The Warband Continues

Not a full day after the paint had dried, I got in a game of Frostgrave with the Ashen Order and it was a good one.  They fought against a band of dwarves in a straight up fight since we forgot the book and, thus couldn't roll for scenarios.  A horrendous number of casualties were taken by both sides.  To be honest, it was a pretty one-sided fight from the beginning.  We were seriously outclassed by the veteran dwarf warband and Frostgrave has no real balancing mechanic for that.


Basically, it worked out like this:

• Rodrigo the thug darted forwards, grabbed something that looked valuable and under orders from the wizard ran away with it and didn't stop running till he got back to camp. 
• The archer and the apprentice got in position behind some rubble piles on a riverbank, to provide covering fire to the rest of their companions. They took out a dwarven thug but ultimately they were both badly wounded by enemy arrows and were presumed dead, They turned up at camp three days later, having played dead and floated away in the river. 
• The two dogs and two knights charged ahead to grab something else that looked like it might be magical, valuable, or both.  Sir Liam took the loot and started to fall back with it towards the wizard (Magnus the Mad) who was casting spells to cover them.  Unfortunately a dwarf barbarian and wizard caught him and beat him to the ground while he was burdened with the treasure.  Magnus jumped in, and struck down the enemy wizard, drove back the barbarian and left as fast as he could, with a senseless Sir Liam over his shoulder.  The barbarian took the loot rather than try to pursue them. 
• Meanwhile, Sir Samuel and the dogs had killed the enemy apprentice and a soldier or two, then retreated themselves when they saw how bad things had gotten.

So two apprentices, a wizard, and some four or five henchmen were taken out of action.  Anyone familiar with the rules to Frostgrave will know that was a horrendous bloodbath of a game. None of my casualties stuck however (you roll after the game for them) and the one treasure token we got turned out to be a small pile of coins and a magic orb.  You can sell magic items in this game (for half their value) if you don't want them.  I desperately needed to amp up my troops but the orb seemed like a fairly weak item for where I'm at in the game.  Looking at what the orb was worth, and figuring I only had two slots left in my roster, I could cash it in and add two very high quality guys while still retaining cash for future emergencies. 

So I reasoned that Magnus sent the orb back to the nearest castle of the Ashen Order, and the castellan decided to send a couple men out to find this warband and aid them in bringing more things back that the Order can use in their relentless persecution of necromancy. 

I wanted to add a lot more shooting to the warband because I actually got kind of lucky in this game.  I'm still very badly under powered compared to the others in the campaign and shooting favors the weaker army, and will tend to dominate skirmish games anyways.  So I added a tracker and a marksman, basically an archer and crossbowmen but with better stats, better close combat gear, and the marksman trades off some of his movement for better armor. Given that the knights have a low move already, I knew I couldn't add two marksmen or I'd be outmanouvered so, a tracker was the best choice for my 10th model. Also it seemed like a reasonable thing that the tracker and an old veteran sniper would be able to go out into  the wilderness and find the party of Magnus the Mad.  So with all that figured out, I had to make myself the relevant models!

I made the marksman and tracker with a mix of Perry and Fireforge bits.  The marksman was easy, just a mailled man with crossbow and sheathed sword.  The tracker gets a staff as his close combat weapon, so I just used a spear-arm with the spearpoint cut off to make his walking stick.  He's wearing a leather gambeson, and a Perry Bros longbowman arm and head fit with the Fireforge torso/cloak perfectly. 

The last thing to do is pick new skills/spells for my wizard.  By killing the enemy wizard he gets to level up several times between the games, which is pretty cool. I'd played two games of Frostgrave already. Playing with a specifically painted set of models was lots more fun though, as it usually is for any game. As someone who enjoys the modelling aspect of the hobby, I felt the game lends itself to creativity in modelling more than any other game I've played.  How?  Paradoxically, by stripping away a lot of the rules for specific models!  Every troop type is presented in very broad terms which allows some fun leeway in your figure building.  But it does this without falling into the trap of making them feel bland.  My verdict is, the game is really very good and you should take a look at it.  The comparisons to Mordheim are valid but there is a lot more to this game than that. If a 1990-something edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles and a 1980-something copy of Dungeons & Dragons had a kid together, this is probably what it would look like.

