Frostgrave Friday: "where are you from" Edition

Played my first campaign game today, running an Enchanter. Got away with 3 Treasures, the enemy wizard in the dirt (like, actually dead), and I only lost a Templar and Thug (both of them died too). The Templar got blasted by the enemy Apprentice before doing anything, but the Thug caved the Wizard's skull in before he went down.

Starting loadout:
Apprentice (200)
Templar (100)
Marksman (100)
Thug x2 (40)
Thief x2 (40)

Spells: Animate Construct, Enchant Armor, Embed Enchantment, Elemental Hammer, Monstrous Form, Absorb Knowledge, Mud, Bone Dart

My treasure after selling some useless scrolls was: 495gc, Ring of Power (1), and a Scroll of Fleet Feet.

Bought a replacement Templar, a Knight, two Archers, potions of Armor and Speed, and successfully used Embed Enchantment to give my Marksman +1 armor.

Brigade games, out of Jersey:
brigadegames.3dcartstores.com/Frostgrave_c_578.html
They don't have the cultists, but everything else is on discount.

The muslamic caliphate of bongistan.

So where to get good looking wizard miniatures, I don't hate the ones Frostgrave makes but they look a bit bland, anybody got some other nice looking wizards, witches or something? Maybe just a medieval scientist fellow

Browse the Reaper miniatures line, there's a few dozen wizards to choose from there. The bones line is cast in PVC and is exceptionally cheap, with enough models to fill out pretty much everything from monsters to heroes to basic henchmen.

If somehow none of those are to your liking, there's usually some good wizards in any miniature line.

Most of them are pretty lackluster compared to some other wizard minis out there, but I really like the Summoner and Necromancer.

lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=80671.0

Personal hitlist:
Hasslefree
Dark Sword
Reaper
Red Box

bump

>where are you from
Sweden.

I'm gonna use the old Heinrich Kemmler model from Warhammer and use the Frostgrave Necromancer as the apprentice. You can't go wrong with the Goth Gandalf lichemaster.

Florida.

I've just finished the Wizard and Apprentice for my fourth warband. Now I gotta figure out how to get people interested in playing.

I've got enough monsters, too.

Man, Red Box and Dark Sword have some great shit. I wish Hasslefree had a wider selection of bits, though.

>Goth Gandalf
I always see Rob Zombie in him.

Either one works fine for me.

Thanks for reminding me I actually need to start working on these skeletons.

Yeah, I need to get working on them bones.

So are the reprinted spellcards gonna include the ones from the upcoming expansion?

Ireland here.

Was thinking of using my Skaven. What wizard class would be best for a grey seer?

Depends.
I could see an enchanter for all the constructs you could field with a skyre warplock technician.
For a plague priest I'd consider using a witch or a necromancer maybe.
A grey seer could maybe be a soothsayer or something like that? If you are more going for throwing green flames etc, an elementalist is probably not a bad choice either. Might depend a little on what kind of personality quirks you want to stress most.

They are also adding beastcrafting magic in the Breeding Pits expansion.

So, I'm a big fan of Frostgrave. It has singlehandedly revived my interest in building and painting terrain and models for 28mm again. I think the reason I enjoy it is a combination of the creativity it encourages with conversions and finding miniatures (when we play there are models from probably 10 manufacturers on the table, easy, if you count bits) and terrain building, together with the format of the game.

Miniature wargaming at the 28mm scale really is at it's best in games where you care about the models and some kind of narrative emerges, and the whole cooky campaign play with mates format just makes for a better atmosphere than pickup games in stores with more popular systems.

BUT.
I don't think the rules are great. The D20 system is very swingy in a way that feels unsatisfying, and there is very little detail in actions and progression on any model except the captain and the wizard/apprentice. I feel that it's a wasted opportunity to make a game with only 10 minis in a warband, but have 8 of those minis be so generic and limited in options (I mean, come on, who doesn't love buying equipment and upgrades etc?)

To this end, I have started a home-brew system for it from the ground up with my friends. If we bother to finish it I might turn it into a pdf and share here, even if people love frostgrave as is, there's bound to be some houserules to use and it's going to include the map based movement system we've created for our campaigns.

