lost World of Lemuria for my first fantasy campaign - I think both would work well. I mainly opted for TotS because it a) gave me a chance to use these dungeon tiles and b) very helpfully gives lists of miniatures needed for each chapter, so with my slow work rate I'm able to start working towards the different parts of the story with a clear target. I've also got another 'good guy' league to play around with some different character set ups. My target is to play out the whole campaign over the course of the year.

I'm also tempted to look into the Frostgrave scenarios and see how many of them might be converted into Pulp Alley games, to be populated with some traditional D&D monsters.