Forbidden Psalm Game! Plus Skull & Crown Skeletons!

WARNING: POST CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF SELF-HARM, HORROR, DEATH, GORE, COARSE LANGUAGE, NUDITY, SOME OF THE OLD ULTRA-VIOLENCE, AND SMOKING. 

So on Thursday Conscript Mike F. and some of the lads came over for our first crack at Forbidden Psalm, the super-grim tabletop game inspired by the Swedish RPG Mork Borg. Mike's been painting like a madman and I was really looking forward to getting a game on the table. We played the first scenario from the book - "Corpse Scavenging." Six corpses were laid out on the table and the two opposing warbands had to search them for treasure and "black fungus", a particular goodie that the Mad Wizard Vriprix would pay handsomely for. Above is Humfrid about to search a corpse. Mike had painted them and they were... horrifying.

Here's two members of Mike's warband trying to search another corpse. This one resisted all attempts to search it - seearchers had to make a Treasure Roll to successfully search, and these guys failed A LOT. Worse still, a model takes 1hp damage when they fail a search roll!

On turn 2 the Disembowelled Ghouls start to appear - these are pretty tough monsters and did for two of my warband. In the background you can see my erstwhile leader, Ulfnar, and great axe-man Karl (RIP).

Ulfnar and Mike's leader put each other out of action - we each used the Omen card that allowed maximum damage from one attack. Wow!

Karl here about to get put out of action by a skeleton summoned by Mike's scroll-user. He'd summoned him to menace my scroll-user, Astrid, but she used her own scroll to immunize herself from attacks by monsters.

This combat went on awhile - my rogue, Nils (second from right) snuck into Mike's deployment zone to mess things up. Unfortunately a Disembowelled Ghoul followed. (They are controlled by an AI formula).

Games run for six turns at most and at the end, I had three men down (one was killed) and I think Mike lost one. I got more fungus so a few more gold pieces from the Wizard. It was a fun game but took longer to play through than I'd anticipated - I felt bad that Frederick, Hugh, John and Dave didn't get to play also, but I think they had a good time kibbitzing. In any case maybe we'll play the four-player variant next time.

I'd painted this horror for Forbidden Psalm - it's the cover model for the game book - the Corpse Collector. Absolutely repulsive.

This model is a 3D print I got on Etsy, I think it came from Greece (!). This was before Mike tipped me to the guy in Quebec that's printing this stuff.

This'll give you an idea of the size of the model. In retrospect I probably should have gotten the next bigger one!

These bony dudes came in a recent order from Skull & Crown. They're super-cool obviously.

Dude carrying a brazier, he'll be the standard bearer if I ever build a unit of these guys.

The unit champion here, of course.

Skelly blowing a trumpet. Not sure how this works exactly but meh, fantasy.

I love this dude toting a huge basket of skulls and bones! Skull & Crown make some superb models and you'll see some more on the blog soon.

Well that's it for now, I hope you weren't too scarred by the Forbidden Psalm stuff :-)

Froztgrave Warband

 Progress has slowed down a bit during the summer, as it usually does. I finally finished a warband for Frostgrave to compete against the evil one I finished a few months ago. This group of miniatures is from a few different companies including, Die Hard Miniatures, North Star, Reaper, Otherworld and Hasslefree Miniatures. 

Avoid hasslefree! They were once a dependable company, but they’ve recently collapsed due to ongoing illness and an inability to carry out the day to day business. 

A wizard and his apprentice 

Expendable warriors

Barbarian, Khajiit, Dwarf and Knight

Reaper

Hasslefree

Reaper

Otherworld 

Die Hard

Hasslefree

Reaper

That’s it for now. Thanks for visiting!

Adios Otherworld!

Some sad news from the world of hobbying - one of my favourite companies has ceased trading. Yes, Otherworld Miniatures is no more. Conscript Dave V. shared a recent Facebook post where the company announced this, along with a sale of 50% off their remaining stock... quick as I was to get on it, I was far too late as there was pretty much nothing left.

Fortunately I'd placed an order not long before Prairiecon, and had gotten these two models (the "Brigands II" pack) painted. I do have a few more in the pending pile as well.

Anyway these models were typical of Otherworld, just excellent figures, great sculpts and well cast. Their miniatures skirmish wargame is great fun as well.

