Dungeon decor

I picked up Artifacts Set 2 for Mage Knight Dungeons on the secondary market, and I really like the look of these prepainted pieces. I plan on using them for terrain and/or objectives for Melee/Wizard, Frostgrave, Ghost Archipelago, and similar games. 

You can never have too much scatter terrain in your skirmish games, and this set even came with some rules for special game effects that I will try to port over to my own scenarios.

As you can see from my Warhammer Saurus hero (used as a Heritor for Ghost Archipelago), these castings are the right scale and style for dungeon crawls. I hope to see them in action soon.

Scenes from the Phantasmal Island Chain

This is a Ghost Archipelago game from several months back. There was a small lake with an island in the middle, where the main treasure was.

My lizardmen encountered armored skeletons, along with local wildlife. The main danger, however, was (as usual) other crews.

All of us made good tactical use of the terrain, as we each tried to abscond with as many treasures as possible.

Crew members in the water were easy prey for missile weapons, as were those of us foolish enough to stand on the island, surrounded by very shooty enemy crews.

There were also natives, including a witch doctor, that showed up.

What has everyone else been playing lately?

Ghost Archipelago locations

Here are a few setups for Ghost Archipelago games that we've used. These all involved homebrew scenarios.

Islands

River and waterfall

Lake

Temple

More islands

I'm curious; do any of y'all make up your own scenarios for GA, or do you use the ones from the book?

More Ghost Archipelago

Another game of Ghost Archipelago from a few months back. The scenario involved another volcano, so the island must be somewhere not too far from the realm of Muspelheim.

My Heritor and crew were quick to find the central treasure, surrounded by several smaller treasures.

Did I mention that the volcano was active, and belching lava what seemed like every turn?

To be fair, the scenario also provided for fissures in the ground opening up, as well as a tsunamis to mess with our boats.

Meanwhile, the crew that entered a cavern in the volcano was fighting some sort of demonic ... demon?

And my guys just kept getting splatted with lava, thanks to a location die that I think was unbalanced--how else to explain the molten rock always landing on my side of the table?

I mean seriously, we ran out of lava to place. You can see a fissure in this photo as well.

At the end of the game, the once-green island was ablaze with smoking lava fields.

At least some of the other crews got a taste.

There was even a tsunami that pushed some boats around.

This was a scenario that made us work for our treasures.

Some Ghost Archipelago for you

These pics are from a Ghost Archipelago game back in April. I took my Lizardman Heritor and the rest of his crew back into the jungle.

Sorry; I don't remember any specifics about the scenario. I do know my Heritor got into it with an opposing Heritor, but both of us escaped serious damage.

There was also evidently some native fauna to deal with. Whatever happened to reptilian solidarity?

Due to vacations and other obligations, we haven't played GA in over a month. Perhaps as a means of relief from the heat, we're probably gonna start a new Frostgrave campaign.

Run through the jungle

I haven't been blogging about Ghost Archipelago much, even though we've been playing that game on a consistent basis since January.

So here's a game from early April that involved our crews toting boats overland to a swamp in search of treasure.

Spoiler alert: What we found was mostly critters.

Yes, my Heritor and his crew are lizardmen. I like to be different.

And with a Wave Warden, I couldn't do much to keep the swamp denizens away, despite our common cold-bloodedness.

There were also other crews to deal with, although for most of the game we were content fighting the creatures and not each other.

A great game, and fantastic terrain by our resident terrain builder, Yosef.

A trip to Muspelheim

Recently the Heritors exploring the Ghost Archipelago heard of a possible mapstone located on a volcanic island far to the south, called Muspelheim. The mapstone was found in the body of the fire giant Surtr, who dwelled in the volcano, surrounded by the Sons of Muspel.

This was a scenario I came up with and ran for our group recently. There were three players (my warband sat out since I was running the game). While Surtr didn't leave the volcano, the Sons quickly set out to drive off the trespassers. And while Surtr remained on the mountain, he threw fireballs at the approaching crews, fireballs that ignited into fire demons if they missed their target.

Players also summoned some wandering creatures through spells, and the critters joined the Sons in attaching crew members. The Pool spell did take the steam out of the Sons of Muspel, who didn't get along very well in water.

While some crews engaged the Sons in hand-to-hand combat, it didn't go well for them.

Perhaps it was smart of them to keep their distance from Surtr himself, who was very powerful in combat. Instead, the crews volleyed arrow after arrow into the fire giant, finally bringing him down from afar.

I enjoyed getting these minis out on the table, and it was a good time running the scenario.

A familiar face in the Ghost Archipelago

Another custom scenario last week. In this one-shot (non-campaign) game, we each received a Heritor with random abilities, a Warden, and three specialist crewmembers, each with a single Heritor ability. The backstory: We'd all heard rumors of a newcomer to the isles, someone from a frozen city far to the north. If this individual found the Crystal Pool, then Bad Things would happen. So we banded together to seek this person out.

He was known as the Lich Lord. And he brought his undead friends with him to the island. Maybe it was the fact that my lizardmen had more detailing, but they were easily able to defeat the skeletons that came at us.

The Lich Lord had found some local allies, tribesmen led by a witch doctor out for power. But some archery took out the spell caster before he could do too much, and I brought my tomb robber in to take out the warriors, with some backup from another warband.

The allied Heritors and their assistants put an end to the Lich Lord's exploration of the Ghost Archipelago. Here's hoping he stays up north.

Hunting dinos in the Ghost Archipelago

One of our group wrote a scenario and we played it a few weeks back. each group landed on a separate corner of the island where a large dinosaur roamed. I took my lizardman warband, still with unfinished bases. This adventure was similar to one of the scenarios in the rulebook, but the main critter was a lot tougher.

Dead bodies marked the treasures in this game, luring each warband in to grab the valuables. The catch: Baby dinos were chowing down on the corpses, and a search would bring the critters out of the bushes.

Meanwhile, Momasaurus was roaming around and spotted another warband. She was mad, bad, and dangerous to know--with a +8 Fight and having a second attack in the form of a tail sweep.

The baby dinosaurs were a lot easier to overcome, although when they popped out two or three at a time, it made things a little worrisome for my warband. Still, my reptilian warriors had no qualms about fighting their distant cousins.

Some other monsters showed up on a random encounter roll, including this swamp troll. I teamed up with another player to defeat this creature, but the same player later took out my Heritor and two other crewmembers because he thought I was getting away with too much treasure.

On the other side of the island, the warband belonging to the scenario's author finally took down Momzilla, after losing several members of his warband. The slain beast yielded a treasure or two, hopefully making it worth his while. A fun game, even though my Heritor received a permanent injury. Them's the breaks.