SHADOWS OVER HAMMERHAL - THE JOURNEY - PART 5

So tonight we had a little bit of a mix up. In part 4 we introduced some of the new rules found in the past couple of months worth of White Dwarf. introducing the cards and the new locations

from the heroes previous venture into the dungeon it was time for something different.
we had picked up a bounty RAZE THE TEMPLE OF SLAUGHTER and we decided we would utilise this as a way to swap out who played the GM. My eldest daughter has a flair for literature and felt she wanted to have a go at 'driving' a dungeon.

i asked her to take a look through the fold out for the quest and tell me what other models i might need...turns out it would of cost me around £100 to flesh this out with pure Khornites. however the good thing with these bounties is that it gives the option to use the models from the base set..so you can mix and match them a bit. regardless I had an order on for new paints and dropped in another £18 for Skullgrinder, who just happens to be the boss baddie for this bounty.

additionally to this i wanted to get the Bloodreavers painted up. and wanted to utilise a painting process ive been trying out as of late whereby washing the model first with nuln oil would help pick out the details and settle in the recesses. then washing over the model with the various colours would..in theory allow me to paint up unit much quicker...8 hours worth of work and i had them painted up to what i feel is a decent enough standard for any table.

these guys were also featured as stand in for the khorn models i didnt have.

well this quest was a fun one indeed. as it was something a little different, swapping the GM around. With my wife slotting into controlling the Cogsmith and Fleetmaster.
she did pretty well too. kept things fluid and told the tale well as we fought our way through the dungeon. The wife however. not so well being her first outing as a hero..required a lot of hand holding. but then thats all part of the experience right?

it's a pretty decent sized quest too. The one thing to note. that my Castellant seems to of really stepped up a gear. my dice rolling seems to of taken a turn for the good. but its the skills i have combined in with him (i wont give them away as i want you all to discover this for yourselves)
But he is literally smashing his way through everything at the moment.
a few rookie mistakes from the young GM cost her giving us any real challenge. there is a very clear tactic within this quest which could of made it much more challenging if a more experienced GM had of seized the opportunity to pop a door open!
we simply kept everyone behind the battering ram of a Castellant.
even upon reaching this guy.

we swept him aside in a swathe of halberd and grudge raking.
he stayed on the board for a whole turn! yup skullgrinder was dust in the blink of an eye!
taking us about 3 hours or so. It's a multi layered singular dungeon with plenty going on.

again to state here. having the option to switch out the models for options provided in the main box set really is something i would of wished to of seen in other games of old. this isnt 100% driven on hard selling all of those extra models. they are nice to have, but not a neccesity!

so quest creators take note!
that the recent adversary cards released all have very clear indictation that for every adversary set there is a relevant adversary set avaialable. in this case the wrathmonger are to khorne what the blight kings are to nurgle. and so on. so this is a very healthy way forwards i feel..that wont burn too much of a hole in my pocket.

anyways we cleared up the dungeon. due to the multi level nature we had missed part of it. so we decided to go and explore further even after taking out skullgrinder. we cleared the whole dungeon. with the castellant leading the way.

we left the dungeon and headed upto the city to collect our bounty, but alas a huge carnival was taking place and we had no way of getting across town. so we headed on into the next mission.

not much to report on this one other than we found it pretty easy at this point.
we had our first meeting with Lord Redomir (who is due a paint job)
we finally met up with the Gryphound.
we progressed another level allowing us 3 skill cards now.
since i seem to of found the magic number with the castellant and his skills it is starting to feel a little bit too easy. adding the gryphound into the mix as well gives another attacking option along with the extra skill for each of the heroes made this entire quest a little bit of a let down. it was simply too easy!
it seems the balance with the castellant that struggled so much very early in the quest as swung the pendulum the opposite way. and he seems to be taking out an easy 60% of the kills

the other characters plod on. the loremaster has a set of skills all garnered around protection. he can shrug off blows at will.

the cog smith can even break away much easier now due to his skills, allowing him a very easy ride for keeping out of the way and firing shots off from his guns.

