Longmyre Holiday Sketchathon!

 Hi!

I'm off on my hols and have taken a small sketchbook with me to doodle out some ideas for my Longmyre campaign.

Now while adventurers do all the glamorous stuff like exploring dungeons and saving the day, the bog standard security for the region is being performed by the lowly Longmyre Militia commanded by Captain Stone Ward, a curmudgeonly old fart who drinks too much but can be relied on in a scrap.

I've based their appearance on the Frostgrave figures that I painted last year:

I'm planning on reworking them a bit to do NMM as I was never that happy with the metallics and their bases will be getting redone to match the style of the Orcs who they will be fighting. 

Before we headed down south, I did manage a quick game of Song of Blades and Heroes for a bit of a retro experience and it was pretty good fun and I may use it again in the future for simple skirmishes (with a few modifications to make combat more decisive!). The game saw the militia facing an equal number of Orcs but taking a pasting as my leader, Captain Ward failed to activate at a critical moment and got shot for his indecision which saw the rest of his company turn tail and flee.

The Barrens

Ward is made of sterner stuff though and still managed to drag himself off the battlefield and is recuperating in Longmyre but his militia have proved not up to the task of dealing with the Orcs who have ventured south from the snow covered endless plains that forms the northern border to Longmyre.

I've been mirroring events from the real world for the setting too as we had a storm earlier in January which has then wreaked havoc in Longmyre and unexpected visitors, travelling and a trade war are also going on in the game which has proved to be a rather fun way of developing the setting in an organic fashion.

The Caravan Route

Once I get back from my hols, I'm hoping to get some adventurers painted up to represent the Farpoint company as well as working on getting more of the Orcs painted and ready but the fact that everything seems to be combining together rather nicely has kept me very much more engaged than I was expecting and I'm compiling a bit of a journal to represent notable events that take place in Longmyre as the year goes on!

Hopefully I'll get more doodles done over my holidays and be able to showcase some actual games too but in the meantime, All the best!

Longmyre Progress

 Hi!

I've got the day off work and have managed to get the pics taken of my Orcish raiders that I'd picked up a couple of weeks back.

The miniatures themselves are chunky plastics made from a Restic type material which does take detail quite nicely with the only downside being that the mould lines are a wee bit difficult to clean off as they need carving rather than filing.

Style wise, they're maybe a bit more realistic than the older GW style cartoony Orcs but they will do the job for a low fantasy setting like Longmyre!

The Orc Gladiator is quite a nice piece and the set comes with two identical sculpts so I'll have another one to add a second higher level fighter to encounters.

The spearmen are nice figures and the first I painted of the miniatures in the set. There's enough detail to make for an interesting and satisfying figure to paint without it getting overwhelming. I believe the figures are digitally sculpted and it does showcase the issues with the medium as the spearmen's faces are a bit soft in detail and I feel it's the case of what looks good onscreen doesn't always work too well in physical form, especially with plastic casts.

Saying that, they're still nice additions to the bestiary that will give me some goons for my heroes to do battle with.

The archer is possibly the most intimidating of the figures of the group which is interesting as he seems more physically imposing than the spearmen or gladiator. Again the face has a bit of soft detail around the mouth that gave me pause on what was supposed to be what. With that said, he does look great once painted!

I've played a couple of skirmishes using Brutal Quest with them against some mercenaries and while they've lost both times, I've come to fear the archer as the amount of damage he does when he hits is absolutely brutal (no pun intended!) so think that I'll be limiting how many I'll be featuring in most skirmishes so they don't unbalance encounters.

In other news, I've sent a bunch of games that I've got the PDF of to get printed and bound with the idea of playing some more small simple skirmishes and re-exploring some of the games I played years ago but have fallen by the wayside over the years and plan on posting a wee review of each once they arrive.

Longmyre Frontier Watchtower

The setting of Longmyre continues to grow and I'm looking forward to delving into the project as the months progress and I'm now needing to paint a few hero types to do battle with the marauding Orcs I've painted!

Fingers crossed, I'll get another few Orcs painted over the coming week but in the meantime, All the best!

Brutal Questing Five Leagues

 Hi!

I've got the first four Orcs from the box I picked up earlier this month nearly finished but I've been perusing my copy of Five Leagues from the Borderlands with the vague idea of using it as the basis of my Brutal Quest campaign.

I do love the campaign system that the game has and the rules for games themselves are pretty nice and simple but fun but the only snag I've found is that I'd need to get a chonk more miniatures painted than I'm able to so I plan on smooshing the two rulesets together to allow me to do something a bit more modest.

I've used the system to create my adventuring area and am working on populating it with some interesting denizens, locations and whatnot over the next few weeks.

Longmyre

At present its looking like the town of Longmyre is being menaced by Beastkin and Bandits as the enemy within and Orcish raiders as the enemy without and its going to be up to my heroes to do some investigating and fight the assorted villains to secure the region.

Lady Cynthia

Our patron is Cynthia, the ruler of the small and rather inconsequential fiefdom that consists of winding rivers and cold lakes, wild moors and not much else so the sudden outbreak of disorder and unrest seems to have sinister undertones, possibly fuelled by the nearby kingdoms of Arcadia and Dulac whose constant feuding seems to be spreading to the otherwise peaceful Longmyre.

Already several farmsteads in the Barrens to the south have been torched by bands of roving bandits and now Orcish raiders have been sighted to the north from their usual stomping grounds in the Near Endless Plains.

Longmyre Moors

I've tied this all into a mini RPG I've been pottering around with too as Cynthia has her hands full dealing with a corrupt mayor who seems to be working with the underworld and her house troops are thinly stretched patrolling the wilderness so she's decided to hire us to try and discover what is behind the unrest and hopefully deal with it.

Its a bit of a ramshackle affair but the project is already seeing me playing games, creating background and even painting miniatures and generally enjoying myself so fingers crossed, I'll be kept busy throughout the year pulling together some suitable miniatures and then playing out an ongoing hybrid of RPG and Miniatures game coupled with ongoing worldbuilding and whatnot.

While I'd love to go for all physical miniatures from the get go, I do think that I may have to incorporate some paper standees to get me going as my painting is very slow and I suspect that its going to take at least a couple of months to get enough stuff painted, even for a small project so we shall see what I can do in the meantime to actually get some games played.

Hopefully I'll get the fourth Orc finished tomorrow and have them all based up for my next day off and will keep updating as I go but in the meantime, All the best!