The end of an era

Back in late 2013, my friend Alex was on a bit of a D&D kick. He asked me to run a game, and I said I would do it, happy to have the chance to put some of my new thoughts about adventure gaming into action. Bob, Simon and Angela joined us. Simon dropped out eventually, but Stephen and my wife Allison joined us along the way.

And here it is 2017 and we're about ready to wrap up. We started out in 3.5, but switched to 5th and I (for one) have never looked back. What started out as a story about a couple of scrubs in a jail cell about to be sacrificed has gone all over the campaign map, to an alternate dimension and even into hell. They've robbed temples, explored tombs, hunted vampires, blown up a giant Fortress Golem by killing a demon on top of it, escaped the law, tampered with the fundamental structure of reality, broken an ancient curse and established a kingdom on a tropical island. They've battled cultists, sorcerers, the living dead, apes, a skeletal dinosaur, the dread Eye of Daoloth, fishmen, genetically-engineered super-soldiers, clones, wargolems, snowlems, cannibals, clockwork soldiers, reality-warping hellbeasts, and the dread Chunder Shark. They've formed alliances, lost friends, and discovered ancient secrets. The one thing they've never done is fight a dragon.

And, I mean, it says dragon right on the cover.

So for the grand finale of the game I'm going to stage a fight against a dragon. And not just any dragon, but this guy:

Chained to the roof of the sky by heroes in ages past and released by our heroes for reasons that seemed good at the time, this son of a gun breathes not fire or acid but monsters. He's helped our heroes save reality, but the price of that aid is that he's coming to eat the peaceful villagers of Frog Island. Unless, that is, our heroes and their unlikely coalition of pirates, gloomy Vikings, civilised hobgoblin mercenaries, drug-addled shamans, decadent aristocrats and general riffraff can do something to stop him. Fortunately, they did manage to get some dodgy magic items from a mummified snake priest. Those'll help, right?

It's the last session of the longest game I've run in ages, and over the next few posts I'll be sharing some of the preparations I'm making.

What is it with me and the post-apocalyptic stuff?

So instead of doing Age of Sigmar or getting stuff ready for Oldhammer Weekend (which, in fairness, is in July), I have just been painting post-apocalyptic models. Mostly, anyway. Why? Don't ask me. I just seem to have the bug. Anyway, here are some examples painted over the last few weeks.

These are Kolony Feral Blades from Pig Iron. The miniatures are pleasingly chunky, although I'm not wild about all the poses. They will be Nurgle cultists in 40K or just general wasteland mutant types in a post-apocalyptic game.

These three post-apocalyptic women are from the Bad Squiddo Games Ghosts of Gaia Kickstarter.

I haven't actually been neglecting other games; it's just that these are the photos I've taken. RPG stuff has either been quiet lately or been the kind of thing that takes a long time to write about.

Post-apocalyptic house!

Back in January I was on a post-apocalyptic kitbashing kick, and I decided to put together some scenery using miscast bits I was given by Curtis of Ramshackle Games. I started out doing what usually works best for me -- just sitting down with a big bag of parts and sticking stuff together to see how it worked out. And here's what I came up with:

I built a roof hatch from a spare base and some junk, added fencing from various scraps in my terrain box, built a little planter out of a cut-up old credit card and stuck on various pipes, doors, steps and so on. There was a lot of filing of casting irregularities (remember, these were free miscasts), but other than that I just covered the joins with other panels or whatever. I added some auto-body mesh to create a window screen. 

And then ... then it languished on the painting table for nearly two months while I dealt with other projects. But this weekend past I had some time to paint, so I had a go at it and this is what I came out with: 

The glue in the garden isn't quite dry yet in these shots, so it looks a bit white. Anyway, as you can see I basically just went at it with a big cheap brush and various shades of red, yellow, orange and brown, and I think it looks not too bad. I wanted it to look like an outpost of humanity in the wilderness, so I gave it a garden, and to be extra clever I gave it a garden that creates a patch of land you can't really fit a miniature into without it tilting a bit. Oh well. 

Here's the final thing, inhabited by the Gentleman Scavenger: one man's slice of heaven in a post-apocalyptic hell.

So, I got the board from a friend, the auto-body mesh from a hardware shop, the sticky gems from The Works, the fence from the Lead Adventure sprue exchange, and all the rest of the bits either just from my terrain box or from Ramshackle. Total cost of materials, less than £1. Effect on tabletop: not half bad. 

Colossal Battle Snail!

When my package from the ThunderChild Miniatures Kickstarter arrived, I quickly started getting it ready, and here it is! It's going to take the role of some kind of a chaos lord guy in my ongoing Age of Sigmar project, but mostly I just really think it's great. The photo is a little washed out, and I can see a few areas I need to touch up, but overall I'm very happy with it.