Death of a Necromancer

The Low Rollers wandered up to the Necromancer's tower, and though beset by challenges, they defeated her without too much trouble.

Moments after the fall of the Necromancer. Just a simple stroll home now, right?

(The square to the right represents the first floor of the tower)

Then things got complicated. Although some of the skeletons crumbled into heaps of bones, all of those in or near the tower were freshly invigorated, gaining in strength. As the heroes tried to make their escape, new foes, ghouls and skeletons, flowed into the area. Was the spirit of the Necromancer still powerful and angry? Did the Necromancer's tower itself hold some sort of malignant magic? Was fate punishing the four heroes for their unjustified murder of an elderly practitioner of arcane magics who was simply pursuing her studies in a remote study in the wilderness?

By the time the valiant murder crew left the scene of their assassination, an amassed horde of 27 skeleton warriors and 8 ghouls had arrived on site.

Back to Sellswords and Painted Some Rabble

Painted some fresh rabble...

It's been a while since I last played Sellswords and Spellslingers but I finally got in a game. Since this warband was my "learning the rules" group, I wanted to wind down their campaign by throwing a couple of horrible scenarios at them. By that I mean I would try to kill them and see if they could survive. Sort of like 2020 for toy soldiers in a fantasy setting.

The first was to replay the Badlands scenario again - playing it wrong just like I did the first time when I had only two characters barely survive. For all their experience and new skills and equipment, they didn't do much better. Bowie, who was essentially a clone of the original Bowie who died the first time, met the same fate. This time ambushed by a troll.

Stabbie tried to rescue her, but she was too far gone. The troll had already eaten one of her legs and was pulling off the other as the shaman got close.

Youbie almost didn't make it either. Seeing P-Stash surrounded by orcs, the powerful swordswoman charged in to assist, but only managed to jump on every sword that was bared in front of her. Really, she barely had to swing at them to mow the minions down, but failed anyway. Stabbie had better luck with his healing this time, saving the bold warrior well enough to limp away to safety. P-Stash, always living in the shadow of Youbie's expertise managed to prove himself by downing foe after foe just when the struggling group needed. He had to climb over a ring of orc corpses to join his friends as they fled the dreaded orc infested territory a second time.

As they leave the Badlands, Youbie takes one last look back, mourning their lost companion and contemplating how they could roll so goddamn low on so many activations again.

It was good to play a game for the first time in a few months!

One last look back at a fallen comrade.

The fallen comrade.

Badlands carnage 2.0.

And then there were three...

Next game with put the Low Rollers up against a necromancer hiding out in a remote tower. Not sure why they've got to go all murder hobo on this nice old lady and her friends. But that's what's going down. If that fails to do them in, there may be a thunder lizard waiting for them after that....

In non-gaming stuff, we're finally getting the first (not counting the herbs & green onions) small harvest from our tiny garden. Last year the neighborhood wildlife annihilated the garden, so I haven't got to pickle hot peppers for two years. Obviously I need a party of sellswords and spellslingers to rid our yard of the raiding vermin.

Remote Gaming, Stuff

We've been cleaning out the garage. I;m going to take advantage o that and try to clear out a space for a larger game table than the 3ft x 3ft I've been using in the basement/dungeon for Sellwords lately.

I got a couple of small folding tables to prop up the old panels I made in the old attic....

My plan is to try a combo of solo gaming, but also involve some remote participants. Maybe I use Hail Caesar/Shadowstorm -- the remote generals give orders and then I solo the minutia and dice rolls, documenting the whole thing here. Maybe even with some videos.

Outside of the garage, and before I started on the table space, we had our first guest over since the pandemic began. We kept out distances, had another fire. It was good. We even talked a little gaming stuff.

I found an old Metal Magic figure in a bin. Thought I'd paint it since I recently posted a bunch of old Metal Magic figures I painted long ago.

Also thought I'd share this blank meme set-up I made based on someone from the FB solo gaming group's photo of their cat at the table. Too easy, it was an absolutely perfect photo for the meme... :)

Hob-orcs, Sellswords, and Fire

I have painted five more of the Midlam Miniatures hobgoblins (or hob-orcs/half-orcs for my purposes.) More great sculpts! I've got some duplicates that I will be using for some minor conversions, mostly just simple weapon swaps.

