A Quiet Sunday Afternoon

There I was, laid on the sofa, reading a book about The Peasant's Revolt to help me plan my GCSE History when a little voice pipes up. "Daddy, can we play The Game?"

So that's what we did.

It starts off with him playing with the two Warg Riders I made him...

Before we move into the serious business of dungeon exploration, Middle Earth Style. 

The very simplified DnD-style system we're using still requires deep thought...

But the Witch King is finally defeated.

Incidentally, he has named his fearsome uruk-hai warriors mounted on fell wargs. One is called Peanut. The other is called Ra-Ra. 

Better than reading, don't you think?

A Storm of Arrows

So that's the second Unit for the Percy Retinue done.



These are tabletop standard only, mainly because I could feel my interest and attention flagging. Unit painting really doesn't suit me.



However, taken as a whole, the Percy Retinue so far is looking quite striking:



The other thing is that the Dragonborn cleric is nearly done; the attempt at source lighting really didn't work but the miniature didn't cost me anything so I can feel quite sanguine about it not looking quite right.



On the plus side, the conversion work has helped to balance the oversized head, so I'm happy with that.

I have a few days of half term left (bar a funeral) so if I can get the archers unit for the Nevilles done I will take a well-deserved break from the Wars of the Roses and paint something else before I come back for the billmen and mounted knights.

Now the depressing bit:

The Pledge So far:

Bought: 189
Painted: 42

CRIPES!

Actual Progress

One of the costs of a largely intellectual job is that it's difficult to see any actual progress. So it's nice to show this:

Yes, that's the first unit for the Neville War of the Roses Retinue. The livery isn't strictly speaking accurate but it is a nice 'generic' Lancastrian scheme and contrasts well with the Percy livery. 

Proper photos will follow tomorrow. 

In other news the Dragonborn Cleric is done and ready for painting. As you can see from last time the cloak has been added to the padded collar and fastened on to the pauldrons. The hammer has been finished and the haft cut down. The final touch - given that he is a Cleric of a storm God - is some lightening flickering around his fist. 

This is the next one for the painting table shortly to be followed by the first unit of Percy longbowmen. 

WiPs - knights and dragons and fires, oh my...

I've been struck down by the Black Death (read: a slight cold) but I'm manfully struggling on with the various items on the workbench. 

First up is the second unit of men at arms, the first for the second retinue. The armour has been shaded and highlighted so no there's just detailing and the livery to do:

The second thing I've been working on the third of our D&D characters, a Dragonborn cleric. We couldn't find a miniature that we liked and the player in question plays WFB so I decided on a cut and shut conversion job. 

The basis is a Perry Foot Knight with a Saurus warrior head. The head is MASSIVE; so out of proportion that I've had to build up the chest and shoulders with greenstuff to help build up the upper body. I've also repositioned the shoulders into a slightly more lizardly joint arrangement and added a neck and a tail. 

Once all this work has set, I'll add a cloak which will finish off making the body look slightly larger. I'll also finish the war hammer - although I'm tempted to texture it as stone just for giggles. 

The last thing I've been doing is the fire pit to finish the 4Ground house; photos of that to follow at the weekend.  

To Ruin And The Red Dawn!

Note to interested readers: Theoden's armour is an absolute cast iron sod to paint.

I finally got the chance to get the shot of my growing Rohirrim force for Lord of the Rings. The warriors were painted as per the previous post; Theoden King, whilst using a simialr colour palette, required a slightly different approach. In the film, his armour appears black or brown depending on the lighting and digital shot grading; shots of the actual costume show it to be a glossy dark brown.

I undercoated the mini with grey primer as usual and then gave it a black wash to help with the recesses. The main armour was then built up with multiple coats of chestnut ink. Gold detailing was added between layers of ink so they gained a reddish shade. Final highlights and edgings were gold only; the armour was not highlighted as the grey showed through to lighten the raised areas.

As you can see, the whole force hangs together quite well:




There are 16 warriors of Rohan and Theoden here - which as well as being the decent core of a LOTR force also gives me two units for SAGA.

While I had the photography set up, I decided to get a decent shot of the two D&D character minis which are now based up:


I'm looking for a good Cleric miniature to stick a dragon head on to for the next one if anyone has any bright ideas?

