Thursday, May 19, 2022

Shadows of Brimstone - Core Set

 In April, I finished off my City of the Ancients Core Set for Shadows of Brimstone, yes, definitely not very timely with this post. At the end of last year, I had two heroes and the Goliath to finish off. I painted up the female Drifter for good measure, not in the core set, for Rachel to play. 

All the beasties in the starter set

Goliath


Drifter (expansion), Gunslinger and Saloon Girl

    While painting the Saloon Girl, I realized her hat sits flat on her head in all of the artwork in and on the box. The sculpt looks more gothic lolita then what is portraited on the front of the box, or maybe that's me, either way, she has a jaunty hat in my version.


Reenactment of a "Holy Shit" moment in game

    Wednesday night, my brothers, Shawn and Nathan, Rachel and I played the tutorial scenario for Shadows of Brimstone. We started by creating characters, Shawn went with the Bandido, Nathan the Gunslinger and Rachel the Saloon Girl (mostly because I didn't print off the Drifter's character sheet). I was the U.S. Marshal, a character I played previous in a Solo play. Everyone gets a personal item to flesh out their character, Rachel's Saloon Girl had a journal as a personal item that will probably tell of the horrors we encounter, and as a warning to those who find it should we fail!

First Exploration, a summoning circle, well, time to go home

    The summoning circle has it's own Advanced rules, which we ignored for our first run of the game, a lot of the tiles have additional rules. I do like how you can ease yourself into learning the game and bring in more rules as you get more familiar with the basic mechanics.

The first, and only fight we had. 

Gunslinger Nathan unloaded his deadly pistol into the first Night Horror

Dynomite from the Bandido took out the last two, with some help from the Saloon Girl and Slinger

    Not much fighting in our first game, which was fine as some of the fun was scavenging on each tile. These are random events that add flavour to the adventure, like how Nathan's character found a dead body at the entrance of the mine full of bandages. We started calling him a mummy, as he had 3rd bandage token from character creation.

    On the second tile, one of the events was called Tracks in the Dust, letting our party smash down a seemingly dead end. This would guarantee a clue on the next time, collecting two clues would lead us to Dark Stone and the final encounter with the horrors.  So of course that's what all the characters did besides Rachel, who wanted to explore (and her strength wasn't very good anyways.) Along her journey she meant a prospector and a room full of steam, both could have led to encounters, instead had some loot. 

    While fighting the Night Horrors in the final battle, I used my inflated ego (my Marshal's badge) to buff everyone's shooting or combat. This must have went to my character's head, as even with 3 shots for my shotgun that rolls D8 (instead of D6), I got three 1's on my dice. 

    I didn't get any experience points for killing the horrors, but exploring, scavenging and healing others all give you XP. So healer characters can still level up with the more aggressive characters. The game also scales nicely, potentially adding 2 more characters to a game, though our kitchen could barely contain a small map with four players.

    I have a few expansions that I really want to get at, but I already have a Glottkin to paint for May. Was very tempted to just assemble one of them anyways, clearly, I trying to find anything to distract me from painting the Glottkin. But the real monster of May is the gray tide, oh and procrastination! 

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I did get some painting in on the Glottkin, probably should show off some of my work on it as well as post my Character of the Month for April & May (once I actually pick one and finish it!) The backstories are bogging me down a bit.

    


4 comments:

  1. IIRC, Shadows of Brimstone miniatures featured prominently in last years' Monster May(hem). I'm pretty sure Azazel painted about twenty of them in a month! Some nice miniatures for sure. How is the game overall?

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    1. I enjoy it, it's solo or up 6. The encounters add some nice flavour to each delve.

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  2. Oh, wow! That's quite the set! Could probably make good use of the with Dracula's America.

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    1. I hear good things about that rule set, I'll have to check it out. Getting this done just makes me want to get the Swamps of Death starter set! Maybe after finishing the couple expansions I have.

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