Friday 20 May 2011

Battle Report!

It's time! As far as I can tell, the first full Super Dungeon Explore battle report!

We played three games in total, but I'm using just the most interesting. It's of note that each game was completely different, exciting, fun, and three complete newcomers to the game went away massively impressed with the system! Also please bear in mind that this was everyones first game, so lessons were learned swiftly!

On with the show!


Level 1!

The Dwarf (played by Jim) and the Elf (played by Sue) find themselves in the Haunted Forest, which is riddled with Kobolds! The Dark Consul (played by Ben) seeks to halt their passage, while I sort of oversee the game and check the rules where necessary.

Setup!

The dark Consul places the Spawning points in the Northeast and Southwest rooms, while the heroes begin in the centre room. The chests are, predictably, well guarded in the spawn rooms.


The kobolds spawn, a dragon priest and knucklehead in the NE room, two gougers and two Knuckleheads in the SW room.

Turn 1! Go!

Jim sends his dwarf frothing at the mouth and swinging his axe into the SW room. Using his cleave special attack, he cuts down three kobolds in one swing! Bonus points! He turns to the remaining gouger and attempts a taunt, but fails.


The Kobolds get a chance to retaliate, the Dragon Priest starts aggressively by lining up with the central room and firing off a volley of magical missiles, scoring two wounds on the hapless elf! The knucklehead moves to support, but is too far away to attack anything.


Sue sent her Elf down to help the dwarf in the SW room, taking aim and executing a sparkle burst special attack, scoring a wound on the gouger and the spawning point, but essentially, the gouger drops a heart, replenishing the Elfs health slightly. A further shot at the well fails to hit the mark.


With no kobolds left to activate, the heroes use their five loot tokens to draw a loot card. Sue draws a rune of meditation which is given to the Elf, granting her a bonus red dice to her will. 


Turn 2.

Firstly, Ben spawns a pair of burly Ironscales from the SW well, and two flingers and two knuckleheads from the NE. Learning from the dwarfs cleave attack, he spaces them out to avoid distaster. 

The Elfs new rune helps the heroes win first turn, and the dwarf makes short work of the first Ironscale. However a couple of bad rolls leave the second kobold standing!


The remaining ironscale began an onslaught against the dwarf, but nothing hits home. Sensing the SW room is doomed, he retreats the Ironscale into the W room to rejoin the kobolds heading for the centre room. In the NE room, the knuckleheads began to mob up around the dragonpriest, one of their number venturing into the central room.

Sue sent her Elf nimbly skipping around the Ironscale, lining up with the well and unleashing a volley. Her luck was in and two shots hit home, somehow managing to collapse the well and prevent any further pesky kobolds from emerging from it! She has just enough movement to finish up next to the chest.


With not much to do, Ben concentrates on how he will defend the NE room.


Once again the heroes have killed enough to earn a loot card, which is drawns as a rune of hot,hot,hot! Most importantly, the Elf opens the treasure chest. With a suitable sound effect, she finds the sword of alacrity! Both are equipped to the dwarf, meaning that he now attacks with four action points, two red dice, three blue, and fire attacks! Pretty mighty!


Turn 3

With his spawning cut down to only four skulls, Ben brings forth a pair of gougers and an Ironscale. Again the Elf seizes the initiative, and allows the dwarf to go first.

Now an absolute killing machine, the dwarf charges through the W and central rooms, slaying an Ironscale, two knuckleheads and a Flinger! Jim makes the fatal mistake of saying "the dwarf is awesome, there's no stopping him!" Bad move.


His almighty charge has left the Dwarf overextended, and the last determined flinger scores a wound with his hot pot attack. The dwarfs beard catches fire in spectacular fashion! The dragon priest scores a further wound with his magic missiles, and with his last action point casts dragon rage.


The Elf is sadly too far away to be of any use this turn, and can't even get into line of sight to use her the herbalist ability to extinguish the dwarfs flaming beard.

Turn 4.

With Ben spawning a few extra kobolds, the heroes once again win the initiative.

