Frostgrave treasure markers & Purple Worms

I got around to painting the treasure markers I got from the first Frostgrave Nickstarter:

Also, some Reaper Bones purple worms for the worm hunt scenario. They look less purple in the photo than irl:

As you were.

Paukarlahticon V

The fifth Paukarlahticon was on 3-5.June and there were more people than ever there. 30 people came to play over the weekend which I am really happy about. A lot of games played, a lot of beer drunk and lots of war stories in the sauna!

Here are some random photos of some of the games played there. I will make separate posts on Cold War Commander and General de Brigade so you can check those out too.

A lot of Muskets & Tomahawks and Ronin going on this time. I think this is Ronin, correct me if I'm wrong.

Epic 40 000. My Dark Angels vs. Necrons. Looking good!

Or not. I was wiped away promptly. I really need to learn how to play this game :)

Late night drunken Bamboleo.

Good old Heroquest. Which is the best game ever made, obviously.

A tutorial game of Frostgrave.

Soldiers of God. I was interested in this but was too busy showing off Frostgrave to pay too much attention. It looked pretty card driven.

A friend of mine brought his 3D printer. 3D printing will definitely revolutionize our hobby in the coming years. I'll show off some printed stuff I paint later this summer.

The printer at work.

There were boardgames played as usual but as usual I was preoccupied in the miniatures section. If someone took photos, send them and I'll add them to the report.

Frostgrave: Thaw of the lich lord scenario 8

Not much left in our campaign. Just two more games after this and the Lich Lord will be done for!

Scenario 8: The Dark Cauldron

Cultists are cooking something odd in a big cauldron, the adventurers invite themselves to dinner

There is a big cauldron in the middle of the board which the cultists are guarding. Every turn a zombie crawls out. The soup must be spilled!

My opponent was undermanned as he had something like three warriors missing out of the game. He was also suffering from exceptionally bad luck when trying to get his spells to work so he was content to grab the two treasures he could claim and retreat when things got ugly.

I played pretty aggressively and had the fortune to drop his captain early on. I also hurt his apprentice and bound him in combat. The apprentice fought valiantly but eventually fell in personal combat against my wizard and his new pet dog. 

Wizard vs. Apprentice

Other than that, the cultists killed my treasure hunter and made my barbarian and my archer miss the next game. Nasty losses but since I got a lion's share of the treasure, XP and loot for this mission, I'm not concerned.

My wizard is now level 33 which coupled with good items and henchmen makes him quite dangerous.

Frostgrave: Thaw of the Lich Lord scenarios 4-7

I've been quite lax in updating the blog lately due to life stuff, but I've been getting regular games in anyway as well as some painting done.Today I have for you the summary of no less than four Frostgrave games I've played in the past couple of months!

Scenario 4: Storm of Undeath

The Lich Lord is flexing his powers, raising the dead during a magical storm.
 
The treasures were in an open space in the middle of the table and four warbands went in to retrieve them. At one point of the match there are plenty of skeletons who are animated by the storm so there are a lot of NPC enemies to handle.

The wizards attempted to grab all they can and retreat before the undead rise, but that didn't go too well for me as I got bogged down fighting another warband. My wizard cast his first successful Summon Demon and rolled 20, summoning a Large Demon!

The demon ended up clearing the center of the table of any skeletons remaining and my warband could retreat with only minor injuries. The demon is a good spell as in addition to getting an additional model to your warband, the demon is completely expendable and can be thrown in any situation.

Scenario 5: Run of the Rangifer

Rangifers are nothing less than WERE-REINDEER! They have natural bonuses versus the undead so naturally the Lich Lord aims to kill them all. 

A tricky scenario where the players attempt to save the rangifers from the minions of the lich lord while trying not to provoke them. That... didn't go too well in our game the wizards pretty much ended up killing all the rangifers themselves..

 

Scenario 6: The House of Longreach

Rumours of a fabulous treasure in a mansion filled with random teleports lure the wizards to fight each other again.

The wizards must try the teleports for a chance to get to a hidden treasure room, but it was more likely to get zapped by the teleport or to teleport to another door on the table. My warband got zapped A LOT losing a lot of health. My opponent got through better but ended up splitting his warband, making the part that stayed behind on the table easier to defeat. To make things worse, a troop of cultists attacked the treasure chamber and killed his guys over there.

Scenario 7: Lair of the Ghoul King

The wizards are trapped in the underground lair of the Ghoul King and must slay the beast and escape before being overwhelmed by ghouls.

My warband had survived the previous matches really well, taking only negligible losses. This scenario proved different. My opponent drew the ghoul king to attack him and defeated the beast easily, but there were a lot of ghouls spawning all around. I got the upper hand in the fight against my opponent, but bogged down badly while retreating to the exit. 
 

In the end my warband took out no less than twelve ghouls in this scenario despite the honour of killing the ghoul king going to my opponent. My warband got a lion's share of the treasure and a lot of EXP, but lost four men dead and one missing the next game! I lost a barbarian, a treasure hunter, an apothecary and a thug as well as a couple of magical items, making it nearly a pyrrhic victory! Good thing I've saved some gold to recover from the losses!

Thoughts on Frostgrave after about ten games played

Ok, we've played enough games to get a good idea on how the magic system and the campaign works. The basic game is quite competent although the big swings of luck built in the D20 can frustrate. The magic system is fun to use and there are a lot of different spells, but there are some which are just too good not to take for any Wizard (leap, elemental bolt, fog..). The campaign doesn't offer as much tinkering on your warband as Mordheim does and learning new spells late in the campaign will not do much for you as you'll probably stick to the few spells you have already maxed out.
I think if McGullough gets the opportunity to do a new edition which irons out the problems rules lawyers have thought up and do some balancing on the spells, I think it will be an awesome game. Now it's in the middle between ok and good.

