Solo SBH Lord of the Rings Campaign, Part 1: About a Book

So I began my solo mini-campaign this afternoon in Tolkien's Middle-Earth...or as close as I can represent it. For a bit more information on how I'm running this, please see my previou blog post. We'll start with the warband pictured here. These guys look familiar? Wrong! They're totally not four of the main heroes from the Lord of the Rings movies! Nope. These guys are totally different. Here are their stats to prove it! 1) Dwarven Fighter: Q3/C4 Group Fighter, Tough, Short Move. 2) Gondorian Healer: Q3/C2 Cleric. 3) Dunedain Ranger: Q2/C4 Forester, Shooter Medium, Fearless. 4) Elven Archer: Q3/C4 Forester, Shooter Long, Good Shot. See? I told you. These guys are nothing like they are in the movies. Well at least Boromir isn't. I wanted a healer and I love this minifig sooooo...sorry Boromir...I turned you into a wussy cleric. Obviously the others are pretty big rip-offs of Gimli, Aragorn, and Legolas but whatever. I like 'em.

Part 1: Fool of a Took
Darkness is speading over Middle-Earth and our four drinking buddies adventurers have been tasked by the famous wizard/veteranarian, Radagast the Brown, to locate a mysterious book called...ummm...THE MYSTERIOUS BOOK OF MYSTERY! They've pushed away from the bar long enough to sharpen swords, fletch arrows, and sober up and are now ready. However, there's one small problem. The book is guarded by a big ol' hairy spider and a burglar is needed. The dwarf could do it, but he's on probation and cannot get busted for stealing again. So, a burglar is a must (sound familiar?). Luckily, the Gondorian Healer knows of a hobbit, a Took of course, who'd be perfect for the job! Well maybe not perfect but he is small and works for mushrooms. Good enough!

The board. (excuse the mess in my basement and the creepy floor that looks like someone was murdered on it.)

Goal: The burglar was last seen searching for mushrooms around the river valley ruins. Check all four ruins. He is found by rolling a 6 on a d6. If not found at first three ruins, he will be automatically found on the fourth. Scenario is failed if any member of the party dies!

Here's a shot of the four terrain pieces that must be checked. As I've described in my previous post, these are treated like rooms in a dungeon crawl. Upon entering them, a die is rolled to determine what the 'room' contains.

Large Hill

Small Woods

Large Woods

Elven...snake pillar...thing.

And we're off!

Our adventurers embark into the river valley beginning first at the large hill.

The short meat shield takes the lead, with the elf being a typical ranged attacker staying out of harms reach. Once the dwarf hit the edge of the hill, I rolled a d6 and...

 

...a three was rolled which spawned 6 Orcs on the top of the hill along with a bag of loot.

After some nice shots by the ranger and the elf and some piss poor rolls by the orcs, two are laying dead.

Speaking of piss poor rolls, the ranger ended up flat on his back. Thankfully the healer was there to lend a hand while the dwarf managed the action.

 

...and there we go. One more death lead to the orcs freaking out and trying to flee. They were quickly dispatched. The leader failed his morale roll on three dice and took a dive off of the hill.

Finally, our Ranger checked the ruins to see if the halfing was anywhere around there...had to roll a six...got a 4. Also rolled to see what kind of loot was there - it was Cram - which grants long move for one turn. This was promptly given to the Dwarf.

Moving across the valley, the small stand of woods was next. On the way, a d6 was rolled for random encounters. Nothing occured. Upon entering the small stand of woods, another d6 was rolled and it too came up as a 3 - which means goons and loot. Two wolves were spawned.

Long story short...

...the wolves were quickly dispatched.

Again, this 'room' had loot, so I rolled on the random table after the conflict and was rewarded with an Elven Cloak, which grants stealth to the wearer. This was given to the Elf because it matched his outfit...that and for the ranged ambush bonus that I think might come in handy.

Again, I rolled to see if the hobbit was around rolling a d6 and needing a 6.

 

Much to my surprise, I rolled a 6! He looked a little shaken up, but being a greatful little man, was willing to join the adventuring party. Hooraay!

 

Closing Thoughs: Well that was uneventful. I only had to explore two 'rooms' and fight two pretty easy battles to meet the objective. I was tempted to ignore that 6 I rolled to locate the hobbit to keep things going longer, but had decided that I wanted this campaign to be honest and real and let the dice decide for better or for worse. 

Now that we have a complete party, the rest of the journey can begin!

 

Easy Transfix Marker/Gelatinous Cube/Blob...thing!

So, I found this great video of a guy making hollowed out Gelatinous Cubes out of clear resin (video found here ). I loved this idea and I give all the props to the owner of the video. While playing Song of Blades and Heroes, I've often wanted some kind of token/marker to indicate when a model is transfixed. I know I could just use a wooden token, but I wanted something that looked cenematic. These cubes seemed like a cool way to do this. As I've stated before, I'm lazy. I haven't the time or the skill to mess with resin, making molds, etc. So I thought I'd figure out a way to make my own. Mine will not be nearly as nice as the ones in the video, but I was pleased with the results.

