Frostgrave Terrain Part 9

Hi Folks

So in my last post you saw the first of my Frostgrave boards - I called this the dragon city board - I should add that this about 50% of the buildings and blocks I created

Link

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-8.html

However there is still more work to be done ! I promised my group of players that I would build three boards - Monday night regularly sees six gamers in the Shed so three boards will be perfect for a series of round robin games.

As before the base boards are all 30cm x 30cm Mdf squares (close enough to one foot in my mind).
Again these were all primed.


Once the primer was dry I added sand and railway modelling ballast to create some underlying texture. This was fixed using PVA and left to rest for 24 hours. The edges were then all tidied up to give a snug fit with the boards. The ballast and sand once painted will create a great texture.

The textured surface

Given these 30cm boards can be mixed with the tiled versions this is going to give me plenty of permutations.


However lets talk about the buildings.

Over the last few weeks I have sat patiently on ebay bidding for warhammer plastic ruins. On many occasions these come along very expensive but if you are lucky there are bargains to be had.

I also managed to acquire one of Pegasus Hobbies Gothic building sets (box A I believe). Rather fortuitously OI discovered that the ruined Warhammer pieces have exactly the same dimensions between pillar. Fixing these ruined pieces onto the structurally sound Pegasus ones creates some wonderful ruined buildings. As you can see I have enough of these to create several interesting buildings.

Having laid out the pieces this still feels a little bare....recalling that I had a load of old rubble piles from my Terminator games I chucked these on...much better ;-)

Still some more bits to add but before I go any further I better go and slap on some paint.


Oh and the name of this board...for some reason these buildings remind me of Hogwarts so this will be known as the Wizards College Board

Part 10 is here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-10.html

Initial thoughts on Frostgrave

 

Fortunately I have had to take some holiday (otherwise I would lose it) so yesterday my good friend John came round to the shed to introduce me to Frostgrave.

Sadly the camera wasn’t available but in this post I’ll layout some of my initial thoughts after two games.

I chose an Elementalist as my Wizard – his starting spells – Elemental Bolt, Elemental Barrier, Wall, Enchant Weapon, Summon Demon, Crumble, Blinding Light and Furious Quill. With the exception of Elemental Barrier I used them all during the two games we played.

In terms of my forces I had an Apprentice, two thieves, an Archer, A Ranger, A knight and a War PIG (hound). The balance seemed to work.

I was facing Johns 4^th Level Wizard and the disparity between the two was not too great. Indeed some fortuitous Bolt spells (don’t you love that +8 shooting attack) soon fried as number of his troops and in both games I walked off with 4 of the six treasure tokens. The net result 700 XP earned in two games and seven levels of experience. 

Great Fun ! Some lovely moments and lots of atmosphere. However I am concerned about how fast you can level up.

Simply: The rate of levelling is too fast !

These are my thoughts…

Reduce the number of treasure points – potentially to four. Also make them further away than the base line. This reduces the number of treasure tokens and hence experience on the table

Increase the rate of Levelling from 100 to 150 XP per level

Based on these my Wizard would probably be around the 4^th Level and not 7^th

Some other thoughts…

Personally I don’t like the idea that all characters can climb – we had a number of levels in our game. The idea a Knight in mail and shield can start climbing walls feels so wrong.

Perhaps only Rangers, Thieves, Barbarians etc have the scaling ability.

Plus I managed to summon an Imp (with Wings) – There appears to be no rules for flying creatures so any creature with flight can ascend the highest points with no penalty and suffer no damage from falling.

I’d also like to see the treasure harder to get – locked chests/traps etc – perhaps there could be %chance that treasure is trapped/locked? Again these could be removed by Thieves/Treasure Hunters (Will roll)  or Forced Open (Fight Roll). This would stop single figures from running up grabbing the loot and running away. Each item should be hotly contested.

