Blog brother Savageddt sent me a comment that made me realize I had not informed on wordpress about my move to instagram! The plan was to run this parallel to the blog, but somehow I ended up just using instagram for my hobby updates. The instant gratification and simplicity has lured me in and I am now reduced to a instahoe…that said, the wordpress blog format has been slightly irritating to use, resulting in fewer posts and it felt more as a task than enjoyment. So if any of you are interested in seeing what I’ve been up to, go check out my instagram @critsmash there is loads of stuff!
Playing solo is a great way of playtesting some custom scenarios. I’ve been using some of the ideas from the perilous deep expansion for frostgrave playing one-off scenarios for rosd. I start by setting up a table I like the look of, using the terrain pieces I want. At the same time I decide if I want a dungeon crawl, a boss battle or an objective such as getting from a to b. Nothing too complex. I decide what the rewards should be and also set out some treasure tokens. Spawn points area great way of adding randomness. I then decide what monsters I want to spawn, usually skeletons or zombies and what kind of boss I want to use. I take one of the existing hard monster stat lines and give it to a mini of my own choice. Voila.
Last time I played a scenario where I split the table into four rooms with some homemade dungeon walls.
Each room had a spawn point, a 50/50 chance that either a grim wolf or a zombie would spawn in one of the rooms each turn. Monsters spawning in a room I had cleared would move towards the final room as a target point. In the last room a werewolf was waiting for us. Ironically, one of my warpugs was aflicted with lycanthrophy!! Imagine the comedy of a pug turning werewolf at the worst possible time….
So we’ve been slightly tweaking rules from the Frostgrave: perilous dark expansion for Rangers of shadow deep. Yesterday we took the writhing fumes scenario.
The tweaks were the following for game 1:
Two temple guard archers instead of ballista constructs.
2 Zombies or 2 skeletons spawn per turn instead of all the other monsters.
For game 2 we wanted a boss fight at the end so we used stat line of the boss character Grevik(?) from the expansion for a giant skeleton. And only skellies for the spawn points.
It worked very well, and we had a blast. Such one off scenarios with no clues are a great way of racking up some sweet xp and just fighting it out!
So I found this lovely box. Sturdy!
I always wanted to add some levels to my table and these would be perfect!
So I used a rolling pin and added some thin foam with pva to the surface. The first try above got a marked streak down where the rolling pin ends. Not good so for the second try i split the foam into four equal parts the size of the pin and that worked better.
Then it was only a matter of painting it. Homemade black wash, some green flock etc.
You can see the difference between the two here.
Since thin foam is ridiculously expensive here, throwing the failure out was not an option.
Looks pretty good. Now I’ll have to make some stairs!
The gang is basically complete.
Being a venator gang they are more expensive than the other gangs, and have no juves, so I think I cannot use all 9 in the beginning. I also have another kitbash I need to do, but that is a hired gun not necessarily limited to this gang.
These are the inquisitors, leader and two champs. Two of them have magnetized arms for variety. The paintjob is very dark and that was intentional. Not only for the theme, but also some of the greenstuff work would stand out with a brighter paint scheme. I wanted it to blend as much as possible.
The veterans. Magnet arm on the pimp to the left.
The brawlers. Magnet arms on the chainsword guy.
Not sure what to categorize these as…buccaneers? Kal jericho types maybe? I’m happy with how they all have a personality. The inquisitors are the most uniform.
I used a mix of regular paints, contrast paints, drybrushing and blending. Painting rhinox hide base and then just drybrushing with balthazar gold over most of the metallics including weapons and maybe some agrax over that. Very few layers were used overall. Black clothing are abaddon black with eshin grey drybrush and on some spots dawnstone db. Most of them have a stiletto knife on them as I like the look, but they will count as fighting knives. Not sure how much I will use the spare magnet arms, but it was a cool thing to try! Can’t wait to see how they will fare against the cawdor!
Our gaming group of three decided to take a dive into the shadow deep this time.