What are some things you guys wish was in Frostgrave, or would like to be able to do, both in-game rules wise and warband creation wise? What kind of setting would you play in if you could choose any kind you wanted, not just snowy ruins? What level of equipment or progression detail would you like for mooks? Do you like the way magic works?

I'm not looking to start a fight or dump on the game, I just think it's perfect type of game to houserule and modify, heavily, and would love to hear what ideas you guys have.

I would say the same. The spirit it encourages and with more focus than ASoBAH helps really push it forwards. I can finally use my Confrontation figures again a long with others I have collected, as opposed to most games which are just an excuse to sell you a certain company's figures. Kings of War does something similar, but you need a million figures for that.

I personally want to see options for individually upgrading soldiers via veterancy, similar to what Mordheim did.

Thanks for that. I have the models for that. Ikit Klaw will look savage in some ruins.

Man, confrontation had the prettiest minis. This is the mini I'm using as the sorcerer for my lizard/snake themed warband. Only, you know. Not as nicely painted.

>Where are you from
Sweden

>This is the mini

Of course I forgot the picture like a retad.

I think the system on its own is solid because it's easy to understand for new people. Also, because it's not cluttered with excessive amount of rules or include too many variables it's not intimidating to get into.

That being said, I would totally be in favour of something along the lines of a Frostgrave Advance module.

I'm having fun digging through my old minis, checking out my large amount of bits to customise my warbands, terrain and treasure markers.

>Red Box

My Moors of impeccable taste.

So what proxy minis are people using for what?

The Living Statues for the one scenario are going to be played by Skorne Immortals.

I'm kinda struggeling with finding some good throwaway minis in my collection to use for statues. Old Warhammer orcs and undead doesn't seem all that proper.

I picked up a cheap chess set at goodwill with pieces made to look like people, tooons of statues for terrain stuff. Old goofy monopose GW minis like the paint set minis or Heroquest dudes also make good statues.

Are authors of the game planning to add more distinction, when it comes to characters and races? I ask because, at the moment I can't find a good game that could fit int a gap that was left by Mordheim. Frostgrave seems cool at the first glance, however it lack a litle bit in character progression and race diversity.

The only player warband distinction so far is the wizards leading them. The game doesn't seem to be made with wildly diverse warbands in mind to keep it more balanced.

>No characterization! In a game where you can play with any mini you want!

It's made a point of being symmetrical. There's no races, both so that people can use whatever miniatures they want, and so that you don't get any balance arguments, because everyone can use the same stuff.

I'm okay just getting to use orc minis if I want to, I don't need them to have special orc rules if it means opening the game up to faction balance crap.

They could add more customization options without adding factions. Essentially you can hire orcs or elves or fishmen or whatever, and give them more diverse equipment or features without restricting those options to one player.

Just use barbarians for your orc mercenary needs.

But that wouldn't be adding options, I can already have any of my warband members be an orc mercenary if I want to.

The beauty of frostgrave is that you can make a warband roster and then use whatever models you think are the coolest.

if you give orcs or fishmen different rules, it's suddenly about what race is the best, not which one you like the models of the most.

In my nerdgang there's one person who only uses old warhammer orcs, another who uses lord of the rings elves and a third who only uses GW empire models, and a fourth who uses historical miniatures. And they can, because a barbarian is just any dude who looks tough and has a big weapon, and a thug is anyone with the right weapons who looks more shifty than the rest of the gang. And I love that.

I play with a mix of Rackham Ophidians and Reaper lizard men for one warband and Red Box humans for another.

I don't need racial options. Adding more types of mercenary, awesome, but stay away from locking any sort of goon class into a specific race.

I bought one of these from ebay.

Reaper recently released minis for statues too.

In the Frostgrave rulebook they used foot seargents from Fireforge. So basically left over minis from the box of 40 they used to build the mooks in the rulebook.
They just glued them onto bottlecaps.

You can also get gargoyles or cthulu statues for various boardgames and stuff like that. Fenris Games in the uk has a nice selection of occult themed stuff for World of Darkness style games and even 'generic' runestones (based on real life ones, they're pretty cool)

Well, as long as I can get it cheap.

So, anons, I have a question. How would you suggest going about getting a Frostgrave "League" together, in terms of stuff to do?

