Frostgrave Friday

So would just a GW Garden of Morr pass well enough for a mausoleum?

I've been thinking of bringing in a Mordheim random happenings chart. It'd be a fun way of making Frostgrave feel more like what the little story fragments in the book sound like. Weird artifacts that effect the battlefield, the instability of a collapsing city held up only by thawing ice, crazy magical shit that one would expect to find in a wizard's laboratory running hog wild throughout the frozen terrain... There's a lot to work with for random encounters and making Frostgrave really feel like the perilous place it is.

It'll do for starters. You may find that it doesn't suit your table over time, but that is entirely subjective.

I'm making crap out of leftovers and bargain bin garbage, then making a table based on what I've got, rather than the other way around.

Will be trying to pitch this to some of my friends that still play updated Mordheim with since I wish to try out something new while still playing something that I like - any points I should focus on ?

Well, the fences are modular, so it's easy to set up a desired border. It will at least be fine until I can build my own.

As someone who is a huge scrub when it comes to frostgrave (never played it, but want to make a kobold warband) I was wondering if a kind user would tell me what each of the wizards are/can do?

I'd look up the info myself but not having the rulebook and the link for it not wanting to work right now makes it surprisingly annoying to find out. Thank you in advance.

> tldr What does each wizard do?

- Wizards (and their apprentices) follow one of 10 schools of magic. Spells from their own school are easiest to cast.
- Wizards and apprentices can activate soldiers near them in their own phases instead of the soldier phase.

So what are people working on?

I'm trying to figure out a good way to convert a genie out of minis I have lying around.

Currently building some warbands & terrain so i can demo some games at my local store.

>Genie
I have a D&D minis oni that looks ambiguously eastern enough that I think it'll pass with some repainting.

I don't think I really have anything that fits. I guess I might as well pick up the Frostgrave genie.

Same thing happened to me.

So dead thread this week?

Interest is there, but there's not a huge amount of people into it yet. It's mentioned a lot alongside Mordheim for Fantasy Skirmish games.

I just got the book myself and havn't had time to read through it. Later I'm gonna order some stuff for two warbands and I apparently need to make a bunch of terrain on a tight budget. Then I apparently also need ro get a worm. The only cheap one I know about that looks good is the Reaper one and since I don't want to get screwed ok the shipping I will need to order a bunch of stuff to go with it. So it will probably be a while until I even get to properly enjoy the game. I also need to find people that isn't just my brother to try it out with as well.

For being a easy to play little game there is a surprising amount of effort that goes into it.

And to think, the people who made this game just had this stuff lying around.

I guess if you played D&D with miniatures you'd have most of that stuff already.
The whole D20 thing and building your Wizard harks back to that somewhat.

I did post some Mantic stuff in the WIP thread that I had lying around after a kickstarter because I wanted a bunch of generic minis for just these kinda games. No doubt a lot of people got stuff from the Reaper kickstarters lying around as well.

>Have entire Demon and Undead armies laying around
>Both demons and undead have explicit rules in the game
>OCD forces me to just buy the cultist box to make up my main warband, with a couple of Confrontation necromancers as the wizards
I almost feel guilty when compared to people who either have several warbands already or do really crazy conversions.

Those actually aren't bad. How did you do the skin? I bought a bunch of the Mantic zombies earlier and want to give them a proper treatment.

That's wargames for you.

Still, go hog wild on Reaper models. The PVC stuff is a huge and diverse range with pretty much everything you'll need on a cheap per-model price basis.

Boxes of dudes are going to be more expensive, but a squad box for a lot of games should get you a good amount.

Just trying to get my tabletop group into Frostgrave now.

Two of the players just played our group's first game last night as a kind of demo. I sorta sat on the sidelines and tried to figure out all the rules.

But it went pretty well and am excited to run an actual campaign. I would love to see anything has written up about using hex maps to track campaigns.

Honestly, I'm almost more excited about building terrain. I spent pretty much every day last week working on a few pieces...here's one pic of your classic ruined building I put together.

