Stone Acre Militia

 Have no fear! The militia's here! 

Hi! I've got some much needed holidays from work and have been working on making some militia for an upcoming Brutalquest campaign game.

Stone Acre Militia

Armed with hefty clubs and shaky morale, they're probably not going to be too much use but I had loads of fun making the little fellows with their oversized helmets and ridiculous weapons. I'm now thinking of making another five which would give me a full unit for Dragon Rampant.

Archers

I figured that they'd probably need some ranged capabilities too so made a pair of bowmen. They have slightly smaller helmets than the clubmen so they can actually see and fire their bows with a bit more effectiveness.

Bunny and Firkin

Unlike my usual Tiny Troops, these guys heads are made from two plastic Craft Pearls that I'd picked up from the Range for £1.50ish a tub. They come in several different sizes and turned out to be perfect for daft kettle helms for my infantry.

The Full Militia

I've also been hard at work making a veritable swarm of derpy zombie types to menace my militia. The Revenants will eventually number about 20 but for the moment I've got a full dozen finished and need to paint up a necromancer to lead them (or at least send them forth to chomp on the innocent inhabitants of Stone Acre!). 

Next up will be some carts but I need to figure out how to make some tiny horses to pull them...

Until then, All the best!

Brutalquest Campaign Turn 2: Arrival at Stone Acre

 Hi!

So I've managed to put together some bits and bobs for turn two of my Brutalquest campaign so without further ado, on with the adventure!

Following the run in with the Revenants in the Debatable Lands, Sir Dunston's party have finally arrived in Stone Acre, the only settlement of any real size between the border and the Priory at Ottery St Catchpole.

Stone Acre Map

The fortified village is up in arms as multiple sightings of shambling monsters have been reported by outlying farmsteads and several more isolated smallholdings have been utterly destroyed.

The party is greeted by Bunny Goodbody (any jokes will result in being smacked around the head by her) the local representative of the Farpoint Adventurers Guild. She inhabits a rather ramshackle tower on the north west of the settlement where she tends her vegetable gardens when not hunting monsters.

Bunny Goodbody

She entreats the party to aid with hunting down the monsters as the local militia are preparing to go out to try and put an end to the threat permanently. Bunny will be accompanying them with her trusty war mallet, Carrot Smasher and says she'd appreciate some experienced fighters and a magic user to back her up as the militia are a bit hopeless.

Mindful of his promise to Lady Sylvia to aid her quell unrest in Longmyre, Sir Dunstan agrees, much to the cackling agreement of Rumblebum and long suffering sigh of Bodkin.

Albert Firkin, Stone Acre Militiaman

The party is then introduced to the militia, led by Albert Firkin, a farmer who has taken up arms in defence of the village. He points out that due to an obscure bylaw, no Stone Acre Militia member may carry a blade so the militia have to make do with heavy maces provided by the Mycologists Guild which look oddly like mushrooms themselves. 

Stone Acre Militia Men

The militia is keen to do their duty but afraid of the nameless monsters they may face out in the rolling hills and rocky outcrops of Stone Acre and are more than happy to have Dunstons' party along to help and even offers a reward of one gold for each monster slain and free bed and board while in Stone Acre.

With plans made, the trio retreat to the only tavern in the village for a good meal and well deserved nights rest before venturing forth to do battle with the revenant menace and help protect civilians who will need to be gathered from their homes and brought to the safety of the walls of Stone Acre.

I've got figures finished for civilians as well as Brother Maynard who will be making an appearance further down the line as well as Bunny Goodbody herself and have also just about finished half a dozen militia men to accompany the party on a larger skirmish in the coming week

Civilian Shenanigans

Bunny Goodbody and Brother Maynard

I still need to make some more revenants and some carts but I'm getting closer to being able to play the next game in the campaign which will see the militia and adventurers trying to defend a wagon train from monsters!

We shall see how they fare as no doubt it will be like herding cats! Until then, All the best!

Brutalquest Campaign Turn 1: An Unexpected Encounter

 Introduction

Sir Dunston's party has departed the small border settlement of Rook Moot and is headed north along the old road towards Stone Acre on the first leg of their journey to Longmyre. Following an uneventful day's travel and just as the light begins to fade, Sir Dunstan is planning on calling a halt for the night when suddenly a foul stench fills the air. From the shadows ahead, shambling forms emerge from the gloom and the party is faced by its first challenge, a pack of Revenants shuffle towards them!