I've been wanting to get back to my Sellswords and Spellslingers solo campaign. But I've recently discovered I've been doing it wrong. I've been using mixing the terms "players" and "PCs" a number of times.

So, for example, the reason the first game was such a bloodbath was that I had far more hordes of orcs than I should have. I've also been handing out too much XP after games. So I've decided to wrap up the current band with a few final games, then start over with a new warband.

My plan is to replay the Badlands scenario -- possibly using the "wrong" number of orcs again. Then possibly play the tower scenario, since I've had this old Battlemasters in my garage we cleaned out my friend Rich's game room over a year ago. (It was mine, & I painted it, but gave it to him at some point. I was handed a box with this and two others to take home...) Finally, I will put them through the Thunder Lizard scenario. Per the scenario instructions, I rummaged through my daughters toys for a suitable adversary. She had a good selection hiding at the bottom of a bin, and I've narrowed it down to these two... :D

I will also need some lizarmen, which is great motivation to get back to painting the old Tom Meier troglodytes I've been planning to repaint for many long years. I did one test figure, with an unusual color scheme based on an actual lizard. But I'm not sure I like it. The main reason these wonderful figures haven't been repainted all this time is because I can't make up my mind on how to paint them!

This weekend we've had some beautiful weather, so my family took advantage of is with a back yard cookout and fire. I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but my wife and daughter enjoyed some s'mores! Stress has been getting to me lately. The pandemic isolation had been difficult. Aside from missing friends and family, we're working full time at home, trying to help our daughter manage at-home schooling (can't wait for Summer break!), and what seems like an endless stream of household maintenance issues requiring attention/repair. Enjoying the outdoors/weather has been something good to focus on.

Low Rollers Head to the Broken Lands & ZeroTwentythree Paints Plague

I abandoned the battle I had set up as I still needed to resolve how some of the solo aspects of the game would be resolved. Instead I have returned to Sellswords & Spellslingers, since I've enjoyed it and have been wondering what The Low Rollers have been up to. Set up a new game, maybe play a bit tonight...


Our Heroes. The Low Rollers.

The Villains. Vile Goblins.

The heroes have been employed by the residents of a rural village to root out some goblins from the Broken Lands to the west. They have made great use of stealth and have managed to approach very close before being detected... The two "Great Goblins" on larger bases are proxies for Orc Brutes.


The setup.

The Low Rollers were counter-ambushed by far more goblins than they had expected, but 3/4 of the team took them down pretty quickly. Stabby the Shaman spent most of the game on the ground, unable to stand up or do much of anything. Supernatural assistance stepped up in his place, however, as a mysterious spirit killed one of the greater goblins in the distance before disappearing again

Also, I painted an old Plague Elemental from Citadel. There were 7 elementals in the range, the usual 4, plus Life, Death, and Plague. This is the last one I had unpainted. It had been painted many years ago, then stripped more recently but never got around to the repaint. A fitting time to paint him/it, I think...

Solo Battle?

Set up a mostly random deployment for a possible attempt at a solo or solo-ish battle.

More Sellswords (Solo games 2-4)

After the first game of Sellewords and Spellslingers, I had to restart half of my party as 2.0 versions of themselves. I wanted to give them a second chance since I felt they had been killed by dice and never really got a chance to prove themselves.

For the second scenario, I chose Defend the Villiage, which seemed a little more tame and appealed to my fondness for the Seven Samurai. I set everything up and drew a card for the antagonist and...

Well, I don't have an minotaurs. So I dug around and found a mutant rat ogre! (Boneripper?) Close enough. It's big, has a horn or two somewhere on its body...

The set up.

Several quick dice rolls later he's dead from a fireball and several arrows stuck in his fresh corpse. Game over in moments. The total opposite of the previous game, I made every die roll by a long shot.

So between the two games, I'm a little concerned about the impact of dice on gameplay, while still trying to understand that I rolled mostly 7 and lower in the first games, and nothing but 17 - 20 in the second. Again -- no rules can account for that sort of one-sided rolling.