Thanks, man.

Sure, this is roughly how I do it. First I do a light brown base colour for the skin, then I drybrush with a coat of citadel Nurgling Green, which I then follow up with a very light drybrush of white mixed with Nurgling Green to highlight features such as the face, muscles, fingers, and etc., then I wash them with a coat of Army Painter Dark Tone Ink, then I finish up with some careful highlights and give the skin around the wounds a white highlight to give it the effect of flaking.

I might also do more than one highlight before washing the mini.

That looks pretty nice, user. Is it styrofoam?

I have those exact same paints. Will try that out on some of my corpses.

Thanks - I was pretty happy how it turned out.

It's actually cork board, cardboard and coffee stir sticks.

Here's a WIP pic I took a few days ago...the painted one is in the bottom right.

Good luck.

Oh, that looks pretty neat. Is the cork expensive?

I picked up a bunch of random Hell Dorado minis super cheap on ebay that I'm using for frostgrave.

They have some pretty awesome things to use for genies, demons and stuff like that.

Anyone with the soldier sprue know which arm pairs with the halberd? Neither A nor B seem to line up.

Nah, not at all. I spent 9 bucks on a 4 pack of 1x1 cork tiles at Michael's (michaels.com/artminds-cork-wall-tiles-12in-x-12in/10271541.html) Although, I just read that most Dollar Stores have some cork too.

And I ordered 1,000 coffee stir sticks off of Amazon for $5.

Well, I live in Sweden and a lot of the time the shipping kinda ruins the cheap deal.

Well, that seems pretty affordable. I will look into that. Thanks for the tip, man.

Tried the ones in the frame with the zweihander?
I'd naturally assume that bits for use together would be geographically close, but I suppose that's not necessairly true.

Also, this looks likea great box.
I wish I had a good reason to buy and motivate myself to paint them.

>Select the rivers.
>Two lakes and a waterfall.
>Fuck you Captcha

Me too, it still pays a lot to look around. If you buy from a seller in the EU, (lots of UK nerds selling stuff on ebay) you still pay less for shipping than you do for most orders from a store inside sweden. I paid something like 5 pounds shipping on 5 character/infantry models and 3 monster-ish sized ones (genie, Sha Ren Zhe and the naga chick) and those were all metal.

Everything is so expensive in sweden that it's usually cheaper to buy from the us or UK, even with shipping.

Remember that as long as you split it up into small enough parcels that they can be delivered directly to your mailbox, you dodge the import tax 99% of the time, unless the order looks super shady.

The reason being that they don't have the staff to make sure you pay your import tax on every international parcel, so they focus on the stuff that's so large that you'll have to collect it from whoever handles that where you live, for me it's ICA.

>you dodge the import tax 99% of the time

UK to Sweden? No such thing.

It's extra frustrating for me because I live in a town with two successful FLGS and non of them carry Frostgrave or have apparently even heard of it. I have found two online stores in the country that carries it and the shipping does ruin the deal. I too have ended up buying a lot of my stuff on online internationally because it takes forever for the FLGS to order anything specific for you. I tend to get free shipping if I order huge bulks.

Thankfully I should be getting a bunch of extra monster I can also use in Frostgrave this autumn from the Conan boardgame kickstarter.

I should just become an ebay propainter to make money back from all the online transactions.

I was talking about the US and the UK, which is why I mention both of them in the sentence before the part about the import tax.

I know you pay fuckall inside the EU, but thanks for making it clear for the rest of the people who weren't paying attention.

I finance my CCG and tabletop hobbies entirely by bargain hunting stuff on ebay or Blocket and reselling them on forums.

Way less time consuming than propainting.

I should be doing that too. I just have too much stuff to deal with as it is. I just wanna play my little skirmish fantasy game, have fun and paint minis.

I should pick up a Reaper Bones basic kickstarter pledge and sell the painted minis I don't need on ebay for crazy prices to see if anyone bites. I already paint better than the average hobbyist so I can pass myself off as a propainter.

