Tag: Frostgrave

A Second Go at Frostgrave

At the weekend Goat Major invited me over for a game of Frostgrave, which we played once before and had a lot of fun with. As it had been a long time since the first game we decided to simply start again, both using pretty much the same warbands as before.

Mine is based around a Necromancer, who has suitably motley followers, including his (when successfully raised) pet Zombie, Alan. GM’s lot are an Arabian looking mob led by an Enchanter on a magic carpet.

The scenery was awesome as before, a complete setting with everything gelling together and making a very challenging landscape to fight over. Lots of obstacles, cover and height changes are important in this game, and allows you to clamber and hide to your heart’s content. Clearly there’s no frost involved here, but the game’s the same whatever the setting. We played the Silent Tower scenario, but I spent most of my time just trying roll above a 5 on the cursed d20.

We took a while to get back to understanding the rules properly, but after a few oversights we had a very entertaining game. Although I managed to get half the treasure off the board, I left 80% casualties behind. Fortunately I made all but one of the post-game survival rolls for them, so it wasn’t all bad. GM made it to the tower to get additional experience points, and if it hadn’t been for his apprentice getting gored to death by a randomly encountered Boar, he’d have won by an even bigger margin.

Despite a fair few casting failures we managed to deploy quite a few spells between us, which of course is what Frostgrave is all about. After the game we rolled up the results of our scavenging and now have a bit of money to spend, and some options to play with. Hopefully we’ll pick this up again in January for some more fun. Thanks GM for the excellent hospitality!

 

 

Ice Demons – Cos ‘Tis the Season

I’ve had these Demonworld figures for a few years, having bought them on ebay when the range was out of production. Although I prep’d and based them at the time, I’ve only just now painted them. They didn’t take very long, so as always it’s a mystery why I kept putting them off!

I decided that they’d look best in icy colours, and I’ve dry-brushed the bases with white over the top of my usual green/brown.

They’ll be used in my 15mm Dungeon game as big demons, and potentially in 25/28mm Frostgrave as man-sized demons.

 

Frostgrave in the Sand

Very late in posting this one, but a few weeks ago I had my first game (one and a half actually) of Frostgrave, courtesy of Goat Major’s hospitality and excellent Oriental-style table set-up. As you can see from the pics below (and here: http://goatmajor.org.uk/ on GM’s own blog), the game scenery for the fictional sand-bound ruins of Sarapur was top-notch!

We each selected a starter warband, with GM going for an Illusionist and me a Necromancer. This allowed me to have a very useful spread of spells, including the handy Bone Dart missile attack, and the very entertaining Raise Zombie option. My tame zombie ‘Alan’ was a slow-moving plotline all of his own, and managed to make a bit of a nuisance of himself, albeit having to be resurrected a couple of times.

Alan gamely attacks the enemy wizard:

 

We played an initial game with a half-warband force each as a learning exercise, which was very effective as a way to get to grips with the rules without being bogged down with too many figures and capabilities. I managed to kill the Illusionist with a bone dart towards the end, but of course we weren’t counting the results of this test game towards the campaign 🙁

Then we got into the main event – a full-sized game using the Mausoleum scenario, which sees skeletons issuing forth from the central building and causing plenty of mirth and mayhem while we tried to acquire treasure and fight each other.

The rules provide an interesting, fun and unpredictable game, and the wide variety of spells offer lots of tactical options for aiding your own side, hindering your opponent and securing treasure, etc. GM used Push effectively – on his own guys (to speed them on their way once they’d picked up some treasure), mine (off a roof) and on wandering monsters to deposit them in combat with my force. I used wall of fog to provide cover from archery, telekinesis to pick up treasure, etc. It’s an exercise in cunning and sneakiness and very enjoyable all-round. My apprentice was a liability, failing enough casting attempts to inflict a lot of damage on himself!

 

The game ended with most of the hired help out of action and our wizards both decided that to stay any longer was to court potential disaster. We both had treasure and called it a day at that point. We rolled up our loot, and will give some thought to new spells, etc, between games.

