Rangers of Shadow Deep - Mission 1, Scenario 1

Rangers of Shadow Deep - Mission 1, Scenario 1 - Deserted Village

My first game of RoSD. The setup is on a 3x3ft area, the group starts in the centre of a deserted village with 5 abandoned buildings. There are 6 clue markers, 4 in line with each intermediate compass point (NE,SE,SW,NW) and about 14 inches away from the centre. The final two are in two random buildings.

The scenario starts with 2 Giant rats on the table and 2 zombies. As companions I selected the following: Templar, Rogue, Man-at-arms, Conjuror, Arcanist. I passed the task roll for perception and was able to move 1 clue marker closer to the group starting position.

In the first turn my Ranger attempted to shoot a rat. Missed. Arcanist, Rogue and conjuror moved north, the rogue towards a building with a clue. To note here I probably shouldn't have allowed myself to know which buildings had clues, it would be easy to simply roll once the door had been breached, it would have made the mission more complicated at least!

The Man-at-arms and Templar moved south to another clue marker in a building and closer to the southern zombie. I then moved the zombies and rats, which was wrong, they should have activated before the companions moved. No harm on this round and a good lesson to remember the proper sequence!

The Templar was getting good rolls and she twatted the zombie in one hit. The Arcanist was fortunate that the zombie closing in on her required both actions to move to get to her. The conjuror was well placed to send a bolt of magic into the zombie allowing the Arcanist to move away, in some panic! The Rogue set to work on picking the door lock and succeeded. However the clue marker inside resulted in a zombie being in the house and surprising her.

I got this bit wrong, I allowed the Rogue to move away which when having an enemy in base contact, I don't believe is allowed.

At turn end more zombies started deploying as a result of the event deck. The basic strategy involved utilising the Templar, Man-at-arms and Ranger to use their combat skills to kill off the enemies while the others tried to sweep up the clues. It largely worked. The ranger had to move north and support the squishy types at one point but withdrawing and consolidating towards the fighters allowed them to survive and continue uncovering the clues.

The conjuror even managed to pick up some treasure, which turned out to be an explosive flask. The zombies and rats came on thick and fast but the waves were defeated without too much hassle luckily although the Arcanist took a big hit but limped through on 2 hit points!

It was a fun game and moves quickly when you get a grip on the basics. There is a good amount of uncertainty so works as a solo game nicely. And as mentioned earlier I can ramp this up by "hiding" the clues in random buildings, or more accurately, rolling for them once the door has been opened.

All in all a great wee game, plays well and easily and not much of a burden in order to get on the table. 

Swayed by Shadow Deep

oooh dearie me! I have been very bad at any updates despite actually being relatively productive hobby wise. So I'll break it up into a few chunks and posts.

First up, Rangers of Shadow Deep. A friend and I send each other pictures on what we are working on, helps with motivation and nice to get feedback! He mentioned Rangers of Shadow Deep some time ago in relation to the Burrows & Badgers figures I had got. Not a bad idea, but then I liked the B&B rules and once I picked up the Rangers rules (a fair bit later, I got the deluxe version!) I liked them and even more, I liked the opportunity to paint some different stuff. So decided to do some collecting and painting.

So to start I painted up the free Ranger figure that came with the ruleset, yes it may have swayed me into buying the deluxe edition.

As I would be playing this solo for the foreseeable future (and that is a big part of the reason for doing it) then I'd need some companions. Bad Squiddo have a really good range as I wanted something a bit different.

 The beer maiden on the far right would be a civilian model, to be saved, hopefully, by the adventurers. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted for a rogue and Conjuror model so on the recommendation of the aforementioned friend I looked at reaper miniatures. A vast range and it was a nice surprise when they arrived that the detail is actually pretty decent.

The Conjuror is taller than all the others, including the rogue from the same range. I don't mind some variation as I think it looks better but he did look a fair bit out of whack, I cut out the mdf base below him to allow hide the plastic base he was on and try bring the overall height down. For comparison the rogue is on a 3mm mdf base, with the plastic base stuck directly on top, essentially making her taller. Anyway I think it worked out alright, and will work for now, if I find a model I prefer I may well get some new ones!

I had hit up Bad Squiddo before this all started for some of their scenic range as they looked thoroughly lovely, so some of these were obvious treasure markers.

The game also needs markers for clues or areas of interest, this seemed like a good opportunity to delve into the bits box and use up some of all the little things I insist on keeping "just in case"

Finally the bad guys that need fightin' I picked up a single sprue of fireforge living dead peasants which got me six zombies. I'll probably get another sprue as I although I didn't get over 6 on the table at once, I may have had any not been killed so quickly!
 

I also picked up the Northstar Giant Rats (and Boar) which completed all I "needed" for the first scenario.

For the second scenario I would need some spiders and a cheap pack of plastic ones did the job, no painting just stuck onto some bases and flocked. Nice and easy and cost about £3 I think.

I'll end with the starting pictures of the first game, I may try a small recounting of what occurred in the next post.