Full Steam Ahead, Mr. Starkey!

No, it's not a yellow submarine, just a little steampunkship.

I had started this some time ago and finally finished it this long weekend. The main body is made from a plastic Mott's applesauce container, cut in half. The nose and tail pieces are made bits of plasticard cut and filed/sanded to shape. The periscope is made from some plastic tubing from an old ballpoint pen. I sculpted the elbow bend with sculpting putty since I couldn't find any useful bits for that part. A bit of paint, and all that's left is varnish to finish it off.

Solo Gaming by the Book

Not having much time or energy for gaming lately one thing I have managed is playing through the introductory pdfs for The Lost City of the Dwarves. These are "choose your own adventure"/solo dungeon types of books/games. You can read more about them at Lost City of the Dwarves
The introductory pdfs are free, and a good full adventure in their own right. You create a character and play through the 3 pdfs, level up your character (if they survive), gain items that you can use as you go, etc. I love dwarves, and these pdfs/books give a nice background and history, lots of flavor, as well as humor and tense or more dramatic moments as well. Some very good artwork, too. I would definitely recommend trying out the free pdfs, which you can get from DriveThruRPG. I loved it enough that I went ahead and purchased the printed version of the main adventure. That's the first part of a new adventure in the Lost City.

A Mess of Orcs

(not sure what the word for a large group of orcs is; like murder of crows, pride of lions, etc. Horde of orcs? Mess seems kind of appropriate).

These are more old Foundry orcs. I made a few conversions, swapping in the hand holding the horn and another hand holding a sword on the orc with the horn in the lower left, a hand with a big cleaver chopper weapon on the orc in the front, a couple of spiky metal shoulder pads on a couple of other orcs, and removal of extra weapons from a few. I may add shields to some or many of these "lads" if I come up with shields I think would be suitable. 25 orcs in one big mass! I think that's the most figures I've painted in one batch in a long time, if ever. There was enough variety and I switched colors around so it wasn't tedious.

(you know the drill - click to embiggen)

Orcs and More

A few figures fresh off the painting table. Some old GW so-called "black orcs" - I think these are really tough orcs, sort of like uruk hai. Unfortunately, for some reason I only ever got around to buying the command group, so they have no more orcs or their ilk to command. I guess they'll have to settle for bossing around lesser orcs.

A few regular orc archers, an old purchase from Foundry.

And some sort of plague-ridden mangy dog-like creature from Reaper's Bones line (I think it could be a Pathfinder goblin dog, which are not canines but more like large carnivorous rat creatures), and a dungeon mimic from Otherworld Miniatures.

Back to the Beginning

Like Inigo Montoya and Fezzik I'm looking at going "back to the beginning". In this case it means I've been looking into Tunnels & Trolls, the rpg rules I started out with back in the mid to late 70s. The advantage they had over D&D was their simplicity and several solo "dungeons". A huge plus for those like me who lacked fellow gamers to play with. I have fuzzy but fond memories of Buffalo Castle and several other solo dungeons, and artwork by Liz Danforth, Carver, et al.

So I have been perusing the Lone Delver blog and have also downloaded free basic T&T rules made available by Flying Buffalo, some 'zines (notably, Trollszine) and solo dungeons/adventures and such from rpgnow. So much free content available and so many creative people involved in T&T! I rolled up a goblin and played the Goblin Lake solo dungeon included in the free rules. Although he was very dextrous luck wasn't with him. It was a fun re-intro though.

While browsing around on rpgnow I also came across a solo adventure called Lost City of the Dwarves. As a long-time fan of dwarves, from my early days of reading Tolkien, the solo adventure sounded like something I might be interested in. They have a free intro, called a Prologue, so I also grabbed that. I love the artwork in it. The artwork used in the Prologue is cool, it's the preliminary sketches, which I always find interesting and fun to look at. The story itself is a good intro to the premise of the adventure, the world in which it takes place, and the mechanics of the game. These are basically "choose your own adventure" solo dungeons, but the story and the art are very well done and captured my interest and imagination. I would definitely recommend the Prologue to anyone who is a fan of dwarves or Tolkien or fantasy. And you can't beat the price!

Rescue

It seems like ages ago that a number of unfortunate halflings were taken captive by a pack of gnolls. Well, finally a brave hero or 2 has come along to try to rescue the captive halflings.

Today, using the Very Simple Generic Miniatures Rules that I used previously, with a few "house rules" for scenario-specific flavor, I had a dwarf hero armed with a crossbow and ax attempt a rescue. He went in alone and didn't get off to a very good start (lots of poor dice rolls!). First shot missed, and then he got knocked down by the first gnoll he acme in contact with.

Eventually he killed that gnoll. The dwarf made it to the rocky area where most of the halflings were being held by several of the gnolls (the rest of the gnolls and halflings were scattered a bit). After some back and forth fighting the dwarf was overcome and captured by several gnolls ganging up on him.

Well, that wouldn't do! Enter an heroic wood elf archer, friend of the dwarf hero. Again I created a few "house rules"/stats for the wood elf and the scenario. The gnolls were now on alert, in defensive positions among various rocky outcrops, and keeping watch on their captives. The wood elf entered the area, promptly shot one gnoll and freed a couple of halflings.
Moving along, the wood elf shot another gnoll and freed another halfling. Then the wood elf moved towards the main group of hostages. Shooting more gnolls. The previously freed halflings had moved up to the rocky area and were able to knock down some of the gnolls and eventually free up more halflings and the dwarf. In the end the elf, dwarf and halflings dispatched the last of the gnolls. Another triumph for the forces of niceness.

One thing I like about simple rules like the ones mentioned above is it's easy to learn the base rules and then add a few variations as desired for specific scenarios.
In this game the main differences between the dwarf and elf were the dwarf was better at hand to hand combat (hitting/killing on a roll of 3-6), while the elf was better at missile combat (hitting on a roll or 3-6 at close range), and the dwarf got armor protection (canceling hits against him on a roll of 4-6).

Assorted Miniatures

I finished off a few assorted fantasy miniatures.
An old GW halfling and a Reaper elf

 

An owlbear and a mimic from Otherworld Miniatures, which seems to have good range of 25-28mm miniatures that hark back to some of the old artwork for D&D. I like the style of the figures. Otherworld's service was good, too. They added in a few figures I hadn't ordered, at no extra cost.

 

I also have some kobolds from Otherworld. The kobolds look great, but they are small figures, about halfling size, and many of them come with separate hands or arms that I haven't been able to attach solidly yet. I wish they were all cast in one piece. I dislike trying to assmble small figures.

And some snow goons from Reaper. When I placed an order with them in December the snow goons were included free as the "perk" for ordering that day. Reaper was doing a sort of "12 days of Christmas" promotion where they included a free figure or so depending on which day you placed your order.