A couple of late birthday presents popped up from friends who know my interests: Perry Mounted Men At Arms and a box of Griping Beast Saxon Thegns.

This means that the Pledge currently stands at:

Bought: 189

Painted: 17

YIKES. 

Adventurers - Midlam and Oathsworn

So my main present from She Who Must Be Obeyed was a complete set of Vallejo Model Colour paints which she found, unused, second hand.

Either that or she mugged someone for it.

I've been using mainly Vallejo Game Colour paints for years, but the Model range gives a much more natural palette which will - I think - work better with where my style is at now. After packing the Young Ones off to bed and watching Doctor Who (which was wonderful) I cracked open the new paints and painted the Dwarf character played by She Who Must Be Obeyed in my Mid-Life Crisis D&D game. I also finished off the wizard for another of our players.

Oathsworn dwarf - Thor Lowkey





Midlam Miniatures Wizard




I was able to practise a few techniques I needed to brush up on - excuse the pun. Both cloaks were done with glazes and the stunty chap's armour was gone with a mixture of inks and washes. Skin was layering as per usual. The mud was a mixture of drybrushing and my Tamiya mud stick. Having got shots of them painted, I'm going to try to the Vallejo brush on varnish so that if they get wrecked at least I've got good shots.

All that's left for them is basing; I'm undecided between a wilderness or dungeon base. Any bright ideas, please drop 'em in the comments.

My big takeaway from this is that I need practise with eyes for display models. I will therefore use the Ramblers of Rohan as test pieces for a) a more muted colour scheme and b) eyes.

In which 2 sleeping goblins are murdered by our heroes

Sorry of the long silence; as The Longest Term grinds toward its distant end, hobby time has dwindled. Hopefully some more to report tomorrow but for today, a report on our second session of 5th Edition D&D.

One of our players wasn't able to make it. In the grand tradition of gaming, the other players metaphorically strapped his character to a sackbarrow and wheeled him round like artillery.

We left our Heroes bickering outside of a Goblin bandit hideout. They sent the Dwarf in as he could see in the dark. After being left to talk to the Wizard for the few minutes, the Dragonborn Cleric decided to go in as well. Hilarity promptly ensued as he tripped over the dwarf in the dark.

After dealing with a sentry quite stealthily, our noble warriors promptly screwed up Stealth checks and stumbled into the main Goblin barracks where they fought a handful of green skins; the dwarf fighter got quite badly injured and one of them rushed off to the next cavern; our heroes gave hot pursuit and promptly staggered into an ambush. The dwarf, in true dwarven fashion, charged into the middle of the stalagmite studded chamber and came face to face with the Bugbear bandit chieftain and his pet wolf. The cleric tried a flanking maneuver and a bumped into the goblin who'd run in.. He also got shot by another goblin somewhere else.

There then developed one of those lovely fights you get in RPGs which make the players feel like they're in an action movie. The dwarf was chipping away at the bugbear: the cleric cast a divine rebuke blast of holy light at the chieftain,which made it turn and charge him while the wizard put the goblins to sleep. The bugbear smashed the cleric down to -1 HP and into the realm of Death Saves while the wizard went round staving the heads of the sleeping goblins in with his staff.

The dwarf out the bugbear down and yen totally failed to hit the wolf. The cleric failed a death save, passed one... (Under the new rules, a death save is straight 50-50 on a d20 - three fails and you're gone) And then. Critical - he's back in the game!

All three of them now gather round what is apparently the hardest wolf in gaming history as none of them seem to be able to hit it. Eventually, they put it down and pause, gasping, to take stock.

Well, all except the dwarf, who immediately starts drinking.

After looting the area and divvying up the treasure they decided to barricade the door and take a rest so that the Cleric could try and regain some HP.

The rules around rests make this a feature of longish explorations; it looks like most groups are going have to have rest after 3 or so major events. Mechanically, this is a great chance to build up tension - can they afford to camp here? Who takes watch and therefore doesn't get a rest? And does the DM roll on a wandering monster table? Or what are the other goblins doing? It's soemthing to build into adventure design.

As it was their first, I allow them to rest without incident and, after a discussion in the party about the fact the cleric has so far completely failed to hit anything with his hammer - is he actually unable to use it and just carrying it to compensate for something? - they head off.

