Forestgrave

Locally our COVID-19 situation is such that we’re allowed to expand our pandemic pods slightly starting a few weeks ago, so myself, my brother Corey, and our friend Sean decided to do the pod thing so we could get some gaming in. Turns out it takes a goddamn global pandemic to get me back to regular weekly games, so that’s a thing.

I own the Frostgrave rulebook in actual physical dead tree format, and we were all able to grab ebook/PDF editions while Osprey was doing their giveaway a month or so ago, and all three of us own enough random figures to put together usable Frostgrave bands, so we set off!

I’m currently using my 17th C English Civil War figures kitbashed with Frostgrave plastics to make a couple of wizard figures (last seen in bare plastic here), Corey is running Reaper mouslings, and Sean has GW Age of Sigmar ladies with big, big hammers. They’re so large we’ve decided they’re actually ogres or half-ogres.

We’re also ignoring the “frost” part of the Frostgrave setting, opting instead for overgrown forest stuff because that suits our existing terrain better. Hence “Forestgrave” instead of “Frostgrave”, then!

frostgrave/forestgrave table overview
Sean on the left, Corey centre, the cat on the right. The circular mat is an attempt to make three person games less uneven. Click for larger.

Today was our second game, and Corey came out ahead on experience with his wizard/apprentice pair getting more spells successfully cast than Sean and I managed combined. We ran the Ruined Keep scenario, with the four teleporter discs around the table. There was no teleporter action at all for the first half of the game, and then suddenly everyone was doing the teleport trot. I think all three of our wizards wound up with the extra experience points for taking a teleporter ride, actually.

start of game
Start of the game. My chaps centre foreground, Sean’s ogre ladies top left, Corey’s mousling bravos top right. Click for larger.

We’ve decided that for next week’s game we are all going to roll up new wizard bands; now that we’ve had two games we’re all realizing there’s things we’d do differently for both warband composition and spell selection, and we want the chance to explore new setups especially among the huge list of spells available in Frostgrave.

centre of the table
Two of my musketeers skirt the toadstool fairy ring to shoot at ogre ladies in the background. Click for larger.

We’ve got some new scenery on the way, too, with Corey working on more ruin pieces and hopefully getting his cranky 3d printer functional again. I want to start building some ruined towers for the Silent Tower scenario, but need to clear at least some of the current painting and building stuff out of the way first!

Quick Fantasy Scenery

We had our first game of Frostgrave last night, for which I used a few of my 17th C/ECW figures, because why not? As usual, I managed not to get a single photograph during the game.

I’ve decided to go with a “Greengrave/Forestgrave” theme instead of the default Frost- part of Frostgrave, so that we can keep using our current scenery rather than starting from scratch with winter stuff.

fantasy bits
Four “teleportation discs” and a really gnarly looking fairy ring, today’s work. Click for larger.

One of the FG scenarios calls for a quartet of 2″ teleportation discs set up around the board, so I decided to whip those up today. The discs themselves are pink styrofoam, based on scraps of plastic card. Quick and easy scenery, a few hours from start to the current state shown here. They could well serve all sorts of purposes aside from just teleportation discs, and I’m sure they will.

fantasy bits 2
Four pieces of fantasy scatter, closer up. Click for larger.

The other piece I created today started with the resin mushrooms from Bad Squiddo games I got a few weeks ago. I’ve been painting them up whenever I have leftover paint, got them finished today while waiting for the discs above to dry, and decided to put together a really, really gnarly fairy ring that, even more so than most others, you really do not want to enter. That’s a 28mm Frostgrave witch on a 25mm base behind the fairy ring; most of the mushrooms/toadstools are at least waist high on a human.

muschroom ring
Any fairy that comes out of this particular fairy ring is probably not one of the good fairies. At all. Click for larger.

This might feature as some sort of marker in a game eventually, but for now it’s just some colourful scatter terrain to fill in a blank spot on the table and possibly worry players!

We enjoyed our single game of Frostgrave so far, and I’ll try to get a couple of photos tomorrow while we also try to get fewer rules wrong on our second outing!

17th Century Artillery Finally Finished

This pair of guns were ordered from The Assault Group as part of the insanely slow to arrive order of June-September 2017. I finished the artillery crew at least a year ago and the guns have sat on one corner of my painting bench the whole time, cleaned up and dry-fit together but otherwise untouched.

The guns are nicely sculpted and cleanly cast, needing minimal cleanup. I spray primed and did most of the painting before assembling either gun, and on the basis of no research whatsoever decided to do the big culverin with a dark red frame and the smaller lighter falconette in green. Each gun has the body and tail as a single piece cast, the two wheels, and the barrel, and the wheels fit on much better than I’m used to with white metal parts, hardly any nudging of the axle pieces around to get everything square and solid.

17th C guns
Both Assault Group guns, some of the crew, the accessories still being painted in the foreground, and a Warlord Games mounted officer just because. Click for larger.

Nothing fancy about the painting, just a couple shades of Reaper paints, various washes (mostly GW), and a bit of edge highlighting that totally doesn’t show in either of these photos. Ah well.

The eventual plan (once they reopen…) is to get a pair of custom artillery bases lasercut in 2mm MDF by the excellent folks at Warbases that will have round holes for six crew figures to slot into and a flat area for whichever gun is in use, so that the crew aren’t weirdly raised over their gun because they’re based and it isn’t.

Slightly higher angle view of the guns. Click for larger.

