Dragon Rampant : my first game

Over the last few days I was able to set up and play a game of Dragon Rampant Second Edition. This game was a play test for, hopefully, a forthcoming magazine article. I will not put too much detail into this post, other than to say I ran it and enjoyed playing the game.

I haven't put videos up on the blog yet, so here are a couple of very shaky run throughs (taken from my phone) of each army as a test of how this all works - I will take more time and care next time I try to shoot videos for the blog.

The "Goodies"

The "Baddies"

And, here is an overhead or two of the game before play started....

There are a lot of proxied miniatures in each unit, but I was able to cobble together enough to at least get the game played. That said, fun is the main criterion with all my gaming, so who cares if the figures are not what they are supposed to represent? It was the mechanics of the game that I was testing, and then the story behind the game that are the main points here.

My take aways from this are that the game played well, with a few surprises due to some dice roll effects. At least it told a story that can be put into some light prose for the article.

More details in the forthcoming magazine article hopefully.

Goblin Raiding Party

Harking back to yesterday's post, the picture I used of a little band of goblin ne'er-do-wells really got my nostalgic juices flowing; enough to warrant a post of their own (and probably several more to come in the future).

These figures are from a very early Citadel box set - Speciality Set 4 - Goblin Raiding Party. The details for them on the Stuff of Legends website has the names I came to know and, erm, love, but their designation does not match up with my memories - the figures listed in The Stuff of Legends entry for them is here in this linky and in the image below...

Image from the back of the box, words by SoL

When I bought the set, this was how I remember them being labelled (basically all the same except SoL have the Warlord and Lieutenant round the wrong way)...

1. D'glish Sharpcut, Ubar's Lieutenant
2. Urag Legeater attacking with Warpick
3. Discipline Master, Snurd Hideflayer with whip
4. Bulbug Orcleaver with warhammer
5. Warlord Ubar Earbiter - Goblin Chieftain
6. Goblin Champion, Torg Dwarfsmasher
7. Norgus the Flatulent attacking with Spear
8. Shaman Pogo Wildchant
9. Gigblad Childsplatter with Morningstar
10. Zurguch Wartpicker with Sling

Here, again, is the picture I took yesterday of the warband all painted using Humbrol enamel paints and based on artists board, with Tetrion and cheap flock for the bases.

Goblin Raiding Party

Goblin Raiders

More Goblin Raiders

Apologies for the poor photo quality - they looked fine on my phone but they lost a lot of detail when I transferred them to my PC to re-size.

What brought these figures back to the front of my mind was their place in one of my gaming worlds from long ago. I saw them as the ideal faction to face off against my dwarf army (Bugman and his Dwarf Rangers got to be included in this army too), which I also bought around the same time. In addition to these, I also picked up dozens of Night Goblins and various other goblins that seemed to fit with this warband - some even had the same shields!

My thoughts when I was totting up the pile of shame was that I would love to re-do these for my more modern gaming sensibilities. Unfortunately, so many of the figures have been affected by the dreaded lead rot. I will need to look into how to arrest the decay of the remaining miniatures so I can get them painted before they become unrecognisable. I just hope the paint on these ones has preserved them.

Another strange thing I noticed - why is Torg Dwarfsmasher on a round penny base whilst the rest are on those square home-made ones? I really don't know is the answer. I will eventually get them all rebased onto pennies for uniformity and to be able to use them for Midgard and Dragon Rampant (I may need to add one or two more from the collection mentioned above to make up the numbers).

If anyone has any tips on how to arrest the dreaded lead rot, I am all ears. Also, what would be the best method for removing the existing paint jobs? They are enamels, so not sure if there are any special methods or particular brands that are better than others. I will do some searching on t'internet but if anyone can help out in the meantime I would be happy for the input.

Painting Summary - all my 28mm miniatures

I have been buying miniatures for nearly half a century now and I have amassed quite the collection. Unfortunately, like most gamers, I am subject to the "ooh shiny" syndrome, and buy far more than I should do, and rarely get to use or paint them before the next impulse purchase comes along. That said, I have bought relatively few miniatures in the last few years - the vast majority in my collection are well over a decade old!