What would you suggest as the rankings and stuff, if that bad idea was done?

I'm thinking of trying to get more people interested locally, and a league might do it.

Maybe make "League play" have a scenario each week, and 'rankings' being based on spells learned, highest level, most treasure claimed, etc?

There definitely has to be a turn count.

I prefer just playing at home. Frostgrave is not very fun or appealing without great terrain and people who are on the same page as you. I will say though that multiplayer games with four players or so are great though.

eBay search for "plastic Dark Elf" gets groups of the old one piece swordsmen...

I was considering a six-pack of Stormcast, but even the secondary market is stupidly priced.

The prices seems to have become increasingly insane ever since Age of Sigmar happened.

>What would you suggest as the rankings and stuff,

Current Warband value?

GW and a few others acting like they have the industry and players by the short hairs is why games like Frostgrave are important AND successful.

Might add that, too.

"How much does your warband cost, right now?"

I know the official advice for leagues with blow out leaders is to start another band when playing the lower ranked.

Yeah, ebay speculators are like those assholes that buy all the tickets for a concert or sometjing and then sell them at an inflated price.

Anyone have any good advice for countering Elemental Bolt? It seems to have a disproportionate ability to create no-go zones because of it's high chance to just delete anything it gets pointed at, even heavy cover isn't very reliable in the face of that +8.

I'm an Enchanter if that's relevant.

>Remember, the ruins of Frostgrave are crowded and maze-like, so there should be lots of terrain on the table, and there should be few areas where line of sight extends more than a foot or two, IF THAT.

One of the biggest failure of the rulebook is that the author tells us that having more than a few places on the board where people can actually see more than a foot in one direction might be pushing it.

Ranged magic is very powerful, and that's meant to balance out the fact that most of the time you have a very limited number of targets, and people can easily avoid you by simply taking a side street or standing behind walls.

In most games where you're using that amount of terrain, powerful ranged attacks let you control a square or street where there might be a treasure token or two, which means the other guy will probably focus on taking treasure somewhere else where your marksmen or wizard can't cover it.

I think the issue might be my store simply doesn't have the right terrain to play this game. It's all 40k shit that looks like swiss cheese and waist-high walls, cover is everywhere but actual LOS blocking is hard to come by.

Then again, it's the same situation or worse in every game store I've visited in my life, so how do people play it the "right" way to begin with unless they slam hundreds of dollars into proper terrain?

>it's the same situation or worse in every game store I've visited in my life, so how do people play it the "right" way to begin with unless they slam hundreds of dollars into proper terrain?

Most wargamers of any game play at home with home made terrain. Frostgrave is a terrible game to start if your only playing venue is a club and if you need to pay for ready made terrain.

We have enough terrain to completely cover a 3*3 table in terrain, most of which will be houses and ruins that is 2 floors or taller, if we want to, so more than enough to play frostgrave on 4*4. Most of it is home made from blue and pink insulation foam, cardboard, plasticard, balsa wood and putty. You can make all that terrain with less than a hundred bucks of materials, but it's a massive time investment. I spent more time on our terrain than I've spent on entire armies of miniatures.

That was meant to be:
>One of the biggest failure of the rulebook is that the author tells us that having more than a few places on the board where people can actually see more than a foot in one direction might be pushing it, but only in an offhand way in one sentence. This should be emphasized, repeatedly throughout the book.

I rewrote part of it before posting and managed to forget it. I'm not saying that the game is bad because it needs tons of terrain, I'm saying the book is doing a terrible job of getting across how much terrain you actually need.

Spend 5 dollars on foam and you can make a monument or pyramid big enough to completely block LoS across the middle of a 3x3 board.

That's beautiful, user.

See what the local craft stores have in those brown paper mache shapes.

Or visit the card shop and grab a handful of the smaller CCG boxes. 60 to 150 count boxes are going to be a buck or two each. You can pretty 'em up later, but they'll cover a table in LOS blockage for cheap.

I agree that the mention being in only one place and not prominent is a lapse.

Not mine! But its how we build ours, so the pic is appropriate.

I'm not exactly a wiz when it comes to building with plasticard, but I can definitely do that kind of brickwork with foam. I just need to actually get a sheet of that foam to work with.

