Batrep: First Frostgrave Match

Last night I played my first game of Frostgrave, against my friend Tom at our FLGS, Just Games Rochester.  A veteran wargamer who hadn't gotten his Frostgrave figures built yet, Tom provided the scenery (a mix of Warlord Games ruined hamlet, some old GW scenery and homemade stuff) while I provided the armies and treasure tokens.  He remembered a tape measure, which I'd forgotten, while I brought a laser pointer (borrowed from my cat) to check line of sight.

Tom took control of "The Undying Host of Sutekh-Ra," an Egyptian mummy-themed Necromancer warband, consisting of a Wizard, Apprentice, three Men-at-Arms, two Thugs and two Warhounds (represented as scarab swarms).  I, in turn, took "the Diabolists of Belphegor," a Summoner warband consisting of a Wizard, Apprentice, two Knights, three Thugs, one Thief and two Warhounds.

Rather than a pitched battle, we decided to dice for a scenario, ending up with "The Complex Temple," in which the treasure tokens are clustered at a central location and guarded by animated columns.

So here's the layout of the table, from my perspective:

I ended up with a bit of a bottleneck to maneuver my troops through, but them's the breaks.  Now, I don't remember the exact play by play, but I can give you some highlights:

Tom took an early lead in pursuing treasure, his Wizard Sutekh-Ra and three Men-at-Arms surging forward to claim the first treasure token on the board while Belphegor led a contingent of his forces through the bottleneck, and his apprentice Bifrons led another contingent over the wall.  The thief Tiviel, accompanied by a Warhound, worked her way east to try and claim the outlying treasure token.

Seeking a little bit of heavier support, Bifrons tried and failed to summon a demon, while Belphegor succeeded (with a natural 20 on his casting roll), calling up a six-armed, snake-tailed Minor Demon.

His jubilation at this summoning was short-lived however, as Sutekh-Ra swept forward and cast Bone Dart twice before the Demon could react, sending it back to the Lower Planes in a puff of smoke.  The necromancer directed his Men-at-Arms to deal with Tiviel, while his apprentice, Skelos-Ptah and two mummified thugs, clambered into the temple, two swarms of scarabs sweeping wide across the battlefield.

In response, Belphegor launched his own assault on the temple, sending Bifrons, two thugs and the vicious albino knight, Lady Cassiatta, over the wall as the remaining thug, warhound and the hellborn knight Vaeloth assaulted their way up the stairs, with Belphegor holding back from the fray.

Swooping forward, Sutekh-Ra silently bashed Bifrons' head in with his staff, sending the young diabolist to an early grave and a place in Hell.  Belphegor responded with an Elemental Bolt, blasting his mummified opponent but failing to destroy him.  Sutekh-Ra replied with a dismissive gesture, and Skelos-Ptah cast "Push," sending Belphegor hurtling backwards.

Vaeloth and Cassiatta entered the fray, with Cassiatta engaging Skelos-Ptah, Sutekh-Ra coming to his apprentices' aid, and then Vaeloth charging in to assist Cassiatta.  In a moment, Vaeloth and Skelos-Ptah were both dead, Tiviel and the Warhound with her had been slain by Men-at-Arms and scarabs, and Thug slew Thug.

Sutekh-Ra's Men-at-Arms converged on Belphegor, and while he made a good accounting of himself, he ultimately fell before their ancient blades.  Sutekh-Ra himself dispatched Lady Cassiatta with a swing of his staff; the three remaining Thugs Belphegor had brought with him shouldered their bundles of treasure and beat a hasty retreat, as Sutekh-Ra and his two surviving Men-at-Arms cleaned up the battlefield.

All in all, we each claimed three treasure tokens, and while we didn't tally up experience points, I imagine killing my wizard and apprentice would put Tom ahead of me this game - but we'll still call it a draw.

I had a blast with this; I've got a set of the ruined buildings that Tom had here, and I'll be assembling them this weekend to be able to bring to our next game.  Between set-up, break-down and figuring out the rules as we went, this game ended up lasting about two hours, which was not too shabby,

What I was not anticipating was how different this experience was from my usual RPG experience; I came away from this game much more relaxed, less spent, than I do from running an RPG session.  Not surprising, really - here I wasn't having to jump through hoops and think on my feet in response to the chaos 4+ players bring to the table, it was just me and Tom engaging in a gentlemanly proxy war.