The dwarf charges in, slaying left right and centre, but Ben has learnt from his earlier mistake and spread the kobolds out, limiting the deadliness if Jims cleave attack. Despite scoring many wounds, he retrieves only one heart, relieved that his dwarf is no longer aflame. 

Ben activates the dragon priest, failing with his magic missiles and once again whipping the kobolds up into a frenzy with dragon rage. 

The Elf runs to the NW room and sparkle bursts the kobolds, dissapointingly only killing a gouger. A single shot scores a wound on the dragon priest, but now the dwarf is surrounded by a gang of angry kobolds!


Ben makes full use of the mob rule, some kobolds attacking with up to 6 blue dice! The wounds roll in, and finally the Ironscale looks to make his final attack. He rolls high, and the dwarfs defence fails! Jims poor dwarf, whom he had so recently applauded as 'unstoppable' falls down dead, flashes a few times, then dissapears, in true 8bit fashion.



The game has turned! The Elf draws a rune of strength, which isn't entirely helpful to her.



Turn 5.

Ben spawns a flinger and s couple of gougers. Sue looks at the table and realises that Ben can spawn faster than she can kill. Winning the initiative for a fourth time in a row, she decides to take a desperate gambit. Dodging in and out of Kobolds, she lines up with the well and unleashes another volley. It's a disaster though, and only one finds it's mark! Terrible!


With his entire force ready to use, Bens kobolds close in, and with a combination of dragon rage, mobbing, and hot pots, he cuts the poor Elf down where she stands. 


The heroes have failed! The Dark Consul practices his evil laugh, and retires to plan his next dastardly scheme! Well done to Ben, comiserations to Jim and Sue!




If there were any rules errors let me know, but hope you enjoyed!        

Monday 9 May 2011

So I got to thinking, our adventurers can't spend all their time in manky old dungeons. No, there has to be a period of travel TO the manky old dungeon. So what happens directly before the heroes reach the dark castle/evil dungeon/ancient temple?

No, not role play, you fools.

The haunted forest!


SUPER HAUNTED FOREST EXPLORE!!!

The brief: I already have the modular plaster cast dungeon that you can see here

However, casting the pieces can take a long time and I'd like something I can update a lot quicker. It won't replace the dungeon, just give me a cheaper, quicker alternative so I can play new scenarios as quickly as possible.

Also, won't it be cool to have the heroes fight their way through the forest, into the dungeon, and away with the treasure!

Features:

Must be easily stored
Must be transportable and robust
Must remain in keeping with the 16bit theme

Inspiration:

I need look no further than the king of top down RPG's, Links Awakening for my super chunky old game boy!



This is basically all I need. Open spaces bordered with trees. Simple eh?

Design concept:

This is the plan; I will start with a fold up gridded battlemat, which has a grass or simple woodland texture to it. As I use 30mm lip bases, my grid will have to be 30mm or 1.5" squares. You can get 1" square battlemat online, I'll probably need to get mine printed.

I will then use corkboard tiles to cut irregular shapes that fit over 1, 2 or 4 squares. These will have trees attached (removable) and will act as dividers.

Simple eh?

The battle mat:

If you're using the standard 25mm bases with your SDE models, you shouldn't have a problem acquiring a 1inch grid battlemat from the Internet, they're fairly common, and you can get them with grass or stone designs. If you want a bigger grid AND a design, you're outta luck, I wasn't paying £50+ for a custom one! 

Fortunately, my brother works at a graphics company, and he made me a simple battlemat out of an offcut of vinyl. 


This thing folds, stores and transports nicely, looks the part (very 16 bit!) and has 30mm squares. Job done!

Trees and borders:

If you look at the pic from links awakening, you can see that the forest areas are made up of open spaces bordered by trees in order to give you the impression of paths through the forest. I'll basically be emulating this on the board.