First, I started with this dice box. Every wargamer has at least one of these things laying around. They come in different sizes and shapes, but this is one of the more common ones. This one easily fits over the top of my Lego figs including the base, and would easily fit any 28mm model.

I then took some crystal clear DAP 3.0 sealant, put it in the caulking gun, and spread it all over the box. I feel I should note that while I'm not aware of there being any hazard to handling the DAP 3.0 after it's cured, if you grow a third eye, it's not my fault.

Using a stick, I gently spread the caulking around the dice box to achieve a rippled effect that I was happy with. Be careful to move in smooth motions and don't pull up on the sealant too quickly to reduce your chances of ending up with big bumps or spikes - unless that's the effect you want.

Once that was done, I set the box on some wax paper to dry. Make sure you do this so it doesn't adhere to anything you don't want it to.

 

24 hours later, I had one finished cube, token, thingy! After it's fully cured, the outside is rubbery but not sticky.

Here's a shot of the inside. You can see that you have plenty of room on the inside of the box.

I liked it so much, I made six more.

So how's look on the tabletop? I've enlisted the help of Gandalf the Grey to demonstrate. Here we see our fearless wizard facing down three orcs and two cobras in a deep dark dungeon.

**WIZ-BANG-CRACKLE** (was that believable?)

That oughta hold'em.

Do not mistake him for a conjurer of cheap tricks!

So that's it. Pretty easy. Somethings I've noticed:
1) While the DAP is stuck very well to the plastic, with some intentional pulling, can be completely removed. It peels off like one of those masks in Mission Impossible. I've tried it, and it leaves no permanent mark on the dice box.
2) The DAP does not take paint well. Again, I've tried this. It looks terrible. If you wanted a blue or green Jell-o looking blob, I'd recommend painting the box with some of that stain glass paint (or some other translucent paint) and then applying the DAP. You might be able to mix the DAP with some ink or something in a cup first, but I have no idea if that'd work.

Anyway, there you go. Let me know if you try this for yourself! I'd love to see what other's are doing.

Modest Magic Dungeon Review

Since getting into this hobby, I've wanted to make a dungeon terrain set. Time and a complete lack of willingness to learn how to cast good looking terrain has kept me away from it. Then Nick from Modest Magic (www.modestmagic.com) came along and made all of my wildest dreams come true. Yup. All of them. Well, at least my dreams of having an easy and good looking tabletop dungeon without breaking the bank or having my wife file for divorce because I spent 2 straight years in the basement making plaster squares. Enter the Modest Magic Dungeon Kit.

Before I get too in depth, I'd highly recommend taking a look at the Modest Magic YouTube channel. Nick has quite a few videos up explaining what he does and how his product works. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that Nick was kind enough to throw in 3 extra floor tiles because he was late sending out the terrain due to getting sick. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted. Yay for free stuff!

The package made it safely to me despite the Post Office trying very hard to destroy it.
Exhibit A:

No worries. A quick look inside revealed that no major damage was done - I say major because one of the floor tiles had a bent corner that I was able to push back down.

Here you can see the whole lot pulled out.

And here you can see them divided into three piles: 30 doors, 90 walls, and 9 floor tiles (or 12 in this case).

Punching the pieces out was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Nick has a helpful video on his channel showing you the best way to remove the pieces.

Here is a close up of a punched out wall. There is a little bit of flashing that needed to be removed from each piece but it all comes of just by running your thumb over it.

Here are my door and wall piles after de-sprueing all of it. This probably took me about 45 mins or so...or in gamer terms, this took about a beer and a half.

As a side note, there's a healthy portion of left over bits that'll come in handy after you pop all the pieces out.

So here's what I ended up with after deliberating over room size. The walls and doors were glued with hot glue but nothing was glued to the floor tiles so that they can be moved around or used for other purposes later on.

Because I'm a wierdo and I game with Lego minifigs, I needed the rooms to be a bit larger than the average 28mm gamer. If I were using 28mm figs, most of the rooms would have been 3 or 4 wall sections max on any side. However, the biggest room here is 4 sections by 5 sections.

And here's the semi finished product. This is sans washes or flocking and it could definately use another layer of black on the tops and backsides of the rooms, but I was just too excited to slap it all together and get it posted. I threw in some BGW rocks in for good measure. (note the mad-delicious Yuengling beer can in the bottom left. Its how all terrain projects should begin)

You'll notice that some of the lines between floor tiles are noticable. I blame two things for this.
1) the reversable gaming tabletop that this is sitting on has a slight bow in the middle causing some of the tiles to pop up.
2) I'm a below average painter. I failed to get a consistant dry-brush coat over the entire grid which causes those spaces to be more noticable.

***While I'm super exicted about this kit, I would be remiss I did not point out the one problem I noticed - the lines in some of the floor tiles had inconsistent depths. Some tiles had really deep lines and some had very shallow lines. I'm assuming this is an issue with the material not being 100% consistently thick all the way through and is probably something that is near impossible to avoid. I would not let that turn anyone off though. It really didn't bother me. There was one tile that this was extremely noticeable on, so I beat it up and burned cracks into it to make it a feature rather than a flaw. You can see this tile as the far bottom right tile.*** (edit: Nick contacted me after this post explaining that the three tiles he gave for free where three test pieces that had inconsistent tile depths. This is not a problem on any other set.)