Paid 3.5 gbp for this on ebay, almost 60mm tall, all metal. I picked up stuff to use for genies, demons, goons and a sorcerer in the same purchase so it was a steal even with shipping.

It actually ended up being the arm next to the 1h crossbow on the left side of . Presumably it's intended to do double duty for the crossbow.

I will probably look into that then.

>Conan boardgame kickstarter.
when is that supposed to finally ship, they've pushed it back so many times.
this is an amazing genie

It sounds like it should be shipped to the backers by September or October. Originally it was supposed to be shipped in time for the summer, but they had some issues with the chinese manufacturer and the Chinese new year seems to have delayed it further.

My setup is bare, so I've got to order in rather than building from what I have. I should search more for deals on stuff, but I've not got a lot of luck with that.

Still, I should find more garbage, but I can probably make decent enough terrain with some decent materials and some garbage. A tree can be made relatively easy by twisting up paper and papermachéing it. I could build a ruin from carved foam and just stick trees to it for theme.

I was reading the Thaw of the Lich Lord campaign and did any of you guys actually build ships for the River scenario? Seems like it'd look cool - but that terrain would be super situational

Consider Frostgrave's frozen terrain. You could just model a roadway as a frozen canal with a ship frozen in it. You'd get some more use out of it like that.

Sounds cool. Plus it opens up scenarios where your guys are surrounded and cut off from resupply.

There a little tutorial here: terragenesis.co.uk/competitions/entry.php?id=322

Also these might be good scatter terrain terragenesis.co.uk/competitions/entry.php?id=58

I've considered to get a ship for some time now.
If you've played this game you'll probably remember all the instances of wrecked ships and the ghost version of it in Hel floating under the ceiling of that dome.

Damn. That game had awesome level design.

Anyway, I've looked into 1:50 models and there is a viking ship by revell that is pretty cheap. If you want a full master you can get those from Ainsty Castings. As well as smaller boats. Those are also important to Freebooter's Fate so you can get them from Freebooter Miniatures as well.
I've also hear about people using Lego boats for scenery, which is not a bad idea since you'll probably be able to get them cheaply.

Thing is if you have a modular board you can always set it up with a canal or a harbor on one side, so the whole thing wouldn't be quite as situational.
To be fair a lot of the scenery and minis you need for the FG and Lichlord scenarios are pretty situational, but I think with a bit of imagination you could make the boats and ships work.

In a city blown up by magic I wouldn't be too surprised to see a ship lodged into the ruins of a building or something like that. In any case it would make for an awesome piece of scenery.

Top right design might be hard to use - it'll take some finesse to move figures in and out of that little opening.

Also cork is my go-to building material so good choice there. There's a Russian website that makes building bits that are pretty cheap, all mordheim inspired if you wanted to add some detail bits. I saved a picture but not the site name

Number of companies make laser cut ship kits too

Oh, I guess it's on the pic if you full-size it

Escenorama also do those kind of building decorations.
They also have a range of modular houses and gothic buildings that would work pretty well for Mordheim or Frostgrave.
Have been on the fence if I want to throw some money their way since I've got all the building materials to scratch build some terrain, but haven't had the inspiration to sit down and do it yet.

That's cool, got any names?

Also rolling on a table of bad things that might happen without proper supplies. It'd have to be a table you REALLY don't want to roll on. Frostbite or animal attacks cause soldiers to become wounded, and they can't recover without a healing spell or potion. Infection might cause wounded soldiers to go directly into dead, and cause harm to spellcasters. Will and Fight debuffs, loss of gear...

Supplies would need to be purchased and added to the Vault, possibly cost 500 crowns per, but that'd be a huge risk/reward, so maybe 250c. You'd also have to figure out how to consolidate treasure gathered on subsequent missions. And are Pack Mules either feature in game itself to become targets of opportunity for thieving bastards, or are hidden out of game at the squad's temporary campsite, safe if their supplies hold out?

But, yeah, it introduces an amount of resource management, as you can't buy new stuff on the fly and have to make due with what you carry in or find on the field.

