Fireforge Games Living Dead Knights and Renedra Ruins

I painted these multi-part plastic mounted skeletons I got from the Fireforge Games kickstarter several weeks ago, but I only finished the basing after FG passed me the GW stule cavalry bases last week. The leader figure is a resin model that was a poor piece of work, and one of the resons I will never spend any money on Fireforge Games products.

Here is the foot version of the leader figure, again a poor product.

The ruins are of course Renedra's plastic ruins. They are quite basic, and sadly come in too few styles. One of the pieces also suffered from the "impossible physics" problem of stone blocks which would not possibly be staying in place - I solved it by gluing the top part of the arch, which includes the keystone, back to its proper place.

I bought these frames to go with my small collection of ruins from the GW LOTR range. The Renedra ruins come with their own integrated bases, and I have applied the same stippling technique to help make them blend with the game mat I have.

Gaming in the time of Lockdown

Since the pandemic has made face-to-face gaming nonviable, I have been forced to look into other ways to play with my friends.

I managed to borrow a laptop from FG and got a zoom session going with the gang yesterday (more of that in the future), but I've also managed a couple of other virtual games since this whole things started.

The first is The Somme Campaign 1916, which my friend Steve and I set up. Since we live in different time zones, a game that required a quick response was not possible. Fortunately, by trawling through Wargames Vault, we found an operational level game that had a theme we enjoyed (as much as anyone can enjoy trench warfare), and which played at a pace that suited the limitations we faced.

I downloaded the game, printed out the board and chart (which you can see below), and instead of using counters I used the coloured pins I had and made counters out of them using a sharpie. I set everything up on a cork board, which made it easier to keep all the pieces in place, and to take photos of the board. I originally planned to play out all the moves and send them to Steve by email, but he was so inspired by my set-up he went ahead and built something similar on his end, so we traded photos each turn, with me playing out the orders and rolling all the dice. 

The second game was a game of Kings of War 3rd Edition with FG. I had spent a bit of time doing the movement trays for the two armies I own, and was really looking forward to some play with them this year... so why not now?

We played the game over a weekend afternoon. I prepared the army lists, set up the board, and sent FG a photo of the battlefield and my deployment via Whatsapp. He relayed his deployment, and once I sent him a photo of that too, he gave his orders by drawing arrows on the photos I sent him and returning them to me.

Granted the game lacked the social element of face-to-face gaming, but it was a good way to try the rules out at a leisurely pace, and give the figures some sunlight.

In the coming weeks my friend Dave will be GMing a Warhammer Fantasy Role-playing Game campaign for us via zoom, which I am really looking forward to.

I hope you are getting some gaming done in this difficult time too. Stay safe.