We’re no strangers to Rangers of Shadow Deep on the Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast. If you’ve followed along so far, you’ll have heard our campaign progress as we played through the Deserted Village and Infected Trees scenarios that made up Mission One.

Now it was time to kick off Mission Two (The Beacon Tower) with its first scenario, The Bridge Guards. Here, we see the introduction of the Gnolls, and those were a mixture of beastmen and goblins on our tabletop.

The gnolls were guarding a bridge (hence the aptly named scenario) over a fast-flowing and very cold river, which we needed to get across on our way to Tor Varden.

I took Joe McCullough’s “wooden blocks” advice on this scenario. The table had to be strewn with rocks, boulders, and general cover – the idea being that the Rangers have the element of surprise (at least, until one of my guys manages to blow our cover pretty early on!).

I even used these blocks to build the bridge itself. Sure, it doesn’t look ultra-realistic, but suspension of disbelief quickly kicks in the minute the first dice is rolled.

We upped the challenge level by adding in a “Gnoll Lord”, who basically took the stat line of an ogre. We also gave ourselves some extra backup with the addition of ‘Goatsy’ – and he had a very interesting afternoon indeed!

Keeping the Joe McCulloch theme of this episode, I also wanted to chat about a book I recently bought and read through – Frostgrave supplement Perilous Dark. This excellent solo/co-op guide combines pre-written scenarios with a lot of how-to advice on creating your own scenarios and campaigns of this nature. Big thanks to friend of the show Mark on our Discord channel for the heads up about it!

This episode is sponsored by Midlam Miniatures. Three of the miniatures used in this scenario were bought from Midlam – Goatsy, Boarus, and the big lizardy lad playing the role of the Gnoll Sergeant on the bridge. You can see pics of the Kraken Cult, Grim Reaper, and Headless Lady miniatures mentioned in my post about Populating a Lovecraftian Dungeon.

Remember, we have similar reports from the Deserted Village and Infected Trees scenarios on the Tabletop Miniature Hobby Podcast, too.