I should really make some ornamnet sculpts for a press mold.

You could also add some skills or hirelings related to scrounging for supplies/scouting/survival like a grizzled old veteran who's slow and weak in direct combat but knows his way around the deeper parts of the ruins so reduces supply attrition.

Researching the Winter War/Eastern Front, the Klondike gold rush and the 1920s fighting in the Baltics might give you some ideas.

usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/wwIIspec/number18.pdf

Neat, thanks.

Thieves might come in handy as well. Rangers or Barbarians might live off the land, a Captain in the group might be able to keep morale, and an Apothecary might be able to keep people up and running.

I suppose if you build your team right, you could mitigate the need for supplies and not leave yourself in a bad situation if you run out, but you'd spend a lot of gold and hireling slots trying to build something that can survive without many penalties, and a huge amount in a party that can live off the land but can still get fucked up pretty bad if they hit some bad luck.

First you'd need to design a pretty terrible and severe table of setbacks to discourage going unprepared, or at least very far, and then introduce some small mitigations certain hirelings, items, and even base-building options can provide.

So will there be rules for a Gnoll warband or would they use the same rules as the general warband in the core book?

Gnolls or gnoll equivalents would most likely be monsters you encounter.

Frostgrave is pretty set on not having races since that lets players use whatever minis they want. As soon as they add race x warband you run into balancing issues and lose a lot of the creativity.

The mooks are generic so that you can use whatever minis you think are the coolest, be it lotr orcs, historical minis or warhammer goblins. It would be a shame to lose that.
If you are a big furf... gnoll enthusuast there's nothing stopping you from making a warband with gnoll minis. Reaper probably makes every variation of gnoll you'd need.

So if I wanted to run a mixed orcs and goblins warband I guess goblins would be fine as the weak tier soldiers while orcs could be the stronger guys?

Sure. I think running small miniatures in densely packed terrain (with no disadvantages) is cheesing it a bit, but your group may have different opinions.

Well, if I use Night Goblins the hoods will make them taller.

Bump

Same between those and the haradrim models I've got I should have a pretty decent Arabian warband in no time.

Yeah the height thing is a bit annoying, and one of the few downsides of letting people play with whatever minis they want.

If you have a "proper" frostgrave terrain setup, you're not mainly going to be in rubble type cover anyway, though, most of the time you'll be behind an entire building or wall, and then it doesn't matter if you're two apples tall or if you're an ogre, so it shouldn't matter much in practice.

It's one of those things that would probably make people bitch if you played in a store, but won't ever matter when playing with buddies at home.

We have houseruled the game to use area terrain though, it works a lot better since you're often going to be putting a mini down where it's the safest for it to physically stand without falling over, not where it's the most optimal line of sight wise, especially when prancing around on roofs and ledges.

You could try using sillohoutes like Infinity. IE have paper standees with a set space in case you are making a shot where size would actually make a difference.

You could use silhouettes. Pretty much every model is built however they want to be, even with bits sticking off the base, but LoS is determined with a simple paper template based on base-size to determine height. It'd essentially create an imaginary cylinder over the model's base that determines what you can see of it.

Alternatively, throw in some tradeoff bonuses/penalties for modelling and creature type, and giving them different silhouettes, though at that point you'd end up getting into different factions. I'd be fine with that, but others might still want to maintain Frostgrave's availability of everything to everyone.

Currently I've got a team of LotR figures, which stand a bit shorter than most Heroic model ranges, and some Reaper Mouselings as Thieves, which stand shorter than halflings.

I like that idea since really guys are moving around so you might only see his arm at one moment but half a second later he's fully visible.