Into, I should say, the bit of the dungeon they should have gone to first. There's a lovely scripted bit in this Starter Pack Adventure, The Lost Mine of Phandelvar, where they have to negotiate with a goblin chieftain who is holding a hostage over a long drop. They partly have to decided whether to trust him or, if they attack, work out how without risking the hostage. It's a situation ripe with tactical and dramatic potential.

What actually happened in play was that the party ran in like a Mediaeval SWAT team; before the goblin could even pick up the hostage, the wizard blasted half the goblins with burning hands and the cleric blasted the remainder with his lighting breath. The dwarf sprinted through the cavern, up the steps and smashed the goblin chief down with one hit.

All in one turn.

So, having completely annihilated one of the major dramatic scenes they got to interact with the prisoner - a human who I played as Sean Bean (so they're probably expecting him to die soon) - and got some ideas in what is going on in the area and where the kidnapped dwarf has got to.

There were some other shenanigans involving a cart a day's travel away and stolen supplies and a truly astonishing desire to not lose a single scrap of possible loot, but that was more or less it. The session was enough to put them up to Level 2.

My impressions of this new Edition of D&D seem to be confirmed. It's really is an excellent piece of game design; streamlined, intuitive and easy to pick up. It's so much easier to run than 3rd edition and the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanism is simple brilliant; there's no general modifiers - you're either making a straight roll or an advantaged or disadvantaged one. On an advantaged roll, you roll 2d20 and take the highest and the opposite for disadvantage. It's incredibly elegant - too fuzzy for a wargame but exceptionally good for an rpg when you want the scene to keep moving. 

The starter adventure is very good; in the first section they've basically done a dungeon and got to learn how their characters work and pick up the rules. The next bit is basically a town and a load of adventure leads where they get to do whatever they like. 

If you've ever thought of having a go at any sort of role-playing game, this is probably the best time if you can get a group together. This new edition of D&D is honestly the best gateway drug imaginable.

Paint Table Saturday

I get to use this again, as I've actually managed to paint on a Saturday:

So, what's on the table?

Well, first we have D&D. I'm painting miniatures for my players. Unfortunately, as it turns out, new players have a rather hackneyed visual of their characters. Our wizard player, for example, sent me this as reference:

My reaction was about as you'd imagine. Anyway, based on a recommendation from Edwin in the comments last month, I pootled over to Midlam Miniatures who furnished me with the last word in  bog standard wizardry.

The miniature is exceptionally crisply cast with a very fine cloak and a characterful face. He's been lovely to paint so far - I'll definitely shop with them again as some of their townfolk are excellent. They even popped me a couple of nice D6s in the box.

So here he is with basecoat and simple shading:

Hopefully I'll finish him tomorrow.

In second place on the table, my new major project. A while ago I mentioned that I'd scored a copy of Dwarf king's Hold with some rather lovely Mantic undead. I thought for a while about the paint scheme to use and eventually settled on doing something not naturalistic. As the game presents these as creatures being raised as the game goes on I though that something more ethereal might be in order.

A long time ago I developed a technique for my Cryx which gave an effect somewhat akin to the Army of the Dead from the Lord of the Rings movies which seems like a great opportunity to repurpose.

The trick of it is to use artists ink rather than painting ink as it gives a much greater depth. The actual process is simple: undercoat black then drybrush progressively from dark grey up to white. Then block in large areas with white. This gives your rather gleefully monochrome figures like so:

You then add a good green in wash which gives you this rather lovely effect|:

Finally, you block back in the white and add more green if required - that's for tomorrow.

Very simple, and hopefully very effective. So the rest of the undead will be on the table this week - marking permitting. I also have another session of D&D on friday, so I'll leave you with the photo I took today while thinking about what can dot the landscape:

Here be Dragons

This is part of a continuing strand of worldbuilding blogs for my nascent D&D 5th Edition game. If you're only here for the wargames, modelling and painting, feel free to skip on to the next entry. 

So, but considering money and British history, I have some details roughed out for how my world is going to work on a social level. But the big question remains - what about the dragons? This is really shorthand for how does magic effect the world.

Although, to be fair, dragons are pretty cool on their own.