More than anything, it left me wanting more, more, MORE! I can't wait for a rematch with Tom, and I'm eager to engage some of the other patrons of Just Games who have Frostgrave forces handy.  I've even begun bandying around talk on the store's Facebook page about setting up some sort of Frostgrave league.  Wargaming has proven thusfar to be everything I've wanted it to be since I first set foot in a Games Workshop store in high school, and I couldn't be happier.

Frostgrave Tonight

Tonight I will be playing my first game of Frostgrave, and my first wargame period - Yes! After years and years of painting toy soldiers and day-dreaming about pushing them across a table in mock combat, it's finally happening.

I'm hoping my generalship will look like this:



But I imagine it will be more like this:



Either way, wish me luck and expect an after-action report!

Additions to my Frostgrave Bestiary

I just got a few figures finished, additions to my bestiary of Frostgrave monsters - specifically, a couple skeletons, some armored skeletons, and a Frost Giant (as represented by a Hill Giant, as I've wanted this specific figure since it was first released in metal, and I'm not super keen on any of the currently available Reaper Bones Frost Giants).  I apologize for the lousy lighting - I'm taking pictures in my kitchen (the backdrop is actually my refrigerator), and I think I need the early afternoon sun filtering in combined with the overhead lights to really bring out the colors of the figures.

very basic color scheme, since these are mooks that'll go down easy in a fight.

debating going back and adding a patina wash to the bronze armor on these guys.

can't be read from here, but I wrote some rude messages in runes on his armor.
His shoulder pad reads "SONS OF YMIR" and his belly plate is just plain vulgar.

I was originally going to do runic tattoos with a "viking biker gang" theme - LOVE and HATE
on his knuckles, for example, and SONS OF YMIR was originally going to be done across
his shoulders, but I was nervous about messing it up.

I'm really pleased with how this bunch came out, and I'm even more pleased to report I'm finally getting to play Frostgrave this week; my friend Tom bought a copy of the book from our FLGS and will be borrowing one of my warbands to test it out with.  I will be posting an after-action report Wednesday night or Thursday!

Planning Ahead for the Painting Challenge

last year's logo

I may be getting ahead of myself, but it occurs to me that it's just a few months until Curt over at Analogue Hobbies announces the 7th annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge.  I think I should probably start thinking about stockpiling figures and getting what needs to be cleaned and primed done while the weather's warm enough to prime outside.  Nothing gets a drop of paint before the challenge begins - that would be cheating!

First up, taking stock of my current lead-pile.  Here's what's currently in my stash:

12x Foundry Valkyries
1x Reaper "Ice Queen"
1x Reaper "Cactus Joe, Gorilla Gunslinger"
1x Reaper "Magda Mintsilver, Female Dwarf"
1x Oathsworn "Female Fighter"
1x Oathsworn "Pregnant Villager" (given to me as a freebie for supporting their "Heroines in Sensible Shoes" Kickstarter)
1x Dark Fable "Prophet of Set"
6x Dark Fable "Cultists of Set"
1x Reaper "Bones" "Jabberwock"

pictured: little weirdo

Somewhere I have a box that Ray from Don't Throw a 1 sent me last year, containing 10 eastern cataphracts and a couple miscellaneous infantry figures, but darned if I can find it right now; last I saw it it was on the shelf in our bedroom closet, but since then Gina cleaned and reorganized the closet and now I have no idea where it is, and neither does she.  We'll find it.

The big challenge is having the closet door open; Atticus, our cat, is obsessed with the closets in our apartment and will take any opportunity to get inside, find a dark corner and squat there for hours.  We keep our closet doors rubber banded shut because he's figured out how to pull them open, and we don't want to risk the little weirdo pulling something down on himself and getting hurt.  So I'll have to lure Atticus out on to our enclosed patio or something and close him out so I can ransack the closet.

Once the Bonus Rounds get announced, I'm going to try to do as much as I can for them with Reaper Bones figures, seeing as how I can paint those in the winter without having to worry about priming them beforehand.  I've got a pretty good handle on painting Bones now so I think I'll have better results this year than I did last time around.

I think I want to give myself a big project for the winter as well, and I'm leaning towards assembling a couple retinues for Lion/Dragon Rampant.  I got the rulebook for Lion Rampant for Christmas last year and found it a really enjoyable read and looks like it'd be fun to play; I imagine Dragon Rampant, the fantasy version, would be much the same.

I'm looking at using 1/72 scale plastic figures for this project, to lighten the financial cost and to speed up the painting process; using the Plastic Soldier Review website, I tallied up the numbers and types of figures I would get from buying one each of Zvezda's Hundred Year War English boxed sets; I figure these would be a good choice for "generically medieval" retinues.  I did the math and figured out how to turn the contents of those two boxes into two full size, 24-point retinues for Lion Rampant with only about six figures left over for future projects.