I decided to replay the same scenario (I spent more time setting up the table than playing the game!) again but with a new draw on the monster cards.

Irony.

Ratmen it is.

After the mutant rat ogre was easily defeated, nearby Skaven agents heavily increased pressure on the small villiage of Geenberg. The Low Rollers, the heroes who defeated the mutant beast had not even left town when the attack began, so they were caught in the middle of a second battle for Geenberg. In spite of poison gas traps and ambushes, the barely adequate heroes managed to defeat the verminous horde, and rescue the townsfolk once more.

Another tense and dramatic Sellswords scenario, a second run through of Defend the Village, the ratmen seemed like an easy win but (like the first scenario) a ton of botched activation rolls (and fumbles like broken bow strings, etc. again) made me seriously concerned for the team's survival again. They barely pulled this one off again. I'm now dumping XP into the Hero trait...

I played one more game after this, but failed to record it with photos. For game 4, I played The Healer, and it went pretty easy I managed to knock out most of the bandits, with just two more entering off the perimeter and being dispatched pretty quickly.

It's been two weeks now, but I'm hoping to pick back up with a few more games this weekend. I'm thinking Sellswords might be a good gateway to try to get my wife & daughter into miniatures gaming...

Big April Approaches and Solo Gaming

April is almost here. That means Big April, what has become my traditional giant painting month. This year, I may still try to paint something for the Old World Army Challenge, but would still like to paint a giant or two.

But I haven't prepped or even decided what to paint. Here's some of what I'm looking at...

Otherworld, Mantic, a few Reaper Bones. Also, not pictured are a couple of giants sent to me by Shadespyre, but they got buried in a late night shuffle to avoid basement flooding last night.



I've still got some more photos & reports from my recent dive into solo gaming with Sellswords and Spellslingers. I just haven't had much time or energy to write anything up. I'd like to play a few more games as well.

I've also got a bit distracted reading the Frostgrave rules, since the author posted a free download code for the rules, plus a couple of downloads for solo play/solo scenarios.

https://therenaissancetroll.blogspot.com/2020/03/frostgrave-is-free.html

At any rate, once I put the basement back together and get access to my table, maybe more solo gaming as well...

Sellswords and Spellslingers (Game 1)

It's been about a year since I bought the game and started prepping for it, but I've finally played a few games of Sellswords and Spellslingers. For those not familiar, it is a cooperative (or solo) fantasy skirmish game with a bit of an RPG feel to it. I downloaded the PDF from Ganesha Games, and bought the printed cards. You go through a points based party/character creation and then dive into scenarios. There are "between games" campaign activities and progression as well.

I originally had a some other plans, but ended up creating a team of four barbarian adventurers, from left to right... P-Stash, Bowie, Stabbie, and Yubie. I'll get back to the other ideas after running this group for a while.

There is no order to the scenarios, but I started with the first one, "Through The Badlands" because it seemed like a good learning scenario.

It was brutal.

This is what I was up against... Orcs, Orc Brutes, and a Troll. At least to start with. The way the mechanics of the game work, each character rolls between 1-3 activation dice. Roll 8+ on a d20, and each success is an action for that character. Fail, and you draw a card which means enemies activate, more enemies join the game, or one of a handful of events happens.

I failed at least 2/3 of my activation rolls throughout the game, which meant that the Heroes didn't get to do as much as the Villians, and more of them kept spawning around the table. Stabbie the shaman fumbled (rolled a 1) his first spell roll, which meant no magic the rest of the game. Bowie fumbled (rolled a 1) her shooting early on, which took her skills down a major notch as well. The scenario involved my group getting from one side of the killing field to the other. It was a flight for survival.

After many rounds of activation, at the end of the slaughter, this was my deployment area. Yubie got bogged down in combat and almost never making an activation roll. She lasted longer than expected, but eventually fell from her wounds, comatose. She could have been carried to safety by her "friends" but by this time they were in a panicked sprint for safety, far far away.

Here's a shot from the other side. You can see the others (Stabbie and P-Stash each down to their last hit point) making a dash for survival, corpses, pursuing foes and their abandoned friend all on the distance (and to either side, off camera.) This is right at the edge of the table. You would think they were home free.

