Cardstock Barricades

I built some cardstock barricades for my Ruined City terrain. The bases took longer than the barricades themselves lol!

Papercraft patterns by Permes

A Ruined Wall

 Hi there!

I built the Ruined Wall papercraft kit from Dave Graffam Games as a bit of additional "ruined city" terrain. I feel like I forgot all of my cardstock creating skills while building this one. It was like Amateur Night, but with less bleeding. I spent a lot of time correcting build errors and it still didn't turn out quite as well as most of my work. But I've got an "outside" and an "inside" picture of the creation for you, Dear Reader.

The Ruined Wall papercraft kit may be purchased at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/80657/ruined-wall-paper-model

A Tale Of Three Tortles - Game 5

OK, so I played another exciting game of Five Leagues From The Borderlands tonight! Our Heroes once again faced the Duskling menace trying to invade the Ruined City Of Armskirk. Weppi and company had heard rumors of a crazy group of goblins indiscriminately killing survivors living in the wreckage, and tracked them down. This would be a straight up fight between the five melee-armed members of the warband (Drustan and Tundaline are both still recovering from injuries) and the entirely melee-armed goblins. No fine tactics, no objective other than butchering the monsters before they could bring more harm.

The first turn saw Yammel move forward to meet the goblins, followed by a general goblin rush forward. One of the vile creatures pushed Yammel back, but Weppi was quick into the fray, felling one of the beasties with her first mighty swing. To the right, Kipor, Alaric, and Galdan moved forward cautiously to engage the enemy.

Turn two saw the good fortune of Our Heroes continue; during the swirling melees, Weppi felled two more of the evil Dusklings while Galdan killed another on the right. Two more of the foul beings decided to make a run for it (although I took the picture before they fled the skirmish!)

In the final turn, Weppi made short work of another goblin, but the final goblin felled Alaric before being butchered in turn by Kipor. This was a bittersweet victory... would Alaric survive his injuries?

As it turned out, Alaric the Wily Rogue was dead, laid low to his final rest by a goblin mace. There was not much to show for the battle either; investigating the Dusklings yielded a map-making kit and not much more. Upon returning to The Crossing, there was big news! There was a patrol of the Queen's Ouriders moving through the Ruined City, which would allow safer travel for time being.

Thoughts: this was much easier a fight than it had any right to be: I rolled a LOT of "6"s for Our Heroes and a lot of "1"s for the Dusklings. "Line up and fight" was exactly what I needed for tonight, some mostly brainless fun with some permanent campaign consequences. I was working on some new scenrry so I'm not always using the same old buildings, but clearly I have not yet finished. With no Travel roll necessary next turn, I think we will move to Bradfordshire , which is outside the city proper and still has plenty of intact buildings and farms for some different scenic options for the next few games.

The Ruin Within

OK, so I finished up 18 models to field The Ruin Within enemy faction for my Five Leagues From The Borderlands solo campaign. There are nine basic melee guys, three guys with throwing knives, two guys with bows, two guys with slings, and two leader types who look a bit undead. I built them from the Frostgrave Cultists boxed set, with two metal sling bits from Gripping Beast to round out the weapons.

Some New Scenery

I've spent my time off-line building some scenery. I have made another ruined building for Armskirk, the ruined city that I set my Five Leagues From The Borderlands games in. I also built a few stone walls. Buildings and walls are from Dave Graffam.

A Tale Of Three Tortles-Game 4, Part 2

 The Story thus far: Weppi, Yammel, and Alaric are the only members of the Warband still on their feet after a savage encounter with Strange Warriors. While Our Heroes were victorious and held the field, the injured were sent back to Mirefield for rest and recovery. There was just one problem: those evil Duskling goblins were still en route to attack The Crossing, and must be stopped!

Musing about the possibilities of success or defeat, Weppi wondered to herself, "what about old friends?" She had known people in Armskirk before the Destruction. Perhaps, just maybe... she let out her loudest Tortle Throat Rumble Calling, and a while later Galdan, a human Noble she had known, was ready to help out. And so Our Heroes set out to once again beat down hard on the Duskling threat.

But first things first, right? Weppi wanted to get an idea of how things had changed near The Crossing since the Destruction. Plumes of smoke were a good start to the investigation. As they approached the burning buildings, through the smoke could be seen goblins! Blood streaks already on their skin, they hadn't quite noticed Weppi and her companions yet.

On the first turn, we Seized The Initiative (and I promptly forgot and played the first turn without it!) The goblin Blood-streaked Band advanced, one of their archers taking a position in the upper level of a building (not the usual AI, but it made sense.) Our Heroes decided to move as a group and go around a building to flank the goblins.

