Rangers of Shadow Deep – Solo play project

The Sword Tree and the Lore.

A splendid bit of work from Hati Hróðvitnisson from the Rangers of Shadow Deep Facebook page gave me food for thought.

Hati used a load of grass / reeds stuck to what look like Oathmark skeleton troops to make his swamp zombies/ skellies.

I went back to my goopy swamp zombies and added moss (green flower soft) and grasses (Army Painter Swamp Tufts and Steppe static grass) to great effect I feel.

“Gnolled Faithful” is called that because beneath that loin cloth… He’s hung like a horse. (Hence the confident smile).

Lercher loves cross-hairs and cross hares (Of Coursing).

Same routine gnoll skin paint job, but started with black primer. Mournfang Brown to come up a tone from the black, Zandri Dust for the pale areas then a mix of Contrast Snakebite Leather on the dark side to a Citadel Yellow wash on the lighter side to show a transition in the colour of the pelt. Morghast around the eyebrows and ears and pelt highlights.

Flesh Tearer Red, Ork Flesh Green and Black Templar Contrast on the clothes.

Finally got around to finishing off these gruesome corpse markers.

Metal Reaper Vultures and badly hacked and painted Mantic Games plastic ghouls from a bits box.

… But you can’t take the Gnoll in Juan. ?

My last sergeant was very colourful. Juan is in drab brown apart from his bright red mask.

This is my third sergeant and I don’t think I need any more than 3 from the scenarios I have seen so far. I may need more in Frostgrave missions when I finally get around to them.

Primed in Army Painter Fur Brown and just used washes and Contrast paints to break up the garments.

Got a bit box off ebay years ago which must have been mentioned a half a dozen times before in this project. A gift that keeps on giving. ?

These Mantic Games zombie bodies were caked in thick white paint and cut at in odd places and removed from the tab bases. Rather than strip the paint or throw them away I made them into Corpse Markers. The Vulture is from Reaper. I think the wolves got his arms and toes. ?

The last room was the Shaman Workshop. Which was annoying because i had lots of fun painting terrain ready for the armoury room. We ended up setting up a wall of the better fighters so we would definitely get some gang up bonuses when we weathered the creature phase when they attack and then in the companions phase we managed to get a huge gang up bonus on the shaman and slay him easily with a crit. We were able to get to the stairs and the Golem wasn’t animated. Was able to get 57 experience points to take my ranger to exactly 100 points to level up. Eoin survived his post game injury with a 20, but to simulate his scrape with injury and death I will leave him with the prisoners on the lower level and take everyone else, including the Man at Arms up stairs.

The next room was a torture chamber. I got to use my Gnoll Jailer and he did injure the soldier you meet in the chamber, but was later killed by him. The terrain was described as sparse so didn’t go overboard, but it was fun to see my racks in play.

The Rogue, Edwin was down to 2 health fighting the gnoll sergeant in the room, but the team rallied around and yet again Otto hit far above his weight killing more Gnolls. I chose to leave Edwin out of harms way and had time to gather around the door before opening it. Again we beat the 4 turn limit and ventured into the next room.

The rooms are random in this mission and room one was a storeroom. I put a cart in there that can just about go through the door. I used barrels and tables etc. I used the Sigma statues to help shape the room.

Sadly Eion The Tracker fell to two awful rolls, but ultimately the team picked up the treasure available, killed the 4 gnoll fighters (Otto the recruit doing a lot of the killing) and made it to the next door within the 4 turn limit.

Tor Vardon: The Lower Tower has been screaming out to be played but I didn’t have enough terrain to deck out the three rooms required for the mission.

I also wanted to add Otto to the warband and have typed up my warband details online and printed and laminated them. It just makes it easier to track now that only items and stats that change in game need to be added in pen.

I also decided to use neoprene mats from the Terminator miniatures game as the floor for my rooms. There’s a good chunk of the mat i can’t use because it has a modern road on it, but I overlapped the ones I have to cover it up.

I had primed some Age of Sigma minis grey already, so will use them as statues to add as extra terrain for now. ?

Almost ready to play the lower tower mission. Just painting up some archery butts and weapon racks and I think I can call that ready.

The torture pieces in the background are from my Mantic Games Terrain Crate.

OTTO

Otto is made from an Oathmark Human body and arms with a Warlord Games German metal head and a Gripping Beast Viking scabbard.

Painted in the same style as the Man-at-arms made and painted earlier in the week.

The idea is that while they dodged the patrols on the way to the tower they found Otto up a tree. The young man wanted to fight his way back in there. But with everyone dead or having fled he just watched and logged the movements around the tower; hoping to be useful to whatever force arrived to retake the tower. Archibald says that sadly there would be no company of ‘heroes’ coming. That he and his companions were all that were coming and to make his report. His Intel helped them negotiate the patrols more easily and Archibald felt that after his companions had been lucky not to have suffered serious injury at the bridge that perhaps another sword might be worth having. In the confines of room to room fighting another blade might make all the difference. Green but eager, Otto would now share their fate as a companion of Archibald the Grim.

Guard room terrain in the Mantic Games Terrain Crate is really going to improve the look of my next scenario. These melee dummies look nice based together. I figured that individually basing them might be a mistake as they will get knocked over too easily.