You'd be wrong.

Here's Stabbie, the inept shaman, mere steps away from "edge of the world" safety. He's already been lapped by his companions because he can't roll above a 5 throughout the game. Just one activation and he's free... nope. Failed, resulting in another orc (just to his left) ambushing out of the bushes... er, ambushes? Just an orc, not a difficult combat at least... right? Nope again. Fumbled, lost his last hit point. But at least he's got a roll to see what happens... aaaaaand he's flat out dead.

The carnage at the end of the game. We started on the left, and 50% of The Low Rollers (they have a name now) exited off the right.

Since Stabbie and Yubie didn't really get much of a chance, I added their twins back into the party for the next game.

Next game? Yes. I thought it was worth another try. I like the mechanics, though they seem like they fluctuate between extremes. And the dice really had a heavy part in the game. But that's also what went wrong here... A large majority of my rolls were 5 or less on a d20. No rules are going to mitigate that. The game deserved a second try.

Back to that in the next update. (FYI, I just finished Game 4. Give me a few days to catch up with updates...)

Sellswords and Printed Cards

Stuff! In the Mail!

As mentioned previously, I bought the PDF of Sellswords and Spellslingers recently. I was impressed enough with the possibilities for both solo and co-op skirmish gaming that I ordered the cards from Drive-Through Cards. There are actually four sets of useful cards available. You don't need them all, but the price for professionally printed cards didn't seem bad, so I went for all of them.

At first glance (they just arrived today) the cards look like very nice quality.

I'm hoping to try a solo game soon. Need to build my first band of adventurers!

Stuff! In the Mail!

Stuff! In the mail!

Reading material for gamesturbation.

Planning a Game

I'm itching for some gaming. Any gaming. I was browsing through the Google Play store & looking at phone games. But I'd rather push some figures around. I think that it's finally time I start trying to put together my first solo game in the Marienburg vs. The Undeadish campaign.

I rambled on about rules from a few angles before, and I think I've decided to start with Hail Caesar rules. I will be using the HC rules plus the "Shadow Storm" fantasy modifications available at...

Ady's Wargames Den's "Shadow Storm" rules aka Fantasy Hail Caesar

I have started cutting, pasting, and tweaking his army lists into two modified lists for my own factions. I'm considering these as just a starting point. The Marienburg list is big, and represents a lot of both painted and possible units that may appear at some time. The Undeadish list is smaller and simpler, but could see more additions. I imagine that I will change things up quite a bit after both lists see some action. I still need to add the commanders.

My Modified Marienbug List

My Modified Undeadish List

Since this is my first solo game, first game of Shadow Storm, and first game in years of Hail Caesar (and one of only a few I've ever played) I'm going to keep things simple. Maybe an undeadish "breakthrough" scenario. I can deploy the Marienburgers at the edge of a village. Undeadish will then be deployed randomly. Their goals will be to head off the other side along any of several exit zones, killing everything that tries to stop them. The Marienbugers will, obviously, be trying to stop them from entering the village.

That's about it. This will give me my first chance at playing solo, as well as getting reacquainted with the Hail Caesar rules. I can add on programmed actions for the Undeadish, event cards, and some of my other planned experiments later.

Remote Gaming and a Bit o' Basing

After exploring the Oldhammer forum a bit more this week, I've started thinking about the idea of "remote gaming" as an alternative or supplement to solo gaming.

The concept would be that I would set up the battlefield, the figures, etc. and would play against a remote opponent by keeping a blog with updated photos of the table, use an online random number generator to get dice results, and would get instructions from my opponent that I would carry out on their behalf. This got me reconsidering Hail Caesar as the basis for a fantasy game, since the movement is somewhat loose, based on a verbal description, and partially dependent on dice. There would be little change from playing an in-person opponent other than me moving their figures for them.

So now I'm considering digging up an opponent and giving that a try.


I like to include at least one photo with each entry, so here's a pic of two older figures I finally based. The figure from the Confrontation range is quite a bit bigger, even when taking into account the larger base. But between that and his proportions, I think he might make a good partner for the old GW "Death Elemental" that I will be painting up sometime (hopefully) soon.