and the fleetmaster..is kinda boring..he is...it kind of just feels now that he is just coming along to hide behind everyone and then jump out at the last minute to kick a dying bloodreaver in the head and shout "yeh come and have a go now bitch!" :)

but that aside we wrapped up another mission. with all of our playing time clocking in at around 18 hours or so with another 3 quests to go. and still 2 more bounties to take hold of i can see us coming in at around 30 hours total play to wrap everything up.
the game is starting to feel a little too easy now. so in the interest of keeping things challenging. we will most likely move the difficulty level up to see how it goes.

and this last dungeon unveiled a surprising twist to the story..not going ot give it away...but not all of the quests are in a dungeon.


i think i may well wrap up my journeys in the next post. not really able to give away too much for fear of spoiling the plot. i have had to take a different angle on how i discuss the game. i feel ive given plenty regarding the heroes. and how they progress. a good insight to the city phase. and a good idea of how the game at least plays through.

so part 6 will be the last of the journeys where i will give my final synopsis :)

peace all

Putrid Blight Kings

as mentioned in my previous post i have had a swathe of painting buzz hit me early on this year.
in total i reckon i have painted up about about 100 minis (including all of the zombies from zombicide which i will post up soon)

but with my most recent buzz at the gaming table being shadows over hammerhal i have been eager to get it all wrapped up.

so the next part was the putrid blight kings. which i first need to say..are pretty fucking amazing!
i mean the sprues give so much choice. and they are fabulous characters. and were also fun to paint up as well.

the only downfall i had was that because i have been doing plenty of unit style painting recently, and quite successfully at that, painting these guys kind of broke my flow.
because i had to paint 5..they are sort of a unit.
because they have so much character. it would of been ashame to paint them all the same.

thats not a bad thing. but i did find i went from painting at 100 mph to about 10 mph.

painting up the previous khorne dudes only took me about 8 hours. these took about 15 to 20.
i just seemed to of lost my stride!

but again. they look great on the table so it was well worth it.
anyways here is a closer look at them all.

Again like some of my more recent models i have added some new styles to my arsenal of painting so i feel i have a wider spectrum now for mixing some different elements of painting. i have taken to always using a white undercoat that i wash with nuln oil then give an overbrush of white again to help pick out all the details and leave some darker greys in the recesses

And this gives me greater control when adding thinner glazes, for example to this kilt thing.. no highlight. no shades. just a simple glaze or 3 gives a basic highlight and shade look already. and this has helped me speed up moreso on unit painting. but also enables me to utilise this at times where needed.

 But then i also mix in some old school GW style of painting, like the edge highlighting of armour.

 or wet blending like on the this fur drape

 one thing i have never been 100% comfortable with is painting metallics. so hopefully in the near future i can spend more time working on getting better results on the metallics on the models i paint.

 also adding simple little glazes of mixed colours really help add some flavour to the skin especially.

 again here you can see the glaze method over my undercoat works really well on the haft of the bell and axe. 1 glaze of dryad bark and i'm done!

 as i say these models are great to paint because they enabled me to utilise lots of differing paint styles. and whilst taking longer. they were a great experience.

 all in all i am happy how they turned out. this guy being my favourite

and now they are all painted up and look great on the table.

this also wraps up all of the adversaries in the hammerhal box set. with exception of the sorceror. and still need to paint up the gryphound. so hopefully i can lay into those soon enough.

Blood Reavers

Only just realised that i had painted these up and not posted anywhere, even after already taking some snaps.

well this is another unit type of batch painting that i have done. that for the first time ever i think i may of reached a point where i havent hated painting them.
some of it lending to the models actually being fun ones to paint.
mostly though lending to the newer styles of painting ive implemented.

this entire unit took me about 8 hours maximum to paint and complete. Now for me. this is good. over the course of about 4 days 2 hours each day. and ive wrapped up a unit.

how this would of panned out in the past. due to me not enjoying painting units i would probably of done an hour a day at very most. then taking breaks inbetween (because i wasnt enjoying it) and would take me anything around 3 to 4 weeks to complete purely based on me avoiding. and taking longer to paint in general. so to go from that to 4 days and done. i feel thats a great step forwards for me.

anyways here they are. hope you enjoy :)

SKULL GRINDER

Hello again!

with my recent shadows over Hammerhal journey posts featuring me moving through the game, out experiences as well as the model i am painting. i also paint a few other things.
this is somewhat linked. but in order to keep up with regular posts i decided to split the painting for their own features.

we only have a few quests left of Hammerhal. but the 3 extra bounties that came in White dwarf gave us a little bit more lifeblood for extra quests

and speaking of blood. i purchased a mighty adversary to go along with the first bounty mission. being Khorne themed leads us to lovely chap.

wielding a mahoosive flaming hammer head on the end of a chain should make him a mighty adversary indeed??!!

