Behold…

…my stuff:

So, in order to play Rangers of Shadow Deep and Frostgrave, I needed some treasure tokens. A number of people have made some cool looking tokens that feature heaping piles of golden coins and whatnot, but flicking through the rulebooks for the two games you’re mostly likely to find a scroll, a small amount of money, maybe a weapon (or in the case of RoSD, you’re more likely to find herbs than you are a rune-encrusted axe of destruction), so I started rooting through my bits box looking for suitable odds and ends to make some slightly more sparse representations of claimable wealth.

The first one I made obviously ignored everything I’d previously planned and was a four foot tall solid gold statue:

It started life as a Game of Thrones Risk Lannister piece, and gets a pass because the image of some poor thug having to lug that giant thing through the ruins of Frostgrave amuses me. I used the same textured paint on its base that I did on my trees, which for some reason looks terrible here.

I also picked up some of the official Northstar treasure tokens:

The little treasure chest because it was cute and cheap, the lamp because I think the genie scenario is great and want to adapt it for solo play, and the armour and book lectern because I didn’t have much in the way of grimoire looking pieces in my bits box. The armour stand got a transfer from an old Bretonnian sheet to jazz it up, and will also serve double duty as a bit of dungeon dressing for other games like D&D too.

I used a fine pen to add some squiggles and magical looking symbols to the open pages of the book (thanks live action Fullmetal Alchemist movie for inspiration) as well as trying to make it look like an illuminated manuscript which you can’t really quite see in this picture. There’s also a tiny cat paw print on one page, as occasionally appears on medieval manuscripts (presumably much to the chagrin of some poor ancient monk):

I also used some resin pieces from Zealot Miniatures:

Tiny, but absolutely great. I put them on bits of cork to make them stand out a little more (especially the potion bottles, which would have gotten a bit lost if I’d just buried them in basing sand). Grimoires, scrolls, potions, check check check. 

And then, the rest, which I tried to make as accurately multi-representative as possible:

While I understand suspension of disbelief and using my imagination (being that we’re playing wizards with little metal men) I wanted to try and create pieces that could represent whatever you rolled, despite the randomness.

Clockwise, starting top left:

GW bow and quiver and a tiny Bretonnian treasure chest. The bow could be a magic weapon, or just scrap to sell if you rolled money instead. Maybe the chest is full of rare herbs, or a spell scroll instead? Works equally well for wizards or rangers to find!

One of my favourites, suited more for Frostgrave - the death mask is a piece left over from a (still unfinished) conversion I started years ago (at least ten?) using Dante as a base, the hand of glory is a zombie hand and the scroll is made from tomato purée tube foil carefully cut and rolled up, with another long thin piece wrapped around it and carefully superglued to make a tie. Gold, spells, magic items, all covered no matter what you roll. 

A Renedra barrel with a Frostgrave pouch and an axe from a Mantic skeleton sprue leaning up against it. This one was made more with Rangers of Shadow Deep in mind than Frostgrave. Is the pouch the treasure, or the axe, or the contents of the barrel? Depends what you roll… 

Another Remedra barrel, with a skeletal hand still clutching a sword (probably magic, that) and a solid gold chicken statue that started life as a standard top on an Atlantic Halflings sprue. Just an excuse to use that bit as a gold chicken, if I’m being honest.

Skull in a fancy and probably magical hat, next to an elaborately decorated sword from the Khorne Berzerker sprue. My only complaint is it’s a bit hard to pick up given it’s low profile. 

I’m sure at one point I recall having made thirteen tokens, but there’s only twelve finished now so if it turns out my children have had one away at some point I’ll have to paint it and add it to the set later!

So, where do we now stand on being ready to play Rangers?

• Mystery additional structure
• Trees
• Cart
• Well
• Woodpile
• Crates and barrels
• a playing surface!
• Treasure tokens

Truth being told, these were actually finished last weekend, but it took me a week to get the blogpost written, so I’m already about halfway to having finished the next item on the list!