First Ever Frostgrave Battle Report: The Keep

 

I recently got to try Frostgrave for the first time. My witch, Hannah of the Owls, led her warband to explore a magical keep to try and recover magical treasures and knowledge. As her warband approached the perimeter of the keep, they spotted a rival band, led by an experienced elementalist. Both sides drew weapons, preparing for battle.

There were five treasures, one in the centre of the keep on a raised area, the other four in the centre of magic circles spaced around the edge. The warband split up to gather the treasure before they engaged the opposing warband. As warband members on both sides started entering the circles to retrieve the treasure, there were fizzles of magic, but nothing happening . . . 

. . . until one of the warband thieves walked into a circle and in a flash of magic teleported across the keep to another circle. Unfortunately, the circle where the other warband's barbarian was standing.

Several of the warband jumped into the magic circle to try and rescue the thief, but to no effect. Our little gremlin thief decided to "waste not, want not" and grabbed the treasure from the circle.

Meanwhile, the magic circle on Hannah's warband's side was suddenly full of rival warband members, who quickly grabbed the treasure there and started planning their escape route.

The warband thug ran into a magic circle and was pulled over to the magic circle with the barbarian, and the two of them together managed to push the barbarian away, even though they weren't able to take her down.

As the rival elementalist saw my warband starting to head towards the central treasure, he summoned up a gigantic stone wall to block access to the treasure.

Still, it turns out that you can climb, so my woman-at-arms spent a couple of turns climbing over the wall, and engaged the rival man at arms while another warband member was fleeing with the treasure.

A portal flashed, and a giant worm arrived, drawn by the sounds of conflict.

Hannah's archer was overwhelmed by two of the rival band making off with one of the treasures.

The warband's crossbow-woman was chased by the worm, and chose to flee to get away from it.

A hostile construct then arrived, probably following the worm as a threat, but then identified multiple "thieves" in the keep, and moved to try and stop them.

My woman at arms was magically leapt to chase after the treasure, but was caught up by the rival warband and overwhelmed.

Hannah's apprentice ended up caught by the worm after a cunning plan to lure it across the teleport circles to move it elsewhere failed.

A desperate scuffle was breaking out over the last treasure, as both sides had, by now, escaped with two.

The back and forth continued a short while, but soon, Hannah's warband was overwhelmed, and the elementalist's band escaped with the last treasure.

In the aftermath, Hannah's warband took stock. Our woman at arms had been killed outright, and the party apothecary had been injured badly enough to miss the next expedition. No-one else suffered significant long lasting effects. Checking the recovered treasures, Hannah discovered a Staff of Power that would help with her casting, and a significant pile of gold, which was enough to hire a Templar to replace the deceased woman at arms with a little spare.

With my wizard having also gained two levels, I enjoyed my first game of Frostgrave. I'm still learning the rules, and now need to paint up a Templar before my next game.

Hedge Witches, Goblins, and a Plinth

 

This week, I finished up the Hedge Witches from Conquest Games. They were a good couple of miniatures to get my vibe back for painting. They're good options for Frostgrave, too.

I've also been plugging on with the Aenor Miniatures goblins. I got started on them ages ago with a sepia wash over off white, and they've been sitting for absolutely ages. I was very pleased with how a little drybrush really brought out the details on the cloak.

Three of the five are now finished and waiting for photography. I'm going to finish the last two before I count them all as "done". I'm also pondering the Steel Legion Drab base rim - maybe I should change it to black?

My big purchase that arrived this week was this 5" x 5" plinth from Fenris Games. I've picked it up for miniature photography so I've got an alternative way of raising miniatures up to the hills I'm currently using. It'll need washing and cleaning up before I get started on painting it, but I'm going to finish a few bits and pieces first.

End of month check in, and Marching forward

 

February has been really busy. I went to Tinbot III in Norwich, I've been busy having a clear out on eBay, I played a bunch of games at the club again, and my work was really rather busy as well. That did mean I didn't get quite as much painted as I'd have liked, but it was still a good month for hobby all told.

I got Dukash painted early in the month for the tournament, and he did well in one of the games I played him in..

The Tiefling Warlock also let me experiment with a possible Morat red skintone, but while I liked this one for the Tiefling it's not what I'm looking for for my Morats, so I'll try something else on another model until I work out what I'm looking for.

I had a bit of a painting stall for a couple of weeks after that. A mix of being exhausted after work, spending more time playing games, and prioritising getting stuff listed on eBay to sell over painting meant I didn't get anything else finished. This is fine. It's about priorities, and things being out of the flat before we move is more important than a few extra miniatures getting painted.