Allegedly the moulds are being passed on to other traders so the models may appear again from other companies. I certainly hope so, we've painted lots of their models and they're uniformly excellent. They totally nail the old school vibe that feeds the nostalgia of gamers "of a certain age".

So adios Otherworld, hope to see you again someday.
 

Fantasy Sampler

 I haven’t posted in a while so I figured I’d show you what I’ve been working on lately. I initially started working on my old world Warhammer Empire Army. I’ve been using Wargames Atlantic conquistador infantry as my Empire State troops. The models are great and easy to paint. The torso are in one piece so all you have to do is attach the arms with the appropriate weapon. I finished a unit of spearman and halberdiers on 25mm bases. I also finished two great cannons and a mortar that are from Gamezone Miniatures in resin. I was in the process of finishing the crew, but decided to pivot and start working on various models I’ve collected for several fantasy skirmish games. I picked up rules for Frostgrave, and forbidden psalm a while ago, but got discouraged by the need for various monsters and beasts to complement the games. I was inspired to give it another try after playing in Dallas’s dungeon crawl murder hobo game he put on at Prairie Con. The murder hobo fits perfectly in the Forbidden Psalm lore. They would also make a pretty good faction for an evil Frostgrave war band. Both Frostgrave and Forbidden psalm require a large group of models to act as a beastiary and I’m challenging myself to work through a large collection models as quickly as possible to make up this beastiary. I’ll have to find the right compromise between quality and quantity, as well as efficient time use. 

My first experiment is with Hero Quest goblins which will act as generic goblins for the various games. I used contrast paints and managed to paint them up very quickly. They won’t be winning any awards, but they’re basically just game pieces so it’s not worth painting them to a higher standard.

Primarily from Otherworld Miniatures. The scarecrow is from Northstar.

A mix of bits from GW, Northstar, Mantic Games and a HorrorClix werewolf.

United for a Frostgrave warband 

Very old Hero Quest goblins painted with contrast paints from GW.

Thanks for visiting!

Conscripts at PrairieCon 43!

Well the Conscripts didn't have a ton of quantity at Prairiecon this year but I think we had good quality. The scheduling was a bit... unusual as there were too many games scheduled (lots got cancelled for lack of players signed up) but since I waited till the last minute as usual I only got one on the schedule - Otherworld Miniature Skirmish Dungeoncrawl, same as I ran years ago. I had five players for it (including Conscript Mike F), only one no-show.

Mike took the Orcs of the Porcine Visage and their buddy Phil, the two-headed Ettin. Unfortunately Phil met a sticky end at the hands of the Vampire gang and Mike's Orcs subsequently bottled out of the game.

I had a surprise in store for the players who made it to the Wizard's conjuring room at the centre of the dungeon... an "Eye Tyrant". Unfortunately while it used its Web spells to good effect, the pesky assassin with the crossbow was able to sneak out - twice - and killed the monster with shooting. Damn!

Anyway after the Eye Tyrant was killed the last two players battled it out for access to the treasure room. More shooting did for one of 'em but...

                                            
A "Wandering Monster" card was drawn in the treasure room and whoops! Giant spiders!!

Anyway Mike ran a game there too - "The Doomed"! It looked really cool, some post-Apocalyptic monster-hunting. The guys playing really had a blast and it seemed to come down to the last die-rolls!

 

On Friday night I ran an extra-curricular game of Lunar for founding Conscript Curt and his buddy Jeremy, who drove out from Regina.

Lunar is a really fun game and I think Curt and Jeremy had a good time. 

Curt also ran a beautiful game of Hametsu (also from Black Site Studios!). Curt did send me a pic he took of me and Jeremy with the table, the terrain and models were off the hook as usual for Mr. Curt :-)

Other than playing and running games I also put in a couple hours at the registration desk and auctioneered as usual. The Prairiecon auction is an institution - a great place to move along games you no longer play or pick up some that you think you might, someday. I think the oddest item this year was a copy of the Barney Miller board game. It got no bids as it crossed the block but I was told later that it sold. Somebody got a beauty there :-) But three hours of standing, waving around 10-lb Kickstarter boxes over my head, and constant loud talking (I ditched the mic as it wasn't working well) was plenty for me. But I always have fun doing it and will be back next time, if they'll have me.

See you in Brandon next year!