To make a border piece, I measure out and cut a piece of cork tile to cover the right amount of squares. For instance, a four-square stretch needs to be 120mm x 30mm. Make sure you measure out the squares though, it's one tree per square


Next, I visited antenocitis workshop. ( http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com).basically, if you want scenery supplies, go here first, the man knows his stuff and stocks the very best. I found these tree armatures by woodland scenics...

http://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/2-1-4-4-conifr-grn-trees-42-kt.html

I chose them for 2 reasons:

1) they look pretty good, and about the right size, and I can get enough of them for not too much cash (I think I need just over 90)

2) they appear to be removable from their stands, so could be packed away easier.

I ordered three sets. I chose conifers as they are less likely to interfere with the tree next to them!

Here's a tip- unless you're incredibly bored and enjoy everything sticking to your fingers, don't bother sticking the clump material to the trees, leave them bare. They look fine for the haunted forest, and the gluing will just drive you mad.

I take the cork strips, and using a piece of coarse sandpaper, I sand the edges down. 


Next, glue down the tree bases into the center of their squares, and texture the base with PVA and sand. Leave to dry for several hours.



When it's dry, paint it. I sprayed mine with Tamiya T69 spray,followed by drybrushes of GW tausept ochre and bleached bone.



Finally, add static grass patches

You should now be able to slot the trees in, and set up your board!


Spawning points:

Woah woah woah! You're not done yet! Surprisingly, this next step caused me masses of stress. I really wanted the Kobolds to spawn out of a spooky old tree bole with a scary face and an open mouth. No such thing exists in the world of online terrain companies. I searched for a good alternative...hollow trees, mine shafts, bottomless pits, to no avail. In the end I settled on an old favourite

www.thomarillion.com makes lots of really nice dungeon pieces. I ordered two of these wells, seen here with a brown undercoat 


The two together was less than £5, and it's 35mm round, just over my square size, but that's negligable. Now Ive bought them, i like the idea of a secluded well in the middle of the forest, it's certainly got precedent in the world of 16bit RPG's!

They got a paintjob to match the plaster dungeon, so they can be used in there too.


So it's done! I enjoyed building and playing on this so much, it's inspired me to make a proper dungeon version tutorial! Coming soon! 




Wednesday 4 May 2011

Stat card previews

In lieu of an update from myself while I'm making the next SDE project, here's one from sodapop.

Check out these preview stat cards shown in an interview with John from Sodapop! Very nice!





you can read the full interview here

http://handcannononline.com/blog/2011/04/26/soda-pop-miniatures-an-interview-with-john-cadice/

Saturday 30 April 2011

Mage and dwarf finished!


phew! I've been struggling with these guys for a few days. I find that when it gets to that stage, you just have to finish them off and hope for the best. They're not my favouritee, but they're good enough for the gaming table. The camera hasn't picked up the hue of the beard very well, you'll have to take my word that it's VERY ginger!

In the theme of old computer and board games, each character has a main colour (I.e paladin blue, elf green, Mage purple etc). The dwarf was the hardest, but I used oranges to highlight the browns, and the orange gem in his helm to give him a nice orange theme


for some reason the mages face just didn't want to finish off nicely. Still, I like her purple, and can't wait to try them all out in different combos!

My next project I wanna save up till it's completed, but I'm very excited about it!

Sunday 24 April 2011

Elf ranger: done! Human Mage WIP

more progress! Bless this clear weather!


the elf ranger, the photo doesn't pic it up so well but I'm really pleased with the rosy red cheeks the elf and the paladin have (and the Mage will have), it's really simple, just a couple of GW Baal red glazes when the skin is finished


side view, the veil is GW hawk turqoise highlighted with many layers of Vallejo silvergrey. Overall, I really like her. Especially proud of the hair.



couple of shots of the Mage WIP. I did her robes purple, then decided she needed yellow moon and star patterns on the robes. They failed, I had to start again! On looking at this picture it's clear I need to redifine her pupil!

I've deliberately left the dwarf till last as I really don't know how I want to paint him (other than with a mighty Ginger beard!)

Thursday 21 April 2011

Dragon priest and Elf ranger WIP

no updates for a while cuz, well... I've been lazy, so here's some pics!


Dragon priest, bein all snarly


look at him. He's full of wrath


leadin the minions


and here's the elf ranger nearing completion



another view

it's good painting weather so more soon!