That said, the goal for March is to finish my half finished jobs - both these part painted models, but also finishing those half assembled Exrah that I abandoned out of frustration a while back. Which I definitely need to space out given . . . you know, that giving up in frustration issue I mentioned.

I also got in my first ever game of Frostgrave, which I'll write up on the blog later. It's a fun, swingy game that I really enjoyed. I think it's too random to try and make it competitive, which helps keep the pressure off.

I also picked up the John Blanche paint sets from Army Painter at the end of the month which I'm planning on using in some projects in the future. I'm pondering doing my Imperial Agents in a limited palette scheme using these paints but I'll need to do some test models to decide if that's the right call or not.

Frostgrave Warband and Plans

 

The club has started running a small Frostgrave campaign, so I've decided to dig out an assortment of miniatures I've painted over the years. It took a bit of searching, but here we have Hannah of the Owls, a witch and her warband.

Centre, we have my warband's wizard, or rather witch - Hooty from Bad Squiddo Games. On the right is the apprentice, from Oathsworn Miniatures Sensible Shoes range. The goose is a model to be a summoned Ice Toad, and is from Northumbrian Tin Soldier.

For my specialists, I have a Crossbow woman, an Apothecary, a Woman at Arms and an Archer. The Crossbow woman is from Reaper Miniatures, the apothecary is from Otherworld Miniatures, the Woman at Arms from Bronze Age Miniatures, which I picked up from their UK seller, Fenris Games, and the archer is another Bad Squiddo miniature.

Finally, a thug and three thieves. From left to right, another Bad Squiddo miniature, a Toadstool Brownie from Fenris Games, a rogue from the Dungeons and Diversity range by Strata Miniatures, and finally another Otherworld miniature.

I'm not sure when I'll manage to schedule my first game in, but I'm aiming for some time this month...

A pilot, a rogue, some unexpected weather and behind the scenes footage

 

I managed to get Oktavia Grimsdottir finished up for my first game at the club slow grow. She's a human pilot who works for Aida Swanson the Shasvastii smuggler. It was a little bit of a challenge to come up with colours that fitted my Shasvastii scheme, but by painting her jacket the colour I use for their tech, and her hair the colour I use for their guns, there's enough visual clues to tie her in.

I also finished the elf rogue by Strata Miniatures. This is from their "Dungeons and Diversity" range of a bunch of traditional fantasy heroes in wheelchairs. If you want to run a character in a wheelchair, there's homebrew rules available for a combat wheelchair for D&D, while Pathfinder 2e remastered has equipment rules for wheelchairs in the Player Core book.

I will need to get a bit of a shuffle on with painting. Blue Giant Studios was ending a few lines of minis and having a sale, which meant a few bits and pieces of those turned up. I also ordered the Blood Bowl "Made to Order" Halflings, which turned up within a week rather than 180 days later, which is inconvenient for getting ahead of my painting numbers. With the "Made to Order" for the Empire Wagon just announced, I'm looking a little nervously at the paint desk.

While Storm Eowyn meant I was mostly expecting the weather to be absolutely awful, I woke up Sunday to calm, sunny skies, and rushed to find everything I've been putting off undercoating over the winter. This was definitely the right move as it turned absolutely miserable on the Sunday, and I'd have got nothing done.

Two Daturazi Witch Soldiers and Bit and Kiss now have their zenithal finished and are ready to paint. These are pretty staple picks for Vanilla Combined Army, especially the Daturazi. They're not going straight onto the paint table just yet, as I've got a tournament in early February. I use contrast a lot in my Combined scheme, and I worry about it rubbing off if I take a half finished model that hasn't been varnished to a game...

Meanwhile, I've also finished fishing out an assortment of minis I've painted over the past few years to use for Frostgrave, written a list and picked my wizards spells. That will be a future blog post, and while I was taking photos of this week's completed miniatures, I took a few glamour shots of them too. I still want to play with my lighting set up a little more - I'm not 100% happy with it - but I do feel that my miniature photography has been improving of late.

Weird little jobs and weird little miniatures

 

It's been a busy week, but I did manage to finish re-undercoating the base on this Rasyat with Boarding Shotgun so it's ready for paint. I'm rushing to try and complete Oktavia Grimsdottir for my Shasvastii so I can use her in a game, but it's going to be close...

