Rangers of Shadow Deep – Solo play project

I spent £14 on dice at The Dice Shop Online. Maybe not really necessary, but I found purple d22 and d15 dice for really cheap to act as wound markers for my group.

I worked out the max health the Rangers (22) and companions (16) can get after experience boosts and got enough dice to cover my team. I had been using Bolt Action / Gates of Antares pin markers. I ran some white paint over the numbers to make them easier to read. I only have 10 or 12 of these and was using them for both the Rangers and the creatures. The numbers on these markers also only go up to 12 which makes them less useful for my Ranger with 18 wounds base.

Now I am facing miniatures with several wounds and mulit mini combats being more prevalent it was becoming less clear which mini the markers belonged to.

Also the game only requires a single d20 vs d20 roll off for combat, so I picked two nice ones just for these games.

That fun bridge battle… Wow. Gnolls are a begger to fight against when the alarm goes up. I lost three companions to the battle, but managed to pick up a clue marker, treasure marker and get safely off the board edge with Ranger, soldier and Myfanwy the archer.
I hadn’t had to roll off on the injury table between games until this game. It was a nerve wracking moment but they all sailed through the roll. If they had rolled that well in battle perhaps I wouldn’t have had those squeaky moments. ?

The next mission requies a lot of furniture for a tower scenario.

Gnollsome. ?

Needed a few more Gnoll fighters to start the next scenario.

Glad that I did. Enjoyed painting these but did rush them in-between night shifts at work.

Skelton Bone Army Painter primer did some of the work with Wyldwood Contrast doing a lot of the gnoll pelt pattern work. Some Yellow wash helped with the tone of the skin. On the metal I did what has become a standard rust routine for me.

Leadbelcher base, followed by a dull orange colour in patches up and down the effected area, then Typhus Corrosion to make it gritting and rusted. This paint can be very dominant so I go back with a very sparing use of orange spots and then revisit with Leadbelcher. The Leadbelcher revisit is usually vital, because it helps to get rid of any organge pieces that look too bold and unlike rust and break up any corrosion brown patches that might sadly just look muddy, rather than rusty.

I have been trying to prepare my table for the start of Mission 2. That required a river. All went a bit wrong really.

Used parts of unwanted mdf paint racks to make a base. Used a filler /pva mix to give me banks and a river bed and sprinkled in flint shards to give texture.
Painted and then poured on clear varnish. The tape i used to keep the varnish in… let some of the varnish escape which was a pain.
I can’t tell at what stage, but noticed that the base warped fairly badly. Then i made a big mistake, thinking that adding a PVA glue might top up the level cheaply and dry clear… It dried as a misty layer. ?
I tried to salvage it by painting with Army Painter Strong shade and more varnish, but I have been left with a very muddy finish.
I have learnt a lot of lessons and at least have something to game the next mission with.

Metal Vulture from Reaper on a stack of books from a Mantic Games Terrain Crate.

I cut some lines in the base to give me a stone flooring look.

The next scenario says I may need a Vulture. The rules also give you the opportunity to use birds in your retinue. If he’s the enemy he’ll be “that darn bird”, if he becomes a part of my troop he will be called Archimedes after the Disney owl from Sword in the Stone. ?

First Bones mini i ever owned or painted.

Got caught up in the snobbery years ago, that soft, poor detail Bones minis aren’t up to much.

The price was right, I liked the look and I needed Trolls in scenarios on the horizon… so I got two trolls from the Dark Heaven Bones range.

Grey skin tone with a base grey of Mechanicus Standard Grey, with Celestra Grey mix for the highlight and messed around with drops of wash and straight Celestra Grey for the skin markings. Contrast for the wood and leather (Darkoath and Snakebite). Zandri base and heavy Wraithbone highlights on the skulls.

Used the gel glue trick again for the drool.

SkellyBob here is made from the NorthStar cultists box, I think. He has been sat primed for a very long time. I have finally got around to painting him.

One of my concerns is that the rest of my skeletons are very chunky GW skeletons in no clothes. I think I saw there are more than one class of skeletons in the game. This might make easier to explain away the difference. The rusty sword and the grim skin covered shield were fun elements.

The base is made of sprue pieces as rubble. It doesn’t look particularly like a natural wall collapse in arrangement but i am happy with it overall.

The Wargames Illustrated miniature range is great. Have got a couple of them over the years and they’re always fun to paint. This woman is pretty tall compared to even the barbarian NorthStar minis.

I would not like to be the fool that slashed her cheek and is now meeting her hateful steely glare of vengeance. ?