Final thoughts: this set is awesome....especially for the price tag. The pieces go together very easily and look great in my opinion! Even if Nick was a jerk, I'd still love this product. Thankfully, he's a terrific guy who is really excited about his company. I can not recommend this stuff enough.

All in all, this is a wonderful product and I give it two thumbs up!

Solo wargaming in Middle-Earth

(image borrowed from the interwebz)

My favorite fantasy setting is Middle-Earth. I wanted to create some scenarios and rewards to run a small adventuring party across Tolkien's wonderful world. As I usually play solo, I took this opportunity to create some generic soloing rules and Middle-Earth specific loot. While I did not want to play any of the Heroes/main characters from the books, I do love all of the new LoTR Lego minifigs. So I've created more generic (and slightly less fantastic) party members based loosely on the main characters...which will probably come across a bit cheese-ball. Whatever. It's my game :)

(image borrowed from Ganesha's Site)

 As always, I'm using SoBH (http://www.ganeshagames.net/product_info.php?products_id=7 ) as my rules but with a few tweaks. First of all I ignore the 'personality' rules because that seems too restrictive for a solo adventure campaign - which I think of more as an RPG than as a wargame. Next, I'm using markers (which could be a minifig base, a piece of terrain, a building, etc) like rooms described in the Song of Gold and Darkness suppliment to determine what happens. Whenever one of my characters comes in contact with one of these markers, or are within a certain distance (depending on the marker/scenario) I roll 1 d6 on the following table.





Marker/room Contents
1- empty
2- goons
3- goons + consumable/loot
4- Major Challenge
5- Major Challenge + consumable/loot
6- Final Challenge + Loot

Once I know what the marker represents or contains, I roll on the following tables based on the above info.

Goons
1- Orc d6-1
2- Spiders d6-2
3- Uruk-hai d6-2
4- Snakes d6-1
5- Wolves d6-2
6- Barrow-wight d6-2

Major Challenge
1-2: Troll + 4 Orcs
3-4: Orc Leader + 4 Orcs + 2 Orc Archers
5-6: Uruk-Hai Leader + 3 Uruk-Hai

Final Challenge
determined by the scenario.

The goon/major challenge tables are likely to change depending on the scenario as well.

To keep up the randomness, if my characters are not in a 'room' or engaged with a marker, at the end of each turn I roll 1 d6. On a 5 or 6, I roll another d6 on the goon table. The resulting goons spawn one long away from the center of the party in a random direction. The direction is determined via a popular way that I picked up on the Ganesha site. Two d6 are rolled. The direction is determined by drawing a line from the lower d6 to the higher d6.

If loot/consumables are indicated, I roll one d6. On a 1-4, I roll on the consumables table, if a 5-6, then I roll on the Loot table. Note: I use the traps system from SGD.

Consumables (d6-2 quantity. Roll for each)
1- Cram: Grants long move for 1 turn
2- Miruvor: grants 1 reroll
3- Honey Cake: +1 to one C roll or -1 to one Q roll
4- Dwarf Root: grants +2 to one C roll
5- Ent Draught: increase size by 1 for rest of scenario
6- Lembas: Hero special for rest of scenario

Loot
1- empty
2- Elven Cloak: Grants stealth
3- Spider Venom: Grants poison
4- Bow of the Galadhrim: Grants shooter: M
5- Elven Blade: grants Lethal v Orc-kind
6- Mithril Shirt: Grants Heavy Armor without the disadvantages

This may not make a ton of sense right now, but hopefully it will once I start throwing up some batreps.

Stay tuned!

Introductions

This blog will serve as a place for my odd interests, namely playing tabletop wargames using everyone's favorite plastic building toys - Lego. I've been a Lego fan for as long as I can remember, but had a dark age of about 15+ years until 2010 when my five year old son found my old tub of Lego in my parent's basement. From that time on, both my son and I have been on a several year Lego kick...much to the dismay of my wife.

My current employment requires me to interview a lot of different people and in early 2011, I had to interview the owner of a local wargaming store. After wandering around the shop and talking to the owner, my interest in wargaming was totally pricked. I immediately went home and began researching. To my amusement, I discoved websites and flickr groups dedicated strickly to gaming with Lego! Now I was really interested! I spend a couple of weeks researching the game system most commonly used, and Song of Blades and Heros rose to the top of the list. I purchased the core system, slapped together some warbands, and figured out how to solo play the game. Since that time, I've purchased all of Ganesha Games other supplements and add-ons and have never looked back.

After messing around with making Lego terrain, I discovered that I really enjoy terrain making in the traditional wargaming sense - i.e. with pink foam and flock. Not to mention that the cost of making a 4x4 table out of strickly Lego terrain is very cost prohibitive.

Hopefully (whether you're a fan of Lego, a wargamer, or both) you'll find something useful and maybe amusing on this blog!

Have fun and play well!