I used a variation of methods to paint up this guy. starting with a recess wash of black over the top of white, then giving him a drybrush of white to bring out all the details.

I then painted in very thin glazes to make up the skin (that shading is natural from the recess wash as the start) all i dit was build up to a lighter tone.

i used the old GW method for edge highlighting the armour

and again some thin glazes for the flames. the purple pouch is is just 1 glaze. no highlighting and no shading involved..same for the boots 

 

painting in this way has also helped me speed up my painting in general. and i am finding i am much more happy with the results because i am not painstakingly spending stupid amounts of time on them. as well as actually saving the rainforest by not having to use so much paint :)

All in all. this guy took only about 4 hours to paint and i am really happy with the result.

the model itself is pricey (18 quid!!!!) but was actually total joy to paint as well.

i have been hitting my rhythm this year. and have already painted up more minis than i painted in the entirety of last year...so more posts to follow :)

peace  

SHADOWS OVER HAMMERHAL - HEROES

You may of seen some of my journey posts chronicling our adventures into Hammerhal.
you may well of also seen the odd picture of thier mini's as they have been getting painted.

well here is a better look at all of them

I decided that whilst i have been trying out different painting methods the last few months. i would simply trial how the paint guide within the box set fared. And whilst i was missing a couple of colours to do exactly the same. i was still able to find the odd replacement or mix up something similar.

LORD CASTELLANT

My guy during our campaign. i never really liked these gold shiny dudes when they first came out..sigmarines right?? regardless he was fun to paint up. retributor armour paint is by far the best quality gold paint i have ever used. the pigmentation is so full and the paint still doesnt clog up.

rather than paint using the colours provided in the paint guide. i went with retributor armour. washed with reikland fleshade and then simply built up in layers using chainmail (some of my paints are old!!)

regardless he was fun to paint. 

BLACK ARK FLEETMASTER

he was a pain to glue together and that anime hair needed a few touch ups. this figure isnt one i would of ever thought of purchasing. but now i have him. its a pretty cool mini. i love that cloak and the blade leg. also he was bloody hard to take any 'sweet spot' style photo. so apologies for lack of face shot.

LOREMASTER

This guy i painted up first out of all of them, due to my youngest daughter having this guy as her character. i had to lie and say it was a girl so she would play...c'mon GW sort it!

regardless he came out really cool. and im glad how the paint job turned out.

I have never been a fan of elves. but painting this one made me start to look at other alternatives as well. so may well make a few purchases soon.

COGSMITH

This guy in game is a total beast for ranged attack. that axe though, leaves a lot to be desired.

i'm not too keen on this sculpt. and due to his range. i was seemingly a little too far away when i primed him too! hence the graininess. but he came out well enough.

Ive actually painted all of the minis except 2 now in the hammerhal boxed set. So coming up soon will be the gryph hound and the chaos sorcerer. I also have to take some photos of the Putrid Blightkings who have also been painted up now. my next hammerhal journey post will add a few more too. and we are close to completing the campaign so will wrap everything up in a conclusion post. however based on the amount of posts ive put up about this game. that may well tell you how well it has gone down in this household.

Anyways enjoy. and have a nice weekend all :)

SHADOWS OVER HAMMERHAL - THE JOURNEY - PART 4

It's been a long time since the heroes returned to the wretched dungeon which they fled from during their previous venture. who knows what has evolved since that time? maybe the heroes got busy going on a massive bender to drown their sorrows. maybe they got sidetracked on some other mission?