The Battlefield

The battlefield is 2'x1' but for larger scales. please do use 3'x2' or larger and represents rough grasslands with piles of boulders, the odd ruin and some trees. The pathway leads across the board from left to right and to win the game, the adventurers have a couple of options, they can try and avoid the Revenants or be a bit more heroic and charge in. The heroes deployment zone is the blue rectangle on the left while the Revenants deploy on the right hand side.

The Forces

Sir Dunston and co

Sir Dunston is a knight armed with a longsword and wearing chainmail armour. 

Bodkin is a retainer armed with a shortsword and wears leather armour

Rumblebum the wizard is armed with a staff and has heavy robes which is better than nothing. He can cast lightning bolt.

Vile Revenants

The revenants are mindless creatures which will move towards anything they can sense and will attack anything they encounter along the way. Until they sense a foe, they move randomly using a direction dice and D6 for how far they move. 

In combat they use their claws and teeth and if they get a double roll on the D100, they sink their teeth in and do double damage!

The Game

I decided to give the decaying Revenants more of a chance of sensing foes if they moved quickly or made noises so Dunstan and co could try and sneak past but if they ran, fought or did pretty much anything else, there was a fair chance they'd be spotted and set upon!

I used Brutalquest with a D100 dicing rather than D10 as I rather like the more granular effect it has and it suits a small skirmish. 

Similarly I only gave the Revenants 10 points of damage each as I tend to use NPCs and mob type monsters as speedbumps or inconveniences and try to give the heroes something to worry about with either sheer numbers or by adding a more powerful mini boss to up the danger level.

As this was the first game in the campaign, I thought I'd go easy on my heroes. How little I knew...

The game started with my adventurers cautiously moving forward towards the narrow point of the table, keen to avoid attracting all the revenants into a choke point where they'll be stuck. Fortunately the shuffling deadmen don't immediately spot the party and two even bump into each other and begin savaging one another.

Spotting one off by itself and despite the urgings of his companions, Wizard Rumblebum jabbers a spell and with a crackle of energy, a searing lightning bolt flashes from his staff impacting the near by Revenant and reducing it to smoking ash. 

Unfortunately this alerts all the other undead and they begin shuffling towards the party. Sir Dunstan, uttering many swears under his breath bundles the cackling wizard off towards a narrow gap that Bodkin has spotted and is heading towards.

Unfortunately the Revenants begin approaching from both directions and Sir Dunstan and Bodkin draw their swords, determined to carve their way through the mob in front of them before the second group which is approaching from the rear.

In the swirling melee that follows, Sir Dunstan bellows his battlecry and decapitates his foe with a single stroke but bodkin fumbles and the Revenant begins to chomp on him. Supremely confident due to his previous spell, Rumblebum decides to cast another lightning bolt but flubs it and the bolt of electricity strikes poor bodkin instead!

Things are looking grim but a smouldering and chomped on Bodkin fights on, managing to dispatch his foe but before they can recover, the second group piles in. Bodkin goes down under a pile of clammy undead flesh and Dunstan piles in to rescue his minion. 

Perhaps trying to redeem himself, Rumblebum casts another lightning bolt and manages to actually hit his target, blasting his target from its feet and allowing Dunstan to hack down the last foe and drag the still smouldering and well chomped form of Bodkin from the corpses.

Post Game

In Brutalquest, you earn Brutality Points which you can use ingame to buff your attacks and so on or save them to improve your stats after. I had thought that I'd be able to upgrade my characters after a simple game but I ended up using all my points to kill off the Revenants before I got overhwelmed!

I rolled on the injury chart for Bodkin and he did survive but is unsurprisingly traumatised by his experience and has a minus 10% to his stats for the next 3 games.

Following the game, I rolled to see if I had any further encounters using the table I found on Five Leagues from the Borderlands and met an itinerant priest called Brother Maynard. The kindly fellow gifted the still traumatised Bodkin a healing potion so it was a bit of a win! 

Brother Maynard heads towards Rook Moot to warn the villagers that the undead are abroad while Sir Dunstan's party continues north towards Stone Acre.

Campaign Book

It's taken quite a bit to get this battle report put together but it's been rather fun and hopefully I'll get chance to post a second turn of the campaign soon but in the meantime, All the best!

Brutalquest Campaign Introduction

 Hi!

I've been trying to get this post done for a while but I had a massive event to organise at work and haven't had chance until now so without further ado, here's the beginning of my Brutalquest Campaign!

