Slow But Steady Progress...

Well, things have been quite hectic with summer ending and trying to get the stars to align so we can move but I have been making some progress with my Frostgrave warband!  Currently I have both the wizard, apprentice, two thugs, one thief, and one archer painted with most of the others waiting in the wings for some spare hobby time.  No pictures at the moment but once I have them all done I plan on putting them up here for the world to see.

 

While working on finishing them up, I am going to get more done with my terrain project.  I have some of the bases cut out so I have an idea how it will all fit on there, its just a question of assembling the rest of the buildings.  I'll need to detail them as well of course but for now just getting the basic shapes assembled will work in a pinch.

 

And last but not least is getting my daughter some figures together so she can try the game.  With various things popping up we weren't able to make it to the Frostgrave campaign that had been running at our LGS but I still want her to give it a try.  The whole wizard and their henchmen digging through the ruins just really seems up her alley so this is really high on my priority list.

 

Not much else going on at this point.  I should have my warband done within the week so I'll be sure to grab some pictures once they're done.  Until next time...

Building The Ruins: Making Some Terrain For Frostgrave

After my game of Frostgrave I instantly thought that this might be a miniature game that my daughter would actually enjoy.  Miniatures wouldn't be a problem (thanks to all the Bones lying around) but some appropriate terrain was another story.

When we moved I had drastically cut back on my terrain, ultimately consolidating it down to two totes; one for natural features (hills, trees, and the like) and another for structures.  Unfortunately most of my structures were geared more towards my Warmachine days so it's a few individual structures rather than the dense fantasy cityscape that I have in mind for Frostgrave.  To remedy that I broke out the graph paper and started doing a little bit of planning (a truly insane concept but thought I'd give it a try...).

 

I was able to work out a rough sketch for a 2' x 2' board (on the small size but should still usable for Frostgrave) using a few different standardized footprints.  By doing this I hope to create some terrain features that can be set up pretty quickly while still giving the feel of a densely packed cityscape.  By using the common footprints I should be able to store my terrain fairly easily as well as I'm trying to make the shapes fit together for storage.  They are still a work in progress at this time but I'll be sure to post some pictures once I've made some more headway.

 

On a related note I've also found a handy way to get my board ready quickly.  Since Frostgrave is supposed to be an ancient city, I really wanted to give it a cobblestone feel.  I looked at a couple of options but happily stumbled across one that I think will work nicely and is dirt cheap as well (truly a great combination in my books...).

 

While perusing one of our local craft stores I found felt embossed with an irregular pattern much like stone for a just a couple of bucks per piece.  I snatched a couple up to test them out and lo and behold the turned out quite nice if I do say so.

 

 

In addition to keeping my costs down I also like that the board now has a little give to its surface to protect falling minis and the texture will grip the buildings a little so in theory they won't go flying across the board if the edge gets hit.

 

Now I'm off to build some buildings plus so treasure markers, spell effects, terrain... plus I should probably work on painting my warband as well.  Pictures of them coming soon.  Until next time...

Lightening The Load: Trollbloods Army For Sale

Hot on the heels of my Cryx army is my Trollblood army.  Unlike the Cryx, I never really got around to painting my Trolls but I do have a pretty respectable number of them as you can see.

As with my Cryx army, this Trollblood army gives you a solid base to start from and can easily be tailored to your play style by adding in a couple of units.  If you are interested you can find the auction at this link...

Trollblood Hordes Army

There will be more as I dig through the mound of stuff laying around but I'm going to try to get another article up soon.  I've been making some good progress with my Frostgrave warband plus some terrain (as a matter of fact both of the armies have been on the board I'm putting together for the game) but more on that soon.  Until next time...

Lightening The Load: Painted Cryx Army For Sale

Sometimes life throws you curve balls and other times it just aims at your head.  My family and I have been put in a position that we need to move ASAP so I will be putting a bunch of things on eBay over the next few weeks.  I'll put links up here on the blog for things that might be of interest to other gamers so please check them out or if you know someone who might be interested I'd appreciate if you could spread the word.

