Well yes, once again I disappeared, only to pop up where and when you least expect it.
Tonight I am popping up from the Travelodge in Sale, south of Manchester England. Why you might ask, well this was the closest and earliest training venue we could find before Christmas.
Getting here was a bit of an epic, including cancelled flights, getting to Aberdeen instead of Manchester, 06.40 flight that left 40 minutes late, losing an Uber driver in a carpark, finding said driver, getting dropped off a mile away from where I needed to be in a rainstorm…and that was only part of it…
I have been meaning to write a post for ages, but just never got around to it.
So if you remember I got five leagues from the borderlands, but as my son prefers sci fi to fantasy then I went for Five Parsecs too…
Not sure if this is meant a bit tongue in cheek or not. So no matter where you are in the world I am sure you will see wild animals. Maybe not some solitary confinement cell deep underground, but anywhere else I would say yes.
A starling is a wild animal, so is a cockroach and a fly. To be fair, I have never seen a wild cockroach.
Living where I do, I regularly see Arctic hares (well they turn white in winter), otters, a whole host of migratory and non migratory birds. The odd Orca, seals a plenty oh and fish too.
I am sure some people will see a whole host of other wild beasties.
One animal I would absolutely love to see is a moose. I have never ever seen one. Nope I don’t know why either!
Well this evening I decided to do a few more townsfolk for Traitor’s Toll.
So from left to right we have… A lady with sickle and wheat (not quite sure why… Maybe a window box or something) a fishmonger, some raggedy arsed man with a sack, a dude holding out a snake (the mind boggles… Maybe he is doing an act where he shoves it down his trousers) and finally we have a young lady playing a flute.
Now there are only five unique bodies in the set, but with plenty of heads and arms then really no two should look alike, same body, different figures.
Because they looked so different in the photo I actually had to check that it was the same body. In fact there are a couple of aprons as well as the mantels that can oomph them up even more.
Well after whining about not having the right magnets I decided to splash out and purchase some 3×1 mm ones to fit the holes I have. As I was ordering them I decided to get five parsecs from home as my son is more interested in sci fi than fantasy.
I have a Stargrave box of miniatures as well as a pile of other stuff so we should be able to get going over the Christmas break.
As I said in an earlier post I have decided to downsize the collection. Anything with no interest is going the journey.
So off the top of my head… Staying are the 15mm armies I have, ditto with the 10mm and 6mm.
I will keep my hundred years war and Celts in 28mm as well as the stuff for Five Leagues and The sci-fi stuff for playing with James.
My bookshelves and boardgames are also going to get a radical cut. I live in a tiny house and don’t have the room for a shit load of stuff.
I have asked for a book on the Italian Wars for Christmas. No miniatures this time, well not exactly true I ordered three frames of cultists to become baddies for Five Leagues etc.
So starting soon I will be offering stuff to Thule gamers and thence to eBay. Wish me luck. Some of this stuff I have had for 30 years.
Well I got going again this evening and slapped more paint on the Brotherhood… Nearly got them finished…
I very cleverly painted a halved shield, was really proud of it then realised I had reversed them. Evidently I never learn as that is exactly what I did with my full size shield…so tomorrow I will try again!
This evening I managed a little bit of snipping and glueing. These are the four remaining miniatures from the peasant levy sprue.
They will be useful in either Traitor’s Toll or Five Leagues. Not exactly a huge amount, but more than I had this morning.
The sprue still has a load of arms, heads and weapon options remaining. I have some 3D printable WA miniatures so I will have to see if any bodies will be useful.
In other news I am up to 30 hours next week in my phased return to work and am heading off down to Manchester in a couple of weeks for some training.
Well I have been discharged by the specialist as he is pleased with my progress after the MRI to the brain. I have continually improved and am off the steroids for the polymyalgia too. So as you can imagine I am pretty chuffed.
I am up to 20 hours this week and had a split day with some training at 16:00 to 18:00.
After Dinner and doing the horse I wasn’t in much of a mood to do much so I decided to glue 3mm magnets into 3mm holes… Well this probably would have worked fine if I hadn’t stuck miniatures on the bases. Now I am not an expert but based on my faffing about it would seem that my magnets are too thick to work the way I want them to. So being undeterred I found some 2mm ones and superglued them in.
These worked enough for what I wanted… Aka to stop them flying about when I undercoat them with a rattle can ( I hope).
After messing about in a notebook I decided to get the warband onto their sheet.
I have written these down, but this actually a print out of an online sheet, which in the long run will save a lot of time with an eraser.
Well I eventually got around to making my brotherhood… Aka my force for Five leagues from the Borderlands.
So here are the six of them… From left to right:
Starting with the heroes:
Bragollach the mystic. Rowan the frontiersman, Sir Percival Fanhard, knight and leader. Nellas the Fey ranger. We have two followers as well…
Caedric the former soldier. A loyal retainer to Fanhard and finally Oswyn an outcast drifter.
So the Brotherhood are on a ship heading to Blackwater Landing: the initial starting point. Now I could have started them in the port but I decided to do a travel roll. So on the journey across the sea they met a physician named Eldrin Marrowell. They got on famously and as he was going to start a practice in Blackwater it seemed a great start. Unfortunately he was worried that his previous employer was unhappy with him leaving. Sure enough as they come down the gangplank a group of what seems like very organised Robbers demand the Brotherhood hand over Eldrin. He asks them for aid and when Fanhard refuses to hand him over weapons are drawn. Not exactly the best start in a new town
After much angst about how to find a suitable ranger cloak for Nellas I decided to have a go at making one for myself. I got the idea from Peachy’s YouTube channel.
Basically the idea is that you use masking tape… It’s not bad for a first attempt.
I had better get some stuff painted so I can find out if the Brotherhood can save Eldrin.
Well I decided I wasn’t happy with the original map and did a new one.
With this one I rolled up the built up areas I split the map into six areas and added the settlements based on the rolls.
This gave me two military outposts, two manor houses, a monastery a number of towns and Hamlets. Three of the towns were trading hubs.
I had to decide where to start, choosing the port bottom right as it seemed an appropriate place to get going.
I then rolled on the internal and external threats.
The two internal threats were the ruin within and whispers from beyond… basically criminals and murderers compelled by a dark power for the first. The second is a sickness lies upon the land caused by unnatural sorceries…undead and cultists.
The threat without was: Curse of War… An imminent invasion by ghouls and cultists which I felt had a nice tie into the first two. Basically the land has been infiltrated by agents sowing discord and dissent.
I then had to choose the location for a Delve. This is an old ruin or underground complex that we can explore. The other is an unexplored location. These have to be travelled to to see what they are.
There are three enemy camps that are placed on the map and then three enemy hideouts that are not.
Finally I had to decide on a threat level for the three. I have two level 5 threats and a level 6 one.
I felt that the external threat would only become more dangerous if the internal threat worked. So sickness got the six and the ruin within the second five.
I now have to build some more miniatures for the rest of my troops and bandits.
Wellllll I decided that I needed to be creative and as I said I was going to paint another Sky with more purple and green in it…. Well I totally failed… Talk about set in my ways lol…
Today’s Purple and green…ahem!Yesterday’s sky….
Tomorrow will be purple and green…I hope.
As we are in the midst of a snowy spell I decided to have a go at a bit of a snowy scene…
I tried adding rock salt to this but really didn’t go into it fully. Most of it landed on the left hand side lol.
Now I always seem to add trees… This is a photo on the way into Lerwick…
Bogenwald 