The second turn saw the Duskling archers shooting ineffectively, but the warriors did contact Weppi and her friends. They were pushed back for their efforts, and one was now wounded, but Our Heroes had held their line.

Turn three saw some more ineffective archery and a swirling melee that left two goblins dead and Galdan down, while Weppi and Alaric had picked up some wounds. Weppi had also burned a Story Point to re-roll a damage roll against one of the now-dead Dusklings. One of the goblins thought better of the fight and fled the scene. At about this time I realized that I had never determined the Scouting Objectives, so between turns I marked the two objectives with dice.

In Turn four, Weppi had the realization that the fires would need to be Scouted before more goblins arrived, She pushed her companions to kill the goblins quickly and promptly killed the one that lunged to attack her. One of the goblin archers felled Alaric, but Yammel pushed forward and killed that archer. Weppi ran to a stack of detritus to search for clues to the fire. The final Duskling archer decided that there was no winning this fight and followed his fleeing companion.

Turn five saw Weppi use a point of Will to quickly move to the next Scouting location, and thereby secure the Objective as well as Hold The Field. A quick look showed that Alaric had once again been Knocked Out (a real winning streak on that one,) and Galdan, while down, had only suffered a broken weapon.

Searching the filthy goblin Dusklings afterward, they acquired a Rangers Cloak and enough furs to sell in The Crossing for three Gold Marks. At The Crossing, news had come that the Gnawling Horde had grown their Camp nearby to a Hideout, and they were building their strength to take over the ruined city of Armskirk.

A Tale Of Three Tortles-Game 4

OK, so I went ahead and played out Campaign Turn 6 of A Tale Of Three Tortles. It was going to be a bit risky, since both Tudaline and Drustan were currently down healing from their injuries. But, maybe some in-town activity could help out a bit, no?

Anyway, during the Local Events phase, a kindly old person packed us lunch and the warband now had one Rations. We spent our in-town time helping the Town Guard and dragging Drustan to the Healer, who got him back on his feet and ready to adventure again. Hey, how about that! We also bought some light armor for Kipor and had a chance to buy a sneaky sneaky little throwing knife, but we passed that one up.

Now, we were following up some reports that those pesky Duskling goblins were up to no good in the vicinity of The Crossing. And so huppty huppty ho we went a-travelling towards The Crossing. But along the way, something strange happened. Strange Troops, to be precise. A defensive battle was then fought against these swarthy strangers with their curved swords, zebra shields, and crested helms...
We started well enough, Seizing The Initiative and advancing towards the enemy. Drustan, newly on his feet, took up a defensive position behind a fence to get some good bow shots at them. Alas, his first shot went wide and the zebra-shielded enemies were upon them. Yammel made a good showing and felled his first opponent, but Alaric was not so lucky, coming off worse for wear in his first engagement and was now wounded. Weppi and Kipor both pushed their opponents back, but the fight was still on.
Things started to turn ugly for Our Heroes. Drustan was taken down by the enemy bowmen. Alaric and Kipor were felled by those curved swords. And while Weppi was holding her own, she too was now wounded. She managed to kill one of the attackers, but she was still toe-to-toe with another.

With more bad luck, the enemy reacted faster than Our Heroes could attack. Yammel went down, leaving Weppi alone to confront two remaining swordsmen and two archers. Is this how our story is going to end? NO! Weppi killed her assailant and then turned her rust-hued eyes towards her next targets.

The remaining enemy swordsman rushed towards Weppi and was promptly cut down for her efforts. Both archers shot at her, but failed to hit anything but her thick shell. And then she lunged, bringing one of the archers down beneath her cyclopean weapon (really, have you seen the size of that thing?) The last archer decided it just wasn't worth it, and promptly fled the scene. Weppi stood alone amongst the bodies of her trusted friends and the dead foreigners.

During the course of this Travel Encounter, I used three Story Points to keep Weppi on her feet. That was half of everything we have. Kipor took a light wound and will be out for a turn to recover. Drustan was moderately wounded and will be out for six turns. Alaric and Yammel were both just knocked out. Alaric has a winning streak of recovering after the battle! The Strange Troops had some furs that will be sold for 4 Gold Marks when we get to The Crossing, and Alaric was able to find some partial armor and a helmet to help him out in future skirmishes.

The real catch here is that this wasn't even the main battle. There are still the Dusklings out there in wait to attack The Crossing, and only Our Heroes can stop them before they do. Can we do it with just three of us? Maybe there is an Old Friend in the area who could help...

TO BE CONTINUED