Dean’s 5LB Campaign

[Dean]

“We split up in the forest, to look for the beast, and I was pretty far from the rest of the gang when I spied the beast, a nasty looking Ogre, who sadly spied me at the same time! It was a hard fought battle of back and forth and just as the gang reached us I managed to land the final blow.

We arrived back in Freefield with the Monster’s head, and during the merriment that evening we learnt of yet more attacks by strange Fey creatures and sighting of a possible camp in the forest.”

[Dean]

This most recent game was the first of the Monster Lairs, in total there are 21 in the game.  I have just finished painting up the last of them, so here they are, with increasing difficulty as they go. Also my first go at using a scenic backdrop, a scenery shot that came scrunched up as packing in with an order recently 

[Ramirez Noname]

What a great thread.

Plenty of inspirational eye candy.

RMZ

[Plynkes]

Good to see your monsters.   

I currently have a grand total of two figures available for that role. I think I shall paint more up as needed rather than trying to do them all at once (don't even own figures for most of them). I am currently working on some Unique Character figures in between the faction stuff I still need, after that it will be more roadside and dungeon encounter critters.

Cool thing about this game is that you can generally keep playing with what you have, you don't need to front-load things and have everything painted at the start.

[Dean]

Thanks for those kind words guys.

Plynkes, I have all the Unique Foes accounted for too 

[Plynkes]

Hehe, you don't muck about, do you?

[Dean]

Nah mate, making the most of my return.  The fun continues as I start filling in some gaps in the enemies lists.  I‘ve been looking for an excuse to buy these lovely Lynx sculpts by Asgard Rising, so I’m using them for Elfin Hounds/Dust Hounds, including an armoured version as a Leader when needed.  Delve Crawlers (Cave Spiders) also from Asgard.  Both printed up exactly as I needed by Phalanx Printing, right for 28mm.

[Plynkes]

Nice one, you can never have enough critters for this game.

I have a few spiders to do, and find myself struggling to make a decision regarding colour schemes. I'll add your efforts to my memory bank of inspiration.

[Dean]

This next game was originally going to be another simple Camp Raid, but I realised the Story Points were stacking up and the Quest was a bit of a distraction from the main aim of clearing down Enemy Threats, so a plot was hatched to have a series of games against the Fey threat.  Game 13 became a Meeting Engagement against Goblin Raiders but that meant they had Outflanking on their side and then Lady Chance also through Unknown Enemy into the mix, so the 9 goblins became 4 in view, an unknown counter that resolved to another 4, and a final group of 4 more turning up later!

“Once again we headed into the forest, looking for the enemy camp, only to spot movement on the pathway.  A group of goblins were clearly visible, but a second, more screened by the trees, were off to the left.  We split into two teams and hoped we could deal with this without calling more trouble down on us. We laid our ambush and prepared to strike, but as the movement to the left resolved into four more goblins, we realised this wasn’t going to be easy!”

“Spreet and Miyako let fly and the battle was on. Three goblins down in the first round, another four in the second, and the last one was running away, things looked good.  Then we spotted that Grak was down and more goblins were on the way!”

“The goblins spotted Leonidas apparently all on his own and rushed towards him, but even a battle scared Feral knew better than to take on those odds and waited for the enemy to come to him, while the rest of us rushed to his aid. Our archers did well, downing two, and Leo using a bush for cover got in a counterattack that dealt with a third, and the last one turned tail and fled.”

“We could take no joy in this victory however as we found to our dismay that Grak was dead!  We vowed there and then to put an end to these Fey intruders!”

[Dean]

“The next day we continued towards where we believed the enemy camp to be, it seems we were indeed on the right track as we were attacked by a pack of Lynx clearly at the command of their Fey masters”

“The first beast to get close was shot by Miyako but the rest kept coming.  Then as we braced to meet their charge yet another four appeared on our right, lead by one appearing to be wearing armour!  We couldn’t wait for the first group to hit us, we had to charge into them.”

“It was a hard fought battle, with even Dorothea and Spreet reduced to hand-to-claw fighting, but I eventually took down the armoured beast and we could count our wounds.  Leo had an impressive scar even after Dorothea healed him, Spreet needed a bandage, and although Erik went down in the battle he wasn’t badly hurt and his broken spear was repairable.”

[Dean]

Tytan Troll Tree Blights

[Plynkes]

Oh no, poor Grak!

Oh well, plenty more where he came from, I guess...


I really like those tree blight thingies. I have some tree men from another manufacturer, but I think those would fit in fine with them. One cool thing about this thread and others like it is that I discover new minis I never knew about. I'm not very knowledgeable about what's out there in the Fantasy realm, due to the fact that I'd been concentrating on purely historical stuff for about twenty years prior to getting into Five Leagues.

[Dean]

ETSY has been a real eye-opener for me, almost any fantasy mini you can think of is out there somewhere 

The trick is finding good providers to work with, who are as interested in the hobby as us and will work on scaling to get you just what you need, and you need a few of them doing different ranges.  I’ve got four now I enjoy working with and keep going back to (with more than twice that many I have tried but won’t use again).

That said, up next will be North Star plastic kits for Gnolls (Gnawlings), Orcs (Dusklings) and Humans (Ruin Within/Curse of War) as I enjoy the process of making my own poses.

[Plynkes]

I have a bit of a love/dislike relationship (love/hate would be way too strong a wording) with the Frostgrave plastics.

On the one hand they are fantastic-looking figures that are great for building up your 5 Leagues factions, I have made good use of them and shall continue to do so.

On the other hand I find multi-part plastics a bit of an annoying faff to put together, and much more work than my lazy ass would ideally like to do. Working through my backlog of LoTR plastics is a breeze by comparison. But as I said, I'm going to keep using them, as they really are smashing figures. 

[Dean]

So for those that haven’t played 5LB, one of the enemy lists is called The Faceless - “A great and terrible kingdom is preparing to unleash its armies across the land. Wearing closed-face helmets, the grim legions advance under flags devoted to their animal totems.”

The list has 12 units, which in this case needs a mix of light and partial armoured troops, crossbows, slings, and unit leaders. From the following mix of figures I an make them all.

The figures themselves are all Victrix but using five different sets - Vikings, Unarmoured Early Saxons, Norman Crossbows, Athenian Hoplites, and the Greek Hoplites heads.

Sorry Plynkes, but I had a lot of fun with this