Comrade's Wargames

Wargaming, painting and modeling in Oregon's Willamette Valley

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Take a Peek at Our Modular Frostgrave Setup

Posted by Comradepatrick on March 30, 2021
Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, campaign, club, fantasy, frostgrave, hobby, terrain. Leave a comment

My friend John, purveyor of fine postings at Barty B’s Command Crate, has put together a tremendous write-up about the origins and development of our modular Frostgrave table, which you may have read about in some recent posts. Do yourself a favor and click the link below to check out his expositions!

About a year ago my gaming group decided to collaborate on a terrain board to prepare for the release of Frostgrave 2nd Edition. After some back-and-forth in our Slack team, we agreed to build modular tiles using shared standards for certain key geometries and base coat colors.

Our modular Frostgrave — Barty’s Command Crate

Rescue Job: Putrid Blightkings

Posted by Comradepatrick on March 18, 2021
Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, chaos, fantasy, hobby, nurgle, painting, saga, warhammer. 11 Comments

Among my very favorite models released in the current “modern era” of Warhammer figures are certainly the Putrid Blightkings. These multi-part plastic kits can be used to build a wide variety of oozing, pus-filled champions of Nurgle, armed with a variety of rusted, wretched weaponry and armor. Each kit comes with more than enough pieces to make five warriors, ensuring that you will end up with a variety of surplus bits to use elsewhere.

I love the models and have wanted to try my hand at painting them for a while now. But I’ve been put off by the retail price — $57 for five figures, well above my typical price tolerance of a few bucks per figure. In addition, while I liked the idea of having a big pile of leftover bits, in practical terms I had no real need for such accoutrements … I just wanted the toy soldiers, thank you very much.

Thankfully, I was able to patiently scour ebay to find the exact solution to fit my needs: a clutch of four Blightkings, already assembled and sloppily painted, for super cheap. I want to say I got the four of them for $20, which made me feel like I’d just won the lottery. In a strange way, acquiring them pre-assembled was actually a relief. I am not super interested in fiddly assemblies these days, and so I was glad to have that task done for me ahead of time.

These guys were about 75% complete when they arrived. A couple of them were missing the all-important butt pieces, which cover their rear ends and generally complete the miniature. I was able to fashion replacement butt pieces using green stuff and various satchels, packs, and bandoliers from my bits box. I must admit I was sorely tempted to sculpt a yawning anus on one of these guys, just for the Nurgle style points.

After a quick dip in the paint stripper, they were ready for some brushwork. The paint job included contrast paints for the flesh, together with dark, grimy chainmail and lurid green plate armor. I like painting my Nurgle guys in a bright, almost cartoonish paint scheme.

Here’s a peek at the butt solutions I came up with. The swishy tail is from a leftover cavalry horse!

All in all, these guys fit the bill for exactly what I was seeking — cheap models, pre-assembled, ready to strip & repaint. I’m not even bothered by only having just four of these guys, because they’ll be a standard-sized unit of hearthguard in Saga: Age of Magic.

What’s your favorite chaos-aligned figure or unit?

Frostgrave: Exploring the Mausoleum

Posted by Comradepatrick on March 17, 2021
Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, campaign, fantasy, frostgrave, game night, narrative. 7 Comments

The next installment in our nascent Frostgrave campaign was a classic scenario from the main rulebook: The Mausoleum! The setup called for a crypt in the center of the table, which would spawn skeletons each turn as the warbands advanced through the ruins.

Mark provided an excellent terrain setup for our mausoleum. We plopped it onto the center of our modular terrain tile setup, tossed on some scatter terrain to clutter up the board, and then set about deploying our warbands.

We had Mark’s chronomancer, who was leading a new warband made up of various versions of herself recruited from different timelines. (Cool concept!)

We had my dwarves, who were battle hardened from the last game and ready for more, led by Vauldric the Metalworker (front row, with staff; he’s an enchanter).

And lastly, we had the scrappy disciples of Elder Futhark, aka John’s sigilist warband from the first session.

With just three players, we found that the game moved along quite nicely. The warbands crept through the ruined city, casting various spells to buff their members and trying to steer clear of the skeletons that were shambling around the mausoleum.

John’s first act of the game was to cast a wall spell to provide a convenient buffer between his warband and Mark’s warband. They agreed to an uneasy truce, as the wall removed the most direct route to confrontation.

Over in the dwarves’ side of the board, things were progressing nicely. I had won the high roll and selected the most advantageous deployment area for my warband. I was close to a couple treasure tokens and also had a fairly clear route to get to the central mausoleum. Valdric the Metalworker used telekinesis to lasso a couple treasure tokens and drag them closer to my minions.