 

The first thing that has gone up is that painted Cryx army that I'd talked about selling a while back.  Well its finally time so they are leading off the charge.

 

This is a solid core for anyone looking to get into the Cryx faction of Warmachine, plus its painted and ready to go right onto the table.  If you are interested you can find the auction at this link...

Fully Painted Cryx Warmachine Army

More will be coming soon so please check back soon and if you know someone that might be interested I'd appreciate it if you could spread the word.  Until next time, thanks again...

Digging Into A Frozen Grave: Quick Review of Frostgrave by Ospery Games

I was recently able to try out a game Frostgrave at one of the local gaming stores.  I have had my eye on this one for a while thanks to Wee Blokes and Battleshed Diaries but I'd never had a chance to play so I was excited to see what the hubbub was about.

Let me tell you its worthy of the praise that its received.

The basic game system is very straightforward, so much so that I was able to pick up on all the basics after skimming through the rulebook for about half an hour.  Once Chad (the man responsible for organizing this particular campaign) had arrived, he told me to go ahead an put together a warband, broke out a couple of boxes of Dungeons and Dragons prepaints and less than another half an hour I was ready to roll.

For our scenario Chad decided to keep things pretty simple so it was just basically a smash, grab, and go; grab some treasure, smash anyone that gets in the way, get off the board as quick as possible.

To give you some idea how things played out, the table we were playing on was absolutely packed with terrain and the four of us each deployed on our own table edges.  For this game there were four of us playing; two running level 0 wizards (Matt and myself), John running a level 7 necromancer and Chad running a level 8 soothsayer.  I had no idea what this meant at the time but with my background in rpgs it sounded like us newbies were going to get ripped apart.  Wow was I wrong!

I didn't take any pictures but the basic run down was that John's level 7 wizards died in the very first turn when he became a pincushion thanks to Matt's marksmen (archers can be quite deadly in this game, especially when you are fielding them as a group).  This doesn't remove the player from the game (no caster kills here folks!) but it does put you at a pretty hefty disadvantage.  Even so John was able to hold his own especially since his apprentice was able to tie up Chad's soldiers with a repeated casting of summon imp.  You wouldn't think this would be a big deal and normally it wouldn't be but the dice rolls for the imp attacks were ridiculous!

Meanwhile, Chad was busy doing his own thing and gathering up treasures when he decided to push his wizard to death to get one of his spells off.  It was in the last half of the game that this happened so it wasn't too big a deal... until one of my archers managed to put an arrow in his apprentice and take him out too.

By this point the game was wrapping up and our warbands pulled back off the table to see just what loot they had managed to find, not to mention see if the dead were really dead. For every soldier, wizard, and apprentice that has "died" you make a die roll to see what really happened to them.  There's a good chance that the soldiers are just dead or injured but the wizard and apprentice are made of sturdier stuff (yes, I even typed that with a straight face...).  For these two there are more detailed injury tables which could hinder some of you abilities while still leaving you alive for the campaign... unless you are Chad of course.  With not one roll but two consecutive rolls of 1 on a d20  both his wizard and apprentice died, in the process also costing him all the magical gear they had collected so far.  Can you say ouch?

Flush from my victory (which in this case means not dying and reaching level 1), I headed home and started digging through my Bones Kickstarter minis to see what I could do to really make my little band of miscreants my own.

Needless to say I think this game is definitely worth looking into even if you aren't really a miniature gamer.  In our game only John was actually fielding his own painted minis while the rest of us were just using random prepaints.  There are no set races in the basic rules so you can pretty much just put whatever you can get your hands on onto the table and play.  On top of that you are limited to a maximum of ten in the warband including your wizard and apprentice so even if you decide to field actual painted minis you are looking at a very reasonable investment in time and money.

Now to get to painting so I have my own warband ready to go by our next game.  Until next time....