One of us had not played ROSD of Frostgrave before, but he has experience with Warhammer quest from 20+ years back so he got into it pretty fast.
We ran the first scenario of mission one, the deserted village. We use the playtest rules designed by Joe for increased difficulty, meaning we could not group activate with our companions at all.
I designed the group for us in advance so we did not have to use time on it on game night.
We each have a ranger which I designed to include the usual fantasy archetypes in one group and get some variety; a spellcaster, a bowman and a warrior. I took the role of spellcaster, the professor got the bowman and our latest member, let’s call him “the diplomat”, got the warrior.
We could each take a maximum of two companions for a total of 30 recruitment points.
My wizard needed some meat shields so I got a recruit and a guardsman.
The bowman got a conjuror with two heal spells and one magic bolt.
The warrior got a warhound and an archer.
The warrior goes for a clue all by himself!
The warhound was the good boy of the hour and took down a bunch of zombies!
First mission went very well. We got all clues and not too many casualties. It looked a bit hairy for the bowman at one point, but he pulled through eventually.
We had time for another scenario, but I wanted to try out one from the perilous dark expansion. It is meant for Frostgrave, but much of the structure is similar so we went for it.
The scenario we chose was “the dog days” where the enemies will respawn if killed.
We started with 6 chronohounds as suggested for multiplayer mode. These were proxied with ghost miniatures and it suited the theme well.
During the first round we realized we had overestimated the rangers. They were still level 1 and the chronohounds are pretty tough! There is also no way to hide from them as they always have los.
So we decided to make some adjustments underway. Although we introduced the sixth hound by the end of turn one, we agreed that it should not respawn when it was killed. Another adjustment we implemented was that for each crystal we were able to destroy, one chronohound would not respawn.
After an intense race to destroy all the crystals we were down to one lone ranger and one stalking chronohound. The ranger approached the last crystal, attacked and failed. He was then set upon by the last hound and killed.
Although it was very entertaining, fast paced and intense, we will probably decrease the armour value for the crystals from 16 to 14 next time we play.
In our experience the scenario was very smooth to port over to rangers, so for those wanting more scenarios for rosd, perilous dark is golden. For those with high level rangers, there is probably less tweaking needed as well. As for rewards,if you destroy all crystals there is treasure to be had, but failing that we still got a hefty amount of xp (50) for each crystal destroyed for a total of 150 xp each. So it can work as a scenario to boost xp and give the rangers an opportunity to skip to more difficult scenarios from the rosd campaign if they want.
To sum up how we will play it for rosd next time (3 players):
Skip the sixth hound for level 1-5 in multiplayer.
1 Chronohound will not respawn per crystal destroyed.
Reduce the armour value of the crystals to 14.
Hydra the assassin. He is kitted with a lasgun, a stiletto knife, smoke grenades and a chem synth.
Ol’ Rutger. Autogun and knife. Simple is best.
The leader to the right, Investigator Calzyr with lasgun and chainsword and a champion, Lefite, with power maul and laspistol.
Ganger, simply goes by “the pain”. Dual chainswords…
And some grenades.
Caliban, ganger.Equipped with a stubgun, a laspistol, a knife and grenades.
The clobbermonk. Simply armed with a power hammer. Might give him some smoke grenades.
I’ve got a few more queued up for this gang!
This was the arena for our gangs final showdown. My pride had taken a heavy blow from the last defeat, and now I was intent on revenge!
We decided to start on the sides furthest away from eachother. This showed to be a good thing for me as my long rifle sniper could fire away from the edge without the risk of being targeted. In this way I was able to pin down and knockback the heavy stubber. Since he has the spring up skill for him, he did not lose any activation from standing up, but the knockback caused him to move into position to fire and thus could not aim before shooting. This saved me a number of times.
The heavy stubber had a very favorable position. And controlled much of my movement and placement. luckily We had a lot of terrain!
I decided to start out carefully, and follow a tactic more appropriate for the Delaque; hit & run.
A slow, but determined approach.
