Rangers of Shadow Deep – Solo play project

Some of the early missions have giant spiders as a requirement. Someone on the RoSD Facebook page suggested these Halloween party favour spiders as a cheap Giant Spider option and I took their advice. I am selling my lefts overs from the packet on ebay. ?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264149229669?ul_noapp=true

I have based these, tidied up the paint that was already applied and added some extra colours myself.

Didn’t want to spend a fortune, when I won’t need these often after these missions, so was glad I got some passable spiders cheaply.

I got side tracked. I saw in the rules that there were Swamp zombies that made me consider how the swamp zombies would differ from the main ones.

I got carried away with the glue and the Nurgles’s Rot technical citadel paint and made several of them, when if i was remaining focused on playing I should really have been making standard zombies.

Used a dab of glue on the base, you can be fairly liberal because it finishes clear, glossy and boggy looking on the base, then using the nozzle or hobby knife drag from the base blob to a prominent point like an elbow or hand. The tricky bit can be that it finishes too thin as you drag. If it is strong enough you can apply nurgles rot a few times to build it up. If it does look way too thin try taking from the blob and aim another drag to the same point. Hopefully it merges with the old weaker strand on the way up. If it all goes wrong you have a reasonable amount of time to remove it before it sets. I have been told that bostick sets firmer and is easier to manipulate.

I also converted from a Mantic Games The Walking Dead All Out War game Walker mini. I chose to remove the feet because they were modern high heel shoes. The swamp was an easy way to hide the change. The bullet holes are a problem, but the spear through the back does take your focus away from the holes in the apron. The collar looked modern too, so i cut at it slightly and made it look like the apron neck straps. I liked it so much that i wrote a back story for her.

Fidelma the Blacksmith’s daughter was brutally murdered. Her ghost was said to walk the swamp where her body had been dumped and swallowed up. Resurrected in zombie form for some unknown dark purpose, she still wields the hammer of her trade; hell bent on revenge.

After enjoying my time painting Gnolls I realised that I should focus on the first scenario which requires Zombies.

I have tons of Walkers from The Walking Dead, but next to no fantasy zombies.

I love the Mantic Games zombie sprue.

I hope to mix in some heads of legs from the Mantic Games ghouls for variety.

I have also used some of the parts from the NorthStar cultist box.

I love using UHU glue (slightly slow to set tube of super glue) for gore – as I have used for the mini eating from the head in his right hand.

BoW Ben set a challenge to mess around with plastic on the Hobby Hangout show (16th Jan 19?).

I knew I would need citizens to bump into and protect during some of the scenarios so I went ahead. These are a mix of the barbarians and the Frostgrave soldiers box sprues and also assembled two women from the female soldiers box from NorthStar. (The guy pointing with a lantern also has a head from conquest games medieval archers box)

I knew i may also want to develop another warband eventually and may sadly (sniff) end up replacing a fallen mini at some point, so had fun and made two guys that are better prepared for a fight.

The painted guy with the drink problem is a metal Viking character mini from Black Tree Designs.

With the different bodies with the GW hooved feet and the Northstar gnoll feet theres a chance that they won’t mix. On the Shaman with the staff I just painted claws on the hooves and think it looks OK.

On two archers I converted, I used claws made from shoulder fur from Mantic Games demons and they seemed a bit too much like talons. I still like them, but on the other models I want to change away from hooves, I will try to cut the length down even more.

When it came to the patterning I allowed myself the freedom to change it away from strictly being hyena pelt if I wanted. I did look at their basic pattern as a guide. I have given them all pale ear tops and eyebrows and taken the hair at the centre of the back darker than most of the hyena images I have seen

To keep the cost down, I bought 2 sprues of NorthStar Gnolls and hope to use the spare heads etc to kitbash more than the 10 bodies provided.

When I got the sprues it dawned on me that that a standard pair of human legs and torso was not going to look right, especially the legs. They would need to be the hyena style, with different knee shape entirely and ending in a paw or claw to look right.

I realised that a friend had given me a box of GW Beastmen so I picked out some of the smaller minis and began converting and painting them.

I came up with a back story for Archibald The Grim as he heads into the Shadow Deep.
War scarred him and drove him to drink for years. The army spat him out after horrific campaigns and a civil war and he found solace in the bottle. Moving from town to town as a sellsword, bodyguard or even carnival wrestler, he wandered in a drunken directionless fug. A bar brawl saw him bloody but victorious when a wizard came recruiting for a trip to Felsted. After a year of fighting for Wizards in the Frozen city he has begun to turn his life around. He is a brutish weapon of war and has chosen to put that to good use as a Ranger. He is again a leader of men. He leads well, his men fear his rage and respect his experience and skill. His men’s only concern is that he is brave and loyal to a fault. Many have been with and around Rangers all their lives and feel the honour and feel a duty to protect every villager and urchin in their domain. Archibald was given the choice of rescuing a fellow Ranger or a villager and he chose the Ranger. This was against their code and expectations.
Archibald has impressed his betters through his commitment to completing missions and willingness to put himself in harms way, but his Grim blunt attitude towards anyone beyond the Rangers and his trusted companions is a cause for concern.

Aragorn completes the band. (I looked into some of the lore in the book – In my group Aragorn will be a Tallis born lord’s welp called Godwin, but the resemblance is uncanny).
I didn’t paint this guy. To make him my own I painted the trousers the same rangers green as some of the cloaks in the gang. They had done a nice job but needed a matt varnish over the gloss one they seemed to have applied. Only cost about £5 delivered from ebay. Archerongames was the user name but not sure who to credit. (whoever they were they were old school, because they painted the base green ?)
Also enjoyed the gargoyle head I added to Myfanwy’s base.

I bought a Black Cat Bases – Book Golem (still in the blister). While I was there I bought 2 dogs to add to my random encounters list, but they looked more tame and smaller than I expected.
Then I got my Nickstarter Frostgrave Folio with the extra barbarian sprue and I wanted to try making a tracker (Staff and Bow). Then I remembered the dogs and felt that one would really add to the look. A barbarian using a working dog to track seemed to fit.

So when i turned to RoSD this unpainted mini seemed to be a great starting point.

Another Northstar Barbarian mini became Edwin The Rogue. I used an archery arm with open fingers and put a throwing axe in the hand without any real thought as to how he would fit into Frostgrave. When I read the RoSD rules it mentioned that the Rogue in the companions section could have throwing knives or axes so the model immediately got drafted.

Myfanwy the Archer was made from the new Frostgrave female soldiers box.