Warbands!

I've always really liked small skirmish 25mm games, where a single model really counts for something.  So, for now at least, the edition of Warhammer Fantasy I will be playing for the time being is... Frostgrave! A great game, it is very easy to adapt to almost any modelling style as the unit types are sufficiently generic. The only thing that was a hurdle to wrap my head around was that all expeditions into the destroyed city are led by wizards, no exception. I knew what kind of warband I wanted to paint, but it took me awhile to figure out what kind of magic using characters might go with it!


A fun new game by Osprey Publishing, Frostgrave has that utmost of advantages, a regularly meeting group of players, who are all people that I actually like being around.  Frostgrave, for anyone who has missed it, is a skirmish game very similar in background to Mordheim, which was a great game that I have played on and off since its release some 15 years ago.  Anyway...  Frostgrave Warbands are slightly smaller than in Mordheim, being for the most part limited to 10 models.  Interestingly enough, both games require you to start by recruiting a warband using "500 gold crowns".

I played my first couple games with a re-purposed models from my collection, but this week I was able to assemble and paint 8 models kitted out to the specifications of a 500 point warband.  I made most of these guys out of Fireforge crusader sets that I'd gotten a year ago just because they're too good NOT to have around (a box each of Foot Sergeants and Templar Infantry, to be specific) along with some GW bits for details.

Thus I made a party of warrior priests, (the Ashen Order, to be exact) based on old RPG characters my friends and I played in college.  Since SOMEONE never reads his friends blag, this will come as quite a surprise to the group tomorrow! I do love showing up to a regular group with a fully painted army or unit that no one knew I had!



First thing you have to create a wizard who is leading an expedition to the ruined city to retrieve magic items and lost knowledge. I made my wizard to be the archetypical DnD cleric type, he'll be a Thaumaturge in the game. This was simply a matter of giving a guy next to no armor, a big flowy cloak, and to be gesturing with a sword while reading from a book.  I am not happy with the lines I painted on the pages of the book, I will have to redo those later.  Next up is the wizards apprentice, I gave him a crossbow because handing out missile troops to the apprentice is actually the cheapest way to get them into your warband. I could have given one to the wizard but couldn't figure out a way to make it look cool, and besides, he should be casting spells, not shooting a bow. I wanted to optimize the warband for shooting but was unable to, for reasons of storytelling and roleplaying. Maybe if they get enough loot at tomorrows game, I can recruit/paint a couple more shooty-types.



My favorite to make was the "thug", a cheap model who comes equipped only with hand weapon and light armor.  I need one to bulk up my numbers a bit. I couldn't figure out why anyone would find themselves in Frostgrave with such bad equipment on purpose, so I burdened him down with a backpack, pouch, canteen, and spare ammo for the bow and crossbow.  He is the working stiff who has to haul the gear for the party! So that explains to my satisfaction why he can't carry more than a mace and basic armor. I really should have given him an axe instead of a mace, to chop the wood for the campfires!  Any gamer who was active in the 90's should recognize the archer, and probably have 50 or so rattling around their basement.  The knight in maille coif is based around my own medieval re-enacting kit, and for the time being represents me on the tabletop.



The warhounds are metal, from Gripping Beast, painted to match the dogs my old high school wargaming friend had back when I started into this mad hobby. To represent my mate, I simply added a knight to the warband, and put a leash on his belt and made him gesturing as if giving commands to his dogs.

To keep some discussion going, what other skirmish games do people recommend?  And on an unrelated note... any practical advice for getting the chaos game Path Of Glory up and running?  I have the "new" one that came out free in White Dwarf circa 2003, but am unsure how to actually get that mutated ball rolling.  Maybe get a group of gamers to chip in for a plastic chaos battalion and kit bash the heck out of it?