I suppose it depends on what kind of ruins you want to make. Townhouses and winding cobblestone streets or a cyclopean maze stone structures.

For our first setup we took a bunch of textures from free 3d models of terrain online (there is tons) and printed them out on paper, which we glued to empty milk cartons, juice boxes, pringles cans and so on that we glued to thin mdf bases so they wouldn't move around. You can also papercraft with cardboard if you want more elaborate stuff, but we just used it as "proxy" terrain that didn't look like shit.

It cost us almost nothing and let us start playing with tons of terrain before we had finished building the "real" terrain. It's also an awesome way of testing out building designs.

"This would be even better if it was a little taller, this needs to have another entrance so you can set it up in more ways, and this should have a flatter roof so miniatures can stand on it" is really good stuff to figure out before you start on elaborate building projects.

Amera does some cheap stuff good for Frostgrave, this is only £12.99.

>cobblestone streets
I'd love to do a board like this, but I get hung up on using foam for that. Seems like it won't last long.
I'm considering alternatives casting panels of brickwork myself.
Haven't had a really good idea that made me want to spring into action yet.

That kind of foam is more expensive than regular styrofoam (very easy to get hold of, they have it in any construction/hardware store since it's used as isolation) Still really cheap though, 20 bucks gets you enough to build several foundations or ruins etc.

What I do to make it last forever, is cut it into long, thin strips that I make individual, thin stones from. Roll a piece of rock over it so you get more texture and not uniform flatness, then just start cutting it into little squares with scissors.

Then you just use the fake stone foam squares to texture whatever you feel like. We have a tower that's basically a cardboard tube covered in those stones. Super easy.

>Cobblestone streets

A really cheap solution is textured wallpaper or textured plasticard. You can find some that looks kinda like cobbles and paving and use it when building your board, or even to texture building walls.

Hirstarts has some cobblestone casts if you want. Modular and cheap to cast with plaster.

Otherwise, you can spend that cash on a beautifully printed gaming mat to set things on for about as much, but it'll be flat with no texture to it.

Haven't seen it at any of my local hardware stores, but I haven't had access to the car that can actually fit one of those sheets (even chopped up). I do now, though, so I can start searching in earnest.

Also, opinions on textured spraypaint? Could give some rocks or areas a more textured look. Normally I guess it'd just look pretty sandy, but it might serve as a good improvised base for either snow, rubble, or plant overgrowth.

I'd run through Dark Alchemy, actually. That would give a bit of time to catch up.

I don't like textured spray, there's not enough texture in it usually, it ends up looking like you painted something outside while the neighbor was sawing down a tree and some of the dust got caught in the paint.

Better to just buy a big bottle of acrylic primer and mix in some fine sand or even sprinkle it on before dry.

Other good stuff to use when building:

plaster (pour a thin layer of it on something flexible, like a plastic sheet, rubber mat, old mousepad, whatever) then you let it dry and give it a smack and take it off in little shards and pieces. It's great filler for ruins and broken ground and looks way, way better as rubble than just using gravel or random rocks that never look like they were actually part of the building. Also good for filling gaps or giving some weight to flimsy buildings.

Baking soda+ super glue. Baking soda is very fine, like fine sand, and when you pour super glue on it (cyanoacrylate, thin kind, not gel kind) it instantly cures and becomes super hard. EVERY time I have trouble fitting together big pieces for terrain projects, especially things of different materials that wouldn't handle the hot glue from a glue gun, this is what I use. since It sets instantly and is really durable. It's also great for texturing bases and doesn't peel off or crumble the way sand and pva glue does some times. Since it's also very fine it looks better on small scale stuff than coarser sand does.

When it comes to the isolation foam, they usually sell it in a big stack that is more than you'll ever need, so see if they can sell you individual sheets. One of my friends is a builder so I can always just ask him where they're doing stuff so I can snatch up offcuts and random pieces of it for free.

>When it comes to the isolation foam, they usually sell it in a big stack that is more than you'll ever need,

My local Home Despot has apparently noticed (or been informed) that the pink board has small scale uses, and now has aisle displays of "project foam board" pieces 2' square.

Hey, that's awesome!
My next board is going to be made up of 1'*1' and 2'*2' pieces of insulation foam, one or two layers, on top of oilboard or mdf or similar.