Goblin Raiding Party

So, over the last few days I have been going through my hoard (or should that be horde? 😉 ) and listing them on a spreadsheet in order to see what I have got, and what does or does not need painting. The numbers have spurred me to get my paint brushes out and begin working on them - I would like to get two sides for each theatre of war, so I can play my sons when they come over or at least have two factions for solo gaming.

Here is a break down of the figures that I have catalogued so far. This is not the full total as I have a few more in bags and packets that I will either sell as they were freebies from gaming shows or magazines, or throw away as they are broken and cannot be cannibalised for parts...

• Romans                          283      (192 of which are painted)
• Britons                           180      (43 painted)
• Roman-British               71        (45 painted)
• Anglo-Saxons                88
• Vikings                          89
• Runequest                      18        (18 painted)
• Undead                          45        (38 painted)
• Frostgrave                     96        (7 painted)
• Other Fantasy                96        (2 painted)
• Old Skool Stuff             569      (357 painted)
• Rohan                            175      (60 painted)
• Isengard                         212
• Gondor                          207
• Harad                             52
• Rhun                              85        (22 painted)
• Dwarfs                           77
• Goblins                          58
• Free People                    119

This gives a grand total of (gulp!) 2520 miniatures, of which 784 are painted – a 31.1% completion rate. That is an OK tally, but I am going to have to pull my finger out to make the total more respectable. I will start by getting paint onto some of my Midgard : Britannia troops as they are still fresh in my mind from the campaign. I know it is a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it will get me started, and hopefully inspire me to continue onto the Lord of the Rings stuff and so on.

I guess my concern now is ROI (Return on Investment); I would like to get some play out of them all in a fully painted state. As each faction gets completed, it will mean I can play more games in that era/setting and I can then do some whacky cross-over stuff like Romans versus Undead or make up Frostgrave or Rangers of Shadowdeep bands from Lord of the Rings factions etc.

Over the coming months, hopefully, I will get more of the pile of shame reduced and some more games played with my "newly acquired" miniatures. Midgard, Dragon Rampant, Rangers, Frostgrave and 5 Leagues are all calling out to me, as well as some return visits to MESBG and general skirmish fun using very old home brew rules.

Chronicles of Midgard

My Midgard : Britannia campaign finished way back in January of this year but I have had thoughts bubbling away in my mind since then on what to do next with the ruleset as I really enjoyed where it led me last time.

I did start painting a few of the unfinished Celts that I used in the Britannia campaign in the hope that I may play another one-off Romans versus Britons scenario at some point soon, but my enthusiasm has dropped off for them as that campaign is in the past now. I also dug out my GW and Medbury Lord of the Rings style orcs to see if they would get my creative juices flowing again, but I am experiencing a bit of painters block at the moment - I think mostly due to my slowly diminishing eye sight; I just cannot seem to fine focus anymore even with decent glasses. 

With that avenue on hiatus at the moment, I decided to look at the system from an actual gaming perspective. I felt that the original rulebook needed just a few extra scenarios to give more options for the gamer to stop things from becoming a bit samey. I was able to write my own scenario for the final battle of my Britannia campaign, but that was hard work. Something "official" would be nice.

And, in answer to my thoughts, along comes James Morris, the Midgard rules author and of Mogsymakes fame, with a brand new supplement called Chronicles of Midgard that has arrived in the nick of time. It is choc-full of new scenarios and ideas, as well as a mini-campaign set in the period of Alfred the Great's battles against the Viking incursions of Guthrum, that will give me the impetus to get going again with this rule set.

Chronicles of Midgard

Again, like the original rulebook, the production values are extremely high; lots of lovely colour paintings and pictures of miniatures in action. The layout is easy to navigate, and the inclusion of an Index again makes things so much easier to find.

With regards the content, as mentioned above, we get 15 new scenarios with this supplement, bringing the total available for use now to 20 - a goodly amount in anyone's books. They are also written for use with a variety of geographical locations in mind, as well as a couple of them being final stand options to bring a campaign to a neat close.

There is also the inclusion of a system, as mentioned above, for running a King Alfred versus Guthrum campaign. Actually, the campaign is presented in two formats, so the campaign can be run either as a map-based set of scenarios or as a liner campaign where scenarios follow on one from the other in a set sequence. Both are well thought out and both will be very useful depending on how you want to run your gaming world.