The d20 system for combat threw up a handful of big results (eg. my Templar going down in his first round of combat to a thug..), but we felt this was in the spirit of a fun, wizard/magic-centric game and not a problem. Overall, the Frostgrave experience is a very good one in my opinion, and we will be returning to Sarapur to continue our campaign soon I hope.

Figures Based for Frostgrave

With a possible opportunity to play some Frostgrave on Simon’s awesome ‘Sandgrave’ terrain, I thought I’d better finish the bases on the figures I painted (or in some cases re-painted) towards the end of last year.

It’s nice to get some of these veteran figures ready for action again, with not an ink-wash or fried egg eye in sight any more. 🙂

A motley crew:

More to do, of course, but one at a time isn’t so bad, and there are enough already done for a warband.

Bits and Pieces

Not loads, but a few items were progressed this week. I finished some 6mm FPW Bavarians that were mostly done back in August, which means the Bavarian corps is now complete. 🙂

Also, I painted the Fenris Games treasure chests that will one day be used for Frostgrave objectives:

Next, a horse and limber (Front Rank) for my 18th century Fleurian Legion artillery:

I have also painted a battalion gun for a new battalion that I’m basing, and which will be the subject of its own post soon (I hope!)

Finally, I painted a first Conquest Games plastic Norman Knight for my Lion Rampant force. It was a simple paint job and a nice easy figure to paint, which gives me some confidence that I’ll get at least a unit done for the November multi-player game.

 

I’d like to get a game in sometime soon, so will have a think about what I might manage to get set up next weekend.

Some Fantasy Dabbling

It’s been a bit quiet on the Medetian front of late, caused by the usual excuses of a busy time at work and lots of other commitments. Still, I’ve managed a few bits of effort here and there – mostly around something new (which of course I need like a hole in the head..)

For quite a while now I’ve been thinking about trying to find a way of playing some fantasy games, based on a party of adventurers and some linked dungeon-crawls – you know the sort of thing. There are lots of games out there for this type of thing, including boardgames and board/figure cross-over games, etc. I hadn’t done a lot of research and was even thinking of designing something myself (and was a bit put off by the idea of having to obtain lots of floorplans or 3D dungeon scenery), so nothing was really happening with this idea. Then along came Frostgrave, which looks very nicely done, and likely to be spot on for me.

I have a reasonable head-start with stuff for this, including winter/snow terrain boards (although I appreciate that you can ignore this element of the background and set your games in any type of setting), buildings (although more on that later) – and lots of old figures from D&D and Rolemaster days.

I had a bit of nostalgic fun looking through these veteran figures from the ’80s and selected the most suitable for use with Frostgrave. They’d need re-painting but doing them one at a time should be quite good fun, so I’ve re-undercoated and re-based some. Where they were slotta based, I’ve done some fudging to get them onto 2p coins. I haven’t decided on the basing style yet, in terms of surface texture and painting, so for now I’m just giving them a smoothing coat of plaster to make things match.

Initially I’m working on two parties (referred to as Warbands in the game), one ‘good’ and one ‘evil’ in style. This is just for fun really, and to differentiate between the figures in a reasonably logical way. I’ve also got quite a few suitable monsters and other nasties that might be encountered, so should be able to get some early games in (when my pre-ordered rulebook arrives) without too much work.

The first few done:

 

Good old traditional adventurer types will fit into the henchmen categories, and a wizard with a pointy hat and staff will always be useful:

A Wizard and Apprentice team:

GW Empire Militia kit bashing. Lots of potential in these figures, from the 12 I had on sprues I’ve managed to make (in Frostgrave terms) 6 Thugs, 2 Infantrymen, 1 Archer, 1 Crossbowman, 1 Tracker and a Thief:

Of which two have been painted so far:

More old figure candidates for a possible repaint (not that I’m really likely to need more, but hey):

Some treasure markers to paint (Fenris Games):

Ideas on scenery next..