On a metaphyscial level, D&D has always operated on the assumption that the world operates on normal physical laws with magic sort of laid over the top; it's easy to think of it in computer terms as being a back door that allows casters to hack the code of reality and do things that normal users can't. This is made more or less explicit in a little boxout in the 5th Edition PHB. I'm happy to work with this - after all, I want these new players to get a proper D&D experience.

So, how does magic work here? I'll cover this in a few sections.

Dragons

Ok, they're too big to ignore and they are pretty iconic, so we need to deal with them. I'm happy to have them as a sentient race - after all, I have a dragonborn cleric in the party. So let's deal with them on that basis. We know that we've got our Roman analogue elves in the backstory and they have a slave-based economy - which certainly fits with Fitz-Badger's comment under the last post about the Mirkwood influence; I can certainly imagine Thranduil putting the Dwarves to work. So that's how Dragons got here - dragon slaves were used as transport and heavy cavalry in much the same way that Claudius threw a few elephants into the British campaign. I also live the visual of ruined 'docking towers' dotting the landscape where the sky-triremes were once berthed as part of the Empire's trade routes. 

When the Fall came, some of them were left behind; and through some means that we can explore at another juncture this led to some form of interbreeding - probably some sort of cult, it usually is - which results in the dragonborn. There was probably a small number of dragons left behind which makes them rare and interesting. I'll fiddle around the edges of this concept to come up with a reason for wyverns - after all, what is my Wales analogue without a red dragon? - but this gives me a way to have them around but without taking the world too far from our basis.

Halflings and Gnomes

Yeah, I'm going to go with the Jewish Mediaeval model here. Not the purges and the discrimination - although that might produce some good story seeds if I decide to play that card - but by having them as dispersed populations without a homeland. They'll need some sort of service or goods that they can provide, analogous to the moneylending of the middle ages, but I might leave that until I've got a handle on religion. Whatever it is will be cultural rather than race-based as there's nothing in the PHB that jumps out at me as a big enough hook.

Magic Users

Yeah, this is the big one. I'll deal with clerics in another post as that requires me to get to grips with religion which is a bigger question than we have here.

The Wizard player has already mentioned in play the 'Head of [his] Order' so I know there must be more than one order of casters. Normally I could flail around for a while with that but the nice thing about working with D&D is that rules presuppose certain things about every setting. To whit:

• There are three types of arcane Spellcaster: Wizards, Sorcerers and Warlocks. So that's my orders sorted out.
• Magic items can be created - interestingly, in 5th, non-magic users can create certain potions if they are proficient in the apothecary skill. I see no reason why non-spellcasting smiths couldn't make magical weapons or armour - after all, if it's good enough for Mime in the Ring Cycle, it's good enough for me. 
• Teleportation Gates can be made permanent quite simply. This has, I think, a far reaching effect on the game world, unless it is strictly controlled. Thankfully, by skipping forward slightly in my pillaging from history, I can quite easily put in a method of social control for such power - I'll put it under the control of a Guild. I can't take full credit for this idea - after all, it's pretty much the same solution Frank Herbert came up with. 

So, for my world, I can quite comfortably add the following:

The Guild of Journeymen: controls teleportation gates in ever major city. Only Guild casters know the sigil keys for these gates and these are the main trade routes for major merchants. This had a brilliant knock on effect - it leaves the roads and rivers as the only routes affordable by minor merchants and so is ripe for smuggling and wilderness adventures. After all, if most of the King's taxes are collected at the Journeymen's Gate, he has no need to pay for expensive patrols on the roads out and about the place.

There will be three main orders of casters; the Witan (Wizards), with the name stolen from the Old English for 'to know'; the Trowe/Faithbreakers (the first being what they call themselves, as in true to Things with which they have made pacts, and the latter being the literal translation of Warlock); and finally the Scinlaecan (middle english for Sorceress). For this to work practically, we're looking at a Guild-type system again, a closed shop of magic users in which unapproved magic is frowned upon. I imagine some people employed by the Orders as witchfinders, whose job it is to find magic users and bring them 'in from the cold'. I can't imagine these being anything other than figures of fear, sweeping into villages and hauling away talented children. I've always preferred innocuous names for bad guys, so lets call them Gatherers.