That way I can make individual board pieces that extend down as well as up, like a pit, exposed/collapsed sewer or basement etc, and then have some pieces with built in terrain and some flat pieces to put separate terrain pieces on top of.

>Hey, that's awesome!
Particularly since we don't normally get pink board locally, yes.

I have seen some examples of people using thin cardboard, making indentations with pen, and then painting and drybrushing that for basic cobblestone or flagstone. After that you would need appropriate ruins to decorate the map.

Are there any examples of well done Frostgrave boards?

>Are there any examples of well done Frostgrave boards?
That is the trick. Even the boards I see over at Lead Adventure (the official home forum of Frostgrave) are typically too light, though often very pretty.

I feel the same way. Having a really dense board with even some vertical play via towers and walk ways is ideal, but very difficult to acheive even if you have hundreds of hirst pieces in front of you already.

I honestly think using hirst arts stuff is making things difficult for yourself.

If you want some random blocks to scatter around or smash up, it's great, but building things out of them is time consuming, makes for heavy pieces and really just looks kind of dull and dead since the blocks are so uniform. Cutting up and texturing extruded foam and stuff like that is flexible, faster and cheaper, while also being light weight.

That's a pretty nice guide. Instead of cutting out the individual rooftiles I would instead cut out rows of them to save time. It would also make for a sturdier construct.

This concept could be good for Frostgrave, would just have to worry about missile troops shutting down bridges.

Since you can just stack sheets, cutting the individual tiles is quicker than cutting individual gaps into the rows to make them look good, and since it's all glued together it's plenty sturdy anyway. I cut strips of roughly the right size, then stack them 3 or 4 thick, and cut out the tiles with a slight diagonal cut (alternating direction) so that they aren't quite square, but one side is more narrow. That way, when you put them next to each other there's a bit of a gap between them.

Individual tiles is also good when you're tiling rounded or pointed roofs like on towers etc.

I suppose that makes sense. It does seem like a lot of effort, though.

I realize not many people step outside the box when painting the TME lime, but why black and orange?

Looks comfy?

So how East is the foamboard to cut? Because it seems like a cheap and sturdy material I might use for something like this.

>how easy is the foamboard*

So, random thought. One of the things I wasn't thrilled about with Frostgrave was, well... The frost. Snow is tricky to make look good, and it's all a little bleak and dreary, isn't it?

It's a nice plot device to explain why nobody has bothered looting the city until now, but you can make up any old nonsense to accomplish that.

What kind of alternative settings would people like to see? Do you enjoy the idea of a lot of environmental effects and things like that, or is it just visuals?

It's very easy to cut it's just a really thin layer of foam between two layers of craft paper or card. Honestly it's not super sturdy, but it's very easy to cut or work with, and it's less prone to warping than cardboard is, so it's better to use as the core of things that will get painted.

Personally I mostly use denser, double layer cardboard instead, it's a lot cheaper and more durable, even if it's harder to work with.

That sounds like the kind of material I would like to use. Reinforcing it with a frame should make it fairly sturdy, right?

I'm just really fine with the general idea Mordheim had. I don't even use the Frostgrave setting or snow.

Absolutely.

Can't go wrong with wooden coffee stirrers. Like popcicle sticks but a little rougher. Looks great cut down for floorboards, random planks used to cross gaps, cut down for fencing and details, lots of uses. Good both for detailing and internal structure, just grab a hot glue gun or your non-shrinking glue of choice and go nuts. Like in
for instance.

I avoid having to put snow over everything by playing the 'iced over' thing as a magical frost. so whilst there is some small bits of snow its largely just a cold climate area. The fluff Ive written for it is that the city was afflicted by a plague of unknown origins and much like the black plague in england, heaps of people died and shit went sideways fast. with the last wizards of the city sacrificing the power of the city to contain the plague

This game has piqued my interest- does anyone have any pictures of games in progress? I think I could convince a few friends to put together warbands for some casual campaigning if it looks cool in practice.

Just Google image search, man. It will be faster than waiting for people to post stuff for you. It's also a game that only looks as cool as the stuff you bring to the table. So it's all up to you and anyone else playing.