Both of the participating armies are carefully limited in certain ways to make troop choice more "realistic". If only I had some Anglo-Saxon and Viking figures to make up the armies. However, as Midgard is so easy to manipulate into what is needed from a game system, there is nothing to stop me from using other armies as proxies for the two presented. I am itching to get my orcs sorted to fight against either my Rohan or Gondor armies. Many figures still require a fair lick of paint, but this could be my major project for this year provided my eyes are up for it. The figures can then also be used for other games system I want to get off the ground - Five Leagues from the Borderlands and Rangers of Shadowdeep for starters.

Vecna (#1) - The Outpost

The usual crowd got together again on Thursday for our latest D&D outing on Fantasy Grounds. I actually thought that the Saltmarsh campaign had finished completely, but I think this seems to be a continuation as we started in Saltmarsh and the theme seemed to carry on. I will try to find out by next week whether this was a continuation of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign or something that the DM has cobbled onto the end of it.

EDIT: It look like this is a new campaign - Vecna. I won't go looking anything up about it as I don't want to spoil anything. I will update the post headings a and when I find out more.

After a big battle at the Spire, the denizens of Saltmarsh narrowly overcame the sahuagin threat. 

A few months later...

Life began to return to normal in Saltmarsh, but we had become more well-known in town due to our exploits. As a result, we were invited by the local dwarf population to the one hundred year celebration of some copper mines that they were currently working.

The trip to somewhere called something like Duvagoia took several days by sea, and when we had landed, it took us and our three dwarven guides a further half-day on foot to reach an outpost, where we rested up for the night to get out of the heavy rain. We were generously plied with food and ale and left to our own devices - we did our best to escape the downpour.

The Dwarf Outpost

Gladreth was the only one of us that didn't get too drunk on the alcohol offered. Maybe because of this she was the most alert and therefore the first to be hit by an arrow that was shot from the undergrowth to our west.

It took us a while to come out of our drunken stupor, but by the time we had we were on the back foot against the attacking drow warriors. Gladreth, however, cast a Fireball that severely injured several of their warband thus buying us a little time to recover.

The fighters in our party rapidly gained injuries as the arrows sent our way were coated in some sort of green-gunk poison which added to the pain inflicted upon them. I managed to cast a Prayer of Healing to undo some of the damage, but the injuries kept piling on. As things looked like they were about to get worse for us, Gladreth spotted an opportunity to use a Lightning Bolt and some Magic Missiles to even the odds a little.

After the Drow encounter

It was a tough fight, but we eventually overcame the drow warband. We gathered their bodies for burial and stripped them of their belongings, amongst which were some small coins/medallions embossed with the likeness of a dwarf god. We drew lots for the watch rota and settled in for the night.

The night seemed to pass uneventfully, except for the constant rain, but when the dawn finally broke we noticed that somehow all of the drow bodies had been removed and our three dwarf companions had been taken. The place was covered in spider webs and a set of tracks headed off westwards towards the mines.

We followed the tracks for about two hours before we arrived at our destination. Many of the huts outside the mine had been burned and were still smouldering, and there were several dead dwarfs lying around the place in amongst pools of blood and silk cocoons. Many of the bodies had the same green gunk we saw on the drow weapons in their wounds. It was obvious that the celebrations had been interrupted by a savage attack which appeared to leave everyone dead or missing.

We scouted the area and managed to find a few maps of the mine and the surrounding area and a few ledgers of the mine's output and expenses (the mine seemed to be very profitable from the records).

Six hours later, the rain was still coming down, so we decided finish up our search and head towards the mine for some shelter. It was whilst we searched the last few huts that we managed to find a single dwarf survivor amongst the carnage - he had escaped by burying himself beneath a mound of his dead friends. He told Gladreth what had happened as she was the only one who could speak Dwarfish; the mine had been attacked out of nowhere by drow and spiders whilst the workers were celebrating the finding of a new, very rich, vein of copper - there were no survivors, and the rainstorm had washed away most of the blood by the time we got here. A short while later, the slain dwarfs rose from the dead and headed towards the mine.

We gave the dwarf directions back to our boat and finalised our investigation. In the final crate we searched we found three wands/rods that contained something that rattled when they were shaken. The box held a warning that they contained black powder.