Horror

I'm actually incapable of running a game without some horror elements. As I alluded to in the last post, I ran Call of Cthulhu for more years than I can comfortably count on a weekly basis. So, where can I slip in some horror? Well, we'll obviously have some Grendel-influenced trolls and other beasties in the fens and moors, but that's just a case of presentation rather than content. It's not Lovecraftian by any means.

Baked into the rules system of the Warlock is the idea of the pact with an Other - be it a fiend, an Old One or the Fey. But what is all magic was simply accessing the powers of unknowable Things From Before Time? What if, every time magic was used, the fabric of our current reality which keeps them at bay was weakened? And that pretty much gives me a cosmological reason to start introducing Arboleths, Beholders and Ithilids into the milieu. At some point, our Wizard will have to realise that every piffly little Magic Missile he casts brings the destruction of the entire world one step closer, until he realises that he has almost unlimited power but is too afraid to use it... And that's Lovecraftian horror.

That's pretty much it for the moment - the next couple of posts will be miniatures based while I wait for the next game session. By seeing how the characters play I'll gain a bit more cultural information about their races and classes.

As aways, let me know in the comments what you think and I'll nick the best ideas.

Money makes the world go 'round

In which we continue our worldbuilding for D&D. If this has no interest to you, feel free to skip and move on to the next post which will have some undead action. 

Sticking with the philosophy that we build our world from the ground up it make sense to start by thinking about the thing which is closest to the hearts of all adventurers: cash.

Looking to history, Dark Ages money is a weird thing. There's a fairly strong historical consensus that for around a century money stopped being used for day to day activities as the roman coinage slipped into disuse. This is very interesting but probably not useful for gaming purposes - our heroes want portable cash and it's only in fairly static societies that barter can work.

In the later Anglo Saxon period, we know that Offa in Mercia started minting gold shillings - so there's my Gold Pieces. There were silver pennies, but that leaves me a bit short for coppers. So if I call the silvers farthings (which comes from fourths so doesn't really make sense but I'm going to bet my players don't know that) and I'm left with copper pennies.

This leaves me with platinum and electrum pieces to deal with; I'm going to ignore electrum as they're frankly a bit silly. But what to do with the top of the tree, the platinum piece...? Remember those roman coins that are still floating round up until the 700s? We're going to have some Siliquae floating around in our world.

But where do they come from? I'm glad you asked. The Heptarchy has a lot of little twiddly bits around the edges that only make sense when you remember that a lot of the administrative bits and pieces were left over from the Roman occupation. So do we have any advantages from having a fallen empire in our world? In a world, yes. Why? In a word, dungeons.

Ruins scattered around the landscape gives us some ruins for the adventurers to go and rob; lost treasures, ancient technology, forgotten - and forbidden - lore... Yes, a fallen empire gives us a lot of bang for our buck.

In traditional fantasy settings, Elves and Dwarves tend to be portrayed as elder races. So they were here first - our ersatz Romans. I like the idea of having the Elves being the fallen, imperialist state as it gives them a slightly different flavour to usual. This then casts the dwarves as the Greeks, scholars, philosophers and seekers after knowledge. I like that.

So where does that leave us?

The humans are the original inhabitant of our landmass, conquered several centuries ago by the Elvish empire (which will be a militaristic, slave-based society). They brought with them a few tribes of dwarves as administrators and technicians. The Empire fell, and the forces withdrew. Why did it fall? Dunno yet - I can flesh that out later. Outside invasion is the obvious analogue with actual history, but internal decay and decadence fits quite well with modern elvish tropes so I can play with that later.

We have some remnants of their forces left; the ones who 'went native' - our bardic, Celtic welsh-analogues, based in the kingdoms of the West (which tells me the direction the nearest landmass must be). So culturally, my markers for them are set Romans with Druidic overlays and welsh language. My cultural markers for the Dwarves are now set as Greek but skinned with Norse trappings. That's enough for me as GM to wing anything I need to or to start planning if I get the sense that my players want to engage with broader political stories.

More importantly, I now have a reason and a style for ruins, tombs and even deserted towns to dot the land. The remnants of a once bustling Imperial Colony which has contracted in the last few centuries as the human kingdoms have fought to establish themselves in the power vacuum.

