Thursday 5 November 2015

Frostgrave Terrain part 3


The beginning of this Frostgave Terrain Project can be found here
 
 
It would appear that my forays into the World of Frostgrave have captured the interest of a number of parties – over a thousand page views on the day I posted part 2 of the terrain build. It would appear that this particular game has fired up so many imaginations and created a vast community almost overnight.

I believe the official forum is hosted on the Lead adventure Forum and the volume of threads appears to be growing daily. There is also a useful Rules FAQ on the top of the thread which I will no doubt review once I begin playing the game.

I’ll be posting shortly about the figures I purchased for this game in another post but suffice to say that I have started painting the minis. Hopefully my first warband can be produced by the end of the month.

However back to the terrain building.

Whilst assembling the foam core stuff over the weekend I was all of a sudden struck by the thought as to the integrity of this city emerging from the ice. Is this a ruined city with buildings ripped away by a glacial advance leaving just the footprints of their foundations or is this an abandoned city made inhabitable by the onset of freezing temperatures and just fallen into disrepair. Thoughts please.

Whilst travelling Hadrians wall a couple of years ago I was struck by the fact that the wall has disappeared in the lower coastal areas as a result of man dismantling the Stone structures and using them elsewhere whereas the parts still in the uplands still stand after almost 2000 years. My final thoughts are that Frostgrave will be a skeletal city, many of the stone structures will still be in place. Some may have partially collapsed and fallen into disrepair. Timber from roofs, doors and frames will have long since collapsed under the weight of snow and ice and what remained has been taken by foraging bands for firewood and their own structures.

One of the questions I am regularly asked is do you plan these builds. The answer is simply no. I create a vision in mind of what I want (usually inspired by pictures and other tables) and then just start. The only real thought that goes into the process is the base materials and procuring sufficient (at the best price) before the build. This vision (I stress is in my mind) then helps me to select the possibilities of mixing scratchbuilt terrain with ‘off the shelf pieces’.

The latest of which can be seen here…these three items were found on ebay for the princely sum of £40 and fit perfectly with my Frostgrave ambition. I’ll probably sell on the dragon altar (too ruined !) and it will off set my costs for the other two pieces. Since acquiring the larger piece I have discovered that it was produced by Ziterdes (there are a couple of other pieces that have caught my attention.)
 
 






 


 




The Graveyard setting looks great and the ruined temple (?) is just wonderful. However both are too grey so these will get repainted into the colour scheme I am adopting for the city. My plan is to paint all the items black before I start the onerous task of drybrushing the whole city. This way it will keep all the pieces tied to the same colour scheme.

So before I sign off from this post a couple of thoughts on table size. It would apprear from all the reports that I have read that this game is best played on a 3ft square table with lots of terrain. With a number of players interested in playing this in the shed I am going to need more than one set up.

All my basic boards are 50cm x 50cm square. So therefore My tables will be built in modular sections on these sized boards (I’ll think about storage later on) – if I create 8 boards this will give me a degree of flexibility to create two 1mtre square tables or one larger version. That’s the thought at the moment but I am sure it will change ;-)

 


 

7 comments:

  1. Some very nice terrain pieces there, are some of them from FW ?

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    1. The big temple I think comes from Ziterdes...the others have no idea. FW I assume is Forge World?

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  2. That Dargon altar could suit your purposes better if you remove the ruined column bases, replace them with intact cake styles ones and do a half rook over the top, maybe with an LED lighting effect on the underside that shines down onto the Dragon. That would look rather awesome I think!

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  3. Those are some really nice pieces. As for your question I like the thought of it being an abandoned sitting made uninhabitable by the cold... well uninhabitable to humans at least.

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  4. The rules allow for a larger table for more than two players.

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  5. bet you can put the dragon altar to other uses ... especially when game of thrones is back on the TV . :-)...

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