I had a little store credit with Bad Squiddo Games, so picked up a couple of sculpts as I was ahead on painting having finished the Lyran Battlemech lance this month. Old Man Shroom is an interesting weird little sculpt that can be a good Pathfinder NPC. Meanwhile the other sculpt is a Kasa-Obake, a spirit possessing an old umbrella from Japanese folklore. I grabbed this because this is a valid PC option in Pathfinder from the recent Tian Xia Player's Guide, and I couldn't not.

Upon purchasing miniatures, I was immediately struck down for my hubris by the arrival of more miniatures. From Bad Squiddo. In my defence, these are Community Miniatures Project minis from last year. These are the last of the "catch up" minis, so the project will be re-launching shortly. As it is, I have two pirates and an angry lady with pigeons who will all happily turn into fantasy NPCs without any work on my part whatsoever.

I've been continuing my clear out, and sorted through all my cases for miniatures I no longer need. I pulled out all the ad hoc ones for listing on eBay, but kept back these two Servitors with Heavy Bolters, as they're going to fit nicely into my Imperial Agents army along with all the random Inquisition stuff I already own...

The other half of the case trawling exercise was pulling out miniatures I can use for Frostgrave, so here's the starting candidates. I need to dig out the rules for what soldiers have what weapons and how many points / gold my warband is so I can have a shuffle through some builds / work out how many of my favouritest models in the world that I've painted I can fit into a single warband...

Plans for 2025

My plans for my hobby this year are a bit different. It's looking like we're going to be moving house this year, and I really want my focus to be on making the move less painful rather than painting a few more figures. The blog may get a little quieter in a bit, but I've got plenty to do before then.

I do need to buy less stuff. I say this and fail many years, but I really need to not mess this up this year, as the cost and the time of the move is really going to exacerbate any failure. I've updated my tracking system, and the goal this year is to buy less than I've sold and painted. I'm excluding anything pre-ordered from previous years, because nothing ruins a system by punishing yourself for something that happened before you instituted it.

With the new edition and a move coming up, I've decided to focus in on just the Combined Army for now. HATE is holding a slow grow League, where I'm playing my beloved Shasvastii, while I'm planning on getting Vanilla up and running for tournaments and so on.

The club is also running a Frostgrave campaign, so it's time to dig out all the random bits and pieces I've painted over the years to put together a warband. I don't need to paint anything new for this, it's more a case of using stuff I've already painted.

I've been trying to improve my miniature photography, particularly using the Jon Hodgson background books. I'm likely to take a weekend some time to do a whole bunch of photography so that I can schedule a bunch of cool photos to "hold down the fort" on the blog as house moves happen.

. . . and really, that's it as far as planning goes this year! Between "sell stuff" and "move", I don't want to over-commit. I'm hoping that by Autumn I'll be able to pick up some new project, but I'll look at how the world looks then and work out what I want to focus on. No point in over-planning right now.

Hobby Admin

 

I've not been getting much painting done of late, but I did spend the weekend getting a whole bunch of "hobby admin" done. I had two commissions back - this big pile of Nomads back from my Infinity assembly guy, and another Terrain Crate back from Brushchewer Inc. So the painted models need photographing, and the assembled ones need checking and putting away.

I've started playing D&D in person. It's a campaign with multiple games of D&D in a linked world. It's good fun, if not hugely deep due to the number of players. I went along with a couple of ideas and ended up jumping into playing a Kobold Druid, because I haven't played one of these small agents of chaos in forever.

I already had the Frameworks Kobolds minis, so I headed up to the storage unit to dig them out.

I hit level 2 after my first session, so I also grabbed the box of horses I had at the unit so I could Wild Shape into a bigger lad if needed.

The "miniatures to borrow" for new players were also a bit limited, so I grabbed some spare Frostgrave sprues I'd been planning on selling to assemble and paint for them instead.

I didn't have a bunch of the things you can Wild Shape into, plus the campaign allowed the Strixhaven backgrounds, so I grabbed Find Familiar via that to allow some additional nonsense. To cover all those options cheaply, I picked up the Reaper Bones Wolf pack and Familiar Packs to get some simple models done for that.

And finally, I ordered a single sprue from the Wargames Atlantic Giant Spider box to make me a Giant Wolf Spider. The seller was also selling single Battlemechs, so I grabbed a Locust for my small militia lance.

I also had a couple of Infinity boxes that were going "Last Chance to Buy" show up, and picked up a few other D&D things from the storage unit because I was full of keen, and all together, that's probably a Bit Too Much to be doing. I'm spending more time sorting stuff out than I am painting...

The Horus Heresy minis are going into the "abandoned projects" pile for now as I stalled out on sorting their bases. I'll finish up the dwarfs and the last of the Dungeon Debris, then move onto something new to get me motivated again.