Used some winter static grass as spots of stuffing on show. Primed with Skelton Bone Army Painter primer and washed with Agrax Earthshade. Some of the bone colour was toned down with some Zandri Dust. The ropes and stitches touched with Wraithbone and used as occasionally highlights and signs of damage. Leadbelcher for the metal weighted bases and Vallejo Air Golden Brown i think for the wood.

The base is from my rarely used square bases (renedra).

No idea why I am making life more difficult for my group, but I wanted to make my own class of Gnoll after modelling a Gnoll with a whip and calling him a jailer.

I decided to use the basic Gnoll fighter stat line with a +1 to shoot. I have given him a 3″ range for his whip which will act like a normal shoot action. I also added a 2″ snap-to instead of 1 inch to simulate that he whips you and drags you closer.

I will let you know how he plays. If he kills anyone i will no doubt curse my meddling ways.

Gnolljay the Gnoll Jailer. And Beiddgar Verlassen the bold and abandoned Man at Arms, all for the next scenario. ?

Also working on my torture and guard house terrain for the scenario.

Gnoll Jailer

Gnolljay was made using a gnoll arm with a mace cut off beyond the handle. I cut off a length of earphone cable and stripped the insulation. I discovered the copper wire was not likely to look right and was going to be a pain to use because it looked weak and began fraying, but there was a slender length of plastic running with the wire which was what I used in the end.

Man at Arms

Verlassen is German for abandoned and Beiddgar is Welsh for bold. The mini is made from and Oathmark human sprue with a Gripping Beast viking shield and sword scabbard. I know that the sword he has would never fit in the scabbard, but it just looked a bit poor to be wielding a sword with no scabbard. For the sake of speed I kept him on his tab and made it out to be a slight step in a dungeon. The shield design plays into the militia guys I made previously in the project.

The human sprue has really impressed me and I might get more. If I decided to go for an army size Human fantasy force I might get a couple of boxes of Oathmark humans as a base for the army.

Thanks Sundancer for the help naming my hound. ?

I looked for paint jobs of this Reaper mini online and felt a Rottweiler look was effective.

Black Templar Contrast Paint to the fore, with Jokaero Orange as the base for the feet and face. Aggros Brown Contrast Paint as a wash over the orange. Then in the transition from Black to Orange on the legs i used a band of Citadel yellow wash that seemed to add a subtle lazy man’s blend effect.

Might add a tuft to the base, but on some bigger Reaper models, like this hound and the troll I have, i don’t feel the need to base the model further than the one provided.

I spent £14 on dice at The Dice Shop Online. Maybe not really necessary, but I found purple d22 and d15 dice for really cheap to act as wound markers for my group.

I worked out the max health the Rangers (22) and companions (16) can get after experience boosts and got enough dice to cover my team. I had been using Bolt Action / Gates of Antares pin markers. I ran some white paint over the numbers to make them easier to read. I only have 10 or 12 of these and was using them for both the Rangers and the creatures. The numbers on these markers also only go up to 12 which makes them less useful for my Ranger with 18 wounds base.

Now I am facing miniatures with several wounds and mulit mini combats being more prevalent it was becoming less clear which mini the markers belonged to.

Also the game only requires a single d20 vs d20 roll off for combat, so I picked two nice ones just for these games.

That fun bridge battle… Wow. Gnolls are a begger to fight against when the alarm goes up. I lost three companions to the battle, but managed to pick up a clue marker, treasure marker and get safely off the board edge with Ranger, soldier and Myfanwy the archer.
I hadn’t had to roll off on the injury table between games until this game. It was a nerve wracking moment but they all sailed through the roll. If they had rolled that well in battle perhaps I wouldn’t have had those squeaky moments. ?

The next mission requies a lot of furniture for a tower scenario.

Gnollsome. ?

Needed a few more Gnoll fighters to start the next scenario.

Glad that I did. Enjoyed painting these but did rush them in-between night shifts at work.

Skelton Bone Army Painter primer did some of the work with Wyldwood Contrast doing a lot of the gnoll pelt pattern work. Some Yellow wash helped with the tone of the skin. On the metal I did what has become a standard rust routine for me.

Leadbelcher base, followed by a dull orange colour in patches up and down the effected area, then Typhus Corrosion to make it gritting and rusted. This paint can be very dominant so I go back with a very sparing use of orange spots and then revisit with Leadbelcher. The Leadbelcher revisit is usually vital, because it helps to get rid of any organge pieces that look too bold and unlike rust and break up any corrosion brown patches that might sadly just look muddy, rather than rusty.

I have been trying to prepare my table for the start of Mission 2. That required a river. All went a bit wrong really.

Used parts of unwanted mdf paint racks to make a base. Used a filler /pva mix to give me banks and a river bed and sprinkled in flint shards to give texture.
Painted and then poured on clear varnish. The tape i used to keep the varnish in… let some of the varnish escape which was a pain.
I can’t tell at what stage, but noticed that the base warped fairly badly. Then i made a big mistake, thinking that adding a PVA glue might top up the level cheaply and dry clear… It dried as a misty layer. ?
I tried to salvage it by painting with Army Painter Strong shade and more varnish, but I have been left with a very muddy finish.
I have learnt a lot of lessons and at least have something to game the next mission with.