Actually nothing happened because i haven't touched the game. i have however painted a few of the figures
the Knight Castellant had been and had his armour polished and his cloak re-dyed.

Additionally it seems some of the bad guys had time for a grooming whilst sitting around for so long waiting for the foolish heroes to step foot back into their realm.

a few other things have occurred since the heroes last took trek down those dark stairs!
the gamesmaster no longer has to flick through the pages of a book to look after his/her babies thanks to a little pack i picked up a few weeks ago!

This is something i pretty much screamed about when the game first came out. and now im so glad this exists not only will it allow people to add much more bad guys into the game but i feel and hope it will give a little extra support which will assist others in making quests or campaigns of their own.


In addition to this White dwarf has started to give us some warhammer quest goodies
December issue gave us
New quest - Raze the temple of slaughter

• This quest is attainable via one of the 3 new locations you can visit in Cinderfall and is a nice way to introduce 'bounty' styled quests to help vary the ongoing campaign.as stated the plan is for a total of the 'bounties' each upcoming in the future months within White Dwarf

Mercenaries

• another of those new locations give the heroes the ability to hire from a motley crew of layabout down on their luck adventurers to assist them in their adventures as well as providing 2 new hero cards for a Freeguild General and a Gunmaster. the rules are for 5 different mercenaries. the other 3 come from the app or hero cards that are currently on sale. but i see no reason why you couldnt randomize this with 5 other heroes you already own. the slight ruling of 'if you do not own the miniature then those mercenaries are not available' can quite easily be ignored. regardless its a cool addition that belongs in every dungeon crawler

12 new cards

• 4 skill cards to plug straight into the game
• 2 treasure cards top plug straight into your deck
• 4 quest specific treasure cards
• and achievement card
• new Cinderfall location card to include the extra 3 locations

pretty sweet!

January issue featured a new singular quest called -
Scour the verminlair 

• which gives us our first official chance to make use of all of those skaven i've been painting in conjuction with the new adversary cards...really looking forwards to this one!

there isn't any other new rules here in this issue but who cares.
in the past few months since the heroes last took the dive into the dungeon a few new buildings have been erected
they can now hire help
and they can now go on new missions too!

so with the last few months covered it was time for the heroes to dust off their weapons and go back to The Vile Dungeon they were driven away from with fear. back in part 3
after fight waves of blight kings (seriously how many kings to these chaos folk need??) the heroes fled from fear of being swamped once again. after finally plucking up their courage it was time to venture onwards....For Revenge!!

as the heroes warily stepped forwards a faint recollection came back to the battles that had taken place there a few months ago. they knew where they had already ventured and decided to take a different path. luckily for once each phase the heroes got lucky with no ambushes heading their way. maybe the villains had completely forgotten about them?
but it was time to press on past the dried up blood soaked floors into unexplored territory.
upon opening the the first portal once more the heroes were faced with even more blight kings
3 this time all lined up awaiting in a slime covered room.
the Heroes had learnt from their previous venture that if there is one carrying a giant bell or a standard bearer that they should dispose of them sharpishly.
And..as luck may have it. that door was popped open by a rather hungry and grudge filled dwarf who also happened to have just rolled 3 6's!! yup grudge raking time!!
taking out both the bell king and bearer whilst also sinking a few shells into the final remaining badguy, the castellant was able to sweep in and finish him off finally pushing him onto his 2nd skill level! yay!

the way forwards from here showed us a staircase that led both up and down. the air with thick with flies and stench but the heroes knew they had unfinished business here and ventured back from where they had came to continue their exploration.
More blightkings led to more blight kings. the heroes carved their way through until reach the final room.
adorned in slime, the air fettid and foul as swarms of flies rasped around the heroes stood an altar of nurgle. and yup 3 more blightkings!
the heroes rushed in for the kill. managing to cut down one of the foes and dealing some minor damage to the remaining 2. along came more blight kings. the heroes were starting to take wounds.
the castellant seemed to be the only one standing tall at this point as his armour shrugged off blow after blow whilst the Fleetmaster and Loremaster were both whittled down to 1 dice roll each. the cogsmith was managing to stay unscathed whilst doing minor damage. finally the castellant once more stepped up killing off 2 of the blight kings whilst the weakened pairing of elves killed off another. finally the heroes crowded around the last remaining blightking beating him to a pulp.
the dust settled and the heroes knew they had to destroy the alter before any more foul chaos worship could ensue.