Frostgrave Thaw of the Lich Lord scenario 3: Loot the Cart

In this campaign scenario the players ambush a supply cart belonging to the Lich Lord's cultists. Since we were four players on one table, we multiplied the number of NPC models accordingly. This worked out fine.

As you'd imagine of freshly painted models, my warband performed admirably and got out of the table with only three warband members out of action and no less than half of the treasure tokens on the table (four). One thug suffered a miss next game result so I sacked him and replaced him with another thug. I also got some nice items and loot. My wizard is now level 12, following a steady climb of about three levels per game.

Our host had bought a winter gaming mat during the holidays so the table looks appropriately frosty now!

Approaching the cart

Two rival warbands clash in a wall of fog (the paper stripe)

My warband bribes an opponent to give up the chase with one treasure token (I held five at one point but diplomacy is king sometimes in multiplayer games!) and leaves with the rest.

Frostgrave warband complete

My summoner warband for Frostgrave is now finished. I was inspired by the Arabian type summoner figure in Frostgrave to do the entire warband around the same theme. The Wizard and the Apprentice are official Frostgrave figures, the rest being a mix of Gripping Beast, Artizan and Reaper miniatures. Oh, and the servant model is from a Wargames Illustrated Napoleon vignette!

The whole bunch. Not a whole lot of variety but enough as long as I don't mind using the same figure from lowly thug to a knight as the campaign progresses.

The summoner and his Djinn. I Frostgrave terms, the genie is a summoned demon.

Apprentice and apothecary. "Care for a mana potion, madam?"

These two are thugs in my current warband.

Swordsmen/knights

Archers. Three is enough ranged power in a warband to make opponents worry a bit.

I use the one on the left as a barbarian (Hassan chop!) and the one on the right as a generic proxy for pretty much anything. He can be a barbarian, a treasure hunter or whatever.

I think these turned out ok-ish. The wizard and the apprentice ended up lacking that special something to make them pop out as warband leaders but I like how the genie and the barbarians turned out. I've been dunking figures in Devlan Mud for a long time and decided to do the highlights mostly by hand in this warband and wasn't especially happy on how they turned out considering the time I spent, so I guess I'll go back to my old ways for a while.

Frostgrave: Lich lord scenario 2

The second game in the lich lord campaign put the warbands on a frozen, slippery river. A spellcaster working for the lich lord was looking for treasure at the center of the board and was unfortunate to get sandwiched between two rival warbands. The game worked out pretty much like a normal scenario. The addition of an enemy NPC spellcaster and slower movement/broken ankles due to slipperyness didn't impact the game terribly.

I doesn't quite look like it's being fought astride a frozen river ;)

My warband was on the receiving end of a sound beating. Even though I limped away with three treasures, half of my force was out of action at the end and my freshly recruited barbarian and one of my archers died. After hiring new men to replace the dead, I ended up losing money instead of gaining any. The three levels gained were a mild solace.

My henchmen are wondering when their paint job will be finished.

After three games under its belt, here's my warband composition:

Base: Inn (allows 11 warriors instead of the usual 10)
Summoner level 9
Apprentice
Knight
Barbarian
Apothecary
Man-at-Arms
Archer
Archer
Archer
Thug
Thug

There's a sprinkling of magic items and potions in my inventory but I won't list them just to be able to surprise my opponents :)

Frostgrave: Thaw of the Lich Lord scenario 1

The new expansion for Frostgrave was released just in time for our second campaign game. The second campaign game ended up being the first game for the Lich lord campaign. To avoid confusion let's just say this was the first game of the campaign alright? :)

After the last game I invested on a knight to take my total warband size to ten, and to have someone to give the enchanted mail armor I found in the last game to. We played the scenario with four warbands. In the game, the warbands fight during a solar eclipse. LOS range drops steadily until the total eclipse, during which spells are much easier to cast and wizards who witness it gain extra XP. 

With four warbands on the table, fighting began on Turn 1. Everyone scrambled for the treasures in the ruins while fighting enemies on both their flanks. During the game I pretty much kept out of close contact, peppering my opponents with arrows while casting a lot of Leap to get my men to treasure tokens quickly. This paid off and I got out with four treasure tokens with minimal close combat. In the aftermath my thief got a miss next game result (I'll sack the lazy git and get a better warrior to replace him) but otherwise everyone was fine. My men picked up a bunch of gold, a couple of grimoires and a couple of potions. My wizard got four levels which I used to improve my spells. That's pretty much it for the first game. Didn't take too many pictures as my warband is still unfinished.

I skimmed the Liche lord expansion briefly and it looks like a solid expansion. The new henchmen, spells and such left me a bit cold, but the ten scenarios included look really interesting and different. They will probably shake up the "standard game" quite a bit and I look forward for more!

Frostgrave campaign game 1

Finally got my first complete Frostgrave game in. Didn't get any proper pics for you but I'll log the game here for the other players to see the results.

My starting warband:
Summoner
Apprentice
3 x Archer
Man-at-Arms
Thief
2 x Thug
Treasury: 20 gc
Base: Inn (Chosen after first game)

Game 1: vs. another Summoner warband
Scenario: The Complex Temple

The opposing warband had a two game head start on me, having a better level wizard and better henchmen, but in the game this was evened out by my good rolling. Both players left the table with three treasures and minor injuries. My Wizard got a "never quite as strong" -injury which makes him start every game with one damage already suffered.

Winnings:
Experience: 270 (have not chosen upgrades yet)
Treasury: 250
Grimoire: Reveal Death
Staff +1 Fight
Mail armor +1

A fun game and a good start for the campaign!