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Since before all this craziness started my wife and I have been saying how we should start gaming again. This of course led to the question of, what to play? After some discussion and explanation (not to mention some gentle nudging) we decided to start a Ghost Archipelago campaign seeing as it ticked the most boxes. Its fantasy based, not too complicated or hard to learn, plays quickly, and the combat/general gameplay is enjoyable. I'll be the first to admit this discussion and decision occurred at the beginning of the lockdown and our first game was last Saturday. Why the long delay between deciding and starting? A good and valid question, which basically boils down to home repairs, relearning the system, and creating two identical (stat wise at least) crews. So as the lockdowns start to lift in some places our lockdown campaign finally begins. Before I forget to mention it this was my wife's first game and only my second. So we opted to ignore Heritor and Warden abilities/spells altogether. I know this takes a lot away from the game but we figured it was better to get the basics down first. Our next game will certainly include these however. By simple luck of the die our first scenario just happened to be X Marks the Spot, the first scenario in the book. We placed all the treasures and deployed our crews. My deployment. My wife's orks. That's when I noticed I hadn't rolled for the creature/creatures defending the central treasure. It almost didn't matter as it ended up being a skeleton that my archer killed on turn one. I'd call it the play of the day. Placement after turn one or two. I honestly lost track. As you can see we're both positioned to grab two regular treasures apiece while a melee is brewing at the central treasure. It was around this time that we both really got into the game and subsequently forgot to take any pictures. Not a bad thing, just not great for a battle report, I'll try my best to report everything missed however. 1.)The central treasure had become quite a melee involving both our Heritors and Wardens. I managed to knock out her Heritor just before mine went down. In the picture you can see the two Wardens squaring off for the treasure afterwards. 2.)At bottom center you can see one of my crewmen getting ready to escape with a treasure. 3.)Top right corner you can see one of my archers getting ready to escape with another treasure. I managed a very lucky shot which outright killed one of her crewmen that had nearly escaped with that treasure. 4.)Middle right my goblin crewmen is almost off table with a treasure. 5.) Not pictured my wife's orks secured a treasure on the left side of the board. The next turn I secured three regular treasures and the desperate fight began for the central treasure. With only my Warden and mercenary remaining I squared off against her Warden, mercenary, infantryman, two archers, and a regular crewman. Though I came close to taking out her warden mere inches from table edge and safety it wasn't meant to be. Both my Warden and mercenary were knocked out and she secured the central treasure. Her final positions after removing my last two figures. My casulties and treasure. Final results: My mercenary was killed outright while everyone else made a full recovery. Treasure: Fury Leaves +30gc 50gc Smoke glass and Lingle berry Heritor XP: 185 With my level up I increased my movement to 7. Warden XP: 60 Her casulties and treasure (including the central treasure). Final results: Her Heritor took psychological scars subtracting 1 from her Will, while everyone else made a full recovery. Treasure: Stinkwort and Farlight Leaf Fury Leaves + 30gc Heritor XP: 160 With her level up she reduced a heritor abilities utilization number by 1. Warden XP: 60 All in all it was a ton of fun and neither of us can wait for the next game. This game did however show me just how little fantasy terrain I actually have, so I guess I know what my next project is.

Recently I started playing Frostgrave Ghost Archipelago so my need for terrain has increased. One particular scenario in the rulebook caught my creative attention. It calls for a watchtower, so I figured I'd try my hand at building one. For the record this will be my first piece of terrain. I wasn't sure how I was going to build this piece and what exactly I was going to use. I remembered I had a leftover square "dowel" from when I built measurement sticks for Song of Blades and Heroes and I figured they would make pretty good supports for my tower. After deciding to use the dowel it didn't take much thought to realize I was going to make this piece out of toothpicks and popsicle sticks. Now I had to make a decision, would I build a ladder or a series of ramps? If I understand the rules of the game carrying a treasure halves your movement, climbing also halves your movement, and they stack. So if there is a treasure at the top of the tower (which the scenario calls for) it'll take a couple turns to climb down. With this in mind I opted for a series of ramps and platforms instead (my failed attempt at making a siege ladder also reinforced this idea). My watchtower so far. My failed attempt at a ladder. The platforms I decided to go with. The first ramp. I originally lumped this project in with my regular painting thread but I thought it deserved it's own thread (it is terrain after all), so here it is.

A few of my friends from D&D AL lately have been interested in getting into skirmish games. Since this is something I've been interested in (enough so that I've already bought and read a few different systems) I helped to fan the flames of their intrest by bringing in and teaching Song of Blades and Heroes. Everyone that played seemed to enjoy SoBaH, but they wanted something more RPG like. Basically they wanted a continuous storyline and the ability to advance/improve their characters. Luckily I figured something like that would happen and I was prepared, you see I had also bought Frostgrave and Ghost Archipelago. In the end we decided to play Ghost Archipelago and we set the date of the first game in a couple of weeks so everyone that wanted to play could learn the system and build a crew. Well the date of our first game was yesterday. So after AL we prepared for a two player game. Quickly we decided not to play a scenario since this was the first game for each of us and we both knew this was more of a learning game than anything. We setup our terrain, placed the treasure tokens, and placed our figures. It ended up we had more terrain than we needed. Had we not been scrambling to play and finish before the shop closed I would have remembered to take pictures. Oh well, I'll have to remember next time. Play began and I felt pretty confident. I was getting great rolls, unfortunately all my great rolls were wasted on unimportant things like iniative. Before I knew it I had lost my Heritor, Warden, Mercenary, Infantryman, and a crewman without taking out a single opponent. The dice were not in my favor, I was able to secure a normal treasure though. We had to finish up pretty quickly because the shop was closing but we were able to resolve our endgame bookkeeping before we left. My Heritor, Warden, Mercenary, and Infantryman survived with no injuries, my crewman however had died. The chest I secured held 40 gold crowns. My opponent did quite a bit better casualty and treasure wise. His entire crew was fine and he had made off with the central treasure. He ended up getting some gold crowns and a weapon (though I can't remember what weapon). All in all I can say I got my butt kicked but had a great time and I cannot wait to play again.