upon destroying the altar a foul noxious gas was let loose which had set into the castellant who was now stuck with a grevious wound that would require special healing from a priest.
the heroes had fought back the waves of blight kings and all seemed to be well. the heroes rushed out of the dungeon with little stop them and headed back up to Cinderfall feeling triumphant!!

we had already plugged in the new skill and treasure cards and it was time to visit the newly opened establishments of the city.

Unfortunately the wounds suffered by the fleetmaster were far to serious to go walking around the ciy. the heroes sent him to the doctor who made sure bed rest was needed for the duration oof their stay. so he would not be taking part in the grand tour!

firstly the fleetmaster decided to take part in Conrads Contest of considerable challenge. and was able to pick up a a new skill for his feats, but sadly suffering a grievous wound which he would be taking with him on his next mission.

the cogsmith decided to go gambling...and lost heavily but clearly didnt care he was celebrating his revenge on the nurgle scum and didnt care if he lost or not.

finally the castellant knew he had to find a cure for the insufferable decease cast upon him. and decided to visit the priest. who'm the heroes had saved a few adventure ago. and he swiftly healed the castellant for free as repayment, having done so with such speed the gold clad warrior now was able to swagger his way elsewhere where he took a walk towards one of the new locations
Raven Bridge Bastille. upon hearing about 2 bounties available to the heroes. he spoke with the rest of the team. It was time to take on a bounty
it was time to Raze the temple of slaughter!

So it was a fun time coming back into the game after a few month away. all the new goodies at hand. newly painted figures gave us all a sense of adventure that had to be quenched. a revenge that needed to be completed.
we did both and whilst setting ourselves up for taking on one of the new quests at hand

In this quest there was nothing new really to be discovered. other than blight kings are proper tough SOB's
the fleetmaster and loremaster did very little as the castellant finally stepped upto the plate showing his metal.
the cogsmith as always kept his distance using that grudge raker to massive effect once more!


so next part. we will be taking on one of the new side quests. so really looking forwards to that. we decided on the december quest because we figured we would already have the figures at hand. we have also decided to use this as a way of switching up players. the side quests being a perfect interval for a player to try their hand at being the GM.
so down steps the wife as GM. and up steps my eldest daughter. who happens to have an extremely sinister streak to her. so its sure to be a challenge!

Stay tuned for part 5

RAZE THE TEMPLE OF SLAUGHTER

SHADOWS OVER HAMMERHAL - THE JOURNEY - part 3

Sunday 23rd July

No session today but i did finish off the Cogsmith

I wonder how he's supposed to go for a shit in that outfit?? I imagine him very clunky in his approach to everything. Smashing into doors and wondering why the hell he chose that novelty backpack!

Saturday 5th August

week off work so can see me getting a few things done on the game and maybe some more sessions to.
today we started on session 4 of which took us down to the 3rd level of the dungeon.
we had just gained our first level of experience, meaning now we could all have 2 skill cards instead of 1.

The one thing we noticed here is that there were a few surprises in store for us and we got to see a little more scope of what the GM can do. carefully wording some of the descriptions can be misleading or not. its down to the GM how they wish to weave the tale. a raise of an eyebrow or careful emphasis on certain words can lead more towards the mystery and help build up some tension when choosing your paths and adventuring further into the dungeon.
My wife has has only ever been 'the bad guy' in our most recent run through of Descent. so even herself would say that she is not an experienced GM. but she is really coming into her own and enjoying the experience with this game.