Eventually, the skeletons took notice of our intrusion and began advancing on the warbands. As monsters go, these guys were weak — just 1 hit point each! A stiff breeze would blow them over!

But, we quickly learned that in Frostgrave, with its rather swing d20-based combat system, even the lowliest enemy could prove dangerous. This burden fell most heavily upon John’s warband, which crossed swords with a pair of skeletons that combined to deal more than 10 points of damage to various members of his warband — killing a thug outright, as I recall, and wounding several others.

Here’s a look at the “folly on the wharf” as this bitter blunder became known. Elder Futhark is righteously pissed that his warband’s advance has been slowed!

Elsewhere, the dwarves were within sight of the central mausoleum. Skeletons kept popping out, and since the dwarves were now the closest target, they began a deadly dance with the undead warriors.

By this point, Mark had found a strategy that worked well for him. He lined the periphery of the battlefield with spellcasters and warriors armed with crossbows, then began taking potshots at any target that presented itself — skeleton or warband alike!

While this was happening, the rest of Mark’s warriors were snatching treasure and fleeing from pursuing skeletons, in true Frostgrave fashion. There were some, ah, casualties, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, right?

I’m pleased to report that Elder Futhark rallied his rabble and pushed past the skeletal guardsmen who were blocking his path. John’s crossbow-armed warrior picked up a few more scars and probably earned some hazard pay for singlehandedly dispatching a skeleton despite being armed with a long-ranged weapon totally unsuited for close combat.

Here’s a look at the battlefield as we entered the final turns of the game. Everybody’s warband was in decent shape and most had already secured a treasure token (or two). However, the skeletons had mostly been dispatched. Now, the only enemies that remained were the opposing warbands. We had entered the endgame!

The dwarves took the initiative, breaking from cover and scampering toward the mausoleum and the treasure contained therein. A lone skeleton dared to stand in there way, and he got a sword to the ribcage for his trouble.

John and Mark found themselves toe-to-toe as their thugs and thieves approached the mausoleum from the other side. Battle was a foregone conclusion, and they clashed in the rubble-strewn streets of Felstad.

Their skirmish drew the attention of my dwarf armed with a crossbow (represented here by a pair of black powder pistols, for flavor reasons). The dwarf was ensconced high up in a ruined building, with an excellent line of sight to the melee. He was only too happy to contribute to the chaotic fight by shooting a few crossbow bolts into the swirling scrum.

This was to be the last substantive clash on the battlefield. By the end of this turn, we were nearing our time limit, and the warbands had each secured some loot without suffering horrendous casualties. By Felstad standards, that’s a great day in the office. As a final act of mediation (and to farm some XP) John again cast his wall spell, providing cover for his retreat, and then we all retired back to our hideouts to count our gold and lick our wounds.

With this being our second game of the current campaign, I was pretty impressed with our collective grasp of the rules and the relative speed of our gameplay. The game flowed really well and we tossed those dice with godlike confidence.

As in previous games, the post-game campaign step was an absolute joy. This is where you find out the extent of your warband’s injuries, and you roll randomly to determine what cool treasure you hauled out of the frozen city. This step was the source of plenty of whooping and hollering on the part of the players, as it should be.

All in all, this campaign is really humming along. Our next game is coming up in late March. Stay tuned for more!

Frostgrave: Into the Frozen City

Posted by Comradepatrick on February 18, 2021
Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, campaign, fantasy, frostgrave, skirmish, warbands. 5 Comments

We got together last month for the first session of our Frostgrave campaign. This game was the culmination of months of planning, building, and painting! Everybody contributed to the terrain board, and everyone had newly painted models to show off for the game. We also did some worldbuilding via Microscope to develop a customized backstory and lore for our version of Felstad. Good stuff!

We had a tremendous setup for the game: John’s large, covered, well-lit back porch, which kept Oregon’s winter rain off our heads and enabled us to play outdoors and stay as safe as possible during ye olde pandemic. We also wore masks, of course.

Since this was our first game, we went with the basic scenario: a ruined section of the frozen city stocked with treasure and danger in equal parts. The table size was slightly bigger than 3×3 feet, which was a bit tight for 4 players, but we made sure to pack the battlefield with terrain, so there were plenty of cramped alleys and irregular ruins to negotiate.

The game began with us re-learning the mechanics and introducing them to the newer players. Each warband deployed in a corner and began a cautious advance toward the nearest treasure tokens. Some treasures were closer than others, which put some warbands at an advantage at the outset of the game. Here’s a look at the warbands… the images should be clickable to see slightly larger versions.

With that, the game got underway! John’s wizard, Elder Futhark, led his warband out of the ruins of a crumbling laboratory, casting Bridge to create a path up to a shattered cornice which allowed his archer to plink away at my advancing dwarf warband.