The next update will be based around the human cultures - and weaving in some horror elements. You don't run Call of Cthulhu every week for a decade without it leaving a mark.

Small World

So a quick note about how I built my world. The biggest mistake people make is building a world that feels vast. They want the EPIC FANTASY EXPERIENCE. That's fine, but you have to ask yourself - how long are you going to play this game for? How far are the characters really going to go?

I once ran a campaign where I started with just a village and a wood; we then built the world from there as we went along, with each player contributing the history of their people. This kind of co-creation is great, but I was going to be playing this with three people who'd never played an RPG before - hence my choice of D&D 5th Edition. So I needed a framework.

Talent borrows, genius steals, we get it off the back of a lorry, no questions asked.

Realistically, I need a world that has a few kingdoms rubbing up against each other for political intrigue and the risk of war; I want some empty space for monsters and bandits and what have you; I need enough room to have some different races and cultures; and I'd like to have an area for 'noises off' - that is, an external threat that I can use for an epic threat if I need.

The solution is, therefore, this:

This is my world; it's rough, hence the crossings out, and bits and pieces will be added or moved around as the game progresses - until the characters have actually been there, it doesn't really exist in a concrete form.

Now, I know I have a few History teachers who read this blog, so you'll be recognising quite a few of the names. I have, of course, nicked Anglo-Saxon Britain almost wholesale.

Here's the seven kingdoms of the so-called Dark Ages, known as the Heptarchy:

Some of the names track across quite easily; I've given all of Northumbria back to one of the ancient kingdoms that made it up, Deira; I've shifted the kingdoms of Wales up north a little and dumped all of Scotland into 'The Northlands' which is basically shorthand for Here Be Dragons.

My basic thinking is as follows; there's enough linkages between bardic and druidic culture for me to call the Elves Welsh and declare victory, so that's a win. I'll take the isle of Anglesey and use that for something magical. Dwarves like mountains, so I'll stick them in the Pennines. 

I can then use Anglo-Saxon and Old English language to name stuff, giving me the feel of a coherent culture with no back-breaking labour - so Mere for lake, the northern forest is called Northweald and so forth. 

At this point, I start stealing stuff from the players. One of them has made a Dwarf and given it a Nordic sounding name. So the dwarf mines get Nivleder as a name, a corruption of Niflheim crashed into Anglo-Saxon. The Cleric has chosen a thunder god, so I can start building a pantheon around the old Pagan gods and so forth... you get the idea. 

And up north? Well, I'm calling them the Skald so you can probably work out what they're going to be.

And that's enough to begin with - because now I have a sense for how this world works, I can zoom in on one area to start with. And where better than God's Own Country, Yorkshire? Or Deira, in this case.

So here's the map for the first area. 

I've started with the first major settlements; I'm then going to steal settlement patterns from the Domesday Book because - again - why keep a dog and bark yourself? This means that I can very quickly get a sense for any given area and add the fantasy trappings to make it work. 

That's it for the moment; if you want to hear more about how I'm going to cheat my way to a calendar, religion, culture and history let me know in the comments. 

Interregnum - A Review of Dungeons and Dragons: The Lost Mines of Phandelvar

Just a quick note in two parts about my first go at running a roleplaying game in a decade.

Part the First: the game

The new edition of D&D is lovely. It's jettisoned a large amount of clutter from the rules; although it's kept that awful class and level system - although that does have a certain retro charm - the rest of it very much feels like a game that's taken  notice of the evolution of rulessets over the last twenty years.

The use of a D20 makes the odds very unpredictable - there's a huge amount of swing in combats and skills checks; the advantage mechanism - which is a bloody brilliant bit of design - mitigates this somewhat but I've added to that with allowing players to use Inspiration for rerolls.

And Inspiration - we're dealing with an edition of D&D which mechanically rewards players for playing their characters. We're through the looking glass, here.

The Lost Mines is an adventure that comes in the starter box. It's neat, well structured and has a good balance of set-pieces and sandbox freedom that is an excellent introduction to the concept of roleplaying for novices. I can imagine a new GM being a touch overwhelmed by it as I've already had to go quite fast and loose with some elements to make it flow. There is one encounter about halfway through that is going to kill any party that rushes in where angels fear to tread -- which I'm all in favour of.