Additionally we were hit by a rather interesting room. up until this point the Cogsmith hadn't ever really come into his own. a couple of grudge rakings and discovering how inconsistent of a weapon it can be.. but also potentially lethal and here is where we saw the lethal damage it could do.
we were faced by a total of 10 enemies that caught us off guard. we werent expecting it.

firstly my Lord Castellant moved in picking up only his second kill. on this level.
next up the Fleetmaster shifting in picking off another.
the loremaster as usual fleeted in picking off the champion. and dropping a treasure found earlier that would prevent enemies from moving into adjacent squares to the loremaster.

we aren't sure if we played this right or not. but we took it as any adversary has to move into a square to pass through it. so based on this.. it essentially blocked the remaining 7 bad guys into a corner only able to attack the fleetmaster. onto the adversary phase. because they were blocked in they only managed to get 1 hit on the fleetmaster and the bottleneck here meant they could not do anything else.. as i say we may of read the ruling incorrectly here but if we didn't. it was obviously a very shrewd move to create the bottle neck.

at this point is where the Cogsmith literally tore the rest to shreds. rolling 3 sixes meaning that he would have 3 chances to let rip on the unsuspecting fools!
and exactly that happened. the Cogsmith took down all 7 with those 3 sixes and still had a dice left.

after about 3 hours we had explored all of this level, uncovering 2 stairwells, fighting some more bad guys and another Indiana Jones style room and finding another stairwell. this is where we decided it was time to head back up to the city.

this time a grand fair was on which meant we could only visit a few locations.
the Castellant picked up a new treasure from the house of Venargo and cashed in remaining gold for 2 more renown
as did the cogsmith.
the loremaster headed over to the guild of thumaturgists and picked up another treasure.
and the fleetmaster just cashed in his paltry 1 gold for another renown.

so that was our session. taking another 3 hours so that's 3 levels cleared. 9 hours played. seemingly quashing my earlier estimation that it would only take 8 hours to get through the game

what did we learn this time?

• scope of what the GM can do. i can see some real good story telling from this at some point. as we get further on in our quest the story evolves. and cant wait for future expansions or player made quests that build upon this some more.

• behaviour rolls - we haven't really seen anything good from these just yet. out of nine hours played every behaviour roll has pretty much been..move and attack nearest hero. so the toss up between choosing the behaviour roll or not hasnt really yielded too much in favour of the GM apart from a roll where you can spawn a pink horror or D3 acolytes.

• we also noticed on this level that it needs a component from silver tower. now whilst i have silver tower and this wasn't a problem. as a standalone expansion...its wrong to assume everyone had already bought silver tower. regardless it was only a blue portal. and we didn't have silver tower at hand, so we just used a standard doorway.

• Indiana Jones!! - so we experienced our second Indiana Jones style 'grab the treasure' room. this time with a pit which you must get over as quick as possible before the treasure is gone. its a smash and grab scenario which could go either way. get the loot or suffer high damage.

• ambushes - we got lucky on this level. only 1 ambush compared to the uncountable amount from the previous session. this level is a pretty big one too. so if we had of gotten more ambushes this could easily of been a 5 hour session.

• Lord Castellant - still struggling to find his groove. I've also had a run of bad luck with him. i get 6s when there isn't many people around so i cant hit the full potential of his lantern and i think this is costing him on the renown wheel massively. whilst everyone has gone around 3 or 4 times. he is still on his second cycle.

• Grudge Raker - with the right rolls this could take out a small army.

we really really enjoyed this session. it had plenty of action. plenty of kills thrills and the odd spill. the exploration of this level felt great and we all came out at the end wanting to play again. but alas tis late! so onto another day.

Tuesday 8th August

OK so today was a little something different. we are enjoying the game but are still a little concerned that because we are enjoying this game so much that by the time we finish we will most likely want more. yesterday i spent the entire day scanning the tiles and re scaling down to a A4 sheet style as well as creating a nice layout page with with a similar design and layout to that of the Hammerhal quest book. why? of course it's so I and others can make their own quests of course!

DOWNLOAD HERE

Thursday 10th August
we went to Warhammer World and i picked up some plague bearers from a rather disgruntled employee who huffed and grunted because i didn't buy more or any 40k stuff! but regardless ive added my first exotic adversaries!

