SPOILER ALERT TO MY ADVENTURERS! The following post contains spoilers for the up and coming campaign. You may want to avoid this post and join me in a future one.

So I have painted the well that was printed off for me. I had run out of primer which put a stop on doing the boat tiles themselves.

But once finished I decided to knock up another part of the dungeon. Which is the photo below.

I did eventually get my hands on more primer (probably not nearly enough) and have sprayed an initial batch of boat tiles.

It was annoying me that I had enough pirate figures, or ones that can be used as pirates, but they needed trimming and gluing. So I finally caved and ordered a cheap model builders kit off Amazon that got me the needed clippers. It also got me a mini self healing mat for cutting stuff on, a scalpel with spare blades and a file.

So Saturday evening I spent clipping and gluing to make the pirates/vikings. This really is my least favourite part of the hobby. How anyone gets enjoyment from this I don’t know.

However Sunday was spent painting the miniatures. I only finished 2 completely because they were the least complicated. The others are in various stages of painting.

I had decided early on whilst I was painting I would concentrate on the models I needed for the first session, and leave the ones that appear much later to last. However as I painted the models in the stages, ie applied the Viking blue to all those that were going to have that colour, or apply the barbarian flesh colour to the models all of a sudden apart from some hair Angrath is almost complete and just needs washes and dry brushing.

It appears that the players have a date for our first session now. Boy has that been like extracting teeth. I’m glad I put the onus on them to make the decision. It was painful to watch them discussing it. I would have been infuriated if I had been trying to arrange it. The whole “I’m thinking of a number, can you guess it?” part of the process I find so frustrating.

I have shared a copy of an excel spreadsheet with the players that summarises the players characters stats.

I have asked them to check the information and let me know of any corrections. One or two of them the hand writing is hard to decipher.

While I was in excel I decided to start to populate the encounters with creatures. I just need to copy the stats across, pre-roll the initiative (to speed combat up a little) and work out the passive perception.

I’ve also been doing minor updates to the other planning notes, like finally setting a DC level for the locked doors. I added a couple of items to the treasure room, one of which is cursed!

I’m also getting inspiration for one or two of the adventure hooks. There was a recent Encounter of the Week on D&D Beyond that uses a skill challenge to navigate successfully through a wilderness. This would be a great way for the party to navigate through the wood covered part (which is most of it) of Mintarn to locate the secret cave of the Ironstar Dwarves.

On the model front I will try and get some viking villagers, put an order in with my guy for the 3D stuff for some 3D trees, and some viking huts. I might try and get some generic figures that can be used as ship crew and townsfolk.

That’s the thing about this part of the Forgotten Realm. There is two real distinct groups of humans. One is viking influenced, whilst the other is more medieval European. There are definitely elven and dwarven communities as well in the area. And they will break down into at least a couple of sub races, like sea elves for example.

Other races will be present but as enclaves within the major settlements.

So when it comes to models to get, I know that I have a focus on the prominent races of the area.

That’s the progress I’ve made on planning and prep since the last update.