Rangers of Shadow Deep - Game 1

Hello Everyone.

Painting has been going slow, and Youtube productions even slower. I've got no great place in my home to really film anything at this time as the place is quite literally a warehouse. I have still been painting and trying to everyday. Fortunately I can meet up with Tim and game from time to time still.

Today I played my first game of Rangers of Shadow Deep with Tim in a coop mission. We both rolled level 0 rangers. Tim's ranger was more of the melee type and brought an Archer and a Man-at-arms while I created a more ninja/acrobat type of build.  I brought along a Rogue, Bloodhound, and a recruit.

Not sure what Tim has taken, but my Ranger for skills and abilities has Blend into the Shadows, Evade, Smoke, and Heal. I was going for the ninja/magic user type of feel. I know Tim has more warrior-esque skills, and brought heal as well.  I have a hand weapon, light armor, a throwing knife, and 2 throwing daggers on Kalam. I know Tim's guy has heavy armor and a shield!

I also name all my characters. I don't think Tim named his yet - he tends to give them names as he plays based on what they often or are apt to do. My ranger's name is Kalam Bridgeburner, the Rogue is Gustav Bladeburn, the recruit is Deedle Surefoot, and the dog's name is Scrappy.  I'm bound to add other types of companions later on depending on the scenario,  but for now I stick with these lads.

We also threw in some houserules - We gave the old frost grave status of "Wounded" to heroes and monsters that would normally receive it at 4 hp (So undead at deamons are never wounded). Furthmore, we decided to give enemies the ability to Critical hit as well, which adds +5 hp to damage.  This would make the game more challenging.

Game One set up - We started with the first mission as found in the rule book - the village with all the dead people and wandering zombies.. We were sent by the King to see what has gone wrong.. so what caused these zombies to spring up? We didn't have a full roof for the building in the top left corner, so we pretend it had a roof. The top left and bottom right buildings contained two clues, while the rest of the clues were outside behind each house. 

My Ranger has +3 perception and was able to notice that one of the clues was closer to the party than originally though, so the clue marker outdoors at the bottom left house was moved closer towards us. 

 Tim's heroes at the top - archer, Ranger, Man-at arms in that order left to right. I brought a bloodhound, a rogue, my ranger, and a recruit. I've got minis that I feel better represent my retinue but they're still being painted!

 The game began, and we both immediately thought it best to take out the critters roaming around. There were four zombies and two giant rats.  My ranger and Rogue engaged this zombie, but it was tougher to kill than expected, and my rogue was wounded.

 Tim's men go in to take out a rat, but are met up with the Zombies... the archer takes a beating.

 Zombies incoming towards the lone recruit. The recruit in his next turn would dash towards the nearest clue!

 Random event.. the zombie we just killed, seemed to just respawn out of the earth in the exact same spot!

 Tim had some fresh zombies incoming as well...

Zombies popping up everywhere!  My recruit approached the clue and found that it was a type of feather that increases shooting but lowers fight and will once used..

 Tim's posse turned all the zombies into spaghetti real fast.

 Meanwhile, my ranger takes out the engaged Zombie and steps back behind the rogue to cover him. The rogue, wounded, was able to use his single action and directly plant a throwing knife into an oncoming zombie's brain thanks to a critical hit roll.

 The zombies were just swarming Tim's group, but his heavier fighters made work out of them. The wounded archer moves toward the locked door and would try to pick lock it next turn.

 Zombies incoming....my ranger was able to heal the rogue at some point.

 I had to include this pic... it looks like the two men are fighting and the zombie is rushing in to tell them to stop the war...when in reality, it was the zombie who was defeated.

 Ohhh horror. The roof on the house near the recruit collapsed! Luckily he dodged the debris.

 Gadzooks! a Zombie came and took out my damaged Ranger! First game and the first model I lose was the proxy model for Kalam!

  Eventually, the whole lot of our parties were able to smash the zombies back to dust without casualties.. the archer on the top left pick locked the door and Tim's ranger found a clue. A dead body with spider mandible bites...

 Meanwhile my recruit was trying to knock down the door of  building that just collapsed..

 But a giant rat spawned at caught him off guard! Luckily he killed the rodent!


After the newly spawned rats appeared, it was just a matter of cleaning up the last clues. My bloodhound was able to find the body of an important Ranger, but since he was a dog, he could not attempt to find the ranger's magical weapon (did not have the skill to check for it), and so that objective was lost.  Afterwards, more rats spawned and they knocked out the dog...  Tim was also able to find a village survivor locked inside the house where the roof had fallen.. must have been horrified to death since his house just collapsed and there were tons of Zombies!

My dog and ranger survived, and all rangers got to level 1 , improved skills. Everyone got a progression point except the dog , who did not make it to the end of game 1..

Having found out that it was vile giant spiders that had laid waste ot the village, the rangers and crew  were able to use the recovered bloodhounds tracking skills to track down the spiders' whereabouts. Somewhere on the edge of a deep wood, the spiders made their home . . since the dog's tracking and nose did not fail him, we were able to arrive early on the scene and one spider was not spawned. That's good since that was probably the one that took out my ranger the first turn!

On the right, four trees infested with spiders eggs were laid out in a row, and there were all sort of clues and cocoons around the forest... our mission was to destroy these spider spawn points.

The game began with all parties moving forward, enemies included. The spiders had pure line of sight through all terrain and suffered no penalties. I guess they know their forest well.  A zombie spawned once I reached the first cocoon and tried to kill us, but Kalam the ranger took it out. 

Tim moved forward and it looked like the bulk of enemies would attack his men.

Very scary giant spiders, indeed! 

A whole lot of arachnid action on Tim's side! It was discovered that there was an additional spider egg point nearby, and another giant spider, one with blue hues appeared!  Tim fought off pretty much every single spider as they all charged his group. His men were poisoned and wounded by the end of it!

My lot only dealt with a single zombie and a single spider - the zombie had been killed by the ranger, whilst my rogue threw a dagger into the body of another spider and killed it outright.

At one point my rogue got caught in a spider web, which held him for three turns or so.. he doesn't have a good strength skill to break out of those webs!

 As Tim constantly fought fires, my ranger and the rest of his companions were chopping down spider infested trees. The rest of the game was basically Tim taking out all these spiders, while Kalam and his companions freely flanked around the other side and took out all of the trees.

In the end, Tim was able to destroy all the crazy spiders that had been harassing his lot, and destroy the last tree.... His group suffered a lot more wounds and poison but it was good his heavier melee oriented group took on the brunt of the attack.

And so, the first chapter of our adventures in Shadow Deep come to a close... we wiped out the horrible spiders that had infested trees nearby , and made that neck of the woods.. safe again!  The King would be proud of us.



Next time, we're apparently being sent on a mission to enter a watch tower or something of the like..and I should have much more specific minis painted for Ranger's of shadow deep instead of these historical and Mordheim soldiers I have been using,  so stay tuned for that!

Hope you enjoyed this little battle report - cheers!