I’m still not sure I’ll ever order anything from The Assault Group in the future, but if I do I’ll do it expecting a four to six month wait for my stuff, and rather like these guns, I’ll make sure it’s for figures or bits that I don’t need in any particular hurry or have an actual timetable built around! Given that I have no plans to do large scale 28mm battles in the English Civil War, 30 Years War, or any 17th C-theme gunpowder fantasy equivalent, a mixed pair of guns should be all I’ll need for now!

Loot from Forge of Ice

Forge of Ice is one of those one-person companies that makes all sorts of cool stuff, and after knowing about them for several years I finally got around to making a small order from them a few weeks ago. Most of the fascinating little one person companies are British, but Forge of Ice is in fact based in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Alex, who is the entirety of Forge of Ice, still doesn’t have an actual website but he’s got a Forge of Ice Facebook page, is very responsive by FB Messenger, and has an illustrated catalog thread over on the awesome Lead Adventure Forum as well, which is frankly easier to navigate than Facebook’s chaotic unsearchable nonsense.

Forge of Ice mostly does Lost World style stuff, small dinosaurs, oddball caveman-style accessories and stuff. I’m not doing much Lost World style pulp at the moment, but I have in the past and I’m certain I will in the future. Besides, I could always cross-pollinate my current weird 17th Century stuff with Lost World, couldn’t I? Hmmm…

Anyway, what did I get from the frozen depths of central Alaska? A pair of Snake Priestesses, a batch of five peacocks, a sabertooth tiger rug, and the centrepiece of this little collection, a resin Doom Serpent Idol.

Forge of Ice stuff
My little Forge of Ice order – peacocks, priestesses, a rug (it’ll really tie a room together), a Doom Serpent Idol, and a cool sticker! Click for larger.

The serpent priestesses are elegantly slim 28mm figures, both slender women with large snakes wrapped around their arms and shoulders. I have no immediate plans for them, but they’re awesomely pulpy and clearly need some sort of group of underpriestesses, guards, and temple lackeys to order about in their sneaky attempts to do whatever it is snake priestesses from a Lost World plot to do.

The peacocks are some of the first figures Forge of Ice released, several years ago, and I’m thinking that as well as being just general fancy set dressing, with a couple of house rules they could be mobile alarm units in a Pulp Alley scenario where players are trying to sneak up on a fancy house and don’t dare disturb the peafowl least the damn things scream the place down and alert guards or something! (if you’ve never heard a peafowl scream, they have a glorious bloodcurdling horror movie shriek. It’s awful.) The smaller female peahens and the male peacock with his tail down are both single piece castings; the peacock in full display mode is two pieces. There will need to be a bit of filing and puttying to get the body of the peacock and his tail to match up nicely, but nothing outrageous.

The saber tooth rug was just too much fun to pass up, I suspect I’ll use it as weird decoration in someone’s study or something!

Doom Serpent ido
The gloriously Egyptian-esque Doom Serpent idol, just the thing to be guarded by a couple of serpent priestesses and their flunkies! Click for larger.

The Doom Serpent idol is a fairly serious chunk of fine grey resin, about 3″ tall and just over 2″ wide at the shoulders. I’m really looking forward to painting this one up, I’m thinking a sort of blond/tan sandstone look like we see in Egyptian statues, with some coloured painted bits here and there, will look great.

Hopefully one of these days Alex gets around to getting Forge of Ice an actual website, but in the meantime go have a look at his Lead Adventure thread (you don’t need a LAF account to see it) and ping him by email, by the message service at LAF, or via Facebook Messenger to get your cool weird Lost World loot from the distant north!

Loot From Bad Squiddo

Ordered a few things from the excellent and varied ranges of Bad Squiddo Games back in March; things took longer to get from the UK to here than I’m used to, almost like some major world event is disrupting trans-Atlantic flights or something. However, everything was dispatched from the UK in good time and I am certainly not going to blame Anne of Bad Squiddo or the various postal services involved for a lack of air mail capacity…

I got a fairly mixed bag of stuff. A few ladies that will probably show up mostly as players or civilians in my English Civil War/Weird ECW games, a fine herd of pigs and some farm scenery, a bunch of cats, and some small scenery to add detail here and there, including a whole lot of mushrooms and toadstools for suitably creepy weird fantasy/horror forest bits.

Bad Squiddo haul
Most of the Bad Squiddo haul all laid out. Clockwise from lower left: mushrooms/toadstools, candles, several female characters, cats, fish seller w/ cats, skoggskattar, and finally in front centre a batch of food. Click for larger.

Skoggskattar
Skoggskattar – giant Scandinavian cats. Compare to the 28mm Warlord guy jogging past them on the right right there. Click for larger.

Everything is really cleanly cast and beautifully sculpted. The scenics are mostly by the very talented Ristul and in an interesting slightly flexible grey resin; the white metal sculpts are by a variety of sculptors and all really well done.

Not pictured above is the pigs, my favourite single part of this purchase. I indulged in the Pigtopia bundle deal which got me ten pigs and six bits of pigsty/farm scenery. I’ve already painted the pigs up, basing them in small groups on 40mm bases.

pigs!
Bad Squiddo pigs! Ten pigs, six pieces of pig-related scenery. Click for larger.

I painted the pigs up to vaguely resemble one of the oldest heritage breeds of pig in the UK, a black-and-white breed that I now can’t find or remember the name of. Anyway, they painted up nicely and I look forward to watching them chase players around the table or be part of someone’s provisions on the hoof in a scenario.

painted pigs
Pigs all painted up, all on 40mm bases. Just a bit of greenery to add and they’re all done. Click for larger.

That’ll do, pig, that’ll do.