Death – it would appear that all characters have the chance to recover at the end of the game and ready to fight the next day (assuming they get the right roll) – perhaps any character that drops to -3 or further is beyond recovery. This makes cash more valuable to restocking your warband  

We also has a scenario where my Ranger took down a magic item laden Apprentice – can he loot the body? There is no reference to this. Perhaps this is a good option – it allows certain characters to target the opposition for those choice goodies, also makes players think more tactically.

These are my initial thoughts but will no doubt change as we progress with this great game…

 

 

Frostgrave Terrain Build Part 8

Hi Folks

Delighted to report in this post you will see the first of my four planned Frostgrave boards...

In the last few build posts (the previous one is here http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/frost-grave-terrain-build-part-7.html )

- you have seen me put together some of the buildings for the city. I have now settled on four different boards, These will all be interchangeable and can be combined.

The first of these is the city before ruin. The base would be the focus of this build.

I started off at one of my favourite places B&Q - I selected an 8 x4 ft 9mm MDF board and got the bloke in the store to cut this into 32 square foot boards. Total Cost - £15

Once home nine of these were put to one side and then primed with PVA to seal - both sides !

I then cut out hundreds of 3cm square tiles from the EVA sheets I procured from Poundland. These were then fixed to the boards using pva. Ill be honest this took a long time !

Once dry I then etched using a biro some crazy paving onto the eva tiles. This took even longer !

Once all the etching and gluing was done I painted them all a solid coat of black acrylic paint. This required a touch up in some places but one coat pretty much did it. With the black dry I was able to drybrush with two coats of successive lighter greys.

All nine boards finished - a 3ft x 3ft board.

Lets add some buildings.....

OK - Decision still needs to be taken on whether snow gets added...




I mentioned I was building more than one board...here is the second - still has some work to be done but this one is somewhat more ruined...

More to come very soon


Until next time

Part 9 can now be found here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/frostgrave-terrain-part-9.html

Frost Grave Minis part 2

First of all I am delighted to announce that I have now received all of my stuff from Northstar Games - which just about clears out my 2015 cash for hobby spending !

With the weather closing in the shed has been a bit cold so rather than developing a case pneumonia whilst building the city I have withdrawn to the kitchen to tackle some of those minis.

At Warfare I purchased the official undead encounter pack for Frostgrave. This gives you a few armoured skeletons and some rather tasty zombies/ghouls. These have all been finished aside from the bases...

as you can see I went with a red and rusted theme for the skellies..

The ghouls/zombies

 

 

 

I also painted up the two bears bought from Warbases

 - of course they have to be polar bears



Plus the Snow Leopard from Northstar...although mine looks a bit like a pussy cat



and finally I acquired two packs of Copplestones Yetis...these will become Snow Trolls. They are the same ones as used in the rulebooks.

 

Still have some more work to do on them...

 



Until next time



Frostgrave - A study on Wizards

Hi Folks

As my city build progresses and the Frostgrave minis are getting a lick of paint I thought I would turn my attention to the nature of my first warband. It has become apparent from what I have read and heard the choice of Wizard is particularly crucial in this game, so with the trusty use of a spreadsheet I thought I'd investigate some of the various schools on offer.

Its important to note that each Wizards ability to cast a spell is dependent upon the schooling and as such the further away the spell you might want to cast is from your school of magic the harder it is to cast. Equally each of the sell has a base cast number  - the lower the number the easier it is to cast.

As you can see below I put together the following spreadsheet - this firstly shows clearly the aligned (green), the neutral (grey) and the opposed (red) schools of magic for each Wizard class.

Secondly I have listed all the spells and their base chance of success (BCS). I have totalled these rolls and have called them spell points.

 As you can see from the above pictures the totals required for each casters spells are NOT the same - in other words some Wizards have a much easier time casting the full repertoire than others. Indeed it would appear that the Enchanter class has the greatest number of easy spells whereas the Chronomancer has the hardest job.