Force on Force does a similar thing:

>LOS is not determined on a per figure basis. LOS is traced from the rough center of the firing unit to the rough center of the target unit. If half or more of the firing unit can see the target unit, it may fire. If less than half the target unit is visible to the firing unit, it cannot be fired upon.
>Example: Six Iraqi soldiers are moving around a building. Two come into LOS of a unit of US soldiers. Since the Americans cannot see half or more of the Iraqi unit, they cannot react to it. On the other hand, since less than half the Iraqis can see the Americans, they cannot fire at them, either
>When we look at the example above, it may at first seem odd to say that the Regulars can see two out of six figures in an Irregular unit but cannot shoot at the unit (or at the two exposed individuals, for that matter), but it is our intention to represent a fluid combat situation. Models on the table delineate the area controlled by a unit, but do not specifically represent the static location of individuals. Figure placement simply indicates that the unit is exhibiting some control of the area they are placed in.

Basically the figure's location is somewhat fuzzy

There's a few rules that can work out pretty well for just about any skirmish game.

Infinity's Silhouette system, already covered.

Infinity's definition of cover is pretty good as well. In Infinity, you're either not in Cover, in Partial Cover, or in Total Cover. Models in Total Cover can't be seen. Models in Partial Cover impose a -3 penalty to shooting attacks and gain +3 armor rating. Since Frostgrave also works on a D20 system, this can be adapted directly without modification. Models can also go Prone, which causes them to flatten themselves down to their base's height, halves their movement as if they were encumbered, and turns Partial Cover into Total Cover. In this case, going Prone can be a Mandatory Move action, which is maintained or voluntarily exited at the next turn. Also, you only ever receive cover bonuses if you're in base contact with Cover. A model that's half-obscured but can still have LoS drawn to it still doesn't receive the benefit of Partial Cover.

Then there's MERCS's "Snap-To" rule. If a model ends its movement within 1" of Cover (walls, partial cover), an enemy model, an Objective, or really anything you'd you'd want to move to (treasure, etc.), you Snap-To it and complete the movement. This can help simplify moving to take you where you need to go without spending another movement just to move 1/2" to pick up the treasure.

Monsters you'd like to see added to the bestiary to appear in-game?

Anything you've created yourself for your own games?

>Monsters you'd like to see added to the bestiary to appear in-game?
Minotaurs would be kinda cool.
Assuming they'd play different than a Troll or Giant.

Rust monsters.

Could be neat.

In each fight the Rust Monster wins, its attacks also automatically cast a successful Decay spell on a chosen or randomly targeted model in melee, regardless of whether or not the attack dealt damage. The targeted model must have a weapon that can be affected by Decay. This is not a spell known by the Rust Monster, but rather an effect of the creature, so it is not an eligible target for the Forget Spell spell.

Should read "chosen or randomly targeted model in a Fight with the Rust Monster." It can't target a model in a melee with a separate entity entirely.

Maybe just change it to read that the Decay spell has the "Touch" quality, so it can target models within 1" of it, symbolizing it's ability to lash around with its corrosive tail.

Maybe something based on ice age mammals just to be different than typical fantasy and for the setting better. Even if it's just modifications of existing things like a Megalocerous man instead of a minotaur.

Both those sound like good mechanisms for moving on and advancing the game rather than fiddling over LOS and fractions of an inch.

Or a minotaur styled after a muskox or ice age bison would look kind of cool

The thing I don't like about the silhouette system is that it focuses on simulating one part and ignoring others, which makes it no more realistic than more abstract methods like area cover rules.

Yes, it show's exactly how much you can see of someone if they're standing up, but moving around in miniature games represents a lot of stuff, creeping through cover, jumping over hedges, ducking out of a window, so being really detailed about the specific, last snapshot of where a mini ends it's move doesn't really make that method more realistic than any other. That's why I prefer area cover rules.

It's basically saying "alright, my guy is running through this ruin here, so your chance of nailing him while he's going through there is lowered" instead of "i teleport my guy to the end of his move and now we focus a lot on exactly where he ended up, even though both the shooting and moving took place roughly at the same time and didn't happen in the last split second."

Isn't that basically already what the raindeer beastmen are?

That sounds pretty good actually.

>Isn't that basically already what the raindeer beastmen are?
They're not monsters though. They kill the undead. That is if I've understood the rules correctly.

Not actually sure what you're getting at, here. You seem to be taking simultaneous movement, cover, and silhouettes all in one.