While there's some Frostgrave interest growing at my FLGS, and Guild Ball is very popular among the local wargaming contingent, I'm hoping to stir up interest in other games as well, and I think Lion Rampant would do well if I can run a few high-visibility demo games.

For those who aren't interested in historical games that don't involve tanks, a purely fantasy army is called for, I think - brightly-colored knights aren't enough on their own, but brightly-colored knights and a dragon will draw people in.  For these people, I'm thinking of grabbing a couple boxes of Dark Alliance "Army of the Dead" figures and putting together a retinue of skeleton warriors to march inexorably across the land, laying waste to all in their path.

I've never painted 1/72 scale figures before; I had a couple boxes of them as toys as a kid, and my dad always hated them from his model kit building days because back in the 1960s and 1970s the tools needed to successfully paint these little soft plastic figures just weren't available.  I've been reading tutorials to figure out how best to apply paint to these figures and not have to worry about it immediately flaking off.  Should be an interesting exercise, to say the least.

So that's what I'm looking at right now for this winter's big painting challenge.  I think that'll put me at a good start and keep my morale up through the long, dark Rochester winter.

Recent Acquisitions

I got some new - and not so new - gaming goods recently, thought I'd take a post to show off a little and talk about what I got.

First off, I bought three out of the four new Carcosa modules written by Geoffrey McKinney.  These aren't so much adventures as open sandbox hex crawls - each booklet details a quadrant of a larger map that player characters are free to roam as they please.  Each quadrant is dominated by a single terrain type - Swamps, Barrens and Jungles.

Unlike the 2008 Carcosa release, which was done as a supplement to 1974 OD&D, or the 2011 re-release which was geared towards Lamentations of the Flame Princess, these modules are written with AD&D rules in mind, and as such reference spells and classes that don't previously appear in Carcosa, such as Clerics and Magic-Users (as opposed to Carcosa Sorcerers) as well as monsters not previously seen, such as traditional Lizard-Men.

The books are printed by Lulu, and are well put together, and for what it's worth, this is the first order I've gotten from Lulu that wasn't damaged or otherwise contained an "oops." One time I got somebody else's order combined into mine - so I got my Swords & Wizardry books *and* someone else's apocalyptic new translations of the Old Testament which described God as an extraterrestrial!

Other than the covers, the books are devoid of art, which is a bit of a shame; likewise, page numbers are missing which makes it a bit harder to track down information.  The maps on the back cover are nice, but the hex-numbers are often hard to read.

Of the three, I think I enjoyed my read-through of The Yuthlugathap Swamps the most and felt like it was the most immediately useable, with its assortment of Lizardman strongholds and the internecine warfare that marks their relationship with each other.

Overall, I'm kind of so-so on these books, and I don't really feel like they got me fired up and excited for running a Carcosa game, which is something I have been considering lately.  I don't regret the purchase, and I'm sure I'll pull some useful material out of them for use in future games, but I'm just not excited to run them for people.

On the flip side...

My FLGS, Just Games Rochester, has two collections of old Dragon magazines; on the wall rack, above the endless plethora of Pathfinder releases, are the "new" issues - copies that are still in great condition, nothing's been cut or torn out, while in a compartment under a display table is a stack of "used" issues.  I grabbed two from the "new" rack; issue #137 because I've always liked that Larry Elmore snow lizard painting, and #138 because it was the next one consecutively and it had a bunch of undead in it.

I gave both issues a read-through today while waiting for some paint to dry on a row of figures, I was really impressed by the sheer quantity of content here, with #137 being especially full of material I would absolutely 100% use in a game - the ecology of carnivorous plants, the weather system, the Pleistocene mammals, and the article on animal skins, tusks, etc., as treasure are all good, with three of the four being deep in my wheelhouse.

#138 was useful on two fronts - a great article detailing a new grimoire for Call of Cthulhu and a related monster I've never seen referenced before, and a listing of new and fun undead for AD&D.  Both of these seem like things I'll get some use out of in the future.

Paint Table Saturday: Aboleth finished

Finished my Reaper "Goroloth" (aka a D&D Aboleth) today; I sculpted a coral base to glue him to a couple days ago and painted that in a dark purple, added the basing grit, glued the big guy down and added a bit of foliage trimmed from an aquarium plant and given a heavy drybrush of citron green, to match to Deep Sea Divers I did during the  Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge at the end of last year/beginning of this year.  So now, in addition to a D&D monster, I've got a big fish to menace those two unlucky fellows!