The bridge here is a massive ribbon of inscribed parchment paper, which is perfect for John’s Sigilist wizard. The stone bridge you can see on the right side of that photo became a hotly contested terrain piece, with John and I both carefully jockeying for position. At one point, he successfully blocked me out with a wall of fog, which prevented my crossbow dwarf from seeing anything on the opposite side of the table. After a few rounds of spells and combat, we agreed to a tenuous truce and redirected our forces to other hotspots on the battlefield.

Elsewhere, Vincent and Lawrence found themselves competing for a handful of treasure pieces amid the ruins of a broken wall. The Skaven were particularly interested in this abandoned well, which seemed to seethe and bubble with barely contained arcane energy.

One of the most interesting elements of Frostgrave is the optional rule for wandering monsters. These are creepy denizens of the frozen city that, depending on the dice roll, show up when you least expect them to menace and stymie the plucky warbands.

Since our group has a sizable collection of varied and wonderful miniatures, there was no question that we would be using the wandering monster rules. We even had a 5th player, Mark, who volunteered to run the monsters as they began wandering onto the battlefield. The action started off with a wild-eyed boar that showed up to gore and thrash John’s warband!

In another notable instance, a loathsome spider roped down on thick strands of webbing to attack the grim warriors from John’s and Lawrence’s warband … just as they were coming to blows over a treasure token! It’s the little encounters like this that makes Frostgrave such a joy to play.

As we entered our final turns, it became clear that the treasures in the center of the map, arrayed around the derelict docks and quays of the canal, would be a great prize for those bold enough to claim them. All of the warbands began edging closer to the docks, using spells and missile fire to cover their approach.

It was a bitter clash and I do not recall that anyone actually claimed the central treasure, represented here by a floating enigmatic crystal prism. But plenty of warbands made off with 1 or 2 treasures, and I believe Lawrence’s warband snagged 3 treasures! Wow!

After the game concluded, we walked through the post-game campaign steps. This is one of the most compelling aspects of Frostgrave, and it helps to set the game apart from other one-off skirmish games. We rolled on a series of random charts to determine the grisly fate of our wounded soldiers and to find out exactly what we had uncovered for each treasure token. It was a ton of fun and it’s already helping bring some character to our starting warbands!

Our next session is coming up this weekend, and we’re eyeing the Mausoleum scenario from the main rulebook. Stay tuned for more!

Bayard’s Holdfast

Posted by Comradepatrick on January 16, 2021
Posted in: Posts. Tagged: 28mm, dwarves, fantasy, painting, project, terrain. 5 Comments

Recently my buddy Vincent was doing a purge of excess gaming stuff, and he very generously gifted me with a Dwarf Stronghold resin terrain kit by Scotia Grendel. It was brand new, still in the bubble wrap, and I was excited to get started on it. I seized the opportunity provided by this nifty terrain pieces to bring to life a key location from my old Savage Worlds fantasy game. It’s always more fun to work on a terrain piece that has some lore associated with it, right?

Bayard’s Holdfast guards the main pass through the Vogale Peaks, serving as the last bastion of rugged civilization for travelers heading east into the goblin-infested mountain range. The dwarven garrison at the Holdfast are renowned mountaineers and mount regular patrols along the snowy trails in search of wayward travelers or encroaching goblins.

The Scotia Grendel kit is scaled for 25mm, which is just a wee bit small these days, what with all the “heroic 28mm” and even 32mm figures that are commonplace on most battlefields. So I decided to “build up” the central drum tower a little bit. I added a cylindrical core from a plastic snack container, then encircled the new core with XPS foam bricks.

The extension added about 5 or 6 inches of height to the central tower, which really makes the whole terrain piece seem a lot more bulky and imposing. You can see where I started my custom brickwork, so it’s not 100% seamless, but I think it looks alright with a lick of paint.

In my lore, Bayard’s Holdfast is build into the side of a mountain, so these fortifications just represent the “upper works” of the fortress. The rest is buried in the rock. About 40 dwarves are garrisoned inside.

Here are a few more detail pics.

This was a heavy, nicely sculpted resin terrain kit. Everything fit together well with a minimum of filing and sanding, and even my modifications were easy to accomplish.

I’m a complete sucker for classic medieval stone castles and fortresses, so this piece will doubtless hit the table in a lot of games. Until then!

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  • Recent Posts

    • Take a Peek at Our Modular Frostgrave Setup
    • Rescue Job: Putrid Blightkings
    • Frostgrave: Exploring the Mausoleum
    • Frostgrave: Into the Frozen City
    • Bayard’s Holdfast
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