Saturday 16th September
We have had a long break since the last session. but work has been immensely taxing and most of my spare time has been taken up by even more work or recuperating. luckily there was no ambushes waiting for me in that time.
i have completed the Fleetmaster

I have also done quiet a bit of painting on other projects and such within this time. getting a lot of paint work done on the castellant 80% complete. and the kairic acolytes.

but tonight we picked up  further plodding into the dungeon. as we moved down to the next level.
tonight was most definitely NOT our night. not even the freshly painted Fleetmaster or the nearly done Castellant could do anything to improve the luck here.

first turn we searched and found nothing, we are in a corridor with 3 exits.
firstly we get hit by an ambush which was evaded with the use of a treasure card.
next up the Cogsmith popped one of the doors open which forced us to miss the rest of the turn, waiting for us in this room were 2 Blightkings. the clumsy Cogsmith had gotten his novelty backpack wedged into the door frame and was easily taken out by the viscous Blightkings.
with the position being very much in the Blightkings favour the heroes decide to back off in an attempt to gain a tactical advantage.

another treasure card was used to bring the Cogsmith back into play but the bad luck struck again! an unexpected event bringing in 3 more Blightkings at the heroes rear.
completely penned in with a weakened team. the next hour was a complete slog where the heroes once more lost the Cogsmith and the Fleetmaster. spending lots of the gathered treasures thus far to finally see off the 5 Blightkings. this entire fight was our nights session. surrounded. stuck out of position in a tightly packed corridor. there wasn't enough room for any of the heroes to get into their best positions in order to try to pick off the Blightkings. the Cogsmith was pinned pretty much all of the time and never once got chance to pick up his guns. the Fleetmaster had very little chance to do anything only picking off a few wounds, which is ultimately why these guys had to take a fall.

as ALL of the blightkings were on the board they were getting all of the bonuses they gather from having all types available.whichmade them lethal. i think if the heroes had of been better positioned they might of fared better. but regardless they survived and made rather sharpish escape from the dungeon. walking away with only 5 renown picked up all by the Castellant and the Loremaster
1 treasure card and 2 gold.

the heroes were shaken so the city was their only escape.

along with this slugfest we had spent over an hour and half only uncovering 2 chambers. and most of that time was spent fighting. frustrations were high from this one never ever really finding any groove and had to simply grind our way to safety.

when up in the city a drunkard mistakes the Castellant again for another hero - this granted D3 renown. taking him up-to only needed one more to hit his 2nd skill, which is lucky because his kill count is the lowest in the team.

with the heroes only have 2 gold between them they decided to cash in for renown. again bad luck struck once again for both heroes trying to scrape some extra renown from a pretty poor venture and my Castellant was unable to get that much needed 2nd skill card.

so we wrapped up for the night all feeling rather disgruntled.

• my daughter who is controlling both the Cogsmith and the Fleetmaster was in a particular bad mood at not really having much chance to do anything with the Cogmaster. because of the cramped conditions and being pinned into a corridor from each side he was never once able to hit his peak. his axe is very much a substitute with the dwarf. and with the quite poor damage and hard to hit was only able to deal about 2 or 3 wounds the entire mission. 

• Fleetmaster also struggled with his fierce attacking skills being nerfed by bad luck and being surrounded. he can deal damage. but isn't great at taking it. this guy is the one that has fallen the most upto this point, relying heavily on the other heroes finishing the job. however as earlier described this guy is the poacher of the team. and quite often sweeps in and finishes off the badguys when the other guys have dealt the first blows.

• Blightkings made it hard for us to take out the kings that were buffing the others. constantly getting healed and having extra move allowed them to pin the heroes down quicker. this made the entire venture very very tough. if you come face to face with all 5 of these beasties make sure you take down the dude with the bell and the dude with the standard as you will suffer from the buffs given by these guys.

• oddly this time it was my Castellant that shone taking out the majority of the Blightkings between himself and the 'Loremistress' :) maybe everyone else having bad luck can pay off when you are shielded by 400 pounds of gold armour :)

so that was us on the 4th level of the dungeon. and didn't even manage to scrape the surface of this level. only 3 rooms revealed chalking up our playing time thus far to 12 hours ish

part 4 will take a little longer as i have pretty much caught upto where we are at now and i am also pretty steamed with work. having a ruck load of acolytes to finish and the castellant has been sitting around for a long time unfinished. but will have a new part coming up pretty soon.