Basically, if anyone is umm-ing and ahh-ing about buying this new edition, go for it. You won't be disappointed.

Part the Second: the play's the thing

So, we have 3 players. A female Religious Studies teacher; a male RS teacher; and a male IT Network Manager and Web Designer. Respectively, they created a Dwarf Fighter, a Dragonborn Cleric and a Human Wizard. As they hadn't had any RPGs under their belt before, I decided to give them the full experience and have them meet in a tavern.

It didn't go well.

The dwarf threw nuts at the head of the dragonborn; when the cleric went over to batter the 'shortarse runt', the wizard tripped him up -- with a crit, no less. Things went rapidly downhill from there.

I actually missed a trick here - I should have locked them all up and played it as The Usual Suspects; but alas I am rusty and missed the chance. Anyway, by an NPC resorting to bribery, I managed to get them escorting a wagonload of supplies up north.

They traveled for a day without speaking to each other.

They camped the night without speaking to each other (and didn't post a piquet - if that happens again I shall destroy them with a wandering beastie of some description).

The dwarf seems to be developing a drinking problem.

Thankfully, a goblin ambush provided something of a common enemy; party relationships were not helped by the fact that the wizard took out more than the Cleric who is operating under the assumption that he is an effective warrior - he's yet to see the Dwarf fighter go The Full Gimli.

Anyway, we left it where they were heading into the Goblin hideout in pursuit of that most noble of all adventurers - loot.

So basically it took them three hours to go from never having played D&D to breaking into someone's home to nick their stuff. I'd say that counts as a success, wouldn't you?

So my question is - I need some good miniatures for the characters. Any suggestions for the following (and you know I'm happy to convert and sculpt as required):

• A male human wizard, aged and bearded, robed, quarterstaff and with a pointy hat - no brim. 
• A male dwarf with a two-handed warhammer, slung shield and chainmail. Flagon of ale would be nice but not essential.
• A male dragonborn cleric in chainmail with a two-handed warhammer, slung shield. Wings would be nice but not a dealbreaker.

Any thoughts gratefully appreciated.

I promise I'll stop the D&D posts soon and get back to the wargaming - I have another WFB match coming up.

Nearly there!

The final stretch looms - the next update should be the final piece. Here's a little taster to whet the old appetite as I need to spend a couple of evenings building a world for D&D (if anyone's interested in that I can talk about it here - I'm basically turning the Heptarchy into a fantasy world).

Here's the sculpted tree in position on the undercoated vignette base.

As of tonight, all the miniatures are in place, the base is painted. All that remains is some landscaping, grass and other textures and the project is done.

The next one isn't going to be a vignette but rather a unit of sorts. As part of my prep I dug out some of my old Cryx to think about colour schemes:

So, that's me entering radio silence til the weekend - unless anyone wants to know about the world I'm making. 

Ttfn!

Bits and Pieces

Well, I have survived another Ofsted visit and my unbroken record continues unabated - I appear to a +3 Cloak of Invisibility To Inspectors as I haven't been seen since 2003. 

Anyway, as the dust settles, I can start to turn my attention to the workbench. This has been an evening of bits. First, the tree; this is designed to give some further height to the rear of the model and well as make the Witchhunters appear smaller and thus more vulnerable. 

A few twists of garden wire 

Et voila. Throw in some greenstuff seeing as I bought so much of the damn stuff and we have a reasonably well skinned tree: 

A few more bits on the furthest branches and some tatty foliage and we can call that one done. 

As per usual I mixed too much greenstuff and so used it up by adding some detailing to the other job this evening, the fence marking the edge of this godforsaken graveyard: 

Not the neatest job in the world, but it will add a touch of visual interest and saves me clipping pins to make nails. 

Hopefully I'll get the tree finished and mounted at the weekend and then it's just a matter of painting and greenery. 

The week should end well in gaming terms though - by a freak confluence of events, tomorrow sees me fight my first game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle in nearly ten years and Friday evening will see me dragged out of retirement to run my first RPG in almost as long. Having read the new edition I can say something I never thought I'd say - I'm actually looking forward to a game of Dungeons and Dragons. 

I'll let you know what misadventures befall.