Painting The Tortle Mystic

 OK, so when my Warband for my Five Leagues From The Borderlands solo campaign was mostly wiped out, I decided that it was high time to recruit a Mystic as a new member. And, because the name of my campaign is "A Tale Of Two Tortles" and I was down to only one tortle, I opted for another tortle as the Mystic. The miniature was a 3D resin print of a DM Stash pattern, purchased from Disaster Decisions Gaming I am sharing this because I am very impressed both by the print quality and the amount of detail on the miniature. I certainly plan to buy more of this stuff!

Anyways, I based the model on a GW-style 32mm base (or maybe it was 30mm?) instead of the 25mm sculpted base included with it. I primed the whole thing with black gesso, and blocked on the colors before hitting the whole thing with my special Shading Wash. During the highlighting, I had some trouble getting the detail to pop on the yellow parts, but otherwise it turned out as I had planned.

I found this model to be a bit intimidating to paint. There is an astounding amount of tiny details, and not the chunky kind of detail found on GW miniatures. This is more reminiscent of old Tom Meier sculps from Ral Partha. But I persevered and I am pretty happy with the final result. Hopefully, he will fare better than his forebears in upcoming games!

Here's a bit of a funny thing: a few years back, I was playing Rangers Of The Shadow Deep using cardstock standees, and my Ranger was named Turtle Power, from a set by Trash Mob Minis Take a look, can you see any similarites between the old standee and the new miniature?

Painting A Centaur

 OK, so I needed a Centaur miniature for Reasons. I wanted one quite a while back, and even bought one from Reaper but it wound up in the back of a box and sat unremembered for a few years. So, when I needed it, it was there for me. I'm just happy I remembered I had it before I ran off and bought a new one.

As a Reaper Bones model, the spear was very bendy, and so I replaced it with a plastic one of almost the exact same length from Fireforge Games. Pro tip: never throw any leftover parts away! I then based him on a 60mm x 35mm GW-style oval base; I trimmed off most of the integral base that was molded with the model.

Painting the model was very basic: I blocked the colors, I applied the secret Shading Wash (homemade, none of that fancy store-bought stuff,) and highlighted him. I hope you like the finished product!

1490 Doom: First Two Games

 OK, so Kurt and I gave 1490 Doom a test drive. He had built a beautiful aqueduct ruin for us to fight over, and it was quite the visual treat. We missed a few rules, misintepreted a few others, but we had a good time over the course of two games.

My little Doom Company was a Fighter (also my Captain,) a Scout, and a Brute. Kurt ran an Assassin as his Captain, a Fighter, and a Brute. I am writing this over a week later for Reasons, so my memory is a bit foggy on the specifics and this report will not be very long.

Things that rally jumped out at me during the games were that the Brutes were not fast enough to really make a big difference to the game, and that the Scout and Assassin were the two most interesting models on the table. I will be replacing my Brute with an Assassin for future games.

The game plays fast, and once we had a reasonable handle on the rules, we were getting through the turns from memory. I definitely want to play this one some more.

A Tale Of Two Tortles: First Quest Turn

 Wow.

Just wow.

I played my 12th campaign turn of Five Leagues From The Borderlands, which was also my first step of a series of Quest encounters. It started simply enough. We were at The Crossing doing the usual stuff; helping the Town Guard to avoid paying any Upkeep, and Weppi had to visit the Blacksmith to repair her weapon. There was a bit of a gambling craze sweeping the town, but we really aren't much in the way of gamblers. Morgan was still healing, which was fine as we still had five Heroes to go adventuring. No Trade was done, and nothing arose from our Connections. It seemed a perfect time to start the Quest!

So, the Quest began. A new location was placed in the Wilderness (note: I immediately forgot we had to travel to the new location, so no Travel rolls were made.) We were to fight a Meeting Engagement to vanquish a foe carrying an important Quest item. The enemy would be rolled on the Whispers From Beyond table, and led by a Captain who would be carrying the desired Quest item (Whispers From Beyond limits visibility to 9", which I forgot once I started playing and led to some bad consequences.) As this was our first Quest turn, I misunderstood the table on page 107 and rolled on the Quest Task Table, rolling a "5" and therefore adding a ranged trooper, two melee troopers, a Sergeant, and a Lieutenant. Further, they would be Outflanking, adding yet another melee trooper. All told, there would be 13 bad guys against our five. This went from a great idea to a distinct feeling of dread.

So first off, there were eight of the Whispering Cultists including the Sergeant and Lieutenant. I decided to deploy them intelligently, with the two archers on the upper floor of a building for a clear field of fire and protection from guys (and turtles!) on the ground, and the remaining six in two groups of three. On our side, I decided to put Drustan and Tundaline on the upper story of a building same as the Cultists, for the same reason. Weppi, Kipor, and Galdan all deploying together for mutual protection.

The first turn started off strongly enough: Tundaline killed the Cultist Sergeant with her first shot, and Weppi was able to ignore the shots from the Cultist archers. A lot of movement forward was made by both sides, Weppi and co. Anchoring themselves between a building and a fire.

The second turn continued the winning streak, with four dead Cultists and the Lieutenant having sustained a wound. Tundaline and Drustan were not hitting with their shots, and the enemy archers were trying to take them down (one of the archers even dropped down from the building into the open to get a better shot!)

Turn Three saw a turn in our fortunes: both Tundaline and Drustan fell to the hail of arrows from the enemy archers. Kipor killed the Lieutenant. Weppi and Galdan then moved forward, with Galdan killing the archer on the ground. The Captain and his four cronies also arrived this turn and made a good advance into the skirmish grounds.

On Turn Four, the Quest became apparent: the Captain had to be defeated in melee combat and he was bringing the fight to Our Heroes. In the ensuing melee, both the Captain and Kipor went down. The remaining archer broke and ran from his top-floor vantage, deciding that he was done with this fight.

By the end of Turn Five, Weppi and Galdan were facing a lone Cultist who was already suffering from a wound.

That Cultist was not to be trifled with, however, as he got the jump on Galdan at the beginning of Turn Six and took him down. Weppi in turn killed the Cultist, and was the lone standing warrior at the end of the fight. But at what cost?

The Dice Gods were not kind to the fallen members of the Warband. Kipor, Drustan, and Galdan all died. Tundaline too would have been dead if not for that point of Luck. I had burned four Story Points re-rolling Weppi's armor, keeping her on her feet and thankfully they were boosted again by the untimely demise of our other companions. And what did we get? An Adventure Point. A Quest Task completed. A damaged warhammer and an unstrung self bow. Was it worth it? Only time will tell...