A Time to Harvest Session 7: New Beginnings

We had a smaller group this week, and a little bit of trouble with set-up - a folding chair broke under me when I sat down in it and we ended up a bit squeezed in next to an X-Wing game, but overall it was a good session.  Let's have a run down.

Dramatis Personae:

• Darren Gray (played by Mike), engineering major and member of the fencing team 
• Perry Webster (played by Dan), journalism major, on assignment for the Miskatonic Crier
• Nathanlie Wingate Peaslee (played by Kai), folklore major, daughter of psychology professor Wingate Peaslee, granddaughter of economics professor Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee 
• Nick Jackson (played by Greg), private investigator

A week or so passed since the events in Orne Library and the deal made with the agents of the "Outer Ones." The Investigators were awakened one day by the sound of police sirens heading to campus.  Following the sound of the sirens brought them to Orne Library, where the bodies of those same agents - the tops of their heads neatly removed and their brains missing - were stacked up like cordwood in front of the library.  While observing the scene, Darren noticed a black Cadillac parked nearby, a bearded man visible in the driver's seat.

Since Daphne Devine/"Roger Harrold" was not among them, they swiftly paid a visit to "his" office; not finding "him" there, Nick trashed the office and then they headed to Harrold's residence.  Finding "him" at home, they escorted the ersatz professor to a nearby cafe for interrogation.  They quickly ascertained that "Harrold" had nothing directly to do with the destruction of the agents, but suggested that the "Outer Ones" don't take kindly to failure and don't feel particularly bound to honor bargains made with what they perceive as an inferior species.

Lunging, Harrold concluded the interrogation by drawing a metal ovoid, not much larger than a hen's egg, from a pocket and electrocuting Perry with it, badly burning the journalist and leaving him paralyzed and unconscious for a few minutes.  As Harrold turned to run, Nick pulled out his pistol and shot the professor in the head.  After explaining the situation to the satisfaction of the police, the investigators left the cafe - and saw the black Cadillac.  Deciding to introduce themselves, they struck up a conversation with first the driver, a large Scotsman, and then the passenger - a beautiful blonde woman who introduced herself as Selena.

Michael Abelard

Selena explained that her employer had a job offer for them, a job relating to "our mutual friends in the mountains." Her employer, she explained, was Michael Abelard, the owner of Federated Oil and Chemical - the financiers behind their college field trip to Cobb's Corners, Vermont.

Driving to the harbor, they boarded an amphibious plane and flew to Detroit, where they were met by Abelard, who laid all the cards on the table - his son had been killed by the Outer Ones while mountain climbing in Tibet, in an accident that had also cost Abelard the use of his legs.  Since then, he'd devoted his life and fortune to hunting these creatures and learning everything he could about them in order to destroy them.

He asked the investigators to lead a team of scientists and soldiers into Cobb's Corners in search of a suspected hidden base belonging to the creatures.  His team had the scientific background, but no practical experience with the region or the creatures, which is where the investigators would come in.  Their concerns about being used as "bait" Abelard allayed with a blank check and an assurance that their grades for the semester would be taken care of at Miskatonic.

They were given a week's rest and recuperation at the Detroit facility, allowing Perry to recover from his electrical burns and the investigators to train with firearms.  They were introduced to some of the other individuals who would be going on this expedition - Dr. David Drake, a psychologist, historian and occultist; Dr. Sarah Matherson, a forensic pathologist; Captain Sam Morrison, chief of security; and Larry Nekler, engineer and radio technician.

Dr. Matherson was especially interested to hear about Perry's experience with one of the Outer Ones, and shared her research with him.  She even took the investigators down into the lab for a brief tour, where they glimpsed an autopsy of a desiccated, humanoid form - albeit one with stumpy, pillar-like legs, long arms, no neck and a wide, lipless mouth.  Dr. Matherson explained that a number of these natural mummies had been found at an abandoned base in Peru, and that they were believed to be a new form of the creatures, possibly an attempt to mimic human form instead of having to rely on brain transplants.

Finally, she played them an audio recording, of an interrogation conducted the one time they captured one of these creatures.  The recording was horrifying, the entity begging for food - unable to digest earthly matter - while Matherson demanded it answer her questions, delivering painful electric shocks to the creature when it hesitated. The creature - identified as a "metch kangmi" in Nepalese on the recording, a name Nathanlie recognized as referring to the "abominable snowman" of the Himalayas - was forced to admit to coming from a ninth planet, Yuggoth, at the far end of the solar system, but was able to say little more before Matherson inadvertently killed the creature with electricity.