Introduction

Lady Cynthia of Longmyre has been having to deal with inheriting her father's domains following his rather mysterious death. Now bands of bandits have begun marauding throughout Longmyre so she has sent the call out for brave adventurers to help discover where these desperate villains are operating from.

As such, Sir Dunstan of Rook Moot has answered the call and along with his lowly footman, Bodkin and the cantankerous wizard, Rumblebum have departed from the small settlement they call home and are heading north along the old trade road towards Longmyre...

Longmyre

Longmyre

The county of Longmyre is a rather out of the way place bounded to the north and east by a mountainous region and the Copper Tail River to the south. The western border is heavily forested with the mysterious Greenwood and the Moss.

The capitol is Longmyre a bustling market town in the north that sits on the Longmere, a long, deep and cold lake that gives the town and county it's name.

The county is currently at its lowest ebb as the neighbouring barony of Voskovia has taken the Red Tower that guards the East March of Longmyre and it is only a matter of time before Baron Vosk orders his forces to cross the Copper Tail river and invade. 

Lady Sylvia is desperately trying to raise forces to meet the Baron but the constant harassing of her settlements and travellers by bandits, no doubt supported by Vosk, has seen her forces spread thin.

She is not without support though as the Nuns of the priory of Ottery St Catchpole and the March warden of Farpoint have allied with her and even now, bands of sturdy frontiersmen and women are training in the northern part of the county and the Longmyre Longstriders, her frontier guard are doing their best to hold back Vosk's scouting parties.

To make matters worse, the southern kingdom of Arcady is currently experiencing a civil war so aid from the supposedly allied kingdom is unlikely to materialise.

Character Portraits

Now I've been working on my tiny troops that will allow me to run a mini campaign without spending a fortune but felt that they needed a bit more character so decided to make some character portraits along with gear charts and next thing you know, I've got a bit of a scrapbook for the campaign!

Sir Dunston's Party

Sir Dunston is a freelancer who was once employed by the old Duke but has spent the last few years in near exile in the small border hamlet of Rook Moot but Lady Cynthia remembered his years of faithful service and has requested his aid in dealing with the bandits. 

He is accompanied by his faithful but rather long suffering retainer Bodkin and the hedge wizard Rumblebum. 

Sir Dunston has chainmail armour and a longsword, Bodkin has leathers and a short sword while Rumblebum has a staff and heavy robes and can cast Lightning Bolt. None of them have any skills yet or other equipment but I'm hoping to see them develop over the course of the campaign!

Gamewise, I'm using Brutalquest with a few modifiers to speed things up and my next post will hopefully showcase the first game of said campaign in which Sir Dunston and co encounter some unpleasantly stinky denizens of The Debatable Lands!

In the meantime, All the best!

Hobby Wobble

 Hi!

It's been a busy few days and I find myself having a bit of a hobby wobble. 

This year I've found myself making tons of stuff and generally enjoying the whole process of creating tiny troops, 2mm and 6mm randomness but as we rapidly draw near to the tenth month of 2026, I find myself having a bit of a pause for thought.

I've been sculpting my own figures now for quite a few years but instead of increasing the complexity and skill levels, I seem to be simplifying them for the sake of limited hobby time and to get things done and I have come to the conclusion that maybe I've been making a bit of an error.

Looking back at my older sculpts, they had some real character and personality to them and I was pleased with how they turned out, even if they were a bit rough and ready around the edges. Now I'm making things that are literally basic shapes and I can't help but think that I need to try something a bit more interesting or challenging.

While my sculpting in larger scales lends itself to cartoony and rather stylised figures, I used to have great fun making them and yet here I am churning out tiny and simplistic stuff simply because I just haven't the time to do more and I'm beginning to realise that I need to buck up!

Bloodaxe Boyz - SD style

For the sake of simplicity and speed, I seem to have devolved into very basic figures that do allow me to play games but feel unsatisfying in some way that I can't quite put my finger on. Looking back through the blog, I realise that even my first real attempt at sculpting, a 15mm scale rogue wizard who would later become Marik Goldhelm a notorious denizen of the frontier and sworn nemesis of my Dwarven Boar Company, looks better than the stuff I've been making this year.

Marik Goldhelm

It's a bit perplexing as my Tiny Troops have been pretty popular but I'm beginning to think that I've strayed too far from the sheer enjoyment of making interesting figures into something that's just too simplistic and not really a miniature anymore, more like a token and I'm wondering what I can do to remedy things.