This first observation suggests that it would be much wiser to select a Wizard from these more expensive classes if you want to cast the most expensive spells without the burden of additional modifiers.

It has been reported that it is good take a mix of offensive, defensive and off table spells. So we need to look at these in more detail.

The Wizard I want to use can throw spells on the offensive, enchant weapons and summon beasties. The classic Wizard of my old RPG games.

This would suggest that I should look at the Summoner, Enchanter or the Elementalist as my first choice...

The Summoner is aligned to the Necromancer, Witch and Elementalist
The Enchanter is aligned to the Witch, Sigilist and Elementalist
The Elementalist is aligned to the Chronomancer, Summoner and Enchanter

From the above it might appear that the Elementalist is the best choice to select from...

I get to throw those lightning bolts with no penalty, the range of 'cheap' spells in the Enchanter's repertoire only suffer a +2 to the BCS (8's now become 10's), and the higher cost Chronomancer's spells are still within reach as the wizard gains experience.

I can see that the Illusionist is directly opposed to the Elementalist - are there spells in this school I really need? Aside from Teleport nothing really grabs me...

So I think I have now settled on my first Wizard....

Wizards start with 8 spells

Three from their school of magic, one from each of the aligned schools, and two from any of the neutral (but different schools)

For my three core spells I will choose

• Wall (10)
• Elemental Bolt (12)
• Elemental Shield  (10)

From the Aligned Schools I am going to choose (+2 added to BCS)

• Crumble (12)
• Enchant weapon (10)
• Summon Demon (14)

and finally from two neutral schools

• Raise Zombie (12)
• Blinding Light (14)

Thoughts....

If you are interested in my Frostgrave terrain builds head here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/frostgrave-terrain-part-1.html

heres some pictures the finished boards

Frost Grave Terrain Build - part 7

So my Frostgrave City of Dragons has a few more statues...

If you recall in my last post I decided to add a Dragon Feel to my city build.

It really pays to search down these beasts on ebay in the collectables sections.

Last post: http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/frost-grave-terrain-build-frozen-city.html

First up we have a Dragon Optic Lamp which when you remove the optic fibres looks just like an alter.

To 'statuefy this item I just sprayed black (only had some Black Satin - hence the shine)

And then I drybrushed up using the greys on the buildings. I think it looks fabulous.

I also acquired two smaller beasts - these are great for sitting on top of the towers - I still need to repaint these.

Finally I acquired the following bits an pieces from Warfare at the weekend - perfect for those Frostgrave settings - I think they all come from Scotia Grendel



another Altar

an adventurers campsite

and some Wizard paraphernalia

All these still have to be painted.

Until next time

Next link here

http://shedwars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/frostgrave-terrain-build-part-8.html

Warfare 2015 - A few photos

Hi Folks

I had the pleasure of attending Warfare in Reading on Saturday. This is a great show albeit let down by available parking. Fortunately we arrived early enough to bag a spot and then we discovered that all the parking machines were out of action...RESULT.

Over the last few years I have pretty much attended all the shows in the South East and to be blunt I am not really finding anything that new. I had thought with the excitement around Frostgrave there might be more on offer - new buildings, ruins etc to grab my attention but sadly no.

I went with £200 burning a whole in my pocket and left with £140 still in my wallet. I'll post up my hoard in a later post.



The Show itself really consists of three parts -

The Bring & Buy - chaos as always and again overpriced second hand goods

The shopping/trade stand hall - this was cramped, very busy on Saturday am - I loved the tannoy announcement that requested attendees to carry rucksacks rather than wear them...

The gaming hall where hundreds of folks push lead towards each other in various tournament games. There were also a few games of Flames of War being played out in the Squash Courts. Interestingly three years ago you could not attend a show like this without falling over FOW kit - this is not the case and perhaps shows the way periods flirt in and out of favour with us gamers.

The gaming hall also hosted a number of demo games - see pictures below

Until next time...