Really, it doesn't matter much since Automatic Reaction Orders aren't a thing in Frostgrave. Unless you implement a system by which Archers can react, they don't get to shoot until they're activated. The only reactions are by figures that running models pass within 1" of but don't engage in melee.

The "snapshot" of where the model ends its turn is exactly how it's measured. Still, while models can snap-to cover, they might still gain the protection of area cover even if not in base contact with cover, if that's what you're getting at. Infinity uses "Saturation Zones" and "Visibility Zones" to represent this, but for Frostgrave it can work just fine and dandy with cover because the system is much less granular and much more loose.

Not him, but something like Deadzone's, well, zones would probably make sense. Every troop can move through the board which is made up of specifically sized cubes, each of which can offer cover or contain objectives.

I'd think setting up simple zones based on terrain would work well enough. Run it like Warhammer's terrain cover rules where the terrain has a footprint of effect that it grants all models with their base inside or partially on top of it.

Is -3 Shoot/+3 Armor a good idea for terrain, though? Perhaps a simple -1/2/3 to Shoot, since Infinity is fairly lethal and Armor makes more of a difference, while in Frostgrave it's pretty simple, loose, and slightly less lethal.

Will Frostgrave use TLOS? Or a model size designation?

Imagine running Thaw of the Lich Lord with expedition rules as in . And with the range bands and monster ratings in , you could set it up as having to fight through increasingly hostile territory to try and reach the Lich Lord. Global map events could see missions involving Undead attacking and featuring even in areas where monsters have already been cleared out as the Lich Lord grows in power, eventually forcing the confrontation if too long ignored or causing the area to become so hostile it's incredibly difficult to actually reach him.

I think it uses TLoS, though they have their own official models that they use, which are of average miniature size, so it might not have presented itself as an issue to the designers. Still, it's an easy workaround.

What do you mean 'will'? It's been out for some time now.
For all intents and purposes it is using TLOS. The book explicitly encourages homebrews and adaptions of the rules and using minis from all over the place, so I can see how a club might want to introduce a different system since there is no standardization of the models.
The openness is once of it's biggest appeals.

That said with any version of LoS you basically get the same arguments. Doesn't matter if you argue about being able to see that specific part of the mini, or an abstraction or a template. That's a problem with your players rather than your game imo.

If you are in such a competitive environment FG is probably not the best game to begin with since it puts it's narrative and roleplaying over balance. And the D20 makes the system inherently swingy.

The system could be adapted to use multiple dice, but it would swing the probability around and out of balance with the game's design. Also, tables of options (encounter, spell, etc.) would probably still need to use d20s, or else it swings towards the middle average and unbalances those options in the middle of the table's results, plus eliminating all results of 1.

My point was more that it seems odd that the kind of audience that gets into arguments about LoS would be interested in FG in the first place.

And sure you could trade the even distribution of possible results from a single dice for a bellcurve, but that would only make sense if those are what balances the game.
Without any of the supplements it already has 80 highly situational spells that are either completely useless or extremely powerful depending on sheer dumb luck. There is no way to and no sense in making this a competitively balanced game.

Also true enough. Seems fun enough. Spells seem balanced by virtue of not having massive impacts on gameplay, and a high chance of failure at least at least before they're improved. Some are outright more deadly than others, but combat-focused spells can be mitigated by, as mentioned in threads before, cutting the amount of experience gained by killing wizards and apprentices by a massive amount, while really ramping up experience gained from completing mission objectives and even upping experience gained by securing treasure.

Also, each magic school has at least some spells that could see a whole lot of utility pretty much all the time, along with more situational spells that are much more limited. But with enough gathered treasure, any wizard can just buy the spells they want.

But, I agree, the game isn't competitively balanced and should not be. It should be a fun initiative undertaken by a group of friends to build a narrative about a bunch of crazy magic users plundering a city for loot and encountering terrible things in their selfish endeavors.

I guess. Couldn't you just take their stats and just make them a monster then?