My champion, Stabby got in position to charge. Ironically it was with the same ganger he struggled with in the last fight! This time Stabby showed what he was made of though, and poked him full of holes with his newly acquired power knife (That also works with the backstab skill)!
His leader and champ got owned by my grav gun wielding ganger. Afterwards, I flamed both of them with one of my other gangers who had a hand flamer. This effectively took them out of battle for a while due to the blaze status.
A very action filled picture! Not intentional!
Anyone left standing at all? Luckily, most of my guys did not get injured, only pinned. My opponent on the other hand…
This was his OOA fighters towards the end! What a delicious sight…he eventually bottled and the day was mine!
The winners! “Line up for the group photo, you guys! Everybody say cheeeeeese! Yeeey, woooo!” I suggested we take a group photo for the Orlocks too, but my opponent declined…
So, it was a sweet victory for me, but Campaign-wise I was very far behind. Delaque won the battle, but the Orlock won the war so to say. We had an equal amount of territories towards the end, but he had over double, maybe even triple the reputation. The territories we got early on earned him way more credits than me, and of course he lavishly purchased equipment for all that dough. We both also misunderstood the starting settlement rule from the beginning and randomly rolled for a starting territory whereof mine generated zero cash. The next territory I got did not have income either so I had literally nothing to use for the first 3 games. I scraped by somehow, but this made it very difficult to catch up. For the next campaign I hope we get more credits and the chance to explore some of the brute/hired guns stuff.
The Delaque is a pretty cool gang. I like how they look, and their tactic cards are good. If I had the chance I would have kitted them a bit differently. Smoke grenades are very useful, at least in the beginning. The Orlock seem like an overall good gang, but a bit boring as my opponent has stated many times and their tactic cards sucks.
We are almost ready to start with new gangs though. I will use a custom made venator gang while the professor will use his awesomly painted cawdor. Stay tuned for that!
Oy vey!
Another frustrating confrontation in the underhive yesterday. To give you an indication of how bad it was, My first internet search this morning was “how to throw dice properly”. I even checked out a few videos on youtube…
Scenario was border dispute. Got pretty ok tactics cards (we always pick these at random). I got priority. A good start! I started with a random selection of 5 fighters while he started with 6. After a disappointing first round where I missed all my shots, my opponent took out two of mine. This caused me to take a bottle test which I failed. It sucks, but lets stay positive! Bottling in the first round is not necessarily the end and I figured they could stay on a bit with their decent cool stat, maybe get some extra xp to weigh up for the lost scenario bonuses?……NO!!!
Let me give you some highlights:
Over the following 5 rounds I had one (!) shot hit which turned out to be a flesh wound. I kid you not. I’m pretty sure that is a statistical anomaly at best! Well, at least my hth champ was in a position to get a charge in. Those are usually pretty safe bets!…..NO!!!
“HaHAA! I have you now!?”
I charged my dual stiletto wielding champion in hand to hand with an unarmed ganger. Result: 0 hits on 4 dice with 3+ ws. Next round, 1 hit on 3 dice…flesh wound! The ganger on the other hand managed to score a wound with his mighty fist (strenght 1).
Oh, I mustn’t forget the honorable mention of my other champ, Shooty! Bs 2+, infra sight, long rifle. Pretty decent right? NOT THIS TIME!!!
He had a crystal clear shot at an enemy two times during the game. Can you guess what I rolled on both shots….?
I almost forgot to mention the performance of one of my Juves. He was hit by a firestorm in the first round and just burned for all 5 rounds, failing his checks every round. Lol!
My opponent on the other hand was all 5’s and 6’s. Even his firepower dice was off the walls. What have I done to you, Dice gods! Answer me! I can understand if my somewhat haphazard tactics gets me in trouble, but this time I was being pretty careful!
“I’ll be safe here…?”
I lost the game of course, bottled and broken, my gang relic defiled, two gangers in recovery….I’m getting so ready to retire this bunch of baldheaded pervos, haha! We have two games left of this campaign and I’m so far behind its not even funny.
crittersmasher 