My most recent figures

I realise I'm being a bit daft as it shouldn't really matter but it does and while I'm flailing around trying to settle on something that I can't even define, my projects have suddenly ground to a halt. On the one hand I'm heading to a record for painting figures and I've had a lot of fun doing so, but on the other hand, once they're done, I've not found myself too keen to actually use them in a game and am heading for my worst year's gaming total in some time.

The tiny troops were designed to allow me to quickly make forces to play games and they seem to have done the opposite.

I'm not going to stress myself out over it but I do think that 2027 will need to be a bit of a change with what I'm doing with my hobby and I want to try and focus more on some fun sculpting projects and maybe do something completely different.

I don't know if anyone else has similar moments when you've had a really productive hobby time only to suddenly realise it's not what you'd had in mind but I refuse to have a loss of hobby mojo like I did last year and will keep on with the tiny troop styles for the moment but I think I need to do some sort of palette cleansing exercise to get me back on track...

We shall see what I can come up with but thank you all for reading my ramblings and until then, All the best!

Richard

Charity Shop Finds and Zombies!

 Hi!

I've got a much needed weekend off work and am about to head out to the local farmers market and craft bank in Blairgowrie but wanted to post a quick update!

We were in a local charity shop the other day and I spotted theses mighty tomes for the princely sum of £11.25:

Now I've no real intention of playing either 3rd edition of Age of Sigmar or indeed 9th edition of 40k, but I rather liked the look of them, if for no other reason than to add to my ever growing rulebook collection. 

As an aside, it's fascinating to see how Age of Sigmar has moved from a pamphlet rulebook when it was first released to a 300+ page tome in three editions. I suspect I'll be using elements of the background and factions in future projects and the artwork is pretty good too!

As for 40k, 1st and 2nd edition are the go to for me but I do have a 4th edition rulebook as I'm drawn the the streamlining they did, much like 2nd Edition epic and Epic 40k and at some point I do want to give it a try but that's for another day I think!

Possibly at some point, I would like to collect an army for 1st edition then upgrade it to 2nd edition and finally 4th edition as beyond that, 40k seems to become a sprawling beast with so many rules that I suspect I'll never get my head around, but I do have a more recent tome to add to the mix if I'm feeling bold!

Note: When I was about to post this, I discovered much to my surprise that I had a tag for 8th edition 40k. A quick peruse of said post had me tooting about how it looked really interesting and possibly a return to something a bit closer to my interests so maybe I should have a bit more of a look into 40k 9th edition than I'd initially thought!

In other news, I also picked up a copy of a very old rulebook from ebay in the form of Raven by Harlequin Miniatures!

I had picked up a copy of this in the 90's from Macs Models in Edinburgh and had obsessed over collecting and making armies using it and found the artwork by Pete Knifton to be awesome but the multi-base nature of the rules off-putting for a Warhammer gamer. I'd sold my copy off when I went to university and had a massive clear out so was really happy to add it back to my collection for a couple of quid.

Re-perusing the rules has made me realise it's possibly more suited to smaller scales, either 15mm or even 6mm which I'd not considered at the time and I'm quite intrigued to see how it actually plays. Sadly I've been unable to find any examples of anyone actually playing the game but would love to hear of anyones thoughts about it if they have!

Finally, I've got some more tiny troops made for an upcoming Brutalquest campaign!

Zombies!

Made using my typical beads and EVA foam style they're going to be menacing my adventurers soon. I also made a hulking zombie thing using a number of wooden beads and a bit of EVA foam for details and had great fun slavering it in red paint to give it a suitably gribbly look!

I've already played out the first game and it was a bit more touch and go than I expected and I'll post the battle report in the next day or so and am looking forward to playing game two! 

I do need to make some more art cards and whatnot for my characters which will add to the flavour of things and I should be able to post an update presently with much more detail of what I'm doing.

Hopefully I'll post more shenanigans soon but until then, All the best!

Blogger on the Blink! UPDATED!

 Hi!

Just a quick post this evening to say that Blogger seems to be on the blink a bit at present. My blog reader list isn't updating and it's incredibly irksome as it's usually super handy for seeing what awesome projects others are working on at present. 

For some reason, it's not updated for a week now! I've tried the usual fix of clearing cache's, trying on different browsers, threatening with sticks and so on, but no success.

I don't know if others are having similar issues but hopefully Blogger will fix the shenanigans soon!

Until then, All the best!

UPDATE!

Huzzah! As always, the threat of a good thrashing seems to have worked on blogger/my aging laptop and things seem to be working again.

Gremlin Issues Solved!

Hopefully I'll have a more interesting update to post soon, but until then, All the best once again!!